Leaving from the Left: Why those on the left should vote to leave the European Union.

In decades recent, the left has taken it upon itself to be the torchbearer of the UK’s continued participation in the European Union, as if those who have historically claimed responsibility to understand history have suddenly developed a collective memory of 6-years. We seem to have forgotten the fact that it was once the left who opposed what was called “the common market” and the Thatcherites who campaigned vehemently to enter into it.

What appears to be the primary and most dangerous view that impels this instinctual reaction from the left to preserve the EU is the picture of the “social Europe” - the idea that the European Union is a unifying paragon of social virtue, the very backbone of which the continents oh-so impeccable workers rights, environmental protection laws, human rights assurance, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and social safety net are built on. These are the reasons why so many EU organisations can apparently without shame refer to themselves as “socialist”. They are also entirely false.

The European Union from it’s embryonic stage was based on the solidification of trade agreements and the free movement of capital and labour, dreamt up by the European Steel and Coal Community, large banks, and the European Economic Community. Of course, this meant “free movement” with the exception of competition from outside of Europe or from potential emerging markets in individual European countries.

Staying true to its neo-liberal foundations, the EU will soon be the bureaucratic basis through which TTIP is passed. Brought in secretly and swiftly by EU and American officials and hidden from the public eye, TTIP is a bi-lateral free trade deal between the EU and the US that would make it legal for corporations to bypass environmental regulation, not adhere to safety standards, open up national services to private penetration (including the NHS), loosen banking regulations, ease data-privacy laws, and even sue nation states. This is perhaps one of the biggest threats to working people in the Western world and no defense or alternative has been offered by pro-EU left.

Despite the EU’s claims that its foundations are assembled from the sincerest of non-aggression philosophies, it has consistently campaigned to encircle and develop an aggressive police against the Russian Federation. Forbye, Vladimir Putins support for the Brexit campaign has been thrown around as a trump card by the stay camp. Because of course in typical Western fashion, if Russia is for something, we simply have to be against it.

It has been the EU’s prerogative to develop and give rhetorical and diplomatic encouragement to far-right and overtly Nazi elements in Ukraine to take power through violence. These groups forcibly removed the president, banned the Russian language, alienated entire portions of the ethnically Russian population and referred to the ousted president Yunukovych as running a “Moscovite-Jewish Mafia”. This illegitimate government, riddled with ultra-nationalists and Christian fanatics are trying to pander to and eventually join the EU, an organisation supposedly built to prevent the rise of fascism.

On a purely democratic note, even if one saw the provocations against Russia as necessary, why should the EU decide for the UK what it’s foreign policy should be? Surely, it should be up to us to decide for ourselves whether we think overt aggression against one of the largest and most popular countries in the world; with a supreme military, is a good idea?

In regards to the economy and the democratic front, the European Union mandates the form our economy can take. It tells us what our fiscal policy should be, what our productive output has to be, how much we can import from other countries outside the EU, who can come in, who we can deport, what our levels of public spending can be, what we can tariff and so on. Not only has the EU forced wealthier countries like the UK to abide by its political and economic criteria. It has forced poorer European countries to accept crippling economic policies akin to the austerity policies in our own country.

Greece’s own anti-EU left party sold out it’s country against the wishes of it’s own people and continued to pay back the unjustly imposed debt through cutting public services, policies promoted by the EU Commission and Goldman Sachs, which have devastated the Greek economy. In Portugal, the anti-EU coalition of Socialist and Communist parties won the election, and the European commission, Central bank, and the IMF refused to even recognise the decision. This blatant rejection of democracy by monopoly capital is only made possible with a centralised European Union ran by and in the interests of finance capital and big business.

Yet somehow the movement which secures its historical appeal by it's critical stance of unaccountable authority and rule of private accumulation has stepped in as the guardian of this system. The fight to revive national industries, the loss of which devastated communities and working class power all over the country, will all be in vain if we don’t vote to leave. If we want to repair the damage done by Thatcherism which has enforced a neo-liberal project on all of Europe, it can only be done by breaking up the hold of monopoly power over the UK.

In contrast, the sun is only rising in the East. Countries like China, India, Brazil, and Vietnam that we cannot currently form trade-negotiations as we'd like to, will offer us far more opportunity than a “common market”. Rather than cut ourselves off from the developing world, we could leave the cage of Europe and open ourselves up to trade with the emerging economies of 100’s of millions strong, some of which are developing socialist countries. That’s the real internationalist position.

