Next Monday, 26th October 2020, BBC’s Storyville documentary follows artist Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog, as he tries to wrest his image back from the Alt Right. The programme’s on BBC 4 at 10.00 pm, and is entitled ‘Pepe the Frog: Feels Good Man’ The blurb for the programme on page 75 of this coming week’s Radio Times runs
Pepe, a cartoon frog drawn in a deliberately crude and garish style, has become a symbol of the “alt-right”; its use is shorthand for a social media poster proudly announcing themselves to be a troll at best and a full neo-Nazi at worst.
But the little green guy was originally part of a harmless cartoon strip drawn by illustrator Matt Furie and, rather than conceding that sometimes artists lose control of their creations, he’s fought back. We watch as Furie takes on both anonymous troublemakers and the big beasts of the American right-wing media – the big problem being that, arguably, if you engage with them at all, you’ve already lost.
Another blurb on page 77 says
The story of how a cute cartoon character morphed into an international hate symbol after being hijacked by the “alt-right”. This film in the Storyville strand follows Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe, as he fights tooth and nail to wrest back his amiable amphibian from the dark forces that appropriated him.
The Pepe meme as a symbol of the Alt Right must have been around for at least a decade now, and it’s been scrawled by noxious extreme rightists all over the place, from the internet to real objects. It also seems to be connected to the slogan, ‘Free Kekistan’, which is also mouthed by the Alt Right and their supporters. I think one of the issues raised against Sargon of Gasbag, Paul Joseph Watson and Count Dankula when they tried to join UKIP was that a crowd of people, claiming to be their supporters, got drunk and started waving Pepe the Frog flags and shouting ‘Free Kekistan’.
I realise that Furie’s got an uphill battle on his hands to win back ownership of his creation from the trolls, racists and Nazis. There have been countless other creators, writers and artists, who’ve similarly lost control of theirs over the years. The Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta is a case in point. Unfortunately, after the film the rights don’t belong to the strip’s creator, the legendary Alan Moore. Rather they belong to the film company, which is very much the kind of exploitative global corporation Moore despises. It’s because of this and similar issues over creators’ rights that has left Moore very bitter about aspects of the comics industry. However, the meaning of the Guy Fawkes mask as an image has remained the same, and has been very much used as such by protestors demonstrating against forces and ideologies like global capitalism, racism and official persecution and injustice. It isn’t as though it’s meaning has been co-opted and perverted by those forces.
This could be a very interesting programme indeed. And no matter how difficult it is, I wish Furie all the best in his struggle to get Pepe back from the trolls and Fascists.
Paul Joseph Watson is another right-wing Youtuber. He used to be bonkers conspiracy theory peddler Alex Jones’ British buddy on Infowars, before he split with him and returned to Blighty. Leaving Jones to peddle his overpriced quack health supplements and mad ideas about the globalists running the world on behalf of demonic aliens, Obama and Hillary Clinton being demonic alien cyborgs set on imprisoning Americans in FEMA camps alone. Like Carl Benjamin, he’s also responsible for breaking UKIP. He entered the party along with Mark ‘Nazi pub’ Meechan. And the rest of the party, who really didn’t want to look like a bunch of racists, left in response.
But despite his extreme right-wing views and his opposition to immigration, I really don’t think it’s fair to call Watson a racist. And he does have a point about Black Lives Matter. BLM is centred around the perception that Black people are more likely to be killed by the cops than Whites, and that the police are institutionally racist. But this isn’t born out by the statistics.
Five years ago in May 2015 Watson posted this video, ‘Racist Facts White People Daren’t Talk About’ on his YouTube channel. He cites official government, police, FBI and academic statistics to show that Blacks aren’t killed by the cops more than Whites. But they do have more encounters with the rozzers because they disproportionately commit more violent crime.
He begins the video by showing that half of the police officers responsible for killing Freddy Gray, which set up of the Baltimore riots, were Black. But this fact is ignored. Black Lives Matter is about exploiting White guilt while ignoring the real causes of confrontations between Blacks and police.
Blacks commit disproportionately more violent crime than Whites. Blacks constitute just 13 per cent of the American population but commit half of all homicides. Department of Justice statistics from 1980 to 2008 show that Blacks were responsible for 52 per cent of all homicides compared to 48 per cent by Whites. FBI statistics for 2013 show that Blacks committed 38 per cent of murders compared to 31 per cent of Whites. From 2011 to 2013 38.5 per cent of those arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault were Black. Young Black men between the ages of 15 to 34, who comprise just 3 per cent of the American population, are responsible for the proportion of these crimes from Black people listed above.
