Umm, Hi.

I wonder where that charming young man's got to, you've been thinking. Without those mots justes, my day is simply not complete.

Well, sorry for not calling. I've been out a lot recently you see.

Doing what? Well, I'll tell you.

Firstly I've been working a lot of hours, which has a funny way of leaving you knackered.
Secondly I've been going to quite a lot of meetings recently (see previous posts). Last week I went down onto a picket as well, which was a great experience. If you've never been before (none of my previous employers have been enthusiastic about the concept of unions), you definitely should. It's a great chance to see the strike from the striker's point of view, you can offer a bit of moral and, if you've been passing the bucket round at work maybe financial, support; and it reminds you that whatever the BBC says is largely false - particularly this stitch-up job right here. Instead of all that, go here, or here, or here (and particularly this). Or just talk to your postie. As one guy said to us on Friday, the bosses think the customers are the corporate clients, but for posties it's all about the average person in their houses and flats. So why not pass the time of day with them when you see 'em?

The only upside is that it turns out Amazon haven't permanently cancelled their RM contract, so one day we may be able to speak again. In the words of an animated moose in an altogether different context, "now our consciences are clear and the healing can begin." Except for the conscience bit of course.

Then there was some personal stuff, which need not delay us here, and a bloody awful cold to round it off nicely.

In the meantime, we've had a Nazi on telly, which at least thoroughly vindicated the case for no platform.*

We've had the frankly bizarre idea that a war criminal would be a good symbol of the EU. Not that member nations don't have their fair share of guilt in that regard of course, it's just unusual to use barbarity as your actual mascot. It's all a bit, you know, urgh. Thank the lords that's all over.

We've had the Tories unveil stupid and vicious policies clearly aimed at launching a major assault on the concept of public service itself. Nothing new there of course, but the scale of some plans is quite breathtaking. And they're going to be in power next year apparently.

Then the Mail had it's own Sachsgate, where widespread public outrage caused heads to roll at the highest level, sorry, I mean, the chair of the PCC's ethics committee, Paul Dacre, must have had to make some tough decisions over what action to take in the face of an unprecedented 25,000 complaints. Inaction was almost certainly the right ethical choice to make.

On the upside, there's been some good films out recently, I've got a talk coming up on Marx and Darwin that I hope should be reasonably interesting to anyone somewhat interested, and however debased and ridiculous our political discourse gets** at least there's always Americans.

Now I'm off to watch Generation Kill and listen to the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

What?

------------------------------------
*My favourite piece of shameless dishonesty by the way was 'I have not got a conviction for holocaust denial.' Quite right Nick, your conviction is for incitement to racial hatred, which shows you in a much better light.

**I'm thinking particularly of the now legendary HYSer who apparently unironically compared Nick Griffin to Atticus Finch. If there is such a thing as anti-genius, this is surely it.

Nazis on TV? Fuck Off!

Last week we found out that both the BBC and the government feel that it's perfectly acceptable to put Nazis on TV now. There's going to be a protest at the Beeb's Newcastle HQ on the 22nd and we're aiming to make it as big as possible. If you can get there, do. 5.30 Thursday the 22nd October.

And why not come along to this afterwards?

Viz News

Ah, you've got to love Viz...

This is from this month's Top Tips:

UAF North East

A fantastic meeting tonight - big turnout (I'd guess at least 150, conservatively), lots of new faces, lots of contributions. I think there was broad agreement on the need to be active and calls for unity were warmly received. I think there's a real chance of pulling something progressive out of this disaster.

The SWP (my lot, in the interests of disclosure) have issued an 'open letter to the left' calling for unity, which at least tests the waters, and if enough people are serious about this it could be the start of something good. We could call it 'Episode 4(th International): A New Hope' or something.

Of course, it's not all good news. The left have currently decided to split over whether or not to pelt Nick Griffin with eggs. Forgive me if I don't see the downside on this one: the proud Fuhrer was going to have his nice'n'easy press conference being lobbed questions he could spout off about his vote and the need to 'control immigration' on from the lawn outside Parliament, so he could look like a proper politician or something. Instead, he ran away looking like this*:

I mean seriously, what's not to like?

