I don’t know if any of my readers and commenters have come across him, but there’s a Brexiteer commenter on YouTube called Geoff Taylor. His recurrent theme is, or was, how wonderful Brexit is, how awful Remoaners are, and how the Beeb and other mainstream news outlets are biased against good, Brexiteer Tories. He posted a video today with a title saying that societal breakdown was coming. The thumbnail for it was his fizzog with his walrus moustache and behind him a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters. I’ve notice the scaremongering about the pro-Palestinian demos for Gaza over the past few weeks. We’ve had a Jewish Viennese academic claim that this is the end of Jewish life in the West (has anyone told the Jews protesting on behalf of Gaza? They don’t look very threatened to me), stories about government ministers thinking of cracking down on protests for Gaza on university campuses because of chants of jihad and the intimidation of Jewish students to go with the claims that this was being done at the public rallies. I dare say some idiots have been chanting ‘jihad’, but certainly not all. And today GB News, TalkTV and the Scum have been ranting about the coming desecration of the Cenotaph next Sunday when there’s another march in London by protesters calling for a ceasefire. Someone on one of these two benighted channels even declared that there would be a revolution if the pro-Palestinian protesters interfered with it. They’re demanding government ministers ban the protests. And apart from Taylor’s video, I’ve noticed a number of right-wingers are predicting some kind of civil war between Muslims and non-Muslims caused by these protests. There were also a number of videos a week or so ago commenting on Macron deporting some Muslims from France.
It also seems more than a bit hysterical to me. What comes across to me is the multicultural nature of the protests. Yes, a very large proportion of the protesters seem to be Muslims. But you’d expect that, just as it was no surprise that a large proportion of the people marching against Tony Blair’s criminal invasion of Iraq were Muslims. But they also include Jews and less remarkable Brits. Indeed, contrary to what some people were claiming on the internet, the Liverpool Street Station protests was organised by a Jewish group calling for a ceasefire and no-one chanted ‘jihad’. Instead, the protesters were chanting ‘Ceasefire’, and no Jews were abused or intimidated. Also, the organisers of next Sunday’s march have said that they won’t be going anywhere near the Cenotaph. So GB News and co are telling little porky pies.
But it looks to me like some sections of the right are hoping to whip up enough hysteria about these protests so they can crack down even further on the right to protest. And the predictions of some kind of war between Muslim and non-Muslim looks like the propaganda the BNP were pushing ten or fifteen years ago. The calls to ban campus protests for Gaza reminds me of one of the infamous events of the wave of student unrest America experienced in the 1960s. There was a protest at one of the universities in Ohio. Nixon sent in the National Guard and in the resulting confrontation four students were shot. One of the pop bands back then wrote a protest song about it. I don’t want a British repeat of the incident. It also appears to me very strongly that some members of the right are looking forward to a conflict with British Muslims, as it will bear out their suspicions that they are treacherous and are some kind of fifth column determined to bring down British values and democracy. And that would provide them with a reason to start deporting them.
Don’t believe the propaganda. This isn’t about destroying Britain or its Jewish community. It’s purely about Israel’s persecution of Palestinians. And Brits from all religions and none have joined these protests.
This is my response to the furore earlier this week about the claim made in the book, Brilliant Black British History, written by a Nigerian author and published by Bloomsbury, that Britain has always been a Black country, the first Brits were Black, and Stonehenge was built by Black people. A few years ago now archaeologists and DNA specialists provided some support for the assertion that the first Brits were Black when they analysed the DNA from Cheddar Man and concluded that he had black or dark coloured skin. However Cheddar Man dates from the Mesolithic, the period between the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic, or New Stone Age. During the Neolithic Europe and Britain were settled by White skinned farmers from Turkey and the Fertile Crescent, who entered the continent via two routes, one which went up through the Balkans and another which went across North Africa then up through Spain to Britain. Stonehenge was built by Bronze Age White farmers. Even the suggestion that Cheddar Man was Black isn’t as secure as it is sometimes claimed to be. One of the team that analysed the DNA later issued a retraction, stating that it was impossible to tell what skin colour he had.
It’s clear why such a pseudo-historical claims should be made by Black authors and appeal to a Black readership. Black Brits identify with Britain and wish to see themselves in its history. But the appropriation of White history like this seems to ignore real Black history and Black achievement. For example, in Africa there were the historic great civilisations of Aksum, Meroe, Nubia and the Swahili, as well as the great Muslim states of the savannah and west Africa. And Black West Indians have also achieved much since the abolition of slavery. In the first generation after abolition there were Black politicians in these countries’ legislatures, elected by Black voters to defend them against the White planters.
