By Sacha Ismail
On Saturday 11 February I went to the Muslim Council of Britain demonstration in Trafalgar Square to have a look around, and then to the free speech protest organised by groups associated with the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, outside the BBC in White City.
The latter was a good event, about 40 people there, we had a good shout - not much else to say.
The former was interesting. I'd confirm what was said on the news - both the other AWLer who came along to observe and I estimated about two to three thousand people. The tone was studiously moderate, no radical groups, all the placards were politically anonymous with slogans praising Muhammad and calling for "tolerance" and "respect".
No visible presence from the Muslim Association of Britain even - presumably because they were pulling all the strings anyway. The demonstration was mostly young, but it was very small compared not only to what the organisers predicted (30,000) but even what the police predicted (10,000).
The left presence was the SWP in force and the RCG doing pro-Cuba stuff.
But I'd say it had a lot of support from STW/UAF/Livingstone/GLA/CND-type forces.
Comments
Great Turnout!
40! may I be the first to offer you heartfelt congratulations on this amazing success!
Shame
Yes, it's a shame that more people aren't prepared to protest in favour of free speech. I think that tells us more about the people - and groups - who weren't there than those who were.
Liberal platitudes
To be honest, I find it quite heartening that the vast majority of the British Marxist left has been able to see the real issues which arise from the whole "cartoon affair", namely ones of racism and solidarity with oppressed minorities.
If the AWL simply wants to repeat sub-liberal platitudes about "free speech" then that's their concern, but they're not fooling anyone as to what the real issues for socialists are here, as the turnout at their demonstration suggests.
Callum
Double standards ...
... or “we won’t print these racist cartoons but homophobic ones are OK”. Yes, this one’s for the SWP comrades who may look at these pages from time to time. Remember that homophobic SWSS poster – you know, the one with the really well thought out and politically measured cartoon of George W and Mr Blair sat intimately astride an intercontinental missile? Remember the caption? No … how about “Stick this up your arsenal” (if any of you keep an archive, look under early 2003). Where, I ask myself, should one stick the Shibboleth? Thankfully some SWSS members were thoughtful enough to point out the substance of this cartoon and it was eventually withdrawn – though not before being circulated to every branch in the country. What’s perhaps worse than the cowardly, liberal muddle the Guardian/Observer/New Statesman have tangled themselves in is the supposedly radical, anti-racist braying of an organisation that found it possible to commission and then print an openly bigoted cartoon.
When I visit the newly opened Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury on Thursday I look forward to being offended, amused and challenged but don’t expect to see the aforementioned poster. Neither do I expect to see the particular cartoons that have caused so much offence of late. Where these pictures are reproduced it should be made clear that they were commissioned with the intention of causing offence (even if some Muslims find them inoffensive) but that reproduction is intended to aid an understanding of the issues and to challenge the right-wing forces who are exploiting these images from both sides.
Tom
SHAME??????
Its a shame.........Do you liberals actually realise what is going to happen in the future or do you just feel nice in your comfy, lets protest, life? I know for sure that I will NOT be here when the proverbial crap hits the fan. My family and I will be far away....In fact hopefully 12000 miles away, inside a Country that realises the truth.
Oh yes?
And which country would that be?
I Think
its Haiti, but the long way round.
Arthur Bough
Ah yes the majority secular w
Ah yes the majority secular white christian western civilisation crusade must be feeling terribly threatened that the only people standing up for them are the AWL and the Worker Communist Party of Iraq. This is really beyond satire.
Most Marxist theories involve at some level a recognition of power relations embedded in liberal values. Thus John Stuart Mill's Harm principle proceeds by equating the freedom of speech of the mill owner with the freedom of speech of mill workers. There is a long history of Marxist lampoon of this sort of thing.
Now it is of course true that here we are not dealing with (unmediated) class relations (although a cursory examination of economic statistics related to religous identity in Europe would reveal interesting things) but its rather noteworthy that the Young Marx's break from the slipperyness of using hypothetical invocations of equality to conceal real inequality took the shape of a critique liberal views on the Jewish Question.
How times change (not) eh?
The "Jewish Question"
How interesting that "anon's" attack on the AWL's stand in favour of free speech and enlightenment values refers to Marx's weakest and most ambigious work, "on the Jewish Question"...and that s/he closes with the comment "How times change (not) eh?".
