Well, there goes the Good Friday agreement. Although it's touted as a tabloid-friendly attack on asylum seekers and victims of contemporary war crimes (ie, those committed in Iraq and Afghanistan), you can bet they'll also prevent the prosecution of British soldiers for other war crimes - including those committed during the conflict in Northern Ireland.
The GFA specifically rests on the existence of strong human rights laws. This is because before human rights laws existed, the British had a terrible habit of murdering Irish people in the street.
Needless to say, this is the stuff of which insurgencies are made.
When I was a kid, IRA bombings and bomb threats were so common that it was a regular feature of urban life to have the bomb squad rock up and cordon off random buildings that had been targeted. Every night on the news you'd see reports on the latest from NI - people shot, blown up, and tortured by the security forces and / or terrorists. It wasn't like the War On Terror - this was normalized, completely routine.
Nowadays, terrorists will be able to bomb us from the air. A couple of drones and that sense of security, of being on the safe side of a wall, will be history. Then the cops will get tooled up and start blasting people again.
It starts with society deciding that certain people don't matter. It ends up with a world where nobody matters.
OK, I know I'm always going on about this, but really...
WHY ARE OUR GUYS SO DUMB?
Take this article for example. Let me show you why it is a stupid article.
1. She allows herself to be photographed looking like she has just been sucking on a delicious lemon.
This really is a beginner's mistake. Presentation is vital; would you read anything written by someone who constantly scowls disapprovingly at you?
2. She mistakes privileges for rights and rights for privileges.
The title says it all (and yes, I have said the same thing on this very blog). But that is wrong. It is bad framing. Being alive should never be considered a privilege, and as soon as you do so, you lose.
Is there such a thing as "white privilege"? Well, yes, you could put it that way, perhaps, although it is grammatically incorrect, at least in white-majority countries.
But it is not helpful to frame it in this way, especially when you are speaking in terms of life and death. I repeat: Being alive should never be considered a privilege; modern juristictions and successful activists speak instead of "human rights". This article mentions the phrase "privilege" 11 times. It mentions "rights" not at all. Although at the bottom of the page, it says "all rights reserved."
Perhaps it was bad interview. If someone had printed an interview with me and it came accross like that, with its sour portrait and its endless scolding of an entire group of people, I would ask to have it taken down. If they refused, I would then approach a lawyer.
Claudia Rankine clearly isn't a stupid person. I am sure they don't hand out PhDs to morons. But intellectuals, especially American intellectuals, seem especially prone to behaving like idiots. It's as if their intelligence works against itsself; they get so wrapped up in signifiers and concocting new forms of jargon that have to be explained at length, that they forget that their function as activists isn't to show everyone how clever they are and flex their intellectual muscles, it's to help with "the work", to stop these horrific human rights abuses in their tracks.
Again, America is a huge part of the problem. Americans have a really hard time understanding the concept of universal rights, "the Commons" - something we all share and all have as a birthright. Even though universal human rights were supposedly enshrined in their Constitution, that document is the oldest that I know of that confuses rights with privileges - notoriously, the right to have a gun is enshrined before the right to a fair trial, the right not to be enslaved, the right to vote, the rights of women to vote, the right to life itsself, and even the right to your own property, practically a religion over there, is not considered as important as the right to bear arms. Everywhere else in the world, having a gun is like having a car, it's a dangerous weapon and in the wrong hands can kill even the person who owns it, so they are subject to stringent controls and licensing. Not so in the USA.
Americans also don't understand the concept of wealth held in common, even abstract concepts such as human rights, because to them everything is private. They think that if one person gains, another must lose. Everything is a zero-sum game to them. So that explains that- the capitalistic culture of the US is a form of ideology, in the Slavoj Zizek sense, which tends to taint everything a person does. To use the language of the Social Justice activists, the problem is systemic and unconcious.
But that doesn't explain why the Left has been so stupid in the past.
I've been either a left-wing activist or a keen supporter or at least a sympathetic observer of the Left for thirty years. I went to my first protest in 1990; I went to my last protest in 2019.
Since then I've seen big wins - like the Poll Tax campaign, gay rights, and local victories for squatters and the homeless - morph into terrible, horrible losses.
I've watched the Left, or as they were then, the environmental movement, screw up in the 1990s. As a result, the environment is fucked.
I've watched the Left screw up the anti-war movement in the 2000s. As a result, the government can basically bomb the shit out of anyone they feel like.
I've watched the Left screw up the anti-capitalist movement in the late noughties and early 2010s. As a result, capitalism has, as Umair Haque puts it, gone full Soviet - the government spends endless amounts of cash propping up the stock market and big business while the people literally go hungry on breadlines.
Now the Left are screwing up on human rights and ethnic minority issues, as a result, the American police are a literal death squad and racist attitudes are entrenched at all levels of society, and not just in the USA. The news is grim for sexual minorities as well; even many Leftists of the previous generation are openly hostile to Transgender people, including people whom I know personally.
