I’ve been debating with myself whether to repost anything by Barry Wall, the EDIJester, for a little while now. I really don’t share his political opinions – he’s a Telegraph-reading Tory, who thinks that five years of the Labour party in power will totally wreck this country but will have the benefit of leading to another 25 years of Tory rule, as he says in this video. He also thinks that the NHS needs to be scaled back as it’s a socialist state. Well, it’s not state socialism that’s responsible for the increase in bureaucracy, but privatisation. He is very well-informed on the immense damage Queer Theory and the transgender ideology has done and is doing to gays, lesbians and vulnerable young people, principally autistic and gender nonconforming children. However, he is very forthright and outspoken in the scorn and sheer loathing he has for the ideology and those pushing it. While I share his views there, I’m very much aware that many of the great readers of this blog don’t, and I don’t want to insult them. But this issue’s a bit different. It’s about the Critical Social Justice invasion of STEM and in particular the teaching of evolution and ecology.
In the video, he reads out and adds his own comments to a review from the website ‘Why Evolution Is True’, of a scientific paper demanding that the teaching of evolution and ecology should be revised to include the subject’s racism in order to combat modern racism and ‘White complicity’. He states that it’s the kind of material that comes from Black activists like Ibrahim X. Kehindi. This isn’t anti-racism as you and I would normally understand it, where people look past skin colour and disregard past prejudices in order to appreciate the person within. No. Critical Race Theory states that all Whites occupy a privileged position at the apex of society, while all Blacks are brutalised and discriminated against by the system. This has to be laid bare, and Whites must feel guilty about their past in order to make up for past or present racial inequities. This last word does not mean equality in the sense of equality of opportunity. It means equality of result. Thus, lower performing Blacks must be given preferential treatment over Whites and now Asians through affirmative action schemes.
The Jester’s a meritocrat, who believes that firms should only hire and employ the best people, regardless of race. But this is under attack from the Critical Social Justice adherents, who, following the pedagogical theories of the Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freyre, wish to turn teaching into a form of political indoctrination, with the individual subjects merely vehicles for this. The Humanities have been the hardest hit by this attitude, but it’s beginning to infect the science subjects as well. This is particularly pernicious because of the immense power of the STEM subjects to affect the quality of people’s lives. Scientists, engineers and medical professionals need to rely on object fact. But postmodernism, of which Critical Race Theory is a part, rejects objective knowledge as merely a product, or rather a prejudice of western society, and criticises the exclusion of ‘indigenous ways of knowing’. The scientific paper being reviewed does exactly the same.
Now I’d normally avoid sites like ‘Why Evolution Is True’. In my experience, many of them appeared in the first decade of this century as a response to the rise of Creationism and Intelligent Design. They tended to be run by militant atheists, who sneered at people of faith generally when they weren’t attacking them for not believing in evolution. This followed the New Atheists and its leaders, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and so on. Dawkins is known for his particularly bitter hatred of religion, but to be fair he was also very critical of postmodernism. And it’s now postmodernism, in the form of its Critical Social Justice ideologies, that are taken over from religion as the main threat to rationality and objective science.
Evolution is particularly vulnerable to criticisms about its racist past because it was incorporated into the racial anthropology and pseudo-scientific racism that arose in the late 19th century. But Europeans had already developed racial hierarchies with northern Europeans at the top and Aboriginal Australians at the bottom before Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Also, other cultures have also developed their own racial prejudices and hierarchies. Medieval Muslim scholars speculated that White people owed their complexions and temperaments, which were inferior to those of brown Arabs and Asians, because they lived in northern regions and so had not been properly cooked by the sun. Blacks were also inferior, but for the opposite region. They lived in hotter, southern climates and so had been overcooked. And in the First Millennium AD, some Chinese scholars decided that Whites were the product of interbreeding with monkeys. And at one level, I think many students of evolution are already aware of its racist past through works like The Mismeasure of Man by the late palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould.
European readers may be surprised at the accusations of racism against ecology, but the American ecological movement is tainted with a racist past. Some of those who established the first national parks in America were fervent racists, who hated Blacks and indigenous Americans. But many of them were also otherwise progressive liberals, who believed in a mixed economy, welfare provision and strong trade unions, as Thomas Sowell points out in his book, Intellectuals and Race. But obviously, racism is only part of this, as I think much of the American ecological movement also sprang from ordinary, working class Americans, who yearned for the beauty of the natural world their parents and grandparents had left when they migrated from the farms to seek work in the cities.
