Your Corbyn/Sultana Party - Discussion thread - Part 2

[fromorbit]

The YP starting conference is in the ACC in Liverpool between 29-30 November so only three weeks off. With competing factions involving Islamic conservatives, every variety of Marxist/Communist, former Labour members, trade union activists, entryists from SWP and SPEW, splitters from the Scottish Greens, trans activists and actual left wing feminists [not the nice kind] it is difficult to underplay how much controversy there is likely to be. So we will need a second thread in advance.

Thus far following the internal drama of the UKs newest left party has taken a whole thread. It has been a wild ride and the party still does not have a name.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5394557-your-corbynsultana-party-discussion-thread

Yes to all of this, too. I'm reading NoViolet Bulawayo's novel Glory right now, an Animal Farm-style retelling of Mugabe's tyranny over Zimbabwe. He, Amin & lots of others really pushed the 'anti colonial angle' as a reminder as to why people should support them. Which of course meshes with Animal Farm's Napoelon saying, 'Jones will come back!' every time someone tries to challenge him, as most communist regimes did.

The complaint that the US is economically strangling Iran and therefore responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe is an old one (used for many countries) on the left. The dialectic exchange goes something like this:

Left: "US imperialist policy is crushing Iran because it refuses to tow the US neoliberal neocolonialist line."

Neoliberal: "But, all the US is doing is excluding Iran from US trade and capital flows. If Iran wants to battle US imperialism, why should the US give it the fruits of the US neoliberal order to be used against it."

Left: "US is hegemonic. One can't just opt out of the US system. Opting out means starvation."

Neoliberal: "Sure you can -f orm a BRICS group, have your own capital and trade flows. (and see how much you like trading with South Africa, Russia, Cuba and North Korea. Or Borrowing from China.)"

Left: "There is still a residue of Imperialism that can't be opted out of. The US can always raise the stakes and embargo and interdict."

Neoliberal: "Someone has to police the seas to keep shipping lanes open, and obviously they're not going to coordinate that very expensive activity with countries that seek to subvert their system and economic well-being."

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Put differently it's incoherent to blame the US for Iran's (or Cuba's or Venezuela's ) plight because those countries intentionally tried to subvert a system for which there is obviously no alternative and did so at a tremendous humanitarian cost to their own citizens and did so knowingly (or delusionally not-knowingly).

For the left's argument to be something other than performative, i.e. be a coherent affirmative policy, it must put forward a system that plausibly addresses the obvious deficiencies of the above exchange. The great crisis is that since the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of the totally dominant US system no one has. One of the things that I was (and still am) curious about is whether yourparty's formation and the superabundance of policy posturing might stimulate a deeper conversation on what it means to be on the left in 2025 from a coherent ideological perspective. So, I'm not seeing it.

One of the things that I was (and still am) curious about is whether yourparty's formation and the superabundance of policy posturing might stimulate a deeper conversation on what it means to be on the left in 2025 from a coherent ideological perspective. So, I'm not seeing it.
The issues spoken about her have been issues with the Left for decades. They love talking about what it means to be on the Left and and who is pure enough and who is a fascist because they arent pure enough, and to waffle on about Imperialism, mostly while living on the huge rewards of both Imperialism and Capitalism, giving them the luxury of spending their lives waffling on about Imperialism and capitalism.

Savage Continent is a good book on this. Its bleak though
There were localised attempts at ethnic cleansings in Eastern

Put differently it's incoherent to blame the US for Iran's (or Cuba's or Venezuela's ) plight because those countries intentionally tried to subvert a system for which there is obviously no alternative and did so at a tremendous humanitarian cost to their own citizens and did so knowingly (or delusionally not-knowingly).
Obamas US released millions in frozen funds to Iran. It wasnt spent on Iranians. I think the Iranian leaders are different to the Zimbabean, Cuban, Venezuelan leaders, in that the Mullahs used the Left in Iran and elsewhere to get the population on their side when they had no intention of doing anything but imposing a strict ( basically Far Right) Islamic state. The Left ignored this as they tend to do when it comes to Islamism, I dont know why. Possibly because they thought they were cleverer than people with religious beliefs and they could educate them out of it. They then found themselves at the wrong end of a firing squad.

Possibly because they thought they were cleverer than people with religious beliefs and they could educate them out of it. They then found themselves at the wrong end of a firing squad.

The late SWP guru Chris Harman wrote a very influential take on this. I'm paraphrasing and massively simplifying, but as I read Harman, his basic take was that Islamist movements are to socialist movements what alchemy is to chemistry - basically a primitive version of the same impulse, with some wrong ideas that will take you to the wrong place if you're not careful (because Chris remembered Iran) but whoo! just feel that angry brown person energy that we can definitely piggyback on.

I think Chris makes a couple of serious errors here. One is the white left's common mistake of assuming the socialists are the brains of the operation and the Muslims are NPCs. The only leftist figure I know who thoroughly broke from that way of thinking is George Galloway, and he's effectively become a crypto-Muslim.

Related to that, most leftists have grown up in non-religious backgrounds and they find it hard to believe that Muslims actually take Islam seriously. They seem to feel it's like the CofE where everyone is going through the motions, and nobody believes that embarrassing stuff in the scriptures. So they read Islam as being a religion that's all about anti-imperialism, which is no less superficial than looking at the Sikh community and concluding that Sikhism is all about bling.

And they essentially deny that Islamism as a political movement is a real thing.

Which leads to things like that viral exchange at the Tower Hamlets protest.
Leftist: there's no need for that, we're on the same side bruv
Muslim man: no we aren't

Yes. It's a sort of sad envy that people really would actually believe so wholeheartedly in an alternative way of life that isn't Marx based, but that they're Trotskyites in waiting if you just shave off the uncomfortable bits about women and non believers.

