Mike’s put up a piece this morning reporting that the Black Lives Matter activist and founder of the Taking the Initiative Party, Sasha Johnson, is in critical condition in hospital after being shot in the head in Peckham. The mother of two had previously received death threats.
Mike says that he guesses she didn’t rate the protection other people in politics get, and wonders if her attempted murder will be properly investigated.
While it’s terrible that she has been attacked, and she should merit the same protection as other politicians, I really don’t think she’s a blameless, innocent fighter for Black civil rights and dignity.
Last year she held a mass paramilitary rally in Brixton, in which she denounced the police as the KKK and called for the creation of a Black militia.
See this video by the right-wing YouTuber Ex-Army Paz 49:
At one of her demos she racially abused a Black man, who dared to question her views, and threatened to beat him up.
I wrote a piece a few months ago commenting on the fact that she’d been thrown off Twitter for tweeting that the White man would be their equal, but would be Black people’s slave.
In my view, she’s a Fascist and racial supremacist, no different from other Nazis except that her brand of Fascism is Black.
While it’s possible that she was shot by a White attacker for her militant views, I think she also had enemies within the Black community. I found this video from Michelle Francis, who holds Black separatist views similar to the Nation of Islam, attacking her. Francis calls her a prostitute and claims that she sleeps with men of all races as long as they give her some advantage or benefit. She also accuses her of being a ‘slave master’ as she claims that the workers in Johnson’s restaurant haven’t been paid for several months. She states that Johnson is bi-polar and has been so out of control that she needs to be hospitalised. See this video:
Francis’ blurb for the video makes a number of other claims about Johnson. I don’t know how true any of this is, but it seems that she also made a number of enemies in the Black community.
It could very well be one of these, who has tried to kill her.
Sir Alan Burns, Colour and Colour Prejudice with Particular Reference to the Relationship between Whites and Negroes (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd 1948).
I ordered this book secondhand online a week or so ago, following the Black Lives Matter protests and controversies over the past few weeks. I realise reading a book this old is a rather eccentric way of looking at contemporary racial issues, but I’d already come across it in the library there when I was doing voluntary work at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum. What impressed me about it was that it also dealt with anti-White racism amongst Blacks as well as the book’s main concern with anti-Black racism, discrimination and growing Black discontent in the British Empire.
Burns was a former governor of Ghana, then the Gold Coast. According to the potted biography on the front flap of the dust jacket, he was ‘a Colonial Civil Servant of long and distinguished experience in tropical West Africa and the West Indies.’ The book
deals with the important question of colour prejudice, and pleads for mutual courtesy and consideration between the white and the coloured races. Sir Alan analyses the history and alleged causes of colour prejudice, and cites the opinions of many writers who condemn or attempt to justify the existence of prejudice. It is a frank analysis of an unpleasant phenomenon.
He was also the author of two other books, his memoirs of colonial service in the Leeward Islands Nigeria, Bahamas, British Honduras, the Gold Coast and the Colonial Office, Colonial Civil Servant, and A History of Nigeria. The Gold Coast was one of the most racial progressive of the British African colonies. It was the first of them to include an indigenous chief on the ruling colonial council. I therefore expected Burns to hold similar positive views of Blacks, given, of course, how outdated these would no doubt seem to us 72 years later.
After the introduction, the book is divided into the following chapters:
I. The Existence and Growth of Colour Prejudice
II. The Attitude of Various Peoples to Racial and Colour Differences
III. Negro Resentment of Colour Prejudice
IV. Political and Legal Discrimination Against Negroes
V. Social Discrimination Against Negroes
VI. Alleged Inferiority of the Negro
VII. Alleged Shortcomings of the Negro
VIII. Physical and Mental Differences between the Races
IX. Physical Repulsion between Races
X. Miscegenation
XI. The Effect of Environment and History on the Negro Race
XII. Lack of Unity and Inferiority Complex Among Negroes
XIII. Conclusion.
I’ve done little more than take the occasional glance through it so far, so this is really a rather superficial treatment of the book, more in the way of preliminary remarks than a full-scale review. Burns does indeed take a more positive view of Blacks and their potential for improvement, but the book is very dated and obviously strongly influenced by his own background in the colonial service and government. As a member of the colonial governing class, Burns is impressed by the British Empire and what he sees as its benevolent and highly beneficial rule of the world’s indigenous peoples. He is in no doubt that they have benefited from British rule, and quotes an American author as saying that there is no other colonial power which would have done so for its subject peoples. He is particularly impressed by the system of indirect rule, in which practical government was largely given over to the colonies’ indigenous ruling elites. This was peaceful, harmonious and had benefited the uneducated masses of the Empire’s indigenous peoples. These colonial subjects appreciated British rule and largely supported it. He did not expect this section of colonial society to demand their nations’ independence. However, this governmental strategy did not suit the growing class of educated Blacks, who were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their treatment as inferiors and demanding independence.
As with other, later books on racism Burns tackles its history and tries to trace how far back it goes. He argues that racism seems to go back no further than the Fifteenth century. Before then, culture and religion were far more important in defining identity. He’s not entirely convinced by this, and believes that racism in the sense of colour prejudice probably existed far earlier, but there is little evidence for it. There have been other explorations of this subject which have attempted to show the history and development of racism as a cultural idea in the west. Other historians have said much the same, and I think the consensus of opinion is that it was the establishment of slavery that led to the development of ideas of Black inferiority to justify their capture and enslavement.
