I got an email today from the Arise Festival of Labour Left Ideas about a number of forthcoming online events. Two were about Latin America and Cuba, but the two that really interested me were against Blair’s knighthood and NHS Privatisation.
The brief notices about these events ran:
“1) FORUM: No to Blair’s Knighthood – No Return to Blairism
Thursday 10 February, 18:30. Register here // Share & invite here // Retweet here to spread the word.
With: Steve Howell (Deputy Director, Strategy & Communications for Jeremy Corbyn in 2017) , Rachel Garnham (Campaign for Labour Party Democracy) & Sami Ramidani (Iraqi anti-war campaigner.)
Tony Blair’s knighthood has provoked a massive backlash – come & find out more about Blairism – & what it represents & means today. With plenty of time for questions & discussion.
Hosted by Labour Outlook. Kindly streamed by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas.“
“2) DIARY DATE: Ending NHS Privatisation – For a National Care Service.
The Second of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs online policy seminars being organised throughout 2022 – in partnership with the Labour Assembly Against Austerity and Momentum – looking at the key policies we need to be raising and how we build the movements to win these policies.”
I haven’t registered for them yet, but I think I probably will as I strongly support both these causes. Blair took us to war against Iraq on a lie, a lie intended to justify the plundering of Iraq’s oil and state industries for the benefit of the American and Saudi oil conglomerates and American multinationals. There’s footage of Gorgeous George Galloway angrily telling one of the New Labour women who cheered and organised the Labour benches for this war that she’s responsible for the deaths of a million people in Iraq. I’ve got mixed feeling about the Glesgae bruiser. Sometimes he says things that are absolutely brilliant, at other times he acts like a self-centred publicity seeker. This time I think he was spot-on. Innocent people died, including our best and bravest in the armed forces, not to defend our great nation from a real threat to be get the already bloated rich even richer and more bloated. It destroyed what was, by middle eastern standards at least, a relatively secular welfare state. A society where women could safely pursue careers outside the home. It created a monstrous society instead where Sunni and Shia Muslims had to be separated in Baghdad by peace walls, as in Northern Ireland. There were sectarian deaths squads running amok with the connivance of the American proconsuls running country, and the mercenaries brought in as peacekeepers ran drugs and prostitution rings. Oh yes,, and they killed ordinary Iraqis for sport. The situation was so dire that one American diplomat went home and gave public interviews denouncing the occupation.
A million or two severely normal Brits marched against the invasion. I think it was the biggest mass protest ever. One of those was one of my parish priests at the time. The satirists Bremner, Bird andFortune attacked the warmongering prior to the invasion. The Tories opposed it, which was a first. I suspect this was simple opportunism, but in some cases it was genuine. The right-wing journalist, Peter Hitchens, continued to attack Blair for wasting the lives of British servicemen and women. A friend of mine even read the Spectator for a time because of its anti-invasion stance.
And Blair ignored it all. The result was a wrecked country, which allowed the expansion of Iranian influence there and, with the rest of the Neo-Con policy in the Middle East, created the conditions for the emergence and expansion of Daesh and their campaign against civilisation.
Millions of people have either died or been forced to flee their homes, contributing to the migrant crisis. The economy was destroyed, people thrown out of work, women forced back into their traditional role and businesses destroyed. But Starmer wants to bring Blairism back, telling everyone that it’s going to be a vote winner.
It ain’t. Blair’s popularity at the time declined and its suffered even worse in the intervening years as more people have woken up to how harmful so many of his policies were. Not just in Iraq, but on the economy, industry and the NHS. Because Blair shared the Tory desire to privatise the health service.
If this country is ever to have a government that genuinely respects and cares for ordinary people, and which pursues a sane, just, humane policy in the Middle East, it’s only going to be through genuine socialist values and the vision of Jeremy Corbyn.
The Tories must go, and Blairism must be consigned to the dustbin.
Whenever any clergyman or religious figure dares to criticise them, the Tories always issue this refrain: that the reverend gentleman has no business doing so, and if he stuck to promoting his religion, the seats in his place of worship would have more worshippers on them. This has been largely directed at the Tories’ critics in the Anglican Church, especially since the Church’s report published under Archbishop Runcie about the increase in poverty in Britain. I also recall that arch-Thatcherite Norman Tebbitt also made some insinuations, based on the sing-song voice and other mannerisms characteristic of a certain type of Christian clergyman at the time, that Runcie somehow was totally wet and weedy. This was in complete ignorance that Runcie had been an army chaplain and so ferocious that he was known as ‘Killer Runcie’.
But an 18th century German rabbi, Jonathan Ben Nathan/ Nata Eybeschuetz/ Eybeschitz, had an answer to such accusation. He felt that religious people had the right to attack the conduct of public figures and that this made them more popular with ordinary people, not less. I found this stated in the article on him in Bowker’s Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. This says that
In his work as a rabbi, he took the view that religion is n ot confined to ‘the religious’, i.e., that teaching and preaching must reach out to affect the conduct of public life. ‘It is regrettable that our preaching is dealing constantly with out duties to God. Let the preacher protest, with a prominent voice, against the malpractices of prominent men, and the people will come to love him and delight in his sermons. (p. 332).
So clearly criticism of the rich and powerful hadn’t driven people away from religion, at least in his experience. I’m aware that explicitly party political statements by people of faith, or statements that may be interpreted as such, can be divisive. There are as many people repelled as attracted when right-wing Christian ministers start attacking gay marriage, for example. But there should be a place for religious criticism of the powerful and their policies, and especially when they harm the poor and defenceless. That’s been a vital element of the Jewish and Christian witness ever since the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, which states very clearly that the Almighty defends the poor, weak and marginalised against the rich and powerful.
