Benjamin Klein argues that the working class movement must lead the struggle for democracy and free speech, and not leave it to the posturing of the Tories and the Liberals
There are a number of important lessons that need to be drawn from the controversy surrounding the events at Oxford University last November, when BNP leader Nick Griffin and holocaust-denier David Irving were invited to speak.
The first is that we must see through the rhetoric and go beyond the spin that the left - particularly those around the Socialist Workers Party - put on the event at the time. According to Socialist Worker, “the way” that the left must take to defeat “the Nazis” is not “publicity stunts or fake ‘debates’” - it is “united mass action, as shown by the hundreds of protesters outside the Oxford Union this week.”1
Yet how can the Unite Against Fascism mobilisation be seen as a success? Yes, hundreds of protestors turned up, but the BNP hardly went away with its tail between its legs. Whatever one thinks of no-platform as a tactic, it was not successful on this occasion - both speakers still addressed (admittedly smaller) separate audiences, and Griffin was able to pose as the voice of reason, democracy and moderation - warning how the demonstrating students were a mob which “would kill” and how, “had they grown up in Nazi Germany, they would have been splendid Nazis”.2
The second lesson to be drawn is that the Oxford Union’s leaders are not consistent democrats and do not uphold the standards of radical democracy and free speech that the working class movement must aspire to if it is to become the hegemonic force in society. Just a month earlier for example, the Tory president of the Oxford Union, Luke Tryl, was more than happy to give in to pressure from people like Peace Now UK co-chair Paul Usiskin and remove Norman Finkelstein from the speakers’ list to a debate on the motion, “This house believes that one state is the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Usiskin’s reasons for wishing to no-platform Finkelstein? One can only presume that this “far-left detractor of Israel”3 would undoubtedly have had a few things to say on Zionism and the historical abuse of Jewish suffering to serve the needs of imperialism. To oppose the no-platforming of Finkelstein is not, however, to subscribe uncritically to his politics, but to highlight how this elite debating club has everything to do with publicity, grandeur and training for elite political careers and nothing to do with the culture of genuine debate and openness our movement must uphold.
The third lesson, as James Turley has already outlined,4 is that it is positively suicidal for the left to call for increased state powers to ‘turn the BNP into HMP’ - turkeys and Christmas spring to mind. Such powers will inevitably be used against our movement.
Tactics
What I would like to do in this article is underline how for Marxists there is not, or at least should not be, any ‘iron law’ when it comes to our response to the BNP. Tactics flow from programme and principles - such as the need for independent working class political mobilisation against the state - and must assume a wide range of forms.
Comrade Turley is also quite correct to highlight that, “No tactic - however glorious its pedigree - must dominate a struggle by elevating itself into an untouchable dogma. In a struggle as important as anti-fascism, this applies a hundredfold.”
Militant posturing about a battle for the streets and talk about always looking to smash up BNP rallies or close down events where it has speakers simply will not suffice. By reducing our arsenal to one weapon our fight against the BNP is considerably weakened.
At times it will be correct and advantageous to our cause to silence a BNP representative, to use violence to defend ourselves against fascists or go on the attack against them. However - and this is where the left falls to pieces theoretically - on other occasions it will be equally valid to attempt to openly destroy their arguments in front of an audience on TV, at an election hustings or, yes, at a student union event. On this last point, I disagree with comrade Turley on his “particular application” of the ‘no platform’ tactic, and will return to this question later.
Calls to deny the extreme right a platform on each and every occasion betray a political weakness and lack of confidence both in the working class and in the explanatory power of Marxism. Just what have we got to be scared of, comrades?
Are we afraid of the potential for the right’s advocacy of reactionary scapegoating to gain support? We certainly ought to be, especially in the absence of a powerful working class alternative capable of cohering support around itself. Equally to the point, ideas cannot be defeated either by trying to suppress them or by bashing their proponents over the head. In order to defeat them they must first be exposed to the light of day, where all their hypocrisy and hidden dangers can be revealed.
The SWP’s Weyman Bennett refused to share a platform with Griffin and Irving at the Oxford Union, just as he would anywhere, at any time, no matter what the circumstances. Yet it is clear that any partisan of the working class worth his/her salt should be confident of destroying their racist, chauvinist apologetics and winning the argument that it is only the project of Marxism and universal emancipation that can provide genuine solutions in place of the divisive, irrational and failed answers of the extreme right.
He/she could also argue that we need political independence and the right to organise our own self-defence against both far-right thuggery and state oppression. It is a sad indictment of the left that, even if Bennett or other representatives of UAF had agreed to speak, they would not have put across these class politics, but would have tailed official establishment anti-racism in order not to scare off those to their right.
