British Ethnic Minorities Abandoning Left-Wing Identity Politics for Values of Family, Faith and Flag

Rakib Ehsan, Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong About Ethnic Minorities (London: Forum 2023).

I first came across this in an interview Ehsan himself gave about it on YouTube. I can’t remember now what channel it was on, but I think it may have been the SDP’s as Ehsan’s politics seem similar to theirs – left-wing economically but conservative socially. He also says at the outset that he tries to bridge the gap between Blue Labour and Red Tories. I have very strong issues with both of those groups, as they cloak their Thatcherite economics that disenfranchise and exploit working people in the language of the left. See Philip Blonde’s Red Tory. The book is directed very firmly at the Labour party. Ehsan sees the party as having abandoned class based activism in the wake of the BLM movement for divisive identity politics imported from America. This is a country that has a very different history and political culture from the UK, and this is going to cost them the votes of the very ethnic minorities they seek to court.

Contrary to identitarian propaganda, Britain and its people aren’t racist, although racism still exists and needs tackling where it does. The supposed privilege Whites enjoy over people of colour disappear when examined in detail. Some ethnic minorities are surpassing Whites in school grades, pay and employment. There are also differences in achievement between White demographic groups. Working class White English males are nearly at the bottom, with only Irish Travellers below them. Chinese and Indians outperform Whites. Black Africans are also outperforming Whites academically. There is no overarching ‘BAME’ community, as these are very different peoples who have different levels of achievement. Black Africans, for example, are much more successful than Afro-Caribbean peoples. The success and growing achievements of people of colour is being obscured by the grievance narrative that they are all being held back by systemic racism. As a man of mixed Bangladeshi-Uttar Pradeshi heritage, he felt particularly insulted when Jeremy Corbyn declared that only Labour could unlock the potential of Britain’s Black and Asian communities. This attitude, he warns, is going to cost the Labour party the votes of Britain’s non-White communities. Rather than being obsessed with racial grievances, these communities value the two parent family, religious faith and are patriotically British. It is these values, that are despised by the woke left, that produces their increasing academic, economic and social successes. This success should be celebrated, and the White population, which is trailing behind in many instances, could, he dares to suggest, take a leaf out of their book. At the last election, one million people of colour abandoned Labour for the Tories.

Brexit Not Fascist Project of Nostalgic White Supremacists

He is also a Brexiteer and is at pains to argue that Brexit wasn’t the project of Fascist, backward-looking Whites. Many of the Whites who voted for it did so because they came from communities who believed the country had been harmed by the EU, not because of immigration. And a large proportion of the non-White population also voted Leave. One in three Asians did so. They feared the immigration to this country of large numbers of people from parts of Europe which were much less tolerant of non-Whites. They also wanted Britain to establish greater contact with the Commonwealth.

Ethnic Disparities Based on Other Factors Apart from Racism

As for the disparities between ethnic groups in sport, jobs and education, some of this is down to class, and differences in culture and job expectations. For example, Bangladeshis largely do better than Whites at school, but come from a very traditional culture that sees women’s place as being in the home. There is thus a relative lack of Bangladeshi women in the workplace. He also discusses the question of the absence of British Asians in cricket played at the county and national level. This comes from the allegations of racism at Yorkshire CC. He states that this was clearly a case of racism, and that the club was racist hellhole. But he quotes several British Asian cricketers that there are particular attitudes in British Asian culture against playing cricket professionally. Asian parents want good, secure jobs for their children – jobs like doctor or dentist. Professional cricket is very insecure, and so their parents will try and steer their kids away from it. As for the police, in many instances it’s a matter of family tradition, with children following parents and relatives in the force. Thus, White people tend to predominate simply because of family tradition. And on the subject of the cops, he cites evidence that shows that most people of colour are satisfied with their local police forces. Indeed, more non-Whites trust the cops more than White British. This does not include the Metropolitan Police, who are distrusted because of their proven racism, misogyny and other forms of bigotry. He believes that this could be tackled by breaking it up into smaller, local forces, and letting local forces also run the parts of the Met that extend into surrounding counties like Kent.

Regarding Islam, he cites the statistic that three-quarters of Muslims believe that Britain is a good place to be one. This is much more than the general British population. More Muslims are also concerned about the threat of Islamism than Whites. He also criticises the Labour MP Naz Shah for claiming that the Prevent programme was resented by Muslims for demonising them when the stats showed that 53 per cent of Muslims weren’t aware of it.

Black and Asians Patriotic Brits

The Black and Asian communities were also generally more patriotic and had a greater trust in British democracy, although this was much less so in the younger generation. 78 per cent of older Asians had faith in British democracy, but only 58 per cent of the younger generation, just a bit lower than Whites at 62 per cent. He put this down to the older generation coming from countries which were unstable with very repressive regimes, tracing the history in particular of the British South Asian community. This began after the War with Sikhs from the Punjab, who had been displaced from Pakistan and given poor quality land in India. They were then followed by Gujuratis seeking employment in the NHS. And then came the ethnic cleansing of the Ugandan Asian community by Idi Amin and his policy of Africanisation. The South Asians in Africa were employed as middle ranking officials and businessmen between the White colonial officials at the top and indigenous Africans at the bottom. There were already immigration restrictions in place, but they were admitted by Ted Heath. I’ve heard again and again, including from Asian speakers at our local church, that the Ugandan Asian community is still grateful to Britain because of this.

He also has immense respect for the Queen and King Charles. The Queen had a strong sense of duty to the Commonwealth, while our current liege lord is strongly multicultural. He said in his coronation speech that Britain is a ‘community of communities’ and that he wanted to be known as ‘Defender of Faith’, meaning all Britain’s religious communities, not just the Anglican church. On the subject of which, he notes the strong contribution made by Black Africans to keeping it alive in the face of the massive secularisation of the White population. He states that you are far more likely to get a sense of the deep antiquity of Christianity in Britain in an African cafe eating Jellof rice in London than in many White communities. It is ridiculous to blame the Queen for the evils committed under imperialism and colonialism, and Britain’s non-Christian religions are certainly not resentful of Christianity. He takes issue with the secularists in the Labour party, who feel that religion is outmoded and dangerous. They are actively putting non-Whites off, because these cultures have a very strong religious identity. More Muslims see their religion as important to their identity than Whites. The Labour party has a strong tradition of Christian Socialism, and these non-Christian religious communities would like to see it revived.