Whites, on the other hand, are twice as likely to be killed by the cops. Data from the Centre for Disease Control from 1999 to 2011 show that 2,151 Whites were shot by the police, compared to 1,130 Blacks. But as Blacks commit the same numbers of offences as Whites, then the numbers of Blacks shot should also be equal.
He also presents evidence to show that Blacks are far more like to commit crimes against Whites than the reverse. He claims that Blacks are eight times more likely to commit crimes against Whites than Whites are against Blacks. He cites FBI stats from 2007 that state that Black males were 40 per cent more likely to assault Whites as the reverse. And interracial rape is almost wholly Black on White.
He quotes the academics James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein , who stated in 1985 that the higher rates of crime amongst Black Americans cannot be denied, even allowing for discrimination in the justice system. Every official statistic shows Blacks overrepresented people arrested and imprisoned for street crimes.
And Blacks are more likely to be involved in violent confrontations with the police. Here Watson makes the point that this does not justify police brutality, but it does refute the BLM allegation that the cops are racist or solely brutal towards Blacks.
This raises the issue of whether Blacks are unfairly targeted and framed by the police. This allegation is debunked by looking at offenders described as Black by the victims. The number of Blacks arrested correlates with the numbers of perps described as Black by their victims.
Watson also goes on to consider the factors responsible for the greater incidence of criminality in the Black community. Poverty is one factor responsible for disproportionately predisposing Blacks towards violent crime, exacerbated by family breakdown. But there is also the problem that there is an element in Black subculture that actively celebrates criminality. This is encouraged by the White liberal media. After the Baltimore riots the media justified the violence directed against Black owned businesses. This is racist, and it leads to more police brutality.
He states that police brutality is a problem in the US. But the real problem is the violent criminality in the Black community. But until this becomes part of the national conversation the real, underlying issues will not be resolved. He concludes that by keeping silent about this, Black leaders and White liberals are responsible for maintaining a vicious cycle of violence.
Obviously this is very controversial stuff. There have been complaints and campaigns for decades about the reporting of crimes committed by Blacks to prevent the automatic association of Blacks with criminality and violence. This has now got to the point where many people assume that a perp must be Black, if his race is not mentioned in any news reports as there are obviously no such delicacies about the reporting of crimes by Whites. 20 years ago this resulted in a reversal of racial prejudices. A poll of the British public taken about then found that White youths were the most distrusted section of the British populace.It’s undoubtedly true that Blacks have been the victims of massive discrimination and prejudice by Whites down the centuries. Highly discriminatory legislation was put in place to keep them down and segregated after the abolition of slavery in America. And there was considerable, vicious racism against them over here. I’ve Black friends, who’ve had terrible experiences.
Black Lives Matter’s assertion that police are prejudiced against Blacks also has a basis in fact. The police were, but I don’t think it’s true so much now. As I’ve said in previous articles, I’ve had relatives and friends in the police who very definitely weren’t. And this ingrained prejudice against the police has caused terrible misperceptions of intent when the cops have gone to help Black people. Years ago back in the 1990s I was on a sociology course as part of a postgraduate degree I wanted to do on British Islam. The lecturer told us that we had to be aware how our views of events didn’t necessary match those of others. One of these examples was a case in America, where a Black woman collapsed in the street. Two White cops went to help her, but other Blacks automatically assumed that they were attacking her and an angry crowd gathered. This was an instance where Black prejudice against the police, which I don’t doubt came from previous experience, was actively harming them by preventing the rozzers from helping that poor woman.
Watson has the attitude that the liberals and the media are keeping silent about the real reasons for Black confrontation with the police, as they wish to keep them dependent on the state. This is the usual conservative nonsense about welfare dependency. I think one of the reasons Britain did not have the same level of violent crime until the last couple of decades or so was because we had a functioning welfare state, or at least some semblance of one, which meant that in the absence of properly paid work people weren’t faced with the choice of robbing or selling drugs to keep body and soul together.
I’m not great fan of Watson, and certainly don’t share his arch-Tory, Brexiteer opinions. But I think that the facts are behind him in this case. And this does need to be recognised, because without it nothing will change.
Even if it discredits Black Lives Matter’s essential assertion that more Blacks are killed by police.
More hilarity now, though it’s unintentional and comes courtesy of Alex Jones’ British pal, Paul Joseph Watson. Jones is the bonkers American conspiracy theorist responsible for Infowars. This was the internet show that told its audience that the globalists were going to take over the world, stripping us of our freedoms and even our humanity. Obama was going to declare a state of emergency and force Americans in FEMA camps, commencing the mass cleansing of the population. The Democrats were all secretly Satanists and paedophiles. They and big business were in league with aliens/ and or demons to take over the world and create the one-world Satanic superstate of fundamentalist Christian end times theology. Barack Obama was declared to be the Antichrist because he smelt and had flies buzzing round him. Hillary was a lesbian cyborg, who practised witchcraft. NASA was running child slave labour camps on Mars. Feminists and gay rights activists are transhumanists, who want to turn everybody into gender neutral cyborgs. They’re coming to take away Americans’ guns. And the government is putting things in the water that ARE TURNING THE FRICKIN’ FROGS GAY.
