Letters

Self-appointed

I’m not so much an alpha-male not to be slightly stunned by the comments of Chris Knight (Letters, April 11). I think the most measured response I can give to Chris, who I have always considered a very thoughtful and visionary communist, is: ‘You should have gone to Specsavers, mate’. His apparent ‘reply’ to me (along with “Tony Clark, Paul Demarty and so many others”) is a response to something I never said nor even remotely implied in my letters of either March 21 and 28. I won’t bore readers by restating my comments. Just read the bloody contribution, comrade; my comments are, if anything, directly opposite to the ones he attributes to me.

Turning to Lawrence Parker and his piece on Paolo Di Canio (‘Explicable politics of extremism’, April 11), I suppose it was inevitable that the left, having cried wolf so often, wouldn’t recognise the real wolf when it showed up. Where are the “apparent espousal(s) of fascism”? The man has a tattoo of Mussolini on his right arm and belonged to a group of rightwing football supporters who hailed Mussolini as their great hero. The greeting between them en masse and in groups is the fascist salute, which he gave from the pitch, and admits is meant to be a fascist salute.

Self-appointed

Di Canio attended the funeral of his friend and comrade, a member of the armed fascist bombing team which raked havoc and death across Italy, among many uniformed fascists and joined them in the fascist salute. Mussolini was a fascist, not a racialist, as was Franco. Both were viciously anti-working class and anti-left. Is that all right then? He was told to make a statement distancing himself from this allegiance or he would be sacked, so he now makes the statement that he does not support the ideology of fascism. Whether that’s true or not, until this furore he did.

The threat to withdraw the Wearmouth Lodge banner from the grounds (which are built on the site of the colliery) was not just because of the great sacrifice of miners during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, but the very real ongoing problem with the far right in the region. For the last 18 months the far right has conducted a violent campaign against the construction of a mosque in a racially mixed residential area of Sunderland. Now Lawrence’s comment on whether the English Defence League is a real fascist organisation may apply elsewhere, but in the north the EDL is the National Front, and its more overtly Nazi ‘Northern Patriotic Front’ and the ultra-violent ‘Infidels’. They think the EDL is a more respectable cover for their marches and rallies. Two years ago the EDL held its national demonstration in Newcastle, and local supporters attacked the platform.

Turn up to oppose them, as I have since this campaign started, and you will soon find out whether we are talking “nonsense” or not, Lawrence. At the beginning of this year a crowd of 200 of them surged toward the area designated for the mosque, screaming, “Ain’t no black in the Union Jack; send the bastards back”. They overpowered the police, who were outnumbered two to one, and the anti-fascist groups four to one, and launched a barrage of bricks, bottles and stun bombs into the crowd. For two hours they charged into Asian shops and harassed black and Asian shoppers until all the shops closed. The police stopped all Asian people driving cars through the area and told all non-white residents to stay in their homes “because we can’t protect you”.

Lawrence’s statement that the EDL “is very unlikely to be harbouring a Benito Mussolini fan club” is contradicted by the very visual fact that they rallied on a hill and chanted “Hitler is our hero” and “Fascist 100%”, as they ran up and down back lanes, lobbing half-bricks into back yards of houses they assumed contained non-white residents. At length they charged off, shouting “Burn the mosque”. Two days before the appointment of Di Canio, they were back. The first of their attackers, from Glasgow (which proves, by the way, this isn’t just ‘wind-up’ football rivalry - they are equally made up of gangs from Newcastle, Carlisle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Glasgow and Edinburgh), screamed “Anti-fascist scum!” as he launched into us. This team attacked the ‘alternative jubilee’ festival in Newcastle, causing serious physical damage. They attacked the anti-cuts Occupy camp, smashing it up and beating old and young. They have attacked the Tyneside Irish Club in the middle of Newcastle and a Love Music, Hate Racism social in Gateshead.

Self-appointed

They turned up to attack the miners’ Tommy Hepburn memorial in October 2011, with not a non-white face or Muslim anywhere among the hundreds attending, but backed off when they saw the odds. At the anti-rail cuts RMT/Aslef picket and rally in Newcastle they also backed off, but they were there to attack it . They regularly attack anti-cuts and anti-bedroom tax protests. Now, you tell me that an anti-working class, anti-minority, anti-union, anti-left, street fighting formation, which supports the state and monarchy and empire, isn’t fascist, but I have to say that it’s close enough for me, Lawrence.

