The fact that Portugal is a young democracy, emerging (by revolutionary means) from a long period of 48 years of fascist dictatorship and 13 years of colonial war, is one of the reasons most commonly put forward to explain this particular characteristic. The recent memory of the crimes of the Estado Novo dictatorship of António Oliveira Salazar [1899-1970, president of the Council of Ministers from 1932 to 1968] and Marcello Caetano [1906-1980, president of the Council of Ministers from 1968 to April 1974, then military exile in Brazil] and the democratic gains of the Revolution of April 25, 1974 contributed decisively to keeping the Portuguese extreme right in quarantine for many years. Subsequently, the Portuguese party spectrum proved to be quite resilient, mainly in the right-wing camp. Until 2019, the two main parties of the Portuguese right, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Social Democratic Centre – Popular Party (CDS-PP), had never seen a political formation on their right that has managed to impose itself politically.

These two fundamental characteristics: the memory of repression and poverty under the dictatorship and the stability of the party structure, have given Portuguese democracy 45 years without representatives of extreme right-wing parties being elected to national and regional parliaments and municipal councils.

A quick snapshot of the Portuguese far right in the post-April 25 period

While Portuguese democracy was still taking its first steps, it was already facing destabilization orchestrated by extreme-right terrorist groups. Terrorist organizations such as the MDLP (Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal), the ELP (Army of Portuguese Liberation) and the “Maria da Fonte”, composed mainly of elements of the defunct political police (PIDE) and fascist factions of the army, were responsible for hundreds of kidnappings, assassinations and terrorist attacks against leftist activists and organizations. For their operational capacity, they counted, to a large extent, not only on the financing of businessmen and financiers nostalgic for the Estado Novo and the support of the most reactionary sectors of the Catholic Church, but above all on the support of Franco’s and Brazilian military dictatorships. The political centre of the MDLP operated from Madrid and ELP terrorists received training in large Spanish farms. The leader of the MDLP, Marshal António de Spínola [1910-1996, President of the National Salvation Junta from April 25 to May 16, 1975, President of the Republic from May 15 to September 30, 1974], went into exile in Brazil after his coup attempt was foiled on March 11, 1975 [Mario Soares was to rehabilitate and decorate him in 1987].

In the current autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira, separatist terrorist organizations – the Frente de Libertação dos Açores (FLA) and the Frente de Libertação do Arquipélago da Madeira (FLAMA) – were born and sought to contain the winds blowing from Lisbon through terrorism. Electorally, the right, nostalgic for the dictatorship, organized itself into different micro-parties and failed coalitions: the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), Independent Movement for National Reconstruction – Party of the Portuguese Right (MIRN), the Party of Progress – Portuguese Federalist Movement (PP/MFP) and the National Front (FN).

The coup d’état of 25th November 1975, which put an end to the Revolutionary Process in progress, led to an intensification of the activities of terrorist organizations. Nevertheless the ELP and MDLP terminated their operations in 1976 and FLAMA mounted its last attack in 1978. The extreme right-wing parties then retreated until their extinction. Most of the economic interest groups and personalities linked to these sectors of the Portuguese radical right joined CDS and the PSD. A minority remained on the margins.

In the 1980s and 1900s, the neo-Nazi movement gained a certain presence in the regions of Greater Porto and Lisbon. They organized demonstrations, concerts and created a new party: the National Action Movement (MAN). Like all its predecessors, its life was short. The activity of these groups was practically limited to violent actions. They had a close link with organized crime. Portuguese skinheads were convicted of the murder of a young black man, Alcindo Monteiro [in 1995, he was from Cape Verde]and the leftist activist and member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), “Zé da Messa” [José Carvalho was killed in October 1989 outside the door of the PSR headquarters in Lisbon]. As a result of this strategy, these skinheads were brought to justice and their main leaders were arrested.

In 1999, a group of far-right activists infiltrated an eroding centrist party, the Democratic Renewal Party (PRD). This group repaid the party’s debts, took control of its leadership and changed its name to National Renewal Party (PNR). The Portuguese Constitutional Court accepted this change in April 2000. The Portuguese extreme right tried to regroup in PNR, but contrary to what happens in many European countries, it did not succeed in coming out of the margins.

The PNR has accumulated successive failures. The best was obtained in the 2015 legislative elections with 0.18% of the cast votes. It has not managed to attract qualified executives, nor has it managed to arouse interest among “economic circles”.

The radicalization of the Portuguese right

In 2011, the Portuguese right wing returned to power. PSD and CDS, supported by the troika’s external intervention [European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund], implemented an aggressive four-year austerity program. More than half a million Portuguese people were forced to emigrate, unemployment reached 15.5%, levels close to those of the 1980s, civil servants and pensioners saw their monthly income fall and the majority of workers saw their taxes rise.

The hangover from the shock doctrine was severe. This situation opened up gaps in the camp of the Portuguese right. In 2015, it lost its majority in the legislative elections and saw the birth of a left-wing majority with a programme to cancel the antisocial measures it had taken. The legacy of the troika divided PSD. Former prime minister Passos Coelho [2011-2015] stepped down as party leader. He was succeeded by Rui Rio [former mayor of Porto from 2002 to 2013], who took over the leadership in 2018. He was critical of the “excesses” of austerity that his party subjected Portuguese society to. Back in opposition until today, the PSD remains divided between two wings, one heir to the austerity of Passos Coelho and the other seeking to reposition the party in the centre, led by Rui Rio.

The CDS saw Paulo Portas, its historic leader and former vice-prime minister in the troika government, step down as party leader to make way for the former Minister of Agriculture [2011 to 2015], Assunção Cristas, in March 2016. The party has accumulated defeats in several national elections [4.22 percent of the vote in October 2019] and the successor to Paulo Portas resigned. From January 2020, with a new neoconservative leader, Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos, the CDS is balkanized and faces polls giving it 0.3% of the vote.

The radicalization of the traditional right and the crisis it has provoked in its camp have opened the door to the emergence of two new parties to its right, the ultra-liberal Liberal Initiative (IL) and the far-right Chega (Enough), led by André Ventura. Both represent the empowerment of radicalized sectors of the Portuguese right, which were represented in the leadership of Passos Coelho. It is no coincidence that their leaders and key officials frequently praise the legacy of his government.

Chega’s birth and electoral evolution

In the 2017 municipal elections, the PSD presented André Ventura as candidate for mayor of the municipality of Loures, Portugal’s sixth largest, located in the outskirts north of Lisbon. André Ventura was known for his inflammatory interventions in defence of SL Benfica (Portugal’s largest football club) in sports commentary panels on television on CMTV and for his inflammatory interventions regarding “criminal acts” in the Portuguese tabloid press. As a member of the PSD’s national leadership, he also chose as a campaign flag the denunciation of the gypsy community, the defence of the death penalty, life imprisonment and the strengthening of repression and police surveillance. The national “populist” discourse created unease within its right-wing partner, CDS, which broke with the coalition.

Despite the strong opposition and resistance that his xenophobic and authoritarian discourse aroused in Portuguese society and also among sectors and leaders of the PSD, the then leader, Pedro Passos Coelho, renewed his support for André Ventura. He supported him in the electoral campaign. This gesture can be read today as the fall of the first cordon sanitaire between the right and the Portuguese extreme right.

André Ventura was elected municipal councillor; his candidacy secured 3rd place, behind the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) (which has led the municipality since 2013) and the Socialist Party (PS). In 2018, after the departure of Pedro Passos Coelho from the presidency of the PSD, André Ventura left the PSD and the municipal council and announced the creation of a new party, the Chega.

The far-right formation, after several initial controversies (they tried to legalize the party using false signatures), was accepted by the Constitutional Court in April 2019.

In May 2019, Chega ran in the European elections under the aegis of the Basta (Enough!) coalition, joined by the Popular Monarchist Party (PPM), the Pro-Life Catholic Traditionalists party (PPV) and a liberal microgroup, “Democracia XXI”. The electoral front of the radical right led by André Ventura is not in the European Parliament. It finished in 9th place, with about 50,000 votes (1.49% of the vote). In the legislative elections of October 2019 Chega ran alone, but included the PPV in its lists. It won 67,826 votes (1.29%) and its leader was elected MP for the Lisbon constituency. A few months later, he declared his intention to run in the January 2021 presidential elections.

The Andalusian moment of the Portuguese right wing

Since Chega’s foundation, a debate has been raging within the traditional Portuguese right on its relationship with the extreme right. Until regional elections in the Azores in October 2020, leaders of the Portuguese parliamentary right rejected any agreement with André Ventura’s party. They accused it of presenting proposals incompatible with their “democratic” and “humanist” programmes and principles.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating”. In the regional elections in the Azores in October 2020, the Socialist Party lost its absolute majority. After a long period of 24 years of opposition, the right may return to power. All that was needed was for José Manuel Bolieiro (leader of the PSD/Azores) to reach a parliamentary agreement with Chega, who won two deputies and 5% of the vote.

The extreme right imposed three conditions on the PSD. The first was a commitment to reduce by 50% the number of beneficiaries of the RSI (Income for Social Insertion, a social support for the poorest of the poor). On average, each beneficiary in the Azores receives 86.11 euros per month. Data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) shows that nearly 10% of beneficiaries in the Azores are working, 61.3% are women, mostly single, between the ages of 35 and 44. The Azores are in fact the poorest region in Portugal. In addition, Chega has demanded the creation of an “anti-corruption cabinet” – a “populist” measure of no consequence – and the reduction of the number of deputies in the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, a measure which, because it depends on the approval of the Parliament of the Republic and the region itself, will hardly see the light of day.

The Portuguese right wing has had its Andalusian moment in the middle of the Atlantic [reference to Vox’s 2018 results in Andalusia with 11 per cent, allowing for the formation of a right-wing government]. The precedent of the Azores agreement shows that the Portuguese liberal and conservative right will make agreements with the extreme right as long as the key to power remains in their hands. It is of little interest to it, when it comes to taking power, that it thus deepens the naturalization of racist, xenophobic and authoritarian discourse, heir to the worst episodes in Portugal’s contemporary history.

What is Chega made of?

If, during the first months of its existence, Chega tried to avoid the label of an extreme right-wing party, it seems that this is no longer a problem for the party leadership. The formation led by André Ventura recently decided to join the European party Identity and Democracy (ID), which brings together most of the European extreme right. He publicly exchanges compliments with the Bolsonaro family, travels to Italy to campaign alongside Matteo Salvini, visits Marine Le Pen in Paris and receives her, in the middle of the presidential campaign, in Lisbon.

The rhetoric and tactics he uses to consolidate his social base also seem to be drawn from the writings of the international extreme right, particularly Bolsonarism: neoliberal economic programme, security discourse, deeply racist and xenophobic, nostalgic appeals to Portuguese colonialism and the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, authoritarian populism, mixed with messianic Christian references. André Ventura went so far as to declare publicly that God had entrusted him with the “difficult but honorable task of transforming Portugal”.

The similarities do not end there. According to Portuguese experts, Chega’s digital militia consists of at least 20,000 fake accounts on social networks. These data explain, to a large extent, the success of the party on Facebook and Youtube. This device is used not only to reinforce the party’s propaganda, but above all to spread misinformation and attack journalists, left-wing leaders and activists of social movements. Chega is a veritable factory of lies that leaves Portuguese fact checkers without fingers to count them.

The economic programme is a veritable liberal vulgate. Chega intends to completely dismantle the Portuguese social state. It wants to privatize the National Health Service, public schools, social security and public transport and hand over all these public goods to private groups. It advocates putting an end to progressive taxation and introducing flat taxes which, if applied, would increase the tax burden for those who earn less and then reduce it for those who earn much more. And it proposes to completely liberalize housing evictions and the Labour Law. In its electoral manifesto, the party even advocates lower wages. While the aggressive shock doctrine defended by André Ventura has created him problems in interviews and debates with opponents – Portugal is one of the most unequal countries in the EU, the at-risk-of-poverty rate before social transfers reaches 43% of the population – it has, on the other hand, served as bait to attract funding and support from various businessmen, real estate investors and bankers (many of whom are linked to various financial scandals).

Many of the “Owners of Portugal” publicly assume that they are mobilizing their resources to support André Ventura. These include businessman João Maria Bravo – owner of Sodarca [arms]and Helibravo [air transport]; Miguel Félix da Costa – whose family was for 75 years the representative of Castrol Lubricants, now an influential real estate and tourism investment manager; Carlos Barbot – owner of Tintas Barbot [inks, colors]; or Paulo Mirpuri – CEO of the airline Hi Fly and Mirpuri Investments.

The Portuguese far right also has strong allies in the financial world. Among them are several senior executives of Grupo Espírito Santo (GES), which went bankrupt in 2014, such as Francisco Sá Nogueira, Salvador Posser de Andrade or Pedro Pessanha. The last two are party members. Posser de Andrade, who is still the director of GES’s former property manager, Coporgest, is a national leader and ran in the Lisbon legislative elections while Pedro Pessanha, a former advisor to the financial group in Angola, is president of Chega’s regional group of Lisbon. Francisco Cruz Martins is former straw man for the business of the Angolan elite in Portugal, and one of the Portuguese names mentioned in the international scandal of the Panama Papers, but also in other national corruption cases, such as the Vale do Lobo case or the bankruptcy of the Banif bank in Madeira. He is a strong supporter of André Ventura. The same can be said of the pharmaceutical businessman, César do Paço, owner of Summit Nutritionals International, which financed CDS until 2019. This ex-consul of Portugal in Florida, in addition to financing Chega, placed in the party his man of confidence – José Lourenço – who, until January 2021, held the position of president of Chega’s Porto chapter.

Like other European “populist” parties of the radical right, Chega’s militant base and leadership structure is an amalgam of groups. The ideologue and first vice-president of the party, Diogo Pacheco de Amorim, has long experience in the Portuguese far right. He was part of fascist student movements that were to the right of the Estado Novo dictatorship. He was a member of the terrorist groups MDLP, where he was part of the “Political Bureau”, and the MIRN. He was Portugal’s representative in the French neo-fascist magazine Nouvelle École and translator of Alain de Benoist’s texts into Portuguese. He was a member of the CDS-PP. He is also a member of the traditional Catholic movement Comunhão e Libertação. Second Vice President Nuno Afonso, currently Chief of Staff to André Ventura in the Assembly of the Republic, has spent his entire career in the PSD, as has its President. The party leadership also includes a president of the police union, José Dias, a member of Opus Dei, Pedro Frazão, and the leader of Chega’s evangelical neo-pentecostal group, Lucinda Ribeiro, who is also active in the denialist groups of Covid-19.

The party’s National Convention Bureau seems to have been the place chosen by the ultra-nationalist wing to feel represented. The president of this body, Luís Filipe Graça, was a member of several neo-Nazi groups, such as the New Social Order (NOS) or the National Opposition Movement (MON), but was also a leader of the National Renewal Party (PNR). Nelson Dias da Silva, a member of this organization and a member of the Chega study group, combines these functions with that of spokesperson for the neo-fascist organization Portuguese First (P1), which includes several well-known faces of the Portuguese neo-Nazi movement, such as João Martins, the assassin of the young black man Alcindo Monteiro.

The party is a growing force in the security forces. The Zero Mouvement (an import of the American Blue Lives Matter movement) is strongly linked to Chega. In November 2019, it organized a demonstration in front of the Portuguese parliament, in collaboration with police union structures. André Ventura was enthusiastically welcomed by hundreds of police officers and was the only political leader invited to speak in front of the demonstrators.

Presidential elections and the reconfiguration of the Portuguese right wing

In the presidential elections of January 2021, André Ventura came third, with 11.9% of the vote, behind incumbent President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (60.70%), supported by the PSD and CDS, and the socialist Ana Gomes (12.97%), who did not have the support of her party (PS), but had the support of People Animals and Nature Party (PAN) and the pro-European party LIVRE. João Ferreira, the candidate supported by the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), got 4.32%, Marisa Matias, supported by the Left Bloc got 3.95% of the votes and the ultra-liberal (IL) Tiago Mayan got 3.22%.

The extreme right-wing candidate won, although he set himself the goal of finishing ahead of Ana Gomes. The result obtained by André Ventura gave rise to much speculation. On the night of the election, many commentators jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that the leader of the extreme right would have obtained his votes from the traditional left-wing electorate. Recent and more in-depth studies have refuted this thesis. The left-wing electorate, which abandoned Ana Gomes, João Ferreira and Marisa Matias, focused its vote on the outgoing president of the Republic. The fact that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa did not hinder the government of the left-wing majority [PS with external, conditioned support from the Left Bloc and the PCP] and presented himself in the elections as an obstacle to the racist and authoritarian agenda of the extreme right, earned him a comfortable victory in the first round. Under these conditions, he won the support of thousands of traditional socialist voters, the Left Bloc and the PCP.

André Ventura’s votes came from the most radical fringes of the traditional right, especially in the interior of the country and in the central region. The “normalization” of Chega by the PSD, especially after the agreement in the Azores, and the erosion of the CDS may have contributed to this result. Racist and violent discourse against the Roma community also seems to have played a role. André Ventura achieved significant results in municipalities with the largest Roma populations, particularly in Alentejo. Indeed, among the almost half a million voters for André Ventura in the presidential elections were many people from the working classes who found in this candidacy the answer to their frustration. But, according to several Portuguese academics, these voters are citizens who, for the most part, have already voted for the right (CDS and PSD).

The balkanization of the right-wing parties into four (PSD, CDS, Chega and Iniciativa Liberal) did not allow them to mobilize a larger part of the electorate. All opinion polls indicate that the vast majority of Portuguese people continue to feel represented by left-wing parties. However, the left should not view this with comfort or recklessness.

Portugal is going through three serious crises: the pandemic crisis, the social crisis and the economic crisis. The Portuguese left must be able to find a programme for majorities and a mobilizing programme to overcome the crisis and leave no one in the way. The unemployment and reduction of income that thousands of Portuguese face, as well as the natural fatigue imposed by the containment measures, can quickly become a factor for the rise of an extreme right-wing majority. Prediction in politics is always a risky exercise. But it is difficult for a future right-wing government not to depend on the extreme right and its racist, discriminatory and authoritarian agenda – with the consequences that we see with Salvini in Italy, Órban in Hungary, Trump in the United States or Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Fabian Figueiredo is a sociologist and a leader of the Portuguese Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda).

