ITN launches libel action against LM
g_d...@my-deja.com
"A.Prianikoff" <al...@prianikoff.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> BBC online
> Monday, 28 February, 2000, 13:47 GMT
>
> "ITN has begun a High Court libel action against a magazine which
criticised
> an award-winning ITN report about a Bosnian detention camp.
>
> The three-week case is expected to attract worldwide interest as the
> credibility of television news comes under scrutiny.
>
> LM magazine - formerly known as Living Marxism - which denies libel,
is
> being sued over its claim that ITN distorted footage from the camp in
a
> report in 1992. "
>
> Full story
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_659000/659818.stm
The story is also covered in todays Times & Telegraph.
For the record, it should be pointed out that LMs
article never claimed ITN 'faked' or 'fabricated'
anything. It simply claims that ITN did not tell
the world that it's award winning pictures were recorded#
by journalists encircled by barbed wire fence when
the pictures were subsequently interpreted as 'proof'
of Serbs running Nazi style concentration camps.
Hopefully the juries attention will be focused on
the actual article.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
loosel...@my-deja.com
g_d...@my-deja.com wrote:
> The story is also covered in todays Times & Telegraph.
Mick Hume (LM's editor and one of the defendants in the trial) also
works for the Times. I imagine they'll be paying some attention to
this over the next few weeks.
> For the record, it should be pointed out that LMs
> article never claimed ITN 'faked' or 'fabricated'
> anything. It simply claims that ITN did not tell
> the world that it's award winning pictures were recorded#
> by journalists encircled by barbed wire fence when
> the pictures were subsequently interpreted as 'proof'
> of Serbs running Nazi style concentration camps.
AFAIK ITN have already conceded that the barbed wire surrounded their
journalists and not the Bosnians in one of their replies to LM's
replies to the particulars of claim.
> Hopefully the juries attention will be focused on
> the actual article.
Fat chance. First chance the prosecuting barrister gets he will rake
up LM's past as the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party. LM
publishes unpopular opinions at the best of times: it won't take much
for it to be portrayed as an apologist for the Milosovic regime and a
denier of the 'bosnian holocaust'.
IMHO there is no way LM can win. The public has after all been told
for years that the Serbs are proto-Nazis. Anybody who publishes
anything contradictory to this view is tainted by association, guilty
by default.
---
And the lawyers will exploit this...
Gerry the Gerbil
>Fat chance. First chance the prosecuting barrister gets he will rake
>up LM's past as the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party. LM
>publishes unpopular opinions at the best of times: it won't take much
>for it to be portrayed as an apologist for the Milosovic regime and a
>denier of the 'bosnian holocaust'.
That's because it is. Both Justin Flude and Gary Dale, the RCP/LMs
representatives on Usenet, have expressed their "unconditional"
support for the Serb regimes, on the Leninist grounds that any country
under imperialist attack should enjoy the 'unconditional but critical'
support of revolutionaries. Sadly, there's not been much of the
'critical' in the RCP/LMs commentaries on the Bosnian War and its
afters - the only criticism of the Serb regime I can remember seeing,
on either Usenet or LM magazine, was one throwaway line by Mick Hume
in a recent commentary. By constantly, and rightly, questioning
Western propaganda, repeated by a compliant media, and bitterly
criticising NATOs actions, but remaining completely silent about the
crimes of the Serb regime, the magazine is plainly pro the Serb
regime. Dale and Flude have gone farther than this, both maintaining
that Milosevic has only ever acted to secure the "territorial
integrity of Yugoslavia" and has done nothing wrong.
As for denying atrocities, Flude has bluntly stated, both on Usenet
and on the LM Open Forum (www.informinc.co.uk), that Srebrenica didn't
happen. Full stop.
>IMHO there is no way LM can win.
They won when the libel writ landed on their doorstep. From being an
obscure mag of an even more obscure vanguardist Trotskyite sect, LM
was catapulted into the public gaze and became the darling of the very
liberals it hates so much, as the David standing up against the
Goliath of ITN. The only losers in this battle are ITN, whose crass
stupidity in launching the libel action beggars belief, and free
speech.
FWIW, I hope ITN loses the legal battle, and have already posted off a
small donation to the LM "Off the Fence" fund. But no-one should be
under any illusions about the real nature of the RCP/LM. The only
reason they posted the Deichmann story was that their organisation
unconditionally supported the Milosevic regime. Neither should anyone
be under any illusion about the "left wing" nature of LM. As Mick Hume
wrote in an editorial in LM 115:
"In these circumstances, the 'left' which has come to prominence
across the advanced world is one which ultimately is more afraid of
other people than it is of the state. That is why it opposes
individual freedom and supports intervention at every turn. It is also
one reason why I would not dream of calling LM a left-wing, socialist
or Marxist magazine these days."
The RCP/LM hates the Left in its entirety: reformist, revolutionary,
old, new, Trot, Communist, anarchist - we're all "enemies of freedom".
By all means support LM against ITN as a free speech issue, but don't
delude yourselves into supporting the organisation on the grounds of
Left solidarity.