Burns is also concerned at what he and the other authorities he quotes as the growth in anti-Black racism that came following the First World War. He compares this unfavourably with a comment from an African lady, who went to a British school during Victoria’s reign. The women recalls that she and the other Black girls were treated absolutely no differently from the Whites, and that the only time she realised there was any difference between them was when she looked in a mirror. This is interesting, and a good corrective to the idea that all Whites were uniformly and aggressively racist back then, but I expect her experience may have been very different from Blacks further down the social hierarchy. Burns believes the increase in racism after the First World War was due to the increased contact between Blacks and Whites, which is probably true following the mass mobilisation of troops across the Empire.
But what I found as an historian with an interest in African and other global civilisations is the book’s almost wholly negative assessment of Black civilisation and its achievements. Burns quotes author after author, who states that Blacks have produced no great civilisations or cultural achievements. Yes, ancient Egypt is geographically a part of Africa, but culturally and racially, so it is claimed, it is part of the Middle East. Where Black Africans have produced great civilisations, it is through contact with external, superior cultures like the Egyptians, Carthaginians and the Arabs. Where Blacks have produced great artistic achievements, such as in the Benin bronzes of the 16th/17th century, it is claimed that this is due to contact with the Portuguese and Spanish. This negative view is held even by writers, who are concerned to stress Black value and dignity, and show that Blacks are not only capable of improvement, but actually doing so.
Since then a series of historians, archaeologists and art historians have attempted to redress this view of history by showing how impressive Black African civilisations were. Civilisations like ancient Nubia, Ethiopia, Mali and the other great Islamic states of north Africa, and advanced west African civilisations like Dahomey. I myself prefer the superb portraiture in the sculptures from 17th century Ife in west Africa, but archaeologists and historians have been immensely impressed by the carved heads from Nok in Nigeria, which date from about 2,000 BC. Going further south, there is the great fortress of Zimbabwe, a huge stone structure that bewildered western archaeologists. For years it was suggested that Black Africans simply couldn’t have built it, and that it must have been the Arabs or Chinese instead. In fact analysis of the methods used to build it and comparison with the same techniques used by local tribes in the construction of their wooden buildings have shown that the fortress was most definitely built by indigenous Zimbabweans. There have been a number of excellent TV series broadcast recently. Aminatta Forna presented one a few years ago now on Timbuktu, once the centre of a flourishing and immensely wealthy west African kingdom. A few years before, art historian Gus Casely-Hayford presented a series on BBC Four, Lost Civilisations of Africa. I think that’s still on YouTube, and it’s definitely worth a look. Archaeologists are revealing an entire history of urban civilisation that has previously been lost or overlooked. Nearly two decades or so ago there was a piece by a White archaeologist teaching in Nigeria, who had discovered the remains of house and courtyard walls stretching over an area of about 70 km. This had been lost as the site had been abandoned and overgrown with vegetation. He lamented how there was little interest in the remains of this immense, ancient city among Nigerians, who were far more interested in ancient Egypt.
This neglect and disparagement of African history and achievement really does explain the fervour with which Afrocentric history is held by some Blacks and anti-racist Whites. This is a view that claims that the ancient Egyptians were Black, and the real creators of the western cultural achievement. It began with the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop. White Afrocentrists have included Martin Bernal, the author of Black Athena, and Basil Davidson. Following the Black Lives Matter protests there have also been calls for Black history to be taught in schools, beginning with African civilisations.
More positively, from what I’ve seen so far, Burns did believe that Blacks and Whites were equal in intelligence. The Christian missionaries Samuel Crowther, who became the first Anglican bishop of Africa, and Frederick Schon, had absolutely no doubt. Crowther was Black, while Schon was a White Swiss. In one of their reports to the British parliamentary committee sitting to examine slavery and the slave trade, they presented evidence from the African missionary schools in the form of essays from their pupils to show that Blacks certainly were as capable as Whites. Possibly more so at a certain age. As Black underachievement at school is still a very pressing issue, Crowther’s and Schon’s findings are still very important. Especially as there are real racists, supporters of the book The Bell Curve, keen to argue that Blacks really are biologically mentally inferior to Whites.
Burns’ book is fascinating, not least because it shows the development of official attitudes towards combating racism in Britain. Before it became such a pressing issue with the mass influx of Black migrants that came with Windrush, it seems that official concern was mostly over the growing resentment in Africa and elsewhere with White, British rule. The book also hopefully shows how we’ve also come in tackling racism in the West. I’m not complacent about it – I realise that it’s still very present and blighting lives – but it’s far, far less respectable now than it was when I was a child in the 1970s. My concern, however, is that some anti-racism activists really don’t realise this and their concentration on the horrors and crimes of the past has led them to see the present in its terms. Hence the rant of one of the BLM firebrands in Oxford that the police were the equivalent of the Klan.
Burn’s book shows just how much progress has been made on, and makes you understand just what an uphill struggle this has been.
According to next week’s Radio Times for 11-17 July 2020, Monday’s edition of Analysis on Radio 4 is about ‘Humans vs the Planet’. The blurb for the programme on page 119 of the magazine reads
As Covid-19 forced humans into lockdown, memes emerged showing the earth was healing thanks to our absence from nature. These were false claims, but their popularity revealed how seductive the idea that “we are the virus” can be. At its most extreme, this way of thinking leads to eco-fascism, the belief that the harm humans can do to Earth can be reduced by cutting the number of non-White people. But the Green movement is also challenged by a less hateful form of this mentality known as “doomism” – a sense that humans will inevitably cause ecological disaster.
