The Labour Party and anti-Semitism

There is no upsurge of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. There is a moral panic being instigated by the media due, to a handful of cases, almost all of which took place before Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in the summer of 2015. In fact, the Corbyn leadership has demonstrated it is not afraid to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism against Labour figures, including allies like Ken Livingstone. But this is not all there is to say.

The perfect storm over anti-Semitism and Labour has been building for a long time. Every wing of the British media establishment has taken part – from the BBC and the Guardian to the Telegraph and the Spectator. The Naz Shah case, and Ken Livingstone’s intervention, is just the latest to be picked up. The British press has manufactured this scandal in a bid to create a crisis and, in turn, undermine Corbyn. But this hysteria also represents the high emotional stakes in Israel among the commentariat.

The Anglosphere is culturally and politically invested in Israel in a way which other world powers are not. Make no doubt about it, this is the result of settler colonialism. Israel fits into the imperial ambitions of Western powers. The American intellectual class fell in love with Israel after the 1967 war, which came as a welcome sign that the world was not in total disarray. So the conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a coincidental part of our political discourse – it is necessarily a part of the way the conflict is understood in the West.

For these reasons, we might say Ken Livingstone ran into the Shah scandal like a bull into a china shop. We still may not have heard the last vase smash as it hits the floor. Plenty of leftists have pointed out the Haavara agreement, the Nazi plans to deport European Jews to Madagascar and elsewhere. However, the facts of Nazi Germany are not really relevant or helpful here. The real controversy is over Livingstone’s use of the term ‘Zionism’ to describe Nazi policy. Laying out the historical record cannot dispel the outrage (much of it phony). The damage is done.

Sadly, honest voices like Jamie Stern-Weiner are lost in the storm. Vilification campaigns are successful because it is virtually impossible to resist mudslinging. If you explain yourself, deny the claims or even apologise, you’re screwed. It’s too late. It’s never enough. There is no way of adequately deflecting, let alone dodging, the mud. You’re always guilty in the eyes of some people. Even before this, Livingstone was rated as an anti-Semite by certain people thanks to the media.

Even if we presume innocence, it’s worth examining why Livingstone’s use of the term ‘Zionism’ was problematic. First off, Zionism is a broad church, much like feminism or conservatism, so it’s hardly a clearly defined target to begin with. For example, Noam Chomsky was a Zionist youth organiser and Alan Dershowitz was apart of the same Hebrew summer camp. But Chomsky’s childhood Zionism would not recognised by the devotees of the state of Israel. There is a big difference between the left-wing, anti-statist currents of the 1930s and present day right-wing Israeli nationalism.

That’s not to say that Zionism did not always suffer from major, and potentially unreconcilable contradictions. Left-wing nationalism, for example, as rarely, if ever given way to non-nationalism. This is what the left-wing problem with Zionism is at its root all about. Politically, the ideology has failed to be secular, becoming increasingly violent and ethnocratic. The British left’s version is compounded by the UK’s history as an imperial power, whose policies created the regional divisions, in the Middle East, at the root of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This is why term “Zionism” is so loaded, and why, in a British context it is especially toxic. It connotes support for a status quo that goes to the heart of a history of ruinous foreign policy, and, in its contemporary form, the chauvinism of settlers towards an indigenous people. This is why the Blairite goon John Mann was so furious with Ken Livingstone. The presuppositions are evident: Israeli policy is so morally immaculate, it can only be opposed by closet Nazis.

Of course, the obvious point cannot be made too often: not all Zionists are Jews, neither are all Jews Zionists. Yet this game is played by the Israeli right, and its reactionary Diaspora boosters. Never mind the fact that Christian Zionism, for example, is a huge movement with deep roots, while anti-Zionism has a long history among, err, Jews. Note the American Christian right tend to be fanatical supporters of Israeli colonialism, but they do so as they yearn for the Rapture and end for Jewish people worldwide. But this anti-Semitism is rarely called out, if ever.

As much as it is absurd to conflate Zionism with Jewishness, the Z-word can be dangerous for progressives to use carelessly. In many ways, it would be much better for leftists to talk about Israeli or Jewish nationalism today. Precision of language is vital here. Clear distinctions have to be maintained. Not only because the misuse of the term ‘Zionist’ can easily be painted as anti-Semitic, but because it can be received as such by actual racists. This means the Left should deepen its vocabulary about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Too often do we hear talk of the ‘Israel lobby’, or even the ‘Jewish lobby’, and this is not unproblematic. The only reason why lobbyists are welcomed in Washington and London is because there is an underlying interest in the first place. In other words, US policy favours Israel due to its own interests in the Middle East, not because of Israeli interference in American political life. The Left should not presuppose Western innocence in all of this, as if the US is being led astray by foreign interests. This is not inherently anti-Semitic, but it is seriously flawed.

