Anti-Fascism

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The far right on 11 November

Far-right activists converged on central London on Saturday 11 November. Whipped up into a fury by Braverman’s dog-whistling, the far right sniffed an opportunity. Tommy Robinson, Lawrence Fox and Douglas Murray all either put out Powell-esque rhetoric, or encouraged their followers to attend to “protect statues” and to demand that the Gaza-ceasefire demonstrators show respect to the war dead. Unlike in 2020, when he helped unleash a similar situation in Central London in defence of war memorials, Tommy Robinson even made an appearance. However, when things began to turn ugly in Chinatown, he...

Unite and Ukraine: Not Good Enough!

Unite’s policy on Ukraine is an EC statement passed at this year's policy conference. It is much better than the only motion submitted to that conference. But it takes a wrong and unclear position on the key issues. It remains unpublicised. It is reproduced below. But, for reasons known only to those who labour in the inner sanctum of Unite’s head office in Holborn, the statement has not yet been made public and released to the union’s own membership.

Bodies Under Siege

• Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global , by Sian Norris (Verso, 2023) In the last year, four women in the UK have been prosecuted for carrying out illegal abortions. This is especially shocking when you consider that in the 160 years prior there were only three. There has been a corresponding rise in criminal investigations, which are not only invasive and traumatic for those involved, but also suggest that further prosecutions are coming down the line. But why now? In her book, Bodies Under Siege, Sian Norris sets out the links between the rising far...

Yes, Trump is fascist

I can’t see where Dan Katz ( Solidarity 676 ) is coming from with his pedantic insistence that Trump is not, as in truth he is, a fascist. Or where Katz is going with it. Sure, we want accuracy and as far as possible, precision. We want to avoid demagogy and using words in such a way that feeling is substituted for reason. In office, Trump did his best to be a rules-free dictator. He broke every rule and precedent he felt he needed to. He has discredited the FBI and the CIA (the main trouble with that is that he wanted to make them his wholly pliant weapons and tools). Before 2016, and in...

Not just populist

As a regular reader of your newspaper I find you get most of the important things right like Ukraine and Brexit; but why do some of your contributors go out of their way to deny that Donald Trump is a fascist? Dan Katz repeats the “Trump is not a fascist” mantra ( Solidarity 676 ) maintaining instead that Trump is merely “a right wing populist”. That view may have been plausible a few years ago, but what marks Trump out from the likes of Orban and Erdogan nowadays is that he has actually initiated a right wing insurrection which came close to succeeding in overthrowing the elected government...

Trump not fascist

I enjoy Jim Denham’s columns, but the last one (7 June) was spoilt by the casual denunciation of Donald Trump as a fascist and the claim that in “November 2020 74 million Americans voted fascist”. Trump’s a peculiar, unpleasant, right-wing pig, for sure. But misunderstanding the problem Trump and his movement poses for the left and the US labour movement helps no one. Trump has widespread support across the Republican party and, in particular among its elected representatives. So, if Trump’s a fascist, the Republican party is a fascist party, too, right? Except the Republican party does not...

Drive out all the Rashmikant Joshis!

Rashmikant Joshi (left), Keith Vaz (centre) and friends Immediately upon being told he would not be allowed to restand as a Labour councillor, former Leicester lord mayor Rashmikant Joshi defected to the Tories . Through whatever mix of ideology and opportunism, Joshi is a supporter of the Hindu right in India. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won re-election in 2019, he spoke at a Leicester event to celebrate , in front of a life-size cut-out of Narendra Modi. Joshi is one of 19 Labour councillors – just over 40% of the total – told they will not be allowed to restand. More here . It...

Far right demos outnumbered

Far-right attempts to mobilise on 26-27 March came up against significant numbers of antifascists. South London saw astroturfed American import, Turning Point UK, try to stop Drag Queen Story Hour at the Honor Oak pub. They attracted more demonstrators than their last attempt but were still outnumbered. In Manchester, James Harvey of “Students Against Tyranny” and “Voice of Wales”, was heavily outnumbered as his attempt to organise against the “Marxist University”. A demo in Wakefield, where far right demonstrators were going to burn the Quran, fared similarly. Patriotic Alternative attempted...

Kino Eye: Conrad Veidt, anti-fascist, 1893-1943

Although he was almost always cast as a Nazi villain (most famously as Major Strasser in the Hollywood classic Casablanca ), the German actor Conrad Veidt was an active and committed anti-fascist. On 3 April it will be 80 years since his untimely death, aged only 50. He sprang to fame with his role in the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), and became one of the most popular actors attached to the German UFA Studio. Under the new Nazi laws introduced in 1933 Veidt was expected to sign a racial declaration. He put his “race” down as Jewish — his wife was Jewish but...

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