Importance of Education to Indians and Chinese

He also puts the growing success of the Indian and Chinese communities in education and professionally to strong families and religion. He cites statistics showing that children from stable, two parent homes are less likely to join criminal gangs, are more emotionally stable, and do better at school and in the world of work. Far fewer Asian children live in single parent families than Whites. They, and the Chinese, are also very aspirational. They want their children to do well, make sure they work hard at school and in the case of the Chinese make sure they keep away from bad influences. They also have the support of the wider community, with elders actively taking an interest in the welfare and progress of the young. He does not decry single mothers, recognising the immense hard work so many do to raise their children, and that the relaxation of the divorce laws were brought in for the very good reason of allowing women in particular to escape abusive marriages. But it has had a devastating effect on marriage and the family in Britain. 63 per cent of Afro-Caribbean children live in one parent families, and 43 per cent of Black African. 25 per cent of Whites also are being raised in families largely without a father. This is holding these groups back, and he dares to suggest that Whites could take a leaf out of the Asian communities in starting to value marriage and the family more. I am in complete agreement, and don’t think this is at all controversial.

On the subject of religion, he states that he has mixed views on the subject, wondering if it really is outmoded and dangerous, especially after the terrorist attacks of 7/7 and the massacre of schoolgirls by a suicide bomber at the Ariana Grande concert. But the stats also show that people, who have a strong religious faith are generally more mentally stable, more optimistic and with a higher degree of life satisfaction than atheists. He also believes that respect for the cultures of ethnic minorities should not be used as a pretext for avoiding tackling crime and extremist attitudes in those communities, which could be excused by their perpetrators as part of their culture.

Britain Not Racist Country

He also cites the statistics showing that Britain is not a racist country. A large majority of Whites -well above 70 per cent – believe that Englishness is a matter of values rather than colour. The number of people linking Englishness to White ethnicity is low, and fell markedly in the last decade. Britain has robust laws against racism and discrimination, and the level of real racism, including abuse and violence, is lower in Britain than in many continental countries like France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. This, he claims, shows the falsity of the Remain argument that views the continent as a paradigm of anti-racism in contrast with evil Britain. Anti-Black racism also isn’t confined to Whites. Eight per cent of Blacks in Britain have experienced discrimination at the hands of other Blacks. 84 per cent of Brits have no problem with a person of colour heading the government. Rishi Sunak, regardless of his wretched political policies, is an example of Asian success, who should be celebrated. His parents both worked in the medical sector – I think his father was a pharmacist. Sunak was privately educated, rising professionally and politically.

This is where the book is really controversial. He takes these stats showing that Britain isn’t a racist country from a variety of reports, including those of CRED and Sewell. The last was commissioned under the Tories, and came under widespread attack for supposedly erasing the reality of racism in Britain. This was despite it being written by mostly Black and Asian academics. Various Labour MPs accused it of being Fascist, with one even Tweeting an image of a Klan meeting underneath. The Black and Asian politicians, who do not accept that Britain is racist, like Kemi Badenoch, are subjected to horrendous racist abuse as Uncle Toms and worse language. He himself has been attacked in these terms. His favourite has been that he is a ‘Muslim Mosley’. Well, I’d say that the Muslim Mosleys were the Islamists convincing lost and alienated Muslims to join Daesh, or march around our cities demanding sharia law while waving the black flag of jihad. The British left, and primarily the Labour party, has taken over dangerous and divisive identity politics imported from America. What many of the people of colour demanding these policies want is not equality, but preferential treatment. He is also suspicious of many of those attacking Islamophobia, as he suspects that many of those are Islamists using it as a strategy to introduce aspects of sharia law. I think he’s right here, as the mass protests against the autistic schoolboy for Islamophobia when he scuffed a Qur’an, a horrendous blasphemy under Islam, certainly shows. He is against the European Court of Human Rights ruling that businesses are allowed to discriminate against women wearing the hijab if this threatens to be disruptive. He points out that the hijab simply covers the face. It is not like the niqub, which covers the whole body, including the face. The ruling threatens to prevent devout Muslim women from finding work outside the home and bring them into contact with mainstream society.

Attacks on Corbyn

Naturally for a man of the right he gives Jeremy Corbyn a good kicking. He claims that Labour lost the 2019 election due to his inability to tackle the anti-Semitism crisis and the promotion of identitarian politics. But this wasn’t the case. Corbyn had very wide support and paradoxically a greater share of the vote than Blair and New Labour, regardless of the fact that it was the poorest electoral performance for the party since the 1930s. What brought him down was a very manufactured campaign by the British right and the official Jews of the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbinate and various pro-Israel groups. They were alarmed by his championing of the Palestinians against the oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Israeli state, and so did everything they could to smear him as an anti-Semite. Corbyn has a long career of standing up for Jewish Brits, but this counted for nothing to people who regard any opposition or criticism of Israel as an anti-Semitic. As for the real anti-Semites in the Labour party, the true nature of the crisis was kept hidden from him by right-wing intriguers and traitors within the party. People like Margaret Hodge, who admitted she did everything she could to stop Labour being elected.

Rejection of Labour’s Proposed New Equality Act

He respects the Labour party for the anti-racist legislation it passed in the 70s as well as the Equality Act passed by Blair, but is firmly against Labour’s promised new Equality Act demanding affirmative action. The majority of Black and Asian people do not want or need it. Indeed, he claims that there is a suspicion that Labour will hold people of colour back in order to stop their success invalidating the claim that their lagging behind Whites is all due to racism. He is also critical of organisations like the Runnymede Commission pushing this narrative. Twenty years ago the Commission praised Britain for its multicultural tolerance. Now it claims that Britain is marred by deep structural racism. But British society isn’t racist and hasn’t become worse. It is just that the Runnymede Commission, in order to keep itself relevant, has joined BLM and the other grievance mongers. Labour’s embrace of these groups and individuals, such Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, is putting voters, including those of colour, off. And they may well abandon the party because of it.

