|
from 03 march 2002 blue vol II |
|
|||
|
Britain's liberal left expose themselves as the
by Flaco
Patriot Act and Bush-whack rhetoric aside, it's fairly
predictable that the lefty–millionaires Sierra Club
should bottle out of confrontation with the power
brokers in the post–S11 city of tears. No real
surprise either that the unions and the host of
'Global Justice' NGOs of every shade of red and green
balked at the idea of ruffling the feathers of New
York's finest. The city's press, on both the left and
the right, cranked up the spectre of an "al Quaeda like black bloc" (Village Voice) massing like
"barbarians at the castle gates" (Newsweek). A string
of Direct Action Movement 'faces' lined up to distance
themselves from anyone whose agenda aimed for anything
greater than a moratorium on badger baiting.
"Vandalism is inexcusable," lamented John Sellers, the
caribina king of the ludicrously–bankrolled Ruckus
Society. Needless to say, the reporting (in an almost
blanket fashion) concentrated on the differences in
tactics between the anarchists and the liberals. No
space was given to the gaping ideological chasm
between the RaisetheFist militia on Fifth Avenue, and
the "raise the Tobin tax" lobbyists munching
vol-au-vents with the delegates in the Waldorf Astoria
foyer.
In the event, a few thousand anarchists and assorted
revolutionary types took to the streets and, amidst an
outpouring of sympathy, the 'poor darlings' of the
NYPD dutifully kicked the shit out of them and threw a
couple of hundred in jail.
The events in New York merely illustrate how the
organised left (in Britain as elsewhere) has used
September 11 to re–position itself in a, at best, more
compliant, and at worst, more authoritarian stance.
Liberal Britain has been split between the trembling
lips and disappearing tails of those who are content
to wrap themselves in a tear–stained stars and stripes
and vanish up Uncle Sam's arse, and those who have (at
last) been freed to brandish their handcuffs and lay
down their own blueprints for a capitalist
super–state. Either way, Britain's left-wing have
finally exposed themselves as the fad–rebel tosspots
we always knew they were.
'Formerly hardcore left-wingers' were apparently
getting all gooey over Tony Blair's Montgomery
makeover. The Ecologist ran a debate titled: Is the
anti–corporate globalisation movement a finished force
in the post-S11 world?, theGuardian columnist Suzanne
Moore was just one of those, converted by the smell of
cordite, giving it the "I was wrong to oppose the bombing," line as the Taliban fled Kabul – as if the women of the city had thrown their oppressors out
themselves, and were not about to become the latest
subjects of a US–manufactured puppet state.
As a rule, the anti war movement in Britain has been
reluctant to confront the illegitimacy of the warring
authority. Though opposed to the bombing, most
silently accept a First World-US orchestrated solution
to Afghanistan: namely the Western annexation of
Central Asia.
To be fair, this reactionary slide began well before
the World Trade Centre attack. The SWP (perhaps after
finally accepting the absence of 'workers' in its
ranks) switched its preferred handle to Globalise
Resistance. Having left it a little late to fasten
their name to the anti-capitalist upsurge of 1999 (as
they had done with the Poll Tax, Criminal Justice Act,
etc), they wasted no time ramming branded anti-war
placards into the hands of pacifist old ladies and
fearful Muslims as Blair strapped on his flak jacket.
No sooner had the first F-16s scrambled and Globalise
Resistance was morphing again – this time into the
Stop the War Coalition.
Anti-capitalism (a phrase that was itself adopted by
liberal left-wingers trying to avoid any
pro-revolutionary tags), has been dropped altogether
by the left in favour of "movement for globalisation
with justice". You may laugh, but the underlying
thought processes behind this repositioning are a
little more sinister.
The "visions" put forward by the NI's gathered worthies are "diverse" in the same way the aims of the
navy are "diverse" from those of the air force. Every proposal in the magazine is legislative and authoritarian. According to the writers, elected
bodies could be re-jigged, governing institutions
formed, legislation passed and treaties re-written.
The lack of aspiration is depressing... unless, of
course, you're setting yourself up for a seat in 'the
world parliament'.
The World Parliament is Lord Monbiot's offering.[1]
Another spin on electoral representative democracy
peddled with all the fervour of a Republican governor.
Completely disregarding the lessons of history, where
electoral democracy has failed to either represent or
serve the people (other than those 'elected' and their
chums), Monbiot taunts would-be detractors with:
"Power exists whether we like it or not... so we might
as well democratise it". You can't dis-invent the Bomb
– eh!
As if a host of similar statist adventures (every
election anytime/anywhere, the policy reversal of all
elected bodies – e.g. the German Greens, the failure
of Kyoto, the carbon trading style legislative
loop-holing that followed, Nato – and its complete
disregard for law/anybody else, the failure of; the
UN; the EU; every other power-invested institution to
address anything other than its own pay checks ... and
so on) hadn't all resulted in those in power
completely fucking over everyone else, Monbiot goes on
to outline his global hegemony leading the rest of us
skipping to milk and honey-dom. He never mentions,
however, if two wolves and a sheep would doing the
catering...
Joining Monbiot in the NI is Jim Shultz (executive
director of The Democracy Centre), who uses the
genuinely inspiring example of the Cochabamba people's
ejection of the Bechtel water company from Bolivia, to
'envision' – not for people everywhere to rise up
against their usurpers, not for the global rejection
of economic dictatorship, not even for the ditching of
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement
and all similarly oppressive international trade
treaties, but... (wait for it) - a 'bill of rights' to
ensure the FTAA does not overrule regional laws. Go
Jim, Go!
