The Tea Party phenomenon
The recent mid-term elections in the USA were a predictable setback for the Obama administration, but what has been the most significant aspect has been the rise of the Tea Party. This supposedly grass-roots organisation has been ridiculed by the Left and a number of its leading lights lampooned as clowns, but it deserves to be taken more seriously. I know we are in a completely different historical context, but its rise, not disimilar to that of its less dangerous UKIP counterpart here, has resonances with the rise of Hitler ad the fascists in Germany.
Hitler and his nutters were also seen as extremist outsiders to begin with, but with a deepening economic crisis and a bankrupt political system, the ruling elite soon tunred to the nazis as saviours.
Today we are in a similar situation. The world capitalist economy is in total disarray and the future highly uncertain. The general public has lost faith in traditional parties. However, rather than directing their ire at the capitalist system itself, the business-owned media has cleverly manipulated opinion and diverted blame to individuals and governments. So we blame Brown or Obama and ‘big government’. This lets the real cuplrits – the banks and multi-national conglomerates – off the hook.
In the USA, Fox News’s extremist anchor man, Glenn Beck recently made the same comparison, saying that the current situation is similar that of the Weimar Republic in Germany. He said he had spoken with his ‘deep throat’ in the White House and this guy told him: "Glenn, everybody I know is reading about the Weimar Republic.” He said, “the money that is being pumped in is staggering and I don't know how we'll ever pull that money back." He added, “we're all reading the Weimar Republic”.
Mark Fisher in his must-read book, 'Capitalist Realism – is there no alterntive?' explains very clearly how the ruling class has been able to shift blame from the capitalist system onto government. How it is also manipulting the war on terror and whipping up fear of outside terrorists to divert attention from the real economic terrorositrs who threaten our planet.
The Tea Party movement is known as the tea party because members compare themselves to American colonists who revolted in a tax dispute with Britain in 1773 and emptied barrels of tea from British ships into Boston Harbour rather than pay taxes on it. This is a very populist image, harking back to US founding history.
But the modern Tea Party is far removed from the popular, grass-roots uprising that it is portrayed by the media. It is a movement motivated by hate, fear and prejudice. Its racist and vitriolic hatred of a black president also underpins those feelings.
How has this ‘grass-roots’ movement grown so quickly and how is it financed? The money to support Tea party candidates, Jane Mayer (New Yorker magazine) and others report, comes through such conservative organizations as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks is a conservative group led by former House Republican leader Richard Armey. Armey’s group has its own influential network, and has supported Tea Party candidates. FreedomWorks is is a top down organization, based in Washington – hardly grass roots.
The Christian Science Monitor says: ‘The tea party movement may have all the appearance of being genuinely grassroots, but just beneath the surface are professional fund-raisers, foundations, and political action committees – some of which have been around for years – pushing a conservative-libertarian agenda.’
In the recent investigative report in the New Yorker magazine, quoted above, Jane Mayer details the links between billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch and the tea party movement. She writes:
"By giving money to 'educate,' fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, 'The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who [care] about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.' With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, 'everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there – people who can provide real ideological power.' The Kochs, he said, are 'trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.'"
Another major source of tea party funding is the Tea Party Express, which poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the successful GOP primary senate campaigns of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska. The Tea Party Express is a group formed by a long-time California Republican consultant that has raised more than $5 million and financed about $2 million in advertising to help candidates. The organization is an offshoot of a political action committee created to support John McCain’s Republican presidential run in 2008. The Tea Party Express is run by Sal Russo, a Republican fund raiser and public relations guru who began his career working for Reagan. Russo is also the chief strategist for “Our Country Deserves Better,” a political action committee (PAC) formed to defeat Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
“As a pivotal player in the ‘tea party’ movement, Russo has helped drive its cause by raising millions of dollars and crafting caustic ads about its opponents,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “There's no question that Tea Party Express, the political action committee Russo runs out of his Sacramento-based firm, is the advertising muscle behind the tea party insurgency.... As the only tea party group making significant advertising buys, Tea Party Express has become one of the most potent forces in the protest movement.”
Our Country Deserves Better, another right-wing organisation backing the Tea Party, launched the first Tea Party Express bus tour last year, and raised and spent just over $1 million in the 2008 campaign year. So far in 2010, it’s raised and spent more than $5 million. Large chunks of that went to the GOP primary campaigns of tea party favorites Christine O’Donnell ($237,000) and Joe Miller (nearly $600,000).
So much political funding in the US comes from anonymous donors or is channelled through innocuous-sounding organisations. The problem for those trying to ferret out where the money comes from – and for Obama and Democrats as they seek to toughen campaign finance reporting in the wake of the Citizens United court decision – is that it’s getting harder to do so.
“Federal campaign spending by groups other than candidates and parties in this election cycle has far outpaced similar spending from the last mid-term election and could rival the 2008 presidential campaign,” the New York Times reports. “But with recent decisions by the Supreme Court and the Federal Elections Commission, it has become harder to know whose dollars they are.”
The reason the Tea Party has been even more successful in the USA than UKIP here is that the economic crisis is much deeper in the USA and the election of a progressive black president has put frighteners on the business elite and red-neck sections of the population. This elite has found it quite easy to tap into the fears and prejudices of ordinary Americans, particularly the disaffected, poor working class and small business people. The parallels with pre-Hitler Germany are alarming.
END
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Looking For The Grave Of Garcia Lorca
release date: Oct 2010
Label: Vida
EGEA Distribution in association with Spitz Records.
Looking for the Grave of Garcia Lorca is the latest album by London-based singer-song-writer Joe Wilkes, and dedicated to the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca, killed by Franco’s fascists during the Civil War in 1936. Wilkes is a great admirer of his poetry and clearly his politics too.
Wilkes is an accomplished acoustic guitar player in the Bert Jansch mould and a gravelly-voiced troubadour. As you can hear from these songs, his politics are firmly Left, but he doesn’t use them as a vehicle for propaganda or political pamphlets. They are deeply personal and his politics only emerge, through the fissures, in the odd word or phrase.
It’s difficult to categorise Wilkes’s music – part blues, a dash of Dylan, part country/folk and, in its instrumental mix, has at times a chamber music or free jazz quality, but it all bears the unmistakable stamp of Joe Wilkes himself.