Behind the claim that Black people built Stonehenge are various Afrocentric claims that are ultimately based on the theories of two 19th century White Brits, Gerald Massey and David Macritchie. Massey was a campaigner for Spiritualism and Christian Socialism, and was possibly the model for the hero of the novel Felix Holt: The Radical. He believed that Britain had originally been colonised by the Egyptians, who were responsible for the construction of Stonehenge and other monuments.
David Macritchie, on the other hand, believed that the first peoples of the British Isles were what he called ‘melanochroi’, a mixture of White Europeans and a dark-skinned people like Aboriginal Australians. The Black population was reinforced by waves of other dark-skinned invaders, such as Black Huns and Black Danes. It was this Black population that built the dolmens, henges and other Neolithic monuments. Other White writers claimed that the Inuit and the Chinese were originally Black. These theories were further elaborated in 1993 by Ahmed and Ibrahim Ali in their book, The Black Celts. They argued that before the Celts arrived to colonise Britain, the peoples of the British Isles were Blacks descended from the people of Ethiopia, who had moved into Europe via North Africa and Spain. This has been further developed by Indus Khamit Kush, who has claimed that Black Africans were the original Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Vietnamese, Thai, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, British and Americans. This last claim is particular noxious. There was a young Black woman complaining on social media a few months ago that Indigenous Americans were as racist as Whites. She’d been talking to one of them, and was outraged that they didn’t accept that Blacks were the original population of America. I can’t think of anything more likely to cause offence than telling a member of the American First Nations, who have suffered persecution, dispossession and displacement, that they weren’t the first people in America.
Some of the more extreme claims of the Afro-Centrists are extremely similar to those made by White supremacists. Regarding primacy as the first people of a nation or country, there’s more than a little similarity between these claims and a book published in 1978 in Paraguay, then under a quasi-Fascist dictatorship, that the Ache Indian people were descended from the Vikings. In the 19th or early 20th century, a German anthropologist claimed that one of the South African peoples must have been descended from the Vandals, the Germanic people that conquered and colonised part of Roman North Africa. You can go on, and add the way great North American Indian monuments, like the Serpent Mound in Ohio, were attributed to any number of civilisations except the Indians themselves. Or how the fortress at Great Zimbabwe was attributed to the Chinese and Arabs, rather than the local Shona people, who really built it.
And the Afrocentrist claim that Blacks have a unique, spiritual connection with the universe which grants them greater insight and intellectual abilities also seems to me to be very similar to some of the bizarre theories of the Germanic Neo-Pagan cults in late 19th and early 20th century Germany and Austria. One of these claimed that the Aryans had originally possessed ‘radio-telepathic’ organs, but these had been lost through interbreeding with the untermenschen.
Pseudo-historical claims that Blacks really built Stonehenge look harmless and liberal, because they’re advanced in the cause of Black liberation. But behind them there’s a very nasty edifice of racist pseudo-history and scholarship that should not be touched by the mainstream press.
Justin Gest, The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Uncertainty (Oxford: OUP 2016).
The White working class in this study refers to manual workers without college degrees. These are people who were previously in the 20th century at the centre of British and American politics when the manufacturing industry was still the basis for much of the economy. The book examines two communities, Dagenham and Barking in east London in the UK, and Youngstown, Ohio in the US, as examples of these communities and what they may say about the wider, White working class in both countries. There are significant differences between the two, but also profound similarities. They enjoyed good wages and conditions secured by the unions as well as welfare benefits, and a privileged position compared to ethnic minorities due to their skin colour and shared racial origins with the majority population. Both communities were hit hard by deindustrialisation after the 1970s. In Dagenham and Barking, the factories opened when the area was built as a garden suburb earlier in the 20th century closed. Many workers were particularly affected by the mass redundancies at the Ford motor factory. Youngstown, Ohio, had been built as a steel town, and was one of the major centres of that industry in America. It too went into steep economic decline when the mills closed, as manufacturing moved overseas where labour was cheaper. The section of the White working and middle classes that could moved out to the suburbs, and were replaced by non-Whites moving into the area because of the cheaper housing. This affects multiculturalism as a whole. Although people in Britain and America have accepted it, in practice White and ethnic communities are segregated from each other in separate spaces. As neoliberalism became the dominant economic theory, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic concentrated their attention on those segments of society, like the middle class, that has successfully adapted to it and the rising immigrant and ethnic minority communities.
Barking and Dagenham
These communities as a result have become acutely marginalised. They feel alienated from mainstream politics as, in their view, the mainstream, establishment politicians do not seek their opinions and actively ignore them. They are also acutely resentful of what they feel is the favour given to ethnic minorities, who they feel are now above them in the social hierarchy. The result of this in Dagenham and Barking is widespread support for radical right groups such as UKIP, the English National Association and the BNP, who had 12 members elected to Tower Hamlets council in 2005 with over 30,000 votes. These councillors were voted out four years later due to absenteeism and incompetence. Nevertheless, support for the BNP at that election was actually higher.
