Why it's not OK to punch political opponents (even if they are Nazis)

It became a thing. A laugh and a joke - "I don't care how many different songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I'll laugh at every one." chortled one chap on Twitter. Others - respected journalists (is that an oxymoron these days?) included - justified punching Nazis with images of Second World War troops landing on Omaha beach, cleaning weapons and generally sticking it to those Nazis in that great war. Fortunately no-one's mentioned caster oil yet.

Problem with all this is that it valorises violence as a tool of political engagement. And to put it pretty bluntly, that's pretty much (at least in orthodox left wing definitions) the whole thing about Fascism. Despite Fascism and National Socialism being bastard children of social democracy, the "left" define them in terms of their fetish for violence - in language and out there on the streets. The "Far Right" is all about boots, flags, marches, banners and direct action something it shares with Trots, Black Bloc anarchists and other "Far Left" grouplets.

If you decide that it's fine to thump someone what you do is grant them the permission, in a manner of speaking, to thump you back. And don't come over all noble here - any circumstance in which violence is accepted represents a negation of democracy, of the idea that we are civilised enough to use discussion, consensus and the vote to resolve political dispute. Where does this end? We start off thumping real Nazis like Richard Spencer and then move to reporters from right of centre websites or people next to us on aeroplanes. Before we know it the people who like those right of centre websites are making common cause with Richard Spencer.

I'm reminded of Thurber's Very Proper Gander:

Not so very long ago there was a very fine gander. He was strong and smooth and beautiful and he spent most of his time singing to his wife and children. One day somebody who saw him strutting up and down in his yard and singing remarked, "There is a very proper gander." An old hen overheard this and told her husband about it that night in the roost. "They said something about propaganda," she said. "I have always suspected that," said the rooster, and he went around the barnyard next day telling everybody that the very fine gander was a dangerous bird, more than likely a hawk in gander's clothing. A small brown hen remembered a time when at a great distance she had seen the gander talking with some hawks in the forest. "They were up to no good," she said. A duck remembered that the gander had once told him he did not believe in anything. "He said to hell with the flag, too," said the duck. A guinea hen recalled that she had once seen somebody who looked very much like the gander throw something that looked a great deal like a bomb. Finally everybody snatched up sticks and stones and descended on the gander's house. He was strutting in his front yard, singing to his children and his wife. "There he is!" everybody cried. "Hawk-lover! Unbeliever! Flag-hater! Bomb-thrower!" So they set upon him and drove him out of the country.

The only winners from punching Nazis and Fascists are the Nazis and Fascists. And if you think punching people who you disagree with is just fine and dandy then you're part of the problem not part of the solution. If your mythology tells you - and left wing mythology does just this - that violence is central to Fascism and Nazi-ism then your punching that Nazi makes you one and the same as him.

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Threats of violence and death are serious even if they're from a vegan

My meatloaf. Not a vegan dish.

Let's be clear. I think veganism is stupid. I've no problem with people who want to adopt the habit, I can put up with them going on about it all the time but I do not consider that vegans have any moral superiority and take the view that their diet is very likely to be unhealthy.

But if you want to be a vegan that's fine. Or rather it's fine until to decide to use violence to try and force your moral prejudices onto others:

The takeaway and couple have received considerable numbers of negative comments on social media – including its Facebook page ‒ such as being called “psychopaths” by user Robert Smith, and Denise Bottall, who said Sam Deeson was “evil”, and that she should “let me at him with a pair of scissors.” Facebook user Janet Tomsen called the practice “disgusting and murder”.

Again, I guess it's just about OK to use this sort of language - the 'let me at them with scissors' comment is getting pretty close to the line though. And that was just one example of organised mobs of vegans trying to destroy a business because they've decided that their supposed (and false) moral superiority justifies that action.

Sadly this isn't a one-off and, because the targeting of restaurants by vegans is not dealt with by the police, the problem is escalating:

"As soon as the activists got hold of it we got around 200 death threats in hours. We have had between 4-5,000 messages, calls, texts and emails.

"It got to the point where staff were in tears and were scared to answer the phone when I thought, 'enough is enough' and pulled the Foie Gras from the menu.

"People coming to eat with us over the weekend are disappointed and I suppose in a way we've let the trolls win but I can't risk the safety of the staff."

You need to understand that there's a distinction between free speech - those vegan activists are entitled to criticise the pub's decision to serve foie gras - and actual harm. And a death threat that results in staff crying and undermines a business that employs people and contributes to the economy is demonstrably harm.

