Review of "Post-Internet Far Right" by 12 Rules for What

The far right has changed, the authors of this excellent and timely book argue. Conventional fascist style political parties and street movements are only one component, and perhaps a small one at that. Responding as if these "classic" fascists are the main event means that anti-fascist strategy is mis-directed. The contemporary far right uses different organisational forms and styles, and has lots of different themes, some of which conflict with each other.  

But despite the differences, there are some common themes, all present to varying degrees. These include:

• Racism and ethno-nationalism
• Misognyny, homophobia and a sense of aggrieved and beleagured masculinity
• Antisemitism - not just as one more "flavour" of racism, but as an organising theory of the world, entwined with conspiracist fantasies.

The book has a lot of description of things that are utterly unfamiliar to me, about internet platforms and tools that I hadn't heard of, memes and symbols and codes that suddenly appear...Pepe the Frog as a far right identifier, and triple brackets around the names of (((Jews))). This is part of the way that the far right can signal to each other that an apparently innoccuous bit of content has a deeper significance. 

As the authors explain, this is not something that's entirely of the far right - it's part of the way that lots of online life is lived now, including the life of the far right.

The book distinguishes between a far right "swarm" of online participants ("activist" seems too strong a word and implies a level of consistent focus that may not be warranted), and "influencers" who direct and are amplified by the swarm - some of whom are deriving both social and financial capital from their online presence. There are the would-be intellectuals of the far right, and the conventional street and electoral organisations.

The book is mainly concerned with the US and UK, so there's not much discussion of the successful "mainstream" parties of the far right...like Fidesz in Hungary, or Law and Justice in Poland, or even the National Front in France. I think that these parties, like Ukip and Brexit in the UK and United Australia in Oz, have successfully driven the centre-right conservative parties further rightwards, and this deserves to be situated in the overall anatomy of the far right.

On the other hand, it does explain well that the organised fascist parties, and even their militarized wings like National Action and Combat-18, are not the far end of the right spectrum. Beyond lies what they call the Blackpilled, the lone wolves of anomised rightist terrorism like Anders Brevik and the Christchurch shooter, and all the shooters in the US. These aren't part of organised groups but do aim to inspire followers, and have had the effect of getting more "moderate" far rightists considerable airtime.

There are two more important aspects to the book. Firstly, the far right is situated in the context of "ecofascism" - the multifarious ways in which it is going to respond to climate breakdown and the turmoil that will create. As yet it's mainly concentrated on being anti-green, promoting climate change denial and crying crocodile tears for the poor people that will be affected by the cost of mitigation and adaption measures. I think there was a strong dimension of this in the Yellow Vest protests in France, and even more so in their imitators elsewhere. But it's perfectly possible for the far right to switch tracks, and to organise in favour of strong militarised measures needed to protect "our people" from climate change, especially in terms of calling on the state to be even harder on refugees. Or even to do both tracks at once.

Second, there's a critique of anti-fascist "culture", which sometimes becomes an identity in itself, abstracted from where the important developments are happening on the far right, and concentrating on street fights and/or re-enactment activities like Spanish Civil War commemoration. Not that those things aren't important, but they're not sufficient.

This is a great book. Sometimes I found the language a bit impenetrable, and I am a one-time social science academic. Sometimes the references are a bit obscure and unexplained - I had to read the book with my phone constantly to hand, to look things up. But these are quibbles. This book will inform and motivate those of us who struggle against the far right for years to come.

Review of "How I Grew" by Mary McCarthy

I picked this up for something to read at night, when I couldn't face reading "Post-Internet Far Right" as a I fell asleep. The idea was to find something interesting but not emotionally demanding, and it mainly did not disappoint in that respect. I'm not a fan of Mary McCarthy - so far I have not read any of her other books, though I may now. It's written from the perspective of an old person reflecting on childhood and youth, and the most interesting parts are where she engages with the fragmentary and unreliable nature of memories...where she admits that her memories can't possibly be right, because of other things that she knows or remembers. 

Some other aspects of the book are dull...her descriptions of her teachers at Vassar, who all seem old and dessicated (they were probably much younger than I am now), the books she read, how bad she was in the various am-dram things she did. But some depictions are really gripping - her accounts of 1920s sexuality, and her relationship to her own Jewish heritage and that of some friends. She's mildly antisemitic - it's a bit like the song in Cabaret, as she worries as to whether her grandmother really is unmistakeably Jewish in her looks, or is surprised that some of her pretty friends turn out to be Jewish even though they don't look it.

Strange afternote...I saved a picture of the cover design, but every time I touched it my laptop crashed. So this review is posted without a picture.

Review of "A Call to Spy"

 

It feels mean to be negative about this film, which is after all a tribute to some very brave women. But despite some graphic violence and some scenes of wartime courage, it has - as Rotten Tomatoes says "a surprising lack of tension". It's a bit dull. I checked my phone quite often as it went on.

Watched on Amazon Prime - we don't have it any more, but Louis does and he was visiting, so he cast it to our Chromecast.

Review of "The Fall of Roman Britain: and Why We Speak English" by John Lambshead

This is a really good work of popular history and science, bringing together scholarship from ancient history and modern population genetics, in an accessible form. And it makes sense of the some of the things in the conventional account of the history of Britain that have always been a bit hazy...in particular how did Roman and post-Roman Britain turn into Anglo-Saxon England? I won't attempt to summarize the argument here, but I found it convincing and well stated. I learned lots about the history of the Roman Empire too, even though I've read stuff in that area before. I can't recommend this strongly enough.

Review of "Ergot. The fungi that ate medieval Europe" by Theophrastus von Oberstockstall

I'd always thought of ergotism as slightly amusing - all those medieval peasants going on a mass acid trip and seeing hallucinations that inspired art and religious movements. Well, I won't think that any more. Ergotism is really ghastly, and the consequences for medieval Europe were horrible. Lots in the short book (more of a pamphlet really) about the impact on culture and medieval institutions. At 99p it's almost free - if you are at all interested in medieval history, or the relationship between humans and plants, then buy it and read it.

One small concern though - the author appears to have no online existence apart from this pamphlet, which makes me a little cautious. 

Review of "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" by Neal Stephenson

This is sort of a sequel to Stephenson's Reamde, but only a little bit - some overlapping characters with back-stories from that book, and one or two from Cryptonomicon too. But it's a very different kind of book. Ream.de was very much an action thriller, whereas this is philosophical science fiction. Where Reamde is taut, this is a bit flabby, and sometimes I skimmed or had to force myself to keep reading. A shame, because the subject matter - uploading minds into a virtual world so that we can live after our physical-body death - is interesting and engaging. 

The virtual world here is more or less created, ex nihilo, by the eponymous Dodge (Richard Forthrast from the first book) after his mind is uploaded, and he then loses control over it as other minds join him there. Somehow the minds end up recapitulating the myths of ancient Mesopotamia (more or less) - remember that Stephenson was keen on that as far back as Snow Crash - and sometimes that just drags a bit. I lost track of some of the too-many characters at this point, and the way in which the virtual world was and was not constrained by the principles of physics started to get on my nerves. Glad I read it, and worth reading, but I do wish an editor had cut it by at least a third.