I gather that she’s been in today’s Guardian, where she’s written a piece about the death of Tina Turner. Turner was one of the greatest soul singers, even appearing as Auntie Entity, the ruler of Bartertown, in the film Mad Max 3, for which she also sang and performed a theme song. Shola’s piece lamented the fact that the singer had died before Blacks had received their proper compensation for their historic enslavement by White Europeans and Americans. She’s an intensely controversial figure. Some people feel that she is anti-British and I believe there was 38 Degrees petition launched by someone to stop the TV companies using her as a guest on their shows when debating racism and related topics. I feel that the issues of Black compensation for slavery raises questions about such compensation that crosses racial and national boundaries and which may affect Shola herself. Slavery was practised for millennia across the globe. Black Africans were enslaved by other African nations, as well as Muslim Arabs and Turks, as well as Indians, Persians and Afghans. Odiously, slavery still persists in Africa and the global south, and has been revived in Islamist-held Libya and Uganda. At the same time, Europeans were held in bondage as serfs until into the 19th century in parts of Europe, and were also enslaved by the invading Turks and pirates from Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia. This rises the issue that if compensations is to be paid to enslaved Blacks, then the same principle should mean that the victims of these forms of slavery should also receive compensation from those, who historically enslaved them.
I’ve therefore sent her this message via the message box on her website. I’ll let you know if I get an answer
‘Dear Shola,
I was struck by your article in today’s Guardian about the death of the great soul singer, Tina Turner, and lamenting the fact that she died before Black people had received reparations for slavery. The question of slavery reparations raises issues extending beyond western Blacks, including the complicity of African aristocracies, the enslavement of Blacks by other nations, including Islam and India, as well as indigenous White European forms of bondage and their enslavement by the Barbary pirates and the Turkish empire. As the granddaughter of an African prince, I would be particularly interested in your perspectives on these issues.
Regarding indigenous African complicity in the slave trade, I’ve doubtless no need to tell you about how generally Black Africans were captured and enslaved by other Black African peoples, who then sold them on to White Europeans and Americans. The most notorious slaving states were included Dahomey, Benin and Whydah in west Africa, while on the east coast the slaving peoples included the Yao, Marganja and the Swahili, who enslaved their victims for sale to the Sultan of Muscat to work the clove plantations on Zanzibar. They were also purchased by merchants from India, and then exported to that country, as well as Iran, Afghanistan and further east to countries like Sumatra. It has therefore been said that reparations should consist of Black Africans compensating western Blacks. Additionally, Black Africans were also enslaved by other Muslim Arabs in north Africa and then the Turkish empire. What is now South Sudan was a particular source of Black slaves and one of the causes of the Mahdi’s rebellion was outrage at the banning of slavery by the British. This raises the issue of whether Turkey, Oman, India and other north African and Asian states should also compensate the Black community for their depredations on them.
The complicity of the indigenous African chiefs in the slave trade has become an issue recently in Ghana and Nigeria. I understand that the slavery museum in Liverpool was praised by campaigners and activists from these nations for including this aspect of the slave trade. I would very much like to know your views on this matter. Forgive me if I have got this wrong, but I understand you are of the Igbo people. These also held slaves. I would also like to know if you could tell me a bit more about this, and how this may have affected your family’s history. Your grandfather was, after all, a chief, and this raises the awkward question of whether your family owned slaves. If they did, how were they manumitted and did your family give them reparations for their enslavement?
There is also the question of the enslavement of Whites both under conditions of domestic servitude and by the Muslim powers of the Turkish empire and Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Serfdom in England died out in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it continued in European countries into the 18th and 19th centuries. Prussia only liberated its serfs in 1825 and the Russian serfs were only freed in 1860. Serfdom is considered a form of slavery under international law, as I understand. If Blacks are to be granted compensation for their enslavement, then as a general principle the descendants of White European serfs should also be compensated for their ancestors’ servitude.
In Britain, a from of serfdom continued in the Scottish and Northumbrian mining industries. Miners were bondsmen, whose contracts bound them to the mining companies and who were metal identity collars to prevent them running away exactly like slaves. I would be grateful if you would tell me whether their descendants should also receive compensation for their forefathers’ virtual enslavement.