Jeremy Corbyn was in no way an anti-Semite, and he had no lack of Jewish supporters because of the depth of his commitment to defending their interests as part of his staunch opposition to every kind of racism. As did Ken Livingstone, who said on an interview with George Galloway on RT’s Sputnik, that Jews greeted him on the street and told him they knew he wasn’t an anti-Semite.
But these Jews were sidelined and deliberately ignored by a political establishment that feared Corbyn as the radical, genuinely socialist leader working Brits of all colours, ethnicities and religious views need. Instead they parroted the smears of him and his supporters as anti-Semites by a true-blue Tory Jewish establishment. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis had even sent a message congratulating Theresa May when she became Prime Minister. And the Board then went berserk accusing Corbyn of snubbing the Jewish community when he chose to spend a Passover Seder with the left-wing Jews of Jewdas. Well, the Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbinate really only represent the United Synagogue, which has taken upon itself to try and present itself as the sole true Jewish community, despite that there has never been a monolithic Jewish community. No rabbi has more authority than any other, and there is the old Jewish saying I’ve found ‘Two Jews, three opinions’. Jewdas are a part of Britain’s diverse Jewish community, and they almost certainly invited him, so his attendance at their Passover Seder definitely wasn’t a snub to the Jewish community. Only the rich, pompous Tory section.
The Tories should stop trying to shut their left-wing critics, both Jews and Christians, up. They have a right and religious duty to defend the poor and meek against the rich and powerful.
And it’s high time that the media dropped the partisan anti-Semitic contempt for left-wing Jews, and allowed them to speak. Because the Thatcherite, Tory policies Ephraim Mirvis appears to approve of are harming working, sick, disabled and elderly Jews and well as gentiles.
On Thursday, Zelo Street reported the welcome news that just about all of Hatey Katie Hopkins’ tweets had been removed from Twitter. However, when she was on there Riley had 1.1 million followers, and despite the ban there’s always the possibility that she’ll come back. Credit for her removal from the platform must go to Rachel Riley, who said that she had met Imran Ahmed for the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, and asked them to review the presence on Twitter not just of Hopkins, but also of George Galloway. Someone describing himself only as ‘That Chap’ commented that it was sad that Twitter had received many thousands of reports about Hopkins’ conduct, but only acted because someone famous had got involved. Dr Louise Raw took a more cheerful view, noting that despite Riley’s crowing, much of the work had already been done by dedicated anti-Fascists.
Hopkins’ banishment from Twitter is certainly no bad thing, but Riley herself is certainly no friend and ally of genuine anti-racists. Her benchmark for deciding someone is an anti-Semite is crudely simple: are they a critic of Israel and/or a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn? If the answer to either or both of those is yes, she accuses them of anti-Jewish hatred. Even when they definitely are anything but, like Corbyn himself and his supporters. These include people, who have suffered abuse and violence at the hands of real anti-Semites and Nazis, either for being Jewish, or for standing with them. It’s why Riley decided she wanted Galloway’s Twitter channel pulled as well. Galloway isn’t an anti-Semite, and has made it very clear that he regards the Holocaust as a monstrous crime against humanity. But his former wife was a Palestinian, and he has always stood up for the Palestinian people against the dispossession and the ethnic cleansing of the Israeli state, and so Riley has decided to libel him as an anti-Semite.
Mike has put up a piece today making it clear that on this issue, my enemy’s enemy is certainly not my friend. He asks if the CCDH have looked at Riley’s own record – at the way she stirred up hatred against Jeremy Corbyn, her comparison of the Durham Miners’ Band with the Klu Klux Klan, her false accusation of a anti-Semitism against a Labour election candidate, and her abuse and harassment of a teenage girl, and then libeling those, like Mike, who stood up to defend her. Mike says, quite rightly, that ‘Ms Riley gets away with all of this because she is an overpaid TV celebrity who can use her wealth to bully into submission anybody against whom she has a disagreement’.
He therefore asks his readers to contact CCDH and Imran Ahmed if they don’t think that real anti-racism campaigners should be consorting with Riley. The organisation and Mr Ahmed are on Twitter themselves at @CCDHate and @imi_ahmed. And you might also wish to donate to Mike’s defence fund to help him fight Riley’s false accusation of libel.
Riley herself has now come in for further criticism on Twitter for getting Hopkins banned. Zelo Street has put up some of the Tweets, and it’s clear that they come from the Right. They seem to be Brexiteers, Conservatives and Unionists, and supporters of Boris Johnson. But Riley’s bestie, the equally offensive Tracey Ann Oberman, has declared that they are all members of the extreme Left. Zelo Street comments
‘That’s a pretty right-wing crowd. But admitting that would never do. You think I jest? Here comes Tracy Ann Oberman. “Watching the Far Left have a twitter meltdown over KatieHopkins twitter ban at the hands of EVIL Rachel Riley and those of us who have helped Twitter assess these matters , is quite a thing. The irrationality and double think plus the outright LIES”. Forget what you saw and look over there!
Katie Hopkins is out there on the far right. So it is those out there who are screaming the loudest. But remember, ignorance is strength, and right is left. I’ll just leave that one there.’
Now there is, unfortunately, nothing unusual in Oberman’s actions here. She and Riley, it seems, always try to blame each and every piece of abuse they receive on the left, even when it is manifestly clear that it comes from the right and the far right. It’s so ingrained now that they don’t seem to be capable of doing anything else. It’s got to the point where you wonder if it’s simple misdirection, or whether Riley and Oberman really do believe that anti-Semitism is just something that come from the left. If they do, then as I said a few times before, they’re losing their grip on reality. They’re starting to sound like all the crazies, who believed there are secret government plots against them, or that the Communist Chinese are beaming messages into their head via secret supertechnology. Or that Blacks have a secret powder that transforms them into Whites, and Roman Catholics can control your thoughts via telepathy, so that you will start thinking about the Pope under their nefarious influence.
