Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – 29 Nov. 2018

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

“I’ve been told that no one sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do. Or the word ‘love’.”

Billie holiday

 “Holiday’s voice, no matter how the Dufty/Holiday interviewing process went, is as real as rain.

David Ritz

The government has failed us; you can’t deny that. Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you’re walking around here singing We Shall Overcome, the government has failed us. This is part of what’s wrong with you — you do too much singing. Today, it’s time to stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn’t help him become the heavyweight champion of the world; swinging helped him achieve that title.

Malcom X[1]

“If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise.”

Samuel Grafton[2] On the song Strange Fruit

Lady Sings the Blues is a brutally honest warts-and-all autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz singer. Holiday died on July 17, 1959, at the Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem, New York City, due to complications of chronic drug abuse. Holiday had an unbelievably difficult childhood. Born on April 17, 1915, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, was 13 years old, and her father, Clarence “Pop” Holiday, was just 15. Her birth name was Eleonora, which she later changed to Billie.

Holiday grew up fast, surviving an abusive childhood; her mother did loads of different jobs, including prostitution. She grew up in Baltimore and Harlem brothels. It has been said that she had a limited vocal range but went on to be a unique singer with an “unsettling emotional wallop”. While it is tempting to see Holiday as a victim, that is not how she saw things. Her memoir was written with help from William Dufty, and according to David Ritz, “Holiday’s voice, no matter how the Dufty/Holiday interviewing process went, is as real as rain. She is open about her sexual abuse, her forced imprisonment, her heroin addiction, and in a minimal way, her struggles of being African American before the development of the Civil Rights Movement.

Some facts in the book have been disputed.[3] John Szwed argues in his 2015 study, Holiday, Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth, that most of the book is accurate; however, Holiday’s co-writer, William Dufty, was allegedly pressured to suppress material due to the threat of legal action. Writing in the New Yorker Richard Brody said “In particular, Szwed traces the stories of two important relationships that are missing from the book—with Charles Laughton, in the nineteen-thirties, and with Tallulah Bankhead, in the late nineteen-forties—and of one relationship that’s sharply diminished in the book, her affair with Orson Welles around the time of Citizen Kane.”[4]

Her untimely death at the age of just 44 ended the career of one of the most important jazz vocalists of the 20th century. While the re-release of her autobiography by Penguin in 2018 went some way in reestablishing her importance. However, the release of the 2015 film by Lee Daniels, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, was a significant misrepresentation of Holiday. According to John Andrews, writing in the World Socialist Website, the film “dishonoured” her work and was a “seriously misguided effort”.

He writes, “The film was populated with historical and entirely fictional characters, blended haphazardly with actual and fabricated historical events, replete with sloppy mistakes and anachronisms too numerous to catalogue. One prominent example from the film: methadone was not used to treat heroin addiction until some years after Holiday died.”[5]

Naturally, Holiday’s autobiography suffers from a substantial fixation on race; this is not surprising given how much racial abuse she suffered, but it is largely divorced from the social struggles of postwar America, as expressed in both the growing civil rights movement and official, state-sponsored anti-communism. Given Holidays’ limited political understanding, she cannot place her life struggle within the broader aesthetic developments of that tumultuous period, not only in jazz, but also in film, literature, and art.

“Strange Fruit”

One of those broader aesthetic developments is Holiday’s relationship with the song Strange Fruit. In her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday suggests that she worked on the song together with Abel Meeropol. Holiday’s economy with the truth has circulated for decades, with Holiday even claiming that the song was written for her and that she had a hand in writing it herself. Meeropol always denied this claim. David Margolick and Hilton Als, in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, said that her account “may set a record for most misinformation per column inch”. Even stranger was Holidays’ response when challenged about the song in her ghost-written book; she said, “I ain’t never read that book.” 

“Strange Fruit” is not an easy song to listen to and requires several listens to appreciate its complexity.  Peter Daniels, in his article “Strange Fruit, believed it was the original protest song. “It is simple, spare, but effective poetry. At a time when political protest was not often expressed in musical form, the song depicted lynching in all of its brutality. The three short verses are all the more potent for their understated and ironic language. The juxtaposition of a beautiful landscape with the scene of lynching, the smell of magnolias with that of burning flesh, the blossoms more typically associated with the Southern climate with the “strange fruit” produced by racial oppression—this imagery conjures up the essence of racist reaction. Racism in America stands indicted and exposed by these lines, with no need at all for a more didactic or agitational message.[6]

Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party from 1932 to 1947. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage, he and his wife adopted their two sons; both children took the surname “Meeropol” In 1937, he published “Bitter Fruit” in the New York teachers’ union journal. The song was Meeropol’s response to seeing a photo of a lynching. Like many of his generation, he was radicalised by the Russian Revolution, the threat of fascism, and the Great Depression.

Holiday cannot be faulted for not undertaking a more detailed examination of the issues surrounding “Strange Fruit”. Holiday does not even begin to understand why the poorest section of the white working class would turn their desperation into racist atrocities. The book does not probe the class roots of racism as a means of dividing the working class. Any limited gains made by the black working class were made possible by the militancy of millions of black workers in the industrial struggles of the 1930s.

Also absent from the book is Holiday’s comprehension of the role played by the American Communist Party and its Popular Front politics. The holiday does not mention that socialists and communists were on the front line of the struggle for racial equality.

As Daniels points out, “There was a tremendous contradiction inherent in the work of artists, writers and intellectuals who the CP influenced in the 1930s and ’40s. On the one hand, as part of a leftward-moving working class and intelligentsia, they were attracted by the promise of the Russian Revolution. They articulated, to one degree or another, anger at capitalist exploitation and oppression, as well as hopes for social equality and socialism. Most of this layer, however, identified the Russian Revolution with the regime in the Kremlin. Only a minority agreed with the socialist opposition to Stalinism articulated by Leon Trotsky. Meeropol was one of the majority on the left who aligned with the CP during this period. The creative work of these individuals could not help but be influenced by their blind obedience to the Soviet bureaucracy and its reactionary political stance.[7]

Since the release of the 2018 Penguin version of Lady Sings the Blues, interest in Holiday seems to have waned a little. It is hoped that, with the current protests against the fascist Trump administration, interest in the holiday and the song “Strange Fruit” will begin to take hold. There has already been a limited revival of interest in the music, as evidenced by the many more recent recordings. Her autobiography has significant weaknesses, but it is worth reading, and Holiday, after all, was one of a kind.

[1] library.gayhomeland.org/0008/EN/malcolmx_speech_1964.htm

[2] www.theguardian.com/music/2011/feb/16/protest-songs-billie-holiday-strange-fruit

[3] www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Billie-Holiday-s-bio-Lady-Sings-the-Blues-may-2469428.php

[4] The Art of Billie Holiday’s Life-www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-art-of-billie-holidays-life

[5]Great jazz vocalist dishonoured by The United States vs. Billie Holiday—Can’t we do better? http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/06/unit-j06.html

[6] “Strange Fruit”: the story of a song-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/02/frut-f08.html

[7] “Strange Fruit”: the story of a song-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/02/frut-f08.html

The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History-By Laurence Rees Public Affairs, 2025

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

We meet ordinary Germans who fell in line with a regime that promised them peace and prosperity. Interviewed decades after the destruction of the Third Reich, some still looked back wistfully to the days before the war. “You saw the unemployed disappearing from the streets,” recalled Erna Krantz from Bavaria. “There was order and discipline … It was, I thought, a better time”.

Laurence Rees

The fury of Nazism, which was bent on the unconditional extermination of every Jewish man, woman, and child within its reach, passes the comprehension of a historian, who tries to uncover the motives of human behaviour and to discern the interests behind the motives. Who can analyse the motives and the interests behind the enormities of Auschwitz? We are confronted here by a vast and ominous mystery of the degeneration of the human character that will forever baffle and terrify humanity.

Isaac Deutscher-

The most appropriate, indeed the only relevant, general proper name for the Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust is “Germans.” They were Germans acting in the name of Germany and its highly popular leader, Adolf Hitler.

