History Debunked on the Genocidal Brutality of the Hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’

Simon Webb, the main man of the History Debunked channel on YouTube, has today put up a very revealing video exposing the horrific reality behind the hero of the 1990s film, Hotel Rwanda. Set during the Rwandan genocide, the film told the story of how its hero, Paul Rusavajena, a Hutu, saved the lived of a thousand Tutsis by providing them sanctuary in the hotel he managed. He claimed he did this on his own, but the fact is that the hotel was occupied by UN peacekeeping forces, who were the real protectors of the Tutsis. Survivors have alleged that instead Rusavajeni extorted money from them and gave room numbers to Hutu murder gangs. Despite this a film was made of the events with Rusavajena’s collaboration, which made him into a hero. And he did very well from the film. It was very popular with what Webb describes as White liberals. Rusavajeni became rich and bought two houses, one in Texas and the other in Belgium. However, after the war in Rwanda ended, Rusavajeni was actively involved in the terrorist group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which particularly targets women and children in its attacks, and founded his own terrorist group, the FLM. He has been exposed however and arrested. Last week he was tried for his crimes and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Webb tells this unedifying story in order to attack the double standards he believes White liberals have towards Blacks. If a White man commits and assault, he is punished with the full force of the law. If a Black man commits a similar offence during a robbery he is committing, White liberals will attempt to excuse him by saying that he was desperate because he was unable to get a job through racism. And while Webb claims that he believes that all peoples and politicians, whether White, Black or Asian, can be just as greedy, brutal, prejudiced and xenophobic, White liberals believe non-Whites to be somehow far nobler. Thus, if a famine occurs in Africa, Webb wonders whether it is due to the local leader stealing aid money and spending it on guns or hiding it in a Swiss bank account. White liberals, however, will blame it on the international banking system and colonialism. And if Black Africans turn on each other and fight terrible genocidal wars, like Europeans did in World War II and the Holocaust, this should be offset by finding a Black hero, who shows the essential nobility of his people by standing against it. This all shows the low standards White middle class liberals apply to Blacks, and consequently their low and patronising view of them.

Much of the poverty in Africa and elsewhere in the Developing World is due to the West in one way or another. It has been hampered by crippling debts with international banks with resulted in the nations of the Third World making huge interest payments which were far larger than the initial sums borrowed. Africa and other nations like it are kept poor through the neo-colonial agreements made with their former imperial masters during decolonisation. These agreements forced the newly independent nations to concentrate on producing raw materials, such as agricultural products and minerals and prevented them from industrialising. There are a large number of such nations producing the same goods and because competition is great, prices can be kept low. The strictures against industrialisation prevents them from developing industries producing finished products, such as, say, cars, for which they could charge more and diversify their economies.

However, much of the poverty in the Developing World really is through the corruption and brutality of the region’s rulers. Way back in the 1990s the Financial Times stated that the corruption in many African nations was so great that they were kleptocracies, who were only called states by the grace of their western partners. Just how nasty this corruption is was described by a visitor our local church hosted last year from Africa. This gentleman had had a very hard childhood, and was several times at death’s door from starvation. His family had had some property to support themselves at one point, but this was stolen from them. As for xenophobia and racism, many African countries were created by amalgamating territory from different tribes, many of which were historical enemies. Nigel Barley in his book, The Innocent Anthropologist, describes how some Cameroonians would angrily denounce western racism, while sneering and reviling their own country’s Dowayo people whom Barley was researching. They did not, however, regard this as racism. And famine and the looting of western aid money have been used as an instrument of genocide by the continent’s dictators.

Some of you will remember Band Aid, the charity record produced by various western pop stars, and the Live Aid global concert in 1985, organised by Bob Geldof to raise money to help the victims of a terrible famine in Ethiopia. But it’s been revealed since then that precious little money or food actually reached the victims. It was stolen by the Communist military dictatorship to prevent it reaching the victims of the famine, who were part of a tribal rebellion.