That would be bad enough, at least for the mental health of the two women themselves. But in some ways it’s actually worse if Riley and Oberman aren’t deluded, but are consciously and deliberately deceiving people by opportunistically blaming the left for instances of anti-Semitism and the abuse they receive.
Because that would mean that they are enabling the far right.
Despite the claims of the media, the actually incidence of anti-Semitism in the Labour party is vanishingly low. It’s much higher in right and in the far right. But there hasn’t nearly been so much attention on that because of the determination of the media and the political establishment to destroy Corbyn any chance they can get. Riley and Oberman have been an enthusiastic part of this campaign.
But ignoring it only allows this right-wing anti-Semitism to grow. The blogger Jacobsfriends showed how much it was prevalent, along with other forms of racism and islamophobia, in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s and Boris Johnson’s supporters. But Riley and Oberman have made it very clear they’re not interested in right-wing Jew-hatred. They’re only interested in it when it’s on the left, or they can shift the blame to the left. They are therefore tacitly demanding that people ignore it and don’t worry about its growth.
Even though its more powerful, and far more of a threat to Jews and people of colour.
Which means that despite getting Hopkins banned, Riley and Oberman are definitely not genuine anti-racists and may even be seen as its enablers.
Remember Sargon of Akkad? He was the internet personality who helped to wreck UKIP. This suffered a crisis when former leader Nigel Farage left to start his own rival bunch of squadristi, the Brexit Party. Which as any fule kno was actually a private company, so that only Fuhrer Farage could make any decisions. Farage took a large chunk of UKIP’s membership with him, and so Supreme Leader Gerard Batten tried to revitalise the party by recruiting a group of far right internet personalities. This were Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars, Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan of Nazi pug infamy, and Sargon. The result was that much of the remaining membership, who considered themselves moderates and non-racist, left. The party was then taken over by Dick Braine, and collapsed shortly afterwards in acrimonious abuse and litigation threats.
Sargon, however, like Hatey Katie Hopkins, seems to have gone back to the Tory party. He’s published a series of videos on YouTube celebrating the Tory election victory. But one of these was also his comment on an article in the Metro reporting that Muslims are frightened by a rise in racism after the Tory victory. So frightened, in fact, that many of them are considering leaving Britain.
Sargon, who somehow believes he’s ‘moderate left’ despite being a libertarian ‘classical liberal’, and opponent of feminism and anti-racism, seemed to find all this highly amusing. He guffawed merrily and sneered at left-wingers correctly observing that these fears were caused by Johnson’s racism. British Muslims’ fears, he seemed to think, weren’t due to a real increase in racism, but because they’re still somehow outsiders and not really British. Johnson stated that the burqa isn’t a British custom and that in British society people showed their face. Muslims should adapt to the mores of host of the host society. Other groups, Blacks, Jews, and Hindus, and so on, were behind Britishness and the Conservative Party – Sargon has posted at least one video claiming the Tory election victory is a victory for ‘Team Britain’. Why weren’t the Muslims? And they were free to go. No-one was stopping them, like some minorities are prevented from emigrating in Islamic society.
Now I actually share Sargon’s views on the burqa and its complete coverage of a woman’s face and body. So, he would no doubt be surprised to know, does George Galloway, the former leader of the Respect Party, who has been attacked for being pro-Muslim, pro-Palestinian and far Left. Galloway pointed out when Johnson first made his comments about the burqa that only a small percentage of Muslim women actually wore it. But Johnson’s comments were seen as an attack on the Muslim community generally, and did provoke an increase in anti-Muslim violence. These fears aren’t idle, but deadly serious. One woman was stabbed to death in a racist attack because she was wearing a burqa.
I realise perfectly that there are problems with integration in some sections of the Muslim community. I am also fully aware how repressive and undemocratic many Islamic countries are. But that doesn’t mean that innocent Muslims in this country should feel that they are somehow regarded as less than full citizens and vulnerable to abuse and worse.
And let’s point out the racial double standards here. When the ultra-Zionists were claiming that Jews were considering leaving the UK because Jeremy Corbyn was an ‘existential threat’ to Britain’s Jewish community, this was trumpeted not just by the right-wing Jewish press, but also by Britain’s right-wing media. It was something that Labour should be thoroughly ashamed about, and marked the party and Corbyn as unfit for government.
But when Muslims start saying that they’re under threat and considering leaving, Sargon and people like him seem to regard this as amusing and view it with an attitude of ‘good riddance’. Or else, as Zelo Street has pointed out in their piece today on the fears of the Muslim community, the media actively ignores it and hacks like the Spectator’s Douglas Murray write articles attacking figures from ‘the intolerant left’ like Grace Blakely and Jo Swinson in order to distract attention from it.
It’s disgraceful that any of Britain’s ethnic minorities should feel unsafe in this country, whether they are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians or whoever. That the press in general is ignoring this issue, or in the case of Douglas Murray, actively trying to divert attention away from it, shows how deep-seated Tory islamophobia is. As well as exposing how cynical their professed concern over anti-Semitism in the Labour party.
Johnson’s victory is emboldening the racists and Islamophobes. And that’s a problem for everyone.
More evidence to add to the plentiful pile of it showing that Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a Jew-hater was given by John Bercow the other day. Bercow, who has just stepped down as Speaker of the House of Commons, was interviewed by Alistair Campbell for GQ magazine. Campbell told him that he realised Bercow was a Jew, and asked him about the issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour party. Bercow responded cautiously and diplomatically, pointing out that racism was a problem across society. He said that anti-Semitism was an issue in the Labour party, and that it needed to be dealt with and that he respected those, who were concerned about it. But in all his time in parliament he had never encountered it from a member of the Labour party, and in the 22 years he had known and worked with Corbyn he had never experienced it from him either. This was not even when Bercow was a right-winger. Campbell joked with Bercow about Corbyn, as a long-time opponent of New Labour, probably voting with the Tories more often than he voted with the Labour party. Bercow chuckles, and admits that he always got on well with Corbyn, and found him personally very supportive.
