A riposte to the Socialist Unity website

A few days ago I found reason to take issue with the comments policy undertaken by the Socialist Unity website. In doing so I noted that there was little opportunity to tackle the shibboleths of the politics of the far left, but noted that whilst the main parties of the Trotskyist milieu (Socialist Workers Party and  Socialist Party) did not allow comments on their sites, Socialist Unity was one of the places where there was at least some debate.

However the debate there became noticeably limited when it came to discussing the Woolich Terrorist atrocity. In raising this issue again I note that the main censor at Socialist Unity Tony Collins does not consider the incident to be terrorist. He attacks the Socialist Party/National Shop Stewards Network thus;

FFS, even the Socialist Party’s National Shop Stewards Network has given in to the narrative and called the murder a “terrorist attack”. What happened to not surrendering to mass media hysteria?

Bizarre to say the least.

In another post criticising one of the posters he opines that:

Grow up and debate like an adult.

Really Tony? Sounds like double standards to me. He refers to my recent article published both here and at Harry's Place:

One right-wing commenter is upset cos I wouldn’t allow his comment through. He said “we need to deal with the EDL and hate preachers equally” – but then guess what he did? He spent the entire comment only talking about the Muslim side of the equation, about the problem with these Muslims. 6 paragraphs. Nothing at all about the EDL – apart from the platitude, the “we must take them seriously”. The rest of the post was about the Muslims.

You people are appeasers and are totally surrendering to racism. And seriously, don’t bleat about censorship. You’ve got the entire mass media saying exactly the same things you are bravely saying.

The real censorship comes from you people, who won’t even admit the rest of us to the debate unless it’s on your terms.

I’m proud of the anti-racist stand this site takes. We don’t give in to fake concern about racism from people who never do a damned thing to combat it. There’s one consistent thread from these people – they never simply stand with Muslims to fight against racism. They always, always try to switch the debate to “what are we gonna do about these extremist Muslims then?”

The reason I took this issue up is not because he censored my views (which he distorts in his response) but he undertook to censor everyone who dared raise the question of how we should deal with hate preachers. This was noted by the blogger from Hatful of History whose "complaint about being deleted" was duly deleted. The censorship was also picked up by "treelover" over at Urban 75, one of the few places on the far-left where wide ranging free debate does take place.

For the record the thread on Socialist Unity had published 40 comments nearly all of which had seemingly concentrated on the far-right/EDL. I responded to the following comment:

This morning the EDL page has over 114,000 ‘likes’, meaning that over 114,000 people are now part of the EDL network and receive EDL messages in their fb feed. I’d say that this is important in a political sense.

My rather innocuous contribution was:

That is worrying and shows why we need to respond to the the atrocity by (a) standing up to the BNP/EDL and (b) the Hate preachers of Islamism at the same time.

Another left wing blog had problems with local Salafists last weekend:

http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/jimas-gets-police-to-threaten-tendance-coatesy/

These people are dangerous and a threat to us all regardless of how “left-wing” people consider themselves. The Salafists in Tunisia have already been attacking Trade Unions and at one point burnt down 3 TU offices which was reported on Labourstart.

It needs to be remembered that these people are also a threat to Muslims, not just because they aim to create strife in the wider community (by provoking the boneheads of the far-right) but want to impose their will on other Muslims the vast majority of whom just want to get on with their lives.

Everyone needs to remember by the way that there is no one Muslim Community. My immediate neighbours are from Kosovo and are totally westernised whilst many of my work colleagues differ in country of origin, dress and culture.

Tackling the hate preachers will have to take a multi-faceted approach.

Too much for Socialist Unity, which is seemingly becoming more shrill in its debating methods.  Hardly bleating on about "Muslims" as Tony Collins puts it so nicely.

Andrew Coates responded to my comments on the thread at Harry's Place by stating that "Socialist Unity live in their own little world".

The far left prove yet again that they are part of the problem and never the solution.