Killary Appearing at Cheltenham Literary Festival Today – But Will They Ask the Really Awkward Questions

Hillary Clinton was due to appear at the Cheltenham Literary Festival today, 15th October 2017, undoubtedly as part of her tour promoting her book, What Happened? In it, she tries to examine and explain how she came to lose the American presidential election to the orange maniac, whose now bringing us just that little bit closer to war with Iran, and nuclear Armageddon. Various American progressive and radical news shows, like The Young Turks, the Jimmy Dore Show and Secular Talk have extensively reviewed her book and ripped it to shreds very effectively. Some of the videos are quite long, but the problem with Hillary’s campaign can be summed up very simply: her. Clinton is a horrible person, and a horrible candidate. She is part of the corporate elite, personally corrupt in the sense that she is very much in the pocket of Wall Street and big business, and a warmonger, who was ramping up international tensions with Russia and China unnecessarily even before she lost the election. Now it’s even worse as she and the other corporatist Democrats try to cast the blame on Russian interference, rather than look much closer to home to the weakness of Clinton herself. She is massively out of touch with ordinary, working American people.

A majority of the population now want single-payer healthcare, like the rest of the Developed World. And which the Germans have had since Bismarck’s ‘Socialist Law’ of the 1870s, when the real Iron Chancellor tried to crush the rise of Germany’s Social Democrats by stealing a bit of their thunder. While Bernie Sanders has shown how America could easily afford it, and it would be cheaper both for the state and for ordinary Americans, Killary herself has declared that it’s ‘utopian’. Which is why it been working very well in Germany and the Scandinavian countries for more than a hundred years, and the French and Swiss have similar systems which mix state payment and private insurance. But this is still too far-fetched and difficult for the world’s only superpower.

Her record gets much worse when it comes to Black Americans. Bill Clinton was so popular with America’s Black population, and had the same easy charm that many of their politicians and celebrities have, that he was hailed as ‘the first Black president’. But Bill and his wife were responsible for putting in place the legislation that’s seen a massive proportion of Black men jailed for drug offences. She drew an artificial distinction between crack and ordinary cocaine, to make it appear that the one favoured by Blacks was a greater threat than the other, and so deserved greater punishment. Pushing this legislation, she talked about the threat of ‘superpredators’ at a time when this term was nearly exclusively used to describe young Black men.

On the world stage, she was responsible for arming Islamist rebels in Libya so that they overthrew Colonel Gaddafy. Gaddafy was certainly no saint. He was a dictator, who tortured and locked up his political opponents. But he kept the nation together and made sure that his country was paid a fair price for their oil after it had been run as an Italian colony from the late 19th century onwards. During the decades of his people’s struggle for independence, one third of the population was killed. It was a secular state, albeit one where the official ideology, as laid out in his Green Book, was a mixture of Islam and Arab socialism. There was free education and free healthcare. Libya was the most prosperous African country, and Gaddafy himself stood up for the continents’ rights in global affairs. And while he used the Islamists to assassinate his political rivals elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East, they weren’t allowed to terrorise his people.

After Gaddafy was toppled, the country descended into civil war between rival factions, including the Islamists. It is still divided between two completing authorities. Its education and healthcare systems have been destroyed, and the Islamists have seized control of large parts of the country.

And then there’s the issue of the coup in Honduras. Up until 2012 or so, this had a liberal president, who actually wanted to raise the living standards of the peasants and urban working class, who were desperately poor, as well as protect the land and livelihood of the country’s indigenous peoples. And, as usually happens in South and Central America when the establishment is faced with the threat of a liberal regime, he was overthrown by a right-wing coup. This installed a Fascist dictator, who started rounding up, imprisoning, killing and torturing opposition leaders, activists and trade unionists. America has legislation designed to prevent it from supporting foreign coups. Killary decided to get around this by officially declaring that the coup wasn’t military, so that America could continue giving aid to the Fascist government.

