Desperate, Paranoid ‘Sun’ Puts Up Conspiracy Map

This shows how weird and desperate Tom Newton-Dunn, the Scum’s political editor, is to smear Jeremy Corbyn. Zelo Street yesterday put up an article revealing that Newton-Dunn had written an article declaring that former members of British intelligence had revealed that Jeremy Corbyn was at the centre of a network of ‘hard-left’ extremists. The article carried a chart, known apparently as the ‘Traitors Chart’, which purports to reveal the connections between such subversive groups as ‘International Marxism’, the People’s Assembly, Stand Up To Racism, Stop the War Coalition and ‘Left-wing media’.

It’s classic far-right conspiracy stuff. It’s the kind of chart that the far-right uses to prove that the supposed subversive groups are all ultimately controlled by the Illuminati or the Jews. Zelo Street states that anyone looking for subversion and treachery, whether from the right or the left, isn’t going to find it at the Beeb, the Guardian, the NEC or People’s Assembly. The fact that these organisations were on this map should have been enough to have it pulled. But it wasn’t. And one of those organisations threatened to complain to IPSO. Peter Geoghegan of Open Democracy declared it was ‘pitiful shite’ and threatened to complain, because his organisation was on there despite winning numerous press awards. But they were a subversive organisation because they had received funding from George Soros. Yep, the George Soros, the infamous Jewish banker at the heart of so many real anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Zelo Street was also flattered because the chart included it, even though the connection with Guardian is utterly erroneous. But that’s only because the paper once ran a feature on the site and its author. Apart from that, there’s absolutely no connection. He’s never written for them or done anything else for the newspaper.

Andrew Bartlett commented

Tom Newton Dunn sharing fascist conspiracy theories should be the end of his career. But it won’t be. So feel free to laugh in the face of any journo moralising about fake news or extremism when that beetle is still invited on Newsnight and so on.

To which Zelo Street adds that Newton-Dunn regularly appears on Andrew Marr’s show, who also appears on the chart. Which should make for some interesting explanations the next Newton-Dunn turns up in that studio.

The article has, however, now been taken down. The text explaining this and redirecting those looking for it says ‘legal removal’, which suggests that m’learned friends might have had something to do with it.

Zelo Street concludes

‘Publishing drivel like this in a mainstream newspaper is going to get someone hurt or even killed. Newton Dunn should have been sacked for going anywhere near it.

But as it’s the Murdoch press, he’ll probably get a promotion instead. Same old, same old.’

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/12/sun-conspiracy-map-busted.html

There are several things to be said about this farce. Firstly, the Scum and the Tories are trying to run another version of the ‘Zinoviev letter’, trying to link Corbyn to evil left-wing subversives. The Scum ran a version of this in the 1987 when it printed pictures of Labour MPs with quotations showing how far-left they were and so a threat to British society. I also would not be surprised if former members of the intelligence services were also trying to discredit Corbyn with this smear. In the 1960s and ’70s MI5 was running the smear that the-then Labour leader, Harold Wilson, was a KGB agent. IRD, that branch of the intelligence services supposedly tasked with combating Communism, ran disinformation linking Labour MPs with the Communists, Soviet Union and the IRA. And the Integrity Initiative, another intelligence outfit, which although private has extensive links with British intelligence and the cyberwarfare branch of the SAS, has lost its charitable status, at least in Scotland. Instead of countering Russian propaganda, it chose to smear Jeremy Corbyn and other left-wing political figures, both here and on the continent instead.

The use of the chart also clearly shows the Tories’ desperation to smear Corbyn, because a casual glance at it would show to most people that it was ludicrously wrong. Unfortunately, there really are loonies out there on the far right, who do seem to think that the Beeb is an extremist organisation. Because the Corporation promotes multiculturalism in its programming, as well as defends Muslims from the charge that they are all terrorists. The kind of people, who would agree with this map that the BBC is full of left-wing subversives, would probably be the same rabid islamophobes and racists, who think that there is a Jewish plot to encourage non-White immigration in order to destroy the purity of the White race.

Which raises real questions about racism at the Scum.

The Scum has a history of racism stretching right back almost to its appearance in the late 1960s, and was fined several times for its bias by the press complaints authority. In the early part of this century Private Eye revealed that there had been 19 such judgments against the wretched paper. The use of this chart therefore suggests that there is real, very deep-seated racism at this paper and it verges on the anti-Semitic extreme right.

And it also makes me wonder if Newton-Dunn and co. aren’t heading towards the same kind of sheer paranoid lunacy that has got hold of Rachel Riley and Tracy Ann Oberman. They seem to believe that not only is the Labour leader a real threat to Jewish life and safety in the UK, but that he’s also persecuting them personally. Like when Oberman declared on Twitter that she was being stalked by him, because he happened to turn up at the Manchester theatre in which she was performing, to see a play. Which he was entirely entitled to do, as he was one of the theatre’s founders and patrons.

I’ve written a couple of pieces about how Oberman reminds me of some of the more notorious paranoiacs on the American conspiracy fringe. Like Steve Renstrom, the artist who believes that Senator Alan Cranston is at the centre of a global conspiracy that has killed millions, including the actors Natalie Wood and Jim Belushi. Or Dr. Francis E. Dec, who believed that there was a Jewish-Communist-CIA conspiracy to reduce the world’s peoples into FRANKENSTEIN COMPUTER GOD TV EYESIGHT SLAVES. This was the same conspiracy which had forced him into a run-down neighbourhood with ‘apoidal Nigers’. He obviously means ‘Blacks’ here, but the misspelling of the racial smear shows how far gone Dec’s mind is. Niger, as any fule kno, is a country in Africa, and one of that continent’s great rivers.

How long will it be, we wonder, until Newton-Dunn similarly goes bonkers, and starts writing completely insane pieces like this before they finally put him away.

By the evidence of that conspiracy chart, not long at all!

Frances Barber Joins Rachel Riley and Tracy Ann Oberman in Raving Anti-Corbyn Paranoia

I’ve blogged several times before about how the visceral, personal hatred of Jeremy Corbyn by Countdown numbers woman Rachel Riley and ‘jobbing’ actor Tracy Ann Oberman seems to be driving them towards the abyss of sheer madness. Oberman seemed to believe a few months ago that the Labour leader was personally stalking her. Because he showed up at a Manchester theatre in which she was performing. His presence had nothing to do with her. He’s a patron of the theatre, had been personally involved in setting up and was there to see the show. Now Frances Barber, another Z-list celeb with a deep hatred of the Labour leader appears to be joining them on their journey towards the funny farm.

Yesterday an Islamist terrorist started attacking people with a knife around Fishmongers’ Hall in London. Tragically, he killed two people with a knife before London’s finest turned up and shot and killed him. The murderer had been imprisoned on terrorism charges, but had been paroled and released. He had absolutely no connection with the Labour leader whatsoever, but Barber decided he had to because, as everyone knows, because the Tories and anti-Semitism smear merchants have told them, Corbyn is a friend of terrorists.

Corbyn, as well as Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick had all praised the actions and extreme courage of the public. But despite this praise for the victims of the attack, Barber tweeted out

People died.  Innocent men & women going to work were stabbed by a terrorist. Jeremy Corbyn is on their side. I fucking hate him.

When somebody pointed out that this was quite a leap of logic, she replied

How fabulous! I leapt he’s a total shithead.

When someone else told her that she may have been deceived by a fake tweet going around, she said that she had no interest in it, and that Corbyn was a ‘terrorist sympathizer’. At this point, someone suggested that she needed help, at which point, as Zelo Street says, ‘the paranoia set in’. She accused that tweeter of having been sent by Aaron Bastani, whom she decided to call ‘Bastardi’. Back to the fake tweet, she denied ever seeing it and declared that Corbyn had ‘loved terrorists all his god damn life’ and was ‘a vile anti-British Communist’.

She then went back to claiming that all her detractors had been set on her by Bastani, declaring

Bastardi has released his demons . Nasty upsetting. Who needs it. But I’m ok.

Which was followed by

This is the way politics is conducted now? Pillory the enemy. Hateful . It’s why after 40 years I left this poison.

By this time the peeps on Twitter were wondering about Barber’s mental health. Responding to Kate, a woman obviously concerned for Frances’ sanity, she tweeted

“Kate thinks I’m mentally ill because I don’t adore Corbyn. Hahahaha”.

Another person, Ian Fraser, decided that she was just deranged. So Barber declared he was ‘a journeyman’.