Given our loss of perspective on this issue, who in our stead has come baring the torch of sovereignty? The nationalist right – a phenomena arising all over Europe as a reaction to the weakness of libertarians, neo-conservatives, and the left alike to properly appeal to any working class sentiment.  Referring specifically to groups like UKIP, the National Front in France, Law and Justice in Poland, the Swedish Democrats, the NDP in Germany and so on. To our shame, we have allowed this movement to lead and subsequently become the face of the fight for a referendum on the European Union and against monopoly capital.

It is imperative that the left re-thinks its position on this matter. Not only for the sake of our historical reputation but because we risk our position as the defenders of the rights of ordinary people to be usurped by a much worse beast. The working people of Europe have felt the stranglehold of German finance capital via the EU and they are standing up, we should be the ones at the political forefront alongside them. We should revive the days when the left stood staunchly against all forms of unjustified authority and oligarchic rule.

As the late Tony Benn said in 2013: “The way that Europe has developed is that bankers and multi-national corporations have got very powerful positions and if you come in on their terms they will tell you what you can and cannot do and that is unacceptable”.

I am not hostile to people from other countries. I am as far away from UKIP and the nationalist right as can be. I am an internationalist. I believe in the eventual disintegration of borders and national identity entirely. I believe the people of the world are commonly united by one flag, shaded in a colour of the blood we all hold in common. I believe the 196 national banners in their infinite colours are falsehoods, lines in sand. That is a cause that I am unashamed to say I am a combatant in and I plan to believe in it for the rest of my life.

It's the same reason I believe that the fall of the USSR, the partition of Korea, the break up of Yugoslavia, and the break up of Czechoslovakia were ultimately negative. It’s the same reason why I was against Scotland leaving the UK in 2014. But I cannot believe in this EU, which puts the interests of money and power before all else and remains completely unaccountable and undemocratic. This is why I believe those on the left should vote to leave the EU when the referendum comes around.

Why the UK should abandon its Trident nuclear program.

In 1980, the UK replaced its independent Polaris nuclear submarine fleet with the US-approved Trident nuclear program. Originally, the idea was that a joint nuclear pact in Europe between Britain and the US would help subdue the perceived aggression of the then Soviet Union. If a Warsaw Pact country were to threaten a nuclear attack against Western Europe, then a nuclear-armed UK could be a deterrent. However, the Warsaw Pact is long gone, along with the Soviet Union, but still Britain today still keeps fleets of nuclear submarines up in Faslane.

1. It's not a deterrent.

NATO refuses to admit that Trident is not a first-strike weapon, and given UK and NATO's track record of aggression against other countries, what reason do we have to believe the UK would not use a nuclear threat as an attack rather than a defence? Moreover, who exactly are we supposed to be deterring? Now that the USSR is gone, what threat is there to Britain's security that it's necessary have a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines? We're the one who's been conducting invasion after invasion all over the globe, in many peoples eyes we are the violent rogue state. Why should the country jointly responsible for destroying Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria be seen as a righteous owner of nuclear weapons? It shouldn't. Nuclear programs haven't kept the world at peace, it's only further slipped the balance of power into the hands of the Western powers and their allies. 

If nuclear weapons are truly a deterrent, then every country in the world should be allowed to have them, otherwise the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction becomes otiose. So why then did the UK put sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran in response to them potentially building a Nuclear weapons program which they were well within their rights to build due to their signature on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? If you want to argue that only democracies should be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, then why did Britain give financial and political support to the Pakistani military dictator General Musharraf to build Nuclear weapons? Why do we refuse to send an international inquiry to Israel, which refuses to confirm the existence of it's Nuclear weapons when we know it has them? Every nuclear armed 'tin pot' dictatorship only has nuclear weapons either as a reaction to us having them in the first place or because we sold them to them. It's almost like NATO aren't interested in a deterrent at all, more that it's interested in surrounding and bullying countries we don't like into submission because we have bigger guns than them. 

