I read ‘Apology’ from Another Angry Voice’ today, because I have a desktop covered in blogs I started writing in the last few weeks and lost faith in along the way, and it set me wondering — whatever the personal circumstances around it — just how many lefty bloggers must be embroiled in doubts and re-thinks lately.

I guess if anyone’d asked me, I would have said I’m suffering from overwhelm – it takes a long, long time and whole armies of activists and bloggers to shift each big, bad idea and offer up a better one, and along the way, you get pretty bored with yourself for going on about whatever it is, because it’s so obvious to you, and your long-term readers. After all, they’re reading your stuff because they agree (confirmation bias, anyone…?) but we have to keep it up.

It’s known as Bandolini‘s law….

That does get you down sometimes, but you can pick yourself up by remembering that if you add up the number of activists and writers who are on the case for truth and justice, we far, far outnumber the big-money politicians and their pet journalists. We don’t have to write five million blog posts each — we’re a collective. We do it between us. (The hashtag #FreePalestine is now checking in at 24 million) but there’s something else.

“The left is always divided”

This is a slander. It’s easy for business heads to unite around the money, they obviously and immediately benefit by doing so — and it’s easy for centrist politicians to unite round a lie — follow-my-leader is their career path — they don’t have to believe it. By contrast, figuring out the truth and sticking to it in the face of a mass of propaganda and lies is not so easy. So, sometimes, parts of the left get it wrong. The biggest apparent split in the left is that between reformers and radicals – ie, between those whose aim is to make capitalism and exploitation a bit nicer and those who believe we need to bring down the house of cards and build a better society based on truth and justice, but that’s not really a split in the left — it’s the divide, presented by the establishment, between the cosmetic left and the real left.

Real unity and real splits

When we radicals were all trying to persuade the UK to get over the media’s take on Corbyn, to give us a shot at a genuinely socialist democratic Labour government, those of us in the movement were pretty firmly together on the big picture even if there were difficulties over details, so whether we were arguing our case at the keyboard or in roomfuls of determinedly blind and deaf centrists, the task was more like a healthy sport than a slow death – we didn’t quail.

The real horrible split – in the radical left

But then came the women’s rights campaign or, as many saw it, “the anti-trans campaign”, and that prompted whole roomfuls of people in our own camp to evoke memories of gay lib, as though defending men’s right to be women and the medicalization of confused kids was the same as defending same-sex orientation. Soon, a large part of our movement was reviling feminists (real feminists – the ones who see “gender identity” as the problem, not the solution) as bigots and transphobes.

If you’re still in doubt about the radical feminist line on the trans issue, please remind yourself that gender is a social construct, a mass of sexist ideas imposed on men and women alike, and that no socialist can possibly believe you can be “born in the wrong body”. Gender is a tool of corporate sexism, not a relative of gay or lesbian orientation. LGBTQIA+ is a blatant appropriation of what was a genuine liberation campaign for gay and lesbian people.

“Gender” is a corporate-friendly, capitalist idea. As David Miller put it, “when GCHQ is lit up with the colours of your flag, you know you aren’t a marginalized minority.”

The second horrible split – in radical feminism

And then it was the same painful scenario all over again in many parts of the radical feminist movement, when October 7^th blew us all off our feet.

And for me, this last one is the worst yet. Trying to change hearts and minds, one year into a race against Israel’s very, very obvious intention of killing everyone in Gaza and the occupied territories has to be the most painful extended writing topic ever.

You just keep searching and searching, and thinking, maybe this will do it – maybe this will… Maybe this will…

Here are the key points from the interview:

“Denial is part of all genocidal processes and acts of mass violence.”

“There are also people who disagree with me, but whom I at least managed to convince that the allegation of genocide is not an absurd allegation motivated by antisemitism.”

To which we can now all add (unless we rely on mainstream journalism) the sight of Israelis on the rampage at a football match, shouting “death to Arabs”.

Triangulation

My little blog gained a mass of followers when I was a CLP and an LRC officer, banging the drum for the Corbyn movement. That tailed off when I started talking about the women’s rights campaign, then ballooned as the women’s rights movement found me. It took a dive when I showed my colours after October 7th [sighs tiredly] — it didn’t start on October 7th. The left has always been anti-apartheid, and anti-settler colonialism. It’s just beginning to build again, now I’m finding a readership who get both of those things.

