I'm not "emptying out the political content" of AFA's campaign. It was obviously political. It was also obviously useful, not least to the ethnic minorities and leftists who might otherwise have been attacked by an unmolested far right. But I don't think that in the greater political scheme of things, AFA's early 90s war against the BNP or NF was all that important, and more importantly it doesn't tell us very much of direct use today because the major forces of the far right are very different and things like CCTV render much of AFA's approach counterproductive today. It's even less relevant to someone in the South of Ireland, where we have about four fascists anyway. I am much more interested in the IWCA, which is actually supposed to be an attempt to address today's changed political conditions and to address them on more than a single issue.
The problem is that none of the IWCA's fans and supporters seem all that interested in it, except in so far as it provides a handy vantage point for pissing and moaning about the rest of the left.
To begin with this might be judged the 'damned with faint praise' type of post of a typical dilletante.
However, there are I think within it, some remarkably egregious (and as importantly representative) morsels to savour.
In no particular order.
1. The AFA campaign was not that important anyway.
2. The forces of the far-right are very different today.
3. Anti-fascism across Europe is not personally relevant because he cannot see fascists from his front door.
4. Nothing can be learnt from the AFA campaign because of the advent of CCTV.
5. Anti-fascism is a single issue.
6. The IWCA cannot comment on the state of the left
1. At the height of the campaign against the BNP it took 7,000 votes in the general election. In the last Euro elections it took the best part of a million votes off - and this is generally ignored - a 30per cent turnout. Which demonstrates an electoral base of roughly 2.5 million. Somewhere in between the two figures is the AFA dividend.
2. It is of course the
strategy of the far-right that is very different today. The fascists are still the same fascists.
3. See...
Pastor Niemoller
4. It is the fascists not AFA that abandoned the battle for control of the streets -and no one on the far-right has picked up that particular baton. Moreover AFA confronted on the streets because that is where
they were then. There are now on the estates instead and the fight is 100 per cent political. The notion that CCTV negates any of that is risible.
5. To repeat: 'the rise of the far right across Europe is not the cause for the failure of the Left it is a consequence of that failure'.
This is of course either ignored or denied. Yet in a public post mortem meeting following the last Euro elections organisers from the SP repeatedly boasted of getting '10 per cent of the BNP vote'.
So much then for 'the single issue'.
As regards the IWCA all you get is the usual ad hominem arguments. In the sense that because the IWCA project isn't bigger than the entire Left then there is some kind of moral hazard in allowing sympathisers to offer any sort of critique.
