To be honest, I didn't really care about this, and was annoyed at the lack of anti-CWF ammunition this event had given me.
Luckily, I then saw the pictures, and was "glad" (
) to see that they're made the Prophet look like a racist tabloid characature of an Arab.
Hopefully next year they can burn an effigy in protest of the growth of black fundamentalist Christian groups. May I suggest a golliwog?
I can't get myself too worked up about this. Didn't they burn Jesus and Hackney's major too?I don't see how it's particularly racist though.
Yes, I mean burning an effigy of a sterotype arab figure with a big nose isn't racist at all. If I had seen that picture without a caption I would have thought it was from a BNP do.
Devrim
It's not that they burned Mohammad in effigy that's the problem. While we might think it a little childish, no one is really going to have a problem with it.
The problem is that the effigy is a racist stereotype of an Arab - I mean look at it!
Just because CWF and their chums shriek that everyone is a liberal/Trot/women hater if they point out their mental anti-Islam stuff is going a bit fucking far, doesn't mean it doesn't need done.
Yes, I mean burning an effigy of a sterotype arab figure with a big nose isn't racist at all.
I like the evil eyes and the hunch myself.
For the record, I don't think the people who made it are 'racists' - I just think they've taken their opposition to the SWP pro-Islam stance ridiculously too far, and have done something unbelievably fucking stupid.
Populist opportunism again - the working class that CW see as their natural constituency, ie white locals (though that has always remained wishful fantasy) has greater fears now of Islam, encouraged by the tabloids who have always led CW's content and style - so CW play on that in the hope of drawing 'whitey' in. Racialised stereotyped politics swallowed whole and regurgitated as anarchism bandwagon jumping.
Well, yes. Take that image out of context, add the caption "Here's what the anarchists are up to", then it really makes anarchists look like total racist twats. Class War really do need to engage their collective brain before they do stuff.
I'd much rather they stopped doing stuff.
Serge Forward wrote:
Well, yes. Take that image out of context, add the caption "Here's what the anarchists are up to", then it really makes anarchists look like total racist twats. Class War really do need to engage their collective brain before they do stuff.I'd much rather they stopped doing stuff.
shut it you or do you wanna end up on top of next years.
Actually they probably will develop a class analysis about paki middle class doctors.
London Class War/Class War Federation continue to miss the point of political activism, so we're going to stab them with it, since Anarchists are being virtually forced into denouncing the LCW/CWF position which promotes this kind of subpolitik as a substitute for activism and discourse.
The point we'd like to stab you with is that political and cultural blunder that the 'leadership' of London Class War/Class War Federation makes by burning the effigies of two very famous religious/political apostate Jews. What's all that about? Are Class War the new Sanhedrin? If they are, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to stone the effigies?
On a public level, if the Paul Marsh/Darren Redstar blundering version of 'Class War' continues to make protests in this way, then all of us enjoined in the class struggle might be tarred with the same brush.
On a subliminal level, such action could compromise the entire anarchist stance for disestablishmentarianism - the separation of religion from state.
Leaving aside Paul Marsh's unsavoury views about people of faith, I cannot for the life of me understand why the Class War Federation/London Class War should allow itself to be run by people who appear to be philosophically hostile to Anarchism.
Thora wrote:
I can't get myself too worked up about this. Didn't they burn Jesus and Hackney's major too?I don't see how it's particularly racist though.
Yes, I mean burning an effigy of a sterotype arab figure with a big nose isn't racist at all. If I had seen that picture without a caption I would have thought it was from a BNP do.
Devrim
We came to a similar conclusion, and we're very unhappy about it. It's antisemitism in the true sense of it's meaning.
The point we'd like to stab you with is that political and cultural blunder that the 'leadership' of London Class War/Class War Federation makes by burning the effigies of two very famous religious/political apostate Jews. What's all that about? Are Class War the new Sanhedrin? If they are, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to stone the effigies?
Yeah, sometimes I nick jokes off urban75 and hope nobody notices too 
What is Mohammed supposed to look liek anyway? Isn't his image banned by the Koran or whatever and that's what started all that shit about the danish mag?
In the absence of any depictions of the prophet did they go: "Well he'd probably just look like any other towelhead"?
The ironic thing is that tactically it's really similar to SWP and the anti-war shit. Insert Blair (ooh, sorry I mean Bliar) and Bush for Mohammad and I'd think it was them.
In the meantime, let Class War do what they will. Noone takes them seriously anyway, apart from conceivably a BBC researcher for Eastenders.
god I couldn't see that picture before. That's truly truly awful.
Still no doubt some will take disapproval here as a sign of "great fucking success and a job well done"...
I think it would be accurate to say that pretty much every person in the country who wasn't either a racist, or in the small group of class war or IWCA periphery would think this was stupid. And probably the IWCA types would think it childish.
Of course it's childish. I don't see why burning Mohammed's so much worse than burning Jesus though.
Burning an effigy of Mugabe would be no worse than burning one of Bush but if you make it as a big-lipped racist charicature then there's a problem, no?
Of course it's childish. I don't see why burning Mohammed's so much worse than burning Jesus though.
It's not because it's Mohammed, it's because of the way that they have portrayed Mohammed.
Do you not think the beady eyes and the hook nose are even a tiny bit dodgy?
In itself, it isn't any worse... but in the current ultra right political climate, it's totally fucking stupid. Plus, the Mohammed effigy looked very racially stereotyped, like what would have once been called a "dirty wog".
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but are Class War really this fucking stupid??? I mean to say, it really undermines any notion of working class unity while making anarchists look total shite. The far right or even the state itself couldn't have made a better job of it.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but are Class War really this fucking stupid??? I mean to say, it really undermines any notion of working class unity while making anarchists look total shite. The far right or even the state itself couldn't have made a better job of it.
I think it's more down to the fact that Class War's pollitics are pretty much a reaction against liberal/Trot stupidity. Which is all very well, except that it leads to silly positions on Islam and idiotic stunts like this.
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Hobsbawm discusses the potential and limits of cities as sites of riot and insurrection.
An overview of the crisis in Czechoslovakia 1968, by the Trotskyist Alan Woods.
First issue of an irregular workers' bulletin put together by users of the website, libcom.org. This issue focuses on the 2008 pay dispute over sub-inflation pay offers.
*
Class War bonfire party
Aren't people shocked by this? Isn't it quite worrying when anarcho-populism is making racist effigies, and burning them?
http://www.londonclasswar.org/newswire_bonfirenight.php
Devrim