From journalistic jeremiads to Strasserism
by Jura Watchmaker, 18 November 2007
Neil Clark’s “Best UK Blog” award, following a classic vote early, vote often strategy, has stirred up a bit of a hornets’ nest over at Comment is Free (yes, I did write that!). In the discussion following Clark’s puff piece, two commenters stand out. The first is “antifaschismus”:
“‘The Exile’ and Neil Clark are both adherents of the Strasserite Third Position, exemplified by the National Bolshevik Movement and to a lesser extent the National Front and BNP. Mr Clark, an apologist for Serbian fascism and genocide, is the prospective parliamentary political candidate for the third positionist British People’s Alliance in Wantage, and ‘The Exile’, who was involved in an attempt to form a political alliance with the NF/BNP, socialises with BNP Oldham organiser Mick Treacy when he’s in Britain. They no more represent the mainstream of working class opinion - or any current of European socialism - than does David Cameron.”
Nothing contentious there apart from the assumption that the “British People’s Alliance” is a substantive organisation, but the Guardian moderators chose to delete the comment, while at the same time giving free rein to the money-blogging fascist Ken Bell (’The Exile’).
Accusing the Grauniad of stooping to new lows has become a popular blog sport. The reality is that the publishing group is a consistent offender when it comes to giving space to anti-democratic political opinion. Such is the nature of left-liberalism. The Guardian newspaper and its online forums may have deteriorated markedly in recent times, but so too has political discourse in general.
Does Neil Clark represent a sizeable political constituency within Britain? To me that sounds like the wishful thinking of modern day fascists and their paleo-leftist fellow travellers for whom the world is terrifying in its complexity. But the problem is not only with intellectually-challenged writers such as Neil Clark. Take Seumas Milne, for example. In Milne we have the thinking person’s Neil Clark, and as a senior columnist and editor he is untouchable.
Paleo-leftism is undoubtedly appealing to some. Karl Naylor, a CiF commenter who writes as SzekelyKarl, portrays Clark’s Strasserite ideology as a form of nostalgic fundamentalism. I am more sympathetic to antifaschismus’ succinct description of Neil Clark and the “British People’s Alliance”, but Naylor makes a number of good points. For example, he sees weird alliances and ideological schizophrenia everywhere from Respect to neoconservative cliques such as the Henry Jackson Society. Their mode of operation, he says, is to scramble as many facts as possible with which to bend reality to the ideological prescriptions of the creed.
We have no shortage of opinion journalists who make a living from writing “jeremiads against neoliberal economics and militarist neoconservatism”, to use Naylor’s words from his Goulash and Guardianistas blog, and Neil Clark is arguably the least talented of them all. There is a market for this material, and I’m therefore not surprised that Clark still enjoys the Guardian’s patronage.
Sunday 18 November 2007 at 17:10
You forgot to mention Bell is a pornographer as well. Apparently he specialises in the sort of stuff where woman are knocked about and shit like that. Has also referred to the murder of Jewish children as ’stamping on baby snake’s heads’.
Sunday 18 November 2007 at 18:09
Today’s Goulash and Guardianistas post was brought to you by the numbers 4 8 7 and 8.
Gans on a bit like - read about a third of then decided I’d be better off swotting up for my ‘Living in the UK’ test, as it’s vitally important for me to know what percentage of Britons own their own homes and when the Saints’ days are.
Sunday 18 November 2007 at 18:15
I know what you mean, Hak, but buried in the undergrowth of Naylor’s verbosity are a number of reasonable points. Also interesting is the post on Seumas Milne and Straight Left.
Sunday 18 November 2007 at 19:13
A Kammism…
“there is a lot to say on the subject - of the idiosyncrasies of the hapless pro-Milosevic blogger Neil Clark. Mr Clark is a fanatic and anignoramus, but (as you will now be aware) more distinctive even than the extent to which he exemplifies those qualities, he’s a vulgar fraud.”
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/one-pearl-of-gr.html
Sunday 18 November 2007 at 21:19
I don’t know why you waste your time on Neil Clark. Or CIF for that matter.
Sunday 18 November 2007 at 21:31
I don’t, as a rule. This business kicked off when Liberal Conspiracy’s Aaron Heath congratulated Clark on his award. Heath had no idea about Clark. Then Clark attacked me on his blog. I don’t intend to keep this up for long. Clark is a worthless piece of shit, but the affair has served to highlight a wider problem with the Guardian/CiF, and is therefore good blog fodder.
As for CiF, I no longer write for it, and only ever read articles published there in cases such as this. That means roughly one a fortnight, or less.
Monday 19 November 2007 at 9:34
Hak: when the Saints’ days are
Trick question. Just write “This isn’t France, matey.”
Mikey: A Kammism…
You’re sure it’s not Blackadder 3 tweaking Mr. Johnson?
Monday 19 November 2007 at 14:42
The “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue
…
Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème; from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the core of the Society of December 10. A “benevolent society” - insofar as, like Bonaparte, all its members felt the need of benefiting themselves at the expense of the laboring nation.
Monday 19 November 2007 at 21:27
Agree with you all.
It was a overlong and needed editing. There were just lots of thoughts I’d written spontaneously as a draft over a few weeks. I rarely get enough time to write in the way I’d like to. But then thought I just might as well put it out anyway.
It’s just a start. If I had more time I would have condensed it and polished it up a bit.
KN
Monday 19 November 2007 at 21:49
D’rig, the Saints days are 20 Jan, 21 Feb, 30 July and the Saint under the Severn Bridge 22 December.
Monday 19 November 2007 at 23:15
Interested to see Ken Bell popping up again. Ken was a mate of mine back in the day, and well worth having a pint and a rant with when Thatcher ruled supreme. But as a genuine working-class guy, he took anti-Thatcherism to all sorts of extremes, openly adhering to the wildest shores of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend. He opposed the Iraq war from an openly pro-Saddam position (and, it would seem, the Serbian war also) and went well over the border between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He is, I believe, pro-Mugabe too. Still, I suppose he holds up one end of an important debate….
Monday 19 November 2007 at 23:54
“Still, I suppose he holds up one end of an important debate….”
that’ll be the nazi end then…
No thanks.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 0:07
“The “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society,…”
Neil Clark appears to be an arsehole, but it ain’t because of his class heritage.
All revolutionaries have in their midst those who will institute a power structure in their interests.
The Manifesto suggested this would not happen in a proletarian revolution, because the proletarians are the true revolutionary class. But we have seen in every instance of “proletarian” revolution so far, a clique always forms in place of the overthrown power in a position of privilege. The Manifesto was wrong, arseholism is classless.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 0:18
And now we get some re-constituted Robert Michels from Clospie.
Fuck me — I need a fucking holiday. Quick.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 2:28
Robert Michels is too cynical, thinking everyting and everybody will be corrupted by power. Rather subscribe to the Team America position - some people are arseholes.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 9:34
D’rig, the Saints days are 20 Jan, 21 Feb, 30 July and the Saint under the Severn Bridge 22 December.
I thought that just about every day of the year was some saint’s day or - hang on, who has been adding Manic Street Preachers questions to the UK living test?
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 9:40
who has been adding Manic Street Preachers questions to the UK living test?
Shuffles … looks at feet.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 14:44
The previous comment by Ken Bell (aka “Exile”) has just been deleted by me following a quarantine imposed by another. No platform for fascists.
Begone, foul creature; you are not welcome here!
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 21:20
Various intemperate and incoherent comments from Mr Bell, including a threat of violence - deleted by others before I had a chance to.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 22:10
You, cockroach, will cease giving lip and start knowing your place. [uncleken]
I fart in your general direction.