>The public has after all been told
>for years that the Serbs are proto-Nazis. Anybody who publishes
>anything contradictory to this view is tainted by association, guilty
>by default.
Had the RCP/LM been at all critical of the Serb regime, its justified
criticisms of the demonisation of all Serbs (including oppositionists
whose heads have been cracked by the State police, or who've been
beaten by Arkan's paramilitaries, or who've languished in prisons for
opposition activities) would have had more impact. In Italy, which had
the strongest anti-Kosovo war movement in Europe, and where the
radical anti-imperialist Left is strong, opposition to NATO
imperialism was coupled with opposition to the Milosevic regime. Even
in the UK, the Socialist Workers Party was robust in its criticism of
both NATO and Milosevic, and for that reasons its articles in
Socialist Worker carried more weight than if they'd taken the RCP/LM
position that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
Whatever happens in the trial, Frank Furedi and Anne Bradley will be
laughing. Their tiny sect has become a media cause celebre, and gained
nationwide publicity which it could never have otherwise done, and all
because of a wind-up article. Oh, they're happy little bunnies, all
right.
Keep on munchin'
Gerry
(gerry....@usa.net)
g_d...@my-deja.com
munc...@sunflower.seeds wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2000 19:28:26 GMT, loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> >Fat chance. First chance the prosecuting barrister gets he will rake
> >up LM's past as the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party. LM
> >publishes unpopular opinions at the best of times: it won't take much
> >for it to be portrayed as an apologist for the Milosovic regime and a
> >denier of the 'bosnian holocaust'.
>
> That's because it is.
You are claiming a Holocaust took place in Bosnia?
I guess ITN must rank amongst the 'Holocaust deniers' since they are
at pains to point out (and always have been) that they didn't find
any evidence of such. However, the world got a different impression,
taking it's cue from, erm, ITN footage.
For the record (and I would need a sledgehammer to get this through
to a Gerbils skull), the moral character of Serbian regime was
irrelevant. If your only evidence that LM had a brief for Milosevic
is that it was strongly anti-Western intervention and pro-national
soveriengty (hence 'unconditional' on the regime) and that it didn't
openly criticise Milosevic, I can say McCarthy would be proud of you.
Marc Living
<munc...@sunflower.seeds> wrote:
>The RCP/LM hates the Left in its entirety: reformist, revolutionary,
>old, new, Trot, Communist, anarchist - we're all "enemies of freedom".
Sounds like all the other left-wing parties attitudes to each other.
>By all means support LM against ITN as a free speech issue, but don't
>delude yourselves into supporting the organisation on the grounds of
>Left solidarity.
"Left solidarity"? That's an oxymoron, isn't it?
--
Marc Living (remove "BOUNCEBACK" to reply)
***********************************************
Nor shall we proceed against a freeman, nor
condemn him but by lawful judgment of his peers
or by the law of the land.
************************************************
loosel...@my-deja.com
munc...@sunflower.seeds wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2000 19:28:26 GMT, loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> >Fat chance. First chance the prosecuting barrister gets he will rake
> >up LM's past as the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party. LM
> >publishes unpopular opinions at the best of times: it won't take much
> >for it to be portrayed as an apologist for the Milosovic regime and a
> >denier of the 'bosnian holocaust'.
>
> representatives on Usenet, have expressed their "unconditional"
> support for the Serb regimes, on the Leninist grounds that any country
> under imperialist attack should enjoy the 'unconditional but critical'
> support of revolutionaries. Sadly, there's not been much of the
> 'critical' in the RCP/LMs commentaries on the Bosnian War and its
> afters - the only criticism of the Serb regime I can remember seeing,
> on either Usenet or LM magazine, was one throwaway line by Mick Hume
> in a recent commentary.
Are they official representatives of the RCP (which, incidentally, has
committed suicide to the best of my knowledge) or did you elect them?
> By constantly, and rightly, questioning
> Western propaganda, repeated by a compliant media, and bitterly
> criticising NATOs actions, but remaining completely silent about the
> crimes of the Serb regime, the magazine is plainly pro the Serb
> regime. Dale and Flude have gone farther than this, both maintaining
> that Milosevic has only ever acted to secure the "territorial
> integrity of Yugoslavia" and has done nothing wrong.
'Wrong' and 'Right' are rather stupid words to apply to politics (and
most everything else). It's pretty easy to compare the actions of
Milosevic's regime with those of western nations confronted with their
own version of 'native trouble', cf the British in Kenya or the
American actions against the AIM? Politics is about the exercise of
power.
It is not sufficient to say that because LM criticises the west (and
the western media in particular) it is automatically pro-Milosevic.
> They won when the libel writ landed on their doorstep. From being an
> obscure mag of an even more obscure vanguardist Trotskyite sect, LM
> was catapulted into the public gaze and became the darling of the very
> liberals it hates so much, as the David standing up against the
> Goliath of ITN. The only losers in this battle are ITN, whose crass
> stupidity in launching the libel action beggars belief, and free
> speech.
I guess you don't get the Guardian over there. It's the most liberal
and left wing of the mainstream british papers and was only too happy
to stick the knife in last year. FWIW LM is not popular among
liberals.