It is time that these mobs of vegan activists were dealt with in the same way we'd deal with a mob trying to prevent a mosque opening or a rampage of activists using threats of violence or rape to close down a feminist blog. Sadly, Norfolk police don't seem to share this view:

A spokesman for Norfolk Police said they were aware but would not investigate further as no direct threats had been made.

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Running amok...

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In 'Stand on Zanzibar', John Brunner coined the word: "muckers". This describes someone who flips and engages in a seemingly random and purposeless act of violence usually in a crowded placed like an airport, high street or, dare we mention it, school. The word - in Brunner's etymology was a corruption of the word "amok" which we know and define as:

...behave uncontrollably and disruptively

But more importantly, the derivation of "amok" is:

...mid 17th century: via Portuguese amouco, from Malay amok 'rushing in a frenzy'. Early use was as a noun denoting a Malay in a homicidal frenzy

And this was Brunner's usage - a homicidal frenzy. And they've been around for centuries - probably much longer.

So a question - following the terrible events of the last week, we're talking again about gun control. Now while I'm equivocal about such controls, it does seem to me that we should consider why we get "mockers" rather than just the means by which such men run amok?

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The Blackleg Miner

Some of you will know I have something of a penchant for lefty folk music – well folk music really but quite a lot of it is pretty lefty! And, while driving back from Carlisle to sunny Cullingworth, I was listening to a little ditty entitled “The Blackleg Miner”. Let me share with you some of the lyrics:

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place,
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a footrace
to catch the blackleg miner.
And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner.

Harkening to this, a thought struck me about strikes, unions and the problems of collective action. Essentially, what right do these men have to enforce what they desire through violence, bullying and intimidation? What right do they have to treat someone who just wishes to go to work, earn a wage and feed his family with such bullying intimidation?

By all means disagree with the strike-breaker, perhaps even have nothing to do with the blackleg. But violence and intimidation are wrong however much they are enforcing the desire of the majority. And the punishment meted out to those who break a strike – the intimidatory bullying – continues long beyond the end of the dispute. Here’s a report from 2009 in the Scottish Daily Record:

None of the strike-breakers approached by the Record would agree to be interviewed. Some have died, some moved away, a few defiant individuals stood their ground pleading their case but, to a man, they were reluctant to re-open old wounds.

This includes Jim Pearson, 76, of Dunfermline, who worked at the Longannet pit and was the first-miner in Fife to return to work. Pearson regularly appeared in the Record during 1984 after breaking the strike.

There were furious scenes on the day he returned. More than 150 police clashed with 200 pickets as he made his way to work. His van was ambushed by around 100 brick-throwing pickets and he ran the gauntlet for two terrifying miles with blood running down his face.

All because he chose to challenge the majority decision – to make a different and pretty tough choice about his life.

I guess we make our choices but no-one deserves this kind of treatment just for going to work.

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General Specific - thoughts on Islam and society

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"O mankind! We created you from a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know and honor each other (not that you should despise one another). Indeed the most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most righteous." Koran Chapter 49, Verse 13

Yesterday evening’s therapeutic visit to the Club finished with an enjoyable interaction – OK, dear reader, spat – with the neighbour. About Muslims. Or more importantly about General Specific.

The contention is clear – because it says somewhere in the Koran that non-Muslims have to be killed, therefore all people laying claim to being a Muslim subscribe to this and are a threat to our peace and democracy. Now, for the purpose of what follows, I am taking the existence of the offending chapter as a given. In truth I don’t know whether or not such a passage exists, what its context might be and how those who concern themselves with such matters interpret the chapter’s meaning.

My problem with all this is pretty simple. And to illustrate this I will make use of a book I have read – the Bible. Now you all know that the bible says that adulterers should be stoned to death:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. (Deut 22: 23-24)

Now, I’m pretty sure that if I bob along to talk to Cullingworth’s vicar (I think we have one now they’ve rebuild the new vicarage on the site of the nice one they knocked down), he will not be saying that your typical Cullingworth adulteress should by lined up in the Rec and bricked to death. While there may be subscribers to the Old Testament view – perhaps in the wackier outposts of American fundamentalism or in one of the nuttier African churches – I can say with some confidence that almost all Christians reject the requirements of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, at least in respect of stoning.

