Interesting...

Some old news, but with bearing on the modern political scene. This is a photo that shows Nigel Farage in 1997 with Mark Deavin, a BNP 'researcher', and Tony Lecomber, a far-right thug with two convictions, one of possessing explosives, the other of stabbing a Jewish school teacher. Farage says he met Deavin once but denies meeting Lecomber and says the photo could be doctored.

The United Klingon Independence Party

Kingdom, surely...? Anyway, it seems the heat is on UKIP, and it's about time. Why? Here's why.

Physical exercise stops you from being gay. Unborn disabled children should be aborted. Nigel Farage admits UKIP candidates could be former BNP members, never mind, at least he's honest, also lap dancing clubs are alright. It seems the limit for UKIP is anti-semitism, which I suppose we should all be grateful for. At least holocaust denial will get you kicked off the ballot paper.

This is the United Kingdom Independence Party. This is, of course, the ugly, provincial underbelly of British life, pub bores, frustrated small businessmen, Graham from the Golf Course, characters we all know and loathe. UKIP is not fascist. Fascism is a right-wing movement that uses extra-parliamentary, often extra legal means. There is a fairly fluid interaction between the ideas of the far right and the mainstream right. The difference is that extra step the far right take, onto the streets, trying to assert such ideas.

No fascist movement ever starts out as an ideologically coherent force but converges, either on a cause or more often on a charismatic figure. The UKIP swamp is broad and dank. In it lurks the wounded monster of British fascism.

This swamp must be drained. What does that practically mean? A UAF-style campaign, perhaps, to suppress the UKIP vote and expose its activists wherever the need arises. Certainly something needs to be done otherwise, even if most people disagree, if this kind of politics is accepted as legitimate then it will give the genuine fascist right room to make a comeback.

1,000 words...

For anyone not aware, THIS is the problem with Sunderland FC employing Paulo Di Canio as manager. There is even more context than most people realise. He used to perform these salutes when he played for Lazio, a club that, on the basis of its followers, is known informally as Nazio, as the the lowest of the low. Di Canio was expressing solidarity, inciting his fascist brethren.

The deadly lure of esoterica...

“Since the revolutionary party cannot have interests apart from the class, all the party’s issues of policy are those of the class, and they should therefore be thrashed out in the open, in its presence. The freedom of discussion which exists in the factory meeting, which aims at unity of action after decisions are taken, should apply to the revolutionary party. This means that all discussions on basic issues of policy should be discussed in the light of day: in the open press. Let the mass of the workers take part in the discussion, put pressure on the party, its apparatus and leadership.”--Tony Cliff, Trotsky on Substitutionism.

This is not an absolute statement and we should always be wary of authority by quotation, nonetheless suggests there is a socialist epistemology, or theory of knowledge.

Socialism and fascism are opposite ends of the political spectrum (as generally understood). The BNP operates on levels of membership, the highest being gold membership. The SWP on the other hand has, or claims to have an understanding that “all members are gold dust”. Esoteric knowledge, secret understanding that can only be accessed through ritual, limited to a small group is what holds fascist organisations together (the core of the Nazi party was the Thule Society). It is a logical extension of the capitalist understanding, of a world and its people graded, ranked and talked to on a need to know basis, people presented with the inflexible judgment of ministers, executives and experts, none of whom you can ever meaningfully access. Esoteric practice is deadly to socialist organizations.

Though the SWP is home to thousands of great socialists, and has been home to thousands more in its time, it has become fatally top-heavy. Access to the little Vaticanon Thames is a mysterious practice that takes place via email or an occasional phone call or (if you’re really lucky) a personal audience; the point being you don’t ever go there and start poking round. Despite a formal ban on secret or permanent factions there are dozens of them, petitions are passed out, letters are passed around the great and good demanding X resign from Y position. The CC meets every week. No one except the CC is party to its discussions. The only secret factions uncovered are the ones that aren’t actually factions. The only crime is getting caught.

While we must admit the pressures of the capitalist world are very difficult to resist, to acknowledge them is halfway to successfully combating them. There is no sign that the current SWP leadership even understands what the SWP is meant to be doing and how it is supposed to relate to the wider world. It is merely self-perpetuating  and this is a large aspect of what’s killing the SWP.

