I have a kind of love-hate relationship with Private Eye. Mostly I like it, but today I find myself wishing there was another satirical magazine around, one that wasn’t captured by the political-media complex. One that genuinely was subversive, crusading and really brought you the news that the papers and the lamestream media wouldn’t, and didn’t want you to know about. Because Private Eye is establishment. Its founders were all public schoolboys, as is its current editor, Ian Hislop. And yesterday it showed.
It ran an article on the imminent departure from politics of Diane Abbott for her letter to the Absurder stating that Jews don’t experience racism, and when they do, it’s like the prejudice against people with ginger hair. Unlike Blacks, who were enslaved and forced to the back of the bus under segregation. She ignored the Holocaust and the fact that across parts of Europe and America various institutions, like the universities, set limits on the number of Jews they would take in case they became dominated by Jews. I’ve also heard from people of Jewish heritage that California at one time wouldn’t allow Jews to own property. Abbott is completely wrong, as she’s been told by everyone.
I don’t believe, though, that Abbott is an anti-Semite. She just doesn’t believe anyone except people of colour, and that means primarily Blacks, suffer racism. And she doesn’t want racism by non-White ethnic groups discussed, because ‘they’ would use it to ‘divide and rule’. Aside from which, as Tony Greenstein has shown citing the stats, there isn’t a lot of anti-Semitism amongst severely normal Brits. 77 per cent of British people have positive views of the Jews. Five per cent hate them, and the reminder don’t care one way or another. Given those stats, it’s easy to see how she forgot about the real persecution Jews have historically suffered.
But this was not enough for the writer of the article on Abbott’s coming fall. The anonymous author, styling himself ‘Steeplejack’, said that her views were normal for Corbyn and his faction. He then quoted some Communist who said that Corbyn never really sympathised with the Jews because of their wealth. Okay, according to the stats 60 per cent of British Jews are upper-middle class. This section of the Jewish community doesn’t vote Labour. They’re Conservatives, as shown by Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, nipping round to No. 10 to congratulate Tweezer on her elevation to Prime Minister. The liberal parts of the community generally vote Lib Dem, according to the same stats, with only a few voting Labour. And some parts of the Jewish community are very right-wing, like the two per cent who voted for the National Front in the 1970s. ‘Steeplejack’s’ article believed that it was quite right that Abbott was going to be retired and that Corbyn had been effectively purged from the party, and ended with the announcement that they were coming after John McDonnell next.
You’ll note that at no time does the article mention that Corbyn had and continues to have the strong support of that part of the Jewish community that hasn’t become entranced by the Tories. They didn’t quote anyone from Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewdas or the Jewish Socialist Group. Because they are the wrong sort of Jews. They’re all evil self-haters and anti-Semites because they support him and criticise Israel. They didn’t go to Shraga Stern for comment, who welcomed Corbyn into his synagogue. Stern’s a Haredi Jew. Their theology holds that Israel will only be restored with the return of the messiah. Until then, Jews should stay patiently in exile, working for the good of the wider community. The Haredi community has a strong respect for Corbyn as he stood by them when they opposed the commercial development of their historic cemetery. But again, the wrong sort of Jews.
Now we come to the question of the identity of ‘Steeplejack’. The last of the Eye’s correspondents pushing this nonsense was outed as a Blairite Guardian hack. I don’t know who this guy is, but the pseudonym suggests he fancies himself in the mould of Fred Dibnah, the steeplejack and broadcaster. Dibnah was very good at explaining industrial history and Britain heritage of invention, but he had very reactionary views. He didn’t believe that women should go out to work, for example. ‘Steeplejack’s’ monicker suggests he is similarly right-wing, though probably not to that extent. And he’s almost certainly another establishment journalist.
Which is what is wrong with Private Eye. You get the views of the lamestream media. It’s critical, but only up to a certain extent. The magazine thus pushed the line that Starmer was an anti-Semite for all it could, because that was what the establishment was saying, and the magazine and its editor and contributors shared the same fears of a socialist revival. It also won’t tell you that the current Ukrainian president, Volodomyr Zelensky, is a quasi-dictator very much in the same mould as Putin. Because Zelensky’s on our side against Russia, and so the people must not know that the Orange Revolution was stage managed by Obama’s Victoria Nuland at the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. Private Eye aren’t anti-establishment, just a slightly critical section of it.
John McDonnell and the Socialist group of MPs are one of the very few things keeping me in the Labour party. And now it’s clear Starmer wants to purge them, with the support of the media and goblins like Private Eye.
This is what Smeeth’s and Hodge’s gaslighting at the Labour conference was intended to protect: Stalin and the Blairites’ continued sectarian anti-Semitic persecution of decent, self-respecting Jews. The Jews they’re smearing as self-hating and anti-Semitic because they’re socialists and/or support the Palestinians. Zelo Street has put up a piece today reporting that Heather Mendick, an active member of Hackney and Shoreditch Labour party is now being investigated for actions that “may reasonably be seen to involve antisemitic actions, stereotypes and sentiments”. Mendick is herself Jewish, and the real reason for her investigation may not be un-adjacent to her position as co-secretary of Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
She was insensitively sent the email accusing her of anti-Semitism on Erev Rosh Hashanah, the ten days of repentance observed by Jews before the festival of Yom Kippur. Last week’s Private Eye contained a number of replies from readers to my letter in the previous issue attacking Labour for their accusation that I’m an anti-Semite. One of the letters was from a Jewish woman, who found their printing of my letter insensitive during one of her faith’s festivals. This is not something I have any control over. I was just responding to a false accusation by a malicious party bureaucracy. A party bureaucracy, who, it seems, themselves have absolutely no sensitivity about causing distress to Jews during a solemn holiday. Mendick states that “This was done in the name of … making the party welcoming for Jewish people. In making this claim, the Labour Party is excluding me from the category of ‘Jewish People’”. Absolutely. One of the most vile aspects of the particular smearing of decent Jews, is that the accusation causes strain and suspicion with other members of the community. Jackie Walker states that the false smear against her caused problems with her partner’s family. Her partner was Jewish, as is Walker.
