fascism – To Whom It May Concern

Here In the Empire

Poway, California. The final day of Passover.

According to one eight-year-old child in attendance, the shooter aimed for the kids first.

The rabbi was shot through the hand, losing his index finger, and reports say that at first he attempted to continue speaking from the front. A member of the congregation, sixty-year-old Lori Gilbert Kaye, the only one to die, jumped in front of him.

The rabbi, Yisroel Goldstein, will later write in a New York Times op-ed, “today should have been my funeral.”

Anyone who refuses to feel some combination of shock, despair, and absolute rage at all of this has no business reflecting on the politics of it.

* * *

To what degree is America willing to let antisemitism simply exist as part of its landscape? How often must something be “unfortunate” and “senseless” for it to finally be deliberate and structural?

The former two are in the vocabulary of rehearsed dismay, of those who see bigoted violence as sorrowful but inevitable. There is a deception – unconscious or not – in such a routine. It obscures the way in which atrocities always fit somewhere into a system’s necessities.

Make no mistake: antisemitism, the oppression of Jews, is very much a structural phenomenon. Though it predates capitalism, it took on a very specific role in its rise and the concomitant spread of European imperialism. Sai Englert, in his 2018 article for Historical Materialism, illustrates how the rise of capitalism and the modern nation-state subjected European Jews to “colonial processes of racialization,” excluding them from the national identity while conversely promising political liberty through assimilation.

That process reached its crescendo in World War II and, inextricably bound up with the conflict itself, the Holocaust. The demotion of most European nations to, at best, junior partners in an ascendant American empire after the war’s end was part of a global rearrangement in the geopolitical terrain. Maps were redrawn, new walls were thrown up that in some cases left the most powerful nation-states in disarray. But the images of the ghettoes, the concentration and death camps, of industrially perfected genocide, left a mark on global consciousness that took the form of the refrain “Never Again.”

Of course, refrains always run the risk of being empty words. Plenty of antisemites and antisemitic ideas ran and continue to run through the halls of American industry and politics. Look at any strain of reactionary thought over the past seventy-five years – anti-communism, opposition to civil rights or queer liberation – and you’ll find tinges of the same modern/classic judeophobia.

Antisemitism never went away. It merely had its place in American life shifted. Its current “return” is both an intensification of this shift and a reemergence of the old in the age of a very troubled empire.

Empire, it should be emphasized, is not a conspiracy. Conspiracies are conducted and decided behind closed doors. Empires are hidden in plain sight, built in the brazen light of day, sewn into our routines and perversely grafted onto our sense of a stable future. As such they push and pull on our conceptions of self and other, on the boundaries of identity and subjectivity. It also, quite frequently, weaponizes them.

* * *

John Earnest, the man who shot up Chabad of Poway, made his motivations clear in his manifesto. He praised Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, and Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant. Like them, he sees Jews as operating in concert with Muslims, non-whites generally, “cultural Marxists” and others as undermining whites and Christians.

Against the backdrop of Christchurch, Tree of Life, Charlottesville and beyond, ignoring the obvious is impossible. But you can still minimize it. It is unsurprising that Meghan McCain and Ted Cruz are blaming Ilhan Omar’s criticism of AIPAC for the events in Poway, brushing aside the proof that Earnest was also likely behind the Escondido mosque arson in March. It is a narrative that deliberately ignores the assault on Muslims, as well as the rejection of AIPAC by so many American Jews.

It is not simply that it is easier to convince an Islamophobe of antisemitic ideas. Islamophobia is deeply entangled with contemporary processes of racialization, the delineation between “good Jew” and “bad Jew” proffered by the establishment right. These same processes, it should be noted, are also pushed by an Israeli apartheid government that is cozying up to the global far-right.

Fascism is by its nature a distillation of imperialism’s most virulent logic; each sees in the other a funhouse mirror version of itself. If it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the rhetoric of the mainstream right from its fascist counterpart, this is why. Both rely on a vision of the repressive state as the only reasonable bulwark against the brown hordes lapping at America’s gates.