It’s a fair question whether Jones actually believes any of this rubbish, or is just exploiting it for the sake of viewers. He was one of the major purveyors of the batshit insane conspiracy theories that are a genuine threat to decent political life. Thanks to Jones’, the bereaved parents of children murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre have been subject to abuse because Jones declared that the massacre didn’t happen and they were just ‘crisis actors’. A Boston pizza parlour has also been subject to abuse and even an intrusion from an armed man after Jones declared that it was at the centre of a Democrat paedophile ring and that the abuse children were kept in a dungeon in the basement. It isn’t, and there is no basement and no children. The gunman had been taken in by Jones’ bilge, and had come to free the kids he genuinely believed were imprisoned there. After being shown he was wrong, he gave himself up peacefully. It’s a mercy that no-one was killed.
Thanks to antic like the above, Jones has been thrown off a series of internet platforms so that his public profile, and his income, have taken a massive hit. And Paul Joseph Watson, after hanging out with him, has returned to Blighty. He was one of the three, who managed to destroy UKIP under Gerard Batten. When he and another two internet personalities from the far right, Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin joined UKIP, prompting those of more moderate views to walk out. The party was already losing members to Farage’s latest vehicle for his colossal political ego, the Brexit Party, and the entry of Watson, Benjamin and Meechan just about finished it off.
Coarse jokes have been made about the precise nature of the relationship between Jones and Watson. One theory is that Watson split from Jones because of the latter’s views about Britain’s NHS. One commenter to a video about Jones and Watson jokingly suggested that Watson was over here because he was tired of being the object of the sexual attentions of Jones and one of the others at Infowars. But whatever the reason, Watson is over here, he’s looking for attention, and he’s angry. And to everyone else, it’s hilarious.
Zelo Street has posted up a rip-roaring piece about Watson going berserk at Piers Morgan on Twitter. Watson wants to debate him, but Morgan’s got better things to do like torment the government in interviews, and has simply blocked him. This has sent the man dubbed ‘Twatson’ by his detractors into what Molesworth used to describe as ‘a fearful bate’. And so he’s poured forth a stream of abuse directed at Morgan on Twitter, beginning with this delightful message.
“Cowardly little bitch. Afraid of the fact that I’m more popular and definitely more attractive than you. Mercenary twat. Debate me, you yellow belly crusty boomer sellout fraud cuck wanker dickhead”.
And there’s more, much more. He rants that Morgan is afraid to debate him because he’s more intelligent, youthful and handsome. And his spirit animal is some kind of bird of prey. He’s not a misogynist, because when he was at school his mother and grandmother would beat up any kid who picked on him. Nor is he an INCEL. He has no trouble picking up girls, especially Muslims. That still doesn’t alter the fact that he is anti-feminist, and has very islamophobic views.
One of the staples of comedy is a character massively losing their temper, like Donald Duck in some of the Disney cartoons. There’s a similar comedic value in watching Watson explode at Piers Morgan’s refusal to get drawn into debating him. Although perhaps we shouldn’t laugh. As Frankie Howerd used to say, ‘Oh, don’t mock. Doooon’t mock! It’s rude to mock the afflicted.’ But faced with such a massive tantrum, it’s very had to follow Howerd’s command of ‘titter ye not’.
Zelo Street concludes their article about this with ‘Piers Morgan is, for all his faults, successful and well-off. And Paul Watson … isn’t.’ And it’s sending Watson up the wall to the immense amusement of everyone else.
Yesterday Mike put up a piece reporting that the Grime artist, Stormzy, had been misrepresent by ITV as claiming that Britain was totally racist. One of the broadcaster’s hacks had asked him if he thought Britain was racist. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘100 per cent’. Now it should be obvious even to the meanest intelligence that what he meant was that he believed 100 per cent that Britain was racist, not that Britain is 100 per cent racist. But we live in a ‘post-truth’ age, where the media is feeding us all kinds of lies, half-truths and distortions. Stormzy was pro-Labour and pro-Corbyn, and after the Beeb and its lead smear merchant, Laura Kuenssberg, had spent the election belittling Labour and promoting the Tories, it seems that ITV had decided it was their turn. There was an immediate backlash which resulted in the broadcaster releasing a statement retracting their claims about Stormzy, but which significantly did not include an apology.