What point are you trying to make, "anon"? How Have times not changed, eh?
How does Marx's (poor) work on the "Jewish Question" relate to a stand in favour of free speech and against religious bigotry and oppression today?
-Jim Denham
sorry second version is bette
sorry second version is better. It is of course a 'critique' of liberal views, and not 'liberal views' which colluded with anti-semitism in precisely the same way that the 'enlightenment values' of the AWL collude with Islamophobia. Marx made the connection between this and the distortions of class society. Its how he became a Marxist.
Freedom
The arguments above relating to freedom are really sloppy. Of course Marx and Marxists point to the limited nature of bourgeois freedom and its hypocritical nature, point to the difference between the freedom of the mill owner and mill worker etc. But the point of that criticism is to go beyond limited bourgeois freedom not to limit it.
Marx did not point out the hypocritical nature of that highest Benthamite freedom "Free Trade" in order to argue for a return to Guild Monopolies. Yet that seems to be the logic of the argument being given above - bourgeois freedom is hypocritical and limited so socialists should not defend that limited freedom especially its use by the bourgeoisie. But that is absolute nonsense, and has nothing whatsoever to do with anyhting that Marx argued.
Yes we criticise bourgeois freedom including the limited and hypocritical freedom of speech, and freedom of the press - a freedom which is far more capable of being used by Rupert Murdoch and the press barons than by ordinary workers. BUt the answer to that limited and hypocritical nature of bourgeois freedom is not to argue in favour of censorship for the very reason that the bourgeoisie is far more able then to censor the working class, and socialists than socialists and the working class are to censor the bourgeois press.
IF statements that offend are to be censored then who is likely to make statements that most often "offend" polite bourgeois society - the bourgeois press, or the voice of the working class, and its most radical proponents.
Arthur Bough
Marx on the Jewish question
Marx's basic stance in On the Jewish Question is a defence of universal and equal democratic rights for all people regardless of their religion or lack of it. It seems to me a bit bizarre that this work is now being cited by a group whose co-thinkers in Canada supported the creation of sharia courts to deal with civil cases in the "Muslim community".
Dany Cohn-Bendit on Islamism & Hannah Arendt
Since we're talking about America... how do you think Hannah Arendt would respond today to Islamicism?
She would say that Islamic fundamentalism is a form of totalitarianism. And that we need to have the power to fight this totalitarianism while at the same time considering Islam as a religion as equal to others. But she would also say that all religions have totalitarian moments in them. That our democracies developed in the emancipation from religion. And that's what Islam has to address: the emancipation of Muslims from their religion, through which a changed Islam and a Muslim atheism would emerge.
What is the Historical Materialist Basis
Religion in the West generally began to diminish as a result of real social changes i.e. changes in the material conditions. On the one hand European rationalist thought after the Enlightenment was a reflection of the growing social weight of the bourgeoisie as a social class itself based upon the increase in trading activity, growth of the market, and increasing importance of Capital as a social phenomenon.
The rise of social-democracy in western Europe I would also argue has established for workers a more stable and secure economic existence. That perhaps is some explanation for the continuance of the strength of religious sentiment in the US where no such social security exists, alongside the fact that the US was created by people of a deeply religious faith - the reason they escaped to the US which remains ingrained in the psyche despite the supposed separation of Church and State embodied in the Constitution - which itself is rather udnermined by the fact that on the dollar it proclaims "In God We Trust".
I do not think that the question is for Islam to address. I think that the question is will economic development within the Middle East proceed in a direction where the same kind of rationalist approach is required for the development of society - Islam historically has been counter to such development - and will the working class in these countries develop within this process its own consciousness as a class, will it through its actions in Trade Unions and political parties assert its own interests and achieve some measure of social security. After all most commentators beleive that religion developed in large part out of a desire to have the goodwill of he gods to ensure the success of the harvest, and Marx much misunderstood comment about the opium of the people was intended to convey that as long as the people suffer, they will require some palliative.
I don't know about a changed Islam it seems to me that the majority of Muslims are already similar to the majority of Christians in how seriously they take their religion, certainly that appears true of Indonesia the world's largest Muslim country. As I said before extremist actions are not confined to Muslims, the potential exists for all religious fanatics to enagage in such activities whatever the religion, it is just a matter of circumstance, that given the weakness of the socialist and labour movements the grievances of Muslims throughout the Middle east and elsewhere have sought solution in Political islam. It is just as likely that in similar circumstances it could just as easily be Christian clerical-fascists.