As Didi Herman argues, the Left should probably stop using the word ‘Zionism’ and try to grasp the problems at hand in clear terms. By using ‘Zionism’, the Left opens itself up to right-wing offensives and infiltration by genuine anti-Semites. At the same time, there is little engagement with Jewish nationalism as a historic movement and the reasons for its appeal. It was once that the Left was avowedly pro-Zionist and many supported Israel up to the 1967 war, whereas today leftists are eager to pronounce themselves anti-Zionists. But posturing does not always translate into good politics.

Speaking of posturing, the self-described ‘anti-totalitarian Left’ is heavily involved in the smear machine. Many of these soi-disant leftists and liberals supported the invasion of Iraq on supposed progressive grounds.

They see Israel as a Western liberal democracy encircled by Arab dictatorships and Islamic fascist regimes. Therefore, all criticism of Israel is painted as anti-Jewish. The reality is much less convenient for this herd of independent minds.

Localising anti-Jewish prejudice on the Left is a form of externalisation. Much like child sexual abuse, we’re meant to believe it’s always someone else who is guilty of it. The terrible truth is sexual violence is far more common and banal. And the same can be said of Judeophobia. It’s not the preserve of student activists, intellectuals and conspiracists. The global financial crisis set the conditions in place for a resurgence of racism. Anti-Semitism is the handmade of Islamophobia. To assume that it would not reemerge now is to not take anti-immigrant politics seriously.

As for the Labour Party in particular, there is little to no anti-Semitism among its ranks. The last leader, Ed Miliband is of Belgian Jewish heritage – his father, a refugee from Nazism served in WW2 – yet the British press was comfortable mocking him for his inability to enjoy a bacon sandwich. His father Ralph Miliband was a refugee from the Nazi onslaught, and the right-wing press insinuated the man was ‘disloyal’ to Britain. There was no discussion of anti-Jewish undercurrents in the midst of this.

Jew-bashing is an old game for the Right. The times haven’t changed so much. As Sam Kriss argues, the contemporary Right is now philo-Semitic – it is fascinated by Israel and by Jews – but this supposed love is really its opposite. Jews who criticise Israel are deemed insufficiently Jewish. This is why Norwegian fascist Anders Breivik drew a line between ‘loyal’ and ‘disloyal’ Jews (Zionists in the one hand, left-liberals in the other). A Jewish state is one kind of solution for the anti-Semite, as Jews are taken, in this view, as essentially deracinated.

The Right is trying to destroy Jeremy Corbyn by any means necessary. The coalition includes the Blairites, the Conservatives and the media. Guido Fawkes started this scandal by digging up Naz Shah’s Facebook posts from August 2014, and the media quickly took it up. This was before she was selected to run against George Galloway in Bradford West. It was also long before Jeremy Corbyn triumphed over the attempts to renew the New Labour project. So it should be obvious why there is a moral panic now of all times.

Actually the media has been pushing this line for a long-term. The BBC’s John Ware, who writes for Standpoint magazine, produced a documentary attacking Corbyn as supporting anti-Semites and terrorists. The good news is Corbyn has overcome every attack on his character. This scandal may be harder to trounce thanks to Livingstone’s comments. It’s possible the local elections could be hit by this, but it’s also true Labour is facing the prospect of long-term decline anyway. Corbyn may not be able to save the party. But the Blairites lack anyone capable of filling the void.

At the same time, it’s less likely to sway Londoners away from Sadiq Khan and to the shameful, racist campaign mounted by Zac Goldsmith. The Khan campaign has kept to its ‘soft left’ script and made simple, uncontroversial pledges. It’s possible we’ll see the Corbyn vote turnout for the mayoral vote, while Labour takes serious losses in the local elections. Neither would necessarily be turned by the events of the past week. Not that this would ever be acknowledged by the BBC.

This article was originally written for Souciant Magazine.

Guido Fawkes helped start this shit-storm

As you may have heard, the Labour Party has a problem with anti-Semitism. Or at least that's what the right-wingers are yelling. It all started with Guido Fawkes, a.k.a. Paul Staines. Mr. P Staines dug up some Facebook posts by Naz Shah from August 2014. This is meant to tell us that the Labour Party is a front organisation for rabid anti-Jewish fanatics. Maybe, we ought to ask questions about Mr. P Staines and his motives for sliming Corbyn's Labour Party.

The Politics of Lee Atwater.

It took some time, but I finally got around to watching Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (2008) by Stefan Forbes. It's well worth a watch if you're fascinated by the drama of American politics. In its focus on Lee Atwater the film individualises a serious problem, which is actually systematic, within the US political scene. This is both its weakness and strength.

It shouldn't be a surprise. After all, individualism has long been the dominant character of American politics. Personalities carry more significance than parties. Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan and Sarah Palin coexist in the same party, but represent very different ideas, constituencies and interests. But this can obscure ideological and economic problems.

Undoubtedly, Lee Atwater is a significant figure in American political history. He arose just as the civil rights struggle had defeated Jim Crow in the Southern States and the anti-war movement was challenging US hegemony. Out of this period the gay liberation and feminist movements emerged in the 1970s. The executive power of the presidency was put under strain with the fall of Nixon in the wake of Watergate. It looked as if the establishment was seriously threatened.