Daniel Goldhagen

“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”

― Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, 1935

The Nazi Mind by the writer, historian and broadcaster Laurence Rees has been described as a “groundbreaking narrative history” of the motivations and mentalities behind the Nazis and their supporters. As will be seen in this critical review it is essentially a rehash of his previous histography that not only downplays the social and economic and political forces at play in the Nazis rise to power but compliments Daniel Goldhagen’s theoretical premise that “Ordinary Germans” were to blame for the rise of German fascism and the subsequent murder of six million jews.[1]

Rees uses previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and those who grew up in the Nazi system to try and gain insight in to the psychological and social composition of the Nazis.

But as this perspective document elaborates “ Nazism was an expression of the most reactionary and brutal tendencies of German capitalism. That is the key to understanding it. Hitler’s rise from a Viennese homeless shelter and the trenches of World War I to becoming a megalomaniacal dictator cannot be explained by the social composition and psychology of his supporters. He owed his power to the ruling elite, which placed him at the head of the state. The millions that Thyssen, Krupp, Flick and other industrial magnates donated to the NSDAP, Hitler’s appointment as chancellor by Hindenburg, the symbolic figurehead of the army, and finally the agreement of all the bourgeois parties to the Enabling Act are eloquent testimony to the fact that the vast majority of the ruling elite had placed themselves behind Hitler when all other mechanisms to suppress the working class had failed.

The members of the National Socialist movement originated, at least up to its seizure of power, almost exclusively from the middle classes. It recruited from among artisans, peddlers, the civil employees and peasants, whom the war, inflation and crisis had robbed of any faith in democratic parliamentarianism and who longed for order and an iron fist. At the head of the movement were officers and NCOs from the old army, who could not reconcile themselves to Germany’s defeat in World War I. However, the programme of the National Socialist movement was anything but petty bourgeois. It translated the basic needs of German imperialism into the language of mythology and racial theory. The dream of a “thousand-year Reich” and the hunger for “Lebensraum (living space) in the East” expressed the expansionist urge of German capital, whose dynamic productive forces were constricted by Europe’s closely meshed system of states. Racial hatred provided consolation for the German petty bourgeois in the face of his absolute powerlessness and prepared him for a war of extermination.”[2]

Program and perspective

One of the most notable aspects of Laurence Rees’s entire body of work, and that can be said of most historians writing on this subject, is the cursory attention given to issues of program and perspective. In all his books virtually nothing is said about the actual policies pursued by the Social Democrats and the Stalinists, from the German Communist party which demoralized and split the working class, and cleared the way for the Nazi victory. This disinterest dates back to when Rees wrote to me in 2008, saying “I’m afraid I simply didn’t have space to include a discussion of these issues- fascinating as they are – in the Behind Closed Doors book. I decided to begin the story in 1939 and therefore felt it wouldn’t be helpful to refer back to this history. I’m sure others would have written the book differently, but for better or worse, that’s what I thought was the right way forward. Equally, I’m afraid I can’t go into my views on Trotsky here, as I would need several thousand words to represent my thoughts on that intriguing time properly. I believe my friend, Professor Robert Service, is currently writing a comprehensive biography of Trotsky, so it will be exciting to see his thoughts on the subject.[3]

As I said to Laurence Rees at the time, Robert Service was a regrettable choice of historian to assist him with Trotsky. In 2010, Robert Service wrote a biography of Leon Trotsky.[4] The Marxist writer David North called the biography “character assassination”, writing that Trotsky: A Biography is a crude and offensive book, produced without respect for the most minimal standards of scholarship. Service’s “research,” if one wishes to call it that, has been conducted in bad faith. His Trotsky is not history, but rather an exercise in character assassination. Service is not content to distort and falsify Trotsky’s political deeds and ideas. Frequently descending to the level of a grocery store tabloid, Service attempts to splatter filth on Trotsky’s personal life. Among his favourite devices is to refer to “rumours” about Trotsky’s intimate relations, without even bothering to identify the rumour’s source, let alone substantiate its credibility.”[5]

While there are some things to like about Rees’s new book unfortunately it is a reflection of the current historical consensus that ordinary Germans played a crucial part in the rise of Nazis and bear indirect responsibility for the murder of six million jews in the Holocaust. Rees not only believes that “ordinary Germans” were to blame but “such horrors occurred not because the Nazis were Germans, but because they were human beings”.

Rees’s belief that all humans, given the chance, can be murdering fascist monsters echoes William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, who believed that forces of human evil lurk deep in man’s soul or psyche. They can easily gain ascendancy, as they inevitably must, over the restraining moral influences of civilisation.

As North says, “Most of you are, I am sure, familiar with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which argued that barbarism is the natural condition of humanity. Release a group of ordinary school boys from the usual restraints of civilisation, and they will, within a few weeks, revert to a state of homicidal savagery. This misanthropic work flowed from the conclusions drawn by Golding from the experiences of the Second World War. “Anyone who moved through those years,” he later wrote, “without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.” The popularity of Lord of the Flies reflected the bewilderment and despair provoked by the horrors of World War II. This mood was strengthened by the political relations that arose in the aftermath of the war. It became more challenging to engage in a discussion of the nature of the Third Reich after 1945 than it had been before that time. In the reactionary political environment of the Cold War, it was no longer considered appropriate, especially in the United States, to dwell too seriously on the relation between fascism and modern capitalism.[6]

There is little new about this “new history”. Daniel Goldhagen’s book[7] set the benchmark for this so-called theory. Although a substantial number of historians condemned his book,[8] It still went on to poison the minds of a younger generation, which swallowed hook, line, and sinker his right-wing historiography.

Brandi Lopez, one of those younger historians, wrote in a 2016 essay: “The term ‘ordinary men’ was used throughout several of my sources.” It was about the people that became the leaders of the Nazi party, Hitler’s right hand men as well as the people that became soldiers following his orders blindly and in the end becoming willing executioners. These individuals began as ordinary men, farmers, fathers, and everyday people. In Daniel Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.” Goldhagen’s basic thesis is that most German people became willing executioners in the Holocaust. He states, “eliminationist’ hostility toward the Jewish people was so deeply ingrained in Germany”, that’s how the people were willing to do whatever it took to rid the country of them.

In Laurence Rees’s “Auschwitz: A New History”, he mentions Hoss and his story. His family was a simple farming family, and for them to sell their goods, they had to go through a Jewish man. His father and mother ingrained in him that the Jewish man was scamming them out of money, and the reason his family struggled was because of this. Most of the people that were in the sample size said they resembled more of “real Nazis” than an “Ordinary German”. This article explores the theories of the perpetrators, the evidence, and ultimately, the sample size itself. Some graphs display a visual representation of the number of men who identified with a specific occupational rank, such as elite occupations, lower-middle-class workers, etc. [9]

The best refutation of Goldhagen’s “ordinary Germans” is by the Marxist David North, who wrote: The methodological flaw of Professor Goldhagen’s book is indicated in its title: Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Let us stop right there: What is meant by “ordinary Germans?” For those of you who would like a textbook example of an “abstract identity,” this is it. This is a category that is so broad, it is capable of including virtually everyone, except, presumably, Germans of Jewish parentage. What, after all, makes any particular German an “ordinary” one? Is it a hefty girth and a fondness for knockwurst and sauerbraten? Is it blond hair, blue eyes and a penchant for sunbathing in the nude? Is it a talent for abstruse philosophizing and a passion for 300-pound Wagnerian sopranos? A concept built upon such foolish and arbitrary stereotypes cannot be of any scientific value in the cognition of objective reality. But if we should attempt to include in our definition more serious sociological characteristics, the worthlessness of the concept of “ordinariness” becomes immediately apparent. In 1933, German society possessed a complex class structure. Was the “ordinary German” at the time of Hitler’s accession to power a factory worker, a ruined shopkeeper, a demoralized member of the lumpenproletariat, a heavily indebted peasant, an East Prussian land-owning Junker or an industrial magnate?