The title track - Looking for the Grave of Garcia Lorca – is hauntingly evocative: ‘you can’t hide the truth; it’ll come out in the rain’.
In Settling the Score the singer contemplates the legacy of Wat Tyler’s peasant revolt after visiting Blackheath and the song has the militant refrain: ‘What happened back then we’re going to see some more and next time we’ll settle the score’
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he sticks vehemently to acoustic instrumentation and aural under- rather than over-statement. When you read the amazing mix of instruments used on this album - organ, flute, oboe, cor Anglais, violin, viola, cello, harmonica, clarinet and sax as well as guitar – you image an almighty cacophony, but the players are all extremely competent and their interweaving so well mixed that it all comes together as a smooth texture, underlining and complementing the vocals. A cracking album.
release date: Oct 2010
Label: Vida
EGEA Distribution in association with Spitz Records.
Looking for the Grave of Garcia Lorca is the latest album by London-based singer-song-writer Joe Wilkes, and dedicated to the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca, killed by Franco’s fascists during the Civil War in 1936. Wilkes is a great admirer of his poetry and clearly his politics too.
Wilkes is an accomplished acoustic guitar player in the Bert Jansch mould and a gravelly-voiced troubadour. As you can hear from these songs, his politics are firmly Left, but he doesn’t use them as a vehicle for propaganda or political pamphlets. They are deeply personal and his politics only emerge, through the fissures, in the odd word or phrase.
It’s difficult to categorise Wilkes’s music – part blues, a dash of Dylan, part country/folk and, in its instrumental mix, has at times a chamber music or free jazz quality, but it all bears the unmistakable stamp of Joe Wilkes himself.
The title track - Looking for the Grave of Garcia Lorca – is hauntingly evocative: ‘you can’t hide the truth; it’ll come out in the rain’.
In Settling the Score the singer contemplates the legacy of Wat Tyler’s peasant revolt after visiting Blackheath and the song has the militant refrain: ‘What happened back then we’re going to see some more and next time we’ll settle the score’
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he sticks vehemently to acoustic instrumentation and aural under- rather than over-statement. When you read the amazing mix of instruments used on this album - organ, flute, oboe, cor Anglais, violin, viola, cello, harmonica, clarinet and sax as well as guitar – you image an almighty cacophony, but the players are all extremely competent and their interweaving so well mixed that it all comes together as a smooth texture, underlining and complementing the vocals. A cracking album.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
The Rise of the Green Left – inside the worldwide ecosocialist movement
By Derek Wall
Pubs. Pluto Press
Pbck
The term ‘ecosocialist’ is a relatively new one. Today it might seem almost unnecessary to attach the ‘eco’ prefix as hardly anyone in the socialist movement can be unaware of the urgent ecological problems facing us. However, as we know to our cost from the past, many socialists believed the new system would triumph by producing more and outperforming capitalism in terms of industrial expansion and ‘taming’ nature. Few would think that way today.
Derek Wall, as a regular Star columnist, hardly needs any introduction as a clear and fervently committed socialist as well as environmental campaigner. Here he puts forward a compelling case for socialism but with an essential ecological core. He begins by defining what he means by ecosocialism and in doing so returns to Marx and Engels. He goes on to formulate an ecosocialist manifesto and outlines the challenges both socialists and environmental activists face in a world of globalised capitalism.
He answers those who ask: ‘why can’t we just be Green?’ and shows how almost any environmental initiative is only welcome to capitalism if it promises to generate profit and this corrupts what, in a different social context, would offer genuine progress. He points out that ‘ecosocialism is to a large extent also a battle over property rights.’ Under capitalism enormous, transnational corporations dominate national economies and lifestyles, and land ownership - still in the hands of a tiny minority – mean that democracy itself has become nothing but a withered fig-leaf.
Wall doesn’t shy away from criticising those Green Parties (as in Germany and Ireland) which have joined governments only to jettison many of their cherished principles in their embrace of a share of power and capitalism. He reiterates how it is impossible to be really Green if you don’t challenge capitalism itself.
In one chapter he gives a valuable and succinct overview of ecosocialist initiatives around the world, from Venezuela to New Zealand. He examines recent experiences in Latin America and the advances made there in terms of ecosocialism. Cuba’s agricultural system, he says, offers us an excellent example of where property is held in common, and where organic methods are widely used and recycling advanced.
He concludes his book with suggestions on what action needs to be taken to ensure that ecosocialism takes hold of the public imagination and how we can go about challenging the present power structures. He also lists a whole number of organisations which are involved in environmental/political campaigning. He points out that there is even already a Green-Socialist international: the Ecosocialist International Network, launched in 2007. He avoids getting bogged down in sectarian thinking on the left and steers a clear course between the various factions and parties without being over-cautious or timorous.
This is a slim book - Wall doesn’t believe in unnecessary prolixity - he makes his points clearly and succinctly. All in all, a very useful guide to where we are at in terms of environmental and socialist advance. It underlines once more the vital need for a broad alliance of the left and the Greens if we are to move forward.
END
By Derek Wall
Pubs. Pluto Press
Pbck
The term ‘ecosocialist’ is a relatively new one. Today it might seem almost unnecessary to attach the ‘eco’ prefix as hardly anyone in the socialist movement can be unaware of the urgent ecological problems facing us. However, as we know to our cost from the past, many socialists believed the new system would triumph by producing more and outperforming capitalism in terms of industrial expansion and ‘taming’ nature. Few would think that way today.
Derek Wall, as a regular Star columnist, hardly needs any introduction as a clear and fervently committed socialist as well as environmental campaigner. Here he puts forward a compelling case for socialism but with an essential ecological core. He begins by defining what he means by ecosocialism and in doing so returns to Marx and Engels. He goes on to formulate an ecosocialist manifesto and outlines the challenges both socialists and environmental activists face in a world of globalised capitalism.
He answers those who ask: ‘why can’t we just be Green?’ and shows how almost any environmental initiative is only welcome to capitalism if it promises to generate profit and this corrupts what, in a different social context, would offer genuine progress. He points out that ‘ecosocialism is to a large extent also a battle over property rights.’ Under capitalism enormous, transnational corporations dominate national economies and lifestyles, and land ownership - still in the hands of a tiny minority – mean that democracy itself has become nothing but a withered fig-leaf.
