Letters

Far right

Of course, if we can spend some time, as Carl Collins suggests, challenging the spread of far-right ideas online, we might as well decide as to what precisely we’re up against (‘Combat the far right online’, August 22). This could be the assertion about numbers of migrants and their ‘effect on the infrastructure’ or claims that all male asylum-seekers are criminal.

Then there’s that favourite theme shared with nationalists in France, Hungary, Germany and the US: the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. This offers a simple explanation, where the globalist liberal elite are importing migrants, many of them Muslim, to undermine, reduce or indeed exterminate white European populations. (See ‘White genocide conspiracy theory’ on Wikipedia.)

This makes all kinds of appeal: it provides a total world view which contextualises places lacking in jobs, public services and self-respect; it’s a justification for attacks on local Muslims (not just Iran) and calls up antagonism to an imaginary group of posh traitors, whether they be red, ‘woke’ or simply upper class.

The spreaders of this rubbish need not attain a fascist state, but they may already be discreetly influencing enough people of all classes to make allusions to parts of the theory, like ‘two-tier policing’, while supplying validation for those parties who wish to appear in favour of tight borders and military confrontation with Muslims.

Mike Belbin
email

Dan Lazare

In the interests of openness readers ought to know why the Weekly Worker decided to part company with Daniel Lazare. We have towards that end put the entire two-way exchange between myself and comrade Lazare up on our website - weeklyworker.co.uk/assets/ww/pdf/lazare-correspondence.pdf.

It should be stressed that the CPGB and Weekly Worker remain committed to debate and fighting the battle of ideas. We shall continue to publish articles with which we profoundly disagree. Eg, last week’s pieces by Carl Collins (‘Combat the far right online’) and Emil Jacobs (‘Nature’s gift to humanity?’). Certainly our letters page is often dominated by those who can only be considered opponents of principled communist unity - even opponents of communism itself.

Comrade Lazare wrote many good articles for the paper. He also, however, wrote not a few with which we had important differences. On occasion we signalled our disapproval by including a ‘critical’ strap introducing the article - that or by directly replying either in the same or a subsequent issue.

But when it came to dismissing the whole notion of genocide in Gaza/Palestine as “garbage” and putting an equals sign between Hamas and Israel, that, in our opinion, disbarred him as a regular Weekly Worker writer. It is not only the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people: Britain and, crucially, the US are acting as Israel’s enablers. Communists have a duty to expose the genocidal logic of Zionist settler-colonialism, not provide excuses.

We stopped commissioning articles from comrade Lazare and tried to persuade him of the errors of his views. We clearly failed.

Perhaps, given time, he will change his mind. Meanwhile we wish him well.

Jack Conrad
London

Identity

I note the letters in recent issues on identity and the CPGB’s Draft programme, and would like to recommend some further reading to comrades for further reflection, as I suspect letters will be insufficient space for this (none of these are through any personal affiliation);

1. The Communist Party of Britain Women’s Commission public statement on sex work (www.communistparty.org.uk/communist-party-statement-on-prostitution) makes a strong case to challenge the idea that ‘sex work is work’.

2. Jane Clare Jones’s Annals of the TERF wars (www.amazon.co.uk/Annals-TERF-Wars-Other-Writing-ebook/dp/B0B3P6M8B6). Jones is a materialist, and she looks at the progressive (or not) nature of transgender ideology.

3. The Anarchist Communist Group pamphlet The politics of division: an engagement with identity politics (not perfect, but a useful contribution - www.anarchistcommunism.org/product/the-politics-of-division-an-engagement-with-identity-politics).

Kieron Smith
email

Wrecking ball

According to Andrew Northall in his letter of August 22, it’s not legitimate for Moshé Machover to analyse Judaism. However, the critique of religion is a salient and needed exercise and has deep socialist roots. It’s essential to understand the role of religion in the Zionist state.