As for middle class White liberals viewing Blacks and other non-Whites as somehow nobler, I’m afraid there’s something to this too. This ultimately comes from the myth of the Noble Savage which emerged in the 17th century. This viewed the First Nations of America as somehow more noble than Europeans as they were uncorrupted by civilisation. Diderot and the philosophes of the French Enlightenment produced a similar myth of the people of Tahiti when they were encountered by western explorers in the 18th century. To European intellectuals like Diderot, the people of Tahiti lived a freer, more natural life untouched by the artificiality of European culture. In the 1960s and ’70s one of the currents among western left-wing intellectuals was Third Worldism. Impressed by the experiments in socialism by some Third World governments and the apparent lack of materialism amongst their traditional societies, these intellectuals similarly believed that these peoples were somehow more nobler than those of the west. They looked to them to start the socialist transformation they hoped would soon spread throughout the world

As for the left excusing Black criminality and violence through appeals to poverty and deprivation due to racism, that has also occurred. One of the right-wing YouTube channels last week posted a video showing how the supposedly left-wing American media had provided such excuses when covering the case of a Black man responsible for a racial assault.

Against this is the far more obvious obvious, and far better known negative view of Blacks and other non-Whites, which has resulted in their abuse and exploitation and which still supports continuing discrimination against them in the west. One result of this is that not only may Blacks and some other ethnic groups have a higher unemployment rate and experience greater poverty than Whites, but they may also receive tougher sentences for crimes they have committed.

Rusavajeni isn’t the only supposed hero who has been exposed as a much darker figure than portrayed in film. Oscar Schindler, whose rescue of his Jewish employees from the horrors of the Third Reich was depicted in the 90’s film, Schindler’s List, has similarly been alleged to have been an extremely exploitative employer. And it’s fair to say that many of the great heroes of history are far darker and more morally ambivalent, especially when viewed by modern standards.

Blacks and other ethnic groups aren’t any more or less virtuous than Whites, and should deserve the same treatment. Just as they shouldn’t be demonised, monsters like Rusavajeni shouldn’t be idealised either because of the colour of their skin.

Colonial Ties, Not Oppression, Is the Best Reason for Granting Asylum

This has been irritating me for some time now, and so I’m going to try to get it off my chest. A month or so ago I went to a Virtual meeting, organised by the left wing of the Labour party, on why socialists should be anti-war. It was part of the Arise Festival of ideas, and featured a variety of speakers all concerned with the real possibility that the war-mongering of Tony Blair, George W. Bush and so on would return. They made the point that all the interventions in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere were motivated purely by western geopolitical interests. Western nations and their multinationals had initiated them solely to plunder and dominate these nations and their industries and resources. One of the speakers was the Muslim head of the Stop War Coalition, who stated that many people from ethnic minorities had supported the Labour party because historically Labour had backed independence for their countries of origin. And obviously the Labour party was risking their support by betraying them through supporting these wars. After the failure of these wars – the continued occupation of Afghanistan, the chaos in Iraq and Libya – the calls for further military interventions had died down. But now these wars were being rehabilitated, and there is a real danger that the military-industrial complex will start demanding further invasions and occupations.

I absolutely agree totally with these points. Greg Palast’s book Armed Madhouse shows exactly how the Iraq invasion had absolutely nothing to do with liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, but was all about stealing their oil reserves and state industries. The invasion of Afghanistan has precious little to do with combatting al-Qaeda, and far more to do with the construction of an oil pipeline that would benefit western oil interests at the expense of Russia and its allies. And the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafy in Libya was also about the removal of an obstacle to western neo-colonial domination. These wars have brought nothing but chaos and death to these countries. The welfare states of Iraq and Libya have been decimated, and the freedoms women enjoyed to pursue careers outside the home have been severely curtailed our removed. Both of these countries were relatively secular, but have since been plunged into sectarian violence.

Despite this, one of the speakers annoyed me. This was the head of the Black Liberation Association or whatever Black Lives Matter now calls itself. She was a young a woman with quite a thick African accent. It wasn’t quite what she said, but the tone in which she said it. This was one of angry, indignant and entitled demand, rather than calm, persuasive argument. She explained that the Black Liberation Association campaigned for the rights and self-government of all nations in the global south and their freedom from neo-colonial economic restrictions and domination. She attacked the ‘fortress Europe’ ideology intended to keep non-White immigrants out, especially the withdrawal of the Italian naval patrols in the Med. This had resulted in more migrant deaths as unseaworthy boats sank without their crews and passengers being rescued. This is all stuff the left has campaigned against for a long time. I remember learning in ‘A’ Level geography in school that Britain and Europe had erected tariff barriers to prevent their former colonies competing with them in the production of manufactured goods. This meant that the economies of the African nations, for example, were restricted to agriculture and mining. As for the withdrawal of the Italian navy and coastguard, and the consequent deaths of migrants, this was very much an issue a few years ago and I do remember signing internet petitions against it. But there was one argument she made regarding the issue of the granting of asylum that was weak and seriously annoyed me. She stated that we had to accept migrants because we had oppressed them under colonialism.

