GREEN ANARCHISM EXPOSED! A special report by the Neoist Alliance

'The struggle for democracy is not a short cut allowing workers to make the revolution without realising it. The proletariat will destroy totalitarianism only by destroying democracy and all political forms at the same time. Until then there will be a succession of 'fascist' and 'democratic systems in time and space...' Jean Barrot.

Green Anarchist and their collaborator Larry O'Hara wish to reorganise social struggle on the basis of what they claim to be a momentous discovery, the fact that the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight fails to operate independently of the British state! Since Searchlight has never claimed to be a revolutionary organisation, it is absurd for Green Anarchist and O'Hara to expect it to behave like one. They might just as well attack the Spectator or the Daily Telegraph for the same reason, or rail against a horse because it isn't a zebra. Anti-fascism is a democratic ideology, it was invented for the defence of the liberal state, anti-fascists have always opposed fascism with democracy, whereas revolutionaries oppose both fascism and the liberal state with communism.

Democrats who claim to relish debate will not tolerate discussion of fascism. They wish to reduce the Nazi question to an issue of morality. Their dogma is that since the NSDAP was undoubtedly racist and genocidal, fascism is evil and that is all that needs to be said about it. Thus anti-fascism does not even reach the level of consciousness attained by the idealist philosophers of the eighteenth-century, it is essentially religious in character and this is its fatal weakness. To understand fascism one needs to grasp the material conditions that create it. Fascism does not gain mass support simply on the basis of its genocidal programme, it is a vampire that feeds on real social movements. In order to grow, fascism has to offer people solutions to the problems that confront them in their daily lives, even if - as is inevitably the case - these are false solutions to the contradictions thrown up by capitalism. Fascism wants to go backwards, at its atavistic core is a neo-feudalism, fascists don't understand that they cannot escape the contradictions of capitalism through a barbarous programme of mass murder. There is only one way to escape from the agony of commodity relations, and that is for the proletariat to expropriate its expropriators.

Green Anarchist and Larry O'Hara treat fascism as a moral category, and as a result are prone to smearing anyone who is critical of their brand of activism as having connections to either Nazis or the Secret State. Fascism as a form of false consciousness is very different to the bogey brandished by Green Anarchist. While the murderous assaults of swastika wielding reactionaries can make life a misery for individual proletarians, these thugs are unlikely to muster mass support because National Socialism in its classical form is historically discredited. The ideological twists and turns of the French New Right and their offspring - such as the political soldiers of the Third Position - demonstrate that the rhetoric of anti-racism and pro-Third Worldism is not incompatible with an ideology that is fascist at its core. Indeed, given the negative fashion in which anti-fascism defines itself, the anti-fascism of those without a material stake in the liberal state can very easily be transformed into its opposite, that is to say fascism. Obviously, since the institution of communist social relations is the only means by which the proletariat can defeat fascism, there is no such thing as 'revolutionary' anti-fascism.

The practical result of anti-fascist moralism is that it prevents its adherents from recognising fascism for what it is, it prevents them from viewing fascism as anything other than a moral contagion, it prevents them from recognising genocidal ideology in anything other than its swastika wielding form. Green Anarchist does not know what fascism is, and it is therefore incapable of recognising itself as fascist. This is the real basis of Green Anarchist's differences with Searchlight. With its anti-urban ideology and utopian vision of small autonomous communities, Green Anarchist has yet to face the problem of how it plans to 'dispose' of a huge 'surplus' population. While supporters of Green Anarchism might hope that the urban proletariat will simply starve to death (thereby saving them the trouble of killing us), if they successfully instigated a counter-revolution, the material unfolding of events would ultimately force them to resort to the concentration camp and the Gulag, as happened when capital restructured itself in Germany and imposed itself on Russia.

Green Anarchist's false solutions to the contradictions of capital are identical to those of fascism. It's propaganda includes posters bearing the following slogans: Only Guns Give Us Rights, Tax Is Theft and Stuff Your Jobs We Want Land. Being a form of capitalism, fascism draws on liberal rhetoric about rights while differentiating itself from democratic ideology by revelling in its willingness to use violence to impose commodity relations upon the proletariat. Likewise, anti-tax agitation is a favoured tactic of the extreme right, since it diverts attention away from the root cause of alienation and instead attacks a by-product of capitalist relations. As for wanting land, the Nazis had a word for it, lebensraum or 'living space'. Likewise, Larry O'Hara's concern about the peasantry (see page 21 of the pamphlet Paradise Referred Back: A Radical Look At The Green Party, co-written with Gary Matthews), is just what one would expect from Nazis without swastikas.

While nationalism was a key element of Nazism, the French New Right and some of those tail-ending it have demonstrated that fascism can mutate by organising itself around an ideological regionalism. What is crucial to fascism as a form of reaction is not nationalism per se, but anti-internationalism, of which nationalism is just one expression. However, it would be wrong to assume from this that Green Anarchist is very far removed from classical fascism. This fact can be illustrated by quoting a few lines of propaganda issued by a pre-war fascist organisation in Belgium: 'Rex is neither a party nor a league. Rex is a movement, that is to say an active force carrying a current of ideas. Rex is a revolutionary movement. Rex is a popular movement... The Rexist movement wants the destruction of all that which in the present regime compromises the existence of particular (i.e. small) communities, suppresses their dignity - that is their functions and their social responsibilities... (the Rexist movement wants) the reconstruction of particular (i.e. small) communities, by a comprehensive series of measures designed to restore their position, their rights and their duties...' This IS Green Anarchism even if GA reject the Christian nationalist trappings of Rexism..

What Larry O'Hara and Green Anarchist want proletarians to do is make a choice between fascism and democracy. Forced to chose between Searchlight (democracy) and Green Anarchist (fascism), anyone with their sanity intact would opt for the former. But in the end this is a false opposition, the material unfolding of history leaves proletarians with no real choice but to oppose both fascism and democracy with communism. If one considers this a choice at all, then in must be posited in terms of progress against reaction. As for the Larry O'Hara and Green Anarchist obsession with spooks, this serves to divert attention away from their reactionary politics. O'Hara and Green Anarchist have made a lot of allegations about various individuals working with the secret state, it's about time they offered some solid evidence for accusations that we must otherwise conclude are simply smears.

WATCH OUT FOR BUREAUCRATS!
WATCH OUT FOR MANIPULATORS!
DOWN WITH WAGE-SLAVERY!

Leaflet issued April 1995

For a critique of fascism and anti-fascism see Fascism Anti-Fascism by Jean Barrot (Black Cat Press, Edmonton 1982). For a critique of the French New Right see The Echo Of Time by Jacques Camatte (Unpopular Books, London 1988).

More on Green Anarchist