If all these elements of diverse social strata are to be lumped together as “ordinary Germans,” it simply means that the concept of “ordinariness” does not reflect the internal antagonisms and conflicts of German society as it existed in 1933. What Goldhagen, therefore, offers his readers is not a scientific examination of German society as it really was constituted in 1933, but rather—and it is unpleasant to say this—an idealized portrait of a homogeneous society that uncritically substantiates the Nazi myth of a unified German Volk, defined by race and blood.[10]

Another problem with Rees’s book is his take on the Holocaust; for Rees, the political, social and economic reasons for this terrible event are not important. What is essential for Rees is the psychological reasons behind the Nazis genocide of the Jews. Rees joins a long list of writers and historians for whom the Holocaust is unfathomable and should not even be attempted to be understood.

If a Marxist like Isaac Deutscher- can write “The fury of Nazism, which was bent on the unconditional extermination of every Jewish man, woman, and child within its reach, passes the comprehension of a historian, who tries to uncover the motives of human behaviour and to discern the interests behind the motives. Who can analyse the motives and the interests behind the enormities of Auschwitz? We are confronted here by a vast and ominous mystery of the degeneration of the human character that will forever baffle and terrify humanity. “What chance do the rest of us have?.

North answers, “ The situation is rationalised too often with the argument that the Holocaust is such a terrible event that it simply defies a rational explanation. If, as Adorno said, it was no longer possible to write poetry after Auschwitz, it was presumably also no longer possible to place much confidence in the historian’s ability to comprehend the forces that drive the social—or, more precisely, the antisocial—activity of man. Historical science and political theory were seen as powerless in the face of such unfathomable evil.[11]

As I mentioned earlier, there are some aspects to appreciate, but overall, Rees’s work perpetuates a very right-wing historiography. As Leon Trotsky once said, “Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioners

[2] National Socialism and the Holocaust-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-ger/09.htmlthe theory

[3] https://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/

[4] Trotsky A Biography-Robert Service-Pan 2010

[5] In The Service of Historical Falsification: A Review of Robert Service’s Trotsky-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/11/serv-n11.html

[6] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[7] Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Paperback – 1 Feb. 1997 by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

[8] Historians criticise Goldhagen’s book-www.wsws.org/en/articles/1997/11/gold-n17.html

[9] Lopez, Brandi J., “German People and the Holocaust” (2016). Capstone Projects and Master’s Theses. 12. https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes_all/12

[10] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[11] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

How to Spot a Fascist: Umberto Eco Harvill Secker Paperback – 13 Aug. 2020 Alastair McEwen (Translator), Richard Dixon (Translator)

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

 “The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organisations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.”

Leon Trotsky, in ” Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It, “

“It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares”. Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point our finger at any of its new instances – every day, in every part of the world.”

― Umberto Eco, Il fascismo Eterno

“ but we know. and have always said, that the bourgeoisie is attached to fascism. The bourgeois and fascism stand in the same relation to each other as do the workers and peasants to the Russian Communist Party.”

― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings: 1921-1926

“Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

― Jack London, The Iron Heel

How to Spot a Fascist is a collection of three distinct yet profoundly thought-provoking essays on freedom and fascism. ‘Ur-Fascism’ examines fourteen essential characteristics of fascism. Like the great German author Gunter Grass, Eco was briefly a young fascist. Unlike Grass[1] Eco was not vilified for it. When Mussolini was at the height of his power, Eco was a young child lacking the knowledge and capacity to grasp the criminal character of the organisation he was associated with. He Writes in “Ur-Fascism:

“In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists — that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.”

Umberto Eco was undoubtedly one of the greatest writers and historians of the 20th Century. If he were still alive during this modern period of history, he would not have hesitated in calling the latest incumbent in the White House a fascist.  Donald Trump fits most of the criteria cited by Eco in his 1995 essay.

Eco writes “If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. Suppose Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism. In that case, I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and indeed a right-wing party, has now minimal connection to the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.”[2]

While Eco has several brilliant insights into Italian fascism, his work also has significant weaknesses. One of which was his blindness towards the betrayals of Italian Social Democracy. As Leon Trotsky points out, “ Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the Italian proletariat’s uprising. From the time the First World War ended, there was an upward trend in the revolutionary movement in Italy, and in September 1920, it resulted in the seizure of factories and industries by the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was a real fact; all that was lacking was to organise it and draw from it all the necessary conclusions. The social democracy took fright and sprang back. After its bold and heroic exertions, the proletariat was left facing the void. The disruption of the revolutionary movement became the most critical factor in the growth of fascism. In September, the revolutionary advance came to a standstill, and November already witnessed the first significant demonstration of the fascists (the seizure of Bologna)[3]

Leon Trotsky was one of the first Marxists to not only define what exactly Italian fascism was, but also to warn of the danger it represented to the Italian and world working class. One of his earliest attempts to define fascism was in November 1931 when he wrote a letter to a friend titled “What is Fascism”. He wrote,

“The Fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders emerging from the ranks. It is a plebeian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat and even to a certain extent, from the proletarian masses. Mussolini, a former socialist, is a “self-made” man arising from this movement. The movement in Germany is primarily analogous to the Italian movement. It is a mass movement, with its leaders employing a great deal of socialist demagogy. This is necessary for the creation of the mass movement.

The genuine basis is the petty bourgeoisie. In Italy, it is a significant base, comprising the petty bourgeoisie of towns and cities, as well as the peasantry. In Germany, likewise, there is a large base for Fascism. In England, there is less of that base because the proletariat is the overwhelming majority of the population; the peasant or farming stratum is only a relatively insignificant section. It may be said, and this is true to a certain extent, that the new middle class, the functionaries of the state, the private administrators, etc., etc., can constitute such a base. However, this raises a new question that needs to be analysed. This is a supposition. It is necessary to explore just what it will be. It is essential to foresee the Fascist movement growing from this or that element. But this is only a perspective which is controlled by events. I am not affirming that it is impossible for a Fascist movement to develop in England or for a Mosley or someone else to become a dictator. This is a question for the future. It is a far-fetched possibility. To speak of it now as an imminent danger is not a prognosis but a mere prophecy. To be capable of foreseeing anything in the direction of Fascism, it is necessary to have a definition of that idea. What is Fascism? What is its base, its form and its characteristics? How will its development take place?”

This short volume, ‘How to Spot a Fascist,’ was republished in 2019 and is an essential contribution to understanding today’s fascist movement, led by Donald Trump. Eco was an insightful and compassionate writer, but he did not live to see the fascists come back. In the same year as Eco’s collection of essays, Christoph Vandrier’s book Why Are They Back was published by Mehring Books. As Vandrier’s recounts in the book after 81 years after the fall of the Third Reich, the neo-Nazi right has become a major political force in Germany. The book provides a valuable lesson in how to fight today’s fascists by learning the lessons of the past.

[1] Günter Grass and the Waffen SS-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/05/gras-m04.html

[2] Ur-Fascism Umberto Eco: June 22, 1995 The New York Review of Books  theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

[3] How Mussolini triumphed-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/fascism-what-it-is-how-to-fight-it-leon-trotsky/02.html

Letter to Deutsche Bank in protest at its termination of publisher Mehring Verlag’s account

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

I want to condemn in the strongest terms possible the action of your bank to terminate the account of Mehring Verlag and the managing director’s private account.

This act of censorship is aimed at sabotaging Mehring Verlag’s work and impeding the distribution of its books. No other reasonable explanation can be found. Mehring Verlag and its predecessor have maintained an account with Postbank, now fully integrated into Deutsche Bank, for 45 years without any incidents.

As a recent statement on the World Socialist Website states, the closure of the managing director’s private account, entirely unrelated to the publishing house, constitutes personal harassment.

This is not the first time Deutsche Bank has targeted left-wing organisations. The Maoist organisation, MLPD, had its accounts terminated in 2009 and again in 2017. It was only by legal action of the MLPD that the bank relented.