2. Trident costs the UK too much.

The UK is not in the best place financially, since 2009 we’ve seen mass unemployment throughout the country, increase in homelessness, and the ever increase cutting of our social benefits and public services. All evidence from living here would tell you we’re broke. Or are we? Apparently, we’ve got enough leftover to spend billions of pounds a year to buy new fleets of nuclear subs and maintain the Trident programs existence. The next fleet of successor submarines is likely to appear next year. This is at a time when the Tory chancellor, just 3 years ago, laid waste to hundreds of British public sector jobs as an attempt to 'tighten our belts', the Labour government fired 200 food inspectors, and the NHS is being slowly chipped away and sold off to the hands of profiteering healthcare companies. This money currently being spent on a Nuclear program, no one in their right mind would ever think about actually using, would be better spent invested in the British economy.

3. All countries should dismantle their nuclear weapons.

If someone uses a nuclear weapon, that's it. We're done. There's no more debate. If a nuclear missile were to be launched, there would be no more human race. You might believe that nukes help ensure "our interests". But we don't have to scourge the Earth with a poorly equipped military to secure foreign resources, we don't have to follow the United States into war after war and ultimately onto the scrapheap of history. We could start now by sending a message to the rest of the world that we don't need nukes and we will have no part in the insanity of holding weapons which will literally end in the extinction of Human kind.

The rise of Anti-Semitism & Islamophobia in Europe.

Shamefully, around a week ago the host of BBC's Question Time, David Dimbleby, had either turned a blind eye to or had participated in the filling of the audience with pro-Israeli fanatics. The question “Why is anti-Semitism rising in the UK and do you think a certain member of the panel may bare some responsibility for this?” was directed at George Galloway, MP for Bradford West, who had come on unaware that he would be ambushed by a collective of Zionist hecklers. I won’t get into specifically why abusing an elected politician is at best troublesome and at worst slanderous because my opinion on that is unimportant and you can watch it in its entirety here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guAjF0csFI0 (39:19 – 59:00)

The question posed by the audience member did stick with me though. As a Brit, it's not uncommon to come across casual bigotry. But does the middle-age white mans 'pub talk' really have that great of an impact on the rest of the country?

It is true that there has been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in not only the UK but also all across Europe. According to the Community Service Trust (CST) the number of attacks against Jews in the UK reached over 1000 in 2014, doubling the previous years number of attacks. It’s also reported by the CST that Jews are at the highest risk of hate crime than they have ever been. Same thing in France, the number of religious hate-crimes committed against Jews doubled from 2013 - 2014. Such incidents include the shooting dead of 4 French Jews at a kosher supermarket by someone claiming to represent the Islamic State. In Sarcelles, another kosher supermarket was set ablaze by Molotov cocktails during an anti-Israeli demonstration.

So what? The wake of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza led to a load of Muslim fanatics who were unable to differentiate between the actions of the Israeli government and regular Jews thousands of miles away who have no connection to the crimes committed in Gaza. But it isn’t that simple, this conjecture that more Muslims = more anti-Semitic attacks unfairly lumps together the Palestinian liberation movement with Europe’s returning spectre of racism - the Far-Right.

The PEGIDA movement or “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West” is a German organisation which claims that Islam is incompatible with what they refer to as “European values”. This far-right organisation uses the threat of radical Islam as an attempt to demonise all Muslims. The groups original leader Lutz Bachmaan resigned after a photograph emerged of him dressed as Adolf Hitler.

While PEGIDA does have international offshoots in the UK, Norway, and Denmark they are primarily active in Germany. That’s right, there is an actual organisation in Germany who march through the street calling for the removal of an entire group of people. A recent study showed that at least 1 in 8 of Germans would join an anti-Muslim march if one was being organised in their home towns.

The un-ironically named “Sweden Democrats”, are now the third largest party in Sweden after receiving 13% of the vote in the last election by running on an anti-immigrant platform and using the slogan "Keep Sweden Swedish". The fact that they’ve been charged with hate speech and wish to ‘slash immigration by 90%’ does not seem to matter to the general population.

In neighbouring Norway, the christian terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik who killed 77 people, most of who were children, was guided by his ultra-nationalist view that Islam and “cultural Marxism” was threatening to destroy the Norwegian (and white) way of life. One crazed mad man does not prove an epidemic however, but the attempts by right wing figures like Michele Bachmann and Pat Condell to justify Breiviks killings as merely a symptom of failed immigration policies does show a shocking attitude of sympathy that is brewing throughout the mainstream discourse towards politically charge terrorism.

