Ruined Leon on the Media and Activist Silence over Black on Black Murders

Ruined Leon is a Black American YouTuber, who criticises and rips into the crazy and bigoted elements in gay rights, feminist and purportedly anti-racist activism, ‘woke’ individuals whose comments and opinions are as hypocritical and offensive in their way as the oppression they oppose. This is a video he posted on the last day of February, commenting on the collapse of the trial against the four men accused of shooting BLM firebrand Sasha Johnson in the head. He notes that this was major news when there was speculation that the perp was a White supremacist. In fact, the four suspects arrested by the police were Black. There’s circumstantial evidence to link them to the crime – they were caught on CCTV casing Johnson’s house, and she and her family were already sufficiently worried to put in extra security. The men were arrested following a random ‘stop and search’ by the cops. But the prosecution dropped the case because no-one has come forward to testify against them. In fact, the witnesses’ statement at the time were confused, with some saying they were Black, others White and others that they couldn’t tell, because they were wearing balaclavas. In fact this looks like an example of the twisted code operating in some Black ghettos. It doesn’t matter what Black criminals do, even to other Blacks, no matter how violent or sadistic. Blacks don’t inform on other Blacks. Or it could be simple fear of reprisal from vicious criminals.

What angers Ruined Leon is that while the initial shooting was well publicised, he had to Google to find out about the collapse of the trial. Like many ordinary Black peeps, he’s angry about the amount of violence within the Black community and that it’s ignored by Black activist organisations like Black Lives Matter. At one point in this video he asks if Black lives only matter when they’re killed by Whites. It’s a good question. Jason Riley raises the same issue in the book, False Black Power, I reviewed earlier. Among other things, he cited the Barbershop series of comedies, set in a Black barbershop. In these movies, the hero and his friends and clients are less worried about systemic racism than with the gang violence plaguing their community. The film caused an outcry from the anti-racist activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but Riley defended it on the grounds that it showed what Blacks really talked about when Whites weren’t around.

Leon has a point. The Lotus Eaters and others have gone through the stats, and at least over here, Black people are far more likely to be assaulted and killed by other Blacks than by White racists. But no-one wants to talk about it. They did nearly thirty years ago, when Black on Black violence was such an intense cause of concern that Sasha Baron Cohen, in his alter ego of Ali G., invited a senior cop on to one of his spoof interviews to discuss Black on Black violence and the weapons brothers were using against brothers.

But even twenty years ago, there were Black activists trying to silence the issue and demanding that attention be directed elsewhere. Readers may remember the Demilola Taylor case. This was a Black lad in London, who was attacked and stabbed to death by a gang on his way home from school. He bled to death in their stairwell of the block of flats where he lived.

I have a particular horror at this case. I was bullied at school, though it was not like today when kids are carrying knives. But the fear I remember from just normal thumps and abuse has stayed with me. I can’t image the fear that child must have experienced as he was set upon and died. The incident is one of the reasons I broke with a Black activist group I was corresponding with when I was working at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. This was the Black and Asian Studies Association, and I got on so well with them that they sent me a copy of their magazine. And it offended me so much that I wrote them a letter back, criticising some of their points. The articles in it varied in quality, but the overall tone was that all White people are racist and all Blacks the victims of racism. Which ignores other forms of racism, such as that of the Sudanese Arabs to the Black Beja people of the Sudan. But one of the comments in their magazine which really infuriated me was about Demilola’s murder. They, or at least, the magazine’s editor, felt that its coverage was ‘racist’. Why couldn’t the Beeb and the other news companies cover all the Blacks murdered by White racists? Reading between the lines, it seems to me that they thought the lad’s murder was only covered because it had been done by a Black gang. In fact it was a case of them jumping to conclusions. The race of Taylor’s murderers was not mentioned. When it was, it was stated that the gang was made up of people of different races. It wasn’t all Black.

A child died in pain and terror, murdered by thugs. But this should be ignored because Black activists thought he was murdered by other Blacks. I find that attitude absolutely contemptible.

I’ve reblogged some of the videos made by Simon Webb of History Debunked on racial issues and some of the myths and falsehoods being retailed as solid fact in Black history. Webb needs to be read carefully, as he is a Telegraph-reading Tory who believes that Bell Curve nonsense about Blacks being less intelligent than Whites. I’ve had one commenter criticise one of his videos I’ve posted here for what he considered to be its historical inaccuracies, and I do advise people to check what he says for themselves. Some of his material, where he sites his sources, seem sound, others much less so. But one of his videos explicitly commented on the problem of this media silence. It asked ‘What’s So Special about Stephen Lawrence?’ Lawrence, you may remember, was a young Black lad killed in a racially motivated incident. The Met police failed to properly arrest and charge his killers, who seem to have been the sons of notorious criminals. This rightly caused a national scandal and resulted in further examination and actions against the Metropolitan Police to purge it of racism. But Webb’s video pointed out that Lawrence was far from the only Black male murdered. The thumbnail to his video showed the faces of many other Black men and lads, who were also killed, but whose murders generated much less interest simply because they were killed by other Blacks.

Not that it’s just Blacks like Stephen Lawrence who are murdered by racists. Years ago Private Eye stated that just before Lawrence was killed, an Asian and a White man had been killed in two separate racist attacks. The Met police treated their deaths with the same cavalier indifference and incompetence they treated Lawrence’s. But there was no public outcry, no denunciations by anti-racists, questions in the House, or marches. Absolutely nothing.

Ruined Leone is right. Black lives only matter when to anti-racist activists like BLM when they’re taken by Whites. Otherwise the same people want you to ignore them.

Some of this no doubt comes from the way the right-wing press has reported Black crime figures to generate anti-Black racism and opposition to non-White immigration. It’s why Ashley Banjo of the dance group Diversity told Jim Davidson that the reporting of Black and White crime had been used to oppress Blacks. Davidson had asked him why it was all right to report a White police man killing a Black man, but not a Black man robbing a White man. But when the amount of Black on Black violence has reached such a pitch that it is a major issue that ordinary Black people are living in fear of their and their children’s lives, I don’t think it is fair to remain silent. People should be organising and marching against it, just as they should be organising and marching against the Asian grooming gangs. It should be done as part of proper anti-racist movement, and not left to be exploited by real racists and xenophobes like Tommy Robinson in the case of the grooming gangs.

But it’s acutely embarrassing to the Black and other other anti-racist organisations, who currently control the narrative on racism and racial issues. I think they seem to believe that somehow Black on Black violence will stop or decline once White anti-Black racism is tackled and conditions and opportunities for Blacks improve. This is undoubtedly the case, but in the meantime innocent people are being killed, but the professional anti-racists would rather you looked away and only saw those who were butchered by Whites.

Black lives matter regardless of the race of the people that take them. And Ruined Leon is right to be angry, because silence is violence whatever the colour of the killer.

History Debunked on the Comparative Lack of Interest in British Asian History

This is a related video to the one I put up from Simon Webb’s History Debunked this afternoon, which discussed how the Beeb had race-swapped the characters in their adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days. Phileas Fogg’s servant, Passepartout, is now Black, but the leading lady, who is Indian in the book, is now White. ‘Cause you can’t have two non-White leads apparently. Or Blacks must be given preference over Asians when it comes to casting non-White roles. In this video Webb discusses the case of Hsien Fan Sun, a Chinese gent who worked as a librarian at the court of James II. If Sun had been Black, then knowledge of him would have been promoted as it has been about Mary Seacole and John Blank, the Black trumpeter at the Tudor court. But he isn’t, because he’s Chinese. It’s another example of how, to Webb, diversity means primarily Black people. Which left me wondering why this should be so.