]]> https://prruk.org/portugals-far-right-what-is-venturas-party-made-of-evangelical-cults-luxury-real-estate-and-fake-accounts/ Thu, 10 Sep 2020 10:45:25 +0000 http://prruk.org/?p=12349 Fabian Figueiredo writes from Portugal: After the US and Brazil, the evangelical lobby is seeking to enter Portuguese politics through CHEGA, the far-right party founded in 2019 by André Ventura. CHEGA translates as Enough! Leaders of these cults have urged their followers to vote for André Ventura but the intervention doesn’t end there. According to VISÃO magazine, CHEGA has over twenty thousand fake accounts on social networks.

The behind-the-scenes story of CHEGA, published in VISÃO, connects the party and its leader – Ventura – to the leaderships of neo-pentecostal evangelical cults in Portugal. This phenomenon is not new. Trump and Bolsonaro have built their electoral platforms with tight relationships with religious fanatics.

Donizete Rodrigues, professor at the Universidade da Beira Interior and specialist in this issue, was quoted by the journalist Miguel Carvalho as revealing that the activity of the evangelical churches in Lisbon has increased significantly since CHEGA’s creation. The professor also states that several pastors have even called on their followers to vote for CHEGA during mass.

As Donziete Rodrigues further explains, these evangelical communities seek to enter the realm of politics in order to secure power, economic gains, fiscal advantages for their churches and government subsidies.

The professor also states that these evangelical groups are increasing their funding of CHEGA’s activities. “CHEGA is part of the scheme”, Rodrigues asserts.

Thousands of fake profiles serving online hate speech

According to an expert on digital strategy, consulting and tracking, CHEGA has over twenty thousand fake accounts on social networks. This information partly explains why the party’s content has so many “likes”, “views” and “shares”. This mechanism is also used to spread fake news and to attack the party’s political opponents.

The man in charge of CHEGA’s online activity is Gerardo Pedro – owner of a company called Kriamos, which has connections to the Angolan company Alcian Soluções (known to be close to MPLA).

Real estate lobby in CHEGA

According to VISÃO’s story, several of CHEGA’s political leaders are professionally connected to the real estate business, particularly the luxury sector. Diogo Pacheco de Amorim – vice-president, ideologue of the party and Ventura’s replacement in Parliament during the presidential elections – is one of them. Ricardo Regalla – CHEGA’s communication director – is also a consultant in a real estate company that operates mainly in Lisbon, Sintra and Cascais.

According to VISÃO, Regalla is known for organizing expensive divorce parties and has led several bullfighting associations, having defended the construction of an arena in Cascais.

André Ventura himself has also been connected to the consulting business. Up until June, he has worked as a consultant for Finpartner that intervenes mainly in the real estate business, fiscal planning and Golden Visa business.

Who are the Masters of Portugal that support André Ventura?

From the BES bank universe to the BANIF financial group. From the armament industry to aviation. From real estate to law firms. Powerful interests have sat down with the leader of the Portuguese far right. According to VISÃO, several powerful businessmen have admitted to financing CHEGA.

On the 18th of June, in a luxurious farm on the outskirts of Lisbon, several powerful businessmen sat down with André Ventura and his VP Diogo Pacheco de Amorim. Their availability to help André Ventura and satisfy his political needs was on the menu. The main dish was, obviously, the funding of CHEGA’s political activity.

The organization of this lunch was the responsibility of João Maria Bravo. He is the owner of Sodarca, which has several million euro contracts for arms supplies to the Portuguese armed forces, as well as Helibravo aviation, that has invoiced millions of euros to the fire fighting industry. This man is known to be a far-right enthusiast and has never hidden from controversial political stances: he thinks Portugal has been sinking since the arrival of democracy.

This armaments millionaire has told the journalist Miguel Carvalho that he will do everything in his power to lend the necessary financial support to CHEGA. He has also stated that he will use his connections to help the rise of André Ventura’s party.

Miguel Félix da Costa was also one of the participants of this lunch. His family has represented the brand Castrol in Portugal. He is currently the strongman of Slil – a holding that manages financial participations in tourism, agriculture and horse breeding. This businessman has not hidden his sympathies with Donald Trump and marched alongside Ventura on his most recent far-right demonstration.

Carlos Barbot, the owner of the Barbot paint empire, and Paulo Mirpuri, ex-owner of Air Luxor and CEO of Mirpuri Investments (which has been recently hired by the government to bring medical supplies to Portugal from China), have also been present at such lunches. João Pedro Gomes, from the BSGG legal society, and Francisco Sá Nogueira, ex-VP of Espirito Santo Viagens travel – are also amongst the participants in such encounters.

The allies in BANIF and the BES universe

Francisco Cruz Martins has been associated with BANIF and BES banking corruption scandals, to the Panama Papers and to the Angolan elite.

For a while now, his name has also been connected to André Ventura. It seems rather ironic that this lawyer who is known for his entanglement in shady businesses has now decided to support the far right with the excuse that CHEGA is the only one that is fighting the status quo and the powerful. The truth is that there aren’t many recent corruption scandals that are not somehow connected to Cruz Martins.

The man who has introduced Cruz Martins to Ventura was Salvador Posser de Andrade – who is, alongside José Maria Ricciardi, director of the old Espirito Santo real estate company. Posser de Andrade has used his connections to fund CHEGA and to promote its leader.

Many of the luxurious fundraising events are known to have taken place in Hotel Palácio, Estoril. Amongst its facilitators are Jaime Nogueira Pinto – known for his lifelong fascist beliefs – and Eduardo Amaral Neto – from a family historically linked to Portugese fascism.

Concerning the future, Posser de Andrade is resolute – he’s sure that more money and friends will start helping CHEGA’s political ambitions.

Fabian Figueiredo writes:  In recent weeks, Portugal has witnessed an escalation of extreme right-wing violence, the like of which has not been seen for a long time. 

An anti-fascist community centre in Lisbon was invaded by neo-Nazis, the headquarters of SOS Racism was vandalized, a recently formed neo-Nazi group organized a KKK-style parade and several anti-racist activists and left-wing MPs, including Bloco de Esquerda MPs Beatriz Gomes Dias and Mariana Mortágua, were the target of threats.

SOS Racism denounces “Ku Klux Klan parade” in front of its headquarters in Lisbon

A group of neo-Nazis, imitating racist criminal groups from the United States of America Ku Klux Klan, marched in front of the association’s headquarters in Lisbon, which will file a complaint with the prosecutor. They gathered in front of the headquarters with their faces covered with white masks, imitating the attacks of the Ku Klux Klan, which, in the United States, for many decades, have made racist attacks and even lynching of African American people. 

The daily newspaper Público recalls that, a few weeks ago, the headquarters of SOS Racism was vandalized with a painting with the phrase “War on the enemies of my land”. On the night of the 12th to the 13th of June, several graffiti with racist and xenophobic phrases appeared in several parts of Lisbon.

SOS Racism is adding what happened last Saturday (08/08/2020) to other threats that it has received and will complain to the Public Prosecutor for threats to physical integrity, moral offences and property damage and incitement to hatred and violence.

In a statement to the newspaper, SOS Racism leader Mamadou Ba says: “This is an escalation. It is one thing to hold a demonstration in the public space where they take a political stand against anti-racism, which is unacceptable in democracy, but to elect an anti-racist organization as a target to slaughter, make death threats and a military parade in Ku Klux Klan’s style goes of beyond all limits of ideological confrontation”.

The group that made the racist parade last Saturday took the initiative on a Facebook page with the name “National Resistance”.

Criminal Police investigate neo-Nazi threats to activists and left-wing MPs

A neo-Nazi group threatens anti-fascist and anti-racist activists, demanding that they abandon political activity and leave Portuguese territory. Among the people threatened are Bloco de Esquerda’s deputies Mariana Mortágua and Beatriz Gomes Dias.

A neo-Nazi group, the self-proclaimed “New Order of Avis – National Resistance”, sent an e-mail in which it threatened several anti-racist and anti-fascist activists and three female MPs.

“We inform you that a period of 48 hours has been allocated for the anti-fascist and anti-racist leaders included in this list, to terminate their political functions and leave Portuguese territory”, they threaten. And they add: “If the period has passed, measures will be taken against these leaders and their families, in order to guarantee the security of the Portuguese people”.

The ten people threatened are: – Beatriz Gomes Dias, Bloco de Esquerda’s MP – Danilo Moreira, leader of the United Anti-Fascist Front (FUA) – Joacine Katar Moreira, independent MP – Jonathan Costa, from FUA – Mamadou Ba, leader of SOS Racismo – Luís Lisboa, from Guimarães Antifascist Committee – Mariana Mortágua, Bloco de Esquerda’s MP – Melissa Rodrigues, from Porto’s Anti Racist Committee – Rita Osório, LGBT and FUA activist and – Vasco Santos, MAS (Movimento ao Socialismo) activist.

According to the Portuguese Diário de Notícias newspaper, the Criminal Police (Polícia Judiciária – PJ) has already received a report of the threats and has opened an investigation to investigate and identify the perpetrators of the threats.

Bloco de Esquerda informed the PJ that the MPs Mariana Mortágua and Beatriz Gomes Dias will individually file a complaint with the Public Prosecution.

Speaking to Público, MP Beatriz Gomes Dias states: “This form of intimidation is serious, it is a crime and must be treated as such. We want the investigation to proceed as quickly as possible and that the authors are identified and held responsible”.

SOS Racism leader Mamadou Ba, who gave statements to the PJ on Wednesday, told the newspaper: “This latest threat is proof that we need to take the level of escalation we are seeing very seriously. It means that they are not just threats from social networks and that they have to do with political dispute but with terrorism and direct death threats”.

This threat follows recent ones, the last of which was the “Ku Klux Klan parade”, which took place last Saturday (08/08/2020) outside the SOS Racismo headquarters.

Community centre attacked after extreme right threats

The community centre “Disgraça”, in Lisbon, was attacked by three skinheads during the dawn on the 7th August. Last Friday night, the 7th, the Disgraça community centre, in Lisbon, reopened for the first time after the pandemic. The fact was public and was advertised on Facebook. After one o’clock in the morning, three elements, between 30 and 40 years old, in dark clothes, masks, shaved heads and tattoos, attacked the people present.

The attack took place hours after an email sent by a group that identified itself as “New Order of Avis – National Resistance” and that directly threatened a list of anti-fascists, giving them 48 hours to leave national territory or “measures will be taken against these leaders and their families, in order to guarantee the security of the Portuguese people ”. In addition, it was said that “the month of August will be the month of the nationalist rebirth” that “no longer tolerate the presence of Antifas terrorists on our streets”.

To the daily newspaper Público, some of the ten people present reported what happened. One of them says that they started by chasing two people who were going to enter the centre saying “‘they are anti-fascists, they are anti-fascists, now they will see what they are like’, something like that, but I couldn’t understand the exact words.”

Then they forced their way in, destroyed objects and threw a gas bottle down the stairs. They broke a window with a beer bottle and stole a fire extinguisher. After intimidation and damage, they fled by car. Disgraça defines itself as anti-authoritarian community centre. For this reason, they’ve become a target of the extreme right.

Andrew Burgin on Trump’s next step

Donald Trump’s incendiary speech at Mount Rushmore on the eve of July 4^th should be a wake up call and a warning for the left and the labour movement throughout the world. Trump set his stall out very directly with a full frontal attack on both Black Lives Matter and the left. He said ‘our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children…Angry mobs are unleashing a wave of violent crime in our cities… there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance’. He reported that the FBI were arresting hundreds of protesters for pulling down racist statues. Last week he signed an executive order introducing a law mandating minimum jail sentences of 10 years for damage to monuments. And to make clear that his target is the BLM movement he added ‘we only kneel to almighty God’.

Trump’s rally was packed with thousands of supporters who revelled in ignoring the perils of the virus, declining to either socially distance or wear masks. Throughout his speech there were repeated chants of USA, USA, USA which has become the chant that mirrors the Nazi anthem of the 1930s ‘Germany Germany above everything’. Trump’s speech was aimed at firing up his base and was a call to arms which no doubt many of his heavily armed supporters will take in a literal sense.

Some might say that we know all this already. Trump has been President for nearly 4 years now and he has made no secret of his racism, his reactionary politics and his contempt for democratic process. But what has changed is that prior to the emergence of the pandemic Trump was thought to be in a position to win a second term relatively easily, especially if the economy was strong and unemployment low and Biden his opponent. Although Biden everything else has been transformed. The pandemic with its enormous death toll in the States has derailed the US economy. Despite Trump’s attempts to ignore the virus and restart the economy unemployment remains above 15 million.

And also what has changed is the mass movement that has been built around Black Lives Matter. This has been the largest movement in US political history. At its peak on June 6 more than half a million took part in more than 550 separate protests. Although there have been bigger single day protests such as the Women’s Day marches in 2017 there has never been a movement which has continued over such a sustained period of daily demonstrations and rallies. Polls estimate that more than 20 million people have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others in recent weeks.

The Black Lives Matter movement has propelled Biden up the polls despite him having done no personal campaigning and being an absolute liability in any debate. Biden now enjoys a significant lead over Trump in popular support. We are once again in the political territory occupied by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Like Biden she elicited no great warmth from working people in the States and was a candidate of the centre-right as he is and like him was well ahead in the polls. The supposedly key argument for voting Clinton was that she was not Trump. Expect much more of this as we head towards the election in November.

There is a polarisation in US politics. Those mobilised by the BLM movement want real change and the focus of that is on those repressive elements in the state, such as the police where the demand for defunding has mass support, alongside the immediate demands to end the glorification of slavery and racism in the public sphere. Biden does not represent this movement but is completely reliant on its support to become president.

In this coming presidential election Trump hopes to build on the precedents from the past. There has always been mass voter suppression particularly of the black and Latino community in the US. They have been prevented from voting by various means and in some black areas there are very few polling stations. There is gerrymandering on an industrial scale. In 2016 these practices were supplemented by the appearance of armed white supremacist gangs at some polling stations. Expect much more of this in November.

Trump has not been idle in preparing the ground for this election and even if Biden wins the popular vote, remembering that Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million in 2016, he may not win in the electoral college which is the method by which individual states are allocated votes. And even if Biden wins the electoral college as Al Gore did in the 2000 election it is not over, Gore’s victory, although having clearly won Florida,  was challenged in the courts. Gore like Clinton also won the popular vote.

It is difficult to see Trump admitting defeat and leaving the White House peacefully. In 2000 the election was stolen from Gore by a decision in the Florida courts. The courts stopped the recount and awarded Bush the Florida win. Gore said ‘for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession’. It is unlikely that there could be such a ‘gentlemanly’ outcome agreed in any difficult post-election scenario in 2020. Should Trump try and steal the election through mass voter suppression, fraud and legal manoeuvres he will be met by a fierce resistance. There is now a mobilised mass opposition to him in the streets.

Trump is urging his supporters to take to the streets not just for the coming election but to continue the battle whatever happens. The Mount Rushmore speech is the opening salvo in this new stage and the stakes both for the people in the US and throughout the world could not be higher. Trump represents the most reactionary forces in the world today. Four more years of his presidency will not only increase the possibility of military conflict with China but seal the fate of the climate.

The emergence of the black-led mass movement against racism and for social and economic justice is a development of huge importance for all our futures. We must expend all our political energies to support and defend this new movement. It is an international movement and we can solidify the links in order to strengthen the global opposition to this system.

There will new attempts to divide the left with false accusations. We are seeing talk of ‘far-left fascism’ from both Trump and politicians here. That must be fought, as well as the attempt now in many countries to portray the left as anti-semitic because of its support for the struggle of the Palestinian people. The key for us must be to unite our struggles. The call of Angela Davis and the BLM movement for solidarity between the struggle against racism and that of freedom for Palestine is an important step forward in building that unity.

Battle is engaged.

Globalisation, the expansion of the power of capital, and the political regime of neoliberalism have strengthened the antihuman conditions of social inequality, cultural dissolution, and individualisation in Hungary as elsewhere. The political far-right responses to these social and human challenges – aggravated by the repeated wave of immigration from the Global South to the Global North – has inflamed xenophobic attitudes. Far from being limited to the region, these distorted forms of protest are manifest in Eastern Europe in the renaissance of far-right wing, nationalist-racist, or even neo-fascist ideologies, which appeared to have been long forgotten. However, we have recently witnessed the birth of political forms and ideologies of a new political far right. Hungary is pioneering this process under the leadership of Viktor Orbán.

By now Orbanism has accomplished the destruction of the institutions of liberal democracy, and transformed the multi-party-system into a ‘one and half party-system’ by severely limiting the scope of action and media influence of all other political parties. Orbán – and this is only a slight exaggeration – has himself become the financer of the ‘nation’. Orbanism entrusts above all the Christian churches with the task of strengthening the social and intellectual-cultural base of the regime, and it completes the neo-Horthyst intellectual-political restoration that we could already observe in Hungary between 1998 and 2002. This restoration amounts to the maintenance of semi-peripheral capitalism and the taming and silencing of the working classes – the fundamental condition for the extraction of profit.

Orbán and his party was the first in Europe to openly and unapologetically introduce an authoritarian regime, which, as the preamble to the Enabling Act makes explicit, they even base in ‘Christian fundamental law’. The coronavirus pandemic made possible a still further concentration of his power. It is good preparation for the next parliamentary elections, in which he can reduce to zero the chances of the completely humiliated and powerless political opposition. The Enabling Act (felhatalmazási törvény) passed on 23 March recalls Hitler’s Ermächtigungsgesetz (such a name has never been applied to any act in Hungarian history, even in the Horthy era). The Act – without any time limit – has declared an ‘state of emergency’, which is serving as a good pretext for the government to suspend the functioning of parliament and immediately rewrite many laws: the police can freely use the data of the Tax Office, without the Attorney General’s permission; demonstrations are forbidden and, in principle, the mayors’ authority can be overridden at any time. Orbán has clearly been testing the possibility of transition to dictatorship. The political opposition made a disgraceful showing; although they did not vote the act, they continued to participate in the electoral farce and played the role of loyal opposition to His Majesty.

Orbán’s propaganda has cynically formulated the Act’s legitimacy also in the nationalistic exclusion of the ‘immigrants’. Brussels expresses its usual disapproval, but Orbán nevertheless can do whatever he wants. It is only the big German car-manufacturing capital that is happy with Orbán’s rule because he created a tax paradise for it.

Hungarian society has been in a state of apathy since 2010 but the coronavirus pandemic further atomised society; thus positions of social resistance were eroded still more. On the – otherwise empty – streets policemen and soldiers guarantee an order whose only purpose is the display of power. Big companies and hospitals have been placed under military control. On TV and radio it is not professionals who ‘battle’ the pandemic; rather, policemen and state bureaucrats ‘inform’ people of what is happening. The government’s control of the media is, if this can be imagined, even greater. The Act is at the same time preparation for the solution to the crisis accompanying the pandemic, since the losses of Orbán’s oligarchs (the narrowest circle of relatives, friends, and henchmen) can now be compensated from public funds while profit has been tacitly accumulated in private pockets.

