According to today Torygraph, far-right Labour MP Neil Coyle has had the party whip withdrawn because of racist comments about the Chinese he made to a journalist at Stranger’s Bar in parliament. This left the press gentleman, who presumably is of Chinese descent, feeling unsafe. Well it’s all coming out now. Coyle, as Mike has reported, made disgusting remarks about Jewish Voice for Labour, tweeting that their members were communists with their own party they could ruin. This resulted in a complaint to Starmer from three very distinguished Jewish gents – Geoffrey Bindman, a Queen’s Counsel, Avi Shlaim, professor of Middle Eastern history at Oxford and a Mr Harold Immanuel. I’ve said in a previous post that Coyle’s disgusting comment was almost straight out of Hitler’s vile rantings. The Nazis attacked the SPD, the German socialist party, as Marxist, and with a disproportionately high Jewish members. The Jews in it were all conspiring to throw gentiles out and place it under Jewish dominance as part of their subversion of parliamentary democracy and their plot to take over Germany. I’ve been trying to find the exact quote to show how similar this accusation is Coyle’s. I haven’t been able to find it, unfortunately, but I have found others that are broadly similar. For example, in one of his speeches Hitler ranted
‘that wherever one looks one sees Jews. The whole of Germany is governed by Jews. It is a sandal that the German workers, whether with head or hand, let themselves be so harassed by the Jews. Of course, because the Jew has the money in his hands. The Jew sits in government and swindles and smuggles. When he has his pockets full again he drives the workers into confusion, so that again and again he finds himself at the helm, and we poor Germans put up with all that. He also spoke about Russia and who did all that? Only the Jews. Therefore, Germans, be united and fight against the Jews. Because they will gobble up our last crumbs. The lecturer’s concluding words: We shall carry on the struggle until the Jew has been removed from the Reich even if it seems like an insurrection or even to revolution.’
Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich (London: Penguin 1970) 41.
Mike has also pointed out how the Nazis identified the Jews with Marxism. This is absolutely correct, as another quote from the wretched man shows
‘Fate answered the question for me inasmuch as it led me to make a detached and exhaustive inquiry into Marxist teaching and the activities of the Jewish people in connection with it. The Jewish doctrine of Marxism repudiates the aristocratic principles of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of vigour and strength by numerical mass and its dead weight.’
Fest, Face of the Third Reich, 55.
And then there’s this quote from a 1933 speech by General Reichenau to a council of commanding officers baldly stating the party’s role in stamping out ‘Marxism’:
‘We must understand that we are in the midst of a revolution. What is rotten in the state must fall and it can only be brought down by terror. The party will proceed ruthlessly against Marxism. The army’s task is to order arms. No succour if any of the persecuted seek refuge with the troops.’
Fest, op. cit., 360.
Okay, let’s not exaggerate – Starmer and Coyle aren’t shooting Jews and Marxists or putting them in concentration camps. But he is smearing decent people, who are Jews and leftists, as anti-Semites and ‘Communists’ in order to purge them from the party and make it safe for nice, Zionist neoliberals. Who are the only people, including the only Jews, that are welcome in the party as they wish to mould it. And the rhetoric they are using is exactly that of Hitler and the Nazis. They are real anti-Semitic tropes.
But left-wing Jews don’t count. Certainly not, it appears, to comedian, writer and broadcaster David Baddiel, who has written a book, Jews Don’t Count, about the revival of anti-Semitism. This presumably includes Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters as members and adherents of left-wing anti-Semitism. Because criticism of Israel for its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians is anti-Semitic, and not merely anti-Zionist. Looking through YouTube yesterday, I found that Baddiel had turned up on Spectator TV to talk about his book. Yeah, the Speccie, whose columnist ‘Taki’ has been described as an anti-Semite, and who wrote a piece in his column in the wretched magazine praising the Greek Chryse Aurea, ‘Golden Dawn’, bunch of Nazis. The group that beats up immigrants and asylum seekers, whose leader has, I believe, been banged up for the murder of a left-wing journo.
In fact the Spectator has been running stories about Socialist and Muslim anti-Semitism for some years now. Way back in 2004 there was a review by Frederick Raphael of a book, set in France in this decade, in which the remains of the French socialists has joined force with the Muslims to seize power. Together the two have launched a new Holocaust against the Jews. Yes, I know the left isn’t free of anti-Semitism, and it’s present in the Islamic community, but this is just anti-socialist, Islamophobic smears and propaganda. But one of the complaints by Jewish right-winger around that time was that the left was more concerned about racism towards Muslims than anti-Semitism. It seems Baddiel may also share this attitude. Well, as the Independent pointed out in its analysis of French racism at the same time, the French were more concerned about Islamophobia because it was far more prevalent than anti-Semitism. Something like 30 per cent of French people polled believed that Muslims weren’t really French, as compared with only five per cent who thought the same about Jews. And I dare say much the same is true over here as well.
