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Only took a day for Tory MPs to pivot from decrying slaver statue removal to calling for grave desecration.

Smith goes straight in for the 'over 100 million' victims of communism line, a favourite refrain of the far right. The problem is this number has been criticised as massively inflated even by authors featured in the book it comes from, the Black Book of Communism.
The Black Book of communism was released in 1997 on the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Twelve historians contributed, though the bulk of the writing was by Nicolas Werth on the USSR. The book was prefaced and titled by Stephanie Courtois without input from the rest.
Contributors Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartosek and Jean-Louis Margolin were massively opposed to their work being used to bolster an inflated 100 million figure, tried to get the book withdrawn in that form, and went public.
I haven't been able to find a good overview of this debacle in English, but Le Monde published this in November 1997.

lemonde.fr/archives/artic…
There's also of course the broader problem that really existing socialist states were not Marx's responsibility. He didn't devise a system of state governance but an analysis of Capitalism.
The USSR and other really existing socialisms were largely built on 'Marxism' as an ideology of capitalist development to be steered towards communism. Marx however explicitly contradicted this interpretation in the late 1870s.

Marx said in the early 1880s that if Russia went for full capitalist development before a transition to socialism, then it would violently throw millions off the land into wage/factory labour, but that none of this would necessarily lead to communism, and he was right.
Henry Smith MP also fails to mention that Marx's grave has already been desecrated by the far right multiple times, twice in two weeks during 2019 alone.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/…
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Always fun when people take an idea put forward by multiple 19th century anarchist thinkers and Marx, the Paris Commune, the IWW, the black liberation movement, entire Mexican towns, and try to associate it with teenage stoners.

"The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature..originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism."
"Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old government – the Commune was anxious to [disestablish and disendow the churches]" - Marx, Civil War in France, 1871
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The UK government has 'launched' a test and trace system this week, which is being used as the justification to re-open non-essential shops and send reception, year 1 and year 6 children back to school. It's also relaxed some curfew restrictions at the same time.
Financial support to people unable to work due to lockdown has been limited to 80% payments via employers through the furlough scheme, and 80% payments to (some) self-employed people.
With test and trace, any one in contact with someone who tests positive for Covid-19 (less than 2 metres for 15 minutes or more) is expected to self-isolate for fourteen days. This means if you come off furlough, go into work in a shop, then have to self-isolate, you get nothing.
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This previously slipped my attention because it's a very thin book, but Michael Gove and Sarah Vine also own 'Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedom' by Alan Benoist, a central figure in the European New Right and Third Positionist movements. Just a couple over from Ruth Rendell. Close up of Michael Gove's bookshelf with Ruth Rendell, Burns Poems and Songs, and Alan de Benoist.
de Benoist's 'Defending Freedoms' is published by Arktos, the publisher closely linked to American White Nationalist Richard Spencer and until a recent amicable reorganisation, part of his AltRight corp.
De Benoist's politics are hard to summarize in one tweet since they're deliberately obfuscatory, so here's a summary of his evolution from an article hosted on our site.

libcom.org/library/invest… Excerpts on de Benoist from linked article.
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