Beyond the fringe IV

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal remarks on The Guardian’s running an anti-war article by the father of Nick Berg:

Here's what the elder Berg says America should have done in response to the Sept. 11 attacks: "I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them."

This is sick stuff, though perhaps partly understandable as an irrational reaction of a man who's lost his son. Shame on the Guardian for exploiting Michael Berg's grief to further its own anti-American agenda.

I agree, though I would place the blame elsewhere. Last week the BBC reported:

The father of Nick Berg - the US civilian beheaded in Iraq - has sent a message of support to the Stop the War Coalition. Michael Berg contacted the coalition to offer his backing after it sent him a letter of sympathy. His strongly-worded message will be read out at an anti-war demonstration in London on Saturday. Mr Berg said that his son had suffered the consequences of policies of the Bush administration….

The Stop the War Coalition will release Mr Berg's full statement at a press conference on Wednesday.
One of the march's organisers Chris Nineham told the BBC: "He [Mr Berg] feels that what needs to come out of the horrific death of his son is that a message has to be sent to Bush and Blair to say that the barbarity of war has to stop. That's his response to the terrible events that have happened to his son.”

He continued: "I think the fact that someone has responded so thoughtfully to the death of their son is a message to the people of America and elsewhere to say that we understand that violence breeds violence. That violence was originally perpetrated by the American government, the British government and by the military and the only way to end the cycle of violence is for the US and British troops to come out immediately."

Little did I know when I resolved on a series of posts about the Socialist Workers’ Party that I would shortly be able to cite a prime and topical instance of what the Observer columnist Nick Cohen has aptly termed that organisation’s parasitism.

As I have documented before, the Socialist Workers’ Party is parasitic on the activities of anti-war campaigners, through the intermediary of its creature the Stop the War Coalition. Chris Nineham, here judiciously identified as ‘one of the march’s organisers’, is a ubiquitous, though rather dense, SWP functionary whose task is to make up the numbers of the caucus for whatever front organisation the party decides to set up next. He sits, for example, on the steering committee of the anti-globalisation pressure group Globalise Resistance. Acting on a scheme that I fear my readers may be unconvinced by, the SWP demonstrated the autonomous character of Globalise Resistance by taking only ten places on the steering committee of 24 while reassuringly labelling the rest ‘independent’.

Michael Berg's grief and horror can scarcely be imagined, but I still have no intention of taking seriously, let alone respecting, his political judgement in having Chris Nineham as his spokesman. To attribute to the Bush administration responsibility, even indirect, for an act of barbarism by Islamist terrorists against an unarmed and helpless American civilian is just flatulence. The proper attribution of responsibility is zero to Bush and 100 per cent to our theocratic enemies. There is no ‘cycle of violence’: there is an enemy with whom no compromise or negotiation is possible, and an overriding duty on our part to defeat it. If you seek a taste of, or a pointer towards, the moral bankruptcy of the SWP front organisation that Nineham represents, note his precious evasion:

…. the terrible events that have happened to his son.

Events! Nick Berg's death wasn’t a misfortune caused by incorporeal phenomena. He wasn’t struck by lightning. He didn’t drown at sea. He was murdered with scarcely conceivable barbarism as part of a declared war against everything we value.

The Stop the War Coalition is undoubtedly the principal success the Socialist Workers’ Party has had in its parasitism, but it is not the first. I would date that as the Anti-Nazi League, which the SWP established in November 1977 after the failure of its ‘turn to class’ (a risible campaign of persuading its largely student membership to take factory jobs). The ANL was certainly successful in organising mass protests, and even carnivals (which I attended), against the National Front in the late 1970s. What was not widely appreciated among the participants was that, at leadership level, the ANL and the SWP were essentially one organisation. I have previously cited the judgement of SWP founder Tony Cliff, in the now-defunct magazine The Leveller in 1979 (and quoted in John Callaghan’s The Far Left in British Politics):

The leadership of the Anti-Nazi League is in reality the SWP and we don’t give a damn.

(In my own defence, I didn’t realise this myself till later. My first major encounter with the SWP was when, in the early 1980s, one of its members in our sixth form lambasted me, a Labour supporter, for favouring Denis Healey against Tony Benn in the party’s internal warfare of that time. His name was Sean Moore, and to my lasting shame I gave him the name Sean Bore, which caught on.)