Arthur Bough
Indonesia
Actually I just saw news footage of an Indonesian fundamentalist group attacking the US embassy, so you may have to find a new example...
Of course Indonesia is a very big country and a few hundred people are not necessarily represntative; nevertheless......
Indonesia
There was a very good piece of coverage last week by I think it was either BBC or Channel 4 from Indonesia. The basic outline was that in Indonesia Muslims have by and large won for themselves a more tolerant moderate approach. The fear of the majority of Indonesian Muslims was that the backlash from the political islamists within Indonesia would result in a reduction of that more relaxed and tolerant approach.
In further coverage last week from Jakarta it showed a reasonably large, though not huge demosntration against the cartoons, but it was completely peaceful. That a few hundred political islamists or more hardliners have taken action might mean something or nothing. It could be a beginning of the reaction the moderate Muslims feared, or it may just be the action of a few individuals.
Arthur Bough
Furthermore...
...in a stirring display of anti-racism and anti-imperialism which must bring joy to the heart of SWP cadre everywhere, Nigerian muslims have rioted over the cartoons and killed 16 of their Christian compatriots.
"The issue is racism"?. THE issue?
and Free-Speech
No doubt we can expect a massive campaign of solidarity from the 'anti-racist' Islamophile former left calling for help to the Nigerian Christians.
Andrew Coates
If you build it they will come
I actually haven't heard anyone on the left, in the SWP, the AWL or anywhere else, calling for a campaign on behalf of the Nigerian Christians. Why don't you start one?
Who After all...
Who after all are in the "context" of a majority Muslim population an oppressed minority.
Arthur Bough
On the logic of this debate...
Can we look forward to some people here arguing for the left to serialise the collected works of David Irving?
I presume, on the "logic" of your argument that you'd be in favour of this, given that he's been jailed for exercising his "freedom of speech" right to talk anti-semitic nonsense to an audience of boneheads?
David Irving
Actually Deborah Lipstadt who won the libel action Irving recently brought against her has denounced the sentence against him on freedom of speech grounds. AWL has always opposed state bans on fascist hate speech as far as I am aware.
But anyone who can equate holocaust denial with a few cartoons of a dead religious prophet has their political compass a little awry, I'd say.
Regarding the Nigerian Christians, the AWL may not be calling for a campaign specifically to defend them, however they and others are certainly campaigning against political Islam and fundamentalist intolerance, which is the motivation for these killings. Hopefully the SWP and others on the left will at some point feel able to do the same.
Limits to Freedom of Speech
So we are saying that there are limits to what should be published in the name of freedom of speech then? Because what Irving says is racist (I would argue the cartoons are too, but that's a separate issue) then he would not get the same strident defence.
That's a perfectly defensible view, but not one that co-incides with the absolutist defence of freedom of speech (or the macho posturing about publishing in defiance of "the man") which went before.
Freedom to Lie?
Alan, isn't the point about Irving and Holocaust denial in general that it is untrue, as well as motivated by anti-semitism?
Obviously (or, I would have thought obviously), 'freedom of speech' means freedom to tell the truth and express opinions (including distasteful ones) - it does not extend to the "right" to tell lies.
Yes, Irving's a liar
I'm sure it'll come as no surprise to you that my position is against the AWL hpothetically publishing Irving's stuff, just as it's against the decision that was taken to publish the cartoons.
However, to return to your point about truth. Without re-running the whole debate about the cartoons and racism, where I'm assuming we don't agree, you'd surely concede that the stereotype of Muslim-as-terrorist (which is undeniably visible in the cartoons) is also untrue.
Therefore, to coin a cliche, what's good for the goose has to be good for the gander, no?
the right to tell lies
Are you saying you are in favour of banning holocaust denial, Janine?
Joe Baxter
Joe ... No, I'm saying that I
Joe ... No, I'm saying that I think that it is right that there are laws which allow the correction of, or redress against, the publication of lies.
The victims of those lies are entitled to it (as I'm sure you would agree if someone put a leaflet through every door on your street saying that you are a child molester), and the population in general are entitled to know whether statements that purport to be facts are true or not.
And further to that, I'm saying that the AWL would have no interest in reproducing lies presented as fact, UNLESS it was quoting them in the process of exposing them.
