Here we go again. Things must be desperate for the Tories, as they’ve got Thatcher’s bully-boy, Norman Tebbitt, to write a piece declaring that the Nazis were far left and socialists. Because they had the word in their name, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. It’s an old like that’s been going around for years. It surfaced about the beginning of this decade with the publication of Joshua Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Now Communism as genuine far left socialism is guilty of horrendous atrocities by Stalin and other monsters, but the Nazis were never socialists. They had their origins in radical right-wing patriotic movements around the time of the First World War, which believed that the Second Reich of the Wilhelmine emperors had failed to capture the support of German workers, and thus left them exposed to the allure of democracy and socialism.
As Social Darwinists, the Nazis believed that the aristocracy and the leaders of big business were biologically superior to the rest of humanity. Hitler made it clear to the genuinely anti-capitalist elements in the Nazi party, led by Otto and Gregor Strasser, that he didn’t intend to nationalise anything. Businesses and enterprises would only be taken into state ownership if they were failing. He courted the support of German industrialists by giving a speech in which he declared that private enterprise could only survive through the personal autocracy which the Nazis were going to introduce. Hitler had introduced the word ‘socialist’ into the party’s name against the wishes of its founder, Anton Drexler. He did so with the deliberate intent of luring voters away from the real socialist parties – the SPD, USPD and later Communists. Yes, thanks to Stalin’s order, the Communists did demonstrate alongside the Nazis after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact. But once the Nazis seized power, socialists and communists were among the first prisoners in the concentration camps, as well as trade unionists after they smashed them.
Nazi Germany was a centrally-planned economy, like the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy, in which the government controlled production and issued commands to business. But industry was largely not nationalized. It was controlled through a series of state-mandated trade and industrial associations. German law divided property into three categories: private, public, and private, but used for public purposes. The industries they controlled fell into the last. They also embarked on a massive privatisation campaign. Even when the industries remained largely in state ownership, like electricity, the heads of the associations managing them were drawn from private industry. The Nazis also took over private businessmen as heads of the government department managing the economy. It’s a method very similar to New Labour’s and the Tories’ appointment of senior business chiefs to run government departments in the new corporativism.
The Nazis weren’t socialists at all for all Hitler’s propagandistic claims. But Conservatives, including the American Republican Party, like to claim that they were as a smear on the left. They also contradict themselves by trying to deny that the Nazis were nationalists, despite the glaringly obvious fact that it is precisely what they said they were. Candace Owens, a young Black lady whose one of the leaders of the American Conservative youth organisation, Turning Point, infamously denied that the Nazis were nationalists when she and the equally loathsome Dave Rubin turned up over here trying to promote their British branch, Turning Point UK. Owens declared that Hitler wasn’t a nationalist, because he wanted everyone to be German. This is flat wrong – he wanted a Europe ruled by Germany, in which those races deemed biologically unfit or hostile would be exterminated. This started with the Jews, but as he makes very clear in Mein Kampf and his Table-Talk, would have gone on to the Slav peoples like the Czechs. She also thought that Hitler’s policies would have been all right, if he’d only put them into practise in Germany. Which means presumably that she believed the ending of democracy, the imprisonment of political prisoners and the Holocaust would all have been acceptable if he’d just stuck to Germany. She was naturally torn to shreds for this stupid, ridiculous and vile remark.
As for Norman Tebbit, he became notorious in the 1990s for his remark that British citizenship should be decided on who you supported at cricket. If a Black or Asian person didn’t support England, then they weren’t really Brits. Not surprisingly, people also tore into him for this piece of prize bigotry.
Mike’s put up a piece criticizing this latest piece of Tory lying, including some very amusing and interesting Tweets by the very many peeps not impressed with the Chingford Skinhead’s knowledge of such matters. My favourite is the comment wondering, based on Tebbitt’s logic for telling the world that the Nazis were socialists, whether he has had spotted dick. It’s a good question, as while I don’t doubt Tebbitt enjoys good, traditional British fare, he also has a reputation for homophobia.
Joking aside, this is a deliberate attempt by the Tories once again to misinform the public and distort history. Tebbitt always had a reputation for thuggish ignorance, but the Torygraph is supposed to be an upmarket, informative newspaper. Well, it lies badly and constantly, like the Tories themselves. This highly mendacious claim is yet another demonstration why shouldn’t believe anything it says.
The newspaper is making a loss hand over fist, and is heading down the tubes at a rate a knots. And this piece has just shown that when it finally goes under, British journalism will improve.
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.
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.
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.