The peeps on Twitter were not impressed. Mike has put up a number of tweets attacking ITV for this from people like Another Angry Voice, Laura Murray, the comedian and I journo Shappi Khorsandi, and Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar. Murray and Sarkar both noted that Stormzy was being smeared after Britain had elected Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. A racist, who talked about ‘picanninies with watermelon smiles’. Sarkar noted that Johnson also says he runs away from Black boys, Nigerians are obsessed with money and uses the N- and C- word for Blacks. Oh yes, and Britain is a country that illegal deported Black British citizens. But Britain isn’t racist, and it’s extraordinarily offensive to say that it does.
And after the Tory election victory that put Johnson into No. 10, I really wouldn’t have blamed Stormzy if he did believe that Britain was totally racist. Because as Murray and Sarkar note, 14 million people elected one. And it also looks like the broadcaster was using the same trick on Stormzy that the Sun in 1987 used to try to put the public off voting for Diane Abbott. They put a picture of her up in a feature on Labour MPs with left-wing or otherwise dangerous or offensive opinions, at least according to the Scum, claiming that she had said, ‘All White people are racist’. And now they misrepresented Stormzy to make it look like he had said something similar. The right-wing media in 1987 as part of their campaign against the Labour party deliberately misrepresented Black discontent not as resistance to racism, but as Black racism. And this looks very much the same tactic. Stormzy’s political views could be discounted, because he was yet another Black anti-White racist. That was the impression given.
Stormzy himself issued a very forthright attack on the smear. He declared, in language that in Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home is described as ‘colourful metaphors’, that all the publications and media outlets distorting his words could perform oral sex for him, and should not bother asking for anything from him in the future.
Mike comments on this affair
The mainstream – Tory – media will take every opportunity to mislead the public about the opinions, actions and philosophy of those of us who want a better deal for everybody, rather than a bigger slice of pie for the few who are already grossly obese while everybody else is starving.
They’ll do it in the knowledge that most of the people they are misrepresenting do not have the means to challenge them.
And when they are exposed, they’ll simply change their headlines, happy in the knowledge that the damage is done.
And now today Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin is chuckling over a hashtag campaign calling Stormzy a ‘bellend’. Sargon is, of course, the man, who killed UKIP along with Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and Paul Joseph Watson. A man so right-wing, racist and sexist that the UKIP branch in Swindon asked him to be deselected as one of their candidates for the south-west in this year’s Euro election. Gloucestershire UKIP disbanded when they heard he’d been selected, and he was greeted with anti-racism demonstrations when he turned up in Bristol as part of his election tour, and had milkshakes and fish thrown at him Truro and other places. Sargon’s support of this hashtag campaign tells you all you need to know about the racists supporting ITV’s smear. It comes after a similar hashtag campaign against Owen Jones yesterday by supporters of Rachel Riley and the Alt Right. Which reveals exactly who some of her supporters are.
And with this latest attack on Stormzy, it shows how Johnson’s victory has emboldened the real racists in this country.
Remember Sargon of Akkad? He was the internet personality who helped to wreck UKIP. This suffered a crisis when former leader Nigel Farage left to start his own rival bunch of squadristi, the Brexit Party. Which as any fule kno was actually a private company, so that only Fuhrer Farage could make any decisions. Farage took a large chunk of UKIP’s membership with him, and so Supreme Leader Gerard Batten tried to revitalise the party by recruiting a group of far right internet personalities. This were Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars, Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan of Nazi pug infamy, and Sargon. The result was that much of the remaining membership, who considered themselves moderates and non-racist, left. The party was then taken over by Dick Braine, and collapsed shortly afterwards in acrimonious abuse and litigation threats.
Sargon, however, like Hatey Katie Hopkins, seems to have gone back to the Tory party. He’s published a series of videos on YouTube celebrating the Tory election victory. But one of these was also his comment on an article in the Metro reporting that Muslims are frightened by a rise in racism after the Tory victory. So frightened, in fact, that many of them are considering leaving Britain.
Sargon, who somehow believes he’s ‘moderate left’ despite being a libertarian ‘classical liberal’, and opponent of feminism and anti-racism, seemed to find all this highly amusing. He guffawed merrily and sneered at left-wingers correctly observing that these fears were caused by Johnson’s racism. British Muslims’ fears, he seemed to think, weren’t due to a real increase in racism, but because they’re still somehow outsiders and not really British. Johnson stated that the burqa isn’t a British custom and that in British society people showed their face. Muslims should adapt to the mores of host of the host society. Other groups, Blacks, Jews, and Hindus, and so on, were behind Britishness and the Conservative Party – Sargon has posted at least one video claiming the Tory election victory is a victory for ‘Team Britain’. Why weren’t the Muslims? And they were free to go. No-one was stopping them, like some minorities are prevented from emigrating in Islamic society.