In this limited sense, I can understand some comrades’ fear that by having such speakers debating Griffin we really could ‘give legitimacy’ to his ideas. They might, by comparison to the comrades’ own arguments, appear more coherent. Yet the weakness and inconsistency of our own movement is hardly a sound reason for insisting on the single tactic of no-platforming the far right. It merely underlines the urgency of the need to break with popular-front, cross-class politics and to fight for genuine, working class independence from the state and bourgeoisie, together with the bureaucratic purveyors of their influence in our movement.
Liberalism versus socialism?
Anindya Bhattacharyya of the SWP is quite right to say that “mere words are not enough” to defeat the BNP. He argues that “what does defeat the fascists … what they are most scared of - is mass grassroots opposition to their presence.”5 Yet his article creates a false dichotomy between “mass grassroots opposition” on the one hand and the tactical consideration of “defeat[ing] them in debate” on the other - disingenuously passed off as a choice between a “liberal” and a “socialist” approach. Apparently it is “liberal” to seek to destroy the influence of reactionary ideas through the power of our own ideas!
Unlike the left, the BNP has not been afraid to adopt new tactics. It has gained itself a bigger hearing - a ‘platform’, if you like - through its tactical nous: cleaning up its act by buying suits, putting on a show of respectability, while continuing to play upon the fears and prejudices of disillusioned and alienated people, particularly among the working class. Its switch from street confrontation to the contesting of elections has brought it 56 councillors - something that the non-Labour left can currently only dream of.
But how does the left look to respond to these changed conditions? “Fortunately,” writes comrade Bhattacharyya, “we too have a strategy for stopping the fascist threat. It involves recognising that fascism is an exceptional threat to all of us, and that it cannot be treated as a legitimate form of politics.” Unlike New Labour, the Tories, Lib Dems and Ulster Unionists, one presumes.
Yet the left cannot magic this “exceptional threat” out of existence by declaring it illegitimate. The fact is that the BNP is regarded as legitimate by those who vote for it, unfortunately in increasing numbers. What tactic does the UAF advocate to defeat the BNP at the ballot box? It effectively calls for a vote for any other party - ie, the pro-imperialist parties responsible for creating the very conditions of alienation and disengagement that the BNP seeks to exploit with its populist, racist garbage. Although it is “liberal” to “defeat them in debate”, it is fine for us to give the establishment parties carte blanche to disseminate their own, marginally less poisonous ‘solutions’.
Despite upbeat claims to the contrary, the insistence on ‘no platform’ as the only permissible tactic is simply not succeeding. In fact it is failing dismally.
Communist Students comrade Chris Strafford argues, like the SWP, that we “do not give fascists an ounce of legitimacy by allowing them a platform or sharing a platform”.6 For him too, it is a “matter of principle” to deny them a platform.
Implicit in comrade Strafford’s argumentation is a conception of debate which actually is tinged with liberalism: the idea that debate is always and exclusively a pleasant and polite affair, involving the toleration of opposing positions, with the protagonists shaking hands afterwards and congratulating each other on a well fought exchange. This is not our view. Our aim when we enter into debate with those who hold wrong, opportunist or downright reactionary ideas should be to expose them for what they are and soundly defeat them. This hardly equates to the granting of legitimacy.
Comrade Strafford’s approach also appears to ignore aspects of anti-fascist history. For example, in the early 1920s the Communist Party of Germany actually organised debates with German fascist groups, including the Nazis, attracting large numbers. This tactic led to an increase in influence for the communists, to the recruitment of many who were impressed not only by its power to mobilise, but by their arguments. And, believe it or not, members of the far right would themselves be won over. Yet the SWP, and presumably comrade Strafford, would have us believe that a tactic so successful that it both increases the influence of communist ideas and reduces that of the fascists is nevertheless somehow unprincipled.
Unwittingly expressing a profound lack of faith in the ability of working class people to draw their own conclusions on whose politics represent their interests, comrade Strafford states: “By allowing the BNP a platform, even if defeated in argument, legitimises the BNP in the eyes of our fellow workers.” Yet the problem is that, if we choose ‘on principle’ to ‘do a Weyman’ every time it comes to a debate like that at the Oxford Union, we are renouncing our duty to fight for working class politics in every arena and in every way we can. This leaves the working class between a rock and a hard place - in effect we are telling them to choose between the extreme right and the mainstream parties, with their tired, discredited policies.
What needs to be stressed again is that the choice of a particular tactic is not a matter of eternal principle - on one occasion we might choose to debate with representatives of the extreme right; on another we might organise a boycott or smash up their meetings. It all depends on the particular circumstances and what tactic we judge will be most likely to advance the cause of our class. We must be firm and intransigent when it comes to principle, but infinitely flexible when it comes to tactics.
