Letters

Kernel

I am writing in response to Ben Campbell, whose letter (May 30) links to a site where I am supposedly quoted. But these statements have been altered from what I actually said and so do not quote me accurately. Caveat lector! In response to Campbell’s other alleged ‘evidence’, we in Platypus have only ever published anti-German and post-anti-German (‘anti-national’) perspectives as symptomatic of the greater death of the left in our time, not as endorsement of any perspectives in the conversations we host. If we in Platypus are to be accused of being “anti-left”, as opposed to ‘ultra-left’, then that would also seem to apply to Rosa Luxemburg in 1914 when she declared the Social Democratic Party of Germany “dead” (a “stinking corpse”), which Lenin, for one, in ‘Notes of a publicist’ (1922), considered to be among Luxemburg’s very most important historical contributions.

Platypus does not define itself by attempting to take a position ‘to the left’ of others on the left. But that doesn’t mean that we are coming from the right. There’s nothing duplicitous in what we do, hosting the conversation on the current politically ‘dead’ state of the left.

I must speak to my alleged “rational kernel of racism” comment, which has been deliberately distorted in its meaning. I did not mean that somehow it is reasonable or otherwise acceptable to be racist. By this statement I was applying Marx’s comment about the “rational kernel” of the Hegelian dialectic, which aimed to take it seriously and demystify it, not debunk or dismiss it. The same is true in addressing racism as ideology - as the ‘necessary form of appearance’ of social reality. I was trying to address the issue of supposed ‘racism’ in terms of the Marxist tradition of ‘ideology-critique’, or the immanently dialectical critique of ideological forms of appearance, or, explained more plainly, the critique from within of ideologies, according to their own self-contradictions, in the interest of seeking how they might be changed.

In this, I follow Wilhelm Reich, who wrote in The mass psychology of fascism that Marxists had failed to recognise the “progressive character of fascism” - by which he meant, of course, not that fascism was itself progressive (Reich was a communist), but that fascism was a new ideology that met a new historical situation more successfully than Marxism did, and that Marxists were wrong to dismiss fascism as irrational, by which they tried to alibi their own failure to do better politically.

So what I meant by the “rational kernel of racism” was the need to address why otherwise rational people would have racist ideologies. It won’t do, I think, to try to dismiss racism as irrational. Rather, the question is, why are people racist? What social realities do racist ideologies express? For it is not a matter that those with racist attitudes have them in their own self-interest. Quite the contrary, it is against their better interests.

However, it must be admitted that nowadays racist ideologies are not nearly as centrally important a part of the social reality of capitalism as they once were. Racism is no longer considered anywhere near as reasonable as it once was. And this is a good thing - though it does present challenges to the ‘left’s’ own ideologies about the nature and character of social reality. Culturalism is not the same as racism, and what is often called ‘racism’ today is actually culturalism, not biologically based: such cultural chauvinism would also be subject to a Marxist ideology-critique as a phenomenon of capitalism.

Beyond that, there is the issue of the actual politics of ‘anti-racism’, which my old mentor, Adolph Reed, has helpfully pointed out leads nowhere today (www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Antiracism.html), and so recommends junking present strategies of ‘anti-racist politics’ in favour of struggling against the concrete social and political disadvantages people face. There’s no point to a ‘politics’ that tries to change people’s attitudes, where the real issue is material circumstances. But it does suit the ‘left’ today very well, in its own subcultural, lifestyle, consumerist-taste community and paranoid, authoritarian, moral hectoring to focus on racist attitudes, as a substitute for real politics.

Kernel
Kernel

RCG smears

Newcastle Unites against the EDL would like to thank the many people who took part in our very successful demonstration on Saturday May 25. Whilst the English Defence League opportunistically exploited the abhorrent murder of a British soldier, Newcastle Unites brought together almost a thousand local people, representing the diversity and multiculturalism of the city, all opposed to the EDL’s racism and fascism. We now intend to build on the broad unity we have created and further develop the strength of this opposition.

Given our achievements, it is with regret that we have to make the following statement in order to counter a number of wholly inaccurate and disgraceful claims being circulated by a small sectarian organisation, the Revolutionary Communist Group (FRFI) (Letters, May 30). Whilst this group played no part in building opposition to the EDL, they have engaged in a number of divisive and disruptive activities designed to undermine the work of those who did. In doing this they have put people at risk and have targeted local Muslim activists with slanders and smears.

Newcastle Unites is a broad-based campaign involving the trade unions, local councillors, representatives of the Muslim community, faith groups and anti-racist organisations, such as Show Racism the Red Card, Unite against Fascism and the Tyne and Wear Anti-Fascist Association. At our initial meeting a number of participants, in particular representatives from the unions and the Muslim community, expressed concerns about working with the RCG on account of their previous disruptive and sometimes violent activity.