This actually doesn’t work as an argument for two reasons. I’m not disputing that we did oppress at least some of the indigenous peoples of our former colonies. The colour bar in White Rhodesia was notorious, and Black Africans in other countries, like Malawi, were treated as second class citizens quite apart from the horrific, genocidal atrocities committed against the Mao-Mao rebellion. The first problem with the argument from colonial oppression is that it raises the question why any self-respecting person from the Commonwealth would ever want to come to Britain, if we’re so racist and oppressive.

The other problem is that the British Empire is now, for the most part, a thing of the past. Former colonies across the globe formed nationalist movements and achieved their independence. They were supposed to benefit from the end of British rule. In some cases they have. But to return to Africa, since independence the continent has been dominated by a series of brutal dictators, who massacred and looted their people. There is an appalling level of corruption to the point where the FT said that many of them were kleptocracies, which were only called countries by the courtesy of the west. Western colonialism is responsible for many of the Developing World’s problems, but not all. I’ve heard from a couple of Brits, who have lived and worked in former colonies, that they have been asked by local people why we left. These were older people, but it shows that the end of British rule was not as beneficial as the nationalists claimed, and that some indigenous people continued to believe that things had been better under the Empire. But the culpability of the leaders of many developing nations for their brutal dictatorships and the poverty they helped to inflict on their people wasn’t mentioned by this angry young woman. And that’s a problem, because the counterargument to her is that the British Empire has vanished, and with the handover to indigenous rule British responsibility for these nations’ affairs ended. It is up to these countries to solve their problems, and we should be under no obligation to take in people fleeing oppression in these countries.

For me, a far better approach would be to stress old colonial ties and obligations with these nations. Part of the ideology of colonialism was that Britain held these countries in trust, and that these nations would only remain under British rule until they developed the ability to manage themselves. It was hypocritical, and I think there’s a quote from Lord Lugard, one of the architects of British rule in Africa, about how the British had only a few decades to despoil the country. Nevertheless, it was there, as was Kipling’s metaphor of the ‘White Man’s Burden’, in which Britain was to teach these nations proper self-government and civilisation. It’s patronising, because it assumes the superiority of western civilisation, but nevertheless it is one of paternal responsibility and guidance. And some British politicians and imperialists took this ideology very seriously. I was told by a friend of mine that before Enoch Powell became an avowed and implacable opponent of non-White immigration with his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, he sincerely believed that Britain did have an obligation to its subject peoples. He worked for a number of organisations set up to help non-White immigrants to Britain from her colonies.

It therefore seems to me that supporters of non-White migrants and asylum seekers would be far better arguing that they should be granted asylum because of old colonial ties and kinship in the Commonwealth and continuing paternal obligations, rather than allowed in as some kind of reparation for the oppression of the colonial past.

The first argument offers reconciliation and common links. The other only angry division between oppressed and oppressor.

Vox Political Points Out that the Advisory Boards of the Samaritans and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Are Stuffed Full of Tories

Mike published this very important article today, which throws the witch-hunt against the critics of Israel and the Israel lobby in the Labour party in a very harsh light. The Disability News Service revealed over a month ago in December that the Department of Health had refused to recognise that disabled benefit claimants were one of the groups at high risk of committing suicide. When this was pointed out to the Samaritans, the charity flatly refused to condemn the government.

Now the charity is facing controversy, not only for its failure to do so, but because of the probable reason why. Its board of management is stuffed full of Tories. Seven of its eleven members belong to the wretched party.
And it’s very likely the board of the faux anti-racist organisation, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, is the same. He hasn’t been able to find out who their board members are, but their patrons include the following true blue members of the corporate elite anti-working class hate squad: Eric Pickles, Matthew Offord, Mike Freer, Bob Blackman and Baron Ahmad. The others include a couple of Labour members and a crossbench peer.

This explains, no doubt, why the woefully misnamed organisation has attacked 40 Labour MPs, and only two Tories.

And Mike goes on to ask the question how many other charities have been similarly infiltrated by the Nasty Party. This is going to be a problem, as for an organisation to have charitable status, it has to be apolitical. And the Samaritans and the Campaign Against Anti-Israelism, sorry, Anti-Semitism, are all too political with the make-up of their governing organs.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/02/02/samaritans-advisory-board-crammed-with-tories-so-is-the-campaign-against-antisemitism-who-else/

This issue – of Tory, or corporate domination of charities, has been raised before. A few years ago Johnny Void posted on his blog how one mental health charity was vigorously promoting the mendacious, unscientific rubbish that work is good for those with psychological problems – take the advice of someone who’s been there: it ain’t – not least because their directors included a corporate shill, who was behind the policy and who looked forward to the charity getting lots of government contracts to administer their scheme.