The appointment of Di Canio with his fascist past at least would be grist to the mill of this movement. And don’t be so naive as to think a fascist salute from this guy wouldn’t drive them to vindicated ecstasy because, I can assure you, they see him as one of theirs and a blow against us. You may well be sure that most Sunderland fans will see Di Canio’s fascist leanings as “a pile of half-digested crap”, but I’m not. I don’t know how many normal white working class folk outside of London Lawrence speaks to, but I do it all the time and we are not winning these arguments - the appeal of far-right and racialist groups is far greater than our own.

That is why the stand made by the Durham Miners Association, evoking our class traditions, waving a valued symbol deeply entrenched in the collective culture of the region, and drawing a line in the sand, was so important. I am happy to accept Di Canio’s climbdown - that’s a victory to us - but if that stand hadn’t been made, it could well have thrown petrol on the flames. The matter is not yet concluded, and further assurances from the club are being sought.

All of this is “highly blinkered”, according to Lawrence. Not for the first time, the ordinary working class activist on the ground is far more informed and streetwise than our self-appointed vanguard leadership of the CPGB.

Peter Manson’s Thatcher obituary annoyed me too, but I don’t have the space in a letters column to take that on as well.

Self-appointed
Self-appointed

Not fascist?

I have to disagree with Lawrence Parker’s take on Paolo Di Canio and the English Defence League. Neither an individual nor an organisation needs to be in agreement with Benito Mussolini to make them fascist. I do not know enough about Di Canio to make a full assessment. But by his fascist salute, his fascist friends and his fascist admirers we surely get a pointer. I would certainly not support his appointment to manage any sort of football team that I would want to be associated with.

As to the EDL, it is fascist in the classic Marxist sense. It is a non-state, street-fighting organisation - anti-Muslim, anti-left and anti-working class. Fascist organisation are not defined by the coherence of their philosophy or world view, but by what are and what they do.

Not fascist?
Not fascist?

Castigated

While heaping praises on Nick Rogers, Fiona Harrington (Letters, April 11) seems to think I need a reminder about gender equality because, although my views on feminism have some entertainment value, they are nevertheless ludicrously reactionary, to the point of parody. She says that “Feminism is basically the idea that men and women are equal - not a difficult concept to get one’s head around, surely.”

If this is the case, if gender equality is at the heart of feminism, why does Fiona criticise me, but praise Nick Rogers, when he argues that the leadership of the working class should be turned over mostly to women? Where is the gender equality here? Why didn’t Fiona upbraid Nick for his ultra-feminism? She prefers to castigate me - someone who believes that opposition to female social equality is criminal and certainly anti-democratic, let alone anti-communist, and someone who opposes all male privileges.

Maybe Fiona was offended when I pointed out that the material foundation of civilisation is provided by exclusively male labour. I can go further and say that I know of no civilisations built by women. There is nothing reactionary in telling the truth, at least not in this case. Civilisation, including the present one, is a product of wars and military conquests, exploitation and oppression of working people. Rather than taking offence like feminist Fiona, women should be proud that they have little to do with directly creating it.

Furthermore, just as it is possible to believe in communism without calling oneself a Marxist, or believing in everything Marx ever wrote or every theory he ever expounded, so it is possible to believe in equal rights for women and oppose all male privileges without adopting the ideological baggage of feminism.

For instance, many feminists, particularly the ultra-feminists, believe that the domination of heterosexuality is enforced by patriarchal society and therefore women are terrorised into heterosexual relationships. However, this lesbian ideology ignores the dialectical reality that, where the biological reproduction and survival of a species is based on opposite-sex attraction, this attraction must be the dominant form of sexual attraction - if, that is, you want your species to survive and be numerous enough to resist all threats to its existence.

While we should be tolerant towards those with same-sex attraction, from the standpoint of the survival of the species it is delusory to pretend that opposite-sex attraction and same-sex attraction are of equal importance. The ecology of human and other species survival dictates the predominance of opposite-sex attraction. In other words, possibly about 80% of us are programmed for heterosexual behaviour - a percentage that guarantees the survival of our species and our society through opposite-sex attraction.

Finally, Nick Rogers’ argument for a gender-based leadership made up mostly of women isn’t only opposed to the gender equality that Fiona claims to believe in: it is also opposed to the notion that the working class contains different levels of consciousness and that leadership is selected mostly on this basis rather than on the basis of gender.

Castigated
Castigated

Simple

Fiona Harrington (Letters, April 11) writes that “basically feminism means the equality of men and women”. Would that it could be like that!

In the days of Marx and Engels, and in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, this definition was well-understood. But it did not mean ‘sameness’ - it meant parity of esteem. It did not mean women had to become men. Or men become women (neurosis!). But in the post-World War II years, into the 60s and 70s, feminism came to mean opposition to men, a struggle against men. There was ‘radical feminism’, which was to all intents and purposes was a neurotic (fantastic) retreat from the reality that evolution created two sexes. The struggle got misled by feminists who, like in the peace movement in the early 1980s, believed that men created war and women were for peace. Interestingly, a key feature of Thatcher’s funeral is its militarism.

