A few days ago I found a video posted on YouTube by Laurence Fox’s Reclaim the Media. This was a short piece of part of a debate he’d had about racism with Ash Sarkar, one of the women of the left-wing internet news and comment channel, Novara Media. This was about whether Whites could experience racism. Sarkar denied that they could, because they enjoyed White privilege. She maintained this stance even when Fox raised the issue of White working class boys, who perform worse academically than Blacks and other ethnic minorities and girls. I’m not surprised Sarkar continued to maintain this view. Novara have posted a couple of videos denying that White working class boys are underprivileged compared to other ethnic groups, and even that the White working class constitutes an ethnic group at all. Sarkar has said very proudly that she’s a communist, particularly when she was exasperated by the attitude of one of the TV hosts interviewing her. But it’s not entirely the Communism of classical Marxism, which saw class as the motor of history and oppression. It’s partly the postmodernist revision of Marxism of Critical Race Theory. This replaces class with race, declaring that Whiteness is a bourgeois quality that ensures that Whites enjoy a privileged position denied to people of colour. This attitude comes partly from the intersectional Marxism of Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School. Frustrated by the failure of the American working class to rise up against capitalist, Marcuse instead urged radicals to look to the ‘people of the ghetto’, groups traditionally confined to the margins of American society. This included Blacks, gays and feminists. CRT denies that Whites can experience racism through a highly contrived redefinition of the term. In their view, racism = prejudice + power. In bourgeois western society, Whites have a power denied to Blacks. Therefore they cannot suffer racism. This is profoundly wrong and in itself deeply racist. It also has highly dangerous implications that may encourage, or at least demand that a blind eye be turned to real racist violence against Whites.
The term ‘privilege’ suggests aristocratic ease, of the type enjoyed by David Cameron. Before he became prime minister, this Eton-educated aristo certainly didn’t have to worry about getting a job. He was actually approached by the Crown to work for it. But the vast majority of White Brits don’t have this privilege, and especially not those at the very bottom of society. One of my old schools had an annex for its first year pupils in a run-down area of Bristol. This was in a grimy back street called Boot Lane, at one end of which was a public toilet frequented by tramps. These were men who enjoyed absolutely no social advantages at all, and their life expectancy was no doubt extremely limited. The life-expectancy of the homeless, I’ve heard, is about three years. Sarkar, by contrast, is middle class and university educated, as is her fellow presenter Dalia Gabreal. Gabreal, who also promotes the nonsense of White privilege, is the co-editor of an anthology of postcolonialist texts. They enjoy a privilege denied to the White underclass, but it’s a privilege that they, imprisoned by Critical Race Theory, cannot acknowledge.
The idea of White privilege also glosses over and ignores the fact that previous generations of working class Whites could be victims of grinding poverty until very recently. Examples of this can be found on YouTube in a series of videos about poverty in Britain in the 1970s. Whether Sarkar, Gebreal and the others of Novara realise it or not, the idea White privilege plays down this poverty, which could be extreme with the bland attitude that however tough it could be for Whites, it’s worse for Blacks. On average, this is true, but not always. While Novara has shown a deep concern for working class poverty and exploitation, the constraints of Critical Race and Postcolonial Theory means that it is unable to recognise or accept the fact of anti-White racism nor that Whites do not uniformly enjoy privilege.
While it comes from the Marxist left, Critical Race Theory’s view that whiteness is intrinsically oppressive is very much of the same type of ideological racism as fascism. This divides society into the race or nation and its oppressors. In the case of the Italian fascists, the true nation was that of Italy and its people. In Nazism it was Germany, and the enemies were the Jews. This binary opposition Noel O’Sullivan, a Conservative historian of fascism, traces back to the new style of political activism that began with the French Revolution. This divided France into the authentic nation of the ‘tiers etat’, the third estate – the common French people, and their oppressors, the aristocracy and clergy. He quotes one French revolutionary who made this very plain, as well as his intention to shoot the country’s noble oppressors. O’Sullivan makes the point that this opposition can be applied to other groups, as demonstrated in the magazine of a radical feminist group, Medusa. This declared that only women were human, and men were an inferior species. Critical Race Theory revises this racism so that the authentic, oppressed nation are Blacks and other people of colour, while the racial oppressors are White.
