>From: "James Heartfield" <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] ESF, Politics of fear
>Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 09:37:20 +0100
>
>The WEEK
>ending 24 October 2004
>
>THE ESF LOOKS IN THE MIRROR
>
>Leftist Hilary Wainwright called the World Social Forum the 'people's UN'.
>But as the festival of the anti-capitalist movement developed it has
>fragmented along regional and now national lines, and lost its collegiate
>style and optimism. Gathering in London, the European Social Forum last
>weekend drew anti-globalization activists from many countries, but could
>not disguise the loss of momentum. A demonstration against the occupation
>of Iraq did follow, but the more lively actions were taken against the
>platform - when assorted 'Wombles' and anarchists sought to prevent first
>an Iraqi 'trade unionist' and then London Mayor Ken Livingstone from
>speaking. Across London, meetings were held with the title of 'Alternative
>Social Forum' or 'Beyond the Social Forum', before the London ESF had even
>begun.
>
>Long-in-the-tooth environmentalists like Paul Kingsworth point the finger
>at the organisational domination of the Socialist Workers' Party and its
>supposed 'Leninist' style of leadership, and the dull uniformity of the
>speakers' panels ('two boring trade unionists and a trot'). Others pointed
>the finger at Mayor Livingstone's sponsorship and dominance of the event,
>leading to excessive entry prices, mass commercial catering, and bouncers.
>But these are symptoms of the events' decline, not its cause.
>
>The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is to Lenin's revolution in 1917 what the
>Quaker Church is to Cromwell's revolution in 1649. It pays lip service to
>Lenin's vanguard party of the working class, just as the Quakers do to the
>light of inner conscience, but in circumstances so different that it cannot
>help but be a different kind of organisation altogether. The SWP owes its
>origins to the more recent disintegration of the Stalinist movement from
>the 1960s onwards. Its founders adopted a method of adopting the most
>militant demands of the day, and repeating them back to an uncertain
>working class. But as the militant working class movement ebbed away, the
>SWP was momentarily lost - only to be saved by the emergence of the
>'anti-globalization' movement since the riots in Seattle against the World
>Trade Organisation in 1999 (see James Heartfield, 'Capitalism and
>Anti-Capitalism', interventions 5:2, 2003). Without the trade union
>movement to follow after, the SWP adopted the nom de guerre of 'Globalise
>Resistance' and trailed after the militant environmentalists of the
>anti-capitalist movement.
>
>The anti-capitalist movement itself, though, blossomed precisely because of
>the defeats of organised labour in the 1980s. It was only once the middle
>class activists felt no threat from the working class, that they turned
>their polemical fervour against capitalism. The organisational underpinning
>of the movement was provided by the non-governmental organisations:
>charities working in the Third World, environmental pressure groups,
>welfare advocates. The movement was characterised by extremist posturing
>and decidedly piecemeal practice. 'Abolish capitalism', in one breath, and
>'reform the World Trade Organisation' in the next. Ironically, it was the
>capitalists' own self doubts that gave the movement legs. Instead of
>dismissing the protests out of hand, leaders at the World Bank and G8
>flattered the protestors as people with something important to contribute.
>
>The organisational openness of the anti-capitalist movement was always a
>myth. In the flux, charismatic leadership held sway, and the floor was
>dominated by those who shouted loudest, and stayed longest. Organisational
>meetings to assemble platforms were always stitched up beforehand. But as
>the movement has ebbed, the dominance of political parties is felt as
>imposition. The criticisms of the SWP are unfair - they have only adopted
>the same organisational standards of the supposedly less formal, but
>actually cliquish, WSF.
>
>In keeping with its organisational metier, the SWP simply held up a mirror
>to the anti-globalisation movement, and relayed back to them what they were
>already saying: the romantic anti-capitalism, the militant
>environmentalism, the identification of Israel with apartheid, the
>posturing ('behead Blair!' chanted the rally on Iraq). But strangely, the
>anti-capitalists did not like what they saw in the mirror.
>
>THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
>
>Adam Curtis' new three part series the Power of Nightmares began on BBC2 on
>Wednesday, with a history of the anti-modernist philosophies of the
>American-adopted philosopher Leo Strauss and the Egyptian fundamentalist
>Sayyid Qutb. The underlying thesis is that the mobilisation of fear has
>replaced the mobilisation of hope in post-ideological politics. The first
>episode showed that American conservatives had mobilised panic over
>non-existent threats from the Soviet invasion to Saddam's WMDs to
>discipline US society.
>
>Curtis' thesis has brought down a flurry of criticism from those myriad
>critics who rather like the politics of fear, not willing to give up the
>option of scaring people into practising safer sex, or reducing carbon
>emissions, just because conservatives are whipping up fears over Muslims.
>Most of the criticisms were caricatures.
>
>There is one weakness, in Curtis' approach - his preoccupation with the
>history of ideas. In the New York Review of Books, Mark Silla makes a
>convincing case that the neo-Conservatives largely misunderstood Leo
>Strauss, who was pre-eminently concerned with ancient philosophy, not
>contemporary politics. Reading the history of the New Right backwards,
>Curtis finds the influence of Strauss's neo-conservative students dominant
>throughout. But one could make an equally strong case that Milton
>Friedman's militant individualism was dominant, as that Strauss's supposed
>communitarianism held sway. The truth is that many ideas, strictly speaking
>contradictory ones, coexisted alongside each other in the New Right.
>
>The ascendance of the champions of 'full spectrum dominance' in
>international relations only came about by default. It was the emptiness of
>Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' that made the Paul Wolfowitz/Richard
>Perle policy of overthrowing Saddam seem attractive. This was less a case
>of the politics of fear being a conspiracy developed over decades, as a
>knee-jerk reaction to a political vacuum. But criticisms are churlish -
>Curtis' programme is one of the most thought-provoking on television today.
>
>
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