Mike’s List of Corbyn’s Proud Record of Tackling Anti-Semitism

Hey-ho, another day, another anti-Semitism smear. It’s almost like the stereotypical opening of a Blues song ‘Woke up this mornin’, and what did I see?’ It was another smear piece against the Labour party being discussed on the Beeb. And imagine my surprise (sarcasm) when I found out that it was published in the Sunday Times, and written by Gabriel Pogrund and his mate, Richard Kerbaj. Whose name is nearly ‘garbage’, which is what he writes. Followers of Mike’s and this blog will remember that it was the Pogrund, writing in the Sunset Times two years, that published the article smearing Mike as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Mike isn’t. Never was, never will be, and like just about everyone else smeared as an anti-Semite by that vile rag and the sordid excuses for journalism that followed it, like the Scum and the Jewish Chronicle, he’s a resolute opponent of all forms of racism. His real crime was that he stood up for Ken Livingstone, writing the Livingstone Delusion against the smear that Red Ken’s an anti-Semite. Just as Livingstone himself, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Cyril Chilson, Marc Wadsworth and so many, many others have been smeared. They’re members of the Labour Left, who have criticised Israel and the Israel lobby. Because Israel’s a fascistic, apartheid state, no difference from the other repulsive Fascist states around the world. The right, both within and outside the Labour party hates and fears Corbyn because he’s undo the corrupt and decaying neoliberalism that’s wrecking this country and impoverishing and literally killing it’s people. And the Israel lobby fear him because they hate and fear anyone, who seriously wants to do something for the Palestinians. And so the Right and the Israel lobby have swung into action and tried to discredit Corbyn and his supporters by smearing them as anti-Semites.

It looks to me from here that it’s the standard hatchet job. It’s supposedly based on leaked emails and texts, and the Labour Party has already attacked the article as biased and untrue, and for taking the quotes used out of context. Mike in one of the two article’s he’s put up today has pointed out that this is precisely what the Sunset Times did to him, and no-one from the Party came to his defence. Instead they put him through a kangaroo court, of the same type that summarily found Greenstein, Walker, Wadsworth and the rest guilty, against the evidence. Mike’s also pointed out that despite the headline declaring the alleged anti-Semites to be ‘Corbyn’s army’, there’s no connection to the Labour leader. And Zelo Street has pointed out that only five cases are discussed, despite the article’s hype about an army of anti-Semites and having a disc full of this stuff.

We’ve seen all this claptrap before. It’s the standard modus operandi of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its appendages, David ‘Gnasherjew’ Collier and his chums, who pore over the email and social media records of the people they want to smear, pulling quotes and comments out of context. Which they then present as absolute proof that the person concerned is indeed the evil spawn of Hitler. They did this to Jackie Walker, a very principled woman of colour, who’s also Jewish by birth and religion. Walker’s an anti-Zionist, as many Jews are, because she was a member of the movement against apartheid in Namibia. She found she could not campaign against the state racism there while supporting Israel, which discriminates against and persecutes the Palestinians. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement smeared her by taking a sloppily worded statement she made about the chief’s being the chief financiers of the slave trade – she should have said that they were among the chief financiers of the slave trade – out of context, and secretly recorded her objecting to the definition of anti-Semitism the JLM was using at a workshop on the commemoration of the Holocaust to portray her as an anti-Semite. The Labour party documents she obtained for her trial acknowledged that the case against her was weak. But nevertheless, she was summarily found guilty, and expelled. And she has been viciously demonised. She has received messages telling her that she’s a fake Jew, or not really Black, but a White women in dreadlocks – she’s mixed race – that she should be lynched, cut up and put in bin bags, or should have been killed in the Holocaust. It’s vile, ugly stuff, and she’s had to tell her children not to read messages on social media about her, because of what they’re see being said about their mother.

This is how nasty the JLM, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Collier and the rest of the Israel lobby and the rags, who repeat their lies and smears are. They’re out to destroy utterly anyone, who stands up against the racism of the Israeli and supports Jeremy Corbyn, who is their ultimate target.

Despite their lies and smears, Corbyn has always been a determined opponent of racism and anti-Semitism. Mike in his article about the latest sorry attempt to smear Labour has put up on his blog a timeline of the Labour leaders’ actions against anti-Semitism, defending Jewish people from real attacks, and those of the Labour party under his leadership. These are:

1. In October 1936, Jeremy Corbyn’s mother participated in the battle of Cable Street in defence of British Jews after British fascists had staged an assault on the area. Corbyn was raised in a household passionately opposed to antisemitism in all its forms.

2. In 23rd April 1977, Corbyn organised a counter-demonstration to protect Wood Green from a neo-nazi march through the district. The area had a significant Jewish population.

3. On 7 November 1990, Corbyn signed a motion condemning the rise of antisemitism in the UK

4. In 2002 Jeremy Corbyn led a clean-up and vigil at Finsbury Park Synagogue which had been vandalised in an anti-Semitic attack

5. On 30 April 2002, Corbyn tabled a motion in the House of Commons condemning an anti-Semitic attack on a London Synagogue

6. On 26 November 2003, Jeremy Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion condemning terrorist attacks on two synagogues

7. In February 2009, Jeremy Corbyn signed a parliamentary motion condemning a fascist for establishing a website to host antisemitic materials

8. On 24th March 2009, Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion praising British Jews who resisted the Holocaust by risking their lives to save potential victims

9. Nine years ago, Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion praising “Jewish News”for its pioneering investigation into the spread of antisemitism on Facebook

10. On 9 February 2010, Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion calling for an investigation into Facebook and its failure to prevent the spread of antisemitic materials on its site.

11. On 27 October 2010, Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion praising the late Israeli Prime Minister for pursuing a two state solution to the Israel/Palestine question.

12. On 13 June 2012, Corbyn sponsored and signed a motion condemning the BBC for cutting a Jewish Community television programme from its schedule.

13. 1 October 2013, Corbyn appeared on the BBC to defend Ralph Miliband against vile antisemitic attacks by the UK press.

14. Five years ago Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion condemning antisemitism in sport.

15. On 1 March 2013, Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion condemning and expressing concern at growing levels of antisemitism in European football.

16. On 9 January 2014, Jeremy Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion praising Holocaust education programmes that had taken 20,000 British students to Auschwitz.

17. On 22 June 2015, Corbyn signed a Parliamentary motion expressing concern at the neo-nazi march being planned for an area of London with a significant Jewish population.

18. On 9 October 2016, Corbyn, close to tears, commemorated the 1936 Battle of Cable Street and recalled the role his mother played in defending London’s Jewish community.

19. On 3 December 2016, Corbyn made a visit to Terezin Concentration Camp where Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis. It was Jeremy’s third visit to such a camp, all of which were largely unreported in the most read UK papers.

20. Last year, a widely-endorsed 2018 academic report found ninety-five serious reporting failures in the reporting of the Labour antisemitism story with the worst offenders The Sun, the Mail & the BBC.

21. On 28 February 2016, five months after becoming leader, Jeremy Corbyn appointed Baroness Royall to investigate antisemitism at Oxford University Labour Club.

22. On 27 April 2016 Corbyn suspended an MP pending an investigation into antisemitism.

23. A day later, Corbyn suspended the three times Mayor of London after complaints of antisemitic comments.

24. On 29 April 2016, Corbyn launched an inquiry into the prevalence of antisemitism in the Labour Party. In spite of later changes in how the inquiry was reported, it was initially praised by Jewish community organisations.

25. In Corbyn’s first seven months as leader of the Labour Party, just ten complaints were received about antisemitism. 90% of those were suspended from the Labour Party within 24 hours.

26. In September 2017, Corbyn backed a motion at Labour’s annual conference introducing a new set of rules regarding antisemitism.

27. In the six months that followed the introduction of the new code of conduct, to March 2018, 94% of the fifty-four people accused of antisemitism remained suspended or barred from Labour Party membership. Three of the fifty-four were exonerated.