You can prove anything with facts

The future of Reality-Lite politics in Britainis the issue of Multiculturalism/Immigration. The conservative demographic is declining in so many ways. Only the power structure in Britaintruly upholds the hegemony of bourgeois, white, Christian, heterosexual men any more. The ruling class is always searching for a popular connection. With the right issue, a touch of demagogy, a touch of mobilisation, soon the Sans Culottes will be marching to restore the monarchy; that's the theory of right-wing populism.

The Multiculturalism/Immigration is of course a means of smuggling racism into popular discourse. No one ever is racist, at least no one ever admits to it; but once the debate starts out comes the code words and the dog whistles. There is no practical way to win an argument as things presently stand because reality has been replaced by ‘legitimate concerns’. 

No doubt the Reality-Lite will grow in leaps and bounds with further published statistics from the 2011 census (notice how news stories now unquestioningly group statistics about religion with statistics about immigration). There was a net increase in the number of foreign-born residents in Englandand Walesbetween 2001 and 2011 of 2.9 million. Foreign born residents now make up almost one in eight of the population of Englandand Wales, around 7 million people by my reckoning. That’s probably enough to make the defensive white nationalists peal with anger, but is that really evidence of ‘uncontrolled immigration’ as it’s so often called?  

The number of people identifying themselves as Muslim has risen over the same period from around 3% to around 5%, compared to a fall of 4 million in the number of people identifying themselves as Christian. That’s a 2% increase relative to the overall population, 60% relative to the previous percentage. By my reckoning, if that trend continues, we’re looking at 8% by 2020, 12% by 2030, 18% by 2040. Even on their own deranged, racist terms, the anti-islamicisation crowd have nothing to worry about for at least fifty years. 

But that won’t stop them.  The basis for, what we will loosely call, progressive politics is growing. The working class is growing. That’s why the right, and the far right in particular, are so agitated right now. Britainis more and more becoming multiracial, multicultural and secular. At all times immigration is overwhelmingly linked to work. Immigrants are a crucial part of the working class. The demographic is changing in our favour.

To win the argument means returning it to reality, no pandering to ‘legitimate concerns’, calling out racism at all times and dealing in facts.

Thoughts for the Brain - petty caesarism...

An interesting article on Lenin’s Tomb a few weeks ago on the conjuncture in Britain introduced the idea of Petty Caesarism. It is a fascinating idea, debatable, but better than the continued assertion “this is a weak government”. Oh really, how is a government that is able to carry out its programme almost unencumbered weak?

The definition of Caeasarism, at least on Wikipedia centres on notions of charismatic leadership, personality cults and military rule. It would be transparently mad to apply that definition anywhere in Europe, let alone Britain. Fortunately Antonio Gramsci expanded the term. In his Prison Notebooks the term also can denote the convergence of party programmes, coalition government, national government and technocratic rule, the last is very important in somewhere like Greece.

The key point here is that social conflict either ceases or is brought to a stalemate, allowing an otherwise unrepresentative portion of society, be it the officer class or the banking or political elite to rule without the use of formal or informal democratic means, formerly considered essential. In other words - stasis. In Greece this is the result of rather intense class struggle. In Britain, if it exists, it is the result of weak or at least one-sided conflict. Further elaboration is perhaps needed.

The point I’m getting to is it made me reflect on a fact of the anti-fascist struggle (the following btw is not a justification of the LT article, just inspired by it). Unite Against Fascism and the English Defence League are clear cut manifestations of two different and opposing sides of civil society. The former is urban, multicultural (specifically anti-racist) and collective, the latter is suburban and rural, mono-cultural (racist) and petty.

The two groups represent two significant trains of thought in our society, yet the numbers of people actively battling it out are quite small. It regularly took tens of thousands to defeat the NF and BNP. It took at the most 4,000 to turn the EDL back in Walthamstow, and that has been the high-point of anti-fascist mobilisation this time round so far.

Compare this to ten years ago when Stop the War and the Countryside Alliance held similar marches within a week of each other, hundreds of thousands strong. It is a perverse fact but now the stakes have been raised people seem more reluctant than ever to take action. The Labour Party may have lost the will and the ways to mobilise against the far-right, or against anything, but it still sits there like the biggest boulder in the highway, and there is no sustained effort to remove it or go round.

