Angry White People

[Joe Hillshoist]

Jeff just posted this on Facebook. What does it remind you of?

Soros. and his stage-managed fake "revolutions" -- all of them proclaiming "democracy" but leading straight to fascism; all of them proclaiming "freedom" but leading straight to enslavement; all of them proclaiming "peace" but leading straight to destruction and violence; all of them proclaiming "economic justice" but leading straight to their own people's dispossession by the same gang of transnational predators.

Over and over. Using the "youth" as a front. I guess young people lack the knowledge, the wisdom and the experience to see these professionally-engineered manipulations for what they are. So they keep falling for the same tricks, the same slogans, the same logos, in one country after another, never stopping to learn from those who came before.

Cos Egypt was better off with Mubarak?

[jakell]

Assuming that a thread is somehow connected with the OP, I'm going to coninue my (brief) assessment of it.

Up till now I've looked at the earlier part of the piece, where a simple and thuggish atmosphere is regarded adequately describing the British far right and its opponents. to me though the focus seems to change at this point:

....As a young Rastafarian I was taught not to hate, and it wasn’t in my nature to hate – after all, we were listening to music that was all about peace and love and bringing people together. We wanted to be living examples of how people could live together, but we knew that if we did nothing we would be killed on the streets. We knew that the National Front was a Nazi front, so our slogan became “Self-defence is no offence”, and we meant it. To defend ourselves in local communities up and down the country, black and Asian groups organised self-defence groups. These were people who would spring into action, defending (when possible) anyone who was attacked.

In London, we had a group called Red Action, a bunch of leftwingers who operated like an alternative police force. They would come to clubs and gatherings and make sure that the event was not invaded and that people got home safely. There were no mobile phones so they would communicate with each other using walkie-talkies, and they would react to our distress calls much quicker than Her Majesty’s police force.

Then there was the legendary Sari Squad. These were women, mainly of south Asian origin, who were experts in various martial arts and ready and willing to take on any racists who would try to spoil our fun. They fought with style, and would usually burst into song after seeing off any attackers.

The National Front did not hide their bigotry. They chanted racist songs, they praised fascist heroes and they did Nazi salutes; but then something strange happened. A schism appeared. They had put up candidates in elections before, but now a group within the “movement” thought that they should seek more respectability and concentrate their efforts on becoming a real political party by seeking power through the ballot box. We still had to fight them on the streets. But now some of them had begun wearing suits and appearing on television programmes....

Considering that Benjamin Zephaniah, widely known for being clear and eloquent, is writing this, the first bolded phrase seems a very odd non sequitur. It certainly doesn't relate to the earlier basic understandings, and actually adds nothing to any subsequent ones, it's a pointless equation using the word 'is/was'. The fact that a good writer such as this would come out with it points to the beginnings of some confusion relating to the subject.
Where the phrase does originate from is the involvement of the far Left in antifascism, and empty slogans were their thing. It's a given that slogans are about the only thing that can be usefully shouted in crowds, but to actually use them as a basis for deeper thought leads us nowhere,

The pretty simplistic approach of the Left to antifascism shows itself when he mentions Red Action who, about a decade later (as AFA), became completely at a loss when the BNP started reducing their street activities. AFA only really had one model of confrontation that they were too attached to and couldn't adapt, a model that continues to this day unfortuately. It seems to be this disconnect that Benjamin Zephaniah is tapping into; he's looking to the Reds for ideological direction and focus and they don't provide any (and maybe don't intend to if we use the 'Soros' ideas developed here).

I'm also puzzled by him saying that it is strange that they should start wearing suits, becoming respectable etc. It's not strange at all, especially if they are entering elections, and Tyndall (et al) were always pretty smart and well-spoken. I think what he is referring to is an inability to respond to other's adapations, and an overriding preference for simpler times... again an attitude that is prevalent amongst today's antifa types.

[jakell]

I'll be wrapping up Benjamin Zephaniah's piece up at a later date (the final part is harder to get to grips with).

