Why they desecrated Marx’s grave
Posted on Friday 30 September, 2011
Filed Under The left
I’M NOT quite sure why I find pictures of swastikas crudely sprayed on Jewish or Muslim graves more shocking than the sight of, say, similar racist graffiti on the shutters of ethnic minority-owned corner shops. In our culture, disrespect for the dead remains perhaps the ultimate statement of visceral hatred.
Reports that the tomb of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery was desecrated yesterday do not make the motivation immediately apparent. Although the Evening Standard reveals simply that it was daubed with paint, my presumption is that some sort of sloganeering was involved.
This action will have been undertaken for a reason, and the obvious suspects are the political right. Maybe this was the work of hardcore facists, maybe this was some sort of prank on the part of tipsy Tory student activists. We may never know.
An attack on what is basically an oversized bust of one of the people who shaped the modern world is something that Marx’s admirers – a category in which I include myself – can live with. The paint will scrub off soon enough, I guess.
But just as vandalism perpetrated in Jewish and Muslim graveyards is designed to hurt not the individual families of the deceased but entire communities, there is little doubt that this was meant as a symbolic assault on the left in its entirety.
Whoever is responsible would like to do to us exactly the same things they would like to do with the other human beings that they despise. We should consider it a warning.
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55 Responses to “Why they desecrated Marx’s grave”
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I know Luther Blissett was an excellent striker in Watford’s glory days. But I don’t think you’re he. And didn’t the Luther Blissett Project shut up shop years ago ?
Anger Management SR? What? You really can read like A New Labour consultancy or employer at times. What a waste? In fact so sad after your brilliant quote from the woman ‘in service’ in Victorian times. Very timely and spot on in Camerons Britain.
I will be generous and put the anger management advice down to patronising derision, another snort up your nose, rather than boosting the profits of New Labour/Tory hacks consultancies. I can live happily with derision. But not the other.
Employers used ‘anger managemement’ strategies in Manchester in the 1840′s. Except they called it ‘work and starve the buggers to an early grave in their own shit, or shoot the fuckers’. Not very catchy though is it? Engels compelling 1844 piece on that still moves me to tears. Because the same conditions that caused it are still with us. We are going back to it daily.
So how about stopping this inane divisive infighting and working towards a new ‘consultancy’. Shall we call it ‘Apathy and cynicism management’. Sorry there are no big bucks in it, not even a pension.
I am a Marxist, but I am not angry. Fucking hell there must be help groups for such people.
Martin. Try the Sally Anne or St Vincent de Paul. A bowl of soup guaranteed for Marxists that drifted from the faith. The British Army are recruiting. Three square meals a day and you get to see the World.
It’s late, been a long week. Some of us still laughingly have to slave labour away just to eat. Ooops, I just farted. Sorry.
Just keep your head under the blanket Martin and enjoy it.