The book also examines the marginalisation of the White working class as it complicates notions of marginalisation based on race. The White communities studies are definitely marginalised, despite sharing the skin colour of the dominant ethnicity. The book also examines some of the general attitudes and social codes defining White working class identity. In Britain its understood in terms of heritage and bloodline, partly due to the remaining influence of the aristocratic conceptions underpinning British society. In Barking and Dagenham there was an active hostility to social ambition combined with a virulent anti-intellectualism. Gifted children were actively discouraged from thinking about going to university because ‘that wasn’t for the likes of us’. There is a story of parents destroying their children’s school coursework. Those who do try to become a little better off may be resented. At the same time, people are considered to remain working class even if they ascend to the middle classes. Thus, former working class people will retain their local, working class accents and speech as well as style of dress. This means that they will be discriminated against in favour of people from the upper and middle classes by their employer. One of the men interviewed works for the Scum, a newspaper aimed at the Tory working class. He describes how he is, nevertheless, given lower status jobs at the paper thanks to his working class origins than his co-workers from higher up the social hierarchy.
Many of residents are in council housing, and this, according to the book, is partly the cause of the high rate of unmarried motherhood in the community. Children live with their parents unless they have children, when they become entitled to council accommodation. As a result, many young women become pregnant simply to move away from their parents. However, family ties remain strong and children remain in constant touch with their parents, not least to benefit from the help they give in childrearing. At the same time, the social infrastructure of the White community is weak, centring around a few remaining pubs. The borough is a Labour stronghold, though this has not brought its people many benefits. Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking, is the Rt. Hon. Margaret Hodge, due to her marriage to the owner of Britain’s largest private steel foundry. A wealthy woman, she lives outside the area in Islington. Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, also lives in a much wealthier area, Notting Hill. There is a similar problem with local civil servants. These are better educated than the local people and identify with the wider attitudes of middle class public sector workers, and so look down on the people they are meant to serve.As a result, working class involvement in politics is minimal. Rather than serve on the council, working class Whites instead become active in their local resident’s associations.
And although it’s a Labour safe-seat, there is a actually little difference in attitude towards ethnic minorities between Labour and BNP supporters. The book reproduces a letter one woman wrote to David Cameron complaining about conditions there which included comments on the behaviour and conduct of members of the local ethnic minorities. There are also similar remarks from others, prefaced by ‘I’m not racist, but’. Some of these are complaints that ethnic minority business owners will not give jobs to Whites, nor will the Asian landlords let accommodation to them. Here I wonder if these claims should be investigated to see whether there is something in these allegations, and if the racism is all just on the side of the Whites. There is also an interview with a young man, a member of the BNP. He has hated Blacks since he was brutally mugged by a group of them when he was 17, as well as impressed by the militarism and racism of Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s notorious propaganda film about one of Hitler’s despicable Nuremberg rallies. This shows you how powerful Riefenstahl was a film-maker, and how Nazi propaganda can still exert its foul influence today. The man himself, however, is interesting in that he is of mixed ethnic origins – a Muslim Turkish Cypriot father and a White English mother.
These sentiments are not shared by the younger generation, who have grown up in a multiracial society, and who have Black and Asian friends and romantic partners. However, these more tolerant children believe that the settled population should receive state aid and benefits before immigrants. The book concludes that race in itself isn’t the defining factor in marginalisation here, but concern for social status, which includes race along with social class.
Although many of the people in the community are on state benefits, they look down as shirkers and scroungers long-term benefit claimants. And while whiteness has been a privilege, it can also be a burden when the status and prosperity they expect it to bring does not materialise. Another problem of the community’s mindset is nostalgia for the past. The people wish for the restoration of the old order of manufacturing and factories. Unlike the people of Youngstown, brought up in the American ideology of limited government and self-sufficiency, they also see the state as a provider, though one whose attitudes and decisions are inscrutable.
Youngstown
Although similar in many ways to Barking and Dagenham, Youngstown differs in having a history of real, overt institutional racism and massive corruption. It was very much an American factory town, where the mills also provided their workers with much of the social infrastructure, largely due to bitter struggle by the town’s strong trade unions. Workers at the mills were also graded and given different types of work according to their ethnic origins. At the top were English and Anglo-Americans, who were given management jobs. Other ethnicities, such as Italians, Hungarians and Greeks, were given successively lower paid and worse jobs. The very lowest, at the furnace, were given to Blacks. Blacks also lived in segregated housing separate from White areas, and banks would not lend to Blacks wishing to purchase property there. Race relations were also harmed when the factory management took on Black workers as scab labour in order to break the White unions. While the Blacks did not know that they were being used, there is still considerable resentment about this even today. The situation is not helped by the aggressive, antagonistic attitude of local Black politicians, who have angrily declared that it’s their time now. Some of the Whites also complain about the aggressive, hostile behaviour of the Black families that have moved into the area, and of Black youths entering it to cause trouble.
