Mark Pattie, one of the many great commenters on this blog, posted this comment on my piece about Open Britain launching a campaign to get people to get photographic ID so they can vote:
‘Apparently Tony Blair has crawled out of whatever stone he’s been hiding these past 15 years to demand “digital ID”! I’m not voting Labour if Starmer goes along with this- haven’t Bunter Johnson et al crushed our civil liberties enough?’
Yes, Blair has, and sent the paranoid conspiracy fringe into a further frenzy of disgust and anxiety. But they’ve got a point. When Blair and New Labour were in government, they were considering the possibility of introducing biometric identity cards, which would hold all your personal details. The new electronic ID cards Blair is now urging to be introduced would also contain all your personal details, including insurance. It looks like the same idea. And before Blair started considering them, I think John Major’s Tory government was also reviewing the same idea.
The conspiracy fringe has condemned it as a totalitarian policy and fear that it could lead to the rise over here as the social credit state surveillance and control programme of communist China. Years ago I read a book about biometric ID cards, the ‘electronic burse’ that was supposed to introduce a wonderful, cashless society and other similar ideas. The book criticised all of them as threats to civil liberties by the state and banks. They’re not for your convenience, but to allow the state to collect every bit of information about you, including your private financial transactions. And they are also horrendously fatally flawed. Similar IDs were introduced, according to the book, in that beacon of personal liberty, Indonesia. The cards were touted as being completely impervious to fraud and being hacked and duplicated by criminals. Famous last words. Within three weeks, Indonesia’s crims had worked out how to hack into them and produce fakes. As for the electronic burse, something similar was trialled in Australia, and abandoned. The reason was that if they were lost or stolen, people were left completely without any money whatsoever.
Not only did this book, whose title I’ve long since unfortunately forgotten, expose these ideas as totalitarian and unworkable, it also announced the existence of a watchdog organisation, Privacy International, that had been set up to guard against them and similar attacks by the state on personal liberty by demanding access to people’s private information. I don’t know if this is still going, but the political class is going to push this idea once more, we really do need it.
I wonder what Stalin Starmer will do it about it. Hopefully he’ll drop the idea, and Blair’s benighted waffling will be ignored. It is indeed true that Cameron and Johnson have both done their best to wreck our liberties through the introduction of secret courts and legislation designed to limit the right to protest, along with Sunak’s proposal to destroy the right to strike. But I’m afraid Starmer is far to enamoured of Blair and his wretched legacy. And I honestly don’t think this policy was Blair’s idea. The fact that Major was also considering it suggests that it was suggested to him, probably by the same people Blair took over along with Tory policies.
The conspiracy fringe are extreme right-wing clowns who believe stupid myths about the Rothschilds, the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, the Masons, Jewish bankers, the World Economic Forum and the ‘globalists’, if not indeed Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. But this time they’re right.
Personal liberty in the UK is under attack, and must be defended.
Mark Pattie, one of the great commenters on this channel, asked me if I’d seen the video in which Webb debates Mark Collett, the current fuehrer of Patriotic Alternative. I hadn’t, so he kindly provided the link. And now I have. It’s not a long video, just over five and a half minutes long, and isn’t actually a debate, despite its title. It’s Webb’s review of another debate between Collett and two Black YouTubers. And to be fair, Webb actually comes out of it quite well, almost appearing like a normal person of moderate, non-racist views.
The video is a response by him to continued calls by his commenters to debate Collett. They’ve also called on him several times to join the party. Webb begins by saying that he got one of their election leaflets through the post. Patriotic Alternative were planning to stand as a political party and put in candidates to fight seats at the last election. In the event, they neglected to register as a party with the electoral commission, and so couldn’t stand any candidates. But Londoners got their literature anyway. Webb states that it horrified the liberals and papers, but he read their pamphlet and couldn’t see anything outrageous in it. This is probably because Webb shares many of their views and prejudices, and so wouldn’t. I’m reminded of something Millennial Woes posted on his YouTube channel a few years ago. Millennial Woes is a Scots extreme rightist. His videos tend to consist of him sitting in a bathrobe in a darkened room, smoking, reflecting on the decline of the west due to non-White immigration. When the Alt-Right were in vogue a decade or so ago, Woes was one of the speakers at their conference. During it he told the assembled White supremacists that he realised how far he’d left the mainstream when talking to a young man on the train. The guy was intelligent and articulate, and it was a shock to Woes that he still believed the conventional narrative about the Holocaust! This comes from the man, who said his most extreme view was wanting to bring back slavery. It shows how people at the political extremes see their views as normal and inoffensive until suddenly shaken by talking to normal folks.
