Jean-Marie le Pen

[Guest]

And I repeat I have a vivid realisation that I am not Trotsky. I have never even had a beard.  However the following is one of the opening paragraphs of "Their Morals and Ours"

"

A moralizing Philistine's favorite method is the lumping of reaction's conduct with that of revolution. He achieves success in this device through recourse to formal analogies. To him czarism and Bolshevism are twins. Twins are likewise discovered in fascism and communism. An inventory is compiled of the common features in Catholicism -- or more specifically, Jesuitism -- and Bolshevism. Hitler and Mussolini, utilizing from their side exactly the same method, disclose that liberalism, democracy, and Bolshevism represent merely different manifestations of one and the same evil. The conception that Stalinism and Trotskyism are "essentially" one and the same now enjoys the joint approval of liberals, democrats, devout Catholics, idealists, pragmatists, and anarchists. If the Stalinists are unable to adhere to this "People's Front", then it is only because they are accidentally occupied with the extermination of Trotskyists.

What an extraordinarily turgid quotation this is, and one with which I must take issue.

Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism all share an essentially elitist theoretical element, this being the notion that the working class must be led to revolution by an elite "vanguard party" who better knows the best interests of the workers than they do themselves. Herein lies the origins of the Soviet dictatorship, which of course began in 1917 and not 1924.

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with John's point:

Blunkett and Trotsky should both be judged on what they do rather than what they have said in the past

I feel that it is also important to recognise the importance of the shared theoretical elitism of Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism if we are to understand why such ideologies attract essentially similar authoritarian personalities as do the ideologies of the Right, and also why such ideologies are flawed.

Such an understanding can only come about from the open discussion of the issues in an atmosphere of guaranteed free speech - getting back to the original topic in this thread

[Chris McKie]

I also agree with John (and Andy):

Blunkett and Trotsky should both be judged on what they do rather than what they have said in the past

Both Trotsky and Stalin (and Lenin for that matter too) believed in the suppression of free speech and were profoundly anti-democratic. The Kronstadt sailors felt the full force of Trotsky's authoritarianism in March 1921. These very same sailors spearheaded the October Revolution. Were their demands counter-revolutionary? Of course not. Among others things, they asked for free elections to the soviets, secret ballots, an end to war communism, free assembly for all workers and peasants... Alexandra Kollantai and the Workers Opposition decried the creeping bureaucracy and lack of democracy in the years following the revolution. All dissent was crushed by Lenin with the full backing of Trotsky. There are so many more examples of Trotsky's authoritarianism. Let's judge him by his deeds, not his self-justifying theorising.

[Derek McMillan]

The Kronstadt sailors felt the full force of Trotsky's authoritarianism in March 1921. These very same sailors spearheaded the October Revolution.

This seems a long way from a discussion of Le Pen but this is not strictly accurate. The Kronstadt sailors in 1921 were not the very same sailors who had spearheaded the October Revolution. They were actually fresh levies from the peasantry who were replacing those sailors who were fighting to defend the revolution on many fronts.

They were fighting for free trade and soviets without Bolsheviks.

I am a little concerned that this discussion is turning into an attack on anti-fascists on the assumption that we are the main enemy.

For information

In 1989, Griffin left the NF and formed the International Third Position, a fanatical Catholic fascist group. The ITP campaigned against Coca Cola, McDonald's, urbanisation and "Zionism".

In 1995, Griffin joined the BNP. He had become editor of The Rune, an antisemitic quarterly produced by Croydon BNP. At the time he announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren.

Griffin has undergone a seemingly miraculous political transformation as he is at the forefront of the BNP's cosmetic changes, leading many to question his true motivations. After joining the BNP Griffin immediately had designs on a leadership position. In 1996 he became the editor of Spearhead, the monthly magazine published by the BNP's former leader, John Tyndall, a position he held until he became BNP leader three years later.

Today Griffin speaks of the need for respectable community-based politics. Yet it was only a short while ago that in reference to the election of Derek Beackon as a BNP councillor in Tower Hamlets, east London, in 1993 he wrote in The Rune: "The electors of Millwall did not back a Post-Modernist Rightist Party, but what they perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan 'Defend Rights for Whites' with well-directed boots and fists. When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate."

Griffin nailed his antisemitic and nazi colours to the mast when he wrote the pamphlet, Who are the Mindbenders? which claims to prove that British people are brainwashed through Jewish control of the media. In 1996, Griffin attacked the Holocaust denier David Irving for admitting that some Jews might have died in the Holocaust.