This isn't just an American problem - I've watched all this happen in the UK as well. I've watched as black activists framed their cause in terms of resentment for whites, I've seen anti-capitalism degenerate into a pointless conspiracy theory jerk-off, I've observed the anti-war movement rapidly turn into an anti-Semitic bandwagon of sympathy for terrorists, and I've been there when environmentalists sat around and got stoned, got in peoples' way, or just smashed things up for the cameras.
It has driven me to despair. I no longer believe the Left will be relevant in my lifetime except as a straw man for the Right to knock down, a sort of controlled opposition.
I think the only hopeful strategy remaining is to elect social-democratic and liberal parties (which the Left also oppose unless they're in charge of them). We can then leverage our protests to get what we want from them, as they are more likely to resort to reform than the Right (who simply repress protest with brutal violence).
ANARCHO-SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
This is the meaning of Anarcho-Social Democracy. "Anarcho-", which means "going to demonstrations, drinking a lot, listening to punk rock and dressing all in black", means you're not confined to any particular leftwing party or ideology. This decentralization has disadvantages, but the great advantage is that it is hard for any one group or party to monopolize power. It also means that anyone, anywhere, can join in, from liberals to socialists to sympathetic capitalists (depending on the issue of course). Anarchism is, generally speaking, inclusive.
Social democracy, because, well, you have a vote, it's the only formal power you have, so you might as well use it to elect a somewhat more sympathetic government than we would have otherwise. It's not much, granted, but it exists and you'd be stupid not to excercise this right.
Evolutionary psychology is often considered a Right-wing discourse - a reactionary, racist pseudo-science that defends the status quo and allows vast swathes of people to be written off. It could well be misused as such. But scientific truth is true whether it's ideologically convenient for you or not, so I have to ask myself... what if there's something to it?
What follows is the culmination of my own darkest thoughts, and an attempt to answer the classic question: "Why the hell do poor working class people keep voting Tory, why do they support the rich, attack other poor people, and generally assist in their own oppression?"
In no way do I want any of it to be true.
Growing up, I noticed a few things. The white kids were either posh, or thick. If you weren't thick, you were automatically "posh", "middle class", "a keener"...and this was a BAD thing. The black kids didn't have that sort of divide; they were just black. Where we established a pecking order of bullies and bullied, they stuck together - if you were racist, they'd all kick the shit out of you. Fair do's.
Later, at college, I noticed that the computer science and technology department, where all ambitious and intelligent people went, had a disproportionate number of black students, who were far more hard-working and studious than the gang of dole-ites and stoners who made up my own affinity group. This was surprising to me because at the time (the 1990s), black people were being encouraged by the media and popular culture to get involved in crime and were very much stereotyped as criminals.
Have you ever wondered why the English working classes are so stupid? Why white, working class people in particular are so slavish, so devoted to drudgery and back breaking work? Why those who do break the habit of work are so utterly irresponsible, why when they can't work, they smash up nice flats and go on drugs, why they get pissed up all the time? Why they seem to have no creativity and no culture other than patriotism and vapid celebrity bullshit?
Because the industrial revolution was a crime against humanity.
It was bred into them. Literally. Nineteenth century industrialisation was like a breeding programme for stupid people.
In order to get a workforce, ordinary folk were run off of their land in the Enclosures and herded into giant cities. The only way of making a living there was basically to work yourself to death in a factory. These jobs were not only back breakingly hard... they were BORING.
Think of it. Every day, except possibly Sunday, you screw in bolts on an assembly line... or something equally mind numbing. It's noisy, hot, and crowded. If you make a mistake, you either (a) cause an accident, in which case you die, or are crippled and cannot work, or (b) get fired, in which case you die.
This is because chronic unemployment was a killer in those days - instead of going on the dole you had a choice between a life of crime and the Workhouse...
Most crimes were punished by removal from the gene pool - either via the death penalty or transportation to a penal colony.
The Workhouse was essentially a proto-concentration camp (complete with mass graves) in which, among other things, husbands and wives were split up and inmates were NOT allowed to have sex. So for non-criminals, chronic unemployment also resulted in removal from the gene pool... and intelligence strongly implied unemployment, because nobody with half a brain could have possibly lasted in those jobs for longer than a few weeks at most. Certainly not long enough to have children.
And if you were just smart enough to escape? You were also out of the gene pool. You either went to America, or (far less often) you became middle class, leaving your old life behind.
Thus, selection pressure changed the English proletariat. It blunted their sensoria, as those sensitive to the clamour and noise of the factory would have been bred out, it diminished their intelligence and shaped their minds as those who couldn't fit into the drudgery of work ended up unemployed, and so forth.
This explains so much of people's everyday behaviour - not only the popularity of extremely loud, atonal music and noisy vehicle engines, but also people's credulity, the way people have total faith in absolutely ridiculous lies, our vapid culture, our emotional attachment to the State... because submissive and stupid people got to be genetically successful, while rebellious and / or intelligent people were not.
