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Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ Not too many decades ago a game called Association Football was very popular in working-class communities. 

The game in those days was, to quote the late great Bill Shankly, “not a matter of life and death. It is much more serious than that”. It was a working-class game played to a set of rules and principles which had generally served well for over 100 years. 

The game itself in those days was different, more entertaining, cultural and we ruled the terracing. The game was refereed by human beings and not the modern fucked up VAR. The referee’s decision, no matter how contentious, was final which is how it should be. We were always told ‘play to the refs whistle’ and nothing else because he’s the only man who “matters”. In today’s version of football – not the genuine article, far from it – it is impossible to use this age-old rule of thumb of playing to the ‘refs whistle’ because nine times out of ten it is not the final decision. Today the referee is regularly called over to the VAR monitor to review his decision and usually overrules himself on the orders of some other official in a hotel room watching the game with a very expensive piece of equipment called ‘Video Assisted Refereeing’ which should stand for ‘Video Automated Refereeing’. Only once have I seen a referee have the balls to tell VAR what to do with their interpretation of his decision and that was a game between Man City and Wolves. The ref, Farai Hallam, turned down the ‘VAR review’ and refused City a penalty. He was later judged correct by the Key Match Incident panel. The subject of VAR is for another day as there are many other aspects of the modern game which are ruining everything apart from making huge profits for a few people.

One major issue for me which ruins the culture of the modern equivalent of football is the all-seater stadia. This came into force after 97 Liverpool fans were victims of corporate murder, in my opinion, at an FA Cup Semi-Final in 1989. The establishment used this, pre-planned or otherwise, tragedy to impose all seater regulations on top flight clubs. This was despite the Taylor Report into the disaster exonerating terracing of playing any part in these deaths. Yet the powers that be still went ahead with imposing all seater stadia and prices rocketed as did profits. This may have been what Hillsborough was really all about, increasing profits which unfortunately cost 97 football fans their lives. 

At last the establishment have control over the what was once terracing as seats are far easier to police than were standing areas! Back in the day of terracing what has become called ‘Tailgating’ was quite common and unofficially tolerated to a point. This was when one person would pay and his/her mate would go through the turnstile at the same time getting as close to the paying fan as possible. This resulted in only one supporter registering when in fact two had gone through. This was costing the big clubs -  now businesses not football clubs in their true sense - money, profits! All seater stadia made this ‘tailgating’ less practical because even if another none paying fan gains entry into the ground only one supporter can occupy the seat. Not so on the terracing where as many as an extra thousand may have gained entry without paying at many grounds including Old Trafford and Anfield. 

The establishment have finally taken control of the stadia as ‘Tailgating’ is now against the law to protect profits. On 16th April the Irish Daily Mirror could triumphantly report “Bans For Tailgaters” explaining how “Two individuals have been given banning orders after breaking a new tailgating law at last month’s Carabao Cup Final at Wembley”. Because these fans had gained entry to the stadium without paying to watch their team, either Arsenal or Man City, and cost money and profits they received three-year banning orders. I hope they refuse to pay their fines in one case £1,862 the other £471. I wonder what the fine would have been for entering a not-for-profit event without paying, an event where the bourgeoisie do not profit from?

Back in the sixties and seventies until fences were erected at first division grounds young fans could be seen on the pitch before and after the game hoping in many cases to get a player’s autograph or shake hands with their favourite. Viewers watching Match of the Day or The Big Match may recall such scenes with the tacit approval of the commentator, David Coleman, Barry Davies for Match of the Day or Brian Moore for ITVs The Big Match. I watched The Big Match Revisited on Saturday 18th April a game at White Hart Lane between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United in 1970. Before the game young fans were on the pitch and George Best was shaking their hands. To these young supporters this was probably the highlight of the day. Today these young fans would be branded as ‘hooligans’ by the sycophant commentators presenting the modern football shows. 

Another piece of culture destroyed as fans today obediently sit in their little plastic buckets drinking their coffee. Who ever heard of taking a flask of coffee to a football match? Another negative in today’s game is time added on which can be up to ten minutes with all the fucking around with VAR. First the referee has to view the monitor if ordered to do so, he should just ignore it, then, after reconsidering his decision overrules himself as instructed. All this time is added on at the end of the game and what was once 3-5 minutes injury time calculated by the referee becomes ten minutes as decided by the ‘fourth official’.