The Trans Issue

He also has controversial views on the trans issue. He states that trans people should enjoy the same protection from abuse, discrimination and violence as other protected groups. However, transwomen should not be allowed to enter women’s private spaces such as prisons, toilets and changing rooms. In many ways, this is common sense as trans identified biological male rapists have been put in women’s prisons in California and Scotland, and there has been an outcry against it. The SNP lost much of their support when they also placed these dangerous men in women’s prisons. It does conflict, however, with the view that ‘trans women are women’, even if they are not biologically, and so trans activists and supporters will naturally find it very offensive. And he is also not afraid to call divorce parties degenerate as part of the collapse of marriage and the nuclear family in the west.

Radical Attacks on Marriage and the Family

This is a controversial but necessary book. Controversial because it overturns the received wisdom about British ethnic minorities as the victims of systemic racism needing aid and allyship from mainstream White British society. The statistics about the beneficial effects of growing up in two-parent family are almost certainly correct. They’ve been reproduced several times before. This will jar with some on the radical left. There has been an attack on traditional European marriage since the time of the 18th century French philosophes. Free love instead of marriage was embraced by 19th century Romantics like Shelley and Byron. It has also been part of the Anarchist critique of capitalism as well as Marxism. Marx states in The Communist Manifesto that it degrades women and believed it was dying out among the working class in his own time. This was further expanded by Engels in his The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which also drew on the Das Mutterrecht of the German antiquarian, Backhausen. Backhausen had believed that society had passed through several phases of development – a communal society without institutional marriage, followed by matriarchy and then finally patriarchy. Archaeologists and historians have since rejected this. Historical research has also shown that marriage very definitely wasn’t dying out among the 19th century working class. Nevertheless, marriage has been attacked by radical activists. I can remember the controversy about Pebble Mill, a BBC lunchtime magazine programme in the 70s, when they invited on a couple who very definitely believed that marriage was dying out, and that this was a very good thing indeed. Over the other side of the Channel, the Postmodernist Marxist Althusser attacked marriage and the family as part of the sociological infrastructure of capitalism and feudalism.

Benefits of Religious Faith

Similarly there is abundant evidence supporting the view that religion is beneficial to one’s wellbeing. A few years ago medical researchers claimed that having a faith in general added six months to one’s life. And back when the New Atheists were beginning their assault on religion neurologists found that people who had mystical experiences were generally in no worse mental health than the rest of the population. This obviously isn’t something secular and atheist activists want to hear. Nor do I think they really want to hear that in general, non-Christian minorities don’t have an issue with institutional, public Christianity. The claim that they do tends to come from secularist and atheist organisations like the Humanist Society as part of their project of removing Christianity and other forms of religion from the public sphere. The philosopher Bruce Trigger tackled this subject in his Religion in Public over decade. He claimed that many Jews did not want the bishops removed from the House of Lords because, so long as they were, it created a public space for religion in politics.

Ethnic Success Also Due to Differences in Culture and History

I also think that the stats showing that Britain is not an intrinsically racist country is likely to be true, even if the report that argued this was commissioned by the Tories. If it is untrue, then it has to be shown to be untrue through further sociological research and polling. The argument that it must be the case from ethnic disparities is false, because as Thomas Sowell has shown, different ethnic groups have different attitudes and economic and professional specialities due to their history and quite often geographical location. The Chinese and Gujuratis are, like the Jews, ‘middleman cultures’ strongly based on trade. They therefore tend to surpass other groups in business, as do the Lebanese in South America. Ehsan himself argues that the success of various ethnic groups depends on the cultural resources and the attitudes and material advantages they may have enjoyed when they left their country of origin. Ugandan Asians have prospered, despite having been robbed of nearly everything they owned by Amin and his thugs, because they were business and professional people. Afro-Caribbeans, however, generally speaking lack this entrepreneurial and professional background and so lag behind. And the idea that all White people are privileged is going to ring particularly hollow for White working class boys and the hollowed out coastal towns and post-industrial communities. The instant dismissal of the claim that Britain isn’t racist is based on prejudice rather than genuine scepticism.

Changes in Patterns of Racism Since the Experience of the First Afro-Caribbean Migrants

The attitude of the identitarian left that Britain must be intrinsically racist seems to come mostly from the experience of Afro-Caribbeans, who are generally more distrustful of the police and democracy than other groups. They have indeed, along with the first generation Asian immigrants, suffered real racism in the form of institutional discrimination – no dog, no blacks, no Irish – racist bullying and violence, particularly from real Fascists in the shape of the BNP, National Front and other lowlifes. It is Afro-Caribbeans in particular who lag behind Whites. This history has bred an attitude among many that Britain is racist and hostile, backed up with convoluted and contrived arguments from the Postcolonial set. This has become part of the general culture of the left, because of the long tradition of anti-racism and anti-imperialism. It looks plausible, because for over four decades now the received view has been that Britain is racist to a greater or lesser extent, even though the situation has changed and is now becoming much more complex. Diane Abbott didn’t want to discuss inter-ethnic minority conflict and racism, but this attitude is contradicted by rioting last year between Hindus and Muslims in Leicester. Ehsan points out that this shows that ethnic conflict isn’t just something confined to Whites. And there is now and industry of grievance mongers in academia and woke capitalism, whose careers are centred around portraying White Britain as innately oppressive, that Blacks and other people of colour are always victims and that Whites should feel guilty as racial oppressors tainted with the blood of the indigenous peoples they exterminated and enslaved.

Multiculturalism Pulling Ethnic Groups Apart, Not Together

Ehsan notes that while Britain may be more tolerant than other countries, there is still a problem in pulling the different ethnic groups together. He cites further statistics shown that a majority of Brits feels more needs to be done on this count, and argues that was is needed is a common set of shared values. But this is one of the problems of multiculturalism. Blair recruited as his community representatives people who very definitely not representative of their communities and determined to push their own sectarian or ethnic politics. And the attack on the welfare state has meant that different communities are competing against each other for government funding and aid. For all his faults, Corbyn did represent a return to class politics, which is another reason why there was such a concerted attempt to remove him. If the working class in general receives proper welfare support, there is less jealousy and resentment between ethnic groups, and so Whites in particular are less inclined to heed racists like the BNP.