It’s all right, I’m ahead of you! The Koran also prescribes lapidation as the punishment for adultery and, as we know, in some Muslim countries such punishment is used – most notably and recently in Iran. So perhaps I was wrong in last night’s debate? Perhaps all Muslims do subscribe to the absolute, inviolable truth of every word within the Koran? I do not know but I am sure that those arguing that specific examples – a stoning case, a bearded mullah calling for jihad in a grainy video or a leaflet handed out by over-enthusiastic students – indicate a general position are no better informed.

It may be the case that all ‘proper’ Muslims subscribe to this view. But that makes it tricky for the many Muslims who find the prescription of stoning and the calls for endless, eternal, violent jihad something less than appealing. I do not believe that the good men and women I encounter – some devout Muslims, others Muslim by culture and tradition if rather lax in their practice – are engaged in some lurid conspiracy to destroy freedom and democracy. And I am encouraged by some Muslim writers:

Moderate Muslims aspire for a society – a city of virtue -- that will treat all people with dignity and respect. There will be no room for political or normative intimidation. Individuals will aspire to live an ethical life because they recognize its desirability. Communities will compete in doing good and politics will seek to encourage good and forbid evil. They believe that the internalization of the message of Islam can bring about the social transformation necessary for the establishment of the virtuous city. The only arena in which Moderate Muslims permit excess is in idealism.

Now this writer may be a lone voice in the wilderness but what we read more accurately reflects what I see and hear from those Muslims I meet. Indeed that same writer has written this encouragement to progress:

In my opinion, Muslims can modernize without de-Islamising or de-traditionalising. India and Japan have shown that societies can modernize without losing their traditional cultures. Muslim societies today have to distinguish between Islam and culture, retain their Islamic essence and reform dysfunctional cultural habits that hinder development, progress, equality and prosperity.

Muqteder Khan is no more the voice of Islam than is Osama Bin-Laden but his writing demonstrates that there is a pluralism of thought within Islam. And that we cannot take a passage from the Koran and from that extrapolate that every Muslim subscribes to a literal interpretation of that passage – any more than we can for Christians or Jews.

When some young men – acting, as they thought, in the interests of Islam – crashed planes into the World Trade Centre, I was sat in a Bradford Council Executive meeting (in the days when we had an all-party executive) discussing the response to Bradford’s riots of 7th July 2001. The link between the two events – while only slight – was not lost on us. We were discussing how better to involve and integrate a large Muslim community while, through an act of terrorism in another country, some other Muslims set up a huge wall between good men like my neighbour and the City’s Muslim community.

However much I point to the good Muslims and argue that you cannot go from the specific to the general, my good neighbours will point to the twin towers, to the bombs of July 2007 and to the stories of stonings and such. And they will say: “explain that then?” And I will be at a loss for words unable to understand how a faith that speaks so clearly of justice and peace can, at the same time, contain some who promote such barbarism, injustice and violence?

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Hooligans - it's not football they follow it's violence

A couple of weeks back this bar - the Foundry Hill in Bingley - had its windows smashed in, stock destroyed or stolen and customers threatened and intimidated. By men who claimed to be supporters of Bradford City - a "firm" known as Ointment. I am sure that up and down the country people can tell of similar tales - whether it is of the Brighton Headhunters, Palace's Dirty 30 or the Service Crew from Leeds. For all the adoption of a particular badge, these men are more lovers of violence than lovers of football.

Yesterday evening saw the seemingly inevitable violence break out at the game between West Ham and Millwall - long-standing rivals in London. Others like The West Ham Process and Darren Lewis in the Daily Mirror described the experience first hand and it did not sound pleasant or enjoyable - emotions we should be able to associate with a sporting occasion.

Some - like our sports minister - have responded with the obvious knee-jerk condemnation accompanied by calls for books to be thrown and stones not to be left unturned. I find this unhelpful since it heaps too much of the blame on the police, the stewards, the club and the ordinary fan. These reactions, however much they might be understandable, do not get to the heart of the matters, do not ask why such violence takes place and simply fuel the calls for more draconian restrictions on football - and by extension other sports as well.

Other observers - before and after the game - seem more wise, more thoughtful and should be paid more attention. Peter Preston in the Guardian reacts as a long-standing Millwall fan by saying it's not the game but the people. And before the game West Ham fan and regeneration writer, Julian Dobson asked what it is that creates divisions and prejudice - in society generally as much as in football.

And these writers appreciate that this hooliganism, this violence, reflects our wider society and culture - football is victim not a perpetrator. The solution - if there is one - lies within the minds of those who join these "firms" of hooligans. And with a society that is at best equivocal towards violence and at worst rewards it with license.