These sentiments have been around for a very long time. Earlier this year, a female professor of Queer philosophy at one of the new universities published her own manifesto for saving the planet. Dubbed ‘professor Goth’ by one of the Conservative news sites that covered the story, she advocates saving the planet through making humanity extinct. It’s a radical, misanthropic, anti-human stance that neither unique nor original to her. About a quarter of a century ago in the mid-90s the radical Green group, VHMNT, was agitating for the same policy. VHMNT, pronounced ‘Vehement’ , stood for Voluntary Human Extinction. It was peaceful and didn’t advocate violence, but wanted humanity to save the planet through voluntary extinction. Those who joined it vowed not to reproduce.
Some left-wing, ecologically aware scientists have been accused of possessing the same mindset, but willing to contemplate much more aggressive tactics. Over a decade ago, back in the early years of this century, Conservatives accused a scientist of advocating the extermination of humanity through disease. He had been speaking at a conference on the ecological crisis, and made some comment about the threat of new diseases to humanity as the environment deteriorates. His defenders argue that he was not advocating it, simply stating that such a disease would arise. Many Conservatives have a deep hatred of the Green movement. At the extremes, they see it as an anti-human, pagan nature cult aimed at the communistic redistribution of wealth and with its origins in Nazism. Hence all the rants by conspiracy-peddler Alex Jones about Obama taking over America by declaring a state of emergency and forcing Americans into FEMA camps and his denunciation of eco-friendly ‘Hobbit homes’.
The SF author, Bruce Sterling, also predicted that there would spring up guerrilla groups also dedicated to the mass culling of humanity to protect the planet. His 1990s novel, Heavy Weather, is set in a Texas turning to desert through the aquifers drying up, devastated through violent hurricanes created by a climate becoming increasingly extreme. These have left masses of Americans homeless, living in refugee camps. The story follows the adventures of the alienated son of one of the rich families, as he falls in with an underground group of outlaw storm chasers. One of the characters he encounters is an angry young man, who belongs to a terrorist organization attempting to save the planet through violence. The man describes how people might be killed by poisoning, after model boats are floated on the water of a reservoir. People die, but nobody is responsible. He compares it to the lynching of Blacks by the Klan. Blacks died, but again, nobody was responsible.
The book was a work of fiction and Sterling is very definitely not a racist or an advocate of such terrorism. It’s simply a a fictional treatment of what might arise if climate change and the deterioration of the environment becomes acute.
As for the hatred of the non-White peoples of the Developing World, this no doubt comes from the fact that families in these nations are traditionally larger than those of western Whites. The birthrate in Britain is actually below the level required for the maintenance of the population at the present level. The country’s population is only increasing due immigration. Without it, it would be falling. Hence the racist alarm at the growth of Britain’s Black and Asian populations. It is the expansion of the human population that is causing the current environmental crisis, but much of this is due to excessive consumption of energy and resources by the Developed West.
The birthrate is also falling in the Developing World as literacy rates rise and these countries modernize. This has led some demographers to fear that instead of a population explosion, as feared in the 1970s, there will be population crash. It’s predicted that this will happen, if at all, sometime around 2050. Fearing a shortage of labour, they predict that states will compete to encourage immigration. It has also been predicted that one of the African countries, that today has a terrible infant mortality rate and left-expectancy, will become the first country to suffer catastrophic population decline.
The programme, Analysis: Humans vs the Planet, is at 8.30 pm in the evening on Radio 4.
Yesterday Tony Greenstein put up a piece about an art exhibition on the plight of the Palestinians by an Arab/Israeli artist, Dr. Gil Mualem-Doron. Titled ‘Cry the Beloved Country’ after a 1953 article in the Israeli paper Maariv by its editor, Ezriel Karlebach. This compared the new legislation then passed against the Palestinians to the infamous Nuremberg laws the Nazis passed against the Jews. The article took its title in turn from the 1948 book by the South African artist Alan Paton on the rise of that country’s apartheid regime. The exhibition also features a conversation between the Palestinian historian Dr Salman Abu Sitta, Mualem-Doron, Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, the founder of the NGO Zochrot, somebody called Decolonizer and the exhibition’s curator, Ghazaleh Zogheib. It includes photographs of some of the ‘present refugees’ – Palestinians, who fled or were forced off their land during the Nakba of 1948, and who are officially regarded as foreigners in their own country among other photographic and artistic installations. There is also a screening of the film To Gaza and Back Home, by Aparicio and Decolonizer about the Arab village of Ma’in and its destruction. It was due to open on the 2nd April, but this was impossible due to the lockdown. It’s now showing online until sometime in September, probably the 27th, when it will open at the P21 Gallery in London.
Tony’s article quotes the exhibition, which says that
“Cry, the beloved country” is a nightmarish series of room installations and photography works dealing with the links between Great Britain, Israel and Palestine and depicting the catastrophic results of this unholy conundrum. Built as a journey into “the heart of darkness” the exhibition is intended to negate many Israelis and Zionists supporters’ view of Israel as a “villa in the jungle”.
The photographs include several of an actor dressed in KKK robes, a Jewish prayer shawl and waving an Israeli flag, saluting Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. It was taken in 2017 during the centennial celebrations of the promulgation of the Balfour Doctrine, in which Britain backed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This was very much against the wishes of the British Jewish community, who did not want their Britishness questioned through the foundation of a state for which they had no loyalty and no desire to live in.