With the closure of the mills, much of the social infrastructure also collapsed. As with Barking and Dagenham, those who could, got out, leaving many homes abandoned. Many of them are being deliberately demolished by the council, or burnt down by vigilantes, in order to stop them being used as drug dens, or by prostitutes or for storing stolen goods. Other, less aggressive forms of vigilante action include residents coming together to plant gardens and trees on the area’s streets.
Americans have a strong work ethic, and these people want to be self-reliant. Many are working two jobs. Others are scrappers, collecting waste material and objects that they repair and sell on. There is a problem, in that those claiming benefits have to walk a tight-rope so that they do not earn too much not to qualify for food stamps and medicaid. As with the people of Barking and Dagenham, they look down on those on full time benefits, such as the people in the trailer site as well as Blacks, who are also seen as benefit scroungers. They draw a difference between cash and cashless benefits. Blacks are seen as drawing cash benefits, and so count as scroungers while Whites on medicare and food stamps are not.
The area has also suffered from a long history of corruption and domination by the mob. The mob ran the politicians and negotiated with the mill owners and unions, so that the town was governed through backroom deals. Nobody objected to this when times were good. Now those times are gone, this corruption is actively harming the town. One example given of this is the poor tarmacking of the streets due to the mob raking off most of the money needed to do a proper job. At the centre of this corruption, allegedly, was the Cafaro family, who owned the steel mills and dictated to the local politicians, although many are naturally reluctant to name them. A few years previously, the mayor, local sheriff, prosecutor and other local dignitaries were all convicted of corruption and similar charges. Even now, local councillors may charge bribes of $3,000 to $4,000 for their services. And many things get done through personal favours to the right people, such as the man who runs a coffee shop and so has acquired the nickname of ‘the Godfather’. Those members of the various council services, who weren’t corrupt, were placed under considerable pressure. One woman, a building inspector, recalls how the mayor frequently gave orders to overlook violations of building regulations and to continue working on buildings that were unsafe. She states that this affected her so much she used to have anxiety attacks before going to work, and used to joke about getting a mirror on a stick so that she could look underneath her car to see if it had been tampered with.
Since the closure of the mills, Youngstown has tried to attract other employers. The desperation to find someone to fill the vacancy left by the mills has resulted in the town’s exploitation by incoming companies, who have taken the opportunity to negotiate extremely favourable contracts that give the community little in return. Despite the dangers, many Youngstowners also look to the fracking companies to set up and provide work.
The book also considers that the local people are further hindered in tackling their poverty through their belief in the American Dream. As in Britain, social mobility has ceased. But Youngstown’s people believe that if they only work hard enough, one day they’ll finally prosper. They thus tend to blame themselves for their misfortunes, rather than the economy and local situation. The equation of status with income, rather than class, means that they have a more flexible attitude towards social mobility and class boundaries than their counterparts in Barking and Dagenham.
Unlike Barking and Dagenham, however, there is little, if any, local support for the radical right. While some radical right organisations have support in the neighbouring counties, there is no support for the Klan, the Sovereign Citizen’s movement and the like in Youngstown. However, questioning revealed that many Youngstowners would support a hypothetical third party like Britain’s BNP, with a policy of cutting immigration, countering Islam and supporting Christianity. Youngstown is similar to Barking and Dagenham in that it is a safe seat. The area consistently votes Democrat. Independent candidates either don’t win, or are swiftly absorbed by the Democrat party. As with the Labour party in Barking and Dagenham, this lack of competition means that Democrat politicians effectively govern as they wish with little interest in what their community really wants or needs. Some of those interviewed believe that the local politicos are only there to enrich themselves anyway. There is also hostility and suspicion towards the White landlords outside the area, whom they blame for letting properties in the area to Blacks.
The book is partly concerned to explore why White working class people, in similar circumstances, take different attitudes towards politics. Some join pro-system political activities, which means becoming involved through democratic institutions such as signing a petition or joining a union. Others become anti-system, joining radical, anti-state organisations like the BNP. Others still may become temporarily inactive politically, but are waiting for the time when circumstances are more favourable. Others see no point in political activity at all, and become politically withdrawn. The book seeks to investigate whether particular forms of marginalisation result in different forms of political activity. It seems that political marginalisation and the indifference of politicians can make people join democratic and anti-system forms of political activity. However, social deprivation is the motive behind support for Trump and the Tea Party. He also considers why working class voters often vote against their own interests. The answer is that White working class Americans are economically liberal but socially conservative. The Republicans therefore obtain their support by campaigning on social and moral issues. But Trump’s own, ambiguous stance on issues like abortion and gay rights has not prevented American Roman Catholics from supporting him.