Now I actually share Sargon’s views on the burqa and its complete coverage of a woman’s face and body. So, he would no doubt be surprised to know, does George Galloway, the former leader of the Respect Party, who has been attacked for being pro-Muslim, pro-Palestinian and far Left. Galloway pointed out when Johnson first made his comments about the burqa that only a small percentage of Muslim women actually wore it. But Johnson’s comments were seen as an attack on the Muslim community generally, and did provoke an increase in anti-Muslim violence. These fears aren’t idle, but deadly serious. One woman was stabbed to death in a racist attack because she was wearing a burqa.
I realise perfectly that there are problems with integration in some sections of the Muslim community. I am also fully aware how repressive and undemocratic many Islamic countries are. But that doesn’t mean that innocent Muslims in this country should feel that they are somehow regarded as less than full citizens and vulnerable to abuse and worse.
And let’s point out the racial double standards here. When the ultra-Zionists were claiming that Jews were considering leaving the UK because Jeremy Corbyn was an ‘existential threat’ to Britain’s Jewish community, this was trumpeted not just by the right-wing Jewish press, but also by Britain’s right-wing media. It was something that Labour should be thoroughly ashamed about, and marked the party and Corbyn as unfit for government.
But when Muslims start saying that they’re under threat and considering leaving, Sargon and people like him seem to regard this as amusing and view it with an attitude of ‘good riddance’. Or else, as Zelo Street has pointed out in their piece today on the fears of the Muslim community, the media actively ignores it and hacks like the Spectator’s Douglas Murray write articles attacking figures from ‘the intolerant left’ like Grace Blakely and Jo Swinson in order to distract attention from it.
It’s disgraceful that any of Britain’s ethnic minorities should feel unsafe in this country, whether they are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians or whoever. That the press in general is ignoring this issue, or in the case of Douglas Murray, actively trying to divert attention away from it, shows how deep-seated Tory islamophobia is. As well as exposing how cynical their professed concern over anti-Semitism in the Labour party.
Johnson’s victory is emboldening the racists and Islamophobes. And that’s a problem for everyone.
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:
This is another satirical video from those merry funsters at JOE. Unlike the others I’ve posted, it’s not musical. It simply pokes fun at Farage and his megalomaniac ambitions as a kind of mini-me of Trump. It seems to be based on footage of a Trump rally at which a small boy came on to the stage. Except that the child’s head has been replaced with Farage’s.
The video begins with Trump introducing Farage to the crowd as the man behind Brexit. Mini-Farage then walks on stage, to be picked up by Trump. The Orange Buffoon asks the lad what he’s called. Mini-Farage answers, ‘Well, people in Oxfordshire call me Farage’. Trump also asks him if he’d like to go, or stay with Trump. After thinking about it, Farage replies ‘Stay with Trump’.
The video comes from 2016 when Farage and UKIP were far stronger than they were. If memory serves me right, it was before Farage left to found the Brexit Party and UKIP was taken over by Batten, who introduced into it the far right internet personalities Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and Paul Joseph Watson. Instead of boosting UKIP’s fortunes, their arrival has very effectively destroyed it, leading to the massive implosion after the local and European elections and the acrimonious recriminations that have broken out since.
Farage now appears to be pinning his hopes on becoming a political force with the Brexit party. But he’s now stood a very great number of his candidates down in Tory constituencies so as not to split the right-wing Brexit vote, the Tories are demanding the removal of the rest of his people, and the former candidates themselves are angry and considering legal action. And he himself is not standing for election, as he’s never personally won an election before. His view of himself and his party as becoming a significant power in British politics is thus probably more than a little exaggerated.
But at that time he was running around with Trump at Republican and American Conservative conferences and other gatherings. And he was very much boosting Trump and his policies as well as his own. I don’t doubt for a single minute that Farage would happily give Trump everything he wants from a Brexit Britain – our agriculture, manufacturing industry and a privatised NHS. Farage has said himself that ‘we may have to move to an insurance-based system’, which is precisely what American private healthcare companies, as well as British firms like Virgin Healthcare, Circle, BUPA and so on want to hear.
But Farage’s fortunes have definitely waned, and it’s Boris who’s now occupying No. 10. But he also wants to give Trump what he wants. And despite Tory splutterings that the NHS was ‘off the table’, they held six secret meetings with Trump’s negotiators about it. Boris Johnson sees it very much as something that is for sale. He just doesn’t want to tell the British public about it, just as Thatcher in her memoirs also lied, claiming that she didn’t want to sell off the NHS. It’s now Johnson who’s running around as Trump’s mini-me.
