This site is a resource for all those who need or want to know what the Stop the War Coalition really says and means.
Got a 404 when you visited the Stop the War Coalition site? That’s because Stop the War has launched a war against its own website. Stop the War Coalition is desperately filleting their web site of incriminating, nauseating and racist material.
If you are looking for an article from the Stop the War website that blames everything on the West, or one written by or referencing an active antisemite, it may now have been deleted.
If so, this site could be for you.
It is a collection of links, references and short critiques that relate to the British Stop the War Coalition. We’ll also be highlighting articles not yet culled that lurk in the depths of the Stop the War Site.
Stop the War’s co-founder and their past chair, Jeremy Corbyn, is now leader of the Labour Party. Pure speculation, but the recent Night of the Long Knives at the Stop the War website may possibly be related to the sudden and uncomfortable scrutiny that STW now find themselves under and the rash of revisions to their published content.
But the truth must out, so this is a record of the Stop the War Coalition’s stupidity, nihilism and pandering to racism.
This webpage is now one of the many 404 pages on STW’s website.
The poem was inspired by the supposed killing of Ahmad Saleh Manasra, a 13 year old Palestinian boy who attempted to knife to death a 13 year old Israeli boy during the spree of attacks on Israeli civilians and the inevitable response and Palestinian deaths, following tensions around the Temple Mount in October 2015.
Whilst Heathcote Williams and other UK supporters of the Palestinian “uprising” recounted the death of Ahmad, he was in fact photographed alive and receiving successful treatment in an Israeli hospital.
What is striking about the poem is not so much its simplistic, gut-wrenching interpretation of a complex, impossible situation or even its unsubtle parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany; the brown uniforms of the Zionist/ ‘fascist’ Jabotinsky – referencing Mussolini or the Sturm Abteilung who people ‘Zionism’s very own holocaust’ – but rather it is the over-riding invocation of the blood-libel.
It is the blood-libel – the time-old accusation that Jews kidnap and murder children to use their blood as part of their religious rituals – that lies right at the heart of this insult. The Jews surround the child, torture him, taunt him (detail; ‘in Hebrew” – that ancient language giving voice to the ancient ritual which, in the eyes of the poet, never really went away), and then the final triumph – Zionism:
“a murderous contraption
Still controlled by Moloch, eater of children…”
Moloch – the ancient Canaanite god who demanded the ultimate sacrifice.
Heathcote Williams is clear here; Jews are a nation of child killers.
The author was journalist/polemicist Alison Weir, who founded the “If Americans Knew” organisation, which argues that American support for Israel is as a result of domination of US media and politics by Jewish interests. A number of Jewish groups now regard this organisation as an openly antisemitic grouping.
Alison Weir regularly appears on the Free American radio show, which is hosted by white supremacist Clay Douglas. She has alleged that Israel regularly harvests organs from murdered Palestinians, both in Israeli prisons and during harvesting raids into Gaza, a crude version of the blood libel antisemitic trope that Jews use the blood of murdered gentiles for their sustenance.
In her piece on Munich, Weir states that whilst some hostages were “accidentally killed” by the Palestinian Black September terrorists, German Special Forces killed the rest. She claims that the terrorists had no plans to harm the Israeli athletes and that attempted rescue by German forces was “botched & unnecessary” and used as a pre-planned pretext for Israeli raids against Syria and Lebanon.
So – Stop the War published a conspiracy theory about the massacre of Jewish Israeli Olympic athletes, written by a discredited fringe activist known for her use of antisemitic tropes.
The title is using an antisemitic trope – playing into the ages-old idea, loved by antisemites, that Israel controls the United States – its banks, its media, or as here – its foreign policy.
The article makes the claim, too, but the hatred is between the lines. On the surface it’s simply an article attacking a world leader, in this case Benjamin Netanyahu –
‘one of the most repellent and dangerous politicians in the world today’, a man ‘who trades on fear and war, a cynical and amoral manipulator without a trace of honesty in his entire body, who lies as easily as he breathes’.
I think this is all fine: it’s not a compelling argument in itself, of course, simply levelling a series of insults at a politician, and personally I can think of many who are more repellent and dangerous. But it’s a valid enough opinion: Israeli leaders can of course be strongly criticized in such ways without any malice towards Jews being meant.