The makeup of fans at many bigger grounds has also undergone a huge sea change. Many supporters do not come from the locality of the team playing and evidence of this can be found in a survey conducted by Liverpool FC in 2016. In this survey it was found only 47% of those attending games at Anfield had a Liverpool postal address, meaning 53% came from elsewhere. In a similar survey conducted by the club it was found of the 27,000 season ticket holders at Anfield only 5,832 or 21.6% had Liverpool postcodes. In comparison to this figure 25,647 or 81.1% of Everton’s 30,500 season ticket holders had Merseyside post codes. Notable to see it is the more successful of the two clubs, Liverpool, who attract the most hangers on, tourists. 

On my last visit to Old Trafford before the Glazers legally stole the club, I noticed an increase in supporters not from Manchester. Back in the seventies and eighties United always commanded a good support from elsewhere, London (Cockney Reds), Yorkshire, South Wales, Scotland, Ireland and a regular small contingent from Norway. These would account for around 20% of those attending Old Trafford with the bulk of support coming from Manchester later, after boundary changes, Greater Manchester. 

The difference between supporters from elsewhere back then and now is regularity. Supporters from Yorkshire, London, Ireland and even Norway would be as regular as the lads from Colyhurst or Salford whereas today with the season ticket culture fans from elsewhere tend to be different people every week. The owner of the season ticket lends out his/her seat in the event they cannot make the game. This results in people not getting to know each other as was previously the case. In the days of standing accommodation season tickets were not issued for these areas at Old Trafford and fans could purchase a League Match Ticket Book which was a similar standing equivalent to an ST. Back then only regular fans would purchase an LMTB and lending out the book was rare if ever because the user would be going to the match themselves. This habit of lending out the ST has resulted in fans at Old Trafford, Anfield, and the Etihad, home of Man City, not knowing any of the old songs usually, in the case of United fans, written by the supporters themselves. Many United chants came from popular ballads and folk songs of the day such as 'the Merry Ploughboy' an Irish republican song. Liverpool FC attempt to replicate the once highly vocal Spion Kop by playing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ before the game. The voice singing this is a recording of Gerry Marsden with a few in the stands joining in.

It is a poor shadow of the former Kop with scarves aloft. As United fans used popular ballads to base their chants Liverpool ‘Kopites’ used the Merseybeat a popular music culture in Liverpool to base their songs. Either way it was our game, they were our songs, and our culture. The two most successful clubs in England, Manchester United and Liverpool, appear to attract the most tourists. Since 2012 when Man City won their first so-called Premier League title the number of tourists attending the Etihad has increased with the team’s continued success. City crowds at Maine Road fluctuated always lower than United’s from between 25,000 to 40,000. Many of these genuine fans, though not all, refuse to attend the Etihad because it is not City. Many fans who watch City since their success began are tourists. Everton beware if you ever become a success it may be your turn for tourist attention as Arsenal in London discovered. One thing is for sure the clubs we followed through thick and thin no longer require our presence, Man Utd are a prime example as the club call supporters ‘customers’. It is possible today to support the team but not the club and the owners, the Glazers facilitated this unwittingly.

Fans back then made all the pre-match entertainment themselves. If the Stretford End was full then entry to the Scoreboard End was the norm with the object of running the gauntlet of policemen trying to cross the pitch onto the desired Stretford End terraces. The chanting would begin about 2pm on an average game earlier if we were playing City or Liverpool. With scarves aloft those in the seating sections could be seen taking photos with their cameras of the scene on the Stretford End, a mass of red and white. Today Americanisation has taken over the pre-match entertainment with some burke on a microphone trying to sing once popular terrace chants while encouraging supporters to join in. This was not the way things were done, it is all phoney these days. 

As the teams emerge from the tunnel at many grounds huge bursts of flames fire skywards and American style lightly clad cheer girls dance waving batons. I shudder to think the chants which would have been heard from the terracing about these young girls back in the day! If you were not there it is difficult to paint a picture, just take my word for it, they were great times at the match. It seems with the blink of an eye the game of football died and I often wonder; where did it all go?

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Where Did It All Go?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Fifty

Jim Duffy ✍ It is scandalous that the government is proposing that tenants renting modular homes in back gardens should not be covered by the tenancy acts. 

That is monumentally stupid. It is a golden rule that you never ever ever lead a block of tenants outside the law and leave them wide open to exploitation. It beggars belief that it is being proposed. It is almost certainly unconstitutional as it blatantly breaks the principle of equality before the law.
 