This reluctance to come out is the basis of Petty Caesarism in Britain, if it exists. Power is so well insulated from the population the ruling class’s response to any challenge is, more or less, “what’re you going to do about it?”

Thoughts for the Brain... oh dear....

I have just discovered a rather brilliant blog, called Pushing Ahead ofthe Dame, a song-by-song dissertation about the life and times of David Bowie . It is a fascinating subject, apt as well. Bowie hasn’t sung on stage for six years and hasn’t released a new album in nine. At sixty-five years young Bowie’s public life may well be over, a shame in one sense because he did make good albums during the 90s and 00s, but let him rest and enjoy life if he wants.

It’s not like there isn’t plenty of music to enjoy, and the blog (to become a two-volume book) goes through it in fine detail. Typically we’ve arrived at our subject late, after the 70s peak. The blog is currently marking the fag-end of the Tin Machine era, so there’s still 1.Outside,Earthling and Heathen to go.

I’ve waxed occasionally coherent about Bowie before, but here are some observations:

Bowie, art and reality

Bowie’s art shows up the tricky dialectic of the particular and the universal, closely allied with notions of personal versus impersonal, realist versus imaginative. Pop music in one sense is a dialogue between ideas of authenticity and artifice. At one point Bowie was recording Bruce Springsteen songs and borrowing members of his band. You could not get more immediately disparate characters, two more disparate albums than Greetings from Ashbury Park and Diamond Dogs.

I would say authenticity is generally held in higher regard. The 90s, for example, were all about playing it straight, keeping it real, representing this or that area etc. It stems probably from pop’s origins in the blues. We’re used to the fact that reality TV is anything but realistic. But we’re liable to forget that straight-talking narrative blues songs were often folk compositions performed by outlandish characters. Bruce Springsteen lived his songs, which were constructs, projections of reality. Reality is equally a construct (though no less real for it). No one lives a truly ‘normal’ life. We get to the universal though the particular, and there’s little as particular in mass culture as particular as David Bowie and his strange fascinations.

Bowie and politics

Any kind of discussion of David Bowie and politics must include fascism. Of course there is the rider that even at his most ‘fascist’ Bowie was not the kind of fascist we know and loathe. Even his strongest endorsement of fascism “Britain could benefit from a fascist leader”, rank though it was, was qualified and hedged during the interview it was taken from, not to mention probably a provocation as well.

His undoubted obsession with fascist imagery and manipulation, came out of two very sixties pursuits, Nietzsche and Gnosticism.

Nietzsche made a comeback in the second half of the last century, after being strongly associated with the Third Reich, particularly in the theory of ubermensch. There are three theories of history. Firstly that it is the manifestation of god’s will, second the accumulated effect of class struggle and finally the result of will to power (and a fourth theory, that history is just one thing after another).

Post World War Two the first theory was discredited by centuries of scientific discovery. The second theory suffered under the effect of the Soviet Union and/or the powerful sense that western workers had been bought off. It was natural that many young people would interrogate the final theory, that of Friedrich Nietzsche. His ideas are really the end point of trying to square liberal theory, based on the unbound, atomised individual, with reality. His post-war heirs were the existentialists, the beat generation and the hippies, in struggle with the suffocating hypocrisy of the Cold War.

Gnosticism is less obvious (and was less popular) but a logical of the above fascination. In Hunky Dory the coming hippie arcadia became the rise of Homo Superior. Gnosticism, broadly speaking, is a branch of Judeo-Christian thought that suggests the fall of man was a fall from true consciousness. Human beings recover enlightenment, achieve liberation and so on through ritual and esoteric practice. This not only chimed with the hippie movement, a privileged group within straight society, built around the ritual and sacrament of LS; it was also the founding idea of the Thule Society, which was the meeting point of many senior nazi cadre, instead of benign hippies you had conquering Aryans.

If all this wasn’t well known the story of Bowie’s mid-70s flirtation with fascism, a time when many people were developing dangerous sympathies, is well known. It took the Victoria incident to break the spell. Bowie swung sharply left, making a point of stating, whenever asked, that he was not a fascist. He also abandoned the accompanying glamour and theatrics, living quietly in Europe, making minimalist albums.