Webb said that there would be absolutely no chance of Patriotic Alternative winning seats in his area. The BNP tried a few years ago and got absolutely nowhere. And when they did win, they didn’t know anything about the practical business of politics in the council, and so were out at the next election. This is true, and it’s hilarious. According to Private Eye, Derek Beacon and his massive fascist legion elected to Tower Hamlets, all seven of them, didn’t realise that as well as proposing motions before the council, you also had to vote for them. Thus, when surprisingly the council accepted one of their motions for discussion, they didn’t vote for it, assuming it would automatically pass or something. The motion then failed. We are, fortunately, not dealing with men of the calibre of Oswald Mosley. Webb notes that in his area the BNP fielded several candidates, one of which was a Jewish woman. He found this surprising. Unfortunately, it isn’t, not if you read the articles on this by the excellent Tony Greenstein. Greenstein has blogged about how the Board of Deputies of British Jews got very upset with the very respected historian of the Jewish community, Geoffrey Alderman, for including in his study of the community’s history the fact that 2 per cent of the Jewish population had voted for the wretched NF. In London this was because they didn’t want their kids going to school with Blacks. He also notes that one Conservative politico, despite being Jewish himself, used to hobnob at elections with the BNP moaning that it was a pit that the nationalist vote was split between the two parties. There are fascist Jews around, and none of them were supporters of Corbyn, as Starmer and the Jewish Labour Movement would like us all to believe.
Webb goes on to comment that the Black YouTubers were perfectly reasonable, but they had weird, high voices so he found it difficult to listen to them. He doesn’t like Collett, and says that he refuses to debate or have anything to do with him because he blames the Jews for everything, and there are enough people on his site who already think he, Webb, is Jewish. This is because Webb has attacked the various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, lived in Israel at one point and supports the country, and occasionally wears a necklace with a Hebrew inscription. He states that Collett made quick, chopping motions that reminded him of a little Austrian dictator in the ’30s, and said he could imagine him on a podium screaming ‘Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuehrer!’ (One Race/People! One Reich! One Fuehrer), imitating Adolf himself as he did so.
And that’s about it. He describes the electoral incompetence of Patriotic Alternative and the fact that the BNP got absolutely nowhere in his neck of London, doesn’t say anything unpleasant about the Black YouTubers except for the personal comment about squeaky voices, and compares Collett to Hitler, as no doubt many others have done before him. He rejects Collett’s anti-Semitism, and so could even sound an anti-racist liberal. That’s if you weren’t aware of his views on race, and a video he posted today in which he asks if democracy has had its day, and that Britain, and Europe, need a strong leader who will rally them against the threat of militant Islam.
If you want to check the video to see what Webb says for yourself, here it is.
Mark Pattie, one of the many great commenters on this blog, left a remark earlier today noting that Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed Ben Gvir as ‘kingmaker’. Netanyahu is the new Israeli president, and Itamar Be Gvir is a raging anti-Palestinian racist. He’s so extreme that in a recent piece about the Israeli elections the Beeb described him as ‘far right’. He is, as one of his demands is for the expulsion of ‘disloyal Arabs’. ‘Far right’ is strong language, especially as the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism says that it may be anti-Semitic to compare Jews to Nazis. But the comparison is certainly there, and valid, as the mighty Tony Greenstein has been showing for a very long time. Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is comparable to the Nazi persecution of the Jews before the initiation of the ‘Final Solution’ in 1942. You can also compare it to the Nazi occupation of Poland, in which a tract of land extending into Ukraine and Russia was cleared of its Slavic inhabitants ready for German colonisation.