The modular idea is nuts anyway, as they are not covered by proper planning. For example, in back gardens they would be entirely inaccessible to fire engines in the event of a fire. They would be death traps. That is one of the reasons why people were not allowed build homes in their back gardens - as they would be inaccessible to the emergency services and be potential death traps.
 
I lived in an apartment building where a fire broke out in one of the apartments. My flatmates and I had to break down the door. The landlord had Forty Three illegal Chinese migrants living in the two-bed apartment. He had bunk beds crammed in everywhere. The sitting room had four bunk beds. There was a bunk bed in the bath. For 'privacy', he had plastic bin liners hung between the beds. One of the bin liners had caught fire and set the bunk beds on fire. People slept in there in shifts.
 
He was prosecuted both by the Gardaí and the council under planning laws and the tenancy acts, and was kicked out of the building. In the court case it was confirmed that he was part of a smuggling ring bringing in illegals, and it was confirmed that all the residents were illegals. Some had been brought in with promises of good jobs, but found themselves forced in a brothel he ran elsewhere.
 
I lived next door and my flatmates and I had noticed that there seemed to be a hell of a lot of people coming and going, and we rarely saw the same face twice. We were suspicious, but discovered the truth when the apartment went on fire and we had to break in to rescue people. (He locked people in.)
 
Now, we have our imbecilic government proposing to allow modular homes to be built with no planning permission, no restrictions, no legal rights for tenants, and in locations that would have no means of access for emergency services. It is a disaster waiting to happen, and perfect for scams and exploitation.
 
What is their next insane scheme going to be? Reintroduce Dublin's notorious tenements that were the worst in the British empire, even worse than Calcutta?
 
This government seems have gone stark raving mad. Ministers should be held legally personally liable for every disaster their crackpot schemes produce!

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Monumentally Stupid

The Guardian 📰 Written by Robert Mackey. Recommended by Jim Monaghan.


Manhattan church led by Norman Vincent Peale was known for opposing presidency of JFK – and Catholics in general

Somewhat overlooked in the furore over Donald Trump’s attacks this week on Pope Leo, for his criticism of the US attack on Iran, and the US president’s decision to post an image portraying himself as Jesus Christ on social media, is the fact that Trump attended services as a young man at the Protestant Marble Collegiate church in Manhattan, which was led at the time by an anti-Catholic pastor.

That church’s pastor in Trump’s youth, Norman Vincent Peale, who would later officiate at Trump’s first wedding, is best-known today as the author of the Christian self-help book The Power of Positive Thinking, but when Trump was 14, Peale made national headlines as the leader of a group of Protestant churchmen who loudly objected to the presidential candidacy of John F Kennedy, on the grounds that he was a Catholic.

As Time magazine reported in September 1960, Peale, “a longstanding Republican whose Protestant following rivals Billy Graham’s as the largest in the US”, was one of the most prominent leaders of a group of “150 Protestant clergymen and laymen, calling themselves the Citizens for Religious Freedom” . . . 

Continue @ Guardian

Trump’s Antipathy For Pope May Have Roots In Childhood Protestant Church

Seamus Kearney 🎤 'Revenge may stain a righteous sword,
It may be just to slay,
But, traitor, traitor, from that word,
All true men shrink away'.


 
The tide began to turn against Scappaticci when an article appeared in The Sunday Times on 8th August 1999 from a former British soldier, Ian Hurst, a member of the Force Research Unit ( FRU), who pointed the finger at a top spy within the Provisional IRA, code named Stakeknife. There was a media frenzy almost immediately and the rumour mill kicked into action, the posse then dispatched to identify the agent known as Stakeknife.

Ian Hurst stated that he had first heard of Stakeknife in 1982 when he was manning the phones in Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn, one evening. A phone call came through from an RUC sergeant who had arrested a man for drink-driving and the man in turn had given the RUC sergeant a number for the barracks and a contact person to speak to. Hurst later learned that the man was Freddie Scapatticci aka Stakeknife - after a conversation in the Army canteen - and was a highly valuable asset to the FRU.
 
Ian Hurst also accused the FRU of the arson attack on offices storing secret contact forms ( MISRs) mainly from Brian Nelson, a Loyalist double agent, at RUC Headquarters in Carrickfergus in 1990, in order to thwart the Stevens Inquiry into collusion.

The identity of Stakeknife had still not been ascertained in October 2001 when a protracted IRA investigation was launched into the execution of Volunteer Michael Kearney in July 1979. Freddie Scapatticci's name was handed over to the two senior IRA investigating officers, but there didn't seem anything machiavellian around him at the time, as very few people were aware of the earlier rumours concerning him.