28. When Jennie Formby became general secretary of the party last year, she appointed a highly-qualified in-house Counsel, as recommended in the Chakrabarti Report.

29. In 2018, Labour almost doubled the size of its staff team handling investigations and dispute processes.

30. Last year, to speed up the handling of antisemitism cases, smaller panels of 3-5 NEC members were established to enable cases to be heard more quickly.

31. Since 2018, every complaint made about antisemitism is allocated its own independent specialist barrister to ensure due process is followed.

32. The entire backlog of cases outstanding upon Jennie Formby becoming General Secretary of the Labour Party was cleared within 6 months of Jennie taking up her post.

33. Since September 2018, Labour has doubled the size of its National Constitutional Committee (NCC) – its senior disciplinary panel – from 11 to 25 members to enable it to process cases more quickly.

34. Under Formby and Labour’s left-run NEC, NCC arranged elections at short notice to ensure the NCC reached its new full capacity without delay.

35. Since later 2018, the NCC routinely convenes a greater number of hearing panels to allow cases to be heard and finalised without delay.

36. In 2018, the NEC established a ‘Procedures Working Group’ to lead reforms in the way disciplinary cases are handled.

37. The NEC adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and all eleven examples of antisemitism attached to it.

38. A rule change agreed at Conference in 2018 means that all serious complaints, including antisemitism, are dealt with nationally to ensure consistency.

39. Last year, Jennie Formby wrote to the admins and moderators of Facebook groups about how they can effectively moderate online spaces and requested that any discriminatory content be reported to the Labour Party for investigation.

40. Since last year, no one outside Labour’s Governance and Legal Unit can be involved in decision-making on antisemitism investigations. This independence allows decisions free from political influence to be taken.

This is a very, very long list. And actions speak louder than words, so Mike’s quite right when he asks at the end of his article if this is clear enough to everybody. It certainly should be. Except, perhaps, to those taken so far in by the media nonsense that the still believe that the Sunset Times is any kind of reputable newspaper.

For more information, see:

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/04/07/was-sunday-times-smear-timed-to-influence-jewish-labour-movement-confidence-vote-on-corbyn/

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/04/labour-anti-semitism-claims-repeat.html

Private Eye’s Anti-Semitism Smear Attack on Labour Appartchik Thomas Gardiner

This fortnight’s Private Eye for 22nd March – 4th April 2019 carried yet another attack on the Labour party by their columnist, ‘Ratbiter’, on page 10. Entitled ‘Gardiner’s Question Time’, attacking Labour Party bureaucrat Thomas Gardiner for not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism in the Labour party. It is, of course, coincidental that the article also mentions that Gardiner is a close aide of Jeremy Corbyn. The article runs

LABOUR apparatchik Thomas Gardiner came to Eye readers’ attention last June as the helpful chap whom Jeremy Corbyn’s aides advised suspended members to contact if they wanted readmission to the party, after general secretary Jennie Formby brought him in to run Labour’s compliance unit (Eye 1472).

Earlier this month, the Observer and Times revealed emails which showed Gardiner opposing recommendations from the party’s investigations team to suspend members accused of Jew-baiting, despite Corbyn’s promise of “zero tolerance for anti-Semites”.

Kayla Bibby, for instance, shared an image of an alien creature marked with the Star of David wrapping its tentacles round the Statue of Liberty. “The most accurate photo I’ve seen all year!” she wrote, having specifically requested a copy of the picture from Incog Man, and American Neo-Nazi site. Incog Man’s talk of the “parasitic, whitish looking, chameleon Jew” didn’t appear to bother Bibby … or indeed Labour, since Gardiner ruled the image was “anti-Israel, not anti-Jewish”.

Gardiner also supported Camden Labour activist Mohammed Joynal Uddin, who had claimed Jews believe Jesus was “boiling in semen in hell and that the Virgin Mary is a whore.” Labour said Gardiner did not know about Uddin’s views when he backed him, and in any case had recused himself from the case. Gardiner meanswhile disappeared on holiday.

With Labour coming under scrutiny by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, party figures suspect that Corbyn’s aides are no lining up Gardiner to be the fall guy. Political hacks think so too, and their editors are prepared to get out the cheque book if he will tell all about Corbyn, Formby and Labour communications director Seumas Milne.

Will he grass up his comrades? The formbook suggests not: Gardiner, a Camden councillor, promoted a motion at the Hampstead and Kilburn Labour party in 2016 dismissing the anti-Semitism scandal as an assault on the Left and condemning “the factional use which a few within the party have tried to make of anti-Semitism”. Yet can Formby be sure he will stay silent? Or will she have to reach into Labour’s depleted reserves and present him with a deal that outbids anything the hacks can offer?

From the evidence is presented here, it seems the case against Gardiner is pretty damning: he’s covering up the massive anti-Semitism in the Labour party in order to protect Corbyn, Formby and co, who also have dirty, guilty secrets that the press are keen to publish. But there are real problems with the story and its sources, which mean that nothing in this should be taken at face value.

‘Ratbiter’: Warmonger and Libeller

Firstly, there’s the credibility of ‘Ratbiter’ himself. On Tuesday I put up extracts about him from a longer post against the anti-Semitism smears against Labour by the veteran campaigner for truth and justice, Tony Greenstein. ‘Ratbiter’ is Nick Cohen, a hack for the Graun and Absurder, who used to be a decent human being until 9/11. Then he morphed into an Islam hating neocon warmonger, who backed Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Cohen is also someone else, who has a problem with the actualite, and publishes lies and distortions about the victims of the anti-Semitism smear campaign. One of them is Greenstein himself, who, after pointing out the many lies Cohen had said about him, said that the only reasons why he wasn’t suing him was because he was already suing the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, and wanted also to have a go at the equally mendacious Jewish Chronicle and a certain unnamed councillor.

Kayla Bibby and the CAA Smears against Mike and Jackie Walker

And then there’s the matter of the two people accused of anti-Semitism, Kayla Bibbi and Mohammed Uddin. Can we really believe the allegations? Both sound like the kind of accusation the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and ‘Gnasherjew’ make. ‘Gnasherjew’ is the pseudonym used by the repugnant David Collier, a vile individual who would have fitted in very well with the East German Stasi, Mussolini’s OVRA, Reinhard Heydrich in Nazi Germany, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, all of whom bugged their enemies. In the case of the last three, this included their personal enemies in the Nazi and Fascist parties and the American political machine. The Campaign Against Truth and Collier specialise in looking through people’s past electronic communications, pulling them out of context and then sending them as a dossier to the compliance unit. This is what they did to Jackie Walker and I’m assuming they also did it to Mike. Walker was smeared as an anti-Semite on the basis of a private conversation in which she said that her people the chief financiers of the slave trade. It was sloppily worded. She admits that she should have said that her people were among the chief financiers of the slave trade. She was also smeared because she said that the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism wasn’t one she could work with. As I and many others have said, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, Walker’s definitely not an anti-Semite. The party’s compliance unit admitted that the case against her was ‘weak’. But on the basis of this weak case, her life has been ruined and she now gets threats and abuse from nutters telling her that she should be lynched, or cut up and put into bin bags.

The smear merchants tried the same tactics recently against Mike over an image he put up on Vox Political. This showed the state of Israel in America, and was included in a piece he wrote against the smear attack on Naz Shah. The Witchhunters claimed he’d taken it from a Neo-Nazi website. Not so: Mike took it from Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish critic of Israel, who is the son of Holocaust survivors. And needless to say, Finkelstein has also had the anti-Semitic abuse heaped upon him, accused of being self-hating and all the rest of it. There’s a clear parallel here to Kayla Bibby’s case. So was Bibby the victim of the same tactics? Did she really get the image from Incog Man, or was it a similar image? And if she did, was she aware Incog Man was a Nazi? And even if she did, does it make her an anti-Semite if she qualifies it and says she talking about Israel, not Jews? If she really did take the image from a Nazi site, then she’s stupid and deserves criticism for it. But if she is genuinely making a comment about Israel, and not about Jews, then she’s no more than that.

