Alex Belfield’s Suspension from YouTube: Update

Andy the Gabby Cabby posted another video yesterday discussing mad right-winger Alex Belfield’s suspension from YouTube. The Cabby didn’t appear himself, but gave the video over to Belfield to say what had happened. According to Belfield, he’d been suspended for several reasons. One was the factcheckers complaining against his remarks about Covid. The second was because he’d been contacted by a journalist for the Times, who wanted to ask him about the smears against Keir Stalin that appeared on one his videos and accused him of making them. Belfield states that he doesn’t even appear in the video and that it’s just Boris Johnson speaking. He therefore called the hack a ‘farthead’, and so got himself banned on that account. And the remarks left by his commenters suggest that it was also because of his personal comments about Carol Vorderman. Not that he seems dismayed by the ban. He talks about having expected it 1 1/2 years ago, and is proud of all the support he’s had from his fans, who he regards as a real family., He’s going to set up his private VOR club, charging a pound a week, which’ll be set up in March.

I’m not surprised that Belfield got a strike against him because of his attitude to the Coronavirus. He’s one of a number of right-wingers, who don’t believe that the disease is all that bad and urge the lockdown to be lifted. He does, however, urge everyone to take the vaccine and has been very careful about what he says about it. But clearly, not careful enough. This comes after 157 medical professionals wrote to YouTube urging that it ban Joe Rogan because one of his guests was sceptical about the efficacy of the lockdown. This was followed by Neil Young taking his videos off the platform, or threatening to.

I can sort of sympathise with him to a certain extent with the Times journo after the way its sister paper smeared Mike as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Nevertheless, even if Belfield didn’t speak on the video and it was all Johnson, the video repeated a terrible, dangerous smear that Belfield didn’t correct. A smear that has resulted in the Labour leader being mobbed, vilified and receiving death threats. And no, I don’t have much sympathy for him, not when he and the other Blairites were all too keen to smear decent , anti-racist women and men as anti-Semites. This was even when they’d opposed real Fascism and anti-Semitism all their lives, like Mark Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and so many others, and were themselves Jewish, like Walker and Greenstein. Because of those smears, these people have been viciously abused and received death threats. Jackie Walker talks about some of the horrendous messages she’s had in one of her videos. She’s been told she should be lynched – an especially horrible comment as her mother was a southern American Black civil rights activist – and she should be cut up, set on fire and her body dumped in bin bags. One entirely blameless Jewish lady in Devon had her car firebombed after the Campaign for Anti-Semitism declared that she was an anti-Semite. These smears are all because these people supported Jeremy Corbyn and/or opposed the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Or else like Mike they dared to correct the fake history pushed by the Labour apparat to show that those accused were innocent.

As for Belfield vanishing behind a paywall, this may well be the end of his popularity. He may retain his fandom, but I can’t see it growing again without the massive public exposure through YouTube. Even if it’s only a pound, people don’t like paywalls, as some of the newspapers have found with their online content. Besides this, there are still unanswered questions about his legal entanglements. Jim Round, one of the great commenters on this blog, has remarked

‘This was predicted by some as the July court case gets closer, he has still not admitted that he is the defendant, and refused to answer questions about donations.
It is not a “ban” as such, as he is still deleting a lot of his content, Playboard is your friend here.
With regards to free speech, as said before, Belfield is quite hypocritical here as if you disagree with him, you get cut off, abused and/or harrassed by him.
I know what you are getting at with over zealous T&C’s but human nature will always unfortunately bring out the bullies who think they can say what they like with no right to reply.’

I’ve seen some of that bullying attitude myself in a video Belfield put up several weeks ago., accusing a caller of wanting to let in 100 million immigrants. The caller, a polite young chap, had called in to challenge him on his opposition to asylum seekers. Belfield responded by saying that there were millions of starving people who’d like to come to Britain. There were 100 million such people in Nigeria, so should we let them all it? Should we round them up and take them here? The lad didn’t know how to respond, so eventually Belfield cut him off. He then sneered and joked with the next caller, who did agree with him, how the poor fellow wanted to allow in 100 million immigrants. But while the lad hadn’t handled the question well, he hadn’t said anything about letting in 100 million people. It was Belfield misrepresenting him, and by extension everyone else who doesn’t share his opposition to ‘dinghy divers’. And Belfield’s remarks about BBC personnel being ‘Guardian-reading, champagne-sipping, oyster-eating, uni-educated Naga Manchushi types’, or alternatively saying they’re lesbian, Celie Imrie-types with clipboards, really is just abuse.