However, all that changed on 10th May 2003 when a journalist, Greg Harkin, rapped Freddie Scappaticci's front door in Riverdale, West Belfast, and accused him of being the British agent Stakeknife. Event hough he tried to deceive the journalist by telling him he had the wrong Scappatticci, Greg Harkin wasn't convinced and responded by telling him he was certain he had the right man.

Freddie Scappaticci was scared but didn't panic, he was certainly cool under pressure and self disciplined to a high degree. Instead of running he decided to stay and dig in, after all he had outwitted the IRA for years and he reckoned he had run rings around them, so intended to carry on business as usual. 

He circled the wagons and waited.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act XV

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Forty Nine

 

A Morning Thought @ 3124

Maryam Namazie ✍With a response to Azar Majedi and Homa Arjomand.

A politics of emancipation must confront both imperialism and the religious-Right. The attempt to subordinate one to the other is a form of political erasure. This essay takes up Azar Majedi and Homa Arjomand’s response to my earlier piece and defends the third pole against those who have abandoned it.

Gaza: The Principled Position

Opposing the Israeli state's genocide in Gaza is a moral and political necessity. But progressive politics does not end with denunciation of one pole of power. It interrogates all dominant forces, including those within societies facing imperialism and occupation.

Islamism is not merely a religious ideology. It is a form of political rule, organising society through religious authority, suppressing working class organisation, enforcing patriarchal control, and crushing secular and emancipatory movements. Its hostility to labour, to women, and to dissent is structural.

A principled position names both the Israeli state's genocide and Hamas's terrorism simultaneously, not as a concession but as a refusal to subordinate one form of domination to another. This is what makes it possible to oppose both without collapsing into civilisational binaries. That Western governments also condemn Hamas does not make our condemnation a Western project, any more than Western governments' condemnation of the Iranian regime makes opposition to the Islamic regime by civil society a Western project.

This was the shared position of Majedi and Arjomand as signatories to the Third Camp Manifesto in 2006. To treat one reactionary camp as primary in a way that renders the other secondary is to abandon that method, and to abandon those who live under both simultaneously.

Imperialism Is Not the Only Reality

There is no serious socialist politics that denies imperialism. US militarism has devastated the Middle East and the world. None of this is in dispute. But Majedi and Arjomand’s argument leaps from the empirical claim that Western military power is larger, to the analytical claim that Western domination is therefore primary, to the practical conclusion that other forms of domination are secondary and deferrable. These are three separate claims.

A political movement can prioritise the campaign against the state with the greatest capacity to wage genocide without conceding that other forms of domination are analytically less real or structurally derivative. The woman imprisoned in Iran for burning her hijab does not become a secondary victim because the US military is larger. The labour organiser tortured in Evin does not become a secondary casualty because Washington has more bombs. Domination must be analysed where it operates, not ranked against a global ledger of military force. The scale of power does not determine the legitimacy of resistance to it.

Islamism was fostered in specific historical conditions such as the US Cold War strategy to create an Islamic belt around the Soviet Union and the West’s role in the expropriation of the Iranian revolution by Islamism. These origins are relevant. But causation is not exoneration. Whatever the origins, Islamism has its own institutions, its own coercive apparatus, and its own governing programme. It is an independent political force with its own logic of rule. The Islamic regime of Iran, brought to power in conditions shaped by US imperialism, is not reducible to Washington’s power. Hamas, enabled by Israel as a counterweight to the secular PLO, is not reducible to Israeli strategy. To explain them as secondary displaces the social relations through which domination is exercised.

Majedi and Arjomand ask: “Do you really believe that Islamic terrorism has the same weight and power of state terrorism in the international geopolitics?” But that is not the question. The question is whether the victims and survivors of both forms of domination deserve a politics that confronts both.

The Politics of Enforced Binaries Is Eurocentric

Their politics is clear: political positions must align with one of two opposing camps; critique becomes illegitimate if it risks benefiting the other. Dissent is judged not on its truth but on its geopolitical alignment. This is the politics of enforced binaries. It is also Eurocentric. By centring Western power as the organising axis, it renders all other forms of domination derivative. People living under the rule of the religious-Right cease to be political subjects. Their struggles are acknowledged only insofar as they fit the dominant anti-imperialist narrative. When they do not, they are minimised or erased. Exploitation, domination, and resistance, however, must be analysed where they occur, in their material conditions, and in the actions of those who struggle against them.