Carr also accuses Netanyahu – ‘the Great Liar’, as he calls him – of cynically invoking the Holocaust, the Munich massacre and more for political gain in his address to Congress.
The article then veers into much more unpleasant territory as he discusses the reaction of American politicians to Netanyahu’s speech and talks about the:
‘Zionist propaganda that it has been injecting into its veins for years’.
The image conjures up not simply an idea of Israel being a carrier of poison into America, but that it is doing so without Congressmen knowing. It evokes Manchurian Candidate-style brainwashing – and of course the antisemitic trope (beloved of the Nazis) that Jews secretly controlled the unwitting dupes of the world to gain power.
Carr continues the theme by presenting members of the US Congress listening to Netanyahu in terms familiar from 1950s science fiction. They are
‘glassy-eyed zombie-politicians…..sucking up Netanyahu’s fearmongering, warmongering poison like alien seed pods in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’.
Carr adds that they have also ‘had their minds well and truly snatched’.
This idea of Jews having such influence over others that they practice a kind of mind control has long been a favourite theme of antisemites, and is still used today. The theme runs through this article by Carr.
No cartoons of Jews with hooked noses or references to a world Jewish conspiracy, but here where antisemitism rests just below the surface, it is truly at its most insidious.
On October 25th 2015 Stop the War published a poem by Heathcote Williams entitled “Evil on the Streets”.
This webpage is now one of the many 404 pages on STW’s website but you can find it in the title link above.
The poem was inspired by the supposed killing of Ahmad Saleh Manasra, a 13 year old Palestinian boy who attempted to knife to death a 13 year old Israeli boy during the spree of attacks on Israeli civilians and the inevitable response and Palestinian deaths, following tensions around the Temple Mount in October 2015. Whilst Heathcote Williams and other UK supporters of the Palestinian “uprising” recounted the death of Ahmad, he was in fact photographed alive and receiving successful treatment in an Israeli hospital.
What is striking about the poem is not so much its simplistic, gut-wrenching interpretation of a complex, impossible situation or even its unsubtle parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany; the brown uniforms of the Zionist/ ‘fascist’ Jabotinsky – referencing Mussolini or the Sturm Abteilung who people ‘Zionism’s very own holocaust’ – but rather it is the over-riding invocation of the blood-libel.
It is the blood-libel – the time-old accusation that Jews kidnap and murder children to use their blood as part of their religious rituals – that lies right at the heart of this insult. The Jews surround the child, torture him, taunt him (detail; ‘in Hebrew” – that ancient language giving voice to the ancient ritual which, in the eyes of the poet, never really went away), and then the final triumph – Zionism:
“a murderous contraption
Still controlled by Moloch, eater of children…”
Moloch – the ancient Canaanite god who demanded the ultimate sacrifice.
Heathcote Williams is clear here; Jews are a nation of child killers.
On 5th February 2014 Stop the War coalition published an article on the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The post has now been deleted from the STW site, but you can find it at the title link above.
The author was journalist/polemicist Alison Weir, who founded the “If Americans Knew” organisation, which argues that American support for Israel is as a result of domination of US media and politics by Jewish interests. A number of Jewish groups now regard this organisation as an openly anti-Semitic grouping.
Alison Weir regularly appears on the Free American radio show, which is hosted by white supremacist Clay Douglas. She has alleged that Israel regularly harvests organs from murdered Palestinians, both in Israeli prisons and during harvesting raids into Gaza, a crude version of the blood libel anti-Semitic trope that Jews use the blood of murdered gentiles for their sustenance.
In her piece on Munich, Weir states that whilst some hostages were “accidentally killed” by the Palestinian Black September terrorists, German Special Forces killed the rest. She claims that the terrorists had no plans to harm the Israeli athletes and that attempted rescue by German forces was “botched & unnecessary” and used as a pre-planned pretext for Israeli raids against Syria and Lebanon.
So – Stop the War published a conspiracy theory about the massacre of Jewish Israeli Olympic athletes, written by a discredited fringe activist known for her use of anti-Semitic tropes.
There are unconfirmed reports in the media that Ken Livingstone will be appointed to the House of Lords by Corbyn.
This might not be true but if it is its disgusting. Labour should not be appointing peers to a unelected chamber of Cronies and Feudal Relics that should be abolished.
Also Livingstone is a loathsome exponent of apparatus leftism, political bullying and opportunist accommodation to reactionary forces.
