So, this is all getting rather tedious, and I’m sure a lot of people out there are getting bored to absolute fuck of having to answer the same bunch of questions over and over again any time they try to express the wildly controversial opinion that ‘I don’t much like the far right and would like to keep the fuck away from them if you don’t mind terribly.’
Apparently, some people do mind terribly. Cue onslaught of the same questions that have been answered innumerable times previously. So, I decided to write it all down and save ourselves the bother.
1. What even is the far right anyway???
Explanation 1: https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1804873861483131120
Explanation 2: https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1829797407518863451
Example of Platonic form of ethnonationalist/fascistic framing of conversations about immigration or foreigners: https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1816874062452273252
2. You just thinks everyone who disagrees with you is far right
Response: No, I think people whose behaviour and rhetoric conforms to the definitions given to question 1 are far right.
3. Far right doesn’t mean anything anyway
It is true that TRAs and various left identitarians have misused the term ‘far right’ to describe anyone who disagrees with their political project, and especially with trans ideology.
Here is the text of a speech I have in 2019 which explains why materialist feminist responses to trans ideology are not aligned with fascism.
Note: The TRA claim that there was a relation between rejecting trans ideology and fascism is not a completely baseless slur. It is based on understanding the structure of fascism as centred, as answer 1 explains above, on ideas of the purity of the nation, and othering some kind of group of ‘foreigners’ and/or ‘deviants’ as a threat to the nation. The othering of ‘foreigners/deviants’ often goes together. This is relevant to the direction taken by many people who dislike trans ideology.
Anyway, the fact that TRAs described people who were engaged in a materialist feminist resistance to trans ideology as ‘fascists’ isn’t proof of anything other than their misuse of the term. It doesn’t mean the term is meaningless any more than the misuse of the term ‘woman’ means that ‘woman’ is meaningless.
It is also pretty hard to take this claim remotely seriously from people who are engaged in exactly the same identitarian behaviour as TRAs in reverse. That is, running around calling anyone who disagrees with them is a ‘woketard’ a ‘libtard’ the ‘far-left’ an ‘Islamo-leftist’ a ‘socfem’ or whatever othering labels you use attack everyone who thinks you too are talking nonsense.
Lastly, there is the small matter of the boy who cried wolf. You may remember that in that story wolves didn’t stop existing. And in the end the wolf ate everyone because people didn’t believe the boy when the wolf actually showed up. Yes, a good deal of the fault lay with the boy (the TRAs & Co), but when the people who are manifestly not TRAs are now also shouting ‘wolf, wolf, wolf’ and you are going ‘shut up wolves don’t exist you Islamo-leftist woketard’ then you are, I’m afraid to tell you, either an idiot or a wolf.
4. The far left is actually the problem what have you ever done about the far left eh eh?
Firstly, I want to ask (in a cunning reversal of question 1) what you actually mean by ‘far-left.’ And I want to ask this not because I am trying to avoid the issue, but because a whole load of people you are calling ‘far left’ aren’t ‘far left’ as you most likely mean it, which is what I would call ‘left or progressive identitarianism.’ There is a whole load of materialist leftists who think progressive identitarianism is a load of shit, and who also happen to really dislike the far right. It would be great if people could stop going up to people saying they don’t like the far right and asking them what a woman is like it’s some kind of amazing gotcha. We know what a woman is and we know what a fascist is too. Go figure.
Those of us on the materialist left who have been standing up against progressive identitarianism since most populists were still fast asleep on the trans issue are getting pretty bored of this nonsense. If you want the receipts, I invite you to look at most of the rest of this blog. There is a blog index here listing all my work critiquing trans ideology and progressive identitarianism. There is also this book. I also have two articles coming out soon that critique progressive identitarianism from a materialist left perspective and explain its culture war dynamic with far-right populism. For those of you who do really want to think about what you mean by ‘far left’ there is quite a bit of stuff in all of that explaining why materialist leftists don’t think progressive identitarians are the left at all, let alone ‘the far left.’ We think they are a mutant product of late neoliberal capitalism and are about as materialist and collectivist as Twitter is. Which is to say, not at all.