Highlighted was the fact that the group tried to storm the Newcastle May Day platform in 2012 in an attempt to prevent a local Labour MP speaking, in the process physically assaulting a number of trades council members. Newcastle Unites informed the RCG that they would not be welcome at our meetings. Despite our decision, members of the RCG turned up at our meetings on two occasions demanding to be let in and stating they were there to denounce the involvement of local Labour Party members. On the second occasion they became highly abusive and had to be asked to leave the venue.

In an act of gross irresponsibility, that showed complete disdain for the security of Newcastle Unites members, the RCG then posted details of Newcastle Unites’ committee meetings on an open Facebook site. They included the date, time and venue of our next meeting and even a picture of the venue. Because of the history of the EDL attacking anti-racist meetings in the north-east, the details of the committee meetings had been kept restricted. As a result of the RCG actions, Newcastle Unites were forced to move our meeting venue and a Muslim Labour councillor received a threatening Facebook message from the EDL saying that they would be attacking the meeting. The trades council, who own and run the building, wrote to the RCG protesting that their article had put at risk all who use the premises and asked them to take down the article. They refused.

On Saturday May 25 members of Newcastle Unites were engaged in stewarding our demonstration to ensure it was a peaceful and inclusive event. The RCG gathered at a different venue. Following the demonstration, we learnt that a number of their members had been arrested. The RCG outrageously attempted to claim that members of Newcastle Unites had been responsible for these arrests! Newcastle Unites condemns, without qualification, the arrest of anyone for exercising their democratic right to peaceful protest. To claim that we would collude in any way with such arrests is an offensive and wholly unfounded allegation. The idea that Newcastle Unites has some kind of influence over the police is frankly laughable. It is, however, necessary to refute the statement and make it clear that no-one from Newcastle Unites played any part in these arrests.

The RCG’s stated view of the Labour Party, expressed both in written form on the internet and in public meetings, is that they are “worse than the British National Party”. They have targeted Muslim activists and have even taken to calling Dipu Ahad, a prominent Muslim Labour councillor, a racist. To make personal attacks on a man who has fought racism all his life and has been the target of EDL death threats is deplorable and must be condemned.

Despite these tactics, Newcastle Unites will continue to build a broad coalition of all those who want to stop the racist EDL and other fascist groups. We will not be deflected from that goal by either threats from the far right or the activities of groups like the RCG. This statement is intended to correct the false impressions of Newcastle Unites circulated by the RCG and to alert people to the danger their activities pose.

RCG smears
RCG smears

SWP illusions

The so-called ‘Socialist Workers Party’ in the UK has a two-year history of spreading illusions in the opposition to the Syrian regime. While the interior workings of the party remind you more of a Stalinist outfit than the non-orthodox Trotskyist organisation it pretends to be, its political line has more and more become one of spontaneist hopes in all sorts of non-proletarian movements. This is particularly true in respect to its position on the so-called ‘Arab spring’.

Based on the fact that the Syrian Ba’ath regime is a bourgeois dictatorship, which has, especially under president Bashar al-Assad, more and more turned from state capitalism to private neoliberalism and has so impoverished large parts of the toiling masses of the country, the SWP has militantly supported the oppositional forces from the beginning. While it has criticised their tactics of turning towards imperialist powers for military support against the Damascus government, it has not dared to reflect upon the problem of the political and socio-economic alternatives of the myriad of oppositional groups in that country.

Socialist Worker’s main author on Syria is Simon Assaf. He has on several occasions credited government forces with massacres immediately they occurred, even when it was in fact unclear who was responsible. While there is no doubt that governmental forces have committed abhorrent crimes and will certainly commit more, in several cases even the serious imperialist press has had to admit that some of those massacres they and Assaf had credited to the regime had most probably been the work of oppositional forces (maybe some who fight under the name of the ‘Free Syrian Army’, which as a centrally-organised guerrilla army does not exist in reality, but is only a name for getting foreign funds, or maybe the work of jihadi outfits such as the Jabhat al-Nusra).

