Crush the saboteurs! How hard-Brexit rhetoric turned Leninist

Steven Poole in The Guardian

Hatred of dissent, it seems, is the new normal in British politics. “Crush the saboteurs,” screamed the Daily Mail, announcing Theresa May’s calling of a snap election. “Crush pro-EU saboteurs, PM,” advised the Sun for good measure. But what exactly are saboteurs and how should we crush them? 

Surprisingly, the language of hard-Brexit Tory supporters is now that of the Russian Revolution. In 1918, the Bolsheviks dissolved Russia’s democractically elected constituent assembly on the grounds that it was a front for the bourgeois counter-revolution. “All power to the Soviets!” Lenin declared. “We shall crush the saboteurs.” For a while, it had seemed as though neo-Soviet rhetoric was the preserve of squabbling factions within the Labour party, with both Corbyn and his opponents accused of organising “purges”. But since three judges defending the rights of the British people were denounced in the rightwing press last autumn as “enemies of the people”, it appears to have become the de facto mode of political argument on left and right. Supporters of the two main parties are complicit in creating an ambient political atmosphere of paranoid permanent revolution. (Rather sweetly, the Mail devoted pages two and three on 19 April to a Soviet-style heroic-agriculture tribute to a British farmer who insists on ploughing his field with horses, which is just as well, since he probably won’t be able to afford a tractor, post-Brexit.)

The political saboteurs Lenin complained of were alleged conspirators, working behind the scenes to ruin his virtuous plans, but the word actually originates in the language of industrial disputes. “Saboteur” and “sabotage” are of French origin, and a popular etymology relates them to “sabots”, the wooden clogs that Luddite workers supposedly threw into machines to break them. Whether or not that is true, the verb “saboter”, meaning to deliberately mess something up, came to be used in the late 19th century by anarchist thinkers, and “sabotage” appeared in English in 1910 to describe the destructive actions of French railway strikers.

The word’s origins in the struggle between workers and capital, then, makes it an appropriate term for enemies of the modern Conservative party in particular. (Home counties Tories, of course, are especially likely to disdain people thus characterised, given their historic battles with “hunt saboteurs”.) And it is no doubt thrilling for well-lunched tabloid editors to dream of “crushing” people they wouldn’t dare pick a physical fight with in person. But Theresa May did not call anyone a saboteur, so perhaps this is all just an unfortunate case of macho projection.

Yet May’s speech announcing the election was, paradoxically, profoundly anti-democratic. “At this moment of enormous national significance, there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division,” she complained. “The country is coming together, but Westminster is not.” This rather charmingly combined a totally made-up fact (the country is coming together) with a bizarre whine that parliamentary democracy is functioning as it should. Any persistent total unity in an elected assembly, after all, would signal that it had been hijacked by a fascist. If there were no “division” in Westminster, we would find ourselves in a de facto one-party state, in which the wisdom of the dear leader is all – a vision of “strong leadership” at which Vladimir Putin would nod sagely.
May’s contempt for the democratic functioning of government neatly mirrors Lenin’s own nearly a century ago, when he asserted that the workers’ councils were better than any democratically elected body: “The Soviets, being revolutionary organisations of all the people, of course became immeasurably superior to all the parliaments in the world.”

In Theresa May’s implicit view, too, superior to all the parliaments in the world would be a British establishment that offered zero obstacles to her “getting on with the job” of delivering what she considers best for the British people (whatever that turns out to be, since apparently no one needs to know right now). In May’s habitual way of phrasing things, the normal workings of parliament – in which MPs and members of the Lords may disagree with a government’s plans – are nothing but “playing politics” or “political game-playing” which must not be allowed to continue lest it cause “damaging uncertainty and instability”. To cast disagreement as game-playing is to characterise dissent as fundamentally unserious, and to bring the very idea of politics into disrepute.

And so, despite her disavowal of the term, the tabloid characterisation of May’s plan as one of crushing the “saboteurs” does not seem inaccurate. Indeed, the recent finale of the TV drama Homeland, which saw the newly elected president Elizabeth Keane holed up in the Oval Office ordering arrests of senators and congressmen, now looks as relevant to British as to American politics. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when you are a paranoid aspiring autocrat, everyone is a potential saboteur.

In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith invents the heroic historical figure Comrade Ogilvy, who had “no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down of spies, saboteurs, thought-criminals, and traitors generally”. Theresa May’s world, too, seems to have shrunk to one in which the greatest enemies are the enemies within and democracy must be democratically eliminated for the good of the people.