*h/t Lenin

Good.

BNP Leader Pelted in Egg Protest.

Update: How can the Graun of all papers get the most bog-standard anti-Nazi chant there is, the wrong way round?

'I say, ruffian there, off our streets you Nazi scum!'

It's like they've never been involved in the anti-racist movement in their lives, or something.

... And Another Thing

Yes, I know, I'm sorry. I'm a stuck bloody record at the minute on this subject. I'm just so angry that a million of my fellow citizens are so unBritish and lacking in our basic values that they'd vote for a party dreamed up by a bunch of Germans in the '20s, who represent the very antithesis of all that is good about this country, that I can't seem to let it go.

Anyway, I've been reading Chris Harman's A People's History of the World for the last few days and I was struck by this passage from a chapter on the rise of the slave trade:

The prevalence of racism today leads people to think it has always existed, arising from an innate aversion of people from one ehtnic background for those from another. Slavery is then seen as a by-product of racism, rather than the other way round.

Yet in the ancient and medieval worlds, people did not regard skin colour as any more significant than, say, height, hair colour or eye colour. ... Many important figures in Roman history came from north Africa, including at least one emperor ... In Dutch paintints of the early 16th century, black and white people are shown as mixing freely ... Jordaen's painting 'Moses and Zipporah', ... shows Moses' wife as black.

...

the slave traders and owners always needed arguments to use with those white people, the great majority, who did not own slaves. In the colonies the smaller farmers were often resentful at the way the slave owners grabbed the best land and, by using slaves at low cost, undercut them. In ports like London escaped slaves often found refuge in the poor slum areas. The traders and owners needed a way of making people despise, mistrust and fear the slaves ... ideas that those of African descent were innately inferior to those of European descent fitted the needs of the traders and planters perfectly.

...

Racism developed from an apology for African slavery into a full-blown system of belief into which all the peoples of the Earth could be fitted[.]

(Harman 2008: 252-4)

And let's have a look at the BNPs 2005 General Election manifesto shall we? (Sorry, no link, not to them.)

when we speak of ‘British democracy’ we do so in an ethnic as well as a civic sense. We do not accept the absurd superstition – propagated for different though sometimes overlapping reasons by capitalists, liberals, Marxists and theologians - of human equality. Whether the now totally discredited feminist argument that men and women are innately the same, to the partly refuted egalitarian claim that everyone within a given population is born as a blank slate with the same innate potential, or to the still dominant Politically Correct denial of the existence of differences on average between members of different races – we reject all these irrational myths.

(BNP 2005:17)

'Absurd superstition', eh? Ho hum.

BBC Invites Arseholes to Spout Bullshit

Anyone who follows spEak You're bRanes on a regular basis will know that the BBC's Have Your Say site is a refuge for the reality-challenged at the best of times.

The Beeb appear to have decided that it isn't mental enough however, and have posted this invitation beneath their coverage of the BNP's victory:

Did you vote for the BNP? Is this the first time you voted for them? What influenced your decision to vote for the BNP? Tell us your thoughts by filling in the form below.

Stand by to repel wankers, captain!

I can just see the BNP's hardcore voters now, staring at the magic screen in wonder that the Zionist BBC has let them free to bash TEH TROOF ABOUT JOOS N ISLAMS into one of the more prestigious intertubes, trembling with excitement as they hesitantly begin negotiating the seemingly tiny keys on their keyboards* with their fists.

Cheers, Aunty.

*probably made by Marksist gayz to keep out the poor downtrodden whites of this ONCE GRATE CONTRIE

Update: I appear to have been hoist by my own petard, as I've been uploading the vids I make to You Tube so they'll sit properly in the blog column and not spill over the sides like they do if I embed them straight from xtranormal. However, this means that for the first time I've come into contact with YouTube commenters, who if anything make HYS look normal. I can only assume that YouTube is largely comprised of not very bright teenage boys.