> FWIW, I hope ITN loses the legal battle, and have already posted off a
> small donation to the LM "Off the Fence" fund. But no-one should be
> under any illusions about the real nature of the RCP/LM. The only
> reason they posted the Deichmann story was that their organisation
> unconditionally supported the Milosevic regime. Neither should anyone
> be under any illusion about the "left wing" nature of LM. As Mick Hume
> wrote in an editorial in LM 115:
I have no idea what the 'real nature' of the RCP is, hence no illusions.
LM I find amusing and disagreeable in equal measure largely because
stringing together a consistent argument is beyond most of the people
they have writing for them.
This is an improvement on 'Worker's Hammer' or 'Socialist Worker' which
read like they've been translated from the russian by a 50's chinese
slogan writer.
> "In these circumstances, the 'left' which has come to prominence
> across the advanced world is one which ultimately is more afraid of
> other people than it is of the state. That is why it opposes
> individual freedom and supports intervention at every turn. It is also
> one reason why I would not dream of calling LM a left-wing, socialist
> or Marxist magazine these days."
Which is fair comment as it goes. Blair's Labour is somewhere to the
right of the Tory party after all and most of the far left parties are
still barking out the same tired mantras. Who'd want to be associated
with that?
> The RCP/LM hates the Left in its entirety: reformist, revolutionary,
> old, new, Trot, Communist, anarchist - we're all "enemies of freedom".
> By all means support LM against ITN as a free speech issue, but don't
> delude yourselves into supporting the organisation on the grounds of
> Left solidarity.
'Left solidarity'? The only consistent behaviour the left engages in
is sticking the knife in the back of their comrades as often as
possible.
Oh. And twisting it of course.
> Had the RCP/LM been at all critical of the Serb regime, its justified
> criticisms of the demonisation of all Serbs (including oppositionists
> whose heads have been cracked by the State police, or who've been
> beaten by Arkan's paramilitaries, or who've languished in prisons for
> opposition activities) would have had more impact. In Italy, which had
> the strongest anti-Kosovo war movement in Europe, and where the
> radical anti-imperialist Left is strong, opposition to NATO
> imperialism was coupled with opposition to the Milosevic regime. Even
> in the UK, the Socialist Workers Party was robust in its criticism of
> both NATO and Milosevic, and for that reasons its articles in
> Socialist Worker carried more weight than if they'd taken the RCP/LM
> position that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
I thought the quantity of cute girls the SWP has floating around was a
much more powerful argument for their cause personally. Are there any
hot babes in the RCP?
LM isn't obligated to criticise Milosevic chief. After all such
criticism is not exactly in short supply. They're entitled to
concentrate on such issues as they deem fit without being painted as
supporters (your treatment above is a recapitulation of the 'logic'
used by power everywhere: if you're not towing the line, you're
supporting the enemy). As most of the media is only too happy to tow
the line I'm quite happy to see a magazine like LM dance to a different
beat without demanding some idiotic 'balance' of them.
> Whatever happens in the trial, Frank Furedi and Anne Bradley will be
> laughing. Their tiny sect has become a media cause celebre, and gained
> nationwide publicity which it could never have otherwise done, and all
> because of a wind-up article. Oh, they're happy little bunnies, all
> right.
I somehow doubt that swathes of middle england will be giving up their
monthly dose of 'hello' magazine to buy LM as a result of this putative
publicity: there's been almost no mainstream coverage of this trial in
the UK btw... one article in the Times and an interview on Radio 5 does
not a cause celebre make.
Furedi, on what I've read, is a moron.
---
Cave canem...
> Keep on munchin'
>
> Gerry
> (gerry....@usa.net)
>
g_d...@my-deja.com
Well the LM editor got to do the proverbial guantlet of hailing a cab
outside the high court on C4 news.
Gerry the Gerbil
>In article <+z++ODI2bnybnE...@4ax.com>,
> munc...@sunflower.seeds wrote:
>> On Wed, 01 Mar 2000 19:28:26 GMT, loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
>>
>> >Fat chance. First chance the prosecuting barrister gets he will rake
>> >up LM's past as the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party. LM
>> >publishes unpopular opinions at the best of times: it won't take much
>> >for it to be portrayed as an apologist for the Milosovic regime and a
>> >denier of the 'bosnian holocaust'.
>>
>> That's because it is.
>
>You are claiming a Holocaust took place in Bosnia?
Everyone and their uncle claims that a massacre of civilians took
place at Srebrenica. The RCP/LM says this never happened. (Not to
mention Gorazde or Zepa.)
>I guess ITN must rank amongst the 'Holocaust deniers' since they are
>at pains to point out (and always have been) that they didn't find
>any evidence of such. However, the world got a different impression,
>taking it's cue from, erm, ITN footage.
To clarify the RCP/LM's position, here's a quote from Justin Flude,
posting under one of his multitude of aliases:
:Which graves? Where are they? Why, despite all the claims of
:massacres in Srebrenica, has nobody been able to find the bodies? Why
:do witnesses that claim to have seen the massacres give contradictory
:accounts? Why did the Dutch troops based in the town testify that they
:saw no massacres? Why did two successive UN reports not find any
:evidence to support the claims? Why have the army of Western
:journalists that have reported from the region not been able find any
:evidence either?
