There’s a lot of catastrophe happening in faraway places this week, but please don’t fail to notice what’s going down much closer to home, in Italy:
Police in Italy have arrested hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants in raids across the country.
Expulsion orders were issued for several dozen of those detained. More than 100 Italians were also arrested.
One raid was on a makeshift camp housing Roma (Gypsies), on the edge of Rome. Italian concern about immigrant crime has tended to focus on the Roma.
Earlier this week, Roma families in Naples fled after angry locals set fire to their squatter homes.
The police crackdown was part of a week-long operation in Rome, Naples and northern Italy.
It is an apparent sign of the change of policy promised by the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi [and] Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, who belongs to the anti-immigrant Northern League.
(Update: read more about the Italian pogroms at Lenin’s Tomb)
The Roma haven’t traditionally been the target of such pathological hatred in Britain as they have been elsewhere, but when they tire of the usual suspects the cops and the tabloids can still work up a respectable two minutes hate: witness the Fagin incident earlier this year. Anti-immigrant racism generally is certainly quite pervasive around here, and in both Italy and Britain a certain paranoia around “Islamofascism” has blinded people to the potential for fascism in the growing Islamophobia.
When, as is the case for the Roma, the same people find themselves in the crosshairs now as then, it is a little harder to shrug off the new fascism. Often, however, we do seem to completely miss the point. The horror of the Nazis’ treatment of the Jewish people was such that we think of anti-Semitism as central to fascism, but for all that the BNP hate the Jews (Nick Griffin doesn’t believe in the Holocaust, remember), they’re hardly about to kick up a fuss against them now. Instead, they employ exactly the same brand of nastiness against the Muslims (and even try to pick up the Jewish vote in the process), and get away with it Scot free.
That’s because hard-core Islamophobia - unlike hardcore antisemitism - is not restricted to the BNP and their coterie of crazies; it’s socially acceptable wherever you go these days. Look, I know you probably already heard about what Martin Amis said, but just read it aloud and see if rings any bells.
There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.
If it still doesn’t shock you, try replacing “Muslim” and “from the Middle East or from Pakistan” with “Jewish” and have another go. Then in the same interview, he brings out the old “if women don’t know their place then how are we going to outbreed the oriental menace?” question
They’re also gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they’ll be a third. Italy’s down to 1.1 child per woman. We’re just going to be outnumbered. [on another occasion:] The reason that America is the only First World country with a non-declining birth rate is because of all those things we hate about it, you know – [it's] patriarchal, church-going. I’m going to take this up because I think it’s such an enormous question – has feminism cost us Europe? …You only have to look at these demographic figures to know what you’re going to get, and you’ve got it in Iraq. I mean, it’s a gangplank to theocracy.
The point isn’t that Amis is a crazy old fascist. It’s that Amis wasn’t seriously challenged on this for about a year afterwards, and even then, far from being ostracised, he remained a celebrated intellectual, getting a cushy teaching job at Manchester University and having half the editorialists in the country proclaim him not even a racist, really. Effectively, the guardians of mainstream culture have said that this kind of thing is okay - and that’s not starting on the BBC’s frankly terrifying “White Season”.
Then what? Oh yes, then we have a significant rise in immigration just in time for an economic crisis for which - thanks to several decades spent systematically dismantling and selling off the welfare state - the working class are ill-equipped to cope with. Can you say perfect scapegoats? So we have had the Housing Minister Caroline Flint blaming the lack of social housing on the immigrants (rather than, say, on the Housing Minister), and the Prime Minister bringing back an old National Front slogan “British jobs for British workers” (in fact, does anyone say the word “British” quite as often as Gordon Brown?)
I know a lot of people are rightly shocked by such rhetoric, and that hopefully most of those reading this blog will fall into this category. But we have to be clear that society on the whole has not been shocked. The opposite has happened, these things have started to sound normal. At a time like this, that’s especially terrible. There’s a lot of people out there feeling angry, exploited, betrayed, and they generally have good reason for feeling that way. But they have a lot of contradictory ideas (certainly this was my impression when canvassing for the Left List; people were quick to agree on everything except our lack of opposition to immigrants “stealing their jobs”), and that anger could express itself in a very positive way or - if those ideas aren’t challenged - in a terrifyingly negative way.
Martin Amis used to be brilliant, his books defined my late-teens. It’s sad to see what can happen.