On the theme of the Holocaust Griffin once declared: "I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat … I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter day witch-hysteria." (Carlisle Two Defence Fund Bulletin)

In 1998, Griffin was found guilty of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred, for which he received a two-year suspended jail sentence

Searchlight has produced an anti-BNP tabloid newspaper from which the above is taken. The contents can be downloaded from http://www.stopthebnp.com/

[Guest]

I am a little concerned that this discussion is turning into an attack on anti-fascists on the assumption that we are the main enemy.

Actually the discussion has developed.

Flawed authoritarian ideologies like Fascism and Trotskyism have been subjected to some interesting analysis thanks to the committment to free speech on this forum.

Overwhelmingly I believe it is best to allow representatives of such platforms to speak and debate freely with more balanced individuals - which is in fact the key point in this debate

[Chris McKie]

The Kronstadt sailors felt the full force of Trotsky's authoritarianism in March 1921. These very same sailors spearheaded the October Revolution.

This seems a long way from a discussion of Le Pen but this is not strictly accurate. The Kronstadt sailors in 1921 were not the very same sailors who had spearheaded the October Revolution. They were actually fresh levies from the peasantry who were replacing those sailors who were fighting to defend the revolution on many fronts.

They were fighting for free trade and soviets without Bolsheviks.

I am a little concerned that this discussion is turning into an attack on anti-fascists on the assumption that we are the main enemy.

Granted, some of the Kronstadt sailors in 1921 were conscripts from the Ukraine. Yet, Israel Getzler and Orlando Figes have both demonstrated that the majority of their leaders were veteran sailors of the Kronstadt Fleet. On the two major ships involved in the mutiny, the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol, 94% had been recruited before 1918.

On 8 March 1921, the rebellious Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee published in its own Izvestiia a statement of ‘What are we fighting for’. For them and many others in Russia it summed up what had gone wrong with the Revolution:

“By carrying out the October Revolution the working class had hoped to achieve its emancipation. But the result has been an even greater enslavement of human beings. The power of the monarchy, with its police and gendarmerie, has passed into the hands of the Communist usurpers, who have given the people not freedom but the constant fear of torture by the Cheka…

Through the state control of the trade unions they have chained the workers to the machines so that labour is no longer a source of joy but a new form of slavery. To the protests of the peasants, expressed in spontaneous uprisings, and those of the workers, whose living conditions have compelled them to strike, they have answered with mass executions and the bloodletting that exceeds even the tsarist generals…”

They rallied against what they saw as betrayal by the Bolsheviks. Namely, that the original conception of the soviet as a free and self-governing revolutionary community had been violated by the authoritarianism of the Bolshevik Party.

Free and healthy debate: where’s the harm in that? Le Pen is a fascist and profoundly authoritarian. If we are to expose his bigotry, then surely we need to do that in a rational debate. All contributors to this debate are, I am sure, “anti-fascists” and as such should support the right of free speech.

[Derek McMillan]

Free and healthy debate: where's the harm in that? Le Pen is a fascist and profoundly authoritarian. If we are to expose his bigotry, then surely we need to do that in a rational debate. All contributors to this debate are, I am sure, "anti-fascists" and as such should support the right of free speech.

It is a pity that the preferred debating tactic of the average fascist in the street is a broken bottle but I wish you all the best in your efforts to "debate" with them. Let us know how you get on when you actually do it.

(The last gang of National Front members I "debated" with offered to throw me down the stairs at the North end of Trafalgar Square....the debate was not particularly gentlemanly to be honest with you.)

Have a nice day.

Derek McMillan

socialist

[Guest]

Free and healthy debate: where’s the harm in that?  Le Pen is a fascist and profoundly authoritarian.  If we are to expose his bigotry, then surely we need to do that in a rational debate.

It is a pity that the preferred debating tactic of the average fascist in the street is a broken bottle but I wish you all the best in your efforts to "debate" with them. Let us know how you get on when you actually do it.

Clearly, cd mckie's recommendation is the only way to counter the appeal of such views successfully. People with fixed mind sets and pre- rehearsed simplistic party responses, (be they of the Right or the Left), to complex issues are much better tackled in rational debate than in a physical fight. At least even if we can't make them think we can show their ideas up for what nonsense they are to others