Obviously, Orbán is preparing for the ‘management’ of the crisis, which has worsened as a result of the pandemic: a severe economic and financial crisis, the expected new unemployment, impoverishment, the possible consequences of migration and the crushing of social resistance. That is why he has expanded the authority of the instruments of oppression. This is the real meaning of the Enabling Act.

Thus, the pandemic has reinforced state economic intervention, authoritarianism, and nationalism. The government is using the pandemic to even further block any search for a left-wing alternative, opening the door still wider for the right and radical right. The European political left is busy with its own self-defence, and in this constellation we cannot see any possibility of stopping or controlling the new Eastern European (Polish, Baltic, Ukrainian, etc.) radical right. This is true despite the obvious opportunity offered by the 75th anniversary of the liberation from Nazism and Fascism for anti-fascist resistance now. Instead, the European Parliament passed a resolution last September, which equated the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, Stalin with Hitler, and communism tout court with fascism. Since it is only mass resistance that can control the (radical) right, liberal movements having proven incapable of countering it, there is no alternative but to go to the root of the problem and formulate a cooperative socialist alternative to capitalism. The pandemic has shown all the contradictions of the capitalist system; the task now is the elimination of these systemic contradictions. There simply is no other way to combat international Orbanism. At least I see none.

In the European Union Orbanism is the embodiment of the new far right, which, while rejecting the old, Nazi-Arrow Cross traditions of the far right has integrated some of its representatives into the mid- and low levels of power, thus stabilising its rule. It is displaying its decisively anti-socialist and ultimately antihuman social character as the representative of one faction of the ruling class, and it renders the regime legally and politically nearly impossible to remove. By doing so, the new populist far right is fulfilling its historical function, since the quasi corporatist regime could be dismantled only through external economic pressure or a popular uprising.

translation: Eszter Bartha

This article was first published by Transform Europe

Manolis with the Greece Solidarity UK delegation 2012On the evening of Monday 30 March 2020, around 9 pm, one could hear people clapping their hands in many Greek neighborhoods. The clapping was followed by old partisans’s songs from the Resistance and in particular one called ‘Heroes’. In its lyrics one can find this line: ‘Heroes with twelve lives’.
If there was a person, that lived these ‘twelve lives’, this was Manolis Glezos, and the people clapping their hands in their balconies and shouting his name and playing old partisan songs were doing it to honor him, because today he passed away at the age of 98.
When Glezos was only 19 he made history, because along with his comrade Lakis Santas on the night of May 30/31 1941, just a few weeks after the Germans had entered occupied Athens, they brought down the Nazi flag from the Acropolis.
But this was just the beginning of eight decades dedicated to struggle. Active in the Resistance as a young communist, he would be arrested first by the Germans, later by the Italians and also by the Greek collaborators. His younger brother, Nicos, was executed by the Germans on May 1944. Glezos would always show the small note that his brother managed to write and throw out of the truck that was carrying him to the place of executions.
Manolis Glezos himself would be later condemned to death twice during the Civil War, but in 1950 his death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. He would be liberated on 1954 only to be arrested again on 1958 on espionage charges and jailed until 1962 despite the international protests against the prosecution for such a symbol of the antifascist Resistance. After the 1967 Colonel’s coup he would be again arrested.
After the fall of the dictatorship he would not join any of the two Communist Parties that had emerged from the 1968 split and tried to revive EDA (United Democratic Left) which was the legal expression of the Left during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s EDA cooperated with PASOK (and Glezos would be twice elected to parliament) but he would distance himself from PASOK. For some time he would be the elected president of his village in the island of Naxos, where he would try to experiment with forms of direct democracy. Active on the Left, in the 2000s he would participate in SYRIZA, being elected again to Parliament in 2012 and the European Parliament on 2014. When SYRIZA capitulated after the referendum, he distanced himself from SYRIZA and in the September 2015 election, he was a candidate with Popular Unity.
During all this time he would always be active in various movements. From the movement to demand German reparations to local struggles and movements of international solidarity. A prolific writer he would dedicate a large part of his energy to defending the history of the Resistance (writing a monumental two-tome history entitled ‘National Resistance 1940-1945), always available to speak at meetings at schools etc. He was also present in demonstrations and protests. On March 2010, during one of the first mass rallies against austerity riot police sprayed him with tear gas with the Minister of Public Order being forced to condemn such practices. During the mass movement of the Squares he was also there speaking to crowds.

During the trial of Golden Dawn he was also there, reminding of the continuity of antifascist struggle.
However, just referring to Glezos’s political trajectory cannot explain the place he had in the collective thinking of many generations. Glezos was never just a ‘living symbol’. He was more like living history, history in the making, history in the present. One is really impressed to see how many people, of many different generations, actually had personal memories of meeting Glezos in one moment or the other.
It is as if he represented the continuity of a spirit of struggle, the red line of commitment, courage and sacrifice, from the Resistance and the Civil War to contemporary movements.
And whatever disagreements one might had with Glezos on one issue or the other, he was living proof of the ‘new humanity’ that the Communist movement had envisaged and projected: always committed but also open-minded, eager to experiment, insisting on the broadening of democracy, trying to avoid dogmatism and bureaucratic mentality.

Manolis Glezos pays tribute to the dead of the 1973 Students’ Uprising at the Polytechnic University in downtown Athens.

It is not that he represented a particular line or program. He represented a spirit of struggle and resistance in a society that in the past ten years went from insurrection and hope to capitulation and defeat. A spirit of resistance and struggle most needed now.
Because of the restrictions imposed of the pandemic Glezos’s funeral will not be a mass demonstration as we would have wished. But tonight’s salute to the ‘last partisan’ made evident the place he has in our collective memory, feeling and thinking.

Panagiotis Sotiris

The suspension of Parliament – a key stage in the UK process – has been defeated but Boris Johnson’s trajectory remains on track. The unanimous verdict of the Supreme Court, announced on Tuesday 24^th September, was that Boris Johnson and the Tory government had acted unlawfully in proroguing parliament from the 9^th September to the 14^th October. It was for most an unexpected verdict and represented a deepening of the split within the establishment. The judiciary, or at least its most significant component, had sided with parliament against the government.

The most obvious and immediate effect was that parliament returned on 25^th September and did not enter a recess for the Tory Party conference. This was a significant setback for the strategy of Johnson and his special advisor Dominic Cummings, and an opportunity for the Labour Party – not through their own efforts but through an individual’s legal challenge backed by other opposition parties.

The first instinct of the Johnson cabal has been to double down and attack the judiciary through the Tory press and in parliament. Johnson’s key ally Rees-Mogg has also attacked the judges calling their verdict a ‘constitutional coup’. No doubt this will harden their base in the Tory party, the Home Counties and the Northern leave areas, but it also creates a serious problem for them.

An important section of the ruling class are not yet disposed to attack the judiciary in this way and recognise the dangers for their class in the Cummings strategy. Moreover the re-opening of parliament makes the no-deal manoeuvres of the Tory government less likely to succeed. This strengthens the position of the Brexit party which is waiting in the wings. Cummings had hoped to undercut the Brexit party with a general election in the wake of a 31^st October Brexit leading to a Johnson victory. The verdict of the judiciary therefore makes a Tory/Brexit Party electoral coming together more likely. It’s unlikely that the Tories now could win a majority in a general election without some kind of deal with the Brexit Party. In the old industrial areas there are sections of the electorate that would never vote Tory but are already willing to vote for Farage and co. Objectively, Brexit and the Brexit party are the mechanisms to split the working class and prevent a left alternative – Labour – coming to power

Johnson was at the UN in New York when the Court judgement was announced, but before he came back to London he met publicly and privately with Trump. No doubt yesterday’s strategy – for how to handle parliament – would have been discussed and Trump is in no doubt that some kind of alliance between Farage and Johnson is necessary.

Johnson was forced to return to parliament and gave an aggressive performance in the House of Commons last night in which it became clear exactly what the labour movement – and indeed wider society – is facing. There was outrage at the insult to the memory of murdered MP Jo Cox – Johnson said the best way to honour her (she was a Remainer) was to deliver Brexit – and the taunting of MPs as traitors and surrender merchants. Today fascists across social media have claimed him as their own and it is absolutely clear that he is building a base amongst the fascists and far right. Wider sections of the population are now open to far right arguments.

Notwithstanding Johnson’s attempts to turn it to his advantage, the Supreme Court decision has been very significant as a mainstream blow to Johnson’s disgraceful anti-democratic actions. Of course it does little to alter the fundamentals – economic and political crisis and the shift to the right in British politics. Although it may be true that the mass of the population do not hold judges, politicians or parliament in great esteem we are not yet at the stage where there is a widespread support for dispensing with bourgeois democracy. Those who do wish to do that largely hail from the far right. The verdict has the effect of moving the Johnson cabal further out of the political and establishment mainstream; they will harden a base around them but they are more clearly identifiable for what they actually are. The crucial next step for the left is to confidently press forward, further isolate them and diminish and defeat their base.

Can the Labour Party do this, given its current failure to give a clear lead on key issues? At this week’s Labour Party conference, the atmosphere was relatively low energy, fractious and insular until the decision was announced from the Supreme Court. The conference had started with a ham-fisted bureaucratic manoeuvre to try and get rid of Deputy Leader Tom Watson and was swiftly followed by news of a senior policy advisor’s resignation. The Another Europe is Possible’s anti-Brexit position was lost because the conference was persuaded that it was a Trojan horse for the right in the party. Corbyn’s ‘we aren’t either leavers or remainers but socialists’ line won in the hall. The problem with this is that an election campaign conducted on an anti-austerity basis is going to crash into the brick wall of Brexit. In effect it will be a one-issue election and to ignore that reality will be catastrophic.

The great danger is that the labour and trade union movement is proceeding as if nothing much has changed and this underpinned the support for the conference’s Composite 14, essentially sitting on the fence – the leadership’s preferred Brexit outcome at conference. There is a misguided belief that the coming election is going to be a reprise of 2017 where Labour broke Theresa May’s majority. Labour has now a much more radical policy programme than 2017 but is in a much weaker political position with poor showings in the opinion polls. At least part of this is because it doesn’t have a clear position on opposing Brexit.

So the decision of the judiciary has deepened the split in the ruling class and hardened up the no deal far right around Johnson and Farage. This is very dangerous politically, but it also opens up political space for Labour – which it is vital that it does not squander – and it creates space for political work from the radical left too. Over the past few weeks we have seen massive protests against Johnson’s closure of parliament – under the slogans ‘Stop the Coup’ and ‘Defend Democracy’; these were largely either spontaneous or organised by the anti-Brexit left. At the same time we have seen huge protests, including extensive civil disobedience, on the issue of climate change. Young people have led the struggles here as elsewhere, and now other movements are joining forces to support them. So this is a period of intensive mobilisation across Britain, with sharper political divides – and a greater risk to our rights and democracy – than have been seen perhaps since the General Strike of 1926. The Labour Party and the radical left must rise to the challenge, in the interests of us all, for much is at stake. We are entering a struggle for the future: not just of this country but across the world. It is a struggle for humanity as a whole – for social justice, equality and economic democracy, to meet the needs of all peoples.

Fascists on the streets are no longer chanting ‘Tommy Robinson’ but ‘Boris, Boris, Boris!’. And while he may have lost his parliamentary majority, his spectacular antics have a greater prize in mind: winning the next election so that he can gut the state; trample on workers’ rights and environmental regulations; enable the hedge funds who’ve invested heavily in a no deal Brexit to make a killing; and open up the British market to his billionaire backers. And if Britain becomes an authoritarian regime in the process, so what?

Boris’ elevation to the premiership has not happened in a vacuum. In Britain, decades of right-wing media messaging from outlets like the Daily Mail and the Express have launched attacks on the institutional foundations of liberal democracy: parliament, the judiciary, the civil service. They have whipped up xenophobia and reaction amongst a significant constituency of the British electorate.

Supposedly ‘liberal’ outlets like the BBC, with their anti-labour and anti-Corbyn editorial policy, have stoked this further, consistently platforming spokespeople of the far-right, from Steve Bannon to Generation Identity. Big data and targeted advertising on social media played a critical role, with the Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighting the rife abuse of data for political ends.

Public services devastated by decades of austerity, and a capitalist system that has left many workers exploited with high living costs and low wages has created rage amongst the British people, some of whom who have been persuaded by the media and the racist Tory regime to scapegoat migrants rather than politicians and bosses. The Brexit vote encapsulated this sentiment.

As this study from LSE shows, it was not a monolithic ‘working class’ that drove the Brexit vote. Instead, the ‘squeezed middle’ played an instrumental role. Many Tory voters in the shires — white, older — swung the vote. Neoliberalism has created atomised individuals and broken down any sense of community solidarity.

The squeezed middle, struggling to cope, turns to patriotism, nationalism, and strongmen leaders to fulfill their need for belonging. This trend is repeated across the globe: from Trump’s America to Orban’s Hungary, from Modi’s India to Bolsonaro’s Brazil. In my recent book, co-authored with Neil Faulkner, Samir Dathi, and Phil Hearse, we call this process Creeping Fascism.

It is now crunch time for Brexit and the liberal parliamentary order as we know it. For the Labour Left, the crisis is existential. Labour’s Brexit fudge isn’t working. The party has wasted years promising to deliver a ‘jobs first’ Brexit, failing to expose it for the racist, far-right, billionaire-backed venture that it is.

In doing so, it’s hemorrhaged progressive remain voters across the country. It’s not just the polls – long discredited on the Labour Left for their failure to predict the 2017 election – that prove this. The EU election results were a hammer blow to Labour, and the Peterborough by-election evidenced a huge drop in vote share.

The progressive vote is now split between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens. With the Tory Party and the Brexit Party now headed for an electoral alliance, the far-right vote is soon to be unified. If things remain as they are now, we will have a Tory-Brexit Party majority government in power by the end of the next election.

Labour MPs and the shadow cabinet know it. That, of course, is why legislation for a general election has not yet passed. The only way for Labour to stand a chance, and we must repeat this over and over again, is for Labour to unequivocally back a radical remain position.

It must not be the remain campaign of Cambell and Blair. We must go, all guns blazing, on an offensive against the Brexiters and their fundamentally capitalist, racist agenda. We must defend migrants and free movement. As Sabrina Huck recently argued in LabourList, capitalism as a system must be explicitly criticised and a real socialist transformation offered. And our manifesto as a whole: domestic and foreign, must be far more radical than 2017.

A four-day week, universal basic income, rent controls, housing as a guaranteed right for all, complete nationalisation of railways and the energy industry are just some of the ideas that have been floated. Of course we can and should dare to go even further. A positive, inspiring, visionary manifesto from the Labour Party can break us free from the current constitutional quagmire and threat of fascism.

But a radical policy agenda is not enough. Labour most mobilise its mass movement onto the streets. The fascists are emboldened. On Saturday, they brazenly attacked two demonstrations and started altercations with the police. They openly stated their intentions to attack Diane Abbott and Owen Jones (who has already been ambushed and beaten on his birthday), both of whom were speaking at the rallies. This is an escalation of their previous mobilisations. The Left must be ready to take control of the streets to defeat the fascists and create a new generation of activists to fight for socialism in Britain, Europe, and the world.

This is the only way to tear apart the Tory and Brexit party’s base of Leave voters. The appetite for a clean break with the existing order exists: the task for Labour is to ensure this radicalism is channeled to the Left, not to fascism and the far right.

Seema is co-author of Creeping Fascism: what it is and how to fight it with Neil Faulkner, Phil Hearse and Samir Dathi. Follow her on Twitter @seema_syeda.

There were angry protests everywhere – from Bodmin to Orkney, from Swansea to St Albans. People in cities, towns, and villages – many of whom had never been on a demonstration before – came out against an illegitimate government. Across the country, the chant ‘Stop the Coup’ rang out.

In London, tens of thousands filled Whitehall, and thousands of young people went from there to take direct action – closing roads and bridges and marching on Buckingham Palace. They were outraged by Johnson’s attack on democracy, overwhelmingly against Brexit, solidly anti-racist and committed to free movement.

A new mass movement is being born.

Many of these protests were spontaneous. Many others were organised by campaign groups such as Another Europe is Possible. All credit to them!

The Labour leadership called on people to join the protests. Jeremy Corbyn spoke in Glasgow and Diane Abbott and John McDonnell in London. Many grassroots activists spoke alongside them, as well as Laura Parker from Momentum and the new general secretary of the UCU lecturers’ union, Jo Grady.

What is at stake? We are entering a struggle for the future: not just of this country but across the world. It is a struggle against the politics of the far right – the politics of the 1930s.

The suspension of Parliament is the latest stage in the right-wing takeover of the Tory Party and the Government that began with the Brexit referendum in 2016. The Leave campaign was pumped full of money by billionaire Aaron Banks. It used unlawful data targeting methods. It was fed by the lies of the Tory press. It was the opposite of democracy.

Anti-migrant xenophobia was the key to the victory of the Leave camp. And in the frenzy whipped up by the far right, MP Jo Cox was tragically murdered.

If we don’t defeat it, the suspension of Parliament will mean a calamitous hard Brexit, followed by a general election. In this, Johnson will posture as the politician who carried out the will of the people. He will advance an utterly reactionary programme based on being ‘tough’ on crime and fake spending promises.

The chickens of the 2016 referendum are coming home to roost. This was never simply about crashing out of the EU. It was always about the extreme right seizing control of the Tory Party and then the Government. They have done so.

Now they want to impose their ultra-right programme. They want to turn Britain into a deregulated, cheap labour, low-tax, outpost, with minimal workplace and environmental regulations. With no EU deal, Johnson will be forced to accept a trade deal imposed by the United States – with grave implications for the NHS. This will make Britain a vassal state. A cornucopia for ruthless billionaires, exporting cheap labour, operating as an off-shore tax haven.

There would be huge tax cuts for the rich, paid for by the working class. There would be soaring prices, stagnant or reduced wages, a collapsing health service and social care sector. Zero-hours contracts would be hugely expanded, with a reduction or abolition of the national minimum wage further down the line. Cue rampant racism and attacks on immigrants. Cue new attacks on trade unions and democratic rights. Cue British servility to American militarism world wide.

This is the hard Brexit that must be fought. It’s the only one on offer. So the Labour Party must fight for Remain.