But let’s stay with the ‘kingmaker’ epithet, shall we? If we’re talking about kings, I supposed the English king most like the demented Ben Gvir would be Edward I, the kind who expelled the Jews from England and who was the centre of a British Fascist cult, English Mystery, in the 1920s and 30s.
And it seems the Israel lobby is getting ready to make insinuations of anti-Semitism yet again against left-wing politicians. Ben Shapiro, one of the leaders of the right-wing American organisation, Turning Point, has posted a video this evening complaining that while the outgoing Israeli president, Yair Lapid, has congratulated Netanyahu on his election victory, Biden hasn’t done so. Well, if I was a politico, I wouldn’t want to congratulate the leader of an administration that had a monstrous bigot like Ben Gvir in it. But the attitude also reminds me of various incidents where the Israelis flung accusations of anti-Semitism against Barack Obama. Obama gave them the Iron Dome missile defence system. He also gave them aid, but because they didn’t get the amount they demanded, the Israeli government through a fit and screamed ‘anti-Semitism’.
This did not impress the very Jewish Sam Seder, head honcho of the left-wing ‘Majority Report’ news and commentary YouTube channel. Seder stated very clearly that if he was the president and they did that to him, he’d cut the aid by a third and ask them if they still wanted to complain about anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, no western leader would dare to do this because of the power of the accusation. Which is unfortunate, as now the Middle East is confronted by a real racist maniac in power with Netanyahu.
I’ve got a few interesting remarks from some of the great commenters on this blog about a piece a put up about a video by Simon Webb of History Debunked about Kwarteng. Webb wondered if the man now doing his best to trash our economy was a diversity hire, whose sole qualification for the job was his skin colour. Mark Pattie and Jim Round have pointed out that he isn’t. He was appointed because he was another Old Etonian willing to implement the programme of the Tory hard right.
Mark wrote
‘Kamikaze Kwarteng was *not* a diversity hire. He may be of Ghanaian descent, but he was Eton educated (hence probably why he got the Chancellor job). Suella Charlatan got the Home Sec job because she was more right-wing than Patel, and James Cleverley got his role because of his many years in the Army. Unlike the rest, he seems to be one of the very few (ten or so) genuinely decent Tories I’ve any respect for. It’s a damn shame he didn’t run for the leadership.’
And Jim commented
‘As with quite a lot of Simon Webb’s videos, it is what isn’t said rather than what is. It isn’t mentioned that groups like The Taxpayers Alliance and The Institute of Economic Affairs had a major influence on this “budget” (Tim over at Zelo Street has covered this) Also remember that The New Culture Forum, who Webb has been a guest of are based there. They think that this is a “Conservative” budget but it is unknown whether they thought that the markets would react so badly. Also not mentioned is the fact that Kwarteng is highly likely to be a millionaire, as well as attending Eton. But no, let’s feed the narrative that he is only there because of the colour of his skin.’
The Taxpayers’ Alliance tends to turn up on BBC News programmes to give their views on economic policies. They are always presented as if they are a politically independent organisation, but their leaders are all members of the Tories. The Institute of Economic Affairs have been demanding hard-right economic policies since before Thatcher. I don’t think Kwarteng’s a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but this shows that the people at the Arise Zoom meeting on the Tory minibudget were absolutely right: he’s a Thatcherite true-believer, working for arch-Thatcherite think tanks, and so shares the same grotty mediocre views as his leader, Liz Truss. I should say that I haven’t watched Webb’s wretched video, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a section of the Tories is now trying to make him a scapegoat for Truss’ abject economic failure.
Simon Webb today went full Mosley and put up a video asking, ‘What’s wrong with Fascism?’ He wanted to make a distinction between Nazism and Fascism. Fascism, he said, had been tarnished through its association with Nazism. But if you wanted to see a benevolent regime that was Fascist in all but name, he directed you to that of the Portuguese dictator Salazar.
