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    Re: Mason's done another helpful diagram Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 11, 2023, 7:29 pm, in reply to "Mason's done another helpful diagram"

    A glutton for punishment, I had a read of the articles (part 1 here: https://htsf.substack.com/p/the-british-lefts-red-brown-problem ) My overall reaction is: who the f* does Mason think he is? How has he got the nerve to position himself as some kind of even-handed judge of the failings of the UK left, given how he has been exposed as colluding with the secret services in a totally cynical, racist way? I guess he must be emboldened by the fact that Glastonbury listened to his ravings... Anyway, some bits that stuck out:

    The one person he was 'alerted to' on a pro-Corbyn facebook group, who he describes as 'anti-semitic':

    “Starmer is a Right wing Red Tory Zionist Israel paid Scab along with Berger, Smeeth, Coyle, Hodge…” …followed by a list of Labour MPs, both Jewish and non-Jewish. When challenged by another member of the group, the author replies: “Starmers wife is Israeli her relations in Israel or all Zionist supporters of Extrem right wing Naitinhau and one or more of Starmer’s wife’s relations or members of Mossad Starmer was could still be MI5” [sic]. The author spends much of his time on Facebook posting pro-Russian content, plus conspiracy theories about US biolabs and Hunter Biden. He predicts a new American civil war between “Democrats Zionist Vs Republican Nazis”. He habitually slanders Ukrainians as Nazis and is obsessively hostile to President Zelensky. He is, in short, a long way down the rabbit hole of red-brown politics – where the conspiracy theories and obsessions of the far left and far right are becoming merged. But who has led him there? Who has given him permission to believe his politics are in any way “left”? What kind of politics does his brand of conspiratorial folklore represent? And what should the labour movement be doing to fight it?

    Inarticulate? Maybe. Factually incorrect? Possibly? Anti-semitic? No. He criticises Zionism and Israel. And the fact he denigrates people as 'extreme right' and 'nazis' is evidence that he supports fascism? No. Who put Mason in charge of giving people 'permission' to consider themselves leftists?

    For criticising the film, I was subjected to an avalanche of online abuse, some of it anti-Semitic. It included a slanderous and wholly false claim from David Miller, one of the film’s participants, that I am an “agent” of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

    No evidence provided of the 'abuse' (prob just legitimate criticism), and he is yet to convincingly deny the veracity of the Grayzone email leaks.

    I do not think such people need be subjectively fascist, but they are objectively close to being so: They are authoritarian, racist anti-capitalists consciously supporting a genocidal and totalitarian state.

    These are all contradictions in terms, as is much of the 'red-brown alliance' spiel. The contradictions are actually in Mason's head because he can't see that opposition to US/NATO gangster imperialism is justified in Ukraine, just as it is anywhere else, and that those opposing it are the ones who have actually stuck to their principles, unlike him (assuming he ever had any).

    the British left has a responsibility to: a) recognise the danger; b) tell them to get lost; c) report and suppress their hate speech and d) stop doing stuff that might encourage them. But will it?

    Actually the british left would be better off telling backstabbing charlatans like Mason to get lost - maybe that's what he really fears, and this is all deflection?

    Their goal, outlined explicitly in the Morning Star, was to turn justified unrest over inflation into a mass movement to disarm ukraine

    'Stop arming Ukraine' vs. 'Disarm Ukraine' - see the difference? Snake. (Apologies to snakes).

    But here’s how it looks to me: parts of the Leninist left in Britain resemble a red LEGO piece perfectly shaped to fit into the brown LEGO piece that is being fashioned by Russian influence operations.

    This is just nonsense. Where is the evidence of corbynist lefties colluding with fascists? Nowhere. They are anti-fascists. Furthermore, unlike Mason they oppose handing advanced weaponry to fascists, with the likelihood that this will lead to terrorist atrocities around the world in the years to come.

    But historically, the critical point in the emergence of red-brown politics has come when fascists and Leninist ultra-lefts start to believe they have a common enemy, and that they should sideline their differences (while respecting each-other’s heroic resistance to the global order) and fight the liberal-democratic state.

    The historical stuff is interesting, though I don't trust his depiction or believe that anybody who really had internalised socialist views could have anything to do with fascism once it had shown its true face. I find Jimmy Dore's position, that you organise with the right when your interests align, and oppose them when they don't to be the correct approach. Mason isn't interested in making common cause or persuading people with different views or organising on class lines despite differences of opinion. He wants to smear people as racists, Trump/Putin/Xi/Assad apologists and conspiracy theorists and only work with people who pass his arbitrary purity tests.

    Today it’s fairly clear who would be served if a left-wing ideology emerged that was overtly anti-Semitic, socially conservative, immersed in conspiracy theories and supportive of Russian geopolitical aims: a) the Russian ruling elite and, b) that section of the American ruling class that supports Trump. That’s why the Trump supporting media have gone to considerable lengths to promote the US confusionists.

    Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism Trump Russia Putin China Fascism

    There are two lefts and they should have nothing to do with each other, he argued. Indeed, the political task of the humanistic, rational, critical left should be to “drive out” its Stalinist opponent. Sadly, the opposite has happened. Critical Marxist thinking is alive in academia but almost dead on the activist left. Until around 2015 I believed the overhead cost we would pay for this was simply Stalinism’s long, slow refusal to die. It would become a quaint, boring re-enactment group. But Russian hybrid warfare has reanimated the zombie. So long as there was nothing vital to fill the theoretical vacuum left by Stalinism’s intellectual collapse, it didn’t matter. But now there is. Into the void have rushed irrationalism, cynicism, irony, genocide denial and nostalgia – but nostalgia now for a future state, in which the Chinese model of socialism is spread across the world by the defeat of US imperialism. The fight for it will be led by a red vanguard of twits in balaclavas, with people like the OCISA guy as the footsoldiers. As a left-wing social democrat, writing in the tradition of humanist Marxism, networked activism and neo-Aristotelian ethics, I’ve spent 5,000 words trying to explore this problem in detail because I am determined: tomorrow shall not belong to them.

    Now he's having a go at the Chinese? Whatever. It's all delusional, lying rubbish. He's found a few idiots on the internet and people who like to play dress-up at rallies, and people with cogent, consistent criticisms of western imperialism who Mason objects to with zero counter-arguments, just smears. Somehow he manages to turn persecuted truth-tellers and the totally marginalised and disenfranchised looking for political expression into a threat of 'far-left “anti-imperialism” to attack the centre, liberalism, the rule of law and the legitimacy of the rules-based global order' - an anti-democratic force. It's completely upside down, and Mason's pose of defending democracy and marxist socialism actually disguises a reactionary attack and attempt to strangle any resurgence of a genuine left political movement in the UK. The real threat of fascism will come from the disallowance of authentic leftist political expression to the desperation of ordinary people which will drive them into the arms of the right. Mason and all those who betrayed & destroyed the Corbyn movement (including Corbyn himself) will be the ones ultimately responsible for how that plays out.

    jeers,
    I

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