Does Sargon Really Think That Only Whites Can Be ‘Far Right’?

I haven’t criticised Sargon of Gasbag, otherwise known as Carl Benjamin, the man who broke UKIP, for a little while, so I’m doing so, now that the opportunity has presented itself. And it definitely has! Like Simon Webb of History Debunked, Sargon and the Lotus Eaters decided to put up a video about the Hindu-Muslim riots in Leicester. The title claimed that the ‘right’ had started it. Which the right definitely has, but not in the sense Sargon thought. East Leicester’s MP, Claudia Webbe, had tried to calm things down with a message to the people of Leicester that it was a great multicultural city where traditionally different peoples had lived peacefully together. Sargon obviously couldn’t resist sneering at that, now that the peace and harmony had been broken. But I understand from the great commenters on this blog that, whether relations between Hindus and Muslims are like now, this was certainly true in the past. But Sargon really showed his ignorance when he sneered at something else Webbe said. Webbe said that the hate and violence was caused by far-right influences from outside. To Sargon and his viewers, this meant that Webbe believed that the tension was being stirred up by White supremacists.

Except Webbe didn’t say that. She said, ‘far-right’. Various television news reports on the riots by the Indian news agencies and British broadcasters like GB News have suggested that the violence was provoked by Hindu far right extremists supporting Modi and his militant Hindu nationalism on the one hand and militant Muslim Pakistanis on the other. Modi’s BJP and its concept of Hindutva, Hindu Nationalism, is considered far right and a form of fascism. I’ve seen it mentioned in a recent textbook on fascism as an example of the mystical trend in fascism. The same textbook also included Marcus Garvey and his Negro Improvement Association because when Garvey was in New York, he and his organisation used to give each other military ranks and hold paramilitary style rallies, very much like Hitler and Mussolini. In fact, Garvey said in an interview that he taught it to those two dictators. He didn’t, but it shows a certain similarity in attitude to them.

Sargon stated in his video that Webbe is now an independent after she was thrown out of Labour party after being convicted of threatening to throw acid in the face of a love rival. It’s a disgusting crime, and a pity Webbe did this. She was a member of the Corbynite left, and the Labour party needs MPs like her who stand up for the working class against neoliberalism. Despite her crime, she’s not stupid. My guess is that Webbe knows very well that other nations and races have their own far right. And so, when she talks about the far right causing the tension and violence in Leicester, she’s talking about Hindutva nationalists and Islamists. She isn’t talking about the NF, BNP, National Action or whoever.

Sargon’s sneer about her assessment of the situation, which is entirely accurate, shows he’s not as clever as he thinks he is.

Or it could be that he knows perfectly well that Webbe did not mean White fascists, but has carried on with the smear because he knows it’ll stick with his viewers, who won’t know any better.

Which is really nasty and cynical. And worthy of a true Tory like Truss or Rees-Mogg.

Callousness and Class Cruelty: The Real Reason the Tory Euro Vote Hasn’t Dropped

A few days ago I reblogged a piece from Mike over at Vox Political, in which he wondered why the Tory vote hadn’t also been significantly affected by their ruthless austerity policies. The Lib Dems have effectively been wiped out due to their participation in the Coalition. After Clegg’s debate with Farage about the EU, the number of people stating they will vote for the Lib Dems has fallen to 2 per cent. Other polls place them vying for fifth place in national elections with the Greens. In one local election, as reported by Tom Pride over at Pride’s Purge, they came behind Bus-Pass Elvis. This incarnation of the King stood on a platform of legalised brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs. Such decadence and immorality was clearly much more palatable to the local electors than the lies, hypocrisy and vicious attacks on the poor and underprivileged of the Lib Dems support for their Tories austerity programme. They are looking at political extinction. They deserve it.

The question remains, though. Why weren’t the Tories similarly affected?

The Lib Dems are, after all, only accomplices. Mike acknowledges that they may even be right in their assertion that they have held the Tories back from even more extreme policies. And the Tories are worse liars and hypocrites, and even more cruel, vicious and persecutory towards the working and lower middle classes. Before the 2010 election, they were posing as even more Left-wing than Labour. They went up and down the country engaging in stunts community activism, like trying to get funding for children’s play areas from the local Labour authority. They announced that they were ring-fencing money for the NHS. Osborne declared at one point that he was going to get rid of the PFI. Cameron’s mentor, Philip Blond, promoted an image of the party that he was extremely friendly to the organised working class, even citing the great anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, in his book, Red Tory. All this has been thoroughly discarded as the Tories push through the privatisation of the NHS, even more punitive policies towards the poor and working- and lower-middle class. And the PFI is still going strong under Osborne.

So why haven’t the electorate punished them, as they have the Lib Dems?

I think the answer lies in the type of people, who form the core Tory vote. The Tories have a reputation for being, in general, much more politically committed than Labour supporters. One of the Labour Prime Ministers, for example, was afraid of the effect the scheduling of a general election may have had on the number of people voting for the party, because it clashed with a popular TV programme. The fear was that the working class voters would stay home and watch that, rather than cast their vote at the polls. The turn-out for Euro elections is much lower than for British, and so only the most determined and committed parts of the electorate vote in them.

And in the case of the Tories, it seems those core voters are utter b****rds. Peter Snowden, in his book, Back from the Brink, discussing how the Tories managed to revive their electoral fortunes from the nadir of the Blair years, makes the point that Cameron’s attempt to position the Tories as more ‘Left-wing’ and competitors to Labour as social activists, met with only an indifferent response, if not outright hostility. The Tories simply don’t like community activism. And when Cameron stated at a publicity meeting that he was the heir to Blair, he was criticised by the editor of the Telegraph.

The number of people voting in general elections has declined considerably. Many are turning away from politics because of the apparent lack of any interest or appreciation of the hardships on ordinary working people that have been inflicted by the Neoliberal agendas now shared by all the main parties. Disgust at the greed, self-interest and hypocrisy of the political class has also had a highly corrosive effect on public confidence in them. The result is that membership of these parties has fallen to a rump of a few, very committed supporters, many of whom are tribal voters. In the case of the Tories, these voters appear to be arch-Thatcherites, motivated by a desire to return to a strongly hierarchical class system, and with a bitter hatred of state assistance for the poor and unfortunate.

The Lib Dems’ supporters, on the other hand clearly included many, who saw their party as far more moderate than the extreme Neoliberal organisation into which it has been moulded by Clegg. The ideological heritage of the Liberal party is that of John Stuart Mill – democracy, social justice and in the classic Liberal formulation, the achievement of individual liberty through collective action. In many areas where Labour is weak they are the opposition to the Tories. As a result, their followers feel the Coalition’s betrayal of their initial promises far more than the Tories, who seem largely content. And so they have abandoned the party in their droves. The Tores, however, propped up by class interest and Thatcherite greed, carry on as before.

And so Britain continues to suffer. It’s about time the Tories came to the same fate as the Lib Dems.