Blue Labour and Attacks on the Welfare State

As for the position that government action is needed to strengthen the family, I agree. But this goes further than simply making it a matter of tax. And I am very suspicious of the right when they claim to strengthen the family. All too often it is based around the view that it’s declined due to the welfare state, and so the first thing they do is cut welfare support even further while loudly crying, like Thatcher, that it’s more self-help and will make people more self-reliant.

He is critical of the Tories as a corrupt group wrecking the economy for their own benefit and hope that Labour will put forward pro-working class policies. But this won’t come from Blue Labour any more than it will supposedly come from Red Tories. What comes from the Blairites and the other Thatcherite infiltrators is more privatisation, including that of the NHS, more cuts to the welfare state and more attempts to strangle the unions, all of which you can see in Stalin’s leadership of the Labour party.

This book is necessary as it argues against the current racial narrative from a man of colour, who clearly believes that such narratives are damaging the Labour party. Certainly racial attitudes have changed radically in my lifetime and it is time that the debate recognised this. But at the same time, as Ehsan is careful to state, racism still exists and needs tackling where it does.

Is Netanyahu Really Preparing to Expel Africans from Israel?

That was a headline I caught this morning when I briefly glanced at the internet newsfeed this morning. This comes after rioting in Jerusalem between pro- and anti-government Eritreans. There was a piece of news yesterday that Netanyahu was planning to expel Eritreans from Jerusalem. And then it was followed by this headline this morning. The reports about these incidents state that Israel really isn’t keen on accepting asylum seekers. This comes from its determination to remain an ethnically Jewish state, and there have been reports of an extremely authoritarian and discriminatory attitude towards African migrants trying to pass through the country into Europe. There have also been reports of a strong current of anti-Black racism in the country, with Jews of Black African origin, such as those from Ethiopia, abused, threatened and assaulted.

I was told yesterday that the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper with a proud future behind it, is writing a book, Israelophobia, in which he claims that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. I think he may well have his work cut out with Netanyahu’s regime. Not only is Israel an apartheid state with institutional discrimination against the Palestinians, but many ordinary Israelis are worried about the direction their country is taking. Netanyahu’s government has passed legislation curbing the freedom of the judiciary. An independent judiciary is a fundamental democratic institution. Israeli citizens have been concerned about this assault on one of their fundamental civic freedoms, and there have been demonstrations. One report profiled a family, who immediately after the Sabbath meal on Friday went out to demonstrate. Liberal and secular Israelis feel under threat because of the favouritism Netanyahu and his coalition partners show to the nationalists and right-wing settlers. Some of these extreme right-wing groups are exempt from national service, and so the burden of defending the country falls to liberal Jews. Many have been talking about emigrating. It’s been suggested that about a third of the population may leave, mainly middle class professionals in science, medicine and law. Well, if they do emigrate, we should be glad to have them to fill our skills shortage. And we could do with a few lawyers, keen to preserve democracy, to guard against the assaults on it in this country. The number of prospective emigrants might be exaggerated, as over the past few decades many people in Britain have said that they’re going to leave if a particular party get in, and then very conspicuously don’t. But even so, it shows the outrage of ordinary Israelis to Netanyahu’s creeping authoritarian.

And then there was this headline that he was considering expelling all Africans. If Netanyahu did say something like that, then I don’t see how anyone can reasonably claim that Israel is not turning into a Fascist state. This is, after all, ethnic cleansing of the type the NF wanted for Britain and Oswald Mosley wanted for British East Africa. He wanted the indigenous Black inhabitants to be expelled and the colonies developed as White states. Buddyhell, the left-wing blogger behind Guy DeBord’s Cat, in one of his pieces about Israel noted that in the 1920s the Jewish settlers in Palestine even had their own, proper, Fascist outfit, the Maximalist Legalists, who wanted to model the future Jewish state on Mussolini’s Italy. Well, Musso threw in his lot with Hitler, passing discriminatory race laws against Jews and Black Africans while the Nazis rounded up Jewish Italians for slaughter in the Holocaust.

But just as anti-racists and liberals are worried about the rise of the far right in Europe, it seems the spectre of genuine Fascism is also rising in Israel.

Blues: The Music of Poverty and Marginalisation

Blues was composed, performed and sung by people who lead lives of immense hardship – grinding poverty and genuine institutionalised racism and discrimination. But reading some of the lyrics I was struck how some of them also reflect the times we’re living in with the cost of living crisis. People of all races are finding it hard to make ends meet, while being expected to watch on and cheer as the global elite get richer and richer.

Here’s a few sample lines expressing the singer’s poverty from Harris’ book, Jazz.

‘I’ve never seen such real hard times before

I’ve never seen such real hard times before

The wolf keeps walkin’ all ’round my door.’

And

‘I can’t go outside to my grocery store

I ain’t got no money and my credit don’t go no more.’

Can we have that last couplet sung by protesters the next time some Tory ratbag goes on a meet and greet of the plebs?

I was also struck by this piece, about a navvy on the roads describing how he’s making it, but it’s only for the rich White folks in their cars.

‘I’m makin’ a road

For the cars

To fly on.

Makin’ a road

Through the palmetto thicket

For light and civilisation

To travel on.

Makin’ a road

For rich old men

Two sweep over in their big cars,

An’ leave me standin’ here.

Sure,

A road helps all of us!

White folks ride –

An’ I gets to see ’em ride.

I ain’t never seen nobody

Ride so fine before.

Hey, buddy!

Look at me!

I’m making a road…’

And many Blacks today share the sentiment behind the lyric, that they’re exploited and marginalised working to produce goods and services that only rich Whites will enjoy.

But I also think it’s possible to go beyond the specific politics of race, as now people of all colours are being pressed into poverty and exploited by the global rich. We’re all expected to work for a pittance so that Priti Patel and the other authors of Britannia Unchained can rave about how strong the British economy is, while working people see precious little of this illusory wealth.

