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French military threaten coup

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The letter, which was also signed by many senior military personnel below the rank of general, belies the myth that ‘democracy’ is the default mode of capitalism. It demonstrates there are sections of the ruling class who will not hesitate to jettison the paraphernalia of democracy when the working class threaten their control of the economy.

French military plan a coup

The letter makes it clear that there are many high-ranking soldiers who have no problem launching a military coup if they think the government of the day are not acting forcefully enough against the ‘suburban hordes’.

‘The hour is grave. France is in peril,’ the generals wrote. France is disintegrating and ‘Those who run our country must imperatively find the needed courage to eradicate these dangers.”

The generals go on the threaten that Macron’s failure to act decisively against ‘Islamism and the hordes from the banlieues’ will lead to ‘the intervention of our active-duty comrades in a perilous mission to protect our civilisation’s values and safeguard our compatriots on the national territory.’

By ‘hordes from the banlieues’ the generals mean the unemployed young people who live in dilapidated tower blocks in the suburbs around Paris, who are refusing to accept the almost daily harassment they experience at the hands of the police. They protested (successfully) against a proposed law making it illegal to publicise videos of police beating up young people.

The danger for the ruling class is that the numbers of unemployed and angry working class youth could be swollen by an anticipated surge in unemployment when the trillion-pound grants and loans to deal with the pandemic end.

The French state, who would not hesitate to arrest and put on trial ‘un-French’ agitators calling for an armed uprising, are suggesting that any active members of the military who signed the letter could face mild administrative consequences such as ‘delisting’ or ‘immediate retirement’. And, of course, as far as the already retired generals are concerned, no legal action is proposed.

For the working class this demonstrates the double standards of a state which claims to be acting in the defence of democracy when it attacks the left, and takes no action when democracy is threatened from the right.

All Dogs Matter

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When I saw this shop sign, I was outraged. I have to get it off my chest.

For months my social media feed has been splattered with posts from people on both sides of the Black Lives Matter fence. For the main I stayed out of it. There is not much new I felt I could contribute. And the ALL Lives Matter brigade were not going to be persuaded. No amount of reasonable discussion was going to get them to change their minds.

Then I saw this shop sign, and the penny dropped. Now I could see what the heated debate had really been about.

The All Dogs Matter (ADM) sign means the owners do not care about cats. They are anti-feline and prejudiced. If all dogs matter, so do all cats. And horses. And rhino’s. And caterpillars. All Animals Matter (AAM). Not just dogs, , but ALL animals. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all animals are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights.

To identify any sub-group of the category ‘animal’ as deserving of special attention is prejudice. That too, is self-evident. Only people who declare themselves warriors on behalf of ALL animals (and most of those people actually participate in campaigns for the rights of NO animal) can be said to be virtuous.

Now I get it.

Hold your nose and vote

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Ayesha Hazarika’s advice in her Evening Standard column echoes what many political commentators have suggested.

From their point of view neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Boris Johnson are suitable prime ministers. But one of them is going to win, so you have to choose the one you least dislike.

I am not convinced.

For nearly forty years I abstained in every election because I did not think it made a difference. When New Labour was born, I felt vindicated. Here was a leader, Tony Blair, who could not be separated with a cigarette paper from his conservative opponents.

But then there was the referendum. I was back. Here was a vote in which my vote counted. I could make a difference. The choice was simple – Leave or Remain – and whichever side won, their decision would be implemented. So I voted to Leave.

How naive I seem to myself when I reflect. The most basic student of Marxism could have told me I was wrong. There is a reason why they call it the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They don’t need to scrap parliament and dismantle the facade of democratic control when they hold all the levers of power.

So the machine rolled into action. For three years we heard an almost constant refrain of how we had got it wrong. First we were stupid or ignorant. They reassured us they would still respect our decision. In the immediate aftermath of the biggest democratic kicking the ruling class have received since the 1945 election, it could have provoked a revolution (what they like to refer to as civil disorder) if they had just slapped the working class electorate in the face at that point.

So they do what they know best. Kick it into the long grass. Delay. Shilly-shally. And start the high-powered propaganda campaign to overturn the result.

The first prong of the attack was that we did not know what we voted for. Hard Brexit? Soft Brexit? But our self-appointed leaders of public opinion would sort it out for us. Every variation of Brexit was discussed, with a constant refrain in the background saying – see, it is more complicated than you thought.

Stage two of the campaign was the call for a ‘second referendum’. Of course that would be complicated too. We would need a three-way vote. Remain, Leave outright or accept some compromise deal. Keeping Leave on the ballot paper was a reluctant concession. But they still lacked the confidence to declare their intention to ignore our vote.

Finally after a three year war of attrition, the second referendum or People’s Vote morphed into a confirmatory referendum. The difference between the two is the disappearance of the Just Leave option. A confirmatory vote is a choice between staying in the EU and whatever deal the government of the day has negotiated. The option to Leave outright has just been dropped. Maybe they thought we would not notice.

This ‘confirmatory referendum’ was originally mooted when the deal on offer was Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement a deal which was almost universally rejected. So a confirmatory referendum would have been an easy win for the ruling class’s preferred option – Remain. This has been complicated somewhat by the new Tory PM’s deal, which has a better chance of winning in a second vote.

The general election has been presented as a kind of second referendum. Giving the Tories a majority makes the Boris deal a shoe-in. Giving Labour a majority makes a confirmatory referendum a shoe-in. And Labour have volunteered to load the dice even more heavily in favour of Remain by saying they will renegotiate a withdrawal agreement which will so closely resemble the Remain option as to make voting for it an almost pointless exercise.

Framing the general election as a second referendum is complicated because it cannot simply be about Brexit. The election also determines the economic and social policy of the next government. That is why Ms Hazarika and others want us to hold our noses and vote Labour.

They want both left wing Leave voters and left wing Corbyn haters to vote Labour – a Remain party in all but name – to keep out the Tories.

My answer to Hazarika and Co. is this. I came out of political abstentionism to participate in this farce. And Leave won. If your party cannot implement that decision then your party does not deserve my vote.

I am not going to ‘hold my nose’ and vote for a party that stinks. I would rather not vote than give my support to a political process that demonstrates its contempt for the democratic decision of the working class.