This is obviously an extremely provocative piece. I have no doubt that the very people and organizations, who scream ‘anti-Semitism’ at any criticism of Israel, no matter how reasonable and justified, would go berserk about this. It comes very close to one of the IHRA’s examples of anti-Semitism: the comparison of Jews to Nazis. But it is a reasonable comment on the Israeli state and its present government, composed of Likud and various parties from the Israeli religious right. Groups of settlers do launch attacks on Palestinian villages, like the Klan lynched Blacks in America. Those campaign for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians similarly claim a religious basis for their crimes, just like the Klan claimed to be defending White, Protestant Christians from Jews, Blacks, Roman Catholics and Communists. And Tony himself has shown all too often how the present Israeli government and British Zionist activists have very strong links to the real far right groups. Jonathan Hoffman, who has frequently protested and demonstrated against pro-Palestinian exhibitions and meetings over here, shouting anti-Semitism, has done so in the company of Paul Besser, the former intelligence officer of Britain First, and members of the EDL. The event’s supported by Arts Council England and the Hub Collective. I think they should be commended for supporting such an important exhibition, despite the abuse and demands for cancellation the organizers of similar events receive.
The Israelis were due to begin their annexation of 1/3 of the West Bank today, in blatant contravention of international law. The Likud regime is zealously pursuing its persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians with the active support of right-wing American Christian groups like Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. It does so against the wishes and passionate efforts of very many Jews and Jewish organisations in America, Britain and Israel itself. The latter includes the veterans’ group, Breaking the Silence, which works to reveal the atrocities in which its members have personally participated, and the Zionist humanitarian group, B’Tsalem. The supporters of this ethnic cleansing, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbinate, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the various ‘Friends of Israel’ groups in the political parties, are doing their best to present Israel as synonymous with Judaism. This is in breach of the IHRA’s own guidelines, which state that it is anti-Semitic to claim that Jews are more loyal to another country, or hold them responsible as a whole for Israel’s actions. As these atrocities continue, more young Jewish people are becoming critical of Israel and the Zionist organisations themselves were frightened by the British public’s disgust at the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Hence the foundation of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the revival of Paole Zion, now renamed the Jewish Labour Movement, in the Labour Party. It was all to promote public support for Israel and quash reasoned, justified criticism.
It is why exhibitions like this continue to remain important and necessary, whatever the witch-hunters do to shout them down and silence them.
For more information on the exhibition and the individual pieces, go to:
In his piece today demolishing the anti-Semitism witch-hunt against the Labour Party, and Jeremy Corbyn’s absolute capitulation to the liars and smear merchants behind it, Tony Greenstein suggests how Corbyn should have handled Andrew Neil in an interview he gave with the broadcaster on his politics show back in November.
Neil challenged Corbyn to apologise to the Jewish community for the anti-Semitism that was rampant in the Labour party and his failure to deal with it. Anti-Semitism was not rampant in the Labour party, and Corbyn had dealt very effectively with real anti-Semitism. Greenstein therefore rightly says that Corbyn should have refused, saying he had nothing to apologise for. And then he should gone on the attack pointing out Neil’s hypocrisy in asking the question. When Neil was editor of the Sunday Times, he hired David Irving to write a piece about the supposed Goebbel’s diaries. That’s the David Irving, who really was an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier and was proven in the court case he lost against Deborah Lipstadt. And then he could have raised the issue of Taki’s continuing employment with the Spectator. Taki really is an anti-Semite, who recently praised the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in the magazine’s pages. This would have been extremely uncomfortable for Neil, whose chairman of the board government the wretched rag. When Owen Jones raised this very issue when he was on one of Neil’s wretched programmes, Neil was visibly frightened and asked if he was trying to get him sacked. Greenstein writes
‘That Andrew Neil Interview and David Irving
Not once did Schneider, Milne and Carrie Murphy ask themselves why, if the ‘anti-Semitism’ offensive was genuine, that it was the Right who were its most ardent advocates? One of its most fervent supporters was BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil. Neil crucified Corbyn in an election interview in November 2019 when he asked whether Corbyn would apologise to the Jewish community for Labour anti-Semitism.
It was a predictable question and there was a simple response. ‘I have nothing to apologise for’. Corbyn could then have gone on to condemn Labour’s genuine racism, against Black people:
‘I do however wish to apologise to Britain’s Black community for Labour’s previous support for the ‘hostile environment’ policy and the Windrush scandal. Our decision not to oppose the 2014 Immigration Act was scandalous.’
When Neil responded, listing examples of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’, such as the attempts to deselect Louise Ellman and Zionist diva Luciana Berger, there was a very simple response.
Corbyn could have told Neil that he had no intention of taking lessons on anti-Semitism from someone who, as Editor of the Sunday Times had hired a holocaust denier, David Irving, to examine the Goebbels Diaries which had just been discovered in a Moscow archive! As Jewish historian David Cesarani commented: ‘David Irving denies the gas chambers. Anyone who deals with him is tainted with that.’
And whilst Neil was spluttering Corbyn could have mentioned the fact that when Boris Johnson was Editor of The Spectator he hired Taki, the owner of Takis magazine for whom David Duke of the KKK wrote. Taki himself was no slouch when it came to anti-Semitism. As his biography records:
‘He (Boris) could have dispensed with Taki… but consistently chose not to, despite entreaties from many critics, including his own father-in-law Charles Wheeler. It is down to Boris that Taki was able to run columns on ‘bongo bongo land’, West Indians ‘multiplying like flies’ and one on the world Jewish conspiracy, in which he described himself as a ‘soi-disant anti-Semite’.
Even the right-wing owner of the Spectator Conrad Black, asked Boris to dismiss Taki after he had criticised Black for marrying a Jewish woman. Boris refused. Taki wrote for the Spectator for as long as Boris was editor. And who was Chairman of the Board of Press Holdings Media Group which owns The Spectator? Andrew Neil!
Of course, having accepted the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative, Corbyn had no response. Not once did he point out the hypocrisy of Britain’s racist tabloids and the BBC for having ignored the Windrush Scandal, in which Black British citizens were deported to their death, instead concentrating on Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ which didn’t hurt a single Jewish person.’