(BTW, there's a goodish little snippet in today's Evening Standard by Nick Cohen, explaining why even anti-semites/holocaust deniers should be allowed freedom of speech for their views. He doesn't comment, though, on the issue I've raised here.)
Alan ... Surely, you can see that a cartoon, even if it promotes an untrue stereoptype, is not a statement of purported fact in the way that Irving's works are? If it was a pseudo-scientific document presenting false "evidence" that all Muslims are inherently driven to terrorism, then you might have a valid comparison. But it's a cartoon, for god's sake.
PS to Anon above
When referring to the posturing I was referring to several people, not necessarily your posts, "Anon". Unless you were one of the posturers ;-)
On Irving
I think that it would be a good idea if someone has the time to actually summarise Irving's evidence and argument, and to test it against the facts thereby undermining its credibility. After all I'm sure that there are many such similar works by people on he Left deconstructing Mein Kampf.
Moreover, I think that there may be another argument here. Whilst in no way wanting to defend Irving, and understanding the reasons he is likely to have done it, Irving seems to have shifted his position. He yesterday on TV said he accepted that millions of Jews died, he also accepts that there were Gas Chambers etc., he now however claims that they were not where the Allies claimed they were.
Suppose, that he is actually right. Suppose that 6 million Jews did die in Gas chambers, but for political reasons the Allies wanted to show that these Gas Chambers were somewhere other than where they were, or suppose the Germans had destroyed the evidence, and the Allies recreated it? The actual fact of the Holocaust is not changed by any of that or what it says about Nazism, but knowing the truth might also tell us something we didn't previously know about imperialism and the actions of the Allies, and equally well might tell us something about Stalinism.
Surely, Marxists want to know the truth, and generally speaking you do not arrive at it by sealing off entire areas of history from discussion. Challenging Irving's evidence and argument by socialists examining the evidence critically is not only the best way of undermining Irving it is necessary for socialists in defining our own politics and history rather than allowing the bourgeoisie to tell us what is fact and what is not.
Arthur Bough
Debunking Irving
There are a few good books debunking Irving, for instance 'Telling Lies About Hitler' by Richard J Evans.
Debunking Irving
Seconded on Richard Evans.
Although doubtless 'a bourgeois historian' in Arthur's eyes, Richard taught me for a year and is generally a good chap whose work reflects a strong sympathy for the German left.
His Coming of the Third Reich has by far the best account in English of the massive campaign of terror directed against socialists and communists during the Nazis supposely 'legal' rise to power.
His evidence in the Lipstadt case and the book based upon it utterly and completely destroys Irving's credibility as a historian with even his work on subjects not related to the holocaust (such as the bombing of Dresden) being shown to be full of outright falsifications.
To reiterate the man is not a historian and has never been a historian: he is a fascist, an anti-semite and a liar and if bourgeois Austria puts him out of circulation for a couple of years then good for them.
On Irving
Arthur, you're starting off down a very slippery slope here.
The Holocaust is in fact the most intensively documented event in human history, the evidence having been exhaustively analysed by literally thousands of scholars and with a bibliography of many, many thousand books and articles.
We also have witness testimonies from surviving victims, perpetrators and bystanders on a scale which beggars any other historical event.
And this is 'sealing off entire areas of history from discussion'.
You clearly know next to nothing about the Holocaust, about Irving or about what it is real historians actually do.
Decent people do not 'suppose' Irving 'was actually right' any more than they suppose that Jews actually use the blood of Christian infants for making their passover matzohs.
The 'evidence' for both propositions is of exactly the same nature: it is untrue, the originators know it is untrue and they just don't care as their only objective is to foster hatred of Jews.
To paraphrase Mary McCarthy on Lilian Hellmann: 'every word Irving utters is a lie - including "the" and "and"'.
Frankly jail is too good for him.
The one thing...
...I always remember about Irving (who isn't someone I've paid that much attention to otherwise) is that he is the one person who immediately spotted that the Hitler Diaries (remember those) were fakes. Respected historians like Hugh Trevor-Roper were fooled.
Apropos of nothing at all, really, but I found it interesting.
The One Thing
Of course Irving knows Nazi documents and the sordid world of the people who trade in them very well - in fact he actually makes a good part of his living buying and selling them on his website.