Wall doesn’t shy away from criticising those Green Parties (as in Germany and Ireland) which have joined governments only to jettison many of their cherished principles in their embrace of a share of power and capitalism. He reiterates how it is impossible to be really Green if you don’t challenge capitalism itself.
In one chapter he gives a valuable and succinct overview of ecosocialist initiatives around the world, from Venezuela to New Zealand. He examines recent experiences in Latin America and the advances made there in terms of ecosocialism. Cuba’s agricultural system, he says, offers us an excellent example of where property is held in common, and where organic methods are widely used and recycling advanced.
He concludes his book with suggestions on what action needs to be taken to ensure that ecosocialism takes hold of the public imagination and how we can go about challenging the present power structures. He also lists a whole number of organisations which are involved in environmental/political campaigning. He points out that there is even already a Green-Socialist international: the Ecosocialist International Network, launched in 2007. He avoids getting bogged down in sectarian thinking on the left and steers a clear course between the various factions and parties without being over-cautious or timorous.
This is a slim book - Wall doesn’t believe in unnecessary prolixity - he makes his points clearly and succinctly. All in all, a very useful guide to where we are at in terms of environmental and socialist advance. It underlines once more the vital need for a broad alliance of the left and the Greens if we are to move forward.
END
A Painter of Our Time
By John Berger
Verso
Pbck £9.99
Berger’s classic portrait of an artist was first published in 1958 and Verso is to be congratulated for re-issuing it now, along with two other of his books: A Seventh Man and Corker’s Freedom.
This novel is written in the form of a posthumously discovered diary written by the émigré artist, Janos Lavin, with additional commentary by the author himself. Although a purely fictitious portrait it is closely modelled on Berger’s friend, the Hungarian-born artist Peter Peri. Of course socio-cultural novels like this are not unaffected by the passage of time, and Berger’s portrait is very much of the immediate post-war period. Then, hopes of fundamental social change were still very much alive, despite the devastating stories emerging from Stalin’s Soviet Union and the onset of the Cold War.
Janos Lavin is a Communist and painter who was involved in the establishment of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, but later forced to flee his homeland. He eventually settles in Britain and marries a middle-class English woman who has sufficient income to keep them from starving. Although not well off, the couple live a relatively comfortable, if very modest, existence. His safe and sheltered life gives Lavin a guilty conscience, as he knows that other comrades stayed behind to continue the struggle. His best friend becomes a government official in the post-war Hungarian Socialist Republic, only to fall foul of the Stalinist clampdown on artists considered dissidents. He struggles to come to terms with what he accepts as a necessary party discipline, but at the same time deplores the bloody sacrifices it seems to demand.
By cleverly reproducing selected entries from his fictitious diary, Berger weaves a clear but complex portrait of a man torn between active political intervention and dedication to his art. By placing a central European Communist in a western capitalist setting, he also draws out the conflict between honest dedication to ‘artistic truth’ and the pressures of the commercial art world and gallery culture, as well as the tug of political activism.
Lavin is a dedicated painter; it is in his blood. That’s what he needs to do and what he does best, but he is also only too aware that painting canvases won’t change the world and could even be considered as a cowardly opting out of the ‘real’ struggle. The novel raises questions and issues that are still valid today, about ‘truth’ in art, about its purpose, about abstraction versus realism and about the artist’s role in society. In that sense, it is as apposite today as it was in the fifties when Berger wrote it.
Everyone recognises that Lavin’s work is supremely competent, if not highly talented, but his paintings are often monumental and figurative, whereas the post-war trend in the West was towards total abstraction. Lavin is thus seen as quaintly old-fashioned. He, his wife and his friends know that he needs to show in the galleries if he is to sell and make a proper living, but he resists this with every sinew in his body. For him it means ‘selling out’, betraying his comrades. Berger’s perceptive descriptions of the gallery scene with its wealthy patrons and obsequious art critics are, however, as accurate today as they were then.
In the end Lavin does is offered an exhibition in an up-market gallery and even sells a number of his paintings to patrons who merely wish to decorate their mansions and, he feels, have no appreciation of what his art is about. He would have preferred commissions from factories, schools or public institutions. It is all too much for him. He leaves the gallery and very soon after disappears. The novel concludes with a letter sent by him to the author, in the form of a goodbye note, informing him that he is ‘going home’ to Hungary. What happens to him there is left to the imagination of the reader, but there is a possibility that he may have been killed by his erstwhile comrades, before the big post-Stalin thaw had begun, as all trace of him is lost.
END
By John Berger
Verso
Pbck £9.99
Berger’s classic portrait of an artist was first published in 1958 and Verso is to be congratulated for re-issuing it now, along with two other of his books: A Seventh Man and Corker’s Freedom.
This novel is written in the form of a posthumously discovered diary written by the émigré artist, Janos Lavin, with additional commentary by the author himself. Although a purely fictitious portrait it is closely modelled on Berger’s friend, the Hungarian-born artist Peter Peri. Of course socio-cultural novels like this are not unaffected by the passage of time, and Berger’s portrait is very much of the immediate post-war period. Then, hopes of fundamental social change were still very much alive, despite the devastating stories emerging from Stalin’s Soviet Union and the onset of the Cold War.
Janos Lavin is a Communist and painter who was involved in the establishment of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, but later forced to flee his homeland. He eventually settles in Britain and marries a middle-class English woman who has sufficient income to keep them from starving. Although not well off, the couple live a relatively comfortable, if very modest, existence. His safe and sheltered life gives Lavin a guilty conscience, as he knows that other comrades stayed behind to continue the struggle. His best friend becomes a government official in the post-war Hungarian Socialist Republic, only to fall foul of the Stalinist clampdown on artists considered dissidents. He struggles to come to terms with what he accepts as a necessary party discipline, but at the same time deplores the bloody sacrifices it seems to demand.
By cleverly reproducing selected entries from his fictitious diary, Berger weaves a clear but complex portrait of a man torn between active political intervention and dedication to his art. By placing a central European Communist in a western capitalist setting, he also draws out the conflict between honest dedication to ‘artistic truth’ and the pressures of the commercial art world and gallery culture, as well as the tug of political activism.
Lavin is a dedicated painter; it is in his blood. That’s what he needs to do and what he does best, but he is also only too aware that painting canvases won’t change the world and could even be considered as a cowardly opting out of the ‘real’ struggle. The novel raises questions and issues that are still valid today, about ‘truth’ in art, about its purpose, about abstraction versus realism and about the artist’s role in society. In that sense, it is as apposite today as it was in the fifties when Berger wrote it.