Since the “Charlie Hebdo” newspaper attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris, France has seen a campaign of hate-crimes against Muslims. Mosques have been victims of grenade attacks, gunshots, physical attacks, and repeated vandalism with spray-painted slogans ranging from “Arabs Get Out” to swastikas.

Over 100 acts of hate-crime that can be directly linked to the Charlie Hebdo incident have been recording, including the murder of a Morrocan man: Mohamed El Makouli, who was stabbed in his home in front of his wife. Amongst the backdrop of all this, the far-right nationalist party in France Le Front National have topped the presidential poll for the first time.

Greece has temporarily managed to subdue the rise of what is perhaps the scariest of these Frankenstein monsters. The far-right Golden Dawn party has been responsible for various assaults on Muslims and non-ethnic Greeks. They have set up “Greeks only” food shelters, and have also conducted torchlight marches throughout Athens. 

A letter was obtained in May 2013, which gave Muslims up to June 30^th to evacuate the country or “be butchered like Chickens”. Golden Dawn have widespread support within the ranks of the police force in Greece, who often turn a blind eye to the fact that many immigrants are afraid to leave their homes due to night patrols by black shirted party members. In 2013, Golden Dawns leadership were responsible for the murder of leftist rapper Pavlos Fysses. Today in Greece, actual fascists are actually marching around the streets of Athens waving Swastikas (or a variation of) and attacking immigrants, and they are being written off by the European states as simply a product of failed immigration policies. Although they claim to stand against austerity, they have no actual economic policies: their tactics are simply violence, division, and xenophobia. Golden Dawn are now technically the 3^rd largest party in Greece, but the fact that 10 out of 17 of their MP’s are currently incarcerated gives them one of two limitations. The other limitation being that the left party SYRIZA currently holds a majority in the Greek parliament.

In the UK we briefly saw the increase in popularity of the British National Party (BNP), originally an offshoot of the National Front and British Union of Fascists. Lead by moderniser Nick Griffin, the BNP dropped the boots and black uniforms of the old fascist party and updated his original position that the holocaust didn’t happen at all to just “the numbers are over-exaggerated”.

Nick Griffin, speaking at a Ku Klux Klan meeting, outlined the tactics used by the modern ultra-nationalist movement. He said: “There's a difference between selling out your ideas and selling your ideas, and the British National Party isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined now to sell them, and that means basically to use the saleable words, as I say, freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can criticise them. Nobody can come at you and attack you on those ideas. They are saleable”.

Another notable UK far right group are the English Defence League (EDL) a movement of people marching specifically on the premise that violent acts of Islamic terrorists are rooted in the Muslim religion itself, and that ‘moderate’ Islam does not exist. What makes the EDL interesting is their attempt to separate themselves from the growing Neo-Nazi movements by pledging their support for the State of Israel.

The BNP and EDL have become disoriented over the past few years. Both experiencing rapid decrease in membership, publicity, and both their founders have since stepped down. Unfortunately, the return of the EDL and BNP to the underground of right-wing politics is not due to some re-emergence of enlightenment amongst Brits. The issues of immigration and EU membership are bigger topics than ever and we can see the establishments promptness to point out Britain’s supposed incompatibility with Islam. On the more professional side of the spectrum, we have David Cameron’s speech about how “multiculturalism has failed in Britain” and on the more extremist side we have literal violent hate-crimes committed against Minorities – the London nail bomber, British National Party member David Copeland comes to mind.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), while not an explicitly racist or fascist party is feeding off of the growing Islamophobia in Britain. Much of their supporters are ex BNP and EDL members. Both Nick Griffin and the ex-EDL leader Tommy Robinson have thrown their support behind UKIPs leader, Nigel Farage, who has said that he is “proud to take on a 3^rd of the BNP’s support”. While still criticised by the media, UKIP have managed to present themselves as an alternative to the three major parties and have successfully shifted the entire political discourse closer to their political line. They currently hold 2 seats in parliament, have an ever growing support base, and will be participating in the 2015 BBC Prime Minister election debate. This is a party filled to the brim with ultra-nationalist supporters from the BNP and who's members are openly homophobic, racist, and deny-global warming. UKIP deputy leader Lord Christopher Monckton has said that "Aids is the wages of gay promiscuity". Another UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom referred to foreign aid as going to "Bongo bongo land". Bloom resigned but was later allowed back into the party. 