The late Marxist leader Mansoor Hekmat named the ideological cover for this as "petit-bourgeois anti-imperialism," used to justify Islamic terrorism by reference to Western government crimes. He insisted there was:

not the slightest real and justified relationship between the sufferings of the deprived people of Palestine and the terrorism of Islamic or non-Islamic organisations attributed to these people.

A left that refuses to analyse Islamism as a form of reaction ends up with less ground to confront reaction anywhere. The far-Right and Islamism are not opposites. They belong to the religious-Right; they feed off each other.

The practical consequence of Majedi and Arjomand’s method leads to absurdities: anti-war protests flying the flags of Hamas and the Islamic regime of Iran; sections of the Western Left marching for women's rights while defending a regime that has made women's subordination a cornerstone of its rule. This is the logical outcome of a framework that grants full political agency to those resisting Western imperialism, while denying it to those resisting other forms of power.

The Hamas Question: What Kind of Society?

Majedi and Arjomand invoke the African National Congress (ANC) during apartheid South Africa as precedent and argue that condemning Hamas in the current context aligns with imperial narratives. But what kind of society does Hamas seek to build?

Hamas is not simply a “resistance” force. It is a governing apparatus, institutional, coercive, and theocratic, that has displaced the Palestinian Left, suppresses secular organisation, and reorganises Palestinian social life around religious fundamentalism.

Israel enabled Hamas’s rise as a deliberate strategy to divide and weaken the secular PLO but Hamas is responsible for its own crimes. Hamas governs, disciplines, and coerces. Its victims are primarily Palestinians. Patriarchal controls such as dress codes, restrictions on public movement, and the subordination of women’s testimony and inheritance rights within a Sharia framework are central mechanisms of social discipline. A liberation movement that subordinates women is not a liberation movement.

On October 7th, Hamas killed at least 828 civilians, including 36 children. The UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe rape and gang rape occurred during those attacks. Hostages were taken. A progressive position cannot ignore sexual violence or the killing of civilians regardless of political context. The right to resist occupation has never included the right to rape, massacre civilians, or take hostages. Questions about Israeli intelligence failures on that day do not alter what Hamas did, who the victims were, or what a principled politics must say about it.

Moreover, the ANC comparison does not hold. The ANC’s Freedom Charter was committed to a non-racial, secular society with universal rights, linking national liberation to social emancipation. Hamas’s founding charter articulates a theocratic political project. These are not analogous.

The 1979 Iranian revolution provides a clear historical example. Islamism came to power in conditions engineered in significant part by Cold War strategy, fostering Islamism as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and Left. Then, too, sections of the Left subordinated their criticism of Islamism to their opposition to the Shah, treating the clerical movement as a lesser enemy to Western imperialism. A politics unable to confront multiple forms of domination simultaneously has no ground from which to resist.

The “Clash of Civilisations” Inversion

Majedi and Arjomand use the discussion on Gaza to attack the ex-Muslim movement. They claim it was “created to serve as a weapon against Islam… a piece of the puzzle of the ‘Clash of Civilisations.’” Their argument reproduces the Clash of Civilisations thesis, which denies internal complexity by essentialising people and society into civilisational blocs. Dissent from religion is explained not as a social phenomenon but as an extension of Western power. In this framework, criticism cannot originate within society itself but must be attributed to external forces. This is the standard accusation of theocratic regimes, that apostates, secularists, and feminists are agents of foreign powers. The Islamic regime of Iran has used it for decades to imprison, torture, and execute opponents.

Ex-Muslims, however, are the product of material conditions in which belief is enforced through state, law, family, community, and violence. They emerge wherever the freedom to believe or not believe is denied. Their existence is not explained by imperialism but by the contradictions within societies governed by religious fundamentalism.[i]

The reduction of dissent to an instrument of Western power means no criticism is valid if it can be appropriated by a dominant power. That would render all emancipatory politics impossible.

Collective Blame and the Denial of Agency

The same logic that reduces dissent to imperial instrument also reduces dissenters to a homogeneous bloc serving a single geopolitical function.