Don’t be tricked by either Farage, Johnson or Blue Lib Dem Swinson, who would also like to sell off the NHS. If you value the Health Service and wish to defend it, you really have no choice but to vote for Corbyn.
Remember Sargon of Akkad, otherwise known as Carl Benjamin, the Sage of Swindon? Sargon was the internet personality who, along with Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and Paul Joseph Watson, managed to destroy UKIP at the last elections. The party’s head decided that he could revive its flagging fortunes by inviting these three people aboard. He was counting on them bringing their audiences with them, but instead everyone with reasonable political opinions fled. Much of the rest went over to the Fuhrage’s new Brexit party, which is really just a corporate cult of personality pretending to be a party. Which left UKIP with a derisory membership and even more internal feuding, culminating in the resignation a few days ago of their Fuhrer, Richard Braine. Yes, Dick Braine was running the party.
As I’ve pointed out, Sargon has some extremely right-wing opinions. He’s anti-feminist, anti-immigration, and a ‘classical liberal’. Which means he’s a 19th century free trade liberal, who would now be an extremely right-wing Tory. He wants complete privatisation and an end to the welfare state, including the privatisation of the NHS.
So why give one of his videos a platform here?
Because on the subject of the Lib Dems, he’s right.
Sargon begins by talking about how the Fib Dems are doing extremely well in the polls, especially in Wokingham, Dominic Raab’s constituency, where they are only a few places behind the Tories. Jo Swinson, their leader, claims to be running a cleaner campaign, opposing the Trumpian politics of political deception. But as he goes on to prove, she and her party are using very Trumpian tactics.
He talks about the Fib Dem leaflet, that claimed that the Lib Dems were the leading party behind the Tories in Bath and North East Somerset. But this was in answer to a very specific polling question. Those polled were asked which parties they’d vote for, if the Tories and Lib Dems were neck and neck. The real opposition to the Tories in that part of Somerset, just south of me, is Labour.
He goes on to show the clip from Sky, where Beth Rigby tries to question Jo Swinson about this. Rigby rightly says it’s misleading. Oh no, denies Swinson, they tell you what the figures refer to. Yes, they do. In very small print of the type that people don’t read. Swinson then bangs on about how Labour voters, who don’t want Brexit, have been deceived and are turning to the Fib Dems instead.
And this isn’t the only instance where the Fib Dems were lying. Kate Burley also tried to tackle New Labour defector Luciana Berger on the subject of the Fib Dem’s mendacity. Berger is standing for them in Golders Green. Burley tries to pick her up on their election pamphlet, which quotes the Groaniad and Sky News as saying that the party’s ready to win the election. In fact those quotes don’t quite come from those sources. They come from Jo Swinson, as reported by the Groan and Sky News. But Berger denies any deceit. She just carries on with a spiel about how the Fib Dems have taken over from Labour as the opposition to the Tories in Golders Green, and that people are looking for a new type of politics.
And then Sargon shows just how Trumpian their election material is. Their pamphlets are all about Swinson, and how she’s going to be the next PM. It’s exactly like Trump, because like his campaigning, it’s all about the leader.
He also attacks another lie from the Fib Dems, where they claimed they were ahead of Labour and neck and neck with the Tories in Putney. Except that it was another lie. They’d never even polled in Putney.
The video ends with him attempting to rebut their stock rhetorical argument by saying that people should vote for them, as they are the only party that stands for Remain. But as Sargon reminds us, most people voted for Brexit. He has nothing against Trump and Trumpian politics, but they can’t say they’re opposed to it when they’re actually doing exactly that. They’re whole campaign is a good way of discrediting themselves.
This is all completely true, unlike just about everything Swinson says.
Mike put up a piece on his blog a few days ago showing how the Fib Dems were lying about their putative lead over Labour in BANES and elsewhere. But this is just one in a long line of porkies they’ve been spewing. Remember a little while ago, when Swinson was complaining that when all the other leaders were doing their best to campaign for Britain to remain in the EU, Jeremy Corbyn ‘was nowhere to be seen’? The truth was actually the reverse. Corbyn had been crisscrossing the country and travelling from city to city campaigning. It was Swinson who hadn’t. Except for one, halfhearted tweet.
Where were you, Swinson, when Remain needed you?
As for the image she tries to give of her party being full of ardent europhiles, keen for us to remain in the EU, only two per cent more of their membership are in favour of staying than the Labour party’s.
And Swinson has pointedly refused to say whether or nor she’d go into coalition with the Tories in the case of a swung parliament. Which means, to me, that she does. Which makes all the guff about her standing for Remain just so much electioneering rhetoric.