What came next has to be understood as a period of reconsolidation for the American ruling-class. Jimmy Carter came into office as a candidate to win over the counterculture and bring them back into mainstream liberal politics. Once in office, President Carter installed Paul Volcker in the Federal Reserve, where Volcker hiked interest rates to soak the poor, and in foreign affairs pledged CIA support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua.

Once in office, Reagan inherited and expanded the Contras and the Mujahideen deepening the American commitment to devastating Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The Reaganites went as far as to sanction CIA drug trafficking to fund the illegal and immoral campaign of terrorism against the Sandinistas. This was the surrounding context of Atwater's rise.

The Reagan campaign recycled the planks of Goldwater conservatism: small government, individual freedom, and anti-communism. This is where Atwater entered. As one of Strom Thurmond's storm troopers he had mastered the Southern strategy, which had allowed the Republicans to seize the South after the Democrats conceded to civil rights reform. He was adept at tapping into the copious reservoirs of Southern anger, not just at the civil rights movement, but at the outcome of the American civil war.

Traditionally, the Democratic Party had been the representatives of white supremacy, as well as big business, and later the labour movement. The balance of this was first disrupted by the New Deal and then finally collapsed under the Great Society. This is the side of history that the documentary could have engaged. Instead, the film does little to critically engage with the Democrats, a flaw endemic to American liberals, which given their failures and complicity is pretty lax. The focus on Atwater allows the film to skip over the complicity of Democrats.

The film rightly focuses on the Bush campaign of '88 and highlighted the use of race as a mobilising force. Atwater engineered the notorious Willie Horton adverts, which sparked controversy, in a blatant appeal to white racial-consciousness. Atwater transformed George Bush, the wimp wasp, into the defender of the white race. However, the documentary omits that it was Al Gore who raised the case of Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in the competition for the Democratic nomination.

In other words, the liberals played the race card first only for Atwater to wield it against them. Much like how Harry Truman initiated the red scare which would mutate into McCarthyism. The capacity of establishment liberalism to undermine itself should not be underestimated. I'm not sure if the omission of this convicts Stefan Forbes of anything particularly egregious. It could be down to ignorance, or a choice to keep the focus on Atwater. In any case, this omission folds into another problematic assumption.

Forbes attributes a diabolical brilliance to the likes of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and, by extension, Roger Ailes. Out of these figures Atwater may have been the most effective, but it's hard to judge as his rise and fall was so rapid. It shouldn't be forgotten that Bush I was flushed out of the White House thanks to a tax pledge he made on Atwater's watch. It's clear Karl Rove offered George W Bush highly damaging advice on more than one occasion. Alexander Cockburn pointed this out a long time ago:

Since 9/11 where has been the good news for the Administration? It’s been a sequence of catastrophe of unexampled protraction. Under Rove’s deft hand George Bush has been maneuvered into one catastrophe after another. Count the tombstones: “Bring it on”, “Mission Accomplished”, the sale of US port management to Arabs. It was Rove who single-handedly rescued the antiwar movement last July by advising Bush not to give Cindy Sheehan fifteen minutes of face time at his ranch in Crawford.

As for Roger Ailes, the emergence of Fox News has largely allowed the mainstream media to pretend it is really objective - at least with Fox News there is little such pretense - when in many ways the US press (even without Fox) is awful. The New York Times, a regular feature in the Fox demonology, has long been a custodian of the establishment and its consensus. The soi disant objective media has always been far from inclusive.

So the picture is incomplete for it lacks the ineffectuality and complicity of the Democrats. It's no coincidence that the culture wars were launched after the economic losses under Reagan were accepted as conventional wisdom. It's not all down to the Machiavellian ingenuity of a boy from South Carolina. The bicoastal elites were always vulnerable to cultural populism as class has long been a taboo subject in American politics. The assumed primacy of individuals leaves little room for systemic analysis, except for sectional interests.

Epigones of Beria.

The late Alexander Cockburn noted that he was often "savaged as little better than an epigone of Beria" for settling on the figure of five or six million deaths in Stalin's Russia. It shouldn't have to be said that looking for an accurate picture of a monstrous series of crimes is not an act of exoneration. But in this society it would seem that the higher you go the better. Only the maximal estimates of Stalin's victims guarantee credibility. Expect nothing less from the enemies of the people!

Since the passing of Eric Hobsbawm in early October the BBC has made available the widely misquoted interview of Hobsbawm by Michael Ignatieff. It's around 11 minutes in that Ignatieff raises the matter of Stalin's liquidation of huge swathes of kulaks and dooming of millions of peasants in the 30s. The question asked is "If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time?" Hobsbawm responds first by stating that it is an unanswerable academic question. In a retrospective answer, not a historical answer, Hobsbawm said "Probably not". He went on to explain his reasoning, that in a period of universalised mass-murder and mass-suffering the chance of a future at all would be worth supporting. The sacrifices in Russia were unnecessarily great and excessive by any measure and, in his eyes, only marginally worthwhile. The Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution, but if it had been Hobsbawm says he isn't sure if the sacrifices would have been worthwhile.