Mendick has been accused because her twitter account appeared in a report compiled by the Community Security Trust. She says “In August 2019, my Twitter account was listed in the Community and Security Trust’s report Engine Of Hate. The report’s authors do not discuss my account except generically but they do state that looking in detail at my Twitter feed they found no anti-Semitic material”. In fact, only 12 of the 36 twitter accounts the CST examined contained anti-Semitic material. Mendick states “The group has needlessly defamed 24 individuals. It hasn’t retracted or apologised. And it appears unwilling to do so …The thought occurs that the CST may have selected some of its targets, knowing they did not have the means to go to law in order to defend themselves”. She further remarks that some of those smeared “are left to try and defend themselves as best they can, fearful of being attacked online, or worse, tracked down and attacked physically, while those who hang on the CST’s every word as if it were unvarnished fact compound the smear”. Absolutely. Jackie Walker has said that her daughters have stopped her looking at her email, because so much of it contains abuse and death threats.
As for the CST, they are, from what I’ve gathered, little more than a bunch of thugs in uniform. They were set up to defend Jews and Jewish buildings and monuments, like synagogues and cemeteries, from assault and vandalism. If they’d kept to that, then I wouldn’t have any problem with them. Jews have been assaulted by anti-Semites, and homes, synagogues and cemeteries vandalised. But they don’t confine themselves to that. They’ve been employed as stewards for Zionist rallies, and have abused and assaulted pro-Palestinian counterprotesters. According to the estimable Tony Greenstein, they’ve separated Muslim and Jewish protesters, ’cause heaven forbid that Jews and Muslims should march in peace and friendship against the persecution meted out by Israel. They’ve also assaulted women and punched an elderly rabbi in the mouth at one rally. But they’ve got the backing of officialdom and are supposedly trained by Mossad in self-defence, so behaving like a mob of White, gentile Fascists is perfectly OK.
I’ve written in a previous article that the CST ought to be wound up. They behave like a gang of out-of-control thugs, and act as a precedent for other groups and ethnicities demanding their own private police forces. Some of us remember the noxious ‘Muslim Patrol’ set up by Anjem Chaudhury, who marched up and down threatening non-Muslims in the streets outside his mosque. These included people drinking alcohol and a man wearing makeup. Chaudhury’s an Islamist, who ran an outfit in Belgium, ‘Shariah 4 Belgium’, that wanted a Muslim-only enclave in that country governed by Islamic rule and with Arabic as its official language. Chaudhury was jailed for supporting terrorists and his wretched Muslim Patrol closed down by the rozzers. The trouble is, you can’t reasonably stop Muslims having their own volunteer police forces while permitting Zionist Jews to have theirs. Muslims are at far greater risk of abuse and violence than Jews, except for Orthodox Jews because of their distinctive clothing.
As for Ms Mendick being investigated simply because she was mentioned in the CST’s wretched report, this is very much like the historic witch hunts, where the mere accusation was taken as proof. Except that you probably had a greater chance of acquittal in the Middle Ages. It’s more like Pemberton Billing in the years just after the First World War and his wretched ‘little black book’. Billing was a bigot, who claimed to have a book containing the names of 50,000 ‘devotees of Sodom and Lesbia’. These gays were a security threat, because they were open to being blackmailed into spying by Germany. But it looks like he was also simply just a massive homophobe. He was constantly accusing people of homosexuality, which was then illegal, and being sued for libel as a consequence. Once such trial collapsed when he loudly claimed that the judge, too, was in his wretched little black book.
This strikes me as much the same phenomenon. Decent people are being deliberately smeared by individuals with no real evidence for an ultra-nationalist end. And the mere accusation is being taken as proof, even when there isn’t any.
The majority of people being falsely accused are Jewish. This seems to me to be sectarian anti-Semitism. And its being rightly called as such by the Labour left. People in the video I put up the other day on The World Transformed talk on Starmer’s attack on democracy in the Labour party mentioned not just the purges generally, but the purges of Jewish members specifically. Despite the fact that Starmer’s wife is Jewish, and his children are being brought up in that faith, the Labour leadership and bureaucracy are so anti-Semitic in this sense that I wonder if a new nickname for Keef isn’t called for.
Instead or as well as ‘Stalin’, it struck me that ‘Stormfront’ would also be fitting after the American neo-Nazi website.
The Community Security Trust, which sounds to me to be a name taken from Monopoly’s ‘Community Trust’, are a volunteer police force originally set up to defend Jewish buildings and monuments, like synagogues and cemeteries, from attack. If that was what they only did, I’d have absolutely no problem with them. Every now and then real anti-Semites and Nazis do attack and vandalise Jewish areas. There have been incidents in the past few years where the stormtroopers have painted swastikas on Jewish homes and desecrated graves. However, there’s also a problem of precedent. If Jews are allowed to have their own police force, than other religious or ethnic groups should be allowed to have them too. But imagine the outrage if Muslims got their own! There’d soon be loud cries about the islamisation of Britain. I’m also critical of them because they joined in the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.
The problem comes when they’ve been used as stewards for pro-Israel demonstrations. They’re rumoured to have been trained in self-defence by Mossad. If that’s so, then either Mossad haven’t done a good job at teaching them about restraint and necessary force, or else they’ve trained them to treat counterdemonstrators over here the same way they would in Israel. Although possibly not as brutally, considering the real thuggery that gets meted out to the Palestinians. There have been reports of assaults on counterdemonstrators. In one incident, an elderly rabbi was punched in the face, and Jews and Muslims forcibly separated. Because God forbid that Jews and Muslims should mix and find friendship and common ground against a persecutory state.
I’ve shown the CST as skinhead thugs punching the rabbi, and calling him a traitor. This is a bit of artistic license, as I don’t think they did this. However, anti-Zionist Jews like Tony Greenstein have been assaulted and called traitors by militantly pro-Israel Jews. I’ve shown the CST thugs throwing away placards carried by a Jewish and Muslim women saying ‘Jews 4 Palestine’ and ‘End Israeli Occupation’, because women have also been attacked by them. It all seems to me less like the behaviour of any kind of responsible, respectable outfit and more like that of the violence carried out by the British Union of Fascists’ stewards at the notorious Olympia rally in the 1930s. The violence there was started by the Communists, but the BUF’s reaction was so brutal that it woke many people up to the reality of the BUF and helped to destroy their rising popularity. Perhaps if more people knew about the thuggery of the CST that would similarly help to discredit this ultra-Zionist organisation.