But it isn’t just the association with the Third Reich and its attendant horrors that has turned decent people across the world against Fascism. It’s the fact that Mussolini’s fascists were also militant imperialists responsible for brutal atrocities in the nations they conquered, as well as those committed by the various Fascist juntas in Greece, Latin America and Indonesia.
Yesterday or the day before right-wingers like Paul Joseph Watson were also celebrating the electoral victory of the right-wing coalition in Sweden’s elections over their socialist party. This coalition included with the centre right party the Sweden Democrats, a far-right outfit. They’re obviously anti-immigration, but have a very unpleasant neo-Nazi past. According to Hope Not Hate, they used to wear Nazi uniforms as late as the ’90.
I didn’t watch Webb’s video about the Swedish election, whose title said that the Swedes had turned against immigration, the Italians were waking up and when would Britain follow? Mark Pattie did, and wasn’t impressed. He writes ‘Dear God! I did watch his recent video on the Swedish election result where he said “Why can’t we have a similar party here?”- and the anti-immigration party he mentioned? Ukip, 2015? No, he mentioned the bloody National Front getting 5% of the vote in 1974. Makes me think he would vote for Britain First in the next GE.’
I remember the National Front when they goose-stepping about in the 1970s, as well as the various other Fascist and Nazi outfits like the British Movement. And they were overtly Nazi and extremely violent. Michael Collins in his book Hate describes one of the attacks he took part in on an anti-racist meeting in the local library. This had young Asian women leaping out of upstairs windows to get away from them. Monica Ali gives a fictionalised description of the gang fights between White Fascists and Asian self-defence groups in her book, Brick Lane. Just to remind people what British Fascism looked like in the 1960s and 70s, here are a few pictures from British Fascism, 1919-1985. and the W.H. Smith History of the World.
Colin Jordan, Fuhrer of the World Union of National Socialists, with his wife, the daughter of fashion designer Christian Dior.
Skinhead supporter of the NF in the 1970s
And this is what the Nazis did to the Jews, aided by their collaborators in occupied Europe.
The Survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp
I don’t know about Portugal, but Franco only kept out of the Second World War because of poverty. Even so, I think he wanted to send a few token Spanish troops with the Nazis in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Not everyone who wants to cut down on immigration is a racist or Nazi. And despite the rhetoric, the BNP and NF as Fascists have a trouble hanging on to members. Lobster published a piece in the 90s which I think quoted anti-racist researchers of the movement as saying that although they boasted of having 2,000 members or more, they actually had a very high membership turnover. In reality they only had 200 or so core members. The simple reason for this is probably that people aren’t interested or sympathetic to fascist ideology. People joined not because they wanted some kind of new British reich or dictatorship, but probably simply because they wanted an end to non-White immigration. When they were subjected to the Nazi or Fascist ideology, they left. And political scientists have noted that this common in other countries with Fascist parties as well. They do better when they get rid of the jackboots, the right arm salute and the calls for a dictatorship. The Alleanzo Nazionale was formed from the Italian neo-Fascist party, the Movimiento Sociale Italiano or Italian Social Movement. But they jettisoned the Fascist paraphernalia and became instead, so they claimed, a centre-right party. As such they joined Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition with the separatists of the Liga Nord and Berlusconi’s own Forza Italia party.
Whatever people’s feelings about immigration, the majority of normal people despise Fascism and its British parties. There should be absolutely no nostalgia for these brutal thugs.
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles about this, the Tories are trying to spin the continuing scandal over the Pakistani grooming gangs as a uniquely Labour problem. The gangs were allowed to get away for decades with the horrendous crimes by Labour councils and local police forces, who were afraid that if they acted, with they would be charged with racism. But the Labour MPs Sarah Champion, Simon Danczuk stood against them, as did Rochdale Muslim councillor, Amina Lone. Mark Pattie, one of the commenters here, posted this remark also debunking this idea of a unique culpability by Labour and the Pakistani community overall:
‘Thanks for the mention. I kind of wonder whether her courage helped her keep her seat Labour, otherwise Rotherham would’ve gone Con in 2019? As for the “Labour councils…” smear, that can be easily debunked. Not all Labour councils with significant Pakistani-origin populations have problems with these gangs- I’ve never heard of any operating in Preston, Ashton-under-Lyne or Bolton (which I think is now Con anyway) for instance. Plus Telford has been Tory for a good few years I think now.’