He also examines the changing nature of the various ethnic groups considered White. This could be extremely narrow – in the past it was only Whites from northwest Europe. However, it has since been broadened to include southern Europeans, Slavs and even Lebanese, Armenians and people from the Levant. Despite living in America for generations, these ethnicities still have an attachment to their homelands and cultures, often celebrating them in special days. This, in his view, makes Whiteness a poor identity, as it consequently doesn’t mean much, and advises instead that people organise along lines of class or sexuality. And in both Britain and America he sees the stress on a separate White identity and hostility to non-Whites as dividing the working class as a whole and preventing working class Whites from finding class allies among other ethnic groups.
The book ends with a series of recommendations on how politicians can appeal to the White working class, who are still a large and powerful political constituency.
Since the book was published the political landscape has changed. Trump has been and gone, though he may yet return. UKIP has imploded, and has been replaced by a number of other right-wing populist parties, Richard Tice’s Reform and Laurence Fox’s Reclaim. Many working class Brits, it has been considered, voted ‘Leave’ in the EU referendum, not because they wanted to leave the European Union, but because they wanted to send a message to shock the complacent governing elites. Jeremy Corbyn, whom the book mistakenly characterises as a ‘far left socialist’ – has been ousted from the leadership of the Labour party by Keir Starmer’s New Labour Thatcherites. The ‘red wall’ Labour constituencies in the north of England were also breached as the communities there voted Tory against the stagnant politics of areas that had consistently voted Labour.
This book helps explain these developments and give a wider understanding of White working class alienation in Britain and America. It notes that politicians have found it difficult to appeal to these communities without alienating other supporters, like the ethnic minorities the book considers to be the future of the Labour party in Britain. Keir Starmer has announced that the White working class, along with ethnic minorities and women, are a group he wants to see given greater representation in politics with the proposed appointment of a diversity tsar. Whether this is anything other than an empty promise, given his record of breaking so many and the fact that New Labour is solidly middle class neoliberal, is a good question.
Someone really, really should take Trump’s phone away from him and shut down his personal internet connections. He really has no idea how to calm things down. His idea of pouring oil on troubled waters is to throw petrol onto fire. He didn’t address the American people about the crisis that has engulfed his country after former police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by asphyxiation by kneeling on his neck. Instead he tweeted ill-chosen comments about shooting looters. Then his bodyguards rushed him to a ‘special secure bunker’ in case the crowd outside the White House tried to storm it.
As Mike has shown in his article about the incident, quite a few of the peeps on Twitter also drew comparisons between Trump, and a couple of other people with extreme right-wing beliefs, who also went into hiding. Like a certain A. Hitler, who likewise hid in a bunker, and our own Boris Johnson, who ran away from awkward media questions in a fridge.
Now he’s made more inflammatory texts, blaming the disturbances on a ‘far-left’ conspiracy and stating it seems that this is concert with the lamestream media. Other far right nutters, like Andy Ngo of The Spectator USA, have also claimed that this is some kind of revolution that the far left has been preparing for years. According to today’s I, Trump tweeted about the rioting in New York, “New York was lost to the looters, thugs, Radical Left & Scum. The Governor refuses to accept my offer of a dominating National Guard. NYC was ripped to pieces.” New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, said that he was not going to use the National Guard, as when forces not trained to handle New York City crowds intervene, ‘still with loaded weapons and under stress, horrible things happen.’ Some of this reluctance may come from the memories of the 1968 race riots and the shooting of four people at Ohio University by the National Guard, called in by Richard Nixon.
I doubt very, very much that there’s any far left conspiracy behind the protests and rioting. The issue of police brutality towards Blacks, and the unprovoked killing of unarmed Black people by the cops has been simmering away for the past few years or so. It’s what Black Lives Matter was formed to protest. And underneath that are the continuing problems of racism, poverty and poor Black academic achievement in schools. Only a few years ago Barak Obama was being lauded for winning the race to the White House and becoming America’s first Black president. The country, it was said, had now entered a ‘post-racial’ age. In fact, the divisions remained under Obama. Things were undoubtedly better under him for most Americans than if the Republicans had won, but Obama was a corporatist Democrat. He described himself as a ‘moderate Republican’, and so the neoliberal policies that have created so much poverty in America and round the globe, continued. American jobs went overseas and Obama went ahead with trying to close down America’s public (state) school system by transforming them into Charter Schools, the equivalent of the privately run state academies over here. Their transformation is often against the wishes of parents, teachers and the wider community. But the privatisation was still pushed, and is still being pushed by Trump. Welfare is being cut, and wages for ordinary Americans, of whatever colour, have remained stagnant for years. If they haven’t actually fallen in real terms, that is.
