AFTER FOUR MONTHS OF ARGUMENTS, SPLITS, MONEY GRUBBING, AND SWP EXPULSIONS, WHAT NEXT FOR THE PLUCKY NEW PARTY NOW ESTABLISHED? ~  Simon and Andy also discuss a big downturn in new homes construction, Ofgem’s punting of the energy infrastructure bill to the public, and Labour’s attacks on refugees—which have had exactly the outcome we all predicted.   The post Anarchist News Review: Now that’s what I call Your Party appeared first on Freedom News.

LABOUR’S WEAPONISATION OF XENOPHOBIC POLITICS NORMALISES CRUELTY AND ENABLES DIVISION OF WORKERS  ~ Simon and Uri talk about the government’s asylum policy abomination, the Pally Action hunger strike, mountains of waste in Oxfordshire, the recent Bristol “Patriots” March, and Maoist violence against Athens anarchists. The post Anarchist News Review: Asylum abomination and Pally hunger strike appeared first on Freedom News.

FAR-RIGHT GLEE TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT’S ASYLUM PLANS ~ punkacademic ~ Plans announced by the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to “shake up the asylum system” have finally achieved what Labour appears to have hoped for: the support of far-right extremists, if not their voters. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (a.k.a. Tommy Robinson)  has been quick to claim that Labour’s moves have shown that ‘the Overton window has been obliterated’, meaning that far-right politics are now mainstream. Given Yaxley-Lennon epitomises Labour’s own fantasy caricature of the imaginary ‘white working class’, this probably means Labour are getting what they wanted from this with his quasi-endorsement. That and the gushing headlines in the right-wing press. That support though should tell you all you need to know about what these policies mean. This is fascism, which needs to be described unequivocally as what it is. The fact that it is a transnational phenomenon or that electoral politics has not merely failed to stop it but actively enabled it should not stop us calling it out. The plans—which include attacks on those provisions in the European Convention of Human Rights which aim to ensure the right to a family life and to protect individuals from torture—are, put simply, heinous. They aim to reduce refugee status to a temporary affair, with continued uncertainty hanging over refugees for decades, unable to achieve permanent status until they have been in the country for twenty years. And of course, being a policy from Starmer’s Labour, there’s the customary genuflection to AI, which will supposedly be used to verify refugees’ ages, something mooted earlier this year. Labour has rolled out the full fash playlist. Jewellery can be confiscated from refugees to pay for processing them, as one minister gleefully told the press—seemingly blissfully unaware of the horrific echoes such a despicable policy conjures up. Indeed, those with living memory of the Holocaust or with a family connection to it have been amongst the quickest to call out Labour’s plans for what they are. Alf Dubs, who fled Nazi persecution in 1939, was clear that Labour’s plans sought to “use children as a weapon”. It has been a long road to here, and though the rise of the far-right is international, the variant in Britain gives the lie to myths the British state has long fostered about Britain’s status as a ‘welcoming nation’. Indeed, despite much rewriting of history, in the 1930s and 1940s Jewish refugees were often met with prejudice and legalised discrimination if they even made it to England. Claus Moser, ultimately a leading statistician and Establishment figure at LSE and Oxford in the post-war period, was placed in an internment camp despite his family fleeing persecution at the hands of the Nazis four years’ earlier. But history isn’t relevant to technocratic centrist politicians, for whom every political question is merely a cost-benefit analysis of fiscal implications or polling data. As far as elites are concerned, the BBC’s much-vaunted TV series The Nazis: A Warning from History, broadcast the same year Blair came to power, seems to only have reinforced the view that the experience has no relevance for now. Instead, centrists not actively convinced by fascism and far-right politics have resorted to the 1990s playbook of contrarianism and triangulation. But you cannot ‘triangulate’ fascism. As scholars have noted, with a force that wishes to destroy freedom and whole communities, there can be no middle ground. The non-fash press continues to persevere with weasel-words such as “populism” and ‘both sides’ perspectives, as if those doomed advocates of greater social spending and council housing in Parliament were of the same ilk as those wishing to open concentration camps. Otherwise, it seeks to report in the depoliticised language of the ‘game’, the hyper-personalised style that makes a big deal of who’s up and who’s down in Westminster rather than making any attempt to consider why people across the country have embraced far-right politics. This tells us something else, a truth we anarchists know too well: that no salvation is coming from centrist parliamentary politicians or their media outriders. Societies are only so receptive to hate on this scale thanks to their complicity in the destruction of what passed for political choice in favour of an oligarchic dystopia, where the donors pay well and news moguls own Downing Street Those who have fuelled a fire won’t douse it. That task falls to us, and those many outside our movement who also know that the answer to fascist politics—in parliament as in the streets—is a total lack of compromise and a total emphasis on human dignity and solidarity. Institutions cannot do that for us. As one of our predecessors reminds us, we must always and everywhere act for ourselves in practices of mutual aid that know no boundary of border or nationality to combat a fascist menace that is itself international, and which cannot be appeased but which must be destroyed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: UK Home Office on Flickr CC BY 4.0 The post Labour rolls out the full fash playlist appeared first on Freedom News.

DESPITE MULTIPLE COURT RULINGS IN HIS FAVOUR, ABDULRAHMAN AL-KHALIDI’S DETENTION CONTINUES UNDER SHIFTING LEGAL JUSTIFICATIONS ~ Alisa-Ece Tohumcu ~ Despite judicial rulings supporting his release, Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi, a Saudi dissident and former member of the pro-democracy Bees Army, remains held in detention in Bulgaria since October 2021. Bulgarian authorities, primarily the State Agency for National Security (SANS), have continued to block his freedom on national security grounds. He has not been charged with any crime. “I am not an accused person, nor am I guilty, nor have I been convicted of anything to seek pardon or forgiveness”, said Al-Khalidi in a statement. He revealed that the Sofia Administrative Court had ruled on 26 March that he must be released immediately. Instead of being freed, Al-Khalidi was transferred to a different section of the Busmantsi detention centre, where he was informed that his detention was being reclassified from “asylum detention” to “expulsion detention.” When he attempted to contact his lawyer, his phone was taken by officials who physically restrained him. He was coerced into signing documents under the threat that he would otherwise be denied access to an appeal process. Solidarity demonstration with Al-Khalidi Al-Khalidi argues this reclassification was a deliberate attempt to bypass the court’s decision and prepare for his deportation, despite his asylum claim which is still ongoing. He cites violations of the EU Directive which limits the detention of asylum seekers to situations where less restrictive alternatives are unavailable, and only following individual assessment. Al-Khalidi applied for asylum in November 2021, shortly after crossing into Bulgaria and being arrested. Over the next three years, his application was rejected multiple times and appealed through Bulgaria’s court system. In May 2023, the Supreme Administrative Court annulled all lower decisions and sent his case back for retrial due to procedural irregularities. His asylum case remains unresolved and pending appeal at the Supreme Administrative Court. A petition calling for an end to his deportation has gathered over 1,100 signatures. On 10 March, Front Line Defenders, along with 20 other human rights organisations, issued a joint statement warning that Al-Khalidi faces a serious risk of torture or death if returned to Saudi Arabia. They called on Bulgarian authorities to respect court decisions and international obligations. “The Bulgarian government must immediately release Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi, in line with the court rulings and its obligations under international human rights law”, said the statement The post Saudi dissident faces deportation from Bulgaria appeared first on Freedom News.