In the next breathe Eric Hobsbawm asks "Do people now say we shouldn't have had WW2 because more people died in WW2 than in Stalin's terror?" At this point interviewer Ignatieff attempts a summary "So what that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified." It was not posed as a question and Hobsbawn responds in the affirmative, to indicate that this is the view that could be taken. Yet the old man had made it clear, moments before, that he isn't sure if the terror would have been worth it with the advent of communism. He goes on to qualify his emphatic 'Yes' by explaining that this is what people thought about the World Wars. Even though in the end many would say that the First World War was an unnecessary bloodbath, the Second World War was worth fighting. Yet this is not how the Right likes to portray this conversation, as I quote in my last article on this:

According to Robert Conquest, Hobsbawm was asked by Ignatieff in 1994 "What (your view) comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?" Apparently Hobsbawm's only response was "Yes."

We have good reason to suspect the right-wing historian Conquest - a former British intelligence officer and virulent cold warrior - is out to push the worst line possible about the Marxist Left and not just the Soviet Union. It's a sure thing that Conquest wouldn't rebuke in phony moral outrage at someone who sees the slaughter of the Second World War as necessary to bring down the Third Reich. As Hobsbawm emphasises, it was not about the construction of a utopia - it was a case of "a world rather than no world" - at that time for the Communists who saw the world as crumbling at that time. Really it's because Conquest disagrees fundamentally with the ultimate aim, whereas the defeat of National Socialism merely means a return to liberal democratic capitalism. The notion of a "radiant tomorrow" was rhetoric in Hobsbawm's thinking, it was more about a better, more perfect and new world. It was a more upbeat view of the future tempered with the stark realism of the dire situation in the world.

At around 24 minutes in Eric Hobsbawm goes over his view of the estimates of deaths in the Soviet Union under Stalin. He insists that the people involved in the Communist International, in the 1930s, had no substantial knowledge of what was going on under Stalin with regard to human suffering. Hobsbawm makes the same statement about what the anti-Communist intellectuals claim to know about the Soviet Union. Hobsbawm goes on to add that the estimates - ranging from 3 to 14 million in the gulags alone - are speculative and indefensible because of the range of the figures alone. The blunt tool Ignatieff quickly inquired if the old man of British Communism was saying Stalin's crimes have been "exaggerated" and, without hesitation, the old man responded "No... I'm merely saying that nobody knows!" Hobsbawm concludes that the situation in the Soviet Union under Stalin was indefensible and inhuman. And yet the man is still lambasted by the Right as a lifelong apologist for Joseph Stalin's abattoir socialism.

Ignoble Liars.

Douglas Murray is just the youngest public ideologist of the 'War on Terrorism' and his work is worth reading at least to know thy enemy. Noting the charge of 'noble lies' leveled by critics of the Iraq war, and its pretext, Douglas Murray writes "The notion of the 'noble lie' certainly arises in Plato, and it is true that Strauss and many neoconservatives admire Plato. But what Plato described (in his Republic) was that, on occasion, leaders have to conceal truths from the masses in order to lead them most wisely. He certainly did not (as one commentator put it with wild hyperbole) claim that 'it is practically a duty to lie to the masses.'" Going on to stress that "Plato described how in matters of grave importance, occasions arise in which a leader will know best, and in which the less well-informed masses, if given the opportunity to decide on a specific matter, might decide wrongly." This goes against his earlier position in the book where he slams the conclusion that Leo Strauss was a "champion of the 'noble lie'" as misinformed.

Even after this Murray maintains that the charge is unfounded, offensive, glib, ignorant and nonsensical. Furthermore it is hurled about by people who have "misrepresented their Plato and not read their Strauss". He describes the outrage regarding 'noble lies' as a "faked outrage". This really comes out of his loyalty to a particular agenda manifested in the policy designs of the Bush administration. In his view the UK and US governments didn't lie because they merely revealed what they knew about Saddam's Iraq - or rather, what they thought they knew - to their people. The twerp goes further to say "they discussed intelligence that was incorrect, information certain amount of raw intelligence that may turn out to have been comprehensively mistaken." He even claims that the governments were too eager to pander to public opinion (except that which was anti-war) as he derides critics as 'conspiracy theorists' once again - it would seem, it is one of his favourite swearwords second only to 'moral equivalence' in his arsenal of vilification and obfuscation.