In my last piece, I discussed a twitter argument between Raheem Kassam, one of the most vehement leaders of the ‘Leave’ campaign, and James Melville on Twitter. The row had erupted when Kassam started moaning about how left-wingers were reporting his comments to Twitter in the hope of getting him thrown off social media. Melville had no sympathy for him, telling Kassam that he was reaping what he sowed after Kassam had put up a piece himself telling his supporters to pile onto Melville’s own account and hound him off the Net. And when Kassam put up a picture of Churchill in a yellow vest, Melville rhetorically asked him if he knew that Winnie had been an opponent of far right extremism. Which brought forth the following tirade from Kassam:
Lol now this guy who had a meltdown yesterday is going through my feed picking out tweets he thinks he can argue with. Churchill defeated imperialistic (opposite of nationalist) National Socialism (opposite of right wing) which wanted a united Europe under Germany (EU)”.
Which was followed by
“Fascism is an ideology. Conservatism is a philosophy. There’s your first problem in attempting to link the two. Fascism concerned itself with a corporate-state nexus (like socialism, and indeed our current pro-EU system does). Your understanding of philosophy is poor”.
Zelo Street commented on the relationship between Nazism and imperialism by pointing out that the Nazis were nationalists, far right and had zero relationship to the EU. Melville himself pointed out that Hitler and the Nazis were Fascists and right-wing extremists.
Kassam’s views on Nazism, the EU, Fascism and socialism are bonkers, but they’re a staple part of much Libertarian and ‘Leave’ campaign ideology. They follow Jonah Goldberg, the author of Liberal Fascism, in believing that the Nazis were socialists because, er, the Nazis said they were. Despite the fact that Hitler staunchly supported capitalism, did not want to nationalize any firms except in emergencies, smashed the trade unions and put their leaders and activists in the concentration camps along with leaders and members of the mainstream German socialist party, the SDP, the Communist KPD, and anarchists, as well as other political opponents. Kassam also doesn’t seem to realize, or doesn’t want to admit, that the Nazis and Italian Fascists were very much nationalists. The full name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. And unlike the ‘socialist’ part of their name and programme, they took nationalism very seriously. Only ethnic Germans could legally be citizens. German industry, values and identity, or rather the Nazi version of them, were aggressively promoted.
The Italian Fascists were exactly the same, although they retained the trade unions, but incorporated them into the machinery of state government and control and made them subservient to the state and private industry. At the same time, private industry was aggressively promoted. The Fascists also aggressively pursued a policy of italianita – Italian national identity. Ethnic minorities within Italian borders, such as those communities which spoke German or one of the Yugoslavian languages were to be forced to become Italian and made to speak Italian. At the same time the party absorbed much of the ideology and finally the party of the Italian Nationalists, which was merged with the Fascists in 1922.
Kassam is right about Hitler wanting a united Europe under Germany. However, he did not want anything like the EU. The EU supposedly is a union of democratic states with equal status. It is not an empire nor an occupying power, although fanatics like UKIP have claimed it is. The claim that the Nazis were the founders of the EU is based on a piece of Nazi ideology devised later during the War when they were losing to Stalin and the Soviet Union. They weren’t enough blonde, ethnic Germans to fight the Russians, who were showing very clearly that they definitely weren’t the ‘subhumans’ of Nazi racial doctrine. So they tried to gain support from the occupied countries by spuriously claiming that Nazism stood for a united, capitalist Europe against the Communist threat. It was a piece of propaganda, nothing more. The real origins of EU lay in the 1950s with trade agreements between France and Germany and the establishment of the customs union between Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg – the ‘Benelux’ countries.
Then there’s Kassam’s claptrap about corporativism equals socialism. By corporativism they mean state control or regulation of capitalism. The hardcore Libertarians believe that only an economy absolutely run by private enterprise without any state regulation is really capitalist. But this situation has never existed. Governments since the Middle Ages have regulated industry to a greater or lesser degree, and industrialists, merchants and entrepreneurs have always sought state aid. For example, before Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations promoting laissez faire free trade, the dominant commercial ideology in Britain was mercantilism. This was a system of regulations governing British international trade. This included tying the colonies in North America and the Caribbean into a very constraining relationship with Britain and each other in which their exports were rigidly controlled in order to keep them serving the commercial interests of Britain.
From the ’50s to the end of the ’70s there was also a form of corporativism in Britain, in which the economy was subject to state planning in which the government consulted with both the industrialists and the trade unions. It was somewhat like the Fascist version, but within a democratic framework and pursued by both Labour and Tory governments. The current form of corporativism, in which private industry dominates and controls Congress and elected politicians through political donations and sponsorship, in return receiving government posts and determining government policy, is very much in the sole interests of private industry and capitalism.