This attitude is extremely dangerous. The critics of Critical Race Theory and other postmodernist ‘isms’, Peter Boghossian, James Lindsey and Helen Pluckrose, submitted a number of spoof papers making extreme claims to various postmodernist academic journals. One of these incorporated quotes from Mein Kampf, but with ‘Whiteness’ substituted for Jews. This was accepted. There have been a series of controversies over the other side of the Pond in which Black academics have announced on TV programmes or internet meetings that they want Whites to become extinct. And there has been real racial violence against Whites. Thomas Sowell describes a few in his book, Race and Culture, noting that the mainstream media either does not cover them, or if it does, the report is framed so as to exonerate the attackers. They acted as they did as a result of the oppression of White America. Racial violence against Whites isn’t confined to America. Over twenty years ago the number of racist murders of Whites was nearly equal to that of ethnic minorities, and the level of racist abuse and attacks against Whites exceeded those against other demographics. This was covered by the mainstream media until the BNP sought to exploit it. But many Black and ethnic minority activists do not want racism against Whites recognised. At a conference of Black and ethnic minority activists a few years ago, three of them criticised the government for including anti-White racism in official statistics. In their view, only racial abuse and violence against ethnic minorities deserved to be counted. Critical Race Theory’s contrived redefinition of racism does the same: it is intended to deny that Blacks can be racist.
Critical Race Theory is also dangerously defective in its Eurocentricismt It assumes that only White Europeans and their descendants in America and the New World can be racist. It ignores the fact that other cultures have also traditions of racial hierarchies and ingrained prejudice. For example, Muslim Arabs also developed ideas of the inferiority of Black Africans on the one hand and White Europeans on the other. India and China also have their own ideas of racial superiority and inferiority. Western Blacks have also developed a distinct racist ideology in Afrocentrism. There is a series of Afrocentric works promoting the idea of White inferiority in vicious, splenetic terms. At the same time, Black Muslim sects like the Nation of Islam and Ansaaru Allah also hold that Whites are racially inferior oppressors, who are due to be annihilated by God at the coming apocalypse. I’ve also come across British Muslim texts that are explicitly colonialist. One of these argued that just as the British allowed other peoples to enter their colonies and keep their laws and customs as a way of populating their territories in North America, so Muslims should be allowed to form autonomous communities in America and Europe. These forms of Black and extra-European racism are largely unknown to most western people, and there is real opposition to discussing them. The Labour politician, Diane Abbott, has said several times that discussing the different forms of racism amongst ethnic minorities would allow ‘them’ to ‘divide and rule’. But these tensions between different ethnic groups in Britain outside the Black/White dichotomy exist and have led to riots. A few months ago, there was rioting in the north of England between Muslims and Hindus. The acceptance of the idea that only Whites can be racist among liberal Whites has also been assisted by the idea of the Noble Savage. This goes back to the 17th century, and views primitive, non-European societies as somehow nobler and more virtuous than western civilisation. It is also a product of the tradition of European and indigenous opposition to imperialism. This concentrates on the horrors of western imperialism but similarly ignores those of other imperialist regimes, such as the Ottoman Empire. The refusal to accept that other peoples are also capable of terrible racism, and the idea that only White racism is to be tackled, led to the police and authorities turning a blind eye for twenty years to the Pakistani grooming gangs.
I find the denial of anti-White racism, and the bitter racism of some Black activists deeply worrying. Because Critical Race Theory declares that all Whites enjoy such privilege and that the level of racism in society remains constant, it comes very close to the old accusation that all Whites are racist. While I doubt very much that it’s supporters would see it as such, it is very close to racial essentialism of the type that causes anti-Semites as intrinsically hostile to Whites. I am very much afraid that this will encourage anti-White attacks and pogroms, but there will be no action taken or condemnation of these because of the racial attitudes promoted by CRT. Sarkar, Gebreal and the rest of Novara doubtless believe that they are sincerely anti-racist and they probably are so in their personal relationship with Whites. But they, along with numberless others of the same views, hold a twisted redefinition of racism that legitimises racism and violence against Whites, while denying that this is possible at all.
This is a very chilling video from ‘Sultan and Khan’s Sunday Scoop’ channel over on YouTube. The two hosts, Harris Sultan and Nuriyeh Khan, are ex-Muslim atheists, who critique and attack their former religion. I’m not an atheist, and while I’m not a Muslim, this is not the kind of material I’d usually put up on my channel. I feel it’s far more important to attack the government and various political movements that I believe are wrong and dangerous, than attack other people’s religions. But Sultan and Khan are also worried about the rise of religious fanaticism and intolerance, not just in the Muslim world and Pakistan, but also in India. They have posted several videos reporting and commenting on the lynching and malicious prosecution of people for blasphemy by Muslims in Pakistan, as well as murderous rants and attacks on Muslims and Christians by Hindu mobs and rabble-rousing demagogues in India. They have also covered two incidents in which Sikhs also have lynched people for blasphemy. In this video they talk about further instances of anti-Muslim bigotry and hate spread by the Hindu far right.