After her death we have reams of newspaper print using feminism to bolster Thatcher’s image as a mentor of women. This brash, despotic, authoritarian woman who served well the interests of the powers that be has become the ideal for many women today. The many women who came into politics before Mrs Thatcher have been written out of history.

The lie that women have to be little despots to be effective in politics can be exposed simply by remembering Labour women (Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams, Glenda Jackson, etc), Marxist women (Alexandra Kollontai, La Pasionara, etc). Even Angela Merkel (Christian Democrat German chancellor) eschews the nastiness of Thatcherism. The head of the International Monetary Fund is a woman. Does that make the banking crisis any easier for the Greeks, Cypriots and the rest of us?

The point is this: today feminism as a constructive force for social change is dead. Feminism is now the struggle against men (cf Germaine Greer and her ilk). Socialism is the struggle for the equality of all. It does not pit women against men. Or men against women. The goal of socialism and communism is the flowering of each individual personality (Marx). And, as far as ‘comrade Delta’ is concerned, the proviso that ‘an individual is innocent until proven guilty’ should prevail. Can the feminists accept natural justice? Simple, innit?

The paranoia of the feminists tars all men with the same brush. Justice under feminism would be a Kafkaesque nightmare, whereby the odds are stacked against the innocent (man). Already the man accused of sex abuse of a woman is exposed to the glaring lights of media publicity, but the woman accuser is shielded. The mud sticks even if the man is proven innocent; careers and reputations and relationships are destroyed. Men are now guilty until proven innocent under the legislation of Harriet Harman et al.

As a result of ‘equality legislation’, freedom of speech and the written word is being threatened: a policed universe of discourse has evolved in recent years as a result of the influence of feminism. Feminism is now a threat to democracy. If this continues and Marxism is not capable of defeating feminism as a danger to democratic rights, we would do well to listen to George Soros’s call for the open society.

Now can we leave feminism to staid university lecturers, who have replaced the struggle for socialism with the struggle to publish books (against men), and return to the issues that are truly weighing us down at the moment? The May local elections are coming soon. The European elections are scheduled for next year. The general election the year after, if not before.

The debate about feminism is a regression into the 1970s and look what happened to the Italian Communist Party as a result of the carping of Il Manifesto trendies. We need urgently to move on from this sterile debate and focus on the priorities of the political struggle of the contemporary world. The Tory-led coalition must be defeated.

Simple
Simple

Male smear

Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group obviously feels he has the right to smear as “alpha-males” anyone who raises a question about his golden-age speculations (Letters, April 11).

This week, a section of the polity has been celebrating another epoch of men led by a woman. Would he reprimand us for not condoning that matriarchy?

Male smear
Male smear

Wider right

Why does the Weekly Worker insist on continuing to write articles on things they know nothing about - as exemplified by your most recent piece on feminism (‘A useless product of 1970s radicalism’, April 11?)

Not only are they all hilariously ignorant: they’re actually pretty pathetic when you consider that they’re criticisms from the right. To claim to be communist, but then offer no alternative to the (oppressive) gender system which currently exists, is to totally and utterly miss the point about being revolutionary.

That said, I’m hardly surprised at sexist men feeling threatened by feminism. This is hardly unique to the left. Indeed, you’re really no better than wider, rightwing society.

Wider right
Wider right

Teesside action

Teesside Solidarity Movement is a new anti-capitalist umbrella group in North East England that seeks to develop solidarity as the guiding principle underpinning a new culture of protest, togetherness and celebration. Structured through self-organised individuals, groupings and collectives, we take seriously the slogan, ‘Another world is possible’.

Despite only forming this year, we have already had hundreds of people participating in our Facebook group, supporting political actions, such as demonstrations against the bedroom tax in each of Teesside’s main towns, and organising cultural events to promote awareness and raise funds for campaign work.

The trade union-led Tees Valley Public Services Alliance has organised a demonstration against the cuts, March for the Alternative, in Middlesbrough for Saturday April 27. We plan to support this with our own celebration of resistance and statement of complete opposition to all cuts, austerity measures and any scapegoating of the vulnerable for the crimes of the rich.

The demo will assemble at 11am at the war memorial in Middlesbrough’s Albert Park, march down Linthorpe Road and through the town centre, with a rally at 12.15 by the ‘Bottle of Notes’ sculpture in Centre Square.

Our contingent on this demo will be bold, noisy and militant - join us!

Teesside action
Teesside action