Oh dear! Who would have thought of grooming gangs operating in a Tory-run town! Well, not Mahyar Tousi, a very right-wing Brexiteer YouTuber, who posted a video attacking Jess Phillips for Labour’s supposed silence over the grooming gangs. It was a tit-for-tat attack because Phillips quite reasonably asked why the various candidates for the Tory leadership kept their mouths well shut when Bozo was guzzling wine and canapes. But as this comment shows, the reply really doesn’t stick.
And we have to make sure it doesn’t to stop the Tories using it to keep themselves and their awful polices in government.
As I’ve said in the previous article, the Tories and the populist right are trying to present the grooming gangs scandal as the fault of the Labour party, as the gangs were allowed to get away with their monstrous crimes in towns with Labour-run councils. This is part of a wider strategy of divide and rule to alienate the White working class from the Black and Asian community and the Labour party. But Mark Pattie, one of the many great commenters on this blog, has pointed out that it was the Labour MPs Simon Danczuk and Sarah Champion who worked to bring the gangs to justice. Champion, however, was forced to resign from the Labour front bench after writing a piece in the Scum stating that the gangs were Pakistani. This is largely true, though they also included scumbags of other ethnicities. She was accused of racism, but also had the support of Sara Rowbotham, the whistleblower on the council who exposed the gangs, as well as members of the Sikh, Hindu and Pakistani communities. Rowbotham was also played by the actress Maxine Peake in a BBC drama about the gangs, Three Girls. I found a piece by Rachel Wearmouth in the Huffington Post from 17th September 2017 in which Rowbotham defended Champion. It begins
‘Rochdale Grooming Scandal Whistleblower Defends Sarah Champion And Slams Austerity
Council worker played by Maxine Peake said the Labour Party has to encourage debate after race row.
The hero whistleblower of the Rochdale abuse scandal has said Sarah Champion should not have lost her job over controversial race comments she made in The Sun.
Champion was sacked as Labour’s shadow women and equalities minister after saying “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men” raping white girls in a column in the newspaper in the wake of fresh grooming prosecutions in Newcastle.
But Sara Rowbotham, the woman lauded for exposing a criminal gang who abused young girls in Rochdale, has defended the Rotherham MP.
Rowbotham, now a Labour councillor, said Champion should not have made “sweeping statements” but told HuffPost UK: “We should be exploring all the issues, not just shutting people down because we don’t like what they are saying.
“Sarah Champion has been a real champion for young people in Rotherham and she has worked hard, but she disappointed me by some of the things that she said, and that she said them in The Sun.”
Corbyn said the Labour Party was “not going to blame any particular group, or demonise any particular group.”
Asked if Champion should have kept her job, Rowbotham said “yes,” before adding: “We have to encourage debate.
“If the Labour Party is a broad church then those views should be allowed to be heard but also be heard with something substantial that argues back against it, or that encourages the debate further.”
Rowbotham, who was portrayed by Maxine Peake in the BBC docudrama Three Girls, added: ”[Champion] is a knowledgeable, articulate woman. We benefit from having that debate with her.”’
I have the greatest respect for Danczuk, Rowbotham and Champion for acting against the gangs, even if some of Champion’s comments were tactless at best. And kudos too to the Asians who supported her. Their support graphically demonstrates that the grooming gangs are not some kind of intrinsic problem within the Asian community or Islam. The gangs were anti-White racists, but they were also just evil men preying on the vulnerable.
We need to bear this in mind and come together to oppose the grooming gangs, along with all other kinds of racism. And very definitely not let the Tories distort this to divide this country’s hard-pressed working people from each other to their benefit and that of an exploitative privileged elite.
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