Okay, it’s not a refutation of the lie that anti-Semitism is rife in the Labour party. It most definitely isn’t anywhere near as serious as the Tories and the right-wing media are making out. Anti-Semitism has actually dropped in the party since Corbyn became leader, and he himself has led numerous initiatives to root it out. But Bercow has said that Corbyn isn’t anti-Semitic, which contradicts what Stephen ‘Goysplaining’ Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle and Rabbi Jonathan Romain in the Torygraph have been telling people this week.
Tory Fibs has put a short clip of this part of Bercow and Campbell’s discussion in a tweet, which Mike posted on his blog yesterday. Along with twitter comments from other people supporting the Labour leader. Many of these messages came from Jewish Labour supporters, who have also found themselves abused as anti-Semites by those taken in or responsible for these lies.
Also, Mike and another twitter commenter, ‘Paul’, point out that Corbyn rarely voted with the Tories. The Conservatives mostly voted for New Labour policies, which is hardly surprising as both groups were Thatcherites. Corbyn, as an old-fashioned Socialist, would have opposed them.
There was also a tweet from RedCountessa, who said that there were plenty of left-wing Jewish people, who support Corbyn, but it was also very noticeable that they were rarely interviewed by the lamestream media to get the other side of the argument.
And Jill Gore showed a twitter response from a Mark Fleischmann to show the odious response some individuals have towards Jews, who support Corbyn. So convinced was Fleischmann that no true Jew could ever support the Labour leader, that he was demanding the Jews who did to prove their Jewishness. I’m not Jewish, but this strikes me as a form of anti-Semitism itself. It’s as racist as Richard Spencer ranting about ‘octaroons’ to smear Blacks and people of mixed race, and in my opinion, anti-racist Whites, ’cause he can’t understand how real White people don’t hate Blacks.
And there were other tweeters attacking Ian Austin, who was in the news yesterday telling everyone to vote for Boris.
Pauline Lane retweeted a message from Children’s Poet Laureate, Michael Rosen, asking the Tory party to stop using the Holocaust and the threat of anti-Semitism to attract people to the party of Windrush, the Hostile Environment Policy, the anti-refugee and 20 years of austerity.
There was also a tweet from ‘Norman’ of Austin interrupting Michael Rosen’s testimony before the Education Committee for Holocaust Education. Norman states that he was aware of Austin, because of his support for Phil Woolas. Woolas was a ‘moderate’ Labour candidate, who got deselected because he ran a dirty campaign designed to get White voters angry and smearing the rival candidate, a Muslim, as a supporter of terrorism. But his interruption of Rosen showed how really horrible Austin is. Rosen testified that when the Nazis invaded the Channel Islands, all nine Jews were deported. Austin says something about how we cannot know what would have happened in Britain, because we fought back and stood alone against the Nazis. Rosen corrects him about this, stating that we had the support of two major powers, the US and Russia.
Rosen is quite correct. We didn’t stand alone. We not only had the support of America and Russia, but we were also supported by the entire resources of the British Empire. If we hadn’t, I gather that we too would probably have only lasted a week. As for what happened on the Channel Islands, Norman states that his grandfather evacuated from Jersey, and that Austin ‘is wrong’.
Absolutely right there, too. The Nazis did invade UK/ Britain, as the Channel Islands are part of it. And the people there were starved, they saw Russian P.O.W.’s worked to death as subhuman slaves, as they were seen by the Nazis, as well as the deportation of the islands’ Jewish citizens. And we can be sure that what happened there, would have happened elsewhere in Britain if the Nazis had invaded. Years ago Anne Applebaum wrote a piece in the Spectator saying that Brits would have collaborated with the Nazis, which I think was probably based on the evidence of the collaboration of the island authorities with the Nazis. This comes from the Speccie, which is the arch-Tory magazine.
And Josh tweeted a clip from Question Time, in which a Jewish lady stood up and attacked the Tories and the Conservative media for using anti-Semitism to smear and demonise Corbyn and the Labour party. The lady states that she and all her family are Jewish, and they’re not scared of leaving the house because of anti-Semitism. The Tories and the press take quotes of context to vilify Corbyn. But only 7 per cent of the time do they discuss his policies. 80 per cent of the time, she says, they’re just attacking his character, because his policies are right.
Clearly, not all Jews buy this rubbish about Corbyn being an anti-Semite by a long chalk. Ken Livingstone, who has now resigned from the party because of the smears and suspensions, said in an interview with George Galloway that he had Jewish people walk up to him in the street and tell him that they know he’s not anti-Semitic.
Perhaps that explains the desperation of the Tories to keep repeating the claim. Because now more and more people don’t believe it!
The lamestream media really are becoming vile and dangerously vindictive. Of course, we knew that all too often they were absolute scumbags already from the way they’ve smeared and libeled decent left-wingers like Michael Foot, Mike from Vox Political, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth and so many, many others. Foot was libeled as a KGB agent, something that even Private Eye found ridiculous and disgusting. Mike, Walker, Wadsworth and Livingstone were all smeared by the press as Jew haters and Holocaust deniers, simply for the horrendous crime of being true Labour folks, and daring to criticise Israel for its apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Or because they dared to stand up for those who had. As a result, they’ve had to endure unspeakable abuse on social media. Walker’s been told by racists that she can’t be Jewish, ’cause she’s Black, and that she should be lynched, set on fire and her body dumped in bin bags. And Mike showed me the other day the splenetic abuse he gets from bigoted morons, who’ve swallowed the lies about him. But the media seems to be digging ever lower depths.
