A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:21 pm

http://liveraf.wordpress.com/2014/01/26 ... onspiracy/

BNP UNCOVER (ANOTHER) JEWISH CONSPIRACY
Posted by Marmite on January 26, 2014

Image
Protocols: with depiction of “Evil Jew”

The world has always been full of conspiracy theory. It’s what used to get “witches” burnt at the stake. It’s also what can lead to genocide.

The Nazis were very taken with a book called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious Antisemetic work about a ‘worldwide Jewish conspiracy’ for world domination. It was published in Russia in the very early part of the last century.

Anyone with a clear mind who read the book was quite aware that it was a hoax, a cruel and crude forgery, depicting a secret meeting of Jews hatching a plot to carve up the world.

They (the Nazis), decided the contents of the book were justification enough to murder millions of Jewish people. It even found its way onto the German school curriculum as a “must read” book.

Image

After the Second World War, the defeated admirers of the Nazis decided that the Holocaust was itself to become another conspiracy. If you lied about facts enough, and waited long enough, soon memory would fade and the victim would then become the victimized again. The British National Party (BNP), has a long history of denying the Holocaust and claiming that it is in fact, a lie; that the murder of millions of Jews, Roma, Gays, Communists, Socialists, mentally ill and the disabled (among others), were never gassed by the Nazis.

Holocaust denial has been on and off the menu for the British National Party (BNP) in recent times. Its founder, John Tyndall, was a long time Jew-hater who sold “The Protocols..” via BNP publications. Tyndall himself admitted that the book was a fake and a forgery, but still, in his opinion, it did give people a fairly accurate idea of what the Jews were up to.

And Tyndall knew what the Jews were up to because he had read “The Protocols..” When he was mildly popular and important, current BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP, made sure that nobody would run around publicly talking about Jewish conspiracies or the Holocaust being a “hoax”. He did have to call the Holocaust a hoax however, to ensure he got the top job in the BNP. It comes with the territory.

As things have slid-and slid badly in the BNP, Griffin is once more letting Jew hating and conspiracy out of the bag again.

Back in 2012 we saw an updated version of Jewish conspiracy theory raise its head at a BNP meeting in Salford. Griffin no longer even cares who he is seen or associated with, hence the recent love-in with Hungarian nasty party Jobbik and the violent Nazi thugs of Greece’s Golden Dawn party.

As well as calling people (in this case Jewish people) liars, the trick has always been to also portray them with a horrible caricature, as has been done on the front cover of “The Protocols..”

Yesterday, the BNP produced a story about Griffin’s criminal mates, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party from Greece. “Golden Dawn Leader Nikos Michaloliakos arrested on the orders of international Zionists”says the BNP’s website. For Nazis, and Islamists, the word “Zionist” is often used when really they just mean Jews. It allows them to get away with conflating the two and confusing many people into thinking it is an acceptable way to attack Jewish people. In this particular story, surprise, surprise, there’s actually no proven Zionist or Jewish influence at all. Just a suggestion that in fact, Golden Dawn are a shoddy, violent organisation.

In the cartoon that appears with the article on the BNP website, check out the menacing shadow of the hooked nosed individual in the background. Sinister, eh? Jewish, probably…

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From Anti Fascists Online . 25.01.14. Report by John P. 25.01.14.


Liveraf Comment. Actually to us at Liveraf the character in the cartoon looks more like Max Schreck doing his famous vampire act in the German 1922 silent film classic, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. Which is probably understandable considering the number of undead which the BNP must have among its ranks. Come to think of it, that might be where they got all that stuff about Blood and Honour. Well, blood anyway. Are you warm enough inside that coffin Nick?
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:39 pm

Well, at least you're posting something up to date now, here's some important context for you though.

British Nationalism has actually had little truck with all the Jew stuff that is reminiscent of White nationalism, and it's nearly always concerned with present situations and present immigration, of which the Jews don't form a part. You will hardly hear any antisemitism from your average British Nationalist.
Our Jews do ok compared to other countries and are quite well integrated, in addition to this British Jews are nowhere near as defensive as in your country and there is no defamation league etc.

The article quite properly states that the BNP is failing (contrary to your other C&P's), and stuff like this from NG is a measure of desperation that will most likely fall on deaf ears.

I've told you. Either go to source, or ask someone closer to the source (eg me), but don't just post all this stuff with nothing to help focus on what is information and what is just data. If you fail to do this you are a poor anti-fascist
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 6:04 pm

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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Tue Feb 04, 2014 6:22 pm

So, why the fascination with the British scene AD? I would have thought that you would be familiar with your side of the Atlantic.

I'm assuming that you are American/Canadian.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:55 pm

Lots of useful antifascist material in this podcast:

http://www.crimethinc.com/podcast/11/transcript11.html



#11: Never Forgive
and Never Forget



Transcript:

FEATURE: FASCISM AND ANTI-FASCISM, PART I

Fascism… why even talk about it? At the end of World War II, with the Axis powers defeated, fascism was over. Mussolini was gone, Nazism was discredited, and the world moved on into the Cold War era. There might be a few isolated wingnuts today who are keeping the dream alive, but they’re so marginal that nobody cares what they think. Right?

Wrong. Fascism remains a serious threat across the world to this day. Not convinced? Let’s start with the recent murder of antifascist rapper Killah P, which we reported in the Hot Wire. Is this an isolated incident? One of Killah P’s friends in the Greek hip hop scene [mentions in an interview that the fascist Golden Dawn party responsible for his death has been implicated in many violent attacks on immigrants across Greece in recent years. But it took the murder of a Greek person for the government and mass media to suddenly decide to take them seriously. After years on the extreme margins of Greek politics, in the last couple of years the Golden Dawn’s popularity has spiked amidst the economic crisis and anti-austerity upheavals, commanding the support of as much as 15% of the population in polls.

But certainly Greece is a special case, right?

Wrong again. Fascist violence has been escalating around the world.

In June, 18 year old anarchist anti-fascist Clement Meric was murdered by neo-Nazi skinheads in Paris. His death is linked to the rise of the well-funded neo-fascist youth movement in France that has dovetailed with broad conservative mobilization against gay marriage and immigration. The French radical left erupted in protest after his death; yet as a group of Clement’s friends pointed out afterwards, in the days leading up to and after his death, numerous other homophobic and anti-immigrant attacks were taking place, while the French state continued to round up immigrants and requested pardon for a cop who committed two racist murders in 2007. The group wrote, “ClÈment was not just murdered by a gang of fascists…

ClÈment is, more broadly, the victim of the swift rise of the most pernicious ideas and their growing acceptability in France and elsewhere in Europe… The confidence shown by the extreme right is made possible by and feeds upon the racist, xenophobic, homophobic statements and actions coming from and authorized by the institutions of power.”