:
:Because it never happened.
:
:Poster: Denzil Morgan <denzil...@hotmail.com>
:Newsgroup(s): alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,soc.culture.croatia,soc.culture.yugoslavia
:Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999
:Thread: Re: ICRC says Srebrinica did happen, Serbs are disobliging
>For the record (and I would need a sledgehammer to get this through
>to a Gerbils skull), the moral character of Serbian regime was
>irrelevant.
As you yourself wrote a while back, in reply to me:
:gg>Uh-huh. So, according to the RCP at the time, the Bosnian Serbs were gg>oppressed
:when Bosnia was set up, and anyone who criticised their gg>actions, however murderous,
:was supporting their 'oppression' and the gg>imperialist powers.
:
: They were adding to the chauvinism, propaganda and demonisation that justified the
:presence of the West. The character of Milosevic regime is utterly irrelevant: the issue is
:that the West and your government has no RIGHT to be there. And you have no
:MORAL right to whine about what the Serbian government was and was not doing. Also,
:when push comes to shove, those who oppose oppression MUST support military victory
:for Serbia against foreign intervention.
:
:Poster: Gary Dale <g...@ee.ed.ac.uk>
:Newsgroup(s): alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
:Date: Nov 13 1998
:Thread: Re: Nationalism:Its significance.
> If your only evidence that LM had a brief for Milosevic
>is that it was strongly anti-Western intervention and pro-national
>soveriengty (hence 'unconditional' on the regime) and that it didn't
>openly criticise Milosevic, I can say McCarthy would be proud of you.
Again from Justin Flude, this time posting as Big Mac:
:>Why, because you participate mystically in the guilt of your bourgeois
: >government?! Get over it, and start thinking straight. Being critical does
: >not mean "sitting on the fence," LM Assholes!
:
: Do you back Serbia unconditionally against the West or not? Yes or no?
:
:Poster: Big Mac <who...@speed.com>
:Newsgroup(s): alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
:Date: June 15 1998
:Thread: Nationalism:Its significance.
and:
: Lenin understood that imperialism necessarily involves the political oppression of
:backward capitalist countries. Therefore the struggle of the people in those countries
:against imperialism was anti-capitalist and demanded the unconditional support of
:revolutionaries.
(Same thread, 10/6/98)
I repeat: you and Flude have repeatedly said that Serbia, and any
other country under attack by Western imperialism, must be
"unconditionally supported". To clarify this position, here's a last
quote from you, then I'm off to t'pub:
: It means exactly that when you presume MORAL RIGHT to criticise the actions of a
:government when YOUR OWN government is occupying that country. The latter is
:PRIOR to anything else, and any criticism of Serbia is IRRELEVANT, the only thing you
:should concern yourself with is opposing your own government's imperialism. Needless
:to say I am only only talking of moral criticism. While you are whining about Serbia,
:Western governments are busy formenting another war and screwing Serbia further with
:sanctions. You moralistic criticism only adds to the demonisation and helps justify the
:Western
: presence.
:
: You should answer the question: who do you want to win in the next showdown between
:Serbia and the West? Or Iraq and the West? Show me you are not 'sitting on the fence'.
:
:Poster: Gary Dale <g...@ee.ed.ac.uk>
:Newsgroup(s): alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
:Date: Nov 13 1998
:Thread: Re: Nationalism:Its significance.
Gerry the Gerbil
>In article <+z++ODI2bnybnE...@4ax.com>,
> munc...@sunflower.seeds wrote:
>> That's because it is. Both Justin Flude and Gary Dale, the RCP/LMs
>> representatives on Usenet, have expressed their "unconditional"
>> support for the Serb regimes, on the Leninist grounds that any country
>> under imperialist attack should enjoy the 'unconditional but critical'
>> support of revolutionaries.
>
>Are they official representatives of the RCP (which, incidentally, has
>committed suicide to the best of my knowledge) or did you elect them?
Both Dale and Flude have posted to Usenet on behalf of the RCP (as
was) and LM (as they maintain it currently is) for many years, always
uncritically (and that's no exaggeration) repeating and justifying the
RCP/LM line. Dale's been posting since at least 1995, Flude since
around 1997. If you want to check out their posting records, have a
look at:
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/profile.xp?author=g...@ee.ed.ac.uk%20(Gary%20Dale)&ST=PS
{Gary Dale}
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/profile.xp?author=31590cd41ddf4861ae8dd2f1f57af69bae6a77d05b64ddeda23302c3e18304a534ee7c1d4a278951cdedea42bd6951d691581c14b854c745715f9207a9&ST=PS&ee=1
{Flude posting as jus...@xara.com}
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/profile.xp?author=3b590dd019d74565b1b44833a44c4eda75b3d00fa9e9cc331cccbf7fca63f39dda06524d51df2b0a4c514d35630114&ST=PS&ee=1
{Flude posting as Big Mac}
From old posts, it's evident that both were at least 'supporters'
(what any other party would call a member) of the RCP and
unflinchingly, unfailingly, and uncritically, repeated its line on
Usenet. Flude in particular posted a message demonstrating his
intimate knowledge of the RCP internals, and incidentally showing that
the RCP existed up until at least Dec 1997:
:Subject: Re: RCP (again!) (Was Famous Politicians . . . )
:From: "Justin Flude" <jus...@xara.com>
:Date: 1997/11/28
:Message-ID: <65n88u$dd0$1...@gaul.lattis.xara.net>
:Newsgroups: uk.politics.misc
:[More Headers]
:
:
:David Toube wrote in message <3481f00b...@news.qmw.ac.uk>...