Ever keen to bash the Beep, the Torygraph printed another story yesterday accusing the Corporation of anti-Semitism. Benjamin Cohen, the CEO of Pink News, had been invited on to Politics Live to debate whether Jews should be included as an ethnic minority in the national census. Coming out of the show, Cohen tweeted how offended he was by the question, and that he was the only Jewish person facing a panel of four gentiles. He was absolutely sure that Jews should be treated as an ethnic minority, and asked rhetorically if the Beeb would have asked that question of a Black or Asian guests.
Actually, it’s a very good question whether Jews are an ethnic minority, and colour is a part of the issue. Before the rise of biological racism, Jews were largely persecuted in Christian Europe because of their religion. The persecution generally ceased if they converted. Before the outbreak of Nazism and the horrors of the Third Reich, the majority of Jews in Europe did not wish to be seen as a separate people from those the countries in which they lived. The British Jewish establishment opposed the Balfour Declaration because they believed that Jews were ‘Englishmen of the Jewish religion’. The British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, they feared, would lead to Jews being viewed as foreigners, whose ultimately loyalty was to the new state, rather than loyal British citizens.
Even now there is a healthy debate within Judaism about whether it is a ethnic group, a religion or a descent group. Not all Jews are happy with being considered an ethnic minority. The comedian, opera director and broadcaster, Dr Jonathan Miller, is one of them. One of the team of satirists in Beyond the Fringe, along with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett, Miller was once introduced as a Jew on a programme covering the jolly funsters. Miller responded by stating that he was a ‘Jewish’. He had not interest in being an ethnic minority.
Jews also differ from the other groups regarded as ethnic minorities in terms of race, and socio-economic status. Traditional, indigenous European Jews are White, as the founder of modern scientific racial classification, Ludwig Blumenbach, maintained. Some of them, like Tracy-Anne Oberman, are more ‘Aryan’ in appearance than the Nazi scumbags, who abuse them. Which shows how wrong scientifically Nazism is, as well as evil. Where there has been anti-Semitic abuse and violence, it has been generally directed against Orthodox Jews, no doubt because of their characteristic dress and appearance.
The British Jewish community is also largely more prosperous than other ethnic groups. The mighty Tony Greenstein has cited sociological studies that have shown that 60 per cent of British Jews are upper middle class. Furthermore, while there is still anti-Semitic persecution and hostility, Jews don’t suffer from the same level of prejudice as Blacks and Asians. Tony again has quoted statistics showing that 77 per cent of Brits have positive views of Jews. Those that don’t generally regard them as no better or worse than anyone else. The number of people with negative views of Jews has risen from 5 to 7 per cent, but they’re far outweighed by the mass of the Brits who don’t share their opinions. This is no doubt one of the reasons the NF decided to stop goose stepping about in Nazi uniforms in the 1970s. When National Action turned up in Liverpool a couple of years ago screaming their hatred, the good peeps of that fair city, including socialists and trade unionists, chased them out of town. Literally. They had to retreat to the train station to await the next train out of there.
While the persecution of the Jews has been particularly vicious, it’s reasonable to compare it to the persecution of dissident Christian groups in Europe. Such as the Manichaean heretics in the Middle Ages, and Protestants in Roman Catholic countries. In Britain before Roman Catholic emancipation and the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholicism was banned. It had to go underground in Ireland, and worship was carried out at secret locations in the countryside. British Protestant nonconformists, such as Quakers, Baptists and Methodists, were barred from serving on juries or in local and national government. By law their chapels had to be built five miles away from towns. You can also compare the British Jewish community’s current prosperity with the Quakers. The actual membership of the Society of Friends was small, but they became influential and prosperous businessmen because of their exacting standards of commercial conduct. You could trust them. A book I read a few years ago on the history of the Jewish people, written by an Anglican clergyman, made the same claim about them. The Jewish laws governing food purity meant that, if you bought a wheaten loaf from a Jew, that’s exactly what you got. Instead of being full of cheats determined to defraud gentiles, Jewish businessmen could be trusted. As for the traditional Jewish prohibition against marrying outside the religion, there are also Christian sects, such as the Exclusive Brethren and Particular Baptists, who also reject marriage with those outside the sect.
In short, Jews are integrated and accepted into British society to a far greater extent than Blacks and Asians, who are obviously different because of their colouring, dress and religion. Muslims are particularly subject to suspicion and abuse following 9/11, and are, with Blacks, generally poorer and more marginalised than the rest of British society.
I suspect the issue here isn’t so much about the question of whether Jews constitute an ethnic group in themselves, but over the benefits membership of an ethnic minority confers. Ethnic minorities are specifically protected by law against persecution, and in the case of Blacks and Asians may be assisted by affirmative action programmes. Even though Jews don’t suffer the level of violence and prejudice that Blacks and Asians do, they are still regarded as particularly vulnerable. As a result, they enjoy a degree of protection far greater than other ethnic minorities. For example, there’s the Community Security Trust, a paramilitary vigilante set up to protect Jews, synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish sites and monuments from attack. The group is supposedly trained in self-defence by members of the Israeli security services. This is, as far as I know, unique. I am not aware of any other ethnic group or religion being permitted their own private police force. Far from it. When the Islamofascists in London launched their Muslim Patrols harassing non-Muslims outside their mosques, they were rightly pounced upon by the authorities and arrested. But the CST is allowed to continue, stewarding Zionist and pro-Israel rallies despite reacting violently to counterdemonstrators. At several of these rallies, Muslim and Jews marching together in protest against Israel were forcibly separated and beaten. The victims included elderly Jewish women and rabbis.
The Zionist Jewish establishment were also able to exploit the general high regard and acceptance of Jews in British society by mobilising it to smear Jeremy Corbyn and his followers as anti-Semites. This is part of the general ultra-Zionist campaign to suppress criticism of Israel and its monstrous persecution of the Palestinians. Mass rallies and protests were arranged, and the lies and mendacious denunciations repeated in the national news and press.
Other ethnic groups have not nearly received such sympathy and support. For example, while the Labour party actively complied in the witch-hunt against suspected anti-Semites in the party, it has been extremely reluctant to investigate and punish those responsible for the racist bullying of Black and Asian MPs and activists. Probably because the racist bullies were the Blairite plotters and saboteurs, who collaborated with the anti-Semitism smear campaign as part of their own attempts to oust Corbyn. The affirmative action programme designed to assist Blacks and Asians achieve the same level of prosperity and acceptance as Whites are still extremely controversial. And rather than support allegations of racism by members of those ethnic groups, the reaction of the right-wing press has largely been to denounce them.