But I’m not surprised Kassam doesn’t know anything about this. He is, after all, a hack with the extreme right-wing news organization, Breitbart, and has appeared several times in articles by the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organization Hope Not Hate because of his vicious islamophobia. As for his distinction between Conservatism and Fascism, this also doesn’t work. Fascism is notoriously fluid ideologically, and is therefore extremely difficult to define. In many ways, it was whatever line Mussolini thought was a good idea at the time. The Duce wrote a book defining it, The Doctrine of Fascism, but contradicted himself the next year by declaring that Fascism had no doctrine. It was a movement, not an ideology. As for Conservatism, while the Tory philosopher Roger Scruton in his 1980s book on it stated that it was largely ‘mute’, it is also ideological. As it stands now, it promotes private enterprise and attacks state involvement in industry and welfare provision. And a recent academic study quoted in the new edition of Lobster, issue 77, states that Conservative parties in the West are becoming more ideological and are increasingly resembling the authoritarian parties of the former Communist bloc.
Kassam is therefore utterly wrong. Socialism is not corporativism, and the modern form of corporativism is very definitely capitalist. The Nazis weren’t socialists, they were nationalists and imperialists, and were in no way the founders of the EU. But such distinctions clearly don’t matter to the extreme right-wing propagandists of Breitbart. And especially those, whose own islamophobia is shared by real, overt Fascists in the Alt Right.
Every now and then a Conservative defender of capitalism tries to argue that Nazism and Fascism were forms of Socialism. Jonah Goldberg tried it a few years ago in his book, Liberal Fascism, a Tory MP stood up in the European parliament a couple of weeks ago and made the same accusation, though he had to take it back and apologise. And Private Eye in recent weeks have also published a couple of letters from readers making the same claims.
Fascism did have Socialistic elements. Mussolini was originally a radical Socialist, who broke with the rest of the Italian Socialist movement in supporting Italy joining the First World War. The Fascist party was originally extremely left-wing in its programme of 1919. Its corporativism was not only based on the ideas of the right-wing Italian Nationalists, but also from part of the syndicalist movement, which moved away from demanding absolute workers’ control to advocating an industrial structure which included both capitalists and workers in a series of corporations set up to govern each industry, or sector of the economy. The Nazis also included socialist elements in their 1922 programme, such as the nationalization of firms and profit-sharing in industry, as well as the break-up of the department stores.
However, the Fascists and Nazis came to power through their alliance with business and the aristocracy. Both the Italian Fascists and Nazis in Germany were hostile to socialism, communism and workers’ trade unions. In Italy, they also allied with the Vatican to destroy the Populists, a party set up to represent Italian Roman Catholics against persecution by the Liberal state, which was distrusted by the Papacy because they considered it too radical. Once in power, the socialist elements of these parties’ programmes was soon jettisoned. Hitler declared that he had no intention of nationalizing businesses, unless they were badly run. He had the SA massacred in the Night of the Long Knives because this part of the Nazi party did take the socialist elements of party programme seriously. The word ‘socialist’ had only been included in the name of the Nazi party – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – against bitter opposition by some of its founders. Hitler stated that he did so in order to steal potential recruits from the real left-wing parties. Furthermore, the Nationalist intellectuals who first advocated a right-wing ‘socialist’ order in the 1920s stated that they did not refer to the nationalization of industry, but to the socialization of people to serve the state. And just before the Nazi seizure of power, Hitler made a speech to German industry stating that Nazism would protect private industry.
Robert A. Brady, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, made the capitalist nature of the Nazi regime very clear in his The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism (London: Victor Gollancz 1937). The book is a thorough description of German society under the Nazis – its ideology, social structure, the coordination of science, industry and agriculture, the instruments of power and the various party organisations used to recruit and control the masses. Brady states
The regime which the Nazis proceeded to establish is fairly described, by the very nature of the major interest which sponsored it, as adictatorship of monopoly capitalism. Its “fascism” is that of business enterprise organized on a monopoly basis, and in full command of all the military, police, legal and propaganda power of the state. (p. 33, emphasis in the original). He lays out the essential capitalist nature of the Nazi state as follows on pages 41-2.
1. Productive Property and natural resources are to be privately owned; freedom of contract is guaranteed (excepting to “aliens” and the peasants under the Inheritance laws).
2. Individual initiative, the business entrepreneur, conduct of business for profit (“reward for services performed”), and ownership (individual or stockholder) control are basic.
3. Business men are to be free, if “responsible” (“self-government in business”), to fix by agreement prices, production totals and quotas, marketing areas, and the conditions and terms of purchase and sale.
4. Stock and commodity exchanges, commission houses, brokers, and speculative transactions are inevitable and necessary for the conduct of “organic business.” (Business as usual.)