Simon Assaf, however, has never admitted any mistakes or even doubts. You might excuse him because he is mistaking his revolutionary dreams for reality and has therefore greatly overrated the impact of the democratic and non-sectarian forces on the whole of the revolt. However, he has now crossed the red line in this respect. In one of his latest articles, entitled ‘Western arms threaten Syria’s troubled revolt’, he writes:

“The west wants to hijack the revolution at the moment of its greatest crisis. This comes a few days after Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, declared that his forces are now active in the civil war. Nasrallah announced that the largely Shia group is sending thousands of elite troops to spearhead the Syrian regime’s offensive on al-Qusayr ... Using unprecedented sectarian language, Nasrallah described the defenders of al-Qusayr as ‘takfiris’ (apostates) in the ‘service of Israel and the US’ ... By giving military support to Assad, Nasrallah has broken a vow to only use the weapons of the resistance against Israel” (Socialist Worker May 28).

What’s the problem with this paragraph? The problem is that Nasrallah and the Lebanese Hezbollah, whatever else they may be, are not clerical sectarians. In fact Nasrallah has argued that the religious sectarian character of important parts of the Syrian opposition is threatening the stability of the multi-religious society of Lebanon and therefore serving Zionism. This is so because “takfiris” are not “apostates”, but those Muslims who declare other Muslims to be apostates, and this is exactly the position of the Al Qa’eda-linked outfits such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which is a leading force in the fight for al-Qusayr. For them, Shiites are ‘apostates’, meaning people who had been Muslims in the past and had chosen to turn away from their religion (in this case Shia Islam in the 7th century). While it is doubtful that the prophet Muhammad had argued in favour of killing apostates, Muslim tradition has largely held this position.

The notion of ‘takfir’ has been a prominent one for many years now in the context of the identification of salafi-jihadi forces in the Muslim world. It cannot be believed that those responsible for Socialist Worker have never heard of it and have thus simply overlooked a mistake made by such a ‘specialist’ in Middle East affairs as their Simon Assaf. It must therefore be understood as a deliberate fabrication in order to defend their - ever more indefensible - line on Syria.

Simon Assaf, of course, criticises Jabhat al-Nusra and the rest, but this is meaningless when he whitewashes them by claiming that those - in this case Hezbollah - who defend Syria and so themselves against the onslaught of the ‘takfiris’ are the ‘takfiris’.

SWP illusions
SWP illusions

Solidarity

We are writing to ask for your support against the police brutality against ordinary people who oppose the building of a shopping centre on the site of a park in Istanbul that has existed for nearly 100 years.

On May 27, a police-escorted demolition team arrived at the Taksim Gezi Park to destroy all the parkland, including the trees. Despite resistance from local people and environmentalist groups, the site was cleared and demolition work proceeded.

The police then clashed with protestors who began to occupy the park. The activists had been camping there for three days in an attempt to stop the destruction. The demolition soon ground to a halt after Sirri Süreyya Önder, an MP for the Peace and Democracy Party, stood in front of one of the bulldozers for three hours. This led to a wider resistance and galvanised a massive stand against the demolition of the site. The determined environmentalists, community groups, members of political parties and trade unionists continued to occupy the park until on the morning of May 30, at approximately 5am, the police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowd. This only increased the support for the protestors and attracted hundreds more from all sorts of backgrounds to make the resistance stronger.

Turkish riot police continued to fire tear gas and water cannons into crowds of demonstrators gathered in Istanbul’s Gezi park on May 31. Their extensive use resulted in deaths and serious injuries. Unconfirmed reports suggest that at least four people have been killed, while hundreds are injured, seven of them seriously.

At the time of writing this statement, hundreds are continuing to gather in the Taksim area to show their anger against the excessive use of force by the police and the state. The state media and most media organisations have turned a blind eye to what is happening and stopped reporting it. Prime minister Recep Tayip Erdo?an and the Istanbul mayor, Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, have denied any wrongdoing and defended vehemently the actions of the police. They went so far as to label the protestors ‘troublemakers’ using the protests as a cover for their own political interests. They tried to block all 3G mobile phone signals to stop the news spreading. But there is now wide anger against Erdo?an and the police, and the unrest has spread to many cities. Slogans such as ‘Erdo?an must go’ and ‘Chemical Erdo?an’ have been echoed by thousands of people around the country. Some unconfirmed reports suggest that around 400 police officers have resigned from their positions.

We are urging all our friends in the UK to show their solidarity and send messages of protest and condemnation to the Turkish prime minister: bimer@basbakanlik.gov.tr.

Solidarity
Solidarity

Correction

You write: “Neil Davidson (who is also speaking at the Counterfire event, by the way, along with fellow SWP oppositionist Ian Birchall) …” (‘In decay and in denial’, May 30).

I did not speak at the Counterfire event, I was never approached by Counterfire and my name did not appear in their publicity.

I should be most grateful if you would remove this falsehood from your website immediately, and if you would publish a correction in next week’s issue of your printed paper.

Correction
Correction