Everyone recognises that Lavin’s work is supremely competent, if not highly talented, but his paintings are often monumental and figurative, whereas the post-war trend in the West was towards total abstraction. Lavin is thus seen as quaintly old-fashioned. He, his wife and his friends know that he needs to show in the galleries if he is to sell and make a proper living, but he resists this with every sinew in his body. For him it means ‘selling out’, betraying his comrades. Berger’s perceptive descriptions of the gallery scene with its wealthy patrons and obsequious art critics are, however, as accurate today as they were then.
In the end Lavin does is offered an exhibition in an up-market gallery and even sells a number of his paintings to patrons who merely wish to decorate their mansions and, he feels, have no appreciation of what his art is about. He would have preferred commissions from factories, schools or public institutions. It is all too much for him. He leaves the gallery and very soon after disappears. The novel concludes with a letter sent by him to the author, in the form of a goodbye note, informing him that he is ‘going home’ to Hungary. What happens to him there is left to the imagination of the reader, but there is a possibility that he may have been killed by his erstwhile comrades, before the big post-Stalin thaw had begun, as all trace of him is lost.
END
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Interview with Wu Ming
Wu Ming are at the moment undertaking a tour of Britain, to introduce audiences here to their unique story-telling technique and radical take on history. They agreed to talk to the Morning Star.
They have been characterised as a ‘mysterious guerrilla group of novelists’, but the two members sitting opposite me look far from mysterious and not at all warrior-like. Wu Ming 1 and Wu Ming 4 (they reject the celebrity cult built around novelists, preferring anonymity) dismiss the ‘mysterious’ tag, but don’t allow themselves to be photographed and emphasise that they dislike the idea of them and their work being mediated by others. They feel this would take away their right to have direct contact with their readers – something vitally important to them. Simply put: they want no limit placed on their public image.
What are their aims, other than to subvert the commercialised literary world, I ask. They reply, laconically, that their aim is simply to tell stories which they love doing. Yes, but your stories are not mainstream, I counter. ‘We write stories about conflict,’ they respond, ‘we look at the key turning points in history and focus on those. We are interested in modernity and how we arrived at the place in which we now find ourselves. So we are not concerned with ancient history but in the history that defines us today’.
‘We are attempting to draw a map of where our generation came from. We try to retell history from new perspectives, from uncanny angles. Thus in our novel ‘54’ we begin with a group of nightclub dancers obsessed with Cary Grant, but the novel examines the relationship between US and European politics. Our forthcoming novel, to be published in Britain shortly, is ‘Altai’ which looks at Europe’s relationship with Islam, based during the historical period of the huge clash between the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe from the 13th century onwards, but written from the point of view of the Turks.’
How far are your novels fictional and how far fact-based, I ask.
Wu Ming 1 uses a vivid metaphor. ‘If you think of history as a big piece of Gruyère cheese, where the solid cheese is the history that has been documented, and the holes are the gaps in the narrative, then we squeeze our fictional elements into those holes; we try and illuminate those dark spots.’
Writing is usually a solitary and individual undertaking, so how does the Wu Ming collective work?
‘We have no fixed method,’ Wu Ming 1 tells me, ‘but a subject or period of history is suggested and, once agreed, we discuss it and then undertake an enormous amount of research so that we gain a great deal of knowledge about the subject matter we wish to examine. We begin with what we call ‘lumps’ of narrative matter and once we have enough we develop an outline fro the story. Each of us then writes a chapter which is circulated, altered, added to and changed. The first draft is very free and each of us adopts his chosen style in complete freedom, but a more homogenous style emerges as the drafts develop and evolve.’
Wu Ming describe the process as incredibly exhilarating and emancipatory. Rather than each being stuck in their own ivory tower, ‘like a prisoner in solitary confinement, we experience the joy of writing together’, they say. ‘Being on the road together, we are like kids again, enjoying the childish naivety of making up stories, but it is also hard work. There is a lot of fun, and we learn from each other, grow together. Each novel teaches us something new’.
So what’s the downside of working collectively? ‘The fact that we only get a quarter of the royalties we would get as an individual writer,’ they reply sardonically.
What is also unusual in their methods of working is that they actively promote the use of the internet to interact with their readers. They are not interested in appearing on TV talk shows or having their work mediated by others; they say the physical shared experience of interacting with their readers is vital for them. They attend more than a hundred such events each year. On their website, through their blogs and twitter they communicate with their readers and encourage the latter to get involved in the creative process. So what does that involve? ‘We get hundreds of emails each day, readers send us ideas or their own short stories and comments, even cartoons or pieces of music which they feel could complement or accompany our stories. We have also involved readers as narrators with mixed results, but now readers are doing things by themselves, ‘they say.
Wu Ming have certainly made a deep impact on the cosy world of modern literature with their unusual hybrid brand of popular novel cum historical epic. They offer a radically new perspective on history and on the art of story-telling itself. Once can only hope that British readers are as fascinated by their books as their Italian compatriots already are.
Do they really feel that their approach to novel writing can really have an impact on the commercially-dominated literary world, characterised by celebrity culture? ‘We don’t know,’ they reply, ‘but ethically we have a duty to counter the current trivialisation of everything. We feel like tightrope walkers, constantly trying to find a balance between popular fiction and more demanding literature, and it is very difficult to maintain that equilibrium.
Who is/are Wu Ming?
Wu Ming (‘anonymous’ in English) is a collective of four left wing radical Italian authors, based in Bologna. They grew out of the Luther Blisset Project (named after a black British footballer), which was, as they explain it, a ‘cultural guerrilla’ exercise. The collective’s first novel Q, was a historical spy novel set in the period of the Reformation, and became a best-seller. It is about the Radical Reformation, asking why Müntzer has inspired radicals for almost 500 years. Their third novel Manituana focuses on the US war of independence seen through the eyes of the Iroquois nation which was almost eradicated by the colonial and imperial struggles.
Wu Ming explain that their work is an attempt to demystify authorship, to subvert the cult of the celebrity author and a consumerist attitude to literature. They are also trying to bridge the gap between popular fiction and serious literature. ‘Our books,’ they say, ‘are readable on two levels: as complex political allegories, and as pulp fiction or adventure novels.’