Racism to and Enslavement of Asian Indentured Workers

Asians have suffered their share of western racism and enslavement. During the infamous ‘coolie trade’, Asian workers from India and China were recruited as indentured labourers to work on plantations in the Caribbean, Fiji and elsewhere to replace the Black slaves, who had been emancipated. They worked in horrendous conditions, which in many cases were worse than those endured by the Black slaves. The system was widely denounced by Indian nationalists and humanitarians, including the Anglican Church and leading politicos, as ‘A New System of Slavery’. Which is the title of an excellent book on it by Hugh Tinker, published by one of the Indian presses. There were riots against the coolie trade in India and China, and the British authorities were also keen to stamp out the enslavement of Asians. The Indian police raided warehouses where Indians were being forcibly confined after they had been kidnapped, or tricked into signing indenture papers. It was such a scandal that the government issued a series of regulations demanding that Asian labourers should have access to an interpreter and understand the terms and conditions of the contract, that there should be a minimum level of acceptable living conditions aboard ships, children should be with women rather than left with the men, and a minimum number of women should emigrate with the male workers. There should also be opportunities for correspondence home and the remittance of money. I think the Britiish government first discussed the recruitment of the Chinese in particular in 1816 or so. They wanted replacements for the Black slaves, and the Chinese were decided upon because they were hardworking and less likely to complain or rebel. The prejudice against Chinese workers continued into the 20th century, when the early Labour party at one meeting denounced the government’s ‘Chinese slavery’ and put up a picture of a Chinese man. There were anti-Chinese riots in 1909, although this was caused by British firms sacking their White employees and replacing them with Chinese during an industrial dispute.

The Asian Presence in British and European History

There isn’t a total lack of interest in the Asian presence in British history. The book Under the Imperial Carpet, whose editors were Asian, also discussed Asian British history. Before the present set of ethnic minority MPs were elected in the ’70s and ’80s, Britain had BAME MPs. Webb put up a video about an Indian rajah, who became a Conservative MP in the 19th century. Other Asians became Liberal and even Communist MPs later in the early 20th. I’m not entirely surprised by the presence of Sun at James II’s court. This was the age when Europe was expanding, not just across the Atlantic, but also into Asia. The Jesuits were establishing missions in China, and scientific and technical knowledge flowed back and forth. I think the Chinese were impressed by European clockmaking, while Europeans were impressed by the Chinese skill at making automatons. By the following century upper class Europeans were consuming tea, Chinese porcelain, decorating their homes with wallpaper and furniture with Chinese art and motifs. Chinese literature was also being translated into European languages. The great religious sceptic, David Hume, read at least one Chinese novel. What impressed him was not how different it was, but how it was comprehensible, given the difference between Chinese and European culture.

Asian Stars on British Television

There are and have been Asian actors and presenters on British TV. I’ve mentioned Anita Rani, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Adil Ray in my previous post. But before them there was David Yip way back in the ’70s, who starred as The Chinese Detective. Dino Shafeek and Andy Ho appeared as the Indian and Burmese staff in the comedy It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. The classical Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar gained widespread popularity among the Hippy crowd through his friendship with Beatle George Harrison. He’s said since that this wasn’t altogether beneficial, as you should approach classical Indian music with the same attitude you approach western classical music, rather than listen to it like pop. And were any number of western groups taking over oriental instruments, like sitars, and rhythms. This in turn led to the rise of World Music, a genre that encompasses music and its performers from across continents, and which includes both traditional and more modern forms.

And there is an interest in recovering an Asian, as well as Black British past. The Black rights and history organisation with whom I briefly corresponded when I was working at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum was the Black and Asian Studies Association. Researchers on Islam in Britain, when I was studying the religion at College in the 1980s, were particularly interested in the discovery of tombs with inscription in Arabic dating from the 17th century in Yorkshire. A more recent programme on the Barbary Pirates on Radio 4 in the early part of this century suggested instead that they may have been the graves of indigenous White Brits, who had been captured by the north African pirates and forcibly converted to Islam before either escaping or being ransomed. And a year or so ago there was a programme on Radio 3 about the Muslim servant of one of the ministers responsible for carrying through the Reformation over here. There have also been history books written about ‘The Muslim Discovery of Europe’. With the rise of capitalism, the stock exchange and the nascent consumer culture in the 18th century came popular ballads celebrating how people of all races and creeds, Jew, Christian and Turk, were all united in the peaceful work of making money. I don’t think there’s any shortage of material. My great-grandfather was a docker, and I can remember my grandmother telling me about the lascar and Chinese sailors that came into Bristol docks. But in general Webb is right: as a rule diversity means Blacks rather than Asians. Why is this?

Blacks More Determined than Asians to Be A Part of Mainstream British Culture?

I think some of it may be that Blacks have a greater determination to be a conspicuous part of western culture than Asians. Blacks have certainly formed a large part of the British and American entertainment industries since White youth started tuning into Jazz in the 1920s. There were Black screen actors, although quite often the roles they were given were demeaning before Sidney Poitier revolutionised the portrayal of Blacks on screen, paving the way for contemporary Black leading men. But then, so did Bruce Lee and stars of Chinese martial arts cinema like Jackie Chan and Jet Li. And some of us still remember the TV adaptations of the Chinese classics The Water Margin and Monkey, the latter based on Wu Cheng-en’s epic novel.

I wonder if some of it may be that some Asian cultures are more inward looking, and likely to look more toward their homelands and its culture for their roots and identity than Britain. Please note: I am certainly not suggesting that they are somehow less British than the rest of us. But I can remember coming across an academic, ethnographic study British Asians entitled The Myth of Return. This probably took its title from the initial conviction among many Asian immigrants that they were coming here only to make enough money so that they could afford to retire back to their home countries in comfort. This aspiration certainly wasn’t confined to them. Many Black West Indians also shared it, as did the Irish correspondent to the Groan whose letter began, ‘Sir, I am an Irishman, who came to Britain to make enough money to go back to Ireland again.’ In the ’70s there was a difference in integration between Muslim and Christian Pakistanis. Both groups were equally Pakistani in their culture at home, but the Christians were far more integrated into wider British culture. For example, their children mixed at school with the White children. By contrast ethnographers found that the Muslims took their children straight to school and straight back, and really didn’t allow them to share the same afterschool activities as their White classmates. This might explain why there were Islamist segregationists, who wanted there to be self-governing Muslim enclaves in Britain and Belgium, with Arabic as the official language, governed by shariah law. I hasten to add that things are rather different now. There was a Big Iftar around the country, a giant feast marking the end of Ramadan, celebrated by the Muslim community, who also invited their non-Muslim neighbours to partake. And polls have shown that only five percent of British Muslims want shariah law. But I think the Asian community may be more likely to get their entertainment from their ancestral countries through the Internet, satellite TV and video and DVD.

Asians More Culturally Confident?