But it does show the poisonous hatred of some parts of the right towards the left, articulated on behalf of working class Whites, who have been left behind by the middle classes and affirmative action.

Private Eye Still Keeping up Media Anti-Semitism Smear against Labour

The media smears claiming that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party are viciously anti-Semitic seem to have died down somewhat recently. This is no doubt due to Labour having folded and succumbed to the immense pressure to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in toto, which is being used, against the wishes of the man who devised it, to silence criticism of the state of Israel and its murderous oppression of the Palestinians. But Private Eye seems determined to maintain the smear.

In last fortnight’s issue, for 11-24 January 2019, the magazine chortled in a piece, ‘What the Papers Don’t Say’ on page 7, about how the Groaniad did not report how Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, was jeered when she said at a Jewish charity event when she said that Jeremy Corbyn had been too upset to address the Labour party’s anti-Semitism claims. Which was in contrast to the Torygraph, Scum, Fail and the Times.

Then in the ‘Rotten Boroughs Awards 2018’ on page 18 there’s the piece ‘Jewish Humour Award’, which gives this dubious honour to Hounslow for Labour councillor Nisar Malik, whom it describes as ‘something of a conspiracy theory enthusiast, especially when it comes to the you-know-whos.’ Malik tweeted that “the Zionist lobby controls all the media”. This amused the Eye’s contributor, as ‘the Z-word’ was spelt ‘zaniest’. ‘Those screwball Illuminati jokesters get everywhere!’ the Eye guffaws.

Ian Hislop’s mighty organ has shown how determined it is to repeat the anti-Semitism smear against Labour by posting a reply to a female Momentum member, who sent them a letter denying it. They replied by saying that Momentum itself had admitted that there was an anti-Semitism problem in the Labour party. This is the view of Jon Lansman, Momentum’s founder, but is very much denied by many of the organization’s members and especially its former vice-chair, Jackie Walker, and her fellows on Labour Against the Witch-Hunt. But the Eye hasn’t bother to talk to them, or showed any inclination to do so. It’s thus no surprise that it sneers at the Groaniad for not reporting the jeers against Thornberry at the Jewish charity event, rather than questioning the other papers and those jeering Thornberry for their acceptance and determination to promote nothing but a vile Zionist smear.

As for Nisar Malik, I don’t know anything about him rather than what the Eye has said about him. It might be that he’s as anti-Semitic as the Eye claims, but that’s not clear after the newspapers smeared Mike as one, along with Ken Livingstone, Mark Wadsworth, Jackie Walker and so on. Malik’s wrong about the Zionists controlling the media, but they are under very heavy pressure from the Israeli state and the Jewish establishment over here not to report Israeli atrocities or crimes against humanity. I’ve posted up on this blog the documentary Peter Oborne made eleven years ago for Channel 4’s Despatches on the Israel lobby, in which the former editor of the Groaniad, Alan Rusbridger and Jewish media figures, and academics, including the respected Oxford professor of Middle Eastern studies, Avi Shlaim, described how the Israel lobby and the Board of Deputies of British Jews had tried to close down accurate reporting of atrocities committed by Israel and its allies, the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, with accusations of anti-Semitism. These were made not only against Rusbridger, but also the Beeb and its reporters Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and then Dimblebore when said the accusations were ridiculous. Malik has a very, very good point to attack this very strong Zionist bias.

And now in this fortnight’s issue for 25th January to 7 February 2019 the magazine is trying to maintain the smear by very carefully reporting the accusations leveled at some of those smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour party. This is in the article ‘Unskilled Labour’ by ‘Ratbiter’ in the mag’s ‘HP Sauce’ page. This is about how Labour is supposedly unprepared for a snap general election, due to subscription income falling. Other allegations are that the party doesn’t have the strategy and isn’t putting in the funding to fight marginal seats, various candidates have been dropped because they are unsuitable due to conspiratorial beliefs about the Manchester Arena bombing and the murder of Jo Cox and unpaid tax. But what is remarkable is how it reports that the party is also suffering pressure on its finances due to legal action by those it has smeared and unjustly expelled as anti-Semites. ‘Ratbiter’ writes

While subscription income falls, costs are rising – not least thanks to legal bills from Corbyn’s friends, who cannot take exclusion from the fold now that they feel the party has power in its grasp.