1984: London’s new Mayor Ken Livingstone bows to Queen
He wasn’t the 20th century’s greatest singer: that accolade must go to either Enrico Caruso or Bing Crosby (or, maybe, Louis Armstrong).
But he was the first real pop star.
His unpleasant relationships with gangsters cannot, and should not, be ignored: but that should not prevent us from admiring his artistry in interpreting a song.
Despite stints with Harry James (his first band leader) and Tommy Dorsey (of whom Sinatra said something like, “He tought me everything about how to phrase a song”), Frank was never, really, a jazz singer. But this session with vibist Red Norvo, is probably the closest that Sinatra came to singing jazz:
Run the film to see Corbyn, Murray and the celeb wadicals at the StWC beanfeast last night
Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at lest night’s Stop The War Coalition (StWC) dinner, and his continuing refusal to sever links with – or even criticise – the group, causes some of us who generally wish him well, a real problem.
There can be no doubt, and there hasn’t been for several years, that the StWC is not primarily anti-war per se, but opposed to Western wars, whilst remaining at best indifferent to wars and interventions by non-Western forces.
StWC’s Lindsey German complains in today’s Morning Star, that “there are accusations that we are pro-Assad, pro-Isis, don’t support the Syrians. Every war we have opposed has seen these accusations raised. We were accused of supporting the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi in Libya and now Assad. It has never been true, and it is the weakest of arguments for those supporting war that their opponents of necessity support the other side.”
Now, of course, German is right that opposing a war being waged by your own ruling class does not of necessity involve supporting the other side: but German is lying when she denies that StWC does just that. She’s lying because she, like most of the rest of the StWC leadership subscribe to a crude version of Lenin’s strategy of revolutionary defeatism, which in their hands amounts to little more than “the main enemy is (always) at home”, or indeed, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
German and her partner John Rees know this (and lie about it) because they were in the leadership of the SWP in 2001 and were responsible for Socialist Worker‘s gloating response, to 9/11 and for the SWP’s “line” of refusing to condemn the atrocities. It is a methodology that has informed the approach of the StWC ever since, even if the likes of German, Rees and Murray lie about it and/or resort to evasion. Surprise, surprise: a lot of the more ‘interesting’ articles (including anti-Semitic stuff) have mysteriously disappeared from StWC’s website over the last few days: fortunately, a public-spirited citizen has made sure that they’re preserved for posterity.
Above: the Murray worry
A classic example of such dishonest evasion can be found in StWC Chair Andrew Murray’s answers to John Harris’s uncharacteristically probing questions, published in today’s Guardian– for instance:
“I suggest that the Assad regime has to go, and ask Murray if he agrees. But he doesn’t directly answer the question. We bat the point around for a few minutes, before we arrive at the reason why: as a staunch anti-imperialist, he says it’s not his place to call for the toppling of regimes overseas: a strange position for an avowed internationalist, perhaps, but there we are.”
The clear need is not for Britain to jump further into this toxic mix. It is for a negotiated diplomatic end to the dreadful civil war which has laid waste to Syria. Ultimately, only the Syrian people can determine their own future political arrangements.
But the foreign powers could assist by all ending their military interventions, open and clandestine, in Syria – ending the bombing and the arming of one side or another.
They should further promote peace by abandoning all the preconditions laid down for negotiations. Such preconditions only serve to prolong the conflict and to give either government or opposition hope that foreign military and diplomatic support could somehow lead to all-out victory.
Our bipartisan armchair strategists are obviously riled by Russia’s escalating military involvement in Syria. But it is a fact. What form of military intervention could now be undertaken which would not lead to a clash with Russia they do not say. Even the head of MI6 has acknowledged that “no-fly zones” are no longer a possibility, unless the NATO powers are prepared to countenance conflict with Moscow.
In a statement today Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths said:
The Communist Party maintains its opposition to US, NATO and British military intervention in Syria. Whatever the pretext – whether to defeat the barbaric ISIS or to rescue civilian populations – the real aim is clear: to strengthen the anti-Assad terrorist forces (Islamic fundamentalists who have largely displaced the Free Syrian Army ‘moderate opposition’), create areas in which these forces can operate freely (in the guise of ‘no-fly zones’ and ‘safe havens’) and ultimately to partition Syria and replace the Assad regime with a compliant puppet one.