So if anyone can tell a real and a forged Hitler signature apart it would be Irving - however as Professor Evans and others have shown in exhaustive and exhausting detail, knowing a great deal about Nazi documents does not make you a historian if you only use that knowledge to systematically lie about their contents.
Trevor-Roper was actually an expert on early modern England whose only connection to Third Reich scholarship was the few months he spent at the end of World War II investigating the last days of Hitler for British Military Intelligence.
I doubt HT-R had even looked at an original Nazi document in the thirty years before the Sunday Times asked his expert opinion on the Hitler Diaries.
However being a pompous ass it never occurred to Lord Dacre of the North (as he had by then become to universal ridicule) to actually ask any of the dozens of much better qualified specialists for their view before he went into print validating this obvious forgery.
So Trevor-Roper nil - Irving 1, however this doesn't make Irving any more or Trevor-Roper any less of a historian.
You Are Absolutely Right
You are absolutely right I know very little about Irving, or the books demolishing his arguments. That is why I think free speech and having those things openly debated on a forum like this is an excellent way of people like me that don't have the evidence in front of us can acquire it.
My point as I stated was certainly not to support Irving, but to argue that unless the ideas of our opponents even the most odious are studied, and argued against we are unable to take our own knowledge further. As has been said there are lots of books demolishing Irving, but that's not much use to those of us that haven't read them. The point of a website like this is to bring that information forward for the rest of us, summarise it and stimultae debate about it. After all we all cannot read every book that's been written about every aspect of life can we?
As for ""Decent people do not 'suppose' Irving 'was actually right'", I'm sorry I can't accept that attitude. Its no different than say a fundamentalist Christian saying they shouldn't go down the path of assuming the possibility that Darwin was right. Just because someone is our political opponent even one as odious as Irving does not mean that they may not occasionally say something that is true. I can imagine for example that the Stalinists would have had very good reason for there to be no evidence of concentration camps and gas chambers to have been discovered to have been in operation on the territory they controlled during the Stalin-Hitler pact for example.
As I said in my original post I summary of the evidecne here produced by socialist historians would be very useful.
Arthur Bough
Yes Of Course I am Absolutely Right....
Arthur,
I am utterly flummoxed by your reference to 'socialist historians'.
I happen to know the field we're talking about pretty well and can say with some confidence that the number of published Third Reich historians you would probably accept as 'socialists'is miniscule to non-existent.
Do you really believe that only fully signed-up members of whatever Trotskyist grouplet you happen to belong to at the moment have anything to tell us about history.
If so, then you really have nothing of value to say on this or any other subject.
Also at a loss to understand your example - is your ignorance so complete and absolute that you imagine that the Nazis were allowed to operate concentration camps and gas chambers in SOVIET-OCCUPIED TERRITORY during the Hitler-Stalin pact?
Don't respond to this - please go away and read some proper books on the subject.
For someone starting from complete ignorance Martin Gilbert's The Holocaust is probably a good introduction.
To get an idea of what scholars are currently thinking then try the collection of essays the Final Solution: Origins and Implementation edited by David Cesarani.
To put it all in context Noakes and Pridham's 4-volume the Third Reich in Documents is utterly indispensable.
I'd also highly recommend Ian Kershaw's 2-volume Hitler which is much more than just a biography.
Once you've absorbed the basic data in these volumes it might be possible to start discussing what this all means for socialists.
A Reply Anyway
As I pointed out above we can't all read every book on every aspect of human life, and as I am reading lots of other things at the moment do not have time to read the works you cite. That was one reason I hoped a rational debate could be had here, and people like yourself that have read such work could share your knowledge with us.
"Do you really believe that only fully signed-up members of whatever Trotskyist grouplet you happen to belong to at the moment have anything to tell us about history."
As I'm not signed up to any TRotskyist or other kind of group clealry the answer is no.
" Also at a loss to understand your example - is your ignorance so complete and absolute that you imagine that the Nazis were allowed to operate concentration camps and gas chambers in SOVIET-OCCUPIED TERRITORY during the Hitler-Stalin pact?"
I don't know. That's why I'd like to be enlightened as to why this would have been impossible. But actually, what I was thinking about was the possibility that such camps might have been operated by the Russians themselves, or are you going to tell me the Russians weren't capable of such crimes, that Stalin really didn't kill millions of Soviet citizens, that the Russians didn't have Gulags and concentration camps, perhaps even that anti-semtiic pogroms were unheard of under Stalin?
Arthur Bough