This is all absolutely correct. Anti-Black racism is far more prevalent than anti-Semitism, and far more respectable. There would have rightly been a storm had May’s government similarly rounded up Jews of foreign parentage on the same grounds. But Cameron and May felt able to deport the Windrush migrants, who had every right to remain in this country, because of anti-Black racism.
Unfortunately Corbyn caved in to Neil and the other smear merchants in the media and Conservative political establishment. And in doing so he not only allowed himself to be ousted, but also decent anti-racists and his own supporters, people like Livingstone, Mike, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Marc Wadsworth, Cyril Chilson, and Greenstein himself, to be smeared and expelled.
Okay, the conspiracy theory about Coronavirus being spread by 5G mobile phone masts has reached a new level of Batshit craziness. Zelo Street today has put up a piece debunking the latest wrinkle, which is that the conspiracy is shown on the £20 note. This shows a mobile phone mast, and a schematic of something that looks like the virus, according to the people, who believe this bilge.
But it doesn’t. According to a piece in the Express on Friday, what looks like a phone mast is actually no such thing. It’s a picture of Margate lighthouse, which was a favourite location for the great Victorian painter, Turner. And the putative virus schematic is actually a diagram of Tate Britain’s staircase. Because the £20 note is in honour of Turner, and Tate Britain has got his portrait in it. The Depress is a terrible newspaper, but this time they’ve done something right, especially as, according to the Groan, 20 phone masts have now been set alight. Some of them aren’t even 5G, but 3G or 4G.
This type of rumour – that signs of the conspiracy are in hidden in plain sight, on dollar bills or company logos – has been running around since at least the ’60s. One of the most famous examples is Proctor & Gamble’s logo. This used to show a bearded old man’s head, and thirteen stars. This was alleged to be proof that the company was run by Satanists. Curls in the old man’s hair were supposed to form 666, the number of the Great Beast of the end times, while the thirteen stars represented the 13 members of a witches’ coven. It was all rubbish. Proctor & Gamble’s an American company, and the 13 stars were supposed to represent the 13 founding states of the USA. The old man did not represent Satan, and it really was just happenstance the way those curls fell. The logo’s since been redesigned, so that the curls have been straightened out so nobody can mistake them for a Biblical prophecy that partly refers to the emperor Nero. The company has been accused of Satanic connections so many times, however, that they have made it very clear that they take an extremely proactive stance to anyone making the claim. This means that the moment someone puts together a flyer, pamphlet or otherwise disseminates the myth, the company goes after them with a suit.
Another example is Marlboro cigarettes. There was a rumour that the company head, Philip Marlboro, was a member of the KKK, and that the company’s connection to the Klan was covertly shown on the cigarettes’ packaging. Looked at the right way, the faces of the packet showed a ‘K’ in red, black and gold. This was supposed to show that the company was part of the Klan against Reds – Socialists and Communists – Blacks, and Golds – the Jews. It’s another myth, though Marlboro won’t say one way or another if it’s true, which is probably a mark of corporate disdain. As a tobacco company, Marlboro’s evil enough without having to include the Klan.
The rumours going around about the £20 note just seem to me to be another example of people finding spurious patterns and meaning where there isn’t any. Now there really are covert conspiracies out there, and sometimes the rumours of secret symbolism are actually true. The city of Bath was planned and laid out in the early 18th century by a freemason, and so the Royal Crescent there really is a lunar symbol, according to masonic symbolism. But that’s far from saying that Bath is run by any kind of Masonic conspiracy now, although I don’t doubt that it has its lodges. That type of secret society and its symbolism exists.
But the myth about the Coronavirus and 5G phone masts is just a myth. Treat it as such.
Really brilliant post yesterday by Zelo Street, demolishing the Tory lies that David Duke, the head of the KKK in Louisiana and Britain’s own Fascist abomination, Nick Griffin, support Jeremy Corbyn. The claim was made a year or so ago by the Times and the Scum in order to add some spurious credibility to the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour leader and his supporters.
This began with Henry Zeffman in the Thunderer writing
“A white supremacist and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan praised the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership as a sign that people were recognising ‘Zionist power’ and ‘Jewish establishment power’. David Duke, who led a branch of the KKK based in Louisiana in the 1970s, told listeners to his radio show in 2015: ‘It’s a really good kind of evolutionary thing, isn’t it, when people are beginning to recognise Zionist power and ultimately the Jewish establishment power in Britain and in the western world.”.
The problem with this was that two years after the claim Zeffman had uncovered, Duke had seriously revised his opinion of Corbyn, calling him ‘Marxist filth’.
And the BNP’s former fuehrer has crawled out from whichever stone he’s been hiding under ever since his stormtroops gave him the heave-ho to make it clear that he does not, after all, support Jeremy Corbyn either. After reading headlines claiming that Corbyn’s speech to the CBI raised the issue of anti-Semitism once again, Griffin tweeted
“Have read that headline several times. Can easily be read that someone at the Mail still has the occasional ‘hurrah for the Blackshirts’ moment!”
Zelo Street remarks that the Heil’s history is so notorious that even Griffin knows about it. Which I suppose he would, actually being one of the Fascists the Heil supported back then. But in an answer to the question who he would personally support in the election, Griffin responded
None of them. Though I did give the Zio-media a stick to beat Corbyn by saying I’d vote for him on foreign policy grounds. But unless he comes out to oppose the UK sanctions on Syria that are killing thousands of children & adding to the refugee flood, I won’t be doing so”.