5. Heavy industries, particularly those catering to the military and foreign trade, are encouraged; large-scale units, unless “uneconomical” are to be kept intact; co-operatives are to be broken up.
6. The social class structure of society is sanctified, strengthened, made semi-hereditary, and hardened into caste lines (Standestaat, class state); the “Middle Class” are the Myrmidons of the Elite (Fuhrerstaat, leader state) and, as such, the backbone of the state.
7. Employers have practically complete control over workmen in regard to wages, hours, and working conditions. They must “take care” of their workmen-i.e. see that they are fed and do not grumble.
8. Collective bargaining is completely abolished; strikes are illegal; trade unions are forbidden; requests for wage increases are lese majeste. 9. Control is completely from on top; there is and can be no such thing as control or discussion of policies from below; the “leaders” decide all things as they see fit; each holds appointed office for indefinite periods at the will of his superior.
10. The National Socialist Party and the German State are one and inseparable, as spirit and body. Legislative, executive, and judicial authorities are fused together. The central government controls all local government and all activities in all their details.
11. Civil and military are fused together; as in the military there can be no freedom of speech, of assembly, of writing, of acting, of “thoughts.” “Anyone may grumble or criticize the government who is not afraid to go to a concentration camp.” (Goebbels).
12. Germany must be made self-sufficient at all costs. (Autarkie). 13. Non-Germans cannot be citizens; as a corollary, all Germans residing outside Germany either belong or owe allegiance to the Third Reich.
14 Communism (Bolshevism, Marxism) is the major enemy. There can be no such thing as equality of rights, opportunities, or income for classes, races, or sexes. The “broad masses” are fools and must be duped and led to meet the purposes of the elite (Herrenstaat). Class war is the major crime; material rewards for the rank and file sheer folly.
15. All sciences and “culture” must be co-ordinated and made to serve the purposes of the “leader,” “total,” “corporate” “master” (Herren)state. propaganda is the method. Propaganda knows neither right nor wrong, neither truth nor falsehood, but only what it wants.
In fact, business autonomy was severely limited by the imposition of the apparatus of state planning as Nazi Germany became a centrally planned economy similar to the Soviet Union, though in the case of Germany and Fascist Italy the economy was still very definitely capitalist private industry. Brady also goes on to discuss in his book how the Nazis celebrated and lauded the businessman as biologically superior through their social Darwinist ideology, and made sure that the leaders of industry, whether state-owned or private, were all drawn from the private sector.
Nazi rhetoric was anti-capitalist, but by this they meant free trade, which they identified with the Jews, just as they claimed the Jews were behind Socialism, Communism, the trade unions and other left-wing movements. They also borrowed some elements from Communism. Fellow Germans were ‘national comrades’, rather like the Marxist use of the term ‘comrade’ to describe a fellow Communist.
However, it is clear from this that Nazism was deeply Conservative and capitalist in its economic and social policies, and bitterly anti-socialist. It had socialist elements, but they were not taken seriously and only ever used as propaganda against the genuinely socialist parties and organisations. Any description of the Nazis as really socialist is utterly false and a lie, a rhetorical attempt to discredit contemporary socialism through guilt by association, and must be seen as such.
This is another, very well-informed rant by Richard ‘the Dick’ Coughlan. Coughlan’s a stand-up comic in his other job, and his videos on YouTube presumably are in the same style as his comedy shows. As you can tell by his signature farewell at the end ‘May God be less’, he’s also quite a militant atheist. I don’t support his atheism, but I am reblogging this because, like many of his other videos on race, it has some very important things to say about prejudice, and how things are really different from the way they’re presented by the Right.
In this video, he’s mostly concerned with attacking Nigel Farage for confusing American Jews with Zionism and the Israel lobby. Farage has his own show on LBC. The other day he took a call from ‘Ahmed’, who said that it was peculiar that everyone was talking about the way Russia interfered in the American elections, but no-one was talking about AIPAC’s and the Israeli’s interference. The man parodied in the Judge Dredd strip as ‘Bilious Barrage’, agreed, and said it was down to the fact that there were 6 million Jews in America. He then went on to talk a little more about how powerful and influential the Jewish lobby in America is.
Coughlan points out that this isn’t very much as a piece of racial prejudice, but it is nevertheless dangerous, as Farage has confused American Jews and the Zionist lobby. He’s afraid this will act as a kind of dog-whistle to promote anti-Semitism further amongst those with racist and far right-wing views. So Coughlan goes on to show how profoundly mistaken Farage is. Most Jews in America are profoundly liberal politically, and many are deeply critical about Israel’s religious and political constitution, and the treatment of the Palestinians. Israel’s biggest supporters aren’t Jewish Americans, but American Christians.