Bowie and Benjamin

Go back to Walter Benjamin and his definitive statement on art:

Outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery – concepts whose uncontrolled… application… lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense.

Though the music industry is a capitalist industry, therefore dedicated to the mass reproduction of art, a number of values and rituals not to mention cults still linger. The cult worship of rock stars is in itself a reaction to the music industry. 

The notion of pop music as a force for change still pervades, despite being based on... not much really. There is left-wing music, but there is also more than plenty of reactionary music made, politically and artistically reactionary.

David Bowie’s enduring popularity lies in his realism. It’s the kind of realism that looks at strange fascinations people have, the imaginative world that is often just as unhealthy and polluted as the real one. If the boundary between fantasy and reality was lost, well, that does happen sometimes. This is where democratic intervention happens. The British music scene veered down dark avenues in the 70s. The advent of Rock Against Racism (some of the earliest leaflets were a response to Bowie's ramblings) changed history for the better.

Postscript

Now, for SOME raisin, here's Dave from 1974:

Fear and fascism

I am currently getting into the Slender Manmythos, an online phenomenon that has grown into a full-blown urban myth. It began in 2009 as an online photoshop competition to transform ordinary photos into fake paranormal photos. A character called Victor Surge made two photos of an unidentified man standing near children. He was very tall and had strange, tentacle like arms. Victor Surge added a detailed, thumbnail back story about a library fire. The legend grew from this point:

Slender Man (a.k.a Slenderman) is a mythical creature often depicted as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a blank face. According to the legend, he can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages protruding from his back. Depending on the interpretations of the myth, the creature can cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, coughing fits (nicknamed “slendersickness”), photograph/video distortions and can teleport at will.

The Slender Man became The Operator in an online series called MarbleHornets. Slender Man/Operator myth, though mostly bluff, is a superb creation; a tapestry of uncanny fears (at the beginning of Marble Hornets, The Operator is literally outside the house), showing that true horror is also compelling. You fear to look but you cannot turn away. I mention all this partly because I want to but also because I have been thinking more about the psychological basis of fascism.

Fascism makes no logical sense. It is a scavenger philosophy. Its class base, the middle-class, has no consistent point of view within capitalism. But fascism makes illogical sense.

It coheres into a movement on the basis of mythos. A note: the German word for uncanny is unheimlich, which in turn derives from heimlich. Heimlich has two meanings, one of which means homely, comfortable, the other secret or concealed. Fascist movements at their core are often based around esoteric, concealed knowledge.

But fascist movements are stimulated by a return of the repressed, the unheimlich. In 1930s Germany it was a combination of economic depression and the Russian Revolution: amalgamated to produce the myth of a global Jewish conspiracy, a repulsive, lunatic theory, but it founded the Third Reich.

In Britain last year there was a spasm of fear after the riots. Nobody, at least in the cities where they broke out, was surprised by what happened, but that could not suppress the horror, the sense of emergency, nothing could, not more riot police, not water cannons, not even live rounds (as I heard one woman suggest on the number 38 bus, very loudly, into her phone). Something had to be done! So the urban gentry took to the streets with their brooms.

Fear (and fascination - the enemy is always stronger and more vital) is an adrenaline shot for fascism, which can make it tremendously energetic. The repressed element, the working class in its most fearsome, elemental form, had erupted. The ruling class fosters fascist ideas so if at any stage it doubts itself, it has this paranoid, demented force in reserve.

Anti-fascism in action.

The EDL were unable to hold a rally in Walthamstow today. This may have been something to do with it. Direct action by 3,000 anti-fascists. Great day, everyone, a great day.

Tomorrow...

Stick together, stand up to the police and leave no one behind. Together we can roll the nazis like a barrel.

The revolution against the revolution

From a document After the Coalition: A Conservative Agenda for Britain, primarily written by Dominic Raaaaaaaaaaaab, Tory MP:

 

"The last 30 years of public debate in Britain has been dominated by leftwing thinking…”

 

It’s all there in black and white. Being exact, “the last 30 years” means since 1982. Since 1982 there have been 15 years of Tory government and two years of Tory-led government. In between there were the Blair/Brown years. New Labour was rightly described as Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement. Mad, isn’t it?