The anomalous rise of Mr Kejriwal

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

YOU would have thought that water alone has the anomalous property of expanding when frozen. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal displays a very nearly similar propensity. He ‘expands’ where others would retreat. The more the media mocks and berates him on behalf of its paymasters, and tries to put Kejriwal in the deep freeze, the fierier he comes out. In this regard he is somewhat like Donald Trump, but the similarity ends here.

Unlike the flashy billionaire who loves the good things of life, Kejriwal is a middle-class family man, happy with his vegetarian meal and cough syrup. As the US preside15 degreent seeks to discard the pro-poor healthcare and moves to auction away public spaces of learning and education, Kejriwal veers closer to the old-fashioned economics that harks back to India’s early quest to become a welfare state. Unlike most of his competitors Kejriwal revels in his hostility to crony capitalism, which he believes has stunted India’s growth.

He was likened to Pakistan’s Imran Khan initially. That was unintelligent. If anything, Imran veers closer to the BJP’s politics of riding religious identity. Would he be able to say, for example, “I will never use religion to win an election even if I have to lose a 100 times”? That’s what Kejriwal said publicly when the BJP won Uttar Pradesh in a polarised election.

Some events more readily set him apart from his rivals. When mobs attacked Muslims in BJP-ruled Haryana, Kejriwal dispatched a fact-finding team to the neighbouring state. In 2015, Haryana Chief Minister M.L. Khattar reportedly asked Muslims to leave the country unless they gave up eating beef, a claim he later denied. “Khattar sahib should resign … His statement is not only unfortunate, but shameful,” Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party said. He set up a special investigation team to revisit the Sikh massacre of 1984, which has not attained a satisfactory closure. When Hindutva mobs vandalised churches in Delhi, it was the AAP that led the face-off with the communalists. I’m not sure if any of these events could be associated with the studiously pro-clergy Imran Khan. Recently, Kejriwal was associated with a Jain monk who walks naked, and it’s his business to do that. But the AAP leader has not used religion to canvass support or to attack his opponents. The imam of Jama Masjid, known for meddling in Muslim communalism, offered support to Kejriwal, which he tersely refused. 

The more Kejriwal’s rivals throw muck at him, the cleaner he looks. How many times has the Delhi Police picked up his MLAs for this or that alleged crime only to be rapped on the knuckles by the courts? By a quirk of logic, the Delhi government has no control on the city’s police who fall under federal supervision. Even the chief minister’s offices were not spared from being raided by the agencies. They only got frustration to show for their heavily publicised efforts.

Sample a report in The Hindustan Times last month: “The Delhi Police arrested 13 MLAs of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in the last two years on charges ranging from rape, extortion, cheating, forgery to rioting. For most of these offences bail is hard to come by, but all the 13 lawmakers are out on bail. In fact, two have been cleared of all charges.”

The anomalous rise of Kejriwal persists with its perverse logic. In 2013, according to The Hindu, the Congress government moved to probe alleged foreign funding to Kejriwal’s party. The following day, the daily donation to the AAP increased six-fold. Kejriwal thanked the BJP and the Congress for the windfall. Like Jerry Mouse thumbing his nose at his quarry, he said: “We are grateful to the BJP and the Congress for raising questions on our funds.”

I have met Kejriwal once for five seconds at a public event where I thought of giving him a book on corporate corruption. He may never have needed it actually, because it turned out that he knew more than the book could reveal. I am told he is allergic to leftists, which is not strange since the left has vainly put up candidates against him. But then, what is a former Maoist doing in his cabinet? There must be some meeting of the minds. It could be much more than that.

Initially, I tended to agree with those who were unsparing in their criticism of Arvind Kejriwal. They were supporters of Congress or the left and believed that he was some kind of an agent for the BJP, if not the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He very nearly was. His early mascot was dubious — a former army truck driver who was projected as a Gandhian activist against corruption, a strange Gandhian though who prescribed public flogging for tipplers.

Easily the single-most important factor shoring up Kejriwal’s pronounced secularism is Ashish Khetan. This journalist-turned-politician carried out the most damaging exposés on Hindutva fanaticism in Gujarat during Prime Minister Modi’s tenure as the state’s chief minister. Khetan’s eerie video interview — a sting operation — with a self-confessed hater of Muslims could only be subverted as evidence of crime and complicity if the state’s key pillars looked the other way.

Last week, the Modi government through the lieutenant governor shut down the AAP party office in Delhi claiming it did not have official clearances. The timing was notable. Elections are scheduled next week to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, currently ruled by the BJP. “A victory in the municipality will fulfil Mr Modi’s dreams for India”, says the radio jingle. Kejriwal was the first to stall the Modi juggernaut in Delhi. In response, the prime minister, that for the first time in Delhi municipality’s history, has staked his reputation to defeat Kejriwal. But in Kejriwal’s case when he loses, he wins.