And then it was back to blaming Bastani for all the peeps coming to tell her that she was wrong, or plain nuts.

Asshole Bastardi has sent all you little ants. Honestly guys it’s too tragic.

When someone suggested that Barber should stop typing, ’cause it was gone midnight, she replied

Bastardi is now so desperate he is pretending fake worrying about The Grand Masters life. Oh my days.

Covering this little interchange, Zelo Street concluded

‘Frances Barber would blame Corbyn and Bastani if her train was late. Sad, really.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/frances-barbers-london-bridge-meltdown.html

Looking at her weird accusations and her personal hatred of Corbyn and Aaron Bastani, it’s hard not to agree with two of the commenters to that article. One, who was anonymous, posted

The woman is either seriously ill or shouldn’t mix a keyboard with The Curse Of John Barleycorn.

‘Jonathan’ concurred, saying

The likes of Frances Barber like other the other minor slebs Rachel Riley & Tracey Ann Oberman, are either seriously suffering from a delusional disorder or more likely been at the sauce or possibly both.

And according to ‘Mark’, somebody had briefly amended her Wiki page so that it read that she ‘was an anti-Islamic Zionist with a Corbyn fixation who does some acting, when she’s sober enough.’

I got the impression that Barber is part of the circle around Oberman and Riley, who have swallowed the toxic nonsense that Corbyn is anti-Semitic and that British society is now so full of Jew-hatred, that it’s like Nazi Germany c. 1937. This is the exact opposite of what’s happening. There are no brown-shirted hordes marching through the streets chanting anti-Semitic slogans. Nobody is burning books or proposing any kind of anti-Semitic legislation. Nobody wants Jewish Brits to be forced out of their jobs, their homes and their country. Even the I’s repulsive Simon Kelner, who has been pushing the anti-Semitism smears as hard as any of the other liars and propagandist hacks, has said that if Corbyn does take power on 13th of next month, nothing will happen to Britain’s Jews. In fact, as Jeremy Corbyn has shown time and again, he has actively supported Jews against discrimination and persecution. But, well, as Boy George once sang in the ’80s ‘And truth means nothing in some strange places’.

But Barber’s rants also say much about her, Riley’s and Oberman’s twisted view of the world. They really are so twisted with hatred, that in my view they really can’t accept that anyone who takes a different view of Corbyn isn’t part of a troll army or defended by one. Mike had similar accusations flung at him during a spat with one of the anti-Semitism smear merchants. When ordinary people turned up to defend him, the smear merchant accused Mike of having set his followers upon him. Mike had done no such thing. They were defending Mike entirely willingly and unprompted, because they like and trust Mike, and know he’s telling the truth. Just like the people telling Barber she was wrong and possibly unhinged were also doing it spontaneously. But to me it looks like Riley and Oberman do deliberately set their followers on people. Indeed, Oberman is part of a network of trolls, which includes David Collier and the Gnasherjew outfit. So when Barber accuses her critics of being sent to attack her by Aaron Bastani, I believe that it not only shows her own personal fixation with him, but possibly that it’s also a bit of projection on her part. It’s the kind of thing she’d do, or like to do, and so they must be doing it.

It also reminds me of the rants of Steve Renstrom, AKA She-Bop Steve, an American artist who believes that the Californian senator Alan Cranston is at the heart of global conspiracy and is responsible for killing, amongst others, the acts Jim Belushi and Natalie Wood. Of the latter Renstrom’s written

Star Magazine T.V. ad, Natalie Woods’ close friend, Wadkins, tries to wink to indicate B.S. info as to how and why she died. The hog who drowned her remotely from the Federal Building downtown, fooling millions, replaces Wadkins’ wink with a “detectably hog” mechanical wink to say to the ‘Dupe Troops’ “No secret we’re involved since you knew already via, say, Ms. Woods’ “Brainstorm” Flick.

They had to wipe out that simple wink! (Frakin, squirmin, insane, desperate Nazis.) In “Brainstorm” an actor reaches over and touches her neck letting us 20,000 “meat puppets” material witness’ know she was in danger.

Or the notoriously rants of Dr. Francis E. Dec, who believed he was being persecuted by the police and their Black puppet underlings as part of the ‘COMMUNIST GANGSTER GOVERNMENT’ conspiracy which was turning people into ‘GANGSTER FRANKENSTEIN EARPHONE RADIO SLAVES’. In one of his truly barking screeds, Dec claimed that the cops and their Black assistants

SPRAY ME WITH POISON NERVE GAS from AUTOMOBILE EXHAUSTS AND EVEN LAWN MOWERS, DEADLY ASSAULTS EVEN IN MY YARD WITH KNIVES, EVEN BRICKS AND STONES, EVEN DEADLY TOUCH TABIN, or ELECTRIC SHOCK “FLASH LITE”, EVEN REMOTE ELECTRONICALLY CONTROLLED AROUND CORNERS TRAJECTION OF DEADLY TOUCH TARANTULA SPIDERS.

Looking at the increasingly nonsensical rants Riley, Oberman and Barber are making about the Labour leader, I really begin to wonder how long it will be before they start writing similarly deranged and paranoid pieces about him.

 

Disgusting and Horrific! Israeli Minister Claimed Fascism Part of Israeli Identity

This really shows how twisted and vile Netanyahu and his coalition are. Yesterday the Jewish anti-Fascist, anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein, put up a piece about how he’d been contacted by an Israeli academic, Avraham Oz. Mr Oz is professor of Theatre at Haifa University and a long-standing supporter of the Israeli left. The professor was appealing for funding for the Alfa Theatre in Haifa. It is in danger of losing its state funding following allegations made by an informer, Shai Glick, to the government. Netanyahu’s vile administration is not only determined to expropriate and eventually expel the indigenous Arabs, but also to silence and harass dissenting voices in Israel. I gather from previous posts that it has launched attacks intended to stifle criticism and reporting of atrocities and other crimes against humanity from groups like Breaking the Silence, a veterans’ organisation, and the Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem. Regev has been part of this campaign in her capacity as Israeli Culture Minister. Last year she attempted to pass a ‘Cultural Loyalty’ bill, which would have denied funding to any work that did not respect the symbols of the state of Israel, viewed Independence Day as a day of mourning, or incited violence and terrorism. Tony points out that this would mean that any play about the Palestinian Nakba – their term for massacres and ethnic cleansing against them that was an integral part of the foundation of Israel as an independent state, would lose its state funding. And such a play may even face banning altogether.

It’s the kind of cultural repression found in Communism and Fascism. And what is truly sickening is that Regev actually said that she was proud to be a ‘Fascist’, and that Fascism was an integral part of Israeli culture! She also made a speech in 2002 declaring Sudanese immigrants to be a ‘cancer’ in Israel’s body. Not surprisingly, her critics produced mock images of her in Nazi uniform, which is anti-Semitic under the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and Regev herself got upset.

Tony puts her remarks into context with the Zionists’ policy of allying themselves with real gentile anti-Semites in order to encourage the foundation of a Jewish state and Jewish immigration to it. He shows this went as far back as Chaim Herzog, who wrote that the Jews had been too hard on groups like the British Brothers’ League, which had campaigned against Jewish immigration to Britain in the early 20th century.

He also quotes Jewish authorities on the rabbinical condemnation of tell-tales like Glick. I’ve used similar quotes in some of my pieces attacking groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Gnasherjew troll army, who go through people’s social media posts looking for material they can use to accuse them falsely of being anti-Semites.

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/11/israels-kulturkampf-culture-minister.html

Anti-Labour Jewish groups launch fact-free attack on Jeremy Corbyn

But it’s Regev’s comments applauding Fascism that utterly astonish me. I can only imagine the disgust and horror it must have caused self-respecting Jews everywhere, and indeed anyone, who had ever lost people in the struggle against Fascism. A Jewish philosopher described the ultra-nationalist ideology of the Israeli state as ‘Judaeonazism’. Obviously it’s a highly controversial term, but when ministers like Regev describe themselves as ‘Fascists’ and claim that Fascism is part of Israeli national identity, then it’s entirely justified. Buddy Hell in post about Zionism a few years ago at Guy Debord’s Cat described how one of the early Jewish settler groups in the 1920s were the Maximalist Legalists, who wanted to create a Fascist state similar to Mussolini’s in Italy. Regev’s comments about Fascism, consciously or not, hark back to them.