On Saturday, Extinction Rebellion activists occupying Manchester’s Deansgate spontaneously joined their actions with the anti-Brexit coup mobilisation. This is the kind of unity that is needed. We need to come together to fight and win.

There seems little chance that parliamentary action alone can stop the coup. Even with opposition parties united – a moot point – it needs Tory rebels to stand up to their leadership. In the past, all such rebellions have faded away. Johnson is threatening all Tory MPs who oppose his plans with immediate deselection. Tory MPs have few principles, but keeping their seat in Parliament is one.

Stopping the coup in Parliament would require a complex operation that could be derailed in the Lords. And even if Parliament succeeds in voting it down, the Johnson regime threatens to deepen its attack on democracy by ignoring it.

The present spontaneous mass action is showing the way. Now we need Labour and the trade union leaders to step up and play their part. They must call a national demonstration – a million-person (or more) march. Trade union leaders such as Dave Prentis from Unison, Len McCluskey from Unite, and TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady all recognise how calamitous Johnson’s plans are for workers and their families. The threats to union rights, to the NHS, and the threat of mass casualisation and large-scale unemployment are staring them in the face. They cannot step back from this fight.

Trade unionists must call for our unions to join together with Labour in preparing this national mobilisation, linking with the new movement that’s forming. The Labour and trade union movement has the strength to overturn the drive to dictatorship that the Johnson government represents.

Tory strategists will be reckoning that however this plays out, they can win a general election with a hard Brexit message, topped up with promises to build more prisons, lengthen sentences, exclude more unruly pupils, and spend more on the NHS.

The best way for Labour to prepare to win the election is to join with the mass mobilisation against the Brexit coup. The politics played out in the next few weeks will determine the future of Britain for years.

MPs can’t win the fight in Parliament without the mass action and civil disobedience we’re seeing across the country. We have to step it up on both fronts. This is a continuing struggle and we must link up with others across Europe and beyond who are facing the same attacks on democracy.

We must act, but we must also debate. We must decide strategy and tactics as we go forwards. This is the reason for this bulletin. It is an initiative of anti-Brexit internationalists on the Left. Please contact us with reports of actions in your area and ideas about the way forward. Contact us for further copies. Let’s work together to stop the coup, stop Brexit, and launch the fight for a better world.

Now is the time to act.

]]> https://prruk.org/hundreds-of-thousand-mobiulise-nationwide-against-the-brexit-coup/ Sat, 31 Aug 2019 17:21:22 +0000 http://prruk.org/?p=11106 Where were today’s demonstrations against the suspension of Parliament? Everywhere!

A mass movement has been born. The 100,000+ in Whitehall is what you might have expected  at a major national demo, but today it was just part of the action. Demonstrators turned out in big cities like Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham,  Sheffield, Bristol, Newcastle  and Leeds, but also  in smaller towns including York, Brighton, Litchfield, St Albans, Oxford and Clitheroe. Great receptions for Jeremy Corbyn in Glasgow and John McDonnell and Diane Abbott in London.  Here are just some of the photos from #StoptheCoup and #StoptheBrexitcoup. Some of these twitter photos are not great quality, but they give a feel for the scale of the mobilisation.

Whitehall

Sheffield

Bangor

Whitehall

London

Brighton

Clitheroe

Leeds

Exeter

Manchester

York

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Parliamentary options to protect democracy are limited, but we can use mass civil disobedience to create a situation politically unbearable for the Tories.

We’re being collectively gaslighted, and we know it. When Boris Johnson and a string of ministers tried to tell the British people that it was “routine” to suspend Parliament for five weeks, we could see from their faces and body language that they knew it was a lie.

But this cynical deployment of the smirk and the shoulder shrug comes at a cost, as Johnson will now find out. Last night, as I joined the thousands occupying the greens and squares around Parliament, I met people furious at the blatant theft of their democracy. Some had simply left their office with a hand-scrawled sign, to take part in their first ever political act.

They did so because they have an innate sense of the beauty and fragility of parliamentary democracy, even if they don’t get the intricacies.

They know that Johnson has broken our constitutional principles in two ways: first, he used a technical suspension of Parliament that normally lasts days to call a shutdown of Parliament against its will, for five weeks. Parliament has never been shut down against its will in our lifetime.

Hundreds marched through the Cotswold town of Malvern on Thursday evening

Secondly, his staff briefed the media that, should Parliament vote to stop him, or to remove him as Prime Minister, he will ignore them. We are now warned, again by his unseen spokespeople, that he will refuse to forward any emergency laws passed to the Queen for Royal Assent. That’s what makes this a coup.

This is such a clear attack on parliamentary democracy that it not only brought progressive people to the streets, it has knocked the wind out of the middle class racists and xenophobes who support the Brexit Party and No Deal as a project.

The moral strength of the Leave argument was always that we would “take back control” via parliamentary sovereignty. It drew on a strain of radical democratic principles that has always been strong within English nationalism, and which stand at odds with what Johnson has done. So, from today, the struggle is no longer about Leave versus Remain. It’s about whether Britain is going to be a political and economic colony of Trump’s USA.

But where do we go from here? It’s said that Johnson wants exactly this kind of confrontation. We know his backroom mastermind, Dominic Cummings, revels in military geek-speak from the Vietnam War era. For Cummings, the aim is always to “make the enemy react to you” – and to shape the battlefield in advance so that we lose.

Looked at this way, Johnson’s parliamentary shutdown was simply the programmed response to opposition MPs throwing him off-balance. On Monday, MPs from across all parties agreed to take control of parliament and block No Deal. So within 24 hours, Johnson’s playbook meant he had to do something to throw that off balance. The coup was the result.

The parliamentary options are now limited. Phase one is for MPs to take control of the parliamentary agenda, through something called Standing Order 24. Phase two – being prepared right now – is to publish legislation stopping No Deal. Phase three is preventing Johnson and his allies from filibustering or sabotaging that legislation.

If we get through all these phases by the 14th of September, when parliament is due to be suspended, Johnson has the following options: he can ignore the new law, triggering a total constitutional meltdown that will see my friends and I transfer our protests from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace, or he can call a snap general election.

In that case, the opposition parties have 14 days to form a replacement government with a majority in Parliament – and my hopes are growing that they will do so.

But our secret weapon is ourselves. Whether it’s at the Oxford Union or on the wretched PPE course the elite all seemingly have to attend, what I’ve noticed is the total disdain among otherwise clever people for mass action. People in these elite circles regard the spectacle of the streets like dog-dirt on their shoes. As a result, they have no idea of its power – both to change politics and to transform and exhilarate the people taking it.

What we need now is a mass peaceful movement of civil disobedience. Protest theory tells us that if around 4 percent of the population simply refuses to comply with the powers that be, we win.

Authorities can tolerate mass demos, even isolated sit-downs in Whitehall. But Tory MPs live in the real world of high streets, shopping centres, village fetes, private members clubs – the very civil society that Margaret Thatcher once claimed did not exist. There are not enough security guards, police or cameras to prevent every public space – from a football match to Westfield on a Saturday afternoon – becoming the venue for some goodnatured and peaceful symbolic action that starts a conversation and calls people onto the streets.

Add to that the power of networks. The three tools you need for mass online movements are networks of activists, some Twitter “superstars” and a technology platform that can leverage all the power into one place at the right time. By my reckoning we have the first two, and could have the third going by Sunday night.

Another thing we have is the power of laughter; these dour-faced hypocrites in oversize twill suits most certainly don’t.

With all these things – mass action, networks and humour – we can, like the Hong Kong protesters, “be water”. Flow around obstacles in a way that makes their Vietnam-era political combat strategies irrelevant.
At our impromptu meeting last night I heard a refugee from Chechnya, a migrant worker from Poland and a 13-year-old schoolgirl take the mic and call, in simple language, for a radical change. Here’s why that is important: it may be that we can’t stop Brexit. It may be that Johnson crashes us out on the 31st of October, to cheers from Trump and the tabloid press. But we can make the overhead cost of that – and the chaos that follows – politically unbearable for the Tory party.

Even No Deal is not the end of Brexit. In the end, Britain will have to sign a deal with Europe. It will be a straight choice: Trump’s terms or Europe’s terms.

A government of progressive parties, determined to make that deal fair and keep Britain close to Europe, would stop Farage and Johnson’s attempts to hand our economy over to the USA – and leave a pathway for the next generation to re-enter the EU, if they’ll have us. This massive self-own by the Tories makes that much more likely.

But the best case scenario is that we drive Johnson from office, and in the process shatter the tawdry alliance of billionaires and racist pensioners who support No Deal.

I’ve learned – from reporting the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Greek crisis and the Gaza war – that the most important question in a crisis is: “Where am I going to put my body?” By turning this from an issue about Brexit into an issue about democracy, Johnson just gave millions of people a reason to ask themselves that question.

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As was widely publicised, Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, was in London last week, having meetings with senior government ministers. According to the UK government, this was all about negotiating a trade deal after Britain leaves the EU on October 31. Simon Tisdall in the Guardian says that it was not really about trade, it was about aligning a post-hard Brexit Britain with US foreign policy imperatives, such as withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and refusing to allow Chinese electronics giant Huawei access to the UK’s 5G infrastructure.

Of course the Bolton visit was about both. There is no divide between economics and politics in the US government; and ever since the Project for a New American Century report in 1997 – the panel that produced it was chaired by John Bolton – the United States has leaned on its military dominance and hence dominant political role, to leverage its economic position.

Hard Brexit is a Godsend for the Trump administration. Boris Johnson, if he wins the upcoming election, will be desperate for a trade deal with the US. Unless that happens, Britain outside the EU will operate with calamitous Word Trade Organisation rules, and giant tariff walls worldwide. And the United States is perfectly well disposed to a trade deal with the UK – on their terms, economically and politically. Britain will have to get into line with US trade demands and also political/military demands. This will involve subordinating the world’s fifth largest economy and its political weight to the needs of Washington; it will amount to a substantial shift to the right in the world relationship of economic and political forces.

Economically the US had made its position crystal clear by publishing in February this year a summary of its trade deal negotiating objectives. This involves detailed demands for full access to the UK for American investment capital, including all state operated or controlled enterprises, with only commercial criteria being used. It contains strictures against ‘unfair’ subsidies for domestic companies, and demands a harmonisation of standards for goods and services, including food and agriculture. In return the UK would be required to accept the US government’s own ‘Buy American’ policy. The document also contains proposals for banning any attempt to discriminate against Israeli goods in trade.

Ironically there is one area where the US position seems more ‘progressive’ than the present practices of the UK government – labour law, which the US says it wants harmonised with ILO conditions on the right to organise unions and decent working conditions. In practice it is unlikely, to say the least, that the US would object to the UK’s anti-unions laws, which would probably be further tightened in the event of a Boris Johnson electoral victory.

There are also numerous proposals for joint oversight and dispute resolution. It amounts to forcing the UK into close alignment with American political and economic needs. It would force a unique subordination to the United States at a level that has not been seen between two major capitalist countries since the Nazi invasion of France, and the American occupation of Japan after the second world war. Any attempt by the UK to pretend to independent foreign policy or trade positions, especially in relation to Iran, the Middle East and China, could be met by immediate trade retaliation. Chlorinated chicken and US firms further enforcing their penetration of the NHS is the least of it; Britain as a 51st state is on the agenda.

This attempt to shore up a Trump-Johnson international hard right axis comes at exactly the same time as Matteo Salvini’s Lega party in Italy has forced a general election, in an attempt to eject his Five Star party coalition allies, leaving the fascists in complete control.

Steve Bannon at Brothers of Italy Rally 2017

The Lega party is likely to win the upcoming election in alliance the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), led by Giorgia Meloni. The Brothers are the re-branded fascist MSI (Italian Social Movement), the historic continuers of the Mussolini tradition. The same people who cheer in bars when the deaths of immigrants in the Mediterranean are reported on TV News, will also cheer the election of an all-fascist government.

The Lega-Five Star government has already resulted in a spike in racist attacks against immigrants and Roma people, as well as the death of hundreds of would-be immigrants who have drowned as a result of their flimsy boats being refused permission to land and driven out to sea.

As Roberto Saviano reported:

“The list of reported racist incidents in Italy from the beginning of this year is shocking. In Lecce province, a young boy from Sierra Leone was battered on the back with a chair as his assailants racially abused him and told him to ‘go home’. In Rome, a 12-year-old Egyptian was verbally abused and beaten up so badly by a group of older boys that he ended up in hospital. A black brother and sister were pilloried by a schoolmaster in Foligno, in central Italy. Women of colour are more and more treated as if they were sex workers – and not only in the street but even in public offices. Many incidents go unreported, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that what is happening in Italy is a sign of a descent into barbarism.”

The election of a Salvini-led fascist government will lead to a new crisis for the EU, with a strong temptation by the Lega-led government to repeat Britain’s exit from the EU and more closely align with the United States. This corresponds of course with the Trump administration’s plan to force European politics to the right and widen its alliance against China.

The news that the German economy is sliding into recession is a confirmation of the warnings of many economists, that there is a danger of a new world slump. A time of new economic turmoil, at a level as big or bigger than 2008, with the far right on the march and the left retreating in many places, highlights major dangers for the world working class.

In these circumstances, the announcement of a new left-wing pro-Brexit campaign is, as Lenin once put it, like wishing people many happy returns of the day at a funeral.

Trump’s post-shooting press conference denunciation of white supremacism was a model of cynical mendacity. He knows full well that white racism is at the core of the mass movement that he is building thorough dozens of rallies nationwide. In the past three weeks Trump launched a vicious racist attack on four Democrat congresswomen of colour and laughed with supporters at a Florida rally who called out that ‘illegal’ immigrants should be shot. In late July a Trump rally in North Carolina broke into chants of ‘send her back’ when he attacked Democrat congresswomen Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia. Trump rallies promote lynch mob politics.

Meanwhile Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has begun mass raids targeting undocumented migrants in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

Trump flagged up mental illness as a major cause of shootings, and called for immigration law reform – implying that ‘excessive’ immigration was a cause of the shootings. There is no doubt that mentally unhinged individuals are attracted by the far right. But the causes of mass shootings go deeper than the pro-Trump fascists who follow lunatic far-right web spaces like 8Chan and Gab.com.

Since 9/11 an extreme right-wing ideological mix has developed, promoted and deepened by the Trump regime. As Henry A. Giroux points out, interlocking elements of this include anti-immigrant and anti-Black racism, misogyny, homophobia, militarism, hypermasculinity and gun culture. Rampant homophobia was on display in the Pulse nightclub shooting three years ago in Orlando (53 dead, 49 wounded). Gross misogyny is highlighted by the growing number of US states banning nearly all abortions, and the widespread backlash against feminism.

Add official veneration of the military to gun culture then you get a mass culture of violence. Police in America killed 1,165 people in 2018. Thirty-five per cent of people shot dead by the police were Black, three times the percentage of Black people in the population. Since the beginning of 2018 21 people have been shot dead by the US Border Patrol on the Mexican border.

Donald Trump also blamed violent video games for the shooting, probably something thrown unthinkingly into the mix by one of his speech writers. Ironically, the United States military utilises, and sometimes creates, violent video games and training and recruitment tools. The 2004 game Full Spectrum Warrior was seized upon for training purposes and the army has recently published American Army: Operations, directly and explicitly with an eye to recruiting. In nearly all these games the enemy have beards and wear Afghan or Middle Eastern style clothing (or a stereotypical version thereof).

The veneration of military violence was on full display in Clint Eastwood’s 2014 film, American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper. The movie was based on the story of homicidal maniac Chris Kyle, an American Navy Seal sniper who claimed to have killed 255 Iraqis. Kyle himself was shot dead in a bar by another Iraq war veteran in 2013.

The advertising for the lethal Bushman automatic rifle – ‘Consider your Man-Car Reissued’ – is an explicit reference to the interlinking of hypermasculinity and gun culture.

Lauding mass murder by a military sniper all too easily creates the atmosphere for mass murder by domestic snipers, many of them followers of far-right websites, if not actually members of far-right organisations.

Martin Longman points out that racist shooters are often ‘self-starters’, not member of the organised right, just like many Islamist terrorists:

“We don’t seem to have trouble accepting the linkage when lone wolves commit terrorist attacks and then affiliate themselves with ISIS or al-Qaeda. Sometimes these people claim to actually be members of one of those organizations even if they’ve never actually talked to a recruiter. Between the president’s toxic rhetoric and the influence of websites like 8Chan, there is no doubt about what is inspiring some of these shooters. They’ve become foot soldiers in a fascist movement.”

Mass violence by fascists is not just an American phenomenon. In 2011 Norwegian Nazi Behring Breivik killed 69 young people at a Workers Youth League summer camp in Norway. Australian fascist Brendon Tarrant killed 53 people in the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings in March.

Trump’s reference to mental illness is a deliberate confusion. Unhinged individuals carrying out racist attacks should not obscure the political origins of these events. For example, the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016, was carried out by Thomas Mair, an obviously disturbed individual. But he was inspired by the National Front and English Defence League, and he collected Nazi memorabilia, as well as press cuttings about Behring Breivik. Mair’s far-right links were systematically downplayed in British media reports.

Trump’s racist mass rallies have the unmistakeable whiff of modern fascism. In the last seven years right-wing mass shootings in the US have targeted synagogues, mosques and a Hindu temple. They are, for the moment, the modern form of pogroms in that country.

Trump will for now condemn white supremacism, but hardly anyone (apart from the BBC) will be fooled. Trump’s politics foreground anti-immigrant racism. It is his go-to political weapon against liberals and the left. It is the way he attracts and fires up the racist mobs at his rallies. And it is coalescing a new face of fascism.

Creeping Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It
By Neil Faulkner with Samir Dathi, Phil Hearse and Seema Syeda

How can we stop a ‘second wave’ of fascism returning us to the darkest times? How do we prevent the history of the 1930s repeating itself?

READ MORE…

Source: Stylist

Things are bad. Things are really bad.

If you saw the footage of crowds in North Carolina shouting “send her back”, prompted by Donald Trump using the same language when tweeting that four Democratic congresswomen should “go back” to other countries, and it didn’t send chills down your spine, then you should brush up on your history.

This is a world leader using the language of fascism without serious repercussion. It is nothing new for the president and his supporters, who have taken the conventions of white supremacy in their stride. What are we doing about it? Or, rather, what aren’t we doing about it? We have reached this point through complacency, disregard, and laziness. It’s time to stand up and fight back.

Trump and his most vocal supporters have often behaved like the members of an old-fashioned gentlemen’s club. They are rigid in their thinking and narcissistic in their actions. When they screw up, they shrug their shoulders imperially, knowing the old power structures will keep them safe. As well as the immovable, unchangeable rules about who gets to be a member.

Like anything prehistoric, these exclusion policies tend to apply mostly to women and people of colour. You are doubly damned if you happen to be both. Because the objective of these brotherhoods, these groups of white men, was never centred around the bond that comes with inclusion, rather the superiority from selecting who stays on the outside.

Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – otherwise known as The Squad, a joking and affectionate nickname that has stuck – are perhaps our most current and public examples of how it looks to be positioned as the outsider.

The four Democratic congresswomen in question have become frequent easy targets for Trump, as they vocally stand for and personify everything he despises. In a video that went viral in February, Ocasio-Cortez broke down how corrupt finance laws are, which makes it easy for congressional candidates to take advantage. Pressley has been taking on the government and banks to ensure working-class Americans can clear their paychecks faster. On Twitter, the women even share information for migrants who may be subjected to immigration raids.

Trump has a narrative: a story he tells of violent black and Hispanic criminals, of thieving immigrants and uneducated people of colour. The Squad has become the middle finger up to the propaganda.

Above anything else they are young, multiracial, working-class women who epitomise the very progression Trump and conservatives like him are so fearful of. Theirs is not an empty rhetoric of sensationalism, name-calling and antagonism. Instead, they have committed themselves to standing up for the marginalised communities the president has been assaulting, before turning his attention to them.

Each woman, all from humble and challenging backgrounds, has made history. Pressley is the first black congresswoman to represent Massachusetts. Tlaib is the first Palestinian American, and Omar is the first Somali American member of congress. Omar and Tlaib are the first Muslim women in such positions. Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever elected.

Pressley is the first black congresswoman to represent Massachusetts, and Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever elected. Between them they have lived through wars, poverty and sexual assault, and have come to understand the importance of striving for fairness. They represent the average person for whom they serve. As people who have worked and worried about bills and their communities, they actually have more in common with the majority of Trump’s supporters than the President himself. They are proving that privilege is not the only road to power. Nor is being a man. Or white.

Stuck in the past

Omar is perhaps the most attacked of the four: as a black woman, an immigrant, and a Muslim – a hijabwearing one, no less – she represents many of the categories Trump and his advocates have contempt for. She unwittingly embodies the arguments about American national identity. What she considers it means to be American, and her own definition of belonging, matters very little to those whose criteria relies on birthplace and skintone alone.

Omar is a problem for Trump. Her predicament is that she does not fit his narrative on why refugees, Muslims or immigrants should be dismissed by American society.

Instead, successful, lawabiding and patriotic – to the point that she has made it her life’s work to serve the progress of the US – Omar disproves the lie Trump has told Americans about people like her. Omar is not a terrorist or a terrorist sympathiser. Omar is not useless or lazy. She fails to satisfy the image the president has spent years warning against.

Now, it turns out, none of that mattered anyway. Trump has let us know. An immigrant can do everything their new country demands of them but, in Trump’s America, being “the good immigrant” was never really the golden-ticket to acceptance.

For Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley, as women of colour, even their American birthplaces are of no importance. For Trump’s supporters, “going back” is simply going to a place away from white people.

Back in 1790, the Naturalization Act decreed that citizenship was permitted only to “free white persons of good character”. Native Americans were excluded, as were indentured servants, slaves and free black people. Trump seems to draw inspiration from the distant past: even before he formally entered politics, we watched his relentless harassment of Barack Obama, asking the then-president to defend his own American citizenship.

Trump’s rhetoric has always been about the past. His slogan Make America Great Again thrives among certain audiences because of one word: again.

Again is the time of (not so) long ago. Again is forbidden abortions, it is where gay marriages were not permitted and husbands could rape their wives. Again is when white supremacy reigned without exception. It is no surprise then, that the language that sticks best with the president’s supporters conjures these loathsome times.

People of colour and immigrants have been cautioning of growing public discrimination against them for some time. The response was one of disregard.

We were told not to worry because times had changed. Katie Hopkins, who described migrants as cockroaches (as the Nazis had done), was just a Twitter troll. Attacks on mosques were isolated. UKIP was just a party the drunk guy in the pub supported. Marginalised people were oversensitive snowflakes. We were paranoid and had a victim complex.

It was this very dismissiveness that allowed Boris Johnson – a man who referred to black people as having “watermelon smiles” and being “piccaninnies” – to become prime minister last week. We can only imagine what the future of Britain looks like, when it was Johnson who brought us the highly xenophobic Leave campaign.

The rise of fascism

Of course, “Go back to where you came from” has been the guffaw of simple-minded jingoists everywhere. In Britain – so long as you weren’t the one subjected to it – many believed it had been left behind in the 1970s.

In more recent years we were told it was only said by those on the fringes of society, at poorly attended EDL marches, or by the uncle no one wants to sit next to at family meals.

But this kind of rhetoric is neither dated, offhand or limited to a few. The thoughtless parroting of slogans has always been one of the most effective tools in furthering fascism. Its message is a clear one, as much about fixed ideologies as it is about exclusion. If you don’t like it, tough.

When you are at the receiving end of these words, you understand it to be a threat.

Whether you disappear of your own accord, or theirs, you will go. A week after Trump’s tweet, the now-sacked police officer Charlie Rispoli wrote on Facebook about Ocasio-Cortez: “This vile idiot needs a round.”

Rispoli’s comment is all the more disturbing as the US deals with the unlawful shootings of people of colour by the police. Ocasio-Cortez linked the comment with Trump’s tweet, saying, “This is Trump’s goal when he uses targeted language and threatens elected officials who don’t agree with his political agenda. It’s authoritarian behaviour. The president is sowing violence. He’s creating an environment where people can get hurt and he claims plausible deniability.”

She’s right. These are not throwaway words bundled in healthy patriotism – they are war cries. And history is our evidence. “What’s your ethnicity?” Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to Trump, asked a Jewish reporter this month. The answer to that question has always mattered to bigots.

The reply to “What’s your ethnicity?” in 1939 was enough to turn 900 Jewish refugees away from America, where they were returned to die in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. “Send her back!” the crowds chanted about Omar, a refugee who escaped war. So what if you die? Just go back.

“Send them back” was an attitude that weighed heavily in Brexit’s Leave campaign. The now infamous Breaking Point poster portrayed a long line of refugees descending on Britain’s borders, mimicking Nazi propaganda.

Encouraging society to fear people of colour and immigrants has not been born from a place of misunderstanding, nor is it clumsy and thoughtless. Instead, the scaremongering is a considered and precisely implicated strategy with a tried-and-tested template. It is, in fact, a recruiting technique.

For many years in a village in West Yorkshire, Thomas Mair collected Nazi memorabilia, consumed with the belief that the white race was being threatened with extinction.

Just hours after the Breaking Point poster was unveiled, Mair murdered MP Jo Cox – a woman who proudly stood for the rights of migrants. A week later Nigel Farage referred to the EU referendum as victorious “without a single bullet being fired”. The message was clear: even allies of the immigrant, refugee or person of colour would not be considered a part of their society.

The same kind of language was used in America. Activist Heather Heyer was murdered in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, while peacefully protesting against white supremacy. Trump said that there had been “very fine people on both sides”, seeming to suggest there was no moral difference between alt-right marchers with swastikas and semi-automatic rifles, and those who stood against them.

Whatever you may think of Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar, the attack on them is as much ideological as it is personal. Every chant of “Send her back” is intended for every non-white person across America. It is a poison that will spread. When will the chants be aimed at LGBTQ+ people? At women? At anyone who doesn’t agree with the ideas of those who sit in power?

These are no longer warning signs. We had those long before Brexit and long, long before Trump. History has warned us, repeatedly.

It is not possible to claim to be against prejudice, then remain quiet. Staying quiet is how fascism gains traction. Staying quiet is how fascism has already risen.

Men like Trump and Johnson are not solely responsible; it’s a chicken-and-egg situation: are their supporters learning from them, or are they giving their supporters what they already wanted?

As people of colour and immigrants, many of us have talked loudly for many years that this is where we were headed. It is finally time to listen and react. Now is the time to stand and to stand together to renounce this racist rhetoric. Before it’s too late.

In the current political context, if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union that will represent a significant victory for right-wing forces in Britain. And it is not just in Britain that the Right will experience a lift. A similar effect will be felt across Europe. The debacle of the Brexit process shows up the deep divisions within the Tory Party. However, the one thing that unites them is their common determination to keep the British Labour Party out of government.

Theresa May’s June decision to enter talks with Jeremy Corbyn was but an endeavour to save her hugely unpopular Brexit deal and to remain in office as Tory Prime Minister. Seeking common ground around a demand that originally emerged from the far-right of the British Tory Party will damage the Labour Party and could yet become a major factor in diminishing Labour’s popularity across the country.

Critical Juncture

The European Union is currently a major political issue, not just in European countries but across the world. The Brexit process has wreaked havoc. On a global scale political forces on the right are salivating at the prospect of Britain leaving the EU. Reactionary movements are trying to gain traction amongst an increasingly disenchanted working population, and opposition to the EU is their bridgehead. In France, Le Pen looks to Brexit as an inspiration. Likewise, in Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Germany and other countries, the right is advancing behind an anti-EU banner. Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) has joined forces with Lega in Italy, the Law and Justice Party in Poland and the Swedish Democrats in the run-up to the next European elections.

Trump has for a long time proclaimed his wish to see to break-up of the European Union along national lines. Shortly after his inauguration he invited Nigel Farage to a big welcome at the White House. Steve Bannon has spoken at anti-EU meetings in Europe. Nigel Farage addressed a similar meeting in Dublin. Lest there be any lingering doubts about the alignment of the right around hostility to the EU, a recent statement by Trump, where he encouraged Theresa May to get on with the process of Brexit, promising her immediate discussions about a trade deal between the UK and the US, post-Brexit.

It is essential that socialists be principled and consistent in this volatile atmosphere. To underestimate the economic and political damage inherent in the Brexit process would constitute a serious error. The future of the EU has many implications in terms of living standards and working conditions. But in addition, racism, right-wing nationalism and xenophobia are advancing under the cover of the Referendum decision of June 2016.

Today 510 million people live within the EU, 6% of the world’s population, which is more than the combined populations of the United States of America and Japan. The EU stretches from Helsinki to Lisbon and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. Together the 28 countries of the EU represent the largest economy in the world, the biggest importer and exporter, the leading investor and recipient of foreign investment and the biggest aid donor. So, it is no small question if Britain leaves the EU.

Brexit

Brexit is a right-wing reactionary movement in all its aspects. The leadership of the Brexit project are from the Tory Party far-right, and the very demand itself to leave the European Union has long been a badge of identity for them. Countless forlorn has-beens of the British Tory Party have received a fillip of new energy from the Brexit process. The Tory Party has become the new UKIP. The other wing of Toryism, starting with Macmillan who decided in 1961 to apply for entry to the European Economic Community (EEC), then Heath who signed the Accession Treaty in 1973, and their successors including John Major and David Cameron, were no friends of working people either. It is noteworthy that in the run-up to the 2016 Referendum Prime Minister David Cameron used the renegotiation process to try to undermine workers’ rights, such as are contained in the European Union Working Time Directive and the Temporary Agency Workers Directive, as well as to foster division on issues such as migration. All this was part of an attempt to make the EU more supportive of the interests of big business and finance.

For her part, Thatcher used her supposed hostility to Europe as a demagogic prop in her endeavour to atomise the Welfare State, denationalise publicly-owned industries and destroy the trade union movement. None of this attack on workers’ living conditions was in response to EU Directives. On the contrary, Thatcher secured derogations from EU measures that would have improved conditions at work. And, it was Thatcher who attracted the major Japanese car manufacturers to Britain in the 1980s based on the competitive advantages that membership of the Single Market would confer on them. Honda recently announced that it will close its factory in Swindon. This closure will cost thousands of jobs, as it is not just Honda workers themselves that will be affected. Small and medium-sized engineering companies will be devastated by the consequent disruption of supply chains following Brexit. A similar situation will face many other manufacturing companies in Britain.

The EU

For their part the leading bodies of the EU have in recent years been pursuing policies that worsen the position of working people and their families. The institutions of the EU intensified the crisis in Greece by demanding increasing austerity and privatisation, while undermining the policies of Greece’s democratically-elected government. The EU bureaucracy protected the interests of the large banks and insisted that workers pay for the economic crises also in Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy. They tried to get a trade agreement with the United States (TTIP) that would have undermined working conditions, as well as previously-established health and safety measures. They advocate a policy of privatisation and facilitating large corporations.

The problems of the EU are the problems of the member States. Decisions by the ruling bodies of the EU should be challenged in the individual countries as well as by democratic and civic bodies across Europe. The European Parliament is directly elected by its citizens. The largest political party in the European Parliament is the conservative European People’s Party (Christian Democrats). Rather than cower in the shadows moaning about the right-ward shift in EU policies trade unionists and socialists should bring all EU decisions to centre stage and campaign forcefully for socialist policies during the EU Parliamentary elections.

In the Member States they should make the various nominees on the EU governing bodies accountable.  The decision of the EU leading bodies to humiliate Greece and its people in the negotiations with SYRIZA’s leaders on the country’s economic crisis was supported by finance ministers from the Member States of the EU.

The European Commission is composed of nominees of the various governments and is headed by Jean-Claude Juncker, candidate of the right-wing European People’s Party (EPP) Group and a past Prime Minister of Luxembourg. The Commission has a lot of power, such as being the executor of the EU budget and the originator of much legislation. But it is not a behemoth. It is essentially a type of civil service with a similar staff to a large local council in one of the member countries. In the often-frenzied attack on the institutions of the EU sometimes the Commission is singled out for opprobrium. The Commission, and other bodies such as the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers, often step beyond the powers conferred on them by the EU Treaties. Yet the Commission can be overthrown by a decision of the European Parliament. In 1999 the entire Commission was forced to resign following allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
The European Council consists of the Heads of State of the member states. Its President is former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The Treaties

The European Union (EU) is a product of political processes that span a period of more than sixty years. On 25^th March 1957 the founding Treaty of Rome was adopted. Article 2 established ‘a common market….and a harmonious development of economic activities’ among the six countries involved i.e. France, Italy, Belgium, Germany (West), Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Article 3 called for ‘the abolition…. of obstacles to freedom of movement of persons, services and capital.’ An earlier Treaty, agreed in Paris in 1951, merged the management of the coal and steel industries of these six countries in the immediate aftermath of World War II, thereby establishing the European Coal and Steel Community. Britain’s application in 1963 to join the Common Market, as the EU was then known, was rejected as a result of a veto by Charles De Gaulle. Ten years later Britain joined the Common Market following a decision in the Westminster Parliament. An attempt in 1975 to overturn that decision by Referendum was defeated by a vote of two to one. A series of other Treaties modified and developed the EU since its foundation, among them the Single European Act in 1986, the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, the Treaty of Nice in 2000 and the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. These Treaties, which inform the corpus of EU law, were agreed either by referendum or parliamentary decision within the member States. The European Single Market, which allows citizens to live, study, shop, work and retire in any EU country, was enshrined in the Single European Act, which came into force in 1987. That Treaty similarly allowed for free movement of people, goods, services and money. A legally-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights was proclaimed in Nice in 2000. The European Court of Justice was established to ensure that Member States abide by commitments in the Treaties. The EU is not just a free-trade area, like for example. the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).  The EU encompasses legislation in such areas as health and safety, human rights, working conditions, animal husbandry and environmental protection.

The EU budget is but a small part of total public expenditure in the EU and constitutes about 2% of public expenditure across all Member States. The EU Regional Aid and Cohesion Policy allows for an investment of €325 billion, or 34% of the EU budget, in the regions and cities of the Member States. The European Social Fund is used to finance vocational education and to combat youth unemployment.

The Treaties lay down the objectives and rules of the EU. To that extent the EU is a site for conducting class struggle. In May 2005 the French people in a referendum rejected an EU Constitutional Treaty. The following month the people of the Netherlands made a similar decision and the Treaty was dropped entirely. A referendum in Ireland in 2000 rejected the Nice Treaty, which was then modified somewhat and subsequently adopted in a new referendum. Not all Member States participate in all areas of EU policy. Only nineteen have adopted the Euro, and twenty-two are members of the Schengen area, which allows passport-free movement between countries. EU taxation policy must be agreed by all member states.

Although the EU has incorporated the Western European Union, a close ally of NATO, as a step towards building its military capabilities, military defence remains in the hands of national governments. Under the rules of the EU individual countries can opt out of any military actions. Direct military intervention can only be engaged upon following separate decisions by each member state. Denmark has rejected support for EU militarisation, although it is the only EU country to have done so. But that does not alter the chosen current alignment of the current EU leaders with the United States of America in terms of global political and military activity. Recent calls by the EU for increased military spending under PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation on Security and Defence) aim at 2% of GDP being devoted to military spending.

It is not alone in the area of defence that Europe’s right-wing leaders have asserted their will. The Fiscal Stability Treaty of 2009 placed obstacles in the way of governments wishing to rely on Keynesian-style budgets and borrowing in order to stimulate domestic economic activity.

Opportunities

The EU provides an opportunity for pursuing alternative socialist policies on an international scale. Trade unions and political parties within the EU operate in joint organisations across national boundaries. The primary requirement for any serious political process is to link policies that are being pursued within the EU with what is happening in the member countries. The right-wing political parties understand this. Of course, the EU will not be transformed into a Socialist Federation. But that does not mean that socialists should not pursue within the structures of the EU policies that serve the interests of workers and their families.

Because of the dominance of Conservative Parties within the EU at the present time, disillusionment with the EU is growing apace, and, in the absence of a clear socialist alternative, this facilitates the growth of right-wing forces. The failure of trade union and socialist leaders to seriously confront and oppose policies of austerity has contributed to this process in a significant way. Since the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979 turnout has consistently fallen, such that in the last elections in 2014 only 42.6% of potential voters cast a ballot. Elections to the European Parliament are generally seen as mere harbingers of impending national elections. But these elections should instead be fought around a common international manifesto of socialist measures. Political disenchantment is always a danger for progressive forces. That is why the Right looks to EU elections as their springboard into the political arena.

The European Peoples’ Party, which brings together the CDU of Angela Merkel, Hungary’s Fidesz, Spain’s Partido Popular and other conservative political Parties, is the largest political bloc in the European Parliament. But that was not always the case. For a long period, the mass parties of the labour movement had a majority. Parties on the Left must now unite around a programme of demands that represent the interests of working people and their families. The self-styled bloc of Socialists and Democrats needs to wake up from its long torpor and recognise its responsibility to its electors. Right-wing forces must be confronted not just in the European Parliament but in national Parliaments and in a European-wide movement on the streets also.