And this explains the failure of social democracy over here (and its success on the Continent). In Europe, they didn't have anything like our industrialization.
European industrialization took place piecemeal and evolved over centuries, rather than being imposed over a couple of decades. European ruling classes were not able to brutalize and enslave anything like that number of their own people until the Fascist and Communist regimes of the 20th century, if at all.
This is why the French working class are so radical - they had no Fascism OR Communism. Indeed, they enjoy a great culture and recent history of Resistance to Fascism in place of our authoritarian "Battle of Britain" siege mentality.
So in Europe they do not have a docile, submissive working class. In Europe, if you give someone a free flat, they do not smash it up, or sell it on and join the yuppies - they have solidarity, not individualism. In Europe, if you try and take away peoples' rights, they protest and often successfully put a stop to that sort of malarkey.
Because in Europe, the working classes have not been bred to be slaves.
This is the tragic thing about working class racism. What our ruling classes did to Africans was some truly Nazi-like evil, and what they did to their own people was some Brave New World bullshit as well - It's not a competition!
Nominally free, 19th century Englishmen would have no escape except death or emigration. Nominally free, the smart ones died, were transported, or left for a new life in the Colonies, while the dumb ones bred... and bred... and bred... and bred....
The UK population quadrupled over the 19th century, and that of England trebled
And now we're a country awash with dummies, whose only use is as a nominally privileged, docile labour force (akin to the Kulaks of old) and voting bloc for reactionary politicians (we call them the "Gammons" over here).
What do you think the ruling classes are going to do with them, when things get tough? What did they do in the past? Ever hear of World War One? The Trenches? Ypres? Millions of people were murdered by the system in a few short years - that's how these scum solve the population problem, they hurl it into some meat grinder of a war. Or encourage them to catch some disease...
This is an unpleasant theory, I know. I don't like it either. But it explains so much - particularly, it explains the affinity of Anglo culture generally for neoliberal capitalism and the far Right. Because Anglos have been stupefied by a kind of selective breeding that took place during our period of industrialization; Eugenics in reverse.
It bears repeating, and social justice activists must understand this: Anglos have a terrible history not just of enslaving others, but also each other. We are cannibals, and the horrific thing about it is, this strategy has been extraordinarily successful. 330 million Americans, 68 million Brits, 30 million Australians and New Zealanders, 37 million Canadians... that's nearly half a billion people who think they are free, but who are deeply, genetically, unfree. Some Brave New World bullshit indeed...
I always wondered why I was different. It's really lonely being working class, or at least, not middle class, and smart, or at least not stupid. Now I know why - my great grandfather and great grandmother came here from Egypt, whose populations were not subject to the same selection pressures, my grandmother was a second-generation immigrant. My grandfather was Welsh and came to England in the 1930s; not much is known about my mothers' family, but they appear to be somewhat French and lower middle class. My people are the smart Anglos - immigrants who anglicised (Great Grandfather Mahmoud changed his name to Richard and shagged his way through three continents before copping it in Canada), smart but sociopathic and thus easily able to climb the greasy pole... apart from my immediate family, who come from a black-sheep progenitor, and that's how I got here.
It's like the Anthropic Principle in reverse; I'm here to observe this stuff because my ancestors weren't part of it. They weren't part of that horrific extermination of thought and mind that took place in the 19th centurty.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR LEFTIST PRAXIS
It's no coincidence, then, that the Communist Manifesto was written here - by two Germans.
So - What does this mean for Leftist praxis? Nothing good. It's possible this rigid social system is ripe for revolution, but it's bound to end in Soviet-style tears, because the English proletariat are not the superior ubermensch they think they are - they're the descendants of industrial slaves, who have literally been bred to be stupid and authoritarian. Like the Russians, they will recreate the system all over again.
And that, as they say, is why I drink. That's the reason, if I'm forced to define myself ideologically at all, why I'm some weird combination of social democrat and post-left anarchist.
Sure, it'd be great revenge if Big Daddy Stalin came back from the dead and mashed up the fuckers who screwed up this country so bad that people literally believe in the Flat Earth - but what's the point of a revolution if it's just going to change the face of the man who kills you?
Every programming language has something like this in it. In C++, for example, it is impossible to pass multi-dimensional arrays to subroutines. And so forth.
When I was young, and stupid, I worshipped people who created computers and wrote programming languages.
They were as gods to me. I'd read books like "The soul of a new machine" and fanboy out... and then one day, I realised that the people who write programming languages and design computers aren't gods, they ain't even ordinary slobs who put their trousers on one leg at a time - they're fucking idiots who happen to be in possession of a better short term memory and more ability to concentrate than everyone else, but that's about it. And worst of all, they think they're fucking geniuses!