“The attack on Mehring Verlag reveals what the ruling class in Germany fears most: the spread of ideas that threaten the foundations of its tottering, rotten capitalist system—namely, the program of socialism. As the great French writer Victor Hugo said 150 years ago: “One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas whose time has come.”[1]

Only through a broad-based campaign in the working class can this act of censorship be defeated. I urge all my readers to protest the arbitrary termination of Mehring Verlag’s account.

[1] In an act of political censorship, Deutsche Bank terminates publisher Mehring Verlag’s account-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/06/25/dmzc-j25.html

The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny Laura Bates Simon & Schuster, £20, pp320

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

“We are hurtling towards a seismic shift in terms of really every aspect of our society is on the brink of being transformed by emerging technologies and, in particular, artificial intelligence.”

Laura Bates

“I’d also like to live in a world in which women can do whatever they want, without fear of what men might do to them. But we don’t live in that world. Our present reality demands that both men and women accept the existence of the sexual asymmetry, even if that means curtailing our freedoms.”

Mary Harrington

“The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.”

Rosa Luxemburg

“Fucking ain’t fair, act accordingly” (Female Dating Strategy blogpost, 2021)

The New Age of Sexism is a lucid, well-written and deeply researched book on how right-wing and fascist forces are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to attack minorities and women in general.

The subject matter contained in the book is, to say the least, disturbing. The degradation of male-female relations has reached a new apex with the use of this latest technology. AI, virtual reality, robotics, and the metaverse have delivered a “new age of misogyny” and, according to Bates “, We are standing on the edge of a precipice”.

As Barbara Ellen writes, “One recurrent theme is that women are no longer being ‘merely’ harassed, they are also being erased–replaced by increasingly realistic pornographic tech-proxies. Among them is a new generation of sex robots that can be purchased online and delivered to your door. Some models have mechanically articulated necks to simulate orgasm. Others give oral sex with back-and-forth head motions that Bates likens to a “pecking chicken”. Although vocal interaction can be enabled with sex dolls, many men don’t want it. It wrecks the fantasy – they prefer them mute.”[1]

The book is graphic in its accuracy, the rise of cyber-brothels, in which, believe it or not, robot sex workers take care of your every sexual need. Bates recounts in the book how a robot called Kokeshi: “A silicone shell being offered up as a warm, willing, breathing, talking, consenting sexual partner.” Bates comments that the robot’s labia have been torn off. “Perhaps bitten off. I feel sick.” Writes Bates. Even more disturbing is that she finds sex dolls made to look as young as five, with child vulvas, holding teddy bears.

Although Bates wonders why society accommodates this parallel universe, the answer is not far away. In one chapter, she examines the rise of the so-called Metaverse and its control by oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg and his global Meta empire. Zuckerberg’s promotion of a “virtual-reality social world” is a big money maker, and so lightly policed as to be non-existent, providing a license to print money by the billions.

As Laura Bates writes in a Guardian article: “Mark Zuckerberg has grandly promised: ‘In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.” It’s the sort of promise that might sound intensely appealing to some men and terrifying to most women. Indeed, the deeply immersive nature of the metaverse will make the harassment and abuse that many of us endure daily in text-based form on social media feel 100 times more real, and will simultaneously make moderation 100 times more challenging. The result is a perfect storm. And I am speaking from experience, not idly speculating: I spent days in the metaverse researching my book, The New Age of Sexism.  She continues, “I visited worlds where I saw what appeared to be young children frequently experiencing attention from adult men they did not know. In one virtual karaoke-style club, the singers on stage were young women in their early 20s. However, based on their voices, I would estimate that many of the girls behind the avatars were likely around nine or 10 years old. Conversely, the voices of the men commenting on them from the audience, shouting out to them and following them offstage were often unmistakably those of adults.”[2]

The role of Meta and other social media websites, which are easily accessible on the latest smartphones, in spreading and profiting from this online abuse and illegality is well-documented. Although not documented in the book is the role played by corporate advertising in helping perpetrate this abuse. But as Thomas Scripps writes “The real problem is the poison spilling out of a rotting social system—from misogynist ideologies to the glorification of violence, wealth and selfishness—for which these technologies are a conduit, and the conditions of social neglect which make young people emotionally susceptible: the most vulnerable dangerously so. Conditions which also hinder the social dialogue necessary to help children learn how to interact healthily with new technologies and form genuine relationships.[3]

Meta is not the only one profiting from this sexual degradation and exploitation. Companies such as Elon Musk’s (X) and Sundar Pichai’s (Google) are in charge of the algorithms, datasets, systems and search engines that promote and deliver this disgusting filth.

If the growth of cyber brothels was not enough, Bates tackles an equally disturbing phenomenon, and that is the massive rise of deep fake pornography. Bates has been the target of this illegal behaviour. In the book, she describes a panic attack after being sent deepfake pornographic images of her. Bates’s experience is just the tip of a massive iceberg of this kind of abuse.  A report by the Children’s Commissioner for England makes the following points.

“The growth of the online world is a technological revolution, the likes of which haven’t been witnessed in centuries. The internet has enhanced our lives immeasurably by opening up education, communication, and research in ways that those of us who are now well into our adulthood might never have imagined. For children growing up in 2025, who are among the first generations to have never known a solely analogue life, being online is second nature.

It is an incredible asset in our daily lives, but it has also fundamentally changed the nature of how we interact with one another, how we stay safe, and how we maintain our privacy. For most children, if not all, it has introduced a darker side. They are forever in their digital playgrounds.

Every day, children tell me about the violent, upsetting or degrading things that are shown to them online by algorithms designed to capture their attention. That’s why, as Children’s Commissioner, I have been relentlessly focused on driving for greater safety online. It has also been driven by what I observed in children’s changing behaviour during my years as a teacher and headteacher, as they learned to navigate life through a digital lens. But the subject of this report – sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’ – is not one I was familiar with until more recently, despite having worked with children every day of my professional life. Of all the worrying trends in online activity children have spoken to me about – from seeing hardcore porn on X to cosmetics and vapes being advertised to them through TikTok – the evolution of ‘nudifying’ apps to become tools that aid in the abuse and exploitation of children is perhaps the most mind-boggling. [4]

There is no doubt that Bates is a sincere activist and her books are an essential part of opposing this alarming abuse of women, but her work is only half the story. Bates, by her admission, is not comfortable debating, and her critics are caricatured or derided as “male” or, worse, “Right-wing”. My criticism of her is not from the right but from the left.

In my review of Lost Boys by James Bloodworth, I examined the reactionary movement that has been somewhat lightly termed the Manosphere. The Manosphere quaintly refers to a motley collection of websites, blogs and online forums promoting misogyny, masculinity and opposition to feminism. It promotes racism, antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, climate change denial, homophobia and transphobia. This movement has become a recruitment centre and training ground for what can only be termed trainee fascists.

There is a flip side to Manosphere, and that is the rise of the Femosphere, which Bates has studiously avoided examining in any detail. This movement was spawned by the growth of the right-wing #MeToo movement.[5] The Femosphere, it must be said, is equally as reactionary as the Manosphere movement.

Bates has so far not commented much, if at all, on this right-wing movement, which has been written about in numerous academic papers and been fabled and glamorised in equal measure in books such as Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Stephanie Lacava’s I Fear My Pain Interests You.

In her excellent article [6], Rachel Healy examines the work of Dr Jilly Kay, specifically her use of the term “Femosphere” in a paper published in 2024. [7] Healy writes that “Kay has been researching a reactionary turn among young women, and how a backlash against mainstream feminism has created new spaces online. In the femosphere, instead of “incels” – male involuntary celibates – there are “femcels”, and instead of pickup artists there are female dating strategists and so-called “dark feminine” influencers who encourage women to find men to support them financially.”

It is not within the scope of this brief review to examine everything in Kay’s excellent research paper, which is freely accessible on the web. One of the more disturbing features of this so-called new feminist movement has been its adoption of the same fascist ideas as its male counterparts.