Judaism is fair game for scrutiny, since Israel claims to represent Jews and Judaism and, for example, Israel justifies its Zionist holocaust by exploiting Europe’s Nazi holocaust. It’s an affront by Northall to try to shut down criticism of Judaism by fear-mongering - that is, warning that the citing of barbarism that’s contained in the Bible will be used to bolster the barbarism of the Zionists. (Incidentally, there’s a long history of Jews being accused of enabling of anti-Semitism because of their criticism of the religion).

Northall touts Marxist secularism, yet can’t abide opposition to religious reaction. This is an ironic and absurd contradiction for someone who seems to be an experienced (self-described) socialist; his motives are necessarily suspect.

Moshé Machover did a great service by pointing out some of the evil precepts in the Bible; in some ways he follows the honourable tradition of Israel Shahak, who didn’t shy away from heroically uncovering the profound, destructive connections between Judaism and Zionism. This scholarship can help explain what makes the Zionist monster tick, and to understand Zionism is the key to fighting it - as the Palestinian resistance has learned from the long, bloody years of Zionist state terror.

The idea of a broad socialist revolution in the Middle East is a principle and vision to be preserved, promoted and never relegated to the ‘dustbin of history’, yet Northall criticises Machover for advocating “a form of mythical ultra-left regional socialist revolution”. We lose sight of socialist objectives when we play fast and loose with the term, ‘ultra-left’. And for Northall to indicate that Machover, a knowledgeable socialist, is somehow ignorant about current material conditions and the politics of ‘minimum demands’ regarding the Palestine question is not credible.

The Weekly Worker is very fortunate to have high-calibre, pro-Palestinian voices such as Moshé Machover and Tony Greenstein, but instead of appreciation of these writers I hear a lot of vilification coming from Andrew Northall. There’s nothing that Northall can say that can tarnish the socialist bona fides of Machover and Greenstein, both of whom we obviously don’t have to agree with on every point.

“It is not for people living in Britain - the original colonial and imperialist power - to prescribe specific state configurations or constitutional outcomes for the peoples engaged in struggle for their national liberation ...” Why shouldn’t they? Northall isn’t the only one who is entitled to opine and theorise about the Palestinian struggle. We all have a responsibility to express our opinions and try to carefully steer people in a socialist direction; that doesn’t mean we should be high-minded and tell Arab and Muslim people what to do.

Northall denies that the Weekly Worker supports “genuinely secular and Marxist-Leninist currents and formations, especially within the Palestinian resistance and national liberation movement” and says: “It would be good to see the Weekly Worker on the side of these”. There are no grounds for this ridiculous allegation that, basically, this paper is not a Marxist project. The excuse given by Northall for this criticism, is that there are no Marxist, pro-Palestinian writers, which is false.

The Weekly Worker, which represents the CPGB, published an article recently with the following statement: “Communists need to take the lead in the fight for pan-Arab unity. A task inseparable from the struggle for socialist revolution and the formation of a mass Communist Party - first in each Arab country and then throughout the Arab world. A Communist Party of Arabia” (Jack Conrad, June 6).

The Weekly Worker is on the right side of history.

GG
USA

Cracking down?

Look at what is being done to women and girls in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq used to win awards from the UN for progress in their education - that was before 2003.

If Yvette Cooper wants to crack down on extremism in general, and on extreme misogyny in particular, then she should start with the people who waged, supported and continue to defend those wars - for nothing in the end in Afghanistan, and to make matters vastly worse in Iraq

David Lindsay
Lanchester

Apology

Tony Clark (Letters, August 22) quite rightly points out my mistake in my letter on migrants headlined “Welcome here” (August 1). I meant to say that the red-brown Workers Party of Britain wants the Royal Navy to ‘stop’ the boats crossing the English Channel - not “sink” the boats, as I wrote in my letter. George Galloway outlined the WPB’s policy in an interview with GB News Channel on June 19, when he was launching its manifesto for the general election.

I apologise to Tony and all other comrades for the confusion caused.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire