Autocritique: Islam, Europe & Democracy.

My very first blogpost was an article on the British refusal to let Geert Wilders enter the country and to be received by Parliament where his film would then be shown. Later Mr Wilders was allowed into the country, to great controversy, given his own views of Islam as a ‘fascist ideology’. At the time I took the line that it would be much better if Lord Nazir Ahmed didn’t push for Wilders to be blocked from presenting the film. Rather Lord Ahmed should’ve challenged him and defeated Wilders in his claims about Islam, it’s not as though the film’s message is difficult to refute. He equates terrorism with the Quran pushing aside the collapse of Arab nationalism which led to the emergence of radical Islamism. Never mind the legitimate grievances of Muslims, not only the atrocities committed against Muslims in Palestine and Chechnya, but in former Yugoslavia as well. Nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq either.

 

It still seems clear that if Geert Wilders had been allowed to enter then he could have been defeated in debate. I think that would have been constructive. My stance on this particular issue is not a part of a general position on free speech. It’s not a reflection of any bias towards the reactionary Right in its bid to further marginalise Muslims in Europe. So I would maintain the position I took up to that point. But I should reassess the following claims and implications in my article: 1) Lord Ahmed has a responsibility to adequately represent British Muslims, 2) the assumption that the Muslim population of Britain is a problem community; 3) any implication that if we don't listen to Wilders we'll have fascism on our hands. It's these aspects of my article which I wish to address here.

1. As Lord Ahmed was never elected we shouldn't hold him to the responsibilities of an elected representative and, in actuality, we should be opposed to the position he holds. It's not that Lord Ahmed poses any threat to democracy, it's that the UK doesn't have much of a democracy in the first place. We're a constitutional monarchy and, principally, I would favour a secular republic with a much more democratic form of government. So we should be asking deeper questions and not presupposing a present existing democratic system. We should ask why British Muslims don't have enough representation and head from there. Ahmed could not pose as such a representative even if he wanted to. Nevertheless, I would add that Lord Ahmed welcomed Israel Shamir to Britain and he has little ground to stand on to block Wilders from coming here.

2. It is the case that British Muslims are too often put on the spot to defend their religion. The expectation is that the British Muslim community have to prove themselves as loyal citizens. Instead of a presumption of innocence and loyalty, we have a presumption of guilt and disloyalty. I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't always immune to the mass hysteria which came with the 'War on Terror'. Actually the Muslims in the UK have nothing to prove. The 'clash of civilizations' thesis is a farce which was spawned by a mediocre squirrel-scholar. The facts are that the major allies of the US and the UK in the Muslim world have long included authoritarian regimes and continue to do so. The 'clash' is a convenient narrative. We claim to back democracy in Iraq while we support theocracy in Saudi Arabia. Muslims and non-Muslims alike are right to be critical of this.

3. There is no likelihood of a Fourth Reich popping up in the next few years. Nor was there such a possibility in 2009 when I was writing of the need to ward-off the BNP threat. There is a long-term threat of neo-fascist groups which we have to deal with. Geert Wilders is a manageable threat – just another political whore – as containable a toxin as Nigel Farage (until quite recently). The opposition to his arrival only served to strengthen his Janus-faced persona as a defender of freedom and advocate of banning scripture. He defends individual freedom, except when you want to migrate (if you're a Muslim), if you want to wear a veil, if you want to read the Quran, and so on. The threat we face is twin-headed, humanitarian liberalism and cultural nationalism converge. Wilders is not a fascist, he actually comes from the market liberal tradition; yet he is increasingly aligned with proto-fascists and has now climbed into bed with Marine Le Pen.

The battleground is not just a marginal one which we can block off easily. It is a matter of challenging and undermining the status quo, where we find even progressive liberals effectively take the side of nationalists and reactionaries. The very people we would expect to guard the liberal flame of human rights and civil liberties are no longer trustworthy. Just as the social democrats of most European states have now become the enemies of what is left of social democracy. The difference is that this isn't a matter of preservation (as there was never much there in the first place).

The Politically Incorrect.

We used to live in a society where you could enjoy the sight of white actors "blacked up" and take in the verbal diarrhea of a meat-head like Bernard Manning. The jokes of the day were at the expense of ethnic minorities, the disabled, gays and women. These were the days before political correctness, which as Stewart Lee says, has been little more than a clumsily institutionalised form of politeness. Today we are a lot more civilised than we were once and political correctness has been conducive to that process. There could never be a political campaign with the slogan "If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour." Unfortunately, we're in a period of transition in this sense and every so often we have to listen to some idiot like David Starkey about how Enoch Powell was right. There is plenty of ink for criticism of political correctness just as there is for multiculturalism, let alone of immigrants and asylum seekers. But there is an irony here.

The Right routinely attacks political correctness out of a dedication to freedom, which the Left apparently lacks. In this view political correctness is nothing less than an assault on free-speech combined with mollycoddling of the undeserving. You can't fly the English flag because it might offend nor can you shout the n-word - it's political correctness gone mad! And yet we find that the Right has sort new ways to safeguard its agenda with political correctness. The English Defence League has set up divisions of gay, Asian and Jewish members, which it will refer back to as evidence of its modern pluralist stance on race. You'll hear plenty of talk about multi-racialism as opposed to multiculturalism. Sameness with a centre, rather than sameness without one. This fails to notice that there is only one race, a suspicious mistake. The EDL goes as far as to arrange LGBT protests, quietly, and wave Israeli flags at their demonstrations. The organisation is predominantly white but it is open to minorities that can be brought together by a hatred of Muslims.

The supposed devotion to the defence of free-speech on the radical Right conveniently destroys the distinction between private space and public sphere. This is easy to do in a society where we lack a real public sphere today. We lack any meaningful political engagement beyond voting every few years and maybe our involvement in unions at work. So we look to circumvent the blockages to the smooth-running of our busy lives. There is no real time nor need for politeness in a society where the strong are meant to rise and the weak fall. The aims of the radical Right are permissive in that they want to do away with political correctness in order to free us from being polite to our co-workers. Well, it's probably to the archetypal foreigner we've never met that we would reserve our true rudeness to be fair. There are plenty of polite racists in Britain, we should have no illusions about that. And this is the brutal irony, the only means for the radical Right to succeed, in its regeneration of British nationhood, are politically correct.

Now there is the British Freedom Party with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as its Deputy Leader under the much more respectable Paul Weston as Leader. It was founded with the aspiration of being a part of the International Freedom Alliance with Geert Wilders as its head. The Party seeks to protect freedom and democracy from Muslims and the European Union. It was formed as it broke away from the BNP, the group had given up on ethno-nationalism and decided that multi-racialism is here to stay. The real battleground is cultural. The leadership is ex-UKIP and EDL, the body of the organisation is ex-BNP. The gloss is modern and much more sophisticated than the BNP, the Party borrows its logo from the Obama campaign. You can spot black and Asian models in the photos on their website. And yet British Freedom pledges to create a US-style First Amendment to safeguard free-speech, no doubt with the PC brigadiers on the hit-list. Its opposition to immigration is specified as non-Western, e.g. strictly Muslim.

This push towards modernisation came with Nick Griffin in his bid to transform the British National Party into a party of new nationalism. Griffin was keen for the party to shift focus onto Islam with the advantage being that Islam is not a race and then it becomes a matter of culture. The EDL is a major outgrowth of this approach, which has taken on a life of its own. The EDL and the BNP have discovered animal rights when it became a convenient way to call for the banning of halal meat. The grounds being that the animal is subject to barbaric suffering in the method of slaughter, as it isn't stunned before it is killed. The gutter press has joined them in their bid to ban halal and kosher meat, just to make sure they can't be accused of Islamophobia. Of course, what a lot of people don't know is that around 90% of halal meat in Britain is slaughtered with the use of the stun. This level of politics has taken on a sadistic form in France where Bloc Identaire set up soup kitchens where only pork is served in order to exclude Muslims and Jews.

Rest assured that British Freedom is tiny, but it has a pact with the EDL, the BNP has imploded and it seems this new group has better funding. This is another instance where the ultra-political fervour of the radical Right converges with the anti-political purism of libertarianism. It taps into the work ethic and moral outlook of the working-class while it displaces the class struggle as a fight between natives and foreigners. The state as just a mantlepiece of failed experiments, which we would do better to strip down rather than empower it any further. Taxation is just a robbery, a redistribution from the hard-working to the work-shy. This mindset divides the poor between deserving and undeserving, but can always finds fault with the claim of a deserving poor. The European continent is a sinister harbinger of everything from multiculturalism to soft-on-crime justice. This is a freedom-loving nationalism for today's world, deliberately churned out to feed the masses who are desperate for a Hitler without the swastika.

A Criminal Decade for Afghans.

A toast to Freedom?

We have been in Afghanistan for 10 years now, though the US has interfered in Afghan affairs for closer to 30 years. It is almost common knowledge that the US intervened in the 1980s and backed the Mujahideen to fight the Russians who had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Actually it was the Carter administration that put together $500 million to set up the Mujahideen in 1978 to counteract the Saur Revolution. The fundamentalist regime of General Zia-ul-Haq was more than welcome to assist the Americans in the bid to prevent Afghanistan from falling under the Iron Curtain. The support for General Zia-ul-Haq went as far as to support the radicalisation of Pakistani society, Jihadist manuals were actually printed at the University of Nebraska before being distributed throughout Pakistan. The consequent sympathy for Islamism in Pakistan combined with bureaucratic incompetence and institutional corruption is what kept Osama bin Laden safe in the country for so long. The horrible war which has now touched Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, for lack of a better word, cannot be understood without this context.

The Poodle's reward.

In the beginning we were told this is the "fight for freedom" and we were told "we will see freedom's victory" in the end. There is little mention of the facts about the people who run Afghanistan now. It is a narco-state where 50% of the economy is "black", which means that the cultivation and trafficking of drugs accounts for half of the Afghan economy. The war lords who cultivate and smuggle drugs out of the country are the same people who slaughtered 50,000 people in a 4 year bid to takeover Kabul in the 1990s. The war lords were won over to "our side" with truckloads of cash and guns. For years now these thugs have gotten away with the mass-rape of women, girls and boys. There is no serious commitment to the reconstruction of the country, instead the Karzai government is allowed to wallow in corruption while the ordinary Afghan goes without universal health-care and education. The Afghan people are only permitted a role of ratifying the position of President Hamid Karzai as the country is occupied and trashed.

The purpose of the invasion was never to overthrow the Taliban, the US had supported the Taliban for years and had provided billions of dollars in support of the regime. Then after 9/11 came the demands from George Bush that the Taliban has to hand over Osama bin Laden to the Americans. The Taliban agreed provided that the US put forward evidence (which is normal procedure for an extradition) and the US then proceeded to bomb Afghanistan without any international authorisation in October 2001. Ironically, the following year Bush and Blair were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is worth noting that there were 5 million Afghans on the verge of starvation in the country at the time and, as the bombing commenced, it looked as though the number could rise to 7.5 million. Thankfully the war has not led to starvation on a huge scale, but that does not excuse the immoral nature of the war. Unless we think that it was a sensible idea for Russia to station nuclear missiles in Cuba and point them at the US because it didn't lead to a nuclear war.

The Long Ride to a Free World?

The attacks of September 11th 2001 provided an opportunity for the US to drive a wedge into the Islamist movement, which was actually highly critical of the "new approach" al-Qaeda had taken to attack the far enemy rather than one of the many near enemies. If there had been a serious operation to apprehend the suspects then a wedge could have been driven into the Islamist movement, Osama bin Laden would have been isolated and the threat of terrorism could have been decreased. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief strategist of al-Qaeda, wrote then that the aim of the group was to lure the US into an over-reaction in which it would "wage battle against the Muslims." So that the US would be left vulnerable in a horrible drawn-out conflict while the long divided Islamist movement could be brought together against the West. The plan worked out as the US and UK jumped at the opportunity to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. There have since been attacks against cities across Europe, from Sweden to Spain.

It is difficult to ignore the strategic value of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the battle for control of energy resources in the region, which has yet to conclude and we have to bare in mind the superpowers in waiting (e.g. China and India). Logically any pipeline from India would have to pass through Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to reach the nearest sources of oil and gas in Iran or Turkmenistan. The problem is that India could feasibly turn to Iran for oil and gas, but the US wants to isolate Iran and would prefer it if the Indians turned to Turkmenistan. Afghanistan is situated close to major energy producers in Central Asia and the Middle East, it shares a border with Iran and therefore could be used to "contain" it's independent neighbour. The possibility of a Central Asian energy network which would exclude and isolate Iran is quite appealing to the US. To the chagrin of the Americans, Iran has managed to extend its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan in spite of the continued efforts to marginalise Iran in world affairs.

Talking Tough, Talking Bullshit.

Only when some of "our lads" are killed in battle are we allowed to criticise the war. So the deaths of over 40,000 Afghans would be fine so long as no American or British troops died along the way. The assumption is that this is a noble war against terrorism, which has to be fought to secure the West from further terrorist attacks. The line goes "If we don't fight them over there, we will be fighting them over here." The same argument was used by the US government to defend it's war against the Vietnamese, President Johnson stated "We have to stop the Communists over there [Vietnam] or we'll soon be fighting them in California." This is perverse because American and British troops are effectively dying in Afghanistan to raise the threat of terrorism in the US and the UK. As the war has been escalated it has spilled over into Pakistan, so now the possibility of a state with nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamists has increased. Protection of Western civilians and prevention of the spread of terrorism has nothing to do with the Afghan War.

The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with freedom, democracy or anything as sanitary as self-defence. Not so much as a thought of the Afghan people has ever passed through the minds of the war-pigs and chickenhawks who decided to start this war. We are only allowed to question the war because "our lads" are suffering, which might explain there is little ink and camera film used to cover the slaughter of thousands of Afghan civilians. The vast majority of the people who have been killed in Afghanistan were the victims of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, not the defenders of Osama bin Laden. We have to concede that the backlash has come from the victims of war, the Taliban now represents a small element of the armed opposition to the occupation. The war itself has made the West hated even more than it was before 9/11 and neither George Bush nor Tony Blair will have to live with the consequences of such hatred. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who said "When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die." Think Bush. Think Blair. Think of Obama and Cameron. Forgive none of these bastards.

Support our Dupes?

Fascism, Regular not Decaf.

The media was somewhat disappointed to find that the slaughter of Norwegian civilians on Utoya Island and the bombing in Oslo was not perpetrated by Islamists. Instead it turned out to be just another angry white man out to "liquidate" an entire generation of future politicians. Oh and he's a fan of Geert Wilders who made contact over the web with fascist groups such as the English Defence League and wanted to make a stand for Europe as a Judeo-Christian civilisation. It is a testament to the state of affairs in Europe that we often hear the political heirs to Hitler and Mussolini calling for a defence of Judeo-Christian values. How dare these people even speak of the Judeo-Christian civilisation?! It is time for us to seriously think about the resurgence of the radical Right with it's promise of an alternative modernity devoid of the class struggle and affirmed through the nation. It is no coincidence that we have witnessed this resurgence just as the economic crisis of 2008 has left us stagnant, bankrupt and disillusioned.

A recent poll conducted by Searchlight has found that 48% of the British people would vote for a radically right-wing political party if the violent xenophobia, football-related thuggery and proto-Nazi regalia was ditched. So we want Hitler without the Holocaust, a decaffeinated fascism. The growing support, which is probably exaggerated, is the result of the financial crisis and the subsequent recession. Similarly, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation has found that 30% of people believe Germany is over-run with immigrants and another study found that 13% of the German people would welcome the rise of a new Führer. So Angela Merkel has announced the "failure" of multiculturalism as Nicholas Sarkozy has banned the Islamic veil and expelled the Roma, whilst Silvio Berlusconi has imposed a state of emergency to combat illegal immigration among other things. The approach of the British government has been to lay into multiculturalism as a "state-sponsored doctrine", to the joy of the BNP and the EDL, in favour of a "muscular" liberalism.

In Europe we find there is a silent rehabilitation of Fascism going on, where Fascism is being defended as not as bad as National Socialism and we are encouraged to forgive Mussolini but not Hitler. The Hungarian government has reformed the laws against Fascist propaganda to outlaw Communist propaganda and Nazi propaganda. All National Socialists are Fascists, but not all Fascists are National Socialists. Thus, Fascist propaganda has been given the green light in Hungary. Just as the UK has introduced an immigration cap and rails against multiculturalism, in order to avoid the horrors of the "extremes" of racism we must resort to a "reasonable racism". This is no better than the way Robert Brasillach came up with a notion of "reasonable anti-Semitism" during the Nazi occupation of France. When we excavate the ideas that lurk behind this attack we should begin in mainstream conservatism and outward to fascism. So we can go from the timid opposition to multiculturalism and political correctness to the militant rejection of Islam and cultural Marxism.

There is no vaccination for Fascism, we can't hold it off with a "moderate" racism that will accomplish the same ends without the Gestapo. As Richard Seymour has pointed out we can still read about the "failure" of multiculturalism that led to the attacks in The New York Times and in The Atlantic how the massacre is a "mutation of jihad" whereby a white man goes ape as a Muslim fanatic would in order to prevent the coming Islamization of Europe. So these outbursts can be avoided if we just act to dismantle multiculturalism in a more 'moderate' way. It is not the case that the Muslim disposition to kamikaze style attacks was "transmitted" into the innocent mind of a blond white European which caused this horrifying atrocity. The worrying presupposition remains Brasillachian in that the radical Right represents the legitimate grievances of working-class people and we must find a "reasonable racism" to resolve such grievances. The media are looking to reconstitute the same line that these events could have been avoided if Norway had been tougher on immigration.

Now we find that the BBC are apprehensive to refer to the Norwegian perpetrator as a "terrorist" and has opted for references to "acts of terror" in Norway in order to maintain the self-serving definition of terrorism, e.g. if you have a beard and you're yelling something in Arabic when you blow yourself up you're a terrorist mate. The euphemism of "international terrorism" pops up to remind us of the threat of al-Qaeda rather than the threat posed by far-right maniacs who have access to firearms and explosives. The commentariat has really showed itself up this time, which set the agenda of the media and the limits of the discussion over the attacks until the murderer surrendered peacefully. The Sun spared no time at all to run the headline "Al-Qaeda Massacre: Norway's 9/11". On Fox News John Bolton stalled until the full facts were known, remaining sceptical until it was proven that it was an angry white man and not a Muslim. The shock-jock Michael Savage went on an appalling rant against Muslims and specifically spewed hate against Muslim immigrants in Norway.

On Newsnight we watched as Jeremy Paxman asked the most feeble of questions to EDL leader Stephen Yaxley Lennon. The line of the EDL has basically been swallowed by the mainstream media, that the grievances of the working-classes are being expressed through a fascist reaction to immigration. So the massacre in Norway is an inevitable bi-product of multiculturalism as white people react to the Islamization of Europe. The only way to avoid more violence is to restrict immigration, put a stop to multiculturalism, political correctness and the fundamentalist practice of Islam. This is the same line that Glenn Beck tows on his radio show. And yet the millionaire funder and strategist of the EDL Alan Lake has said "Apparently, in a long screed Anders Behring Breivik posted on line, he did this attack to protest against the way that Islam is taking over large parts of Europe. By attacking the leftist politicians that are enabling this, the chickens have actually come home to roost – although I’m sure it won’t be depicted that way."

Projections: Islam and the West.

I was in the audience at this debate last year, though I've only just found this video and I haven't been able to find the rest of it online except for snippets. It was an interesting debate between Douglas Murray and Tariq Ramadan, I had seen both of them on YouTube before then but never on the same stage as one another. Douglas Murray is the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, he's a notable political commentator and has been called the enfant terrible of British neoconservatism. Tariq Ramadan is a intellectual, concerned with Islamic Studies and known for an emphasis on the heterogeneity of Islam. Both men have been controversial for quite different reasons, Douglas Murray is scorned for his criticism of Islamic culture and Tariq Ramadan is attacked as being "too soft" on Islamic fundamentalism. Each figure is too invasive to be accepted into the realm of discourse, but that is precisely the reason that each of them has attracted so much attention in recent years.



The motion of the debate was "Europe is failing its Muslims", naturally Murray was in opposition and Ramadan in a defensive position. It was a very interesting night, with some booing of Murray at one point and yet in the end he won over the audience. The vote at the end of the debate was swayed in his favour by the last person to speak from the audience, who argued that Europe had not failed European Muslims because Europe was not represented adequately by politicians and the media. Personally, I found Ramadan's take on things imperfect but preferable to Murray's neocon posturing so I voted for the motion. Ramadan is a problematic figure for he still believes that the answers for the Middle East may still lie in the Qu'ran rather than in education, political change and development. Though Ramadan is not an opponent of any of the latter mentioned. We ought not be looking for a Muslim who is essentially a white liberal. The opposition to violence, support for reform and emphasis on heterogeneity are all positive qualities in his work.



The major reason for this article is to address the context in which the debate was held, a grand narrative which is hopefully coming to a close, that of the "War on Terrorism" which was re-declared by George Bush in 2001. Douglas Murray is a particularly important figure in this respect, given he is one of Britain's few self-described neoconservatives. The "War on Terror" emerged as the grand narrative by which Westerners held together our understanding of the world. With the beginning of this "war" shape and form were given to international events in a way not seen since the Cold War. In an obscene triumvirate the interests of politicians, journalists and Islamists converged to form this narrative. The Islamists struck to lure the US into a war against a Muslim country, the press and the politicians jumped at the opportunity to do so. The mutually assured projections of Western commentators and Islamic fundamentalists have played an interesting role in this narrative of terror. The projections onto Islam and the West are self-serving.

Fundamentalism envy can be picked up in the anti-Islamic rhetoric of neoconservatives like Douglas Murray. For such reactionaries the Muslim Other are the people who really believe in a moral cause and yet the neocons have their equivalent, military operations like 'Just Cause' and 'Geronimo, which no one really believes in. Even the neoconservatives are cynical liberals hiding behind a false belief, which they deem a noble lie necessary to bring unity in a liberal society. If we did believe then we would stop at nothing, thus the fixation with the beliefs of Muslims and the prevalence of "dhimmitude" in the West. For that very reason the Other are incredibly dangerous fanatics, whom we cannot negotiate with, whereas we are sane proponents of open debate and freedom of speech. The envy even runs deeper, not only is the Muslim Other the one who truly believes, the Muslim Other is also the one who butchers us. The neocons can't stand that the Muslims "get away" with this.

As the neoconservatives like to remind us that "Islamo-fascism", the preferred term of neoconservatives, rejects liberal values of democracy, freedom and human rights as absolutely binding moral frameworks. It is a concerted effort to undermine and destroy Western civilisation, these are the people who are capable of every imaginable and unimaginable horror. The splinter cells of "Islamo-fascism" can fly planes into buildings, send the retarded off to commit suicide-bombings and behead infidels on video. So we engage in cruel and degrading forms of interrogation in an international network of secret prisons and torture recorded at Abu Ghraib. We drop bombs on weddings, phosphorus on civilians and open fire on ambulances. All done in the hope of wiping al-Qaeda from the face of the earth, we suspend Western values like freedom and human rights in order to secure Western civilisation in a perpetual war fought for perpetual peace.

For the Islamist the secret truth of the "War on Terrorism" is part of a new crusade by the West. The combination of military conquest and religious conversion supplemented with the spread of jahiliyyah. The only appropriate response is the radical transformation of Jihad, the struggle for purity in Islam, into a militant struggle to defend Islam by means of force and to destroy the infidels. Notice that in this sense Islamism, in line with populism and fascism, offers a radical return to "fundamentals" but actually engages in systematic challenge of tradition and hierarchy. The Taliban were keen to destroy the Buddhist heritage of Afghanistan in order to reaffirm the country's Islamic values. The ultimate aim is to establish the preconditions necessary to build and expand a new Islamic Caliphate. Western civilisation has to be destroyed in order for this grand plan to progress. There is no room for tolerance of theological or political opposition, even along the lines of coexistence.

The Islamic fundamentalists project attributes of a cesspit of sexual depravity onto Western civilisation. The West is where people have the freedom to marry donkeys and children are taught about how to have sex at the age of 10. Apart from that the projection might be a lot like Ancient Rome through the eyes of the Marquis de Sade. There is nothing which demonstrates this more clearly than the provocative attire and behaviour of Western women, a constant temptation to men which leads them into perpetual masturbation to an endless supply of pornography. Sharia Law is posited as necessary for this very reason, the imposition of harsh penalties like the stoning of adulterers is required to constrain and suppress lust in all people. Otherwise the masses will start indulging in adultery and self-pollution on a massive scale. The fascination with sex is also mirrored in the West, where the 72 virgins have been of discussion on-and-off for years.

Tea, Cake and Lunacy.

Easy Answers.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and the subsequent recession, the working-classes of Britain and America are still in a crisis of unemployment and stagnant wages supplemented with credit cards and loans. Most notably the Tea Party movement in the US and the English Defence League in Britain which are now forging an alliance in the name of defending Anglo-American values from Islamism. Though the Tea Party and the English Defence League have little in common, except when it comes down to foreign policy, border security, immigration, political-correctness and multiculturalism. Take economics, where the Tea Parties are free-market fundamentalists, the EDL are lacking any official position on economic policy. Just going by the chants of "British jobs for British workers!" it's likely that the EDL do not share the Tea Party's love of privatisation and deregulation.

Interestingly the membership of both groups at first appears quite different, a rabble of gun-toting survivalists and Christian extremists on one side; a mass of football hooligans and neo-fascists on the other. But both movements are of the working-class which has become superfluous in an economy based on finance and banking. Entire industries like manufacturing and mining have gone into decline, which has devastated whole communities. These communities have been reduced to "pockets of deprivation" where the unemployed fester and pensioners rot. People trapped in such "pockets" look for an answer and, naturally, the mass-media has an answer: it's not the economy, it's immigrants, it's single mums etc. The assumption being that the economic system would work perfectly if it were not for some "meddlesome entity" like immigrants, gays etc. When in fact there are systemic problems within the economy, which have nothing to do with any of these groups.


The rage of the working-class is real and based on legitimate grievances going back to the 1970s, when the assault was first made on the welfare state. The reactionary press has focused on directing all of this anger against the government, whether it be the welfare state or immigration policy. The aim being to distract from real sources of problems in our society. The MP expenses scandal was used by the press to direct anger away from the £7 billion that bankers are receiving in bonuses. In fact if the expenses system was scrapped it would likely leave politicians more likely to jump into the pockets of lobbyists. Though serious reforms to the expenses system are needed such reforms are irrelevant, compared to the kind of changes we need to made in banking. It was the financial sector that have dispossessed people of housing, work and even pensions in some cases.



The media loves to direct rage from the grass-roots against government and unions because the state is potentially democratic and the labour movement is democratic. Businesses on the other hand are pure tyranny, there are no elections and the decisions come from the top if you're disobedient you could lose your job. Other favourite scapegoats include single-parent families, anti-social youths, foreigners, ethnic and religious minorities. But never a bank or a corporation, except in cases where it's against one person like Fred Goodwin or Dick Fuld. The media is a lot like a conveyor-belt on which moral panics are fed to the public, keeping a lot of us in a perpetual state of fear and anger. This is so successful because the readership are constantly working to sustain themselves. So they do not have the time to carry out a research project to filter through all of the nonsense, so lots of people just assume it's true what they read in the press.

Know-Nothing Solidarity.

The scapegoats, that were conjured up by the media, for the EDL and the Tea Parties are Muslims and Mexicans. The EDL claims that the government has pandered to Muslims, giving them special treatment and in doing so is trampling on English culture. The Tea Parties believe that Mexican illegal immigrants are responsible for crime, job losses, wage cuts and the decline of health-care. Similar claims are also made by the press in Britain. But this is no different than the "Know-Nothing" movement of the 19th Century who thought that the influx of German and Irish immigrants would turn the US into a "Catholic country". It was even feared that the Pope was trying to destroy American democracy. Of course none of this happened, but the fears were a result of real grievances such as poverty and unemployment. This was the reason that shops would hang signs in windows stating "No dogs, no Irish." Then towards the end of the 19th Century the Chinese became the new scapegoat and  a racial exclusion act was passed in 1892, banning the Chinese from migrating to the US.

Xenophobia, specifically with the Muslim community as a scapegoat, is the primary characteristic of the EDL. The Tea Party, on the other hand, opts for a strain of nationalist populism branded as a fusion of rugged individuality and Puritan family values, all protected by a strong defence and a militarised border. The EDL lacks a platform so the "bridge" between the Tea Parties and the EDL is Pamela Geller, the leader of 'Stop the Islamization of America' - an organisation modelled on 'Stop the Islamification of Europe'. Geller gained salience in the Tea Party after leading the march against the "Ground Zero Mosque". Though it should be noted that this so-called "mosque" is actually an Islamic Cultural Centre open to all. It will have a restaurant and a basketball court as well as prayer rooms for Muslims, Jews and Christians. Not only is it not a mosque it's not even at Ground Zero, it's two blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood.

This standard of nonsense is what has accelerated the Tea Party's rise to prominence and influence in America, but also what feeds the racism of the EDL. Some commentators have speculated that the Tea Party could emerge as a third-party in the future. The Tea Parties are becoming a political force in America, due to the financial backing by billionaires like the Koch brothers. Similarly the EDL is being funded by sympathetic elements of the business community in the UK. However, the EDL is lacking the level of support from the media to achieve the prominence that the Tea Party movement has gained. It could be that the alliance forged between the EDL and the Tea Parties is nothing more than short-sighted opportunism. It is unlikely that the relationship between the two movements could be sustained into the long-term future. Especially as the Tea Party may have weakened itself by associating with a movement of football thugs and neo-Nazis.

Historically there have been two faces of anti-capitalism to emerge during recessions, fascism and socialism. The fascists saw liberalism as bougeois a system as communism was a proletarian movement. Instead fascists situated themselves in the "centre" and sought to transcend class boundaries, whilst upholding an authoritarian hierarchy, for the sake of national solidarity. Socialism, on the other hand, seeks the emancipation of the working-class through the end of capitalism. The emergence of extreme right-wing groups like the EDL should be understood in this historical context. Whereas the ideologues of the Tea Party are out to reaffirm capitalism as it was before the crisis, not as the utopian free-market idealised by many of it's activists. The connection between the two groups could be exploited by the Democrats, which is why the Tea Party will probably dump the EDL. We should be relieved as nothing could from an alliance founded under the slogan "Angry White Men of the World, Unite!"

The Road to Fascism.

Angry White Men.

In 2009 we have seen the rise of mass movements on both sides of the Atlantic, I am of course referring to the Tea Party Movement and the English Defence League. In both instances these movements are thoroughly politicised and are growing in strength. In the US the Tea Party Movement has risen to prominence in conservative politics in reaction to taxation, fiscal irresponsibility and what they consider "socialism". In the UK the English Defence League has become a prominent movement in right-wing politics and is supposedly dedicated to combating the "Islamization" of Britain. Both movements appear to consist of various right-wingers united by a few key issues. The Tea Parties consist of "Birthers", gun-toting survivalists and Christian fundamentalists etc. while the EDL consists mostly of football hooligans and far-right activists formerly associated with groups like Combat 18. The latter movement became prominent due to the protests against Islamic fundamentalism outside a mosque in Harrow on September 11th 2009. The former emerged in direct reaction to Barack Obama's bailouts and health-care reforms.

The reasons for the sudden emergence and rapid growth of these particular reactionary movements are not as obscure as the media pretends. Typically in recessions people are desperate for answers in such situations and often flock around identity markers, e.g. religion or nationality, in search of comforting answers. The popularity that the far-right experiences during financial crises is due to the vulnerability people have for easy answers. This is the way that Hitler came to power in Germany during the Great Depression. So there is a definite connection between socio-economic troubles and far-right politics as a "solution" to such troubles. The critique these groups present of society's problems are drawn along populist lines, sometimes reminiscent of leftist attacks on capitalism, but focusing more on individuals and groups than the system itself. Thus, fascist groups like the EDL require a scapegoat, the Muslim community as the source of a destructive radicalism and the Left as dangerously capitulating to that force.

In the case of the Tea Party Movement the scapegoat is the Obama administration, as the enemy of the American way of life, and the Federal government, as a source of incompetence and corruption of the free-enterprise system. The Tea Party see the reason for the financial crisis, not as a lack of regulation but as too much regulation and too much state interference in the financial sector. For them, it is an imaginary elite of liberals, secularists, communists, feminists and progressives who are responsible for the fiscal irresponsibility and "big government". Therefore, the political system needs to be "changed" so that fiscal responsibility, the Constitution and free-markets can be restored in America. Ironically this was a method of communists used to justify a further purge and yet more economic planning. The failures of communism were often blamed on an imaginary elite of capitalists that was still functioning somehow to deprive the workers of their utopia. The system is not at fault, just corrupt individuals that we must purge.

In America and Britain the last 30 years have been difficult for working-class people, to say the least. Communities centred around factory work, mining and manufacturing, were torn apart through privatisation and deregulation on both sides of the pond. The government has effectively abandoned these communities, creating pockets of deprivation. The labour movement and unions were smashed, weakening them considerably, reducing the power of workers to improve working conditions, obtain pay rises and shorter work hours. As a result, wages went into decline or stagnated and work hours have increased. The gap between the wealthy and the poor increased rapidly. This is reflected by facts such as in the year 2000 1% of Americans owned over 40% of stock while 80% of the population owned less than 10%. In Britain we are now seeing the greatest gap between the rich and the poor in 40 years.

The economic policies that have created this inequality is not scrutinised in the working-class press anymore, because the working-class press does no longer exist. It was eliminated by the growing dependence on advertising revenue in the media, which influenced the content of the news as advertisements could be withdrawn if businesses dislike the content. As a result, the cheapest and most commonly read newspapers are thoroughly right-wing. In Britain we saw The Daily Herald replaced by The Sun owned by Rupert Murdoch, in the US it is Fox News. Today the only answers available to the majority of working-class people, regarding the current state of affairs, are from those who blame everything on "do-gooders" whose sensitivity - to immigrants, single-parents and gays - will bring down society as we know it. Political-correctness and multiculturalism are depicted as a source of weakness, leaving our society "vulnerable" to moral decay by "alternative life-styles" and destruction by radical Islamists.