Consider how Trump responded when he learned that Jonathan Morales, the Chabad member who chased off Earnest, is a border patrol agent. “Sincerest THANK YOU to our great Border Patrol Agent who stopped the shooter at the Synagogue in Poway, California,” he tweeted. “He may have been off duty but his talents for Law Enforcement weren’t.”

Capitalizations are Trump’s own.

* * *

More news as I was still writing the above: a shooting on the last day of classes at University of North Carolina – Charlotte, killing two and injuring many others, and the murder of a Sikh family of four in West Chester, Ohio. The suspect of the UNC shooting is in custody but there is no word of a possible motive. There is no known suspect for the West Chester killings.

I could write that this is one of those weeks where America appears to be coming apart at the seams, but that would be to imply that there is something unique in the terror. There isn’t. It is by now utterly quotidian. Utterly American.

Debating gun control offers very little. Yes, this country has become a murderous parody of itself, the place where André Breton’s eighty-year-old description of “the simplest surrealist act” has come to life. And there are influential political forces who have aided in making this a reality.

But what we are witnessing would eventually, even if all guns were to vanish tomorrow, find some other equally violent expression. Empires are ruthless places while in turmoil; they require outsiders, an us and a them, and the kind of atomization that makes these acts inevitable.

Similarly, the liberal ideal of multiculturalism is a poor ideological defense against racialized terror. A different conception of identity is called for. There is something to be said in what Robin DG Kelley refers to as “polyculturalism,” a framework that allows for both the autonomy of cultures and the inevitability that they will converge, morph, and redefine themselves.

All cultural transgressions create new foci and axes, which then collide and bend and create new ones still. What this points to is an interpretation of culture not as a series of untouchable monoliths but as a process (a cultivation if you will) ultimately shaped by humans. The question then becomes “which humans?”

Recent years have seen a renewal of interest in pre-war Jewish radical ideas, those that informed and came out of the socialist Bund and other similar groups. It’s seen in formation like Jewdas in the UK, the Jewish Solidarity Caucus of DSA, in books like the recently republished Revolutionary Yiddishland. Prime among these ideas is that of “doikayt,” the Yiddish word for “hereness,” expressed more lengthily in the slogan “vauhin mir lebn, dos iz aundzer khoumland” … “Wherever we live, that’s our homeland.”

Again, refrains always run the risk of becoming no more than rhetoric. The critical charge of this one, its actionability if you will, is in its implication of militant recognition. A rejection of the meek quietism of “thoughts and prayers,” “tolerance” or “acceptance.” If it echoes other mantras of revolution and self-determination – the Black Panthers’ “community control” or the Zapatistas’ “¡Ya basta!” – then all the better. Those who survive the empire can also redefine themselves without its permission.

Lewisham. Charlottesville.

Today is the 40th anniversary of what is remembered in Britain as the Battle of Lewisham. On August 13th, 1977, anti-racist demonstrators, organized primarily by the Socialist Workers Party, faced down with the fascist National Front organization. The NF had been growing in influence and gaining votes by doing exactly what fascists do: exploit acute economic anxieties by pointing the finger at immigrants and people of color. On that day in the London Borough of Lewisham, they were organizing what they called an “anti-mugging rally,” claiming that Black and Caribbeans were responsible for a disproportionate number of muggings and assault. Lewisham, a majority Black and brown area, was chosen for the site as a deliberate provocation.

The National Front were thoroughly routed that day. Five hundred of them tried to march to the town center; they were met by 4000 counter-demonstrators. Many were members of left-wing and anti-racist groups, but they were primarily youth from the surrounding neighborhoods. Police attempted to protect the NF march, but the anti-racists broke through the line several times to chase them off. The fascists ended up having their final rally in a parking lot before being escorted to the train by police. The cops, furious at being humiliated, continued to attempt taking back the streets, but in the end it was the counter-demonstrators who won out.

