Can the camera lie?

Simon Pottinger examines the meaning of a photo and its caption in the upside-down world of the SWP

Most eye catching about Lindsey German’s latest article in the Socialist Worker is not the headline but the accompanying picture. The title of the piece simply reiterates the “troops out” demand, the call to arms for the next StW demonstration. The article is largely rallying support for this. Whilst her contention, that this is “still the key demand after the election” does halt you in your tracks it is the picture, and its caption, which takes your breath away.

Lets start with that caption; “Crushing democracy. A British tank on the streets of Basra, Iraq”.

Now mentally Google “crushing democracy” and “tanks” and see what image you come up with? Probably the first is either Tiananmen Square or Hungary in 1956 or Prague 1968, probably the last is Basra. The bag-carrying student confronting the tank is probably the most enduring political image since those of napalmed children in Vietnam. Both Tiananmen and Hungary occurred during the SWP’s (and its precursors) “Neither Washington nor Moscow” days. From memory, they held anti-tank and pro-democracy positions well within mainstream left responses. That aside the images we recall are of occasions where Russian and Chinese tanks actually and physically crushed democratic movements.

Now this cannot be what Lindsey German can be claiming here, can it? Even those capable of the wildest inversion of reality, something of which she and her comrades are well capable, could do no other than fairly report the truth; the troops in Iraq created a fragile security environment in which over 8 million Iraqis could, in scenes of celebration, vote for the first time in generations. Democracy was not “crushed” quite the opposite it was allowed to flourish against a background of murderous intimidation. The purple fingers, arguably now the most powerful political image since Tiananmen, were raised in defiance of those who would suicide bomb them outside polling stations.

Those bombers are of course part of a “resistance” for which parts of the far left have continually reiterated their support. Here we do have an inversion of reality. Those they champion in Iraq had every intention of “crushing democracy”, whilst those accused of this, prevented it.

There is insufficient space here to rehash the widespread condemnation of the pro-resistance leadership of the StWC it might however be worth recalling Michael Ignatieff’s words on the day of the election: “This makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates – fascists”

In a world where Bush=Hitler and secularism is a form of racism it seems perfectly plain that soldiers protecting voters from fascists is “crushing democracy”.