And Berger is also a liar.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Fib Dems have overtaken Labour in Golders Green. It’s because Berger and the rest of the Blairites, the Tories and the Israel lobby have been trying to scare Jewish Brits witless by telling them that Corbyn and his supporters are genocidal anti-Semites. The reverse is true. Corbyn has always stood up for Britain’s Jews, just as he has done so for all of Britain’s diverse communities. What Berger and her colleagues in the Blairites and the rightwing Zionist organisations found absolutely intolerable is the fact that he wants a genuinely just peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And hence the accusations of anti-Semitism and the hysterical screams that a Britain under his government wouldn’t be safe for Jews. Piffle.
Berger herself has genuinely received death threats and abuse online. But I think that some of her other claims of abuse by Labour party members have been shown to be false.
Berger is a liar, from a party of liars, led by a liar.
And you can tell the moral squalor of the party when someone as right-wing as Sargon points it out and almost looks good in comparison.
It has been pointed out, time and again, that there is very little real anti-Semitism on the left. Mike and other opponents and victims of the anti-Semitism smears haven’t denied it exists, but that it’s tiny. The overwhelming majority of anti-Semitism come from the right. Tony Greenstein has blogged countless times about the massive support Israel, and right-Zionist organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism enjoy on the Far Right. He’s put up photograph after photograph showing various viciously intolerant pro-Israel groups demonstrating shoulder to shoulder with racist, islamophobic and Fascistic organisations like the Jewish Defence League, the EDL and Britain First. But you won’t read about this from the lamestream press and media. Or from Z-lists celebs and trolls like Rachel Riley and Tracy Ann Oberman.
The real reason for the mass smearing of decent, anti-racist women and men in the Labour party – people like Mike, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Martin Odoni and so on, ad nauseam, is nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It’s the Labour right trying to purge the party of Corbyn’s supporters, and right-Zionist groups, which include the Jewish Labour Movement, trying to close down any criticism of Israel. Decent people like those above, have been smeared either because they’ve stood up for the rights and dignity of the Palestinians, or defend those who have after they were smeared as anti-Semites.
And it seems one of those, who shares the witch-hunters contempt for Labour supporters defending the Palestinians, is Count Dankula. Dankula, real name Mark Meechan, was one of the right-wing internet personalities like Sargon of Akkad, aka Carl Benjamin, who joined UKIP, thus helping it towards its massive electoral implosion and total demolition at the last elections. Dankula’s the bloke, who was convicted of hate speech after he posted a video online about how he’d taught his girlfriend’s pug to do the Nazi salute when he shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’ or ‘Gas the Jews!’
Meechan has tried to excuse his behaviour as just a tasteless joke, and defend it as a free speech issue. Looking at some of his videos, don’t think Meechan is an anti-Semite. And he does seem genuine in his defence of free speech. He does seem genuinely concerned about its suppression in so many parts of the world, like North Korea, for example. He’s not a free speech absolutist, but he does see the right to say and write grossly offensive and sometime immoral material as part of this issue. He also sympathises with everyone, even those whose political opinions are the polar opposite of his, who has fallen victim to censorship through the same speech codes that forbid racist, misogynist, or otherwise bigoted and hateful material.
But he also shares the witch-hunters’ contempt for supporters of the Labour Party, who protest against the brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians. In a video posted on 21st August 2018, ‘A Salty Peanut’, Dankula critiques a video made by one of his opponents, celebrating his conviction for hate speech. Five minutes 40 seconds into the video, there’s a clip of this man criticising Israel for the gunning down of Palestinian protesters. After this, at the 5.53 mark, Dankula simply says to the camera ‘A Labour supporter.’ I’m not posting a link to the video or showing it on this blog, as I don’t want someone from the Campaign from Anti-Semitism or the Gnasherjew troll collective using it to smear me as an anti-Semite, as they’ve lied and smeared Jackie Walker and so many others. But the video is up on YouTube, and all you have to do to find it is find Dankula’s channel and look for its title.
Dankula’s video shows just who else on the political right shares the same views about pro-Palestinian activists in Labour as Tracy Ann Oberman, Rachel Riley, David Collier and the rest of the witch hunters: a man, who was convicted of anti-Semitism for teaching his girlfriend’s dog to make the Nazi salute. While I believe it’s not evidence that Dankula really is an anti-Semite, it does show who the right-wing supporters of Israel really are, and their support for anti-Semitism witch-hunt against the Labour party. It’s further evidence of the kind of people, who support the likes of Oberman and Riley, and in turn shows the witch-hunter’s hypocrisy very clearly.