The writer Michael Chricton calls it "thintelligence" - a very specific, very narrow form of intelligence devoted entirely to technology and its capabilities, but completely lacking in any understanding of how said technology might actually work in the real world. He used it to describe the mentality that lead to the fictional technogenic catastrophe of Jurassic Park, but we see it all the time, in everyday life and in the realm of policy (whose bright idea was it to store all the country's nuclear waste in the same rusty tub of water?) - but the most maddening sign of it in everyday life is surely the proliferation of gadgets with unbearably awful dogshit user interfaces.
If you're a civilian frustrated by technology, you might as well know that it's unbearably awful dogshit all the way down - the computer industry treats programmers and end-users with the absolute, fucking, haughty contempt of the unintelligent nerd who thinks he is smart because he can memorize Pi to twenty places, do his 12 times table and program in ten crappy, awful, shitty languages like fucking Python.
When you're a whining critical arsehole like me, you get asked a lot: "What would YOU do then?" It's a fair question.
While personally, I like to think well of Long-Bailey, and as such I think she made a mistake rather than actually being an anti-semite - (after all, it wasn't her interview, most of which was about how much the Tories suck) I can also see that clearly, some house cleaning has to be done on the Left.
How, who knows - or if it's even possible, considering just how quick the British Left is to blame Israel for everything, even when it's literally on a different continent to the problem at hand, I would say it is definitely systemically anti-semitic - yet there's always hope.
I don't know how to get there, the journey would have to involve some kind of period of long, sober reflection, but I know what the end product should be.
So what should a New New Left look like? What should the Left do?
* The Left is nothing if it isn't ultimately about economics - cold hard cash.
So the New New Left would be laser-focussed on economic matters. The anarcho-capitalists are right, money really does unite us all, we all need more, and we are all being robbed blind by the same system. Without in any way wanting to detract from wider social justice struggles, which can (and should) belong to the wider society, the Left should be more about money, about prosperity and why that prosperity isn't being shared.
* The Left should of course support social justice, environmental, and minority rights struggles. But it should not, and MUST NOT attempt to monopolize or hijack them.
We've seen it time and again, on the one hand with miserable Trots like the SWP hijacking these issues for their own purposes, and on the other with Leftists generally taking their eyes off the prize of economic redistribution and latching onto increasingly obscure issues such as the endless conflict in the Middle East, which has become a toxic running sore beloved of racists and arseholes the world over.
The Left should cut through that nonsense and issue general memoranda of support for peace where the problem is complicated and intractable, as with Israel / Palestine, and issue specific statements in support of no-brainers such as BLM, where the problem is simple but not directly related to the wider economic issues.
Again, the focus must remain on the distribution of wealth in the wider society. Don't get caught up in the Right's culture wars, they are designed to divide people, not unite them.
* The Left must change its own culture.
From one where those it supports are patronized as victims, to one where the proletariat are genuinely supported and lifted up, emotionally as well as economically, as those who actually do the work in society. Nobody likes to be told they are a loser, and right now the Left poisons its support base with a patronizing narrative in which the poor, pathetic working classes are patted on the head and told they deserve more handouts, rather than shown how they too can gain real concrete results for themselves.
* Leftist discourse must be about bringing people up, not pulling them down.
Leftist discourse has also become poisonous in the way it treats people generally - The classic example is how Twitter leftists are constantly pulling each other down, or trying to bring down celebrities who have in some way trespassed. Policing public morality is not our job. Our job is to gain political power and facilitate the transfer of power and wealth towards to the proletariat. It's not supposed to be about "cancelling" people we don't like and bringing people down - it is supposed to be about bringing people up.
* The Left MUST STOP supporting causes and organisations that actively harm it.
There are two obvious examples - the aforementioned poisonous and intractable Middle East conflict, and (to a much, much lower degree), its obsession with defending the BBC. Everything that can be said about the Middle East has already been said, so I'll talk about the Left's relationship with the BBC, which is a good example of this phenomenon but without the emotional baggage of the miserable, horrible Israel / Palestine debate.
The BBC is a State broadcaster. As such, it is a tool of the government of the day. If the Tories really do want to shoot themselves in the foot by doing away with it, that is their mistake to make - do not, under any circumstances, defend that gang of propagandists. They aren't your friends, they certainly aren't journalists, they are a tool of government - and you will have to treat them every bit as roughly as the Tories do if you ever gain power.
This is not to say, don't be media savvy - you must be media savvy. But don't spend hours and hours going on about how much you love the licence fee - remember, the TV licence fee is a regressive tax which is levied on rich and poor alike so as to benefit a giant corporation, and therefore profoundly and intrinsically reactionary. It should be abolished anyway.
I came up with this zinger myself, but it's hardly original. Billy Bragg Tweeted it once, and copped a load of shit as a result. Me, I just thought it would be a cool thing to yell at fascists.
How, in short, has anti-fascism become an extreme position?
Anti-fascism is traditionally a mainstream position - and it has been until now. Not only WWII but the Falklands War and both Gulf Wars were fought on the basis of a bipartisan consensus that Fascism was bad, and resisting Fascism was, you know, good. The normal point of view.