This summer in Germany, the trial began of a Neo-Nazi who participated in ten murders of immigrants over nearly a decade of racist terror, taking place with at least partial knowledge and complicity of state security forces.

In Serbia, the state again banned a gay pride march in Belgrade, claiming that it could not protect marchers from right-wing violence.

Over the past year, fascists in the Ukraine have made over twenty violent attacks on radical activists and journalists, including the near-fatal beating of an anarchist in Kiev in April by five Nazis. The attacks continue with virtual impunity from police.

And last year in Russia, an anarchist was brutally murdered by a gang of Nazis in Samara, while in 2009, another anti-fascist was shot to death in Moscow. And a Nazi sympathizer in the Spanish army murdered a 16 year old anti-fascist at a racist demonstration in Madrid in 2007. We could go on and on.

OK, so this is clearly horrible, but it’s just a European phenomenon, right? Thank goodness we don’t have anything like this here in the US. Sure, the Ku Klux Klan used to be terrible, but the Civil Rights Movement took care of that, right?

Wrong again. For one example, thousands of migrants from Mexico and Latin America have died along the border in recent years, killed by Border Patrol agents or racist vigilantes, or from exposure or thirst while attempting to avoid these murderous forces.

[Thousands of homophobic, racist, and anti-immigrant attacks](http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/h ... nts?page=1 S) have taken place over the past decades in the US, many by members of organized fascist groups. Some incidents of homophobic or racist violence, such as the 1998 killings of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., made national headlines. Yet extreme-right violence has largely flown under the radar; in that same year, Neo-Nazis murdered Spit and Dan, two members of Anti-Racist Action, in Nevada, while others beat Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Selaw to death in Oregon, yet these killings never catalyzed similar national outrage.

Occasionally when a white supremacist is arrested and found to have massive caches of weapons and ammunition, a brief shudder runs through the public consciousness, but then recedes. Yet fascist violence has flared up again and again over the past decades. Back through the 1970s and 80s, the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party were responsible for numerous instances of racist and homophobic violence, including the notorious 1979 Greensboro Massacre, where racists murdered five radicals at an anti-Klan demonstration with the complicity of local police and were acquitted by an all-white jury.

What’s happening? What is this horrific movement that won’t seem to die? Why is the state often complicit in certain kinds of right-wing violence while the media ignores it? How can we stop it? Over the next two episodes we’re going to look at fascism and resistance to it. We’ll begin in this episode by attempting to clarify what it is we’re talking about when we speak of fascism, and we’ll look at anti-fascist action in recent years across the US. In the next episode, we’ll look in more depth into the international history of anarchist struggles against fascism since its first emerged, and the lessons we can learn for our struggles today.

First of all, what is “fascism”? The word gets thrown around quite widely, especially among radicals. The term has been applied to everyone from bigots of all sorts to cops and state agents that exert oppressive power to, at times, almost anyone who takes militant action outside of democratic process. Let’s see if we can rein it in a little bit.

Who are we talking about when we speak of fascists? There are neo-Nazis, immersed in anti-Semitic conspiracies and idolizing Hitler’s Germany. There’s the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist and neo-Confederate groups who want a return to a racially divided society and believe in myths of white supremacy. There are anti-immigrant zealots obsessed with national identity, and those whose apocalyptic religious fervor takes a racial dimension. Among all of these there are infinite variations, but what common links do they share?

One of the challenges in coherently defining fascism is that there’s never been a single platform or consistent ideology. In certain contexts it’s a definitively right-wing phenomenon, as in Hungary or Serbia today, while in others it doesn’t map neatly onto a left/right spectrum, as in Mussolini’s Italy. In France and Serbia, fascists use the social upheavals around gay rights to gain leverage by emphasizing homophobia; on the other hand, extreme right parties that focus more on Islamophobia and anti-immigrant populism may have active gay supporters, even leaders, such as the assassinated Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. Many brands of fascism are anti-Semitic, while others focus on xenophobia or anti-black racism but have no particular qualm with Jews; for example, Mussolini only began repression against Italian Jews, many of whom had supported the early years of the fascist regime, when alliance with Hitler’s rabidly anti-Semitic Germany became centrally important.

In practice, fascism has been opportunistic, shifting according to different political circumstances. For instance, the focus on Islamophobia among European fascists today would have seemed irrelevant during the 1920s and 30s, but today offers a basis for right-wing populism among Europeans who feel threatened by the presence of large numbers of Islamic immigrants among them.

So one thing we can say about fascism is that it attempts to be a mass popular movement. It’s not an elite or highbrow movement, although it advocates for strong centralized power in the state. It plugs into broad currents of social discontent and offers an authoritarian vision of society as a solution.

Another core principle is nationalism: the mass politics of fascism rest on shared myths of racial or historical identity. Politics based on these identities operate through scapegoating, attributing social problems not to structural oppression or the actions of states but to the characteristics of people within social groups defined as outside the imagined community of the nation. The particular form of bigotry may vary, depending on what kinds of oppressive myths a particular nationalism dictates. Often times this hatred of the outsider forms the only basis of an increasingly flimsy sense of nationhood. The Coming Insurrection illustrates this in their discussion of the role of xenophobia in propping up French identity in an increasingly atomized society:

“We have arrived at a point of privation where the only way to feel French is to curse the immigrants and those who are more visibly foreign. In this country, the immigrants assume a curious position of sovereignty: if they werenít here, the French might stop existing.”


This turns on its head the typical fascist claim that immigrants threaten the racial existence of a nation, such as the frenzied fears of US racists about demographic shifts that may result in a white minority. In fact, without blacks to blame for crime, Mexicans to blame for job losses, Jews to blame for the banking crisis, gays to blame for undermining the traditional family, and so on and so on… we would actually have to look at capitalism, oppression, and state power to figure out why we have the problems we have today.

And that’s why another consistent feature of fascism is virulent opposition to communists, anarchists, and most other radicals. Many of the violent attacks by European fascists we mentioned earlier targeted political radicals. Fascist punk bands continue the Cold War with Rock Against Communism, linking opposition to radical politics with anti-Semitism and racism. Why such a focus on fighting radicals and leftists? Well, in large part because they’ve been the most prominent militant anti-fascists since the beginning. And allying with powerful conservative forces against radicals can bring leverage and legitimacy to the extreme right wing. But fundamentally the reason for this opposition is because radicals also mobilize around discontent in society, but rather than offering false racist explanations and oppressive solutions, look at the root causes and promote solidarity among all people towards a freer world. And this puts us in direct competition with fascists, who rely on duping people into channeling their legitimate rage into hatred for oppressed groups and support for hierarchical power.