Over a million White Europeans and Americans, mostly from southern European countries such as France, Spain and Italy, were enslave by the Barbary pirates. This only came to an end with the French conquest and occupation of Alegria. If people are to be compensated for their ancestors’ enslavement, then presumably America and Europe should also receive compensation from these nations for this. The Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 14th century by Mehmet II resulted in the depression of the indigenous White Christian population into serfdom as well as the imposition of slavery. When Hungary was conquered, the Turks levied a tribute of a tenth of the country’s population as slaves. When one of the Greek islands revolted in the 1820s, it was put down with dreadful cruelty and the enslavement of 20,000 Greeks. Do you feel that the descendants of these enslaved Balkan Whites should also receive compensation from their former Turkish overlords?
There is also the fact that after Britain abolished the slave trade, she paid compensation to the former African slaving nations for their losses as part of a general scheme to persuade them to adopt a trade in ‘legitimate’ products. This was believed to benefit both Britain and the African nations themselves. How do you feel about the payment of such compensation? Do you feel that it is unfair, and that these nations should pay it back to us, or that they should pay it to the descendants of the people they enslaved?
Finally, slavery still persists today in parts of Africa and has even revived. The Islamist terror groups that have seized control of half of the former Libya have opened slave markets dealing in the desperate migrants from further south, who have made their way to the country in the attempt to find sanctuary in Europe. At the same time, slave markets have also opened in Uganda. Slavery is very much alive around the world today. I would be greatly interested in your perspectives on this issue, which is affecting people of colour in the global south. How do you feel it should be tackled? Are you working with anti-slavery organisations, such as Anti-Slavery International and the various organisations by former African slaves to combat this? If not, I would be very grateful if you could tell me why not, when you are obviously motivated by a human outrage at the plight of the historic victims of western slavery.
I hope you will be able to provide me with answers to these questions, and very much look forward to receiving your reply.
I found this short video from Middle East Eye and several others showing Israeli soldiers and settlers attacking Christians and desecrating churches ahead of the Holy Fire ceremony in Jerusalem. This is the service during which a fire spontaneously ignites at one of the major churches in Jerusalem. Other videos show Israeli settlers abusing and spitting at Christian nuns. I am not putting this up to stir up any kind of hatred against Jews. Indeed, the people that have done so much to talk about this and reveal the anti-Christian bigotry as well as the other forms of racism in the Israeli state, its far right ruling parties, and the settlers, have been Jews like the mighty Tony Greenstein. I’m putting it up because this is what the mainsteam media and the Anglican and Methodist churches in Britain won’t show, nor will Christian Zionist organisation in the America like Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. There was much coverage a little while ago of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinian Muslims at the al-Aqsa mosque, but there was never any mention about this. Palestinian Christians are leaving the Holy Land because of this kind of pressure and violence. But in the mainstream media the Palestine/Israel conflict is always presented as one between Islam and the Israeli state. Some of this is due to western backing of Israel as an outpost of western culture and influence in the Middle East. Some of it is no doubt fear of being accused of anti-Semitism by the Israelis, along with accusations that Christianity is itself intrinsically anti-Semitic. The Israeli state wants the money from Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and so its keen to play these incidents down. But it comes from the theology of the various Israeli far right parties, which view Christians as idolaters and Jew haters, who, like Muslims, must be cleansed from Israel, and churches as ‘houses of idolatry’ that must be destroyed.
Starmer has declared himself a ‘100 per cent’ Zionist. In that case, I would like him to make a protest against this brutality by the Israeli far right, and why he isn’t standing up for Christians, Muslims and Israeli liberals and anti-racists, who are being attacked by this intolerant, far right regime.
Condemn anti-Semitism.
Condemn Israel persecution of Palestinian Christians, Muslims and other minorities in a brutal apartheid state.