Militant Black activists have also developed their own splenetic racist ideologies, in which Whites are at the bottom. These have been developed by the Afrocentrists and the Black Muslim organisations like the Nation of Islam. The latter teaches that Whites were created thousands of years ago by an evil Mekkan scientist in order to destroy Black racial purity. As time went on, however, they also interbred with lepers and dogs. Now, if the teaching of mainstream subjects like evolution and ecology has to include these subjects’ racist past, the argument could be levelled that no teaching about Afrocentrism and Black Islam should exclude mentioning the racism of these ideologies and religions. But I can see real resistance coming to the mere suggestion of this.
This isn’t about informing students of a particularly evil side of their disciplines, but about using that history as a means of indoctrinating them with an extreme and controversial racial ideology at the expense of the subject itself. CRT should have no place in the curriculum.
I’ve already put up a piece about some of the events at this year’s Arise Festival. Yesterday I had a further email about their programme, which added these events to it.
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4) NHS @ 75 – How can we repair & restore it after 13 years of austerity?
Online. Wed. June 7, 18.30. Register here // Share & Invite here // Get Festival Ticket here // Retweet here
With: Nadia Whittome MP // John Lister (Keep Our NHS Public) // John Puntis (Doctors for the NHS.) // Chloe Brooks (North West. Rep, Labour Students.) July marks 75 years of our NHS. In light of Starmer and Streeting’s recent remarks, join the discussion on how we can end the current crisis, & secure its future as a universal publicly-owned, public service for all.
Hosted by the Labour Assembly Against Austerity at Arise 2023.
5) Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist & Scourge of Empire.
Friday June 9, 1pm, Online. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here
With Katherine Connelly – author of ‘Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire.’ Sylvia Pankhurst dedicated her life to fighting oppression & injustice. This event will look at how this courageous & inspiring campaigner is of huge relevance today.
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
6) People & Planet on the Brink – Socialist Solutions to Climate Catastrophe
Online, Sunday, June 11, 5.00pm. Register here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Olivia Blake MP // Tess Woolfenden, Debt Justice // Sam Knight, Green New Deal Rising // Sam Mason, Climate Justice Coalition trade union officer // Fraser McGuire, Young Labour. The world is on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, threatening the very future of humanity. Yet our Government – like many others globally – are more interested in protecting the profits of the fossil fuel giants than urgent action to tackle the climate emergency.
A Socialist Sunday session at Arise 2023.
7) Free Palestine – Mustafa Barghouti briefing + Q&A
Monday June 12, Online, 6.30pm. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here.
In-depth briefing + Q&A with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian National Initiative, on the latest developments in Palestine as Israel’s far-right government steps up its aggression. With supplementary contributions from Young Labour, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign & Labour & Palestine. Chair: Louise Regan, National Education Union & PSC.
Free event but solidarity tickets & donations essential for funding Webinar & streaming. Hosted by Labour & Palestine as part of Arise.
8) The Case for Labour Party Democracy – for Members’ Rights & the Union Link
Online, Wednesday June 14, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Jon Trickett MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF GS//Simon Fletcher // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour. Join a vital discussion to make the case for a democratic party & movement – & to map out next steps in campaigning for members’ rights & in defence of the union-link.
9) What would Marx & Engels say about today’s global capitalist crisis?
Online, Friday June 16, 1.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With Michael Roberts – economist & author, The Great Recession – a Marxist view.
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
10) The New Colonialism- resisting racism & exploitation of the global South
Online, Sunday June 18, 5.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Asad Rehman, Director, War on Want // Heidi Chow, Director, Debt Justice // Lubaba Khalid, Young Labour BAME Officer // Chair: Denis Fernando, Arise volunteer.
A Socialist Sunday session at Arise 2023.
11) No more Pinochets in Latin America – Stand with social progress, democracy & regional integration
Online, Monday June 19, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Guillaume Long, former foreign Minister, Ecuador // Nathalia Urban, Brasil Wire // Claudia-Turbet Delof, Wiphalas Across the World, Bolivia, // Dave McKnight, UNISON NW // Gawain Little, GFTU.
Hosted by Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America at Arise 2023.
12) Socialist economic policies explained: the alternative to never-ending cuts
Online, Wednesday June 21, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
Richard Burgon MP // Laura Smith, Labour Councillor & co-author of the No Holding Back report // Professor Özlem Onaran, University of Greenwich // Cat Hobbs, Director of We Own It.
Ask your questions & make your contributions on socialist alternatives to ‘Austerity 2.0.’