If we close our eyes and imagine what fascism looks like today, we might envision imposing young white men with shaved heads and brass knuckles. This is certainly part of the face of contemporary fascism, but in the US today you’re more likely to see white supremacists in suits and ties or dresses than steel-toed boots and bomber jackets. A shift has taken place in fascist circles towards the appearance of respectability, in part due to the success of anti-fascists in physically confronting them at public rallies and in part due to the broader right-wing trend towards integration into universities, think tanks, and conferences. Beginning with holocaust denial among anti-Semitic historians, fascists have attempted to capitalize on liberal principles of free speech and the marketplace of ideas to demand that their oppressive views receive consideration. This manipulation of free speech rhetoric facilitated the emergence of student organizations such as Youth for Western Civilization.

This suit-and-tie approach is also used to infiltrate existing organizations on both the right and the left. The modern environmental movement in the US offers disturbing examples of this. Anti-immigrant and racist groups insinuated themselves into the national leadership of the Sierra Club across the 1990s and into the 2000s. They pushed ideas of eugenics, population control, and immigration restriction into the consciousness of green activists and attempted to sway the group’s board elections and public positions. In addition to the green movement, fascists of various stripes have attempted to make headway into the anti-globalization and anti-war movements, Palestinian solidarity, the Tea Party, the fringes of Occupy, libertarians… anywhere they sense discontent, they appear to offer false solutions to the crises we face.

So what have anti-fascists done to challenge these groups from leeching off of movements and spreading violent hate?

One of the major forms that anti-fascist organizing has taken in the US over the past decades has been Anti-Racist Action, or ARA, which has consistently confronted racist and neo-Nazi events and campaigns across North America. Founded in 1987 in Minneapolis/St. Paul among participants in the anti-racist skinhead punk subculture, ARA chapters soon spread around the US and Canada, affiliated in a loose network that held gatherings and published newsletters. ARA labeled their policy towards fascists as “expose, oppose, and confront.” Their actions ranged from publishing personal information of closet fascists to physically shutting down racist meetings and concerts to attending demonstrations in solidarity with a variety of other overlapping struggles. Influenced by European anti-fascist groups, the ARA network adopted the “no platform” approach of being open to a wide range of political perspectives under the antifascist banner. But from the beginning, the ARA network reflected a strong anarchist and feminist focus, and worked closely with the Love and Rage Anarchist Federation.

The four ARA points of unity read:

-We go where they go. Whenever fascists are organizing or active in public, we’re there. We don’t believe in ignoring them or staying away from them. Never let the Nazis have the street!

-We don’t rely on the cops or courts to do our work for us. This doesn’t mean we never go to court, but the cops uphold white supremacy and the status quo. They attack us and everyone who resists oppression. We must rely on ourselves to protect ourselves and stop the fascists.

-Non-sectarian defense of other anti-fascists. In ARA, we have a lot of different groups and individuals. We don’t agree about everything and we have a right to differ openly. But in this movement an attack on one is an attack on us all. We stand behind each other.

-We support abortion rights and reproductive freedom. ARA intends to do the hard work necessary to build a broad, strong movement against racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, and the most oppressed people. We want a classless, free society. We intend to win!"


Through the 1990s into the 2000s over 100 chapters affiliated with the ARA network existed around the country, plus many in Canada. At large mobilizations such as the “Battle of York” in 2002, they consistently shut down fascist events in militant confrontations, while many others were pre-empted by community organizing. They mobilized against Nazi efforts infiltrate youth subcultures and music scenes, challenged street gangs, outed prominent white supremacists, and in many cases faced consequences ranging from liberal condemnation to physical threats to legal charges for their resistance. Today there are at least a dozen chapters still active, though many more folks come out of the woodwork to attend demonstrations.

Another major dimension of antifascist activity involves research on fascist groups, which is crucial to exposing and confronting them wherever they appear. Numerous groups exist to track fascist organizing in the US and beyond. Some, such as the One People’s Project, are directly affiliated with anti-fascist social movements. However, more mainstream and widely funded research groups often target anarchists and radical activists as well as fascists under a generic and depoliticized category of “extremism.” As early as 2000, the Anti-Defamation League identified the circled A as a racist symbol on their “Hate on Display” website, despite acknowledging that most if not all of those who sported it adhered to vehemently anti-racist beliefs. Likewise, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report after the Seattle WTO protests implying that black bloc anarchists were in league with violent fascists. Today they toe the government line of identifying animal and earth liberation activists as moral equivalents to neo-Nazis who kill others in pursuit of a world based on racist oppression. Collaboration between law enforcement and supposedly anti-fascist researchers, including SPLC and the UK-based publication “Searchlight,”( http://www.libcom.org/history/1985–2001-anti-fascist-action-afa ) has done serious damage to trust and organizing relationships among anti-fascists.

And how does the state respond? As we pointed out in our discussion of the recent history of fascist violence, often it takes place with the knowledge and tacit permission of state forces. While the FBI and other law enforcement agents have often infiltrated fascist groups, they have consistently allowed these groups to carry out violent acts, even going so far as to incite and provide weapons to them. White supremacists populate the ranks of police, prison guards, the military, and the border patrol, giving them the opportunity to enforce violent oppression with the backing of the state.

At the same time, the political climate prioritizes prosecuting so-called violence that destabilizes property relations rather than attacks that increase dependence on the state for security. That’s why the Earth Liberation Front remains the top domestic terrorism threat in the US, despite having never killed nor injured a single person, while abortion clinic bombers, anti-immigrant vigilantes, and armed white separatists receive little attention.

When it does become politically necessary to take action against hate groups and their violent members, the state uses the framework of the “hate crime,” which uses the ideology of an attacker as a basis for lengthening their prison sentence. Apart from the fact that incarceration is not solution to fascism and hate crime laws only strengthen the prison industrial complex, these laws use a vague category of “bias,” rather than socially oppressive action, as the punishable offense. This has lead to prosecution for supposedly anti-white or anti-heterosexual “hate crimes,” and even an effort to characterize anti-capitalism as a form of bias in cases of property destruction!

This context obscures the reality of racism and fascism today. Dominant media narratives reflect the illusion of a post-racial society, which obviously obscures the persistence of a massively racist social order secured through prisons, police, the military, and global capitalism. The myth that the election of Obama proves that we’ve transcended white supremacy as a society allows anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and other fascist organizing trends to appear falsely race-neutral and gain legitimacy. At the same time, progressive anti-racist discourses focus on institutional oppression and privilege theory, reasonably enough, but claim that fascists are marginal and irrelevant. This is both offensive to their victims and dangerously out of touch with the history and current global reality of fascist organizing.

We will never forget Killah P, Clement, Spit and Dan, those who die in the deserts of Arizona whose names we’ll never know, and all the other victims of fascist violence. And the best way we can remember them is by staying committed to anti-fascist struggle everywhere.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 7:35 am

I think one of your errors AD is to view the 'far right' as quite monolithic around the world the world.

This may be the view of American white nationalists (American hegemony again), but in Europe at least, this is not case, it even differs significantly from country to country, which is why it important to gain local knowledge too. These differences are another area where the Left have missed the boat.