The problem seems to be that anti-fascism as a political position has been appropriated by the anarchist contingent in particular, and what some call the "extreme" Left in general. This may have been inevitable as mainstream politics became more Rightwing, but modern antifascist activists have accelerated the process when, counter-intuitively, they should have been resisting it.
Then there is the issue of historical revisionism on the Left, which has chosen this exact moment to demonize Churchill. Now, Churchill really was kind of a bastard (to put it mildly), however it is spectacularly bad timing to "cancel" him just as the far Right are making a demigod out of him, when you consider that he led a coalition that destroyed Fascism.
The main problem though, is this: The anarchists have managed to make anti-fascism seem like an extreme position. They have played straight into the hands of the extreme Right, who try to portray themselves as reasonable, calm, interested in debate, and above all, holders of a mainstream, "normal" position - and then along come a load of sinister looking, black clad weirdoes who hide their identities and scream abuse - and the effect on anti-fascist activity is devastating.
When Fascists started showing up in my town, around 2012 or so, they were run out on a rail. At their peak, the anti-EDL demos had the entire city out on the streets - every decent, ordinary person showed up. This was in the mid 2010s.
Now, you're lucky to get an overgrown bus queue.
Some advice for the comrades
So here's my advice for the Left:
(1) STOP going on about fucking Churchill. I don't care what he did - you are NOT going to win a culture war on the subject of his legacy as he is still VERY POPULAR in England, you're just gonna have to leave that argument for another day. Pick your battles - There are more important things to talk about and do right now.
(2) BROADEN the anti-fascist movement. I don't mean broaden as in, let the Trots in (as they will run it into the ground like they do everything). I mean, broaden it as in let everyone in who subscribes to a basic premise that the far Right are not welcome on our streets (except the Trots, because fuck those guys).
Do this even if you have to work with Lib Dems and Tories (I mean, if you have to) - but especially with a view to recruiting what the online Right call "normies", people who consider themselves either apolitical or part of the political mainstream. Why? Because (a) that's how the Fascists came back - they did everything possible to appeal to "normal people", not freaks like us - and (b) anti-fascism used to be so mainstream that even Churchill, an arch-rightwinger, was anti-fascist. In fact, since the Fash seem to be trying to appropriate the man, you should probably make a point of mentioning that. Every time you see one of those skinheads: "Churchill was an anti-fascist!"
This brings me to another mistake that anti-fascists make, which is assuming that only violence can get fascists off the streets. Now I'm no pacifist... but surely the major reason fascists show up is because there is a promise of some violence! As long as there are more of them than there are of you, you aren't going to win - it's a numbers game.
If half the city shows up, you won't need to use violence - or rather, if it is necessary to use it, our side is guaranteed to win because the Fash will be outnumbered ten, twenty, a hundred to one! But you can only do that if you get anti-fascism out of the anarchist / leftist ghetto and back into the mainstream.
Obligatory quote time
I have a favourite Churchill quote of my own:
“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
This remark was supposedly made during World War II, when Churchill was considering an alliance
with Stalin's Soviet Union following the Nazi invasion of Russia. As a right wing, racist Tory bastard, he had to build an alliance with a Communist state, people whom he had attacked in the past and would consider attacking four years later - HAD TO, because their mutual enemy was even more dangerous to him.
You can't afford to be overly picky about your allies when the Nazis are on the march, and the only reason they're able to paint you as extremists right now is because you ARE extremists. You've made yourselves into that by insisting that your supporters pass all kinds of political purity tests and vigorously denouncing people who are on your side when they fail to live up to your very high expectations.
I happen to quite like you guys, and I agree with most of what you say - but nonetheless, anarcho-communism isn't a mainstream political position and you're not going to build an effective anti-fascist movement on the back of it. So forget the purity tests and start recruiting normies - your future depends on it.
I live in Bristol, and I didn't make the big demo when Colston fell, or any of the other ones. I have been thinking a lot about what's going on, and here is a letter to black people explaining some of my, perhaps even our (ie, white people's) thought processes. White leftists should read it as well, although it is not addressed to them.
I don't know if it's even called for - but I have to say something, I have to explain myself.
I'm chicken. I'm afraid of catching and / or spreading COVID-19, I'm afraid of having my head stoved in, I'm afraid of ending up in a boring, pointless time suck of a poxy leftie demo, and, I have to admit, to my shame, to some extent I'm afraid of black people. (If it's any consolation, I'm not that crazy about whites, either.)
I really did think there was a chance that the demo could turn into a violent settling of scores. I'd seen footage of the disturbances in London, something like 17 coppers badly battered and who knows how many demonstrators (in one clip, I saw a horse bolting into the crowd) - and while I happen to know there are indeed legitimate scores to be settled between Bristol's black community and the local cops, I don't desire to join in. I guess you could say that was my white privelige - as a middle aged white man I do not have any personal beef with the cops and my heart just wouldn't be in it. Also, I don't want to get arrested.