So the fault of the Anglo-American establishment was not in but in telling the people too much, revealing information that should not have been revealed. Apparently there is not the remotest possibility that any of this could constitute deception. Murray is keen to guard against anyone who might attribute immoral behaviour to George W Bush and Dick Cheney, while looking to maintain a high bar for American aggression against Iraq. Yet the administration officially dumped the talk of WMD as soon as the invasion found there were no such weapons. The supposed links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were dropped as the invasion quickly turned Iraq into a centre of terrorist activity. The doctrine of 2004 was that it's enough for a country to have the capacity to build weapons and the intent to use them. So that's virtually any country in the world. It's this kind of thing that the neoconservatives are looking to defend by damning critics as 'relativists', yet another swearword deployed against critics of imperial adventurism.

I wonder if Murray refined these abilities in whatever public school mummy and daddy sent him to when they realised they didn't love him. It's clear Murray is aware that the Platonist framework gives convenient reasoning to the wider agenda to which he is a loyal servant. In Plato's Republic the 'noble lie' is supposed to engender devotion to the city-state among the citizenry, it is meant to be employed when philosophy fails. So if we accept that the established authority has to propagate a particular view of the world in order to maintain social harmony we can still question the neoconservative mission. Really it's that Murray believes in the cause to the extent that he can be totally cynical. To get to the bottom of this we have to question the fundamentals: the position that the United States can and ought to invade countries to make democracies out of them. It's the insistence that the interests of the US (which are pervasive in all of its interventions) are synonymous with the interests of the countries it invades and occupies that we rightly take fault with.

Chomsky on Cambodia.

In the late 1970s Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman were following the Western reception of atrocities in Cambodia alongside the case of East Timor. The figure of 2 million killed was repeatedly deployed in US media, it originated in a book review by Jean Lacouture of Ponchaud's work Cambodia: Year Zero which was published in 1978. Lacouture said that the Khmer Rouge boasted of killing 2 million people, yet it was not in Ponchaud's writing which claimed 800,000 people died in the US bombing from 1970 to 1975. Since the emergence of the Khmer Rouge, amidst the devastation of the bombing, an additional 1.2 million had died according to the US embassy in Bangkok. When Chomsky pointed this out to Lacouture he soon published corrections in which he conceded that the killings may have been in the thousands rather than in the millions. American intelligence confirms that the slaughter was in the tens of thousands and may well have ran into the hundreds of thousands. But it was too late and the figure of 2 million remains stuck in the minds of many even three decades later.

Ever since then Chomsky has been tarred as a defender of Pol Pot's atrocities. The charge has become a favourite tool on the Right who have regularly deployed it to bash Chomsky. Yet it was Noam Chomsky who points to the 1978 invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam as perhaps only one of two instances of ' humanitarian interventionism' since the Second World War. The other example he highlighted was in 1971 when India invaded East Pakistan, ending a massive slaughter and did so out of less than benign self-interest. Likewise, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia came just as Pol Pot's crimes were really picking up. By 1979 the capital of the country was in Vietnamese hands and the Khmer Rouge had fled to the Thai border. The Vietnamese would be condemned internationally as "outlaws" and "gangsters" for this invasion, the United Nations would support the Khmer Rouge in its claim to govern Cambodia while the US would lead the international effort to starve Cambodia as long as the Vietnamese occupied the country. Later William Shawcross would bemoan the silence over Pol Pot's crimes, that he imagined, pinning the blame on the scepticism of the Left.

The point that Chomsky made was that the West has never concerned itself with questions of human rights, only when it is convenient to do so. The crimes committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia constitute 'nefarious bloodbaths', which are condemned in the strongest terms because they are committed by the enemy, whereas the crimes of the Indonesians in East Timor were 'constructive bloodbaths' and therefore worth our support and our silence. The US, Canada, Britain and Holland supported the Indonesians all the way, while the West continued to pose as humanitarians over the atrocities in Cambodia. Suharto had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia in the 1960s, but the US supported him because he was open to American influence and investment. This helps to illuminate the "dramatic shift" away from condemnation to outright support of Pol Pot during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. As the Khmer Rouge became a force of opposition to the occupation, thereby becoming an opponent of Russian influence, the US shifted its support as part of its new-found alliance with China.

Near the end of her reign, Margaret Thatcher said in an interview "Most people agree that Pol Pot himself could not go back, nor some of his supporters who were very active in some of the terrible things that happened. Some of the Khmer Rouge, of course, are very different. I think there are probably two parts to the Khmer Rouge, those who supported Pol Pot and then there is a much much more reasonable grouping within the Khmer Rouge." The Iron Lady went on to qualify her statement, that this is what the experts on Cambodia have told her. She didn't go as far as to admit that the British government had been training the Khmer Rouge through the SAS for several years. That would come out in 1991. All of this was later confirmed on the Cambodian side by Ta Mok when he was arrested in 2000. Yet the Right still have the audacity to accuse Noam Chomsky of taking the side of Pol Pot in the midst of 'Year Zero'. It remains the favourite means of vilification for the neoconservatives who describe themselves as "revolutionaries" while they are nothing less than chickenhawks.

A Tragedy, Not a Statistic.

