Sargon Attacked for Anti-Semitism

After the Mail on Sunday’s hit piece on YouTube rightist Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad at the weekend comes yet another attack from the Jewish News and Jewish Chronicle. Sargon has been adopted by UKIP as their second listed candidate for the southwest. And so the media has spent the last few weeks tearing him apart for his highly controversial views about race and feminism.

Sargon’s Infamous Rape Tweet

Sargon is infamous for his tweet to Labour MP Jess Phillips saying ‘I wouldn’t even rape you’ after she read out in parliament the rape and death threats she’d received over social media. He also made a video against ‘political correctness’ and identity politics, in which he used various racial slurs against Blacks, Hispanics, Jews and Asians, called gays ‘fags’ and the mentally handicapped ‘retards’.

Apparent Support for Sexual Abuse of Boys 

The MoS’ article discussed these, but also included new allegations, that Sargon approved of the sexual abuse of underage boys. A dossier of information handed over to the rozzers by an unnamed senior official in UKIP included the recording of a conversation Sargon had on YouTube. In it he said he could be quoted as saying that it was acceptable to f*** young boys, because it was normal in ancient Greece. ‘It’, he said, ‘all depends on the child’.

Jews, Identity Politics and the Holocaust

Yesterday Zelo Street put up an article reporting that Sargon has now been attacked for anti-Semitism for comments he made at an evening in New York with YouTube independent journo and actor and stand-up comedian Carlos Alazraqui. The evening was recorded, and put up on Sargon’s YouTube channel under the title ‘The Manhattan Panel’. Sargon had made the comments in response to a question by a member of the audience about a powerful and influential Jewish political group, and how he could point them out without engaging in identity politics.

Sargon replied by defending Jeremy Corbyn. He stated that though he was loath to defend a socialist, Corbyn didn’t deserve the pasting he had received. He then went on to make the following comments

“Jewish people do very well in our societies. That’s to their credit, they work hard. It’s not that this is illegitimately gained. But then I can see why people are resentful that successful, rich, well-off people, who are well connected, who are socially very advanced, are then playing the game of identity politics as well.

“I can see why it doesn’t seem fair. It seems like an unfair defence, an unfair advantage that they have. If someone were to say, ‘Well that’s anti-semitic thing to say,’ it would sound to me like someone criticising feminism and being called a mysoginist. To me it’s just another brand of identity politics.”

He then went on

“Jewish people are very smart, they work very hard, of course they’re successful, if we want to even have any idea that we’re living in a meritocracy, if Jews weren’t succeeding in our societies they must be being held back. But they’re not, they’re doing great, because they’re not being held back, because they do work hard, because they are smart.

“We need Jewish people, unfortunately for them, have got to drop the identity politics.

“I’m sorry about the Holocaust but I don’t give a shit. I’m sorry.”

It is this comment about the Holocaust that was criticised by the two papers as anti-Semitic, who also mentioned that he had also made other racial and anti-Semitic slurs.

Sargon’s Defence of Racial Slurs against Asians

Zelo Street in their piece about Sargon’s comments linked it to the remark he made in his video defending his right to use abusive terms against those of others, gays and the mentally handicapped. He argued that he had the right to call Asians ‘ch*nks’ because they were generally more prosperous and thus more privileged than Whites. Zelo Street quoted Sargon’s comments, adding their own pertinent remarks thus

“Because Asians are privileged. In almost every walk of life, Asians make more money [what does that remind you of?], they have better results, and they do better in life than me, just a dumb-ass cracker. So when Asians are filling up all of those top spots in better proportion than white people [?] you have to understand you have institutional privilege”.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/04/carl-benjamin-in-anti-semitism-storm.html

This is based on the Buzzfeed article at

https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/benjamin-akkad-racial-statements

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism on the Disparagement of the Holocaust

Sargon’s comments were inevitably going to be considered anti-Semitic. Way back in 2014 the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism published a list of remarks they considered to be anti-Semitic. Two of them were about lack of sympathy for the Holocaust. These were ‘Jews talk too much about the Holocaust’, and ‘Jews talk about the Holocaust to make people feel sorry for them.’ These are more or less the kind of sentiments Sargon was expressing.