And now I see Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has decided to spout lies against Corbyn once again, accusing him of having not done enough against anti-Semitism.

The Labour leader certainly has and more than enough, as some of those allegations, such as those against Mike, Tony, Marc Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Ken Livingstone and so on were unfounded and malicious. They were a cynical attempt to smear and purge decent anti-racists from the party as part of a wider campaign to oust Corbyn. Since Mirvis opened his mouth, and his mendacious splutterings were published in the Times, a number of left-wing bloggers have put on the Net the countless instances where Corbyn and his party have supported Jews against discrimination and racism.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/11/26/heres-the-real-reason-chief-rabbi-mirvis-attacked-jeremy-corbyn-and-labour-hes-a-tory-and-a-racist-it-seems/

And Mirvis and his predecessor, Jonathan Sacks, also have questions to answer themselves about racism and bigotry.

A year or so ago, Sacks led a contingent of British Jews to participate in the March of the Flags. That’s when the Israeli equivalent of Nazi boot-boys parade through the Muslim part of Jerusalem waving Israeli flags, banging on doors and vandalising property. Sacks had been asked not to go, but he still went. And I also remember the anger he caused when he declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’ – which is the language of religious persecution. Mirvis and the Board also turned up to the mass demonstrations against Corbyn a few years ago, when they tried smearing him as an anti-Semite because he had not fully adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. That’s the definition that’s been criticised by Kenneth Stern, who formulated it, as chilling reasonable, genuine criticism of Israel.

There’s absolutely no substance to Mirvis’ recent sputterings. It’s just more noise from a Tory, writing in the Tory press, and an arch-Zionist afraid of reasonable criticisms against Israel.

Like what is the country doing appointing a self-identified Fascist as its Culture Minister?

Now I realise that Regev may have made her comments well before Mirvis became Chief Rabbi, but you have to wonder what his reaction to Regev’s words were. He is, after all, a friend of Netanyahu’s as well as Boris Johnson, and while British Jews aren’t responsible for what the Israelis do, the Chief Rabbinate and Board of Deputies have shown themselves to be staunch Zionists. So it has to be asked of them how they saw Regev’s statement and what they did, as supporters of Israeli, to protest against it.

My guess is that Mirvis and the Board did nothing. They’re quite content to let Israel behave like a Fascist state, and Israeli ministers call themselves Fascists, so long as it isn’t reported and they aren’t criticised for it.

And David Rosenberg, another Jewish anti-Fascist and critic of Israel, published a post in which he recalled how, when he was growing up in ’70s and ’80s, the Board tried to stop Jews from joining the marches then against the NF and BNP by groups like the Anti-Nazi League. Or go to meetings and concerts by organisations like Rock Against Racism. The Board claimed it was to stop them being exposed to anti-Zionist propaganda, but others suspected that there was more than a little of real racism against other minorities there as well.

And that’s why they hate Corbyn: because he is a genuine opponent of racism and anti-Semitism, while they just want to stop criticism of Israel.

 

Is Riley’s and Oberman’s Fixation with Corbyn Heading towards Clinical Paranoia?

Mike’s had to put up another piece on his site asking his supporters to dig into their pockets again to help fund his defence against Rachel Riley. His preliminary hearings set for December 11, and he needs a further £6,684. Justice in this country is expensive, which is why I think Riley is pursuing her entirely malicious libel claim against Mike, and threatens anybody else, who dares to criticise her, with legal action.

But the fixation Riley and her bestie, Z-list actor Tracy-Ann Oberman, have with supposed Labour anti-Semitism, and particularly Jeremy Corbyn, is so extreme and irrational that I’m starting to wonder if it’s edging into clinical paranoia. For example, a few months ago one of the two heard the Durham miners’ band playing ‘Hava Nagila’ at their annual gala. Riley – or was it Oberman? – blew her top and declared it was like the KKK playing it. Except that it wasn’t. The Durham miners’ explained that they played the tune every year, and resented being compared to the Klan. As they should. But the pair have obviously decided that as Corbyn and his supporters want justice for the Palestinians, they are anti-Semites, and so every member of a trade union or the Labour party is thus likely to be a Nazi.

And a few weeks ago Oberman decided that Corbyn was stalking her personally. She was performing in a play at a theatre in Manchester, and Corbyn turned up visiting the theatre. But it had nothing to do with persecuting Oberman. Corbyn’s actually a patron of that particular theatre, and was one of the people, who got it set up in the first place. He was there to see a play. This seems to show, to me, that Oberman is on the verge of real paranoia.

I’ve compared her fixation with Corbyn and anti-Semitism in the past to some of the bizarre racist myths about Roman Catholics and Blacks circulating around poor White Protestants in the southern US. A documentary was made about this a few years ago, but I can’t remember its name. Apparently this included tales that Roman Catholics were secretly telepathic, and if you suddenly found yourself thinking about the Pope, it meant that they were secretly beaming Roman Catholic ideas into your head. Blacks also had a powder they could put on their body that would make them appear White. Thus your mate could really be Black. She also reminds me of the paranoid messages the FBI used to get during the Cold War from people, who wore the tinfoil beanie against the CIA/Red Chinese/Aliens beaming their mind control rays at them. As well as the other nutters, who thought they’d found Adolf Hitler alive and well and working at the local Jewish delicatessen in New York.

She also reminds me of Steve Renstrom, AKA She-Bop Steve, an American artist, who decided that Senator Alan Cranston was behind a vast conspiracy to kill millions including John F. Kennedy and the actor John Belushi. Donna Kossy provides an example of his insane rants in her Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (Portland, Oregon: Feral House 1994). This has the following

The Goods on the Big Boys

Reagan/Cabinet, Iran/Contra Situation –

IT’S A CRANSTON ‘TAKES THE FALL’ FRONT LIE

[TERROR OF JUSTICE]

The Reich, or Cranston Co., owns the scenario and is undermining the power and popularity of the Presidency. The Reich is freaking about the possibility of justice re their mass slaughtering of the people.

So, they opportuned and exacerbated the Iran thing plus deviously calling for conclusions, anti-Reagan conclusions, all across the land. (brainwashing every voice). This one really tipped me: picture of Reagan on the front page pointing to head. (At the same time as Iran scheme!)

The Dan Rather Incident: Horrifying Berlin 42 Implications

It was designated also to blind mass “Dupe Troop” levels. “What’s the frequency” was a ‘drop’ they’d buy a “it’s pigs allright, must be o.k. to beat up newsmen. We ought accept more ‘n more Nazi violence and atrocities. And it’s o.k. also about owning the media about it.”

P.S. All during this writing I’m being insanely tortured. Also flow “cover up” and American guilt lies every second.

The Iran/ Contra scandal was when members of Reagan’s government were caught supplying arms to Iran, so that they would pressure Shi’a terrorists in Lebanon into releasing captured American hostages. The conspiracy also involved sending aid to the Fascist Contras in Nicaragua in exchange for allow them to export cocaine to America. The Dan Rather incident was when the veteran American newsman was assaulted in New York by someone, who seemed to think he was responsible for mind-control beams or some such similar nonsense, and beat Rather over the head shouting, ‘What’s the frequency, Kenneth?’

It might sound a bit extreme comparing Riley’s and Oberman’s fixation with Jeremy Corbyn and She-Bop Steve’s paranoid views about Senator Cranston. But I do think that there are real similarities there and that, if they’re not careful, Riley and Oberman will end up as real paranoiacs blaming Corbyn for all manner of conspiracies, including UFOs.

Mike’s very grateful to his supporters for all the help he gets, no matter how small. If you want to help him, go to https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/11/08/target-set-to-fund-next-hearing-in-riley-libel-fightback/ and follow the instructions there.

Dankula and Mates Make Nuisance Call to Black Pastor

Well, Halloween is upon us. This is the time of year, according to folklore, when the dead once again return to Earth, and witches and wizards pore over their cauldrons and spell books casting their magic. For most people, it’s simply an opportunity for a party, where people go dressed as witches, ghouls, demons, vampires and so on. Or else they watch a horror film at the flicks or on DVD. Or go and catch The Rocky Horror Show at the theatre, if it’s playing. Many Christians dislike it, as they are afraid it encourages a real interest in the occult with all its dangers. Some churches put on Light Parties instead. I remember as a child going to Halloween parties, where the only magicians were definitely of the stage variety, and everything was at the suitable level of the traditional folktale and children’s fantasy book. This was long before the occult scares and witch panics of the 1980s and ’90s, and the hysteria over ‘Harry Potter’.