Wu Ming encourages a ‘communitarian’ use of the internet and their official website: http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/englishmenu.htm provides more information about them and their novels and gives links to their other sites. It enables the worlds of their novels to be enriched and expanded, offering background information and invitations for fans to make their own contributions.
Books by Wu Ming published in English so far are: Q, 54 and Manituana, all published by Verso.
END
Wu Ming are at the moment undertaking a tour of Britain, to introduce audiences here to their unique story-telling technique and radical take on history. They agreed to talk to the Morning Star.
They have been characterised as a ‘mysterious guerrilla group of novelists’, but the two members sitting opposite me look far from mysterious and not at all warrior-like. Wu Ming 1 and Wu Ming 4 (they reject the celebrity cult built around novelists, preferring anonymity) dismiss the ‘mysterious’ tag, but don’t allow themselves to be photographed and emphasise that they dislike the idea of them and their work being mediated by others. They feel this would take away their right to have direct contact with their readers – something vitally important to them. Simply put: they want no limit placed on their public image.
What are their aims, other than to subvert the commercialised literary world, I ask. They reply, laconically, that their aim is simply to tell stories which they love doing. Yes, but your stories are not mainstream, I counter. ‘We write stories about conflict,’ they respond, ‘we look at the key turning points in history and focus on those. We are interested in modernity and how we arrived at the place in which we now find ourselves. So we are not concerned with ancient history but in the history that defines us today’.
‘We are attempting to draw a map of where our generation came from. We try to retell history from new perspectives, from uncanny angles. Thus in our novel ‘54’ we begin with a group of nightclub dancers obsessed with Cary Grant, but the novel examines the relationship between US and European politics. Our forthcoming novel, to be published in Britain shortly, is ‘Altai’ which looks at Europe’s relationship with Islam, based during the historical period of the huge clash between the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe from the 13th century onwards, but written from the point of view of the Turks.’
How far are your novels fictional and how far fact-based, I ask.
Wu Ming 1 uses a vivid metaphor. ‘If you think of history as a big piece of Gruyère cheese, where the solid cheese is the history that has been documented, and the holes are the gaps in the narrative, then we squeeze our fictional elements into those holes; we try and illuminate those dark spots.’
Writing is usually a solitary and individual undertaking, so how does the Wu Ming collective work?
‘We have no fixed method,’ Wu Ming 1 tells me, ‘but a subject or period of history is suggested and, once agreed, we discuss it and then undertake an enormous amount of research so that we gain a great deal of knowledge about the subject matter we wish to examine. We begin with what we call ‘lumps’ of narrative matter and once we have enough we develop an outline fro the story. Each of us then writes a chapter which is circulated, altered, added to and changed. The first draft is very free and each of us adopts his chosen style in complete freedom, but a more homogenous style emerges as the drafts develop and evolve.’
Wu Ming describe the process as incredibly exhilarating and emancipatory. Rather than each being stuck in their own ivory tower, ‘like a prisoner in solitary confinement, we experience the joy of writing together’, they say. ‘Being on the road together, we are like kids again, enjoying the childish naivety of making up stories, but it is also hard work. There is a lot of fun, and we learn from each other, grow together. Each novel teaches us something new’.
So what’s the downside of working collectively? ‘The fact that we only get a quarter of the royalties we would get as an individual writer,’ they reply sardonically.
What is also unusual in their methods of working is that they actively promote the use of the internet to interact with their readers. They are not interested in appearing on TV talk shows or having their work mediated by others; they say the physical shared experience of interacting with their readers is vital for them. They attend more than a hundred such events each year. On their website, through their blogs and twitter they communicate with their readers and encourage the latter to get involved in the creative process. So what does that involve? ‘We get hundreds of emails each day, readers send us ideas or their own short stories and comments, even cartoons or pieces of music which they feel could complement or accompany our stories. We have also involved readers as narrators with mixed results, but now readers are doing things by themselves, ‘they say.
Wu Ming have certainly made a deep impact on the cosy world of modern literature with their unusual hybrid brand of popular novel cum historical epic. They offer a radically new perspective on history and on the art of story-telling itself. Once can only hope that British readers are as fascinated by their books as their Italian compatriots already are.
Do they really feel that their approach to novel writing can really have an impact on the commercially-dominated literary world, characterised by celebrity culture? ‘We don’t know,’ they reply, ‘but ethically we have a duty to counter the current trivialisation of everything. We feel like tightrope walkers, constantly trying to find a balance between popular fiction and more demanding literature, and it is very difficult to maintain that equilibrium.
Who is/are Wu Ming?
Wu Ming (‘anonymous’ in English) is a collective of four left wing radical Italian authors, based in Bologna. They grew out of the Luther Blisset Project (named after a black British footballer), which was, as they explain it, a ‘cultural guerrilla’ exercise. The collective’s first novel Q, was a historical spy novel set in the period of the Reformation, and became a best-seller. It is about the Radical Reformation, asking why Müntzer has inspired radicals for almost 500 years. Their third novel Manituana focuses on the US war of independence seen through the eyes of the Iroquois nation which was almost eradicated by the colonial and imperial struggles.
Wu Ming explain that their work is an attempt to demystify authorship, to subvert the cult of the celebrity author and a consumerist attitude to literature. They are also trying to bridge the gap between popular fiction and serious literature. ‘Our books,’ they say, ‘are readable on two levels: as complex political allegories, and as pulp fiction or adventure novels.’
Wu Ming encourages a ‘communitarian’ use of the internet and their official website: http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/englishmenu.htm provides more information about them and their novels and gives links to their other sites. It enables the worlds of their novels to be enriched and expanded, offering background information and invitations for fans to make their own contributions.
Books by Wu Ming published in English so far are: Q, 54 and Manituana, all published by Verso.
END
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Rethinking Communism for the 21st Century
With the increasing realisation that capitalism cannot solve the world’s problems, there has been a resurgence of interest in the concepts of justice, equality and, yes, even the taboo one of ‘communism’. With books like The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists by Daniel Dorling we are seeing more and more intellectuals questioning the basis of the present system. In 2009 over 1000 people came together in London to attend a sell-out conference on “The Idea of Communism”.