The Torygraph ran a story yesterday claiming that over half of Hindu schoolchildren in Britain had been bullied by their Muslim classmates. This included throwing beef at them, a particular insult given the Hindu veneration for cattle. The victims were supposedly told that the insults and violence would stop if they converted to Islam. The blog’s favourite YouTube non-historian, Simon Webb, posted a video about it on his channel this morning in which he added his own peculiar viewpoint on it. He claimed that the bullying was being ignored by Guardian-reading liberals, who would have otherwise been extremely annoyed and organising protests if the bullying had been by White children against Blacks and Muslims. I’m sure he’s right there. However, he claimed that the anti-Hindu bullying was being ignored because Guardian readers had convinced themselves that Hindutva was fascism, and because India was friends with Israel. This is nonsense. Many academic historians of Fascism across the world have concluded that Hindutva, militant Hindu nationalism, is fascistic. One of the Hindu nationalist prayers appears in a collection of fascist texts because it exemplifies the mystical strain of fascism. The RSSS, a paramilitary Hindu organisation, was modelled on Mussolini’s black shirts. I’ve put up a piece about ultra-nationalist Hindu priests putting bounties on the head of dissident Indians and calling for the death of blasphemers. There have been mass rallies calling for the abandonment of India’s secular, pluralist constitution and its transformation into a Hindu state. Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are the target of militant Hindu nationalist violence, with Muslims and their mosques especially targeted. I also remember a particularly repulsive incident back in the ’90s when one local Hindu nationalist politico announced his support for Hitler against the Muslims, and used the Nazi version of the swastika. But western liberal hatred of India fascism almost certainly isn’t behind the liberal left ignoring such anti-Hindu bullying.
Playground violence between different Asian groups has been around for a long time. I heard back in the 1980s that in one of the schools in a multicultural ward of Bristol the real conflict and violence wasn’t between Black and White, but between different Asian groups. I don’t know if the violence was based on religion, ethnicity or caste. I do remember, however, that talking about it to friends there was a real opposition to any recognition that Asian racism could be as bad or worse than White racism.
Part of the problem is that the anti-racist movement arose specifically to tackle White prejudice, hostility and discrimination against Blacks and other people of colour. It therefore has immense difficulty recognising that non-Whites also have their own racial prejudices and can also be responsible for racist abuse and violence. Some of this comes from the way the right-wing press in the 1980s framed the 1980s/81 race riots and continuing racial controversies as due to Black racism. Diane Abbott has said several times that she wasn’t going to tackle racism within ethnic minority communities, because this would lead ‘them’ to ‘divide and rule’. The result is that racism from non-Whites is played down or ignored. One Jewish writer for the right-wing online magazine, Spiked, wrote a piece describing how she also received anti-Semitic abuse and treatment from ethnic minorities. But this wasn’t reflected in the public discussions about anti-Semitism, which only dealt with it when it came from Whites.
This exclusive focus on White racism does not represent the complex reality of racial attitudes in multicultural Britain. This is grossly unjust, and needs to change, however uncomfortable it may be to official anti-racists like Diane Abbott.
One of the ex-Muslim atheists published a piece about another incident of bloodthirsty fanaticism from the Hindutva far right in India. I think it may be a few months old, but it still needs commenting on as it shows the real fascism now rising in Modi’s India. There was a mass conversion of Dalits – the very lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy – to Buddhism. During the ceremony they formally forswore the Hindu gods, vowing never to worship them again. The ex-Muslim atheist commented that there have been several such conversions to Buddhism or Islam by the Dalits as a way to escape the oppressive caste system. This appears to have sent the Hindu religious right into fury. There was a mass gathering of the Hindutva stormtroopers, who formally vowed to turn India into a Hindu rashtra, which I think means ‘republic’. And then three extreme right-wing Hindu priests emerged to demand the beheading of blasphemers. Two attacked one India personality in particular, calling for his death. One even put a bounty on his head. The other just called for a general execution of blasphemers.
This is chilling stuff. Hinduism has won many admirers in the west because it’s seen as a peaceful, tolerant religion. Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolence, ahimsa, and peaceful protest has justly been admired and taken up by people right across the world protesting against oppression. But Hinduism, like most other religions, has also had a militant side, and it is this aspect of the religion that seems to be growing thanks to Modi and the BJP government. The BJP has links to the RSSS, a militant nationalist group partly modelled on Mussolini’s Fascists and which carries out attacks on Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. And also Buddhists, after one Hindutva politician denounced them as a threat to Hindu India a week or so ago. Meanwhile, liberal Hindu journalists and their papers are being shut down as Modi increases state censorship. Modi and the BJP are undermining India’s constitution as a secular, pluralistic democracy to establishment a fiercely intolerant form of Hindu nationalism. It seems that across the world, bitter, intolerant nationalism is on the rise and democracy and tolerance is under threat from the bigots and fanatics.