:>"Justin Flude" <jus...@xara.com> wrote:
:>
:>:Lyn David Thomas wrote in message <254573...@stuffing.demon.co.uk>...
:>:>In article: <65kbs3$3m7$1...@gaul.lattis.xara.net> "Justin Flude"
:>:><jus...@xara.com> writes:
:>:>> Well, I'm just an average joe who reads the mag,
:>:>
:>:>As a matter of interest does the RCP have members - if so how many
:>:>and how do people join - or is it like "Militant" of old ie only
:>:>readers and supporters of the paper?
:>:
:><snip>
:>
:>:3. By taking personal responsibility for the project and meeting a certain
:>:standard.
:>
:>That is what an RCP-er told me. I don't know why, but I feel that
:>there is something a little spooky about this 'membership by
:>committment' qualification.
:
:It follows on from the fact that the political quality of the membership
:must be of the highest standards. It's a key difference between the RCP and
:all the other left groups out there, which are about as difficult to join as
:the Labour Party (which itself only requires that you cut out an ad in the
:Guardian and send in your money). The need for a high political standard
:follows from the role and tasks of a revolutionary party.
:
:Your questions are best answered by reading up on the Bolshevik tradition,
:in particular Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" and the essay by Georg Lukacs,
:"Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organisation", which inspired the
:organising principles of the RCP.
:
:>Who, for example, decides whether you have taken personal
:>responsibility for the 'project'?
:
:There's a probationary period to see if you like it, if you are any good
:etc. Generally these things are decided by your organiser and the other
:members.
:
:>To what extent do ordinary
:>members participate in the formulation of the RCP line?
:
:Completely. The broad "line" is arrived at via discussion within the whole
:party, which meets regularly, while the day-to-day shifts etc obviously have
:to be delegated. The concept of "democratic centralism" comes into play
:here - best defined as "freedom of discussion, unity in action". It has to
:be like that, or it simply doesn't work as Marxism.
:
:>Why do
:>all RCP-ers all seem to use the same form of words?
:
::) Sometimes this is unavoidable, because the politics involves concepts
:that are unfamiliar to others, and hence come over as a bit "jargonistic".
:The "decline in subjectivity" thingie is an example of that, I guess. I can
:think of a few phrases of the past that would bring wry smiles to RCP-ers
:(anyone for "bending the stick"?? :) Othertimes this is because people
:arguing the LM point of view haven't thought deeply enough about the issues
:to be able to explain them in a simple and natural way (I'm guilty of that,
:I'm sure), so they tend to repeat particular arguments found in the magazine
:more or less verbatim. That's not so bad - after all, the magazine aims to
:provide the best arguments on particular issues, it is explicitly
:propagandistic after all. You could say it was partly a problem of
:comprehension, partly a problem of delivery :)
:
:>What
:>precisely does the 'project' involve - does it involve more than
:>raising awareness of the battle against subjectivity, or do
:>RCP-ers actually do more concrete things?
:
:It was and still is world revolution and communism, but that's a long-term
:goal :) In the here and now, LM aims to develop a contemporary critique of
:capitalism that ordinary people today can relate their problems and
:aspirations to, and the magazine hopes to become *the* intellectual
:opposition to bourgeois thought in all its varied guises. So no
:street-fighting for the foreseeable future, more research needed ...
:
:>These aren't per se criticisms of the RCP, who seem like a well
:>meaning and pretty innocuous bunch with a good line on
:>censorship. In fact, you could level many of these criticisms at
:>Lib, Lab and Tory.
:
:Indeed. Many of the things I describe above are quite similar to the
:bourgeois parties and not "spooky" at all - they are "common sense". I
:mean, Labour has its line with the spin-doctors, the Tories had their
:brain-storming session. Oona King was on Question Time last night, and it
:was pretty clear that she could have done with more rehearsing of her
:arguments :) As usual, Marxism grasps the essentials with greater clarity
:and rigour, and poses the questions a bit more formally.
:
:>The only thing I find a bit odd is this idea that you have to
:>prove to somebody that you are committed to the project in order
:>to be allowed to join.
:>I mean, is this what happens? You get to join. You aren't doing
:>enough in Frank Furedi's eyes (or whoever) because you can't be
:>arsed, or you have something else urgent to do and so you are
:>faced with the stark choice of doing what you need to do to
:>remain a member, or you're chucked out and lose all your mates.
:
:Slackers and the bone-idle would definitely not be welcome, I imagine, nor
:would they enjoy being a member. Although the standards are very high, I
:don't think it's as rigid or pedantic as you seem to imagine, because it is
:a party of human beings after all. People do come and go.
