The
decision of the Cambridge Union Society to invite Kevin Scott, a long-standing
regional organiser for the fascist British National Party (BNP), represents an
atrocious failure of political imagination on the part of the Union’s
elected officers. When Nick Griffin was invited to speak at the Oxford Union in
2007, students and anti-fascists broke up the meeting, breaking through the
security cordon to stage a sit-in protest inside the chamber’s not-so-hallowed
walls. Kevin Scott should expect the same treatment in Cambridge. Why?
It
is no coincidence that Griffin’s invitation to
speak in Oxford
had been justified on the grounds of a debate about ‘free speech’. Now, the CUS
hacks, under the stewardship of President Austin Mahler, have tried to use the
same erroneous logic to invite one of Griffin’s
erstwhile underlings to Cambridge.
Scott
recently left the BNP, but not because of a change of heart; he left to join
the ‘management team’ for the newly-formed British Democratic Party (BDP) set
up by fascist Andrew Brons, the MEP for Yorkshire and Humber, who also resigned
from the BNP earlier this year to set up the
BDP (formerly, and very briefly, known as True Brits).
The
essence of the no platform argument is simple: to allow – indeed, to invite –
fascist agitators to enter into the sphere of agonistic, rational debate is to
give their ideology of violence, fear and hatred a cloak of legitimacy which it
neither merits nor deserves. Doubtless the Union hacks think they have all the
bases covered. The arguments of racists are easily defeated, so what’s to lose
in subjecting Scott to a thorough grilling at the hands of UK PLC’s
brightest-and-best squad? Such self-satisfied complacency overlooks the fact that
politics takes place in the real world,
which is a world away from the careerist hothouse of the Union Society. These
people forget that when Nick Griffin was invited to speak on Question Time, a
YouGov poll found that one in five viewers said they would be more likely to vote BNP after the
would-be Fuhrer’s appearance.
More
recently, the Greek fascist (and ex-special forces operative) Ilias Kasidiaris
physically assaulted two female socialists in a televised interview.
This descent into physical violence did not have quite the effect that myopic
liberal commentators would hope for: the popularity of Kasidiaris’ party, Golden
Dawn, has since risen in Greece,
and Kasidiaris himself is still ‘at large’ (sitting in the Greek parliament). The
complacent assumption that his violent outburst ahead of the June 17th
elections would lead to an electoral wipe-out proved false, in part because the
commentators who made such predictions fail to understand the true nature of
the polarisation taking place in Greece, in a period of intense neo-liberal
austerity, ongoing capitalist crisis, as well as continuing decomposition of
key sections of the bourgeois state and its apparatus. It has since been made
known that Golden Dawn members have infiltrated many sections of the police,
which perhaps provides some explanation as to why the warrant for Kasidiaris’ arrest
resulted in neither a conviction, nor, even, an arrest.
Turning
to Kevin Scott’s previous record, we find that a BBC profile lists two previous
convictions – one for assault in 1987, another for using threatening words and
behaviour in 1993.
In 2001, he penned an article for International
Third Position – the journal of a neo-fascist BNP splinter-group – entitled
‘The Final Conflict’. You can guess what the conflict might look like. (The Southern Poverty Law Centre has a useful breakdown of this motley crew
of crypto-Strasserites and self-styled revolutionary nationalists.)
Apparently, this record makes Scott worthy of an invitation to speak at the Union.
Why has he agreed to accept the invitation? He must know that he is hardly likely to win the debate, nor is he likely to win any new recruits (unless the Henry Jackson Society have yet to declare their maximum programme). Scott has agreed to speak to the Union so that he can go back out into the world and wear the free publicity given to him as a badge of respectability and normality. He can include the photos in electoral propaganda. He can trumpet his high-profile speaking engagement in mail-outs for his delightful little fundraising operation, misnamed Civil Liberty. The Guardian recently exposed Civil Liberty as a BNP front-group, set up to raise money from far-right nut-jobs in the US. Why should the Cambridge Union Society lend any material support to such an organisation, or its agitators and fundraisers? Such publicity-seeking, ill-reasoned and politically naïve invitations can only contribute to a culture in which fascist ideology is normalised and its advocates made to seem spuriously legitimate.