TNT News this afternoon put out a post stating that one of the Chinese senior diplomats, foreign secretary or equivalent has stated that China will be the Middle Eastern nations and help to ensure that they remain strong and independent. I don’t think you have to look very hard to see what that’s about – backing the region’s nations and making sure that America and the west don’t invade them, as we did with Afghanistan and Iraq.
This could also complicate the situation for Israel. I got the distinct impression that the west supports Israel as an outpost of western influence and power in the Middle East, especially against Iran and the various Arab states aligned with the Communist bloc. In return, America acts as Israel’s bully-boy. The neo-cons drew up a list with the Israelis over which states they wanted overthrown. This list included Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and, in Africa, Somalia. Hence the bombings of those countries and the support for rebels attempting to topple the government, as in Libya. Israel seems to get its way not just through a perceived identity of interest with America, but also through bullshit accusations of anti-Semitism when they don’t. They got the Iron Dome anti-missile shield through the generosity of Barack Obama. But when he didn’t give them the amount of aid they demanded, they immediately fell back to screeching ‘anti-Semitism’ until he did.
But how long can they continue to do that as the power balance across the world changes and China grows in power?
Years ago I used to read Theodore Beale’s – Vox Dei’s – site. He’s an extremely right-wing Libertarian – anti-feminist and, I would say, an anti-Semite. But he could say some very interesting things. And one of those was how long Israel could continue calling on America with China becoming the major hegemon in the Middle East.
Good question. I’m sure there is a minute Jewish population in China, but as far as I know there’s no tradition of anti-Semitism there. There have been persecutions of Buddhists and Christians during Chinese history, as well as Mao’s campaign to eradicate the Taoists and the recent persecution of the Falun Gong and the ongoing genocide of the Uighurs. But I’ve never heard of any persecution against the Jews. I think if there is a Jewish community, it’s probably tiny, perhaps no more than 1-2 million in a country with a population of 1 1/2 billions. They’re not big enough to present any kind of threat, and the real danger to the country’s independence has come from western imperialism and colonialism. I doubt that many Chinese have even met one, although when the Nazis started their persecution Jews constituted only 5 per cent of the German population. There was a surge of anti-Semitism in Japan in the 90s, despite there being hardly any Jews in that nation, so numbers don’t necessarily make much difference to the bigoted believers of stupid conspiracy theories. Apart from which, as the invasion of Tibet and the genocide of the Uighurs shows, the Chinese don’t seem to be bothered about committing real genocide and crimes against humanity in the face of international horror and condemnation.
And without the black past of anti-Semitic persecution, Israel doesn’t have much moral leverage against the Middle Kingdom. This could get very interesting indeed!
I hope this isn’t too controversial a post, because I know many of the great commenters here are strong supporters of trans rights. But I hope that whatever our differences, we can agree on this issue: the fear going around the trans community that there is a holocaust either underway or about to come is a toxic myth that may have played a role in the tragic shooting of six people at a Presbyterian school in America on Monday. Audrey Hale, the perpetrator, was a trans-identified woman, who believed she was a transman. She walked into the school with an assault rifle and proceeded to shoot the children and staff before she was shot in the head by the cops. It’s not really known what her motives were, and she is unusual in that while I’ve heard and seen YouTube footage of violence by transwomen, transmen have not, as far as I know, been personally violent. Hale did, however, leave a manifesto, the contents of which have not been disclosed to the public. Right-wing American commenters have claimed that the authorities won’t because they don’t fit the narrative of transpeople being an oppressed minority.
Several YouTubers and other commenters on the Net have made the point that part of the cause of the tragedy lies in the very militant, violent rhetoric among trans militants. I am not going to deny that there is prejudice against transpeople, but there is a real culture of violence amongst the trans militants. Gender critical feminists like Maria MacLachlan, who was herself assaulted by an angry transwoman, have posted a number of videos showing the very aggressive counter demonstrations by trans activists. There is also footage on YouTube of feminist campaigners being beaten to the ground by trans activists in Spain. There is also a feminist site on the Net which regularly posts examples of such violence. Kelly-Jay Keen, a leading trans activist, was mobbed and feared for her life when she spoke in Auckland, New Zealand. Maria MacLachlan has posted video footage of the various aggressive militant trans who greeted her when she spoke in Bristol. The militants were also supported by Antifa, dressed in black bloc, and Bristol Anarchist Federation. They tried to storm the police cordon around the demonstration. Wheeen n she spoke in Bristol the trans militants were supported by Antifa, dressed in black bloc, and Bristol Anarchist Federation. There were similar scenes when she spoke in Brighton, when the counterprotesters let off smoke bombs and one of them, a young guy, was dragged off because Brighton’s finest had found 12 knives in his bag. Similar, highly aggressive displays have been staged by trans rights protesters over the other side of the Pond. In one such instance, a young woman speaking at university was ushered by a cop into a cupboard to hide her from the angry mob chasing her.