:
:>What happens if as a member you have an ideological difference
:>with the RCP? Do you "agree to differ", and get a bit sidelined
:>unless you can persuade a large enough number of other RCP
:>members, as happens in most other political parties (pace
:>Militant, who were another political party altogether who
:>eventually voluntarily abandoned entryism; pace Peter
:>Temple-Morris, who was an anomolous high profile victim of a
:>Hague purge? Or does your dissent prove your lack of commitment,
:>and lead to you getting chucked out and losing all your mates?
:
:Certainly not. In fact, what's the point of a party of "yes-men"?
:Democratic centralism relies on differing views and the clash of opinions,
:to ensure that all bases are covered and a political viewpoint is developed
:that really has an answer to all aspects of a problem. The whole idea is
:that a line is "distilled" from the various experiences of individuals. I'm
:not personally aware of any, but the possibility of factions and so on is
:very much in the Bolshevik tradition. I've seen some very passionate and
:healthy arguments over political direction in my time, without any
:repercussions for the "dissidents" at all, or anyhrting like it. In fact, I
:can honestly say that I've never detected a hint of that kind of thing, and
:the descriptions that some ex-lefties come out with about their life under
:Gerry Healy (or whatever :) are unrecognisable in my experience. However,
:there has to be a limit, which is what the "centralism" or "unity" entails -
:people are free to argue their point, whatever it is, but you no longer have
:a party if that translates into a free-for-all when explaining the party
:politics to the outside.
:
:>I know that you or Gary won't be able to answer these questions,
:>because you aren't actually members,
:
:No, but as I said, it's no secret, and the principles of democratic
:centralism can be discovered in your local library (assuming that it hasn't
:been closed down :) Even if you're not a member, I don't think you can be a
:Marxist without an understanding of these things.
:
:>but I would really be
:>interested to hear how precisely you get to become a member in
:>the first place,
:
:It begins when you sign up as a supporter, which is a (considerably) weaker
:commitment to the party on your part.
:
:Justin
>It is not sufficient to say that because LM criticises the west (and
>the western media in particular) it is automatically pro-Milosevic.
Correct. But as I've pointed out in another message on this thread,
which I've just posted, the organisation takes the Leninist line of
"unconditional" support for countries under attack by imperialism. Or,
to put it simpler, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
Paul Flewers
published in New Interventions. I think it recognises the drift of the
now-defunct RCP.
Paul F
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Frank Füredi, Culture of Fear: Risk-Taking and the Morality of Low
Expectation, Cassell, London, 1997, pp184, £11.95
NOT a few people have remarked upon the strange disappearance of the
Revolutionary Communist Party, and have noticed that the formerly
high-profile organisation has taken a dive into obscurity, with its monthly
Living Marxism becoming the anonymous LM. Current rumours claim that the
organisation has abandoned being a party and is now operating as a
think-tank. Interested folk will get an idea of the organisation's current
preoccupations from this book, written by its senior theoretician.
Füredi makes the important point that the assault by Thatcher and Reagan
upon working-class organisations in the 1980s in the name of the defence of
the individual led to the opposite effect - the individuation of society,
undermining the individual, and dissipating the 'confidence that collective
identity generated'. We now live within an all-embracing culture of low
expectations, in which the whole concept of social change and transformation
has been extinguished, and people not only do not expect to make much of
their own lives, but have a suspicious, misanthropic attitude towards
everyone else. There is an antipathy towards taking risks, be it on a
personal or society-wide scale. The ingenuity and experimentation that has
customarily been looked upon as a positive aspect of humanity is now seen as
dangerous and irresponsible. People emerge as a pitiable lot, at the mercy
of forces which they cannot control. Those who have suffered at the hands of
these forces are the heroes of today, resulting in the worship of the
victim, that those who have suffered are an inspiration to us purely because
they have suffered. The fashionable phenomena of self-help groups and
therapy only reconcile people to their powerlessness.
Whilst the main thrust of this book is pretty much indisputable, Füredi's
idea of what constitutes a risk is too broad. He pokes fun at an advert for
mountaineering equipment that emphasises safety aspects, saying that the fun
of climbing is that it is risky. But promoting 'better ropes, boots, helmets
and other equipment' is not being over-protective, it's basic common sense.
Or perhaps Frank likes to go climbing with fraying hemp ropes, boots that
fall apart and rusty pitons.
Such illogical conclusions emerge from the RCP's one-sided approach. In the
past, it quarantined itself from the bacillus of reformism with which many
left groups were infected through their support for left-wing Labour Party
and union officials, to the degree that it pointedly refused ever to side
with dissident leftists, even if this could have been useful. It hardly ever
worked with other groups in single-issue campaigns, preferring instead to
run its own campaigns in splendid isolation. Now, this one-sidedness has led
it to mistake the parlous state of the labour movement for the demise of
class politics altogether, and to conclude that 'class politics cannot be
reinvented, rebuilt, reinvigorated or rescued' (see LM, May 1997).