Dennis Fang Asks Why They Cast a Black Woman as Cleopatra

Another video criticising Netflix for casting a Black woman as Cleopatra. I’m post this up, not just because of its content, but also because the author of the post is of Asian heritage. They have their own history of colonisation and discrimination, and so it’s not just case of White supremacists or generally offended Whites criticising the casting. . As I hope is also clear by the fact that it’s the Egyptians themselves who are objecting to what they see as the appropriation of their history by Black Americans. I noticed he’s also dyed his hair blue, which also probably would raise alarm bells amongst the militant right and mark him down as a ‘woke’ leftie weirdo

Fang makes many of the same points as the Fun Slaying King about the historical evidence for Cleopatra’s racial identity. But he also adds that under the Roman Empire, the Egyptians were subject to an apartheid system which heavily discriminated against them in favour of the Greek and Roman colonists. At one point he says that showing Cleopatra as Black is like portraying King Leopold, the butcher of the Congo, as Black. He swiftly changes his mind, and says it’s more ridiculous than this, it would be like portraying him as an indigenous American.

He also makes the same point that the concentration on Cleopatra ignores some really stirring events in genuine Black African history. He talks about the last stand of the Songhai empire, when they drove cattle against the muskets of the invading Moroccans. Or when the Cushites fought off a Roman invasion and even decapitated the head of a statue of the Roman emperor. I think this is a real problem. There’s some fascinating discoveries being made about the rise of urbanism in Black Africa. A few years ago a White archaeologist teaching in Nigeria discovered the remains of an urban complex covering an area the size of Salisbury plain. But he’s the only one exploring it, as his Nigerian students are all keen to go to Egypt.

My Reply to Labour Email on Gay and Trans Policies: Supporting Videos

My last post was about the email I received from the Labour outlining its proposed policies for gay and trans people. I have absolutely nothing against protecting gay and trans people from prejudice, violence and discrimination. However, although the implications of Labour’s stance towards trans people aren’t made clear in their message, I believe they pose grave dangers for women. I am afraid women may be left vulnerable to predatory men in prisons, schools, rape crisis centres and homelessness and domestic abuse shelters through such men simply stating that they identify as women as so gaining access to them. I believe that women’s achievements in sport will be harmed through men participating in them while also claiming that they are women mentally. And I am also worried that the ban on gay conversion therapy will mean affirmative-only care in the treatment of gender-confused and trouble children, to the point where individuals will be trans where this is definitely not the appropriate course of treatment. I am also convinced that the sudden explosion in trans-identifying youth is due trans having become a social contagion rather than the product of innate gender dysphoria. And this is being promoted at the ideological level by Queer Theory, a postmodernist revision of Marxism.

Here are a number of videos that support some of the points I made in my email back to the Labour party.

Here’s an audio piece by gay YouTuber Clive Simpson, in which he describes the horrors of real gay conversion therapy and argues that it is most definitely not the same as any modern trans conversion therapy. He makes the point that any ban on gay conversion therapy will effectively leave only the affirmative care model as the sole course of treatment.

On the violence by trans rights activists to gender critical feminists, here’s a 30 minute video by Maria Maclachlan, a left-wing gender critical feminist. She was physically assaulted by a trans activist at Speaker’s Corner, but in a disgusting miscarriage of justice she was then one prosecuted.

Here’s a series of three videos from James Lindsay in which he reads through Gayle Rubin’s Thinking Sex. This is one of the founding texts of Queer Theory, published in the 1980s. Lindsay lay clear its basis in the postmodernist revision of Marxism and how it seeks to legitimise paedophilia as part of its radical agenda for sexual liberation and social transformation. These are long videos – each one is about about an hour and fifty minutes long, more or less, so you might only want to watch one of them.

In this video from Graham Linehan he discusses WPATH’s collaboration with the Eunuch Archive with feminist writer Genevieve Gluck. The Eunuch Archive is an organisation for castration fetishists, whose website includes an archive of its members fiction, some of which involve sadistic fantasies of child abuse.

Another video from Glinner, in which he and his fellow conversationalists talk to two Spanish feminist guests about their campaigns and the violence they experienced from trans rights activists.

Here’s a short video of about 3 minutes plus on the controversy over the trans policy in Loudoun county schools.

There are several others that I could put up, but I hope these will be enough for now.

The Racists and Reactionaries Who Are the ‘Honorary Patrons’ of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism

On Wednesday, Tony Greenstein also put up a very revealing post discussing some of the honorary patrons of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. This is the organisation responsible for many of the anti-Semitism smears and libels, including that of Mike. Greenstein notes that it’s suspected of being funded by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs as part of their campaign of dirty tricks against the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement. And the CAA’s patrons are a grim lot of reactionaries, racists and islamophobes. They include the former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, Eric Pickles, Bob Blackman, Matthew Offord, Mike Freer, and Richard Kemp.

Carey got himself into trouble with Britain’s Muslim community in 2004 with a tactless comment about Islam, which included the words ‘During the past 500 years, critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity’. It’s a very simplified version of Islamic history, which leaves out Modernists like Mohammed Abduh, the Egyptian ulema, who began the process of modernisation in their country before its conquest by the British and French, and secularist radicals like Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk.

Eric Pickles, whom Buddy Hell at Guy Debord’s Cat has nicknamed ‘the Sontaran’ because of his striking resemblance to those aliens from Dr. Who, used to be progressive and anti-racist. That is before he and Maggie’s Tory cabinet decided to back Ray Honeyford, the headmaster of a Middle School in Bradford. Honeyford had written a piece in the right-wing Salisbury Review, claiming that there was a link between race and intelligence. The local authority wanted to sack him, but he was supported by the Daily Heil and Thatcher. And so Pickles also decided to throw in his lot behind Honeyford. And he’s been a populist ever since.