13) The Paris Commune – “Glorious harbinger of a new society”
Online, Friday June 23, 1.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With Sandra Bloodworth. Australian labour historian & contributor to The Paris Commune, An Ode To Emancipation. The Paris Commune is still studied throughout the world as one of the first working-class attempts at emancipation, direct democracy & social change – why?
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
14) Push for peace – No to forever wars
Online, Sunday June 25, 5.00pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Kate Hudson (CND) // Steve Howell (author, ‘Game Changer’ & former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn) // Shadia Edwards-Dashti (Stop the War Coalition) // Chair: Logan Williiams, Arise volunteer.
One of the issues that concerns me about the current debate over historic slavery is that the belief seems to have grown up that only White Europeans and Americans practised it, and only enslaved Blacks and other people of colour. Connected to this is a related belief that only Whites can be racist. There’s an image on the net of young man of colour waving a placard ‘The British invented Racism’. Neither of these ideas is true. Slavery existed in many societies across the world from ancient times. It existed in ancient Egypt, the Middle East, India, China and elsewhere. It was a feature of many Black African societies, dating back to 3000 BC, and the proportion of the enslaved population ranged from 30 to 70 per cent according to the individual peoples. Black Africans were also enslaved by the Muslim Arabs and then by the Ottoman Turks, as were White Europeans, who were also preyed upon by the Barbary pirates of Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia. The Islamic world also developed racist views of Black Africans and White Europeans, contrary to the explicit teaching of Islam. The Chinese have also developed their own racial ideologies and hierarchies. However, many people don’t understand this, and this leaves them vulnerable to woke racial ideologies, like Critical Race Theory, which view Whites as innately racist and requiring particular teaching and treatment in order to cure them of their prejudices.
I think part of the problem is that the school curriculum only teaches the transatlantic slave trade. Outside the classroom there is little discussion or mention of slavery elsewhere in the world, except in the case of ancient Egypt. As far as I am aware, there are no TV programmes about global slavery, with the exception of the occasional news item about modern slavery and people trafficking. I am also not aware of any museums which also cover the global history of slavery. This absence, I believe, is leaving people vulnerable to radical ideologies that explicitly demonise Whites and teach Blacks that they have and will always be the victims of White prejudice, maltreatment and discrimination.
Yesterday I emailed messages to Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, Nick Gibb, the minister for schools, and the shadow minister for education, Bridget Phillimon about this issue, recommending that the teaching of slavery in schools and universities should also mention that it was done across the world. As should museum displays about slavery and the slave trade. I doubt that I shall receive a reply from them, as the internet addresses, I used may have been solely for their constituents and MPs are forbidden to reply to anyone except them. I’ve therefore also posted the message to the Department of Education using their contact address. But I doubt I’ll get anything back from them either.
Here’s the message I sent them, which I altered a little according to the minister’s or shadow minister’s sex and official position. Please note: I am not advocating the teaching of slavery and racial prejudice in other societies in order to somehow excuse western slavery and racism. I am merely doing so to counter the very specific issue that some people seem to believe that it is unique to White Europeans.
‘Dear Madam,
I am an historian with a Ph.D. in archaeology. I writing to you to express my deep concerns about the teaching of the subject of slavery in British schools and universities and the historical falsehoods being promoted by radical left-wing ideologies such as Critical Race Theory. I understand that the school curriculum includes transatlantic slavery. This is entirely correct, and that dark page of British imperial history should be taught. However, I am concerned that the exclusive focus on British and White European and American enslavement of Black Africans is leading to the distorted view among many British young people that slavery is somehow unique to White culture and society, and is something that only Whites did to Black Africans and other peoples of colour. This is, I feel, being exploited by the advocates of Critical Race Theory to promote a distorted narrative which demonises Whites as perpetual villains while at the same time teaching Black and Asians that they are victims, who will be perpetually oppressed by White racist society.
The idea that only Whites practiced slavery is far from the truth. Slavery has existed across the world since ancient times, as was recognised by the 19th century Abolitionists and their opponents. White Britons were enslaved by the Barbary pirates of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia from the 16th century onwards. This was only ended by the French conquest of Algiers in the 1820s. The Turkish conquest of the Balkans from the 14th century onwards resulted in the White, Christian population being depressed into serfdom as well as slavery itself. Slavery in Africa existed from at least 3000 BC. It was practiced in ancient Egypt and in many Black African societies. In these latter, the proportion of the enslaved population could range from 30%-70%. Black Africans were enslaved by Muslim Arabs and later on by the Ottoman Turks. It also existed in India, where the slave class are recorded in the Vedas as the Dasyas, and in China and elsewhere. There are some excellent books about these subjects, such as Jeremy Black’s Slavery: A New Global History (London: Constable & Robinson 2011), Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003), and Sean Stilwell, Slavery and Slaving in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014).