Laura Kuenssberg yesterday revealed that Omar Salem, the father of a sick child at a hospital BoJob was visiting, was a Labour activist and gave out his twitter handle. This has resulted in this principled man getting a mountain of abuse from the indignant, vitriolic right. Because Salem had the temerity to tell BoJob how disgusting his destruction of the health service is. It doesn’t matter that a doctor at the hospital shares Salem’s disgust and outrage at the poor service the hospital is providing because of the cuts. The Beeb and the rest of the Tory propaganda machine laughingly called the mainstream media cannot tolerate any criticism of the party. Dissenters must be crushed, vilified, humiliated and terrorised into silence.
Now it seems they’re going to do it to Jolyon Maugham, a long time critic of government policy. According to Zelo Street, Maugham has tweeted that the Mail on Sunday is going to dox him. That is, they’re going to reveal his private address. This comes after he has received death threats because he opposes Brexit. This is mentioned in an article discussing how the Mail on Sunday’s hack, ‘Whinging’ Dan Hodges, has lied on twitter about Jon Lansman’s move to replace the post of deputy leader of the Labour party, which was vetoed by Jeremy Corbyn. Said veto has the support of Lansman, but never mind. Hodges has lied about the decision, claiming that the Labour office now resembles a scene from the Death of Stalin but without the jokes. When this was very obviously shown to be wrong, Hodges claimed that Lansman was going to be set up to take the fall for the decision by Corbyn. He was going to be the patsy, just like Lee Harvey Oswald was for the JFK assassination. Peter Oborne, who left the Torygraph because he was disgusted at the way the editors were slanting stories in line with the wishes of their advertisers, said it was part of the ‘deformation professionelle’ of journalism. For which he also claimed partial responsibility. Oborne’s very definitely a man of the right, but he does have journalistic integrity which is more than the hacks at the MoS have. And he’s been reviled by the press for it. Tim Fenton, the man behind the Zelo Street blog, also has experience of this kind of intimidation. After he published an article criticising the Speccie for supporting Tommy Robinson, Robinson and his islamophobic stormtroopers turned up on his doorstep.
And if all this wasn’t sordid enough, apparently the ‘Fake Sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood is also working behind the scenes at the Mail on Sunday. This is the scam artist, who used to work for the News of the World trapping unwitting slebs into saying or doing something indiscreet or illegal. He dresses up and poses as an Arab sheikh in order to ingratiate himself with his victims. He’s got some aristos into trouble for saying something uncomplimentary about the royals, got a Radio 1 DJ the sack after persuading him to buy drugs for him, and tried to get George Galloway to say something monstrous about the Holocaust. But Galloway recognised him and didn’t fall for it, stating instead that the Holocaust was a crime against humanity. Mahmood’s employment was supposed to have stopped due to the phone hacking scandal, but apparently he’s still running around doing the same old tricks. Still, the Zelo Street article has a handy photo of him, so keep it handy if you’re a public figure. And bear in mind that he’s as much Arab nobility as I am, even if he is Asian.
But doxing people after they’ve received death threats. This looks like the media’s way of putting people in genuine fear for their lives, but in a manner that allows them to deny any responsibility. Hitler and Goebbels used to do that kind of thing against their enemies in Weimar Germany, before they moved on to outright assassination themselves. Joachim C. Fest describes in his book, The Face of the Third Reich, the way they’d smear political opponents, including members of the Weimar police and civil authorities, as Jews even when they weren’t simply for propaganda purposes. It was deliberately dangerous, as other right-wing groups were also carrying out attacks and assassinations on the ‘traitors of Versailles’, as they called the mainstream Weimar parties. Now the Mail and its sister paper are doing exactly the same and for the same reason: they also believe that the people they smear are traitors, though because of their opposition to Brexit.
And so BoJob and the Tory press and media are leading us ever further into real Fascism and state terror.
This is another issue that I couldn’t let pass without comment. On Friday on the Beeb’s satirical news quiz show, Have I Got News For You, Ian Hislop took it upon himself once more to push the establishment smear that anti-Semitism is rife in Labour. The editor of Private Eye was responding to a question about the expulsion of Alistair Campbell, Blair’s former spin doctor, by the party for saying he voted Lib Dem in the elections. As Mike and Martin Odoni have shown on their blogs, Labour has Campbell bang to rights. What he’s done is very much against Labour party regulations. And Martin has further pointed out that there is no hypocrisy on Jeremy Corbyn’s part for his congratulation of George Galloway when he won Bradford West for the Respect Party. He was only doing what other Labour leaders have done before, such as Neil Kinnock when he congratulated John Major on becoming leader of the Tories. There really isn’t any comparison of the two cases. See
Campbell whined about how there was a difference between his case and those of members accused of anti-Semitism. Mike pointed out that Campbell’s whinge was a case of sour grapes, and there were differences between his and other Labour party members. Like Kerry-Ann Mendoza, the mighty chief of The Canary, had been thrown out of the party for admitting she voted Green before she joined the Labour party. As for those accuse of anti-Semitism, if they are high-up in the Labour party, and aren’t supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, an excuse will be found not to investigate them and exonerate them. If they’re high-profile supporters of Corbyn, any excuse will be found to expel them. As happened to Mike, who didn’t get any right to appeal.
Hislop, however, is ignorant of all of this, and followed Campbell’s line, ranting that no-one had been expelled for anti-Semitism with a sneer at Ken Livingstone. Livingstone, he claimed, was particularly foul because he had said that Hitler was ‘a little bit Zionist’.