I'd be much more interested in hearing about the American end of things, and this could be a good focus for you, we could then compare notes in a constructive fashion and hopefully inerest the rest of the board too.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:37 am

http://antifascistnetwork.wordpress.com ... i-fascism/

Anti-Extremism or Anti-Fascism?

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by Liz Fekete

re-blogged from The Institute of Race Relations

Anti-extremism frameworks, popular in policy and academic circles, are masking the multi-dimensional and pan-European nature of contemporary fascism and the role of the state.

Not since the early 1990s, and the pogroms at Hoyerswerda and Rostock have Europe’s far-right movements posed such a tangible threat to the safety of racial and religious minorities. In truth, levels of violence and state responses are far more worrying today than in the 1990s when hostels housing asylum seekers and guest workers were firebombed. There are a number of reasons why the central issues associated with far-right violence and racism are not being fully and publicly discussed.


A fertile climate for fascism

First, fascism is a much more complicated and diverse phenomenon than it was in the 1990s. (Read an IRR report: Pedlars of Hate: the violent impact of the European far Right.) When violence is carried out by neo-Nazis, it is easier to understand and see as linked to fascism. But the far Right is a fluid, evolving scene which is constantly mutating. The Autonomous Nationalists, white resistance movements, the counter-jihadists, the ultra-patriot identity movements and defence leagues are amongst the more recent variations on a far-right theme. The nebulous homophobic network Printemps Français (French Spring) is yet another. Earlier this year, as the Gay Marriage Bill went through the French parliament, Christian fundamentalists, ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis all participated in its fanatical demonstrations. In the poisonous atmosphere generated by the verbal violence of French Spring, politicians who supported the Bill were issued with death threats.[1] Then, in June – a month after the Gay Marriage Bill became law – 18-year-old anti-fascist Clément Méric was left brain-dead after being attacked by skinheads in Paris.

Many of the homophobic movements (in western Europe at least) do not necessarily identify as fascist (though the picture is more clear cut in Russia and eastern Europe). Neither do the counter-jihadists. But just look at their actions: marching through Muslim neighbourhoods; spreading hate against Gays; and threatening politicians who support progressive legislation. All this might lead us to conclude that self-definition is not the only measure of fascism.

Second, the climate today – with the European-wide assault on multiculturalism by centre-right politicians and the embedded presence within the electoral process of extreme-Right and anti-immigrant movements – is much more fertile for fascism than at any time I can recall since I first started researching the far Right in different European contexts in 1992.

Many of the electoral extreme-right parties, like the Freedom Party in Austria, the Front National in France, Golden Dawn in Greece (and Cyprus), Jobbik in Hungary, National Union Attack (Ataka) in Bulgaria, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the Falange in Spain, the National Democratic Party of Germany have expressed admiration for fascism. Some of these parties (as well as key elements within the People of Freedom Alliance in Italy) are in fact the direct political descendants of pre-war fascist movements.[2] These did not wither on the vine after the Second World War, but regrouped, initially mobilising over the loss of former colonies (the French over the loss of Algeria, and the Belgian over the loss of the Congo) or in favour of nationalist and revanchist demands for territory lost at the end of the war, or, later, in support of apartheid South Africa. And yet it is they, alongside newer anti-immigration parties such as the Danish People’s Party, Sweden Democrats, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Progress Party (Norway), True Finns (Finland), Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (Netherlands) as well as the older and more-established Swiss People’s Party, which are benefiting from the electorate’s disillusionment with the centre-right and centre-left parties. We should be alarmed not just by the influence of extreme-right and Islamophobic parties in Europe’s legislatures, or the likelihood that they will make impressive gains in next year’s European parliament elections,[3] but also by the way in which fascist ideas are rapidly travelling from the far Right to the mainstream.

Thirdly, far-right violence is not contained on one region or country. It has emerged as a definite and specific threat in every country of Europe, with the culture of racism in one country crossing borders. Pavlo Lapshyn, the 25-year-old PhD student sentenced to life imprisonment for the Birmingham killing of 82-year-old grandfather Mohammed Saleem and for a bombing campaign against mosques across the West Midlands was described as a ‘lone wolf’ by the police, a view quickly echoed by journalists and anti-extremism experts. Lapshyn, who was from a Russian linguistic minority in the Ukraine, was known to visit Russian neo-Nazi websites, and had a video game on his computer called ‘ethnic cleansing’ at the time of the police raid on his Birmingham apartment. Yet, disturbingly, not one single article has appeared in the British press attempting to situate Lapshyn’s seemingly inexplicable actions within the ubiquitous culture of racism and fascism which goes unpunished both in the Ukraine (the land of his birth) and in Russia.[4] Nor did anyone ask, if he could do this here, perhaps he had already done it elsewhere.

The threat is constantly shifting from one country to the next, from Hungary, to Greece, then to the Czech Republic, where, over the course of this Summer, the Workers’ Party of Social Justice have mobilised every weekend in Roma neighbourhoods. Just as Winter brings a temporary halt to the Czech protests, the hysteria passes to Bulgaria where hatred towards Syrian refugees and attacks on refugee accommodation centres is being fuelled by government ministers and far-right parliamentarians from Ataka who described Syrians as ’scum’, mass killers’, ‘cannibals’, ‘savages’, ‘Islamic fundamentalists who have escaped justice’ and ‘terrible, despicable primates’.[5]Only last year, the Romani municipal council candidate Malin Iliev, died a month after sustaining critical injuries when his arm was ripped off in a bomb explosion outside the Euroma party headquarters in Sandanski. (Read an IRR briefing paper: From pillar to post: pan-European racism and the Roma.)

Generally speaking, since the war, fascism has been defined as ‘any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism’ (Collins). Anti-fascism, therefore, was tacitly accepted as an ethical movement to uphold democracy and liberalism and the rights of national and other minorities which might be under attack. One would think that, though the exact circumstances of fascism and anti-fascism might change over time, the basic tenets would not. But this is not the case.

The myopia of anti-extremism

In government, policy and academic circles it is now the fashion to reduce fascism to extremism, which exists at both ends of the political spectrum – on a line from far-left to far-right, as well as within minority cultures and religions (ie Islam) themselves. Anti-extremist experts in academic departments now dominate the debate, constantly warning of the symbiotic relationship between different forms of extremism, and the danger of a spiral of ‘cumulative extremism’[6] or ‘reciprocal radicalisation’.[7] (One group brings out the worst in another extremist group in an enduring cycle of violence and terrorism. And groups in terms of ideology and tactics simply mirror one another.) The dominance of these anti-extremist ideas is the fourth factor inhibiting the anti-fascist cause. Not only do the new ‘experts’ on extremism dominate in the media (crowding out grassroots voices and perspectives), but another problem also arises when some NGOs and civil society actors, partly driven by the need to secure government funds or gain influence in policy circles, accommodate themselves to anti-extremist frameworks in ways that undermine the broader vision inherent in anti-fascism. For anti-fascism has always been linked to anti-racism, and effective anti-racism/anti-fascism opens one up to the broader picture, one which may, as a matter of practical necessity, have to foreground the neo-Nazis at certain points, but does so in ways that illuminate (rather than obscure) the political culture and social reality that gives them succour.