But before he gets on to this issue, he talks about some of the other news about the far right he finds amusing or irritating. Such as the fact that the blogger, Peter Sweden, has a YouTube channel, in which he devotes a nine minute video to discussing a kebab he bought in Norway. He also talks about Milo Yiannopolis briefly getting a job with the Daily Caller, presumably another right-wing media outlet. But he didn’t last there long. He was sacked, and the person, who hired him was also sacked. The Caller, Coughlan goes on to say, has some truly horrendous people working for it. But Yiannopolis was too much even for them.
I can’t say that I’m surprised Yiannopolis got sacked. But it probably has nothing to do with Milo’s own, very right-wing political views, where he’s attacked Blacks and non-Whites, feminism and ‘SJW’ – Social Justice Warriors – in general. No, it’s far more likely they got rid of Milo because of his comments defending paedophilia, comments which he later retracted. Sort of. Before recognising that he was also a victim through being abused by a Roman Catholic priest when he was 14.
Coughlan points out that Israel mostly attracts the support of very hardline, racist, anti-Islamic individuals and organisations like the English Defence League, Jihad Watch, Gert Wilders, Pamela Geller, and the hardline American Conservatives. The biggest organisation lobbying for Israel in the Land of the Free is the CUFI – Christians United For Israel. This was presided over by the Roman Catholic bigot, John Hagee, before his death, and had Jerry Falwell, the extreme right-wing Christian evangelist on its board. It has 2.5 million members. AIPAC – the largely Jewish Israeli lobbying group, is more influential, as it has more powerful and influential members. Here he runs through a list of American politicos. But its actual membership is much smaller -100,000. American Conservatives love Israel, because Israel’s a profoundly Conservative nation. In the 2012 elections, 65 per cent of Israelis favoured Mitt Romney. But extremely politically Conservative Jews, such as Pamela Geller and Jonah Goldberg, the author of Liberal Fascism, aren’t representative of American Jewry as a whole.
Coughlan points out that about 22 per cent of Jewish Americans aren’t religious. This is so high a percentage, that the census has had to create another category specifically for them. There are now two entries for Jews – one for religious Jews, and another for non-religious. American Jews are also overwhelmingly liberal. 65 per cent of them vote Democrat. The majority also support a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, and 66 per cent believe that Israel and an independent Palestine could co-exist peacefully. It’s just that their leaders don’t want to. 44 per cent of American Jews are opposed to Israel building further settlements in Palestinian territory. As for the theological view that Israel was given to the Jews by the Almighty, only 40 per cent of American Jews believe this. Which contrasts with the 82 per cent of American Christian Evangelicals, who think this is the case. And 77 per cent of American Jews have an unfavourable view of the orange simian creature, now skulking in the White House.
Regarding Israel’s religious constitution, 43 per cent of American Jews want synagogue and state to be separated. A further 20+ per cent want there to be more separation between synagogue and state, but not a total separation. He also notes the rise in Jewish concerns about anti-Semitism. Last year, in 2016, only 21 per cent of American Jews felt anti-Semitism to be a problem. This year, 2017, it has risen to 41 per cent.
And on social issues American Jews are very liberal. 90 per cent of American Jews, whether religious or not, support gay marriage and LGBT rights, as opposed to 50 per cent of Americans in general. They are also for gun control, against global warming, and do not support the war in Iraq nor the War on Terror.
Coughlan then discusses the size of the various Jewish denominations in America, and the political stance of the largest, the United Reform Judaism Union. 35 per cent of American Jews belong to Reform Judaism. The next largest Jewish denomination in America are the Conservatives, with 18 per cent, and then the Orthodox, with 10 per cent. The president of the URJU is Rabbi Robert Eric Yoffre. Yoffre ran unopposed as leader between 1996 and 2012. He’s very much in favour of equality, social justice and tolerance and religious dialogue, having spoken at Christian and Islamic religious conferences. But most people probably haven’t heard of him. And despite the size and numerical importance of this gentleman’s denomination, when he goes to Israel he is not treated as a rabbi. Because Israeli law does not recognise Reform Judaism as a denomination.
Coughlan states before he begins his discussion of real political and religious views of American Jews that he doesn’t intend to say anything about Israel, either for or against. This is simply about the facts about American Jewish opinion, as gleaned by polling groups like Pew Research.
He then continues his attack on Farage by stating that his conflation of ‘Jews’ with the Israel lobby will act as a dog-whistle to anti-Semites with stupid conspiracy theories about Jewish power and influence. And while he’s at it, he also wonders why Farage is no longer talking about Brexit. He should, because he spent 20 years campaigning for it, as well as being massively in favour of Trump. But now it’s a complete failure, supported only by bitter, racist Little Englanders.