This comes just after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission announced it was investigating Labour for anti-Semitism, and the MP, Peter Willsman, was suspended on anti-Semitism charges. Why? He claimed quite reasonably that the Israeli embassy may be interfering in the internal politics of the Labour Party. It is an entirely reasonable question, given that Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy official guilty of plotting to decide with British civil servants which Tories would serve in May’s cabinet, offered Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel £1 million in funding at a Labour conference. See
As for the assertion that Livingstone was somehow lying about Hitler’s support for Zionism, no, it’s historical fact. Mike, Tony Greenstein, myself and many, many other bloggers have made it very clear that this is so, quoting chapter and verse from the relevant sources. As has John Newsinger, a historian at one Bath’s excellent universities, who is a regular contributor to the conspiracy magazine, Lobster. Hitler and the Nazis did indeed initially support the Zionists from the cynical motive of simply wishing to get the Jews out of Germany. It’s called the Ha’avara Agreement, and there’s even a page about it on the website of the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, in Israel.
But history, genuine history, in this case, rather than establishment smears, appears to be utterly foreign to Hislop in this issue.
Just as it is to his magazine, Private Eye. I still read it, and it contains much excellent material, but it has consistently smeared Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites. These have included smear pieces from its correspondent ‘Ratbiter’, alias the Groaniad’s Nick Cohen. Like the rest of the lamestream media, it completely accepts the anti-Semitism smear unquestioningly. And it has never, ever interviewed anyone on the receiving end of those smears, like Mike, Martin, Tony, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Cyril Chilson and on and on.
If you’re falsely smeared as an anti-Semite, Ian Hislop and his magazine were support the smear and the smearers, not you.
Which gives the lie to his claim that his magazine is somehow anti-establishment and brings you the stories the other parts of the media won’t touch. Admittedly, this is often true, but on certain issues Hislop, Private Eye and Have I Got News For You solidly toe the establishment line. The anti-Semitism smears about the Labour party is one case. The claim that Putin is the aggressor in the Ukraine and a threat to the freedom of the eastern European states is another.
I’ve been tempted many times to write a letter of complaint to Private Eye about their promotion of the anti-Semitism smears, but I’m afraid it would do no good. They either wouldn’t publish it, or would publish it in a very carefully edited form that would deliberately weaken my argument and allow them to publish a reply that appeared to refute it completely. Or else I’d find that my details had been passed on to the CAA or other Zionist smear merchants and trolls, and I’d be accused in turn of being an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier like Mike. Are Hislop and his crew at Private Eye that nasty? I hope not, but as they are part of the media establishment, and the media establishment is that vicious, I’d rather not find out.
As for Have I Got News For You, Hislop and the Beeb were boasting a few months ago that people trust it more than the ordinary newspapers, especially asylum seekers, who come from countries where the state heavily controls and censors the news. This is dangerous, because the BBC itself is very heavily biased against Labour, and consistently follows the Tory, government line. Which is unsurprising, given the number of Beeb newsroom staff, who left to find jobs working as the Tories’ spin doctors. Have I Got News For You appears to be impartial, but it also follows the government line in pushing certain interpretations of news stories. The fact that the Maidan Revolution in the Ukraine in 2012 was carefully orchestrated by the American State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, will definitely not be covered, either by the mainstream British news or by Have I Got News For You and Hislop’s mighty organ, Private Eye. And neither will they ever publish the truth behind the anti-Semitism smears.
Hislop once again ignores history to smear Livingstone, the Labour Party, and everyone, who has been false accused of anti-Semitism. And despite the satire, Have I Got News For You is, like much of the Beeb’s news coverage when it comes to Labour, fake news.
Next week’s Radio Times for 20th-26th April 2019 has a long interview with veteran thesp Miriam Margolyes. It’s partly publicity for her forthcoming documentary, Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure, in which she explores death and how people cope with it. This includes venturing into the kind of territory Louis Theroux explored in his Weird Weekends all those years ago, when he explored the weirder margins of American society. In her case, Margolyes meets a group, who believe they can use orgasmic energy to stave off death forever, making them immortal. Needless to say, she doesn’t believe a word of it.
Most interestingly, Margolyes discusses the anti-Semitism allegations against the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn, making it very clear that she doesn’t believe in them either. She condemns the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and describes how her view have led to her being vilified by pro-Israel groups and individuals, like Maureen Lipman. And like Jackie Walker, another Jewish anti-Zionist lady of mature years, she was radicalised through her opposition to apartheid in South Africa. This section of the interview runs
A Labour Party member, she has firm opinions about anti-Semitism accusations directed at the party. “Jeremy Corbyn, who is an excellent constituency representative, a serious person, is not an anti-Semite. I don’t think there is the extent of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party that people seem to imply,” she says. “I think it’s to do with trying to stop Corbyn from being prime minister”. She is also critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. “It’s just a fact that the Israelis have behaved appallingly, they continue to do so, and people are dying. I am ashamed, as a Jew, of what’s been done in my my name. I can’t bear it. And for that I’m vilified and people won’t come to see the plays I’m in. I’ve become, as it were a kind of minuscule Vanessa Redgrave when she was vilified for her political position. But I am right. I have no doubt about that whatever”.
I wonder how it feels to be separated from your own community. “It hurts me,” she says. “I’m so Jewish, and so happy to be Jewish. And the schism between me and Maureen Lipman, which is the manifestation of this chasm, causes me pain.”
Lipman is a very public supporter of Israel. IN 2015 she demonstrated with pro-Israeli groups outside a production of a pro-Palestinian play in London. “She feels that I am a wicked traitor to my people,” says Margolyes. “And I feel that she’s a fool.” The two appeared together in a 1989 British Telecom commercial spoofing Jewish domestic life, now Margolyes admits it would be difficult if they met in the street. “I hope I would be civil. I’m sad because I admire Maureen, and I have known her for a long time. She’s been a friend, and now it’s not possible any more. I expect she might be said, too. But she said don’t communicate with me again and I haven’t.”