Russian military forces are now attacking all the anti-Assad terrorists, including Isis, at the invitation of the Damascus government – which has every right to issue such an invitation as the internationally recognised political authority in Syria.
Is Andrew Murray saying that his comrades in the CPB should change their ‘line’ that Russia has “every right” to bomb in Syria?
Does he genuinely support, against the policy of the party to which he belongs, the formal, avowed (if generally disregarded) policy of the StWC?
The fact that Murray, and the StWC as a whole, apparently feels no need to address that question, let alone answer it, is further proof of what a dishonest, hypocritical and politically bankrupt organisation it is. They seem to have a fig leaf, formal, position of opposing Russian bombing in Syria that can be called upon when they’re under pressure in the media, whist in reality doing nothing about it and appointing as their chair someone who, as far as can be judged, supports both the Assad regime and the Russian bombing campaign.
The difficulty those of us who understand this, but are generally in the Corbyn camp, have, is how to make this point whilst not lining up with the right wing who just want to use this as part of their campaign to undermine and eventually remove Corbyn. Not an easy balancing act to maintain, but an essential one.
Above: James Bloodworth exposes the lies and evasions of StWC’s hapless Chris Nineham
2015 marked an important milestone in the history of physics: just over one hundred years ago, in November 1915, Albert Einstein wrote down the famous field equations of General Relativity. General Relativity is the theory that explains all gravitational phenomena we know (falling apples, orbiting planets, escaping galaxies…) and it survived one century of continuous tests of its validity. After 100 years it should be considered by now a classic textbook theory, but General Relativity remains young in spirit: its central idea, the fact that space and time are dynamical and influenced by the presence of matter, is still mind-boggling and difficult to accept as a well-tested fact of life.
Less well known, these days, is the fact that Einstein was a man of strongly-held political and philosophical views. What follows is an article by Carl Darton, first published in the US ‘Shachtmanite’ publication Labor Actionin 1950:
Albert Einstein as Scientist and Socialist
If your school-age son is somewhat better than clever in any field of science, you may have heard the expression: “He’s an Einstein.” It is indeed unprecedented that the name of a scientist working in highly specialized mathematical physics has become a by-word in the homes of his adopted land. This unique status of Albtrt Einstein rests not only on his scientific pre-eminence but also upon his keen interest in social and political affairs.
Dr. Einstein’s great scientific works—the Special Theory of Relativity (1906), The General Theory of Relativity (1915-20), and the extension of the General Theory to cover electromagnetic phenomena (1950)—can be understood only with the aid of tensor calculus. Obviously, only those versed in higher mathematics con begin to understand the technical phases of Einstein’s theories. But there are different levels of understanding in science and it is perfectly possible to choose a level of relativity theory which can be understood even by those with no special mathematical training. Einstein himself has done an excellent job of “popularizing” in his Relativity, The Special and General Theory. Also recommended is Leopold lnfeld’s Albert Einstein, His Work and Influence on our World (Charles Scribner, N Y, 1950).
On Capitalism and Jewish Nationalism Einstein has become almost as noted a philosopher as a scientist. His views appear to spring from these fundamental beliefs:
(1) “I believe . . . in . . . God who reveals himself in the harmony of all being, not in a God who concerns himself wim the fate and actions of men.”
(2) There is a spontaneous activity of the mind, altogether apart from experience, which can make contributions of the utmost value to natural philosophy.
(3) The simplest equations are most likely to be true, and “The aim of science is … a comprehension as complete as possible . . . and on the other hand the accomplishment of this aim by the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations.”
Just as Einstein’s belief in “harmony of all being” leads him away from simple experience, deduction, and abstraction in scientific endeavor, so it also leads him toward a cooperative society, However, there is no General Theory dealing with social relations. In Why Socialism? (a chapter in his Out of My Later Years) Dr. Einstein investigates the difficulty of making general formulations of social phenomena.
He does indicate the “essence of the crisis of our time”: “The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset . . . but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even his economic existence. . . . Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.” Further in this essay, written in 1949, Einstein assails capitalist production “for profit, not for use,” unemployment, inadequate wages, and the worship of acquisitive success.
Dr. Einstein has been active in recent years in two political movements; Zionist and One World. Although he grew up in a non-observant Jewish home and early rejected the concept of a personal God, he has accepted and retained the ethical teachings of Judaism. He supported the opening of Palestine to the dispersed Jews of Europe. On the issue of partition he stated: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than in the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power … I am afraid . . . of . . . the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks.”