This rejection of class politics - the essence of Marxism - leads Füredi
into some very odd byways in this book. He claims that the outcry against
fat cats' huge salary rises is part of the culture of low expectations, as
was the popular disdain for the yuppy culture of the 1980s. We hated yuppies
because they flaunted their new-found wealth in our faces. Our disdain for
fat cats is that they're jacking up their already high wages by several
hundred per cent and giving themselves even more through share options,
whilst they sack workers by the thousands, and allow the former public
amenities to stagnate. It's a blast against the contempt these characters
have for us. It's called class consciousness. But that's old hat, I guess.
Similarly, the criticism of unions that they spend much of their time on
health and safety matters is misplaced, and the concern of a worker about
his or her safety at work should not be confused with the refusal to take
risks. A short chat with anyone working in, say, construction, should make
that pretty clear.
Actually, the RCP's renunciation of class politics has far greater
consequences than a disdainful view of workers' concerns over pay and safety
at work, and it's worth digressing for a bit. The concept of class politics
is central to Marxism, and serves as the basis for the transformation of
society from capitalism to socialism. The working class is the only force in
society that can lead the way towards the transcending of classes, the basis
of a communist society.
Once this concept is rejected, then the whole idea of social transformation
goes out the window, as do any political strategy and tactics aimed however
tentatively in that direction. LM is singularly obsessed these days with
opposing state interference in people's lives, censorship and other related
issues. Stripped of any class orientation, it is starting to bear an
uncomfortable resemblance to right-wing libertarianism, that bolt-hole for
the ultimate petit-bourgeois hedonist.
One crucial difference between right-wing libertarianism and Marxism is that
the former worships the market, and the latter rejects it in favour of the
democratically-planned running of the economy through the collective action
of the working class. If one repudiates class politics, if the working class
cannot plan and run the economy, and if - as the RCP rightly recognised -
the Old Labour nationalisation or the Soviet-style statification of the
economy are no answer, then what remains other than the market? Any moves in
this direction will require a drastic vulgarisation of analysis, but that's
not impossible, especially in these days of low expectations...
The concept of low expectations is not an inaccurate observation; indeed,
irrespective of this book's lamentations about it, looking at the RCP's
renunciation of class politics, it's clear that even those who once had
lofty ambitions can fall victim to it. Socialists cannot be content with
echoing present-day consciousness. To admit that the labour movement is in a
bad way is one thing, to repudiate class politics is something else
completely. Working-class politics can and must be revived and developed if
we are to overcome the demoralisation that is so prevalent today. The RCP's
acquiescence to the culture of low expectations is an admission of defeat. A
sorry end for what Class War called 'the most ambitious and arrogant group'
on the British left.
Dave Walker
g_d...@my-deja.com
"Paul Flewers" <hatch...@virgin.net> wrote:
> Newsgroup readers may be interested in this review of Frank Füredi's
book,
> published in New Interventions. I think it recognises the drift of the
> now-defunct RCP.
>
> Paul F
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
advert for
> mountaineering equipment that emphasises safety aspects, saying that
the fun
> of climbing is that it is risky. But promoting 'better ropes, boots,
helmets
> and other equipment' is not being over-protective, it's basic common
sense.
> Or perhaps Frank likes to go climbing with fraying hemp ropes, boots
that
> fall apart and rusty pitons.
>
Obviously the author is not a rock climber. Many 'free climbers' eschew
all those accessories and for them the attraction is the challenge and
partly the risk. For others, the idea is to make technically difficult
climbs accessible by making them as safe as possible. Why not
drive 12" pitons into the rock then, for protection against falls?
Because it totally defeats the challenge of leading a climb.
Or why not just put a ladder up the rock face and have done with it!
Come to think of it, why not just sit on the sofa at home and watch it
on the telly?
'Basic common sense' says this would be safest.
g_d...@my-deja.com
"Paul Flewers" <hatch...@virgin.net> wrote:
book,
> published in New Interventions. I think it recognises the drift of the
> now-defunct RCP.
>
> Paul F
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
against
> fat cats' huge salary rises is part of the culture of low
expectations, as
> was the popular disdain for the yuppy culture of the 1980s. We hated
yuppies
> because they flaunted their new-found wealth in our faces. Our disdain
for
> fat cats is that they're jacking up their already high wages by
several
> hundred per cent and giving themselves even more through share
options,
> whilst they sack workers by the thousands, and allow the former public
> amenities to stagnate. It's a blast against the contempt these
characters
> have for us. It's called class consciousness. But that's old hat, I
guess.
The debate over 'fat cats' gives vivid demonstration of 'class politcs'
reworked as therapeutic politics. The debate in recent times hasn't
been coupled with a demand for higher wages or strikes against employers
shedding workers. Instead it's all about a plea for 'fat cat'
employers to 'set an example' to make it easier for the government
to demand restraint all around.
Gerry the Gerbil
<hatch...@virgin.net> wrote:
>Newsgroup readers may be interested in this review of Frank Füredi's book,
>published in New Interventions. I think it recognises the drift of the
>now-defunct RCP.