I also wonder if part of the answer is that Asians, and specifically Indians and Chinese, may be more culturally confident than western Blacks. India and China were highly advanced, literate civilisations with histories going back millennia. A glance through books on the history of inventions and mathematics shows any number of works and innovations by Arab, Persian, Indian and Chinese scholars. The first instance of plastic surgery, for example, comes from 8-9th century India, when one of the leading surgeons repaired the nose of a Indian princes. Muslim mathematicians and scientists studied astronomy, alchemy, medicine. And the Chinese had printing – though not with movable type, that was definitely Gutenberg’s invention – gunpowder, rockets, paper money and toilet paper, to name but a few. Sometimes this cultural confidence has formed the basis for humour. One of the characters on Goodness, Gracious Me – or was it the Kumars at No. 42? was a father, who was excessively proud of his home country’s achievements. He shouted out ‘India!’ every time various inventions were mentioned. I also remember one episode of Lovejoy in which the dodgy antique dealer was in negotiations with a Hong Kong businessman. This man was also conscious of how his country had led the world in science and invention for centuries, to the point where he believed the Chinese had more or less invented everything. At one point this is too much for his interpreter, who says to him, ‘Oh no, Mr -, I don’t think we invented motorcycles’.

Black African Cultures Less Well-Known and Admired

This is in contrast to Africa, whose great civilisations and monuments are less appreciated. Ancient Egypt has been claimed as Black civilisation by the Afro-Centrists, but this is controversial and they could well be wrong. Nubia and Meroe in what is now the Sudan died out centuries ago. Christian Nubia was conquered by the Muslims. It’s predecessors in the Sudan unfortunately spoke languages that are now extinct. The Nubians took over the culture and alphabet of the Ancient Egyptians. Frustratingly, we can read their inscriptions but have no idea what they mean until the appearance of a Rosetta Stone that will give us the key to translating them. Abyssinia was a literate, Christian empire while the Kiswahili were also an advanced Islamic civilisation. As was Mali and other states in northwest Africa. But I think these have been seen as the exceptions rather than the rule. Although many of the civilisations of north and Saharan Africa were capable of building large structures, like house and mosques from mud brick, I suspect the popular image of Africa remains that of mud huts. And until the introduction of Islam and Christianity on the continent, many of these peoples were illiterate. The result has been that the attitude of many western scholars towards African civilisation was wholly negative. The book Colour and Colour Prejudice, by the last British governor of Ghana, has page after page of quotes from various western scholars, almost all of whom declare that African culture is worthless and that the continent’s people have discovered nothing. Obvious this has been and is being challenged by Black activists and scholars.

Blacks and Affirmative Action

Much of the promotion of Blacks as a specific group has come from concern at the poor conditions of the Black community in America and Britain. Other groups have also suffered racism. I can remember one of my uncles telling me with disgust about the horrible ‘jokes’ the other White workers played on an Indian comrade. As a rule, I think Blacks are at the bottom of the racial hierarchy when it comes to academic performance and employment. Above them, but still disadvantaged, are Muslims. Indians are about the same level as Whites, or just below, while Chinese actually outperform us. Black history as a specific subject in schools is being promoted as the solution to the problems of the Black community. If Black people were aware of their achievements and presence in American and British history, then they would develop the self-respect and confidence to perform better at school, and challenge the racism that still sees them as outsiders and foreigners. Unfortunately, this has led to Black activists claiming the credit for Blacks for scientific achievements that came from others. I think the entertainment industry is part of this drive for Black empowerment too. I have a feeling that some of roles created for Black performers are intended to provide positive images of Blacks as just as urbane and middle class as everyone else. Or proper, respectable working class. I’ve no doubt its done to challenge the negative racist stereotypes Whites may hold, while at the same time hold up positive role models to the Black community. To show that Black people also live in families with fathers, where the parents are respectable, upstanding citizens who work to support their children and give them the best life they can. I’m not aware that family breakdown is the same issue in Asian communities as it is amongst Blacks and the White poor, so some of the issues that have led to a specific emphasis on Blacks in diversity may simply not be as pressing. It thus seems to me that, in general, Asians may be so much more confident in their culture that they don’t see the same urgency in establishing and insisting on their historic presence in Europe.

Blacks More Vociferous and Forceful in Attacking Racism

I also think it may also come from Blacks complaining the most forcefully about racism. One of the key events in the introduction of positive discrimination in Britain were the 1980s/81 race riots, where Black communities in Bristol, Brixton in London and Toxteth erupted in rioting. It led to various official reports, which recommended affirmative action programmes to give greater opportunities to Blacks, as was being done at the same time in America. There have been protests in the Asian community, and interethnic violence between Asians and Whites, along with Asian anti-racist activism. But I don’t recall the Asians rioting in the same way Black Brits did. And the protests held by Britain’s Muslims seem to be about specifically Islamic issues, like the publication of the Satanic Verses, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and general Islamophobia, rather than issues like employment or education although those have also been present. As a result, I think it’s probably true that Asians are less represented than Blacks in moves for ethnic diversity, although it should be stressed that they aren’t completely absent.

But these are just my ideas based on my own impressions. I may be wrong, and there may be other factors involved. I’d be interested to know what others think about it.

As an example of a TV series with an Asian leading man, here’s the titles to the Chinese Detective, starring David Yip, which I found on Robert Telfer’s channel on YouTube. Since then we’ve had Luther, starring the awesome Idris Elba as a Black detective. I like Elba – I think he’s a great actor, who could easily play Bond. I haven’t watched Luther, however, as the crimes he investigates all seem too grim and ‘orrible, like the serial killers tracked by Linda La Plante’s heroines. But perhaps it might be time once again for an Asian detective.

History Debunked Asks if Black lives Matter to Black People

It’s a provocative, controversial question to be sure, but it does need to be asked. In this video History Debunked’s Simon Webb raises it in connection with the shooting of Black activist Sasha Johnson. Johnson was shot a month ago by a Black gang while dancing the night away at a party in Peckham. According to the police officer in charge of the investigation, none of the thirty people, who were present at the shooting have offered any evidence. It seems that Black lives only matter when the killer is White. When this occurs, the slogan ‘White silence is violence’ is trotted out to castigate any White that doesn’t condemn the killing or offer evidence. But when it comes to Black on Black violence, Blacks cover it up. Hence the various claims made after the shooting that a White supremacist was responsible as demonstrated in Diane Abbott’s noxious tweet about it. But the four men accused of the shooting – Prince Dickson, Cameron Derigg, Troy Reed and Demontay Brown, are all Black. There’s a certain irony that they were caught because of Stop and Search, which Sasha Johnson condemned as racist against young Black men. The cops stopped one during such a search, he ran away, was arrested, and so led them to the others. But the thirty people at the party aren’t giving evidence because of a belief in the Black community that it’s wrong to cooperate with the police. Any Black person who does is a Judas. But more Black lives are lost to Black gangs than to White racists, and if Blacks really want to stop Black people being killed, then they should tell their boyfriends and sons not to stab and shoot other Black men. As for the 30 people at the party, their silence really is violence. By not coming forward to give evidence against Johnson’s shooters, they are all complicit in her shooting.

A few years ago, Black on Black violence really was an issue that was being discussed in the mainstream media. This was in the 1990s or early 2000s. There was even an edition of the Ali G show in which Sasha Baron Cohen’s wigger alter ego did a mock interview with the senior police officer supposedly about Black on Black violence. G was particularly interested in the weapons that ‘brothers were using against brothers’. The police chief had brought along a selection of knives, swords and other weapons that had been taken from Black gang members. Then Cohen decided to turn the interview into farce, and started drooling over how cool these weapons were, to the obvious horror of the policeman. The fact that even Ali G was discussing the subject showed very clearly that it was definitely not a taboo subject. But now it’s vanished. The Black Lives Matter movement is only concerned with Black lives if their taken by Whites. And its fair to say that many Black are very unhappy about this.