Maybe we should be grateful that the left has come
clean – shaken off their Seattle rain capes and
returned to bickering about vote counts and electoral
funding. For some time, the rhetoric of the leading
left wing/environmentalist NGO's has been almost
indistinguishable from that of the World Bank's... –
though admittedly, this revealed precious little about
either faction's agenda.
But, the question remains – how wide is the influence
of the organised left and their liberal overlord
companions – and how substantially are they capable of
stemming the rising revolutionary tide anyway?
(Despite the comic-recoiling of the West's left-wing
top brass, the people looking down the business-end of
capitalism's shotgun are heading in the opposite
direction. Argentinians, Bolivians, Brazilians,
Chileans and Colombians are all combating the rolling
privatisation of public services with road blocks,
occupations and armed assaults. Massive tracts of
Latin America have been taken back into the people's
control. Power is rapidly being returned to the
roots.)
Back in Porto Alegre, undoubtedly the left's blueprint
for a 'world parliament' (in his keynote address
Chomsky called it a sketch of the beginnings of a 21st
Century International), the predictable has happened.
Two years in, and the 2002 Forum is already playing
host to corporate lobbyists, media clowns and WEF
delegates ("jumping ship from NYC"). Naomi Klein (one of the 10,000 invited 'delegates') describes the WSF as at risk from "turning from a clear alternative into a messy merger" with their New York antithesis.
In protest to what Znet's James Adams calls "left-wing corporatism", 600 attendees of the alternative Jornadas Anarquistas – Anarchist Journeys – (some of
the 50,000 excluded internationals who had travelled
to Porto Alegre to unite and discuss outside the
conference centres) "broke off from the opening march and occupied a three story house, building barricades in the streets, in order to emphasize that, as one IMC
(Independent Media Centre) poster put it, 'Porto
Alegre isn't the social democratic paradise that the
PT (Brazilian Workers Party) makes it out to be.'"
(The PT control the municipal government and view the
WSF as a party conference – draping the town in their
flags, propaganda and party faithful.) Needless to
say: "Local police, under the command of the PT, and dressed in full riot gear, surrounded the house immediately, nearly running over one squatter at a
particularly high point of tension." Familiar?
However – despite the Fifth International looking set
to follow the first into a dog-pit of flying fur and
shattered dreams, perhaps things are not so bleak. The
50,000 who gathered outside the auspices of the WSF in
Porto Alegre, and the two thousand that took on the
WEF in New York – plus the tens of millions who have
already learnt the hard way that genuine, direct,
democracy will never follow a recount, a rebrand or
any amount of reform – do not look like they are about
to jack–in the revolution because Washington's busted
the safety catch off its Winchester.
Undoubtedly the atmosphere of resistance has changed.
But, just because the warmongers were quicker to
colonise the airwaves, it doesn't follow that they
will win the (global) war. By shirking off that
protest-chic, the reformist-statist-liberal-left has
finally brought some clarity to the message they have
been concealing from disgruntled democrats for years –
namely, that they do not seek the overthrow of
illegitimate power, merely its replacement.
Now that's clear, we can get on with the fucking
revolution!
- SOURCE: Flaco
|
|||
"Standing protesting outside Gap is a strange thing to
do when civilians are being killed in Afghanistan,"
Globalise Resistance's Guy Taylor tells a fawning Andy
Beckett (Guardian G2, Jan 17 Has the Left Lost Its
Way). The implication being that before September 11 –
before perceived public support for resistance to
world dictatorship evaporated in an explosion of dust,
glass and cello music – it was perfectly natural to be
protesting outside Gap as civilians endured a
blitzkrieg of Allied firepower in Palestine,
Indonesia, Columbia and Iraq. Beckett goes on to quote
a stream of liberal left-wing tossers whose politics
were so well-founded that they'd managed to pull off
complete ideological U-turns after a only couple of
weeks of heart-tugging (Poor Old America) Newsak.
One leading voice of the liberal left is the New
Internationalist magazine. Their January/February
issue was subtitled 'Another World is Possible'. The
introduction promised "visions" of "many diverse pathways into a better, fairer world". The reality
merely reinforced what Orwell pointed out over sixty
years ago; that the organised left's version of
democracy is little different from the right's, and
despite the tags, they have no intention of doing away
with the constraints of capitalism – and would merely
replace the domination of private capital with that of
state capital. Or to bring that observation up to date
"a (neo) liberally-distributed amalgamation of the two". Global PPPs anyone?
There are those who hope they are well capable; the
bods from the FBI who spent half of last month
dismantling LA's RaisetheFist.org with the site's
founder, Sherman, locked in the basement; the EU's
Working Party on Terrorism who are right now in Spain
drafting a document on intelligence sharing about
political activists in order to stamp out "violent urban youthful radicalism"; the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP) and the half dozen US state and private sector bodies it
initiated under the National Security Council and
Department of Defence (to name but two) to combat
'hacktivism' and 'cyberterror!'; the Swedish
authorities who have just rejected the appeals of
eight activists, each serving between three and four
years for using SMS messages to stop their mates
getting hammered by police at the EU summit in
Gothenburg last year; every boss, landlord and New
Labour voter; every shareholder, whip-cracker and
charity director, (insert your own 'come the
revolution they'll be the first against the wall' list
here), and everyone else who, overtly or covertly,
revels in the deal capitalism has dealt them.