The first case they comment on is the arrest of a fourth man by India’s finest for ‘Bulli Bhai’. Bulli is an insulting term for Muslims used by the Hindu fascists. Last week the Indian cops arrested a young woman for putting up the images of 100 Muslim women on the internet, announcing that they were for auction. It was deliberately done to humiliate these ladies. Now a fourth person, a man, has been arrested for it.
But what will chill western viewers is the footage of a mass gathering in a village somewhere in India, in which the villagers swear a Nazi style oath not to do business with, sell land to or work with Muslims. Sultan and Khan describe it themselves as Nazi, and they are absolutely correct. It is almost exactly like the Nazi oath to boycott Jewish businesses, which culminated in the smashing of Jewish storefronts in Krystallnacht. And the parallel is even closer when you see that the wretched people swearing the oath do so with right arm outstretched in what really does look like the Fascist and Nazi salute. The oath ends with them shouting ‘Hail Mother India! Hail Lord Ram’. Sultan and Khan are naturally disgusted at this. They state that while there is a problem with Muslim fanaticism, only 5 to 10 per cent of Muslims are like that. And it is up to the vast majority of ordinary Muslims, who aren’t like that, to take care of them. Most Muslims, says Sultan, are Muslim in name only. They are just ordinary people trying to put food on the table.
The Hindu far right, like the BJP and the paramilitary RSSS, are considered Fascist movements by political scientists and historians of Fascism. One modern text book on Fascism includes a BJP prayer as an example of Fascist mysticism, a phenomenon that isn’t confined to Hinduism but permeates all Fascism, Hindu, Christian or whatever. Hindu fanaticism has been a growing problem since mobs rioted, and attacked historic mosques and ordinary Muslims while the authorities turned a blind eye in the 1980s. Indeed, several leading members of the BJP have connections to far right organisations or else made very sure that the mobs responsible for the attacks were allowed to go unchecked.
Most of us have an image of Hinduism as a gentle religion, largely, I think, thanks to Mahatma Gandhi and his doctrine of ahimsa, non-violence. The Hindu far right exploit this peaceful image, denying that such bigotry and violence exists in their religion while at the same time copying it from the religions they hate and persecute. And as well as hating Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, they also hate ordinary, democratic, moderate Hindus and secular Indians as well as Gandhi himself for their ideal of India as a democratic, pluralist nation. As this video shows, these fanatics wish to turn India into a nation where Hinduism is the only permitted religion.
Sultan and Khan have greater faith in the power of modern India’s democratic, pluralist traditions. They state that this will not happen, and India will never become a world power by persecuting 200 million of its citizens. This is presumably the Muslim population in India. The persecution isn’t stopping with Muslims and other religious minorities. The fanatics are also attacking and trying to close down and arrest Indian activists and journalists opposed to this wave of intolerance.
I have said that Fascism knows no colour or religion. Violent contempt for democracy, extreme nationalism and religious or racial hatred can arise everywhere, in any race, religion or culture. And it has to be fought everywhere it appears.
I therefore wish Indian anti-fascists and liberals every success in combating this bigotry regardless of their personal religious views, just as we in the West need to combat the rising Fascism in Europe and America.
This is another video from Middle East Eye that’s been posted on YouTube. It shows mobs of Israeli rioters attacking shops and businesses owned by Palestinians. You can see these thugs waving the Israeli flag. It’s an absolutely chilling sight, especially as it brings to my mind Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht, when the Nazis attacked and smashed Jewish owned businesses. This is very much the kind of video the Board of Deputies of British Jews does not want you to see. Peter Oborne, a deeply principle journalist, who previously worked for the Torygraph, made a video over ten years ago for Channel 4’s Dispatches on the Israel lobby. He interviewed Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Groan, and Avi Shlaim, an Oxford expert on the Middle East. Rusbridger described how, when his newspaper ran stories about Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians and their allies, the president of the Board would turn up with his pet lawyer in tow to complain that the story would increase anti-Semitism. The Board also denounced the Beeb as anti-Semitic because its highly respected correspondents on the Middle East, Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin, also reported Israeli atrocities, including the massacre of Palestinian refugees by their allies, the Christian Phalange. Shlaim stated that the Beeb’s reporting was actually overwhelmingly factually correct, although there were a couple of minor faults, according to an independent review body.