Nevertheless some people do try dabbling with the supernatural. Some of it’s just kids legend tripping. This is the term folklorists use to describe teenagers and young people going to reputedly weird or haunted sites hoping to see something paranormal. Or just wanting to take it as an occasion to have an evening out with booze and their girlfriends. This can have unintended sinister consequences, when the wider community takes the evidence of what they’ve been doing too seriously, and concludes that real, Satanic witchcraft has been going on. This can generate rumours and accusations of child abuse and the torture and sacrifice of animals. When this happens, a full-scale witch hunt erupts with the fear and hatred of its medieval and 17th century predecessors. People can be falsely accused and children separated from their parents and taken into care based on nothing but highly dubious testimony and the righteous beliefs of the witch hunters. The witch panic effectively ended over here with the Fontaine Report in the 1990s that concluded that the multi-generational Satanic groups abusing children haunting the lurid imaginations of the witch hunters didn’t exist. But the people, who pushed the Satanism scare are still about, trying to peddle their views to anyone who will listen, and there’s a real threat it could return.

It’s with this in mind that I came across a video on his channel on YouTube by Mark Meechan, the notorious Count Dankula. He’s the bozo, you remember, who thought it would be jolly japes to train his girlfriend’s pug to make the Nazi salute when he shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘Gas the Jews’. He was therefore prosecuted and convicted of spreading anti-Semitic hate speech. Dankula’s posted a number of videos of himself trying to defend it as a stupid joke, which should have been allowed under freedom of speech. He was also one of the crew of extreme right-wing internet personalities, including Paul Joseph Watson and Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, who joined UKIP. This resulted in some of the more liberal members leaving it and the party achieving a mighty 3.3% of the vote at the council elections.

The video I found dated from three years ago, 2016. It was of Dankula’s mates in a forest with a pentagram they had made on the ground out of tree branches. They’d also had some kind of fire, and were scattering the ashes around in order to make their pentagram look even more impressive. One of them also put a candle at one of the figure’s corners. They then phoned up a Black British pastor on a mobile and started swearing at him and trying to trick him with a bogus story about Satanists and human sacrifice.

The pastor was live streaming a Bible study of the Book of Jonah. Dankula’s mates first shouted ‘F**k!’ at him. One of them then put on a fake African accent and pretended to be a man waiting in the forest for Satanists to sacrifice him. The friend then said that there were no Satanists there, and he didn’t think they were going to turn up. But he personally had fought Satan last year on holiday in Spain, when the Devil had taken the form of a lizard. He’d killed the lizard, and roasted it in the ocean. This was accompanied by more swearing and puerile sniggering.

I’m not showing the video here or giving its address because I don’t want to give Dankula the publicity and the views. But it is out there. If you want to see, all you have to do use the search bar on YouTube.

Now Dankula claims not to be racist, and has said that he has Black friends. He may well be right. I also believe that there has been problems with some of the Pentecostal churches, which do promote the belief that witches and a Satanic conspiracy to undermine Christianity and decent society are all too real. It’s perfectly reasonable to criticise the preachers, White or Black, and secular individuals that promote this dangerous nonsense. But there was absolutely none of this here. The video gives no explanation for what they’re doing. It just shows a group of White yobs make a nuisance internet call to a Black pastor and telling a stupid, bogus story about Satanic sacrifice. It just seems to be a case of secular White kids sneering and mocking religious Blacks for their perceived credulity.

This undermines somewhat Dankula’s claim not to be racist. But it’s also an example of some of the pranks others might be making at this time of year. They also might be hoaxing evidence of occult rituals and Satanic practices, simply as a way of winding people up. Be warned, and don’t be taken in.

But whatever your beliefs or lack of them, I hope you have a great time this week. The most horrific thing I can think of is Boris Johnson and Brexit. Don’t have nightmares!

Cyberwoman Lies About Anti-Semitism Smears in the Metro

The late, great Bill Hicks once said, ‘We live in a world where the good die young, while mediocrities thrive and prosper’. And on Tuesday, two days ago, one of the more noxious of those mediocrities, Tracy Ann Oberman, appeared in the ‘Sixty Seconds’ interview column in the Metro. That’s the free newspaper given away to passengers on buses. The former Dr Who cyberwoman was talking about her latest role as the heroine, Brenda, in the crime drama Mother of Him, the mother of a son, who has committed a terrible crime. Inevitably, the questions then moved on to the abuse she had received for her campaign against anti-Semitism. This ran

You’re no stranger to facing a barrage of abuse online since speaking out against Labour’s alleged anti-Semitism problem. Did that feed into the play?

My speaking out on anti-Semitism and misogyny, in particular in my old party, Labour, and the trolling I received didn’t really feed in because the character of Brenda is not an actor or celebrity and didn’t put herself out there. It made me think that social media has a positive side, which is to give people a chance to put out their story when they otherwise would have been unable to.

Why has anti-Semitism reared its head now?

All racism and misogyny is there somewhere beneath the surface but up until the past few years it was kept to people mumbling in pubs and private areas as it wasn’t deemed acceptable to say in public. I think there’s been a big change since 2017. The left should be better, as should the right- but that is not my affiliation so someone else needs to police them. You can deny you have a problem with it as much as you like but it’s here and it’s thriving.

Your experience with trolling on social media fed into your podcast, Trolled. Have people responded positively to it?

I’ve had such incredible feedback. I get handwritten letters and cards and tweets from people who enjoyed it. I think people have found it very empowering and cathartic to be able to talk about it. Everybody I had on my podcast was championing a different cause and every single one of us had exactly the same sort of trolls. So it is less to with the issue and more to do with the type of person who wants to abuse someone they disagree with.

This is the most self-promoting, hypocritical balderdash. 

The anti-Semitism Oberman and the other witch-hunters are so keen to root out isn’t anti-Semitism per se, but rather criticism – including very justified criticism – of Israel. That’s why Oberman and the rest of the witch-hunters have been attacking Corbyn and his supporters. They do criticise Israel and its slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And Oberman, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Jewish Labour Movement and the rest of the wretched lot can be very justly accused of anti-Semitism themselves. Very many of their victims have been Jews, like Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, to name only two. As a result, these decent people have suffered the most appalling trolling and abuse. Walker has been told that she can’t be Jewish, ’cause she’s Black, obviously by White racists ignorant of the indigenous Black Jewish people of Africa and Afro-Jewish people in the Diaspora. They’ve demanded that she be lynched – not a joke to someone, whose mother’s people in America really suffered that atrocity – and her body dumped in bin bags, or set on fire. Tony Greenstein has been physically attacked, and told by right Zionists that they wish his family had died in the Holocaust. And any Jew, who criticises Israel, will be called that their a ‘traitor’. As they point out, you can’t be a traitor to a country you weren’t born in, or have never visited. But Netanyahu, contrary to the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism, which says that Jews cannot be accused of being more sympathetic or loyal to a foreign power, has declared all Jews, everywhere, to be citizens of Israel, and automatically expects their immediate, unconditional loyalty. Needless to say, he’s being sadly disappointed, as increasingly more Jews are giving him the two-fingered salute and ignoring Israel completely or showing solidarity with the Palestinians. To be a Jew, as one pro-Palestinian Jewish American has said, ‘is always to side with the oppressed, never the oppressors’.

The witch-hunters targets also include decent, anti-racist gentiles, like Ken Livingstone and Mike. They went after Leninspart because he dared to cite respected history, that Hitler did initially support Zionism. Tony Greenstein and Prof. Newsinger over at Lobster, and many others, including Mike, have cited chapter and verse of respected histories showing that this is absolutely right. But as Greenstein has shown, Israel has repeatedly tried to suppress any mention of its collaboration with Nazi Germany, including the collusion of Zionist activists, like Kasztner in Hungary, with the Nazis in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz.

Many of the people smeared as anti-Semites by people like Oberman are anything but.

Quite often, they, Jews and gentiles, have been active against racism, like the Black anti-racism campaigner, Mark Wadsworth. Mike and I were brought up with an awareness of the horrors of the Shoah, and Mike at College was invited to be one of the speakers at a commemoration of those murdered in it by one of his Jewish friends. They have often themselves been the subject of racist or anti-Semitic abuse and attack.

And as for trolling, Oberman, her friend Rachel Riley, and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism have done more than their fair share of this against decent people like Mike, Jackie and Tony. Riley herself has connections, it seems, to David Collier’s Gnasherjew troll army.

