One of the other issues that really concerns me at the moment is continuing revelations about the Pakistani grooming gangs. Last week it was revealed that gangs in Telford had preyed on a further thousand victims, and that this had been ignored by the police and the local authorities. I’m absolutely disgusted by this, and infuriated by the response of these organisations and the left to it. There were angry scenes at a council meeting in Oldham last week when the council blithely claimed that there had been no cover-up. a Tory councillor shouted that there was, and he had one of the victims of these gangs there to prove it. I’ve also heard it alleged that it’s still going on. This is being used by the right to discredit the left, meaning particularly the Labour party, as the local authorities that allowed it to go on for decades were Labour. Various right-wing channels and YouTubers are stating that the left prefers rapists to accusations of racism, which is absolutely correct. But it also shows an underlying, profound inability in the left to deal with anti-White racism.
The anti-racist movement and its various organs, like the former Commission for Racial Equality, were set up to deal with anti-Black and anti-Asian racism, particularly after the race riots and the stabbing of a Black man just for having a White girlfriend at the Notting Hill Carnival. And there was a lot of very blatant racism, right down to the bullying of peeps from ethnic minorities by their workmates. There really were signs saying ‘No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’. And the continuing poverty, poor educational performance and marginalisation of the Black community has continued this focus on Black racial welfare. At the same time, the biased reporting in the right-wing press of Black crime and the victimisation of Whites in Black and ethnic majority areas was a part of a wider campaign against non-White immigration. This was rightly attacked as racism, especially as the real Fascists of the BNP and National Front used it as part of their political campaigns, while making up a few facts of their own. One of the grotesque examples of this was Nick Griffin or one of his wretched storm troopers telling his minuscule legions that Stephen Lawrence was a crook at school who forced the other kids to give him their dinner money. Completely made up! But when did that bother the political heirs of Hitler and Goebbels? What this has done is made the left in particularly absolutely terrified of acknowledging, let alone combating, anti-White racism.
This hasn’t been the case all the time. The Independent journo Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote a report for the CRE about anti-White racism, and the issue was discussed in the Guardian. But this was two decades and more ago. And the left is continuing to mishandle the issue of the grooming gangs by signally failing to protest against them. It means that the issue is being exploited by racists and islamophobes like Tommy Robinson. The left, meanwhile, protests against him while saying nothing about the racism against the White girls who were raped and exploited by the gangs.
I believe there is a way to tackle this, and that the left has the resources within it. I think what is needed is for the left to hold multicultural rallies against the gangs, just as Whites have marched with Blacks and Asians against racism and prejudice against them. I have therefore sent emails suggesting this to my local branch of the Labour party and to Asher Craig, the deputy mayor for Bristol and head of children and equalities for the city. My email to the local Labour party runs
‘Dear Sir,
I am writing to you as a member of the local Labour party to express my growing concern about the recent revelations of the rape and racist abuse of White girls by grooming gangs of men of Pakistani origin. I am particularly dismayed by what I feel is the complete lack of an appropriate response by the Labour party and the local authorities. In towns and cities like Bradford, Oldham and Rotherham, these gangs were allowed to get away with their predations for decades because the police and local authorities were afraid of being accused of racism. This past week it has emerged that a further 1,000 girls were raped and abused of the decades in Telford. This abuse has been confounded by police officers turning up to talk to one of the victims because she appeared on GB News to talk about her experiences. This grotesque inaction and the attempts by the police and authorities to contain this story, complete with denials that there has been any cover-up, reflects extremely badly not just on the police and local authorities in those areas, but on the left and the mainstream anti-racist movement generally. There have been videos about this scandal on YouTube that make it very clear that the posters believe that the authorities cannot be trusted and that the Left as a whole finds the racist abuse of White girls perfectly acceptable. The anti-trans activist Kelly-Jay Keen has put up a video, for example, with the title ‘the Left – Better a Rapist than a Racist’. The right-wing YouTube group The Lotus Eaters have been covering this issue for years, expressing similar views about the left. And the anti-immigrant YouTuber, ‘We Got A Problem’ included on his video about the issue the advice that people should start organising themselves to protect their children against such predatory gangs because the police and authorities won’t protect them. This is a call for vigilante gangs and racist lynch mobs, and the first step to Fascism.