Telling children 'hard work gets you to the top' is simply a lie

Hashi Mohamed in The Guardian


I know about social mobility: I went to underperforming state schools, and am now a barrister. Could somebody take the same route today? It’s highly unlikely

‘Those inside the system naturally recruit in their own image. This then entrenches the lack of any potential for upward mobility and means that the vast majority are excluded.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP


It is a common promise made to the next generation. “If you work hard, and do the right thing, you will be able to get on in life.” I believe that it is a promise that we have no capacity to fulfil. And that’s because its underlying assumptions must be revisited.
Imagine a life living in quads. You attend a highly prestigious school in which you dash from one quad to the next for your classes. You then continue on to yet another prestigious institution for your tertiary education, say Oxford or Cambridge University, and yet more quads with manicured lawns. Then you end up in the oasis of Middle Temple working as a barrister: more manicured lawns and, yes, you guessed it, more quads. You have clearly led a very square and straight life. Effortlessly gliding from one world to the next with clear continuity, familiarity and ease.

Now contrast the above oasis with the overcrowded and under-performing schools of inner cities, going home to a bedroom which you share with many other siblings. A home you are likely to vacate when the council can’t house you there anymore. Perhaps a single-parent household where you have caring duties at a young age, or a household where no one works. A difficult neighbourhood where the poverty of ambition is palpable, stable families a rarity, and role models very scarce.


The unwritten rules are rarely shared and 'diversity' and 'open recruitment' have made little if any difference


The former trajectory, in some or all its forms, is much more likely to lend itself to a more successful life in Britain. The latter means you may have the grades and talent, despite the odds, but you’re still lacking the crucial ingredients essential to succeeding. I don’t have to imagine much of this. I have experienced both of these extremes in my short lifetime.

My mother gave birth to 12 children. I arrived in London at the age of nine, speaking practically no English. I attended some of the worst performing schools in inner-city London and was raised exclusively on state benefits. Many years later I was lucky enough to attend Oxford on a full scholarship for my postgraduate degree. Now as a barrister I am a lifetime member of The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn.

Is my route possible for anyone in the next generation with whom I share a similar background? I believe not. And this is not because they are any less able or less dedicated to succeed.

What I have learned in this short period of time is that the pervasive narrative of “if you work hard you will get on” is a complete myth. It’s not true and we need stop saying it. This is because “working hard, and doing the right thing” barely gets you to the starting line. Furthermore, it means something completely different depending on to which context you’re applying this particular notion. So much more is required.

I have come to understand that the systems that underpin the top professions in Britain are set up to serve only a certain section of society: they’re readily identifiable by privileged backgrounds, particular schools and accents. To some this may seem obvious, so writing it may be superfluous. But it wasn’t obvious to me growing up, and it isn’t obvious to many others. The unwritten rules are rarely shared and “diversity” and “open recruitment” have tried but made little if any difference.

Those inside the system then naturally recruit in their own image. This then entrenches the lack of any potential for upward mobility and means that the vast majority are excluded.

As a form of short-term distraction, we are obsessed with elevating token success stories which distort the overall picture. The story of the Somali boy who got a place at Eton, or the girl from the East End who is now going to MIT. These stories may seem inspiring at first blush, but they skew the complex picture that exists in deprived communities. It perpetuates the simple notion that what’s required is working hard, and that all else afterwards falls neatly into place. This simple ritual we seem to constantly engage in is therefore as much about setting up false hopes for other children, as it is about privileged, middle-class-led institutions making themselves feel good.

The reality is that there are many like them trying hard to do better, but may be lacking the environment to fully realise their potential. Are they worth less? When told to “dream big” and it will happen, who will tell them that failure had nothing to do with their lack of vision? But that real success, especially from their starting point, often boils down to a complex combination of circumstances: luck, sustained stability, the right teachers at the right time, and even not experiencing moments of grief at crucial, destabilising junctures.

Improving educational attainment is critical, and so much progress has been made over the years to improve this. But this is not enough. Employers must see hiring youngsters from poorer backgrounds as good for business as well as for a fairer society. They must be assisted with a real chance to succeed, in a non-judgmental context and inclusive environment. They must do more to focus on potential rather than polish. More leadership and more risk-taking are required on this front.
Perversely, class and accents remain an overwhelmingly important way of judging intelligence. In France or Germany, for example, your accent rarely matters. Your vocabulary and conjugation will give much more away, but never your accent, apart from regional perhaps. I don’t see this mindset shifting, so my advice to youngsters has remained: you need to adapt yourself. You need to find the right way to speak to different people, at different times in different contexts. This is not compromising who you are, but rather adapting to the relevant surroundings.