The title of Prof. Swyngedouw’s recent paper published in the radical geography magazine, Antipode, is perhaps a little off-putting: The Communist hypothesis and revolutionary capitalisms: exploring the idea of communist geographies for the twenty-first century. It is an academic paper and not intended for a wider audience. However, what is surprising and significant is that here we have a mainstream academic – a professor of geography at Manchester University - calling for a revival of the “communist idea”.
His paper begins with the words: ‘This essay starts from the presumption that “the communist hypothesis” is still a good one…’ He goes on to argue that ‘the idea of communism requires urgent rethinking in the light of both the “obscure” disaster of twentieth century really existing socialism and the specific conditions of twenty-first century capitalism.’
Like fellow iconoclastic academic, Slavoj Zizek, he argues that we need to look again at the idea of a communist society as a viable alternative to a capitalism that is intellectually as well as in practice bankrupt. He agreed to explain the ideas underlying his paper to Morning Star readers.
He says that the persistent outlawing of the name “communism” and its erasure from the pages of self-respecting journals over the past two decades has been so effective that even its utterance is looked upon with suspicion and distrust.
So why has he decided to utter it at this time?
He says that since the student rebellions of 1968 even the study of geography became radicalised and more academics realised that politics and economics also take place in specific geographical contexts and couldn’t be ignored.
‘In an age in which anything and everything can be discussed,’ he says ‘the very idea of communism as a positive injunction seems to have been censored and scripted out of both everyday and intellectual vocabularies. It is only tolerated in sensationalised accounts of the “obscure disaster” of twentieth century “really existing socialism”, or in romanticised Hollywood renditions of communist heroes like Che Guevara.’ He talks about the “obscure” disaster of 20th century communism because, he argues, the neo-liberals have only condemned it in its totality, as a dystopia, and the left hasn’t undertaken a proper critique of the experience. Although we have to learn from that experience, he is adamant that we have to completely rethink the concept of communism in the light of the profound changes that have taken place in capitalism itself and the imminent threats to our environment and indeed life itself.
What does “communism” signify for him, I want to know?
Swyngedouw sees equality and democracy as the central concepts that define communism; communism without them is a contradiction in terms. He argues that these principles can only be achieved through self-organisation and self-management. He sees no roles for a coercive state or a ‘leading’ party.
He argues, perhaps controversially, ‘that the key markers of twentieth century communist politics – state, party and proletariat – require a radical reworking. I would insist,’ he says, ‘that neither state nor the party are any longer of use to think the communist hypothesis.’ He doesn’t deny that the state and political parties have roles to play, but they cannot be the main actors or means to achieving communism he insists.
‘The idea of communism retains a subversive edge,’ he notes, ‘and in spite of the failed experiments it still evokes the idea that a different world is not only imaginable but is also practically possible. But it must be a communism that is egalitarian and allows the self-development of each, and then it will retain its great mobilising potential. To work towards such a goal, political organisation needs to be rethought.’
So how can we rethink communism for the twenty-first century, I ask?
‘The communist idea is nothing,’ he says, ‘without the will to do something new, without the will to become political subject ie as an individual acting upon and transforming our environment. The majority of people,’ he argues, ‘are unhappy with the present situation and want change, but are not sure how to go about achieving the changes they desire, because they are told over and over again that capitalist neo-liberalism is the only option.’
‘While we need to come to terms with the disaster of twentieth century communism, it is also necessary,’ he emphasises, ‘to undertake a critique of the repressive state capitalism in “the West”. Capitalism,’ he says, ‘reinvented itself in the seventies and recaptured the imagination of the majority – capitalism could deliver material wealth and well-being. Many lost hope; there was no political controversy and neo-liberalism appeared to be the only show in town. Conservative restraint was replaced by the imperative to enjoy. Liberation was experienced as the search for surplus value as well as surplus enjoyment. Political equality faded as a central concern; demands for equality became defined as the equality of difference, and justice became the right to enjoy one’s own individual freedom. Democracy itself became synonymous with the freedom to exercise individual choice, and consuming became the highest freedom; market equality replacing political equality.’
He maintains that neo-liberalism also ‘wiped out working class politics’. The triumph of neo-liberalism represented ruling class victory. This victory has also been accompanied by the tactics of de-politicisation of the people with the media now so concentrated and providing a basic fare of triviality and non-political gossip alongside the cultivation of fear.
He quotes Marx on the domination of capitalism by the financial sector and argues that capitalism’s resurgence is closely connected with the geographical transfer of basic exploitation to regions like SE Asia, but also the privatisation of the environment, water, gene pools, minerals and intellectual property. However, with the recent collapse of the banking system the whole edifice of capitalism was threatened with collapse. Only unprecedented state intervention, characterised by Newsweek as: ‘we are all socialists now’ has temporarily saved it.
‘In the final decades of the twentieth century industrial labour lost its hegemony in the “North” and,’ he says, ‘in its stead “immaterial labour” emerged, ie labour that creates immaterial “wares” like knowledge, information software, communication resources etc. Industrial labour has been transferred elsewhere, and it is there where new industrial (class) struggles are emerging and will intensify. In the global “North” new forms of struggle will and are emerging which do not revolve around ownership of the means of production but directly around the ownership of the products of this immaterial labour, as we have seen in the battles over free downloads and access to internet resources.’
He doesn’t see democracy – as so often narrowly defined in the West, as a set of political institutions and their associated political procedures, such as ‘free’ elections – as the solution, but argues that it must be a democracy that involves everyone participating in society on an equal basis. Equality, he stresses, is the very premise on which a democratic politics has to be based. However, he stresses, political democracy is not about expressing demands to an elite to rectify injustice, but in conquering freedom and equality for ourselves. For Swyngedouw this means that the ‘place of power is kept structurally vacant’ ie power remains with the people and is not vested in or ‘handed over’ to some representative body or individual. He envisions a situation where the state is replaced by self-organisation and self-management. He says the very name of communism invokes the egalitarian concept of ‘being in common’ and this includes the idea of the ‘commons’ ie that all natural resources, including land, and indeed life itself, belongs to us collectively and should be collectively stewarded. We need to think beyond resistance towards transformation. He sees the communist idea as a transformation of the commons. This, of course, raises vital questions of property relations in respect to common resources.
‘The key task,’ he finally underlines ‘is to rethink communism again and this will require serious debate about what an equal, free and self-organising being-in-common for the twenty-first century might be all about. It will, he argues, ‘require a restoration of trust in our theories, a courageous engagement with painful histories and geographies, and, above all, abandoning the fear of failing again…There is no alternative!’, he stresses adamantly.