Meanwhile, I was thinking that the recent discussion on soccer hooliganism would fit perfectly under this thread title, so here's a short to set the mood:



The opening section is really there for contrast, those who think it drags a bit can always dig the Santana until the action starts.
I came across this while searching for 'Barnsley Boot Boys', which I remember seeing scrawled on walls as I was growing up, this was probably my first inkling that all was not well in football and why I started to avoid it.

[jakell]

Proabably time now to lay Benjamin Zephaniah's article to rest and I'll conclude with a third installment. I may start having a look at him as a writer and poet, but that will be another time.

.... He mentions 'party political broadcasts' (rather quaint and clunky British things compared to slick American media enemas), by the NF, but I've never seen one, the BNP did a few, but we're talking of something much later (circa 2000). He may be thinking of interviews they did, and there we get his 'suit wearing' image again.

He mentions that they were a 'one issue' party, and so they seemed, but as with the later BNP, if anyone actually took a closer look, that one issue seems to overshadow everything else. Suspiciously when it doesn't, their opponents won't let them talk about anything else, I'm thinking back to the 'Question time' interview I covered, at the time I thought I was wandering a bit with that but I may give it another look.
With single issues it probably comes down to which one you choose, UKIP seemed to do OK with theirs with some help from Nigel Farage's excellent roasting techniques.

Back to the article... From the point where he says "And so Combat 18 and the British National Party (BNP) began to grow....' he's starting to get vague and the specifics are turning into generalisations. He's doing this definitively, though, ie defining the areas of uncertainty, much as I did in my own series here and where he leaves off, I tend to start up. Repeatedly he keeps referring to street confrontations and thereby harking back to simpler times. As before, I put the blame on Lefty antifascists for this as I have outlined previously.
He's right though, it does get more complicated from there on, the question is do you grasp this and develop new strategies or stick to a simple black/white fairy tale scenario.

He coins the term 'The Race Industry', and it seems he is referring to those who, whilst being potential victims of Racism (and we could talk about Sexism etc etc), have found a way of personally benefiting from the structures that have been built up to oppose it. I think this is what tapitsbo was referring to when talking of Cultural Marxists. Certainly there are opportunists waiting under every rock.

To wrap up, he seems to locate the only valuable contribution the Left has left us in producing practical antifascism concepts... that it's not about race (and gender etc), but about class, and if only the working classes could unite, despite their differences, and combat the elites. There we have the seeds of a thousand dreams and conspiracy theories (even David Icke), and maybe some practicalities will emerge too, it's just a matter of grabbing those as they flit past us.
I like to think my own rather poor writings concerning the later BNP have started where BZ leaves off (ok, there might be a bit of a gap in the 90's), if they don't, then hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps.


Now the OP's out of the way, the thread title can be attended to. I propose that a look at the NF's use of football hooliganism and a culture of casual violence (and the NF in general) fits the bill. these are the 'useful idiots' of the far right. This can then be compared with the Left's 'useful idiots', and from there a larger framework can be constructed.

[American Dream]

Deep Racism: The Forgotten History Of Human Zoos




Racism is deeply embedded in our culture. Slavery of African people, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and colonialist imperialism are seeds that intertwine to create racism that still has impacts today. One example of the sad human history of racism — of colonizers seeing themselves as superior to others — is the long history of human zoos that featured Africans and conquered indigenous peoples, putting them on display in much the same way as animals. People would be kidnapped and brought to be exhibited in human zoos. It was not uncommon for these people to die quickly, even within a year of their captivity. This history is long and deep and continued into the 1950s. Several articles below with lots of photos so we can see the reality of this terrible legacy. KZ

Through the 1950s, Africans and Native Americans Were Kept In Zoos As Exhibit

By M.B. David
Political Blindspot, February 13, 2013

Throughout the early 20th century, Germany held what was termed a, “Peoples Show,” or Völkerschau. Africans were brought in as carnival or zoo exhibits for passers-by to gawk at.