Here's a photo of Farage posing with the secretary of the Aberdeen branch of UKIP, Andrew Lovie, who a just happens to be Neo-Nazi.

It's also worth noting that two of the main participants in the 2014 US-backed Ukrainian revolution which lead to the overthrow of the democratically elected president were the "Svoboda" and "Right Sector" parties. Both are ultra-nationalist groups and friendly with the US government. The leader of Svobda, Oleh Tyahnybok has been quoted saying that Russia and Ukraine are ran by a "Muscovite-Jewish Mafia". 

Nationalist supporters in Ukraine have conducted torchlight ceremonies and have been seen often carrying photos of Stepan Bandera, the Nazi collaborator who lead the 'Ukrainian Insurgence Army' during WW2 and was responsible for the murder of 200,000 Jews in 1942 (not including the ones which they carted off to the German death camps).

The United States has taken a liking to the Nationalist forces in Ukraine as part of their plan to surround Russia. Svoboda and Right Sector do not run the newly established pro-EU/NATO Ukrainian government, but they do occupy many high positions, especially in the judiciary system. 

The Ukrainian Azov battalion fighting against the separatist movements in Donetsk and Lugansk also decorate themselves with SS insignia. They refer to their ideology as "Social-Nationalist".

So why is there this rise in both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia across Europe exactly? The smirks of victory currently appearing across many of my more right leaning friends faces might tell you the answer to that, and history is actually on their side. Yep, Godfreys law strikes again.

The economic collapse in Germany during the 1920’s and 30’s saw a shift to both fascistic and progressive groups; the world awaited the emergence of a radical government in Germany, but instead the elite class and royalists paved the way for the Nazi party to take power. Promising an abundance of slave labor in the occupied territories and the subduing of communist uprising, the German political establishment gave Hitler the necessary political and financial support he needed; with Von Papen and Hindenburg granting him the title of chancellor and industrialists like Fritz Thyseen, Hugo Stinnes, I.G Farben, and Henry Ford giving the Nazis enough investment to fund their war economy - at the end of the day, fascism is and always will be the champion ideology of the wealthy and privileged. This goes without mentioning the level of responsibility the Western appeasers like Britain and France have, who saw Germanys emerging economy as a potential business partner rather than the global threat that it was.

I wholeheartedly reject the premise that immigrants are the reason for the mass impoverishment across Europe. Basic necessities like healthcare, work and education have been rejected in place of tax cuts for international corporations and funding austerity measures. The failure of the Neo-Liberal economic system to provide the stable livelihood that was once experienced under the old Eastern Bloc has lead directly to this resurgence in far-right activity. One only has to look at the increase in poverty, suicide, welfare, sexual trafficking and unemployment rates in Eastern Europe to know that it directly correlates with Europe’s post-cold war shift to liberal economic policies. Western Europe has temporarily managed to prosper off of the cheap labour and investment opportunities found in the ruined economies of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary etc; granting Germany, France, and Britain the title of Europe’s overlords. but even the working people in those countries have felt the crippling consequences of the capitalist model, particularly emphasised in the 2009 financial crash.

When the European people see that they are ruled by a group of privately educated, robotic, wealthy politicians who represent the financial and industrial classes, who could blame them for looking for an alternative? Any alternative. The Far Right has done an incredible job at both modernising and presenting themselves as a strong and determined force ready to bring about a new society representing the needs of "ethnic Europeans" and their culture. Got fired from your job? Must be an influx of immigrants! Church attendance declining? Must be the destruction of Western culture! Banks committing mass theft and getting away with it? Must be a Jewish conspiracy! This is an attitude that is ever growing and will continue to grow until it and it’s root causes are stamped out.  

Unlike in the early 20th century, there is no strong uniting leadership on the left. There is no single radical voice to represent the interests of the working masses of Europe. With that being said, just because there is no large scale opposition in Europe, this does not mean we should be fooled into taking the liberal-minded  approach that fascism can be defeated though peaceful discourse. The fight against fascism will not be won in a debate, and they will not grant you the same luxury of free speech that you are currently giving them.