 

This is where the destruction/abandonment of class-based politics gets you. This is anti-logic in action. This is what we have to look forward to if the forward march of the austerity is not turned back.

 

The statement aims to frame the debate even further to the right, useful for a group of right-wing thinkers wanting to hack away at employment law, trade union rights and generally drive working class living standards down to Chinese levels. It is also a mobilising statement.

 

Since universal suffrage the Tories economic base, the high bourgeoisie, has never been big enough to win elections. Its electoral base, the middle class, is shrinking also. As they have nothing to really offer the working class, it is perfectly plausible that the Tory tactics will become more Jacobin-like. They will seek to mobilise people and bind them together on some ideological basis, religion, racism, small-state fanaticism and such like, to achieve right-wing goals. While this isn’t fascism it would be borrowing from fascism. After the coalition expect a British Tea Party to be launched, especially if there is Labour led-government.

 

A revolution against the revolution (the American hard-right uses revolutionary rhetoric all the time) is impossible without an enemy and an order to overcome. It makes perfect sense, from that perspective to say "the last 30 years of public debate in Britain has been dominated by leftwing thinking…” It’s not true, of course, but don’t like little considerations like that get in the way of your argument.

Oopsie! That nazi moment...

Or: laughing at nazis when they fuck up. Voula Papachristou, racist Greek triple-jumper is “very bitter and upset” about her exclusion from the Olympics for her Nile Fever ‘joke’ on Twitter, subsequently deleted. Check this quote out, a perfect example of modern racism expressed. It’s less white-supremacism more arch victimhood:

"I have not slept at all and to be honest I am still trying to come to terms with what has happened. I am trying to stay calm otherwise I would lose control. I am thankful to my coach and family and so many other people who have stuck by me.

"After so many years of hurt and sacrifices to try and get to my first Olympics I am very bitter and upset. But what has upset me the most is the excessive reaction and speed of the disciplinary decision”.

Boo-fucking-hoo! She says she has never got involved in politics but has been involved enough to retweet posts from the woman-beating nazi, Illias Kasidiaris. At one stage she even wished him (via Twitter) all the best on his saints' day. This was also later deleted: it’s almost like she knew there was something wrong, you know? Question: who on Earth could Kasidiaris patron saint be? Some awful cross between Joseph Goebbels and Jackie Gleason. One of these days, Alice…!

Papachristou’s bitterness extends to the Greek government’s sport programme (or lack of it):

“We have zero support from the state," she said. "There are a lot of things that people do not know about, such as the unacceptable conditions in which we have to train.

"For example, there is no heating and no hot water even to take a shower in winter, no air conditioning in the summer and squalid training facilities and equipment in a state of disrepair.

"These are just the tip of the iceberg without mentioning the financial side and how we have been affected by massive cuts in state-funding for sport."

Now, for all this to make some logical sense you’d have to assume Papachristou thinks Africans run the country. But this is racism we’re dealing with, and racism and logic were always ships in the night.

Alleged master race on tour...

The English Defence League, bringing their unique charm to Dewsbury (well done to all those who opposed them, btw). Look at them, displaying their 'genuine concerns' about immigration. No wonder Ed Milliband is after their vote.

Spot the nazi

Greek police are unable to find the fascist MP Ilias Kasidiaris, who is wanted for assaulting two women on live television. Greek police are unable to find the prominent fascist MP Ilias Kasidiaris. Greek police are unable to find the prominent fascist MP Ilias Kasidiaris, who until recently acted as a public spokesman for the Golden Dawn party. Greek police are unable to find the prominent fascist MP Ilias Kasidiaris, who until recently acted as a public spokesman for the Golden Dawn party, and presumably has a place of residence, and list of friends and associates, whom he may also be staying with.

In other news half of Greek police officers polled recently said they voted for Golden Dawn.

Be afraid...

That's the message from Greek nazi leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos:

"Greece is only the beginning," Michaloliakos shouted. "You know exactly what I mean."
The party's principal idea is to rid Greece of all "illegal immigrants".
"Out of my country, out of my home! How will we do it? Use your imagination..."