Sargon of Akkad, real name Carl Benjamin, is a shabby individual. I’ve blogged about him several times before, not least because his recruitment to UKIP along with Mark ‘Nazi Pug’ Meecham and Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars infamy, effectively destroyed whatever electoral credibility that borderline Fascist party had. Sargon is very definitely a member of the extreme right. He’s islamophobic, anti-feminist and has been credibly accused of racism. He claims to represent the moderate left, but also defines himself as a ‘classical liberal’. Which means that he favours the complete privatisation of the economy, and the destruction of the welfare state. He’s notorious for sending a particularly noxious text to the Labour MP Jess Philips telling her ‘I wouldn’t even rape you’ when she was describing the threats of sexual assault and worse she receives.
But this time, surprisingly, he sounds like a reasonable human being.
In this video he comments on a letter sent last month to the Sunday Times, signed by 22 leading gay rights activists, including Simon Fanshawe, the co-founder of the gay rights organisation Stonewall. The letter condemns that that organisation for its support of trans activists and their denial of the biological basis of gender identity, which they feel is a dangerous threat to women’s rights. They are particularly concerned about the way their ideology – that gender identity is a mental construct – threatens to undermine women’s rights and voices in issues like FGM, pregnancy and abortion. Sargon agrees with them, noting that concepts like lesbianism and bisexuality are based on there being only two genders, which the trans activists deny. Sargon and the gays here object to people, who have been born men, claiming to have a right to speak for women on these issues. They also state that it is dangerous for trans activists to go into schools to encourage children to review their gender identity. Sargon also agrees with this, stating that half the time if ask children about what gender they identify with, they’ll answer with fire-engines and dinosaurs.
The lesbian activist Julie Bindel is also concerned about the violence and threats coming from trans activists. She states that there are no threats of violence coming from the terfs – an acronym standing for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. But there certainly are threats made by the trans activists. Such as slogans like ‘Punch a Terf’. Sargon also shows a video on the Mail Online page, in which Bindel walks down a road in which trans activists are holding a counter demonstration against a meeting by an anti-trans feminist group. The trans people are chanting ‘Trans rights are human rights’ and kicking at the windows of the building in which the meeting is being held. Bindel states that this being done to intimidate the women inside. She states that women are being threatened, and criticises the police around the building for not doing anything to protect the women inside.
So great is the conflict between gays, bisexuals and lesbians, particularly the latter, with the trans rights activists, that the letter to the Times talks of a split occurring in the LGBTQ group, with the formation of a splinter organisation, LGBQ.
Naturally the video also contains Sargon’s sneers about feminists and gay rights activists. He states that he finds their views ridiculous and laughs at them. In a dig at progressivism in general he replies to Bindels comment about women being intimidated that the police will do nothing against the trans activists, as trans people trump women as being a more oppressed group. Well, there’s that. But the way the cops moved Bindel on when she tried to stop and talk to some of the counterdemonstrators suggested that they were more worried that any action by them would turn it into a violent riot. Sargon does say, however, that although he laughs at the Terfs, they have a right to their views and to express them. And so he opposes their deplatforming and the way some organisations, like the Cooperative Bank, have refused to deal with Terf groups.
It’s a crazy situation when a near Fascist like Sargon actually starts to make sense and defends free speech and democracy. I think he’s right in that most people would see gender identity as based in biology, and it is dangerous for trans activists to try to encourage children to question their gender identity. And he’s right when he says that women faced with issues like FGM cannot escape them by claiming to be a different gender mentally.
There are caveats to his views, however. Some transpeople, like the trans vlogger Rose of Dawn, draws a distinction between the genuine transgendered and the gender radicals. Rose of Dawn is a transwoman herself, and has stated that trans people like her have invested a great deal financially and psychologically in their transition to the opposite gender. The gender radicals, however, consider gender to be simply a mental construct. They make little or no effort to change the physical markers of gender identity or their biological gender itself. They have created any number of different genders, some of which come close to, or are indistinguishable from parody. One of them is a ‘gender that identifies with space, stars and nebulae’. Most dangerously, these people consider that as gender is a mental construct, they wish to overturn the 2004 act that stipulates that diagnoses of gender dysphoria – the medical condition in which one’s mental gender does not match one’s biology – should only be made by medical professionals. Rose of Dawn is, unfortunately, like Sargon in that she is a person of the right. Nevertheless, she makes some excellent and interesting points.
The radical trans activists do seem to be a threat to women’s rights, although I would argue that some, hopefully the majority of transpeople identify so strongly with the gender to which they have transitioned, that they should be treated equally to born members of those genders. I also have a read accounts by trans activists, who have been physically assaulted by radical feminists, so I don’t believe that the violence and threats are all on one side. But there is a genuine issue here, and it’s a sad state when only the right is discussing it.
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