At the same time, the West has not been the only civilisation to develop racial prejudice and hierarchies of race. Racial prejudices against Blacks, but also White Europeans also developed in Islam, as discussed in Bernard Lewis’ Slavery and Race in Medieval Islam, and similar racial ideologies have also developed in China. But I very much regret that many young people are unaware that other, non-western cultures have also developed such practices. The result has been that some people seem to believe that racism is, once again, unique to the west. There is an image on the internet of a young man of colour bearing a placard saying, ‘Britain invented Racism’ which illustrates this very well.
I am afraid the lack of knowledge of extra-European racism and slavery is being exploited by Critical Race Theory and its supporters to promote the view that only Whites can be racist, and that racism and historical slavery is something that Whites need to be particularly reminded of and feel guilty about as part of wider radical programme to promote restorative racial justice.
I am very much aware that racism needs to be confronted and erased, but I believe this doctrine to be itself hypocritical and racist. I would therefore like to see the teaching of slavery in schools and universities, and museums exhibits about it also include the existence of slavery throughout the world, including Africa. The intention here is not to demonise other societies and their peoples, but simply to make the point that slavery has never been solely practiced by Whites. At the same time, I would also like to see any teaching in schools about racism also include the fact that this too is not simply something that Whites have done to people of colour. I believe strongly that it is through an awareness of the ubiquity of slavery and racism across the globe that a proper understanding of these issues as both part of British history and a continuing problem can be gained.
I hope you as Secretary of State for Education, will consider this issue worth raising will work to introduce these ideas into the current teaching on slavery, and look forward to hearing from you about this issue.
I gather that she’s been in today’s Guardian, where she’s written a piece about the death of Tina Turner. Turner was one of the greatest soul singers, even appearing as Auntie Entity, the ruler of Bartertown, in the film Mad Max 3, for which she also sang and performed a theme song. Shola’s piece lamented the fact that the singer had died before Blacks had received their proper compensation for their historic enslavement by White Europeans and Americans. She’s an intensely controversial figure. Some people feel that she is anti-British and I believe there was 38 Degrees petition launched by someone to stop the TV companies using her as a guest on their shows when debating racism and related topics. I feel that the issues of Black compensation for slavery raises questions about such compensation that crosses racial and national boundaries and which may affect Shola herself. Slavery was practised for millennia across the globe. Black Africans were enslaved by other African nations, as well as Muslim Arabs and Turks, as well as Indians, Persians and Afghans. Odiously, slavery still persists in Africa and the global south, and has been revived in Islamist-held Libya and Uganda. At the same time, Europeans were held in bondage as serfs until into the 19th century in parts of Europe, and were also enslaved by the invading Turks and pirates from Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia. This rises the issue that if compensations is to be paid to enslaved Blacks, then the same principle should mean that the victims of these forms of slavery should also receive compensation from those, who historically enslaved them.
I’ve therefore sent her this message via the message box on her website. I’ll let you know if I get an answer
‘Dear Shola,
I was struck by your article in today’s Guardian about the death of the great soul singer, Tina Turner, and lamenting the fact that she died before Black people had received reparations for slavery. The question of slavery reparations raises issues extending beyond western Blacks, including the complicity of African aristocracies, the enslavement of Blacks by other nations, including Islam and India, as well as indigenous White European forms of bondage and their enslavement by the Barbary pirates and the Turkish empire. As the granddaughter of an African prince, I would be particularly interested in your perspectives on these issues.
Regarding indigenous African complicity in the slave trade, I’ve doubtless no need to tell you about how generally Black Africans were captured and enslaved by other Black African peoples, who then sold them on to White Europeans and Americans. The most notorious slaving states were included Dahomey, Benin and Whydah in west Africa, while on the east coast the slaving peoples included the Yao, Marganja and the Swahili, who enslaved their victims for sale to the Sultan of Muscat to work the clove plantations on Zanzibar. They were also purchased by merchants from India, and then exported to that country, as well as Iran, Afghanistan and further east to countries like Sumatra. It has therefore been said that reparations should consist of Black Africans compensating western Blacks. Additionally, Black Africans were also enslaved by other Muslim Arabs in north Africa and then the Turkish empire. What is now South Sudan was a particular source of Black slaves and one of the causes of the Mahdi’s rebellion was outrage at the banning of slavery by the British. This raises the issue of whether Turkey, Oman, India and other north African and Asian states should also compensate the Black community for their depredations on them.
