Hard Right Johnson, Wilhelm Reich and the ‘befogging’ of the masses

So said Wilhelm Reich in 1944, “Only on paper does the process of social development appear as easy and pleasant as a taking a stroll through the woods. In hard reality it encounters new and unrecognised difficulties one after the other. Regressions and catastrophes result”.

The election of a Conservative majority government in the UK with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister is definitely a regression and may well be a catastrophe. Johnson’s Tory government becomes the latest in a line of hard right governments that have taken over major geopolitical states. Positioning themselves as daring voices speaking out against the ‘establishment’, despite in fact being the establishment, this model of leader started with Victor Orbán (elected Hungary, 2010). A number of world leaders have followed in his wake, such as Narendra Modi (elected India, 2014), Donald Trump (USA, 2017), Matteo Salvini (Italy, 2018), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil, 2019), and now, Johnson (UK, 2019).

Why a Corbyn-led Labour Government would be better for nearly everyone, even the radical left. Part 1b: Race and Immigration, questions for the radical left

This is Part 1b of a series of articles around the UK General Election. You can find the introduction to the series here.

The Left has basically won on the question of Austerity. It has managed to convince people that the stripping back of state provision and selling off of state assets was not done to reduce the deficit but rather out of political considerations: to enrich the rich, transferring wealth upwards. Under the Conservatives, the deficit has increased and they are not in the least bit concerned because that was never their aim in the first place. Despite some fluctuations, Britain’s external borrowing (debt owed to creditors outside the UK) remains above 6,000,000 million pounds, up by another 500,000 million pounds since the Tories came to power.[13]

However, on the question of immigration, the Left has still to find an answer that can convince the population. “No borders”, is more than a political slogan, it is the only ethical position on the subject. To assert the right to residency of some people but not others has no moral basis other than a fascist-style racial supremacy that posits an arbitrary ‘ethnicity’ (either ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘white’) as the basis of belonging or a feudal-style ‘right of conquest’. ‘We were here first’, runs the latter argument.

Why a Corbyn-led Labour Government would be better for nearly everyone, even the radical left. (INTRO)

Finally we have found a topic about which it is as hard to have a sensible, reasoned debate as the issue of Israel-Palestine. Over Christmas, I spent two weeks with my good friends Becca and Joey in Cape Town. On most topics – artistic, emotional, political – we are in broad agreement and differences are amiable and argued out constructively. This remained true for my whole trip until, during an hour’s drive to their friends’ place for Christmas lunch, we started talking about Jeremy Corbyn. Voices were raised, conversation was heated and turn-taking went out of the window and into the blue of the Southern Atlantic.

Over lunch, our hosts, having been informed of my Corbyn sympathies, mocked me as a crazy radical. Corbyn seemed to them to be some madcap, far-left maverick. These were people who were kicked out of the ANC in the 1980s for being too communist. And it is not only they who see Corbyn as a symbol of crackpot leftism, witness also Barack Obama’s message of support for Bernie Sanders in December last year:

“I think people like the passion that Bernie brought, but Bernie Sanders is a pretty centrist politician relative to … Corbyn or relative to some of the republicans.”[1]