Now, my little readership of radical left radical feminists had better cover their eyes for a couple of paragraphs here…

This week, lot of women’s groups are sharing and discussing an infuriating article from Alastair Campbell.

A favourite retort amongst the women is a Substack missive from Suzanne Moore, who writes that “Campbell explains that the fact that trans issues played a part in the Democrat loss was relayed to him by his US pal, the former diplomat and journalist James Rubin. A man told him something, so Campbell listened.”

I completely agree with Moore that Campbell’s a bullying, arrogant opportunist and a very good example of how good apparently-left men have been at ignoring the women’s rights campaign, but then her recent missives to the world are full of other lines of the apparent left, such as…

“News agencies still keep translating ‘Jew’ as ‘Israeli’, which is wrong: Hamas do not want to kill only Israelis. For Hamas, a Jew is a Jew and they wish all of them dead. Do I have to spell it out? Apparently yes, I do.”

Yes Suzanne, you do. You see, if something’s true, you can ask people to look at the evidence and then discuss it but if it’s not, you have to get a bunch of journalists such as yourself to keep on saying it until it’s absorbed.

She also talks about the “performative activism” of the #FreePalestine campaigns. She didn’t use that perjorative term when reporting on women’s rights actions and demos, but she knows the #FreePalestine campaign is a load of bull because she’s been to Israel, and us proles who can’t afford to go globe trotting should listen to her – even when she’s waffling on about her and Julie Bindel accidentally going on holiday to Greece to get away from all the nasty news.

Here’s the latest example of “performative activism”, in this case from French footie fans, who don’t take kindly to genocide or apartheid…

French supporters chose not to go to the Israel/France match in Paris (I don’t know if this photo is real – that’s how social media is, lately – but the figures on ticket sales are real)

Israel is currently busy killing people in Lebanon. If I ask mainstream journalists why, will they say “it’s complicated”? Have they even looked? It rather reminds me of the effect so clearly demonstrated by a very popular women’s rights YouTuber who got phoned by a bloke who asked her to look at some of the videos of what’s happening to people in Gaza, and why and she promptly said, I’ve seen all the videos of what happened on October 7th. I don’t want to watch your videos, thank you very much. – as though the former explained recoiling from the latter. That is the denial that professor Goldberg talks about.

Divisions, real and imagined

The division between the apparent left and the actual left makes sense. They are genuinely opposed political stances. The women’s movement encompasses right, left and centre because — hey, who knew! — there are women in ALL the political movements, and they all need sex-based rights — but I put it to you, the best way to distinguish between the real and the faux left is to ask people whether they get that settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide are all incontrovertably bad things, that responsible journalists should be pointing out as wrong, and responsible politicians should be exerting themselves to end. Whatever they all claim, most human beings get that.

Anyway, I’ve recovered from not finishing blog posts now – this one is nearly finished, hooray! My backlog includes one about Claire Provost and Matt Kennard’s Silent Coup and one about the Nordic Model Now conference, and one about a conversation with Illan Pape, including an explanation from me of why the those issues (Palestine, corporate exploitation and the exploitation of women and girls) need to be looked at together to be understood) … and one about a very exciting new project I just agreed to.

I will finish and publish them soooon!

Finally, I know the request for donations on the end of blog posts is boring but we really, really do need to be supporting independent voices at this time — that’s not just for me, but for all the truth-and-justice seekers out there. We used to pay a weekly newspaper bill. Now, we really need to pay a weekly bloggers bill – where you place it is up to you of course, but please make it a weekly habit, even if it’s only a couple of pounds.

In my case, and as I said above, my readership is, and therefore shares and donations are, quite low at the moment (see note on splits above) and it’s getting to that time of year where I need to pay for another year’s hosting for the blog and I also desperately want to buy a new camera, so I can be confident I’m using real images, at least when reporting UK events (see note on the football pic above) so please do consider the usual request below…

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Kay

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