The complicity of the indigenous African chiefs in the slave trade has become an issue recently in Ghana and Nigeria. I understand that the slavery museum in Liverpool was praised by campaigners and activists from these nations for including this aspect of the slave trade. I would very much like to know your views on this matter. Forgive me if I have got this wrong, but I understand you are of the Igbo people. These also held slaves. I would also like to know if you could tell me a bit more about this, and how this may have affected your family’s history. Your grandfather was, after all, a chief, and this raises the awkward question of whether your family owned slaves. If they did, how were they manumitted and did your family give them reparations for their enslavement?
There is also the question of the enslavement of Whites both under conditions of domestic servitude and by the Muslim powers of the Turkish empire and Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Serfdom in England died out in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it continued in European countries into the 18th and 19th centuries. Prussia only liberated its serfs in 1825 and the Russian serfs were only freed in 1860. Serfdom is considered a form of slavery under international law, as I understand. If Blacks are to be granted compensation for their enslavement, then as a general principle the descendants of White European serfs should also be compensated for their ancestors’ servitude.
In Britain, a from of serfdom continued in the Scottish and Northumbrian mining industries. Miners were bondsmen, whose contracts bound them to the mining companies and who were metal identity collars to prevent them running away exactly like slaves. I would be grateful if you would tell me whether their descendants should also receive compensation for their forefathers’ virtual enslavement.
Over a million White Europeans and Americans, mostly from southern European countries such as France, Spain and Italy, were enslave by the Barbary pirates. This only came to an end with the French conquest and occupation of Alegria. If people are to be compensated for their ancestors’ enslavement, then presumably America and Europe should also receive compensation from these nations for this. The Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 14th century by Mehmet II resulted in the depression of the indigenous White Christian population into serfdom as well as the imposition of slavery. When Hungary was conquered, the Turks levied a tribute of a tenth of the country’s population as slaves. When one of the Greek islands revolted in the 1820s, it was put down with dreadful cruelty and the enslavement of 20,000 Greeks. Do you feel that the descendants of these enslaved Balkan Whites should also receive compensation from their former Turkish overlords?
There is also the fact that after Britain abolished the slave trade, she paid compensation to the former African slaving nations for their losses as part of a general scheme to persuade them to adopt a trade in ‘legitimate’ products. This was believed to benefit both Britain and the African nations themselves. How do you feel about the payment of such compensation? Do you feel that it is unfair, and that these nations should pay it back to us, or that they should pay it to the descendants of the people they enslaved?
Finally, slavery still persists today in parts of Africa and has even revived. The Islamist terror groups that have seized control of half of the former Libya have opened slave markets dealing in the desperate migrants from further south, who have made their way to the country in the attempt to find sanctuary in Europe. At the same time, slave markets have also opened in Uganda. Slavery is very much alive around the world today. I would be greatly interested in your perspectives on this issue, which is affecting people of colour in the global south. How do you feel it should be tackled? Are you working with anti-slavery organisations, such as Anti-Slavery International and the various organisations by former African slaves to combat this? If not, I would be very grateful if you could tell me why not, when you are obviously motivated by a human outrage at the plight of the historic victims of western slavery.
I hope you will be able to provide me with answers to these questions, and very much look forward to receiving your reply.
Okay, I just caught the announcement on today’s midday news that the Beeb has launched a fact checking and verification service. I didn’t quite catch all of the announcement, but I think there was something about the war in Ukraine. Assuming that this was part of the same announcement rather than a separate news item about the war, it may have been related to the conflicting claims yesterday made by Russia and Ukraine about Bakhmut. The Russians claimed they had taken the town, while the Ukrainians denied it. The BBC seemed to be saying that this new service would be able to cut through such confusion. The Beeb also announced a few years ago that they were going to launch a service aimed at checking and rebutting the fake news coming out of the internet. The announcement today seems to suggest that they’ve finally completed setting the service up. Events have moved on a bit since then, and internet fake news and the ‘alternative facts’ put out by Donald Trump aren’t such a pressing issue on the public mind. They’ve therefore decided to announce its launch with a more topical question, such as who’s telling the truth about the war in Ukraine.
