How Not To Fight the BNP & EDL

As argued by Andrew Coates.

EXTRACT: "The far-right can concentrate all the resentments and insecurities of people together into an  ’anti-system’ programme. This can slip from anti-foreigners, British nationalist, to virulent anti-black or Moslem propaganda. But its hinge is a reaction to the market-state. That is Labour’s commitment to keeping its consistency ’safe’, promoting their interests. With its idea that the state should equip us to compete in a global market, people are left vulnerable  to the gales of insecurity when economic crises arrive. Their own policies inflame the atmosphere in which the far-right thrives.

Unite Against Fascism and Hope Against Hate have not tackled these problems. They tend to reduce the source of British National Party backing to ‘anti-Islam’ inflamatory speech. They have tried to create the view that nobody should criticise religious belief.  But opposition to religions, such as Islam, and Islamist politics, should not be confused with dislike of Moslems. By putting these together they are unable to pursue an  anti-racist agenda. In Tower Hamlets, for example, Ken Livingstone, Galloway, the SWP and other 'anti-BNPers’, are allied with the supporters of the far-right Jamaat-I-Islami  a well-funded  Islamist group responsible for massacres in the Bangladesh War of National Liberation and the slaughter of leftists, Hindus and other minorities ever since. By failing to answer those who criticise this link they expose a weakness that undermines their own credibility as anti-fascists".

Unsurprisingly, I concur with Andrew's general argument.