America has also become more racist as the trade unions and old industries, which employed both Whites and Blacks and brought people of different races together were smashed. It’s created a more atomised and racially segregated society. The old forms of community which crossed racial barriers have declined partly due to the ‘White flight’ which saw White people migrate away from the inner city towards the suburbs. The book attacking the Neocons and their toxic policies, Confronting the New Conservatism, argued that this is what fueled the rise of George Dubya Bush’s administration. And the same processes are at work in Britain too. Hence the victories of the Tories over here, the disproportionate numbers of British Blacks and Asians dying from the Coronavirus, and the consequent Black anti-racist protests in Britain.
There might be some extreme left-wing malcontents stirring the crowds up. I remember during the race riots that hit St Paul’s in Bristol in the early 1980s a White man with a long, grey beard hanging around the school gates with a megaphone as we went home. He was haranguing us, trying to get us to join the rioting. I didn’t realise it at the time, but thinking about it, it seems to me very likely he was from the Socialist Workers Party or similar far left organisation. They have a reputation for joining any kind of protest and trying to radicalize it or exacerbate the problem. But the SWP in Britain was and is miniscule. They’ve been criticised by their left-wing opponents because they don’t ever start protests, they merely colonise those of others. The riots in St. Paul’s started over heavy-handed policing, and specifically a raid on the Black and White Cafe, which had a reputation for drug dealing. The underlying grievances were the same then – racism, unemployment and poverty. The SWP, Workers’ Revolutionary Party, British Communist Party or any other radical left group weren’t behind the riots then, whatever White guys with megaphones may have tried to do. They aren’t behind the protests and riots in America now.
There is no far left conspiracy at work here. Just poverty and despair caused by four decades of neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, Reaganomics, Thatcherism and just plain, old Conservatism. Tackling the protests will mean not only tackling racism, but also the economic and social grievances underneath them. Grievances that the Conservatives and Republicans exploit to bolster their own horrific policies.
If we want to create a better society for everyone, regardless of their colour, it means getting rid of Conservative policies as well as stopping the police from killing people.
And in the meantime, Trump should also stop making things worse with his stupid Tweets.
Part of the anti-Semitism smear campaign against the Labour party is the attempt to foist upon it and wider society the definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which specifically includes criticism of Israel. Although, as Mike points out, the definition only states that such criticism may be anti-Semitic, but not necessarily so in all cases. Nevertheless, this is how the IHRA’s definition is interpreted by the Israel lobby, and why it is being used to attack and smear decent, anti-racists when they object to it or question it. Jackie Walker, one of the vice-chairs of Momentum, was accused and vilified as an anti-Semite, despite her own Jewishness, precisely because she questioned this definition and the exclusive focus of Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Nazis’ attempts to exterminate the Jews, rather than include other races, who had also suffered their own genocides.
The IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism is completely ahistorical and just wrong. Anti-Semitism, as defined by Wilhelm Marr, the man, who coined the term and founded the Bund Antisemiten – ‘League of Anti-Semites’ – in 19th century Germany stated that it was hatred of Jews as Jews, regardless of religion. And this was well before the foundation of Israel. Mike has also several times posted the views of a very senior lawyer on this issue, that this is indeed the proper definition of anti-Semitism.
But this is not what the Israel lobby wants people to believe. And so when Corbyn met the Board of Deputies of British Jews a few weeks ago, after they organised a demonstration smearing Labour and its leader once again as anti-Semitic, they pressured him yet again to adopt the HRA’s spurious definition. If adopted, it would make criticism of Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Robin Ramsay, the editor of Lobster, discusses this in a recent edition to his article, ‘The View from the Bridge’ in Lobster 75, Summer 2018. His article also points to an excellent piece by Alison Weir of the If America Knew Blog on this history of this attempt to foist the HRA’s definition on America and other nations. It’s at http://ifamericaknew.org/history/antisemitism.html
The article also includes this handy timeline giving the important dates in the development of this project.
Timeline for creating new Israel-centric definition of anti-Semitism
Following is a timeline of some of the key events in the creation, promotion and adoption of the Israel-focused definition of antisemitism. It provides an outline, but does not include every step of the process, all the key players, or every action.
1991 – Jean Kahn is elected president of the European Jewish Congress at its plenary session in Israel. He announces an ambitious agenda, including demonstrating solidarity with Israel and European countries coordinating legislation to outlaw antisemitism.
1997 – Kahn “convinces 15 heads of state” to create the The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia to focus on “racism, xenophobia and antisemitism.”
2000 – The Monitoring Centre issues a position paper calling for the definition of antisemitic offenses to be “improved.”
2003 – Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs Natan Sharansky founds the Global Forum against Anti-Semitism, stating: “The State of Israel has decided to take the gloves off and implement a coordinated counteroffensive against anti-Semitism.”
2004 – Sharansky, who is also chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel, issues a position paper that lays out the “3-D Test of Anti-Semitism:” statements that “demonize” Israel, apply a “double standard” or “delegitimize” Israel are “antisemitic.” These will form the blueprint for new definitions adopted by lobbying organizations and finally governments.
