(An edited version of this article will appear in the newspaper Solidarity, the fortnightly journal of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.)

Following the 7/7 bombings in London, the media has been full of righteous denunciations of “extremists” of all stripes. Fair enough, you might think. The belief that blowing hundreds of public transport users up is a good way to get a political point across is pretty “extreme,” so why not denounce it as such?

Pav Akhtar, the Black Students’ Officer of the NUS, said in The Guardian on July 20th that the union was “working with [Universities UK] on their project to combat extremism on campus - including extremism related to political issues, animal rights, the BNP, homophobia and racism, for example - and we welcome moves by any organisation that seeks to highlight this issue.”

Again, at first glance it all seems pretty innocuous. BNP? Bad. Homophobia? Bad. Racism? Bad. Even animal rights campaigners who think it’s okay to murder scientists are pretty bad. So what’s the problem?

The problem is who’s in a position to determine the meaning of “extreme.” If someone’s an “extremist,” what are they “extreme” in relation to?

Denouncing fascists like the BNP or clerical-fascist reactionaries like Islamist terrorists simply for being “extreme” both misses the point and lets the bigots off the hook. The BNP and Islamists are not bad because their views are “extreme” in relation to the moderate mainstream, they’re bad because their views are antithetical to the principles universal human rights and because their ideology and organisation present an immediate physical threat to political and social freedoms. The political agenda represented by the bombers needs opposing for its specifically and violently reactionary content, not just because it’s “extreme.”

Combating the “extremism related to political issues” mentioned in Akhtar’s quote could mean anything. For example, I’m a Marxist. I ultimately believe in an inevitably violent revolutionary struggle between the forces of labour and the forces of capital. This probably makes me an “extremist” in a lot of people’s eyes. So does Pav’s vision of an “anti-extremism” NUS involve clamping down on revolutionary socialist organisations on campus?

The history of social progress is the history of victories for “extremists.” Take, for example, the idea of universal suffrage. Those occupying the political centre (against which notions of “extremism” are defined) claim this idea as their own, but universal suffrage would not exist if it had not been fought for over decades of political struggle led by “extremists,” including Marxists like Sylvia Pankhurst.

As part of moves against “extremism,” the Blair government is attempting to outlaw Islamist organisations such as Hizb-Ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun. This is particularly interesting in terms of the NUS; Hizb-Ut-Tahrir was recently added to a list of organisations to whom the NUS’ “no platform” policy applies.

In the context of the debate about extremism, it will be very easy for right-wing bureaucrats to spin the “no platform” position into a catch-all policy that can be used to prevent anyone whose views they find disagreeable – or “extreme” – from being given a hearing. This is both a violation of free speech and a profound misunderstanding of the real motivation behind “no platform.”

However unpleasant we find the views of fascists and other violent racists (such as the deeply anti-Semitic Hizb-Ut-Tahrir), we should not “no platform” them simply on this basis but because they use meetings and political platforms to organise a physical threat to ethnic minorities and the entire union movement itself. Denying fascists a platform is not aimed at preventing “extreme” – even extremely reactionary – views from being aired, but is a basic measure of self-defence for our unions. Talking about fighting fascism and racism in the context of an overall attempt to “combat…extremism related to political issues” severely blurs those lines.

It is for these same reasons that state-imposed bans on political organisations, even violently bigoted, fascistic organisations like Hizb-Ut-Tahrir, cannot be supported. The capitalist system creates the social conditions which drive young workers and students into the arms of reactionaries like Hizb or the BNP, so relying on the administrators of that same system to protect us from those reactionaries is, at best, deeply naïve.

There is obviously no social, political or ideological comparison between the reactionary, Medievalist, anti-modern rage against capitalism expressed by Islamism and the rational opposition to capitalism in the name of a better, democratic alternative offered by socialism. But in times of acute political crisis, rulers-in-danger see only potential threats to the stability of their power, and measures used today to outlaw Islamists could be used in the future to repress others that the ruling-class considers dangerously “extreme,” – Marxists leading a large strike, for example, or even radical anti-fees campaigners.

The National Union of Students and its officers should stop using the terms “extremist” and “extremism” as terms of condemnation. Doing so not only insults the legacy and tradition of movements like the Suffragettes, but also implicitly condemns countless student activists around campaigns like People & Planet, No Sweat and War on Want who hold views on subjects such as human rights, sweatshop labour and trade justice that sit well outside the prevailing consensus on such issues.

And consider, for instance, an issue as fundamental to student politics as the question of free education. NUS’ own historic policy of supporting completely free education funded by taxation of the rich is, in relation to the status quo, undeniably “extreme.” Is the NUS itself then perhaps an “extremist” organisation?

Leon Trotsky – the Russian revolutionary – once spoke of the importance of “calling things by their proper names.” At a time when many difficult political questions are being posed very sharply, the need to call things by their proper names is greater than ever. The motion I’m proposing on this issue at the NEC on the 22nd is precisely about doing this.

Calling things by their proper names means that Islamists and fascists should not merely be denounced as “extremists,” especially by people who sloppily use the term to condemn anyone whose views they deem to be outside the acceptable, moderate mainstream, but should be explicitly condemned and opposed on an ideological and organisational basis for being violent reactionaries. Wherever groups like the BNP and Hizb-Ut-Tahrir organise, they present a real threat to freedoms that we fought for and won by previous generations of “extremists.”

The political fight on our hands now – the fight between fascistic reactionaries of all kinds and those in the student movement and labour movement who want to defend and extend democratic rights, even to an extent that some might consider “extreme,” - is not a question of their “extremism” against our safe, respectable, mainstream moderation. It’s a question of our “extremism” against theirs!

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