We need to do more to double down on improving environments both at home and at school which continuously constrain potential. If the adage that hard work truly matters rings true, then we must do more – at all levels of society – to make it a reality.

Why rightwingers are desperate for Sweden to ‘fail’

Christian Christen in The Guardian

Of course Sweden isn’t perfect, but those who love to portray it as teeming with terrorists and naive towards reality, are just cynical hypocrites

‘When terrible events take place, they are framed as evidence of the decline and fall of the European social democratic project, the failure of European immigration policies and of Swedish innocence lost.’ Photograph: Fredrik Sandberg/AFP/Getty Images



There are few countries in the world that have “lost their innocence” as many times as Sweden. Even before a suspected terrorist and Isis supporter killed four and injured many more in last week’s attack in central Stockholm, Sweden’s policies were being portrayed on the programmes of Fox News and pages of the Daily Mail as, at best, exercises in well-meaning-but-naive multiculturalism, and at worst terrorist appeasement.
So, when terrible events take place, they are framed as evidence of the decline and fall of the European social democratic project, the failure of European immigration policies and of Swedish innocence lost.

When Donald Trump argued against the intake of Syrian refugees to the US earlier this year, he used supposed problems in Sweden as part of his rationale. “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” the president said at a rally in Florida in February. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.” The White House later clarified that Trump had been speaking about general “rising crime”, when he seemed to be describing a then non-existent terror attack.


Sweden is a capitalist, economic power – usually found near the top of rankings of innovative and competitive economies


The obsession with Sweden has a lot to do with the country’s history of taking in refugees and asylum seekers, combined with social democratic politics. Both are poison to the political right. When prime minister Olof Palme was shot walking home (without bodyguards) from a cinema in 1986, we were told that Swedish innocence and utopian notions of a non-violent society had come to an end. But Swedes miraculously regained their innocence, only to lose it again in 2003 when the popular foreign minister Anna Lindh (also without bodyguards) was stabbed to death in a Stockholm department store. This possession and dispossession of innocence – which some call naivety – has ebbed and flowed with the years.

The election to parliament and subsequent rise of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats were discussed in similar terms, as was the decision in late 2015 by the Swedish government to halt the intake of refugees after a decades-long policy of humanitarian acceptance.

Yet the notion of a doe-eyed Sweden buffeted by the cruel winds of the real world is a nonsense. Sweden is an economic power – usually found near the top of rankings of innovative and competitive economies. Companies that are household names, from H&M to Ericsson and Skype, and food packaging giant Tetra Pak, are Swedish. It plays the capitalist game better than most (and not always in an ethical manner. The country is, per capita, one of the largest weapons exporters in the world. As for the argument that Swedes are in denial, unwilling to discuss the impact of immigration? This comes as news to citizens who see the issue addressed regularly in the Swedish media, most obviously in the context of the rise of the Sweden Democrats.

Stockholm attack suspect 'known to security services'



Between 2014 and 2016, Sweden received roughly 240,000 asylum seekers: far and away the most refugees per capita in Europe. But the process has not been smooth. Throughout 2016 and 2017, the issue of men leaving Sweden to fight for Isis has been a major story, as has the Swedish government’s perceived lack of preparation about what to do when these fighters return. There is also much debate on the practice of gender segregation in some Muslim schools in Sweden.

As Stockholm goes through a period of mourning for last week’s attack, it is worth asking: is Sweden the country divorced from reality? If we are speaking of naivety in relation to terrorism, a good place to start might be US foreign policy in the Middle East , and not Sweden’s humanitarian intake of the immigrants and refugees created (at least in part) as a result of that US policy.

Has Swedish immigration policy always been well thought-out? No. Is Sweden marked by social and economic divisions? Yes. But the presentation of Sweden as some kind of case study in failed utopianism often comes from those who talk a big game on democracy, human rights and equality, but who refuse to move beyond talk into action.
So, when pundits and experts opine on Swedish “innocence lost” it is worth remembering that Sweden has never been innocent. It is also worth remembering that Sweden was willing to put its money where its mouth was when it came to taking in refugees and immigrants fleeing the conflicts and instability fuelled by countries unwilling to deal with the consequences of their actions. This shirking of responsibility while condemning the efforts of others is far worse than being naive. It’s cynical hypocrisy.