Prof. Swyngedouw’s essay is also available in the book: The Point is to Change It, edited by Castree N., Chatterton P., Heynen N., Larner W. and Wright M.W. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
With the increasing realisation that capitalism cannot solve the world’s problems, there has been a resurgence of interest in the concepts of justice, equality and, yes, even the taboo one of ‘communism’. With books like The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists by Daniel Dorling we are seeing more and more intellectuals questioning the basis of the present system. In 2009 over 1000 people came together in London to attend a sell-out conference on “The Idea of Communism”.
The title of Prof. Swyngedouw’s recent paper published in the radical geography magazine, Antipode, is perhaps a little off-putting: The Communist hypothesis and revolutionary capitalisms: exploring the idea of communist geographies for the twenty-first century. It is an academic paper and not intended for a wider audience. However, what is surprising and significant is that here we have a mainstream academic – a professor of geography at Manchester University - calling for a revival of the “communist idea”.
His paper begins with the words: ‘This essay starts from the presumption that “the communist hypothesis” is still a good one…’ He goes on to argue that ‘the idea of communism requires urgent rethinking in the light of both the “obscure” disaster of twentieth century really existing socialism and the specific conditions of twenty-first century capitalism.’
Like fellow iconoclastic academic, Slavoj Zizek, he argues that we need to look again at the idea of a communist society as a viable alternative to a capitalism that is intellectually as well as in practice bankrupt. He agreed to explain the ideas underlying his paper to Morning Star readers.
He says that the persistent outlawing of the name “communism” and its erasure from the pages of self-respecting journals over the past two decades has been so effective that even its utterance is looked upon with suspicion and distrust.
So why has he decided to utter it at this time?
He says that since the student rebellions of 1968 even the study of geography became radicalised and more academics realised that politics and economics also take place in specific geographical contexts and couldn’t be ignored.
‘In an age in which anything and everything can be discussed,’ he says ‘the very idea of communism as a positive injunction seems to have been censored and scripted out of both everyday and intellectual vocabularies. It is only tolerated in sensationalised accounts of the “obscure disaster” of twentieth century “really existing socialism”, or in romanticised Hollywood renditions of communist heroes like Che Guevara.’ He talks about the “obscure” disaster of 20th century communism because, he argues, the neo-liberals have only condemned it in its totality, as a dystopia, and the left hasn’t undertaken a proper critique of the experience. Although we have to learn from that experience, he is adamant that we have to completely rethink the concept of communism in the light of the profound changes that have taken place in capitalism itself and the imminent threats to our environment and indeed life itself.
What does “communism” signify for him, I want to know?
Swyngedouw sees equality and democracy as the central concepts that define communism; communism without them is a contradiction in terms. He argues that these principles can only be achieved through self-organisation and self-management. He sees no roles for a coercive state or a ‘leading’ party.
He argues, perhaps controversially, ‘that the key markers of twentieth century communist politics – state, party and proletariat – require a radical reworking. I would insist,’ he says, ‘that neither state nor the party are any longer of use to think the communist hypothesis.’ He doesn’t deny that the state and political parties have roles to play, but they cannot be the main actors or means to achieving communism he insists.
‘The idea of communism retains a subversive edge,’ he notes, ‘and in spite of the failed experiments it still evokes the idea that a different world is not only imaginable but is also practically possible. But it must be a communism that is egalitarian and allows the self-development of each, and then it will retain its great mobilising potential. To work towards such a goal, political organisation needs to be rethought.’
So how can we rethink communism for the twenty-first century, I ask?
‘The communist idea is nothing,’ he says, ‘without the will to do something new, without the will to become political subject ie as an individual acting upon and transforming our environment. The majority of people,’ he argues, ‘are unhappy with the present situation and want change, but are not sure how to go about achieving the changes they desire, because they are told over and over again that capitalist neo-liberalism is the only option.’
‘While we need to come to terms with the disaster of twentieth century communism, it is also necessary,’ he emphasises, ‘to undertake a critique of the repressive state capitalism in “the West”. Capitalism,’ he says, ‘reinvented itself in the seventies and recaptured the imagination of the majority – capitalism could deliver material wealth and well-being. Many lost hope; there was no political controversy and neo-liberalism appeared to be the only show in town. Conservative restraint was replaced by the imperative to enjoy. Liberation was experienced as the search for surplus value as well as surplus enjoyment. Political equality faded as a central concern; demands for equality became defined as the equality of difference, and justice became the right to enjoy one’s own individual freedom. Democracy itself became synonymous with the freedom to exercise individual choice, and consuming became the highest freedom; market equality replacing political equality.’
He maintains that neo-liberalism also ‘wiped out working class politics’. The triumph of neo-liberalism represented ruling class victory. This victory has also been accompanied by the tactics of de-politicisation of the people with the media now so concentrated and providing a basic fare of triviality and non-political gossip alongside the cultivation of fear.
He quotes Marx on the domination of capitalism by the financial sector and argues that capitalism’s resurgence is closely connected with the geographical transfer of basic exploitation to regions like SE Asia, but also the privatisation of the environment, water, gene pools, minerals and intellectual property. However, with the recent collapse of the banking system the whole edifice of capitalism was threatened with collapse. Only unprecedented state intervention, characterised by Newsweek as: ‘we are all socialists now’ has temporarily saved it.
‘In the final decades of the twentieth century industrial labour lost its hegemony in the “North” and,’ he says, ‘in its stead “immaterial labour” emerged, ie labour that creates immaterial “wares” like knowledge, information software, communication resources etc. Industrial labour has been transferred elsewhere, and it is there where new industrial (class) struggles are emerging and will intensify. In the global “North” new forms of struggle will and are emerging which do not revolve around ownership of the means of production but directly around the ownership of the products of this immaterial labour, as we have seen in the battles over free downloads and access to internet resources.’