Kay quotes from an FDS podcast episode, which discussed a Reddit post entitled “40 Years a NEET: Reflections of a Stay-At-Home Son. One of the hosts said:

“I think men like this can’t be saved, I believe that the only that can be done about them is to allow them to perish on their own time […] we shouldn’t slaughter people for being like this but, like, they’re going just not to reproduce because again, they don’t have the drive to find a wife, they’re not gonna have kids, and I think it’s just better if their bloodline dies out, honestly, that’s probably just the best thing for society […] the only men who deserve to have families and kids are men who are gonna model ambition, drive and healthy relationship dynamics.”

The only difference between this group and their Manosphere counterparts is that the men have more ready access to guns than their female counterparts. It is undoubtedly only a matter of time before one of these trainee female fascists decides to launch a murderous rampage in the name of modern feminism.

To be blunt, this type of reactionary feminism would not look out of place in Nazi Germany. Their modern-day eugenicist ideas will be embraced by fascists worldwide. They make the same arguments that were put forward by the nazis. Only a cursory read of Mein Kampf would confirm that.

There is nothing progressive in this modern feminism, as Kate Randal points out. There is more talk of gender today than at any previous moment in history. The #MeToo campaign in the US has supposedly brought the conditions of women to the fore like never before. The Global media and Hollywood are animated by hardly anything else. But this is a fraud. The women receiving nearly all the coverage belong to the upper echelons of society, the richest five or ten per cent. Working-class women are largely absent from this discussion, except for a few token exceptions that highlight the rule. As Rosa Luxemburg once wrote, “The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.[8]”That is true today as it was in Luxembourg’s day.

London-based author and activist Laura Bates, 37, is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a website that collates first-hand accounts of sexism from women around the world, using those experiences to press for change. She’s also the author of bestselling nonfiction titles including Misogynation and Men Who Hate Women, as well as novels for teens that grapple with issues such as revenge porn and slut-shaming. Her new novel is Sisters of Sword and Shadow.

[1] Sexism with a silicone face-observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/sexism-with-a-silicone-face

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/10/the-misogyny-of-the-metaverse-is-mark-zuckerbergs-dream-world-a-no-go-area-for-women

[3] Adolescence: Gripping realism explores social pressures behind young male violence- violence-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/24/fbxd-m24.html

[4] “One day this could happen to me” Children, nudification tools, and

sexually explicit deepfakes April 2025-assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2025/04/Children-nudification-tools-and-sexually-explicit-deepfakes-April-2025.pdf

[5] See – She Said: The origin story of the #MeToo campaign, or a version of it- it-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/11/21/bcwe-n21.html

[6] www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/welcome-to-the-femosphere-the-latest-dark-toxic-corner-of-the-internet-for-women

[7] The reactionary turn in popular feminism-www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2024.2393187#abstract 

[8] Women’s Suffrage And Class Struggle by Rosa Luxemburg (1912) 

Trotsky in Exile by Peter Weiss- Atheneum-Hardcover – 1 Jan. 1972

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Horatio, I am dead,

Thou livest, report me and my cause aright

To the unsatisfied.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2

“But who then, at that time [during the Stalinist repression], protested? Who stood up to shout his disgust? The Trotskyists can claim this honour. Following the example of their leader, who paid for his stubbornness by receiving the blow of an axe, they fought Stalinism totally, and they were the only ones. At the time of the great purges, they could no longer shout out their revolt except in the frozen vastness to which they were dragged to be more easily exterminated.”

Leopold Trepper: The Great Game

One of my favourite bookshops is the Amnesty International in Hammersmith, London. It is neither pretentious nor ostentatious, just a straightforward second-hand bookshop. I like it because you occasionally find a gem of a book. One such book was Peter Weiss’s Trotsky in Exile. I usually steer well clear of books on Trotsky’s life because they are inadvertently written by writers who are politically hostile to Trotsky and generally not worth reading, let alone reviewing. However, this play or book is different.

“Trotsky in Exile” is a play by German playwright and artist Peter Weiss, first performed in 1968. The play is a fictionalised account of the last years of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s life. Trotsky was residing in exile in Mexico and under constant threat from Stalin’s assassins.

The play is structured as a series of dialogues between Trotsky and various figures from his past and present, mostly revolutionaries, including his wife, Natalia Sedova, his son, Lev Sedov, and his former comrades in the Bolshevik Party. Through these conversations, Weiss explores Trotsky’s revolutionary ideology and his views on the Soviet Union under Stalin. The more Weiss read, the more he became a strong opponent of Stalinism. In 1967, this led him to meet one of Trotsky’s most important biographers, Isaac Deutscher.

Weiss’s portrayal of Trotsky as a complex and conflicted figure is an honest one. Outside of Trotsky’s writings on the impact of exile and political isolation on his family, this is one of the few books that examines his personal life in detail. While being faithful to Trotsky’s politics, Weiss employs Brechtian theatre devices, such as music and dance, to create a sense of distance and alienation. This style serves to underscore the play’s political and ideological themes, highlighting how history and ideology shape individual lives and experiences.

Peter Weiss (1916-1982 is arguably one of Germany’s most important artistic figures. He was an extraordinarily talented artist. He worked as a painter, novelist, filmmaker, and dramatist throughout his life. Weiss was comfortable in German literary and artistic circles. He was fond of Bertolt Brecht, seeing The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in 1930.

In the 1960s, Weiss had a friendship with the German-born, Swiss writer Hermann Hesse. In a letter to his long-time friend Hesse in 1961, Weiss writes, “I am very preoccupied with the art which first comes about when reason, rational thinking is switched off. I have been unable myself to resolve this conflict: sometimes it seems to me that the most essential lies in the dark and the subconscious, then however it occurs to me that one can only work today in an extremely conscious way, as if the spirit of the times demands that the writer does not lose his way in regions of half-darkness.”

Unlike most of his generation of artists, Weiss was deeply interested in the seminal experiences of the twentieth century – the crimes of fascism, the October Revolution, and its subsequent betrayal by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

It is hardly surprising, given the political hostility to Leon Trotsky and the Trotskyist movement in general, that a play that is broadly sympathetic to Trotsky and his revolutionary life has hardly been performed, let alone written about. With 2016 marking the 100th anniversary of Weiss’s birth, no attempt was made to stage “Trotsky in Exile”.

As Stefan Steinberg writes, “To my knowledge, the play is unique in its attempt to portray Trotsky’s life and political struggle on stage. The work has its flaws and, on occasion, reveals the influence of Weiss’s discussions with Ernest Mandel, the leader of the Pabloite Unified Secretariat. What is striking about the play, however, is Weiss’s valiant effort to correct all manner of Stalinist falsifications, to restore Trotsky to his rightful place in history as a leader of the Russian Revolution alongside Lenin and as the principal Marxist opponent of the Stalinist degeneration in the Soviet Union.