Civil rights movements emerge from material conditions, not from imperial design. The gay rights movement was not created by Western state power. It was created by people persecuted for who they are. The women's liberation movement was not a geopolitical instrument. It was built by women who refused subordination. The ex-Muslim movement was established for the right to apostasy and blasphemy because those rights are denied. It brings together people across a wide political spectrum, united by opposition to apostasy and blasphemy laws, not by shared ideology. Its members hold widely different political views, as do Muslims. To say ex-Muslims serve imperialism is the same as saying Muslims serve Islamism. It erases individual agency, social movements, and class politics. It imposes a fixed collective identity carrying collective blame, guilt and punishment.

Provocation, Civil Disobedience, and Who Decides

If political legitimacy is determined by which camp you are aligned with, then forms of resistance that do not conform to it are recast as illegitimate.

Majedi and Arjomand characterise CEMB’s fast-defying protests as “provocative and hostile”[ii] and ask what they achieve. The question itself is revealing; effectiveness is recognised only when resistance aligns with their framework. In Morocco, Ibtissame Betty Lachgar and MALI organised a public picnic during Ramadan. Lachgar is currently serving two and a half years in prison for wearing an Allah is Lesbian t-shirt. In Iran, women burn their hijabs, people sing and dance at funerals, acts of collective presence in public space that the state has criminalised, making coercion visible and contesting it.

Civil disobedience has always worked this way, from Montgomery to Tehran, by asserting the right to act against unjust authority, exposing the mechanisms of control, and shifting what is considered permissible. Its effectiveness lies precisely in making visible what power seeks to normalise.

Topless protest is another example. There is a difference between the commodification of women's bodies, which serves domination, and their autonomous use as instruments of resistance, which challenges it. Conflating the two reproduces the terms through which women's bodies are policed, now in the name of political propriety rather than religion, but with the same effect.

Like Majedi and Arjomand, the powerful have always described resistance as provocation. Refusing compulsory veiling is framed as offence. Eating during Ramadan is framed as subversion. Dissent from apostasy laws is framed as incitement. In each case what is treated as the problem is not the coercion but the refusal of it.

None of this is new. In 2012, Majedi dismissed the Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar, made in solidarity with Aliaa Magda Elmahdy as “idiocy” and “buffoonery,” and criticised acts of bodily defiance as aiding reaction. The same argument is repeated here.

Insinuation, Antisemitism, and the Collapse of Evidence

Once dissent is treated as illegitimate, it can be easily discredited. In a video interview, Majedi claimed, without evidence, that feminists and secularists who declined her conference did so because their organisations were funded by Soros and "effectively corrupt." In an article, she says that Soros "was a Jewish Nazi collaborator in Hungary, during the war." Independent fact-checking has shown this to be false.

In a separate interview, Majedi references Jews "eating babies' blood" in connection with a synagogue tunnel incident. The Associated Press documented that the incident involved an unauthorised tunnel built by a religious faction over an internal dispute, with no evidence of any crime. Blood libel is one of the oldest antisemitic fabrications in recorded history.[iii]

This is where the logic of enforced binaries leads. When alignment becomes the criterion of truth, evidentiary standards collapse, and what would otherwise be immediately challenged passes in the name of anti-imperialism.

The Third Pole: From Principle to Necessity

What emerges across these arguments is a consistent political method: the subordination of one form of domination to another, the delegitimisation of dissent, and the erosion of evidentiary standards. The question that follows is what kind of politics can oppose this.

Hekmat articulated the third pole as a material necessity: a force rooted in workers, women, secularists, and dissidents, standing against both poles of reaction simultaneously. It is not a position of balance but one grounded in the struggles of those subjected to multiple forms of domination.

This was the shared position of Majedi and Arjomand as signatories to the Third Camp Manifesto in 2006. That manifesto was an insistence that the working class and the oppressed have no camp among reactionary powers, that their interests are served neither by US-led imperialism nor by Islamism, and that building an independent force against both is a precondition of any meaningful emancipatory politics.

To treat one reactionary camp as primary in a way that renders the other secondary is to abandon that method, and to abandon those who live under both simultaneously.[iv]

Conditions have changed since the manifesto was published but the necessity for a third pole has not. If anything, it has become more urgent with perpetual wars in the Middle East between reactionary forces.

Conclusion: No Liberation Through Erasure

A politics that subordinates one form of domination to another does not clarify the world. It obscures it. It does not strengthen opposition to oppression. It leaves those who confront multiple forms of domination without a politics that represents them. There is no emancipation in ranking oppressions or deferring struggles.

This is the practical consequence of the method they defend. By treating imperialism as the organising axis of all analysis, it renders other forms of domination secondary or derivative. By treating dissent as alignment, it delegitimises those who refuse that framework. By replacing analysis with insinuation, it lowers the standard of political argument itself.