It is Israeli Fascist violence like this that Jeremy Corbyn opposes, not Jews. As have any number of pro-Palestinian Jewish activists – Jackie Walker, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Tony Greenstein and veteran thesp Miriam Margolyes. Nearly ten years ago Margolyes condemned the attacks on Gaza as ‘a proud Jew, and an ashamed Jew’. It is because of their activism on behalf of the Palestinians that these people have been foully smeared and reviled as anti-Semites.
It’s time this stopped. Terrorism by anyone is wrong, and I don’t agree with the Palestinian attacks either.
But its time the Israeli attacks on Palestinians ceased, Netanyahu condemned for his barbarous treatment of the country’s indigenous Arabs, and the Board condemned for seeking to cover up such racist barbarity.
First a piece of good news. Yesterday’s I for 8th October 2020 reported that a Greek court had convicted the Golden Dawn of being a criminal organisation. This was the Golden Dawn that’s a neo-Nazi outfit responsible for violent attacks on immigrants, left-wing activists and the murder of rap singer, not the Golden Dawn, which was an early 20th century occult society. Although the latter did briefly have Aleister Crowley, the Beast 666 and the ‘wickedest man in the world’ as a member.
The ‘I’s report on page 25, by Derek Gatopoulos, runs
A Greek court has ruled that the far-right Golden Dawn party was operating as a criminal organisation, delivering a landmark verdict in a marathon five-year trial.
The court ruled that seven of the party’s 18 former legislators, including party leader Nikos Michaloliakos, were guilty of leading a criminal organisation, while the others were guilty of participating in one.
As news of the guilty verdicts broke, cheers and celebrations erupted among the crowd of more than 15,000 people gathered in an anti-fascist rally outside the Athens courthouse.
A small group among the crowd threw Molotov cocktails and stones and police responded with tear gas and water cannon.
The marathon trial had been assessing four cases rolled into one: the 2013 fatal stabbing of Greek rap singer Pavlos Fyssas, physical attacks on Egyptian fishermen in 2012, and on left-wing activists in 2013, and whether Golden Dawn was operating as a criminal organisation.
The 68 defendants included the 18 former legislators from the party that was founded in the 80s as a neo-Nazi organisation and rose to become Greece’s third-largest.
Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the verdict “ends a traumatic cycle” in the country’s public life.
The three-member panel of judges also delivered a guilty verdict against Giorgos Roupakias for the murder of Mr Fyssas. prompting applause in the courtroom and among the crowd.
Roupakios had been accused of being a party supporter who delivered the fatal stab wound to Mr Fyssas. Another 15 defendants – none of them former legislators – were convicted as accomplices.
Outside the courthouse, Mr Fyssas’s mother, Magda, who had attended every session over five years, raised her arms and shouted: “Pavlos did it. My son!” All five people accused of attempted murder against the fishermen were also found guilty, while the four accused of attempted murder in athe attacks against left-wing activists were found guilty of the lesser charge of causing bodily harm.
“Today marks a huge victory for justice and respect for Greece and the entire world,” said Eva Cosse of Human Rights Watch. “It sends a strong message that hate crimes are not and should not, be tolerated in a democratic society.”
There was never any real doubt that the Golden Dawn were a neo-Nazi organisation, although they denied it. They took as their symbol the angular design used in ancient Greek friezes which resembles a series of interlinked swastikas. Whenever they were asked about it and its similarity to the Nazi symbol, they claimed instead, quite rightly but disingenuously, that it was an ancient Greek design. They also celebrated the ancient Spartans. They were the ruling Herrenvolk of the Greek city state of Sparta, a society geared to war. Babies were examined after their birth to make sure that they had no physical defects or malformities. Those who failed the test were brutally disposed of by being thrown into a nearby cavern. Archaeologists have chillingly discovered the bones of a large number of infants, presumably the victims of this cruel custom. Beneath the Spartans themselves were the Helots, the state slave class, the descendants of the city’s original inhabitants whom the Spartans had conquered and enslaved. One day each year normal laws were suspended to allow the Spartans to treat the Helots however they liked, up to and including murder. In its militarism, enslavement, eugenics and racism it very much resembles the Nazis and their horrific Third Reich.
One of the internet news organisations a few years ago made a documentary about the Golden Dawn. They interviewed the Egyptian fishermen and other extra-European immigrants, who’d been attacked by them. I don’t doubt that the austerity imposed on Greece by the EU contributed to the organisation’s rise. We were taught at in Geography at school, when we studied the Third World as part of the ‘A’ Level course, that extreme poverty leads to political extremism and racial and ethnic conflict as different groups fight over resources. Apart from attacking immigrants themselves, the Golden Dawn also attacked and tore down their stalls in the local markets. They also gave out food parcels, but only to ethnic Greeks. It’s excellent that the organisation and the murderous thugs running it have been successfully prosecuted.