And in her own party, Hillary was in cahoots with the head of the Democratic National Convention, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, so that Democratic nominations were fiddled to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Sanders was by far the better candidate, with far greater appeal to working Americans. But he’s a self-declared ‘Democratic Socialist’, who wants single-payer healthcare, a renewed American welfare state, stronger trade unions, and an altogether better deal for America’s poor and working people. And unlike the Clinton’s, Bernie has genuinely taken an interest in promoting the welfare of America’s ethnic minorities. He was one of the first, if not the first, mainstream American politician to go to the reservations of America’s First Peoples to seek their views on improving conditions for them.

But this was all too much for Hillary, whose entire electoral strategy consisted of turning against the party’s core constituency amongst blue-collar workers, Blacks and other minorities, to appeal to Republicans. Just like the Clinton’s mate, Tony Blair, pursued the Tory vote as the expense of the British White working class over here.

But Killary can’t accept any of that, and so blames everyone else in her book except herself, including Jill Stein, the head of the Green Party. Clinton’s tried to present herself as some kind of feminist, whose victory in the election would somehow be a step forward for America’s women, despite the fact that she would do nothing for them. Bernie was much more popular amongst the female population, because he promised women – and men – work and proper healthcare. As did Jill Stein. Stein was a doctor. I put up one of her election broadcasts I found on YouTube, in which Stein talked to a group of women about the necessity for a single-payer healthcare system. She stated unequivocally that it was especially needed for America’s women. And I don’t doubt for a moment that Stein’s absolutely right. From what I’ve seen, the cost of giving birth alone under the American private medical system is tens of thousands of dollars, so much so that American couples have to spend years saving up and then worrying if it’ll bankrupt them before starting a family. It’s a situation that also shows how hollow the Republicans’ concerns about the falling American birthrate is. Their solution is to try to ban abortion. I think Mussolini in Fascist Italy also did that. But he also passed legislation to give Italian women state aid in raising a family. It was part of the Fascists’ reactionary campaign to take women out of the workplace and back in the home and the kitchen, but even then it was far less reactionary in its methods than that of contemporary Conservativism.

The electorate knew that Hillary wasn’t going to do anything for ordinary women, and so voted for the other candidates. And so Killary responded by trying to smear Sanders as a misogynist, just as the Blairites in the Labour party tried to smear Jeremy Corbyn over hear. It hasn’t worked.

And Killary’s still trying to present herself as some kind of feminist ‘everywoman’. When she appeared on America’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon a few days ago, the show’s female writers and a tearful Miley Cyrus also appeared to write ‘thank you’ notes to her praising her for being such an inspiration to them. The Humanist Report produced the video below rightly critiquing not just Hillary, but also the other mainstream comedians, who have politicos on their show, whether the comedians are Fallon, Bill Maher or whoever. He attacks them because they are using their comedy to promote a corporatist agenda regardless of whether the politicians are from the Democrats or Republicans. The Report’s presenter urges his audience to watch intelligently and critically. They can’t and shouldn’t censor, but they should hold presenters and broadcasters, even himself, up to a higher standard.

I am very definitely not a Humanist, but it’s an excellent point that can’t be repeated too much. Here’s the video.

I wonder just how many of the really tough questions have been or will be put to Hillary at the Cheltenham Literary Festival today. My guess is that they’ll ask some awkward questions, but nothing too hard or likely to make her feel uncomfortable.

As for Hillary’s appearance in Britain, I was talking about it to a friend of mine in Cheltenham the last time I was up there a week or so ago. He told me that one of his American friends had wondered what she was doing over here. The obvious answer is that Britain has a special relationship with America, and American politics directly affects this country, and indeed the rest of the world. But his reply was different. He said: ‘Because you owe us an apology’.

When George ‘Dubya’ won the election in 2000, Americans went on social media to apologise to the rest of the world. I think something similar is needed now. But instead of ordinary Americans apologising, it should be Hillary apologising to the ordinary Joes and Josies across the US for being such a transparent corporate shill that she lost to someone as bigoted, stupid and murderous as Trump.