The threat of another war concerns Albert Einstein constantly. His road to peace lies in “One World”—a supra-national government having the sole function of military security. National troops are to be replaced by international police and offensive weapons are to be outlawed. Einstein now advocates that the Western powers take the lead in the formation of this world government, leaving the door open at all times for Russia to join.
Is He Breaking with Russian Illusion?
These proposals for One World exposed Einstein to attack by four famous Russian scientists in November 1947. These Stalinist spokesmen rationalized their nationalist ambitions and denounced Einstein as a “virtual supporter of the schemes and ambitions of the bitterest foes of peace and international cooperation.” This attack brought to an end a period during which Dr. Einstein was noticeably non-critical of Stalinism and was used by their front movements.
Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the essentially Utopian nature of Einstein’s socialism than does this experience with Stalinism. The utopianism is rooted in the belief that planning is equivalent to socialism and not in the failure to recognize fhe economic factors undermining capitalist society. There are evidences, however, that this weakness is being corrected, since in the conclusion of Why Socialism?we read: “Nevertheless … it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires some extremely difficult socio-political problems.” Einstein has no answer for the further question: “How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
Edmund Whittaker, a reviewer of the book Albert Enslein, Philosopher-Scientist, writes: “Some of the observational confirmations [to the General Theory of Relativity] do not appear to he so secure as they were thought to be a few years ago.” It is possible that Einstein may share the fate of other scientists of our era and outlive his most famous works. Already it has been questioned as to whether Einstein is one of the three men who understand Einstein best.
Nevertheless, it may well be his greatest contribution that he has foreshadowed the ideal citizen of the socialist tomorrow—a specialist in his vocational sphere, where there is no room for amateurs; and a serious participant in political life, where there should be no professionals in the sense that special interests and privileges are accrued.
Purvis must surely be the strangest, most picaresque and mysterious figure in the entire history of recorded jazz. As well as being a phenomenal trumpeter (one of the first – if not the first – of the white players who were obviously influenced by Armstrong), he was also a compulsive liar, con-man, gun-runner and drug smuggler. Naturally, he was also a jail-bird: but one who once, having been released, broke back in, so that he could continue to direct the prison orchestra for their radio debut.
He made no records after 1935 and seems to have committed suicide in 1962 (but even that is in some doubt: there was, according to Richard M. Sudhalter, at least one reliably attested encounter with a man claiming to be “Jack Purvis … I used to play trumpet” after that date). He had a wife and daughter, both of whom were reduced to broken-hearted despair by his antics and absences.
Many jazz musicians could be called “eccentric”, but Purvis’s lifestyle and behaviour went well beyond that: he was almost certainly mentally ill, which makes the title of this 1929 record especially appropriate: ‘Mental Strain At Dawn’:
Whatever one thought of them, the Militant Tendency was a serious force within the Britsh labour movement (including the Labour Party) in the 1970s and ’80s. Since leaving the Labour Party in 1991 their influence has waned dramatically and efforts to stand candidates in elections (as TUSC and No2EU) have resulted in derisory votes.
Now, after years of declaring the Labour Party a dead end and a waste of time, the SP finds itself completely nonplussed by the election of Jeremy Corbyn. Here (on last night’s Channel 4 News) Michael Crick interviews the SP’s National Organiser Sarah Sachs-Eldridge about their call to “deselect” Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy whilst not being members of the Labour Party. Crick can scarcely keep a straight face:
NB: The SP’s website describes Crick as an “arch witch-hunter” but as they’re outside the Labour Party it’s difficult to see how this amounts to a “witch-hunt” in any meaningful way.
We write as previous strong supporters of the Stop the War Coalition and applaud its mobilisation against the disastrous UK and US attack on Iraq. Sadly, since then, on the issue of Syria, StWC has lost its moral compass and authority (Green MP Caroline Lucas steps down from Stop the War Coalition role, 8 December). Stop the War has failed to organise or support protests against the Assad dictatorship and the regime’s massacre of peaceful democracy protesters in 2011 – and since. Nor has it shown solidarity with the non-violent Syrian civil society movements for democracy and human rights and with the millions of innocent civilians killed, wounded and displaced by Assad’s barrel bombs and torture chambers. It portrays Isis as the main threat to Syrians, despite Assad killing at least six times more civilians.