Trade unions throughout the EU should present a common programme and mobilise around that programme. The European Trade Union Confederation brings together trade unions from across Europe. The big employers are multinational and exploit divisions amongst workers along national lines. But just as the capitalists are united across national boundaries so too should workers’ organisations be united.  Anything that weakens that unity should be resisted. Britain leaving the EU now is an example of such division and would represent a weakening of solidarity between workers of different countries.

Demands must be advanced for improvements in pay and working conditions, better health and safety provision, environmental protection, improved public services without cost at point of delivery, nationalisation of the banks and finance houses and publicly-owned industries run efficiently under workers’ control and management and defence of migrant workers and of minorities. A universal living wage for all workers in the EU should be fought for. Such an approach could combat the forced economic migration of workers who decide to leave their home countries and their families in order to secure an improved standard of living. A Europe-wide campaign against the capitalist system should have a secure foothold within the institutions of the EU, as much as within individual countries. Countries that are outside the EU should also be part of this campaign. There are forty-eight countries in Europe, twenty-eight are in the EU.

In addition to this action programme, the trade union and labour movement across Europe should also initiate a campaign to examine all the Treaties of the EU with a view to creating conditions for a new Treaty that would protect public services, expand public ownership of key industries and service provision, facilitate public control of banking and finance and expand educational and cultural provision on an equal basis for all. There is no legal provision within the EU that cannot be reversed. No European Treaty is set in stone. An international conference of the organisations of the European labour movement should be convened for the purpose of examining this issue.

Changing balance within the EU

The balance of forces within the countries of the EU has been changing since its foundation. Spain, Greece and Portugal were admitted to membership in the 1980s, having spent decades under dictatorial rule. The EU structural funds that were allocated to these countries assisted them in the growth of their GNP. Ireland for nearly fifty years since the creation of the Free State in 1922 stagnated with mass emigration and underdevelopment. It joined the EEC in 1973 and, while it experienced a collapse in some of its industries, nevertheless through the European Common Agricultural Policy, the Regional Fund and a policy of encouraging foreign investment the country experienced a general improvement in living standards. Smaller countries were attracted towards the EU because of their increasing isolation in the face of the growing, globalised economic power of the multinationals.

A significant change in the composition of the EU occurred after 2003 when individual accession treaties were signed with several countries emerging from the Stalinist Eastern European bloc, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia. The ruling elites of many of these countries were anxious to align themselves with NATO and the United States. Donald Rumsfeld, during the US and British invasion of Iraq sixteen years ago, referred fondly to this group as ‘new Europe’. The balance of forces has shifted rightward for a period. The left across Europe must unite in combat against the right-wing and conservative forces that dominate European institutions at the present time

Nature of the EU

The EU is a construct of the capitalist system and serves the interests of banks and big business. How could it be otherwise! It was founded following agreement between capitalist States – initially six – and was supported and encouraged by the United States, anxious to prevent the growth of socialist movements in the post-War period, such as occurred in 1918. A few European-American organisations came into being following World War Two, such as the Council of Europe, the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation and NATO. The European Economic Community (the Common Market) emerged in that context.

In order to facilitate free movement in commodities, services, labour and capital and to prevent as far as possible any one capitalist enterprise from seeking unfair advantage over another, a series of international Treaties was agreed within the EU and its predecessors. Over time the EU Member States voluntarily surrendered aspects of their sovereignty in areas such as environmental protection, food safety, working conditions, agriculture, animal husbandry, consumer rights and health. EU laws in these areas have the same force as national laws in individual states. For example, the prohibition on discrimination, as set out in various EU directives, takes precedence over conflicting national law.

In addition, Regional and Structural Funds were established to assist in such projects as and road and rail construction, particularly in the less developed countries of Europe.

Balance of Class Forces

The predominance of right-wing governments across Europe today does not mean that all progressive measures at EU level are blocked off at source. A Charter of Fundamental Rights was incorporated into the Treaty of Nice in 2000. EU rules prevent discrimination on grounds of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. A series of Regulations, Directives and Decisions, some beneficial to workers and others against the interests of employees, has over the years been enacted by the EU. That is no different from what happens in individual states. These questions are decided on the basis of the balance of forces in society, not by any legal or moral imperative.

Trade union pressure has led to the EU Commission taking action against ‘wage dumping’ which largely affects workers from Eastern Europe who are employed in areas such as construction and harvesting. In the past these workers had been entitled only to the minimum wage in the host country but now they are to be given the right to the same bonuses and allowances as ‘national’ workers. This follows changes to the Posting of Workers’ Directive. The Working Time Directive was adopted in 1993, and since then the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled on more than fifty working-time related cases.

Maximum weekly working time must not exceed forty-eight hours on average according to a Directive in 2003. The Directives also provide for rest breaks and rest periods.  A Directive in 1997 established equal rights for part-time workers and in 2008 equal treatment for temporary workers became the law. The Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that emergency workers fall within the scope of protection of the Working Time Directive. Equal treatment for men and women in employment became the law within in the EEC in 1976.

Europe has high food standards and the EU regulates food labelling, not just in terms of food content, but also in the case of meat country of origin. Water cleanliness and air purity are similarly regulated.

Although the motivation of the executive and policy-making bodies of the EU is not to serve the interests of working people or the ‘ordinary consumer’ nevertheless, political pressure in 2016 led to the European Commission imposing a fine of nearly €3 billion on a lorry cartel involving Daimler, IVECO and VOLVO for price-fixing. Action is currently underway in the European Court of Justice against Apple Corporation over its failure to pay €13 billion owed in taxes. The giant multinational Volkswagen recently had to pay around $24bn in penalties and compensation over its manipulation of figures for diesel emissions following action taken by the European Union. Over the past two years Google has been fined more than €8 billion by the EU for breaching its antitrust rules and for abusing its dominant market position. Fines totalling €824 million were imposed on a number of banks for manipulating interest rates.

The Euro

The Euro was established following agreement on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Twenty-one years earlier US President Nixon broke the link between the dollar and the official price of gold, thus abolishing the international system of fixed exchange rates, that had been in operation since the end of World War Two. The Bretton Woods international monetary system ended in 1972. Prior to the introduction of the Euro the EU made a number of attempts to create currency stability, such as the Snake, the European Monetary System and the Exchange Rate Mechanism. For a variety of reasons none fully succeeded. In a continuing endeavour to underpin the Single European Market and the free movement of capital, people, goods and services, the Euro was launched in 1999 and became fully operational in 2002.

When the Euro was introduced in 1999 there was no accompanying central fund that could be drawn upon to assist members of the new Monetary Union. The banking system remained under national control. There were no bail-out rules. Both Germany and France in 2003 broke the budget deficit rules that had been set by the Stability and Growth Pact, but neither country faced any sanction. It was the economic crisis of 2008 that brought to the fore many of the contradictions of the capitalist system that had been building up. A bail-out fund was established then, with the support of the International Monetary Fund and the so-called European Stability Mechanism. Bail-out measures, involving austerity budgets and cuts in public sector spending, were forced upon Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus. The approach of the leading bodies of the EU was to defend the assets of the big banks and finance houses at the expense of the living standards of working people and their families.

Yet, despite the difficulties inherent in its structural base, the Euro remains the world’s second most-used currency and accounts for one quarter of the world’s foreign currency reserves. Three hundred and forty million Europeans in nineteen Member States use it on a day by day basis. Clearly the use of the Euro greatly facilitates travel and trade.

Class Struggle

The dominant forces that are now arraigned against the EU and that are calling for exit from the Union are of the far-right. There is understandably continuing criticism of EU policies coming from the left. But there is a particular problem amongst the left in Britain. For many years some left-wing leaders, such as Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn, mistakenly argued that opposition to the EU and its predecessors, regardless of context, should be an essential aspect of the socialist movement. There are even some small left groups in Britain today who argue that the current Brexit process should be supported. Such an approach is not only blind to reality, but it discredits socialism.

The principal drive for Brexit constitutes a uniformly reactionary, right-wing process. Campaigns against the EU are leading to an increase in nationalism and division amongst workers. In Britain there is an attempt to re-generate the right-wing Tory Party around xenophobia, racism and illusionary imperial grandeur, using Brexit as the rallying call.

The issue of the European Union today presents an arena where the right-wing must be confronted and defeated. The British Labour Party should avail of every opportunity to highlight the essential nature of this right-wing movement and to build up the opposition in Westminster and throughout the country around an internationalist and socialist alternative to Brexit. The principled class argument is not between a so-called ‘hard Brexit’ or ‘soft Brexit’. That false dichotomy shifts the terms of the debate into right-wing Tory territory. There has to be a new campaign to combat the lies and false propaganda that littered the Referendum of 2016, and there must be a new Popular Vote in which the Right can be confronted and defeated.

The outcome on the issue of the future of the EU is not neutral. However, the socialist approach to the EU must be critical and must be based on class issues and class demands. In this climate, where jobs are being destroyed and living standards are being undermined, and where racism and xenophobia are securing roots, the organised labour movement has an opportunity to present an internationalist and socialist alternative, a Socialist Federation of Socialist States in Europe

Johnson is the British Trump – proclaimed as such by Trump himself, the supreme symbol of what is now a global tidal wave of nationalism, racism, misogyny, and fascism.¹

Remain-supporting Tories have been purged and a new regime of Leave ultras has been installed. Johnson himself is a narcissistic opportunist, a serial liar, an Islamophobic racist, and a man devoid of the slightest trace of idealism, principle, or integrity. His leadership campaign was funded by tax dodgers, arms dealers, and carbon polluters.² He described Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’ and ‘bank robbers’ in an unashamed pitch for racist votes.

It served him well. A recent poll showed that 56% of Tory Party members believe Islam is a threat to the British way of life (whatever that is); in other words, a majority of this party of the living dead, that has just elected a new prime minister, comprises Islamophobic racists.³

Other leading regime figures are also from the political sewer. Sajid Javid is the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In his previous role as Home Secretary, he used that fact that tiny numbers of migrants were trying to cross the Channel in rubber dinghies to create an anti-migrant panic, ably assisted, of course, by the gutter press.⁴ He recently made a high-profile speech ‘applauding’ Nigel Farage and denying that the Brexit Party is ‘extremist’ – opening the door to an electoral arrangement.

The Home Office goes to Priti Patel, a self-proclaimed Thatcherite with a record of homophobia, clandestine Zionism, and indifference to human rights.⁵ Dominic Raab takes the other top government post, becoming Foreign Secretary. Raab thinks that feminists are ‘obnoxious bigots’, and that the Government Equalities Office, which leads policy work on women, sexual orientation, and transgender equality, is ‘pointless’ and should be abolished.⁶ Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Leader of the House, would no doubt agree. As well as thinking zero-hours contracts ‘excellent’ and food banks ‘uplifting’, Rees-Mogg, a multi-millionaire with a deliberately cultivated image of reactionary toff, is an anti-abortion and homophobic bigot.⁷

Expect mounting attacks on Muslims, migrants, and minorities. Expect growing threats to abortion rights and LGBT rights. Expect further squeezes on the poor, the homeless, and the disabled. Expect violations of civil liberties and democratic protocols. This is the context in which to read Johnson’s promise to fund 20,000 more police. This will be a regime of moral panics around crime, migration, and terrorism – a regime forever conjuring imagined threats from alien ‘others’ – a ‘state of tension’ regime with more surveillance, more raids, more lock-ups.

The racism and repression will be laced with more spending on education and infrastructure – in classic fascist style – since the aim will be to ‘make Britain great again’ in the context of a Brexit crash-out. But all the signs are that this will be mainly decorative, designed in part to divert attention from the neoliberal core of the regime’s economic and social programme: tax cuts for the rich, the corporations, and the middle class. The plan is to lower corporation tax – Johnson has not said by how much, but rival Jeremy Hunt suggested lowering it to 12.5% during the Tory leadership contest – and raising the higher-income tax threshold from £50,000 to £80,000.⁸

Needless to say, the leadership of the Tory Party is chocker with climate-change deniers. Johnson himself is probably not so stupid as to disbelieve the science, but, true to his hollow opportunistic nature, he flip-flops in his public statements. He is certainly on record saying climate change is a ‘primitive fear’ that is ‘without foundation’.⁹ But whatever its members may privately think, what matters is that the Johnson government is a corporate regime – a regime of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. This will decide its behaviour.

A political sea-change

Attempts, on parts of the Left, to maintain that this is a ‘normal’ government, albeit of the Tory Right, are disastrously wrong. If Johnson holds onto power, history will record that 2019 marked a sea-change in British politics as significant as that of 1979.

The advent of the Thatcher premiership that year marked the beginning of the neoliberal ‘counter-revolution’, the systematic attempt by the British ruling class to roll back all the gains made by the working class since 1945. For Thatcher, the defeat of the unions was decisive, above all the defeat of the miners in the year-long 1984/5 strike, which broke the back of organised labour in Britain and cleared the way for the neoliberal programme of financialisation, privatisation, and profiteering, with tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for public services, wage cuts for workers, and benefit cuts for the poor.

The advent of the Johnson premiership represents a further qualitative shift – to the far right, to a programme of ultra-neoliberalism, a programme of corporate power and climate-change denial, laced with nationalism, racism, and misogyny.

Arguments about ‘normalisation’ were heard after Trump’s election. He was merely a right-wing Republican, we were told. We should not be confused by overblown campaign rhetoric. He would moderate once in office, we were assured. Not only sections of the Left but much of the liberal commentariat argued this in 2016/7. They were wrong. Let us consider the political situation in the United States today, which, in a sense, is three years ahead of that in Britain.

The process we described as ‘creeping fascism’ in the first edition of our book three years ago is now much further advanced.¹⁰ Central to our argument was the contention that fascism should be regarded as a political process, and that to focus primarily on the fascist ultras – the street thugs and embryonic paramilitaries – was seriously mistaken, for the primary threat was posed by mass electoral formations headed by suited racists like Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Orban, and Salvini, and by the way in which the political mainstream was contaminated by their politics. This, we argued, was a great ‘moving right’ show, with social-democrats and liberals capitulating to racism by backing immigration controls and traditional conservatives sending in the cops against migrants, banging people up in detention centres, ramping up the Islamophobic rhetoric, creating an ideological climate in which both far-right electoral formations and street-based fascist groups could gain traction. The different elements in this reactionary constellation, we maintained, were mutually reinforcing: the more concessions that were made to racism by centrist politicians, the easier the next political advance of the Far Right would be.

The Trump regime

The Trump regime illustrates these tendencies. Since his takeover of the Republican Party, Trump has shifted the whole of US politics to the right. He has not ‘moderated’ or ‘normalised’ in power. He has continued to ramp up the nationalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and authoritarianism. Tens of thousands are now held in appalling conditions in concentration camps on the US/Mexican border. Abortion has effectively been illegalised in several US states, and the Far Right is aiming to extend the ban to the entire country. Trump has just launched a vicious racist attack on four Democratic congresswomen of colour, stirring his reactionary mass base into chants of ‘send her back’ at a Nazi-style rally in Greenville, South Carolina – a highly personalised onslaught on Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee, naturalised US citizen, and Minnesota congresswoman.

Behind the façade – the taunting of the weak, the attacks on minorities, the contempt for the powerless – is corporate power. Belligerent global posturing and a huge increase in arms spending have fuelled the military-industrial complex. Withdrawal from international climate-change agreements and the trashing of environmental protections at home have served the carbon polluters. The Trump regime is a big-business regime.

Despite all this, the whole chunk of the organised Left that campaigned for Brexit three years ago seems to have learnt absolutely nothing. Instead, they have degenerated into ever more grotesque forms of self-delusion.

A recent piece by one Lexiter – who, incidentally, refused a recent invitation to debate the issues with me before a Labour Party audience – argues that the Brexit vote represents ‘the largest democratic mandate in the country’s history’, that for Corbyn to challenge it would ‘leave the field open for the Tories and the Brexit Party to paint themselves as the defenders of democracy’, that there should be an immediate general election, and that Labour should fight it by ignoring Brexit and talking about other things.¹¹

I hardly know where to start. Labour has just suffered a catastrophic electoral meltdown in the Euro elections – taking less than 14% of the vote nationally – and its current opinion poll rating is around 25%.¹² The party haemorrhaged millions of progressive voters to the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the Nationalists – all of which have a solidly anti-Brexit position. Many of those losses may turn out to be permanent. For Labour’s equivocation has continued – partly in a hopeless attempt to ‘triangulate’ (reactionary) Leave voters and (progressive) Remain voters, partly because a small group of hard-core Lexiters around Corbyn are determined to exit the EU and build ‘socialism in one country’.

‘Socialism in one country’

This political fantasy should have been dispelled in the 1970s, when the programme of Britain’s last social-democratic government (by which I mean a government that attempted to introduce social reforms, as opposed to the Blair government, which was a neoliberal government of counter-reform) was destroyed by international finance in the form of the IMF and the US banks that stood behind it. But the fantasy lives on: apparently, in this age of internationalised corporate power, of capital flows of billions at the click of a button, Britain is going to surge to economic growth and social transformation if only the shackles of Brussels bureaucracy are thrown off.

In reality, all the signs are that this doomed experiment will never be tried. Labour has an electoral mountain to climb and is hamstrung by the entrenched right-wing hostility of most Labour politicians to the leadership. If the relentless ‘anti-semitism’ campaign – a transparent attempt by Tories, Blairites, and Zioinists to smear, destabilise, and eventually destroy Corbyn – does not cripple Labour’s electoral prospects, the Brexit shambles surely will.

As for ‘the largest democratic mandate in the country’s history’, what can one say? Since when has the Left conceded final victory to the Right on the basis of a single vote, a single battle, a single struggle? Have we not been fighting against the odds, pushing against the stream, for some two centuries – in the interests of the working class? And when has it ever been in the interests of the working class to align itself with the nationalism and racism of the Far Right?

A far-right landslide?

The real danger now is a lash-up between Johnson and Farage. The same poll that puts Labour on 25% puts the Tories and the Brexit Party combined on 44%. With Labour rendered shambolic by internal division and the progressive vote as a whole split – perhaps irrevocably – the possibility arises of a far-right landslide (in terms of seats).

Johnson will be planning a general election. His theoretical majority is tiny, and he has no majority at all for a hard Brexit. The Far Right expects to fight a general election soon, and they will fight it on their centrepiece, the Brexit project, which they will proclaim as the consummation of democracy and the beginning of a new ‘make Britain great again’ era.