As for stupid conspiracy theories, Farage’s conflation of the Jews with the Israel lobby may only be a small piece of prejudice, but he wonders what’s next: Farage raving about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, perhaps? This is the notorious Tsarist forgery, which supposedly revealed that there was a massive Jewish conspiracy to enslave gentiles around the world. It was concocted by the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, or Department 4, to convince the Tsar to increase the persecution of the Jews further. It’s a deeply malign document that has inspired racists and Nazis since its publication, such as Oswald Mosley in Britain and Adolf Hitler in Germany. Coughlan then concludes that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are so important, that he’ll probably produce another video debunking them.
This is video is really good, as it gives the facts and figures to support some of the arguments I’ve put up before now, stating that Judaism and Zionism are entirely separate, and that many Jews are deeply critical of Israel. The veteran Jewish critique of Zionism and the Israeli lobby, Professor Norman Finkelstein, has made the point that historically support for Israel was very much a minority opinion amongst Jewish Americans. Many Jews in America and over here support the Palestinians and the campaign for their civil and political rights, joining groups like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign against Israel. And in Israel itself there are proud Jews, who also protest against the house seizures and demolitions, the construction of the illegal settlements, and the brutalisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their ancestral lands.
This probably explains the sheer venom of the Israel lobby, and its organs in the Labour party, in persecuting them, as well as gentile critics of Israel. I’ve pointed out time and again how the majority of people suspended and expelled from the Labour for anti-Semitism were nothing of the sort. They were very largely decent, anti-racist men and women, who hated anti-Semitism as another form of the racism they detested. They opposed Israel, or at least the brutalisation of the Palestinians, because they saw Israel as a White, European settler state, based on the same racist, imperialist and colonialist attitudes towards indigenous peoples, that has led to the brutalisation of other indigenous peoples and the theft of their land by Europeans across the globe.
However, the Israeli lobby both here and in America has libelled and vilified these people as anti-Semites, even when its obvious to everyone else that they aren’t. Those so maligned have included self-respecting Jews, who have themselves been the victims of real, anti-Semitic abuse or assault. This does not matter. Zionist and pro-Israel organisations, like the horribly misnamed Jewish Labour Movement and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, have adopted a tortuous definition of anti-Semitism, which deliberately conflates it with opposition to Israel. And so it doesn’t matter how genuinely anti-racist a person is, whether they have a positive view of Jews, or simply have no strong opinion of them one way or another. Or if they’re Jewish, how observant they are, or otherwise self-respecting. Simply for denouncing Israel’s attack on Jews, they’re attacked as self-hating and anti-Semitic. And many people, including the British comedian Alexei Sayle, have noticed that the majority of the victims of the witch-hunt in the Labour party over this issue have been Jewish.
It looks very much like it’s because these organisations know how weak their position is, and how repugnant very many ordinary people, including Jews, find their persecution of the Palestinians. And so to keep up the image that Jew = Zionism/ Israel, as dictated by Likudnik doctrine, they have to try to marginalise and vilify those who deny it. And that means particularly persecuting Jews.
One of the books that was published a few years ago on the Israel Lobby noted that the lobby affected American elections through the funding of political candidates by organisations and Jewish businesses. AIPAC and similar groups give ample funds to pro-Israel candidates. And where an aspiring congressman or senator is critical of Israel, they will donate heavily to their opponent, thus ensuring that they will lose the election.
But as Coughlan has shown, not all American Jews support Israel, or at least not its maltreatment and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Some American Jewish businessmen even donate to Palestinian charities and organisations, as well as Israeli. One of them is featured in the book Bushwhacked, published a few years ago, which exposes everything nasty and corrupt about George Dubya. This gentleman is included because he stands out against the bigotry and intolerance of the Bush administration.
Others have pointed out that Christian Zionism is much larger, and has a very theological agenda. It’s adherents believe that in order for Jesus to return to Earth in the Second Coming, the Jews must return to the Holy Land and Israel restored. This will culminate in a final battle between the forces of good and evil. Twenty years ago the forces of evil were the Communist bloc. Now it’s Islam. These people are a real, terrifying danger to world peace.
