LARRY O'HARAS PARAPOLITICS JOURNAL SO MUCH SELF ABUSE

Oh dear, some things don't change, do they?

Larry O'Hara still spends more time and energy attacking anti-fascists than the fascists themselves. Granted, the barely re-constituted neo-Hitlerite rantings of the BNP might not be to Larry O'Hara's taste but is he still having cosy chats with Patrick Harrington over the dog or being invited for tea in Kensington by Patrick Harrington's batty mother? Is he still trying to get fascists off the hook for the Notting Hill Bomb Plot (recently revisited in my film, BARBARIANS AT THE GATE, see FACEBOOK) because of some other cosy chat that he had with Steve Brady? I'm all for golden oldies (if its RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE for a Christmas Number One, that is) but this petty crap of Larry's - like his bitchy and vindictive attacks on myself - take the biscuit.

Without a doubt, fascism will only be defeated when a credible class struggle alternative to New Labour is built. This is because, given the de facto collapse of a moribund free market capitalism combined with the erosion of citizenship by the coercive state, the primitive rebellion of a section of the white working class is always liable to be drawn to a limited and reactionary conclusion.

In this respect, as a recent journal article by myself elucidates, the situation is similar to that with the Lyalist working class in Northern Ireland if primitive rebellion (articulated as deferential rather than contractual loyalism) is drawn to sectarian conclusions where class politics have been shut down.

Of course, in Northern Ireland, this is amplified if the Loyalist working class is painted into a corner by concessions to IRA terrorists, to the point at which their very right to be British citizens seems poised to be placed in the shredder. As Henry McDonald once said, end the siege if you want class unity in Northern Ireland, As a lot of my good friends in the Irish Republic would also say, if you want to break the capitalist hegemony of Fianna Fail then stop banging on about a United Ireland that never existed - and never will!!

Which brings me to the charge of "taig baiting" in O'Hara's barely literate rag, NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND (William Hope Hodgeson must be turning in his grave). As someone who's acually FOUGHT fascists on the street (unlike O'Hara, who lacks both the politis and bottle to do so) I am aware that sectarianism is a species of racism that has to be cahallenged but by that I mean ALL sectarianism - which is tackled through socialist politics and social inclusion NOT green Republicanism.

The reason why I've spent 20 years studying the history of the Loyalist working class and its contradictions, and challenging the tiresome demonization of the Loyalist working class by a section of the left, is that I'm committed to working class unity in the struggle for socialism in BOTH countries: Northern Ireland and the Republic. As for "taig bashing," I don't believe that's how roughly half of my former students at Queens University Belfast would see it nor else the filmmakers in and from the Irish Republic with whom I routinely collaborate.

Just as I've actually fought fascists on the street (unlike a few people I can mention who'd rather have cosy chats with them on the phone instead) so I've actually lived in Northern Ireland and the Republic, where my parents also live on account they were f***ing born there. (Granted, they're Prods and no, they're nort rich ascendancy prods - another sectarian cliche). To put it in plain English, at least I'm not some guilt ridden Plastic Paddy from England who knows all the tiresome, dreary IRA songs about dead murders but hasn't an opinion on Mary Harney's butchery of the health service or savage attacks on public servants' pay by a gangster capitalist Fianna Fail Party who sing the same shitty IRA songs at their Ard Feis.

On a good day, people like this make me sick but then there's Larry's support not just for Sinn Fin/IRA (who have "sold out" in Larry's deranged view of the universe) but the Continuity IRA and Real IRA scumbags who - in Omagh in 1998 - committed the worst ever atrocity in the whole histry of the troubles. And they're still at it!!!! Time and again, Larry would brag that he had links to this group (as well as the INLA, who'd degenerated from Stalinism into a drug dealing sectarian murder gang) then started whining when SEARCHLIGHT got hold of this - saying that they were putting his life at risk.

Actually (and unlike SEARCHLIGHT) I don't think that Larry is a fascist but I do think he's a petty minded, self absorbed and vindictive little scroat whose politics are as degenerate as his personal hygene and taste for spanking mags (of which he has quite a collection). I also think that if his barely literate rag, NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND, had any influence over the anti-fascist movement he'd be a menace.

The sad thing is that Larry did some important research in the late 1980s and early 1990s that was way ahead of everyone on how fascism was changing. It's what he did with this that saddens me. For anyone wanting to fight fascsm, my advice is join UNITED AGAINST FASCISM, which Larry attacks or some other genuine anti-fascist-group and give NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND a wide birth. Anyone wanting to fight fascism at the cultural level, go to the BARBARIANS AT THE GATE group on FACEBOOK and check out the film we're making. In the very near future, we'll be selling tee shirts and other memorabilia to get this important project made as a feature the way that Nick Love did it ith OUTLAW.

And as for Larry, stick with your spanking mags mate....you smelly little perv