It should come as no surprise that neither Duke nor Griffin support Corbyn. And in Griffin’s case, he makes it clear that he only said he did in order to cause trouble for the Labour leader.
Despite Conservative claims on both sides of the Atlantic that the Nazis were socialists, because they said they were, Hitler’s crew were far from it. Both the Nazis and the Italian Fascists were strongly in favour of private industry. When in power, they both embarked on massive privatisation programmes. The Nazis celebrate the entrepreneur of part of the biologically superior elite, who had a natural right to rule. And before the Nazi seizure of power, Hitler told a meeting of leading German businessmen that he had no intention of nationalising anything and private enterprise needed a strong ruler to protect it. Under Mussolini, the Italian Fascists declared that private industry was the best economic system and the very foundation of the country and state.
David Duke is a member of the Republican Party, or he was. Who are very keen on protecting and extending private enterprise against the state – not just in industry, but in healthcare and education, and also against the environment. So are other members of the Klan. A few years ago Duke frightened the Republicans by threatening to reveal the identities of other Republican politicians, who wore white sheets at their klonvocations. Of course Duke was going to find out eventually what Corbyn really stood for, and denounce him as a Commie. Just like the Tory press has been trying to smear him and his followers as Communists, Trotskyites, Stalinists or whatever.
And Duke obviously didn’t know about Corbyn’s Jewish supporters.
Contrary to what the press and media want you to believe, Corbyn ain’t an anti-Semite and has Jewish supporters. People like Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewdas, the Jewish Socialist Group, and London’s Haredi community. Because he’s actually stood up for Jews and Jewish issues. Mike and the other left-wing bloggers have put up lists of the numerous occasions Corbyn intervened on the community’s behalf. He has the support of Shraga Stern and London’s Haredi community because he stopped their historic burial ground from being redeveloped. And rather than wanting the mass carnage of Israelis, he simply wants an end to the Israeli state’s system of apartheid and oppression of the Palestinians. But that enrages Israel and its apologists, who unable to refute the allegations against them with fact, simply turn to smearing their opponents – including and especially self-respecting Jews – as anti-Semites.
Duke’s comment about Corbyn looks like his ideas about the Labour leader came from the biased reporting of the lamestream media. I dare say Duke would have gone berserk if he’d realised then that Corbyn is pro-Jewish and anti-racist, with Jewish supporters, along with those from Britain’s other ethnic communities.
However, if Duke and Griffin aren’t supporting Corbyn, other members of the far right are supporting the Tories. Like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, alias Tommy Robinson, formerly of the EDL, formerly of PEGIDA, former special adviser on Islam to UKIP. And for some reason the Tories are keeping very quiet about his support, while definitely not repudiating.
They can’t really, not when so much Tory strategy is based on stirring up hatred against ethnic minorities and immigration, particularly Islam. Mates Jacobs uncovered a whole mass of islamophobia, racism and anti-Semitism in the social media groups for supporters of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg. Some of whose members even believed in the same ‘great replacement’ nonsense – the conspiracy theory that the Jews are deliberately introducing and encouraging non-White immigration in order to destroy and replace White Europeans – that Duke and the Klan believe in.
Corbyn doesn’t have the support of David Duke or Nick Griffin. But the Tories have the support of Tommy Robinson, and some of their members certainly have extreme right-wing views. Which is why Boris isn’t going to have an inquiry into Tory islamophobia until after the election.
He’s probably hoping that by that time he’ll be safely in No. 10 and people will have forgotten about the whole scandal. Don’t let him.
There are some individuals, who are so noxious, that their endorsement is instant death to organisations and causes. UKIP found that out when fuehrer Gerard Batten recruited Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and Paul Joseph Watson. Oh yes, and Tommy Robinson, formerly of the EDL, formerly of PEGIDA, and frequently in the Nick, as a special adviser on Islam. The result was that, faced with competition from their rivals, the Brexit party, or Farage Political Vehicle Mark II and these horrors from the far right, UKIP’s members voted with their feet and walked out. UKIP collapsed, elected a Dick Braine as leader, and has since imploded in an ugly mass of accusations and litigation. This hasn’t dissuaded Robinson from endorsing other political parties, however. And the latest party he’s decided to give his public support is Boris Johnson and the Tories.
The Huffington Post, Mirror and Independent reported that Robinson had given his vote to Johnson, saying “Everyone should vote for Boris Johnson.If we want Brexit, if we believe in democracy, we have to have Brexit. So yeah. Go Boris”. The Huffington Post also stated that BoJob had been called on to reject the thug’s endorsement. Jo Swinson made an adverse comment about Boris’ new supporter, and Corbyn drily remarked “The Trump – Johnson – Farage alliance has a new member”. He didn’t need to make any further comment on Robinson giving his noxious support to two of this noxious trio.
But the Tory press have been mysteriously silent about it all, in sharp contrast to the glee with which they splashed all over their front pages the fake claims that David Duke, the former head of the Klan, had endorsed Corbyn and that the Labour leader had the support of Nick Griffin of the BNP. The Labour leader didn’t. But the Tories do have the support of Robinson. And while they’re silent about it, BoJob hasn’t repudiated it either.
Zelo Street observes that there’s a synergy about it. Robinson likes to turn up outside his critics’ and opponents’ homes in the middle of the night mob-handed, looking for a ‘polite conversation’ and has been jailed for assault. And BoJob was phoned up years ago by his friend Darius Guppy, who wanted the address of a journalist so he could have the man beaten up. BoJob kindly complied. This incident was discussed a few years ago on Have I Got News For You. This was when it was still satirically sharp and rather funnier.
