First it was the Torygraph giving fascist Barnbrook a platform for his blog (see posts about it here, here and here). And now the Sunday Indie has interviewed him. Why?
Part of the problem that we will face opposing the fascists will be that their relationship with the norms of bourgeois political behaviour has changed. Perhaps that is the wrong way of puting it: the norms of bourgeois political behaviour are changing on a whole number of levels. Think, for example, of the attacks on civil liberties, the unprovoked attack on Iraq and the political consequences of these things for the establishment.
An innocent plumber can be murdered in cold blood on the way to work, sleeping muslim postal workers can be shot in their homes at night and the political consequence is a collective shoulder shrug. Asylum seekers are treated like human vermin, returned to face torture and this is seen as nothing to be concerned about. Nobody resigned for leading Britain into an illegal war.
Indeed, David Miliband feels free to opine that international community (whatever that means: the USA/UK in practice) have the right to invade other countries if there is any sort of humanitarian argument for doing so (there always will be as no country will have a perfect human rights record and racist/sexist/homophobic laws and practices prevail pretty well worldwide. Not that the West lacks a track record of using humanitarian arguments as a cover for imperial plundering from at least the days of Leopold of Belgium taking over the Congo to rescue the people there from “arab slavery”.
In the last few decades fascism has had a functional role within bourgeois politics. It has been a marker of where you cannot go without breaking the norms of bourgeois political behaviour. For instance, it is pointed out that the nazi regime invaded Poland and other countries with cooked up justifications. To start a war for no good reason was something you were not supposed to do. Not that it never happened but it was outside the norms of political bahaviour. Now it is inside what the establishment can do and get away with it politically. The same goes for the rising tide of authoritarianism and the scapegoating of the weakest in society whether asylum seekers or disabled people on benefits.
Again not these things have not gone on or that establishment politics in the 60′s, 70′s or 80′s was a regime of rigorous honesty and a determination to see fairness and justice prevail. Rather that there has been a significant shift in what it is acceptable for the political establishment to do.
What has this to do with the Sunday Indie interviewing Barnbrook? Well if the boundaries of acceptable politcal behaviour are changing in the way I have suggested then the previous function of the perception of fascism is lost to a great extent. The interview is far more about Barnbrook’s Mussolini style conversion to fascism and his failed affair with the nazi ballerina.
The violence and opression that fascism is about is skirted round in the interview: perhaps saying as much about the interviewer as the interviewee and saying something about the changing norms of bourgeois behaviour. The use of violence and oppression are much less abhorrent now to the establishment and much more mainstream that they were. The interview is a signal that the perception of fascism is changing. Elsewhere fascism is portrayed as a cry of those (white) working class people betrayed by New Labour. This is opposed to being a decision to blame those weaker than you for your troubles and to force society’s scapegoats to pay for the problems you face. People who make such a decision should not be given a platform for their views: this is the way to stand shoulder to shoulder with their victims. Standing shoulder to shoulder against the fascists is what is needed now more than ever.
In terms of ideology Barnbrook spouts an unremarkable mixture of unthought out nostrums and racist nonsense. In fact this is typical of fascists to have an ideology that is intellectual garbage. Fascism does not gain its political force from the coherence of its ideas. It derives its force from being a movement that will use the most extreme measures to try to deal with the crisis of bourgeois society. It revels in cruelity and oppresion in a way that other bourgeois political currents cannot do to anywhere near the same extent.
That is why fascism needs opposing: not because of weird theories on the indigeous population or an individual need to match socks and suit. Yes this man is a very strange individual. So are lots of people. It is not this though but the nature of fascism and its permissive attitude to the worst kinds of oppression that mean that all should turn their backs on it and why those who embrace it, ex-lefties or otherwise, are the scum of the earth.
Maybe your right, myself being a disabled person my legs have gone, my back is broken so badly I cut my spine leaving me in a mess, I went from being an active person playing football to a zombie at home, I’ve tried to find work , but I’ll never do anything worth while again.
Yes this New Labour party has made me out a lier and a cheat, last year i was knocked around so badly I spent time in hospital do you know what for, the people felt I was cheating the benefits, while they worked and paid tax, I was hit over the Head so hard with a lump of wood I had blood in my mouth, all because Labours work shy lazy benefit jibs.
I’ve been Labour all my life but now have no party to vote for , would I vote BNP well no of course not, are the BNP evil, to me no more evil then Blair and Brown.
One thing that did cheer me up in the Indie was that Barnbrook had his head shoved down the toilet a couple of times in school. Surely we should be organising a whip round to give the school students involved a nice party.
Nice one Tony, gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘flushed with success’!!!
I guess a lot of BNP were bullied at school