What do you tend to say to people re. ‘immigrants stealing jobs’ when you’re canvassing? People seem so passionately attached to the idea. I guess taking on the immigrants is easier than taking on capitalism.
yeah i remember this letter into the metro or was it the m.e.n which was saying post electoral labour defeat how labour should really be. it was very progressive suggesting things like bringing back state pension, keeping retirement age at 65, stop priviatising schools and nhs, troops out of iraq and afghanistan. then it said no privatisation of council housing, and they should be cheap and affordable for BRITISH NATIONALS.
it just shows that someone who is obviously leftwing, traditional labour supporter can be affected by the constant bombardment of anti immigrant scapegoating from the media and gouvernement
on a completely unrelated note. take a look at this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_9
their trial is coming up soon
The rise of fascist-leaning political parties to power in Italy is astonishing and saddening in equal measure. In pockets across Europe, there are worrying signs that fascism is considered as almost an acceptable part of the political landscape. Across Europe we have seen the scapegoating of immigrants by mainstream politicians playing to the right-wing gallery and now, all of a sudden, the creeping Islamophobia that has become more or less acceptable doesn’t seem so trivial. The original post gave a great example by quoting the anti-Islamic rant made by Martin Amis. Who but Terry Eagleton really challenged Amis in the press? Why was the matter downplayed as an ‘Academic spat’? Even when Amis continued in another interview that he feels racist impulses and urges, the response was muted and conciliatory (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2658703.ece).
Derogatory terms such as “PC do-gooders” (like “the looney left” twenty years ago) have been used to undermine those who stand up to casual discrimination with the result that it is less socially acceptable to pull someone up over an Islamophobic slur than to make one.
In Italy, the successful campaign by the new Roman Mayor made use of posters showing a glum-looking Native American and worded (I’m paraphrasing from memory) “This was his country, now he lives on a reservation”. Is that so far removed from the current “British Jobs for British Workers”/”Must speak English and assimilate our culture” rhetoric that the main players in UK politics are happy to engage in?
@theraffishdandy:
Thanks and welcome.
Yeah, Italy’s Northern Leaguers are only part of a Europe-wide trend; the Swiss Freedom Party are if anything even scarier, and it wasn’t long ago the openly fascist Front National came second in the French elections. That the BNP lag behind their European cousins so much is for two reasons, IMHO: mainly, that the anti-fascist movement has been broader, stronger, better organised and more militant here than anywhere else; also to a lesser extent that the war against the Nazis is such an integral part of our national myth (1939-1945 being just about the only time in history you could even give a coherent argument for the British empire being the goodies) that even people who are quite racist are very suspicious of NeoNazis.
At the same time, we shouldn’t focus on the extreme right to the extent of ignoring the ambient mainstream racism. Yes, the BNP are dangerous, and we ignore them at our peril, but it is their more respectable fellow travellers who are creating openings for them. I was genuinely pretty shocked by the BBC’s White Season advert, but beyond writing angry letters it’s hard to do much about it as an individual. I mean, a few people did pick up on what Amis had said pretty quickly, but their concerns were never picked up on by the media as a whole - until Eagleton, and then as you say it was just a “spat” to gossip about.
I think this tells us a lot, actually. I don’t konw if you’re familiar with the propaganda model (medialens.org have a pretty good overview of it), basically it states (among other things) that journalists and editors may be sincere in putting across their beliefs, but they wouldn’t have got where they were if they had believed anything different, anything less conducive to the interests of the establishment. The issue, then, isn’t about who holds which views, but about what views the ruling classes is comfortable with; and at the moment, it seems they’re quite comfortable with protofascist ideas.
This confirms what I’ve been saying ever since the elections: when the centre is in crisis, either the left or the right has a chance to fill the void (that’s why it’s crucial that the left rise to the challenge). Most of the time, ruling class conservatives tend to avoid fascists (there were even a few Tories in the ANL, I believe) - but when the left poses a credible threat they are willing to make an alliance with them. Both Hitler and Mussolini came to power through alliances with the centre-right establishment. I’m not saying a Tory-BNP axis is particularly likely at the moment - I think it’s entirely possible that this time the good guys can win - but we are in a race for ideas against the far right, and the establishment will do all they can to stack the decks in their favour.
@Red:
I remember you saying. But it happens all the time, no?
@Chris:
It’s hard. I for one had expected people to be broadly either with us or against us, and was unprepared for the sheer number of people with both strong anti-capitalist and anti-immigrant feelings. I didn’t really have a coherent strategy for dealing with it, and kind of made up my responses as I went along; I’m sure I’m not the only one dusting off old anti-racist pamphlets to sharpen myself up on the issue. A few thoughts though:
First there’s the factual stuff. A lot of people think they’re ok with immigration in theory, but that Britain is full up - and with a new wave of immigration coinciding with the dilapidation of the welfare state, it’s not an unreasonable conclusion to jump to. We have to break that link, to smash it into smithereens: workers, including migrant workers, contribute more wealth than they take out, and the expansion of public services and infrastructure needed to accomodate the new arrivals could be very easily funded if the government were so inclined. Instead, they’ve spent years shrinking the welfare state, so that even if no new workers had arrived the NHS, council housing etc would be under more strain than before.