Of great interest also in Trotsky in Exile is Weiss’s recognition of the central role of culture in assessing the October Revolution and Trotsky’s historical significance. Weiss had studied Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution and devotes a scene of his play to a discussion among Lenin, Trotsky and leaders of the Dadaist art movement. In Zurich in 1916, Lenin is known to have met political co-thinkers in the same café frequented by Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and other leading lights of the Dada movement. With legitimate poetic licence, Weiss brings the remarkable figures together in a discussion about the prospects for art in a post-revolutionary Soviet Union. A later scene features Weiss’s old mentor Breton in discussion with Trotsky and Diego Rivera in Mexico.”[1]

In the 1960s, Weiss became increasingly politically radical. One form this radicalisation took was, as mentioned by Steinberg, was Weiss’s conversation with Ernest Mandel.[2] Weiss had no fundamental understanding of Mandel’s politics. Mandel broke from orthodox Trotskyism. As Max Brody points out

“Mandel sought to provide the economic justification for the rejection by Pabloism of the revolutionary role of the working class. He claimed capitalism had reached a new stage, in which the imperialist powers had resolved the inner contradictions that resulted in the barbarity of the early 20th century. He initially referred to this new period as “neo-capitalism. “To make the central point from the outset, Mandel’s embrace of Pabloism did not flow from an incorrect economic theory, but the reverse. His economic analysis was based on his rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class as the harbinger of capitalism’s demise.[3]

Weiss’s inability to understand the differences between orthodox Trotskyism and the Pabloism of Ernest Mandel was behind his decision to include Joseph Hansen in his book. However, Weiss did not know that Hansen was heavily involved in the assassination of Leon Trotsky. However, once Hansen’s treachery was in the public domain, Weiss should have at least told his readership of Hansen’s role in the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

According to a document entitled  The Role of Joseph Hansen “The initial stages of the (Security and the Fourth International)investigation uncovered recently declassified documents, which revealed the conspiracy that prepared Trotsky’s assassination and the fatal role played by agents who had managed to infiltrate all the major political centres of the Fourth International. The ICFI uncovered documents relating to the activities of agents such as Mark Zborowski, who became the principal assistant of Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov. Zborowski played a key role in the murder of Sedov and other leading members of the Fourth International in Europe.

Another important Stalinist agent, who supplied the Kremlin with valuable information on Trotsky’s activities, was Sylvia Caldwell (née Callen), the personal secretary of James P. Cannon; however, the most significant information uncovered by the ICFI related to the activities of Joseph Hansen. Documents discovered in the US National Archives and others obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Hansen, immediately after the assassination of Trotsky, sought out and established a covert relationship with high-level US government agents. One such document, a letter from the American Consul in Mexico City to an official in the State Department, dated September 25, 1940, reported that Hansen “wishes to be put in touch with someone in your confidence located in New York to whom confidential information could be imparted with impunity.”[4]

Weiss’s radicalism and defence of Leon Trotsky against the slander of the Stalinists led to his investigation by the East German Stalinist police, following the publication and production of Trotsky in Exile. Weiss, in the eyes of the Stasi, had become a traitor.

The Stasi’s “Operational Information No. 551/69” of September 5, 1969, reported “that the enemy side is making massive efforts to win over and misuse famous authors for deliberate and destructive ideological purposes,” and “it should be recognised that the enemy has succeeded in turning the author Peter Weiss, who has been successfully featured in our theatres. The Stasi report described Trotsky in Exile as a “clear commitment to anti-Soviet positions” and made clear it favoured a total ban on the work and its author in the GDR.

To conclude, as Weiss writes, “ Every word that I write down and submit for publication is political. It is intended to reach a large audience and achieve a specific effect. I submit my writings to one of the communication media, and then they are consumed by the audience. The way in which my words are received depends to a great extent on the social system under which they are distributed. Since my words are but a small and ever-diminishing fraction of available opinions, I have to achieve the greatest possible precision if my views are to make their way”[5]

Notes

1.   The Heritage We Defend David North, 1988. The Heritage We Defend was first published in book form in 1988. Its origins lie in the political struggle waged by the ICFI and the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party of the United States, from 1982 to 1986, to defend Trotskyism against the nationalist opportunism of the ICFI’s former British section, the Workers Revolutionary Party.

2.   Peter Weiss The Necessary Decision- Ten work points of an author in this divided world-NLR I/47•Jan/Feb 1968

3.   Hanjo Kesting-The Writer’s Resistance (Peter Weiss) NLR I/139•May/June 1983

4.   The mechanism of revolution in the documentary theatre- Gideon Tsunami, The German Quarterly, November 1971, Vol 44 No 4

1

[1] The false friends of Peter Weiss, German dramatist, filmmaker and novelist-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/20/pete-o20.html

[2] See Mandel’s review of Weiss’s Book http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1971/xx/exile.htm

[3] The ICFI’s exposure of Ernest Mandel’s “neo-capitalism” and the analysis of the global economic crisis: 1967–1971-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/09/rvtn-s09.html

[4] www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-us/48.html

[5] 2.Peter Weiss The Necessary Decision- Ten work points of an author in this divided world-NLR I/47•Jan/Feb 1968

Lost Boys by James Bloodworth (Atlantic Books, £14.99).

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

‘Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on,’

 Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here

“A revolution does not deserve its name if it does not help with all its might and all the means at its disposal- if it does not help women, twofold and threefold enslaved in the past, to get on the road of individual and social progress. A revolution does not deserve its name if it does not take the greatest possible care of the children … for whose benefit it has been made. But how can one create … a new life based on mutual consideration, on self-respect, on the real equality of women . . . on the efficient care for children-in an atmosphere poisoned with the roaring, rolling, ringing, and resounding swearing of enslavers and enslaved people, that swearing which spares no one and stops at nothing? The struggle against ‘foul language’ is an essential condition of mental hygiene just as the fight against filth and vermin is a condition of physical hygiene.”

― Leon Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life & Other Writings on Culture & Science

“The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.”

Rosa Luxemburg

Lost Boys by James Bloodworth is a journalist’s examination of the reactionary movement that has been somewhat lightly termed the Manosphere. The Manosphere quaintly refers to a motley collection of websites, blogs and online forums promoting misogyny, masculinity and opposition to feminism. It promotes racism, antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, climate change denial, homophobia and transphobia. This movement has become a recruitment centre and training ground for what can only be termed trainee fascists.

It is not surprising that Bloodworth did not want to research and write this book. He replied to his editor, saying, “Why would I want to do that?”. He writes, “Today I feel a bit like a funeral director in the aftermath of a mass casualty event. I would have preferred things to have turned out differently, but considering they haven’t, I intend to put my knowledge to some practical use. Having spent so much time researching the manosphere – including interviewing and interacting with hundreds of men and spending months at a time embedded on a course which purportedly taught men how to become ‘high status alpha males’ – I feel as if I have something worthwhile to contribute.”[1]

Indeed, why should anyone want to associate and talk to a bunch of Nazi like scumbags who give two thousand pounds to learn how to hunt down woman and on some occasions rape them and then brag about their behaviour of social media.

The origins of this so-called pickup movement can be traced back to Neil Strauss’s 2005 bestseller, The Game. His book turned the art of seduction into a woman hunt, which sees women as nothing more than prey and being treated as such. The men within this movement have no comprehension of history but their attitude towards women would not look out of place in the Nazi Party of German fascism.

To his credit, Bloodworth exposes these trainee fascists. He reveals the close links between the manosphere and the far Right, including fascists like Donald Trump. Trump’s fascist partners in the While House who dismiss their enemies as “beta”. His vice-president, JD Vance, describes himself as “red-pilled”. As Bloodworth points out, the rise of the Anti-feminist backlash coincided with the growth of fascist forces worldwide, and it reminded him of Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here, which enjoyed a resurgence during the first Trump presidency. As Sinclair wrote, ” Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.’  However, his political understanding of how and why these members of the lumpen proletariat and deranged petty bourgeois are cannon fodder for a fascist movement is limited.

Bloodworth’s new book was inspired by his watching of the Netflix series Adolescence. He writes, “It is a striking film that is masterfully shot and powerfully acted. It has also generated a worthwhile public conversation. Much of this conversation has been constructive; however, some of it has been animated by a desire to change the subject – to talk about anything but misogyny and the radicalisation of young men on the internet. I found Adolescence surreal to watch at times.”[2]

As Thomas Scripps writes in his review of the Netflix series, “The reality, as we have been shown, is that the problems are well beyond an individual family’s ability to resolve. Perhaps the most common expression throughout the series is “I don’t know”, or some variant, from kids and adults alike; they are buffeted and bewildered by forces beyond their grasp.