Zionist Appropriation of Holocaust 

Now Tony Greenstein, who is a Jewish anti-Zionist, has made the point that the Jewish community in Britain is generally comfortably middle class, and that the loud accusations of anti-Semitism leveled at critics of Israel are unjust, because Jews don’t suffer the massive hatred and institutional racism suffered by Blacks, Asians and Muslims. In contemporary Britain, there are no forced deportations of Jews as there have been of Blacks and other non-White minorities, such as those of the Windrush generation and their children.

Greenstein and other Jewish critics of Israel, such as Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe and even Hannah Arendt have described how the Holocaust has been appropriated by Zionism to support and fend off criticism of Israel. This is controversial, obviously, but nevertheless it’s  a fair point, which should be able to be discussed without accusations of anti-Semitism.

But Sargon didn’t mention Zionism. He was simply referring to ‘the Jews’.

The Holocaust and Gentile Resentment of Jewish Success

A number of Jewish writers and bloggers have made it clear that they don’t like people praising them for their economic and social success, because this can too easily turn into envy and resentment. Which is absolutely true. The Nazis and other anti-Semites resented Jewish success. They attempted to explain it with stupid, murderous conspiracy theories like the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. These claimed that the Jews were planning to enslave non-Jews and were doing their best to squeeze gentiles out of important positions in politics, business and culture. This happened in Germany, which during the 19th century was one of the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe. I’ve read histories of the Jewish community in 19th century Germany that have argued that there was far less prejudice against them there than in France or Britain. The Holocaust, apart from the Jewish people’s long history of persecution, has left behind a terrible legacy of social insecurity. It continues to be discussed because it occurred in the West, in one of the most civilised and cultured nations in Europe. It fascinates and terrifies because it shows that, despite the West’s ideas of progress and civilisation, they also could commit horrific acts of mass barbarism against innocents, simply because they were the wrong race.

Anti-Semitism and Persecution Easily Generated Under Fascism

And such resentment can be generated very quickly, even in societies where there was little traditional anti-Semitism. In Italy, for example, there was also extremely little anti-Semitism. The Jewish community was small and assimilated. They were proud Italians, so proud, in fact, that many even joined the Fascist party. But this changed after Mussolini passed his infamous racial legislation in 1937. It was a milder imitation of Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, and similarly banned Jews from positions in the Fascist party, government, education and certain businesses. Initially there was shock and outrage from the Italian public. But after a few years of repression, in which gentiles who commiserated with and supported Jews were harassed and punished, part of the Italian public began to wonder if the Jews had not brought it all on themselves and deserved it for somehow conspiring against Italy and Mussolini. The regime’s spies were thus pleased to observe that anti-Semitism was therefore increasing.

See: Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy (London: Vintage Books 2013).

Asians in Similar Social Position to Jews

Asians are in a similar situation. Although certain Asian groups, like the Chinese and Hindus in Britain, have managed to prosper, they have also experienced racial prejudice and discrimination, and are at risk of abuse and violence from racists and Fascists like other, less privileged minorities. Hence the same concern to see them also protected from racism, including abusive language.

Sargon Not Anti-Semite, But Views Normalise Racism

I don’t think it’s fair to call Sargon an anti-Semite. I think he may even have claimed to be Jewish. He clearly admires the Jews for the way they earned their success through hard work and enterprise, although not everyone in the Jewish community is rich or comfortably off by any means. David Rosenberg on his blog has described how there are still Jews, who are poor and depend very much on the welfare state that Sargon, as a Libertarian, sorry, ‘Classical Liberal’ would like to see demolished. And Sargon is right in that there would indeed be something wrong with Britain as a meritocracy, if talented people from minorities like the Jews couldn’t rise in society.

But Sargon’s views on race, identity politics and the Holocaust are ignorant and dangerous, because they legitimize certain forms of racism. And his views on the Holocaust are particularly dangerous because, without its proper remembrance, horrors like it may be all too easily committed again. Sargon has argued with the Far Right on debates on YouTube, but some of his views are so close to theirs that Fascists like Richard Spencer have confessed to using some of his videos as gateways to their own vile ideologies and organisations.

Sargon thus deserves all the media criticism he has received for his extreme right-wing views. He was always a liability to UKIP, and since Batten adopted him and the other YouTube rightists he’s been bringing them down with him. And I don’t doubt the criticism are over yet.