StWC has repeatedly refused to have anti-Assad Syrian democrats and leftwingers on its platforms at events where Syria is being discussed; whereas it has offered a platform to pro-Assad speakers such as Issa Chaer and Mother Agnes. Moreover, StWC intervened to stop a Syrian Solidarity UK speaker from addressing the Migrant Lives Matter rally in London in April. It has one-sidedly failed to support demonstrations against the escalating Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah military interventions in Syria.
As well as systematically ignoring war crimes committed by the Assad regime, StWC often misrepresents the opposition to Assad as being largely composed of jihadi extremists and agents of imperialism; marginalising the non-violent, secular, democratic, local community and non-aligned opposition to his tyranny. It also misrepresents the call by Syrian civil society organisations for civilian safe havens and humanitarian corridors; claiming they are calls for western bombing, when they are actually bids to stop Assad’s bombs and save lives. We urge StWC to take on board these constructive criticisms and change its stance to support the Syrian people’s struggle against the war being inflicted on them by both Isis and Assad.
Signed:
Abdulaziz Almashi Syria Solidarity UK
Peter Tatchell human rights campaigner
Yasmine Nahlawi Rethink Rebuild
Dr Rupert Read University of East Anglia
Dr Amer Masri Scotland4Syria
Darren Johnson Green party London assembly member
Zaki Kaf Al-Ghazal Syrian Association of Yorkshire
Dr M. Alhadj Ali Syrian Welsh Society
Andy Wilson Founder, Reservists Against The War
Muzna Al-Naib Syria Solidarity UK
Dr Odai Al-Zoubi Syrian exile and journalist
Shamira A Meghani scholar
Mark Boothroyd Syria Solidarity UK
Ayob Rahmani & Sattar Rahmani International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran
Javaad Alipoor Iranian socialist activist
Sam Charles Hamad writer
John Game independent researcher
This article appears on Eric Lee’s blog and the present issue of Solidarity. Please feel free to post comments there as well as below the line here.
By Eric Lee
Wilhelm Reich.
There can be little doubt that the murderous ideology of Islamic State is a form of fascism. In discussing how the Left should react to it, it is therefore necessary to return to our sources, to learn how earlier generations of socialists understood – and fought – fascism.
In that fight, Trotsky was of course an inspiring and authoritative figure. As opposed to the Stalinists, who saw no difference between the Nazis and the Social Democrats (and indeed sometimes preferred the Nazis), Trotsky understood fascism to be a mortal danger to the working class.
And while Trotsky’s deconstruction of the Stalinist argument was brilliant, like most socialists of his time, he understood fascism as a form of bourgeois society, one in which one section of the ruling class crushed all others. The classical Marxist understanding of fascism, however, could not explain, and sometimes did not even try to explain, the tremendous appeal of fascism to the working class itself.
Which brings us to the brilliant Austrian Jewish psychologist Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). Reich was one of Freud’s outstanding disciples, but in the 1920s he moved increasingly to the left, eventually joining the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). There he engaged in theoretical work in an attempt to bridge the gap between Marxism and Freudianism. By 1929, he was able to get the official KPD journal, Under the Banner of Marxism, to publish his essay “Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis.”
Reich also moved beyond theory with field work in working class communities, setting up clinics, carrying out sex education, and on, in the course of which he created a mass movement of young people engaged in a new politics of sexual liberation.
Reich grasped that fascism had its basis not only in the economic contradictions of a decaying, over-ripe capitalism, but also in the psychology of the masses.
His 1933 book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, was an attempt to find out what made millions of workers who should have been a bulwark against fascism into its most fanatical supporters. Reich’s book was so outrageously controversial that it led to his expulsion from the KPD. A year later, he was kicked out of the International Psychoanalytical Association as well. It goes without saying that the Nazis too banned the book.
So what explained the appeal of fascism to people who would be its victims? Reich looked for what could make a child “apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense” and he found it in the family.
In particular, Reich linked the development of this kind of personality to the “suppression of the natural sexuality in the child”. He explained the lack of rebelliousness in such children – and later in adult life – by this. Sexual repression, he believed, “paralyses the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties.”
“In brief,” he wrote, “the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation.”