Blackman, Offord and Freer all put their weight behind the campaign ‘Operation Dharmic Vote’ by the National Council of Hindu Temples back in 2017. This looks like an attempt to copy David Lammy’s Operation Black Vote earlier this century, which was a campaign to get more Black people to vote so that more would be done for them by a more diverse parliament. ‘Operation Dharmic Vote’ sounds similar, but was definitely not as benign. The National Council of Hindu Temples were annoyed that British parties, like Labour, were trying to outlaw caste discrimination, especially against the Dalits. This is the term now used for the Untouchables, the people of the lowest caste, who are given the dirtiest, lowest paid and most demeaning jobs. Indian Dalit activists and writers have described their conditions as ‘slavery’. There are reports in this country of Dalits being refused medical treatment by their doctors. It’s disgraceful, but Blackman, Offord and Freer decided to back the campaign to get the votes of the most reactionary elements of British Hinduism.

Blackman also went further, also hosted a meeting in parliament, at which one of the speakers was Tapan Ghosh, an Indian islamophobe and christophobe. Claiming to be defending human rights, Ghosh talked about ‘800 years of Arab Islamic’ aggression, and ‘200 years of European Christian aggression’. He also described the Rohingyas, now being butchered in Myanmar, as ‘violent’.

Both Islam and Christianity largely entered India through military conquest, though India also has a community of indigenous Syriac Christians in Kerala, who entered the country as refugees from persecution in the Persian Empire. The Hindu Nationalist right bitterly hate Christianity and Islam, as neither religion has a formal caste system like Hinduism. There is a kind of caste system in Indian Islam, but it’s less severe than Hinduism. As a result, many Dalits have converted to Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. The Hindu nationalists have reacted by organising pogroms against Christians and Muslims, as well as Sikhs and extreme right-wing Hindus have carried out forced conversions of Christians. This seems to be the type of Hinduism Ghosh seems to represent, and it’s as racist and intolerant as the militantly extremist forms of the two religions Ghosh denounces.

Then there’s Colonel Richard Kemp, who was successfully sued by Baroness Warsi after he wrote a column in the Jewish News claiming that she was trying to excuse the horror committed by Daesh.

For further details, see Tony Greenstein’s article at http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/the-campaign-against-anti-semitism_9.html

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is the group that’s claiming that since Jeremy Corbyn became head of the Labour party, it’s been infested with anti-Semites. Perhaps there should be an outcry instead on the way it’s supported by very real racists and islamophobes.

Canadian Socialist Leader Denounces Trump, Calls for Stronger Action from Trudeau

This is a short clip from Sam Seder’s Majority Report showing Thomas Mulcair, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban in no uncertain terms in parliament. Mr Mulcair states that on his side of the House, there is no doubt about condemning singling people out because of their religion, discrimination against people based on their religion, executive orders and government by decree. He states he thought he would never see the day. But there is no doubt what happens if you do not stand up against such racist, Fascist behaviour. He states that his party is not afraid to stand up and be counted, and call a spade a spade. It’s time to say ‘No’ to Donald Trump, yes to human rights, and for the government of Canada to stand up to these racist policies.

To which the programme’s host, Sam Seder, adds merely ‘Save us a couple of places up there.’

The New Democrats are, very roughly, the Canadian equivalent of the Labour party over here. They were formed as a Socialist party in the 1960s. Despite the conservative dress fitting parliament, for a long time the party did have something of the ’60s ‘flower power’ hanging around it, or so I’ve read. It therefore comes as no surprise that Mr. Mulcair and his party heartily condemns Trump and his racism.

Of course, this is quite apart from the fact that Canada is multicultural democracy and that this week the threat of domestic right-wing racist terrorism was horrifically made very real by Alexandre Bissionette’s attack on a mosque which left 6 six dead and 17 wounded. Bissionette was previously unknown to the police, but he was on the internet, where he ranted against feminism and supported Trump.

Around the world, statesmen and political leaders are denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban, while Theresa May remains silent. Their unequivocal condemnation of Trump’s racism shows her up as the coward she is through her unwillingness to do the same.

Vox Political on the Return of Anti-Semitism Smears against Corbyn in the Graun and the Heil

Mike today has written another piece about the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. This time they’ve been regurgitated by pieces in the Grauniad and the Heil.

The first piece Mike deals with is entitled ‘Why Jews in Labour Place Little Trust in Jeremy Corbyn’ on the paper’s website by Joshua Simons. Simons is a former policy adviser to Corbyn, who used the usual rhetorical smears of the Israel lobby against the Labour leader. He identified Israel with the Jewish people throughout the world, stating that Israel’s very existence has been used by the far Left to stir up anti-Semitism against Jews in Israel in the wider world. Mike points out that this statement would exonerate Corbyn from the anti-Semitism charge, as he’s centre-left, not far left. Simons then brings in the stereotype of the Jews as bankers and financiers, which Mike also criticises as strange, as the various debates about anti-Semitism in the Labour party haven’t mentioned them. He states that anti-Semitism isn’t rampant in the Labour party, only to go on to contradict himself by saying that Jews are let down by a leader, ‘who some believe traded a peerage for a favourable report into anti-Semitism’. Again, Mike points out how contradictory this statement is, as he has already admitted that anti-Semitism isn’t rampant in the party. If it isn’t, there would be no need for Corbyn to bribe Chakrabarti to get a positive report. He concludes that Labour is only thought to be anti-Semitic because it is led by someone who has a visceral contempt for America and Israel. Mike responds to this assertion with the comments

But ill-feeling about Israel’s political decisions is not anti-Semitic, no matter how often or how loudly the more strident Zionists claim it is. Again he contradicts himself by adding: “It is not at all true that antisemitism exists because of the Jewish state” and “Young Jewish people in Britain should not give up their criticisms of Israel’s policies.”

More interesting, to me, was the fact that he is a former policy advisor. Why did he quit? Does he have an ulterior motive in resurrecting these claims?