 

 

 

Shaun Bailey: Not Only Islamophobic, but also Misogynist

On Wednesday, Mike put up a piece reporting and commenting on a story by Business Insider about the rather unpleasant attitude Shaun Bailey, the Tory candidate for mayor of London, has for girls from poor backgrounds. He has made a series of comments in an article he wrote for the Torygraph, at the Tory party conference in 2008 and in 2005, when he was a social worker, claiming that young women deliberately became pregnant to get a flat or benefits. He also said that poor people need rules to stop them from turning to crime, and that girls were more likely to start smoking than boys because they had the ‘smoker’s attitude’.

Labour’s Rosina Allin-Khan told Buzzfeed, the site that uncovered some of these comments, that it was appalling sexism and misogyny.

Mike in his article points out that Bailey’s campaign team tried to excuse him by saying they were the “blunt words” of someone “who hasn’t figured it all out” but wanted to make a contribution to society by offering his experiences, “however raw they might seem now”.

Mike advises his readers to go to the Business Insider and Buzzfeed articles, look at them, and decide for themselves. But he doubt their decisions will be favourable to Bailey. He recognizes that people’s attitudes change over time, and that we might hear from Bailey a statement disowning his comments. But Mike won’t be holding his breath.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/10/10/shaun-bailey-tory-london-mayoral-candidate-is-sexist-as-well-as-racist-it-seems/

This isn’t the first time Bailey’s shown an unpleasant, bigoted attitude. At the end of last month, Mike put up a piece reporting that Bailey had retweeted an image of Sadiq Khan, the present London mayor, as the Mad Mullah of Londonistan. The Tory party tried to excuse this by saying that he didn’t really look at the image before he retweeted it. Or something like that.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/09/29/tories-appoint-racist-as-their-new-london-mayoral-candidate/

‘Londonistan’ is the name ‘Mad’ Melanie Phillips, a writer for the Heil, has given to Muslim London in her book of the same name, because she claims the capital’s Islamic community is full of Islamist terrorists. And Mike’s article also shows that people on Twitter, including Jeremy Corbyn, were also quick to connect Bailey’s sneer with Zac Goldsmith’s Islamophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan, in which he claimed that his rival was indeed a supporter of Islamist terrorism.

Now we see Bailey repeating the old Tory lie that young women just get pregnant in order to sponge off the state. It’s a lie that’s been repeated endlessly in the Tory press, particularly the Heil. Now I dare say that in the case of some women, who are poor and desperate, this might be the case. I can remember a female friend telling me years ago that if she was homeless, she would try and get pregnant to be rehoused. Incidentally, that young woman was a very hardworking and responsible citizen. It was an expression of the desperate measures she would take, if she was in that position.

I don’t know if the young women Bailey encountered deliberately did get pregnant to get housing and benefits, as he said. For all the ranting about benefit fraud and unmarried mothers in Tory rags like Geordie Grieg’s esteemed organ, the rates of schoolgirl pregnancy and people fraudulently claiming benefits are absolutely miniscule, a fraction of a percent. But thanks to the vile Tory press, a poll of the British public found that they thought 25 per cent of all benefit claims were fraudulent, and the country was drowning in waves of schoolgirl mothers.

And unmarried mothers were on Peter Lilly’s foul little list of the people he hated, which he paraded at a Tory conference back in the 1990s in a weird parody of the Mikado. They’re also a threat to ‘our stock’, according to Maggie’s mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, showing his own eugenicist, Social Darwinist attitude to poverty.

I also wonder if there isn’t a little bit of racism in their as well. Bailey didn’t mention what colour these girls were, but it reminded me very much of the fear Reagan and his supporters whipped up over in America about Black ‘welfare queens’. These are young girls in the ghettos, who supposedly get pregnant by any number of different men in order to claim benefits. A little while ago I came across an article – I think it was in Counterpunch, the American radical magazine and news site – which argued that the Republicans used Blacks and ethnic minorities to hate on other people of colour. They supported the argument with numerous examples of BAME Republicans attacking Muslims as an invasive culture, incompatible with American culture and values, and the Black community for its supposed criminality and contentment to rely on state support. In actual fact, American sociologists have found that while there are real problems of poverty in Black America, they’re the same kind that afflicts White society. The only reason they’re more acute is because Blacks in general are much poorer than Whites.

But perhaps I’m wrong about Bailey. Perhaps he isn’t racist towards other, poorer Blacks. He is, however, retailing the same story the Tories use to justify benefit cuts. And these cuts are pushing people into grinding poverty, and claiming lives.

Racist or not, Bailey, and the party that has adopted and supported him, is a disgrace. He’s a bigot who has no business being mayor of world city like London. Just as Tweezer and the Tories have no business being Prime Minister and the government.