It therefore seems to me to be a good question whether Jews should be treated as an ethnic group, rather than simply a religion practised or not by some Brits, not so very different from various traditional Christian sects, which were also persecuted by which are now accepted as integral parts of British culture. I think that the determination by Jews like Cohen to retain their demarcation as an ethnic minority is doubtless partly motivated by a quite understandable fear of the return of the biological racism which led to the monstrous horrors of the Holocaust.
But I also wonder how much also comes from Zionist ideology. The IHRA definition of Zionism claims that it is anti-Semitic to deny Jews their national aspirations. Jews are a nation, and so it is supposedly anti-Semitic to deny them the right to their own state, Israel. But these national aspirations become highly questionable if Jews are not seen as a nation or ethnic group, but as a religion. Zionism becomes spiritual, not political. Jerusalem and Israel become the spiritual centres of the Jewish faith, just as Christians regard them as the spiritual centres of their religion. But this does not necessarily translate to a desire to return to the Promised Land. Some Jewish denominations removed the traditional Passover toast, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’. Many other Jews simply repeated it as part of the revered ritual celebrating their deliverance from Pharaoh’s persecution in Egypt without actually meaning it.
All this makes me wonder whether the Torygraph’s article isn’t really about whether British Jews really constitute a separate ethnic group or not, but whether it’s was just a way of exploiting the anti-Semitism witch hunt to attack the Beeb, a favourite Tory target, on the one hand, while subtly trying to reinforce support for Israel on the other.
Well, the election’s over and Boris in power with a massive majority. John McDonnell has resigned and Jeremy Corbyn is hanging on to oversee things until the party elects a new leader. But the Beeb still knows where its priorities lie: pushing the anti-Semitism smears against Corbyn and his party as hard as they can. And once again the vehicle for it was former satirical news quiz, Have I Got News For You.
This time the mugs making the smears were the guest host, Charlie Brooker, and comedian Phil Wang. Reading off an autocue, Brooker made a joke about Labour denying the Holocaust. He quoted someone saying the party was ‘in denial’ before quipping, ‘Well, at least it wasn’t about the Holocaust!’ Laugh? I thought I’d never start. Later on Wang made a joke about Jeremy Corbyn defending Nazis. Which isn’t funny either. The Beeb can’t claim the jokes are satirical, because they don’t parody reality. Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite and has never defended Nazis. Quite the opposite. Nazis don’t get themselves arrested protesting against apartheid in South Africa. They supported White rule there. They also don’t protest against the lack of content for Jews on television, or the redevelopment of Jewish cemeteries. Nor do they attend meetings addressed by Holocaust survivors. This last point was lost when the Conservative press and Jewish establishment collectively lost their minds at Corbyn nodding in agreement when a Holocaust survivor said that the Israelis were treating the Palestinians like the Nazis had treated him. How dare he! Anti-Semite! But Nazis don’t give any attention to Holocaust survivors, because they try to pretend it either didn’t happen or was far smaller than claimed.
Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani tweeted footage of Brooker’s joke, commenting
As minorities face rising abuse and violence every day the BBC producing this stuff is deeply disturbing. Perhaps the licence fee isn’t worth it after all.
Very true. Boris’ victory has emboldened racists, and the media seems to be joining in with ITV misrepresenting Stormzy’s remark about racism in Britain.
Simon Maginn commented
Imagine being Charlie Brooker. Successful, feted, admired as a fierce and uncompromising critic of lies and bullshit. Then he goes on some crappy BBC ‘comedy’ show and delivers a Labour Holocaust-denial ‘gag’ and BOOM! he’s just another dumbo cog in the dumbo BBC smear machine.
Brooker is popular and has received massive critical acclaim. This is for his harsh, scathing attack on poor television in books like Dawn of the Dumb, and for Screenwipe. This last was his TV series in which he made vicious comments about various programmes while screaming at the screen and miming masturbation. He then moved to creating thought-provoking Science Fiction television with his series, Black Mirror. This was a series of tales showing the chilling possibilities in computer technology and our media saturated culture. It was greeted with critical acclaim. But Brooker seems to have thrown that away by making a stupid joke about Corbyn and anti-Semitism. But as Mike says, perhaps that’s a contractual obligation of people fronting the show by the Beeb.
Tom London also criticised it, making the point that he was Jewish and that these jokes are damaging Britain’s Jews
I am Jewish There is NO proper evidence that Corbyn is an antisemite because he is not one The people who pushed the incessant, relentless propaganda that he is have Undermined democracy Done huge damage to relations between minorities Harmed Jewish community.
Ah, but that doesn’t matter to the Beeb. They’re the establishment, and all they care about is protecting the existing neoliberal order from attack from people like Corbyn’s Labour party. Left-wing Jews like Tom don’t count. Because they’re the wrong kind of Jews.
Mike also makes the point that while some may like the right-wing propaganda HIGNFY is spewing forth, others don’t, and it may not be long before the programme’s axed. Artdecolady tweeted
HIGNFY is really unfunny now, and I think it might be because I always thought they were on my side, but it’s now clear they’re not. Charlie Brooker made a really pathetic joke about the Holocaust and the Labour Party. To think I used to like him.
Sometimes it’s funny, but I’ve also gone off it. It used to be hilarious when it started back in the 1990s. Perhaps it’s simply because the novelty’s worn off. But there’s something more to it. I gave up watching it completely a few years ago because of the constant propaganda. The attacks on Corbyn are just part of this, but it was also pushing the lie that the Maidan Revolution that ushered in pro-Western government in Ukraine was a popular uprising, rather than a coup backed by America and the country’s own domestic Nazis. It was organised by Victoria Nuland of the US state department and the National Endowment for Democracy, which is the independent organisation to which the American state has outsourced this kind of operations after the CIA caused too many scandals with their activities. But ordinary peeps in the West can’t know this, and you’re an evil conspiracy theorist if you do.
The Scots comedian Frankie Boyle was very critical of Have I Got News For You. He saw it very much as part of the political establishment akin to similar shows in some of corrupt Balkan states. In an interview with Richard Osman at the Edinburgh television festival the other year, Boyle recalled how he had been in Romania watching a show like HIGNFY on TV. Politics there, at least at the time, was very corrupt and the media and television programmes rigged to present a pro-government line. The supposedly satirical show was no different. A government minister was in the front row as the comedian went along, and there was a piece of banter between the two. Everything was very chummy, and showed that the show wasn’t in the least opposed to the government. Rather the opposite, in fact. When Boyle remarked on this, he guide and translator said, ‘But it’s like programmes in your country!’