She says she feels compelled to stand against injustice in the world. “For me, it’s the same sort of cause as apartheid. I was marching on South Africa House when I was young and, unfortunately, it’s now my own people I’ve got to march against. That’s painful, but I won’t pretend. If you can’t tell the truth when you’re 77, when are you going to tell it?”
Jewish Opposition to Zionism as Anti-Semitism
Over a decade ago she was one of a number of public figures, who condemned the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and she made her Jewishness very plain then too. She stated that she was a ‘proud Jew, and an ashamed Jew’. She says in the interview that she doesn’t believe in God, but she loves Jewish life, the cooking, culture and community. She shares her happiness with her Jewish identity with many of the other Jewish critics of Israel, both Torah-observant and secular/ atheist, who have also been vilified for their stance against the Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arabs. People like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni and many others. And many Jewish critics of Israel find it utterly ridiculous, even anti-Semitic, that they should be considered traitors by their community, because they’d don’t support a foreign country that they weren’t born in. Greenstein, David Rosenberg, and the Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, have made the point that until recently the majority of the Jewish people rejected Zionism, partly because they were afraid that it would lead to accusations that Jews’ loyalties were divided between their homeland and that of the Jewish state. Indeed, at the beginning of the Zionist project, Zionism was strongly associated with anti-Semitism because of the number of real Jew-haters, who wanted to expel their Jewish populations to some other country, and the establishment of a Jewish state would be perfect for this purpose. The majority of Jews wished to stay in their native homelands and be accepted as equal citizens with their gentile fellow countrymen and women. The establishment of the state of Israel has indeed led to diaspora Jews being accused of being more loyal to Israel than their home countries, not least because Benjamin Netanyahu actually declared that the Jewish people and Israel are synonymous and identical. All Jews, everywhere, are citizens of Israel. The Palestinians, however, are not. Which is why activists like Tony Greenstein make it very clear that Israel isn’t a democracy, as it is not a state of its citizens but of a single, privileged ethnic group.
Maureen Lipman’s Attack on Ed Miliband
As for Maureen Lipman, she’s a great actor, but she has boiled her brain on this issue. She’s claimed to have left the Labour party because of Corbyn. She didn’t. She left it a few years ago when Ed Miliband, who’s Jewish, became leader. Miliband made some mild policy departures from a rigidly pro-Israel line, so Lipman threw a strop and left, ranting about how the party was now anti-Semitic. She wasn’t the only one. As Mike and the other left-wing bloggers have pointed out, the anti-Semitism smears date from this time, long before Corbyn became leader. Which makes utter nonsense of the claim that Corbyn, one of the most anti-racist and determined opponents of anti-Semitism, is a Jew-hater.
Other Victims of Witchhunt Silenced by Media
It’s refreshing that the Radio Times should give space to Margolyes’ views, and I’m sorry that she, too, is suffering vilification and smears for her opposition to Israel that other critics and activists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are also receiving. But unfortunately the media, including the Beeb, is still determined to repeat these smears and libels. Those abused, like Mike, may be able to correct these attacks through IPSO, but it’s very difficult for the victims to take their attackers to court for libel. This is largely because of the huge costs involved, but also because there are time limits on libel actions and the newspapers do everything they can to stall and stonewall them until they run out of time. And I have yet to see any part of the lamestream media invite those, who have been smeared as anti-Semites, onto their programmes to defend themselves. The noble exception to this have been the new, alternative broadcasters like RT and Novara Media. George Galloway has had Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein on his show, Sputnik, on RT to make their case and describe their experience of victimisation in the anti-Semitic witchhunt. But the Beeb, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and others have yet to do so. Meanwhile Laura Kuenssberg and the other liars of the BBBC newsroom have been free to continue their promotion of the lies and smears against Corbyn and his supporters without any criticism or dissent whatsoever, urged on by the rest of the mendacious right-wing media and Jewish establishment.
I’m pleased Margolyes has been able to present the other side of the argument in the RT, and would like other anti-Israel activists also to have the opportunity to explain their position and rebut the anti-Semitism smears. But the majority are ordinary people, like Mike, Greenstein, Walker, Odoni, Wadsworth and Chilson, who aren’t already media figures and so are denied a proper, sympathetic platform. And so the lies and smears continue.
Here’s another passage from the anarchist Bakunin that’s still very relevant today, in Tory-run Britain. Bakunin was strongly impressed by sociology, and believed, like the French philosophes of the Enlightenment, that humanity and society were governed by laws. So strong was this belief, that he rejected free will completely. I very much reject this philosophical stance, along with his atheism and denial of divine providence, which he claimed made science impossible.
Humans do have free will and not just meat machines, running according to a set of biological or sociological imperatives, and while sociology is a powerful tool for investigating the basis of society and suggesting solutions to social problems, it’s very different from the natural sciences based on experiment and prediction. People are still responsible for their actions. Nevertheless, sociological influences are a powerful cause of crime. Bakunin discusses this in his piece ‘All Round Education’, quoting the stastician Lambert Queteler on the sociological origins of crime, which he believed were completely responsible for its incidence. Bakunin writes
A science of statistics is possible only because of this natural and social inevitability. This science is not satisfied with ascertaining and enumerating social facts but looks for their links to and correlation with the organization of society. Criminal statistics show, for example, that in a given country, in a given town, over a period of ten, twenty, thirty or more years, the same crime or misdemeanor occurs every year in the same proportion [to the total], if the fabric of society has not been altered by political and social crises. Even more remarkably, a given modus operandi recurs from year to year in the same proportion, for example, the number of poisonings, knifings, and shootings, as well as the number of suicides committed one way or another, are almost always the same. This led the famous Belgian statistician Quetelet to utter the following memorable words: ‘Society prepares the crimes while individuals merely carry them out.’