The alternative is not a false choice between competing powers, but independence from them. A third pole confronting both imperialism and the religious-Right simultaneously.

This requires opposing genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran without qualification. It requires naming US militarism and Israeli occupation as structural forms of domination. It requires refusing to treat Islamism as anything other than a reactionary political project that suppresses workers, subordinates women, and eliminates dissent. It requires defending the right to leave religion without coercion or punishment. It requires a politics that does not ask any section of the oppressed to wait.

The third pole does not disappear because it is denied. It exists wherever people confront multiple forms of domination simultaneously. This is the condition of any politics of emancipation.

References

[i] Secular conference manifestos from CEMB and One Law for All condemn all religious-Right movements, including Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, and Islamic. The charge of double standards on Judaism is contradicted by a consistent public record.

[ii] CEMB’s fast-defying actions take place in front of the embassies of Iran, Pakistan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. They target states that imprison, flog, and kill people for eating during Ramadan. The solidarity action is with those persecuted during this month.

[iii] Links to statements are available here.

[iv] Majedi and Arjomand say: “8 months into a genocide… Ex-Muslim had not even whispered a word against this genocide…” For context: I refused to sign their March 2024 statement on “Genocide in Gaza, Where Does the Women's Rights Movement Stand” precisely because it condemned genocide without one word against Hamas. I supported Feminist Dissent’s April 2024 statement, which named both. The October 2024 statement by a number of ex-Muslims named both as well. The timing of a response is not analysis. It does not show that Islamism is politically secondary, that criticism of Hamas is illegitimate, or that the third pole should be abandoned. It establishes only a demand for silence on one form of domination in the name of another. On the December 2023 conference co-organised by CEMB and Laiques sans Frontiere, the conference was specifically about laïcité and the separation of religion and state.

Maryam Namazie is a  is a British-Iranian secularist,
communist and human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster.

Against Political Erasure 🪶The Third Pole And The Limits Of Anti-Imperialism

Merrion Press 🔖 has just published a new book by Dave Hannigan.



WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT ROY
THE KEANEIFICATION OF MODERN IRELAND

Dave Hannigan

NO IRISH SPORTSPERSON IS MORE TALKED ABOUT THAN ROY KEANE.

None has had more of substance to say for himself. Across nearly four tumultuous decades, from callow teen prospect to grey bearded influencer, Roy Keane has transcended sport, redefined the parameters of fame and captivated the nation. Our hopes, dreams and sometimes our despair have been wrapped up in him, his exploits and outbursts. Oscillating between national treasure and national argument, he put the manic in talismanic, bestriding Lansdowne Road one minute, getting booed there the next.

If the sporting heroes of every era offer a window into a society, We Need to Talk About Roy is a fascinating portrait of who and what we were in the age of Keane, showcasing our vices and virtues, our fortunes and foibles. The best of us, the worst of us. Drink. Religion. United. Begrudgery. The Celtic Tiger. Tabloidization. Saipan. Touching on all the major themes and teams, this remarkable book is a refreshing and entertaining look at how the life and times of our greatest footballer is the story of modern Ireland itself. His progress and pitfalls, revolutions and evolution uniquely intertwined with those of the country that made him.

He is of Ireland. Ireland is of him.

Paperback • €18.99|£17.99 • 240pages • 226mm x 153mm • 9781785375798
Buy your copy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dave Hannigan is a professor of history at Suffolk County Community College in New York, a weekly columnist with The Irish Times, and author of several non-fiction books, including The Big Fight: When Ali Conquered Ireland, and Muhammad Ali: Fifteen Rounds in the Wilderness. A native of Cork, Dave currently lives in East Setauket, Long Island, with his sons Abe, Charlie and Finn.

Out Now 📚 Dave Hannigan

Gary Robertson ⚽Separated by a mere 33 miles and the Kincardine Bridge, Falkirk & Dunfermline share a rivalry to match almost any other in Scottish football. 

So when the pair were matched for Saturday's Scottish FA Cup semi final the anticipation between the two sets of fans was electric.
 
Falkirk plying their trade in the Premier League whilst Dunfermline currently fourth in the Championship these games don’t come along too often and despite being a league apart there was nothing between them on the park.
 