If Johnson and Farage win a stable majority and a five-year term, anything could happen. The model for Brexit Britain will be a corporate tax haven and low-wage sweatshop on the edge of Europe. Remaining public services – including the NHS – will be up for sale to US corporate pirates and asset-strippers. Arms dealers and carbon polluters will have free reign. The social order will be poisoned by racism. Police power will increase. There will be crackdowns on the Left – perhaps using, amongst other things, the ‘anti-semitism’ cudgel to illegalise pro-Palestinian solidarity.

We need, now more than ever, a united Left. But it has never been more obvious that unity can be built only on the basis of principled and consistent internationalism – that is, on the basis of unequivocal opposition to the Brexit project of the Far Right.

Neil Faulkner is the author, with Samir Dathi, Phil Hearse, and Seema Syeda, of Creeping Fascism: what it is and how to fight it. He is currently working on a new book, The Mass Psychology of Creeping Fascism.

While refusing to call Donald Trump’s attacks on four non-white Democrat congresswomen ‘racist’, Javid singled out Nigel Farage for praise, claiming he was not an extremist. Bizarrely, the basis for this exoneration of Farage was that he had walked away from UKIP, an increasingly hard-right party.

To imagine that Farage’s tactical split from UKIP exonerates him from the promotion of anti-immigrant racism is to demonstrate memory suppression at amnesiac levels. Although long a theme of the Conservative right, anti-immigrant racism was weaponised at new mass levels by UKIP, especially after the election of Farage as leader in 2006. This led directly to UKIP’s electoral breakthrough in the 2009 European election where UKIP won 17% of the vote. This result emboldened and encouraged the Tory right to fight for a referendum on EU membership, a campaign which led to Brexit and – barring a miracle – the election of Boris Johnson as Tory leader.

A Johnson-Farage coalition government would be a disaster for public services, democratic and trade union rights, the NHS and the welfare state generally, the living standards of the bulk of the British population and the environment. It would be a stunning victory for Donald Trump and political reaction worldwide. But it is a distinctly possible outcome, given the electoral arithmetic predicted by the polls.

None of the four main political parties – Labour, Tories, Brexit Party and Lib-Dems – are scoring more than around 28% (and in general most polls put all of them well under that figure). Labour have been wounded by political failures on Brexit and an inability to forcefully refute the anti-Semitism smear campaign. Behind this is the sabotage of the Labour right.

Jeremy Corbyn has been the victim of the most vicious witch-hunt smear campaign since the McCarthy witch-hunts in 1950s America. It has been evident since his election as Labour leader in 2015 that most right-wing Labour MPs would prefer a Tory government to a Corbyn government. Their disappointment with Labour’s gains in the 2017 election was obvious. Right-wing Labour has promoted every smear attack on Corbyn and directly conspired with their right-wing liberal media friends, including in the Guardian and Channel 4 News, as well as the usual suspects in the BBC and right-wing newspapers.

The Brexit Party is now playing an essential role in the campaign to prevent a Corbyn government. Labour is pressurised among pro-remainers by the Liberal Democrats and Greens; that is crucial because in the referendum 67% of Labour voters cast their ballot for Remain. Johnson’s supporters are likely calculating that defections to the Brexit Party among Labour pro-Leave voters will complete a pincer movement, making a Labour victory impossible. In any case, a Johnson Tory Party can easily agree political terms with Farage, given the massive policy convergences. And lauding Farage sends a message to Tories who voted for the Brexit Party in the Euro elections that it is now OK to come home.

Sajid Javid’s speech came at an event at which the Commission for Countering Extremism called for evidence, towards a new report on ‘extremism’. Confusion on this issue can be seen in the Commission’s request to 30 academics to write up their definitions of extremism. This is an extension of the so-called Prevent strategy, a spectacular failure.

Up until now the government has concentrated on Islamism and the far right as the key targets for anti-extremism initiatives. But Javid and lead commissioner Sara Khan included ‘far left’ as well as ‘far right’ in their definitions of extremism. Given the present atmosphere, there must be a danger that pro-Palestinian campaigns will be targeted as ‘anti-Semitic’, and thus racist and extremist. At any rate, the Brexit Party will be given a clean bill of health and criticisms of Trump will be couched in the most diplomatic language.

The rapidity and scale of these shocking political developments are breathtaking. If they go unchecked and undefeated they will deal a body blow to progressive politics, devastate many communities and eradicate much that is decent in our society, for a generation or more. It’s time for all of us to step up to the plate.

“I’ve travelled 24 hours, from Manila to Rio, to be here, yet politically I feel I haven’t left home.” Walden Bello, leading light of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ and former Filipino congressman reflected on the rise of authoritarian right-wing ‘strong men’ from the Philippines to Brazil. I joined him in Brazil to assess what has changed in the 20 years since mass protests in Seattle brought the World Trade Organisation to a standstill, and announced the birth of a new, international movement to the world. “But 20 years ago, Seattle was an exclusively left-wing affair” Bello continued. “We need to understand how the far right managed to eat our lunch.”

How indeed, when capitalism is facing one of its deepest crises in history, has a rogues’ gallery of financiers, billionaire businessman, and the most establishment politicians imaginable been able to capture sufficient popular imagination to take over some of the biggest countries in the world? And where is the international left, which 20 years ago fermented one of the most international and diverse movements the world has ever seen, but today seems defensive and insular in the face of a crisis which we predicted and warned about?

We were in Brazil to compare experiences, to learn from each other, to work out how to rebuild an internationalism strong enough to combat this ‘Trumpist’ trend. As Walden Bello’s opening quote makes clear, the similarities faced by very different societies across the world is startling. Capitalism is facing its deepest crisis since the Second World War, a crisis which threatens the very existence of this economic model. But while the political left is in retreat in many places and focussed heavily on a defensive, domestic agenda, the far right have used this moment to build a terrifying global network, backed by big money and able to feed off popular discontent.

In countries including Brazil, India, the Philippines and Turkey, authoritarian strong men have been elected to office, fuelling movements of fear and hatred, further demonising marginalised groups, rolling back the limited gains made on climate change, on racial and sexual equality, and even challenging the relatively democratic spaces in which we organise. The kingpin is Donald Trump, normalising and legitimising these politics, giving confidence to far-right networks, encouraging international funding. And the narratives are spreading well beyond the countries where the strongmen rule, seeping into politics everywhere.

Trumpism around the world

20 years ago, Brazil was one of the launch pads for what became known as the anti-globalisation movement. It was here, under a radical regional government that the first World Social Forum was held, an attempt to counter the elite gathering in Davos, Switzerland known as the World Economic Forum. The World Social Forum was a space for meeting, learning and strategising with activists from around the globe. Two years later, Lula was elected president, part of the ‘Pink Tide’ which swept Latin America and provided a thorn in the the side of free market capitalism.

Today, Lula is in prison, and Brazil is ruled by Jair Bolsanaro, an extreme-right member of the elite, an apologist for the human-rights-abusing military dictatorship, who somehow has managed to cultivate a popular image and win a majority. He came to power denouncing left-wing activists and social movements as terrorists. A racist, a misogynist and a homophobe, Bolsanaro makes Trump look moderate.

Of course, when you arrive in Brazil, you don’t see stormtroopers or swastikas. And many tourists will not even notice anything has changed. But for the left, and for the marginalised, things have changed a great deal. The police and military have been let off the lease. During our 5 days in the country, soldiers shot 80 bullets into a car carrying a family, without warning, killing a black musician. They claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. 12 months ago, Marielle Franco, a Black, lesbian city councillor who spoke out for the poor of the favellas, and against police violence, was assassinated along with her driver. Two men have just been arrested for this crime, after much public outcry, but we know that the real people who ordered the murder are associated with a shadowy criminal group with links to the elite, including the new president. More generally, civil society groups are increasingly harassed and anyone who harbours hatred in society, feels empowered to spread their bigoted views online and in the streets.

Brazil is not alone. The current president of the Philippines, mentioned by Walden Bello at the opening of the conference, is Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte is responsible for the killing of 20,000 drug users, victims of the vicious war on drugs which has been a central theme of his presidency. Duterte has compared his war on drugs to Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. He’s proud of that. He’s encouraged death squads to take part in the killings, which don’t only include drug users but also street kids and the marginalised poor in general. And he’s an aggressive opponent of human rights organisations which make any criticism of these policies.

Then there’s India, run by Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, whose period in office has seen a massive upswing of hate crimes, murders, lynchings, public beatings, gang rapes, especially aimed at muslims and low caste groups, combined, in true Trump style, with an unprecedented amount of political interference in, and undermining of, democratic institutions from the parliament to the courts to the media.

Of course, this is just three countries. Trumpist ideas are spreading much wider, including Europe where fascists are an important part of the Italian government and where Hungary is essentially run by a fascist. Even here in Britain, during my time in Brazil, an opinion poll suggested that 54% of the public agreed with the statement that “Britain needs a strong ruler willing to break the rules.” Only 23% disagreed. In Uruguay, a stable, progressive sociIn Uruguay, a stable, progressive society with no recent history of far-right activity, the head of the armed forces recently took the unconstitutional step of criticising the judiciary for investigations into human rights abuses. After his dismissal by the president, he has become a rising populist star who activists fear will run in the elections for president in elections later this year.

The essence of Trumpism

All of these situations have important differences. By the nature of the ‘strongman’, there is a hefty dose of individual eccentricity, sometimes bordering on mental illness, in the ascendant leaders. But there is enough commonality to begin drawing lessons from this situation confronting us.

The Trumpist leaders and movements always rise up by demonising certain vulnerable groups in society: migrants, the underclass (labelled ‘criminals’ or ‘drug users’), muslims or low caste groups, women, trans and gay people. This has proved a vital way of building the popularity enjoyed by these leaders. The popular base for the Trumpists is very male, and feeds a feeling that white (or Hindu or Latino) men have lost space to more marginalised groups, that they can no longer say what they feel without being challenged. Even though these challenges come from groups who have traditionally been voiceless, and are finally able to express themselves to some degree, it has been successfully equated with a liberal elite project of ‘political correctness’. Fascism always appeals to those who have some power to lose – however small. And of course, there’s usually someone more screwed than you, and if someone tells you ‘watch them, they’re after a bit of what you’ve got’ – be it migrants, or women, or Muslims or whoever – it can be very effective.

In this way, deeply establishment figures (Trump the billionaire, Bolsanaro and Modi the elite politicians, [and in Britain -IV]Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage the upper class financiers) have been able to portray themselves as anti-establishment. After the defeat of the unions and the capitulation of the social democrats to the forces of the free market, these elite politicians have successfully portrayed themselves as the voice of the ordinary and forgotten majority, harnessing an often legitimate anger at an elite which has spent the last 40 years enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.

It also explains the most frightening aspect of these strongmen – their popularity. None of these people came to power in a coup. They were democratically elected. They have very significant support from the middle classes, and from sections of the working classes who actually stand to economically lose out from their economic policies. The murderous Duterte has an approval rating hovering around 80%. Modi expected to win the upcoming Indian election. Trump and Bolsanaro, while not as popular, could easily win a second term as things currently stand.

That’s how they’ve got away with their unprecedented attacks on the institutions of liberal democracy across the board, the dismantling of those systems which, while highly imperfect, at least allow us space to organise for our rights and for change. Like traditional fascists, Trumpists are determined to upend any form of pluralism or democracy which can thwart their power or allow resistance to build and succeed. They are trying to reshape our politics as a whole, in a way that means their power, their programmes, will enjoy a longevity well beyond their own terms of office.

What is this programme? At its core it’s letting capitalism off the (very very long) lease it is on. Many of these leaders are climate change deniers. Trump has withdrawn from the main international climate treaty and Bolsanaro is expected to do so, regardless of the extremely weak terms of this treaty. Trump has begun to open up all offshore waters to oil and gas exploration, to massively expand fracking potential and to open the US market fully to Canadian tar sands. Bolsanaro promised to remove protections from the Amazon and throw it open to unlimited mining. Modi is on the verge of evicting over a million indigenous peoples from lands which mining corporations are desperate to exploit. The indigenous, globally, are a major target for the strongmen, because even though they are sitting on top of some of the worst land in the world –where they were pushed – capitalism is so desperate that it now needs that resource too. And the indigenous are ‘in the way’.

The view of capitalism is much more authoritarian and nationalist than we’ve seen over the last 4 years, but big business and big finance is still at the core of the model. Trump has passed one of the biggest tax giveaways to corporate America in history. He’s taking an axe to Obama’s mild financial regulation. Bolsanaro has appointed an ultra-free market economic minister, who bases his policies on that first and most brutal and authoritarian neoliberal leader, Chile’s General Pinochet, and declares “We are creating a Popperian open society” after free market ideologue Karl Popper. Both Modi and Duterte are involved in sweeping deregulation of financial investment and privatisations.

So the programme, at core, is about sweeping away those the limits that are being placed on capital by climate change and public opposition. But the pretence that the nation-state isn’t important to capitalism is swept away. Partly, that’s because the state will be necessary to deal with the increased anger that will result from these polices. It’s clear that the policies, for instance, will fuel migration across the world. No wonder that building taller walls, enforcing harsher rules on migration, is part of the programme. An increasing authoritarian approach to those who offer resistance will also be needed as the shit really starts to hit the fan, and explains the focus on undermining space for opposition and dismantling liberal democratic institutions.

Of course, the problem with these strongmen is that they’re difficult to control, difficult even to predict. There’s no blueprint. Duterte claims to care about the environment and even calls himself a socialist. Trump is said to enjoy a more productive relationship with some unions than his Democrat predecessors have for some time. Modi has backed off a number of economic reforms in the face of resistance. But it’s that very unpredictability – that ability to tear up the rule book of politics – that makes these leaders so necessary at this point in time.

Some of this will also be at odds with the values of individual corporate leaders. So Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, doesn’t care for Trump’s incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric. I believe him. I’m sure that many heads of industry disliked aspects of Mussolini or Hitler’s rhetoric. But the point is not that these are the regimes which individual capitalists would ideally like to live under. It’s that there is a structural necessity to these politics, and Silicon Valley needs it more than most. After all, the revolution in technology and communications which is taking place threatens automation which could wipe out millions of ordinary jobs, decimate small business, allow the completion of the corporate takeover of agriculture and massively increase the surveillance all of us face every day.

There are democratic solutions to this – widespread socialisation of these technologies. But that means Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerburg losing control of their empires. They won’t be keen on that solution. And the alternative is that things will get very messy indeed. If they think they’re under scrutiny now, they’ve seen nothing yet. They will find that they need authoritarian capitalism more than anyone, whether they like it or not.

In the 1930s, big industrialists and finance found fascism more palatable than communism. Today, they find it more palatable than even moderate forms of social democracy – witness the horror with which they greater Lula in Brazil and now greet Corbyn in Britain. That’s the extent of the crisis which the elite today perceives.

Trump is coming… get busy

Trump is the kingpin of capitalism’s Plan B. His election has legitimised the new form of strongman politics. Even if others preceded him, he makes these politics safer through normalisation and through the dismantlement of international institutions which would have previously made life difficult for the strongmen. Trump also changes the discourse – centrists like Blair and Hillary Clinton have urged a doubling down on anti-migrant polices to ‘answer’ the Trumpists. Beat him by becoming him. The networks of think tanks and dark money, are emboldened. They will spread the hate right across the world. They will use new technologies to manipulate electorates in ways we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago.

How do we respond? First by not giving an inch. We must not sacrifice those most impacted and most opposed to the strongmen. In fact we need to empower them. The bit of American society least likely to have voted for Trump is the bottom 20%, measured by wealth in US society. The really marginalised don’t like any of this, and with good reason. Helping them organise, and take leadership positions in our movement, is essential. And visibly confronting Trump and his ilk in the streets – like when he comes to Britain on 4 June or later in the year for the NATO summit – is a vital part of this confrontation. It’s simply untrue to say Trump deserves a state visit because he’s the US President. This is an unusual honour which simply legitimises his programme and his hate speech.

That doesn’t mean we can write off those working class people who aren’t hardcore racists, but have been attracted by Trump-like rhetoric because the economic system has so clearly failed them. Without toning down our defence of migrants, our opposition to anti-abortionists and so on, we have to admit these messages alone will not cut through to everyone. They can only work as part of a radical platform of economic restructuring – putting power into the hands of ordinary people through socialisation of the things we need – housing, healthcare, education, energy, communications. We need to show clearly, we’re on the side of the have-nots, not the elite. Many are already engaged in local struggles to take back control of energy and housing, and to oppose developments that re about profit not people. It is through these concrete struggles that we can win arguments on migration.

Our Brexit woes are replicated in many others countries across the world, as the left struggles to respond to the authoritarian right. In the Philippines, some communists even went into Duterte’s administration, in Thailand, some leftists supported the military coup, and in the US there’s a feeling some on the traditional far left were far too soft on the dangers of Trump. This has created massive divisions and broken down trust at the very worst time. We must finds a way beyond this. It’s certain that a small minority (for example, anyone who stood for the Brexit Party in the European elections) is beyond the pale. Them aside, we have to try to find common ground, probably based on values rather than precise policies.

Reinventing internationalism is key to our project too. 20 years ago I was part of the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement, the biggest international movement the world has ever seen, which was also grassroots, and scored some incredible victories. Today, while the far-right has developed frighteningly impressive international networks, the left has never been more insular. Let’s learn from history. As the First World War approached, the socialist international broke down as different national groups fell in behind their own national war machines. The horrors unleashed were beyond precedent. Of course we shouldn’t dismiss the vital importance of domestic struggles. But we need to find ways to internationalise our struggles because we’ve never needed international solidarity more. It’s not a luxury. The power of the nation state can only take us so far. Facing climate change, transnational corporate power and a well networked far right, we cannot win in Britain alone. In fact, the experiments with local democracy – from Porto Alegre to Barcelona to Preston – might be the perfect way to make give people power without falling back on the imperial nation states for ‘answers’. A form of what we might call local internationalism.

We will not have an easy landing. Climate change and the sheer scale of environmental degradation alone means we need to rethink our linear view of history and ‘progress’. We don’t know what tomorrow will look like, but it will have to be very different, and we must embrace this. Even our ‘enemy’ is not as clear as it was in the past; the reason part of the right has been able to “eat our lunch” and appear more radical than the left. We need to convey hope and that can be a challenge at this point in history. But let’s try to be open-minded. Again, to a degree the new right has done this better than the left, ditching neoliberal ideology when it failed to serve their values (indeed the only neoliberals left are those in the political centre, who should never have swallowed the dogma in the first place).