Hammer home the idea of a “global” or “international working class”. With the media seemingly unwilling to use the phrase “working class” without the prefix “white”, just getting those phrases out there is a good start. Then can say things like, big business can exploit people all across the world - national borders don’t stop them - and we need to resist on a global level or we will surely lose. When settled (NEVER say indigenous) workers pit themselves against migrant workers, it is the bosses who win; when they start working together it puts the bosses on the back foot. etc.
Obviously there’s more to say. If people talk about arrivals from the developing world, it might be worth alluding to history: rich countries (Britain in particular) have taken so much from India, Africa, etc, and when people follow those resources and try to take a part in the society built on what was taken from then it’s a bit of a bastard trick to turn them away. Generally, nobody leaves home without a good reason, and often it is our government and our businesses that give them resons to leave home; I’m sure all present can think of examples, obviously the war is the big one.
You could talk about how our culture has been created and enriched by immigrants since forever - come on, everyone loves curry, or at least everyone uder 60, and reggae and rock music (a development of soul music) and all - or about how there was a time when British people were going abroad to work in the Auf Wiedersein, Pet generation. In fact there’s loads of Brits emigrating even now, and they don’t put half as much work into their host countries as the Poles and that do over here.
Like I say, I don’t realy have a coherent strategy yet, but I think these are good starting points for seperating the confused from the hardcore racists. Any thoughts?
The point about the ‘established media’ only allowing through the messages that they’re comfortable with is a good one. That is why blogging and internet-based symposiums- especially internationally- are vital. As Tony Benn said “the internet, which allows you to undercut Murdoch and Fox news and the BBC and so on, is terribly important”, how else are we going to get the messages we require across given the rapid and terrifying curtailment of civil liberties in the UK. If you can’t shout “nonsense” at Jack Straw without being frogmarched out of Conference and if Brian Haw gets his placards confiscated- both following the abuse of laws pushed through Parliament as Anti-Terrorist or Anti-Organised Crime- then what hope is there if, say, the Tories win the next election on the kind of right-wing ticket that Michael Howard ran under? I don’t think that they would repeat those policies, but two years is a long time.
One major problem is that a broadly progressive, left-wing, anti-fascist, anti-globalisation, climate-change conscious, socialist, libertarian (et cetera) movement is disparate and unfocused. There are inherent contradictions that act to prevent the kind of coherent strategy that you’ve identified the need for (and the struggle to codify).
The flip-side of the propaganda model is that it breeds complacency in the mass population. Is the dominance of our press with celebrity/paparazzo snaps/reality TV/bloated Premiership stars et al really a coincidence in the age of illegal foreign invasions, restrictions on personal liberty, stolen elections, stricter school curriculum adherence and capitalist/political corruption? The argument remains that the papers give the public what they want, but I doubt that anyone reading blogs like this would fall for that. People are being spoonfed this stuff to dull their cyniciam and criticality. Gently, gradually, insidiously.
More power to you for standing firm in the face of this.
As I say, we have had great successes in the past. My own organisation, the Socialist Workers’ Party, has often been instrumental in building up so-called “united fronts” to campaign on single issues - Stop The War, the Anti-Nazi League, etc - that can mobilise a large number of people even if they don’t all share the same philosophy, and in arguing for the most appropriate strategy within those organisations.
These fronts have had significant successes - I think the Anti-Nazi League and its successor, Unite Against Fascism, can take a lot of credit in blocking a BNP breakthrough on the scale of their European equivalents, and I think you’ll be seeing an upsurge in UAF activity over the coming months (eg I just learned today that there’s a march scheduled in London on June 21st) - although obviously the challenge of building a broad-yet-coherent left alternative for elections and all continues to elude us.
The “strategy” I was discussing above was more a strategy for us as individuals, “winning” in conversations with someone who is mainly good but a bit of a soft racist. Alienating that interlocutor would be a catastrophe, as would letting the racism go unchallenged.
Like Chomsky said, propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. Meaning, it’s what keeps people from getting out of line.
From Lenin’s Tomb:
In the comments of that article, someone has found a video of a Mussolini rally chanting Duce! Duce! http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=dI_7cNBbPtk