And trans militant rhetoric is similarly violent. There are any number of posts on Twitter where the activists display guns with slogans like ‘I Kill TERFs’. Nicola Sturgeon caught flak the other week because, when she was trying to pass the Gender Recognition Bill in Scotland, she stood in front of a flag saying ‘Behead TERFS’ or some such. In their discussion of the recent shooting, the Lotus Eaters have used as their thumbnail a picture of someone standing next to a sign saying ‘Trans Right… Or Else’ with multiple pictures of AK47s.
Many trans activists seem to sincerely believe that gender critical feminists and their supporters are real fascists. This is nonsense, which MacLachlan has also disposed of in another of her videos. My own experience of simply reading their blogs and watching their videos is that far from being any kind of allies of Stormfront and the rest of the jackbooted horrors, real ‘TERFs’ tend instead to be respectable, middle-aged ladies, and that they largely come from the political left. That’s the direction MacLachlan comes from, and KJK started out as a left-wing socialist before she got censured from her Labour feminist group simply for asking why transwomen were women. They seem to be largely women, who marched against real fascism in the shape of the BNP, NF and apartheid South Africa. And they have not, to my certain knowledge, posted anything demanding the murder, let alone the mass murder, of trans people. Not MacLachlan, not the feminists at Redux, not gender critical gays like Clive Simpson, Dennis Kavanagh or the EDIjester, Barry Wall. Not even J.K. Rowling, for whom I have a fair degree of contempt because of her support for the libellous accusations that Mike was an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, simply because he supported Jeremy Corbyn.
Part of the problem is, I believe, the myth of the trans holocaust. There have been trans days of remembrance held in Britain and Scotland, but the numbers of trans people killed over here has been low. In Scotland they were about three, and no-one was killed last year. This should obviously be a source of pride. The figures are higher in America, but as a section of the population they’re still low. The stats the activists use to show that there is a trans holocaust underway come from Latin America. These are desperately poor countries, and some of them, like Brazil, have horrifically high murder rates anyway. And it’s unclear whether the murdered transpeople were killed because they were trans, or because they were sex workers.
But despite the lack of death camps or paramilitary mobs going from house to house looking for trans people, as happened to the Jews during the real Holocaust, this myth is spreading. The right-wing, anti-trans YouTuber, Arielle Scarcella, who is herself a lesbian, put up a piece in which she reported many trans people are joining the Pink Pistols. This is a network of gun clubs set up by the gay community in America and Canada to teach gay men and women how to shoot in order to defend themselves. I sympathise with the reason for them. There has been a violent hatred of gays in America and Britain, and in a culture like America which supports gun ownership as the citizen’s right to defend him- or herself, it’s natural that gays should also want to own them for their defence. Just like the Black Panthers decided that if the White man had guns, they wanted theirs too. But it means we’ve entered a very dangerous climate where scared, volatile people, afraid of Nazi-style persecution, are taking up arms amid angry rhetoric that calls for and legitimises the killing of their opponents. One internet commenter has even said that, given the circumstances, the shooting was entirely predictable.
This is where I hope genuinely liberal people, people concerned about the deteriorating state of social discourse over this matter can help, and particularly academics. Because we’ve been here before, folks, but from the other political extreme. I have a strong interest in folklore, and was for a time a member of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research. This was set up by academic folklorists to investigate contemporary urban folklore. You know, vanishing hitch-hikers, UFOs, and other weirdness. But this was in the 1990s when the was another spike in American and western paranoia. It was when anyone and seemingly almost everyone with a computer was producing small press magazines or pamphlets ranting about THEM. President George Bush Senior sparked some of it after the Gulf War by talking about his New Order, which harked back to the Nazis’ rhetoric about their new European order, and even further back to the 18th century and the Illuminati and the words printed on dollar bills: Novo Ordo Saecularum – ‘New World Order’. Looking for an underlying explanation for the Gulf War, people found it in the old conspiracy theories about Satanist freemasons. And there were real fears of a resurgence of the militant extreme right following the rise of the Militia movement and Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. Morris Dees, one of the major figures in the Southern Poverty Law Centre, published a book about their threat and links to the wider American Nazi movement. It’s been widely criticised, not least because one of the captains of one of the militias was actually Black. There were calls from someone who styled herself a militia commander for them to march on Washington DC. But the other militia members smelt an agent provocateur, and wisely kept to running around training in the hills.