Mohammed Uddin and What Is Not Being Said

Uddin’s case also should be treated with scepticism. Did he really say what he is alleged to have said about Jews and Christ? And if he did, what is the context? It’s possible he was quoting someone else, or reacting to something someone else has said along the same lines. We aren’t told. Furthermore, looking carefully, this doesn’t seem to be the original accusation against Uddin. Gardiner is quoted as saying that he didn’t know about Uddin’s views when he defended him. Now I doubt that the witchhunters simply made a complaint about Uddin just saying that he was an anti-Semite and wanted him suspended, and then left it like that. They must have provided some substance to their accusation. And Gardiner clearly found this evidence unconvincing. Then they dredged up, or invented, this remark about the Jews and Christ. As for recusing himself, this is what you’re supposed to do in a court of law if you know the accused. So it looks like Gardiner may well have acted entirely properly in the circumstances as they unfolded.

The Campaign to Unseat Corbyn

And underlying this sordid tale are Cohen’s true intentions. Gardiner is an enemy of the witchhunt, which really is against the Left and particularly against Israel’s critics. As a Blairite neocon, Cohen wants Corbyn out. This is the ultimate goal of the witchhunters. It’s why they accused Chris Williamson of anti-Semitism last week, because he had the horrible audacity to state that Labour was being too apologetic about it. And it’s no coincidence that Williamson is a close Corbyn ally. This is all about smearing and getting rid of Corbyn’s chief supporters before attacking and unseating the man himself.

As for the newspapers Cohen cites in his article, the Absurder and the Thunderer, neither have shown themselves even remotely to be impartial and trustworthy when it comes to the anti-Semitism smears, having published them with the same zeal as the rest of the press. Just as Private Eye has done, and no doubt for the same reasons.

This attack on Gardiner therefore looks like just another Blairite/Tory hit piece on a close Corbyn aide, consisting of nothing but lies and, at best, half-truths, from liars like David Collier, the CAA and Cohen himself. It’s disgraceful that such vicious smear merchants should be given such space by the media, and it’s a damning indictment of the Eye that it has also followed them in doing so.

Asa Winstanley Suspended from Labour Party Charged with ‘Anti-Semitism’

Asa Winstanley, a journalist with the pro-Palestinian website, The Electronic Intifada, has become yet another casualty in the Labour right’s attempts to silence critics of Israel. He was suspended from the party because of a Tweet he posted, which said

Israeli embassy proxy the JLM confirms it was responsible for the referencing of Labour to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for supposed “institutional antisemitism”.

Shameless sabotage of the party.

This is what Israel terms “lawfare”

https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lawfare

Like other members of the party, who have similarly been suspended and smeared as anti-Semites, Winstanley only knew of this after it was published by the Jewish Chronicle, which also chose to reveal Winstanley’s private details. A hack from the Chronicle, Rosa Donerty, posted

It is understood that Asa Winstanley is suspended from Labour party pending investigation.

to which Winstanley commented that

The fact that a Jewish Chronicle journalist is claiming to be the first to know information, which would, if true, be confidential indicates attempts to politicise and compromise Labour’s disciplinary process.   

And, as you might expect, the abuse started. Someone calling himself ‘Dr. Gonzo’ responded in classy fashion with

F**k off you anti-Semitic piece of s**t. Go play with the traffic you insufferable racist c**t.

Ali Abunimah’s article about this mentions that two years ago in 2017, lawyers from the Jewish Labour Movement, which has close ties with the Israeli embassy, tried to shut him down by threatening legal action.

See: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/labour-party-investigates-electronic-intifada-journalist

Mike states in his piece about this latest vile attack on a critic of Israel that it resembles his own experience. He only heard that he had been suspended when someone phoned him up about it from the Welsh paper The Western Mail. Mike also agrees with Winstanley that the disclosure of the information to a third party may be a breach of the Data Protection Act. Mike’s currently taking the Party to court, and this is very definitely going to be a part of his case. And yes, Mike has also suffered vile abuse following the Labour party’s actions. Mike also makes the point that although the party describes its investigations procedure as quasi-judicial, it has no legal validity. This means that the party can be sued by members or former members, who have suffered harm to their reputations after their treatment by the party.

The Electronic Intifada’s article states that the complaints procedure was expected to become fairer with the appointment of Jenny Formby. It hasn’t. Mike concludes

But then, it seems the attitude of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee and complaint-handling “compliance unit” really hasn’t changed in the nearly two years since my case began.

They still treat the people who pay their wages with nothing but contempt.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/03/12/labour-investigation-of-asa-winstanley-shows-it-is-still-abusing-rank-and-file-members/

I’m not surprised that the Labour party has accused Winstanley of anti-Semitism. As the Electronic Intifada’s article on him says, he’s been with them since 2015, and has appeared frequently on the various alternative news media discussing and commenting on Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, and the Israel lobby’s attempts to silence opposition and dissent, with other journalists and activists. In a way, I’m just surprised that it took this long to get round to him.

I suspect the tweet about the Jewish Labour Movement being a front for the Israeli embassy got him into trouble because, as last Friday’s piece in the I by the United Synagogue’s Richard Verber shows, the Israel lobby is claiming that accusations that Jewish or other organisations are funded by Israel is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. In some cases, it may well be. But the Jewish Labour Movement was founded in 2015, as its leader, Jeremy Newmark admitted in 2016, in order to fight opposition to Israel. It has strong ties to the Israeli embassy, as does Labour Friends of Israel, whose chair, Joan Ryan, hobnobbed nearly every day with disgraced conspirator Shai Masot. And six of the original eight founders of The Independent Group were members of the LFI, and they included that organisation’s chair. Which means that Ruth George was quite right when she tweeted that she wouldn’t blame anyone for suspecting that they were funded by the Israelis.

The accusation also shows how fake and contrived these accusations of anti-Semitism are. I’ve read many articles by Winstanley and the other journos at the Electronic Intifada, and absolutely none of them have been genuinely anti-Semitic in the real, legal sense of of expressing or trying to provoke hatred of Jews as Jews. Indeed, I believe from the tenor of the articles that the opposite is true. The articles have always been very well informed and precisely worded, so that the object of criticism has been the Israeli state and right-wing politicians, activists and Israeli racism in general. But never Jews or the Israelis as a people.

Which is why I’ve no doubt that the JLM is trying to silence him now. He’s too well-informed, accurate and reliable, and definitely not an anti-Semite. I wish Mr Winstanley every success in dealing with this vile calumny and give him my full and staunch support, as I do with everyone like him – Mike, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone. May they get re-instated soon, their names cleared, and those who besmirch them exposed and thrown out instead.

Blairite MP Siobhain Mcdonagh Claims Anti-Capitalists Anti-Semitic

The Nye Bevan News blog reported yesterday that Blairite Labour MP Siobhain Mcdonagh had appeared on Radio 4 that morning, 4th March 2019, and told presenter John Humphreys that the anti-capitalists in the Labour party were anti-Semitic. Humphrey had asked her if the party was taking anti-Semitism seriously. She replied

I’m not sure that some people in the Labour party can, because it’s very much part of their politics – of hard left politics – to be against capitalists, and to see Jewish people as the financers of capital.

Humphreys then asked her if you had to be anti-Semitic to be anti-capitalist. She replied

Yes. Not everybody, but absolutely, there’s a certain strand of it and these people are not Labour, have never been Labour but we now find them in our party.

Humphreys then asked her if they didn’t become Labour when they joined the party. To which she gave the following answer

Not as far as I see it. I believe that the Labour party has a very strong set of values related to how we see society should be run and about being anti-racist, which they cannot be part of. 