Why has he agreed to accept the invitation? He must know that he is hardly likely to win the debate, nor is he likely to win any new recruits (unless the Henry Jackson Society have yet to declare their maximum programme). Scott has agreed to speak to the Union so that he can go back out into the world and wear the free publicity given to him as a badge of respectability and normality. He can include the photos in electoral propaganda. He can trumpet his high-profile speaking engagement in mail-outs for his delightful little fundraising operation, misnamed Civil Liberty. The Guardian recently exposed Civil Liberty as a BNP front-group, set up to raise money from far-right nut-jobs in the US. Why should the Cambridge Union Society lend any material support to such an organisation, or its agitators and fundraisers? Such publicity-seeking, ill-reasoned and politically naïve invitations can only contribute to a culture in which fascist ideology is normalised and its advocates made to seem spuriously legitimate.
Especially in a period of neoliberal austerity, this process of creeping normalisation and legitimation ought to concern us all. Martin
A. Lee describes in The Beast Reawakens (1997) how neo-Nazis rebooted their strategies in the early
1980s:
The jackals of the extreme right believed
they found the crucial pressure point when they seized upon immigration as the
main issue to rally around. While a network of ultra-right wing cadres
continued to function as the violent vanguard of xenophobia, some shock troops
from Europe’s neo-fascist underground split
off to form mass-based political parties.
One
of the advantages of this dual-pronged effort was that it provided an electoral
front for hard-core militants, who underwent an ideological face-lift and
watered down their pronouncements to conform to electoral requirements.
By
the mid-1980s, a flock of radical right-wing parties had found a nesting place
on the democratic landscape. The initial success of the Front National in
France and its emulators elsewhere showed that large segments of Western
European society were vulnerable to national populists and the totalitarian
temptation they embodied.[1]
A
public debate about ‘no platform for fascists’ took place in France in the
1980s, addressing the question of whether or not the fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen
ought to be accepted as a ‘normal’ part of French political life. The liberals
won the day: Le Pen’s ‘shock’ breakthrough into the second round of the
presidential election of 2002 did not take place in a vacuum. The liberal 'free
speech' arguments paved the way for his success, but the real nature of the French
National Front remains clear for those who care – or bother – to look. The National Front is now like a bad smell in French politics which refuses to go away; the liberals are responsible for having boiled up the sprouts.
As
far as Scott’s invitation is concerned, the other speakers on the Union’s panel should also pause for thought. If, as the
proposition will argue, hate speech is not a human right, how can the decision
to share a platform with a fascist appear as anything other than a decision
made in abysmally bad faith? On their own terms, they are hypocrites. If they
actually believe that hate speech is not a human right – insofar its
vocalisation entails the potential for politically dangerous material
consequences – they would shun the possibility of sharing a platform with a
fascist. One must conclude, instead, that the speakers for the proposition will
simply temporarily assume the position for ‘the sake of the debate’, before
moving on to give strenuous consideration to the relative merits of blue as
opposed to green bottle-tops. The Union’s term-card is deliberately vague, but if Scott is
proposed as a candidate for the proposition then the Union’s
hacks are not only hypocritical, but suffering from an acute case of historical
amnesia.
When
dealing with fascist political organisers, such as Scott, the other side of the
liberal argument (for which Voltaire provides the well-known locus classicus: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it”) requires serious attention, not least because fascist politics has
led – and could lead again – to the kind of the violence about which Voltaire
offered only hypothetical speculations. François-Marie Arouet did not actually
give his life to defend another person’s freedom of speech; but hundreds of
thousands died fighting against fascists in the Spanish civil war and during
the Second World War. We might do these young men and women the courtesy of
remembering that fascism is not a normal, run-of-the-mill form of politics, nor should it be treated as such.