It doesn’t surprise me one iota that the Tories dominate the Samaritans. I dare say that the gentlemen involved genuinely wish to stop people taking their own lives. As do very many others not connected with the Tory party. But they get on the board, because they’re the establishment, and establishment contacts are always good for private organisations, whether industry or charities.

Way back in the 1990s I worked for a few weeks for a charity for elderly in Bristol as a voluntary worker. I walked out one Wednesday evening and handed in my resignation because I didn’t like the way my supervisor spoke to me as if I was a mere underling and incompetent. I was later told by a friend that a lot of ordinary charity workers were doing exactly what I did. The charities have a policy of recruiting their management from industry. And these managers are used to kicking around paid staff. They don’t know how to treat ordinary people, who are devoting their time and energy gratis. And so they have a high staff turnover, because people are sick of getting abuse from management for work they’re doing literally out of the kindness of their hearts.

As for the Campaign Against Anti-Israelism, sorry, Ant-Semitism, this has never been against anti-Semitism per se. As Mike’s pointed out very many times on his blog, citing Jewish academic experts on anti-Semitism, that it is about hatred of Jews as Jews. That’s how the ant-Semites, who coined the word themselves defined it in the 19th century. The word was invented by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the Bund Antisemiten in late 19th century Germany. And he made it clear it was hatred of Jews for biological, racial reasons. It didn’t matter to him whether they were observant, religious Jews, or members of another faith, or whatever. What mattered to these proto-Nazis was that they were racially Jews.

But it does matter to the Israelis and their supporters and puppets in fake organisations against anti-Semitism, like the Campaign and the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion. They’ve tried to expand the definition of anti-Semitism so that it specifically includes criticism of Israel. In the case of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, it’s because the charity was set up in 2014 after its founder was shocked to discover that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza was reviled and condemned by the majority of severely normal Brits. The standard Israeli response ever since the 1970s and no doubt many decades before that, is to smear any critic of Israel as an anti-Semite. They have to be, ’cause it’s the only Jewish state. Thus very decent gentiles have been smeared, who have campaign ardently against racism, including the abuse and maltreatment of Jews. And Jews have been particularly singled out for such smears, in terms which would be anti-Semitic themselves if they were uttered by non-Jews. It’s because Zionism was always a minority position amongst most Jews, and the last thing these bigots and race hucksters want is for more people to wake up and see that an increasing number of Jews, including young people, who’ve suffered anti-Semitic abuse and violence themselves, despise Israel for its maltreatment and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

The Blairites were keen to make those accusations, because Tony Blair received much of his funding from the Israel lobby through Lord Levy. They’re now worried because Momentum and the real Labour moderates are in the ascendant, and so are trying to use any stick to beat them. And the Tories have been madly pro-Israel since Thatcher.

Lurking somewhere in the Tory support for Israel there’s a nasty whiff of bog-standard British imperialism. Whatever the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, AIPAC or the other pro-Israel groups say to the contrary, Israel is a White settler society. Its leader stated very clearly that this was the case, before decolonisation made imperialism unacceptable. Then they started lying about how it was movement of national liberation against the occupying Arabs. The vast majority of Zionist settlers were Jews from Europe and America. Ashkenazi Jews are still the dominant class in Israel today. And they despised the Mizrahim, Jewish Arabs, or Arab Jews, as racially and culturally inferior. They were segregated in different schools, in case their oriental manners and attitudes contaminated respectable White settlers, and given the dirtiest, poorest paid work to do. Discrimination against them was and is widespread.

While the British Empire is very much a thing of the past, some Tories seem to hanker for the days when Britain could and did conquer and colonise other nations. Way back when the war in Afghanistan was just starting, there was an article by right-wing historian Niall Ferguson in the Heil which made this very clear. It started reasonably enough by defending the Allied invasion as a response to 9/11, but ended with Ferguson looking forward to the Americans settling the country. It was, at least to this reader, a naked apologia for imperialism. Sheer undisguised imperialism, not dressed up as nation building, or the neo-colonialism of the trade tariffs and IMF recommendations to struggling developing nations. But real colonialism.