Lastly, the fact that we have idiot progressive identitarians on one side of us doesn’t mean it’s impossible for us to have idiot populist identitarians on the other side. And many of us simply decline to be members of either of your tribes.
5. Tommy Robinson et al.
From a feminist perspective Tommy Robinson’s alleged concern for women and girls, and exploitation of the grooming gang scandal, is motivated by a racist intention to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment, and not any genuine concern with MVAWG whatsoever.
I explain this argument here: https://janeclarejones.com/2024/07/28/tommy-robinson-far-right-populism-and-gender-criticism/
Before you tell me I don’t care about women being raped or call me an Islamo-leftist, or accuse me of antisemitism, or whatever bullshit you make up to explain why feminist women are not okay with the kind of racist talking points and exploitation of MVAWG coming from the likes of Robinson, I would ask you to actually read the essay above and answer to the argument in it. I know, a fucking essay, who needs to read essays explaining why Robinson is a patriarchal piece of shit before spending all your time accusing women who have spent their lives fighting MVAWG of being paedophile and rape apologists because they have his number. You don’t have to read anything at all. No one is forcing you to consume words against your will. But we are under no obligation to listen to your name-calling or answer your questions if you refuse to try and understand the reasons why we want to steer very well clear of racist patriarchs. Selective concern about MVAWG when the perpetrators are not-white is racism, not feminism, or ‘women’s rights activism.’ (As is selective concern about the patriarchal harms of some religious fundamentalism and not other religious fundamentalism.) The men pushing anti-Muslim grooming gang talking points have form for handwaving male sexual violence when the perps are white. Tommy Robinson also has form for handwaving child sexual abuse among his associates (also here). The narratives being told by Robinson about his role in the grooming gang scandal are false. As is the claim that the only reason why nothing was done about it is because people being scared of being called racist, as Jo Phoenix explains in this essay on the background of the scandal.
However, if you do genuinely want to be able to discuss your concerns about Islam and its impact on women and girls without being called a racist or far right, then it’s probably a really good idea to stay the fuck away from far-right racists. There are plenty of people who are able to do this (see footnote 3 in above essay.) It is harmful to activism against VAWG and the damage Islamic patriarchal practices inflict on women to allow this conversation to be co-opted by racists. And no, I am not saying that women talking about their experiences of extreme violence and exploitation at the hands of grooming gangs are necessarily involved in the racist framing of this issue. They are only involved in a racist framing of this issue if they are propgating or defending narratives that focus exclusively on the violence of racialised men, often being peddled by white men who have form for not caring about MVAWG when the perpetrators of white, and which uses the kind of ‘barbarian invasion’ structure discussed in the answer to question 1.
Lastly, the connections between misogyny, racism and ethnonationalism are not in any way coincidental and it’s not an accident that Robinson and Benjamin et al. are raging misogynists and anti-feminists. This is discussed in the essay on Robinson, in this piece on sovereignty, territorial thinking and rape, and in this piece which looks at connections between the manosphere, incels, ethnonationalist violence, and femicide. The MRA-to-far-right pipeline is a thing for a reason. And as I laid out in ‘Why Feminists Are Not Nazis‘ that reason is because both ethnonationalism and patriarchal masculinity are structured by sovereignty-logic and the fanatasy of invulnerability (which is why the ethnonationalist Robinson is deadset on defending Tate and his trying-far-too-hard alpha tomfoolery and systemtic sexual abuse of women). These men don’t give a fuck about women. And women who really give a fuck about women and fighting male violence against women are doing women no favours by playing into the narratives of violent, racist, woman-hating men.
And that’s what I have to say on that. If you read all that and still have questions that enagage with what’s actually been said here and are not just warmed over versions of the same sealioning, then am very happy to hear them.
Jane Clare Jones 