In this conflict between Pamela Geller and Gates of Vienna, which both incorporate a huge swath of blogs etc., I am proud to say that I on behalf of Trotskyism am very definitely located nowhere, but I am evading nothing. As this analysis will show.
What is absent in short from this discussion is what is going on in the real world in which we live every day, and foremost at this point in time I would place the war of NATO against the Muammar Gadhafi regime in Libya
In this war by NATO on a small part of a country, that represented by Gadhafi, I with 4international line up on the side of Muammar Gadhafi. As I explained before I do not just call to defend Gadhafi, I call for the victory of Gadhafi and his forces against NATO.
FOR THE DEFEAT OF AMERICA AND THE EU
I want to see the US ruling class of Obama but also including many others in America defeated in this war. Ditto for those EU ruling governments, in particular the British, but also the Spanish where at present I reside.
Got that!
Victory to Gadhafi! Defeat for NATO!
Also although I would not chose his methods any methods which Gadhafi chooses to use in this war then I defend his use of those methods. I defend Gadhafi against the Fascist NATO in the same way that Leon Trotsky defended Haile Selassie in the 1930s. It is the exact same precedent.
THAT IS WHAT IS LEFT OUT OF THIS CONFLICT BETWEEN GELLER AND GATES OF VIENNA OVER THE EDL
THAT SAID LET US TURN AGAIN TO THIS ISSUE OF THE EDL
The discussion (over the issue of Pamela Geller and the English Defence League) is seriously skewed because while this goes on the Imperialist forces of NATO, especially the US and EU, are engaging in one of the worst imperialist wars ever, which is the campaign to replace the Gadhafi regime with one based on Qaradawi’s Muslim Brotherhood. It is not as if this is new! This is consistent on the part of NATO, from Bosnia, Kosovo, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Egypt and of course Libya.
I do not know about G of V, but I do know about the position of Geller and Spencer, because I support their analysis of Islam which has been consistently very precise, and I believe that the campaign against Rauf was most important.
Both of these thus do great work in explaining and fighting against the evil ideology of Mohammedanism.
DANGER IS NOT ALONE FROM ISLAM…IT IS THE ALLIANCE WHICH NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED
But in our period of time the danger does not come alone from Islam. It comes from the alliance of capitalist governments and Islam.
This is precisely where I and 4international have continually separated from all of the above. They say it is the Jihad, I say it is the alliance of Imperialism and Jihad. The alliance, a real definite alliance, not people who are mistaken, or who are naive etc.
THE NEW DEVELOPMENT WHICH TELLS US THE FUTURE
The President of the US, Obama Husseini, has allied US along with the Muslim Brotherhood, not in a subtle underhand way but in an open and official manner. And US president Husseini has been leading and pushing the Arabs (on behalf og the Muslim Brotherhood) to create a Nazi, Judenfrei, Palestine Arab Jihadist state on the flank of Israel.
(See excellent article on this by Barry Rubin on Pajamas Media)
These are the issues, and the role of their own governments in all of this, that is absent from the Open letter to Pamela Geller by the Vienna people, as it is also on Atlas Shrugs. In the absence of this political context, and the role of the Governments of Europe and America in the Imperialist war on Muammar Gadhafi, the latter vital because it happens as we speak, in the present, with the reactionary British elite of Tory/Liberal/Labour playing a leading role along with France, shades of the NATO bombing of Serbia by the same forces, that this conflict between these two sides (now collecting signatures!) becomes meaningless and a politically sectarian affair. That is what must be changed.
Where Geller and Spencer go serious wrong is that they separate the reactionary Jihad and issue of supremacist Islam from the overall drive of the Imperialist powers to create dictatorship (of their own) in each country and an overall dictatorship in the shape of some kind of Soros inspired and media led New World Order. They are in fact supporters of American Imperialism and of the capitalist worldwide system. But in every single situation, from Bosnia and Kosovo to the Ivory Coast, and now Libya, it is these capitalist governments who are in alliance with the reactionary and medieval forces of Islam
SETTING UP A JEWISH SECTION WAS AN EVASION OF RESPONSIBILITY…TO JEWS!