The Heil on Sunday article is about Corbyn supposedly re-igniting the race row by purging the party of Michael Foster, the Jewish donor who criticised his leadership. Mike begins by pointing out that the very title is inaccurate, as Corbyn can’t and doesn’t purge anyone. Johanna Baxter, the NEC members behind the purge of many of the Corbynites, has stated that the decision to expel members is taken by three member panels. Corbyn doesn’t sit on any of them. The appearance of the two articles in their respective papers at the same time suggests to Mike that they’re part of an orchestrated campaign against Corbyn. Foster isn’t a financier – he’s a show business agent, but he did donate £400,000 to the Labour party. This might explain why Simons in the Graun felt he had to rant about Jews being equated with banking. The article then goes on to make more allegations of anti-Semitism against the Labour leader.

This story, complaining about the purge of a right-wing candidate, has been published at the same time as the Blairites are carrying out a mass purge of low-ranking left-wingers within the party, most notably the leader of Broxstowe council this weekend. This suggests to Mike that these articles are to mask and obscure the purge of low-ranking members by playing up the purge of a single, high-ranking member of the party. And Mike also points out the irony of a Jewish man complaining about anti-Semitism in the Labour party in a paper that explicitly supported Adolf Hitler and the BUF before the Second World War. Other bloggers, like Tom Pride, have also produced headlines from the Heil attacking Jews and Jewish immigration during the same period.

Mike discusses a comment on Twitter by Eoin Clarke, remarking on the large number of people, who have been purged, who were also going to be delegates at the Labour party conference. Mike adds that Labour First, another Blairite body, has been contacting like-minded Labour members to attend the conference, in the hope of replacing the Labour leaders’ policies with their own. This is being done in the hope that this will force him to leave, either by making it impossible for him to do his job as leader, or to make him vulnerable to criticism. This is being done as they realise that he’ll probably win the leadership election on Wednesday.

Mike concludes

This is the real dichotomy in the Labour Party at the moment.

Mr Corbyn may be accused of the most vile behaviour – falsely. Meanwhile, just look at the underhand tactics employed against him.

It isn’t what This Writer calls democracy.

See his article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/09/11/new-angle-on-an-old-lie-the-return-of-jeremy-the-jew-hater/

There are a couple more things that can be said about these articles. Let’s deal with Joshua Simons’ article first. Part of his resentment against Corbyn and Momentum is that he believes they have a ‘visceral contempt for America and Israel’. This marks Simon out as Blairite Neocon. The Blairites were strongly in favour of the Atlantic alliance, and were partly the products of the Reaganite political initiative, the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, which wanted to guide suitable British politicians and media leaders – one of BAP’s other alumni was an editor of the Times – into a suitably pro-American stance. Reagan’s America was strongly pro-Israel, partly as psychological compensation for the America’s signal failure to win the Vietnam War. To make up for their country failing to quash the Vietnamese Communists, the American Right turned to celebrating Israel’s victories against the Arabs. And there are good reasons for despising the foreign policies of both countries. Having contempt for America’s long history of overthrowing democratic, left-wing regimes and installing brutal Fascist dictators, and Israel for its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians does not automatically make someone either anti-American or anti-Semitic. Many of the people, who despise America’s politics, admire other aspects of the country, such as its popular culture and music. And very many of Israel’s critics have been Jews. These include Harold Pinter, who was a bitter and outspoken critic of the barbarity of America’s foreign policy. The great playwright also was certainly not reticent about robustly expressing his opinions about anti-Semitism. I heard from a friend that he once decked a man in queue he was in, after this fellow said something monstrous in favour of the Holocaust.

As for the automatic connection between Israel and Jews around the world, this has been repeated a number of times by the Zionists, including Netanyahu. But it’s not true, and the ties between Israel and the Jewish community in America are becoming weaker. Norman Finkelstein has talked about how there was very little support, or even interest amongst Jewish Americans for Israel until the 1970s, and a growing number of young Jewish Americans are increasingly indifferent and critical towards it. As for his complaint that opposition to Israel leads automatically to hatred of Jews in Israel, that’s a very careful way of trying to avoid the reality that Israel was set up as the Jewish state. In this case, it is easy for Simons to claim that hostility to Israel equals hostility to Jews in Israel, as Israelis are Jews. But talking about Jews in Israel is away of trying to avoid Israel’s own self-image and identity as the Jewish state, and present it as another pluralist nation, of whom Jews are only one section of the population, and not the dominant population for whom the state itself was founded. George Galloway has pointed out that it’s difficult to avoid criticising the Israeli people for the atrocities committed by their country, as unfortunately Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition have the support of the majority of Israeli citizens.

I am also very much aware that it is unfair to hold the whole nation accountable for what Netanyahu and his supporters are doing. There are many Israelis, who have shown great courage in supporting the Palestinians. These people are also under by Netanyahu and his cronies. There was a recent poll of Israelis, which found that a majority agreed with the statement that Israelis, who sided with Arabs, should deprived of their citizenship and civil rights. Such a finding should chill anyone, who believes in democracy, pluralism and tolerance. This also adds another twist to Simons’ contention that hatred of Israel is also leading to hatred of Jews abroad. If that poll is to be believed, a fair number of Israelis also hate Jews in Israel – the Jews that protest against nearly seven decades of injustice against the Palestinians, as well as the Mizrahim, the Arab Jews, who were recruited by the Israelis as a cheap labour force, and then rigorously segregated and discriminated against in order to make them discard their Arab culture.

As for Simons’ rant about bankers, I’ve seen that used by the Republicans in America to try and rule out of bounds the entirely justified criticisms of the bankers and financiers responsible for the global financial collapse. The argument runs that as much anti-Semitism centres around the perceived Jewish control of the financial sector, then criticism of the financial sector is anti-Semitic. It’s a false syllogism. The people, who despite the financial sector, do so regardless of the particular ethnic or religious origin of its members. They’re outraged because the current financial system has destroyed the world’s economy, forced billions around the world into poverty, including destroying the economies of whole nations, like Greece, and then have the temerity afterwards to continue demanding the same bloated bonuses and pay rises for its chief executives, while shifting the burden for clearing up their mess onto the poor. But Wall Street, along with the other major corporations, heavily donate to the political parties in expectation that the politicos will enact legislation favourable to them. Shrillary Clinton is a case in point. She’s taken millions from Wall Street in fees for speeches, and is a firm proponent of the ‘light touch’ regulation that resulted in the financial collapse. Here in Britain, New Labour launched its ‘prawn cocktail offensive’ in the 1990s, aimed at gaining financial sector support, again by promising a ‘light touch’ on regulation. With exactly the same results as occurred in America. Part of Simon’s rant may also reflect Lord Levy’s role in funding the rise of New Labour. He was the link for the supply of money to Blair and his crew from the Zionist lobby.