Mike’s right. It’s time to bring the curtain down on the Tory domination of charities. The Tory connection to the Samaritans has done disabled people immense harm and injustice by preventing the organisation recognising and condemning the way Tory welfare policies are driving disabled people to suicide.

And the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is strongly political. As well as not condemning the Tories, it also has little to say about the real Fascist groups, who do want to exterminate or harm Jewish Brits. But that’s not why it was set up. It was set up to defend Israel from criticism. And it’s frightened of Corbyn because he’s pro-Palestinian. But not, as I understand, anti-Israel, though you will never hear that from this pack of liars, bigots and frauds. They’re part of the true-blue, official, Conservative Jewish establishment.

And woe betide anyone one, no matter how anti-racist, whether Jew or non-Jew, who dares to break their party line. It won’t matter how many scars their victims have had fighting the storm troopers of the BNP or National Action. It doesn’t matter if the Jews they pick on are Torah-observant or secular, but self-respecting. Nor if they themselves have been abused and beaten by the real anti-Semitic thugs. Simply for condemning Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians automatically means that they’re all anti-Semites in the twisted thinking of these frauds and their political allies.

It’s time to end this charade. Get the Tories out of charities, and get the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s charitable status revoked. They aren’t a charity: they’re a party-political pressure group, and should be condemned as such.

Telesur on Britain’s Legacy of Exploitation in Guyana

This is a very short video-just over a minute or so long-by Telesur very briefly describing Britain’s history of colonialism and exploitation in Guyana. It discusses how Britain important African slaves to work on the sugar plantation, and how it gained its independence after the War in the 20th century. The left-wing People’s Progressive Party took power determined to combat the massive poverty and inequality. However, in 1953 Churchill’s government suspended the constitution, and the party was ousted. The result is that the country’s valuable resources are dominated by foreign companies, while ordinary Guyanese live in severe poverty, so that the country is one of the poorest in South America.

A little while ago looking through the politics section of the Oxfam bookshop on Bristol’s Park Street I found a book by a Black Guyanese author, who argued that the cause of so much poverty in Britain’s former colonial possessions was because Britain underinvested in them. This is extremely plausible. Their development is also restricted by the high trade tariffs imposed by all the European states in order to protect their manufacturing industries. Britain granted its former colonies independence on condition that they would provide the raw materials, which British industry would use to produce finished goods in a system Gunnar Myrdal termed neocolonialism. Guyana and the rest of the nations in the Developing World are put at a disadvantage, because so many of them produce the same raw materials that it’s very difficult for them to bargain for higher prices. If they simply stop or restriction production, the way OPEC did with the oil in the early ’70s, the west can always switch to another desperately poor nation willing to supply them with what they want.

As for the removal of the Guyanese government in 1953, I think this is one of the coups orchestrated by America that William Blum lists in one of his books. Again, it was sold to the American people as a defence against the global Communist threat, while the real reason was that it threatened American – and British – corporate interests. Just as our countries worked together to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1958 because he dared nationalize the Iranian oil industry.

William Blum on Socialism vs. Capitalism

William Blum, the long-time fierce critic of American and western imperialism, has come back to writing his Anti-Empire Report after a period of illness. He’s an older man of 84, and due to kidney failure has been placed on dialysis for the rest of his life. This has left him, as it does others with the same condition, drained of energy, and he says he finds writing the report difficult. Nevertheless, his mind and his dissection of the ruthless, amoral and predatory nature of western capitalism and corporate greed is as acute as ever.

There’s a section in the Anti-Empire Report, where he discusses the advantages of socialism versus capitalism. He notes that there were two studies carried out under George Dubya to see if private corporations were better than federal agencies. And the federal agencies won by a huge margin every time. He writes

Twice in recent times the federal government in Washington has undertaken major studies of many thousands of federal jobs to determine whether they could be done more efficiently by private contractors. On one occasion the federal employees won more than 80% of the time; on the other occasion 91%. Both studies took place under the George W. Bush administration, which was hoping for different results. 1 The American people have to be reminded of what they once knew but seem to have forgotten: that they don’t want BIG government, or SMALL government; they don’t want MORE government, or LESS government; they want government ON THEIR SIDE.

He also states that the juries’ still out on whether socialist countries are more successful than capitalist, as no socialist country has fallen through its own failures. Instead they’ve been subverted and overthrown by the US.