The Society also covered some of the weird conspiracy theories going around America. The American far right at that time hadn’t taken in the fact that real, existing state communism in eastern Europe had collapsed. There was a paranoid fringe that believed it was all a ruse. Thus there were bonkers theories that held that the Russians had established secret bases in Canada and Mexico, from which the tanks would roll into America at the given signal. And God-fearing American Christians believed that they would be targeted for extermination under the One World Satanic state. There was a rumour going around Christians in Pennsylvania that the coloured dots on the state’s road signs indicated the sites of the concentration camps in which they were to be interned. It was all false. The dots were part of a code telling state highway workers when the signs had last been painted, so that they knew when they needed another coat. It had nothing to do with concentration camps for anyone.
And then, with 9/11 came the stories about the destruction of the Twin Towers, and the rise of Alex Jones. Jones has become infamous for his wild conspiracy theories. In one of them he claimed that Barack Obama was going to use an environmental emergency to force Americans into refugee camps and seize power to become an eco-communist dictator. And there were other weird attacks on the former president, in which it was claimed that he was secret atheist/Muslim/Communist/Nazi filled with a hatred of White America and planning its extinction. In fact, Obama was in many ways a bog-standard conventional American politician. He saw himself, as he’s said recently, as a moderate Republican. And there’s a very strong continuity between his bombing of Libya and continuation of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, with Neo-Con foreign policy.
Well, Obama’s been and gone. he was succeeded by Trump, who was succeeded by Biden. There are no concentration camps for anyone. But the ideas of a trans holocaust are merely an extreme left-wing version of the right-wing American fears about a holocaust of Whites and Christians. And it needs people to point this out. During the ’90s and after there were a number of academic books published about the paranoid fringe in America, sometimes as part of wider examinations of conspiracy theories like the infamous Jewish banking myth that inspired Hitler and the Nazis. This new myth of the trans holocaust needs putting in the same context. The fact that it comes from the left, and a minority group that sees itself as vicious marginalised and oppressed, should make no difference. It’s a myth, a dangerous myth, that does seem to be inspiring militant trans activists to violence. And the internet platforms should be helping as well. Nobody should be allowed to post material genuinely calling for the murder of others. It should be immediately struck down. Protests that it’s all a joke should not be tolerated. Since the rise of political correctness in the 1980s people find racist jokes genuinely distasteful. I cannot imagine decent people finding anything funny in jokes about killing Blacks and Jews. And the so-called jokes about killing TERFS shouldn’t be tolerated either. As for masked individuals turning up in black bloc threatening violence, that could be solved by invoking the legislation passed in the 1930s that outlawed paramilitary uniforms. It was aimed at Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. I think it may have become a dead-letter because of the paramilitary violence in Ulster. But there’s a strong case for enforcing it over here.
We have to fight the poisonous myths and paranoia in the militant trans community.
Before someone else with serious mental issues and anger against society because they fear they’re going to be put into a concentration camp because of their gender identity goes on another killing spree.
I also found this book on Google Books in my search for studies on Fascism, and its blurb is very illuminating, not least for what it says about the thugs BJP president Modi is allied to.
In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism
Marzia Casolari
‘This book examines and establishes connections between Italian fascism and Hindu nationalism, connections which developed within the frame of Italy’s anti-British foreign policy.
The most remarkable contacts with the Indian political milieu were established via Bengali nationalist circles. Diplomats and intellectuals played an important role in establishing and cultivating those tie-ups. Tagore’s visit to Italy in 1925 and the much more relevant liaison between Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA were results of the Italian propaganda and activities in India.
But the most meaningful part of this book is constituted by the connections and influences it establishes between fascism as an ideology and a political system and Marathi Hindu nationalism. While examining fascist political literature and Mussolini’s figure and role, Marathi nationalists were deeply impressed and influenced by the political ideology itself, the duceand fascist organisations. These impressions moulded the RSS, a right-wing, Hindu nationalist organisation, and Hindutva ideology, with repercussions on present Indian politics. This is the most original and revealing part of the book, entirely based on unpublished sources, and will prove foundational for scholars of modern Indian history.’