One Black Conservative American youtuber last year put up a long video about why many Black Americans hated Black Lives Matter. This consisted of clips of Black people, including business people as well as ordinary peeps, stating very clearly that in their experience, all the abuse and violence had come from other Blacks, not Whites. This included a man, who’d been physically threatened as well as people, who’d seen their shops and businesses trashed by the rioters.

There is indeed a widespread, deep distrust of the police amongst the Black community in both America and Britain. It’s doubtless due to the real racism Blacks have experienced at the hands of White cops. Since the race riots in Britain of 1981/2 there have been efforts to recruit more Black and ethnic minority officer into the police as a way of countering this. Cressida Dick, the Met’s police chief, has announced that she wishes to recruit a further 20,000 police officer. To Alex Belfield’s horror, she is also trying to change the law to give preference to Black applicants. She’s almost certainly doing this, or wants to do it, because of the long-standing campaign to get more Blacks into the rozzers as a way of gaining the community’s trust.

As for the reluctance of the people at the party to give evidence against the shooters, my guess is that there are other factors at work quite apart from simple racial solidarity. It’s been suggested that it was a gang shooting, and they accused were really trying to kill Johnson’s partner. Johnson was simply unlucky enough to get in the way. In this case, the silence of the other partygoers probably is due to fear for their lives. A Black resident of Bristol’s St. Paul’s area said much the same after the riots of 1981/2. She was on the side of the police against the rioters, as she wrote in an article in the Bristol Evening Post that the area was being terrorised by criminal gangs, and people were afraid of speaking out against them.

But there’s also a marked hostility amongst Black anti-racist activists to media reporting of Black on Black violence. Remember the murder of Demilola Taylor? He was a 12 year old Black lad, who was stabbed by a gang on his way home from school, finally bleeding to death in the stairwell of the block of flats where he lived. A vile, horrific murder that shocked the nation and was extensively reported in the press. I’ve mentioned before the many vile attitudes held by the Black and Asian Studies Association that thoroughly disgusted me when I read their wretched newsletter. One of the worst was their accusation that the Beeb was being ‘racist’ for reporting it. In issue 32/33 of their newsletter they complained about its reporting and stated that the media should instead have carried stories about all the Blacks murdered by Whites. They were showing their prejudices here. They’d obviously concluded that Taylor was murdered by a Black gang, but their ethnicity hadn’t been mentioned on the national news and it was later revealed that it was made up of people of different races. It’s an attitude based, no doubt, on the extensive reporting of Black criminality by the right-wing press, which certainly was racially biased. I’ve no doubt that the Black activists, who oppose the reporting of Black on Black assault and murder do so from a genuine belief that this somehow supports anti-Black racism and ‘negative stereotypes’ of Black people.

But most of the Black people stabbed and shot are attacked by other Blacks. And I’ve no doubt that there are many British Blacks, like those in America, who would like this to become an issue. They want their neighbourhoods to be safe, and to be able to raise families and run businesses without fear of being robbed, looted or murdered by anyone, whether White supremacists or Black criminals.

It’s just Black Lives Matter and similar organisations, like the Black and Asian Studies Association, who want to silence any discussion of Black on Black violence.

And their determination to silence its reporting is both an indictment and makes them complicit in the killings they ignore.

My Email to Simon Webb of History Debunked on Ideologies of Black Colonisation and the Slave Trade

I sent a couple of emails to various people last week discussing and attacking what I believe to be a dangerous form of anti-White racism within Black Lives Matter and similar Black, allegedly anti-racist activism. One of these was to Simon Webb, the vlogger behind History Debunked. Now Webb is a Torygraph-reading right-winger, who believes in the Bell curve stuff about Blacks having, on average, lower intelligence than Whites. It’s dangerous stuff and did lead to the passage of discriminatory immigration and eugenics legislation. But Webb does not believe in eugenics – indeed, he criticises it in one of his videos. He also denies being racist and states that he has many Black friends and has been involved in their education. He’s certainly provided evidence of this with photos of himself surrounded by Black children, to whom he’s reading. Now I’m aware that some of his statements must be taken with a pinch of salt. Both Brian Burden and Trev have shown very clearly that some British authorities, at least, were appealing to Caribbean workers to come to Britain at the time of the Windrush migration. But there are others posts he’s made where he cites his sources and where it seems that he is almost certainly correct.

I sent him this email as it describes my own experience of briefly collaborating with the Black And Asian Studies Association, and their hardly subtle anti-White bias. He has also discussed in several of his posts the apparent desire to airbrush Black African slavery out of history. This tallies with my experience in Bristol recently, where Cleo Lake and Asher Craig, in their demands for reparations for slavery for all ‘Afrikans’ seem to be determined to put the blame for slavery solely on White Europeans and Americans. While this is a private email, I hope it clarifies some of the reasons why I am so deeply suspicious and opposed to some of the policies now being articulated by the Black Lives Matter movement and associated activist groups.

I am very much aware that anti-Black structural racism exists, and have Black and Asian friends and colleagues who have suffered the most terrible abuse and threats simply because of their colour. But I don’t believe the distorted history and identity politics of BLM are helping the matter. Indeed, I firmly believe that they are driving White and Black apart, and that they are assisting the Tories by providing them unintentionally with material they can exploit to divide the great British working class.

Dear Simon,

I hope you will forgive my contacting you like this rather than commenting on your great YouTube channel. I’ve been watching your videos for a little while. Although I have to say that we probably don’t have the same party political views, I do share your concerns with the way myth and deliberate falsifications which are now being passed as authentic Black history by activists, educators and the media., I thought you might be interested to hear of my experiences with certain Black groups.

Way back in the 1990s and very early years of the present century I did voluntary work at the former Empire and Commonwealth Museum at Bristol’s Temple Meads station. I really enjoyed working there, and met some great people, which include Black volunteers and historians. I was tasked with putting together a database of the Museum’s holdings on slavery. These were mostly copies of text documents and official papers the Museum had acquired from the Commonwealth Office. There was also a library of books people had kindly donated to the museum. These included not just the classic texts and studies against transatlantic slavery but also contemporary studies, including those of it in modern Black Africa. I also briefly cooperated with a Black organisatiion, the Black and Asian Studies Association in providing them with materials for Black history week. 

This cooperation ended when I had a look at a copy of their wretched magazine. I think it was number 32/33. I took immediate exception to the tone. While there were exceptions, the attitude behind most of it was that all White people were automatically racist unless shown to be otherwise. Moreover, that issue came out after the Observer had run an article predicting that by the middle years of this century, Whites would be a minority in Britain. The magazine simply reported this in its ‘things you should know about’ column. However, a few lines later it sternly rejected any limits on Black and Asian immigration to Britain as racist, and stated that Blacks needed their own, special, exclusive spaces. This is, in my view, colonialist. It resembles what we did in our colonies. 