Zelo Street put up a very good piece about the Golden Dawn’s conviction, pointing out that it poses something of an embarrassment for the Spectator, its editor, Fraser Nelson, and board chairman Andrew Neil. Because the magazine, itself heading rapidly towards the far right, published a piece by Greek playboy and jailbird, Taki, praising the Nazis. Way back in 2013 Takis had written in his column that
“Golden Dawn came into being because of PC, poor Greeks at times getting fewer benefits than African illegal immigrants. Then GD became very popular with certain poor Greeks while it defended them from being mugged by Albanian criminals and drug dealers, and for safeguarding older folk after bank withdrawals”.
He also claimed that they weren’t Nazis, but just good, patriotic Greek boys who were just rough. No, I think it’s quite clear they really were Nazis. And murder and violent assault goes far beyond being a little rough.
When people complained about Taki’s article, Nelson responded by saying
“Our readers like diversity and well-written pieces that they disagree with. We have no party line”. This prompted Sunny Hundal to ask if they had any limits at all. Could they write pieces praising Hitler? Well, they haven’t so far, but Taki did write another piece stating that the real heroes of D-Day were the German soldiers, who fought to the death against overwhelming numbers. This is particularly remarkable considering the brutality and atrocities committed by the Italian Fascists and the Nazis during their occupation of Greece. Nelson defended this piece by arguing that “People like reading well-argued pieces with which they might disagree”. Well, you wonder. You wonder if the problem is that actually, at least part of the Speccie’s readership do agree.
The Street wondered how Nelson can defend publishing such stuff praising the Golden Dawn and excusing their violence, while claiming any complaints about it simply came from the PC brigade and invoking free speech. The Street concluded
‘After the verdicts were handed down in Athens today, Fraser Nelson should have stopped and thought. And then he should have resigned his post. But he won’t.
Because that would require principle. And he hasn’t got any. I’ll just leave that one there.’
Well, yes. It should at least have given Nelson pause. But it won’t stop him. He’s been publishing Taki for years, despite frequent complaints about his anti-Semitism. And doubtless Nelson will continue printing pieces by him. The Spectator’s a Tory magazines, and the publication of such pieces by Taki suggests that many of the rag’s readers have the same attitude towards Blacks, Muslims and Jews as those the blogger Jacobsmates found on internet sites for supporters of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson.
But remember, there’s supposed to be no problem with racism and anti-Semitism in the Tory party, who deal with it promptly, unlike Labour.
Here’s another revolting development, as it would be described by Marvel Comics’ ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing, the idol o’ millions and butt of the Yancey Street gangs’ pranks. On Tuesday Mike reported that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission had decided not to go ahead with an investigation into islamophobia in the Tory party. It considered that this would not be ‘proportionate’ after seeing the Tories’ own plans and terms of reference for its own investigation, which included specific reference to islamophobia.
The Muslim Council of Britain declared that these terms were a ‘facade’ and that the investigation was too narrow compared to Labour’s Chakrabarti investigation into anti-Semitism. They went on to say that the investigation would hide the hundreds of incidents of bigotry in the Tory party, which they had uncovered.
Mike in his article makes the very valid point that it doesn’t matter what the EHRC says about ant-Semitism in the Labour party. It has shown it cannot treat the two parties equally. Indeed, BoJob’s own behaviour provides a prima facie case for investigation. Mike concludes
If the EHRC can’t see that, then no decision it makes about the Labour Party can have any weight at all.
I recommend that it be disbanded and replaced by an organisation staffed by people who can do the job properly.
Of course, Mike’s right. There’s Johnson’s wretched book 72 Virgins, a wish-fulfillment fantasy if ever there was one, about a bike-riding Prime Minister foiling an evil Islamist plot to bomb parliament. This also included racist comments about other ethnic groups as well, including a Black character, who is described as a stupid coon, and a shady Jewish businessman who makes his money by exploiting migrant workers. This nasty anti-Semitic stereotype was accompanied by the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about the Jews controlling the media. And then, of course, there’s Johnson’s vile newspaper column in which he compared women in burqas to bin bags and letter boxes. Despite all the bluster about how he was merely being un-PC and it was an act of free speech, nothing more, Johnson’s rhetoric did lead to a spike in islamophobic assaults, especially against women clad in that way.