‘No, it isn’t!’ replied Boyle. Which was answered by
‘Yes, it is! Have I Got News For You!’
The show’s been running for nearly 30 years. Perhaps it’s had its day and should be cancelled before it outstays its welcome.
But Mike concludes that if it is, then this will only provide Boris with a pretext to privatise and abolish the Beeb.
Worst of all is the probability that Boris Johnson will use this as part of his excuse to axe the BBC’s status as the UK’s public service broadcaster and remove the requirement to pay the licence fee.
Still, the BBC did its best to ensure the Tories won the general election, knowing that this would be on the cards.
The Corporation’s bosses really are like turkeys voting for Christmas.
They did, but my guess is that they won’t care, because the top managers and the people in the news department responsible for this are no doubt counting on getting new jobs with the private broadcasters that will replace it.
Do I scent fear hitting the Tory ranks? Surely not! But the proof is there, as the increasingly desperate Torygraph and the Jewish Chronicle are reviving the old smear that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. But they’re simply parroting the claim of James Cleverly, the Tory chairman – and Mike’s absolutely right that his monicker is a misnomer – that Jewish families are going to leave the UK, ’cause they’re afraid of what Corbyn’s going to do if he gets in.
Really? I don’t believe it!, to use Victor Meldrew’s old catchphrase. Has anybody asked the views of Corbyn’s many Jewish supporters? Like, you know, Jewish Voice for Labour? Jewdas, with whom Corbyn spent a Passover seder? Mr Shraga Stern and the Haredi community, who Corbyn gave his support to their campaign to save their historic London cemetery from redevelopment? Or just ordinary, grassroots Jewish Labour voters, like those, who have appeared on YouTube and in print stating clearly that there is anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but they personally haven’t experienced it.
No, clearly not, because this would undermine the narrative the British political establishment want to push: that Jeremy Corbyn is a vicious anti-Semite, and so are his supporters – decent, anti-racist women and men like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, Mike, Martin Odoni and too many others. The pro-Israel right is pushing this for all it’s worth, because Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite. But he does want a just peace in Israel with the Palestinians. And that can’t be tolerated. As for the Tories, they’re simply using any smear they can to destroy Labour, while it’s been repeated by the Blairites within the party as a way of ousting him and purging his supporters.
As for the two papers pushing this story, they’re going down the tubes at a rate of knots. The Torygraph has lost much of its readership, partly due to its mercenary editorial policy, which has seen it sacrifice journalistic integrity to the interests of its advertisers. And the Jewish Chronicle is under the helm of Stephen Pollard, who’s as Jewish as I am. Hence writer and academic Michael Rosen, who I think was Children’s Poet Laureate, has accused him of ‘Jewsplaining’. Yes, Pollard’s a non-Jew, who’s taken it upon himself to tell Jews what to believe as Jews. But he’s also a right-wing hack, who when he was with the Depress and similar rags wrote foam-flecked rants demanding the destruction of the welfare state, attacking the trade unions, and claiming that Labour and the Scary Muslims are going to destroy western civilisation.
The Tories have been pushing this line for a long time, ever since around about 9/11, I think. I remember Frederick Raphael giving a glowing review in the Spectator to a novel set a few years hence, in which the remains of the socialist parties in the EU and the Scary Muslims have joined together to begin a new Holocaust. And long before Corbyn won the Labour party leadership, the Right were already leveling accusations of anti-Semitism. Their target was Ed Miliband, who was, er, Jewish. And there was more than a shade of anti-Semitism in their attacks on him. Like the Mail’s article attacking his father, Ralph Miliband, as the ‘Man Who Hated Britain’. Miliband pere was a Belgian immigrant, who fled here from the Nazis. And unlike the father of former editor Paul Dacre, who stayed put in Britain as their society correspondent, Miliband fought for this country in the War. And then there’s the Mail’s own infamous history of supporting Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, and how the father of the newspaper’s current editor, Geordie Grieg, was a member of one of the pro-Nazi British societies before the War.
And the anti-Semitism continues, along with the islamophobia and bog-standard racism. Zelo Street has posted a very good riposte to Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show, where the show’s host interviewed John McDonnell. Of course Marr had to raise the question about what Labour was doing to allay the fears of the Jewish community about anti-Semitism. It’s now part of the standard set of questions the media now ask. But they don’t ask it of the Tories, despite the flagrant examples in the Tory ranks.
For example, how about Jacob Rees-Mogg calling John Bercow and Oliver Letwin ‘illuminati’ in parliament? As I’ve blogged previously, the Illuminati were a freethinking sect, who infiltrated the Freemasons in Bavaria. They are now at the centre of a bonkers conspiracy theory, which sees them as the secret force behind the world’s governments, manipulating politics and industry. Not all varieties of this theory are anti-Semitic. In some, they’re just the global elite, who are seen as Masonic Satanists. But it does merge with the stupid, murderous theories about Jewish bankers. The accusation so alarmed one Jewish academic, that he wrote an article about it revealing the anti-Semitic underpinnings behind the accusation. But it was about the Tories, so the media ignored it. Oh well, at least Mogg didn’t accuse Bercow and Letwin of being members of the Zionist Occupation Government.
Then there’s Priti Patel’s support of the Viktor Orban, the head of the viciously anti-Semitic and islamophobic Fidesz party of Hungary, and her denunciation of the ‘north London liberal elite’. Now she might be referring simply to rich liberals in that part of London. But it also sounds very much like an attack on a certain religious/ethnic group, who stereotypically live in Golders Green.
Gove has also tried to smear Labour again with another accusation of anti-Semitism, following a tweet from an individual, who wasn’t a member of the party. Apart from the fact that Labour can’t suspend people who aren’t members, Gove himself was also criticised by the Jewish Chronicle, amongst others, for opposing an attempt by the European Parliament to censure Orban’s government in Hungary for its anti-Semitism.
And this is all quite apart from the rabid islamophobia and racism of the various twitter and Facebook groups supporting Boris and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Gove’s equally odious wife, Sarah Vine, declaring that the statement that there should be ‘less Islam in Britain’ was funny.
Going back to the claim that Jewish families are going to leave Britain to escape Corbyn, Mike points out on his blog how this resembles Phil Collins’ statement back in the early ’90s that if Labour won the election, he’d go to America. Well, he didn’t. The Tories won the ’92 election, so he didn’t have to. But he didn’t leave when they won the ’97 election either.