I sent them a reply, which reminded them that certain parts of the Arab world also enslaved Blacks, backed up by an obituary in the Independent of a Sudanese Black civil rights activist, who had been told by his Arab compatriots that Blacks shouldn’t be educated and were to be used as slaves. I also pointed out that there was unreported class of White poor in South Africa, as covered by another piece in the Independent about a photographic exhibition of works on them, ‘Outlands’, as well as other bits and pieces. They sent me back a letter telling me not go get in touch with them again.

A few years ago, after I left the museum, I tried writing a book based on the material I had amassed at the Museum. This was rejected by the mainstream publishers, so I have had it self-published with Lulu. It’s in two volumes, and is entitled The Global Campaign. In it, I tried to set British transatlantic slavery in its wider imperial setting. America and the Caribbean weren’t the only British slave colonies. There was also Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon and India, as well as the kidnapping of girls in Hong Kong, and slavery in Java and Sumatra. I also covered the infamous ‘coolie trade’ and the enslavement of indigenous Pacific Islanders.

And that, I believe, is one of the reasons why I think I was turned down. Slavery and its history has always been linked to Black civil rights activism ever since W.E.B. Dubois, who wanted equality for Black in America and independence for Black Africa. The problem here is that much of the slavery the British pledged to end was indigenous. It was by other Blacks in Africa, as well as by Arabs, Indians, Sri Lankans and the peoples of modern Malaya and Malaysia. It contradicts the cosy, received narrative that it was all Whites’ fault.

I also believe that it may have been unacceptable because not only did I deal with indigenous African slavery, I also showed its parallels with European serfdom, and argued that Europeans turned to the enslavement of Africans because their traditional sources of slaves – eastern European Slavs – had been cut off by the expanding Ottoman Empire. There were other reasons, I’m sure. A friend suggested that I may well have been turned down because, not being a tenured academic, I was outside the closed guild of people publishing on it.

If you want to read the book for yourself, it’s available from Lulu or I can send you a copy.

I‘ve also tried corresponding with Asher Craig, the Black head of equalities in Bristol in response to her comments about slavery in the city during an interview last years, and with her and Cleo Lake, a local Green councillor, after they both pushed through a motion in the city council calling for reparations for slavery to be paid to all ‘Afrikians’, which I also criticised for creating an ahistorical division between Whites and Blacks. I haven’t had a response from either of these two ladies.

Yours with very best wishes,

Channel 4 Documentary Next Wednesday on the Murder of Damilola Taylor

Here’s another documentary that may interest you, particularly if you’re old enough to remember it and the horror it rightly provoked. Damilola Taylor was a ten year old boy, who was stabbed to death by a gang on an estate in Peckham twenty years ago in 2000. It was a murder that shocked the nation, comparable to that of Stephen Lawrence who was killed in a racist attack by a White gang. Channel 4 have made a documentary in which Yinka Bokinni, a radio presenter and former friend and neighbour of the murdered lad, talks about the murder and speaks to other members of the community about it. It’s entitled ‘Damilola: the Boy Next Door’, and is on Channel 4 at 9.00 pm on Wednesday, 28th October 2020. There are two blurbs for it in the Radio Times. The first, by Jack Sealse on page 95, runs

The murder in 2000 of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor shocked Britain but, for most of us, it was an abstract, distant tragedy. Not so for Yinka Bokkini, now a radio presenter and then a kid for whom “Dami” was a friend and neighbour.

Bokinni’s documentary about the killing and its repercussions is unusually personal. She explores her own imperfect memories of Damilola and the south London community they lived in, visiting fellow residents to talk about the horror and how growing up on their Peckham estate, which was demolished soon after Damilola’s death, shaped them.

Gradually – it feels harsh to say it, but a bit too gradually – a complex picture emerges about our attitude towards run-down urban areas and the people who live there.

The second blurb, on page 97, goes

To mark the 20th anniversary of her friend Damilola Taylor’s death, Yinka Bokinni confronts the impact it had on her community, as she discovers that she is not alone in having grown up never mentioning Damilola, or even wanting to admit that she is from Peckham. Yinka attempts to reconcile the happy community she remembers so fondly with that presented in the media as a crime-ridden “sink estate”.

I have to say that I felt particularly shocked by the murder, because I was bullied at school. The whole idea of a young boy living in fear of his life, and finally being killed by a gang really did fill me with horror.

I was also massively unimpressed by the attitude towards the media coverage of his murder by the Black and Asian Studies Association, one of the groups I’d been in contact with in my volunteer work in the slavery archives at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. Their editor commented on the murder and the news coverage in an issue of their wretched magazine they sent me, I think it may have been number 31 or 32. They complained about the murder being covered, and asked instead why the media didn’t cover all the children murdered by Whites. Or something like that. They clearly believed that the media was only covering it because Taylor’s killers were black. In fact, the gang’s race was not mentioned on the news as I recall, and I think when it was mentioned the gang was composed of individuals of different races.

But I was heartily disgusted by the Association’s attitude. A ten year old boy had been murdered, for heaven’s sake! It shouldn’t matter what the colour of the victim or the perps is, it’s a chilling, horrific, contemptible destruction of a young life. It deserved to be on the news, just like the reports of other gang violence at the time. Anyone remember the story about the school teacher or headmaster murdered by another teenage gang at the gates of his school trying to protect the kids within?

And young people are still killing, or trying to kill each other in the epidemic of knife crime that’s hit this country. And I don’t doubt that the majority of the victims there are Black people from deprived, inner city estates.

I have to say, I’m not a fan of Black Lives Matter and its automatic opposition to the police. I’m well aware that some coppers have been and probably still are racist, and that perfectly decent, innocent men and women like Dawn Butler have been aggressively stopped and harassed simply because they’re Black. But I also know some excellent cops, who did their job conscientiously and with dedication. I heard from the husband of one, who had herself several times successfully arrested armed criminals, that when she went out each day, she did so with the intent of making sure no-one was going to die that day.

And no-one should.

Black lives matter, and I wish the organisation, apart from attacking the police, would also stand up to Black on Black violence. And all children’s lives of whatever colour, ethnicity or religion do matter. That’s why we should be doing our best to make sure there aren’t any more murders like this.

Anti-White Black Racism in Seattle’s Decolonised Mathematics Syllabus

This is another video from Sargon of Akkad, the man who broke UKIP. He put it up nearly a year ago in October 2019, and the subject he discusses comes from a Daily Caller article two years before that in 2017. It’s about the move from Seattle’s public schools board to get Black students to do better at mathematics by producing a syllabus that aims to teach them how White mathematics is being used to oppress them, and how they also use it to liberate people and communities of colour.

The maths syllabus is the creation of Tracy Castro-Gill, the ethnic studies program manager for Seattle public schools, and deals explicitly with issues like ‘origins, identity and agency’, and ‘power and oppression’. The article shows the syllabus itself and what it aims to teach Seattle’s schoolkids. This starts off by teaching them that mathematical theory is rooted in ancient histories and empires of colour. Sargon doesn’t have a problem with this, as mathematical theories and formulae have been discovered independently by different peoples over time. The Babylonians, he rightly says, had versions of Pythagoras’ theorem. But he makes the point that ’empires of colour’ can also mean ‘oppressors of colour’, as this is what empires are: one ethnic group ruling another.