The MP went on talk about Jenny Formby not releasing the figures for anti-Semitic incidents in the Labour party, although the Nye Bevan News blog notes that Formby had actually done so some time ago. She also criticised Formby for saying she reported to the NEC, not Labour MPs, and praised Tom Watson for wanting to interfere with the process, despite them being against data protection rules.

The article concluded:

It is clearly very problematic and actually borders upon anti-semitism in itself to immediately make the association between Jewish people and banking/financing – repeating an anti-semitic trope on national radio is appalling.

See: https://nyebevannews.co.uk/labour-mp-siobhain-mcdonagh-to-be-anti-capitalism-is-to-be-anti-semitic/

Martin Odoni, a Jewish Labour party member and dedicated anti-racist, is in absolutely no doubt that Mcdonagh’s comments were anti-Semitic. He posted a template email on his website requesting Jenny Formby suspend Mcdonagh pending a full investigation. He points out that not only would many Jews find the implication of her claim that anti-capitalism is anti-Semitic, that Jews are therefore bourgois and capitalistic, not just offensive but also anti-Semitic under the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism that the party has adopted. She is also to be suspended because her endorsement of Watson’s demands to see personal information in order to interfere in anti-Semitism cases, which contravenes data protection laws, is therefore solicitation to commit a criminal act.

See: https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/suspend-siobhan-mcdonagh-from-the-labour-party-with-immediate-effect-template/

Now it’s true that you can find examples of disgusting anti-Semitism in the views of leading socialists, communists and anarchists from Marx onwards. But the view that Jews equal capitalism, and particularly financial capitalism isn’t the view of socialists and anti-capitalists, but that of fascists and Nazis. The ideology George Orwell described as ‘the socialism of fools’. But the smear that socialism and anti-capitalism is innately anti-Semitic is that of the transatlantic extreme right in books such as Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. It is also being pushed by the Republicans in America and the Tories over here as a means of defending the super-rich one per cent from criticism. This is the section of predominantly western society that own capital and industry, and who demand the policies of privatisation, welfare cuts, job insecurity and the reduction of the tax burden on them that are causing so much misery and poverty across the world. But for the right, criticism of the one per cent is absolutely forbidden. It’s anti-Semitic, you see, because of the way the Nazis equated the Jews with the rich and finance capitalism. But when socialists, communists, anarchists and other anti-capitalists, as well as genuine liberals, talk about the 1 per cent and their destructive policies, they mean the global elite regardless of colour, race or religious affiliation. They do not mean ‘Jews’.

It’s the same tactics the right used to try to defend bankers from criticism a few years ago, when they were all giving themselves massive bonuses after the crash at the expense of the rest of us, who had to bail them out. They used the same tactic, saying that if you were criticising the bankers and demanding their punishment, you were a Nazi. Because Jews equal bankers to anti-Semites. But again, only Nazis and Fascists equate Jews with banking, and the left-wingers demanding punishment for bankers were demanding it for those, who had caused the crash, regardless of their race or religion.

Mcdonagh is clearly, at heart, a Red Tory, who has taken over these views, and is desperately keen to preserve the present, corrupt system and its enrichment of the few at the cost of the impoverishment of the many.

She’s also at the same time pushing the lie that Blair and his followers represent the real Labour party and those further to the left are communist or Trotskyite entryists. But it was Blair, who was the real entryist. He was a Thatcherite, who removed Labour’s commitment to socialism and was determined to follow Thatcher’s agenda of privatisation, destruction of the welfare state and creating a fluid Labour market. Which meant creating job insecurity. Traditional Labour party members, who wanted a genuinely mixed economy, we forced out of positions of leadership in the party. Many ordinary members left. Corbyn, with his policies of nationalising the utilities, renationalising the NHS, restoring trade union power and extending workers’ rights, represents solid traditional Labour party values. They values and policies that gave us thirty years of growth and prosperity after the War.

And then there’s her views of Labour party anti-racism. Well, Tony Benn was genuinely one of the most anti-racist MPs, giving his wholehearted support to the boycott of Bristol Bus Company by Black Bristolians because of its refusal to employ non-Whites. And he was a staunch advocate of a mixed economy, industrial democracy, trade unions and everything that Mcdonagh, as a Blairite, fears and despises. As is Ken Livingstone, whose leadership of the GLC was reviled and hated by the Tories as a centre of ‘political correctness’. The campaign against racism by Labour party members began long before Blair took over.

And as for the Blairites’ own attitudes towards racism, Tony Greenstein has pointed out their hypocrisy in a post on his blog this morning. He contrasted Watson’s and the others’ screams about supposed anti-Semitism with their total indifference over May’s victimisation of immigrants and the deportation of the Windrush migrants and their children.

As a Blairite, Mcdonagh is just another disloyal intriguer smearing those who really stand for traditional Labour values and real anti-racism – not just against the hatred and persecution of Jews, but also against that of Blacks, Asians and particularly Muslims. Her claim that anti-capitalism is identical with anti-Semitism is nothing but an attempt to defend the exploitative rich against those who want real change. She should apologise immediately, or reconsider her position in the party.

The Canary: Lee from Swindon Tears Tom Watson Apart on LBC

There’s a very good article in The Canary reporting how Tom Watson got an earful from a caller, Lee of Swindon, when he was LBC on 1st March, 2019. Watson has been trying to undermine Jenny Formby’s attempts to deal with the anti-Semitism accusations by requesting people send their accusations to him at a private, non-Labour phone number, instead of to Formby and the Compliance Unit. This is because the accusers, or rather, smearers and libellers, are upset that there isn’t any opacity about the complaints process, and too many people are being found innocent. He is also trying to set up a backbench group of MPs to undermine Corbyn. Although he denies it, it’s very clear that he’s organising a coup against the Labour leader.

Watson’s appearance on LBC therefore provoked an angry response from Lee, who was, like the rest of the genuine supporters of the Labour party, angry at his disloyalty and intriguing. Lee told him he was trying to destroy Labour from within, when they were trying to build a revolution that would transform Britain for the better. He pointed out that Labour had a membership of over a half a million people, and very few of them are anti-Semites. He challenged him on his failure to target the Tories, concentrating instead of trying to destroy the Labour. He ended by saying that as the deputy leader, Watson should be bringing people together. Instead he and his ‘little tribe’ were appearing on TV stations, trying to destroy the party.

The Canary adds that Lee’s correct. There are 500,000 people in the party, and that 0.1 per cent of them have been accused of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, an academic study found that the media had vastly exaggerated the extent of anti-Semitism in the party. The worst culprits for this highly biased reporting was the Beeb and the Groaniad. The report concluded that the media reporting of the issue was so bad that it amounted to a disinformation campaign.

The Canary’s report is at: https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2019/03/02/a-concerned-citizen-phones-up-tom-watson-and-exposes-his-anti-corbyn-sabotage-live-on-air/

It also has a recording of that piece of Watson’s appearance on LBC and a link to a petition calling for Watson to resign as deputy leader of the Labour party. I’ve signed it, and I encourage other, genuine supporters of the Labour party to do so.

Zionist Witchhunters Attack Chris Williamson for Defending the Innocent

 

Dress of accused and condemned witches, From Roger Hart, Witchcraft (Hove: Wayland 1971) p. 84.

The witchhunters have claimed another victim. This time its Chris Williamson, one of Corbyn’s staunchest supporters, who has been forced to apologise and suspended from the party by Jenny Formby. Why? Oh, shock, horror! He had the temerity to make a speech, enthusiastically applauded by his local party, in which he asked how Labour, the most anti-racist party, had now become smeared as institutionally anti-Semitic. It was, he said, because they had given too much ground. They were too apologetic. And no-one had done more to address the scourge of anti-Semitism than they had. Then, after meeting Corbyn, he issued a statement saying that the party could never be too apologetic about anti-Semitism in its ranks.