Marc Wadsworth, an old Corbyn ally, is suing Labour for expelling him after he reduced the Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth to treats at the launch of a report on, of all things, anti-Semitism. Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, candidate for South Thanet, has raised more than 4,000 pounds and retained leftish brief Michael Mansfield QC to challenge the national executive’s decision to block her candidacy because she brought the party into disrepute by banging on about Hitler, Zionism and Ken Livingstone.

Some, but not nearly all of this, is true, but even the truthful bits are very misleading. Labour Against the Witch-Hunt was formed long before the media started admitting that Labour had a chance of winning a coming election. The same with those members, who have been unjustly and foully smeared as anti-Semites, like Mike. They are friends of Corbyn, but they’re motives are getting proper redress and admission back into the party they’ve always supported, and would still demand this whatever the party’s electoral chances were. But putting it that way makes it seem that they’re all infiltrators, just in it for power. It’s a continuation of the Blairite/ Tory smear that they’re entryists.

Now let’s deal with the Eye claim about Wadsworth. Yes, at least one of the papers did accuse him of making the odious Ruth Smeeth cry. No, that’s not why the party expelled him. They accused him of anti-Semitism because he had made a comment about her handing material to a journo from the Torygraph. She tried to claim that he was using an anti-Semitic trope of being party of a Jewish conspiracy to smear her. The Blairite/Zionist kangaroo court couldn’t make that stick, because it was all too clear that Wadsworth was anything but an anti-Semite. For crying out loud, he worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews to get tougher legislation passed in the 1990s to combat real Nazi attacks on Jews in Thanet. This was dropped in favour of the catch-all claim that he had brought the party into disrepute. He hadn’t. Smeeth had with a completely and utterly false and libelous claim, which the gutter press was all too keen to repeat.

Going on to Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, it seems she was smeared and expelled for precisely the same reason Mike was. He also wrote a piece taking apart the smears against Ken Livingstone. These were that he had claimed that Hitler was a Zionist. He wasn’t, and Leninspart never said he was. The Leninist newt-fancier had outrageously told the truth and said that the Nazis had made a deal with the Zionists to send Jews to the nascent Jewish colony. This is the Ha’avara agreement, which is accepted, documented historical fact. It is mentioned on the website of the Holocaust memorial museum at Yad Vashem in Israel, and by Zionist historians of the Shoah. But this is too much for the Blairites, the Israeli state and the Israel lobby to stomach. And so they’ve libeled entirely decent, anti-racist individuals as anti-Semites.

The intention behind these smears has been to purge the party of Corbyn’s supporters, a move of which ‘Ratbiter’ evidently approves from the tone of the article. And the way these smears were done looks very much like an infringement of electoral law. Like the way Mike was smeared as a Jew-hater and Holocaust denier when he was standing as a candidate for his local council. Someone within the Labour party was obviously very much afraid that he would win, and so they leaked the smear to their friends in the press, a smear that was heartily taken up by Mike’s loudmouthed Tory opponent.

But there is absolutely no mention of this from the Eye.

Which makes you wonder how much of the rest of the material in ‘Ratbiter’s’ article is true. As for ‘Ratbiter’ himself, I believe Tony Greenstein on his blog outed this person’s real identity after he made similar misleading claims about Labour and anti-Semitism in Private Eye.

Despite the fact that Eye’s founders were all public schoolboys, as is Hislop and his deputy editor, Francis Wheen, the Eye has something of a countercultural reputation because of its irreverent approach to authority. But here the magazine seems to be staunchly following a very establishment line to prevent real change for this country by maintain the press narrative of Labour anti-Semitism.

Congrats to Mike as Sunday Times Finally Retracts Anti-Semitism Smears

Very many congratulations to Mike, who has finally won his battle with the newspaper Private Eye refers to as the Sunset Times. Today Mike put up a piece over at his blog reporting that after over a year the rag has finally published a retraction stating that their accusations that he was an anti-Semite and a holocaust denier are false, and explaining what Mike really said and meant in his interview with them.

The Sunday Times is the last of the newspapers, which libeled Mike, to admit that it was wrong and smeared him. The other newspapers, which already made retractions and clarifications following the press regulator, IPSOS, ruling against them, were the Mail, the Sun, the Jewish Chronicle and the Express. Mike’s piece reporting this not only includes the text of the ST’s article admitting their piece on him was wrong, but also the relevant parts of the IPSOS ruling, as well as his own further remarks and clarifications.

