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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

I do not usually recommend that you read the publications of the Socialist Workers Party

The Socialist Workers Party (Glad you asked, comrade: apostrophes are a bourgeois affectation!) are a bunch of Trotskyist goblins with admittedly good organisational skills. Back in 2011, I reminisced about how you could turn up at any demonstration for any left wing cause in Britain over the last forty years and find that their lank-haired activists had been there handing out posters since 4 a.m.:

Three quarters of the posters, and almost all of the printed ones, were produced by the Socialist Workers Party. Busy little bees, they were. They still are: it is an astonishing fact that this tiny and fissiparous Trotskyist sect has twice dominated massive popular protest movements in my lifetime; the Anti-Nazi League / Rock against Racism movement of the 80s and the Stop The War Coalition of 2001-2008. Sorry, 2001-present, only they stop wars much more quietly now that Mr Obama is president. They were also big in CND.

Their literary output is not usually enticing. But I would recommend you read this press release of theirs while you still can.

Press release: Facebook shuts down major left wing group in Britain

January 22, 2021

Press release: Facebook shuts down major left wing group in Britain

For immediate release.

Facebook has shut down the accounts of one of the biggest left wing organisations in Britain, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) (1). The Socialist Workers Party Facebook page – as well as account of local pages – have been removed from Facebook with no explanation given. Those targeted say it amounts to a silencing of political activists.

Facebook took the action on Friday, shutting down the Socialist Workers Party page and removing dozens of leading SWP activists from the platform.

The SWP Facebook page regularly posts in support of Palestine, Black Lives Matter and against Boris Johnson’s Covid policies. It also hosts dozens of online events every week that activists across the country take part in.

The SWP say they have been silenced for speaking out on these issues and that the action taken by Facebook amounts to an attack on political activists to organise. They are demanding to be reinstated immediately.

Bye, bye Swappers. You were a presence in British politics for nearly half a century, British as damson jam from Jeremy Corbyn’s allotment. And now you are gone from one platform, just like that, and soon you will be gone from the others.

Incidentally, that nine year old post of mine contained a link to this Guardian story that I expect has had more clicks in the last two weeks than in the nine years before that:

Student protester jailed for throwing fire extinguisher:

A student who admitted throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof of a central London building during the student fees protests has been jailed.

Edward Woollard, 18, from Hampshire, was among protesters who broke into the Tory party headquarters and emerged on the roof on 10 November.

He was jailed for two years and eight months after admitting at an earlier hearing to committing violent disorder.

Police said his actions “could have resulted in catastrophic injury”.

And so it could. Mere chance that it didn’t.

The student, who hoped to be the first member of his family to go on to higher education, was filmed throwing an empty metal fire extinguisher from the seventh-floor of 30 Millbank as hundreds of people gathered in a courtyard below.

The canister narrowly missed a line of police officers attempting to protect the looted and vandalised building from further damage on a day when 66 people were arrested.

Yet John McDonnell MP, later to become Shadow Chancellor, thought Woollard was hard done by.

  • Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has faced criticism for allegedly supporting student Edward Woollard, who was jailed for throwing a fire extinguisher off a roof during student riots
  • Uncovered: John McDonnell Praises 2010 Riots

    Look at Niall Kilmartin’s post of January 15th. That and other accounts of the death of Officer Brian Sicknick from injuries sustained at the riot at the US capitol provide an interesting comparison.

  • 12 comments to I do not usually recommend that you read the publications of the Socialist Workers Party

    • bobby b

      Interesting that the USA version is still alive and well on FB.

      Also interesting that I see no rabid denunciations of FB on that page for banning their UK contingent.

      Seems as if FB has the power to scare brothers off from fighting for each other.

    • Hugh

      Ah,it takes me back to my student days.
      Nearly all public school boys with one working class member; their pride and joy.

    • Katy Hibbert

      They don’t like it up ’em.

      First they came for Trump etc etc

    • We will not lack for mind-broadening frenemies to defend even after tolerating ‘equality before the law’ arguments against the loudest “I can say it but you can’t” enforcers of the double-standard. (From my post The equal oppression of the laws)

      The SWP sure qualify as “mind-broadening frenemies”. Before they were “removed from Facebook with no explanation given” did they ever rejoice over the deplatforming of others? Maybe not. Maybe, like Merkel and von der Leyden, the Socialist Workers Party would never approve a capitalist organisation banning people from its platform, since only the socialist state should have the power to ban all doubters of socialism from every platform.