In my defence, I also have to say that I am very mouthy and have a very short temper, especially when it comes to this sort of thing. I can easily see myself getting into a situation where I could cause trouble for other people. I've also been known to go off half cocked at my own side. I didn't think the protest needed an angry white man who likes to make everything about himself - it's not for me to say what black people should do at their own demos!
My background, politically speaking, is Marxist. We Marxists don't have a lot of time for discussions about race. It makes us feel uncomfortable. Our stock response tends to be of the "we're all the same, unite and fight" variety, and we see racism as an unpleasant throwback to pre-modern times which the ruling classes use as a distraction from The Class Struggle, which is our main, if not our only concern.
We're a lot more like the unconsciously racist white liberals than we like to think - we see ourselves as allies, sure, but we complain incessantly about being "guilt tripped" and frequently refer to Black struggles as "a distraction", even a "bourgeois" one.
You are, it should go without saying, not a bourgeois distraction.
We need to listen and think
That is what we are like. We don't generally want to be assholes and we're not generally personally racist, but it's definitely true that many of us are reluctant to listen and learn, and the racism of the wider society does trickle down to us. I suppose we are all a little bit racist.
I for one appreciate the patience and restraint of Black activists. Again, we genuinely want to help - but there is indeed resistance. Nobody likes being told home truths about themselves.
Anyone who is involved in politics is liable to be somewhat narcissistic - it's a peril of the trade. That certainly goes for me. Narcissists don't like to listen and think - they (we?) already know we are the centre of the universe and that we know everything. We have an opinion about everything, even, sometimes especially, things we know nothing about. We like to make things about ourselves.
But it's not a futile effort. We may be narcissistic, but most of us are not full on, medically diagnosable narcissists. We can be reached. We were all shocked and horrified by the murder of George Floyd and the current situation is teaching us, slowly but surely.
Please bear with us.
White Privilege
About a year or so ago, I had several conversations online about White Privilege. This was in the context of the Extinction Rebellion protests and the lack of Black involvement. I strongly resisted the notion that I, a long term benefit claimant, ex-homeless, resident of a council estate, was in any way "privileged". What about Barack Obama? My opinion was that White Privilege was a middle class, academic construct designed to divide people and detract from The Class Struggle with grievance politics.
I was wrong.
I now understand that the white privilege isn't that you get to live in a cramped council flat - it's that you get to live at all.
White Privilege isn't that you get to live in shitty squats for years on end because you are homeless - it's that you get to break into empty buildings and change the locks on a regular basis without getting arrested. Why do you think there are so few black squatters?
White Privilege isn't that you get to interact with coppers without fearing arrest - it's that you get to interact with the police without fearing death.
Yes, people do get aggravated in online discussions - don't you? In fact, that's another privilege we whites enjoy - we get to be pissed off. When white people are all pissed off, we're "just blowing off steam" or at most, "trolling" - when black people are all pissed off, you've "got a chip on your shoulder", and are "causing drama". I appreciate this now.
There seems to be some confusion in the world about the difference between Radicalism and Liberalism(or as I will put it, liberal reformism).
While both have their strong points and their weak points, it is vital not to confuse the two. So, in the spirit of getting our facts right, I present a primer:
Liberal Reformism vs Radicalism
Liberal reformism is guilt tripping people into being more "woke".
Liberal reformism is throwing the mob a few goodies to placate them.
Liberal reformism is firing a few bigots from their job, but not asking why "non-essential workers" get paid ten, twenty, a hundred times as much as "essential" workers.
Liberal reformism is a company putting the Rainbow Flag or a BLM sticker on their logo - but only in rich, Western countries where that's profitable.
Liberal reformism is all about the things that divide us, but nothing about what unites us.
Liberal reformism, ultimately, is more female drone pilots. Great for those who desire the profession of drone pilot - but people still end up getting bombed.
Its only advantage is that it's less dangerous than radicalism.
(This isn't nearly as cowardly as it sounds - As anyone from Russia, China, or Cambodia will tell you, the new boss is frequently even more brutal than the old boss)
Meanwhile....
Radicalism is bigots actually realizing for themselves that it's fucking stupid to be a bigot when we all have the same enemies.
Radicalism is every fucker going on strike - rent strike as well as labour strike.
Radicalism is taking over posh hotels and empty condominiums and using them to house the homeless.
Radicalism is people organising mass shoplifting raids on supermarkets to feed the community.
Radicalism is massive CHAZ type areas springing up in every city, the cops bottling it and abandoning their posts while the factories and farms and stuff are taken over for the people.
Radicalism is people storming the prisons, liberating the camps, and imprisoning the guards.
Radicalism is people marching on the White House and the soldiers turning their guns on Trump and his goons.
Radicalism is mass defections from the army and police because nobody wants to back the losing side.