Hope Not Hate

...Have got a 'not in my name' petition up to protest against Griffin and Brons. Sign it here.

Vacancy: New Party Needed

Given the disastrous victory for the Nazis last night, I think we can safely say that anti-fascist action wasn't enough.

Everywhere on the web in the run up to these elections we've seen anti-fascists win the arguments and humiliating the lying racist bastards. There's been fairly vigorous anti-fascist action on the streets too, especially in the NW where the fuhrer is setting up shop. But it wasn't enough.

I think it's pretty obvious that the fractured, fragmented left vote is responsible here. Low turnout and the lack of a single left alternative has made these elections the most right-wing I've ever seen in this country. I even found myself counting a victory for the Greens as somehow 'left' just to keep snatching at straws.

We have to do something. I suppose that the three main parties are centre-right themselves is something that it's almost easy to overlook, precisely because it is so prevalent, but when you take the victories of UKIP and Nazis into account it is clear that a right-wing narrative underpins most of the vote in the UK. The left have virtually no space left in public.

Wiser heads than mine will no doubt be providing a fuller analysis as the day goes on, but surely it shows just how desperately we on the left need to form a broad front electoral coalition that unites us.

The problem is that I genuinely can't see where the momentum for a new coalition can come from. My party has something of an image problem amongst parts of the left, although I've never really been sure why. Labour clearly can't tear itself away from The Project and most people I speak to have never even heard of John McDonnell. No2EU never really stood a chance at the Euro elections and nor did the SLP - polling made that pretty clear.

We are stuck. We can't tear down our existing organisations in favour of a new one - to take my party as an example, if we restricted ourselves to an electoral position we would destroy the very point of the party - so we need a coalition. I always thought RESPECT was perceived as too single-issue to make it very far as a permanent electoral entity, and the same with No2EU this time. We need to have a party which can put forward a genuine socialist alternative at the ballot box.

Of course, that gives us a hugely difficult problem in itself - agreeing on a programme. How far will the various groups go to compromise? I don't think any such programme should be overly calculated on concerns of 'electability' oddly enough. I think that left-wing ideas are perfectly electable, if they're put across with conviction and given the space to be explained - and besides, putting 'electability' ahead of ideology will only break apart any coalition worthy of the name before it gets started, or mean that it isn't a left-wing organisation if it does get somewhere.

But any such coalition needs resources as well as a programme. If we build one, we can expect significant party time will be taken away from other issues, like anti-fascist activity. And to get any media time at all it needs to be able to bring into it the union bureaucracy and as much of the Labour left as can be torn away from the party, which still, even now, seems like a Sysephean effort. And we'd need to be able to incorporate what electoral socialist organisations do exist into any coalition - which I can't imagine will be popular with the SLP or the SPGB.

Frankly I'm not in a great position to do anything about this myself. I'm just a humble party hack who gives up what time I can, when I can, to go to meetings and sell papers - and I've not always been terribly good at that. But something does need to be done to bring the left into some kind of unified electoral party that can make significant efforts to recapture the elected parts of our governmental machinery. Now that the fascists have got £2m to spend I think we can assume that they will become an ever greater threat, especially at a general election next year.

Update: Check out Anton Vowl - he's excellent today. But I'd avoid Socialist Unity, unless you want to be dragged into the very factionalism and infighting that got us into this mess in the first place.*

*Although it has also got some very handy background info on former NF leader and now MEP Andrew Brons.

Update:


Update: A productive/constructive discussion about the way to respond to this clusterfuck is currently ongoing over at Len's place. So if you've got tuppennyworth to add to this, why not go somewhere frequented by slightly more than 3 people? (Although I love you all, of course.)

Although of course, if you annoy Lenin he'll probably kick you out so you'll end up back here anyway...

Bloody Hell

Yes, it's more BNP related stuff, and I realise that anyone who reads this has almost certainly been to Complex System of Pipes already, but in case you've missed it, watch this vid:

Bumper BNP Bashing Bonus Blogging

(taking an assonatic leaf out of JURY TEAM's book there).