The syllabus then moves to demand that teachers and students ‘create counterknowledge to origins of mathematical knowledge’. This teaching ‘power and oppression in western maths’. The syllabus claims that western maths is seen as the only legitimate mathematics, and is used to disenfranchise people of colour. It erases the historical contribution of people of colour. Sargon replies by stating that different peoples have indeed independently discovered different maths theorems and formulae, but that Western maths is based on the Greeks. The syllabus also requires students to learn the history of resistance and liberation of people of colour using maths, engineering and technology. Sargon says he knows some great stories, but they are all about western maths. Like how Archimedes defended Syracuse against a Roman invasion by having the Greek soldiers align their bronze shields so that they reflected the sun’s rays as a kind of death ray. He also tells the story of Archimedes’ death. The Romans sent a soldier to capture him. When the soldier finally caught him, Archimedes was busy trying to draw a perfect circle by going through as many small points as possible. He told the soldier not to bother him, so that the soldier stabbed him with his sword.

The syllabus also includes more general questions, asking students how the feel about themselves as mathematicians and who is a mathematician? Sargon argues that a mathematician is someone who gets a problem right. But he also says that he doesn’t know, because he’s been using maths in ordinary life since he left school, as well as in computers, but doesn’t think of himself as a mathematician. He also remarks that he studied logarithms at school, and after twenty or so years still hasn’t been in a sitution that requires them. Students are also asked what it means to make a mistake, and where does power and oppression show up in people’s maths experiences. Sargon jokingly responds to this that it shows up in his maths teacher, who told him off for getting his maths wrong. there are also questions like ‘how and why does data-driven processes prevent liberation?’, ‘how is maths manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist?’, ‘how has maths been used to liberate people and communities and colour from oppression?’ and ‘Can you advocate against oppressive mathematical practices?’

As Sargon points out at the beginning of his video, this is all about teaching Black children that they are oppressed, and White children that they should feel guilty. It’s political activism that shouldn’t have a place in maths. He also argues that some of this is actually dangerous when it comes to claiming that there is a distinction between White and Black mathematics. mathematical facts are true regardless of race or culture, and lives may depend on their correct application. For example, planes depend on engineers understanding the equations governing aerodynamics. These have to be correct, and it doesn’t matter whether the person doing these is White or Black. It’s either right or wrong, and if it’s wrong, then people may die.

I realise that Sargon is a man of the right, even extreme right, and that he himself says that this subject has already been discussed in right-wing newspapers and internet sites. Nevertheless, I think this is important and needs to be discussed and refuted. Because it, or something similar, may well come over here. Black activists are worried about Black schoolchildren’s underperformance in maths. It’s why, when I still got on with the Black and Asian Studies Association they asked me if I knew anything about Black mathematics. I didn’t, but sent them material on medieval Muslim mathematicians – Persian and Arab – for which they expressed their thanks. It wouldn’t surprise me if a group in Britain was demanding a similar approach in British schools following Black Lives Matter.

Here’s the video:

There have been other attempts to create a maths syllabus that would engage and inspire Black American pupils with controversial results. Back in the 1990s Private Eye’s ‘Funny Old World’ column carried a piece about the anger that had been sparked by one American school’s or schoolboard’s attempts to appeal to its Black students. It attempted to do so by framing maths problems in the setting of Black urban gangsta culture. One of the problems set featured two gangsters, Lucius and Rufus. They had guns that had different rates of fire and held clips of different numbers of bullets. The question was on how many times these gangsters would have to fire their weapons before they had to change the guns’ clips. The schoolboard attempted to justify this and and similar questions by claiming that it reflected the home environment of their students, and they were just trying to engage them through using it. But naturally, this horrifies everyone, Black and White, who doesn’t want violent criminals to be glamourised, or feels that Black children should be inspired to identify and aim for something better. There is a caveat to this story. Some of the items in the column are, shall we say, far-fetched and others have been shown to be urban legends, so it’s quite possible that the story’s fake and was made up as a spoof or joke. But looking at the blatant bias in Seattle’s maths syllabus, as bonkers as it is, it could also be true.

I’ve suggested before in a previous video that if educators really want to inspire Black children in maths, they could teach them about some of the maths problems studied by the ancient Egyptians, or failing that, the kind of maths problems they studied, as some of the formulae the Egyptians used aren’t accurate. They might also teach them the type of maths problems studied and taught in the schools of the great Islamic civilisations in north Africa. That would clearly be better than telling them that Whites have appropriated maths to oppress Blacks and other non-White peoples.

There is clearly a viciously anti-White racism in some of the academic doctrines and approaches now being advocated and taught as pro-Black. Critical Race Theory is another one, as it teaches that all White people are racist and any institutions they set up will automatically oppress non-Whites. Trump passed an executive order last week banning its teaching in federal government. services, including the police. But Trump is himself determined to indoctrinate children with his attack on anything he considers to be liberal propaganda being taught as part of history. He has just launched the 1776 Initiative, which aims to make American history teaching even more patriotic.

Such indoctrination, whether coming from the left or right has no place in schools. Children need to be taught objective facts, both in maths and history, and encouraged to make up their own minds about race, country and politics.

Black and Islamic Calls for Autonomous Communities and Colonies in the West

On Tuesay I put up a piece comment on the plans by two Black entrepreneurs to set up a Blacks-only town in rural Georgia, to be named Wakanda after the fictional African supertechnological nation in Marvel’s Black Panther. The idea’s part of a long tradition of American ideal communities, beginning with the first Puritan settlers. it recalls the Utopian Socialist communities of the 19th century as well as the Free Black townships set up by Baptist missionaries in Jamaica, Antiqua, Demerara and Berbice in order to protect the newly freed former slaves from re-enslavement by the planters. However, coming nearly a century and a half after the abolition of slavery in America and the British Empire, this looks more like the compounds and proposed colonies of White racists, that have been set up in the Hayden Lakes area of America and which a group of British Nazis tried and failed to set up on a French farm.

Paul Boateng and the Black and Asian Studies Association

Way back in 1984/5 the Black British Labour politician, Paul Boateng, called for the establishment of autonomous Black communities in Britain. He was criticised for this in the pages of the Observer, which rightly viewed it as an attempt by Blacks to introduce apartheid. I’ve mentioned before that when I was doing voluntary work for the Empire and Commonwealth I was for a time corresponding with a Black studies organisation. This was the Black and Asian Studies Association, based in London. I split with them over the views they expressed of Whites in a copy of their magazine they sent me. I think it was no. 32/33, around about 2001-3 or so. One of the views, which I objected to was their comment that Blacks need their own space. I presume they meant by this separate arts and community centres, rather than separate geographical areas. When Blacks and other ethnic groups are a minority, and a depressed minority, this is actually reasonable and just. But they made it after reporting an article in the Observer that predicted that after the middle of this century Whites would be a minority in Britain and Europe. This was followed by another comment firmly rejecting any restrictions on non-White immigration, because it was racist. Now there was no comment about the Observer article itself. It was simply presented as something their readers should know about. I don’t know whether the editor believed the prediction or not. They could have felt it was alarmist. I don’t know. But coming after this prediction, the continued support for unlimited immigration and separate spaces for Blacks – but not for Whites – struck me as simply a form of colonialism.