At first glance a 0-0 may sound dull to the casual observer. But we are not casual observers - we are football fans and we know that a score line only tells a little of the story. There was plenty of excitement, missed chances, some excellent saves, some very poor finishing but this was a nil-nil of quality. Again, our fictional casual observer may claim that’s an oxymoron, and yes it is in some ways but for a game that lacked goals it made up for in incident.
 
Onfield action, a red card and a penalty shootout after 120+ mins. The two best chances possibly in the whole match falling at the feet of 17 year old Lucas Fyfe. Whether it was nerves or inexperience or a combination of both he managed to fluff his lines and put neither away. He’s only a kid though and will improve through time. He’s got pace to burn and as his finishing improves he’ll be yet another player, in my opinion at least, who will go right to the top as long as he remains focused, works hard and keeps injury free.
 
The villain of this match was Falkirk's Henry Cartwright who turned to the dark arts in the last minute of extra time and was rightly shown a second yellow for his Tom Daley impression.
 
So to penalties, and it was the time for heroes to be found. Ex-Celtic keeper Bain facing off against ex- Celtic boss Neil Lennon's current side but the real hero of the shootout was Dunfermline's Aston Oxborough. The on loan Motherwell keeper made two very good saves to help send his side through to the cup final. I’d imagine it was late into the night before that smile finally left his face. Cameras too swung to catch an emotional Neil Lennon who was visibly overjoyed at the end, having taken on and taken out three Premiership teams they’ve one more to overcome and that one more being the victors of Sundays Celtic v St Mirren semi final.
 
I wasn't overly confident going into Sundays match as I’ve said the performances have been poor and scraping one goal wins hardly inspires confidence so imagine my shock at half time when Celtic found themselves two nil ahead. Goals from Maeda in the first minute, a combination of pressing that’s been missing in the lads' game recently and a goalkeeping blunder saw the ball bounce off the Japanese and trundle into the net, and then a rocket finish from the much maligned Anthony Ralston in the final minute of the half, it looked for all the world to see like Celtic were back and they’d go on and run riot in the second half. 

But this is a team that’s flattered to deceive before and eight minutes into the second half the buddies' danger man Mikael Mandron pounced to pull one back that seemed to knock the stuffing out of Celtic who did their best impression of the big bad Wolf but failed to do more than huff and puff as time passed and the Saints grew into the game there was something of an inevitability about Mandron's second. Full time, a triumph for never giving up and a lesson that two goals are never enough. 

A further 30 mins and penalties ahead. A situation Celtic shouldn’t have found themselves in yet somehow having managed to shoot themselves in both feet something was going to be needed to separate the two.
 
Now before I give my thoughts on extra time I’d like to be brutally honest here. I know this was a cup game, no points at stake and no bearing on the title race But to let a two goal lead disappear isn’t the stuff champions are made of. This has been one of Celtic's bigger problems this year, defensive frailty. And, sure, the new manager should have a full compliment of fit players to choose from come the start of the season, with Carter Vickers and Trusty in the middle of defence, that rigidity should return. However, an injury to one or both and suddenly we look vulnerable again. While our rivals are strengthening Celtic seem to be quite happy with a sticking plaster approach, and whilst it may provide temporary relief and respite ultimately it won’t heal the deep wounds in this team. Signings have to be made and the man at the top needs to let go of the purse strings.
 
Extra time and a performance that’s been missing all season was witnessed in the first six minutes. Celtic rejuvenated looking like a team who hadn’t just ran around for the best part of one hundred minutes bagged four goals to sink the sorry Saints. Two from super sub Ihenacho and one each from McCowan and Nygren sent the Celts through and great scenes of both jubilation and relief reverberated through the halls of Robertson Towers as I’m sure it did throughout the homes of Celtic fans across the globe.
 
Into the final to face Lennon's Dunfermline who have proven to be able to mix it with the best it’s anything but a forgone conclusion. I’m sure Celtic will be the bookmakers' heavy favourites but I’d not be betting on Lennon not delighting in getting one over his old club, his old boss and the fans who once adored him.
 
The final is to be played on Saturday 23rd May at a yet to be determined time but should be available on both BBC Scotland and Premier Sports.

Let’s hope it’s a lovely sunny day so Steve R can get out in his garden and not have to endure the Bhoys lifting (hopefully) another trophy 🤣

PS: I can’t go without mentioning Saints stand in keeper Tamosevicius who for his first time ever in goal for the club in any first team match was at fault for none of the goals and didn’t look out of place. Another lad of just seventeen I wish him well for his future.

Til next time …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

A Tale Of Two Seventeen Year Olds

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