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Daniel Randall Profile picture
@therubykid
Aug 23, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
A comrade has sent me a screenshot of a Facebook post by a Labour Party activist in their area (who’s not, as I understand it, a Stalinist) which links to Paul’s tweet below and says “why doesn’t Paul Mason just come out and say ‘I’m in the AWL’”? Let’s unpack that for a sec...
I don’t want to blow it out of proportion, it’s just one person on Facebook, but it is consistent with a method of argument I’ve encountered several times before, so it merits a response.
Firstly... thanks, I guess; if the message is “the AWL = the people I most associate with going on about how Stalinism is bad”, then yeah, cool. I won’t argue with that. That’s definitely a big part of what we do.
But what seems to be implied is that saying “Stalin was bad and it was wrong to make alliances with Hitler” is some kind of marginal or extreme position that Mason could only conceivably be articulating if he was part of a small Trotskyist group.
Apparently we really are at the point on the Labour left where some people, who aren’t themselves Stalinists, are happy to go along with the idea that historical affinity with Stalinism should be the default/mainstream, and dissenting from that makes you some sort of outlier.
It’s a subtle attempt to ideologically and rhetorically bully other people from speaking out against Stalinism in the movement, for fear of being tarred by association with the dreaded Trots.
It’s also illustrative of a culture of apolitical distortion and lying: Paul Mason is manifestly not in the AWL, as even a cursory glance at any number of his our our basic positions on a whole range of issues, will make clear.
Political critique goes out the window, replaced by a kind of tabloid demagogy. But to make “Stalin was bad” the argument you’re trying to place beyond the pale... wow. Kinda bizarre, kinda worrying.
But, also, as I say, weirdly... kinda cool. If people want to designate us as the official voice of anti-Stalinism on the Labour left, be my guest. Follow @workersliberty for a regular dose of anti-Stalinist, revolutionary socialist goodness.

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More from @therubykid

Daniel Randall Profile picture
Oct 22, 2023
When Jews see a protest where even a small minority has placards or slogans that express racism towards them, many will worry and object.

But lots of people on Palestine demos oppose it too and can be allies against antisemitism.

Find ways to make links! 🧵
This is not a matter of PR/optics. The reason to oppose even small pockets of antisemitism on demos is not because it makes the cause “look bad.”

It’s because the presence of antisemitism in any movement is toxifying. You can’t fight for equality whilst tolerating bigotry.
If we want to have a real and productive conversation around this, it will require some compromise and understanding on both “sides.” (Palestine solidarity activism and majority Jewish political identity/opinion don’t have to be counterposed “sides” but unfortunately often are.)
Read 13 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
Aug 10, 2023
Some thoughts on David Miller’s latest pearls of wisdom about (((them))):

1) Not being socioeconomically oppressed does not mean you can’t experience racism or discrimination. Not all racialised bigotry is impelled by the state or linked to class exploitation.

🧵
2) Metrics about representation of a minority group in positions of power often don’t tell you much by themselves. The richest person in Britain is Indian. Does his “disproportionate” power protect all Indian-background people from experiencing racism?
3) Jewish “overrepresentation” in banking, finance, etc., has clearly traceable origins, in the forced siloing of Jews into commercial/mercantile trades by medieval antisemitism in Europe. But to Miller, it’s simply evidence of insidious Jewish power.
Read 19 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
Jun 7, 2023
Claims that “the Israel lobby cancelled Corbyn” and that a UK MP is being controlled by “his masters in Tel Aviv” are not instances of misstated “support for Palestine”. They are claims that a hidden (Jewish) power controls world affairs. That’s antisemitism.
You don’t have to believe that Jews are racially inferior to non-Jews, the racialised antisemitism of the Nazis, to think in those terms. In fact, you can be a sincere opponent of that kind of antisemitism whilst still recycling other forms.
You may think your opposition is not to “Jews as Jews”, but only to a political power (“Zionism”). But conspiracist claims about the hidden, world-shaping power of Israel and “Zionism” are antisemitic nonetheless. David Miller’s work shows where the logic takes you…
Read 7 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
Nov 29, 2022
Far-right antisemitism is certainly more “dangerous”, in the sense of immediately imperilling Jewish safety. But that doesn’t mean other forms of antisemitism aren’t “real”. 🧵
The threat posed by left antisemitism isn’t that its adherents are likely to start physically attacking Jews, but that by accepting, even implicitly, antisemitism’s “pseudo-emancipatory” claims, it can mislead and poison attempts to develop a *genuinely* emancipatory project.
I’ve sometimes posed it in terms of left-AS being more of a threat *to the left* than it is “to Jews” as such. That’s a provocative and maybe hyperbolic way of stating it, and obviously “Jews” and “the left” aren’t mutually exclusive categories, but I think that frame has value.
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
Jul 19, 2022
One of several risks in aftermath of the #FordeReport is that discussion around antisemitism, and other bigotries, in the party/movement yet again gets lost in weeds of process, procedure, and bureaucracy, rather than being about a political confrontation with reactionary ideas.
The most robust and efficient complaints procedure in the world is not going to uproot bigoted or reactionary ideas. Obviously those procedures should be improved (although “make it easier to expel people” shouldn’t be the aim), but changing ideas requires political education.
On antisemitism, the issue I’ve been most engaged with, successive Labour leaderships have failed on this. Under Corbyn, one decent educational resource (the ‘No Place for Antisemitism’ pamphlet) was produced, but there was no accompanying drive to use it for ongoing education.
Read 6 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
May 7, 2022
There’s a lot about “lockdown spirit” (icky term but indulge it as a shorthand) that was very admirable, emerging from a sense of social solidarity that impelled us to make major personal sacrifices for the sake of the greater collective good. (1/4)
But the same period also gave rise to a lot of petty, embittered, curtain-twitching social spite that saw the whole experience as an opportunity to snitch on and do down other people: the exact opposite of appealing to a sense of social solidarity. (2/4)
In different ways, I think both dynamics are at play in the responses to #Partygate (which is rightly seen as an affront to the former) and #Beergate (which seems to me to have a lot to do with the latter). (3/4)
Read 4 tweets

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