We can find hope in the collapse of ‘market knows best’ dogma, in the progress now being made on public understanding of climate change, in the anger felt by so many at the power of Big Tech, in the inability of world leaders to complete major trade deals like TTIP. We need to have confidence in our cause, in our ideas, in our programme, and not be thrown off track by the strongmen. We can’t solve all the problems of the last 200 years. The attempt would overwhelm and paralyse us. But we can, and must, make a start. As I learnt in Brazil, what we’re feeling is also being felt by activists like us right around the world. Let’s learn, share, try to draw energy from one another.

Trumpism is still a growing global phenomenon. It can be halted, but only with a radial programme which is local and global. It won’t be easy. But it’s certainly possible. If not us, then who, if not now, then when?

5 June 2019 Red Pepper

Farage endorses far-right theories which have disturbing echoes of fascist propaganda in the 1930s.

According to newspaper reports, Nigel Farage has been featured on the shows six times. Which highlights some disturbing things about the person whose new Brexit party is likely to top the European elections on 23 May.

First is the very decision to appear on the show of a ranting ultra-right wing conspiracy theorist who promotes insane ideas – six times. And second what Farage actually said, namely:

• Left wingers and Islamists have formed an alliance to destroy Western civilisation and promote world government. This is because they both hate Christianity and the Judeo-Christian civilisation which is the foundation of ‘our’ (eg Western capitalist) society.
• Ordinary people are the victims of a conspiracy by ‘globalists’ – notably the European Union leaders and big business – who want to destroy nations and create a world government – a government by them.
• Climate change theories are a ‘scam’ designed to help globalists takes over the world.

An exchange with Alex Jones went like this:

Jones: “Why is the left allied with radical Islam?”
Farage: “Because they hate Christianity. They deny, absolutely, our Judeo-Christian culture, which if you think about it actually are the roots, completely, of our nations and our civilisation. They deny that. They also want to abolish the nation state – they want to get rid of it. They want to replace it with the globalist project, and the European Union is the prototype for the new world order.”

This seems like a repetition of the Islamophobic Bernard Lewis/Samuel Huntington theory of the clash of civilisations, but it has other connotations as well.

On Alex Jones’ show Nigel Farage repeated his attacks on Hungarian philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, which promote multiculturalism from a liberal perspective. On Fox News Farage said that Soros was encouraging millions of immigrants to come to Europe and was “the biggest danger to the entire Western world”.

Hungary’s harsh anti-immigrant laws are called ‘the anti-Soros laws’ and Viktor Orban’s use of Soros as a whipping boy is widely seen as encouraging the rampant anti-Semitism in that country.

Farage’s views are a full-on acceptance of the rightist conspiracy theory of the New World Order. The term ‘New World Order’ was the Left’s description of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf war in 1990. Buti it was given a new meaning by American Christian fundamentalists who identified it with the ‘End of Days’, the final conflict with the anti-Christ, and the riding out off the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – a senario of course taken directly from the bible’s final chapter Revelations.

Alex Jones refers in his broadcasts to the Four Horsemen and the sign of the beast (‘666’ – the sign of the Devil). The New World Order theory does what many right-wing theories do, namely takes aspects of capitalist reality and then turn them into a lunatic theory. Jones for example talks about how smart phones are just devices for state surveillance which is going to be used to bump people off Uber and other services; picking up on the reality of surveillance capitalism and then turning it into something weird and exaggerated.

Tom Dispatch explains New World Order theorists in the following way:

“You know the story: The globalists want your guns. They want your democracy. They’re hovering just beyond the horizon in those black helicopters. They control the media and Wall Street. They’ve burrowed into a deep state that stretches like a vast tectonic plate beneath America’s fragile government institutions. They want to replace the United States with the United Nations, erase national borders, and create one huge, malevolent international order.”

The New World Order run by globalists theory was until the last decade or so mainly the preserve of Christian fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists like David Icke who claimed the world had been hijacked by shape-shifting reptilians called the ‘Babylonian Brotherhood’ or ‘Illuminati’.

Icke’s theories were given an anti-Semitic twist by his endorsement of the notorious forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to be a plan for world domination by the Jews. Theories of a New World Order and Illuminati have long been seen as a cover for anti-Semitism.

Farage endorses the extreme right theories which have disturbing echoes of fascist propaganda in the 1930s, which alleged an alliance between Bolshevism and ‘cosmopolitan’ (ie Jewish) finance capital. The forces he sees as conspiring today to found a New World Order are the alliance of Wall Street bankers and politicians, the Left and Islamic fundamentalists.

Like the Nazi Communist-capitalist conspiracy idea, and like Donald Trump, Farage is attempting to utilise mass anger with big business and the bankers to created a movement which in the end defends them. In domestic politics this takes the form of accusing leftists and liberals of being part of an ‘elite’ defined culturally. Former commodity broker and multi-millionaire Nigel Farage, with strong support from Rupert Murdoch and the Telegraph, is of course a rather typical member of the real elite, the capitalist class. And he and his Brexit party are a major danger to the working class, democracy and multiculturalism.

Phil Hearse is the author of the pamphlet Full Spectrum Mendacity: Social Media and the Far Right, and one of the authors of Creeping Fascism: What It Is And How To Fight It

Creeping Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It
By Neil Faulkner with Samir Dathi, Phil Hearse and Seema Syeda

How can we stop a ‘second wave’ of fascism returning us to the darkest times? How do we prevent the history of the 1930s repeating itself?

READ MORE…

The Labour Party hasn’t escaped this political crisis and it too faces divisions. A section of right-wing Remain MPs have left the party to form a new centrist organisation while the Labour Party itself has now entered into negotiations with the Tory government over the Brexit deal. Although there are no serious expectations that Corbyn and May will come to an agreement, the Labour Party remains committed to delivering Brexit in some form. However, a majority of the membership oppose Brexit altogether. The ambiguities of Labour’s position are driven partially by the need to maintain its position in the post-industrial areas that voted to Leave.

In the run up to and since the referendum, the radical/revolutionary left has also been divided over the question of Brexit. We are part of the radical left that called for a Remain vote in the referendum, not because we harboured illusions in the progressive nature of the EU, but because the Leave campaign was fuelled and dominated by reactionary politics. We believed that a Leave victory would empower the right rather than the left, and that far from providing a solution to any of the fundamental problems facing the working class it would open the way to further defeats. The post-Brexit treaties and legislative settlements would be seized upon by the government as a further opportunity for deregulation and attacks on our rights.

Others on the left argued that the crisis which a leave vote would inflict on the ruling class would open up a greater space for the left. In doing so, the Left Leave (Lexit) Campaign tended to dismiss and downplay what we considered to be real gains for the working class, such as freedom of movement referring to it in their campaign literature as ‘so-called freedom of movement’, and ignored the increasingly apparent rise in support for the far right, fed by the racist narrative on which the official Leave campaign was built. The Socialist Workers’ Party was part of the Left Leave Campaign but has subsequently kept its distance from the successor organisation – the Full Brexit Campaign. This new campaign is travelling politically in the slipstream of English nationalism with some founding members being prepared to speak on platforms organised by Nigel Farage or even to stand as candidates for Farage’s new Brexit Party in the European elections.

Alex Callinicos, a leading member of the SWP, has recently attempted to theorise the modification of his party’s previous position, writing on Brexit[1] in International Socialism Journal [ISJ]. One would hope that this would constitute the beginning of a timely re-assessment of the untenable Lexit position.

Callinicos recognises that opposition to free movement and a capitulation to nationalism are at the heart of the Full Brexit campaign but he still seeks to defend the core Lexit position. We believe he does this by attempting to construct a protective belt of subsidiary propositions which are as untenable as the central position itself.

To start with, Callinicos explains the problems for the ruling class, which make Brexit a disaster for British capitalism. The problem for the British bourgeoisie is that access to the European market is absolutely vital for the 80% of exports that are services. The issue of the import and export of goods is secondary. The propositions of the Tory Brexiteers about WTO rules bringing a new special relationship with Trump’s America are daydreams. There is no realistic position for British capitalism other than significant integration with the economies of the EU.

This seems a realistic assessment, but there is little explanation of the conundrum which it demonstrates – why, if this assessment is true, has a significant section of the main party of the ruling class come out with a strident anti-EU position if it is so damaging to capitalist interests? The key to understanding the situation is to recognise that there is a split in the ruling class; this results from neoliberalism being ‘visibly in crisis’, and is responsible for what Callinicos describes as the ‘crisis of the political system’. The split is being played out through the Tory Party, thanks to David Cameron’s attempt to defeat the hard right in his party by calling the Brexit referendum, but no section of British society is left untouched. In their struggle to take British capitalism to the extremes of free-marketism, the far-right in the Tory Party – along with their ideological allies in UKIP and elsewhere – has whipped up and deployed racism and xenophobia to generate strident anti-Europeanism. As we saw during the referendum campaign, this was used as a mobilising banner to secure a Leave vote, with the stage then set for the hard right to take control of the Conservative Party. This is what is currently being fought over – and the stakes could scarcely be higher. A hard right Tory victory will result, in government, in an utterly reactionary programme aimed at crushing the last remnants of the 1945 welfare state settlement and further attacking workplace rights and the rights of migrant workers.

Callinicos’s three main political conclusions are the following:

1. The debate on Brexit is essentially a debate within the ruling class; it is important for the radical and revolutionary left not to get stuck in this debate.
2. Some remainers who advocate a second referendum are prioritising the fight to retain EU membership over the fight against racism, because a new referendum will inevitably unleash an avalanche of xenophobia and racism.
3. The fight against racism and its cutting edge Islamophobia requires maximum unity on the left, and differences on Brexit must not be allowed to disrupt that unity.

The argument that Brexit is mainly a debate within the ruling class cannot be sustained. It is a division, not a debate, which has life and death consequences for the working class, and migrant workers in particular. The imposition of Trump-style capitalism will be the outcome if the hard right wins. This is not a situation in which the working class movement can be bystanders.  Take for example the situation of immigrant workers after Brexit which is insufficiently addressed here by Callinicos. He rightly states that ‘a left that opposes free movement sets itself against workers in the rest of Europe’. But he argues:

‘The difficulty confronting May and Corbyn is all the more acute because both have interpreted the referendum result as a rejection of free movement for European citizens. This—dictated in May’s case by her own core prejudices, but a pragmatic move on Corbyn’s part in large degree in response to pressure from trade union leaders and Labour right-wingers—has made striking a deal with the EU harder, because free movement is one of the “four freedoms” that have hardened into a legalistic dogma that Brussels seeks to impose on its neighbours. But it also panders to the anti-migrant racism played on by the Tory right and UKIP during the referendum campaign.’

But it is not that May and Corbyn have interpreted the Leave referendum vote as being opposed to free movement, it was all about immigration and free movement. Callinicos concedes that it is ‘partially’ right to say there was an upsurge of racism after the Brexit vote, but false to say that the Brexit vote itself was mainly a racist or xenophobic vote. The question of who actually voted Leave has been answered by former SWP member Charlie Hoare in the US Socialist Worker[2], looking at the Ashcroft survey of referendum voters which found that two-thirds of Leave voters had voted Tory or UK Independence Party (UKIP) at the 2015 general election. He writes:

‘The survey also found that Black and minority ethnic voters and young voters — two groups hit particularly hard by both unemployment and austerity — decisively rejected Leave, with Muslims voting 70 percent Remain.

‘Ashcroft didn’t ask about trade union membership, but at the 2018 Trades Union Congress (TUC) congress, Steve Turner of the trade union Unite said that 60 percent of trade unionists voted to remain.

‘Of course, responses to unemployment and austerity played a part in determining how some workers voted, just as some white workers responded in the U.S. by voting for Trump….Similarly, as I noted in an article written immediately after the referendum: “It’s an odd ‘working-class revolt’ that doesn’t include Scotland, West Belfast, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, London, most union members, most Black and minority ethnic voters, and three-quarters of young voters”.’

This argument, which coincides with positions outlined by Wayne Asher in International Socialism, seems to us to be irrefutable. Brexit is not just a ruling class issue that can be parked on one side while we get on with the fight against racism. It is the mechanism by which hard right forces use and increase racism to push themselves forward and get into power.

On the question of a second referendum, Alex Callinicos says:

‘Advocates of a “People’s Vote” are indeed in a contradictory position. They argue (falsely) that the vote to leave on 23 June 2016 was a racist vote, and also argue (with partial truth) that the result encouraged racism. But they advocate another referendum, even though the Tory right, UKIP (now remodelled under Gerard Batten’s leadership in alliance with the alt-right and Tommy Robinson) and open Nazis will rely on anti-migrant racism even more than the first time round. But Remainer ultras seem happy to pay the price in heightened racism in order to keep Britain in the EU.’

Callinicos doesn’t seem aware that the fairly unambiguous SWP position that the first referendum was not based on racism is slipping. On the one hand he says that remainers ‘falsely’ claim the Brexit referendum Yes vote was based on racism, but then talks about  ‘the anti-migrant racism played on by the Tory right and UKIP during the referendum campaign’ and says that in a new referendum the hard right ‘will rely on anti-migrant racism even more than the first time round.’

As explained by Charlie Hoare and Wayne Asher[3], there is strong empirical evidence that the Leave vote was won by mobilising the most reactionary sections of the population, especially huge reactionary sections of the petty bourgeoisie. It was a massive exercise in pushing politics as a whole to the right.

On his third point, on unity irrespective of a Brexit position, Alex Callinicos says: ‘This is the issue—combating racism and the far right. By comparison, where you stand on the EU is a secondary question’. He argues:

‘By refusing to accept this logic, some left Remainers are putting support for the EU ahead of fighting racism and fascism. Maybe the stress of the past few years has turned some of them into left liberals who have bought into the ideology of “Europeanism” and sincerely believe the EU to be a motor of progress. Others may hope that campaigning against Brexit will give them the edge against other sections of the radical and revolutionary left. But many left Remainers are much better than this—accepting the left critique of the EU but opposing Brexit in the mistaken belief that in current conditions it is impossible to campaign against the EU on a socialist basis. We disagree about this. But there is no reason that we can’t stand together against the main enemy—the bosses and the racist far right that the crisis of their system is strengthening.’

We agree with unity against the racists and fascists. The authors of this article were amongst the organisers of the recent successful No Pasaran! conference in London, which drew together participants from across the movements in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Such unity is essential but it is also essential to organise politically against the dynamic forces behind the rise of the far right.

The real situation is that most left Remainers perfectly well understand the nature of the EU, but think that in this concrete situation Brexit anti-Europeanism is being used to advance the hard right inside and outside of the Conservative Party, and indeed is a deadly threat to the working class and immigrant workers in particular. And far from alleviating the racist and right-wing nationalist threat, a hard Brexit will actually accentuate it.

There is a curious insouciance in the Callinicos approach. Fighting racism and the far right is not something that goes on irrespective of the political situation and the new forces that have emerged – with no connection to Brexit. In the present situation there is a real danger of a hard-right Conservative government, backed up by the Brexit party. This would be an absolute disaster for the working class, and for millions of migrant workers and long-term immigrants in particular. This is not just a ruling class debate.

Apart from the impact of a hard right government on workers’ and migrant rights, a hard Brexit would have an enormously detrimental effect on working class living standards, as explained by Sabby Sagall writing in the current  issue of International Socialism[4]:

‘A hard Brexit will undoubtedly result in a significant deterioration of levels of employment and income. This is apart from the likelihood of an economic downturn in the event that there is no deal with the EU on the terms of Brexit. The resulting chaos could double food prices and plunge Britain into a recession that could last 30 years, worse than the 1930s. The government’s own statistics estimate that under the worst scenario, in 15 years GDP would be 10.7 percent lower than if the UK stays in the EU. According to barrister Anneli Howard of Monckton Chambers: “the anticipated recession will be worse than the 1930s, let alone 2008”.’

The SWP and other Lexiteers, in attacking those campaigning against Brexit – for example the hundreds of thousands who marched on March 9 – have cut themselves off from influencing the progressive forces in the debate, as well as from the many tens of thousands of migrant workers and young people who were on that march. The likes of Alistair Campbell and Vince Cable are only able to pose themselves as the leaders of the anti-Brexit movement because Jeremy Corbyn and other key Labour leaders are absent and have ceded leadership to the Labour right and Liberals.

So Alex Callinicos’s main conclusion that we can forget about the issue of Brexit and get on with unity against the racists and bosses doesn’t work. At least not in the way that he poses it. In a situation where there are unfortunately a small number of people in the workers’ movement who want a ‘full Brexit’ and are prepared to speak on the same platform as Nigel Farage, parking the Brexit question won’t work.

The hard right and the fascists have to be opposed at every turn. But socialists cannot abstain from opposing the threat posed by the Brexiteer hard right of the Conservative Party, and their flank guards in the Brexit Party and UKIP. Anti-immigrant racism and Islamophobia did not originate with Brexit but it is Brexit that has enabled the hard right to make huge advances and opened up the path for a Boris Johnson Trumpian-style premiership.

We believe that Brexit must be recognised not just as a problem for the ruling class, but as central to the crisis that is unfolding to the detriment of the working class across Europe. Brexit must also be understood as the British expression of deeper shifts within capitalism internationally, and the British manifestation of the far-right turn, afflicting Europe and beyond.

The delusions of the Tory Brexiteers with their empty rhetoric of a ‘Global Britain’ are mirrored on the left by those Lexiteers who wish to build a Socialist Britain while cutting economic ties with its biggest trading partners, ending freedom of movement and operating the economy under World Trade Organisation rules.

The importance of Europe for the radical left is that it is the arena in which it is possible to seek the solution to the reality that the productive forces have outstripped their national framework. The working class in Britain is increasingly part of a pan-European working class and needs to develop the forms of transitional organisation that will enable it to operate on a European-wide basis. One of the central problems of the Eurozone crisis in Greece was that the working class there was isolated from the wider European labour and trade union movement despite the best efforts of the solidarity movements. It is by consciously attempting to raise the level of struggle above the national that will provide the framework for proletarian internationalism to cease being an abstract slogan and become part of the living reality of the struggles of the class.

Andrew Burgin
Phil Hearse
Kate Hudson

[1]http://isj.org.uk/brexit-blues/; http://isj.org.uk/shambling-towards-the-precipice/
[2]https://socialistworker.org/2019/01/08/building-the-left-in-the-face-of-brexit
[3] [3]http://isj.org.uk/the-left-and-brexit/
[4]http://isj.org.uk/remain-and-replace-a-socialist-case/