2004 – US Congress passes law establishing special office and envoy in the State Department to monitor antisemitism that includes statements about Israel under this rubric. (Sharansky is witness at Congressional hearing.)
2004 – American Jewish Committee directors Kenneth Stern and Rabbi Andrew “ Andy” Baker work with Israeli professor Dina Porat to draft a new antisemitism definition and push the Monitoring Centre to adopt it, according to Stern. Their draft drew on Sharansky’s 3 D’s.
2005 – Monitoring Centre issues a “Working Definition of Anti-Semitism” that includes Sharansky’s 3 D’s, based on Stern et al’s draft. While standard dictionary definitions of antisemitism didn’t even mention Israel, fully half of the newly devised Monitoring Centre definition referred to Israel.
2007 – UK’s National Union of Students (NUS) adopts the new antisemitism definition focused on Israel, after pro-Israel students introduce a motion misleadingly entitled “AntiRacism: Challenging Racism on Campus and in Our Communities.” Some student unions at various UK universities then follow suit.
2008 – The first U.S. State Department Special Envoy on antisemitism, Greg Rickman, endorses the Monitoring Centre working definition in State Department report to Congress. (Rickman later went to work for AIPAC.)
2009 – The Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (CCA), which brings together parliamentarians from around the world, issues the London Declaration signed by then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others. The Declaration calls on governments to use the Monitoring Centre definition and to outlaw and prosecute such “antisemitism.” US Congressmen Ted Deutch and Chris Smith are members of the CCA’s steering committee.
2010 – Second US State Department Special Envoy on antisemitism Hanna Rosenthal officially adopts European Monitoring Centre definition; this is subsequently referred to as the State Department definition of antisemitism. Rosenthal creates course on antisemitism using this definition to train Foreign Service Officers.
2012 – Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law is founded and immediately begins promoting the new definition. Within a year it launches an initiative to establish student chapters at law schools throughout the U.S.
2013 – Successor organization to the European Monitoring Centre (called the European Fundamental Rights Agency) quietly drops the working definition from its website. When questioned about this, the agency’s director says the organization had “no mandate to develop its own definitions.” (Groups using the definition continue to use it.)
2014 – Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, with help from Ira Forman and Nicholas Dean of the U.S. Department of State, initiates efforts for another agency to adopt and promote the working definition of antisemitism.
2015 – European Commission creates a special position to coordinate work on combating antisemitism, appointing German Katharina von Schnurbein to the post. Schnurbein proceeds to promote use of the Israel-centric definition.
2015 – Indiana University passes resolution denouncing “anti-Semitism as defined by the United States State Department and will not fund or participate in activities that promote anti-Semitism or that ‘undermine the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.’” University of California Santa Barbara and UCLA also pass such resolutions.
2016 – The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), consisting of 31 Member Countries, adopts the definition; the goal is to inspire others to also adopt “a legally binding working definition.” An analyst writes that the IHRA action is “a potentially crucial tool for forcing governments and international agencies to confront and take action.”
December 2016 – U.S. Senate passes law to apply the State Department’s definition of antisemitism to the Education Department, for use in investigating reports of religiously motivated campus crimes. Now the law defines actions connected to criticism of Israel as “religiously motivated.”
December 2016 – UK announces it will formally adopt the Israel-centric definition–the first country to do so besides Israel. UK Prime Minister Theresa May made the announcement during a talk before 800 guests at the Conservative Friends of Israel’s annual lunch.
December 2016 – Adoption of the definition by the 57-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which had been heavily lobbied by the American Jewish Committee, is blocked by Russia. The AJC then says it will push for individual member states to adopt it.
March 2017 – South Carolina House of Representatives passes legislation under which the State Department’s definition “would be used in probes of possible anti-Semitism at state colleges and universities.” The Senate version will be discussed in 2018. Similar bills are being considered in Virginia and Tennessee.
March – May 2017 – Resolutions adopting the Israel-centric definitions are passed by student governments at Ohio’s Capital University and Kent State, California’s San Diego State University and at other campuses around the U.S.
April 2017 –
Austria adopts the definition. (The Austrian justice minister previously announced that the new definition would be used in the training of new judges and prosecutors.)
The ADL, which uses Israel-centric definition of antisemitism, announces that antisemitism has risen by 86 percent in 2017, but includes questionable statistics. News organizations throughout the U.S. report the ADL claim.
Reports that Trump administration budget cuts might cause special antisemitism envoy position to remain vacant provokes outrage among Israel lobby groups and others. Samantha Power calls for entire Trump administration to focus on antisemitism. Soon, Trump administration says it will fill post.
All 100 US Senators send a letter to UN demanding it stop its actions on Israel and connects these to antisemitism.
May 2017 –
Israel-Britain Alliance begins asking candidates for Parliament to sign a pledge that they will support the new definition.