In Robert E. Cutler, Mikhail Bakunin: From Out of the Dustbin: Bakunin’s Basic Writings 1869-1871 (Ann Arbor: Ardis 1985), p. 122.
Now I can remember one of the postgraduate archaeological students at Bristol University making much the same point as Bakunin in a talk she gave explaining her research into the physical structure of one of Bristol’s historic hospitals. She said that the total number of prison and mental hospitals tends to remain the same, although the proportions of people going to one or the other changes. She went on to discuss the beneficial effects of natural light and contact with the natural world in healing hospital patients and reforming criminals. Despite pressures from government across the political spectrum to cut costs in the prison service and abolish them, prison farms have remained because of their demonstrably strong influence in reforming convicts.
At present, Britain is suffering a very high incidence of crime and suicide. The media has reported the shocking number of knife crimes in the capital. There has been a rise in hate crime, not just against ethnic minorities, including Muslims, but also against the disabled. Suicides have also increased, and as Mike, Stilloaks, Tom Pride and so many other left-wing and disability rights bloggers have pointed out, these have included disabled people, who were left in misery and starvation due to being thrown off their benefits. Several left notes explicitly stating that they were ending their lives due to sanctions by DWP, or being judged ‘fit for work’ under the Work Capability Tests.
Predictably, the Tories have held up their hands and claimed that there is no absolutely no link between their shabby, degrading and vicious welfare policies and the tragic deaths of these people.
This is a lie. The anti-immigration rhetoric and stance of many of the leaders of the ‘Leave’ campaign, and anti-EU parties and organisations like UKIP has led to an increase in racist hate crime. And the Tories are also responsible for stoking this hostility through their campaigns to get illegal immigrants to turn themselves, their attempt to deport the Windrush generation, despite the fact that they had a perfect right to stay in Britain, and the racist and islamophobic comments of many of their members. Like Boris Johnson and his wretch article describing women wearing the niqub as looking like dustbins and letterboxes. Only a tiny minority of Muslim women wear it, and many pro-Muslim political figures, like George Galloway are opposed to it. But Galloway also believed that women had a right to wear it, and condemned Johnson’s comments as racist. He was also bitterly critical of Johnson’s remarks along with many other people, including Mike on his blog, because after Johnson made them attacks on women wearing the burka increased. At least woman was killed. Despite this, the Tories concluded that BoJo’s article wasn’t racist, but ‘tolerant’ and ‘respectful’.
There have also been vicious attacks on the homeless and the disabled, again due to Tory policies and the rabid right-wing press, which demonizes the poor and the unemployed as scroungers and the disabled as malingerers. Thanks to rags like the Scum and the Heil, people believe that a quarter of all benefit claims are fraudulent, while the reality is that fake claims account for less than 1 one per cent of them.
The crime figures, and particularly the increase in hate crimes, clearly shows that the Tories have had a disastrous effect on British society, making it more suspicious, hateful and violent. Individuals are still responsible for the crimes they commit, but Quetelet’s and Bakunin’s views are correct. Society is a powerful influence in the amount of crime and suicide.
And the conclusion is undeniable: the Tories have prepared these crimes by deliberately creating a society where they are carried out, however much they scream and try to deny it. They have to be got out, before they cause any more attacks and deaths of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
This is a short video from Sam Seder’s Majority Report, in which Seder, his co-host, Michael Brooks, and backroom team laugh at a leaked video of Boris Johnson trying to explain Britain’s long alliance with Portugal to the general public.
It follows on from a previous discussion they’ve had about the video of a northern schoolboy waterboarding a Syrian refugee lad. Where, they ask, did this hatred come from, the idea to hit out at the pressures in society by attacking someone, who had come from unimaginable suffering? Well, they suggest, it might have come from this person. Boris.
And so to the video, apparently leaked from the Beeb. This shows Boris standing in sunny Portugal, explaining to the camera that Britain and Portugal have been friends and allies since 1386, the Napoleonic Wars and then the Second World War. Er, er, problem. Portugal was neutral during the Second World War. What happened during the War? Some tries to help him out by shouting, ‘the Azores’. So Boris asks what did we – Britain – do in the Azores.
Next take: Boris starts off by telling the camera about the alliance since 1386, and says that Portugal’s our fourth largest trading partner. Er, no. One of his aids walks on to explain that we’re Portugal’s fourth largest trading partner. They’re not ours. Cut!
Take 3. Boris starts again with the 1386 alliance, and goes on to say that it was just a few miles away, in Estoril, the James Bond was born. No! Yet again an aid walks over to him to explain that James Bond wasn’t born in Estoril. Ian Fleming, Bond’s creator, had the idea for him in Estoril. Boris gets tetchy, and retorts ‘Why did you put this in the briefing, if you’re going to tell me it’s wrong?’ The obvious answer to that is that the aid probably did tell him all this properly in the briefing. It’s that Boris didn’t read it properly, as George Galloway has said that he doesn’t read what his aids have written for him.
The video concludes with Seder, Brooks and co. chortling and wondering how ‘this a**hole’ got the job as Foreign Secretary. It’s a good question. It’s probably because he’s filthy rich, an aristo, went to Eton, and was editor of the Spectator. And he appeared a couple of times on Have I Got News For You, published a book, a collection of old articles from the magazine, which capitalized on his appearances on the show – it was called Have I Got Views For You – and so someone thought he was massively popular. Especially after he’d been mayor of London and been part of the British government’s team preparing for the Beijing Olympics.
None of which remotely disproves, and even confirms the fact that Boris is a clown, and a malign, scheming, duplicitous one, who should be kept well away from power. He wants to be Prime Minister. I think his machinations against the other front bench Tories have effectively put him out of the running for that, but then, the Tories are a stupid, inept, entitled, vicious and malign party. So he might get in. If he does, it’ll be a disaster.
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 