More Eugenics from the Tories: Voice of Conservative Youth Wanted Young Unemployed Sterilised

I just read this little bit by Mike over at his Vox Political blog. It seems that Ben Bradley, who was appointed by Tweezer as the vice-chair of Young People, put up a blog post in 2012 declaring that unless something was done, Britain would drown in a sea of ‘unemployed wasters’ due to unemployed people on benefits having too many children. He then argued that they should be forced to have vasectomies. The story was, apparently, uncovered by Buzzfeed, and when they came to Bradley for comment, he simply deleted the article.

Bradley’s a nasty piece of work anyway. He was four-square behind the benefit cap, and voted against scrapping tuition fees, against university maintenance grants, against nurses’ bursaries, against Education Maintenance Allowance, ending the public sector pay cap and increases to the minimum wage.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/01/17/the-voice-of-tory-youth-unemployed-wasters-should-have-vasectomies/

In other words, he’s a typical Tory, who thinks only of enriching himself and his class, and exploiting working people, who no doubt after Ayn Rand he also regards as ‘moochers’ and ‘looters’. His comments about sterilising the young unemployed are pure eugenics. In the early part of the 20th century, the chattering classes all over Europe and America were worried by the possibility that the ‘dysgenic’ poor would outbreed all the responsible, biologically superior middle and upper classes, and so demanded legislation to stop them breeding. This programme was then taken up by the Nazis, who sterilised the congenitally disabled and recidivist criminals, before launching the infamous Aktion T4, which saw the mentally retarded murdered by Nazi doctors in clinics, in an operation run by the SS.

One of those, who was impressed by the eugenics argument was Lord Beveridge, before he issued his report that laid the foundations for the NHS. Beveridge argued that the long-term unemployed should be granted state support, but in return they would have to be sterilised to prevent them producing more children like them, who would be a drain on the state’s resources.

It’s recently been revealed that amongst his other activities, Toby Young attended a eugenics conference at University College London, as well as writing an article supporting it. And way back in the 1970s, Thatcher’s mentor Sir Keith Joseph expressed similar sentiments when he claimed that unmarried mothers were a threat to ‘our stock’.

The Tory party, it seems, is full of borderline Nazis, who hate the poor and the disabled, and wish them nothing but harm. Because they consider them a positive threat, not just to their position in society, but also to their biological superiority and purity.

Here’s Chunky Mark’s perspective on Bradley’s comments, in which he states that Bradley’s comments about it aren’t really an apology. He merely says that ‘the language was wrong’. Chunky Mark states that we are just experiments to the Tories, with people dying in corridors, and hormones injected into our food animals, which contaminate the meat. The Tories really believe in eugenics, and we’re their dinner.

Vox Political: Lewes Bonfire Night to Feature Giant Effigy of Cameron and Pig

One of the most spectacular and elaborate celebrations of Bonfire Night is that held at Lewes. They have a long tradition of producing, and then burning, particularly huge and well made guys that frequently make a satirical dig about those in authority. A few years ago the Tory press was delighted about how the Bonfire revellers had produced effigies of Tony Bliar, and possibly Gordon Brown, to consign to the flames.

If the news from Buzzfeed is right, the likes of Murdoch, Dacre and Dirty Dez and co. probably aren’t going to be quite so happy about this year’s guy.

According to Mike over at Vox Political, they’ve made one of David Cameron, with a pig and a fox. Because of that story about Dave inserting part of his anatomy into a severed pig’s head in order to get into the Piers Gaveston Society when he was at Oxford.

Mike’s story’s at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/11/05/a-massive-effigy-of-david-cameron-and-a-pig-is-going-to-be-set-on-fire-buzzfeed-news/

Go there for a sneaky peek of what it looks like.

It should be said that there’s very little to support the story of Dave Cameron performing an unmentionable act with the remains of a pig. It’s a scurrilous tale, the primary, and indeed nearly the only source for which is Lord Ashcroft. And his reason for recounting it seems to be pique at not having got a place in the government after all the money he’d donated to the Tories over all these years.

As this looks like the kind of corruption the Eighteenth century was notorious for, I don’t see how anyone actually comes out looking any good. Not Ashcroft, for effectively trying to bribe his way into parliament. And not Cameron, for accepting the bribe. It is, however, much more difficult to produce an effigy portraying the act of accepting bribes, and the story about Cameron and the pig has better comedy value.