And Oberman has no business lecturing anyone on free speech.

She and her bestie, Rachel Riley, are suing 16 people, including Mike, for libel because they reblogged material showing how they bullied a 16 year old girl with anxiety issues after calling her an anti-Semite. Why? She dared to support Jeremy Corbyn, and didn’t want to have anything to do with them when they wanted her take time out from school to meet them to be ‘re-educated’. Riley is suing Mike, despite not being able to answer his question about what was libelous in the material he reblogged.

At the moment, they’re trying to wear down Mike’s defence by raising technical legal issues in the hope, it seems, of using up Mike’s money so that he won’t be able to afford to defend himself. Mike is still appealing for contributions to his defence fund, and is very grateful for the generous support he’s received from people really concerned with justice and free speech. See:

Court confrontation over Riley libel case is postponed

Fortunately, every time Riley and Oberman open their mouths, support for Mike and the other victims of their lies, smears and trolling goes up.

Don’t believe the lies of Oberman and Riley. Support free speech, and the people really tackling racism and anti-Semitism: their victims.

 

 

Israel Lobby Thugs Try to Close Down Book Launch with Threats and Intimidation

This can’t be left unchallenged. Yesterday a group of thugs from the Israel lobby, egged on by their fellows and supporters on social media, forced Waterstones in Brighton to abandon a book launch. When the event was moved to the Rialto, they tried the same tactics there, only for the management of that venue to stand firm.

The book in question was Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief by Greg Philo, Mike Berry, Justin Schlosberg, Antony Lerman and David Miller. This is a critical examination of the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour party, particularly the denunciations of the party last summer that claimed it was institutionally racist and an existential threat to Britain’s Jews. The promotional material about the book, published by Pluto Press, however, states that

This book clears the confusion by drawing on deep and original research on public beliefs and media representation of antisemitism and the Labour Party, revealing shocking findings of misinformation spread by the press, including the supposedly impartial BBC, and the liberal Guardian.

Bringing in discussions around the IHRA definition, anti-Zionism and Israel/Palestine, as well as including a clear chronology of events, this book is a must for anyone wanting to find out the reality behind the headlines.

The authors are mainstream academics specialising in media studies, Jewish/Gentile relations and anti-Semitism. Mike, in his excellent article on the issue, gives their academic fields and qualifications. They are

Greg Philo is Professor of Communications and Social Change at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Glasgow University Media Unit. Mike Berry is a lecturer in the Journalism School at Cardiff University. Justin Schlosberg is a media activist, researcher and lecturer in Journalism and Media at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a former Chair of the Media Reform Coalition and Edmund J Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University. Antony Lerman is Senior Fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue in Vienna and Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at Southampton University. He has written on multiculturalism, racism, antisemitism, and Israel/Palestine for the Guardian, Independent, New York Times, Haaretz, Prospect, Jewish Chronicle and London Review of Books. And David Miller is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol. He is a founder director of Public Interest Investigations and a director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies. 

As Mike points out, they are academics, not anti-Semites. The two don’t go together, except in the pseudo-academia set up to provide a spurious intellectual veneer for the real hard right. Which these professors certainly don’t represent.

But this hasn’t stopped the Israel lobby and its supporters, both institutional and individual, going berserk and throwing around gross accusations of – what else! – anti-Semitism. The event was supposed to begin at 7.30, and would feature a panel discussion with the authors and Ken Loach. Two venues were forced to cancel it through intimidation and bullying that was so intense, an employee at one of the venues could not return to work.

The organisations supporting the bullying, and claiming the event was anti-Semitic were the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Sussex Jewish Representative Council. The individuals giving their support to it included one charmer giving his Twitter handle as #JC4 and then an icon of a toilet, Neil Barstow, Natalia Sloam, Nobody Norman Esq, Heidi Bachram, Ian Mackintosh, Jane Habib, Curry Fleur and Fiona Sharpe.

Mike states that he would like to see all the above interviewed by the rozzers about the threats suffered by the staff at Waterstone’s and the Rialto. He states it is especially abhorrent coming from those, who claim the moral high ground, and are using threats of violence to silence those they have smeared as anti-Semites and prevent them from exonerating themselves. He also points to a Tweet by one Gary Spedding, a venomous individual, who wrote an on-line article smearing Mike as an anti-Semite, which he refused to take down when Mike contacted him to show it was wrong. Spedding also added a few more ad homs against him on the way. It is to be hoped that Spedding also gets his collar felt about this.

Mike goes on to state that he does acknowledge that there is anti-Semitism in the Labour party. It just doesn’t exist in the book the Zionist fanatics were attacking, nor amongst the staff at Waterstones or the Rialto.

He concludes

These aren’t campaigners fighting prejudice against Jews.

They are vicious, hate-filled bigots.

And they need to be stopped before they seriously harm somebody.

One more thing – they did get an aspect of their campaign right: the slogan “Don’t host hate”. That’s a good slogan, and it can very clearly be applied to these bigots.

So I’m having it. If you see these people, or anyone else pushing their message, then flag it up with #DontHostHate

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/09/24/bullying-bigots-tried-to-stop-book-launch-when-will-they-be-arrested/

Tony Greenstein, another victim of the anti-Semitism smear campaign, and a self-respecting Jew, who has always campaigned against racism and anti-Semitism as well as Zionism, has more information on this disgraceful thuggery on his blog at:

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/09/book-burners-r-us-waterstones-shameful.html

Tony begins his article by describing the way the Israel lobby tried to prevent the performance of the play, Sedition, by the socialist playwright Jim Allen, 25 years ago. This drew the Israel lobby’s ire because it was about the 1944 trial in Jerusalem of the Zionist leader, Erich Kasztner, who had made a deal with Adolf Eichmann which sent half a million Hungarian Jews to death in Auschwitz. The play was due to be staged at the Royal Court. It was taken off, but so great was the public indignation against the attack on it, that it was performed instead at London’s Conway Hall and became the subject of a book, Dramas Played Off Stage.

Tony continues

That is what we need to see happen with Bad News for Labour. The Zionists know that their anti-Semitism smear campaign in the Labour Party is fraudulent and that they have cowed and coerced timid Corbyn into going along with the nonsense that the Labour Party is full of anti-Semites including himself. We must ensure that this book is publicised because it contains all the ammunition and evidence we need to demonstrate that the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign has nothing to do with antisemitism and has no evidential basis. 

It is shocking enough that the supporters of Israeli Apartheid have been able to ‘persuade’ through threats and abuse, venues like the Holiday Inn, Jury’s Inn and Friends Meeting House into cancelling meetings with Chris Williamson. The cancellation on Monday night of a book by 5 academics of Bad News for Labour – Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief takes this one step further. It is an attack on freedom of thought and inquiry and demonstrates the police state mentality of Zionism’s rabid supporters.

He goes on to quote the great German Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, “Where books are burned, in the end, people will be burned” – which prophesied the mass book-burnings and murder of the Nazis. Justin Scholsberg, one of the authors, said last night that it was worse than McCarthyism and approached the book-burnings of the Nazis. Tony states

Cancelling a book launch and threatening to boycott Waterstones for holding the event is a Nazi tactic. It demonstrates just how far along the road to destroying our civil liberties and freedom of speech the Zionists have travelled. Literally Zionism is the enemy of a free society, not only in Israel/Palestine but in Britain, Europe and the United States.

He then goes on to discuss the culpable silence of the so-called liberal press about this incident, except for The Canary and the Skwawkbox, and calls upon his readers to imagine the outrage the Right would go into if the Left had done something similar against the genuinely racist books some of them have produced, like Douglas Murray’s racist Strange Death of Europe – Immigration, Identity and Islam.

And there’s much more in his very full article about the incident and the excuses made by Waterstone’s CEO for pulling the book launch from his store.

Tony and other Jewish anti-Zionists have long provided very detailed descriptions of just how violent and threatening the militant Zionists are, and their determination to shut down any criticism of their favourite apartheid state. They smear their opponents as anti-Semites – decent people like Mike, Martin Odoni, Tony Greenstein himself, Jackie Walker, Cyril Chilson, and Chris Williamson, so that they receive vile abuse. Some, like Walker and Williamson, have been sent death threats. Greenstein has also been assaulted by Jewish American Zionists. And a little while ago Tony also put up a piece describing how the CST – the paramilitary Community Security Trust – which is supposed to defend Jews, acts like Fascist stormtroopers when stewarding pro-Israel events. This includes beating up Muslims and anti-apartheid Jews. One rabbi was even hit in the face by these squadristi.