He also issued a statement that he had been an anti-racist all his life, and had been a member of the anti-Nazi league. He participated in street action againstanti-Semitism, and rejects racism ethically and morally.

But now, like the other accused, he is being investigated for ‘a pattern of behaviour’.

Mike over on his blog makes the point that Willliamson was not making any kind of anti-Semitic statement. He was saying that real anti-Semitism should be investigated and punished, but those making false accusations should also meet with an appropriate response. But this is too much for the witchunters, like the vile Tom Watson and the odious, smirking, entitled Luciana Berger. They want his head for daring to stand up for the innocent.

There may also be another factor in Williamson’s suspension. This notorious racist and bigot had booked a room in the House of Commons for a preview screening of the film Witchhunt, about the persecution of Jackie Walker. Walker is the Jewish lady of colour, with anti-racism in her blood through her mother, a Black civil rights campaigner, and Russian Jewish father. She was suspended from the Labour under another accusation of anti-Semitism because of sloppy remarks about Jewish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, run by Christian monarchs and states. The screening had been arranged with the awesome Jewish Voice for Labour, and Williamson had no other role in organising the event.

The film is due to go on tour around selected cities in Britain with its director, Jon Pullman. It has been acclaimed by Mike Leigh and Peter Kosminski, who are both Jewish. Leigh will be familiar to cinephiles as a highly respected, veteran film director. I think it was Leigh, who made the critically acclaimed Kes. It is also strongly supported by the Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim, of Oxford University. Shlaim said of it ‘Anyone who speaks or writes in the public domain about antisemitism and the current state of the Labour Party has a duty to see this film and address the issues it raises.’ Professor Shlaim was one of the experts interviewed nine years ago in Peter Oborne’s documentary, ‘The Israel Lobby’ on Channel 4’s Despatches. Shlaim specialises in Middle Eastern history, and told how journalists reporting Israel’s atrocities in the Middle East have been smeared as anti-Semites when they have correctly and objectively reported events. Berger was also outraged that Walker was attending the event when he case hasn’t been heard yet. Mike’s response on his blog is essentially, ‘tough!’ Walker’s innocent until proven guilty, or that’s the basic principle in British law. But like all totalitarian fanatics, the witchhunters don’t believe in basic legal principles or justice. Otherwise you wouldn’t have such stupid and nebulous accusations like ‘a pattern of behaviour’.

Berger’s snivelling hasn’t gone down too well on Twitter, whose peeps duly tore her and her wretched whining apart.

It seems the showing also coincided with a debate by Paole Zion, sorry, the Jewish Labour Movement, about whether they should disaffiliate from the Labour party. Mike says the should, and the sooner the better, because of the mischief they’ve caused.

For more information, see Mike’s articles: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/02/27/intimidation-forces-cancellation-of-film-screening-about-labours-anti-semitism-witchhunt-part-one-of-two/

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/02/27/why-has-labour-forced-chris-williamson-to-apologise-for-defending-innocent-people-part-two-of-two/

Tony Greenstein has also blogged about this disgusting episode, suggesting that it may be the end of the Corbyn project. Quite simply, Corbyn’s response to accusations of anti-Semitism is to cave, and throw his supporters to the wolves. But his opponents will not be appeased and will keep on making these accusations until they finally get him.

He is also strongly critical of the supposed left-wing Labour MPs, who have failed to support Williamson, such as Denis Skinner, and Owen Jones. He has also set up a petition on his blog, which I have signed, demanding Williamson’s reinstatement.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/02/27/why-has-labour-forced-chris-williamson-to-apologise-for-defending-innocent-people-part-two-of-two/

Tony’s not the only person predicting that this means the death of the Corbyn project. The left-wing vlogger Gordon Dimmack, who despises the witchhunt and the witchhunters, has also done so. He’s made an hour long video, which I haven’t seen, about this affair.

I regret that Greenstein is right about Corbyn in that he does not stand by his supporters. The witchhunters will never be appeased, and they will not stop until they destroy him. But he seems to believe that if he sacrifices enough people, they will.

This is profoundly mistaken. The establishment, including all the papers are determined to destroy him. The proper course would be for him to grow some backbone and start fighting back, end the false accusations, state firmly and clearly that Labour is committed to tackling racism and has done more than any other party about this. And then start throw the ball back in the establishment court. Attack the racism and rampant islamophobia in the Tory party, and the partisan bias of an establishment media determined to use this to bring him down, along with their Tory paymasters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watson Intriguing Again After Splitters’ Departure, Stoking Anti-Semitism Witch-Hunt

After the departure of the nine Labour splitters, Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labour party, is up to his old tricks again trying to undermine Corbyn. Watson to my mind looks like the American comedian Greg Proops, but without any of Proops’ wit, personality or charisma. He’s a Blairite, who is now trying to use the splitters’ departure to try to get his old chums back onto the front bench, develop a separate back bench power base, and then purge Corbyn’s supporters on the pretext that they’re anti-Semites.

Watson was on the Andrew Marr show to peddle his malign views on Sunday. He claimed that he had received 50 complaints of anti-Semitic abuse from MPs, and that he had passed them on to Corbyn. Now today I read in the Metro that he was demanding to be allowed to deal with allegations of anti-Semitism as well as the party secretary, Jenny Formby, because Formby allegedly wasn’t dealing with them quickly enough.

Yesterdays I, for Monday, 25th February 2019, quoted Watson as saying

‘I think he [Corbyn] needs to take a personal lead on examining those cases and, if necessary, recommend to our [ruling body]NEC what has to be done.

‘The test for him as a leader is to eradicate anti-Semitism. It is not Labour party members, who will be the judge of that, it is the British Jewish community.’

He also demanded a reshuffle of the front bench to represent a greater range of views, saying

‘If there isn’t one, I think I’d need to give a platform for my colleagues who want their ideas to be listened to by the current Shadow Cabinet’.

The I’s report about his intention to set up a back-bench group of MPs, ‘Splintering: Deputy leader to set up backbench group’, runs as follows

A new grouping of Labour MPs who are disillusioned with the party’s direction under Jeremy Corbyn is being set up by his deputy Tom Watson.

Its launch, which is expected within a fortnight, is aimed at preventing the trickle of defections of MPs to The Independent Group from becoming a flood.

But the faction will also inevitably be seen as a rival power based to Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. I understands that organisers hope to attract more than 100 backbenchers into the group, which will appoint spokespeople and work on policy initiatives.

Meetings will be held within days to gauge the level of support for the group.

‘We need to assert ourselves more than we have done in the last two years,’ said one MP.

Mr Watson said he wanted to ‘give a platform’ to Labour MPs who felt excluded by the leadership.

‘My central point is that the social democratic voice has to be heard, because that is the only way you keep the Labour party unified and prohibit other colleagues from potentially leaving the PLP_ [Parliamentary Labour Party]. The situation is serious,’ he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.

Of course, Watson denies he is rebelling. The previous article in the I quoted him as saying that he was ‘standing up for pluralism in the party’.

This is just lies and doubletalk. Watson and the 100 MPs he wants to recruit are obviously Blairites, indignant at being forced out of power. They’ve been intriguing against the Labour leader ever since he came to power. They’ve threatened to leave several times before, just as they’ve tried to oust him as leader. But Corbyn is genuinely popular with the Labour grassroots activists, and his policies are immensely popular with the public. Which puts Watson and his fellow plotters in an awkward position: no-one wants their shoddy, mouldy neoliberal economics any longer. People are sick and tired of Labour trying to copy to the Tories as Blair and his coterie did. And the Blairites themselves were a small minority within the party. They dominated it because they seized control of party bureaucracy, just as Stalin and his supporters were able to seize control of the Communist apparat in the former Soviet Union. These backbench MPs may claim to be defending a plurality of views, but they only views they’re interested in defending and promoting are their own. Not Corbyn’s, and not anyone else’s in the party.