He doesn’t see democracy – as so often narrowly defined in the West, as a set of political institutions and their associated political procedures, such as ‘free’ elections – as the solution, but argues that it must be a democracy that involves everyone participating in society on an equal basis. Equality, he stresses, is the very premise on which a democratic politics has to be based. However, he stresses, political democracy is not about expressing demands to an elite to rectify injustice, but in conquering freedom and equality for ourselves. For Swyngedouw this means that the ‘place of power is kept structurally vacant’ ie power remains with the people and is not vested in or ‘handed over’ to some representative body or individual. He envisions a situation where the state is replaced by self-organisation and self-management. He says the very name of communism invokes the egalitarian concept of ‘being in common’ and this includes the idea of the ‘commons’ ie that all natural resources, including land, and indeed life itself, belongs to us collectively and should be collectively stewarded. We need to think beyond resistance towards transformation. He sees the communist idea as a transformation of the commons. This, of course, raises vital questions of property relations in respect to common resources.
‘The key task,’ he finally underlines ‘is to rethink communism again and this will require serious debate about what an equal, free and self-organising being-in-common for the twenty-first century might be all about. It will, he argues, ‘require a restoration of trust in our theories, a courageous engagement with painful histories and geographies, and, above all, abandoning the fear of failing again…There is no alternative!’, he stresses adamantly.
Prof. Swyngedouw’s essay is also available in the book: The Point is to Change It, edited by Castree N., Chatterton P., Heynen N., Larner W. and Wright M.W. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Sunday, 19 September 2010
Secret Affairs – Britain’s collusion with radical Islam
by Mark Curtis
Pubs. Profile Books Ltd
Pbck. £12.99
Mark Curtis’s book should be on the book list of every educational institution’s history curriculum. In this detailed historical journey, he charts Britain’s intimate involvement in the promotion of Muslim individuals and Islamic states as tools for its own imperial ambitions. It used Islam in a blatant divide and rule tactic, from the time of the Raj onwards. Curtis amply demonstrates a continuous and intimate marriage of convenience between Britain and various Islamic forces over three centuries.
After Britain’s long-time support of the Ottoman Empire, as a bulwark against Tsarist Russia and to protect its East Indian trade routes, it soon sought alternative allies once the Turks had unexpectedly entered the First World War on the side of Germany. Britain then proceeded to find a suitable and subservient proxy from among the tribal groups of central Arabia. In the 1920s it found Ibn Saud as an ideal candidate for leadership and gave him sole control over Saudi Arabia which he proceeded to assert in one of the most bloody repressions the region had experienced, killing over 40,000 Arab tribesmen and women and amputating the limbs of 350,000 more. This led to the complete domination by the Saud family in the region to this day. It assured Britain of a steady flow of oil and the Saudi family complete support from Britain in the maintenance of its brutal ad obscurantist regime. It also led to the spread of the divisive and backward-looking faction of Islam called Wahabism (the founding ideology of modern jihad).
Throughout the region Britain has always propped up elements of the ruling classes against the democratic and nationalist aspirations of the people. Curtis provides a long list of such tactics from Egypt, Afghanistan and Persia to Turkmenistan. This history is little known and rarely discussed in historical circles. It will come as a surprise to many to see how Britain has meddled in Islamic affairs over such a long and continuous period. And, although it would be silly to blame Britain solely for the present resurgence of Islamic extremism or terrorism, it’s certainly not the innocent bystander it paints itself.
Britain has continuously covert support to Muslim guerrilla forces to counteract the spread of Soviet influence in Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan to Kosovo (does that sound like more recent history?).
Curtis concludes with the present day chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing how Britain and the USA are very much to blame for what unravelled there even before they chose to invade. He names those ‘heroic Afghani guerrilla leaders’ who fought Soviet forces, who were backed and armed by Britain and the USA, only to then set up the Taliban regime and become ‘the enemy’. Pakistan was also given massive military and financial support over many years as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the region and to counteract India – seen as pro-Soviet and unreliable. This policy and Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan has also contributed to the present political instability and violence there.
A fascinating, well written and researched book – a must read for anyone who wishes to better understand the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Britain’s key role.
END
by Mark Curtis
Pubs. Profile Books Ltd
Pbck. £12.99
Mark Curtis’s book should be on the book list of every educational institution’s history curriculum. In this detailed historical journey, he charts Britain’s intimate involvement in the promotion of Muslim individuals and Islamic states as tools for its own imperial ambitions. It used Islam in a blatant divide and rule tactic, from the time of the Raj onwards. Curtis amply demonstrates a continuous and intimate marriage of convenience between Britain and various Islamic forces over three centuries.
After Britain’s long-time support of the Ottoman Empire, as a bulwark against Tsarist Russia and to protect its East Indian trade routes, it soon sought alternative allies once the Turks had unexpectedly entered the First World War on the side of Germany. Britain then proceeded to find a suitable and subservient proxy from among the tribal groups of central Arabia. In the 1920s it found Ibn Saud as an ideal candidate for leadership and gave him sole control over Saudi Arabia which he proceeded to assert in one of the most bloody repressions the region had experienced, killing over 40,000 Arab tribesmen and women and amputating the limbs of 350,000 more. This led to the complete domination by the Saud family in the region to this day. It assured Britain of a steady flow of oil and the Saudi family complete support from Britain in the maintenance of its brutal ad obscurantist regime. It also led to the spread of the divisive and backward-looking faction of Islam called Wahabism (the founding ideology of modern jihad).
Throughout the region Britain has always propped up elements of the ruling classes against the democratic and nationalist aspirations of the people. Curtis provides a long list of such tactics from Egypt, Afghanistan and Persia to Turkmenistan. This history is little known and rarely discussed in historical circles. It will come as a surprise to many to see how Britain has meddled in Islamic affairs over such a long and continuous period. And, although it would be silly to blame Britain solely for the present resurgence of Islamic extremism or terrorism, it’s certainly not the innocent bystander it paints itself.
Britain has continuously covert support to Muslim guerrilla forces to counteract the spread of Soviet influence in Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan to Kosovo (does that sound like more recent history?).
Curtis concludes with the present day chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing how Britain and the USA are very much to blame for what unravelled there even before they chose to invade. He names those ‘heroic Afghani guerrilla leaders’ who fought Soviet forces, who were backed and armed by Britain and the USA, only to then set up the Taliban regime and become ‘the enemy’. Pakistan was also given massive military and financial support over many years as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the region and to counteract India – seen as pro-Soviet and unreliable. This policy and Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan has also contributed to the present political instability and violence there.
A fascinating, well written and researched book – a must read for anyone who wishes to better understand the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Britain’s key role.
END
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