This is excellent news, as it’s long past time that these newspapers finally told the truth and made it clear that they were wrong and that Mike is by no means any kind of Jew-hater or denies the terrible reality of the Nazi’s appalling murder of the Jews, along with millions of other victims. Mike states that ‘This is a huge victory for the fight against false allegations of anti-Semitism.‘ But the struggle against these malign accusations and the people who made and are still making them continues.

He explains that the Sunset Times smeared him after someone in the Labour Party leaked a confidential report about him to the Murdoch rag. The newspaper printed what they thought were the strongest parts of this vile document, parts which have now been disproven as lies and smears. This did not prevent Mike from being expelled from the Labour party at a kangaroo court last November, all because someone said that they were ‘upset’ by the articles he’d published. Mike states that the original accusations were made by the fringe extremist group masquerading as a charity, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. The CAA made their false allegations just before Mike was due to stand as a candidate in his local council elections, and which Mike believes was a corrupt attempt to prevent him being elected.

He concludes his article

This is what we must resist – false claims against innocent people, made to create political advantage. That is what this is about – not anti-Semitism, but power.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/01/13/at-last-the-sunday-times-admits-anti-semitism-allegations-against-vox-political-writer-were-false/

Mike’s entirely correct about this. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is seriously and deceptively misnamed. It isn’t remotely interested in tackling genuine anti-Semitism, but instead is part of the Zionists’ attempt to close down criticism of the Israeli government and military for the appalling barbarism inflicted on the Palestinians by smearing those, who protest against it and their defenders as anti-Semites. The CAA and the other people and organisations in this malign campaign have smeared genuinely decent, anti-racist women and men, who have frequently themselves suffered for their determination to combat racism and real, genuine anti-Semitism. These have included proud, self-respecting Jews, like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Martin Odoni, as well as passionate non-Jewish anti-Fascists like Ken Livingstone and Mark Wadsworth.

And just as decent anti-Nazis have been smeared, the Israel lobby has lent its support to real Fascists, like the Law and Justice Party in Poland, Viktor Orban and Fidesz in Hungary, and feted real Fascists like Richard Spencer of the Alt Right, Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka in Israel itself, to the horror of many thousands of decent Israelis.

Mike has won a profound victory, but the people, newspapers and organisations behind this campaign of lies and vilification are still continuing with their malign falsehoods, including the Zionist organization, the Jewish Labour Movement, previously Paole Zion, and the Blairites in the Labour party. It’s high time this smear campaign was utterly and totally discredited, and the decent people they have hounded out of the Labour party given a proper apology and had their membership restored.

Throughout his battle with the press, Mike has enjoyed the support of the very great people, who comment and enjoy his blog. Some of whom have posted their congratulations to him in the comments section of his article. One of the most interesting of these was from Alas Poor Uric, who remarked

Excellent news Mike, and well done! You have actually made a significant contribution to those of Jewish background (like myself) who have been disturbed by the misuse of anti-semitism for political reasons. The media Reform Group:

‘The Media Reform Coalition has conducted in-depth research on the controversy surrounding antisemitism in the Labour Party, focusing on media coverage of the crisis during the summer of 2018. Following extensive case study research, we identified myriad inaccuracies and distortions in online and television news including marked skews in sourcing, omission of essential context or right of reply, misquotation, and false assertions made either by journalists themselves or sources whose contentious claims were neither challenged nor countered. Overall, our findings were consistent with a disinformation paradigm. ‘

You have shown more discernment on this issue than some in the Jewish community itself.

This is interesting, as it confirms what many other people have been saying: that this is a deliberate campaign of misinformation. There have been articles elsewhere that have claimed that this is all being run by a section of the Israeli Foreign Ministry as part of their hasbara campaign of civilian propaganda.

And there are a very large number of people, not just Jews, who are like Uric in being concerned at the political misuse of accusations of anti-Semitism. It cheapens the term, so that it loses its power to warn and defend Jews against the threat of real anti-Semites and Nazis.

So congratulations to Mike, and thanks to everyone, who has supported him in his fight. And I wish it will not be long before everyone, who’s been smeared receives similar retractions and apologies from the liars, who maligned them.