Anyway, at risk of sounding like a stuck bloody record, just caught Tim Ireland's new Billy Brit pisstake, and it made me laugh, so it might you.

Here you goes.




Update:
Tim's trying to improve the Google ranking of the vid, so go to You Tube and give it some props, yeah? (I'm just so ghetto when I'm being anti-fascist)

How Euro Elections Work

Found this via Bristling Badger:



It's rather good isn't it? Luckily my region's not so heavily being targeted by the BNP scum, but they're still a presence. I'm still not sure which way to vote, but that's probably for another post.

Urgh

I know, two posts in as many days, it's a bit of an achievement. And as I always say, never mind the quality - feel the width...

I'm off work with some kind of stomach-thingy so I was already feeling nauseous before I found the leaflet the BNP dropped through the door this morning. God it's creepy though. It literally makes my skin crawl. And I do mean literally - it felt like it was trying to crawl away from the thing.

A few years ago, we got this A4, black and white thing through the door claiming to be the 'Gateshead Patriot' which had - I shit thee not - a picture of an Asian man getting off a dinghy at a reservoir with the caption 'flood of asylum seekers - headed for Gateshead?' on it.

That was nasty, but so poorly executed that there was some comedy value.

This one is somewhat nastier, although I should find it funnier.

After all, it's got the hilarious Polish spitfire on it, the not-terribly real voters, and the bright friendly colours (strangely similar to those on the UKIP leaflet that got pushed through atthe letterbox at, interestingly, the very same time - what could that mean?) somewhat undermined by gratuitously racist text like 'British Jobs for British Workers - Because We've Earned the Right'. It's still a very poor effort, just a bit glossier.

Of course the reason it makes me uncomfortable is that it's got the level of faux-honesty about on par with the leaflets you tend to get from the real parties, and production values to match. When you get one from Labour, for example, they never seem to mention 'a key part of our manifesto is continuing to put the public sector in hock to Balfour Beatty until your children are nearing retirement' or 'we promise to serve the interests of the City of London for reasons too stupid to detail'. No, they focus on you, the hardworkingfamily. And if you're not a hardworkingfamily then you probably like hardworkingfamilies or want to be one, yeah? And so too with the BNP's scumlet: pics of white people with hard hats or doctor's coats on all apparently avowing how important it is to hate foreigners.

It's still poorly judged of course. I don't know quite how anyone is supposed to link jobs for white people today with victory at Trafalgar, and I think most people will find it a stretch, even assuming they can make the required leap to Planet Bigot in the first place, a magical fairyland where the colour of your skin means something to global capitalism. It reminds me of Labour's recent attacks on unemployment benefits, where in order for it to make sense you have to buy into the idea that the reason there are so many people unemployed is because half the workforce became institutionally lazy overnight, upsetting the Jobs Unicorn and making it skitter off into the Forest of Recession, never to be seen again.

In short, this leaflet really is just ghastly, and its similarity to proper political leaflets implies a bid for respectability, with its careful use of obfuscation and the unconvincing institutional fictions of actual politics. I can't even bring myself to treat it with the admirable lightness of touch that Anton Vowl has. I only hope that this is a last gasp and that Griffin gets nowhere near Brussels. If he does, their despicable narrative might actually gain currency.

Update: just caught Charlie Brooker's piece. Damn, that's good!

Please let this be some kind of April Fool's...

Got an email from Hope Not Hate last night, saying that the BNP are about to launch a What Would Jesus Do? poster campaign, implying that what Jesus really did, right, was hate people from foreign countries and had an ideological opposition to income tax. And of course, if he did, you should too.

No, really.

Since it was sent out last night I'm assuming Nick Lowles isn't having some kind of practical joke on his Hope Not Hate mailing list, so I present you the link to HNH's petition opposing this ludicrous bollocks and ask you to sign it.

http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/uniteagainstfear