Radicalism is when you take all the rich corporate bastards who have fucked up the world, round 'em up, put 'em on trial, and hang them for crimes against humanity.
You might be in favour of one or the other or neither or both - but don't get them confused!
I come here not to bury Leftism, but to critique it. You may not like what you are about to read, but you need to understand what you are doing wrong so you can do it right. So here's my critique of Leftism, from a Leftist or at least Left-sympathetic point of view... it's UK-centric I'm afraid, so note that, for instance, our SWP is not necessarily the same as your SWP.
I may update it as others critique my critique, in order to make it better. This isn't "changing history" so I can "win", I don't want to "win", this isn't about me personally - I want to help improve leftist discourse because I want the Left to win. Sincerely! So, let's get into it...
Considering the opportunities they've had of late, I find it bizarre how much the Left keeps getting it wrong.
Oh come on, Ron. You knew this was coming.
In street demonstrations for example, they either go for organized violence to such an insane degree that they lose public sympathy, as in the Black Bloc, or they just sit there and let the cops beat the shit out of them. Or march from A-B in a despondent, miserable fashion while Black Bloc'ers smash up a few shops so the media can have their daily dose of riot porn, changing nothing.
In the past the understanding was that demonstrations were to be peaceful but if the authorities started something, people have a right to defend themselves, but now there's no sense of proportion or reality, it's all pure ideology - you're either out to riot or you're out to get beaten up / wander around miserably. But whichever it is, the choice is always completely self-defeating. Or like the Corbyn campaign last year... it's as if the Left are afraid of winning.
No! Really? Say it isn't so!
Consider the case of renewable energy. For decades, Left wingers have been enthusiastic boosters of renewables, yet today they have begun to talk down success stories and wallow in defeatism. What's with that?
Here's a pretty good Knowing Better video on the subject:
(Why yes, I do recognize myself in this description!)
A diagnosis would have needed at least five traits... here are six traits which Leftists and the Left exhibit time and time again, with examples:
chooses people and situations that lead to disappointment, failure, or mistreatment even when better options are clearly available(EG: Specifically allying with Muslim religious fanatics and terrorists in the 00s, this went far beyond sticking up for religious minorities and well into the territory of collaborating with extreme reactionaries. This isn't just a Western thing either - they did it in Iran in the late 70s with predictable results)
incites angry or rejecting responses from others and then feels hurt, defeated, orhumiliated(EG: Consistently making fun of working class people, despite same being their traditional constituency and indeed the whole point of Marxism)
rejects opportunities for pleasure, or is reluctant to acknowledge enjoying themselves (EG: Corbyn's aseticism, the misery and anhedonia which comprise the majority of SWP demonstrations)
fails to accomplish tasks crucial to their personal objectives despite having demonstrated ability to do so(EG: The way Corbyn and Sanders both failed at the last hurdles, and how Corbyn's chosen successor, Rebecca Long-Bailey, also failed miserably - precisely because Left-wing Labour members refused to vote for her!)
is uninterested in or rejects people who consistently treat them well(Example: the constant abuse and harassment of left wing activists by left-wing activists, a problem brilliantly dissected at length by the YouTuber Contrapoints discussing her own "cancellation" in this video).
engages in excessiveself-sacrificethat is unsolicited by the intended recipients of the sacrifice(A classic example of this is the Lefts' consistent rallying around Palestinian nationalists, despite same being utterly uninterested in Socialism and Socialism being an overtly internationalist, working class ideology. Another is their die-hard support of the BBC, a rightwing State broadcaster dominated by political conservatives.)
I say again, I come here not to bury Leftism, but to critique it - society needs the Left's ideas, their commitment to fairness and decency, their optimism about the human future... but we don't need their self-defeat, their misery, their palling up with utter bastards. We don't need Tankies and Trots, TERFs and SWERFs - we need something that has not been seen before, at least not recently... and I think we're going to get it.
I do think the Left will get better. Many of my earlier comments already feel dated to me (mainly cos I gave up on demos a couple of years ago and don't know what's happening now), and there is a new generation of people who grew up in the 21st century, a hardscrabble, tough time, totally unlike the self-indulgence of the late 20th, particularly the 1960s. They're willing to ask tough questions, including of themselves - OK, the endless agonizing can get a bit much sometimes, but they're good kids and they are facing far worse conditions than we (GenX) did.
There are new leaders as well - in particular I see a lot of potential in young women like Rebecca Long-Bailey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represent that new generation. This ain't over... but it does take time to fix something that's broken, and I'd say to a lot of people in the old guard, myself included, sometimes you have to know when you're part of the problem and butt out.
Which I have done by and large, apart from whining screeds like this one :-D
OK. Let's get the clichés out of the way. It's A Tumultuous TimeⓇ, and Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again™.
Now, you wanna know how Right-wing governments are going to not only get away with this, but also gain from it?
Here's how:
They're gonna blame China, and bring back all the jobs we sent overseas back in the Eighties and Nineties.