But can the Beeb itself be trusted? One of the right-wing news outlets – I can’t remember which one – said that Britain had one of the very lowest rates of public trust in the news in the world. Only 13 per cent of us, according to polls, supposedly believe the newspapers. I think the amount of trust in the Beeb might by higher, but it seems to me that this will also have been hit by allegations by the Tories about left-wing bias, particularly over Brexit. But the BBC has shown several times to people on the left that it can’t be trusted. It wholeheartedly took part in the mass demonization of Jeremy Corbyn as an evil anti-Semite. And I particularly remember the way it blatantly edited and censored Alex Salmond during the referendum a few years ago on Scottish independence. Their correspondent, Nick Robinson, had asked Salmond if he was afraid that the Scottish financial firms, located in Edinburgh, would move south if Scotland became independent. Salmon answered that they’d gone into that, and the firms wouldn’t. This clip was gradually edited during the day so that first it appeared that Salmond hadn’t given a satisfactory answer, and then that he ignored the question altogether.
And part of the problem isn’t what the Beeb or the rest of the lamestream media tells you, but what they don’t. Like the Maidan Revolution that toppled the pro-Russian Ukrainian president eleven years ago and started the path to the current war wasn’t a spontaneous, popular uprising, but carefully stage-managed by Hillary Clinton and her deputy Victoria Nuland in the state department with the cooperation of the National Endowment for Democracy. Other lowlights that found their way into the alternative media were reports that Clinton and Nuland had been recorded discussing whether or not they wanted the boxer-turned-politico Klyuchko in the Ukrainian cabinet. The gruesome twosome were also recorded lamenting that they hadn’t rigged the Palestinian elections, thus allowing the Palestinians to elect a Hamas government.
Today’s announcement is no doubt intended to reinforce the Beeb’s image as a source of unbiased, objective news. Certainly, that’s the image the corporation likes to project of itself. A few years ago, there was an advert for the Beeb’s news programmes which stated that the Beeb was listened to all over the world, especially in countries with authoritarian and dictatorial governments. The people in these countries trusted it to give them the real news that was being suppressed or distorted by their official news agencies.
Except I think it may be too late for that. The Beeb has shown itself too biased, too untrustworthy too often. You’re far better off getting information from the left-wing alternative internet channels like Novara Media and OpenDemocracy. The internet is notorious for the amount of rubbish, fake news and conspiracy theories circulating on it. But sometimes it’s more truthful than the mainstream news. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the fake news the Beeb will now claim to have checked and refuted is actually truthful, but needs to be discredited because it doesn’t fit the establishment agenda.
David Starkey is also one of the speakers at the National Conservatism conference, and once again has stirred up controversy because of his comments on race. According to the Independent, the Tudor historian said that the left is jealous of the Holocaust and wants to replace it with Black Lives Matter. And they’re not interested in protecting Black lives, but it tearing down western, White culture. The article says
‘Left-wing activists are “jealous” of the Holocaust and want to replace it with slavery, a leading historian has said.
In a speech to the National Conservatism conference in London, David Starkey claimed that groups such as Black Lives Matter were attempting to destroy “white culture” and “do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust”.
He said: “The determination is to replace the Holocaust with slavery. In other words, this is why Jews are under such attack from the left, there’s jealousy, fundamentally. There is jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and a determination to replace it with slavery.”
The historian’s comments brought swift condemnation, with Daniel Sugarman, public affairs director at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, tweeting that they were “pathetic attempts to drive a wedge between communities” that “will not work”.’…
‘In his speech to the National Conservatism conference on Wednesday, Dr Starkey renewed his criticism of Black Lives Matter, denying that the movement cared about black lives at all.
To applause from the audience, he said: “Movements like critical race theory and Black Lives Matter are not what they pretend to be.
“They are attempts at destroying the entire legitimacy of the Western political and cultural tradition.
“The idea that they are there to defend black lives is a preposterous notion. They do not care about black lives, they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture. We have to be absolutely clear about this.”
He added: “The narrative of Black Lives Matter is that Western culture and Anglo-American culture in particular are fundamentally morally defective, they are characterised by the mark of Cain and their strategy is to do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust.”’