Indeed. But why be afraid, bloodcurdling rhetoric and threats (like - Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat, kommt Attentat) aside, of a party that only gathers 7% of the national vote? Well, not long ago they could only count on nought point nothing of the Greek electorate. Of course fascists aren't interested in elections, only to use them to build support for building a street army, use your imagination.

The recent elections have been a disaster for the Greek and European ruling classes. There is a clear anti-austerity majority in Greece but, partly due to the vagiaries of the Greek electoral system (the party with the most votes gets 50 bonus seats - like some kind of gameshow), and partly due to the compromised Greek Labour party, which would certainly have to be part of any left-government, an anti-austerity government seems a long way off.

What's the solution, another round of elections? That hardly seems likely. One can never say there is no reformist solution in any situation, but it would require a massive U-turn from the European ruling class. If the Greeks successfully turn back the austerity programme (even after all the damage it has done to their society) their example could prove dangerously popular. This is only how it seems to me but the Greek left has all the support but none of the power. Without turning to extra-parliamentary action, its hard to see how they can wield power, either way, the right will give them all the blame. This is where the Golden Dawn could prove dangerous, just use your imagination.

Greece is now an anti-fascist issue.

The violent and weird world of fascism....

I said at the time (not to you, of course) that there was more than meets the eye about the Tottenham Court Road siege last Friday... AND THERE WAS. The man involved was the BNP's 2010 General Election candidate for Stevenage, Michael Green. This is him pictured shortly after the end of the siege. I don't know about you but he looks to be at least topless. One of the things he is charged with is making a bomb hoax; semi-naked? That's some power of suggestion...

But seriously: yet another loony connected with Britain's far right has been found guilty (or in this case caught red handed) of plotting and/or carrying out murder and mayhem. Will our mass media keep portraying these scum as lone wolf madmen whose violence is incidental to their afilliations?

Elsewhere in fascist violence, read this statement by Lewisham Anti-Racist Action (via Transpontine). Last Saturday fifteen nazis assaulted two socialist pensioners (what a brave and noble master-race!):

Two local  anti-racist pensioners  were viciously attacked and hospitalised  this Saturday by racist thugs who said they were part of a group known as ‘March For England’ which is  very closely linked to English Defence League (EDL) and the BNP. Andy Smith, a retired teacher and active in Lewisham Pensioners’ Forum and the NUT was viciously attacked as well as another local pensioner.

The attack appears to be in response  to a planned Unite Against  Fascism event  across south London  whose aim was to  discourage  people from voting for or supporting far-right racist parties in the forthcoming London assembly elections.  It  follows  the humiliation they received in last week’s ‘March For England’ Brighton demonstration where 1000 anti-racists succeeded  in reducing the far-right march to a miserable  and defeated mob.

The attack happened during a busy Saturday on Lewisham High Street whilst manning a regular campaign stall, one that has been active for over thirty years in Lewisham and an integral part of the local community. Shortly after 12pm the stall was thrown to the floor by an individual loitering in the area and according to witnesses, already there waiting for the local activists to arrive.

A group, taking photographs and staring menacingly at the activists started to gather near the clock tower. Before too long, they passed the stall en masse at which point an altercation began, with shouts and heckling from the racist group. In response to Islamophobic statements one pensioner approached them and received a vicious head-butt as an answer, throwing him to the ground . Another pensioner  intervened and was quickly surrounded, man-handled and flung to the floor receiving a knock to the head. Both had to receive medical treatment for their injuries.

Earlier in the morning a photographer was also attacked by the same group of racists and had reported the attack to Lewisham police station...

LARAG is arranging a coach from Lewisham to Luton next Saturday May 5th to join the counter-demonstration to the planned EDL march there.  Call 07508 633 045 to book a ticket.

That's a point! National anti-Fascist demo, Luton, Saturday, definitely, be there!