The people organising this campaign of abuse and intimidation should be called to account. And this includes the Board of Deputies. They are not above the law, and they are repeatedly demonstrating glaringly clearly that they do not represent the Jewish community of this country as a whole. They only represent the United Synagogue, and the pro-Israel branch of that. They are a viciously sectarian organisation, who actively support those who raise their fists at the people they consider the ‘wrong sort of Jew’. 

Nigel Farage Reveals Contempt for Royal Family to Ozzie Tories

Yesterday, the Groaniad reported that Nigel Farage had made some unpleasant, and quite possibly impolitic, comments about the royal family atthe Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney. The Brexit party’s fuhrer spared the Queen his sneers, but went on to attack Prince Harry and Megan Markle for their ‘irrelevant’ social justice and environmental concerns, called the late Queen Mother a ‘slightly overweight gin drinker’. He then went on to say that he hoped the Queen would continue to live a long time to stop ‘Charlie boy’, as he called Prince Charles, becoming king, and that William would live forever to stop Harry ascending the throne. He also bewailed how Megan Markle changed Harry’s laddish behaviour. According to today’s I, page 9, the Fuhrage said

Terrifying! Here was Harry, here he was this young, brave, boisterous, all male, getting into trouble, turning up at stag parties inappropriately dressed, drinking too much and causing all kinds of mayhem. And now he’s met Megan Markle and it’s fallen off a cliff.

The I explained that when Fuhrage referred to him as being ‘inappropriately dressed’ at stag parties, he meant the time when Harry turned up at one dressed in Nazi uniform. According to the I, a spokesman for the man ‘Judge Dredd’ satirised as ‘Bilious Barrage’ claimed that the Groaniad had taken his comments out of context. But as Mike says in his article about this, it’s irrelevant whether Farage meant what he said or not. He was telling his right-wing audience what they wanted to hear: that he was their friend.

He was raising money from rich foreigners again.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/12/what-he-thinks-they-want-to-hear-farage-attacks-royals-in-speech-to-far-right-aussies/

Now I’m aware that some of the readers of this blog may well be republicans, who believe that the monarchy is a vestige of feudal privilege and that we would be better off with a proper democratic constitution and an elected presidency. I’m also aware that what Farage said at the conference would be unremarkable if it came from a member of the public or a journalist. A few years ago, before his career imploded due to plagiarism, Johan Hari wrote a very long article in either the Independent or Guardian attacking the royal family. A tranche of government material had been declassified and released to the national archives. These revealed that ministers and senior civil servants had been worried about Prince Charles writing letters to newspapers and various official bodies trying to influence government policy. He was, for example, very keen to stop the closure of the grammar schools. The officials found his interference a headache because the monarchy is supposed to be above politics. They are definitely not supposed to try to influence government policy.

The Tory press, including and especially the Heil, despise Charles. I can remember the Rothermere’s mighty organ claiming that that the Tories were discussing ways to ensure that the Crown passed directly from the Queen to William, completely bypassing Charles. The reason they cited for this was that Charles was too close to Laurens van der Post, the author of Testament to the Bushmen. Under van der Post’s influence, the Heil claimed, the future heir to the throne had become too New Age in his spiritual beliefs. He had indicated that he wanted to be known as ‘Defender of Faith’ when he ascended the throne, an inclusive title to cover all religions, rather than ‘Defender of the Faith’, meaning exclusively Christianity. As he would be the head of the Church of England, this would create a constitutional crisis. I wonder if the real reason was that Charles appeared a bit too left-wing, especially in his concern for the unemployed. And Charles’ office also spoke out against the decision by John Major’s government to close down Britain’s mining industry.

Hari was also scathing about the Queen Mother. He claimed that she was certainly no democrat, complaining that it was ‘so unnatural’ when she was a young woman. Ministers were also upset at the government apparently having to spend £1 million a year keeping an office open for her so she could get the results at Ascot. Private Eye has also described her as ‘greedy’ and criticised Charles for hypocrisy over his views on architecture. Charles caused outrage a little while ago by describing modern buildings as ‘monstrous carbuncles’. But the Prince himself was also employing the same type of architects to design similar buildings. They also attacked him for the colossal overpricing of his organic honey.

Now we live in a democracy, where you are allowed to criticise the government and the monarchy. One where people do, often. But what makes Farage’s comments unwise is that they come from a ruthlessly ambitious politician. Attacks on the royal family are bound to be controversial because they still have a central role in the country’s constitution. The Queen is the head of state, and the royal family act as this country’s ambassadors. They also have a politically unifying role. Some people may find it easier to respect a head of state like the Queen, who is above party politics. To many people the royal family also embody British history and tradition, and they are still regarded with respect by millions of British and commonwealth citizens. I dare say this is particularly true of Conservatives. I’ve a Conservative friend, who hates the Scum because, in his view, it has done nothing but run down the royal family. And looking at the wretched rag, I can’t say he’s wrong either. Nor is it alone – all of the papers run stories trying to create some controversy about the royal family. The latest of these are about Markle, and how she is apparently throwing her weight around and causing some kind of feud with the rest of the royals.

Farage’s piece of lese majeste Down Under is controversial and offensive because it comes from a politician, who clearly hopes one day to serve in government. If he did, it would surely create tensions between him and the Crown. It’s also impolitic, as even though the culture of deference is supposed to have gone, the constitutional importance of the monarchy means that any criticisms politicians have of the royal family or differences of opinion between them should be settled discreetly. Farage has shown himself to be incapable of maintaining a tactful silence on the matter.

Of course, what Farage really hates about Harry and Megan, along with Conservative rags like the Spectator, is that Harry has dared to be environmentally concerned, like his father. He’s also fallen behind Markle’s feminism, so obviously they despise him for that. And there’s also a nasty tone of racism there was well. They certainly wouldn’t have objected if he’d married a White American. But instead he married a woman of colour. Farage’s apparent view that Harry dressing up as a Nazi officer was just natural masculine hi-jinks shows just how seriously he takes the issue and the offence it caused. I’ve no problem with comedies spoofing the Nazis, like Mel Brooks’ The Producers or the BBC’s ‘Allo, ‘Allo. But the Nazis themselves were far from a joke, and people are quite right to be angry at those who think dressing up as them is a jolly jape. But Farage and his audience obviously don’t. Quite possibly the Conservatives he addressed are still pining for a White Australia policy. But in their environmentalism and their social concerns, Harry and Megan, as Mike says, are just showing themselves to be a modern couple. The monarchy also has to move with the times, whatever reactionaries like Farage like to think.

Farage’s comments aren’t just disrespectful to the royal family, they also show how he places his own political ambitions above them as an institution as well as showing his contempt for the genuinely liberal attitudes Harry and Megan have espoused. I hope they lose him votes with that part of the Conservative-voting public, who still revere the her Maj and the other royals above the sneers of press and media. 

 

The Tories and the War on Drugs

There’s been some amusement to be had this past week with various leading Tories coming out and admitting to having used drugs. Michael Gove confessed to having snorted cocaine, and Rory Stewart admitted that he’d smoked opium once, 20 odd years ago, when he was backpacking around Iran. It was at a wedding. He claimed that it couldn’t have affected him much, as he was walking 25 – 30 miles a day. My guess is that in reality he’d have been stoned out of his tiny patrician brain. It’s generally the lean, fit people, who are most affected by intoxicants, as you can see by all the tales about champion marathon runners and other athletes, who become massively drunk when they celebrate with half a pint of booze afterwards. Then there’s Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog. He hasn’t come out of the stoner closet, but he was notorious as a Libertarian for taking and advocating DMT as a mind-expanding drug. My guess is that he’d need it. As a member of an organisation that was so right-wing, it invited the leader of one of Rios Montt’s death squads from El Salvador to be their guest of honour at their annual dinner, Staines would need some powerful hallucinogenics to convince himself he was a decent human being.