Ironically, substituting a broad approach to combating fascism for a myopic study of different forms of extremism ends up hindering both the fight against fascism and strategies against extremism. Extremism is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Different forms of extremism have specific historical roots. They are not variations on the single them of a generic extremism. Each extremism is different, and has its own individual trajectory.[8]

When it comes to fascism, the myopic lens of the anti-extremist can’t help us to see the relationship between fascism on the fringes of society and racism in the mainstream – the relationship between fascist hatred of Roma and Muslims today for example, and mainstream laws that deny Muslims and Roma civil and human rights, and the popular media that constantly dehumanises, stigmatises and serves them up to the fascists as suitable enemies. Despite the mad ranting of the counter-jihadi fanatics about the Islamisation of Europe and the spread of Sharia law, the reality is that no Islamist party is represented in any government – in even a tiny corner of the EU. The same cannot be said of extreme-right, anti-immigration Islamophobic movements which are represented in government in every single country, and every single nook and cranny of Europe. They are constantly pushing at the frontiers of government policy. Against the background of the economic crisis, and the inability of parliamentary democracies to protect its citizenry from the forces of globalisation, elected politicians have moved firmly into the extreme-right territory of nativism. This is evidenced in laws against the veil and other signs of visible Islam, racial profiling of migrant populations, denial of welfare to immigrants, of citizenship (and the protections that go with it) to Muslims, dismantling of Roma encampments etc. To recapitulate: racist ideas are constantly travelling from the fringe to the mainstream and back again. (Maybe we should call this phenomenon ‘cumulative racism’!) It calls into question, of course, the idea behind cumulative extremism of a neutral government or state, holding the ring between warring extremist factions.

Variations on the cumulative extremism theme

The diagnosis that the real threat we face today is from cumulative extremism has different consequences in different European contexts. In the context of the UK, we are told that there is a symbiotic relationship between Islamist extremism and the English Defence League, whose ideologies mirror one another and who feed off each other in a spiral of violence. In fact this viewpoint is merely a reworking of tired frameworks used before in Northern Ireland. Remember all those film-makers, journalists and academics who sought to present the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland as part of an everlasting cycle of Catholic and Protestant religious fanaticism, thereby denying that British troops, British policies and entrenched discrimination against Catholics were the engine of the Conflict.

In the Czech Republic, politicians and mainstream extremist experts have suggested that violence of the far Right is a cumulative response to too much reliance on welfare, or too much delinquency amongst the Roma community.[9] And at the EU-level, the current fad is for research into populism per se, which tends to see Left and Right populism as part of the same stable, equally driven by anti-elite ‘resentment’ and thus equally dangerous to the EU project.[10] But in Germany, where both fascism and Communism were deemed un-constitutional in the post-war period (in the Federal Republic that is), and where the pre-unification mindset (against the Communist East) still prevails, with the Left seen as a greater threat to democracy than the Right, cumulative extremism plays out more in terms of equating Left and Right as equal threats to the democratic order. Not surprisingly, then, given the history of fascism in Germany and the centrality of Left forces in the anti-fascist resistance, it is here where anti-racist and victim support groups are refusing to accommodate to government programmes that equate Left, Right and ‘foreigner’ violence on the grounds that such programmes exclude radical critiques (and critics) from debate and delegitimise anything radical. (Read IRR News articles: ‘German counter-extremism programme – a “spying charter”’ and ‘Anti-fascism – extreme necessity’.)

Anti-extremism and the security state

Anti-fascism has always been associated in the post-war period with progressive causes – from the fight against dictatorship in Spain, Greece and Portugal, to the defence of ethnic minority communities under attack. Removing anti-fascism from a progressive register and placing it in the field of anti-extremism, means accepting reactionary security discourses which have emerged in the context of the war on terror. For anti-extremist experts, with a few honourable exceptions, are not speaking primarily to anti-fascist movements at the grassroots, those endeavouring to protect communities from fascist provocation, but to policy-makers, police and intelligence services. The idea is taking hold that fascism and hate – so widespread on the internet – can only be controlled by relying on the state as policeman and protector. This is very dangerous at a time when parliamentary democracy is weak, when the right to demonstrate is under attack (if not in terms of legislation, in practice, via police techniques such as kettling) and when the Snowden revelations have thrown light on the ‘increasing subservience of democracy to the unaccountability of security power’[11] (read an IRR News article: ‘Is anti-fascism being criminalised?’) and the ‘interconnections between global intelligence services in a system of global dominance’.[12] A warning from novelist John Lanchester (asked to read the Snowden documents by the Guardian), about the dangers of the ‘lone wolf’ theory, is pertinent here. He calls this ‘the ultimate version of the scare story that used to be called “reds under the bed”‘, adding ‘how can the state ever hope to protect us against people like that, if not by permanent, omnipresent, ever-increasing surveillance?’ [13]

Post-war history – from the 1980 Bologna railway massacre, the pogroms at Hoyerswerda and Rostock, to the 1995 presence of Greek fascists at the Srebrenica massacre, and Breivik’s 2011 massacre at Osloand Utoya island – teaches us that fascism can emerge on states’ blind side.[14] Whether this is because of a tendency to view fascism as excess of nationalism, or patriotism (a form of extremism states can sympathise with), or due to suspicions about the loyalties of ethnic minorities and anti-racists (witness the current revelations about the surveillance of the Lawrence family and anti-racist organisations in the 1990s[15]), or because far-right groups are not seen as a direct threat to state institutions (so the threat is downgraded) is a moot point.

Collusion with fascism and criminalisation of anti-fascism

But certainly it is true in a number of countries, most notably Germany, with the National Socialist Underground (NSU) revelations, that police and intelligence services (including military intelligence) are today, far from blind to fascism. (Read an IRR Briefing paper: State intelligence agencies and the far Right: A review of developments in Germany, Hungary and Austria.) In fact they are too close to it, running inappropriate paid informer schemes and other dubious methods of covert policing. In Germany, eight men of Turkish origin, one man of Greek origin and a female police officer, were shot in the head at close range between 2000 and 2007 by members of the NSU. Despite having examined 80,000 documents and examining 800 witnesses, a parliamentary inquiry failed to conclusively determine why thirty-four separate police and intelligences agencies were unable to apprehend the far-right killers over that seven-year period. The deliberations of the parliamentary commission were not helped by the fact that countless security services’ documents were shredded on the eve of the inquiry and that key witnesses appeared to suffer from memory loss. Many political commentators in Germany now ask whether the security services are a law unto themselves and a threat to a constitutional state.

