I agree with the thrust of your post. I would add to be careful of whatever the state can do to the BNP, it can turn around and do it on the left. If they are denied a permit, you can be next.

I kid you not!! this is what the left has to deal with! stalin had it right!

I,like Mil, crave the certainty and sanctity of the legal process. But I do believe that legal process should be dynamic, and (with appropriate checks and balances) should reflect the will of the people.

The role of the left is to ensure that the will of the people is a socialist will, and thence that the laws reflect that will – sich that ASBO laws are developed to the poin where, in cases where teenagers run amok, the resulting ASBO can equally as well be applied to any statutory authority which, according to the court’s findings, did not provide adequate life opportunities to that amok-running and dislocated teenager.

Of course, in comparison to the ferocity unleashed by the peasant war which liquidated the control of the landlords in the countryside whilst the Bolsheviks were doing the same in the city, this military orgy of violence looked positively restrained. Nonetheless it happened – and we should admit that openly.

However that is not to say it necessarily had to happen. History is not a mechanic process, it takes into account human agency and not to mention the circumstances in which it is played out. These soldiers had been routinely beaten, half starved and had been put through the rigors of war. It seems almost natural that they should react to their new-found freedom in such a way, after so much oppression.

Thankfully in the 21st century UK, things aren’t quite like that. In such circumstances, and bearing in mind the vast majority of our population is urbanised and their lives aren’t close to being as brutalised, I think any such Marxist praxis as I suggest above is a rational and well-judged harnessing of working class energies rather than a dangerous ploy which would open Pandora’s box.

What I’m arguing for is not an autocratic crack down upon fascists; I’m advocating the constructive praxis of building an oppositional movement from the ground up. This would involve turning people from the knee-jerk reactionaries the Guardian is attempting to pander to into reflective participants in an open political gesture.

It’s important that people recognize that I’m not proposing a mob or even a crowd descend on the schools where fascist teachers work. I’m proposing a structured, organised campaign that would channel people’s energies into the pre-existent nexus of the organised working class: trades unions and political parties, not to mention places of work.

This movement, having discussed courses of action and taken democratic decisions regarding them, would then present its demands to the managers of the school, with whom teachers have an oppositional arrangement. A failure to comply with demands could be met with a staff and student strike. Even if this failed to oust the fascist, it has raised consciousness and literally – both through argument and action – destroyed any potential influence that teacher might have.

Rightly so.

Secondly, I have no faith in Parliament. I especially have no trust in the (often self-declared) representatives of Capital such as the Conservatives in their mealy-mouthed denunciations of fascism. As any study of history shows with stunning clarity, the British political establishment in the era when fascism was rampant, was riddled with supporters of Mussolini and Hitler etc.

This is not coincidental. These people shared with the fascist movement a genuine hatred for the working class movements that both Hitler and Mussolini explicitly aimed to destroy. They occupied a position relative to the working class that meant they would hardly be sympathetic to the demands of that class, organised into fighting cadres.

Indeed the best the Tories have ever managed in that regard is a benign paternalism disguising attempts to roll back the victories which were achieved in the creation of the welfare state.

The same instruments which turn people into a mob and turn a protest into a lynching, by depoliticising the content of their protest, can be used to equate a Marxist and a fascist – and there is a large section of Parliament which could easily find rationale to do so. The myths of Tory libertarianism would soon evaporate should Parliament find its rule challenged by an active working class – and one might suggest the active Tory incitement of the Army to rebellion and anti-labourism during the early 20th Century as analogy.

So no, I see no use for the rubber stamp of parliament.

Back in blogging mode now.

I think, firstly, we must be prepared to draw lines in the sand, as you most certainly do. And there I do agree. We must be intolerant of certain intolerances, without feeling that we have no right to this logical inconsistency. Life is sometimes necessarily inconsistent. It’s patently ridiculous to equate fascism and racism – two examples of “thought” you mention – with Marxism, just because all three can come under the linguistic set of “-isms”. There is clearly no comparison. Marxism – perhaps I should say Marxists – can be intolerant too but their intolerance is of a different ilk.

Your intolerance of racism would, I guess (perhaps you can correct me here), not be an intolerance to the individuals per se but rather to the beliefs they falsely hold. Their intolerance, on the other hand, is an intolerance to a humanity they actually, viscerally, despise.

Nevertheless, where I think we part ways is that you seem to be happy for – and even prefer – extra-legal and extra-constitutional structures to be used to achieve your aims – in this case, to excise racism from the British labour force. I do not see laws as substituting an awareness and consciousness of oppression but rather as supporting that awareness, where of course those who promote (from Parliament) and implement those laws (from other organs of the State) do so in good faith. For is it not possible to believe that our society is moving in the right direction, even if slowly, and that the vast majority of its members, to some degree or another, is more left-leaning – more socially aware of its place in the class system you describe – than it was a hundred years ago?

I suppose my problem, as always, is that find myself reacting emotionally. I really do find resistible the idea of anything which smacks of witch-hunts. And maps like those the Guardian published, which reminded me of others the Sun published not long ago on the subject of terrorist cells “near you”, do remind me of the first steps of a witch-hunt. And even if the witches are demonstrably evil (which in this case is clearly the case), I find their hunting resistible. It seems to me that although you have a full quiver of arguments to back up your Marxist positions, arguments which I find convincing and sincere, there is an emotional edge to the flurry of media activity over this matter – and in this flurry I include our own bloggers – which hardly befits a movement of the left. By all means let us have our emotions – but, please, let us act more coolly when we wish to act to exclude others from everything that what we might understand to be a “normal” society and its intercourses.

I fear a lynching – whether verbal or indeed literal – ennobles no one. I also believe that no behaviours, however awful, can possibly justify any such lynching. That is why I would prefer to bring the force of law to bear on this matter. And that is why I am suspicious of the fact that no one cared to bring to light this membership list through entirely legal means.

I am, however, open to the views of others on this matter.