As for claiming to be Social Democrats, this is a sick joke. The Social Democratic tendency in the Labour party was the creation of Anthony Crosland. Crosland didn’t want further nationalisation, because he felt it was unnecessary. Its benefits, he felt, could be obtained instead through progressive taxation, strong trade unions and social mobility. Well, thanks to Thatcherism, social mobility stopped under Blair. In fact, I think under the Tories it’s even been reversed, so that for the first time since the late 19th century Marx’s statement that the middle class are being forced down into the working class is true, at least as far as middle class poverty goes. Similarly, Blair, as a Thatcherite, hated the trade unions and passed legislation aimed at destroying their power. With their acquiescence, it should be said. As for progressive taxation, they’re against that as well. Aaron Bastani quoted an interview in last week’s New Scientist with Chris Leslie in his article on the corrupt, compromised policies of the Independent Group. Leslie had said that he was not in favour of a 50 per cent tax rate. This was the tax rate set by Gordon Brown. And I don’t doubt Leslie was alone. My guess is that a number of the Blairites, who still remain in the Labour party, have the same noxious views.

Watson and the other Blarites aren’t Social Democrats: they’re Red Tories, Thatcherites. Any other description of them is a lie.

As for the anti-Semitism allegations, my guess is that it’s just more smears of people supporting Corbyn and standing up for the Palestinians. And when Watson says that Labour will be judged by the Jewish community, he’s not talking about the Jewish community as a whole. He’s talking about the Tory, Zionist Jewish establishment. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is monstrously right-wing and which is an explicitly Zionist organisation. An organisation which is morally corrupt and deeply compromised. How else can you describe an organisation which issued nauseating, spurious justifications for the IDF shooting unarmed Gazans last year? Which excludes Orthodox and secular Jews? And which howled with rage when Corbyn spent a Pesach (Passover) seder with the socialists of Jewdas, and claimed this was an insult to the Jewish community?

And the same is to be said about the Chief Rabbinate. The former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, caused shock and outrage when he called Reform Jews ‘enemies of the faith’, like a medieval inquisitor about to launch an auto-da-fe against heretics and Jews. He also considered homosexuality to be a terrible sin and warned his congregation not to join a gay rights march, until he later changed his mind, that is. And he led a contingent of Jewish British thugs to Israel to join the March of the Flags. That’s the day when Israeli ultra-nationalists march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem vandalising their homes and businesses and threatening and intimidating them. I see no difference between it, and Tommy Robinson and his odious crew marching into British Muslim communities, or Mosley and the British Union of Fascists goose-stepping into the Jewish community in the East End in the 1930s. And when the Jewish community held their rallies last summer against Corbyn, organised by the Board and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, those attending including members and supporters of the Fascist organisations Kach, the Jewish Defence League, and the English Defence League Jewish Division.

Similarly, Watson’s declaration that he wants to assist in dealing with cases of anti-Semitism cases means that he’s unhappy with Formby’s handling of it for other reasons. He wants more Cobynites thrown out through the same spurious reasons that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism and that describing Israeli plotting to determine who should be in the cabinet as a ‘conspiracy’ is the same as reviving the smears on Jews as a whole of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Oh yes, and that showing a photoshopped image of a Jobcentre with the slogan ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ on it is another terrible anti-Semitic smear, rather than a justifiable description of the murderous policies of the DWP.

And his demand to decide these cases personally is the precise same tactic Stalin used when he gained power. Before Stalin became leader of the Soviet Communist party, the post of General Secretary was a relatively unimportant position. His comrades thought he was thick, and so gave him the job thinking that he would satisfied purging it of all the drunks and seducers. But as well as getting rid of them, he was also using it to purge his enemies’ supporters and fill it with his own. He’s supposed to have said of the power of elections, ‘It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes’.

Watson is a typical Blairite. He follows Blair and the others as a destructive neoliberal, who wants absolute obedience to a highly centralised, dictatorial party elite. It is not Corbyn and his supporters who should be thrown out, but him and his.

Is Margaret Hodge an Hysterical, Paranoid Lunatic?

I wonder about the sanity of some of the witch-hunters accusing people of anti-Semitism in the Labour party. Or at least their sense of proportion. Margaret Hodge, who claimed that Ruth George’s perfectly reasonable inquiry into whether the Labour Splitters were funded by Israel, is a case in point. She caused outrage and disgust a few months ago when she screamed at Corbyn in the House of Commons, and reviled him as ‘a f***ing anti-Semite’. For which she was duly suspended under Labour party rules that apply to everyone.

This was too much for her sensitive soul, and she compared the stress this had caused her with the fear Jews in the Third Reich felt, waiting for the knock on the door from the Gestapo ready to send them to the death camps. People, who really had had family imprisoned in the concentration camps were rightly outraged. Hodge was attacked for her grossly insensitive comments by Jews, whose family had been sent to these murder factories, and also by non-Jews, who had also had family members incarcerated for their opposition to Hitler’s Reich. Like a young man, whose Sudeten German grandfather was sent there because he was a Communist.

The witch-hunters were also outraged a week or so ago when Jenny Formby dared to reveal the truth about anti-Semitism in the Labour party: there actually wasn’t a lot of it, and only a very few people had actually been expelled. This was too much for them, who can’t stand the thought that anyone they’ve denounced could possibly be innocent. Hodge herself whined that this couldn’t possibly be true, as she’d denounced 200 people.

200? What party did she think she was in? The BNP, the Klan or something? The Labour party is now, thanks to Corbyn, the largest Socialist party in Europe, and as a mass party it obviously is going to include some anti-Semites. But real research shows that anti-Semitism in the Labour party has actually fallen under Corbyn, and is lower than in wider British society. Also, other Jews and Jewish groups have come forward, like Jewish Voice for Labour, and a group of Orthodox rabbis. The good rabbis said that they had absolute confidence in Corbyn, while the peeps at Jewish Voice for Labour said that although there was anti-Semitism in the party, they had never personally, or only very rarely, ever personally experienced it. These were Labour members of long standing, who had been active in their local constituency parties.

But the accusations of anti-Semitism aren’t really about anti-Semitism. Not as it is defined by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the German Bund Anti-Semiten, who coined the term. He said that it was hatred of Jews, simply as Jews. This is the standard dictionary definition. What Hodge and co see as anti-Semitism is actually criticism of Israel. And long term Jewish critics of the Israeli state and its brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians, like Norman Finkelstein, have made the point Israel defends itself by accusing its critics of being anti-Semites. And this is what has been going on here.

And what the witch-hunters decide is a basis for an accusation of anti-Semitism is very, very wide. One young man was accused of anti-Semitism and expelled, or suspended, because he posted a picture of a Jobcentre sign carrying the slogan ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, the infamous inscription above the gates of Auschwitz. His accusers maintained that he was somehow denigrating Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. But he wasn’t. He was denigrating the suffering of the jobless inflicted by the DWP under Ian Duncan Smith. Who had begun an article actually quoting this infamous slogan, and saying that it should be rehabilitated because of its usefulness in getting people back into work. It was, he wrote, part of his ethos. Not surprisingly, his editors weren’t impressed, and this part of his article was removed a few hours later. But the Gentleman Ranker had said, nonetheless. And Tony Greenstein and others also pointed out that the inscription was on all the concentration camps, whose members also included the long-term unemployed, people declared arbeitscheu, or ‘workshy’, by the Nazis.

In fact Hodge’s denunciation of 200 hundred people doesn’t remind me of serious accusations, so much as the hysterical persecutions that have occurred in very repressive societies in the past. Like the witch craze in 16th and 17th century Europe, in which people could be accused of witchcraft for the flimsiest of reasons. Or the horrific purges of Stalin’s Russia, where voicing even the slightest comment, which could be considered disrespectful of the tyrant could see you arrested by the NKVD and sent to the gulags. One man was arrested simply for remarked that Stalin didn’t seem quite well when the dictator coughed or something similar during a speech. It also reminded me of all the nutters that wrote into the FBI denouncing anyone and everyone as a Communist agent during the Red scare of the Cold War. Or indeed of the quarter of the East German population that were spying on their friends and neighbours to the Stasi.