Fascism and anti-fascism: mini-roundup

The headline news is of course that one in five French are nazis, a grossly unfair observation no doubt, but a national fascist vote of 18-20% is a matter of shame, it is also a matter of urgency... we have been here before. It's often noted how the French left is weakned by a dogmatic attachment to Republican ideals, it has failed to tackle state-led islamophobia (although the Mélenchon campaign was maybe the start of something different). Could this also be a long-term result of half-hearted denazification, which was known in France as Epuration Legale, which saw many collaboration politicians and civil servants granted amnesty under the Fourth and Fifth Republics? Whatever the background, the French labour movement is capable of making sharp upturns, even scoring major victories. This can be turned around.

Meanwhile in Norway, fascist child-killer Anders Breivik is still turning his trial into a grotesque circus. The court has paid far too high a price to get him to talk about what he actually did. He does seem to have offered a bit of leverage, he will aparently do "anything" to avoid being committed. His sanity is questioned apparently to discredit him, and maybe it does to some, but then I would guess most people are against mass murder already. Breivik is sane. Questioning his sanity actually lets him off the hook, lets the whole system of state racism off the hook and denies what should be the obvious fact: he did what he did because he is a fascist. His brutal rampage was fascism in action.

But a bit of good news from Britain to end on. The BNP is in turmoil and probably irreversable decline. The EDL meanwhile is going through serious doldrums. The nazis attempted to hold a demonstration in Brighton this weekend. Though they had heavy police protection (including horses and tear gas) they had a miserable day, outnumbered 10 to 1 and hounded every step of the way. Well done to all involved.

Alert

It's only one poll, almost equidistant between general elections, but for the time being the UK Independence Party has replaced the (fast disappearing) Liberal Democrats as Britain's 3rd party. These voters are being attracted overwhelmingly from the Tory party. This means one thing. There are several million people in Britain for whom this government is not right-wing enough; there isn't enough union bashing, not enough service cutting, too many kids in education, employment or training, grannies are too warm in the winter, the sick and disabled are getting too much care. 


This is also probably a Breivik bounce. The normally not-great Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian has got it spot on here, about the unfolding catastrophe of the Breivik trial:

My Guardian colleague Vikram Dodd, who covered that London trial, was struck when he heard a Radio 5 Live phone-in this week that was regularly interrupted by snippets from Breivik's statement. "The grammar of the coverage was as if this was the chancellor giving his budget," says Dodd.More than one caller to that programme, while quick to insist they disagreed with Breivik's methods, did rather think the Norwegian had a point about multiculturalism run riot. "I can understand where this guy's coming from," said Tom from Dover. Several readers of a Guardian article sought to post comments in the same vein, calling for "a complete stop of immigration from Muslim countries" and suchlike. To listen to it, you'd think Breivik had simply wanted to start a debate, that he'd perhaps written a provocative pamphlet for Demos, rather than committed an act of murderous cruelty.

This is the backbone of (potential) British fascism beginning to flex (a fascist party in Britain will come, if we are not vigilant and active, in part from a party like the UK Independence Party lurching rightward). I warn you, there will be mass-murdering fascists in Britain soon.

Two trials...

One just ending, one beginning. Coming to a close the trial of Alfie Meadows and co. In my opinion reading the court reports you can see the defence has been excellent. This is a most important case; aggressive and egregiously political policing was used against the student movement of November/December 2010, the first mass movement against enforced austerity, a movement which was causing the government to falter, the coalition to come apart.

If the imprisonment and battery of children and young adults is allowed to stand, if it is deemed to be 'proportionate policing', as the Commander on the day described it, it will be a dark day for us all. I fear for the people on trial. The business end of the state urgently needs to sweep through London, make it a happy place for capitalists of the world to enjoy their Olympics. The state would think nothing of sacrificing young lives to this end. In my opinion if Alfie Meadows is found guilty we will all have to watch out for each other. If Alfie Meadows, who nearly died at the hands of the police, can be sent down for violent disorder, they can come for any of us.

Just beginning, the trial of fascist child murderer Anders Breivik. He did it. He killed 77 people, mostly teenagers at a youth camp. He does not deny it. If he is allowed to turn the trial into a political exposition, if his 'self-defence' argument is given any credence we will be in deep trouble. This is an important political event. There is great responsibility on the prosecution. If they get it wrong we could be facing the prospect of Breivikite attacks across the continent.

The aestheticisation of politics

From The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:

The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.

As in 1936 it is in 2012.