Zelo Street and other left-wing bloggers have also put up articles about the numerous supporters of BoJob and Rees-Mogg revealed by the internet activist Jacobsmates, who posted viciously islamophobic and anti-Semitic comments on Twitter. Like the various Conservative politicos Mike and Zelo Street also reported were suspended by the Tories for their islamophobic conduct. In their posts they had declared that Sadiq Khan and other Muslim and ethnic minority politicos, like Diane Abbott, should be killed, ranted about how Muslims were plotting to destroy the country and were responsible for rape and terrorism and supported the old anti-Semitic conspiracy libel that Muslims and non-White immigrants were being imported into Europe and the West by the Jews with the intention of destroying the White race.
And the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is grossly disproportionate itself in the importance it gives to the allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour on the one hand and islamophobia in the Tories in another.
The reality is that there was far less anti-Semitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn than in wider British society, and that the vast majority of it comes from the right, and especially the far right. What those screaming about Labour anti-Semitism really objected to was anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians. This is why Corbyn was viciously denounced as an anti-Semite for attending a speech by a Holocaust survivor, who compared Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians to the Nazis’ persecution of himself and other Jews, while the same witch-hunters had nothing to say about Tweezer and Rachel Reeve singing the praises of Nancy Astor, a real anti-Semite and supporter of Hitler. Part of the motivation for the anti-Semitism smears against Labour was pure partisanship. It was a convenient stick for the Tory establishment, including the Thatcherites within the Labour party, to beat Corbyn and try to oust him or prevent the party from ever coming to power. It didn’t matter whether they were true or not. And western geopolitical interests were involved. Israel is one of the pillars of British Middle Eastern policy, along with Saudi Arabia. Tony Greenstein among other bloggers and activists has put up a number of quotes from British officials showing that it always was regarded as a centre of western influence in the region from the days of the British Mandate in Palestine, comparable to Ulster in Ireland.
The anti-Semitism smears had nothing to do with real anti-Jewish hatred. It was purely about defending Israel and preventing a genuine the formation of a socialist, genuinely Labour government.
The EHRC’s decision not to investigate Tory islamophobia may also be connected to the anti-Muslim prejudices of its leader, Trevor Philips. He is, or was, a member of the Labour party, but was suspended a little while ago by General Secretary Jennie Formby for islamophobia. He had accused Muslims of forming a ‘nation within a nation’ and stated that the members of the Asian grooming gangs, who abused White girls, committed their horrendous crimes because ‘Muslims see the world differently’. He seems to regard Muslims as fundamentally different and Other to the rest of British society, stating that they ‘are not like us’. He also chaired a Tory conference on ‘Challenging Islamophobia’, in which he and several of the others attending even blamed Muslims themselves for the terrorist attacks on the mosques in New Zealand and Finsbury Park. They were, Phillips and the others declared, a natural response to Muslim terrorism. In 2006 Ken Livingstone, then mayor of the London Assembly, accused Phillips, who was chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, as the EHRC then was, of pandering to the right and turning it into a huge press department while at the same time winding down its legal work. Six of the EHRC’s commissioners also resigned in protest at Phillips’ leadership. Phillips has also presented programmes for Channel 4 which accused Blacks of being far more inclined towards criminality than Whites, and that a significant number of British Muslims had terrorist sympathies among other accusations. Both of these were misleading. In fact, the number of British Muslims, who had terrorist sympathies was s1-3 per cent, rather than the nearly quarter that has been claimed.
Tony Greenstein has put up a long piece including several other articles, which extensively discusses Phillips’ islamophobia and shabby career and critiques and demolishes the two programmes he presented. Greenstein states that when he was active in student politics in the 1970s, he came across Phillips politically. It struck him then that Phillips really had nothing to say about racism, and was only using the fact of his colour for political advancement.
And its very noticeable that, as Greenstein describes in the above article, Phillips has received glowing support from a series of notorious racists and islamophobes like Tommy Robinson. Phillips is also another Labour rightist, who has weaponised the anti-Semitism smears for his own benefit. When he was suspended for islamophobia, he claimed that it was really because he had spoken out about Labour anti-Semitism. Which is purest twaddle.
With someone creditably accused of islamophobia himself in charge of the EHRC, it’s not surprising that it has decided not to pursue anti-Muslim prejudice in the Tories.
And this sorry episode also illustrates another point Quentin Letts has made about race relations in this country. In his book, Bog-Standard Britain, the Tory journo argued that there was a racial hierarchy of power and influence amongst ethnic and other minorities. Jews were at, or near the top. Blacks and Muslims were much lower down. I think Muslims may well have been at the bottom.