Zelo Street remarks
‘It’s no surprise that Bozo is not disowning Stephen Lennon’s endorsement. Nor is it any surprise that his pals in the press are keeping schtum about it. A Bozo Government would not be averse to a little gratuitous thuggery and bullying.
Stephen Lennon and Boris Johnson – two peas in a pod. I’ll just leave that one there.’
But it also seems that Robinson has problems of his own. He’s facing bankruptcy from libel actions from two of the people he’s smeared.
Robinson is being sued for libel on behalf of Jamal, a Syrian refugee, who was beaten up at school. Robinson decided to go round and interview his attacker, during which the statements at the heart of the case were made. Statements which Robinson is having difficulty defending. The case has reached the High Court, and Robinson claims he is facing a possible bill of £650,000. Robinson has bleated that this is “financial terrorism”. Just as he has claimed that his arrest and conviction for contempt of court have similarly been the government trying to shut him up. The reality was that the judges, who had him arrested and tried were trying to give the defendants a fair trial. And this was placed in severe jeopardy by Robinson’s antics outside the court.
And the historian and teacher Mike Stuchbery is also raising money to sue Robinson. Stuchbery had blogged about Robinson’s activities, so Robinson dealt with him the way he frequently did with his critics. He turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night with his stormtroopers, started banging on Robinson’s doors and windows and made what Zelo Street has described as, ah, ‘creative accusations’. He also doxxed him twice. Stuchbery has since moved to Germany, saying of the incident that Robinson’s
actions have cost me a lot, in terms of health and professional opportunities. It will take years to get back where I was before he directed his followers at me, with patently untrue allegations”.
A crowdfunding page has been set up to help Stuchbery raise enough money through donations to sue Robinson. And Roanna Carleton Taylor, who helped set up the crowdfunder, has appealed for more of Robinson’s victims will come forward so that legal actions can be brought against Robinson on their behalf.
“We intend to document, pursue and fund legal action to make Lennon and his gang members pay for each and every illegal action they commit … To this end we ask anyone who believes they have a legitimate case to sue Lennon to come forward”.
Zelo Street states that Robinson doorstepped several people before picking on Stuchbery, one of whom was Tim Fenton himself. He predicts that after Stuchbery finishes with Robinson, there will be no shortage of others going to court to sue the thug for what he did to them. And that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.
The prospect does not look good for Robinson, who claims that from the last two days of donations, his fundraising is ‘dead’. If he loses, he just might have to move out of that very expensive house that’s in his wife’s name, because of his conviction for mortgage fraud, and go live in a smaller property. Like Hatey Katie Hopkins had to move out of her £500,000 house because of a libel case she lost.
Zelo Street suggests that the age of Robinson’s intimidation and bullying may soon be over. Let’s hope so. And let’s hope his hero Johnson goes down with him.
If you want to contributed to Mike Stuchbery’s campaign, go to this article at Zelo Street and follow the link:
Mike’s had to put up another piece on his site asking his supporters to dig into their pockets again to help fund his defence against Rachel Riley. His preliminary hearings set for December 11, and he needs a further £6,684. Justice in this country is expensive, which is why I think Riley is pursuing her entirely malicious libel claim against Mike, and threatens anybody else, who dares to criticise her, with legal action.
But the fixation Riley and her bestie, Z-list actor Tracy-Ann Oberman, have with supposed Labour anti-Semitism, and particularly Jeremy Corbyn, is so extreme and irrational that I’m starting to wonder if it’s edging into clinical paranoia. For example, a few months ago one of the two heard the Durham miners’ band playing ‘Hava Nagila’ at their annual gala. Riley – or was it Oberman? – blew her top and declared it was like the KKK playing it. Except that it wasn’t. The Durham miners’ explained that they played the tune every year, and resented being compared to the Klan. As they should. But the pair have obviously decided that as Corbyn and his supporters want justice for the Palestinians, they are anti-Semites, and so every member of a trade union or the Labour party is thus likely to be a Nazi.
And a few weeks ago Oberman decided that Corbyn was stalking her personally. She was performing in a play at a theatre in Manchester, and Corbyn turned up visiting the theatre. But it had nothing to do with persecuting Oberman. Corbyn’s actually a patron of that particular theatre, and was one of the people, who got it set up in the first place. He was there to see a play. This seems to show, to me, that Oberman is on the verge of real paranoia.
I’ve compared her fixation with Corbyn and anti-Semitism in the past to some of the bizarre racist myths about Roman Catholics and Blacks circulating around poor White Protestants in the southern US. A documentary was made about this a few years ago, but I can’t remember its name. Apparently this included tales that Roman Catholics were secretly telepathic, and if you suddenly found yourself thinking about the Pope, it meant that they were secretly beaming Roman Catholic ideas into your head. Blacks also had a powder they could put on their body that would make them appear White. Thus your mate could really be Black. She also reminds me of the paranoid messages the FBI used to get during the Cold War from people, who wore the tinfoil beanie against the CIA/Red Chinese/Aliens beaming their mind control rays at them. As well as the other nutters, who thought they’d found Adolf Hitler alive and well and working at the local Jewish delicatessen in New York.
She also reminds me of Steve Renstrom, AKA She-Bop Steve, an American artist, who decided that Senator Alan Cranston was behind a vast conspiracy to kill millions including John F. Kennedy and the actor John Belushi. Donna Kossy provides an example of his insane rants in her Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (Portland, Oregon: Feral House 1994). This has the following
The Goods on the Big Boys
Reagan/Cabinet, Iran/Contra Situation –
IT’S A CRANSTON ‘TAKES THE FALL’ FRONT LIE
[TERROR OF JUSTICE]
The Reich, or Cranston Co., owns the scenario and is undermining the power and popularity of the Presidency. The Reich is freaking about the possibility of justice re their mass slaughtering of the people.