It also reminds me of the curious case of Danny Cohen. Cohen was a senior Beeb executive, who bogged off to Israel claiming that Labour was anti-Semitic and Britain was unsafe for Jews. Not that unsafe, however, as I think he’s come back. So much for the claim that contemporary Britain is like Germany in 1937. It isn’t, not by a very long chalk.
Treat all this as just more scaremongering from the Tories. It’s just more lies, from a desperate and lying party. And one that hopefully will be out of power after the election.
This is a very interesting development in the anti-Semitism furore that has engulfed the Labour Party. Margaret Hodge, who so delights in accusing Corbyn supporters of anti-Semitism, and called Corbyn himself a ‘fucking anti-Semite’, has been accused herself of anti-Semitism. Her accusers is Shraga Stern, a Haredi Jew, a member and supporter of the Labour Party. Mr Stern met Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour MP Dan Carden at Portcullis House in Westminster. Where he was photographed by Hodge, who then tweeted the picture to one of Murdoch’s journalistic minions. She added the caption
Having lunch & wondering why Corbyn wants to be seen talking to an anti-LGBT activist who doesn’t represent the mainstream Jewish community yet chooses to sideline groups like Jewish Labour Movement.
Stern told the Jewish Chronicle that the picture’s appearance made him feel ‘quite intimidated’. He’s been the subject of recent claims that he’s against the LGBT community because of his activism in the area of sex education. However, Stern himself has replied to the accusation by saying that he isn’t against gays, but simply wants Orthodox children to be given their sex education at home, in accordance with their tradition. He was also offended at being described as a ‘non-mainstream Jew’. He therefore sent her an email objecting to her comments, and a formal complaint to the Labour Party. He states in his letter
The evidence proves the intention of the attack was for maintaining Jewish traditions.
It is ok, to be hurt and assaulted for simply living in the UK as a Charedi Jew?
Is it acceptable for a party member to suffer from stress due to anti-Semitic assaults for being a Charedi Jew?
Is it ok, for a Member of Parliament to assault a fellow Jew just for the reason that his external appearances are different?
Last but not least, why is it wrong for Jeremy Corbyn to speak to a second-class Jew. (Your words).
In his complaint to the Labour Party, Stern complains that Hodge defamed him as an anti-LGBT activist. He states firmly that he is not, and that he is against all sex teaching in the classroom, as this should be done by the parents at home according to Charedi Jewish custom. He states that he made this clear throughout his campaign. He says
‘She is attacking me for continuing my religious Jewish tradition … This is pure religious anti-Semitism against me my religion and my rabbis.’
He also passed on a dossier of information relating to her time as leader of Islington council, which he believes indicates a negative attitude towards Orthodox Jews. This is reproduced in the Skwawkbox article about the incident. They seem to relate to the plans by West London Synagogue to redevelop the Jewish cemetery for housing and a playground. This was strongly opposed by Orthodox Jews, although the scheme was supported by the council. The protesters, however, had the support of Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, whom the Orthodox community publicly thanked for their stance.
The Skwawkbox notes that there are about 67,000 Charedi Jews in the UK, who make up a quarter of the Jewish population. This is expected to increase to half within fifteen years.
Mike in his article about this says that it will test the Labour Party’s complaints team, who try to protect all party representatives like Hodge from all complaints against them. He wonders whether they will try to sweep her anti-Semitic attack – one that appears to be part of a series going back decades – under the carpet. He also observes that this shows the highly partisan nature of the lamestream media that it hasn’t been widely reported in the national press. He illustrates this point with a tweet from the Prole Star, which accurately points out that if a Corbyn ally had been accused instead, it would be on every news outlet for weeks. The tweets states
Their silence is pretty strange considering they love to talk about anti-Semitism so much. The mainstream media have proven they don’t really care about racism. It’s just a weapon to smear their opponents. Absolutely disgusting.
Absolutely right. The French Philosophical Feline, Guy Debord’s Cat, showed this very clearly in a post from the 7th of this month responding to Gordon Brown’s comments about the anti-Semitism accusations. Brown supported them, so the Cat pointed out the various racist incidents in the Labour Party against Blacks and Asians that Brown chose to ignore, not to mention that against Roma and other Travellers. He then went on to state, absolutely correctly, that there is a hierarchy of racism in this country and that the racism Blacks experience comes a very distant second, third or fourth place behind the anti-Semitism smears. And that even real anti-Semitic incidents are ignored instead of the smears. He showed this very clearly with a report about a Far Right terrorist, Tristan Morgan, who had been sentenced to be locked up in hospital indefinitely. Morgan had tried to burn down an 18th century synagogue in Exeter, Devon, on the 18th July 2018, a day commemorating the Holocaust. Morgan himself laughed when he committed the attack, though he was put on fire by the blast from the fire he started.
I’m not surprised that Hodge targeted Mr Stern with this nasty sneer. Stern’s a very staunch supporter of Corbyn. I believe he was among the people, who met the Labour leader when he visited a London mosque a few months ago, whose members had been victims of a White Islamophobic terrorist attack. I also recall that he was involved with a letter sent by a number of Haredi rabbis to the papers defending Corbyn, and stating that he has been a good friend to British Jews to the papers, as well as other efforts showing that Corbyn actually has widespread support amongst British Jews. Which the Jewish Chronicle has tried its very best to invalidate through quibbles about the right of some of those, who signed to be credited as proper representatives of British Jewry. But it does seem that Diane Abbott and Corbyn are genuinely held in high regard by the Orthodox community for their support over Islington council’s plan to redevelop the community’s cemetery.
And it’s more than a little rich for Hodge to accuse Mr Stern of not being a mainstream Jew, when the Jewish Labour Movement can in truth be accurately described as a fringe organisation. Jewish bloggers have pointed out that it seems to have less than 200 members, that over half of these aren’t Jewish. Unlike Jewish Voice for Labour, which appears to be a genuinely Jewish organisation. But Jewish Voice for Labour is ignored or vilified by the lamestream media and the Jewish establishment in this country as they’re pro-Corbyn, and so don’t count as ‘proper’ Jews. Which is very definitely an anti-Semitic stance.