The reaction to Hobsbawm's death ranges from modest applause in the liberal press to the usual paranoid anti-Communist hysteria of rightist news outlets. The Daily Mail engaged in the usual prattle about Hobsbawm's years spent in the Communist Party even during the exposure of Stalin's crimes. Even though while young Eric was embedded in anti-Fascist politics Lord Rothermere (owner of the Mail) was shamelessly climbing into bed with Adolf Hitler. The Evening Standard even went as strange as to stress Hobsbawm's later associations with Tony Blair and Ed Miliband, as if the Labour Party had been infected by the nonagenarian Marxist even when the Party was sliding further and further to the Right. Then again, this shouldn't surprise anyone as foaming at the mouth McCarthyites have never been subtle! On the upside, if the old man's passing was met with unadulterated adulation from the mass-media we would have to ask ourselves if he was really any good at all. Some people you would never want nor expect praise from.

Fortunately some on the Right weren't so pettily obsessed with Hobsbawm's past to concede his work was worthy of praise. The right-wing historian Niall Ferguson wrote "Hobsbawm the historian was never a slave to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. His best work was characterised by a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge, elegant analytical clarity, empty with the 'little man' and a love of the telling detail. He and I shared the belief that it was economic change, above all, that shaped the modern era." Ferguson went on to note wisely "The fact that he sided with the workers and peasants, while I side with the bourgeoisie, was no obstacle to friendship." The historian recommends Hobsbawm's tetralogy to the reader - The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Industry (1975), The Age of Empire (1987) and The Age of Extremes (1994) - going as far as to call this body of work "the best introduction to modern world history in the English language." As much as this should give one good reason to read Hobsbawm, it reflects rather well on Ferguson.

I have nothing to add to the praise for Hobsbawm's historical writings, though I will recommend Terry Eagleton's review of his last book if you want to dip into the great man's work. This isn't to say that the right-wing hysterics penned nothing worth of reflection about Hobsbawm, as Ferguson demonstrates so well himself. According to Robert Conquest, Hobsbawm was asked by Michael Ignatieff in 1994 "What (your view) comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?" Apparently Hobsbawm's only response was "Yes." No doubt Conquest has his own reasons for emphasising this, I suspect Hobsbawm had much more to say than simply an emphatic endorsement of unimaginable slaughter. But we should for a moment consider the question in terms of the dialectical materialist conception of history. It's certain that the Stalinists of this world have viewed their actions in terms of a service to the Revolution and, ultimately, to historical progress in a certain guise.

If we take history to be a succession of exploitative modes of production with its present culmination in global capitalism, then we could well view history as an appalling and seemingly unending tale of horrifying bloodshed as well as a tale of progress. It was through the tremendous suffering of millions in past centuries that the material resources and conditions to build capitalism, and further advance its productive capacities, were refined and accumulated. The immense injustice and unfreedom of this process cannot be separated from the accumulative development of capitalism, which almost mirrors a natural organism. In turn this mode of exploitation propels itself forward, only to create the proper economic and political conditions for socialism to be built in its place. We find then that in its beginning socialism is inseparable from capitalism in the same sense that capitalism is to slavery and feudalism. The link is in the material conditions fostered by each system. This is roughly the Marxist view, if a tad hastily sketched out as only it can in so few words.

Furthermore, the birth of socialism is not immaculate rather it is born out of the squalor of the capitalist system. The socialist movement could be seen as a project redemptive of capitalism, a view taken by Communists in Beijing today, in that the ultimate collapse of the system in crisis and revolution would give way to a new egalitarian world where the endured inequalities would be undone. The temptation to posit the vindication of capitalism in the advent of socialism should be resisted. Not just because of capitalism with Asian values, but because if you take socialism as simply redemptive of the generations who were worked to death in capitalism then it's tempting to say "What does it matter if a few more go?" It's all too tempting to say that the ends justify the means. This is the reason that many attribute to wily Stalin the notorious line "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic." The big question dangling before us is: will all this misery be worth it if we build a better world? And that's a major debate to be had.

The more nuanced Marxist might concede that the socialist movement may be incapable of making up for the enormous suffering of what has gone on for far too long. Even if socialism cannot compensate for the injustices of capitalism it is the better system. By analogy, the reparations for slavery can and should be made, not because we can really make up for the harm done to Africa but because it's right to try and establish a much more just society. Similarly to the climate change deniers we can retort: even if climate change is a natural phenomenon not to be feared, we're right to reorientate our entire society because it would still be better than what we have. Socialism may be the best that we can do to attempt to make up for all the women and men shredded in the economic propellers of history. Though it may well be utopian to claim that it could do so in its entirety, it is not wrong to attempt at this task. We on the Left are not clutching at straws in a world of chaos in the midst of our own inexorable decline, rather we belong to a tragic tradition.

Shouting Fire.