Boris is also widely suspected of having done drugs, and it’s almost certain that the allegations are true, and of continuing to use them. But he hasn’t confessed to it. When asked whether he had at a press conference about his candidacy for the Tory leadership, he brushed the question aside by claiming that he thought the British public were more interested in what he intended to do as politician than whether he took illegal substances. He might be right for some people. We’re so used to public figures, like actors, rock stars and other media celebrities, coming forward to admit that they took drugs some time in their lives, that it almost seems unremarkable. In some parts of the entertainment industry, it’s even to be expected, as with tales of pop musicians, which have become part of the general pattern of rock excess. However, Boris’ own political career isn’t any recommendation for him as Prime Ministerial material either. He’s been so egotistical and massively incompetent that many people would have to take large amounts of illegal chemicals to be persuaded otherwise.

Author’s impression of Theresa May with potential voter.

There’s more than a little fun to be had out of all this furore. Some wag with a better grasp of video editing than yours truly could provide us all with a laugh by cutting their speeches with bits from notorious films about drugs from the past. Like the 1950s anti-cannabis film, Reefer Madness, or David Cronenberg’s ’90s flick, The Naked Lunch, based on the notorious book by William S. Burroughs. This latter film is roughly based on Burrough’s own life, and is about a pest exterminator, who gets high on the ketamine he’s using to kill the insects. As the drug takes effect, he hallucinates that he’s some kind of SF spy, and has to make his report to Interzone before flying to Morocco after accidentally shooting his wife while they were playing William Tell. The hallucinations include the hero seeing everyone in a bar as mugwumps – humanoid lizards – and a gay talking typewriter-beetle. You could have some fun showing Boris sitting down to type his statement for the leadership election, but showing the hands of Cronenberg’s hero typing away at the beetle creature. Though as the beetle-typewriter then goes on to declare how wonderful homosexuality is, this scene might not be appropriate. The Tories have declared themselves at ease with the gay community, and no-one could ever accuse Boris of it. Another excellent film candidate for mixing with the Tory leadership speeches would be Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on the book by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Which also has a bar full of hallucinatory lizards, bats coming down out of the desert sky, and Richard Nixon erupting out of a TV set, amongst other bizarre visions.

But there’s also a very serious side to all this. The great commenters on Mike’s blog, when he covered this story, made some very good points about these people’s hypocrisy. They’ve all done drugs, and got away scot-free, in contrast to more ordinary users, who’d been to jail. One commenter told how he had a friend, who now suffers from PTSD because of what he’d experienced in prison after being convicted of a drugs offence. And the whole affair also seems to me to be a replay of a similar scandal back in 2004, when a number of other Tories confessed to having used cannabis.

The furore was started when Anne Widdecombe announced that she wanted harsher sentences for drugs, quite at variance with the party stance on the issue at the time. A number of Tories then came forward to announce that they’d taken it. Matthew Parris then gave his view about it all in an article he wrote for the Spectator. One Tory revealed that he had smoked cannabis at Oxford. This didn’t shock Parris, who was far more outraged by the way the august gentleman had consumed it. Parris declared that he could have been smoking cowpats for all he cared. What offended him was that the pretentious so and so had put it in his pipe. He smoked a pipe! It’s something you can imagine Rees-Mogg, the MP for the 18th century, doing. If he were inclined towards the substances used by Thomas De Quincy and Coleridge, of course.

This came at the time the government was considering changing its policy towards drug abuse. Much had been in the news about the success the Scandinavian countries, Portugal and Switzerland had achieved in their battle with illegal drugs, in contrast with Britain’s failure to combat or contain its growing drugs problem. These nations had a softer approach to tackling drug abuse. Addicts were treated not as criminals, but as sick people, who needed to be helped. But this was too namby-pamby for Widdecombe and those like her. Parris wrote that this had also been the policy in Britain, and had been giving positive results. But it all changed with the election of Ronald Reagan. Reagan wanted a war on drugs, and as American’s ally and the Special Relationship, we had to follow suit. The result was harsher sentences for drug offences, which actually had a negative effect on what they were trying to achieve. Treating drug addiction as a sickness makes sense, as no-one wants to be sick so they seek help. Criminalizing it, however, gives it a kind of glamour. You ain’t sick, you’re gangsta! Public enemy No. 1. And so far from deterring people from using drugs, the policy actually helps to promote it.

And then there’s the racism of the War on Drugs. Hillary Clinton deliberately played on White American fears of Black criminality when she announced Clinton’s new, tougher policies on drugs back in the 1990s. She talked about ‘superpredators’ – at the time, a term that was only used about Black men. The laws were also framed so that it targeted Blacks rather than Whites. Although studies have shown that Whites are just as likely to use drugs as Blacks, the majority of those arrested and convicted are Black. And I suspect that the situation is similar over here. Certainly it’s been clear to me from talking to Black friends that they believe that Blacks suffer disproportionately harsher punishment than White drug abusers. I know many Blacks, who won’t touch the stuff, and they make the point very clear to Whites trying to encourage them to do so.

It seems very clear to me that we need a return to a saner, more effective drugs policy. One that discourages it as it helps the victims by treating it as a disease, rather than giving it a spurious glamour it doesn’t deserve by criminalizing it. A policy that punishes and cures White and Black equally, instead of playing to White fears and racism.

But for me, the most toxic drug not mentioned in the Tory leadership contest is Conservatism. This has destroyed whole communities, and comprehensive wrecked Britain, creating poor healthcare, unemployment, despair, depression and general poor mental health, all while fostering racism, bigotry and bitter resentment against the poor, disabled and marginalised. It has done this while creating illusions of prosperity and national greatness. It’s time it was stopped. The pushers of this vile drug – Johnson, Gove, Leadsom and the rest of them – should be properly punished by losing any and every election they take part in. And the literature that encourages this vile drug – the Times, Torygraph, Mail, Sun and Express, should be binned at once and readers should turn to proper news outlets.

Only then can we look forward to a saner society, less afflicted by drugs.

Tony Greenstein on Zionist Opposition to the Commemoration of other Holocausts

This past week has been dominated by the ceremonies commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces landed in Normandy in 1944 in an invasion that was to roll back the German forces. With the Soviet advance across eastern Europe, the invasion eventually led to the final defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of Europe. The news coverage of the various displays, ceremonies and discussions of the events of D-Day and their historical significance have also included the Holocaust, and calls for its survivors each to be given proper honours by the Queen.

I’ve absolutely no objection to this. These men and women, now obviously thinned by time and old age, survived a true living hell at the hands of a regime that has come to symbolise tyranny and mass murder at its darkest, most extreme and malign. I also believe that the Holocaust needs to be taught, remembered and properly understood and placed in its historical, sociological and political context. The forces of the extreme Right, though severely beaten, are always at the political margins, seeking to gain a foothold back into power. Thanks to neoliberalism and its impoverishment of the masses in order to benefit the elite super-rich, Fascism and extreme right-wing populism is now on the rise again across Europe and America, from Donald Trump in the US to UKIP and the Brexit party here in the UK, Marine Le Pen and her crew in France, and the AfD in Germany. These last contain some unreconstructed, real Nazis, who have denounced their country’s Holocaust monument as ‘a badge of shame’ and have said that when they get into power, they will open up an underground railway to the infamous death camp. And then there’s the various bitterly racist and anti-Semitic regimes in eastern Europe, like Viktor Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary, the Baltic states and their determination to honour as patriotic heroes Nazi collaborators during War, and the truly Nazi Azov battalion in the Ukraine.

Now more than ever we need to show how genocidal Fascism arises, and leads nations to commit the most horrific atrocities.

However, nearly a month ago, on the 13th May 2019, Tony Greenstein, a Jewish activist against all forms of racism and Fascism, and particularly its Jewish form, Zionism, put up a piece on his blog arguing that the Holocaust should not be commemorated. It’s a highly controversial piece, and obviously shocking to very many. But Greenstein is not alone, and his piece is backed up by very strong arguments. For example, it was only after the 1967 War that Israel began commemorating the Shoah. Before then they played it down and actively discouraged its commemoration. It was felt that the sufferings of the Jewish people would reflect badly on their ability to found a new state for themselves. The survivors themselves were vilified. Greenstein states that in Israel they were subject to the disgusting epithet ‘sapon’ – soap – from the myth that the Nazis turned the bodies of those murdered in the gas  chambers into the substance.

Greenstein also shows that, despite Holocaust Day being a regularly part of the Israeli calendar and the emphasis on the Holocaust and its commemoration in the Israeli education system, with young Israelis taken on trips to Auschwitz, there is no proper understanding of it or the reasons behind it. Instead, Israelis are simply taught that it was due to anti-Semitism. The result is that the Holocaust is used to foster the sense of national persecution and intense patriotism, especially against the indigenous Arabs. Forty-four per cent of young Israelis don’t believe that Arabs should be elected to the Knesset. And no Israeli, after visiting Auschwitz, has gone to the walls and fences around Gaza, and vowed ‘Never again’ for its citizens as well.