Hodge herself has also been massively indifferent to the rise of very real racism. When Derek Beacon and his storm troopers in the BNP got elected on Tower Hamlets council, they rewarded Hodge for her lack of efforts to oppose them by sending her a bouquet. As an MP she was so lackadaisical and unimpressive that the Jewish Chronicle was calling on her to resign. But now she’s screaming that she’s terribly concerned about anti-Semitism in the Labour party, of which she is a victim, despite all evidence to the contrary.
It will be very interesting to see how the Labour complaints team handle this, and I wish Mr Stern every success.
A week or so ago I put up a post about The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups by Jon E. Lewis, and its chapter roundly debunking Holocaust denial. The book is a popular volume on conspiracy theories, describing and frequently debunking 100 such conspiratorial beliefs about the death of Princess Diana, the Men In Black, the assassination of J.F.K., and Martin Luther King, Area 51, Ronald Reagan, the Priory of Zion of Holy Blood, Holy Grail infamy and many more, including Holocaust denial.
Another infamous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that also gets thoroughly disproven, is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the book gives in its full title, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and deals with on pages 433 to 450. The Protocols are a notorious forgery, concocted by the tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, to encourage Nicholas II to be even more anti-Semitic and persecute the Jews even worse than he already was. It is one of the leading sources of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and was read and influenced many Fascists. It was proven to be a forgery as long ago as the 1920, but even after this was revealed, some of those, who had read it continued to be maintain that it was symbolically true, even if it wasn’t factually. Unfortunately, the book continues to have a very wide circulation, particularly in the Middle East and in eastern Europe.
The history of this vile book is briefly described on pages 433-5. The chapter states that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was first published in 1897 as an appendix to the book, The Antichrist Is Near At Hand by the Russian writer, Sergei Nilus. It claims to be an instruction manual for a cabal of anonymous Jews planning to conquer and subdue the Christian world.
It states that the chief points of the Protocols are that the plot will remain invisible until it is so strong it cannot be overcome; government is to be increasingly centralized; press freedoms shall be restricted; gentile are to be distracted by games and amusements; and all non-Jewish religions will be swept away.
The book was immensely popular in Russia and the rest of the world. One enthusiast was the industrialist Henry Ford, of motor industry fame, who printed sections in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He believed it exactly described the world situation as it was in his time, and used them to try to influence the US senate to stop America joining the League of Nations.
The first person to show that the Protocols were a forgery was Lucien Wolf. In his The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion of 1920 showed that sections of the Protocols had been lifted with only very minor changes from a satire written by a French lawyer, Maurice Joly, Dialogue aux Enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavelli (“Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli”). This was itself influenced by Eugene Sue’s 1843 conspiracy novel, The Mysteries of Paris. The Protocols was also based on the 1868 novel, Biarritz, by the German spy Hermann Goedsche, written under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe. This had a chapter describing how a fictitious group of rabbis met at midnight every century in a cemetery to plan the further progress of Jewish world domination.
Lewis suggests the Protocols were probably forged by Matvei Golovinski, one of the agents of the Okhrana. He hoped to justify the tsarist regime’s persecution of the Jews by whipping up a scare about revolutionaries in the pay of the Jews planning the downfall of the monarchy. As a result, pogroms were launched against the Jews in 1905-6. And the truth of the conspiracy described by the Protocols was seen by all too many people as confirmed by the Russian Revolution of 1917, some of whose leaders happened to be Jews.
After the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, Adolf Hitler made the Protocols compulsory reading in schools. Lewis goes to describe how, despite or because of their influence in causing the Holocaust, the Protocols continue to be held as ‘fact’. Egyptian television broadcast a series in 2000 that claimed there was a connection between the Protocols and the foundation of Israel. The Protocols could also been found in al-Qaeda training camps. They’re also popular with Hamas, and in America they’re distributed by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. That section of the chapter ends
In fact, wherever anti-Semites gather you’ll find well-thumbed copies of the Protocols. That any of these organisations or their adherents could not discover within at most thirty seconds’ worth of research that the Protocols are, as a Swiss court described them as long ago as 1935, “ridiculous nonsense”, forgeries and plagiarism, beggars belief.
The book gives each conspiracy a threat level, according to how apparently plausible they are. You won’t be surprised to find that the threat level of the Protocols is zero.
The chapter also lists for further reading the following:
Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1996.
Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, 1998.
Lucien Wolf, The Jewish Bogey and the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, 1920.
The book provides extracts from the main documents behind or about the various conspiracies, so that readers can make up their own minds. This includes the Protocols, extracts from which are reproduced on pages 436-50. Lewis obviously trusts his readers to follow his entirely correct judgement of the Protocols, and similarly realise that they are a forgery. This is also useful, because opponents of anti-Semitism, racism and Fascism can read them without having to give money to Nazis, anti-Semites and Islamists.
I wondered if they’re shouldn’t be a proper, scholarly edition of the Protocols, written by orthodox historians and opponents of anti-Semitism, aimed not just at debunking the Protocols, but also for decent people interested in its noxious influence on Nazism and other anti-Semitic ideologies. The Bavarian government did something like this a little while ago to Mein Kampf after it came out of copyright. The government had used its ownership of the book’s copyright to prevent its publication in Germany. When this expired, they decided that the best way to combat its adoption once again by neo-Nazis would be to prepare a properly annotated version by mainstream historian of the Third Reich.
The problem with suppressed literature is that it acquires a glamour simply by being forbidden. I doubt very many people in Britain have even heard of the Protocols, but they are published and read by Nazis, and briefly appeared on the shelves of one bookshop in the north of England during the conspiracy craze of the 1990s because they were cited by one of the UFO conspiracy theorists, Bill English, in his book, Behold a Pale Horse. In this situation, it is very good that apart from general books on Fascism and Nazism, there are works specifically dedicated to exposing and debunking this vile, murderous hoax.
A few months ago I got through the post the 2017 archaeology catalogue for Eurospan University Presses. Amongst some of the fascinating books listed were several on the archaeology of Black communities in America and the Caribbean. As you’ll see, they’re at prices well beyond what ordinary readers can afford. They’re really available only to the rich and academic libraries. If you’ve got access to one near you, then I recommend you try to borrow it from there. Some universities do lend to members of the public in the summer holidays when most of the students have gone home. It might also be possible to get it on interlibrary loan, although this can also mean a long wait and isn’t cheap either. The last time I enquired about it at Bristol, I was told the price was £5 per book. Which means that if you want to borrow more than one, it can become very expensive very quickly. Dam’ Tories and their cuts! I don’t know, but it may also be that some of these books may be available in PDF form over the Net at a cheaper rate. This isn’t mentioned in the catalogue, but it might be so. Alternatively, you could see if there are secondhand copies on Amazon. On the other hand, it might be worth waiting to see if a paperback edition comes out, which may be cheaper.