I think he’s wrong about this. The Communist bloc couldn’t provide its people with the same standard of living as the capitalist west, and the state ownership of agriculture was a real obstacle to food production. The bulk of the Soviet Union’s food was produced on private plots. Similarly, Anton Dubcek and the leaders of the Prague Spring, who wanted to reform and democratize Communism, not overthrow it, believed that Czechoslovakia’s industrial development was held back through the rigid structure of Soviet-style central planning.

However, he still has a point, in that very many left and left-leaning regimes have been overthrown by America, particularly in South America, but also across much of the rest of the world, as they were perceived to be a threat to American political and corporate interests. And for the peoples of these nations, it’s questionable how successful capitalism is. For example, in the 1950s the Americans overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz after he dared to nationalize the banana plantations, many of which were own by the American corporation, United Fruit. Benz was a democratic socialist – not a Communist, as was claimed by the American secret state – who nationalized the plantations in order to give some dignity and a decent standard of living to the agricultural workers on them. The government that overthrew Benz was a brutal Fascist dictatorship, which imposed conditions very close to feudal serfdom on the plantation labourers.

Which leads to a more general point about the emergence of capitalism, imperialism and the exploitation of the developing world. Marxists have argued that capitalism had partly arisen due to western imperialism. It was the riches looted from their conquered overseas territories that allowed western capitalism to emerge and develop. Again this is a matter of considerable debate, as some historians have argued that the slave trade and plantation slavery only added an extra 5 per cent to the British economy during the period these existed in the British empire, from the mid-17th century to 1840. More recently, historians have argued that it was the compensation given to the slaveowners at emancipation, that allowed capitalism to develop. In the case of the large slaveholders, this compensation was the equivalent of tens of millions of pounds today. At the time the plantation system was in crisis, and many of the plantation owners were heavily in debt. The slaveholders used the money given to them by the British government – £20 million, a colossal sum then-to invest in British industry, thus boosting its development.

This system has continued today through what the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal termed ‘neocolonialism’. This is the international trading system which the former imperial masters imposed on their colonies after the end of imperialism proper following the Second World War. High tariffs and other barriers were imposed to stop these countries developing their own manufacturing industries, which could produced finished goods that would compete with those of Europe and the west. Instead, the former subject nations were forced through a series of trade agreements to limit themselves to primary industries – mining and agriculture – which would provide western and European industry with the raw materials it needed. As a global system, it’s therefore highly debatable how successful capitalism is in providing for people’s needs, when the relative success of the capitalist west has depended on the immiseration and exploitation of countless millions in the developed world.

And in the developed west itself, capitalism is failing. In the 19th century Marx pointed to the repeated crises and economic slumps that the system created, and predicted that one of these would be so severe that it would destroy capitalism completely. He was wrong. Capitalism did not collapse, and there was a long period of prosperity and growth from the late 19th century onwards.

But terrible, grinding poverty still existed in Britain and the rest of the developed world, even if conditions were slowly improving. And the long period of prosperity and growth after the Second World War was partly due to the foundation of the welfare state, Keynsian economic policies in which the government invested in the economy in order to stimulate it, and a system of state economic planning copied from the French.

Now that Thatcherite governments have rolled back the frontiers of the state, we’ve seen the re-emergence of extreme poverty in Britain. An increasing number of Brits are now homeless. 700,000 odd are forced to use food banks to keep body and soul together, as they can’t afford food. Millions more are faced with the choice between eating and paying the bills. In the school holiday just passed, three million children went hungry. And some historians are predicting that the refusal of the governments that came after the great crash of 2008 to impose controls on the financial sector means that we are heading for the final collapse of capitalism. They argue that the industrial and financial elite in Europe know it’s coming, are just trying to loot as much money as possible before it finally arrives.

The great, free trade capitalism lauded by Thatcher, Reagan and the neoliberal regimes after them has failed to benefit the majority of people in Britain and the rest of the world. But as the rich 1 per cent have benefited immensely, they are still promoting neoliberal, free trade policies and imposing low wages and exploitative working conditions on the rest of the population, all the while telling us that we’re richer and generally more prosperous than ever before.

Back to Blum’s Anti-Empire Report, he also has a few quotes from the American comedian Dick Gregory, who passed away this year. These include the following acute observations

“The way Americans seem to think today, about the only way to end hunger in America would be for Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to go on national TV and say we are falling behind the Russians in feeding folks.”

“What we’re doing in Vietnam is using the black man to kill the yellow man so the white man can keep the land he took from the red man.”

For more, see https://williamblum.org/aer/read/150