The role of smartphones, the Internet, and social media, in particular, is well-contextualised in this broader social landscape. It would be foolish to deny the role they play in creating an unprecedented level of exposure to peer pressures and corporate advertising, declared and undeclared, and in streamlining the passage of individuals damaged by these influences into darker waters. But the real problem is the poison spilling out of a rotting social system—from misogynist ideologies to the glorification of violence, wealth and selfishness—for which these technologies are a conduit, and the conditions of social neglect which make young people emotionally susceptible: the most vulnerable dangerously so. Conditions which also hinder the social dialogue necessary to help children learn how to interact healthily with new technologies and form genuine relationships.”[3]

So far, the opposition to the rise of the “Manosphere has not come from working-class women, but has taken the form of the middle-class movement centred around the #MeToo movement, which is already eight years old. As the Marxist writer David Walsh wrote, “The ostensible aim of this ongoing movement is to combat sexual harassment and assault, i.e., to bring about some measure of social progress. However, the repressive, regressive means resorted to—including unsubstantiated and often anonymous denunciations and sustained attacks on the presumption of innocence and due process—give the lie to the campaign’s “progressive” claims. Such methods are the hallmark of an anti-democratic, authoritarian movement, and one, moreover, that deliberately seeks to divert attention from social inequality, attacks on the working class, the threat of war and the other significant social and political issues of the day.”[4]

One of the more outspoken and articulate critiques of the “Manosphere has come from the pen of the writer Amia Srinivasan. Her book The Right To sex,[5] while containing so worthwhile observations, it essentially promotes the #MeToo movement’s right to unsubstantiated and often anonymous denunciations and sustained attacks on the presumption of innocence and due process.

Srinivasan is the darling of all the radical groups, who fall over themselves in promoting her idea of social justice.  Her brand of modern-day feminism is dominated mainly by selfish, upper-middle-class champions of “women’s rights”. Srinivasan writes, “It’s essential in any radical political tradition. It’s no surprise that utopian writing always has these wacky ideas. I mean, think about More’s Utopia, full of these strange possibilities, because the same political imagination that leads to the disclosure of new possible social arrangements also sometimes generates some crazy shit. The broadening of the sense of what’s possible, as well as what’s delightful about human life, has to be central to a radical politics.

As Kate Randall points out, “ The fight for women’s rights is a social question that must be resolved in the arena of class struggle, not in the rarified atmosphere of the corporate boardroom and Hollywood. As Rosa Luxemburg once explained: “The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.”

Notes

James Bloodworth is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in numerous British newspapers, as well as in many US publications. His book Hired: Undercover in Low Wage Britain was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2019 and was selected as The Times Best Current Affairs and Big Ideas Book of the Year in 2018. He has produced and presented documentaries for Channel 4 television and has appeared on many podcasts. He has a new book, Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere, scheduled for release on June 5, 2025, the result of a five-year investigation into the subculture.

[1] Adolescence’ and the Marketisation of Childhood, by James Bloodworth – 4 April 2025-https://leftrenewal.org/articles-en/bloodworth-adolescence/

[2] ‘Adolescence’ and the Marketisation of Childhood, by James Bloodworth – 4 April 2025-https://leftrenewal.org/articles-en/bloodworth-adolescence/

[3] Adolescence: Gripping realism explores social pressures behind young male violence-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/24/fbxd-m24.html

[4] One year of the #MeToo movement-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/19/year-o19.html

[5] The Right to Sex: Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2022 Hardcover – 19 Aug. 2021-Bloomsbury

Diary of a Nobody

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

In November 2025, this Blog/Website will be 18 years old. Started as a vanity project after my part-time degree at Birkbeck University, it has now become something more substantial. It is now comfortably racking up 10,000 hits per month, which is not bad for a website that, outside of the World Socialist Website, is the only orthodox Trotskyist website.

This year, I hope to expand the website and add more history writers, as well as a few additional subject pages. The other aim is to produce two drafts of the books I have been working on for some time. A collection of essays on Raphael Samuel and to rewrite my degree dissertation on Cromwell, the Levellers and the Putney Debates.

Meetings

If any writer has a meeting or book launch coming up, please don’t hesitate to contact me to advertise it.

Book Launch – A.L. Morton and the Radical Tradition-

Author James Crossley introduces his biography of the Communist intellectual A.L. Morton, who pioneered studies of English radical history.

Thursday, 26 June 2025 – 7:00 pm Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London, EC1R 0DU

National Portrait Gallery The Fiery Spirits: John Rees 10 July 2025, 13.00-14.00

Popular protest, parliament and the English Revolution

Books Purchased

1.   The Nazi Mind-Laurence Rees

2.   The Last Days of Kira Mullan- N Ricci

3.   Oliver Cromwell-R Hutton

4.   Did It Happen Here- D Jenkins

5.   Hiroshima-J Hersey

6.   Anne Frank-The: The Diary of a Young Girl

7.   The Many Lives of Anne Frank-R Franklin

8.   Marxist Modernism-G Rose

9.   Mafalda-Isabella Cosse

10.Mafalda Quinto 2025

11.America’s Fatal Leap-Paul W Schroder

12.Reform, Revolution and Opportunism M Taber

13.The Time of the Harvest Has Come M Empson

14.Billie Holiday The Lady Sings the Blues

15.Lost Boys-James Bloodworth.

A Rebel’s Guide to Malcolm X by Antony Hamilton, Paperback – 29 Sept. 2016, Bookmarks Publication

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

“The notion was expressed that the British government would not, out of its free will, ‘donate’ self-rule to a colony and that the application of some element of force might be necessary.”

FR Kankam-Boadu

“If the Western world is still determined to rule mankind by force, then Africans, as a last resort, may have to appeal to force in the effort to achieve freedom.”

WEB Du Bois

“Every Negro who lays claim to leadership should make a study of Bolshevism and explain its meaning to the coloured masses. It is the greatest and most scientific idea afloat in the world today that can be easily put into practice by the proletariat to better its material and spiritual life. Bolshevism…has made Russia safe for the Jew. It has liberated the Slav peasant from the priest and bureaucrat who can no longer egg him on to murder Jews to bolster up their rotten institutions. It might make these United States safe for the Negro…if the Russian idea should take hold of the white masses of the Western world, and they should rise in united strength and overthrow their imperial capitalist government, then the black toilers would automatically be free!”

Claude McKay (1890-1948)

Trotsky asked me some straight and sharp questions about American Negroes, their group organisations, their political position, their schooling, their religion, their grievances and social aspirations and, finally, what kind of sentiment existed between American and African Negroes. I replied with the best knowledge and information at my command. Then Trotsky expressed his own opinion about Negroes, which was more intelligent than that of any of the other Russian leaders…he was not quick to make deductions about the causes of white prejudice against black. Indeed, he made no conclusions at all, and, happily, expressed no mawkish sentimentality about black and white brotherhood. What he said was very practical…he urged that Negroes should be educated about the labour movement…he said he would like to set a practical example in his own department and proposed the training of a group of Negroes as officers in the Red Army.

Claude McKay (1890-1948)

A Rebel’s Guide to Malcolm X is further confirmation, if it was already needed, of the British Socialist Worker’s Party’s promotion of racialist identity politics. This small book largely whitewashes, if you pardon the pun, Malcom X’s pursuit of black nationalist politics and support for racial segregation.

Hamilton’s book and the party he belongs to have historically adapted to the reformist middle-class leadership of the international civil rights movement. The SWP presents black nationalism, along with other forms of petty-bourgeois nationalism such as Castroism in Cuba, as complementary to the fight for socialism.

This small book begins by granting political amnesty to Garveyism.[1] The SWP in all their articles on Garvey contain mild criticisms of him, but on the whole, they gave him a free pass, saying, “In the end, he is remembered for giving a sense of pride to black people in the face of the hideous racism of the 1920s. That is worth recalling, and his faults should be seen in that context.”[2]

But as the Trotskyist Lawrence Porter points out “Despite his radical aura, Garvey rejected socialism. Indeed, he steadfastly opposed the struggle for equality even among blacks. As time progressed, the left rhetoric receded and the right-wing essence of Garvey’s politics came to the fore. By the 1920s, he found himself in cooperation with Jim Crow politicians and the Ku Klux Klan, who agreed with black nationalism’s policy of racial separatism. By the end of his life, Garvey boasted he was a fascist.”[3]

The other organisation given a free pass by Hamilton and the SWP is the American Communist Party. Malcolm X was never a member of the Communist Party or even close to it. So it is a little confusing that while he was in prison, his correspondence was opened and intercepted by the FBI. In this letter, Malcom X clearly states he is a Communist.