Starkey’s wrong about the left seeking to replace the Holocaust with slavery, but he does have a point about Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter being used to discredit White culture. Jackie Walker, a Jewish woman of colour, was unfairly charged with anti-Semitism by the witch-hunters in the Labour party a few years ago because she dared to ask questions about how other genocides, such as the Black Holocaust of slavery, would be commemorated as part of Holocaust Memorial Day. She said this in a Labour party workshop about the proper commemoration of the Day, which stated that there would be no restrictions on what anyone could say. I think she’s technically wrong to describe transatlantic slavery as a holocaust. The Holocaust and similar genocides are deliberate attempts to wipe out nations and ethnicities. That wasn’t the case with transatlantic slavery, which aimed at the forced use of the enslaved peoples’ labour. This doesn’t remove the fact, however, that the violence and cruelty involved in the transatlantic slave trade was horrendous and it contributed to increased warfare and conflict in Africa, as tribes competed to capture slaves to sell to Europeans. The ceremonies on Holocaust Memorial Day also include the remembrance of other genocides, and Walker definitely did not want to replace the Holocaust with the slave trade, merely add it to the other atrocities also commemorated. Walker’s case, which was an attempt to silence a long term and principled critic of Israel, is the only one I know that comes anywhere close to a demand to replace the Holocaust with the commemoration of slavery. And she didn’t do that. When left-wingers have denounced the commemoration of the Holocaust, it’s been because of the way it is used as a propaganda device to muster support for Israel against the Palestinians. Who are being ethnically cleansed from their traditional home.
Starkey has much more of a point with Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory. Black Lives Matter was a response to a deep felt issue – what was perceived as racism in the American police which resulted in the greater shooting of Blacks. In fact, Black and other Conservatives have challenged this, and shown that more police get shot than Blacks, and more Whites are shot and killed by cops than Blacks. The organisation itself is Marxist, and rejects capitalism and the traditional family. In America, it’s also been rocked by scandal as its leader, Patrice Cullors, has used the millions donated to the organisation to enrich herself, her relatives and lieutenants. There have been a couple of similar scandals in Britain. A Black Lives Matter activist from Bristol is being sued for similarly taking donations. And a few days ago it was reported that the British Film Institute is taking a BLM-supporting film maker to court. She received funding from them to produce a documentary about Black liberation and the BLM movement, but hasn’t done so. Moderate and Conservative Black commenters have also criticised BLM for ignoring the problem of Black on Black violence and killing, which seriously afflicts many Black communities in America and Britain. Innocent Black people are still being murdered, but the movement ignores those lives unless the killers are White.
At the same time, Critical Race Theory holds that Whiteness is a bourgeois quality that automatically gives White people a privileged position in western society, which is intrinsically and systematically racist. The amount of racism in western society hasn’t changed, but only become more hidden. Hence demands to ‘destroy White privilege’ and for Whites to ‘be less White’. Slavery has become part of this, because the current disadvantaged state of Black communities in America and Britain is attributed to the slave trade and its legacy. Hence the demands for reparations. And yes, it is being used to delegitimise those nations. The 1619 Project about the influence of slavery and racism in America deliberately took that date as part of its name, because it considers it the true date of the founding of America. This was when the first Black slaves were imported into the nascent British colonies. At the same time, Britain is also coming in for criticism because of slavery and imperialism. For campaigners, the two or intrinsically linked, despite the fact that the later British empire and its annexation of Africa was partly motivated by a crusading zeal to stamp out slavery and the slave trade. Apart from the toppling of slavers like Edward Colston in Bristol, there are campaigns by Critical Social Justice activists to censor art and literature connected to slavery. And one of the problems is that slavery and imperialism is framed as something that only Whites do to people of colour. One of the arguments used by the slave-owners against the abolitionists was that slavery had been practised across the world down through history, and its abolition would leave Britain vulnerable to other nations and empires that had no such moral scruples. I’ve put up videos from the Arab, Turkish and Iranian world about their Black citizens, who also have their origins in those countries’ slave trades. Dubai, to its credit, has a museum to its history of slavery and slave trading. But few in the west seem to be aware of this and there is an active opposition amongst western anti-racism campaigner to tackling the resurgence of real slavery in Africa and elsewhere in the world. One of the left-wing writers in the I, Emma Maltby, rejected such demands as a distraction from the goal of achieving racial equality in the west. And Critical Postcolonial Theory rejects any criticism of extra-European societies traditional cultures as racist. Radical ideologies like Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theory are part of the wider movement of Critical Theory which is a postmodernist revision of Marxism that seeks to overthrow capitalism, patriarchy and the gender binary as part of the intersectional leftism called for by the German-American Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s.
I’m not a fan of Starkey, and he’s way off with his complaint about leftists trying to replace the Holocaust with slavery. But he does have a point in that slavery is being used as an ideological weapon against traditional western culture as part of a wider, postmodern assault on the Enlightenment values of individualism, rationality and reasoned debate. And this not only bothers those on the right, like Starkey, but also people on the left, like Helen Pluckrose, one of the trio of critics of Postmodernism and its assault on western culture with Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay. They have pointed out that CRT and related ‘isms’ differ strongly from the traditional anti-racism and feminist movements.