Both the EDL and the Tea Parties have a palingenetic tendency, reminiscent of the fascist movements of the 1930s. Palingenesis being a rebirth or reincarnation of something, in Nazism the Third Reich was the "rebirth" of the First and Second Reich, in Italian Fascism it was the goal of "recreating" the Roman Empire. Today, the EDL "seeks" to take Britain back to a time when British values were safe from Islamism and to do so intend to fend off the "Islamization" of our society. Similarly, the Tea Parties aim to "rejuvenate" the ideals of Revolutionary America, ending the "tyranny" of the Obama administration in the name of individual liberty and responsibility. Of course, the ways they aim to bring about this "rebirth" involves the infringement on the ideals and values they claim to be defending. It is a sad fact that there are such crypto-fascist movements, who claim to stand for freedom while promoting causes that are radically opposed to freedom, in countries that helped bring down fascism in Europe and the Pacific.

Significant Links:

EDL - Inside the violent world of Britain's new far-right 

The Tea Party Patriots - Mission Statement 

English Defence League - Who are the EDL?

English Defence League - Exposing the Myth 

Keith Olbermann - Racial discrimination in the Tea Party Movement 

Islam, Europe & Democracy.

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician and an elected Parliamentarian, he is a member of the Party for Freedom and is probably best known for his merciless criticism of Islam. Wilders considers himself to be a libertarian and has named Margaret Thatcher as his greatest political role model. He is opposed to cultural relativism and has referred to Islamic culture as a retarded culture in the past. Wilders produced a short film, which depicts Islam as a fascist ideology, he called the film Fitna and he released the film in 2008. In his own words Fitna is "a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamization and a push for Leitkultur".

Fitna is an Arabic word, which is difficult to translate, and is considered to be an all-encompassing word referring to schism, secession, upheaval and anarchy all at once. Leitkultur is a German concept and can be translated as "guiding culture" or "mainstream culture". The culture Wilders is referring to consists of the values and traditions of Judeo-Christianity, Humanism and Liberalism. In 2009, Geert Wilders was invited to Britain by the House of Lords for a viewing of his film Fitna and a debate on social inclusion.

Lord Nazir Ahmed is a member of the House of Lords and is the first Muslim life time peer of the United Kingdom. Most of his political activities relate to the British Muslim community, as well as the International Islamic community. In the past, he has openly criticised the British government for it's over aggressive Foreign Policy and the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Lord Ahmed was appalled by the decision to give Salman Rushdie a knighthood and stated that "It's hypocrisy by Tony Blair who two weeks ago was talking about building bridges to mainstream Muslims, and then he's honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive in community relations." He went on to say in regards to Rushdie "This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world. Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far."

Lord Ahmed was sent with Baroness Warsi to Sudan in 2007, to meet with President Omar al-Bashir, to secure the relase of Gillian Gibbons. Their meeting was successful in securing a pardon for Gibbons, a school teacher who had been arrested for blasphemy after naming a teddy bear Muhammad. In 2009, when Geert Wilders was due to make his appearance in the House of Lords, Lord Ahmed threatened to lay siege to the House of Lords, with a force of 10,000 Muslims, if anti-Islamist Dutch MP Geert Wilders was allowed to speak at the House. Lord Ahmed later denied the allegation, whilst Wilders was denied entry to the United Kingdom and has been banned from entering in the future.

Silencing Wilders simply because he holds anti-Islamic views is counter-productive, in regards to furthering integration between the Muslims and non-Muslims of Great Britain, and will probably generate more Islamophobia in the long term future. Fascist Nick Griffin and his racist thugs will no doubt latch onto Lord Ahmed's behaviour for propaganda. Their argument that Islam is incompatible with democracy and therefore has no place in British society, will win over even more people. Well, Britain is technically not a democracy it is a polyarchy. A polyarchy is a system in which the ruling elite of a nation is divided into two or three factions - which have some differences but fundamentally adhere to the same ideology - whilst the rest of society is kept ignorant, fragmented and distracted. In elections the ignorant and distracted masses are given a choice between two or three people who basically have the same policies. So, even if Islam is incompatible with democracy, that is irrelevant because Britain is no democracy. Lord Ahmed may have intended to defend his religion from criticism, but the methods he used to accomplish his end ultimately tarnished Islam as much as the Sudanese teddy bear controversy and the controversy over Muhammad cartoons have done.

Do you really want these people running the United Kingdom?

Banning Wilders and his Fitna from Britain - in an attempt to pacify a man, who was not elected, who is meant to represent British Muslims, and he is threatening violence - implies that the film has a formidable argument; that British Muslims are incapable of peacefully defending Islam. This is utterly insulting to British Muslims and it annoys me that no one is angered by actions like this. Actions that perpetuate the myth that Muslims are intolerant and violent bigots. If we continue to feed this delusion, we in turn feed the propaganda machine of fascist groups like the BNP, we've already got a member of the BNP sitting on the London Assembly like a turd on grass. But how many turds will we let land on our grass before we take a stand and say "No more"?