As for the Shoah’s survivors in Israel, many of them live in abject poverty, denied the compensation that Israel has claimed on their behalf. Which shows how hypocritical the Israeli state’s attitude to the welfare of these people, who endured so much, actually is. 

But the Zionists are determined that the Holocaust should be considered a unique event, a phenomenon that occurred only to the Jews. In fact Gypsies were also singled out for extermination because of their race in Nazi Germany, and the techniques of mass murder – gassing with Zyklon B cyanide gas – was developed first to destroy the congenitally disabled, who were also considered racially undesirable. The Holocaust also had a precedent in the Armenian Massacres, the attempt by the Young Turks regime to exterminate the entire Armenian people, when they rose up against their imperial masters during the First World War. Hitler was encouraged to move to the mass extermination of the Jews by his observation that the great powers – Britain, France and America – had done nothing to stop this genocide. ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ he remarked.

And in order to preserve the idea that the Holocaust was a unique event, peculiar only to the Jews, some Zionists have also done their best to discourage comparable commemorations of the Nazi murder of the Romany and disabled, or the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians. Greenstein wrote

The elevation of the Jewish Holocaust above all other acts of genocide not only suggests that it is unique but that it has nothing to tell us beyond the fact that it occurred. If the purpose of remembering and commemorating acts of genocide is to prevent their reoccurrence and to act as a warning against their repetition, why single out one act of genocide? The genocide of the Gypsies and the Disabled are all but omitted from Holocaust museums such as Yad Vashem and the Washington US Holocaust Museum. The genocide of Africans in the slave trade or Armenians forms no part of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Indeed from the days of Herzl onwards there has been a determined refusal by Zionism to acknowledge the Armenian massacres and genocide. Lucy Dawidowicz, a prominent Zionist historian went so far as to say that unlike the Nazis, the Turks had a ‘rational’ reason for massacring Armenians. Elie Wiesel, Alan Dershowitz and Arthur Hertzberg, all prominent Zionists, withdrew from an international  conference on genocide in Tel Aviv when the sponsors refused to remove sessions on the Armenians. (Novick pp. 192-193, Finkelstein pp. 69-70)  The Zionist lobby in the United States has repeatedly opposed any commemoration of the Armenian holocaust.

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, in a debate with Dr Sybil Milton, the Senior Resident Historian at the US Holocaust Memorial Council argued that

‘the tragedy of the Gypsies’ whilst being ‘ no less poignant, and no less horrible’ was nonetheless not part of the Holocaust. Whilst ‘it happened at the same time as the Holocaust, and there are of course many similarities. Yet it appears to me that the Holocaust is very much a unique case. If someone prefers to call it Judeocide, that is his her privilege. It is exactly the same thing: it is the mass murder of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis.’

For Zionism the Holocaust is a Jewish only affair. Sybil Milton, who was herself Jewish, responded succinctly:

‘(The) Nazi genocide, popularly known as the Holocaust, can be defined as the mass murder of human beings because they belonged to a biologically defined group. Heredity determined the selection of the victims. The Nazi regime applied a consistent and inclusive policy of extermination- based on heredity- only against three groups of human beings: the handicapped, Jews, and Gypsies.’

This correspondence ‘Gypsies and the Holocaust’ can be found in The History Teacher, Vol. 25, No. 4. (Aug., 1992), pp. 513-521.

Wiesel’s, Dershowitz’s and Hertzberg’s decision to walk out of the international conference on genocide because its inclusion of the Armenian massacres, in my view, is no doubt a direct contradiction of the fellowship many Jews feel towards them because of both peoples’ shared experience of genocide. It can be seen, for example, in the play, Burning Issues, which Mike and I saw at the theatre in Quakers Friars here in Bristol way back in the ’90s. Set in the American publishing industry, it’s similar to King Lear in that the drama is about an elderly, failing patriarch being challenged by his children. In this case, the central character is an Jewish publisher, who is determined to bring out an exhaustive encyclopaedia of the Holocaust. His fixation with the Third Reich is damaging sales, however, and his children wish to rescue the firm from bankruptcy by ditching the project and publishing something far more popular instead. The old man is himself a survivor of the Shoah, and his closest relationship is with his Armenian cleaner through the shared bond of surviving the attempted extermination of their peoples. The behaviour of Dawidowicz, Wiesel, Hertzberg and Dershowitz in their refusal to allow the extermination of other groups into the memorialisation of the Holocaust, even when they are directly comparable and relevant, is disgusting and should rule them out utterly as any kind of moral authorities on this subject.

Greenstein goes on to consider how the Israeli Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, has been used to whitewash many extreme right-wing political leaders from around the world. People like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who has compared himself to Hitler, and the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, which was founded by two former members of the SS. These politicians sign agreements with Israel, duly visit Yad Vashem, at which they lay wreaths, and then are duly legitimised by Israel’s Zionist establishment as friends of the Jews.

He also describes how Yad Vashem doesn’t discuss the Nazis’ murder of other ethnic groups during the Holocaust, quoting one of the journalists for the Israeli paper Haaretz. He says

Blatman noted the absence of Yad Vashem from the 5^thGlobal Conference on Genocide in Jerusalem in 2016. Why? It has nothing to say on anything bar the Jewish genocide. Blatman wrote of how  

None of the hundreds of scientific events organized by Yad Vashem has been dedicated to the Holocaust and genocide…. You have to look hard to find any reference to the destruction of other populations in the Holocaust, and its chief aim seems to be to silence criticism. Similar museums in Paris and Washington hold regular activities on these topics

Whilst Yad Vashem studies what happened to the Jews in Polish or Ukrainian cities ‘they rarely address Nazi atrocities against other ethnic groups’. They study the minute detail of what happened to the Jews without ever seeing the wider picture. Yad Vashem ‘helps keep the Holocaust in a narrow Jewish ghetto that serves the xenophobic manipulations Israel makes of it.’

That is why Yad Vashem has never given birth to a comprehensive book on the Holocaust such as Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution or Raul Hilberg’s Destruction of the European Jews. Holocaust research in Israel has done nothing to combat racism.

In fact, Yehuda Elkana, an Israeli historian, believed instead that the commemoration of the Holocaust had been so appropriated and corrupted by the Zionists, including Yad Vashem, that it was actively fostering Israeli racism. The only lessons they had learned from it was that Jews were victims, and so they were morally empowered to do anything against those they considered enemies with force. Elkana therefore argued that the Holocaust needs to be forgotten. Greenstein also quotes another Jewish scholar, Gideon Levy, who made the same point.

Greenstein himself writes

The Holocaust cannot be forgotten. The question is how it is remembered, by whom and for what purpose. Zionism’s abuse of Holocaust memory has to be challenged. Under capitalism all memory serves a purpose.

And concludes

The Holocaust needs to be reclaimed by the Left and Anti-Fascism.  For too long the Zionist movement has got away with harnessing the Holocaust to the chariot of racism and ethnic cleansing.

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Absolutely. If Europe is to be saved from the new wave of racism and Fascism, it has to be by showing how similar the Holocaust is to the other prejudices and strains of racism now spreading across Europe. Like hatred of Blacks, Asians and Islamophobia. This needs to be done because vicious islamophobes like Tommy Robinson will declare their support for Israel and march with the extreme Right Jewish Defence League on the grounds that Israel is an outpost of western civilisation that needs to be defended from Islam.

It is absolutely disgusting that Zionism, or at least leading Zionists, are not allowing and indeed have actively blocked the commemoration of similar genocides against other ethnic groups in their memorialisation of the Holocaust. Just as it also shows that Jackie Walker had a point in her complaint that the plans by the Jewish Labour Movement to commemorate the Shoah also left out the genocidal persecution of other peoples and races, like the slave trade in Black Africans.

It is entirely right that survivors of the Holocaust should receive proper honours by her Maj at the 75th anniversary of D-Day. But we desperately need to remember also that they were and are not alone as the victims of attempted extermination. These horrors continue today, such as the Chinese state’s attempts to destroy the culture and ethnic identity of Uighurs of Sinkiang. The victims of these genocides are every bit as worthy as the generation, who passed through the Shoah, and their suffering every bit as deserving of commemoration and condemnation.