Red Tory’s liberal racism and the BNP bogeyman

Phillip Blond's 'Red Tory' peddles nationalistic, liberal racism as a necessary response to the BNP threat, just as the mainstream political parties do

As a short follow up to both my review of Phillip Blond’s Red Tory and my post asking ‘Is anti-fascism a waste of time?‘ I would like to combine the two to compound the argument I forwarded in the latter post. In this post I questioned the wisdom, given the limited resources of the left, of structuring activities around opposing the BNP. Rather, I advocated targeting our ire at the liberal racism of the mainstream political parties, where they use the ‘threat’ of the BNP as a justification for their own much more powerful and influential anti-immigrant discourse and legislation.

If there is one book in which the bogeyman of the BNP is blatantly used for forwarding a parochial, nationalistic and quietly anti-immigrant politics it is Phillip Blond’s Red Tory.  In the introduction Blond attributes the growth of the BNP—no figures are actually quoted, of course (that would actually derail the BNP’s rhetorical usefulness as a threat)—-to a “collapse of British culture, virtue and belief.” (p.2) From herein the twin strategy of denouncing BNP fascists in order to argue for various nationalistic cultural and economically protectionist policies becomes something of a reliable trope in Red Tory, as it also is for the Tories as a whole, as well as Labour and the Lib Dems. In this sense Red Tory acts as a case study for the cynical use of the BNP in propping up the rationale of mainstream liberal racism.

For instance, Blond writes conspiracy think resentiment such as: “We became multi-cultural and cosmopolitan but at the price of an open borders policy that looked at times designed to destroy the prospects and outcomes of the white working class.” (p. 128) This could, of course, be straight out of the textbook of BNP canvassing lines. Not further on in the text he discusses the BBC—whose new generation of employees have all, apparently, suffered from a miseducation in “bad, French philosophy” (p. 140) [damn those frogs!]—and approves that it “rightly refuses to reflect back the values and beliefs of the BNP”, but argues that ‘we’ need to go further to “recover instead the Reithian belief in the sort of people we British ought to be and what sort of culture we should have as a result.” (p. 141)

The same sort of thing is replete throughout Red Tory. Condemn some easy racist target and use it as an excuse to advocate a remarkably similar sugar-coated nationalistic vision. If even a Tory prop like Blond can find some easy moral pivot for advocating an extremely backward looking vision of society and politics, the left should really question whether running around screaming at the BNP and penning raging polemics against the ‘Nazi BNP’ is really a good use of our time and energies?

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Is anti-fascism a waste of time?

 

Is railing against BNP nazis the best use of the left's time during the election?

An interesting debate unfolded on my Facebook wall a few days ago. After posting a comment to the effect that the radical left is wasting its time with gratuitous tit for tat anti-fascist rallies, rather than expending its energy on attacking the liberal-left parties (Labour and Liberal Democrats), I was accused of aping earlier Stalinist follies from the 1940s.

Whilst historically speaking that argument is highly suspect, in any case one has to look at present conditions and not simply bask in the comforts of tradition. The question for me, at least, is with the limited energies and numbers of those on the left, is anti-fascism a good use of our time? My answer is no. Further, I would even say it is counterproductive to the cause—it confirms the liberal media and elite’s perception of a valid role for the radical left, which is, predictably, a total dead end as far as overthrowing capitalism in the 21st century is concerned.

I would give the following reasons for ceasing all anti-fascist activities.

1) In present conditions, groups such as the BNP and EDL have no supporters within mainstream government. They are not the militant wing of fascist tendencies within government. In fact, they are reviled by the elite. The kind of racism one finds within the liberal parties it truly awful—scapegoating immigrants and so forth—but is qualitatively different to BNP style racism. As such, they do not pose any real threat. A victory for one of their candidates would certainly make a local community more unpleasant, but that is about it.

2) There is no transformative potential in anti-fascism. Anti-fascism is a static affair that adopts an entirely defensive posture. Its activities have no transformative potential for the properly revolutionary aim of overthrowing capitalism. There have been, in the past, periods in which it has played a vital roll in the struggle; today it merely saps energy.

3) Anti-fascism leads to complacency. With such a clear enemy as the BNP (hated not just by the radical left, but much of the left and centre of the political spectrum) a certain moralising complacency can be allowed to prevail at the expense of making those hard choices that face the radical left. Since we on the radical left currently face a crisis of both communicating our ideas and attracting people to the cause, the hard thinking that needs to be done around these issues is obviated by investing in tribal warfare with the far-right. I won’t deny the fun of it; but particularly around election time, the sentiment which still prevails around most of the left and labour movement (vote for Lab or Lib Dems as a lesser evilism to keep the Tories out) should be the target of our ire. Unless we can shift most of the left and its natural constituency away for this kind of thinking there will never be any change.

4) Anti-fascism in ineffective. I haven’t seen any proof, or indeed, any logical arguments, for showing why anti-fascist rallies are effective. Surely it just demonstrates that there is a militant core opposed to them who can make a lot of noise too? In terms of denting support for the BNP, I have serious doubts it does much good.

So all in all, I think this obsession with the BNP is an entirely unproductive use of our mental and physical energies. Much better to focus on the illusions of the mainstream. Time to ‘no platform’ Nick Clegg!

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