There’s much truth in this, as Sayeeda Warsi herself has complained that people are able to say things about Muslims with impunity, for which they would be immediately attacked if they said them about Jews.
Tony’s article also reports that Richard Littlejohn, another scummy right-wing hack, has even claimed that Phillips only agreed to chair the EHRC in order to close it down.
Perhaps this would now be the right action to take. Mike’s right in that at present it seems utterly unfit for purpose.
This is a short, minute-long video from RT of Jeremy Corbyn talking at the Finsbury Park mosque after he was attacked yesterday. RT follows the mass media in claiming that he was hit by an egg. He wasn’t. He was hit by a man holding an egg. It was a real, physical assault by an enraged Brexiteer.
But Corbyn’s speech is excellent. The video shows him being greeted and embraced by the mosque’s congregation, and in the excerpt shown in the video, Corbyn celebrates that all the faiths in the area came together with the Muslim community to condemn the attack in 2017 when a Fascist drove a car into people leaving a service, killing one man and injuring a couple more. He says
We’ve had our problems, we’ve had a far-right attack two years ago when Makram Ali was murdered on the streets of our borough by a far-right extremist, who is now in prison. But what happened the day after was people came together, people came together of all faiths. Rabbis came along, Christian pastors and vicars and priests came, Hindu people came, every single faith came. The traffic was stopped and we held a service of reconciliation in the middle of Seven Sisters Road to show that whatever people throw at this inner city community, we will not be divided, because an attack on any group, an attack on any faith, an attack on any place of worship is an attack on every one of us.
And unlike the Tories when they make similar comments, he means it. The Tories, however, are content to utter platitudes against racism, while as we’ve seen their party is a seething, putrescent mass of racism, Jew-hatred and islamophobia, where the supporters of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg talk about banning Muslims from office, bulldozing their mosques, shooting and bombing them; about deporting Blacks and Muslims, and repeating the bizarre conspiracy theories of the Nazi fringe that Blacks, Muslims and other non-White immigrants are being imported into Europe by the Jews to destroy the White race.
The Tories talk about anti-racism, but May sent the vans out to hunt out illegal immigrants and put up posters encouraging them to hand themselves in and for people to snitch on them. Like the posters of every Fascist surveillance state. And it was Tweezer, who had the Windrush migrants and their children illegally deported.
The Tories are the party of hate and racism.
Corbyn, however, is determined to bring people together, and has always worked hard to protect minorities and promote peace, equality and fraternity between the peoples of this country. Which is yet another reason why they want to get him out, and are smearing this most anti-racist of politicians as a Fascist and anti-Semite.
For a better Britain, which truly lives up to our values of tolerance and democracy, get the Tories out and Corbyn in.
Tony Greenstein, the veteran Jewish anti-racist, anti-Fascist and anti-Zionist, has today announced on his blog that the ‘Justice for Marc Wadsworth’ Tour begins next Tuesday, May 15th at the Indian YMCA in Fitzroy Square, London. Wadsworth is the Black anti-racist campaigner, who was thrown out of the Labour party by a kangaroo court on trumped-up charges of anti-Semitism because he criticised Ruth Smeeth, the Blairite MP, after she passed on information to a Torygraph hack.
Wadsworth has not only campaigned for Blacks and Asians, including arranging for the parents of Stephen Lawrence to meet Nelson Mandela, he also had the law on racial harassment changed in concert with the Board of Deputies of the British Empire in the 1990s after a series of anti-Semitic attacks following the election of the BNP’s storm trooper, Derek Beacon.
It’s a farcical travesty that Wadsworth’s even been accused of anti-Semitism. Just as it has been for all the others, including Mike, who have been so smeared and libelled simply for opposing the Blairites or criticising the Israel and the Israel lobby. Or merely defending those who have.
On the stage with him is the comedian Alexei Sayle, who’s Jewish, and Jackie Walker, one of the leaders of Momentum, who was also smeared as an anti-Semite after she criticised the Israel lobby. Walker’s Black, but her father’s Jewish, she is a practising Jew, her partner’s Jewish, and her daughter attends a Jewish school. For most of us, this makes the charge of anti-Semitism ridiculous. But not to the Blairites and their allies in the Israel Lobby.
The tour is being put on by the groups Grassroots Black Left, Labour Against the Witchhunt and Jewish Voice for Labour.
This is another great video from that notorious Russian propaganda outlet, RT, which shows exactly why we need the channel. It’s the only one allowing those smeared as anti-Semites from the Labour party to come on TV to give their side and their views.