Under the heading of “Communist Party Activities”, the heavily redacted FBI transcription of letters from Malcolm X while in prison noted:

“Several excerpts from letters written by the subject. [redaction’] these excerpts were not quotes but rather notes jotted down [redaction] on the contents of these letters. On June 29, 1950, the Subject mailed a letter from which [redacted] copied the following: ‘Tell [redaction] to get in shape. It looks like another war. I have always been a Communist. I have tried to enlist in the Japanese Army during the last war, but now they will never draft or accept me in the U.S. Army. Everyone has always said [redaction] Malcolm is crazy, so it isn’t hard to convince people that I am.”[4]

The free pass given to the Stalinists in the American Communist Party reflects their attitude towards the American Trotskyist movement and Leon Trotsky. Neither is mentioned in the book. For an organisation that purports to be Trotskyist, the SWP and Hamilton do not discuss the attitude of Leon Trotsky and the American Trotskyist Party towards Black Nationalism at any point. There is not enough room in this short review to include Trotsky’s discussion with the American comrades on black nationalism, which should be considered in any discussion of Malcolm X.

Trotsky wrote:

“The point of view of the American comrades appears to me not fully convincing. ‘Self-determination’ is a democratic demand. Our American comrades advance as against this democratic demand, the liberal demand. This liberal demand is, moreover, complicated. I understand what ‘political equality’ means. But what is the meaning of economic and social equality within a capitalist society? Does that mean a demand to public opinion that all enjoy equal protection under the law? But that is political equality. The slogan ‘political, economic and social equality’ sounds equivocal, and while it is not clear to me, it nevertheless suggests itself easily to misinterpretation.

The Negroes are a race and not a nation:—Nations grow out of the racial material under definite conditions. The Negroes in Africa are not yet a nation but they are in the process of building a nation. The American Negroes are on a higher cultural level. But while they are there under the pressure of the Americans they become interested in the development of the Negroes in Africa. The American Negro will develop leaders for Africa, that one can say with certainty and that in turn will influence the development of political consciousness in America.

We do, of course, not obligate the Negroes to become a nation; if they are, then that is a question of their consciousness, that is, what they desire and what they strive for. We say: If the Negroes want that then we must fight against imperialism to the last drop of blood, so that they gain the right, wherever and how they please, to separate a piece of land for themselves. The fact that they are not a majority in any state today is irrelevant. It is not a question of the authority of the states but of the Negroes. That in the overwhelming Negro territory also whites have existed. They will remain henceforth is not the question and we do not need today to break our heads over a possibility that sometime the whites will be suppressed by the Negroes. In any case the suppression of the Negroes pushes them toward a political and national unity.

That the slogan ‘self-determination’ will rather win the petty bourgeois instead of the workers—that argument holds good also for the slogan of equality. It is clear that the special Negro elements who appear more frequently in the public eye (businessmen, intellectuals, lawyers, etc.) are more active and react more strongly against inequality. It is possible to say that the liberal demand, just as well as the democratic one, in the first instance will attract the petty bourgeois and only later the workers.”[5]

In a lecture delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) summer school, held August 1 through August 6, 2021, Niles Niemuth, a writer for the World Socialist Web Site, made the following point. “Trotsky was seeking in brief discussions with American members in Turkey in 1933 and Mexico in 1939 to correct the American Trotskyists’ neglect of the “Negro question,” orient the party to a critical section of the American working class and facilitate the recruitment of worker members under conditions where the twists and turns of the Communist Party had alienated many black intellectuals and workers who had been drawn to Marxism over the previous two decades.” I don’t know if even the Trotskyists in the American section of the Fourth International would have been able to change Malcolm X’s subsequent political trajectory. Still, the ensuing political discussion with Malcolm X would have educated a much larger audience and clarified the question of Black nationalism.[6]

Section four of the book elaborates on Malcolm X’s time in prison and his life in the Nation of Islam. While in prison, Malcolm X read John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Orlando Reade[7] In an interview with the SWP, Reade said :

“Malcolm X read Paradise Lost in the late 1940s when he was a young man serving a long sentence for burglary. He had this desire to read, combined with a deep suspicion of white writers. Malcolm X was trying to bend the literature to make it serve his new radical viewpoint. When he came to Paradise Lost, Malcolm also perceived something true. Milton compared Satan on his way to Eden to European ships on their way to satisfy their appetite for sugar, spice and tobacco. Malcolm saw how Milton associated Satan with European kings and their armies, as well as the colonisers. Malcolm found something profoundly radical in Milton’s critique of worldly power. He found in Paradise Lost a critique of white supremacy.”[8]

In the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine, an article on the women in Malcom X’s life shows they were instrumental in his turn towards the politics of the Nation of Islam. [9]The NOI was not a threat to capitalism in the United States, nor was Malcolm X, as long as he was in it. But as David Walsh points out, it was only after breaking with the organisation that his life became endangered. Walsh writes :

“The assassinations of Malcolm X and, some three years later, of Martin Luther King Jr., could not have been accidental in their purpose or their timing. When Malcolm represented the Nation of Islam, his life was not threatened. Still, when he broke from Elijah Muhammad’s anti-white separatism and suggested, even in a limited way, that race was not the fundamental dividing line in the fight against injustice, he became a marked man. His newly formed Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) was undoubtedly quickly infiltrated by agents and provocateurs. At the same time, full advantage was taken of the threats made against him by the Nation of Islam. All the cops had to do was sabotage Malcolm X’s security and look the other way.”[10]

As I mentioned at the beginning, the SWP adapted to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. With the advent of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, it continues to maintain its stance in support of Black nationalism. How else would you understand the SWP’s Ruby Hirsch’s fawning article over the recent Super Bowl performance of Beyonce’s “ in which her dancers dressed in the black berets and raised gloved fists of the Black Panthers and stood in an “X” formation, was broadcast to more than 100 million Americans. It was a powerful tribute to Malcolm X and the Black Lives Matter movement.”

The reality of the Black Lives Matter Movement is somewhat different from the one described by the British SWP. As Lawrence Porter and Nancy Hanover write, “From the beginning, the ‘mothers of the movement’ Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi—who collectively adopted the famous hashtag—specifically opposed uniting blacks, whites and immigrants against the brutal class-war policies of the capitalist state. Instead, the group did its best to confine anti-police violence protests within the framework of the capitalist system and push a racialist and pro-capitalist agenda.”[11]

Malcolm X was a complex man. Who knows if he had not been assassinated, whether he would have moved further to the left and rejected his brand of black nationalism and taken up a struggle against black and white capitalism. To be blunt, Hamilton’s book is a whitewash of Malcom X’s history and politics and does nothing to clarify today’s issue of black nationalism or racism.

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey

[2] Marcus Garvey: a liberating legacy of challenging racism-socialistworker.co.uk/in-depth/marcus-garvey-a-liberating-legacy-of-challenging-racism/

[3] Marcus Garvey and the reactionary logic of racialist politics-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/02/qhdd-m02.html

[4] www.blackagendareport.com/malcolm-x-black-nationalism-and-cold-war

[5] On Black Nationalism-Documents on the Negro Struggle http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1940/negro1.htm

[6] Race, class and social conflict in the United States. wsws.org

[7] What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost, 2024, Jonathan Cape.

[8] Paradise Lost inspired generations of radicals-socialistworker.co.uk/reviews-and-culture/paradise-lost-inspired-generations-of-radicals/

[9] www.historyextra.com/magazine/current-issue-bbc-history-magazine/

[10] Two men convicted in 1965 Malcolm X assassination exonerated in New York court-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/19/malc-n19.html

[11]  Black Lives Matter cashes in on black capitalism-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/04/blm-a04.html