You can therefore criticise them without necessarily wanting the extremely right-wing economic and social order called for by people like Starkey.
This was included as ‘also coming up with the notifiction about the right to resist online rally.
‘1) Why Palestine Matters
Online forum. Monday May 15, 6.30pm. Register here // share & invite here // Retweet here & spread the word.
Join an in-depth forum on why standing with Palestine’s struggle is a vital question for socialists – & all those committed to international justice, ending imperialism & winning a better world.
With Bernard Regan, long-term campaigner for – & writer on – Palestinian rights, member of the PSC Executive Committee, & author of The Balfour Declaration: Empire, Mandate and Resistance in Palestine. He was the first recipient of the NUT’s Steve Sinnott Award (2015) in recognition of his contribution to international solidarity.
Part of the Socialist Ideas series. Hosted by Labour Outlook. Kindly streamed by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas.‘
The Palestinian people need our solidarity now more than ever. We will be joining fellow Labour members & affiliated trade unionists who will be joining this protest march and rally for Palestine taking place on Saturday 13th May 2023 in central London.
The march is supported by numerous trade unions including Artists’ Union England, BFAWU, CWU, The MU, NEU, PCS, RMT, TSSA, UCU, UNISON, Unite the Union.
FREE PALESTINE – END APARTHEID – END THE OCCUPATION
GENERAL DEMO INFO:
Date: Saturday 13 May 2023
Time: 12pm
Location: The BBC, Portland Place W1A, London
Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Supported by Artists’ Union England, BFAWU, CWU, The MU, NEU, PCS, RMT, TSSA, UCU, UNISON, Unite the Union.
The March is also commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Nakba when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and villages in 1948.
More demo info can be found on the PSC Website here.‘
The Palestinian people need our solidarity now more than ever. We will be joining fellow Labour members & affiliated trade unionists who will be joining this protest march and rally for Palestine taking place on Saturday 13th May 2023 in central London.
The march is supported by numerous trade unions including Artists’ Union England, BFAWU, CWU, The MU, NEU, PCS, RMT, TSSA, UCU, UNISON, Unite the Union.
FREE PALESTINE – END APARTHEID – END THE OCCUPATION
GENERAL DEMO INFO:
Date: Saturday 13 May 2023
Time: 12pm
Location: The BBC, Portland Place W1A, London
Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Supported by Artists’ Union England, BFAWU, CWU, The MU, NEU, PCS, RMT, TSSA, UCU, UNISON, Unite the Union.
The March is also commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Nakba when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and villages in 1948.
More demo info can be found on the PSC Website here.‘
I can’t go, but I’m putting this up for anyone who can.
I found this short video from Middle East Eye and several others showing Israeli soldiers and settlers attacking Christians and desecrating churches ahead of the Holy Fire ceremony in Jerusalem. This is the service during which a fire spontaneously ignites at one of the major churches in Jerusalem. Other videos show Israeli settlers abusing and spitting at Christian nuns. I am not putting this up to stir up any kind of hatred against Jews. Indeed, the people that have done so much to talk about this and reveal the anti-Christian bigotry as well as the other forms of racism in the Israeli state, its far right ruling parties, and the settlers, have been Jews like the mighty Tony Greenstein. I’m putting it up because this is what the mainsteam media and the Anglican and Methodist churches in Britain won’t show, nor will Christian Zionist organisation in the America like Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. There was much coverage a little while ago of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinian Muslims at the al-Aqsa mosque, but there was never any mention about this. Palestinian Christians are leaving the Holy Land because of this kind of pressure and violence. But in the mainstream media the Palestine/Israel conflict is always presented as one between Islam and the Israeli state. Some of this is due to western backing of Israel as an outpost of western culture and influence in the Middle East. Some of it is no doubt fear of being accused of anti-Semitism by the Israelis, along with accusations that Christianity is itself intrinsically anti-Semitic. The Israeli state wants the money from Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and so its keen to play these incidents down. But it comes from the theology of the various Israeli far right parties, which view Christians as idolaters and Jew haters, who, like Muslims, must be cleansed from Israel, and churches as ‘houses of idolatry’ that must be destroyed.
Starmer has declared himself a ‘100 per cent’ Zionist. In that case, I would like him to make a protest against this brutality by the Israeli far right, and why he isn’t standing up for Christians, Muslims and Israeli liberals and anti-racists, who are being attacked by this intolerant, far right regime.
Condemn anti-Semitism.
Condemn Israel persecution of Palestinian Christians, Muslims and other minorities in a brutal apartheid state.
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