David Baddiel is highly intelligent and a genuinely witty, funny bloke. He has a double first and a doctorate from Oxford. I can remember laughing fit to burst along with the rest of his audience when I heard him read from his book, Time For Bed, nearly two decades ago at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. But now it seems he’s another one who’s checked his brains at the door when it comes to anti-Semitism in Labour.
He made some excellent observations about Whoopi Goldberg’s ignorant remark that the Holocaust wasn’t about race. Unfortunately, his views about Corbyn and his supporters are also ignorant and prejudiced. Don’t bother with them.
Tags: Adolf Hitler, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Anti-Zionism, Armed Forces, Assault, Avi Shlaim, Chinese, David Baddield, Frederick Raphael, General Reichenau, Geoffrey Bindman, Golden Dawn (Greece), Harold Immanuel, Holocaust, Immigrants, Islamophobia, Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Voice for Labour, Joachim C. Fest, Keir Starmer, Labour Party, marxism, Middle East, Murder, Muslims, Neil Coyle, Oxford University, Palestine, Palestinians, Purges, racism, The Face of the Third Reich, The Spectator, Time for Bed, Violcence, Whoopie Goldberg, Working lClass, Zionism
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
February 11, 2022 at 5:29 pm |
Yes, the unfortunate victim is (to my eye) Chinese in feature. I read somewhere that “Oriental” is no longer PC, though I doubt if that’s true. If it is true, my copy of Biggles In The Orient will be a collectors’ item. Bids start at £1000-00
February 11, 2022 at 7:44 pm |
I think it’s quite likely, but it is ridiculous. I once saw Cenk Uighur of the American left-wing YouTube news site, The Young Turks, say that ‘Chinaman’ is a terrible racist insult. But in the list of proscribed words the Beeb drew up in its early days it stated that ‘Men of Chinese origin are to be referred to as ‘Chinamen’ and not ‘Chinks’. Which is entirely correct, at least as far as I can see. If it is racist, perhaps someone could kindly explain why.
As for books now accused of racism because of changing sensibilities, I’ve got a very old copy of Willard Price’s ‘Cannibal Adventure’. This is set in Papua New Guinea, some of whose tribes did practise cannibalism. But Brent in the 1980s banned it as a racist, even though Price makes it clear that while the Papuans his young heroes encounter are still in the Stone Age, they are not stupid savages but intelligent, dignified people. Which is why I believe you should use your own discretion when judging whether material is really racist because of the dangers of censorship, fanaticism and misrepresentation from the crusading, bigoted left.
February 14, 2022 at 3:16 pm
Can I commend the hilarious story entitled (as I remember) William And The Native Son in William Again. What I found quite wonderful about this story, which was written well before the last war, is that Richmael Crompton doesn’t seem to have a racist bone in her body, though the story is full of potential pitfalls. William hears that the local women’s group is to entertain a missionary and his young African protege. William decides to get in on the eatables before the guests arrive, and blacks up with boot polish. He is duly patronised by all the well-meaning ladies, and makes short work of the goodies. Only one other guest rumbles him – a small girl, who says, “It’s William Brown!” and keeps insisting on this until her exasperated mother exclaims, “How would you like to come here all the way from Africa and have somebody say you look like William Brown?” When the actual protege arrives, he is unhappy when he realises that William has scoffed most of the food intended for him, a fight breaks out, and William is forced to retreat. I wonder whether this story is included in recent reprints of William Again!
January 9, 2023 at 9:57 am
In much the same vein, I think there was a tribunal recently where a judge declared “coloured” not to be a racist term, b/c the people who use it tend to be older and more conservative. My Gran (born 1934) used it a lot, even though she was LibDem and had Black friends at her church.
January 9, 2023 at 12:47 pm
“Coloured” originally meant “mixed race” – as in “Cape coloureds” and could be regarded as an insult by full-blooded Africans. I remember a three way conversation during a holiday job many years ago. A young German had been up to London and showed us his snaps. “Look at that old nigger,” he said innocently, pointing to a West Indian in the background of one of his pix. I told him that “nigger” was insulting and that the word he wanted was “Negro”. At this point, the section head chipped in and said, “Much better to say ‘coloured man.'”
February 14, 2022 at 4:13 pm |
I read some of the ‘Just William’ stories when I was a lad, but I don’t remember that one. I may not have read that book. It’s interesting. My guess is that the story would probably be omitted now, or if it was included there’d be an explanatory note apologising for the racism and attitudes of the times, and stating that it’s included for completist. Even though the actual story itself isn’t racist.
January 9, 2023 at 1:47 pm
You’re right about ‘coloured’ originally meaning someone of mixed race. In the 19th century a person of colour certainly meant that, and educated men of colour were in demand to run the African colonies, as it was felt that they had better immunity to tropical diseases than Whites while having the advantages of western upbringing and education.
With the German chap not understanding that the ‘N’ word was an insult, it might be that he was confused between the similarity between it and the German word, ‘Neger’, which just means Black person. There was some kind of controversy a few years ago about the Dutch word, which is the same. Some Blacks found it insulting, and I think it may have been because of the similarity to the English word. Or perhaps it was because many Blacks now dislike the term ‘Negro’.