It seems to me from what I read so far that Geller and Spencer did not have any right, from the standpoint of parties and groups operating in a fraternal manner, to cut the ground from under the leadership of the EDL. What Geller and Spencer did was not to operate in a fraternal manner in any sense of the meaning of the word fraternal. They may argue that it was for the good of the movement in general. The mistake of setting up a “Jewish section” in the EDL has been compounded by Pamela Geller linking with that Jewish section (Moore) to the exclusion of the central leadership in the EDL around Robinson, Carroll and Price (those I know of)
Why was it a mistake to set up a Jewish section? The reason is now in hindsight rather obvious. To use a football metaphor the Jewish issue has been taken off the playing field and placed along the sideline, somewhere round the corner flag
The reason why this is so damaging to all concerned is contained in my first statement of yesterday in which I made a fraternal call to the EDL leadership to organise a serious education programme among the ranks, which will deal with the revolutionary origins of the English nation under the Cromwellian Revolution, but followed by the treachery of the Restoration, and the subsequent treachery with cruelty of the British ruling class on an international scale. And with the one exception of Balfour no other people has suffered more and paid a higher price from British treachery than the Jewish people. The British leader Churchill who has a reputation of being for the Jews was the very man who did much damage to Jews. He did this when he treacherously sliced off in an underhand and unilateral manner, the whole of “Transjordan” from the promised (San Remo Treaty of 1920) Homeland, and thus delivered a blow to the Jewish people from which they NEVER recovered. That action of Churchill, acting on British Imperialist interests, sliced off 80 per cent and gave it to the Arabs. And if such an 80% could be sliced off once why not again. The process set in of curtailing the Jews into a smaller and smaller area, a process which condemned the Jews to the Nazi Holocaust, finished off by the British ruling class as a whole via the iniquitous British Parliament’s White Paper of 1939.
That is my central point. The EDL leadship has to be based on that history. Thus they must as a whole fight against antisemitism in Britain in all its forms.
THE CRITICAL 1948 PERIOD
Churchill was of course playing as ever up to the Arabs and the Jews have suffered. Thus when the critical 1948 year came along Britain had long been siding with the Arabs against the Jews and in this case, in 1948, actually working with the German Nazis, and with Hajj Amin el Husseini, in the planned continued genocide of the Jews. For the Arabs and the British ruling class the Holocaust did not stop at all in 1945.
This has created the situation of today where Britain is allied with Hamas/Fatah (Note they did not prosecute Galloway!) and where President Husseini Obama is recognising along with Jew Hater Hilary the Muslim Brotherhood.
DEFENCE OF JEWS AND DEFENCE OF ZIONISM AT THE VERY CENTRE OF EDL
This history of the British towards the Jews is the imperative reason why the struggle for British emancipation which the EDL represents must place in that very central circle of the football field the defence of Israel and the Jews against the dominant ideology in Britain which is anti-Semitism.
Posing the issue in this way also shows why Pamela Geller was wrong on a whole number of fronts.
- There can be no pure movement in Britain free from anti-Semitism because the dominant culture in Britain is just that…anti-Semitism
- Rather than a Jewish section playing an imaginary game on the sideline the whole central leadership of the EDL, and other such parties, must place the defence of Jews and the defence of Israel, against British politicians of all stripes, against Hussein Obama, and against Ashton and others on the EU, at the very centre of its political struggle in Britain. We on 4international really do salute the valiant efforts of EDL leaders such as Carroll and Robinson who have already started out on this road. We offer, since this is not an individual speaking but the organization and website 4international, every possible support and assistance, offered from the standpoint of Trotskyist independence and of fraternity. It goes without saying that the Spencer and Geller formula “we have our eye on you” is extremely reactionary, is quite hostile actually, and is rooted in misconceptions of what national liberation movements actually are. Also, believe it or not, in how superior is America, while in point of fact in many ways the British workers are far in advance of the American workers. For example, it is possible that the EDL leaders may fail and will be submerged by the dominant antisemitic ideology in Britain. The important thing though is the fight against antisemitism.
- It therefore goes without saying that the present anti-Semitic “left” does not in any way represent socialism. We do. Join us. This antisemitic “left” has to be confronted and this is where we really separate from all!
- Point 3 above needs to be taken very seriously. One of the features of the present situation is that all of the groups on the left are in support in one way or another of Fascist Islam. It is like a repeat writ large of the Stalin alliance with the Nazis prewar. And people who are really serious about the future, and serious about the future of the working class, and since we are talking about the EDL here, about the British working class, must address this central question of socialist leadership. It is the absence of a Trotskyist Party, fighting against Islam, fighting against NATO, fighting against anti-Semitism and for the unconditional defence of Israel…that is the biggest factor of all. THAT should be the starting point in this discussion between Geller and gates of Vienna. As to the whole idea of signatures well that solves not a single thing.
4international 