Earlier this week Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP until he sort of resigned, but didn’t quite, appeared at a Trump rally in Mississippi to give his support to Trump. Sort of. He never actually told the assembled crowd that he would vote for Trump. Rather, he said that if he were an American, he wouldn’t vote for Hillary ‘if you paid me’. He then told the assembled Trumpists that they could defy the polls and win, just like Britain defied the polls and won with Brexit.
Amy Goodwin, one of the main anchors with Democracy Now!, discussed this with the veteran British thesp, Emma Thompson. Thompson had been in the arctic, and so hadn’t been around when Farage made his pronouncement. Asked for her reaction, Thompson declares that it was frightening, because Farage and Trump were both ‘nationalists- White nationalists’. She was shocked that Trump didn’t accept the reality of global warming, and declared that she was amazed that anyone who had anything between their ears didn’t believe in it, when 98 per cent of the world’s climate scientists did. This included that IPCC, which usually offered only mild criticism. Even they realised we were in serious trouble. She stated that one good reason for voting for Hillary was because she did believe in climate change.
It’s quite a messy little interview. When challenged by Goodwin over what she meant by ‘White nationalist’, Thompson doesn’t answer the question and carries on talking. She’s still talking when the titles start rolling and Goodwin has to cut her off.
I think she’s right about Trump being a White nationalist. He does have very strong racial views against Mexicans and Muslim immigration, even if he tries to camouflage it with claims that Blacks and Hispanics really love him. A similar racism did fuel the Brexit campaign and is evident in much of Bilious Barrage’s party, UKIP, despite its repeated claim that it won’t tolerate members, who have been members of the Fascist Right.
The reference to the arctic I think refers to a film Thompson has been making on the effects of climate change on the environment in that region. About this, I doubt, however, that Shrillary will be much better than Trump. She accepts the reality of climate change, but my guess is that she’s too much of a corporate shill beholden to the big energy companies and Wall Street ever to want to do much to curb their depredations on the environment. Anyone seriously interested in Green issues and tackling climate change would probably be better voting for Jill Stein and the Greens.
And finally, there’s Farage’s presumption in telling Americans how to vote. Talking about this with Mum the other day, she reckoned it was ‘a bit of a cheek’. It is. No nation likes being told which way to vote by foreigners. I remember the time over a decade ago when the Guardian – or was it the Observer – was so horrified by the prospect of Bush winning the election that they organised a mass letter writing campaign to voters in one of the counties in Ohio, on the grounds that this district had just the right number of voters to swing the vote. This had the opposite effect. Good patriotic Americans were duly royally annoyed at being told what to do by the Limeys again, 200 years after throwing us out. The result was a landslide for Bush, and much hilarity on Have I Got News For You when they covered the story.
This is another piece about Donald Trump. Sorry about that. Normally service blogging about the Nazis and clowns in our own government will resume later.:)
In this piece, The Young Turks discuss the latest propaganda video released by ISIS over the internet, and the fears of European students at an American college interviewed by Jordan Cheriton, that Trump will win the American election.
ISIS’ wretched video shows Trump describing how Belgium used to be a beautiful place, and how it has been destroyed by ISIS in their latest attack. The Turk’s anchor, Cenk Uygur, attacks Trump for offering ISIS a ‘twofer’. First of all, he blamed the victim, stating it was the country’s own fault it got attacked, and that it was ‘a mess’. And then he gives ISIS and other Islamist terror groups more free publicity through his statements that he will go in harder in the Middle East, and kill civilians and the families of terrorists, not just the terrorists themselves.
They also show a clip, in which Jordan Cheriton interviewed a group of students at a uni in Ohio. From their names and accents, the students were all Brits. They stated that they, and Europeans like them back home, were afraid of Trump winning the election, and that all the talk was about Trump. They believed that Europe was better in integrating minorities. They also said that at first they didn’t know who Trump was, and as they found out more about it him, it seemed funny that a TV host should be running for president rather than a professional politician. Now it was truly frightening. They were also unimpressed with the level of the campaign rhetoric – the comments and innuendo about the man’s genitals, for example. That was like school politics, they said.
Cheriton and Uygur discuss how this is the complete opposite of Republican rhetoric. They claim that Obama has wrecked America’s image abroad. Instead, this shows that Europeans are far more afraid of Trump, and that after Bush, Obama was a godsend. They’re right. I have right-wing friends, who like Obama but are, like everyone else, deeply concerned about Trump winning the presidency. And the comments about European being better at integrating minorities is also interesting. While I was on an archaeology course about eleven years ago now, the American students claimed that we British were actually worse racists than they were. Now the situation seems to be reversed. The Turks concluded that at one time, the world was sending their young people to America to learn how American democracy functioned. Now foreign kids were learning, as the youngsters interviewed by Cheriton said, how not to do politics from Trump.
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