Here’s David Widgery, writing in his book on Beating Time: Riot ‘n’ Race ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll.

The mood was justly euphoric. Not only because of the sense of achievement – they didn’t pass, not with dignity anyway, and the police completely lost the absolute control [Police Commissioner] McNee had boasted about – but also because, at last, we were all in it together.

In the end there was a lot that came of Lewisham. The Anti-Nazi League was formed, Rock Against Racism (formed a year earlier) gained greater exposure and momentum, and the NF were faced down several more times before drifting into the background of organized politics. Some anti-racists and Leftists were locked up. Others, like Misty in Roots singer Clarence Baker, sustained life-threatening injuries. Still others, Blair Peach for instance, were killed. But there were also moments like those described by Widgery, including (sometimes literal) carnivals of the oppressed. There were intense and beautiful moments of victory, of seeing an ugly racist threat pushed out of public space and giving way to multi-racial crowds becoming unavoidably aware of their own power, feeling a freedom that is all the more thrilling for it having been fought for. The movement didn’t end racism in Britain of course, but it created space for a multi-racial resistance that was able to push back its worst manifestations.

There is something breathtakingly eerie about this anniversary falling when it does. Calendars have no will of their own of course, but the commemorations they allow are what give us the ability to change the meaning of the past. To see where the unfinished business lies and perhaps identify the link that, if broken, might prevent future history from going in the same destructive circles. Present struggles unearth different meanings of past events that have been hidden under the rubble of ideology.

Historical parallels are imperfect things and severely limited in what they can teach us. Partially because there is a temptation for them to become inert and predetermined. But if we can step back and look at the possibilities of not just what did happen but what might have happened had participants chosen a different way, the dynamics of what is playing out now start to seem obvious. Watershed moments do not merely happen. Their meaning is shaped and reshaped over time by those who step into a breach.

Lewisham. Charlottesville.

National Front. Alt-right.

Thatcher’s fears of Britain “swamped by people with a different culture.” Trump’s ravings about “bad hombres.”

Blair Peach. Heather Heyer.

The raw organizational materials of the Anti-Nazi League. Those who marched and ultimately outnumbered the fascists yesterday.

There are plenty of open questions thrust upon us by the realities of notions like unity or, more pointedly, a united front. These questions are hard to answer when your own are in the hospital or in the morgue. But they also must be asked. History must be engaged. Not just as the past but as something currently unfolding. Possibility refuses to present itself unless we do.

This post originally appeared at an earlier blog that I used to run. I have migrated it with its original post date.

Synthpop, the Left, and the Future That Refuses to Come

Depeche Mode have long suffered in the synthpop scene from what I call “godfather syndrome.” They aren’t the only act of massive influence who find themselves in such a position. Nor is it entirely, or even mostly, their fault. The irony of popular culture’s nostalgic time-loop is that it never really lets you see even the most influential acts through anything but layer upon layer of distorting filters.

Yes, acts like Chvrches, Grimes, and M83 arguably wouldn’t exist without Depeche Mode, but in the consciousness of many of these groups’ more casual (and let’s face it: younger) fans, Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher likely register as far shallower versions of themselves. They are important in some vague way but not really worth understanding as anything other than sugary predecessors to a genre that has become fuller and more fleshed out. It’s wrong of course, but a very real perception.

Simon Reynolds, in his own short written appreciation of them, confesses that he himself had to work through a perception of the group – persistent even when they were at their height – that they “lacked substance.” Add in a few decades and a music industry that prioritizes quality-obscuring levels of quantity, and it’s not hard to see why more people associate “Just Can’t Get Enough” with Depeche Mode than they do “Policy of Truth.” While even fewer recall songs like “Master and Servant,” “Blasphemous Rumours,” their strident anti-Thatcherism, or their dark commentaries on authoritarianism and religion.