Blanket bans
The Marxist left must be the most consistent partisans of free speech as a general principle, fighting for the right, not least of minorities, to speak out and constantly looking to win more democratic freedoms to facilitate the open struggle of contending class forces. One of the problems with our movement calling for the no-platforming of certain ideas is that blanket bans can also be used to suppress critical and progressive ideas - not purely at a state level, but within communities, trade unions, and, despite the views of comrade Turley, on campuses too. In his Weekly Worker article he proposed that “communists must support, and fight for, no-platform policies”, as he believes that the left would be able to circumvent proscriptive bans.
Last year’s NUS conference, however, in adopting the European Monitoring Commission’s definition of anti-semitism, effectively agreed to deny anyone a platform whose comments were deemed to breach it. I am sure that comrade Turley would disagree with this move, as it could clearly be used against those who criticise Zionism. Yet it does provide a particularly telling example of how making an iron principle out of tactic, even when we are not dealing directly with the state, can be extremely counterproductive and may result in the arbitrary suppression of critical and dissident thought.
The NUS example demonstrates that left or critical ideas, whether we subscribe to them or not, could easily get caught in the no-platforming net - it depends on who is defining what is or is not acceptable, or ‘legitimate’. Once more, the case of Norman Finkelstein is pertinent - Zionists and their supporters claim that those who criticise the state of Israel are proposing some sort of islamic, if not outright genocidal, outcome. In the case of those looking to drive Israeli Jews into the sea, this has more than an element of truth. At least in terms of intentions. The point is, though, that blanket bans can be applied in an arbitrary manner that allow a good deal of abuse by bureaucrats, including those in student unions.
Take this justification for Manchester University’s banning of the BNP: “There is a fundamental difference between free speech and discrimination. I would defend the right of any of my political opponents to say whatever they want, but when you discriminate against someone on a fundamental - like race, colour or gender - fundamentals that can’t be changed and that you don’t choose, it isn’t freedom of speech: it is just pure, naked discrimination.”7
This is to mix up two arguments. Discrimination on the basis of race, colour or gender and the advocacy of discrimination on the basis of race, colour or gender are not the same thing. But the main problem we face is how best to combat the sea of reactionary and backward ideas. For example, in Britain today the vast majority has no problem whatsoever with institutionalised discrimination against the vast majority of the world’s working class on the basis of nationality. ‘British jobs for British workers’ is a widely held view. The overwhelming majority of the population take national divisions as natural. We do not.
Indeed we oppose anything and everything that divides the working class. Hence communists seek to overcome - using all manner of tactics - all forms of sectional ideology. Not only sexism and racism, but nationalism, feminism, narrow trade unionism, opportunism and religious superstition. All support discrimination, all perpetuate divisions in the working class.
If the above Facebook writer were serious about the need to suppress advocacy of discrimination, then not only the BNP would be banned from campus, but so would all the mainstream political parties in Britain - and the mainstream media for that matter. Do not all of them “discriminate” on the basis of nationality, pitting the British against outsiders? Here the banning argument comes up against the brick wall of reality.
The BNP is a symptom of capitalist decadence, of capitalist decline. It is foul - yes, of course. But the job of Marxists is to go to the heart of the problem. We must tackle the disease itself. There is no possibility of the capitalist class turning to the BNP as a fascist - ie, an unofficial, extra-state, counterrevolutionary - solution in the short term. There is no revolutionary situation. In the meantime, however, the left, the real left, has no interest in legitimising the mainstream bourgeoisie in the eyes of militant workers by giving it anti-fascist, or even democratic, credentials that it does not deserve.
Communists must be intransigent defenders of free speech. We should not seek to impose - or, even worse, demand that the state impose - limits or restrictions on this freedom: the best conditions for the establishment of the truth are those of open and free debate, where the sharp clash of ideas - including the most reactionary ones - is facilitated. These are the best conditions within which the ideas of our class can, and must, thrive.
For the same reason the left must take our own democracy seriously. The pitiful culture of sects like the SWP which gag and expel those who dissent must be overthrown. Unless we do so, our fight against the far right can only be held back. To suppress the democratic rights of the minority is, at the end of the day, to suppress the democratic rights of all. That is why Leon Trotsky opposed measures in the US that would restrict the activities of the fascists. They would inevitably be used against the advanced section of the working class.
The BNP claims to provide political answers for working people and has made some gains as a result. But the dogmatic cannot rise to its challenge. Only by the ability to choose from a wide range of tactics can we be flexible enough to do so.
Notes
1. ‘Free speech for Nazis is a threat to democracy', Socialist Worker December 1.
2. http://librabunda.blogspot.com/2007/11/irving-and-griffin-spark-fury-at-oxford.html.
3. www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1276.
4. ‘Oxford Union and “free speech”’ Weekly Worker November 29 2006.
5. ‘Why there must be no freedom of speech for Nazis’ Socialist Worker December 4 2006.
6. http://csukblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/oxford-union-and-%e2%80%98freespeech%e2%80%99/
#comment-717.
7. www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21702436152&ref=mf.