It also reminds me of a very dark joke I heard once by an American comedian years ago on one of Bob Monkhouse’s shows on the Beeb in the 1980s. This was a series in which Monkhouse interviewed other comedians, including Pamela Stephenson before she returned to psychiatry. One of his guests was an American comedian, whose act included a parody of the stereotypical, racist southern sheriff. Putting on the accent and persona, the comedian told the following joke.

‘You know, I can tell if someone’s a murderer simply by the look in their eye. And if they got that look in their eye, I hang them. Well, one day I saw this black man, and he had that look in his eye. So I hung him.’

If you know the history of lynching in the Deep South, then it’s probably not a joke. Blacks – and other minorities – were lynched for almost no reason at all, simply for being ‘disrespectful’ to Whites. And the local community would celebrate their deaths, holding a mass party and even breaking pieces off the victims bodies to take home as souvenirs. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks has described this in one of their videos. British anti-racist YouTuber Kevin Logan has also mentioned it in one of his, complete with a photograph taken as one such lynching, showing the crowds gathering and rejoicing around two lynched Blacks. Some idea of the pressure and fear of that environment came across very clearly in the Dr. Who story at the beginning of the season about Rosa Parks.

I’m not accusing Hodge of being racist. But I am accusing her of having the same paranoia that has motivated witch-hunters and persecutors, like those in Stalin’s Russia and the anti-Communist fanatics of the ’50s.

So what did those 200 people do, that made her accuse them of anti-Semitism. Does she think she has the ability to see if someone’s an anti-Semite, just by looking in their eye? And did she accuse those 200 simply because they looked at her funny? It might not have been quite because of that, but I very much doubt that the reason she gave was much stronger.

Labour Complaints Unit Fine With MP Wes Streeting Smearing and Doxing Party Member

Now that Tweezer is floundering about trying to keep herself and her wretched party from sinking on the black rocks of Brexit, they, the Blairites and the Israel lobby both within and outside the Labour party have taken to repeating the anti-Semitism. One of those who decided that he was going to try to whip up the witch hunt there again was Wes Streeting, who took it upon himself to dox and smear a 70-year old woman using a fabricated image on twitter.

Doxing is publishing someone’s name and personal details, like their address, on the internet without their consent. It’s against Twitter’s rules and is very dangerous. People have been personally threatened, attacked and their homes vandalized through others maliciously putting their personal details on the internet. In this case, Streeting decided he was going to dox Annie W-B because he’d decided that she’d dismissed anti-Semitism as a smear. He tweeted

Meet Ann . Ann dismisses anti-Semitism as a smear and says that hatred is being perpetrated by Emily [Benn] and Luciana [Berger] against innocent people who have never in their lives been anti-Semitic’.

He then goes to say ‘Let’s take a look in her back catalogue’.

But the tweet he was referring to did not dismiss anti-Semitism as a smear. It only dismissed the witch hunt against innocent people in the Labour for alleged anti-Semitism as a smear. Ann W-B actually posted this tweet, replying to Emily Benn raving about how brave Luciana Berger had been for standing up to anti-Semitism.

Oh please go away. Luciana Berger has done everything she possibly can to smear Mr Corbyn & over 500k members. #EnoughisEnough of the cost hatred being perpetuated by you and others towards innocent people who have never in their lives been antisemitic.

That these accusations are nothing but baseless lies and smears is amply shown by some of the very upstanding people, who have been accused. People like former Momentum Vice-President Jackie Walker, a Jewish woman of colour and civil rights activist; Marc Wadsworth, a Black anti-racism activist, who campaigned with the Board of Deputies of British Jews against anti-Semitic assaults by the BNP in the 1980s; Cyril Chilson, a former member of the IDF and the son of a Holocaust survivor and a heroic Russian Jewish airman; Ken Livingstone, who has always been notorious for his opposition to racism and the recruitment of real, genuine Nazis by the British secret state; Tony Greenstein, a Jewish anti-racism activist and campaigner. Because he campaigns against Zionism for the good reason that it is just another form of apartheid and Fascism. Tony Odoni, another Jewish anti-racist, for the same reason. And, of course, Mike, for defending Livingstone and Walker.

Then Streeting moved on to smearing Annie W-B with a doctored image. She was shown tweeting her approval of an image posted on Twitter by another person, which contained a spurious quote from Voltaire ‘To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize’. This was next to a giant hand coming down crushing a group of people. On its sleeve is a Magen David, a Star of David. Mike points out that the quote doesn’t actually come from Voltaire. It comes from an American Nazi and Holocaust-Denier Kevin Alfred Storm. As for the image, it has a variety of forms in which the symbol on the sleeve differs. In its most common form, there is no symbol. It’s possible that Annie W-B may have genuinely believed the quote was from Voltaire. I’ve come across it several times, and until Mike’s article did not know who was really responsible for it. Mike suggests other Labour members and supporters may have been tricked into liking it because of its similarity to Tony Benn’s ‘Five Essential Questions of Democracy’, which as Mike says, are ‘What power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?’ And the dodgy quote does look like something Voltaire would say as an Enlightenment philosopher and defender of free speech against institutional religion and absolute monarchy.

He also decided that she had to be an anti-Semite because she had also posted a series of comments attacking the Rothschilds. Mike says of this

Interesting subject, the Rothschilds: A hugely wealthy and influential business/banking organisation that is apparently immune from investigation under any circumstances because those questioning its actions may always be accused of anti-Semitism. Does anybody – apart from a witch-hunter – think that is reasonable? We can see that Mr Streeting does, but then, he stands with the witch-hunters.

And the family has immense personal power. Last year one of the continental members of the family appeared in a very brief article in the I. It reported that this man was having the indigenous people in one region of Zaire cleared out of their homes in order to make it his personal hunting preserve. It’s because of its wealth and power that the Rothschilds feature in many of the Nazi conspiracy theories about Jews, Freemasons and the Illuminati plotting the downfall of the White race. But they also have a very sordid past. They lent money to the Third Reich, even when it was known that the Nazis were persecuting and exterminating the Jews. But because the Rothschilds themselves are the subjects of so many conspiracy theories, any person asking serious questions about their influence and power is automatically tarred as an anti-Semite themselves.

The peeps on Twitter immediately pointed out to Streeting that what he had done to Annie W-B was wrong. Not only had he published her name, but it, and the story, had been picked up by BBC news. This was far too far, and they began writing complaints to the Labour party about Streeting, with one person stating it was a sackable offence. Unbelievably, the complaints team said that Streeting’s actions did not contravene Labour policy. Which made them all the more determined to press their complaints and escalate it.

As for Streeting, he then went off and attacked Mike for being an anti-Semite using the old, and now absolutely discredited Sunday Times article. Which left Mike demanding that, if it was an attempt to smear him, he wanted an apology.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/02/06/police-investigation-threat-for-mp-over-faked-anti-semitic-image-and-doxxing/

The controversy continued when Jenny Formby got involved. She was upset that Streeting was being ‘tried by twitter’ and so asked everyone to send their complaints into the Labour party’s Compliance Unit instead, so that they could all move on to attacking the Tories. She was then bitterly attacked in her turn by angry Labour party supporters, furious that the Blairites were able to smear and bully ordinary party members as they pleased without Formby or anyone else for that matter taking any kind of disciplinary action. As proof of this, Mike cited the example of one individual, who was thrown out for liking the music of the Foo Fighters, while Streeting himself went unpunished for what should have been a disciplinary offence. Some people stated that it was high time the Blairites were kicked out of the party. The sheer number of complaints about their behaviour on Twitter showed how deeply unpopular the various right-wing members of the Parliamentary Labour Party are. Finally, to show just how unfair the system is, Mike put up the case of Karen, a Labour party member, who told Formby that when she sent in a complaint against Tweeting, one of his little minions reported her in turn for ‘bullying’. Mike asked if Karen was also going to be penalized.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/02/07/formby-asked-and-labour-answered-reform-labours-complaints-system-but-will-she-listen/

You can understand why Formby doesn’t want a fuss kicked up about Streeting, or any of the other Blairites and supporters of the Israeli apartheid state. They’re actually a tiny minority in the party, but they have the full support of a deeply biased right-wing media. Whenever they are even lightly embarrassed or taken to task, their immediate response is to whine about how they’re being bullied by evil Trotskyites, Stalinists, Communists and anti-Semites. As Joan Ryan did after she lost her local party’s vote of ‘No Confidence’. And these lies are automatically retailed as absolute truth by the Beeb and everyone else.