And the Israel lobby also has a profound connection to real anti-Semites going right back to the Nazis and the Ha’avara agreement. As anti-Zionists like Tony Greenstein and very many others have documented, the pioneers and leaders of the Zionist movement were all too willing to deal with anti-Semites, because they believed that increased anti-Semitism against diaspora Jews would benefit Zionism by encouraging more Jews to emigrate to Israel. Hence the Judischer Rundschau, the main Zionist newspaper in 1930s Germany, hailed the infamous Nuremberg laws, and urged its readers to wear their yellow star with pride. This was before the Holocaust, which the magazine did not foresee, but it’s still chilling nonetheless. And the head of the Zionist movement in Hungary during the War, Kasztner, allowed the Nazis to deport a greater number of Jews to the Death Camps than may otherwise have occurred, because he hoped that they would also spare some and send them to Israel instead.
But if you dare mention these historical facts, you’re an anti-Semite.
And more recently, the real Nazis and anti-Semites connected with Trump’s administration, like the Alt-Right ‘White Zionist’ Richard Spencer, have very strongly supported Israel. Spencer’s even been on Israeli TV. And Sebastian Gorka, a former member of Trump’s administration with extensive connections to the Hungarian Fascist right, has also been one of the guests at the Herzliya conference, the annual jamboree for the Israeli military. Many real Fascists and anti-Semites support Israel because they see it as another way of getting rid of their domestic Jews, by forcing them to emigrate there.
Judaism is certainly not synonymous with Zionism. And some Zionists and Zionist organisations will collaborate with Fascists and anti-Semites against diaspora Jews, in the hope of boosting their country’s population.
Reichwing Watch is a YouTuber, who puts extremely interesting and pertinent videos about the racist and Libertarian right in America. In this short clip, he shows the very strong similarities between modern right-wing Libertarian and Fascism, simply by putting extracts from the speeches and comments by Libertarians like Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Alt-Right vlogger Stefan Molyneaux with Adolf Hitler and Nazi propaganda films.
Both Libertarians and Hitler shared a hatred of the state and a concern for the ‘race’ or ‘volk’, as well as a bitter rejection of parliamentary democracy, majority rule, humanitarianism and Socialism. Instead, they embraced Social Darwinism and the preservation of capitalism and private property.
The clips include Ron Paul stating that the Founding Fathers stood for individual liberty, not democracy, and decrying democracy as dangerous. This is followed by quotes from Hitler about the destructive nature of democracy on the ‘volk’, and how the man is always more important than the majority. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, described as a Libertarian theorist, stated that in a Libertarian state there would be no room for democrats and Socialists, and both would have to be isolated and expelled. There are also quotes from Ron Paul attacking majority rule, Stefan Molyneux stating that most Libertarians are Whites, and therefore peace will is threatened by demographic trends which means that they will be overtaken by Blacks as the most numerous racial group in America. Which is juxtaposed with Hitler stating, ‘We stand only for peace’.
Ayn Rand, her eyes bugging, talks about how humanitarianism is a threat, followed by Adolf saying much the same. There’s a clip from the Nazi propaganda movie, Die Erbe (‘Inheritance’) in which a group of white-coated scientists watch two beetles fighting, in order to demonstrate the ‘survival of the fittest’. Which is followed by another Libertarian arguing in a debate that freedom means that society shouldn’t be required to take care of the weakest.
Interspersed with these clips are comments from Noam Chomsky, observing that the existence of private property, owned and managed by an elite group, is a form of dictatorship.
This is a very effective reply to the argument you hear from the Right, and particularly the American Right, that Socialism, and by extension, state intervention as a whole, is Fascistic, ’cause the Nazis claimed to be ‘National Socialists’. This point of view was stated very firmly a little while ago by Jonah Goldberg in his book, Liberal Fascism.
This shows that the reverse is also true. Libertarianism, which claims to be a right-wing form of anarchism, also shares very strong ideological links to Fascism and Nazism. Which perhaps isn’t surprising, considering that Von Mises, one of the founders of Libertarianism and ‘Austrian Economics’, served as a minister in Engelbert Dolfuss’ ‘astrofascist’ government before the Nazi annexation of Austria, when he fled to America. Both Libertarianism and Fascism are reactions against socialism, and the extension of liberty to minority groups. This meant the organised working class, women and ethnic minorities, who were attacked as the internal enemies of the racial group.
In the 1980s Libertarianism, or Anarcho-Capitalism, was presented very much as a form of anarchism. But now it’s becoming very clear that it’s a form of Fascism in its elitism, racism and anti-Socialism.
Tory MEP Daniel Hannan – claims BNP are Socialist, while wanting to privatise the NHS.