No SWP front organisation other than these two has achieved significant levels of support. In a sense it’s handicapped by the patent eccentricity of its analysis. In the 1980s, for example, it made clear the ideological deficiencies of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (in a pamphlet by party ideologue Peter Binns, ‘Missile Madness’, 1981):

Unless within that Campaign there is a growing nucleus of people who understand the need to make connections with the other issues, who see nuclear weapons as a class issue, then at the end of the day the Movement will tragically fail as much this time as it did last…. The alternatives are Socialism or nuclear annihilation….

Neither of these alternatives appears to have come to pass. Perhaps, as with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s just a matter of time.

In the meantime, I suggest a general approach to political hygiene. I am strongly opposed to the views – which I consider immoral - of CND and the Stop the War Coalition, but there is a legitimate democratic argument to be had with anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigners. The SWP, however, is a party of totalitarian ideology, antisemitic bent and intolerant (and often thuggish) conduct. I reject and condemn anyone who would knowingly ally with its front organisations, let alone speak from those organisations' platforms – as the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy did in Hyde Park in February last year. Such conduct is like signing up to an anti-Mugabe campaign run by the British National Party: there are boundaries that should never be breached in democratic politics.

Comments

[David T]

Ah, John Callaghan’s The Far Left in British Politics. I lost my copy to an (ex-)friend some years ago. How disappointing to find that it is out of print.

[David Duff]

David T:
Try,
www.abebooks.co.uk
and I will be amazed if they fail to find you a copy of that book, or any other, come to that!

[roger]

The Guardian didn't "exploit" Nick Berg's father by publishing him. He is a legitimate figure of interest, due to his son's head being cut off. It is silly to think the Guardian should be ashamed of giving him a forum. That he thinks we should have flooded Afghanistan with Marlo Thomas's Free to be, you and me after 9/11 shows a certain cluelessness, granted. Big deal. The objection to the nanny state is that it knows better than you do, and makes you do things like give up smoking in bars. The objection to the nanny press is that it knows better than you do, and censors articles all 'right thinking' people abhor. We have all too much of the nanny press.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

Oliver, yet another excellent post by you on the vile organisation that is the Stop the War and the SWP. I find Berg father's comments to be objectionable in extremis, even though he had the right to make them. There is even some evidence that the father exploited his son's naivete, which eventually got him killed.

[Clem Snide]

Oliver:

In Australia, the Trots had considerable success in the early 1980's infiltrating the Nuclear Disarmament Party. Quite why Australia, a country with no nuclear weapons or power plants, needed a nuclear disarmament party was never adequately explained, since the true answer probably lay in the egos, inadequacies and messianic delusions of its leaders. In any case it attracted a lot of attention, since among its leaders was rock singer Peter Garrett and a number of prominent greenies. In fairly short order these prominent leaders announced they were quitting the party on the grounds that it had been infiltrated by Trots. The Trots whined about paranoia, but the party collapsed without celebrity support. Its supporters (at least the ones who never grew up) are now probably campaigning against the USA's current nuclear disarmament efforts.

[FabianH]

Pro Iraq War organisations are highly unlikely to knowingly ally with the SWP and its fronts for obvious reasons.

But what of a group of Maoists who have declared their support for the war?

If they too represent a totalitarian ideology, antisemitic bent and intolerant (and often thuggish) conduct, would you also reject and condemn anyone who knowing allies with them or their front organisations?

[herb]

Oliver,
When you say the SWP membership was "largely" students c.1977, can you give a percentage or numbers? Was it a majority? Just wanna know what your source is.

[Chevalier]

Nick Berg's slaughter was partly caused by the western press publication of the "abuse" portfolio.
How many more innocents will be butchered for the deeds of greedy Journalists ?

[occam]

Shame on James Taranto for exploiting Michael Berg's grief for his own anti-guardian agenda. And shame on him for 'pathologizing' his statement (i.e., a mere 'expression of grief') rather than engaging with it as an argument. Typical vacuous journalese.

[One-Eyed Undertaker]

Shame on Nick Berg's father! Nick Berg believed in the liberation of Iraq. Out of respect he shouldn't sell out Nick's ideals for the crass political exploitation of a bunch of nuts.