In Hungary, six Roma, including a 5-year-old child, were assassinated by four neo-Nazis who carried out a total of twenty attacks in nine small towns and villages from July 2008 until 2011. A short parliamentary inquiry, despite limitations in its remit, managed to establish that the National Security Office repeatedly failed to prioritise the murder of the Roma and to pass relevant information to police investigators. Journalists managed to uncover other facts which had been withheld from the parliamentarians, namely that one of the neo-Nazis (a former professional soldier) had at some point been an informer for military intelligence. Other disturbing facts have emerged from Austria, where seven members of Objekt 21 were convicted in November 2013 for ‘re-engagement with National Socialism’ under a 1947 anti-Nazi Prohibition Act. While they were under surveillance from 2009, it is not clear why they were allowed to maintain a reign of terror in the region for years, with arson attacks, weapons and drugs dealing, as well as control of prostitution, being amongst their crimes. A former detective had previously alleged that of three agents working for state security on the question of fascism, two were openly sympathetic towards the far Right.

The most serious allegations come from Greece, where members of the Special Forces Reserve Union recently called for a coup and a government investigation has been launched into allegations that members of the armed forces were training Golden Dawn hit squads. The head of the police’s special forces, internal security, organised crimes, firearms and explosives and a rapid motorcycle division have been moved to other posts pending investigation of media reports that they were assisting Golden Dawn’s criminal activities. During a raid on the home of the chief of police in the fascists’ Athenian stronghold of St Panteleimon, the addresses of immigrants, bags of counterfeit goods and weapons were seized. Taking just these known cases from Germany, Hungary, Austria and Greece (given the nature of covert policing there are bound to be more) allows us to say with some authority that there is now considerable evidence of European state collusion – either direct or indirect – with the growth of the far Right. Collusion, Sir John Stevens defined, (in the context of Northern Ireland) in 1993 as ‘encompassing a range of actions including the wilful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence, through to the extreme of agents being involved in murder[16]

An anti-extremism discourse, with its narrow parameters and closeness to security discourses and interests, keeps the state and its security services outside the reckoning. This is not to suggest a conspiracy, but merely to point to a significant blind spot, which, in the political arena, lends legitimacy to police in their attempts to criminalise resistance to fascism (as just another form of extremism), and to intelligence services to spy on anti-racists and anti-fascists (as potential subversives and extremists). In fact, opposition to fascism – which should be the preserve of all democrats – has already been seriously weakened by this ‘anti-extremist’ discourse which is proving very useful to powerful state agencies and extreme- right politicians. For now, human rights defenders and anti-fascists face criminalisation as police target them as extremists leading to high-profile court cases, a number of which have collapsed.[17] At the same time Right politicians in European parliaments are attempting to get left parties banned. When the French government, in the wake of the murder of Clément Méric, announced in parliament that the Third Way, Revolutionary Nationalist Youth and Desire to Dream, would be banned, angry rightwing politicians heckled, calling for similar bans on left groups[18] — a policy now supported by the leader of the UMP Jean-Francois Copé.[19] Marine Le Pen, for her part, has decried policies based on ‘selective dissolution’.[20] In Greece, the New Democracy/PASOK coalition government routinely equates Golden Dawn to the Left (including the anti-fascist movement) with the law professor Costas Douzinas amongst those who have warned that the ignorant and morally perverse ‘theory of two extremes ‘ is the favoured narrative of the Greek elite.[21] The recent murders of two fascists outside the Golden Dawn headquarters in Athens does not bolster this argument, no matter how hard the press try to portray it as a revenge attack for the earlier murder of the anti-fascist musician Pavlos Fyssas.[22] Unnamed Greek security sources now claim that either the Sect of Revolutionaries, or a splinter group of Revolutionary Struggle, were behind the fatal machine gun attack. But no one has been arrested yet and neither of these groups were connected to Pavlos Fyssas or anti-fascism. In fact, neither of these organisations emerged in the context of the current fight against Golden Dawn but out of anti-capitalist anarchist movements on the one hand and the 2008 student protests in Greece that followed the police killing of the student Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Their previous targets were banks, prison and police officers, and court houses – ie institutions associated with the state and capitalism.

Building an anti-fascist culture

Fascism starts by capturing public spaces, be it a street, a village, or a town and turning them into natives only, foreigner no-go zones. In the modern world, ‘the spaces’ that fascists also seek to capture include television and social media, using free speech as the Trojan horse through which democratic societies can be infiltrated and undermined. In the long term we probably have most to fear from the far Right at a local rather than a national level (where extreme-right and anti-immigration movements hoover up the racist vote). For it is at the local level, that the cultural revolution of the Right is advancing like an invasion of weeds in the European garden. It is here also that anti-fascism is at its most vibrant and relevant. The danger is that the anti-extremism industry will provide the intellectual cover for the criminalisation of resistance to fascism.

We desperately need strong local movements against fascism. This doesn’t just involve mobilising to protect our streets from neo-Nazis, but building a resilient focused and grassroots anti-fascist culture. For, as Greek anti-fascists on the frontline of resistance today have argued, ‘anti-fascism is a political struggle about the kind of life we want to live … it is a battle for democracy, solidarity and social justice’.[23] Such movements need also to embrace town halls. It is only right that our elected tribunes should stand shoulder to shoulder with us in demanding ‘they shall not pass’. Catchpenny theories and fashionable fads are one thing – but sometimes the old slogans say it so much better.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 12:17 pm

Well, here's another article, even missing a one line comment this time.

Do you have any response to when I addressed you in the post before that?

jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:35 am wrote:I think one of your errors AD is to view the 'far right' as quite monolithic around the world the world.

This may be the view of American white nationalists (American hegemony again), but in Europe at least, this is not case, it even differs significantly from country to country, which is why it important to gain local knowledge too. These differences are another area where the Left have missed the boat.

I'd be much more interested in hearing about the American end of things, and this could be a good focus for you, we could then compare notes in a constructive fashion and hopefully interest the rest of the board too.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Wed Feb 05, 2014 12:29 pm

http://www.crimethinc.com/podcast/12/

#12: Remembering
Means Fighting



“Stopping fascists from speaking makes you just as bad as them.”

Failing
to stop fascists from speaking - that is, giving them the opportunity to organize to impose their agenda on the rest of us - makes you as bad as them. If you care about freedom, don’t stand idly by while people mobilize to take it away.

“Shouldn’t we just ignore them? They want attention, and if we give it to them we’re letting them win.”

Actually, fascists usually don’t want to draw attention to their organizing; they do most of it in secret, fearing (correctly) that an outraged public will shut them down. They only organize public events to show potential recruits that they have power, and to try to legitimize their views as part of the political spectrum. By publicly disrupting and humiliating fascists, we make it clear to them and their potential supporters that they are not in control and can’t wield the power that they glorify. Ignoring fascists only allows them to organize unhindered - a dangerous mistake. Better we shut them down once and for all.