Demands for Muslim Autonomous Colonies

I recall reading a passage in Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation (New Haven: Yale University Press 2009) in which he discusses the establishment of autonomous Muslim communities in America. He bases his argument on the methods used by the British in founding their own colonies. The British themselves were a minority, and so they encouraged the citizens of other European nations to settle in their colonies in exchange for which they promised to respect and preserve these peoples’ own languages, culture and laws. Thus America should permit the similar establishment of autonomous Muslim communities, who would be free to follow their own culture under sharia law but which nevertheless would still be loyal to the American state. Allawi, a former Minister of Defence and Minster of Finance in the postwar Iraqi government, is a critique of both the westernisation of Islam and Salafi fundamentalism and Islamism. But this call for Islamic colonisation really can’t be tolerated. The best defence against it is the American separation of church and state, which was used against the followers of one of the grunge gurus from India when he tried to set up a theocratic town in Oregon.

The radical Islamist Anjem Chaudhry made the same demand for an autonomous Muslim community in the pages of the Financial Times colour supplement for the 1st January, 2000. Chaudhry, then running an outfit called Sharia4Belgium, was claiming that Muslims should have their own separate community with Arabic as its language under sharia law. I think he may have been able to argue this as Belgium is already split into several different regions occupied by its different traditional ethnic groups – French-speaking Wallonia, Flanders and a German-speaking enclave. Chaudhry’s own lack of engagement with Belgium’s traditional peoples is shown in the title of his organisation. The 4/for pun simply doesn’t work in either of the country’s two majority languages, French or Flemish. This is another demand for what is in effect Muslim colonisation.

Way back in the 1990s I briefly tried a postgraduate degree researching British Islam. I eventually gave up, partly because I couldn’t handle some of the polemic coming from the radical fringes. During this time I came across similar arguments contained in books from British Islamic publishers. One was on sharia law by Ibrahim E. Doi, the former head of the Islamic society at Oxford University. Another was a guide to the adab, the traditional Muslim system of morals and courtesy. The introductions to both books demanded the establishment of independent, autonomous Muslim communities, governed by sharia law, in Britain. If these were not permitted, then British multiculturalism was a sham.

Self-Enclosed Communities in Britain and Germany

Since then I have seen plenty of articles in the press, including liberal journals like Prospect, worrying about the increasing separation between White and Muslim communities. There was an article a while ago in that magazine discussing a city in the north of England, where the Muslim and non-Muslim White communities were nearly separate with a minimum of interaction. Other articles elsewhere in the press have mentioned the situation in Germany, where the Turkish minority may also form self-enclosed communities. It has been argued that in these communities, people can get by without any knowledge of German, supported as they are by Turkish businesses and able to watch and listen to Turkish broadcasting. But I don’t believe I’ve ever come across anyone discussing the demands for separate Islamic colonies, at least not in Britain. It’s possible that the journos writing those articles don’t know about and neither do British politicians. I’ve also never heard Tommy Robinson mention them either, so it seems very likely that he and his gang of thugs don’t know about it. On the other hand, it’s also possible that the authorities are aware of them. They’re just not publicising them for fear of riots and the breakdown of ‘community cohesion’. The same reason they permitted the Asian paedophile gangs in Rotherham to go on for so long.

In many ways this is doubtless a good thing, as you can imagine the massive scaremongering and islamophobia that would be generated by the right, including Tommy Robinson and the EDL and the Daily Heil. 9/11 saw a rise in hate crimes against Muslims, and Boris Johnson’s infamous article in the Torygraph attacking the burqa resulted in further physical attacks on the minority of Muslim women clad in the garment. Several were murdered.

Sharia Law Small Minority in British Islam

It’s important not to exaggerated the numbers of western Muslims, who may support this view. One of the papers a few years ago notoriously claimed that the majority of British Muslims wanted the establishment of sharia law here. In fact a close reading of the stats showed that only 5 per cent of Britain’s Muslims wanted it, and then only where it didn’t conflict with British law. I’ve heard that most Muslims in the West base their ideas on Islamic law on the Qu’ran, where most of this is about inheritance, rather than systems of government. I very much doubt that the majority of Muslims would welcome the formal imposition of what amounts to a system of autonomous ghettos, and certainly not those immigrants who have come to Britain to escape persecution in very draconian and authoritarian Islamic states.

The demands for separate, autonomous Muslim communities seem to be attempts by Islamic traditionalists to impose their views on the majority of their coreligionists, who seem more comfortable in a multi-faith society allowing the free interactions of people with different religious or non-religious views. And the general Muslim community seems to have become less insular, stressing engagement with wider British society rather than retreat. This has been shown in Muslim restaurants feeding the poor and homeless during the Christmas period, and community festivals like Eid, commemorating the end of Ramadan. This is celebrated with a large feast, which the Muslim community in parts of Bristol shared with their non-Muslim fellow residents.

No No-Go Zones in Britain

Fox News made itself a massive laughing stock a few years ago when it hysterically claimed that Muslims were taking over Britain. Birmingham was 100 per cent Muslim, which surprised the mayor and people of that great city. There were no-go areas in towns throughout Britain, where non-Muslims feared to tread. This was also angrily refuted by the mayors and politicos of those towns so accused, as well as ordinary British peeps.

Nevertheless, these calls for segregation do seem to be still around. A while ago I noticed in the ‘ethnicity’ shelves in Bristol’s Central Library a book by a prominent Muslim woman from one of the northern cities. I can’t remember who she was, but one of her claims was she was a matchmaker and an agony aunt, who had appeared on the Beeb’s Asian Network. The book’s blurb stated that it was about the rise of racial conflict and violence between Asians and other ethnic groups, and offered ‘a surprising solution’. The only surprising solution I can think of is segregation. I didn’t look at the book, so I might be wrong.

Belfield on Islam in Birmingham

I also wonder if this, or similar views, are secretly held by some of the leaders of Britain’s Muslim communities. Following the stabbings in Birmingham, right-wing radio host and Youtuber Alex Belfield put up video calling for Birmingham’s authorities to clamp down on the threatening environment in one particular area of the city. Some of this was uncontroversial. He specifically mentioned the druggies on the streets there. But he also, and some of the callers to his programme, claimed that there was a Muslim presence there which was overpowering and threatening to non-Muslims. He attacked the chanting coming from the local mosque, as well as preaching, some of which seemed to be political by Muslims on the street. This, he said, was not tolerated in other towns.

I wouldn’t like to say that Belfield is personally racist. Certainly one of the callers supporting his view wasn’t. She said she had no problem with the Black population of the area, who were also Brummies. But he is vehemently anti-immigrant, condemning the arrival of asylum seekers from Calais. He also seems to be have been taken in by the rumours that the stabbings were committed not by a Black Brit with mental health problems, but by one of the Somalian asylum seekers he and Nigel Farage have been moaning about. He also attacked Leeds English language local radio for broadcasting warnings about the Coronavirus in Urdu, which is the language, or one of the languages used on the Beeb’s Asian Network, which is also based in Leeds.

Covert Support for Extremism Among Some British Muslim Leaders

But there is a problem in that the leaders of Birmingham Central Mosque and British Islamic organisations have a history of saying one thing and believing quite another. Ed Hussain in his book, The Islamist, an account of his time as a militant Islamic radical, describes the various leaders of the British Muslim community, who visited No. 10 to reassure Tony Blair that they supported his campaign against Islamic radicalism, all the while holding the very beliefs they affected to condemn. It’s therefore quite possible that the leaders of whatever mosque Belfield was attacking may want Muslim autonomous areas, and are acting on this belief as far as they can in a democratic, pluralist society. I hope not, but I don’t know.