Here are the books I found interesting, and the blurbs for them in the catalogue.
Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic, edited by Michael J. Gall & Richard F. Veit
9780817319656 Hardback £74.50
Provides insights into the archaeology and cultural history of African-American life from a collection of sites in the northeastern US. This volume explores the archaeology of African-American life and cultures in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, suing sites dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries.
University of Alabama Press.
Before the Pioneers: Indians, Settlers, Slaves and the Founding of Miami, Andre F. Krank, 9780813054513, hardback £18.50
Formed seemingly out of steel, glass, and concrete with millions of residents from around the globe, Miami has ancient roots that can be hard to imagine today. This work takes readers back through forgotten eras to the stories of the people who shaped the land along the Miami River long before most modern histories of the city begin.
University of Florida Press.
Honoring Ancestors in Sacred Space: The Archaeology of an Eighteenth Century African Bahamian Cemetery, Grace Turner, 9781683400202, hardback £79.50.
Throughout life, black Africans in the Bahamas possessed material items of various degrees of importance to them and within their culture. St. Matthews was a cemetery in Nassau at the water’s edge – or sometimes slightly below. This project emerged from archaeological excavations at this site to identify and recover materials associated with the interned before the area was completely redeveloped.
University Press of Florida.
The Rosewood Massacre: An archaeology and History of Intersectional Violence, Edward Gonzalez Tennant. 9780813056784, £84.95.
Investigates the 1923 massacre that devastated the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida. The author draws on cutting edge GIS technology, census data, artefacts from excavations, and archaeological theory to explore the local circumstances and broader socio-political power structures that led to the massacre.
University Press of Florida.
Simplicity, Equality and Slavery: An Archaeology of Quakerism in the British Virgin Islands, 1740-1780, John M. Chenoweth, 9781683400110 hardback, £79.50.
Inspired by the Quaker ideals of simplicity, equality, and peace, a group of White planters formed a community in the British Virgin Islands during the eighteenth century. Here, the author examines how the community navigated the contradictions of Quakerism and plantation ownership.
University Press of Florida.
These books sound very interesting. There have been a lot of research into the homes and communities of Black Americans over the past couple of decades. They’ve been excavated in New York, and also the slave communities owned by the Founding Fathers, like Benjamin Franklin. In the case of excavating cemeteries, it’s obviously a particularly sensitive area, and the archaeologists involved have obviously had to be particularly careful in their negotiations of the host Black community and the surviving relatives of the deceased. As you should when excavating any human remains.
From what I gather from reading elsewhere, cemeteries and burial grounds are of particular importance in Afro-Caribbean culture, where it’s associated not only with personal heritage and family history and identity but also occupation of the land.
I remember correctly, the 1923 Rosewood massacre was White supremacist pogrom against the Black community in Rosewood, their politicians and their White supporters and allies. This was before McCarthyism, when the American Left was still very strong, and the Republican party the more left-wing of the two main political parties. The town’s mayor was Black, and the town council included Socialists. Even the Republicans issued a statement condemning the treatment of the poor, the corrupt corporate politics keeping them there, and declaring healthcare and education a right. Obviously the Conservatives and the Klan really couldn’t tolerate that, and stirred up resentment until it boiled over into organised violence.
As for the Quaker plantation in the British Virgin Islands, the Quakers very early denounced and condemned slavery as fundamentally opposed to their principles. John Fox, the sect’s founder, denounced and by their laws no member could own slaves. Nevertheless, the acceptance of slavery was so deeply ingrained in European society, that its rejection was not easy for many to accept. And although they were condemned from owning or dealing in slaves, some Quakers did make their cash through supplying the slave ships. If you want to know more about the Quakers, their ideals in this period, then I recommend you read David Dabydeen’s history of the Quakers in the 17th and 18th centuries, Sugar and Slaves.
In my last post, I discussed the rise in racism in this country and America, as reported in Mike’s recent post about the fall in immigration and rise in hate crime following Brexit, and the anti-Semitic desecration of a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis. This incident has had a more positive sequel, in that a Muslim organisation has so far raised $71,000 to be spent on repairing the cemetery and other Jewish communities, that have suffered similar attacks.
Discussing the American attacks, Ben Mankiewicz and Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks made the point that they were part of the wave of hate that has been unleashed by Trump’s bigoted rhetoric and campaigning. While Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, whom his daughter converted to Judaism to marry, and denies that he is anti-Semitic, his supporters include Steve Bannon of Breitbart, an anti-Semite and White supremacist, and Richard Spencer, the leader of the Alt-Right, which comprises anti-Semites, White Supremacists and other far-right bigots.
Unfortunately, there has been a racist strain in the Republican party for a very long time. Ever since, in fact, Richard Nixon devised the ‘Southern Strategy’ to keep hold of the South by playing on the racist fears of White voters after desegregation. One of the leading Republican politicos is David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. And I can remember how Joe Queenan on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Postcard from Gotham, greeted the electoral victory of Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire with the statement that the only thing you could now in that state were cries of ‘Duce! Duce!’ after Mussolini.
In this piece from 2014, David Pakman reports on a speech at Kentucky University’s ‘Constitution Day’, which resulted in the speaker being escorted off stage by university staff. This was Robert Edward Rensdell, a rising Republican candidate for the senate with appalling anti-Semitic and White separatist views. Rensdell had previously put placards up with his slogan ‘With Jews we lose’ all over Cincinnati. He has also called Blacks ‘savages’ and looked back to the racist past as a time when ‘Blacks knew better’ than to pick on White people, particularly women and children.
Instead of the speech on the American Constitution they were no doubt expecting, the university’s students got a racist rant.
Pakman himself also warns about treating Rensdell and his antics too lightly, as if he represented no more of a threat than a few tasteless comments. He talks about how he had on his programme Frasier Glen Miller another racist Republican senator ten years before. Miller was openly anti-Semitic on his show, insulting Pakman personally with remarks about his Jewish heritage. Miller has since been convicted of the murder of two Jewish people at different Jewish community centres. Pakman points out that the racism expressed and promoted by people like Rensdell and Miller has terrible real world consequences, and can very quickly turn to violence.
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