Colonel Gaddafi Predicted He Would Be Killed For His Opposition to Capitalism

William Blum in his book American’s Deadliest Export: Democracy has a very interesting little extract from Colonel Gaddafi’s Recollections of My Life. In the entry for April 8th, 2011, the former Mad Dog of the Middle East predicted that he would be killed because he was attempting to defend his nation, and the Developing World, from capitalist domination by the multinationals. He wrote

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama, wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called ‘capitalism’, but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us … I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are my children, the so be it… In the West, some have called me ‘mad’, ‘crazy’. They know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip. (p. 169).

Gaddafi was no saint. His regime did sponsor terrorism. He gave aid to the IRA in Britain, and sent Islamist terrorists against competing African and Arab leaders. But domestically he was fiercely opposed to Islamism, and he did make a deal with Blair’s administration.

Under Gaddafi, the oil companies had to pay a fair price for the oil they extracted. Education and healthcare was free, and the country had one of, if not the lowest infant mortality rate in Africa. I’ve been told that Gaddafi’s Green Book is a peculiar mixture of Arab Socialism, Communism and Islam. Regardless of this, it was a secular state with considerable freedom given to women.

After the coup sponsored by Killery, all that has gone. Free education and medicine has ended, women’s status and freedoms have been curtailed, and the country is under Sharia law, and Black workers from Africa subjected to racism and persecution.

Gaddafi’s sponsorship of terrorism wasn’t the issue. After all, the IRA also received some funding from Irish Americans through Noraid. And America itself has always been prepared to fund and equip terrorists itself in its campaign against those foreign leaders it wants to oust. At present America is giving funding, arms and training to al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria to get rid of Assad.

Gaddafi’s country was bombed and the Islamist butchers who rose against him supported, because he dared to stand up to the West and America, and give his people free healthcare and education, against the dictates of American imperialism and the oil companies.

TV Documentary from 1999 on Contemporary British Fascism

This is more Fascism – British this time – for those that can stomach. And some of it is hard to take. This is a British documentary, The Lost Race, broadcast in 1999, that charts the career of the various Fascist parties and movements in Britain from c. 1979 to the end of millennium. It follows the NF, BNP and other Fascist splinter groups, like the Third Position after Margaret Thatcher’s election victory of 1979 took the wind out of their sails by taking many nationalist votes from the NF. Faced with defeat after it was almost on the verge of becoming a mainstream party, the National Front split, the British National Party emerged as the dominant party of the Far Right, and British Fascism in general began a process of self-examination and exploration trying to find ways to recover their position.

The documentary covers some of the bizarre intellectual movements within the BNP at this time. This includes Nick Griffin’s attempt to turn his stormtroopers into ‘political soldiers’ following the ideas of the Italian Fascist and occultist aristo, Giulio Evola and the Italian Fascist, Roberto Fiore. This involved trying to cultivate a mystical, spiritual dimension to the Fascist revolt, and the ideas of the late Libyan dictator, Colonel Gaddafi. I think Nick Griffin travelled at least once to Libya, and he tried to get the other goose-steppers to study Gaddafi’s notoriously muddled and incoherent ‘Green Book’. One of the former Fascists interview, now standing as a ‘National Liberal’ local councillor in one of the London boroughs, describes how he got a copy for the local council. It’s on their shelves, but no-one’s read it. Also highly influential in this stage of the BNP’s development were the ideas of the Romanian Fascist, Corneliu Codreanu, who tried to form a mystical nationalism based on a synthesis of love of the land with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This also failed to ignite any interest. It’s hard to see how Griffin expected it to be otherwise. Codreanu’s Iron Guard was a failure, even in Romania. From what I understand, in the 1930s they tried to overthrow the Romanian government in a coup. King Carol formed a government of his own from the traditional Rightist groups, which then counterattacked and massacred the Fascists, including Codreanu. His ideas were also unlikely to have any resonance for contemporary Brits, considering the very different intellectual climate in western Europe. The early Russian intellectuals, for example, used to contrast the mystical mindset of their own country with western rationalism and its obsession with the law and legal niceties, in contrast with their own preferences for utopianism and solving social problems through a complete restructuring of that society.

As for the International Third Position, this can be summed up as plain, old fashioned segregation. In their case, Blacks and Asians were to be allowed to remain in Britain, but would be kept separate from Whites through a system of apartheid. This also eventually died the death, as the traditional stance of the BNP and Nazi groups always was for an end to non-White immigration and the deportation of Blacks and Asians back to their countries of origin.