So, they opportuned and exacerbated the Iran thing plus deviously calling for conclusions, anti-Reagan conclusions, all across the land. (brainwashing every voice). This one really tipped me: picture of Reagan on the front page pointing to head. (At the same time as Iran scheme!)
The Dan Rather Incident: Horrifying Berlin 42 Implications
It was designated also to blind mass “Dupe Troop” levels. “What’s the frequency” was a ‘drop’ they’d buy a “it’s pigs allright, must be o.k. to beat up newsmen. We ought accept more ‘n more Nazi violence and atrocities. And it’s o.k. also about owning the media about it.”
P.S. All during this writing I’m being insanely tortured. Also flow “cover up” and American guilt lies every second.
The Iran/ Contra scandal was when members of Reagan’s government were caught supplying arms to Iran, so that they would pressure Shi’a terrorists in Lebanon into releasing captured American hostages. The conspiracy also involved sending aid to the Fascist Contras in Nicaragua in exchange for allow them to export cocaine to America. The Dan Rather incident was when the veteran American newsman was assaulted in New York by someone, who seemed to think he was responsible for mind-control beams or some such similar nonsense, and beat Rather over the head shouting, ‘What’s the frequency, Kenneth?’
It might sound a bit extreme comparing Riley’s and Oberman’s fixation with Jeremy Corbyn and She-Bop Steve’s paranoid views about Senator Cranston. But I do think that there are real similarities there and that, if they’re not careful, Riley and Oberman will end up as real paranoiacs blaming Corbyn for all manner of conspiracies, including UFOs.
Internet bully Rachel Riley scored an enormous own goal this week when she decided to jump on the bandwagon for a new non-profit organisation trying to help people deal with internet trolls. It’s a real problem. Nearly every day at one time there was yet another story in the papers about the real harassment innocent people, including MPs and ‘slebs, as well as ordinary folk have suffered from bullying. What is most worrying is the vicious abuse heaped on schoolchildren and young people on social media. It’s turned many children’s lives into a living hell, and tragically, some have become seriously ill or tried to end it all.
A group of celebrities including Gary Lineker appeared to state that they would no longer be publicising the abuse they received on social media. Instead they are going to mute, block and report the most abhorrent abuse they receive to the rozzers, in order to deprive the trolls of the oxygen of publicity. The charity the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which has launched a ‘don’t feed the trolls’ campaign, is encouraging people to mute and take a break from social media before escalating the situation into something unlawful.
Hungry for more publicity, Rachel Riley jumped in, and appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show trying to present herself as yet another victim of the evil trolls. Instead, all she did was remind people of what a horrible troll she herself is. The peeps on Twitter responded by reminding her that she was one of the worst trolls around. They mentioned how Riley bullied a 16 year-old schoolgirl with anxiety problems. This was the girl Riley had smeared as an anti-Semite, because she happened to have posted up a piece supporting Jeremy Corbyn. As a result, the girl was dogpiled by Riley’s supporters. They also reminded her that she was part of the Gnasherjew troll collective. This is partly run by David Collier, a bald thug and ardent, bitterly intolerant Zionist, who can’t bear to see Israeli apartheid criticised. He’s one of the three people behind the Gnasherjew monicker, and he specialises in going through people’s net traffick in the hope of finding anything he can twist into sounding vaguely anti-Semitic, so he can smear them. Tom London, who is Jewish, also sent a Tweet to Derbyshire telling her that she should have done due diligence on her guest, who many Jews and non-Jews consider a troll because of the way she smeared people as anti-Semites. Others pointed out how how they had to mute and block Riley because of her abusive tweets smearing them and other as anti-Semites. To show how baseless her accusations are, they reminded the world how she had confused the Durham Miners’ Gala to the KKK because they happened to play Hava Nagila. Another tweeter, Leftworks, gave an example of the kind of abuse Riley metes out to people she accuses of anti-Semitism, and encouraged his readers to give to Mike’s CrowdJustice fund.
The result was that Mike had donations suddenly come flooding in by well-wishers, fed up of Riley and her hypocrisy.
I’ve no doubt that this will have caused her some embarrassment, as Riley likes to present herself as an innocent victim with the support of millions. A few months ago she appeared on Jonathan Ross’ show to thank all her fans for their support against the campaign of abuse she claimed she had received. Which shows you once again how biased the Beeb is. Even on a light entertainment show, there must be no doubt that Labour is irredeemably anti-Semitic and Jeremy Corbyn is a Nazi. On no account must the victims of the witch hunt be allowed to speak for themselves, and especially not people like Mike and the others, who have been smeared and libelled. And if we’re talking about real, horrific abuse, there’s the disgusting attacks directed at Jewish woman of colour, Jackie Walker, after she was falsely accused of anti-Semitism by the Jewish Labour Movement and the woefully misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. She has been told she should be lynched, and her body set on fire and shoved in bin bags. This would be serious enough in any country, but her parents came from America. Her father was Russian Jewish and her mother was a Black civil rights activist. These were people, who came from communities which had experienced real mass violence in the shape of pogroms and lynchings. Walker wasn’t libeled by Riley, but Riley is part of the wider movement that throws accusations of anti-Semitism around in the hope that the victims won’t be able to defend themselves, and will suffer further abuse.
It’s great that Riley put her foot in it with this attempt to pose as victim for publicity. I’m really glad people decided to give to Mike’s campaign, and hope that her egotistical hypocrisy has also encouraged more people to support other victims of her abuse and vilification.
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