“The best way to defeat fascism is to let them express their views so that everyone can see how ignorant they are. We can refute them more effectively with ideas than force.”

People don’t become fascists simply because they’re persuaded by their ideas. Fascism claims to offer power to those who feel threatened by shifting social and economic realities. The fact that their analysis of these shifts are ignorant misses the point; do we need to cite examples of how dumb ideas have proved massively popular throughout history? From Italy to Germany to streets around the world today, fascists haven’t gained strength through rational argument, but through organizing to wield power at the expense of others. To counter this, we can’t just argue against them; we have to prevent them from organizing by any means necessary. We can debate their ideas all day long, but if we don’t prevent them from building the capacity to make them reality, it won’t matter. Only popular self-defense, not simply debate, has succeeded in stopping fascism.

“Neo-Nazis are irrelevant; institutionalized racism poses the real threat today, not the extremists at the fringe.”

Our society’s institutions are indeed deeply racist, and our organizing must challenge and dismantle them. But the visibility of neo-Nazis and fringe fascists enables other right-wing groups to frame themselves as moderates, legitimizing their racist and xenophobic positions and the systems of power and privilege they defend. Taking a stand against fascists is an essential step toward discrediting the structures and values at the root of institutionalized racism. Plus, as we heard last episode, suit-and-tie fascists are infiltrating positions of influence in academia and politics, giving them dangerous power to advance racist policies on an institutional level.

And fascists around the world are still terrorizing and murdering people. It’s both naive and disrespectful to their victims to minimize the reality of fascist violence. Fascists act directly to carry out their agenda rather than limiting themselves to representative democracy, so even small numbers can be disproportionately dangerous, making it crucial to deal with them swiftly.

“Free speech means protecting everyone’s right to speak, including people you don’t agree with. How would you like it if you had an unpopular opinion and other people were trying to silence you?”

We oppose fascists because of what they do, not what they say. We’re not opposed to free speech; we’re opposed to enacting an agenda of hate and terror. We have no power to censor them; they continue to publish hate literature in print and on the internet. Their public events don’t exist to express views, but to build the power they need to enforce their hatred.

The government and police have never protected everyone’s free speech equally, and never will; they systematically repress views and actions that challenge existing power inequalities. They spend hundreds of thousands of public dollars on riot police and helicopters to defend a KKK rally, but for a radical demonstration the same police will be there to stop it, not to protect it; just look at the evictions of the Occupy encampments, attacks on Earth First! actions, or countless other examples. Of course anarchists don’t like being silenced by the state, but we don’t want the state to define and manage our freedom, either. The First Amendment covers what laws Congress shall or shall not enact; it’s up to us to determine what we need to do to defend ourselves. Unlike the ACLU, whose supposed defense of “freedom” leads them to support the KKK and neo-Nazis, we support self-defense and self-determination above all. What’s the purpose of free speech, if not to foster a world free from oppression? Fascists oppose this vision; thus we oppose fascism by any means necessary.

“Trying to suppress their voices will backfire by generating interest in them.”

Resistance to fascism doesn’t increase interest in fascist views. If anything, liberals mobilizing to defend fascists on free speech grounds increases interest in their views by conferring legitimacy on them. This plays directly into their organizing goals, allowing them to drive a wedge between their opponents using free speech as a smokescreen. By tolerating racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, so-called free speech advocates are complicit in the acts of terror that fascist organizing makes possible.

“They have rights like everybody else.”

No one has the right to threaten our community with violence. Likewise, we reject the “right” of the government and police - who have more in common with fascists than they do with us - to decide for us when fascists have crossed the line from merely expressing themselves into posing an immediate threat. We will not abdicate our freedom to judge when and how to defend ourselves.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 1:03 pm

Any chance of you engaging?

You have spoken quite a bit about anti-fascism on RI lately, but as far as I can see all you do is post second hand stuff. I'm sure I don't have to point out that absolutely anyone could do that, no matter what their political persuasion, or even if they were just using the appearance of this to fulfil some sort of self image that had little to do with the actual politics.

I would say there is a lot more to anti-fascism than simply reproducing stuff.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Wed Feb 05, 2014 1:11 pm

jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 12:03 pm wrote:Any chance of you engaging?


Not with you. Leave me alone.


American Dream » Wed Feb 05, 2014 7:39 am wrote:I don't see any compelling reason to enable your efforts, as I believe you came here to subvert that which most all of us support:
This is an anti-fascist board. Propagation of fascist, neo-Nazi and "white pride" causes, including sympathetically linking to sites which advocate such, will not be permitted.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 1:33 pm

American Dream » Wed Feb 05, 2014 5:11 pm wrote:
jakell » Wed Feb 05, 2014 12:03 pm wrote:Any chance of you engaging?

You have spoken quite a bit about anti-fascism on RI lately, but as far as I can see all you do is post second hand stuff. I'm sure I don't have to point out that absolutely anyone could do that, no matter what their political persuasion, or even if they were just using the appearance of this to fulfil some sort of self image that had little to do with the actual politics.

I would say there is a lot more to anti-fascism than simply reproducing stuff.

Not with you. Leave me alone.


American Dream » Wed Feb 05, 2014 7:39 am wrote:I don't see any compelling reason to enable your efforts, as I believe you came here to subvert that which most all of us support:

This is an anti-fascist board. Propagation of fascist, neo-Nazi and "white pride" causes, including sympathetically linking to sites which advocate such, will not be permitted.


Hmm. This is a very interesting and fairly sudden reversal. It seems only a matter of days ago that you were gunning for me and coming out with all sorts of unsupported slander, and now you are content to settle for a quiet life.

Well, I'm sorry, but this is supposed to be a forum, and engagement is usually the order of the day. If we had divergent interests this might work, but as it happens, I do have a vested interest in this area (mainly 4 years worth, plus a good amount of lesser engagement before that), and you are standing right in the middle of the subject.

As you quoted that rule again, may I suggest that we start with a look at what constitutes a good approach to active anti-fascism, especially in this environment. We could focus on my suggestion of 'non-fascism' and then move onto those three areas I outlined.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Feb 06, 2014 2:03 pm

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewis ... gue-340454

Hungarian Jews set to ‘physically hinder’ Neo-Nazi rally in former synagogue
By SAM SOKOL
02/05/2014 18:00

Ultra-nationalist Jobbik party set to hold rally; two more Jewish groups declare boycott of Government’s Holocaust commemorations.

The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) may send people to physically prevent members of the ultra-nationalist Jobbik party from holding a rally at a former synagogue next Friday, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Jobbik, which the World Jewish Congress considers a neo-Nazi party, is Hungary’s third-largest party with 43 out of 386 seats in the legislature, and is currently gearing up to further improve its standing in April’s parliamentary elections.