Private Eye over a decade ago ran a piece about militant Hindu nationalism and the BJP, and stated that the RSSS were modelled on Italian Fascism. The RSSS are bunch of Hindu bovver boys, who go about beating up Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. This blurb and the book it advertises definitely puts more additional information on these links. Randranath Tagore’s book on nationalism is very definitely in print. I found it in Waterstones among the various classics. My guess is that it’s probably being read by liberal anti-imperialist types, but I wonder if its acceptability in those quarters would be harmed if they knew about Tagore’s visit to Italy and the links between Hindu extremist nationalism and real fascism.
A few days ago I watched another video put up by Jim Boobeh, the main man behind the right-wing YouTube channel Correct, Not Political, and a fellow rightists, called O’Looney. Correct, Not Political are the bunch who believe that the World Economic Forum are at the at the heart of a global conspiracy to take over the world and make us all serfs under green communism, owning nothing, confined to 15 minute cities and eating insects for the good of the planet. Many people on the right have similar views, like Carl Benjamin and the Lotus Eaters. But I wasn’t prepared for just how paranoid Correct, Not Political was.
That they’re a bunch of far right conspiracy theorists is obvious, as shown by their videos of them protesting gay rights marches, drag queen story hour, trades union and environmental protests, pro-refugee demonstrations, and events held by socialists and ‘commies’. How right wing they are is also demonstrated by the video they show introducing their live streams, which are old footage of Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts marching about. They also don’t like the Freemasons and there’s more than a touch of anti-Semitism there, as I think they’re also into the stupid myths of the Jewish banking conspiracy. But they’re also worried about a military invasion by the Channel migrants. Yup, these are not poor unfortunates fleeing war and persecution in their homelands, but undercover UN soldiers. Now, many members of the anti-immigrant right have said that most of the Channel migrants are military age men, and are suspicious of them because they don’t include similar numbers of women and children. Which is what you would expect to see if people were fleeing war and persecution, or at least what the sceptical peeps of the right would. But there was an interview with one Channel migrant a little while ago who said that he, and many others were running away from conscription, and hoped to bring their women and families over later when they had settled. I also think that many of the military age men are actually young blokes hoping to find work and greater opportunities in the West. The impression I’ve had reading various bit and pieces of information on the current state of the Middle East and talking to more knowledgeable friends is that there’s a real problem with large scale unemployment in many of the Arab countries. A little while ago there was a piece in one of the news blogs that the economic situation in Egypt had deteriorated to the point where many families could no longer afford basic staples. There was a similar situation among Sunni Muslims in Syria, where they were very firmly at the bottom of the social pile and faced with grinding poverty, less educated and with poorer prospects than the Shi’a, Alawi and Christian Syrians. Hence their support for radical Islamist movements and the rebellion against Assad. But Correct, Not Political really do believe that we’re being literally invaded.
Boobeh and O’Looney spoke about how they’d heard from a number of people that the Channel migrants were really undercover UN soldiers. One man had sent a drone off to spy on them, and had seen them being trained by the Black Watch. They were here, ready to take over the country. The two also speculated about the outbreak of a nuclear war, and stated that the elite would be all right as they would be safe in their luxury nuclear bunkers 2- 3 miles underground. That was certainly true of the Soviet elite. After the Fall of Communism it was revealed that a whole city, complete with shops, had been built underground for the Communist rulers in the event of a nuclear war. I dare say that something similar may have been secretly built in the west. One of the TV travel shows, in which a celeb goes round a part of the world talking about the interesting bits, showed the world’s most expensive nuclear bunker. I think it was built by a businessman in Nevada, and was so luxurious it even had a swimming pool. I don’t know if other big businessmen built themselves similar bunkers, but as during the Cold War ordinary Americans were told to build fall-out shelters in their yards it really, really wouldn’t surprise me.