The Right have already got a grass roots / astroturf campaign going to blame China for the 'Rona. So it's China's fault that the Prime Minister went around a coronavirus ward shaking hands with everyone and babbling about herd immunity, it's China's fault that El Trumpo spent precious weeks bibbling on about how it was all a conspiracy and even more precious time keeping medical equipment from those who needed it instead of doing anything constructive, it's China's fault that the rich and the bankers got bailed out first and everyone else had to eat shit... all the blame for that - deflected at China.
So that's the electorate half way to happy. The only problem - the post-plague recession. Cos the economy's collapsed and every fucker has lost their job.
Plenty of jobs in China. Fortunate indeed that the country we're choosing to scapegoat for everything (and they are indeed far from blameless) also just happens to be the richest country in the world. And why are they rich? To quote South Park: They took our jobs!
Well, our fearless leaders gave them our jobs, actually. And now, this is the perfect opportunity to bring them home.
If I'm correct, the post-Pandemic years will see a dramatic industrial renaissance in the CANUSUK countries. All the factories that were shuttered back in the day will suddenly find that they're economical again, and the jobs sent overseas during the neoliberal globalisation years will come back.
After all, we've got our working classes "disciplined" and willing to work for peanuts, and there's the added advantage that we don't have to shift goods halfway across the world or worry about a sinister Communist government stealing our greatest technological secrets, like how to make a shitty fucking iPhone knockoff. In the future, the shitty iPhone knockoffs will be built right here in the West! Woohoo! Go us!
Oh, joy.
That's if they don't manage to fuck it up. I mean, Trump could definitely screw up even a scam that simple- mainly because it's not even that much of a scam, and people like him are so used to dishonesty that simple geopolitics tend to break them. But Britain will likely be fine, while the US's loss and long-term decline is Canada and Mexico's gain.
Brexit will... go away, as nobody is going to give a flying fuck about how many migrant workers we have in the country, in fact we'll pay to bring them back now the fruit are rotting in the fields, and this virus is a great face saving opportunity for the extreme nationalists who pushed that particular dumb and evil policy - cos they can always go: "Look - CHINA!" and then run away while we're all looking around for the Red Menace.
So yeah, the good news is, the economy is saved, and it might even reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping - the bad news is that it means Johnson has a clear path to saving his skin.
Labour have gone back to the Centrist brand just when the Left were starting to get over the worst of it, and nobody's going to choose some has-been lawyer they've never heard of, with a face like a spanked arse, when they could be choosing The Man Who Saved Us From The Virus (and got us all jobs while he was at it)! come 2024... though there is plenty Johnson could fuck up, that is my projection for the next election.
Just call me Cassandra!
And as for the Left? Traditionally a day late and a dollar short, I think that after Starmer completely fails to get anywhere in 2024, we'll see the return of Rebecca Long-Bailey, revamped and reprogrammed to kick arse and take names. With the return of industrial jobs, we'll see a return to trade unionism, it's just a part of the scene - and the Left will get back a considerable amount of its former mojo with it.
So, to recap: After The Pandemic ends, I predict we'll see rapid re-industrialization followed by, sadly, yet another fucking Tory government in 2024, followed by Labour finally getting its' shit together and actually getting elected in 2029. I've long been predicting that Labour wouldn't get in until around about 2030, and now I'm one step closer to finding out how.
Meet someone who is NOT going to be leader of the Opposition:
As you can see she's far too intelligent, competent, and principled. A Leader of the opposition can fall into one of two categories: A unprincipled scumbag who will betray the electorate as soon as they are elected, or a principled, yet utterly incompetent person whom the media can crucify in their regular Two Minute Hate sessions and serve up as an example of why socialism is crap.
And why Corbyn is a DRUG CRAZED NAZI COMMIE who LOVES TERROR and HATES BRITAIN
Rebecca Long-Bailey falls into neither of those categories, and thus she will NOT be leader of the Labour Party. If she was, there's a danger she'd get elected, and if she got elected, she might actually change things around here. Uh huh, can't have that. The ruling class Mafia that runs things needs dupes and morons in charge just as much as it needs dupes and morons to vote for them.
The REAL voting, of course, is occult, hidden. Who knows what conversations our beloved leaders have with newspaper proprietors and Russian oligarchs (and spies!) when they take over?
I don't know how these people are selected but I can guarantee that just as the last Labour leader was dim-witted 1970s vintage electoral Kryptonite, the next Labour leader will be a Centrist Remainer who does what he's told, so that if the public turns against Johnson, the Oligarchs have a Safe Pair Of Hands to run their affairs for them. At least until 2030 when the country is either devoured by the sea or vanishes under a hail of nukes :-D
If she does get to be Labour leader, she won't stay that way, and if she does, she won't get elected, but if she does, the bastards will have no problem with kicking her out on her ear and replacing her with someone more ideologically reliable. It wouldn't be the first time.