One of the Fascist groups also made an abortive, and borderline fraudulent attempt, to set up a Whites-only Nazi commune on a farm in France. The documentary makers themselves go there, and visit the site in the company of one of the local dignitaries. They find the site abandoned and dilapidated. Its British owners only stayed there once, and were looking to sell the place. Despite this, they were still appealing for money for the project in the various extreme Right-wing journals.

This made sense of some of the things I’d heard about the extreme Right at the time. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in his book on contemporary Nazi occultism, The Black Sun, discusses some of the links between Libya and European Neo-Nazis, who adopted a pro-Islam view linked with their anti-Semitism. Larry O’Hara, who did a doctorate, I believe, on the contemporary British Far Right, mentions the Third Positionists several times in some of the articles he wrote for Lobster in the 1990s. He also briefly mentioned the attempt in France to found a Nazi commune in his own conspiracy journal, Notes from the Borderland.

The BNP/NF also tried to gain support by copying the Liberals, and concentrating on ‘parish pump’ politics, local issues at council level. It’s about this new electoral strategy that they talk to the ‘National Liberal’ town councillor in London.

The documentary also discusses the extreme violence of the Far Right, and the rise of Combat 18, an extremely violent, expressly Nazi organisation that specialised in attacking left-wingers and anti-fascists. It was founded in 1979 by the American Klansman and Nazi, Harold Covington, whose members shot day five civil rights protestors.

What I, and no doubt many others, found particularly repulsive was the way the NF/ BNP tried to recruit and indoctrinate schoolchildren. The various Nazi periodicals encouraged pupils to inform on staff, who were supposed to be promoting ‘Communist’ ideas. These were then beaten up by the storm troopers. The programme includes an interview with a teacher, who was attacked by two men in school, after one of his pupils wrote such a snitch letter to one of the Nazi rags. The man was beaten because he had taught Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. From that, you could be forgiven for thinking he was indeed a Marxist. Except he wasn’t. The documentary makers ask him this straight out, and he gives them a flat denial. The school’s course at the time involved teaching them about the Soviet Union for a term, which involved obviously studying the ideological foundations of the state in Communism. The next term, however, they were due to study America, and the term after that Europe. So no, the teacher was definitely not a Communist. And even if he was, it would have been a matter for official censure and discipline if he was trying to indoctrinate his young charges, and definitely not ground for a savage physical attack.

The Nazis also launched their own ‘comic’ intended to draw children into their vile world of racial nationalism. There’s a clip of one of them hanging around outside a school’s gates, selling copies of The Stormer to the children leaving school. The Stormer took its name from Der Stuermer, one of Goebbel’s vile propaganda rags. The documentary briefly shows a page from the ‘comic’, with strips like ‘Ali the Paki’ clearly intended to promote hatred towards Blacks and Asians through playing up racial stereotypes. I’ve got a feeling that The Stormer was banned, and the Nazis producing and distributing it sent to jail for incitement to racial hatred following police raids on their homes. Good. The footage of the Nazi shouting to all the schoolchildren to get their copies of it, only 10p is genuinely repulsive and creepy. It has the same kind of overtones as paedophiles hanging around school gates, trying to get their claws into young, vulnerable children in their turn. It’s one that makes you want to take a bath after you’ve seen it.

The documentary, however, states that these attempts by the NF and BNP to revive their flagging membership and electoral support ultimately died, as in those 20 years Britain became used to and more comfortable with being a multicultural and multi-ethnic country. There’s an interesting section where the presenter asks John Tyndall, the leader of the NF, if he would deport, say, someone who was half-black, or a quarter. Tyndall gets very tetchy indeed, and gives an evasive answer about how these issues would be dealt with on a case by case basis.

This was at the time a little too optimistic, as in the early years of this century the BNP seemed to be in the ascendant. Fortunately, that passed when just about everyone turned on Griffin and the BNP. These groups are still around, but they’re smaller than they used to be, though still as nasty, and now openly anti-Semitic, whereas before they kept that hidden.

Here’s the video.