In this clip, RT’s presenter for the ‘Going Underground’ programme, Afshin Rattansi, talks to Marc Wadsworth. Wadsworth is the veteran anti-racist campaigner, who was smeared as an anti-Semite by Blairite Labour MP Ruth Smeeth. He was then subjected to what can only be described as a kangaroo court, before being found guilty and thrown out.
Wadsworth here talks about how he formed the Anti-Racist Alliance in 1991, and how he helped the parents of the murdered Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, meet Nelson Mandela. He states that this was a time when racism and Fascism were on the increase. Blacks and Asians had been attacked, the BNP had established a bunker, which they claimed was a bookshop, and then there was the murder of Stephen Lawrence. He was able to get Stephen Lawrence’s parents to meet Mandela through contacting expatriate members of the ANC, who were disgusted to find out that Black lives were just as cheap in London as they were in South Africa. The Anti-Racist Alliance itself had the support of MPs, Blacks, Asians and Jews, and was the largest Black led anti-racist organisation in Europe.
Rattansi then asks him about Amber Rudd, the deportations and his expulsion from the Labour party. Wadsworth states that his father was one of the Windrush generation. He was an RAF volunteer from Jamaica, who paid his own passage of here in 1944 to help Britain fight the Nazis. After the War, he then made his way back here, to help this country rebuild. Wadsworth says that his father’s dead now, but if he were alive, he’d be appalled at the way they were treated, and the way his son has been treated.
Rattansi then asks him how long he’s known Jeremy Corbyn. Wadsworth states that he’s known Corbyn since he was first elected as an MP in 1983, when he was a campaigning trade unionist. Wadsworth also discusses how he was one of those involved in the movement for Black sections in the Labour party, which led to the election of the first Black Labour MPs, including Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott. This was a landmark moment, as up till then parliament had been all White, as White as that of South Africa.
He and Rattansi also discuss how Wadsworth was influential in changing and drafting the law on racial harassment in concert with a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. This was after a series of battles with the BNP on the Isle of Dogs after the election of Derek Beacon, when Jews were being attacked.
As for the kangaroo court that found him guilty of anti-Semitism, he states that his legal team had entirely disproved the charges against him, and that the court couldn’t even give him a definition of anti-Semitism, and had to take legal advice part way through. He found this very disturbing. He says he’s been overwhelmed by the support he’s received from thousands of people, and that polls show most people think he’s innocent. He states that this is the Blairites trying to hold on to power, and that if they get away with throwing him out, they’ll be able to throw out anybody. It could be Jackie Walker next, or Ken Livingstone.
Rattansi tackles him on why no Labour figures have publicly defended him. Wadsworth states that he had received the support of high-ranking Labour MPs, naming them. As for the reason they haven’t publicly come forward, this is because Jeremy Corbyn is under siege by the Blairites. 172 MPs signed a ‘no confidence’ motion against him, which is 95 per cent of parliamentary MPs. They’re afraid to speak out in case the right-wing press jump in and try to use their defence against them and the wider Labour party.
Rattansi mentions that Wadsworth isn’t just concerned with racial justice, but also with class. Wadsworth states that he left the Labour party because of the invasion of Iraq. He rejoined when Corbyn became leader. He states that we need to back Corbyn in this battle for the soul of the Labour party, if we wish to have genuinely socialist, internationalist, anti-war Labour party.
At the end of the programme their subtitles giving dates from a ‘Justice for Wadsworth’ tour, beginning in London. You may wish to stop the video at that and make notes of the dates.
Wadsworth is clearly a man of deep conviction and integrity, and it is an utter travesty that he has been so foully smeared as an anti-Semite when he is clearly very, very far from it. As are so many others.
As for his story about his father serving in the RAF, and then coming back to Britain after the War to help in our reconstruction, Wadsworth’s father was by no means the only one. The book Under the Imperial Carpet, which discusses various incidents in Black British history, has a chapter on the many West Indians, who, like Wadsworth’s father, came to this country during the War to help us. These people were so well received that they came back here after the War expecting the same treatment. Sadly, they weren’t, and found instead bitter racism and resentment. Rudd and Tweezer’s deportation of this generation and their children is another vile chapter in this story of hope, racism and disappointment and maltreatment.
Wadsworth and everyone else falsely accused of anti-Semitism should be cleared and reinstated as members of the Labour party immediately.
The deportations must stop now, and those deported returned to their homes and families in Britain. And Tweezer should resign or be thrown out for her role in drafting the legislation used to persecute them.
And Ruth Smeeth and the other Blairites are utterly despicable, and should be deselected.
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