Thanks, mate - I hadn't seen that one before. Can you give a reference
for when it appeared (issue, date)? In return, here's a mainly, but
not completely, critical review of another of the Dear Leader's books,
by Stephen Howe. (Sorry about any stray carriage returns - I've pasted
it in from my word processor.) The interesting thing about this review
is that LM took a quote from it, out of context, and whapped it on
their home page as an endorsement. It read:
WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT LM:
" ...[LM's] take on race and imperialism, when allied to serious
historical investigation, produces really powerful
analyses...".
Stephen Howe in the Independent, 6 August 1998
Still, I've got to thank the RCP/LM for this shameless bit of
misquoting, as otherwise I'd never have found the review. Cheers, lads
and lasses!
Keep on munchin'
Gerry
(gerry....@usa.net)
=======================================
From the Independent (Review section, p5), 6th August, 1998:
The hobby horse of race war
THURSDAY BOOK THE SILENT WAR: IMPERIALISM AND THE CHANGING
PERCEPTION OF RACE BY FRANK FÜREDI, PLUTO PRESS, £14.99
THE IDEA of global race conllict, argues Frank Füredi, has been a
paramount but mostly hidden theme of international relations
throughout the 20th century. Western, especially US and British,
foreign policy has waged a "silent race war", maintaining an
embarrassed public silence about racial issues, but in private
obsessed by them. Western policy-makers and pundits were guiltily
convinced that anti-colonial protest, the rise of the Asian powers,
Civil Rights campaigns, and the Communist use of the race card in Cold
War propaganda, were all riding a global wave of racial revenge
against white domination.
Füredi believes that, in response, the Western powers moved
slowly away from their Victorian assumption of racial superiority They
shifted first to a defensive "racial pragmatism"; then to petulant
claims that it was the rebellious who were spreading racial conflict.
Next, in the Sixties, came a belated and grudging acceptance of the
idea of racial equality Now, after the Cold War's end, comes a new
solution, to rehabilitate the West's colonial past and justify its
imperialist present. This is the effort to highlight and even invent
the failures - from corruption through economic stagnation to genocide
- of newly independent Third World states.
Füredi's is a stimulating and bold argument from a very able, if
sometimes dogmatic historian. It is flawed, though, by its tendency to
draw sweeping conclusions from a rather narrow range of evidence, and
by nagging inconsistencies and gaps in the detail of his reasoning.
But there's a wider aspect to Frank Füredi's work on this subject. He
is the main intellectual inspiration for a substantial group of
writers on race and international politics connected to the
Revolutionary Communist Party and to its glossy magazine, Living
Marxism.
In the pages of Living Marxism and other places where RCP
associates publish, one finds his arguments so closely repeated, in
such similar language, that it is tempting to suspect that a dozen or
more bylines are in fact all pseudonyms for Frank Füredi. Actually,
they're not: I have met some of these other writers in their quite
distinct fleshes, though not all write under their real names. Yet the
sheer homogeneity and conformism of the arguments (even Furedi's key
phrase, ''the silent race war'', is repeatedly used) leave one
wondering where the individual thinker ends and the party line begins.
The shared conviction of the RCP is that pretty much all of
contemporary politics, including the manipulation of ideas about race
and nation, is the fault of Western imperialism. It is a clear and
simple idea, which gives its devotees a ready-made explanation for
everything that happens in the world. If the mainstream media blame
Serb extremists for the carnage in Bosnia, and Hutu ones for that in
Rwanda, then they must be covering up for imperialist plots in those
countries. Moreover the Serbs and the Hutu must be unfairly maligned;
indeed, stories of genocide in Bosnia must be fabrications.
If the papers are full of stories encouraging us to worry about
child abusers on the streets or dangerous additives in our food, this
must be a grand conspiracy to distract us from the real problems of
global capitalism and imperialism (Füredi devoted his last book to
that theme). If Green ideas have an ever bigger place in public
consciousness, even in conservative news-papers and corporate
boardrooms, this must reflect an irrational, anti-science worldview,
which in turn must serve the interests of globalcapitalism. Did the
Western media cry out with one voice against the judicial murder of
Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria? Well, in Living Marxisrn's eyes, not only
must the outcry have been hypocritical, but Saro-Wiwa was probably
guilty as charged by the military thugs who hanged him.
The pity of it is that, across all these areas, a good case is
being spoilt by wild overstatement. Füredi and his co-thinkers are on
strong ground when they complain that many Western liberals now
embrace a comfortable amnesia about imperialism and take a horribly
smug comfort in blaming the Third World for all its own ills. They are
right, too, to damn much of the contemporary Left for its abandonment
of Enlightenment rationality its collapse into a kind of spineless
relativism. At best, the Living Marxism take on race and imperialism,
when allied to serious historical investigation, produces really
powerftil analyses - as with Kenan Malik's work, or the best of
Füredi's. At its crudest, though, it degenerates into strident
tub-thumping, paranoid conspiracy-mongering, and - as in some of its
advocates' commentary on Bosnia - into apologetics for mass murder.
Füredi himself usually avoids the worst excesses. But writers must
take some responsibility for the way their admirers use their ideas,
and here The Silent War is in some very questionable company
The reviewer's book 'Afrocentrism: mythical pasts and imagined homes'
is published by Verso
STEPHEN HOWE