But time is not on their side. They are only a minority and the strength of the response to Streeting’s smears and doxing, and Formby’s attempts to hush it all up, show how much ordinary party members have lost patience with them. And it is becoming glaringly clear to an increasing number of people outside the party that people like Streeting do not represent the real heart of the Labour party, and that their smears and accusations of anti-Semitism are nothing but grotesque lies. As for their own threats and bullying, it’s high time the leadership stood up to them and called them out on it. That would have saved a lot of grief if it had been done at the very start, no matter how hard they may have whined and moaned in response.

Thatcherite Labour MPs Once Again Threatening to Quit Party

Another week, Labour ahead of the Tories once again in most polls, except those the Beeb and the rest of the lamestream media pay attention to, and once again the Blairites in the party are threatening to leave. According to yesterday’s and today’s papers, it’s all about the anti-Semitism, you see. Again. I caught a glimpse of the Beeb’s news today, and it showed the far-right islamophobic hate group, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism once again camped outside parliament, or Labour HQ, waving their lying placards against ‘anti-Semitism’. While inside parliament, the Thatcherite entryists were all ready to up sticks and leave if Jenny Formby doesn’t satisfy them that enough is being done to tackle anti-Semitism.

But this isn’t about anti-Semitism. Never has been. And the row erupted long before Corbyn was elected leader of the party. On Sunday, when the threats were first made, Mike put up a piece reproducing the Tweets of CremantCommunarde, who showed very clearly that it all blew up when the Jewish Ed Miliband was leader of the Labour party. He was accused of anti-Semitism, despite his Jewish heritage and conspicuous absence of genuine Jew-hatred, because he had dared to recognize Palestine as an independent state. Veteran actress Maureen Lipman left the party in disgust. Just as she claimed to have left the party in disgust last year because Corbyn is an anti-Semite. Except that he isn’t, and has worked tirelessly to counter all forms of racism, including genuine anti-Semitism. Being pro-Palestine does not mean hating Jews, or even Israelis. It means attacking a bigoted, racist state imposing apartheid and a slow genocide on the indigenous population. A state that was set up as part of imperialist machinations by us and then maintained and supported for geopolitical reasons to maintain western, US and UK, dominance in the region.

See Mike’s article at: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/02/03/labour-leaders-challenged-over-anti-semitism-again-but-will-the-accusers-accept-the-facts/

As for the people angrily denouncing anti-Semitism in the Labour party, their true moral stature is shown by their own actions. Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks a few years ago led a contingent of British Jews to Jerusalem to participate in the March of the Flags. This is an ultra-nationalist occasion where right-wing Jewish Israeli thugs parade through the Muslim quarter of the Holy City vandalizing Palestinian property and threatening and intimidating its people. The same people claiming Corbyn is the next thing to Adolf Hitler included the kind of people one Jewish Israeli scholar called ‘Judaeonazis’. Like the couple who decided that they would show their racial tolerance by wearing T-shirts with the symbol of a banned Fascist Israeli terrorist group, Kach. As well as members of the Jewish Defence League and other Zionists, who mix easily and unashamedly with the EDL and various unsavoury characters from Britain First. The kind of people who, if they were not Jews and not connected with Israel, would automatically be denounced by everyone as Fascists and Nazis.

And now the Blairites are trying to use the pretext that Labour is riddled with genuine Jew-haters to threaten once again to split the party and leave. Just like the ‘Chicken Coup’ plotters threatened to do a few years ago. And then again a little later, when the media reported that they would leave the party to join a new centrist, pro-EU party that was being formed. A party that boasted the backing of millionaire corporate donors. An exciting new party that has since fizzled out and vanished without a trace.

But never mind! We are reliably informed by a corrupt, mendacious media, that there are more than six right-wing Labour MPs ready to depart. And Vince Cable is hoping they’ll come over and join his gang of morally corrupt corporatists and sell-outs in the Lib Dems.

The right-wing Labour MPs supposedly ready to depart aren’t really upset because they honestly believe that Corbyn’s an anti-Semite. They’re upset because they’re Blairites, Thatcherite entryists, who believe in continuing her poisonous, destructive policies of privatization, outsourcing, the destruction of the welfare state, and selling the NHS off to private healthcare firms. And destroying the trade unions in the name of creating a cowed workforce ready to accept any kind of work, no matter how ill-paid or precarious. A party so enamoured of the corporate elite that they eagerly took their donations and then gave the chairmen of these companies and senior management positions in government. All in the name of creating a properly business-friendly environment, introducing the alleged greater expertise and efficiency of private industry, creating a fluid labour market. And generally rewarding the corporate elite, who also offered them not just donations but nice, lucrative places on their boards when they left office.

Corbyn threatens all that, because he believes in a genuinely socialist Labour party, overseeing a mixed economy where the utilities, including the railways and water industry. A Britain whose working people are properly served by strong unions and have job security and rights at work from day one. A Britain whose poor are supported by decent benefits, where the jobless don’t have to wait weeks or months for welfare payments, and where a quarter of a million people aren’t forced to use food banks to stop themselves from starving in misery. A Britain where the disabled aren’t deprived of the support they need because they’ve been found ‘fit for work’ by a rigged system of tests, based on pseudo-scientific bogus theories. In other words, everything that threatens the Tories’ and Blair’s precious, poisonous Thatcher revolution.

That’s really why the Blairites have been trying to undermine Corbyn from day one. It’s why the press and people like Joan Ryan have been sneering at him and his supporters as Trotskyites, Communists and Stalinists, and why they are so desperate to claim that he’s unpopular and that he’ll never get elected by the general public. Because he threatens the Blairite policy of taking over the ideology and policies of the Tory party. Because they’re scared that he will get elected, and the Thatcherite policies they admire uncritically will be consigned to the dustbin.

I’ve had enough of their constant attempts to undermine a democratically elected and popular leader, as well as their disdain and contempt for the party’s grassroots and this country’s working people as a whole. I’m sick of them constantly threatening to leave, only to stay in the party to threaten to leave again later, whenever they feel they can do the most damage. Or whenever they think anyone will back them. I just now want them to go. They’re Conservatives anyway, and really don’t have any place in a party that genuinely supports working people instead of the corporate elite.

But as Mike has pointed out on his blog, they won’t. Because the moment they resign the party whip, their constituents will vote against them at the next election. And so they’re determined to hang on, all the while fraudulently claiming that they’re the really Labour party and whining about ‘Labour values’. They aren’t really Labour, and the party’s real values go back to Clement Attlee, Keir Hardie, Nye Bevan and the Webbs and Fabians. Genuine socialists, whose achievements Blair and his cronies have done their best to destroy.

They should now either leave for good, or shut up and support their leader. But whatever they do, it’s going to be glaringly clear to an increasing number of people that, despite their lies, they’re not interested in anti-Semitism. They’re only using it as ploy to destroy Corbyn for the same reasons as the press and the Tories they claim to want to defeat electorally.