The recent explosion of outrage in the Middle East over an anti-Islamic cartoon produced in America has raised the debate over freedom of expression and speech once again. Here's some food for thought on this complicated matter. As Slavoj Žižek argues there is a point at which censorship can function as the measure of cultural standards. He suggests we shouldn't fear censorship for this reason. It's been commonplace for European countries to ban explicit Fascist propaganda, swastikas and so on, yet in Hungary the restriction has been altered to outlaw Communist and Nazi propaganda. This new change leaves the door open for other Fascist propaganda - it's the rehabilitation of Fascism other than the Hitlerian variety. We wouldn't like to live in a society where you argue against rape. Instead Žižek argues that the ideal situation would be where anyone who argues for rape to be legal is immediately disqualified by virtue of their position. It's certain that the sanctions of regard are already in place to some extent across the West.

Consider the following: If I came into your home and put up a poster which declares that the Holocaust was a 'hoax' it would not be a violation of my right to free-speech and free-expression if you were to rip down the poster and throw me out of your home. It would be utterly absurd for me to claim that this is a fundamental violation of free-speech, as well as a concerted effort by the Left to subvert our society and undermine the unremitting greatness of the white man. Even the most strident advocate of the right to free-speech would shudder at the thought of defending this case. So there is a distinction between private and public space, which is relevant to free-speech as there is a difference between expression in the home and expression on Speakers' Corner. Really freedom of speech is not supposed to be applied consistently as a universal principle justifying every statement in any situation. The complex question regards the specifics of the particular situation.

The conflict between private space and free-speech becomes increasingly ambiguous when it comes to the media, in which debates can be held in a space which is at once public and private in a way. The extent to which the broadcasting is a form of involvement of your private space is blurred. Significantly the popular anger about political correctness has emerged with the decline of the public space in recent decades. It has become a means of political mobilisation for the Right in the post-political era. The only struggle worth fighting is to preserve the permissive society of racists, sexists, homophobes and so on. After all, we're led to believe that the Left are working to undermine our civil liberties with this totalitarian notion of political correctness. Even though political correctness can be found on the most conservative of university campuses in the US. It's primary focus is the phraseology deployed in statements regarding race, gender, sexuality etc. 

Political correctness is not as much a matter of what can be said as much as about how it can be said. Nevertheless it is viewed with suspicion by many, we are told it must be combated for it is an imposition on our wholesome society from the lair of cultural Marxists. You can tell it's a concocted panic as it is endorsed by the mainstream media and commentariat. No one ever stands up to promote political correctness. It is only railed against by the brave journalists who are paid by Rupert Murdoch. At the same time there is little concern for the evacuation of meaningful political language and discourse. You can see this when the use of the word 'profits' is replaced with 'jobs' whenever a politician talks about a deal involving government and business. It's more blunt when the mass-killing of foreign civilians becomes 'collateral damage' while kidnapping and torture by governments becomes a 'rendition'. As Gore Vidal observed, you can now 'liberate' a country by bombing it - this is true decadence! The death of 1789 may not be far off the emptying out of the language of politics.

It was politically correct for conservatives to accuse Ken Livingstone of 'homophobia' when he said that the Conservative Party is 'riddled' with closet homosexuals. He was accused of racism when he said that he looked forward to seeing the Saudi Royal Family 'swinging from lampposts'. Yet at the same time Ken Livingstone is constantly accused of being a rabid anti-Semite with a sympathy for Muslim extremism. An honest observer can see that Ken Livingstone has used provocative language in picking fun at the opponents of his worldview: whether it's Tories or the King of Saudi Arabia. As for the allegations of anti-Semitism Ken Livingstone is an outspoken critic of Israel and has been vilified as a Judeophobe for over three decades because of his position on the conflict. With all of this in mind it has to be acknowledged that these accusations are forms of political correctness expressed by the Right. It seems that the phenomenon has transcended left and right.

As Stewart Lee once said political correctness is little more than a clumsily institutionalised form of politeness, which has downsides too but it's a lot better than the time when people could make all kinds of obscene comments. Before political correctness, in Britain, we lived in a country where people like Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson were allowed on television to spout jokes that pick fun at gays, women, ethnic minorities and the disabled. That was a time when we could watch shows like The Black and White Minstrel Show, in which white actors "blacked up" for the sake of 20 years of "family entertainment". And it has to be acknowledged that very often the stories of political correctness going mad are exaggerated. Lee has pointed this out that the infamous example of Birmingham Council banning Christmas. Actually Birmingham Council decided to use the word Winterval as an umbrella term to cover Christmas and other religious celebrations around the same time.

Brand Obama - the Warrior President.

Obama has fulfilled a campaign promise in killing Osama bin Laden. Brand Obama can go 'Warrior President' now, with his citizenship finally confirmed, it seems he shouldn’t have much trouble in fending off a Republican candidacy or even an entry by Donald Trump into next year’s electoral bout. At the same time the Middle East is being swept up in revolutionary fervour, with the US supporting the Gulf Cooperation Council in it’s repression of the uprising in Bahrain. American gulags like Guantanamo Bay are still open for business and there is little possibility of closing down the kidnapping-and-torture ring in the near future. It might have been better to have held the man for trial, alongside Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for 9/11 and other atrocities. But that would have led to a protracted battle in court, with the potential for serious questions of American conduct in recent years and this would have reopened the rift in American politics. Unity and national pride might be useful in subduing the American people before a harsh austerity can be imposed.