As part of its political campaign, Jobbik is planning on staging a rally at the former synagogue in the city of Esztergom, whose Jewish community was wiped out during the Holocaust.

Party leader Márton Gyöngyösi has previously called for the government to draw up of a list of “people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian Parliament and the Hungarian government, who pose a national security risk to Hungary.”

While the local Jewish community has called upon Esztergom Mayor Éva Tétényi to prohibit the gathering, it is also preparing itself for a physical confrontation, Mazsihisz president András Heisler told the Post.

“In case this [gathering] will not be prohibited, the Mazsihisz and Jewish civil organizations will protest and physically hinder the Jobbik rally on the spot,” Heisler wrote in an email.

Mazsihisz has previously indicated a willingness to use physical force, if necessary, to combat rising anti-Semitism.

During an interview last June, Mazsihisz executive director Gusztáv Zoltai told the Post that “until this moment, we have [had] verbal attacks so we strike back with words, but we have more than words.

“We are strong, and if we have to, we will strike back,” he said at the time.

While neither the government nor the ruling Fidesz party have made any statements, the Esztergom branch of the Socialist Party has publicly voiced its opposition to the planned rally.

Jobbik’s use of a former synagogue is an “unworthy, ugly and cynical desecration of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the sentiments of the survivors,” local party chairman Tamás Gál wrote the mayor in a letter reprinted on the Budapest Beacon website.

“The institution is owned by the local government.

For this reason it is your responsibility to prevent this event from being held at this location,” he asserted.

The controversy over Jobbik’s use of the Esztergom synagogue comes as more Jewish organizations are declaring their intention to boycott the government’s commemoration of 2014 as a Holocaust memorial year.

Upset over what it claimed were instances of Holocaust revisionism by the government, the Mazsihisz stated two weeks ago that it was “contemplating refraining from participation in the events of the Holocaust Year.”

Since that time, both the Jewish Cultural and Tourism Center and the Frankel Synagogue Foundation in Budapest have announced that they would reject state funding for their activities.

In explanation of its decision, the Frankel Synagogue Foundation stated that its aim is to “draw attention to the government’s presentation of the [Nazi collaborator] Horthy era in a positive light, the appearance of [neo-fascist organization] Arrow Cross writers on the national curriculum and its qualification of mass murders as an ‘alien citizens’ procedure’ as well as several other manifestations that are incompatible with granting support for memorial events that pay tribute to the victims of mass murders or an honorable way of thinking.”

While local Jewish organizations may be boycotting the government, not everyone agrees with its stance.

The Rabbinical Council of Europe, one of two competing continental rabbinical associations, recently announced that in March it would be holding a conference in Budapest “in cooperation with the Hungarian government.”

“In the past few years, the voices of anti-Semitic ideology have become louder in the country. The conference is aimed at showing support to the Jewish community, and to the majority of Hungarians who experience with fear the negative developments,” RCE director- general Rabbi Menachem Margolin said in a statement.
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Thu Feb 06, 2014 3:12 pm

Thanks for posting the above, Luther. I'm always glad for more anti-Fascist participation on this thread.

The Jobbik story is ongoing- and this is not a marginal force in Hungary. Here's an interesting story from last year:


Iranian City, Elements of Hungary’s neo-Fascist Jobbik Party Allying
POSTED BY DAVE EMORY ⋅ MARCH 16, 2013

Image
Hun­gar­ian Job­bik Party
Mem­bers on Parade


COMMENT: In an alliance of “Yock­eyite” or Third Posi­tion char­ac­ter, a city con­trolled by the Hun­gar­ian Job­bik Party and an Iran­ian city have announced a coop­er­a­tive agreement.

Reca­pit­u­lat­ing Hungary’s fas­cist past to a con­sid­er­able extent, the Job­bik Party on its sur­face would seem to have lit­tle in com­mon with Iran, other than anti-Semitism.

In announc­ing the agree­ment, Job­bik leader Gabor Vona noted the West’s dis­agree­ments with Iran and indi­cated that he hoped the Jobbik/Iranian alliance would sig­nal a begin­ning of an end to that antipathy.

Image
Hezbol­lah Troops Salute Iran’s Achmadine­jad
upon his Arrival in Lebanon


The union does call to mind a num­ber of vari­ants of fas­cism unit­ing West­ern and Third World ele­ments in an anti-American, anti-Semitic alliance. The doc­trine espoused by Fran­cis Parker Yockey, the “Third Posi­tion” (described in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M19 and M21) and numer­ous “Red-Brown” polit­i­cal alliances encom­pass this dynamic.

Third Posi­tion­ists, in par­tic­u­lar, glo­rify Iran and the Shi­ite theoc­racy has, in turn, formed polit­i­cal alliances with Euro­pean fas­cists of var­i­ous stripes. Achmed Huber of the al-Taqwa bank embod­ies this type of polit­i­cal philosophy.

“Iran and Hun­gar­ian Party Form Anti-Semitic Alliance” by Cnaan Lip­schiz [JTA]; Times of Israel; 3/11/2013.

EXCERPT:
The pot­holed streets lead­ing to Tiszavasvari’s rusty train sta­tion offer no clue that this sleepy town of 12,000 in east­ern Hun­gary is con­sid­ered the “cap­i­tal of Job­bik,” the country’s ultra­na­tion­al­ist, anti-Jewish party whose name means “better.”

The first sign appears near the office of the mayor, Erik Fulop, the first of five Job­bik politi­cians elected to run a Hun­gar­ian munic­i­pal­ity. Shortly after tak­ing office in 2010, Fulop set up a twin­ning arrange­ment between Tiszavas­vari and the Iran­ian city of Ard­abil, and a sign in Hun­gar­ian and Farsi near the office cel­e­brates those ties.

Observers say the announce­ment of the twin­ning arrange­ment was the first inter­na­tional event held in Hun­gary under Jobbik’s aus­pices and a mark of a grow­ing part­ner­ship aimed at break­ing through the iso­la­tion that both the party and the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment are labor­ing under — Iran for its sus­pected nuclear weapons pro­gram and sup­port for ter­ror­ism, Job­bik for its hyper-nationalism and anti-Semitism. . . .


http://spitfirelist.com/news/iranian-ci ... y-allying/
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Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby jakell » Thu Feb 06, 2014 3:19 pm

American Dream » Thu Feb 06, 2014 7:12 pm wrote:Thanks for posting the above, Luther. I'm always glad for more anti-Fascist participation on this thread.

The Jobbik story is ongoing- and this is not a marginal force in Hungary. Here's an interesting story from last year

................................


Talking of this, when are we going to get back to that discussion of what exactly constitutes anti-fascist activity in this environment?

I sort of touched on this today in 82_28's 'interesting observation' thread:

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37712

Do you have any response to what what said there?
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
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