[mobglob-discuss] further thread...

[Macdonald Stainsby]

When one works in a student union during the Summer months and is 
quitting smoking at the same time, a lot of hostility can flow onto 
email lists, given the free time and the nature of the medium. I must 
apologise for letting the heat outweigh the argument. 

As per the discussion around dangeous elements of racism in the 
movement: I first off was not calling Rick a Nazi, those are words he 
ascribes to it. Let me make that clear. Only he knows whether or not he 
has these attitudes, and he never struck me as the sort at all.

It is not okay to move beyond these issues without a resolution. 
However, as I mentioned before I appreciate those who would task one 
another to our behavious, so to those who find my cut too harsh, thank 
you for being clear and making the time to say so. Apologies to those 
who feel unneccessarily overwhelmed by tone.

We are, in Vancouver, part of the first movement in some thirty years 
that involves all sorts of people, from all walks of the diverse ladder 
of resistance to corporate rule and actually has a social impact. That 
includes a plethora of peoples: from "hardened radicals" to newly 
thinking peoples, from revolutionary-minded anarchists and communists 
to NGO's and Trade Union leaders. We have environmentalists and we have 
forestry workers. We have Native sovereigntists and Palestinian 
sovereigntists. As much as all of our movements in the last few decades 
have left us with a world teetering on environmental collapse and the 
most inequitable distribution of wealh and services ever, this 
diversity is a strong point in that we all need to re-think our path. 
Look in your heart, look in the best books and also read from the 
reality around you. All of these things will be part of how we deal 
with what is happening. 

There is a dark side to this great light, however. What we also face, 
in a movement without a centre, is a major contradiction. we are highly 
vulnerable to the worst sorts of people and their motives. In this I'm 
not including Rick, I'll believe him when he says that he is genuinely 
motivated by concerns for the same issues. Therein lies the greater 
problem, in fact. In our eagerness to be "broad" and open minded, we 
have let people who have exactly the opposite views on how things 
should be struggled for, and more importantly *what* should be 
struggled for. The National Alliance is clearly a Nazi group, but what 
on earth makes them think they have a good shot at organising among us?

Well, there are a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is our 
uncritical look at who we are aligning ourselves with. We do need to 
know, not just that these people are nice folks, but exactly what kind 
of world they strive for. I'm not interested, nor I hope are many 
others, in building a world where racial conspiracies of power supplant 
a real analysis of the power of the corporate sectors and of capitalism 
itself. There is no place in our movement for people who want to 
eliminate taxes but maintain the financial structure we have. That 
would only serve to do exactly what we say we are broadly fighting 
against: increase the wealth and tyranny of a few. 

In times where the far-right are actively pushing, through the Larouche-
ite anti-immigrant groups, the AGAN and NA recruitment push, etc, we 
have to be able to draw a line and say, yes, indeed we do draw lines as 
to what is acceptable within our bounds. 

Now, if that is a given, and I truly hope it is, what is that line? Can 
we try to determine this on the basis of someone's sincerity? It's not 
that easy. If only it were. For example, when it comes to the Radical 
newspaper, the defenders of it always talk about the editor Arthur as a 
personality- as what he personally wants, rather than what his paper 
has actually produced. That is not a decent argument, simply because 
the grandest of good intentions do not outweigh the smallest of good 
deeds. But Arthur Topham has actually defended his publication of 
articles by out and out Neo-Nazis like Paul Fromm, and also considers 
the opinions of anti-woman terrorist Gordon Watson to be part of 
the "debate[sic] on abortion". Continually promoting David Icke is 
dangerous as well, considering this paranoid creature has actually 
taken several passages from the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and 
republished them in his book- thus promoting one of the most genocidal 
books ever put into print and giving it a revival that should never 
take place anywhere, especially not under our auspices, given the 
current deadly situation in the Middle East, where Israel (claiming to 
speak for Judaism) is carrying out such amazing atrocities. In such 
circumstances, anti-semitism may appear more rational and it is even 
more important for us to be adamant about the need to erase it. 

That kind of group of materials is not a matter of an "error". It is a 
direct association with the kinds of thinking that ultimately are like 
a freshly watered lawn to the seeds of fascism. And with that ground to 
work on, we are starting to see the budding of a new wave of violent 
groups appearing- and they are intending to do so in and around us, not 
in opposition to us. We have, for far too long, been more concerned 
with building alliances, alliances that give us a much needed sense of 
community and a larger than ourselves audience. But there is a line 
that we must draw, we must do so before we find our efforts at building 
a new world unwittingly becoming a haven for exactly what it is we are 
trying to stop. After the 9-11 bombings, I personally shed a few tears. 
The tears were not on the day I saw the buildings blow up, but in the 
days after when my neighbours started openly proclaiming some of the 
most racist views I had ever heard. It was when I saw people in my own 
backyard killing others for a different skin colour. I let the tears 
flow because I simply couldn't live in a world like that, I didn't want 
to and no one here should be any differently motivated. But fighting 
those things is not as simple as waiting for the next terror attack and 
telling people that their temporary (or not-so-temporary) bilge is 
wrong; attitudes are built and deconstrcuted over a life time of 
struggle, both within the self and within the population. We are part 
of a radical community that speaks to building, among many other 
things, true racial equality.

That cannot exist and will only be a hollow slogan so long as we are 
not better than the parts of society that think "it's not the place 
here" to call people on their associations (or downright participation) 
with groups or large, popular personalities that promote hate. We can 
not take things like papers that reproduce anti-semites David Icke and 
Paul Fromm as okay, merely because they also reprint work by Starhawk, 
Splitting the Sky and others- and then call it "relative". It is not, 
it goes to our credibility.

Put another way: If your friends are Pakistani, Jewish, whatever- are 
you comfortable telling them to ignore the paper floating about in the 
room which helps promote ideas that ultimately call for their forcible 
expulsion or death? I cannot look them in the eye in such a 
circumstance. It would mean that all our pronoucements about our anti-
racist work doesn't matter when it finally comes right down to it. We 
let that slide, and what have we left?

Again, my apologies to those simply reading along about the tone in 
some of my previous words. This issue is deadly serious now, and it 
inflames me, even more so wearing the nicotime patch. The nicotine fits 
will go away, but a commitment to anti-racist work will not.

I hope that now Rick has seen the article with a call against third 
world immigration and will, as he stated, reconsider his support for 
the paper. Either way, this issue must come up and the truth must come 
out. This is not at all about Rick McCallion, it's not about any 
personalities. It's about taking the responsibility of making the 
political personal, and taking repsonsiblity for the results of our 
hard work. We must live as the world we want to see.

 We are better than the people who run the world. Let us demonstrate it 
by earning the respectability of all by determining who with, and how 
we make our coalitions succeed. It is time we do not hide our heads in 
the sand and take this on before it's too late. 
 
sincerely,
Macdonald

-- 
Macdonald Stainsby,
External Relations Co-ordinator,
Douglas College Students Union.
**
In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht.
***
"`Order rules in Berlin.' You stupid lackeys! Your 
`order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rear 
ahead once more and announce to your horror amid the brass 
of trumpets: `I was, I am, I always will be!'" 

-Rosa Luxemburg, 1918.