Noam Chomsky predicted that the Obama administration would recycle the policies of the last half of the Bush years, which were considerably moderate when compared with the first term. The bailouts and bombing of Pakistan were the early signs of this, in spite of this conservatives resorted to labelling Brand Obama "socialist". The important changes came in form, the rhetoric changed along with the way policy was delivered and the limits of what can be done in the US has been challenged significantly in this way. The most important change being that there is now a black family in the White House, a house built by slaves, which really does widen the perimeters of what is possible in the US. Though under Obama there has still been US support for the blockade on Gaza, the bombing of Pakistan, the coup in Honduras and the assault on Haiti by the IMF. There has only been a lukewarm return for liberal interventionism. Along with a no-fly zone over Libya also came a subtle pass for Gaddafi on human rights and the Libyan bankers have been made exempt from the sanctions.

We have seen the return of the old "crazies" in the media since Osama bin Laden was wasted. Most notably of all is Dick Cheney, an ultra-nationalist if there ever was one, has come out in support of the President's decision. It was under Cheney that policies of war and torture were furthered to an appalling extent. Andy Card reappeared on Newsnight to inform us that the raid went well as a result of planning. He also emphasised that it was "tough, courageous decisions" that Presidents have to make, which Mr Card would no doubt extend to the kidnapping and torture of "enemy combatants". The uniform praise for Obama reaches as far as George W Bush. The basic message of the Bushites has been defensive of past actions, criminals like John Yoo have claimed the death of Osama bin Laden justifies torture in all circumstances. Now the extremist wing of the GOP no longer have to fall back on the feeble line that torture is justifiable because there has yet to be another terror attack on US soil.

This is reason for the whitewash for Bush, who effectively allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan in 2001. The administration also failed to leap on the opportunity to divide the Jihadist movement by extraditing Osama bin Laden rather than executing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – which have increased the threat of terrorism significantly. Instead there is talk of "courage" and "justice", as if these values are best expressed in war and assassination. Revenge would be the best word for it! If Obama had bombed the compound, the lives of Pakistani intelligence forces and soldiers could have been jeopardised. Not that the US has ever shown any concern for killing Pakistanis in bombing raids. Under Obama there have been six times as many drone strikes as there were under Bush, in fact Barack Obama picked up where Bush left off on his third day in office and the victims of these attacks are mostly civilian. The continued bombing of Pakistan was not enough for conservatives, he was still too soft for them. 

Assassination is no more an aberration in American history than the use of violence to achieve political goals in general. As Benjamin reminds us, every advance of civilisation is an advance in barbarism as well as emancipation. The recent action undertaken in Abbottabad by Obama is standard practice for the US government. Not always carried out by Americans personally. There is Ngo Dinh Diem, who ran South Vietnam, in a typically oppressive manner, and then in 1963 he was assassinated on orders from Washington. The attempt to kill Gaddafi in Libya, which has been overshadowed, is a similar demonstration of a willingness to kill in the American establishment. Assassination is not a method reserved to dispatch the monsters from this world. At the peak of COINTELPRO Fred Hampton was murdered, the same apparatus has tried to assassinate Fidel Castro 638 times and succeeded in killing Che Guevara in 1967. The willingness to kill is an important qualification for all American Presidential hopefuls, whether it is in war or in America's prisons.

The ultra-Rightist campaign of vilification, fear-mongering and baiting of all kinds, has been successful in fuelling the rise of the Tea Party and forcing compromise in the White House. The aim was to stamp out any currents in Obama policy which might have progressive outcomes – from health-care to the stimulus. The death of Osama bin Laden might signal the end of easy targets for the RightGlenn Beck, which might contribute to the inability of the Republican machine to attack Obama in damaging ways every week and put forward a more capable figure. It would seem that the Obama administration may have a lot more in common with Bill Clinton than Jimmy Carter.

It has been said that a second term might not be secure for Obama, after all George Bush won the Persian Gulf War and then was humiliated because of a U-turn on taxes. There are important differences between the election in 1992 and the one coming up in 2012. Though there is just as much, if not more, disinformation and fear-mongering going on today as there was in 1992. George HW Bush represented a third-term for Ronald Reagan, which is what John McCain would represent for George W Bush, whereas Barack Obama was elected as he represented a clean break with the Bush era. The Persian Gulf War may have been a victory for the US, Bush was criticised by neoconservatives for not taking out Saddam. The neocons have no grounds to attack Obama as Guantanamo Bay is still open, the war in Afghanistan is ongoing; there have been air-strikes against Gaddafi and Osama bin laden is dead. Obama is about to initiate a series of harsh spending cuts and the Bush tax-cuts have been renewed, it would seem there is little the Republicans have to offer for Corporate America.