Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!

So Nick Griffin has received a trouncing on Question Time. You can all YouTube it yourself. Chicago's finest Bonnie Greer was soooooooo sharp, so sexy. Agreed?

And obviously the BBC were right to let the gig go ahead, and the protesters who opposed the programme were and attempted to prevent its broadcast were 'misguided'. Right?

Wellll...let's remember our history, please. Yes, there are various aspects to The Struggle and Bonnie Greer and the other Question Time panelists were one aspect. But please, please, remember that they were only light relief in the real Struggle, the violent struggle that's paying out daily on British city streets.

Let's look at some historical examples:

The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement. My own (tiny, miniscule) contribution* was attending ANC benefit gigs (this, btw, when the ANC was a proscribed organisation whose leader was described as the UK PM as a terrorist). Hugh Masekela, Thomas Mapfumo. Mlalathini, The Bhundu Boys. On the white intellectual front, we had...well...you name them. The entire South African literary elite: Fugard; Cootzee; Breytenbach (his 'Confessions of an Albino Terrorist' was my personal favourite), Gordimer. Inspirational figures, all but....None of whom (with the possible exception of Breytenbach) really drove the nail into the coffin of Apartheid. So who did? Umkonto we Sizwe. The CP-SA. COSATU. The massed children of Soweto.

The US Civil Rights Movement. I know I don't have to name the artistic and philosophical contributors to The Struggle. Taking the white side alone....Abel Meeropol, Harper Lee, Bob Dylan..none of whom freed African Americans. This was achieved by African Americans themselves. But not as non-violently as history records. Brother Malcolm; Bobbie Seale; Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis...Dr King's Southern Leaders Christian Conference itself grew out of CP-USA activism whereby white neighbourhoods were 'involuntarily integrated' by the likes of Decca Mitford and her comrades. Do you think this was done without force?

And so to...

Germany. Nobody who's seen and appreciated Berthold Brecht's 'Mother Courage' could be a Nazi. Come to think of it...neither could anyone who'd read Goethe, Schiller (see post title), Mann...where do we stop?...do you reckon there might have been the Jewish Intellectual equivalents of Bonnie Greer in 1930's Germany who could have wiped the floor with Hitler and his 'Director of Communications' Goebbels? You betcha there were.

So why did Hitler succeed? By the brutal supression of the elements that were Fighting The Fight on the streets of German cities. This is what the Reichstag fire was about.

So, yes, I loved Question Time. Best TV event since 'Up For Portillo' (I was up in a birthing suit of the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital for that one, incidentally). I loved things like Greer's 'And of course Nick, as you remind us you have a 2.2' (Subtext: Whereas I, the Granddaughter of sharecroppers am Deputy Director of The British Museum. So kiss my black ass.)

BUT DO NOT TELL ME THE PROTESTERS WERE MISGUIDED. Democracy alone is not enough to defeat fascist cunts: they are simply too practised, too adept at using Democracy against us. We also need those with the courage to face them down with the only argument they have ever understood: half bricks, thrown with great force.

Quote from the CP-GB father-in-law of a good friend of mine:

'When the Blackshirts came to Glasgow, we beat them back from Glasgow Green...
by the way - I do mean 'beat'.'

Oh, by the way...you might like to see just how successfully Bonnie trounced Griffin (these are vids 2 and 3 if you do a YT search on her name):

*That and 'Trolleys Against Apartheid' - individually or collectively taking a supermarket trolley around the aisles, filling it to the brim with SA tinned fruit, pilchards sherry....and leaving it/them tere with a suitable note attached. This was in the days before CCTV, so you could do it every shopping trip and not get banned.