Protests in Edinburgh against Steve Bannon Speaking to the European Broadcasting Union

This is a report from RT, broadcast last Thursday, 15th November 2018, about the protests in Edinburgh against Steve Bannon’s address to the European Broadcasting Union.

Bannon, you will remember, was another Far Right activist and member of Trump’s cabinet, before the Orange Generalissimo gave him the heave-ho. He was interviewed in Edinburgh by journos from the Beeb. The video has a clip of Bannon’s speech, in which he states that present media coverage at the White House is at the level of playground gossip. There is no real coverage of the issues, partly because of economics but also because of a lack of investigative journalism.

The report states that he was met with protests from anti-racism demonstrators, which include United for Grenfell. The protesters chant ‘Stop Trump’, hold placards with the slogan, ‘Ban Bannon: Racists Never Welcome’ and ‘No To Racism, No To Trump’. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, withdrew from the even in protest, and the anti-racism group, Stand Up To Racism, has asked those involved in the interview to complain to the BBC.

There’s a clip of the joint head of Stand Up To Racism, Sabby Dahlu, explaining that they don’t agree with him being given a platform and treated as a normal journalist. He isn’t. He may have had links with Far-Right websites like Breitbart, but he was also Donald Trump’s chief of staff, and chief political strategist. He was sacked, but is now building a Far Right political movement across Europe, including Britain. Bannon has met Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory right, and funding the Fascist Free Tommy Robinson campaign. She therefore questions why the Beeb is presenting him as a respectable journalist when he isn’t. And the real danger is that if people like Stand Up To Racism don’t speak out, organisations and individuals like them will be treated as normal. And that is how Nazism started.

The European Broadcasting Union said it had a duty to present all views and give him a platform. They said that he was a key influencer in the rise of populism, one of the dominant political trends of our time. He was invited to News Xchange this year because his views are relevant to today’s society at large and therefore to the media industry. They also said it was their journalistic responsibility to scrutinize and share a variety of relevant viewpoints in the framework of balanced debate.

The Beeb defended their decision to be part of this with a statement that

Good journalism in a world of fake news and disinformation is more vital than ever. Journalism is about asking tough questions and understanding what is happening in the world and why. A conference designed to analyse the big issues impacting that world isn’t an endorsement of anyone or anything – it is a function of what journalism is.

In fact, this isn’t the first time that the Beeb and the British media has chosen to interview a Fascist, not by a very long chalk. Some of us can still remember the controversy the Beeb caused when they invited Nick Griffin, the-then head of the BNP, to appear on Question Time. And Buddy Hell has made the point over at Guy Debord’s Cat that the media is always soft when it comes to interviewing the Far Right, illustrating this with an interview with John Tyndale, the head of the National Front, in the ’70s.

And Sabby Dahlu’s right: there are real dangers to this approach. The number of people voting for the Nazis in Weimar Germany was derisory, comparable to the number of people voting in Britain for the BNP and the other bizarre Fascist grouplets today. One of the factors which aided their rise to power until they became a mass movement with a membership in the millions was that influential members of German society took them up and promoted them.

And there are real questions too about the impartiality of Edinburgh council. One protester was arrested on a charge of breach of the peace for holding a placard saying ‘Nae Nazis in Edinburgh’. Tony Greenstein pointed out that under Scots law, this isn’t a minor offence. It can carry an unlimited sentence. He also wondered what was so offensive or dangerous about the placard that the man holding it was arrested.

Bannon is a White supremacist and a real menace to civilized European society, and to its ethnic minority citizens. A week ago, on the 12th, Hope Not Hate put up a report about a mass march in Warsaw organized by the Fascist National Radical Camp or ONR, named after a viciously anti-Semitic organization in the 1930s, and All-Polish Youth, another Far Right outfit that is also militantsly homophobic as part of the celebrations commemorating the centenary of Poland finally gaining its independence in 1918. The march also included foreign fascists like the Italian Forza Nueva, a group of British skinheads, the Canadian Alt-Right YouTube personality Stefan Molyneaux, and Tommy Robinson and a group of his stormtroopers. 200,000 people attended the march.

See: https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/11/12/fascism-march-warsaw/

Jewish anti-racist activist David Rosenberg has also described this procession in a moving article about a tour of Auschwitz and a tour of Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow, which he was involved in organizing. He notes that as well as the Nazis, anti-Fascists also made their presence felt. He writes

But the spirit of anti-Fascist resistance was also present in Warsaw as progressives held an alternative march and anti-fascist rave. This march was led by two banners in Yiddish and Polish held side by side, translating to “For your and our freedom”. This slogan was first used in a Polish rising against the Tsarist Empire in 1831, then revived in the Spanish Civil War by the Botwin Company of the Dombrowski Battalion, and later by Bundists in the Warsaw Ghetto resistance.

https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/sadness-and-rage-auschwitz-2018/

Fascism is on the march again, and Bannon is a part of it. And if you want to see what real Fascism does, contrary to all the nonsense Richard Spencer has spouted about a ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’, all you need to do is look at Auschwitz. Or simply read the rest of Rosenberg’s article above.

Fascism and Nazism aren’t simply just another political movement. They are a direct threat to democracy and the lives and dignity of millions of people. Their leaders should never be given a platform from which to spread their vile doctrines.

Tags: All-Polish Youth, anti-racism, BBC, BNP, Boris Johnson, Breitbart, Buy Debord's Cat, Conservatives, David Rosenberg, Donald Trump, Edinburgh, Ethnic Cleansing, European Broadcasting Union, Forza Nueva, Gays, Holocaust, Homophobia, Hope Not Hate, Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Tyndale, Local Councils, Michael Gove, National Front, National Radical Camp, Nick Griffin, Nicola Sturgeon, ONR, Polish Language, Question Time, racism, Richard Spencer, RT, Russian Empire, Sabby Dahlu, Spanish Civil War, Stand Up To Racism, Stefan Molyneaux, Steve Bannon, Tommy Robinson, Tony Greenstein, Tsarism, Warsaw, Warsaw Ghetto, Yiddish, Youtube