I’ve blogged before on the Tory claim that Fascism, Nazism and, in Britain, the BNP, are forms of Socialism. There is indeed a perfectly respectable academic debate about how revolutionary the various European Fascist movements were. Mussolini started out as an extreme Left-wing Socialist, who broke with the Italian Socialist party in his demands that Italy should enter the First World War. He then moved increasingly and opportunistically to join the Italian Right, and in the red scare following the invasion of the factories by radical Italian workers promoted Fascism was a force, which would defend private property and the middle class against the threat of socialist revolution. The Nazi party in Germany also contained several Socialist demands in its 1926 political programme, such as profit-sharing and the confiscation of excessive profits from the War. These were also ignored, with the exception of a half-hearted attempt by Hitler to nationalise the department stores, when the Nazis finally came to power. Again, this was partly achieved through Hitler appealing to the middle classes, offering to defend them from Socialism and the organised working class on the way hand, and big business on the other.
The allegation that Fascism is a form of Socialism re-emerged a few years ago with the Republicans in America at about the same time Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was published. It’s an attempt to smear Socialism or an kind of progressive politics, which can be linked to socialism, like welfare provision or greater state regulation of the economy through a simple process of guilt by association and by suggesting some kind of equivalence. The argument is roughly that if Fascism is a form of Socialism, so, therefore, Socialism is also a threat to freedom and human life, like Fascism. Good American citizens should therefore reject Socialism, or anything that looks even remotely like it, such as Obamacare, and should vote for small-state Republicans instead. The most extreme example of this attitude was the extreme Right-wing American TV presenter, Glenn Beck. After Anders Breivik committed his horrific massacre of the children attending a summer camp run by the Norwegian Socialist party’s youth organisation, Beck went on to describe them as like the Hitler Youth in Germany. The reason for this vile accusation was that the Norwegian Socialists had criticised Israel for its policies towards the Palestinians. Beck saw this as demonstrating that the Socialists were anti-Semites, and therefore exactly like the Nazi party.
Over here the accusation that Fascism is a form of Socialism has been repeatedly made by the Tory MEP for Dorset and Telegraph columnist, Daniel Hannan. Guy Debord’s Cat has produced a detailed refutation of one of one of his columns making this argument, which I’ve also reblogged. As far as I’ve been able to make out so far, the accusation was first made in the context of modern Tory politics by the Libertarian wing of the Conservative party in 1977. The group Aims of Industry published an attack by Stephen Ayres with the title The National Front is a Socialist Front. Ayres was an activist for NAFF, the National Association For Freedom, which later became the Freedom Association. The National Front rejected the accusation, and in return criticised the NAFF in the pages of its journal, Spearhead, for ‘simply echoing the voice of the new Toryism by emphasising the freedoms and rights that the individual should possess vis-à-vis the state but is afraid to mention the duties that the individual should hold towards the State and Nation.’ (See Larry O’Hara, ‘Notes from the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92, Part 1, 1974-83’, in Lobster 23: 15-20 (16, n. 30, 19). lobster’s editor, Robin Ramsay, has suggested that Thatcherism was based on Libertarianism, rather than the authoritarian Fascism of the BNP/ NF Right, as it seemed at the time. This seems to be true. Thatcher was strongly influenced by von Hayek and the monetarism of the Chicago School. As this has now become the dominant ideology within British Conservatism and the Republicans in America, so the Libertarian accusation that Fascism is somehow a form of Socialism continues to be made.
In fact, Libertarians also have a history of backing extremely Right-wing, illiberal movements. Guy Debord’s Cat has pointed out that von Hayek himself served in the government of the Austro-Fascist, Vollmar Dollfuss. Dollfuss banned the Austrian Socialist party from the fear that they were organising a Revolution, and established a Corporate state like that of Mussolini’s Italy following the theories of Othmar Spann. Fascist Austria was more tolerant than Nazi Germany. A range of political opinions were permitted with the exception of Socialism. Nevertheless, it was still a Fascist state. After the War, von Hayek went to Chile to view the operation of the monetarist policies put in place by General Pinochet’s military dictatorship. And Libertarianism elsewhere also had a history of supporting murderous extreme Right-wing dictatorships. I distinctly remember the accusation that one of the Central American dictatorships and its death squads was also supported by the Freedom Association.
While Fascism did contain left-wing elements, in practice it allied itself with the Right as the defender of property and private industry. The accusation that it, and its British forms, the NF and now the BNP, is really a form of Socialism, was rejected by the NF itself, and comes from the Libertarians, who have themselves supported brutal Right-wing dictatorships. The claim has been made to present the Tory party as the only authentic party representing and defending freedom. As has been shown recently by the authoritarian stance of successive Conservative administrations, including Maggie Thatcher and her policy of the strong state, this simply isn’t the case. Moreover, it supports the economic freedoms of industry against the welfare of the working and lower middle class majority, leaving them exploited by their social and political superiors. They support freedom, but only for a very narrow, select, and extremely wealthy few. For everyone else, it’s wage slavery.
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