The
BNP (and, now, the BDP), along with other neo-Nazi organisations in Europe, pose as legitimate, in order to be allowed to play the representative-democratic
game – and they are very bad actors, so the fact that some liberals are taken
in speaks volumes – but, as ever, their intention is to change the very rules
and nature of the game itself. Theirs is a category of speech which does not
merit protection, as the very terms of the Union’s
debate seem to acknowledge, at the same time as Scott’s invitation undermines
any real commitment to put this acknowledgement into practice.
It
is currently left unclear whether any of the Union’s
speakers will argue that hate speech is, in fact, a human right. Much will
hinge on the precise definition of the category of hate speech. Scott will, one
assumes, want to claim that the BDP and its ilk do not engage in types of speech which
can be described as ‘hate speech’. Fascist agitators – the clever ones, at
least – will know that there are laws which prevent them from giving vent to
the full gamut of their political views, so they are forced to fall back on cannier
tactics, such as accepting invitations to speak at high-profile public events
(as and when the organisers are thick-headed enough to
make the offer). Similarly, Nick Griffin knows he is legally disbarred from
directly inciting racial hatred, so instead of talking about racial purity, he
talks about identity: it is quite a cynical PR exercise; he has said so himself.
As
the little parable about Kasidiaris should demonstrate, however, when the
political context changes, when the barbarism of capitalist crisis suddenly
makes the foundations of bourgeois liberal democracy seem somewhat less secure,
fascists gain the confidence to start acting out the desires they keep carefully (and not so carefully) pent up. One
need only look to the strength of Jobbik in Hungary,
an organisation whose members march with side-arms and conduct pogroms against
Roma families; or Greece,
where Golden Dawn street militias conduct sweeping raids against migrant
traders. Why, the hacks at the Union might ask
themselves, have they given any quarter
to an organisation of this kind? Must they be reminded of the history and
origins of the British National Party, an organisation to which Scott belonged for over twenty years? Can they not see that it, and the BDP, are parties which are different from the mainstream bourgeois parties, not only in degree, but in kind? Fascism is a qualitatively different form of
political organisation. Those who retain any illusions in this regard need to
disabuse themselves very quickly.
The
real reason the hacks at the Union have invited this fascist to speak is
because of the culture of short-term, big-splash spectacularism which prevails there;
officers are elected for short periods of time, which encourages the courting
of controversy for its own sake, in an attempt to boost membership, as well as
in the hope of securing a few extra Curriculum Vitae nectar points. Enough people in the National Union of Students realise the dangers of allowing fascists to speak on University campuses, which is a why the NUS currently supports a principlied 'no platform' policy. On what democratic mandate did Austin Mahler decide to break from this important principle in the student movement?
Scott’s
invitation should be immediately revoked; if it is not, students, trade
unionists and all those whose interests are threatened by the fascist right
should organise to intervene in the ‘debate’ – as if the proposition even
needed to be debated in the first place.
[1] Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from Hitler’s Spymasters to
Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 388.
OH
28/12/2012
29/12/2012: A message on the Union's Facebook page subsequently confirmed that Scott is "UNABLE" to attend. Griping about the situation on his not-so-Civil Liberty blog, Scott vowed to "[stand] up to the cranks of the so-called 'anti-fascist' movement" and added that his organisation "intend[s] to do it on our own terms". These 'terms' are left unspecified, so they must left to the imagination.
OH
28/12/2012
29/12/2012: A message on the Union's Facebook page subsequently confirmed that Scott is "UNABLE" to attend. Griping about the situation on his not-so-Civil Liberty blog, Scott vowed to "[stand] up to the cranks of the so-called 'anti-fascist' movement" and added that his organisation "intend[s] to do it on our own terms". These 'terms' are left unspecified, so they must left to the imagination.