That Corbyn For The Many manifesto mentioned "multiracial society", which I still think of as a very 1970s term. Surely it's multicultural, particularly as they throw their lot in so specifically with getting in with the Muslim community, who of course are not a single ethnic group. More specifically he seems to have aligned with the Pakistani origin/ mirpuri community which is where the Birmingham and Bradford Gaza MPs are from.

How do we interpret Ken Livingstone as London Mayor in 2004 inviting over the cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi?
Was Livingstone an active believer that Western liberal values and class-based socialist ideals could co-exist with virulent misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism?
Or did his hate of Israel trump all?

...and the grooming gangs which is less Islamic, or even Pakistani, and wholly Mipuri.
My hate for Corbyn and the wider intersectional left burns even deeper knowing this.

Related to that, most leftists have grown up in non-religious backgrounds and they find it hard to believe that Muslims actually take Islam seriously. They seem to feel it's like the CofE where everyone is going through the motions, and nobody believes that embarrassing stuff in the scriptures.
Totally agree with this. Its a form of racism to assume fundamentalist Christians are dangerous right wing bigots but fundamentalist Muslims are just too uneducated to realise that what they believe is rubbish, so they just need to be exposed to the superior intellect of the White Lefty and they will turn to secular Socialism.

I suspect the latter. Interesting point about George Galloway. He isn't Atheist. Hes Catholic so has a better understanding of religion than people brought up Atheist.

Muslims condescended to as some kind of noble savage......

Yes, because Pakistanis are oppressed by Indians, apparently. Pakistianis win in the oppression stakes.

Saved from lives of servitude as noble slaves to be enlightened as blank slates into atheist foot soldiers for the revolution.
Part of the reason the left cannot handle brown (Sunak) and black (Badenoch) people becoming leaders of the Tory Party.
I mean, don't these race sellouts know their place in the grand scheme?

You can't really argue with them. Most of them would literally prefer to live in North Korea than any capitalist country. Even after all the information that came out about living under these vile Communist regimes after the Berlin Wall fell.

I suspect they actually dont. They just want to talk about it.

Fully agree about the left not understanding that fervent religious beliefs are underpinning some of their causes,

When the Russians sent tanks into Hungary in 1956 to put down the workers’ uprising, it tore open a divide in the Communist movement worldwide. Those who defended the Soviet intervention were called tankies by the others, who thought they had joined up because Communism was for the workers.

I worked with a tankie many years ago. Nice chap, big fan of Uncle Joe.

It seems to me that there is a whole host of issues about which the left and right have completely switched positions over the past 10 years. Lots economically and socially as well.

It's.... strange.

Did they? Goodness - How very odd.

Fundamentally I think this is just human nature - if you have a minority sub-group within the main population, and they do well, particularly economically, they are going to be a target when times are bad. And historically Jews have typically remained distinct and not integrated/become part of into the main population.

You can see the same things at work when there are other groups in a similar dynamic. If it stops happening it seems to me it's usually because the populations intermarry and become one.

I didn't want to post about this because I didn't want it to look like I was starting a bun fight (I'm not I just find the history fascinating) but that also happened with the left and Israel versus the Arab States. Prior to the creation of the Jewish state during the British mandate when there were Jewish (freedom fighters or terrorists pick your label) groups carrying out attacks on the British military etc the left were much more sympathetic to them than the right. This carried on all the way into the 1970s largely because Israel was the democratic, left wing country surrounded by non-democratic countries. Also lots of interest in Kibbutzes etc which were very socialist in their design. Meanwhile, as the attacks by groups like Irgun got more extreme it led to a spikes of anti-Semitism in the UK in the 40s and 50s against British Jews who were unfortunately associated with the terrorism happening overseas by anyone not on the far left.
Then in the 1970s it started to switch and the left became much more enamoured with the Palestinian independance movement. While to people on the right the Palestinians (and the Irish) became "the terrorists".
Maybe the left has a natural tendancy to identify one side as the underdog and automatically side with them, while the right tends to side with the status quo. But in reality groups can fluctuate between underdog and status quo depending on context. And neither side is automatically the perpetrator or victim 100% of the time.

Maybe the left has a natural tendancy to identify one side as the underdog and automatically side with them, while the right tends to side with the status quo. But in reality groups can fluctuate between underdog and status quo depending on context. And neither side is automatically the perpetrator or victim 100% of the time.

Yes, I think it's like what was mentioned upthread, the Pakistanis are seen as oppressed by the Indians and therefore are more righteous. That's how quite a lot of the left evaluate, if they are oppressed they are like the proletariat, and the oppressors are in the role of the capitalists, and that is how you know who is good and who is bad. And the solution is the destruction of the oppressors, physically or in terms of identity as a group.

And you can extend that to race, sex, gender, ethnicity, or whatever.

I think the fact no group is always victim or oppressor is an advantage, you can take whatever position serves your interests.

Irgun got more extreme it led to a spikes of anti-Semitism in the UK in the 40s and 50s against British Jews

Irgun disbanded in 1949. And with the British gone by 1948, the newly formed IDF was too busy fighting Palestinian Fedayeen terrorists through the 50's to worry about the British now safely thousands of miles away.

Antisemitism in the UK has been a feature since forever; in 1218 Henry III made Jews wear yellow badges so they would stand out. I don't think you can lay blame for British antisemitism on Irgun fighting the British in Mandate Palestine.

Besides, British Antisemitism is the odd one one, or used to be: non violent and tied into the British class system into which Jews didn't really fit. They were tolerated but never part of the establishment, although mostly left to get on with their own devices.