A hazy memory can easily be siphoned off. When alt-right figurehead and aspiring punching bag Richard Spencer declared “Depeche Mode is the official band of the alt-right,” he might have gotten away with it if not for the direct intervention of the band. The quasi-martial rhythms of synthpop have always, for music journalists who honestly should have known better, conjured fascist affinities. Mick Farren’s label of Gary Numan’s music as the “Adolf Hitler Memorial Space Patrol” still unjustifiably sticks.

As for Depeche Mode’s own sense of their scene’s roots, it is best summed up in their most recent video:

Ultimately, the video is more than a little on-the-nose. As for the song itself, its music is far more interesting than its preachy “message.” Even at their sharpest, Mode have never been very good at talking politics. But “Where’s the Revolution?” also reveals something that is not often discussed. Namely that much of synthpop – particularly in Britain – viewed and positioned itself as an oppositional response to an increasingly right-wing modernity. And, in turn, the song reveals how far removed the cultural landscape is from that.

A recognizable reference point for those who didn’t experience this would be the “Pits and Perverts” concert portrayed in the move Pride, originally staged as a benefit for the UK miners’ strike by Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and headlined by the Bronski Beat. This show rather exemplified a deliberate, class-conscious countercultural attempt to aesthetically perceive of working class and queer identities as complimentary of and overlapping with one another. It wasn’t for nothing that after leaving the group, Jimmy Somerville’s next project was named Communards. Nor, for that matter, is it coincidental that Depeche Mode’s own outspoken anti-Thatcherism came within this same time-frame. When the Left was still fighting not be marginalized rather than fighting to break out from the margins. When there was a sense of competing futures vying for influence.

Intentionally or not, Mode’s video comes off as a lamentation for what has become of the organized politics that interacted with this scene and made such artistic moments possible. The Eisenstein-esque usage of well-placed red on black and white film is both a nod to British synth’s constructivist influences and a statement of political sympathy. The title and refrain could be read either as berating the listener or just a kind of despair for the days when there was indeed some kind of opposition posed to the Trumps and UKIPs of the world that didn’t just rehearse the same nostalgic rituals as a method for sustaining itself. Inevitably, with enough triumphalist shouting, the crowd dwindles, ends up talking to itself, and the red flag becomes a useless ornament better left on the ground.

None of this is a done deal. The current environment may be one in which there is increasing room for the Left’s explanations of the world, but it’s also one defined by the stark lack of a force coherent enough to give those explanations corporeal form. Capital – not just its economics but its political and cultural institutions – refuses to relinquish its grip. It also has run out of any significant vision for the future. Earlier today, a tweet from Zero Books pointed out that “The future still sounds like Kraftwerk even though Kraftwerk is more antique now than Big Band music was in the 70s.” Very true. And the fact that so little had managed to sound new in forty years speaks to the kind of nostalgic ritual that neoliberalism has engendered in the cultural landscape.

This is a manipulative kind of nostalgia, particularly because it takes place in the context of very little being new to begin with. It is greatly responsible for the “godfather syndrome” I spoke of earlier, partially because it also makes it far easier for scenes and subcultures to appear unmoored from history. Ask any number of synth fans who are utterly oblivious to the above history. Ask, for that matter, and if you can stomach it, Richard Spencer. Given where many young people’s political opinions are at right now, they may be encouraged to learn about these connections between aesthetics and politics. Richard Spencer not so much.

Which is what makes “Where’s the Revolution?” poignant. Not as a battle cry or even as a sterling example of politics as art, but as a funeral dirge, an acknowledgement of mourning. Mourning that also necessitates a starting point of sorts. As art it succeeds in only the clunkiest way. As politics, it is ham-fisted. But as an artifact for the moment, it’s incredibly apt.

This post originally appeared at an earlier blog that I used to run. I have migrated it with its original post date.