A pint of the usual

This week's round-up...

UK Politics and Election 2018

Lewisham East

My take on the runners and riders in the forthcoming Lewisham East by-election, and on the selection process. (A thread that will be out of date by Wednesday night, so read it now.)

Labour antisemitism

Daniel Allington on how antisemitism slips beneath the radar on left-wing social media. Rob Marchant on Len McCluskey's bullying of Labour "moderates". Rosa Doherty: Millennials are proud of being “woke” – so why don’t they call out antisemitism? Some stats on Labour and the Jews, by Stan Anson.

The right, the far right and the really far right

Shiraz Socialism on the hypocrisy and racism of the Tories.

UKIP: Hope not Hate on UKIP's election failures.

Is this Britain's most influential far-right activist? The BBC investigates Jim Dowson.

The hard left

Shiraz Socialism on "Red London", Stalinist smear merchants.

The information war, Syria solidarity and Putinism

Leila Sibai on the tragic fall of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta.

Women Across the Sea: a beautiful piece in AntidoteZine on solidarity, resistance and migration.

Omar Sabbour on why the White Helmets aren't the West's puppets. Brian Whitaker on Vanessa Beeley, the Kremlin's "goddess" of propaganda. From 2016, but newly republished at Pulse: Charles Davis on why disagreeing on the internet isn't the new McCarthyism. Sam Hamad on the alternate reality that makes genocide possible. Louis Proyect on the contradictory nature of pro-Russian accounts of chemical attacks. Luke Harding on how Russia fights the Salisbury propaganda war.
Anton Mukhamedov on why you aren’t antiwar if you aren’t anti-Assad’s war. Mohammed Sulaiman on the Left’s Erasure of Syrians. Joshka Wessels on how Assad chases, tortures and kills the best of Syria’s young pacifist leftists. Joseph Dahar calls for a rebuilding of revolutionary humanism and genuine anti-war movement. Idrees Ahmed asks if there are really no good guys left in Syria.

Gareth Browne is a fly on the wall on the British Christian PR tour of Syria. George Morris on the Christians who visit Assad's fascist Syria. Stephen Griffith on the Syrian churches in captivity to the regime.

Louis Proyect dissects Diane Johnstone's Stalinist (and borderline antisemitic) anti-Marxist analysis of Syria.

The fascist international

Defend Europe: Otto English on the "sexbot chic" far right cult, and who is funding them.

From misery to misogyny: incels and the far right, by Jeff Sparrow.

Red-brown convergence: Daphne Lawless on the Red-Brown “zombie plague”: how fascist ideas are becoming popular on the Left. Andrew Coates reports on Westmonster Brexiteer George Galloway giving a viva to Italy's far right 5Star movement.

4.2 million tweets of hate: The ADL report on social media antisemitism.

The return of Stalinism on the British left?

Every May Day, I feel a little more depressed. As a long-time Marxist and trade unionist, May Day should be my holiday. But watching the parade of Stalinist icons parade through London every year makes me feel shame rather than joy. Shame - but also fear about the direction the British labour movement is marching in.

Something grimly comic about a banner calling for "human rights" below pictures of Stalin and Mao. pic.twitter.com/oO939Zk6Tt

— James Bickerton (@JBickertonUK) May 1, 2018

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in the heyday of the global anti-capitalist movement, the official TUC May Day march had become a dying relic of an earlier form of state socialism, dwarfed by the massive, lively, carnivalesque crowds participating in the unofficial (in fact, often illegal) parallel parades. With the fall of Communism in eastern and central Europe, it seemed clear that the authoritarian model of socialism-from-above had been a dead end; the submerged democratic and libertarian traditions of radicalism seemed to be re-emerging and filling the streets. After around 2003, these crowds died down, partly, I think, as their energy was siphoned off into protests against the war on terror, recuperated by the trad left parties who'd lost control of it in the post-Berlin Wall years.

Kim Jong Un at today’s May Day march through London... pic.twitter.com/PdJ1nAXaj8

— Lindsey Hilsum (@lindseyhilsum) May 1, 2018

Now, we seem to be seeing something even more disturbing. Stalinism, instead of rotting away in the dustbin of history, appears to be resurgent. The dwindling, ageing bloc of grey-haired tankies (many of whom actually remembered celebrating the Soviet tanks that rolled through Prague in 1968) who carried their hammers and sickles through London every May 1 seem to have been augmented by a new generation of tankies. Scrolling through pics of yesterday's march, it looks like there are more Stalins and Maos than ever before, along with a couple of Kim Jong-uns.

Hey barber make me look like someone who will grow up to be one of the highest death count dictators in history but also a bit like that guy in One Direction

The rise of millennial hipster tankies tweeting stupid memes at anarcho-centrist dads like me might feel like a weak joke, but, sadly, the problem is deeper than that. I've already blogged about actual Stalinists in key positions in the Labour leadership -- such as Seumas Milne, formerly of ultra-Stalinst sect "Straight Left", the party's director of strategy and communications, or Steve Howell, also formerly of Straight Left, deputy director of strategy and communications, or  Andrew Murray, who only joined Labour from the Communist Party of Britain in 2016, or Murray's daughter Laura Murray, Corbyn's "stakeholder manager" (recently heard darkly muttering, Great Purge style, about the undue influence of "Trotskyists" in Momentum).

Stolen from reddit

Closer to home for me, last week saw the bizarre AGM of Lewisham Momentum, half of which (apparently mostly young white men?) left the meeting to go to a noisy New Cross pub where they nodded in a slate of new officers (watch the video here) including, as "political education officer", believe it or not, someone whose social media profiles are replete with pictures of Stalin, as well as celebrations of Assadist war crimes denial - this Great Purge celebrated by Novara Media's Aaron Bastani as the #LewishamSpring.

So, about that #LewishamSpring. Momentum have elected Dominic Cerasoli as their "Political Education" officer. He's an anti-White Helmets conspiracy theorist that shares racist anti-Syrian posts on his wall. These are the people Momentum want educating youhttps://t.co/27wBbBQYsK pic.twitter.com/fLnn1Mrjt5

— Oz Katerji (@OzKaterji) April 26, 2018

When a political education officer of the most important faction in Labour in my constituency is promoting homages to dictators and denials of war crimes, it's a sign that something is very wrong.