La jeunesse emmerde le Front national

How can it be that this song and this slogan from it is once again relevant, forty years after it was first sung?

I love Bérurier Noir and this song, but it’s fucking frustrating that the same issues they sang against back in 1985 are still alive and kicking now in 2024. François Guillemot gets it exactly right her in this interview in The Guardian:

Because it comes at a really dangerous point in French history. It feels like we are at the turning point, and I don’t want people like Bardella and Le Pen take power because they will be dangerous.

It was easy to chant against Jean-Marie Le Pen because he was almost a caricature of a far-right politician: he was very bourgeois, very racist and that made it easy to stand up to him. His daughter, by contrast, changed her looks and has been very strategic in detoxifying the party’s image, for example by condemning antisemitism.

She and Bardella have managed to attract voters who are not ideologically formatted like the skinheads of the 1980s. These voters are ras-le-bol, fed up with the old way of doing things. They want to topple the system. I see it in a place like Lyon, where I now teach history at the university: inside the city, most people vote left or centre, but on the outskirts it’s mostly the National Rally.

I think Macron has to shoulder most of the blame. He had everything in his hands to create real change, but his arrogant management of the state managed to turn a lot of people against him. And with his unpopular pension reforms and the new immigration law he opened the door for the National Rally, because he normalised their ideas. The media, who have helped de-demonise the National Rally and played up Bardella as a pop star, have not helped.

The past four decades all through Europe and America we’ve seen our political choices being steadily reduced to one between cynical centrists slowly destroying the world to enrich their friends and literal fascists promoted as their main opposition as they’re less dangerous to the status quo than anything even vaguely leftist. Whenever anything on the left has had even a small change of getting near power it is stomped to death (cf. Corbyn) while people like Trump, Farage and Le Pen are activily promoted. So now in France you have a choice between Macron, already executing the sort of policies Le Pen would kill for and Le Pen, but at least there there still is a leftist movement to oppose both. In the UK meanwhile the only thing you can chose is the colour of the tie the leader of the crackdowns and austerity party will wear, while in the US it’s between genocide Joe and cheeseburger Nazi Trump. Forty years of neoliberal centrism really has achieved a lot.

Blame Gordon Van Gelder instead

File 770 reports that the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is going to publish an actual fascist:

David A. Riley announced to readers of his blog on June 19 that his 11,600 word sword and sorcery novelette “Ossani the Healer and the Beautiful Homunculus” “has been accepted for publication – and by one of the most prestigious markets I have ever appeared in.” On July 5 he revealed that the story “will be published sometime later this year in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.”
[…]
David A. Riley’s history with the UK’s National Front became common knowledge in 2016 after Riley was included on HWA’s Bram Stoker Award Jury. The HWA appointment became news at a time when questions were already being asked of Riley due to his involvement in the relaunch of Weirdbook. Riley reportedly answered in a no-longer-available Facebook thread.

The news was broken by a tweet from Christopher Rowe, in which he quoted the editor, Sheree Renée Thomas, while its publisher, Gordon Van Gelder, has stayed conspicuously silent. Much of the ire about this decision therefore has taken aim at Thomas. And to be honest, if as an editor you think not withdrawing a publication offer is more ethical than not publishing an actual fascist, you are due some criticism.

However, there are other circumstances in play. Thomas is a Black woman and as tonia ransom points out, the consequences of her deciding to cancel her offer might involve a little bit more than just online criticism:

I can not IMAGINE what Sheree is feeling like right now, but I’ll tell you what would be going through my mind:

– If I publish this guy, it hurts me and pisses off some readers.
– If I don’t publish him, I will get doxxed and me AND MY FUCKING FAMILY are in danger.

You cannot blame Thomas for not knowing who Riley was, you can blame her for not rescinding her offer but who is far more to blame is Gordon Van Gelder, who should not have left it to her to take the heat by staying silent himself. He has a duty as a publisher to a) not publish fascists and b) defend and protect his employees from fascists. The moment it became known who Riley was, he should’ve taken the lead in explaining why he would or would not publish Riley. Because he didn’t, it’s Thomas who is now getting both (deserved) criticism for the decision and hateful attacks by the far right. It’s doubly unfair because it’s also not clear whether this really was her decision to not retract the offer.

We should do better as a community, we should demand transparancy and honesty from Van Gelder as well.

Seriously? These losers?

The final panel of Nate Powell’s excellent About Face, “death and surrender to power in the clothing of men” has a warning:

These are the future fascist paramilitary participants and their ushers -- take them seriously

But I just cannot take them seriously. Those overgrown man children, with their penis substitutes and nerd sense of what is cool are made to be mocked and bullied. Just look at them. Gargling bleach to own the libs, deliberately running their cars badly to “roll coal” and own the libs, shooting themselves in the cock (literally) because they have the gun discipline of a drunk elephant. Any asshole can look tough in black sunglasses and holding an M-16, but take away these toys and they fold like a cheap suit. Yes, be aware that they’re dangerous, but for heaven’s sake don’t take them seriously. Fascist bully boys always need mocking.

Goosebumps

Aging Norwegian folkie leads 40,000 people singing the Norwegian version of Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Race, in a giant fuck you against Breivik and all he stands for



The news can seem unending grim day in day out, then something like this comes along and restores some of your faith in humanity. A reminder that despite all the Breiviks out there, there has been progress in the past seven decades since WWII, that the belief in the equality and worth of all people, no matter their race, creed, faith, orientation or gender, is utterly mainstream. The fascists and nazis have lost, they may still be dangerous but they cannot win.

It was seventyfive years ago yesterday



On the fourth of October, 1936, a coalition of Jews, unionists, Labour Party members and communists of various kinds, not to mention ordinary stopped the fascists under Oswald Mosley marching through the East End of London. In the Battle of Cable Street they stopped him and his blackshirts cold, despite a heavy police presence there to protect the fascists. It was a huge victory, hugely symbolic in that it was the victims who stood up to the fascists and their police escort; it would inspire antifascists decades later, even though there are always some who’d belittle these achievements.

See also: seventy years after Cable Street: nothing changes.