Throughout the late 19th century, and well into the 1950′s, Africans and in some cases Native Americans, were kept as exhibits in zoos. Far from a relic from an unenlightened past, remnants of such exhibits have continued in Europe as late as the 2000′s.



Throughout the late 19th century, and well into the 1950′s, Africans and in some cases Native Americans, were kept as exhibits in zoos. Far from a relic from an unenlightened past, remnants of such exhibits have continued in Europe as late as the 2000′s. Above photograph is from Brussels, Belgium in 1958.

Only decades before, in the late 1800′s, Europe had been filled with, “human zoos,” in cities like Paris, Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, and Warsaw. New York too saw these popular exhibits continue into the 20th century. There was an average of 200,000 to 300,000 visitors who attended each exhibition in each city.

Carl Hagenbeck of Germany ran exhibits of what he called, “purely natural,” populations, usually East Asian Islanders, but in 1876, he also sent a collaborator to the Sudan to bring back, “wild beasts and Nubians.” The traveling Nubian exhibit was a huge success in cities like Paris, London, and Berlin.

The World’s Fair, in 1889 was visited by 28 million people, who lined up to see 400 indigenous people as the major attraction. The 1900 World’s Fair followed suit, as did the Colonial Exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) which displayed naked or semi-naked humans in cages. Paris saw 34 million people attend their exhibition in six months alone.

Just four years shy of the 20th century, the Cincinnati Zoo kept one hundred Sioux Native Americans in a mock village at the zoo for three months.



Ota Benga at Bronx Zoo

In 1906, the amateur anthropologist Madison Grant, who was the head of the New York Zoological Society, put a Congolese pygmy Ota Benga, on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. The display was in the primate exhibit, and Ota was often made to carry around chimpanzees and other apes. Eugenicist and zoo director William Hornaday labeled Ota, “The Missing Link.” The public flocked to see the display.

Benga shot targets with a bow and arrow, wove twine, and wrestled with an orangutan. Although, according to the New York Times, “few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions,” controversy erupted as black clergymen in the city took great offense. “Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes,” said the Reverend James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. “We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.”

In 1906, the Bronx Zoo kept Ota Benga on a human exhibit. The sign outside of her fenced in area of the primate exhibit read, “Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches. Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Exhibited each afternoon during September.”

These sorts of, “human zoos,” continued even later. The Brussels 1958 World’s Fair kept a Congolese village on display. Even as late as April 1994, an Ivory Coast village was kept as part of an African safari in Port-Saint-Père (Planète Sauvage), near Nantes, France.

In Germany, as late as 2005, Augsburg’s zoo in Germany had similar exhibits. In August 2005, London Zoo also displayed humans wearing fig leaves, and in 2007, Adelaide Zoo housed people in a former ape enclosure by day. They were, of course, allowed to return home at night, unlike many of the earlier incarnations of these racist displays.

Many people console themselves with the belief that the racism of yesterday remains safely in the past. But the echoes of the, “human zoo,” into recent years show that this is far from the case. The racism of the past continues to bleed through into the present

https://www.popularresistance.org/deep- ... uman-zoos/

[NeonLX]

Human zoos. I had never heard of that until I read that article. How fucking despicable.

[American Dream]

Fucked up that there are people who minimize the violence of White Supremacy- or even support it.

[jakell]

Human zoos. I had never heard of that until I read that article. How fucking despicable.

There is a reason that AD's article dates from the fifties and earlier, and that is that the representations of the 'zoos' there are crude and recognisable.

Nowadays the techniques are less noticeable and we don't confine people in small physical spaces, we confine them to categories of symbolic victims, thereby still reducing their status and agency. The crudity only re-emerges when the context free visuals and dog whistles are produced on a regular basis.

Progress?

[NeonLX]

At least now we crackers can feel good about all of that "progress" that has occurred. It's important that we feel good and also ignore the pangs of conscience that occasionally pass our way (at least some of us crackers, anyway).