This is a situation that needs watching. It will be interesting to see if Black British and Muslim radicals start making demands for autonomous areas following developments in America. If so, they need to be discussed, refuted and fought. Such views would be unacceptable coming from White supremacists and racists, and should be no more tolerated coming from any other colour or religion.

Tommy Robinson’s Equipment Seized After Breaking Lockdown Rules

The odious Dominic Cummings wasn’t the only right-winger to be caught breaking the lockdown. So was Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, the notorious islamophobe. Robinson had been nabbed by the fuzz, which can be extremely painful, in Cumbria when he was trying to get to Barrow-on-Furness. The rozzers seized his equipment – his car, his phone and his camera.

This set the anti-Muslim bully-boy off on a long rant against Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter was caused by the radicalisation of people by Antifa, socialist, communist activists. It’s the product of identity politics imported from the US, and funded by the Americans, communism and Marxism. BLM was also supported by the media and ‘the whole remain movement’. Antifa were a ‘far-left’, Fascist organisation, which is an oxymoron. He also attacked someone called Anthony Joshua, who has apparently called for Blacks not to shop at White businesses. Robinson called him a Black supremacist and claimed he was being funded by Saudi Arabia.

Ominously, Robinson also said that he was coming to London this past weekend for a non-racist, patriotic demonstration. “It’s not an anti-Black Lives Matter protest. Many people were there for the right reasons, but you’ve been hijacked by Antifa, you’re being used … on Saturday, many non-white people will be standing with patriots – here Zelo Street interpolated the right interpretation of this clause – [patriots can clearly only be white, then] cos we cannot rely on the Police”.

But as the events on Saturday showed, it was an anti-BLM demonstration. Thugs and louts from the Democratic Football Lads’ Alliance turned up waving anti-Black Lives Matter placards. They were also seen setting fire to a BLM poster whilst describing the person on it as a ‘Black c***’. They were clearly hoping to start a fight with the BLM protesters, who had planned on demonstrating that day. However, those protesters had moved their event to last Friday. Denied their chosen targets, the Fashy idiots decided to attack the cops instead. One of them spat at and threatened a young woman, who was simply picnicking with her friends, while another was seen urinating next to the memorial for the policeman killed defending parliament from an islamist attack. He wasn’t actually widdling on it, as right-wing rent-a-mouth Julia Hartley-Brewer was keen to point out, as if that somehow exonerated this prize bit of drunken yobbishness. Well, no, but it still was a despicable sacrilege to the memory of a brave man. And as the peeps on Twitter also pointed out, urinating in public is still an offence, as it’s an act of public indecency. They were, in short, a disgraceful, drunken rabble, which, if you read the anti-racism, anti-religious extremism site, Hope Not Hate, is just bog-standard, typical behaviour for the far right.

Black Lives Matter has been imported from America, but I really don’t know if it’s funded from there. The BLM demonstrations seemed to me to be spontaneous and occurred all over the world. They are undoubtedly supported by the left, including socialists and communists, but I doubt very much they are an exclusive socialist or communist movement. For all that the various communist movements and parties would like to believe they are instrumental in mobilising mass protest, the truth is the opposite. The collapse of communism globally took most of the local, national communist parties with it. And they were never very popular anyway. The British Communist party reached its peak of popular support in the mid-’70s. When I was a schoolboy in the 1980s, I noticed that in one set of elections in Bristol – I think it was around ’82 or ‘3’ – the local Communist party got 45 votes, beating the National Front, who only got 40. Hardly anybody voted for them. The Socialist Workers’ Party, now the Socialist Party, has done its level best to infiltrate and colonise other people’s protest movements, but their efforts have always been counterproductive. When they inflitrated ‘Rock Against Racism’ in the early ’80s and tried to turn it into a satellite organisation, the mass of members simply left and the organisation, and their plan for using it to radicalise the masses towards Marxism – collapsed. The people who joined ‘Rock Against Racism’ did so because they were anti-racist, not because they were interested in revolutionary socialism.

I also don’t know how many supporters of anti-racist movements like Black Lives Matter are actually socialists. I got the impression that Jo Cox, the Labour MP murdered by racist fanatic Thomas Mair, was on the anti-socialist, Blairite right of the party. Anti-racism and feminism are liberal movements. They are about expanding democracy, opportunity and social participation to include marginalised groups, in this case, ethnic minorities and women. But that can simply mean improving opportunities for individuals, rather than improving conditions generally for the poor or the working and lower middle classes. Hence Blair could back anti-racism campaigns and the movement to get more women in business, science and parliament, without taking up nationalisation or turning away from the Thatcherite road of privatisation, welfare cuts, the destruction of the unions and selling off the NHS. Socialists have adopted anti-racism and feminism as part of a general concern to emancipate those excluded and exploited by capitalism.

I’ve already blogged about the real reasons for the Black Lives Matter protests, as opposed the stupid conspiracy theories about Marxists spouted by Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s primarily a reaction to the disproportionate use of lethal force by the police against Blacks. But it’s also caused by continuing racial inequalities and the grinding poverty of Black communities, as well as everyday anti-Black racism. It’s why the BLM protest in Cheltenham last weekend included a poem by a little girl, Nylah, about why Blacks should take no notice when people tell them they aren’t beautiful. It’s a subject that has haunted many Black people. I came across a similar poem about Black beauty in an issue I was sent at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum of the magazine of the Black and Asian Studies Association. That was 20 years ago, and it is a disgrace that after nearly fifty years of such campaigning, some Black people still somehow feel that they are less attractive than Whites. But it’s also a demonstration that Black pride and anti-racism are humanist movements that go beyond the ideological boundaries of socialism and communism, although both of the latter may and should support them.

Back to Robinson, by his own admission his phone contains footage of his activities. These includes turning up announced on his critics’ doorsteps with a few of his henchmen in order to intimidate them into silence. He also inadvertently doxes them, posting their private information online but telling his followers not to trouble them, and then deleting the information. It all looks suspiciously like incitement, while Robinson himself pretends the opposite. He didn’t want anyone to harass anybody, honest! Look, he’s deleted their information. Robinson did it to the parents of a lad, who persisted in criticising Robinson online and who had pointed out that Robinson’s expensive house showed he was definitely not the poor, working class lad he claimed. He did it to the anti-racist activist Mike Stuchbery, who was forced to leave his teaching job in this country after Robinson falsely claimed, or insinuated, that he was abusing children. And he did it to Tim Felton himself, the man behind Zelo Street. Naturally Tim hopes that the rozzers crack the codes and passwords into Robinson’s phone, and get all the sordid details. Including who is breaking privacy laws by giving Robinson other peoples’ private addresses.

Robinson’s got a series of convictions as long as your arm. These include assault and contempt of court for his repeated violations of the very tight legislation governing trial reportage. That’s legislation intended to make sure the accused get a fair trial. In the case of the Asian grooming gangs and paedophiles, whose trials Robinson has insisted on covering, this means making sure that if they are guilty, their lawyers can’t have the cases dropped because Robinson’s stupid vlogging stops them getting a fair trial.

So far Robinson has had suspended sentences, or those of only a few months. But depending on what the police are able to get out of his phone, that really could change. And it could net some of Robinson’s vile collaborators with him.

See also: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/lennon-loses-his-instruments.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/lennon-loss-lacked-lockout.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/fascist-scum-really-are-scum.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/julia-hartley-doodas-piss-poor-excuse.html