This was the basis for authoritarian society. “At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family,” he wrote, and “this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety.”
Reich’s expulsion from both the Communist and Psychoanalytical movements left him isolated, and over the remaining two decades of his life he drifted far away from both the Marxism and Freudianism which he had worked so hard to bridge.
But his work over the course of a decade made a real and enduring contribution to a socialist understanding of fascism and how to fight it. That contribution can teach us much about the sources of Islamo-fascism today and how to defeat it.
Vulgar Marxists (and Trotsky was not one of those) are quick to point to simplistic class analyses to explain the rise of groups like Islamic State. Imperialism and colonialism left a legacy of poverty and inequality, and it was from a sense of powerlessness and despair that Islamism arose. This argument has been somewhat undermined by the fact that so many of the more prominent terrorists (such as the 9/11 murderers) were educated, middle class Muslims who lived in the West. Even today, there is no evidence linking young Muslims who run off to Syria to join IS with a personal experience of poverty or even oppression.
Wilhelm Reich’s description of the patriarchal, authoritarian family as the incubator of fascism was correct in Germany in 1933 and it is correct today. There can be little doubt that the suppression of “sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child” is part of the reactionary character of most Muslim societies.
Muslim societies are obviously not the only sexually repressive societies in the world, which is why fascism can find roots in other places as well. But Islamism is today a particularly aggressive and expansionist variant of fascism, one which threatens the entire world.
If Reich’s analysis is correct, what can socialists do to defeat fascism? Obviously, it is not enough to simply propose “class against class” as the answer. This was the view of the German Communists and it failed miserably as millions of ordinary Germans either supported the Nazis or accepted their rule with barely a murmur of protest.
Instead, the Left should directly confront the sexually repressive character of Islamo-fascism and prioritise the fight on that level. That means that it should no longer be possible to say that our first task is building support for, say, workers organisations in Iran and that support for gay rights in that country is secondary.
Gay rights, women’s liberation, and sexual freedom are not by-products of the revolution that is coming to that part of the world – they are the revolution.
Because of Reich’s later decline, a result in part of his expulsion from the both the Left and the psychoanalytical movement, his works have been largely forgotten and ignored, certainly by socialists. This is unfortunate, because a book like The Mass Psychology of Fascism can contribute so much to our understanding of Islamism and how it will be defeated in the end.
“SNP independence has become the cocaine of the politically active. Fun to join in, but dulling the senses, jabbering on at a hundred words per minute while disconnected from self-awareness.”
In a recent article admitting that the SNP’s economic arguments for independence never stacked up, this is how Alex Bell summed up the delirious nature of the pro-independence political mindset. (Bell was SNP Head of Policy under Salmond.)
But the response of the SNP to the launch of airstrikes against Daesh has exposed the inaccuracy of Bell’s statement: he was being too charitable by half.
Labour Party policy was to oppose the bombing. The overwhelming majority of Labour MPs – and a majority of the Shadow Cabinet – voted against the bombing. Some 75% of Labour Party members were against the bombing. The lead speaker in Westminster against the bombing was the Labour Party leader.
But all these basic facts were blotted out of reality in the parallel political universe inhabited – and created – by Scottish nationalism.
SNP MP John Nicolson summed up the political essence of the SNP response to the launch of airstrikes when he created the hashtag: “Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems #BombingTogether.”
Challenged about the accuracy of this hashtag, Nicolson responded that bombing was backed by the vast majority of Tories (true), by all Lib Dems (wrong), and by most of the Shadow Cabinet (wrong).
And the 152 Labour MPs who voted against bombing? Or Labour Party policy against bombing? Nicolson simply ignored them.
SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson likewise ignored how most Labour MPs actually voted. Harking back to the SNP’s exploitation of the Labour-Tory “Better Together” referendum campaign, he tweeted:
“Syria vote: Want to join opposition to Labour/Tory ‘better together’ majority. Join the SNP.”
The Tories had a majority even without the votes of Labour MPs. And the majority of the Labour MPs voted against bombing. But this did not prevent Robertson from performing the political conjuring trick of pulling a “Labour/Tory ‘better together’ majority” out of his hat.
The SNP was equally silent about anti-war speeches by Labour MPs. Instead, on planet SNP, the intervention by Labour MPs was reduced to Hilary Benn’s closing pro-bombing speech. Read the rest of this entry »
