Monday, March 20, 2006
Marching for Denmark and the 'Viking Jihad'. posted by Richard Seymour
Okay, so some hacks want to rally in Trafalgar Square in order to defend Jyllands-Posten's right to publish racist cartoons (http://marchforfreeexpression.blogspot.com/). What's it to you? Or me? It's just that I suspected there was something rather defensive in Cohen's advertisement for it in The Observer yesterday:Fortunately, the British National Party is nowhere to be seen and the rally will be filled with democratic leftists, Liberal Democrats, secularists and Iranian and Saudi Arabian dissidents.
He adds that with the 'white far right' absent, the 'brown far right' will be holding a counter-demonstration. And he advises on the dress code: "Danish". On this account, it is a harmless liberal self-aggrandising love-in, a proverbial roll in the hay, with ample free expression and free love all around, spoiled only by the seething hordes of the Muslim Action Committee (not a far right organisation at all, actually). Turns out, however, that among the key supporters of the rally are the Freedom Association, a nasty little far right group which received money from the apartheid regime in South Africa and which spends most of its time these days moaning about the brown tide of migrants in our green and pleasant land. Also advertised is the support of various branches of the UK Independence Party, an organisation packed with racists and outriders for the far right. And the Libertarian Alliance, an organisation which would like to repeal all anti-racist laws and disband the Commission for Racial Equality, will be represented by Sean Gabb. They made themselves heroes of the far right by describing Yasmin Alibhai-Brown as an anti-white racist.
And there will be at least some BNP folks present, under the rubric of a BNP spin-off organisation called Civil Liberty. Also present will be the Islamophobes of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Organisation. And they appear to have the support of a blogger-cum-tabloid columnist.
There will also, it is advertised, be a 'sister rally' in Copenhagen, organised in part by one Harry Vinter, who sweetly promises that "In accordance with your guidelines there will be no expression against any group of people. Only for free expression." This would be a more impressive stipulation if the March for Free Expression website did not make it plain that its campaign is specifically against Islam, not least by advertising a wonderful range of t-shirts plastered with witty slogans such as Fatwa You Too, Viking Jihad, Up Yours Religion of Peace, Islam Is a Blast etc etc. Oh, joy.
So, let's get this straight: with a wave of anti-Muslim violence and racism breaking out across Europe, some liberals are anxious to defend the right to incite hatred against Muslims, and while doing so they intend to rally in Trafalgar Square alongside known racists and far right activists while claiming that Muslims who demonstrably object to this are themselves the 'brown far right'. And to think, these people complain about the fundamentalists' lack of irony.