I wrote the following blog in response to a blog article that appeared on The Guardian's Comment is free (CiF) blog.
The article's title is Recession and resurgence of the far right: If we allow the anti-fascist movement to be divided, we are doing the work of the British National party for it. It was written by Sabby Dhalu (Joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism), and was published on Monday 23 February 2009. The original article can be found here.
In particular, I was responding to this paragraph:
This is therefore a strange moment for David Toube to choose to attack the anti-fascist movement. No wonder the British National party (BNP) immediately quoted his piece with approval. The BNP well understand that, as in the past, divisions among their opponents are a precondition for them to advance.
My response to Sabby's article starts here:
Know Your Enemy
Martyn Richard Jones
"This is therefore a strange moment for David Toube"
No, it's not. There's nothing strange about it at all.
Some people just hate everything about the left, everything about social-democrats and everything about radical liberals. They hate people who oppose "just wars", they hate feminists, they hate human rights, rights for children and gender rights. They don't want Chavez they want some handpicked undemocratic muppet, they hate Putin because he refuses to play their game, they hate Premier Wen Jiabao, just because , and they hate uppity indigenous leaders in South and Central America. They hate the people who oppose globalisation, greed and incompetence. They hate the people who complain about the vagaries of the free market. In fact, for some people, it is better to be a fascist than a bleeding hearted liberal. However, worst of all, what they hate is everything and anything about Islam. The people who practice it, the people whose culture it is, the people who respect it as a religion, the people who respect it as a culture, and people who respect its right to exist in a secular and democratic society and strictly according to the rule of law. In a nutshell, all of it.
These people embrace would rather embrace the ultra-nationalists and the fascists, these very same fascists who hide their visceral anti-Semitism under a bushel of lies, deceit and indecency, the appalling racist scum who make the Iranian leader look like an absolute beginner when it comes to prejudice.
What is new about fascism? What is new about the BNP? What do people don't understand about neo-Nazis? If people cannot see the link between the three vices then they are either ill-informed, thick or mendacious.
Occasionally misguided, the democratic left sometimes mistakenly lends its support to dodgy causes and authoritarian political movements, or gets too up close and intimate with misogynists, wobbly nihilists and enemies of secular democracy. Those are more often than not simply small outbreaks of naiveté and stupidity amongst the British democratic left. When compared to the real filth that is fascism, we must see ingenuousness and innocence for what it is.
Everyone who wants to live with the benefits of a civil, democratic and secular society must be preparing to oppose fascism in all its forms, the easier most desirable way, and by far the best way to stop it in its tracks, is to kill it at the polls. In order to defeat fascism and ultra-nationalism we must deny it votes; your vote, and the votes of your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours.
Know your enemy! The real enemy isn't the democratic left or democratic and radical liberalism, its isn't Plaid Cymru or the SNP, it isn't even the Tories, as vile as one may consider some of their economic and social policies.
Print | posted on Monday, February 23, 2009 12:00 AM