In short, Simons’ rant is an attempt to prevent criticism of the Neocons and corporatists of New Labour. It is not a genuine response to anti-Semitism, however hard Simon tries to insinuate that there is still rampant Jew hatred in the party. His rhetorical introduction to the accusation that Corbyn corruptly traded a peerage with Shami Chakrabarti in return for her clearing the party with the words, ‘some believe’, is an age-old Fleet Street device to get round a possible libel claim. It’s not being asserted as fact, merely as a belief, which is protected under law.

As For Foster’s hit piece in the Heil, I think Mike and Eoin Clarke are exactly right. And underlying it is the same fear that New Labour and its corporate and Zionist backers are losing their grip on the party. And so Foster is doing everything he can to smear their opponents – Corbyn and his supporters – as anti-Semites, even though they aren’t, and include many Jews and activists with a long history of combating racism and anti-Semitism.

The National Union of Journalists’ Code of Professional Conduct

This is the NUJ’s code of professional conduct, as laid out in Mark Hollingsworth’s The Press and Political Dissent: A Question of Censorship (London: Pluto 1986).

1. A journalist has a duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards.
2. A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the Press and other media in relation to the collection of information and the expression of comment and criticism. He/she shall strive to eliminate distortion, news suppression and censorship.
3. A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate, avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation.
4. A journalist shall rectify promptly any harmful inaccuracies, ensure that correction and apologies receive due prominence and afford the right of reply to persons criticized when the issue is of sufficient importance.
5. A journalist shall obtain information, photographs and illustrations only by straightforward means. The use of other means can be justified only by over-riding considerations of the public interest. The journalist is entitled to exercise a personal conscientious objection to the use of such means.
6. Subjection to justification by over-riding considerations of the public interest, a journalist shall do nothing which entails intrusion into private grief and distress.
7. A journalist shall protect confidential sources of information.
8. A journalist shall not accept bribes nor shall he/she allow other inducements to influence the performance of his/her professional duties.
9. A journalist shall not lend himself/herself to the distortion or suppression of the truth because of advertising or other considerations.
10. A journalist shall neither originate nor process material which encourages discrimination on grounds of race, colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation.
11. A journalist shall not take private advantage of information gained in the course of his/her duties, before the information is public knowledge.
12. A journalist shall not by way of statement, voice or appearance endorse by advertisement any commercial product or service save for the promotion of his/her own work or of the medium by which he/she is employed.

So now you know all the ethical rules which the press, particularly Murdoch, the BBC and Laura Kuenssberg regularly and spectacularly break.

Trump Jokes About Killing Journalists, Mocks Disabled Reporter

This is another excellent report from The Young Turks showing just what kind of low-life scum Donald Trump is. In this segment, Cenk Uygur talks about a Trump rally, in which the all-American Fuehrer in waiting talks about how he hate the press with a passion, but would never kill them, although … no, he’d never kill them. It comes after Trump was interviewed over the phone by a couple of presenters of one of the American news shows, who asked him how he felt about Putin liking him. Wasn’t he uncomfortable about this, considering Putin had killed journalists.

Trump didn’t seem bothered by the question, or by the fact that Putin has murdered journos. First of all, he dismissed the question with an airy statement that it was ‘leadership’. Then when pushed on the point, he said cavalierly, ‘Well, we’ve done things as well’. Indeed we have. Decent people are ashamed of them, and fight so that they don’t happen again. This means that by and large they don’t vote for idiots like Trump. Then finally the pair of presenters asked a leading question, ‘But you don’t approve of killing journalists’. Trump finally admitted that he didn’t.

As Uygur points out, killing journalists isn’t something you joke about. It’s about as an un-American as you can get. He states that The Turks have also done their fair share of criticising the press. They’ve done it, in order to make them better. The Right does it in order to destroy the press, so that you can’t see what they’re doing.

For some reason, Trump seems keen to defend Putin from the charge of killing journalists. He waves off the allegations with the statement that ‘some people say some things, others say different’. Or words to that effect. In fact, there’s abundant evidence and little doubt that Putin has killed journalists. There’s a whole chapter on Putin’s murder and beating of journalists in John Kampfner’s Freedom for Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty (London: Simon & Schuster 2009).

Also telling is the jeering and mockery Trump metes out to a New York Times journalist. The man is disabled, and suffers from a condition which seems to make his muscles and limbs twitch and move strangely. So Trump does a sneering imitation of these movements. Yeah, he’s at that level. We’re back to the vile playground insults about ‘flids’ and ‘spastics’ I remember when I was growing in the ’70s. I’m really sorry to use these terms here, as I know it must make some of my disabled readers blood run cold, reminding them of some of the terrible insults they endured at school. Or just any kid, who was bullied in school anyway, as that was one of the favourite playground sneers. But it shows the puerile, bullying level of this man.

Uygur states that Trump attacks the journalist, because he contradicted Trump’s statement that the Muslims in New York were cheering en masse at the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11. The journo was actually there, in the area of town where all this is supposed to have taken place, at the time it was supposed to have occurred. He stated categorically that while some may have done, he didn’t see it, and there was no mass cheering by the Muslims in the area. So Trump’s a liar. Not that that should be news to anyone.

Uygur then wonders what Trump is going to do next. He wants Muslims shut out of America, 11 – 12 million Latinos deported, and those Muslims that remain resident in the US to carry identification. And the danger is people don’t think he’ll do it. He points out that when Hitler came to power, millions of Germans didn’t think he’d win, or if he did, that he’d actually do everything he said he would. But he did. And the result was the systematic genocide of millions of innocents.

Here’s the video:

Trump’s a dangerous lunatic, and unfit to lead a great nation like America.