      May MeWe and suchlike one day make Facebook eat their dust.

    • Eric

      Glad you asked, comrade: apostrophes are a bourgeois affectation!

      You could read it more than one way. Workers, plural, and not necessarily possessive, being made up of workers but not belonging to them.

    • bobby b

      “May MeWe and suchlike one day make Facebook eat their dust.”

      MeWe has been banning Trumpcentric groups, as well as gun-related content. (And I don’t mean “shoot the dang progs with your guns!” content, but “here’s how to remove the bolt carrier group if it jams” content, or “how do I reload ammo” content.)

      I fear MeWe offers most of us little comfort. CEO is just another rich progressive using the anti-FB trend to build his platform, which he will then run pretty much as FB is run.

    • bobby b (January 25, 2021 at 1:00 am), thanks for info. I had recently seen an article on MeWe that began with instapundit-like ‘Hmmm’ but seemed to have some hopes of them, so had made a mental note to check them out, while wondering if they would have a Parler-like experience; from what you say, I guess not.

    • John Lewis

      “Sod off Swampy” but this time from an unexpected source.

      (Yes I know that was Greenpeace, I also believe there was just as much crossover between them and the SWP as there is today between the BLM and Antifa crowds).

    • Paul Marks

      The international establishment strongly support Frankfurt School “Cultural” Marxism – Third Wave Feminism, Critical Race Theory, “Trans Rights” and so on – but that does NOT mean that they endorse full economic Marxism.

      Think about it – does anyone that someone like Klaus Schwab or “President” Xi in China or the lapdog who licks his boots “Joe” Biden, is on the same page as the Socialist Workers Party?

      The ECONOMIC agenda of the Davos crowd (including “President” Xi and lapdog bootlicker Joseph Biden) is far closer to FASCISM rather than Orthodox Marxism – and Mussolini always held that he was updating Marxism for the modern world (an heretical opinion for Orthodox Marxists – which is why they killed Mussolini).

      Klaus Schwab and the Davos Corporate and Governmental establishment elite do not like the word “Fascism” so they use the term “Stakeholder Capitalism” which, essentially, means the same thing.

      As I have pointed out before……

      All this is very close to the ideas of Saint-Simon (a French Collectivist) some two centuries ago – Big Business types, Credit Bubble bankers and so on, are not to be killed – they are to be IN CHARGE of the new Collectivist world society, with much the same Progressive laws and government tax-and-spend everywhere.

      The establishment in this country, and other countries, would never endorse the policies of economic Marxists such as the Socialist Workers Party because it would mean wealthy people such as themselves being robbed and murdered, and the owners of Facebook, Twitter, Google (and so on) oppose the SWP for the same, quite understandable, reasons.

      Orthodox Marxists were good for (with their looting and burning of cities) helping get rid of “Trump” (Donald John Trump had openly opposed, indeed mocked, the agenda of Davos – so he had to go) – but the international establishment do not want these economic policies.

      The economic policies they want are those of Saint Simon two centuries ago, or Mussolini in the 1930s.

      Names are important – the international media would never support Mussolini and Fascism, but they will support Klaus Schwab and Stakeholder Capitalism. Essentially the same thing – but with a different name.

      There are also many “Conservatives” very close the “Sustainable Development” and “Stakeholder Capitalism” of totalitarian (Fascist) Davos.

      The SWP are thugs on the street – Klaus Schwab is a civilised person, he represents a more acceptable face of totalitarianism.

    • Caligari

      Hypocrisy and double standard are typical for a certain strategy of medial fight.

      If I looks from Germany to the conflict in UK or the States, I ofter wounder how fair your press still is.
      Trump at all, is IMHO not a quite good president, but he is far away from being a facist.

      But the point is, you have still two sites in the States, unlike the countries of Europe. The press there is a party of the conflict and fight againts the new media.

    • Flubber

      The whole point of Cultural Marxism is the destruction of the country and culture that is currently there.

      It doesn’t necessarily specify what comes after. The closest I can see is the Great Reset and the Chinese credit system.

      The destruction of the independent middle class and everyone on government UBI with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads if they express an unauthorised opinion.

      Oh and a lot fewer white people.

    • Paul Marks

      Flubber – so far POLAND has rejected a lot of the agenda of evil (although, tragically, not the lockdown – or E.U. subsidies which are corrupting), I do not know if Poland can continue stand against the tide of evil.