Going back to the weird idea of the migrants as UN troopers, it looks like a mutant British version of some of the rumours that were going around America’s paranoid fringe in the ’90s. This held that the Soviet Union had not in fact collapsed, but had a staged a careful ruse. There were supposed to be secret Soviet military bases on the Canadian and Mexican borders, from which Russian tanks would roll into America once the invasion started. Here the Red Army has been replaced by the Channel migrants and the United Nations, who are the centre of similar fears on the American right. It’s all part of the plan to set up the evil, satanic one-world communist government. The current paranoia about the World Economic Forum is part of that, and indeed Boobeh himself put it into context by mentioning the other groups that have also been seen as part of the global conspiracy, like the Trilateral Commission.
The extent of this section of the far right’s alienation from mainstream society was shown by Boobeh and O’Looney talking about how they’d like to set up parallel societies, complete with a separate healthcare system, independent of the mainstream. Well, the anarchists and other left-wing radicals they despise have also felt the same way, and tried to something like it, but have been unsuccessful. They, or at least Boobeh, also were against voting, because all the parties were compromised, but neither did they want to start a violent revolution. Which was reassuring. Mosley’s their hero, but they don’t want to follow him down the road of trying to attempt a Fascist seizure of power along the lines of Mussolini and Hitler.
I don’t know how many of them there are in Correct, Not Political. Probably not many, as even at their height the extreme right-wing groups in this country were numerically small. The BNP claimed to have 2,000 members, but researchers have suggested that they only had about 200 core members. Most of the others left after about a year, probably because although they were against non-White immigration, they didn’t have any interest in Fascist ideology. But I suspect that there are many other groups and individuals, like Godfrey Bloom, who shared their fears about the WEF and the UN.
As for the notion that the Black Watch were training the migrants, it seems to me that they may have been sent to guard them. Some of them came over with guns, as reported a few months ago. But if any kind of training was going on, I wonder if it could be because these are western-allied soldiers, who were disguised as civilians, perhaps to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. Or perhaps as part of some undercover global security operation which uses the migrant networks. Of course, this is just speculation and it may well be rubbish, and no training of any kind is going on. But I wonder.
There may be a genuine conspiracy here, which has nothing to do with the UN, WEF or Masonic Jewish bankers.
I got this message this afternoon from Megaphone inviting me to join the TUC’s Black Network for Black trade unionists. Not being Black, I’m not eligible for membership. But I’m putting it up here in case there are any Black readers of this blog who would be interested in joining. It’s part of a wider campaign to celebrate trade unions. This is extremely important, as it doesn’t matter what colour or religion you are, Black, White, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, without strong trade unions to defend us, working people are screwed.
‘Dear David,
For #HeartUnions week, we want to spotlight Black British trade unionists. We know that our movement is strongest when it stands for all members – Black and White – and leads the charge for equality.
That’s why the TUC have launched the Black Network, a powerful tool that will connect, amplify and support the work of Black trade unionists.
It’s the first step in the national recording of Black workers who are in the Trade Union movement.
From reps and activists, to organisers and trade union employees, it’s time we build a comprehensive and inclusive record of Black collective achievements.
Make your mark on history and be a part of something truly ground-breaking
The success of the network relies on all of us doing our bit to spread the word. Will you encourage your Black and minority ethnic (BME) friends and colleagues to join the network?
As the trade union movement renews the fight against racial injustice, we must continue to learn from the past. Take a look at the TUC’s blog and learn about Black and minority ethnic (BME) workers past and present.
A very short text report came up on YouTube from one of the Indian English-language news channels, reporting that the Indian authorities had raided the Beeb’s offices in Kolkata, or Calcutta as I think it used to be under the Empire, for a tax ‘survey’. There were no further details, so I don’t know what this is all about, But it brought out all all the Hindu Fascists in the comments section. They were denouncing the Beeb as anti-Indian and demanding that it should be banned along with al-Jazeera. At the moment Modi’s bunch of subcontinental stormtroopers are trying to silence opposition media. Apart from the Nazi persecution of non-Hindu minorities like Muslims, Sikhs and Christians – and they were even going after the Buddhists a few months ago, like they have any kind of reputation as a violent threat to civilised society – they were also clamping down on liberal Hindu and other journalists, who believe in the Congress party’s vision of a liberal, pluralistic India where peoples of different faiths and philosophies can live in harmony. I wonder if something like that is going on here, and that the Beeb has angered the goose-steppers of the BJP by reporting on their religious fanaticism, their corruption and the harm their neoliberal policies are doing to the poor. And that the tax ‘survey’ is a trumped-up investigation designed to exert political pressure.
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