I believe that this issue has and is being disastrously mishandled by the left and the conventional anti-racist movement because of a long-standing failure to treat anti-White racism equally with anti-Black and anti-Asian racism. This seems based on the fear that any mention of racism by Blacks and Asians towards Whites will spark race riots and bring back the spectre of Enoch Powell and his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. But the opposite seems to be the case, as people are going back to Enoch Powell because of the left’s refusal to tackle these gangs. See recent posts by the History Debunked channel. While the left appears to give the impression that racism towards Whites is acceptable, it is islamophobes such as Tommy Robinson who are successfully manipulating the issue so that they appear inclusive. A few months ago Robinson, formerly of the anti-Islam organisations the EDL and Pegida UK, as well as the BNP, held a rally in Birmingham to promote the launch of his film, ‘The Rape of Birmingham’, complete with interviews with the abused girls. There was a counterprotest by Unite and Stand Up To Racism. However, instead of demonstrating that they were also against the grooming gangs, they simply shouted the usual slogans of ‘Refugees welcome’ and ‘Off our streets, Fascist Scum’. But it was Robinson’s group that really appeared to be inclusive and genuinely anti-racist. Their video of the rally prominently shows a young Black man wearing a ‘Black and White Unite and Fight’ anti-racist T-shirt.
This is what the Left needs to be doing. A few decades ago it was prepared to discuss and condemn anti-White racism as well as racism against Blacks and Asians. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote a report on it for the Committee for Racial Equality back in 1997. In the early part of this century, a Muslim Guardian journalist wrote a piece in that paper stating that working class Whites and ordinary Muslims should united against Islamist organisations like Hizb-ut Tahrir. And I have heard complaints from other moderate Muslims that they have received zero coverage and support from mainstream British society in their protests against the preachers of hate in their religion.
I feel very strongly that what is needed is a multicultural rally bringing Whites, Blacks and Asians together to condemn the grooming gangs and their predations as part of the wider anti-racist movement, to show that every form of racism, against all ethnic groups, is equally unacceptable. After all, Whites have shown their support for their Black friends in marching with them against their discrimination in the Black Lives Matter rallies, for example.
While Bristol is not one of those cities what has been preyed upon by these gangs, I believe it can play a major part in combating them through launching such a rally. Bristol has a diverse, multicultural population with Bristolians of all colours enjoying events such as the St. Paul’s carnival and the Asian melas, as well as the Pride events last weekend. I feel it is absolutely imperative that a multicultural rally should be staged to combat this racism, not just for itself, but to nip in the bud any further exploitation of it by the racist right.
It would be excellent if the Labour party in Bristol, or just the local Labour party in south Bristol, could organise such a rally or march, even if only on a small scale. I understand that there is no monthly meeting in August, but if this affair continues to develop then I will try and put forward this suggestion as a motion at the September meeting. In the meantime, if you can suggest other people or organisations I should contact to get this going, I would be very grateful.
I eagerly await your response.
Yours sincerely,
David Sivier’
And here’s my email to Craig
‘Dear Asher,
I am writing to you in your specific capacity as the official in charge of child services and equalities in our great city. I am very much concerned by the recent revelations about the grooming gangs of men of Pakistani heritage and the way their predations on vulnerable White girls were ignored by the police and authorities because of fears that they would be accused of racism. This past week, as I’m sure you know, it has been revealed that there were a further 1,000 girls abused by these gangs in Telford. I am deeply worried at what I believe is the disastrous way Labour and the anti-racist organisations are handling this crisis, and the way it is now being perceived and exploited by the right. Thanks to this mishandling, many people now believe that the Labour party regards such abuse as perfectly acceptable. The anti-trans activist, Kelly-Jay Kean, has put up a video entitled ‘The Left – Better a Rapist than a Racist’. The Lotuis Eaters, a right-wing, Libertarian YouTube channel, have devoted a stream of videos to this issue, which they regard as a form of anti-White racism. And not only is the Labour party tarnished by this inaction, but so is are the police, the BBC and the authorities generally. The anti-immigrant YouTuber ‘We Got A Problem’ posted a video last night stating that people should organise themselves to protect their children because the authorities would not protect them. This is a call to set up vigilante groups, with the attendant danger of racist lynch mobs. As I’m sure I needn’t tell you, the first step on the road to real Fascism is when there is a profound breakdown of trust between the authorities and their citizens on issues of race and nation.
I also believe that the racist right are far better at exploiting this issue,, and are doing so because they are doing what the left should be doing, but isn’t. The islamophobe Tommy Robinson, formerly of the EDL, Pegida UK and, I gather, the BNP, held a rally and a public showing of his film ‘The Rape of Birmingham’ a few months ago. He was met by a group of counterprotesters from Stand Up To Racism and Unite the Union. But they did not tackle Robinson on the subject of the grooming gangs. They merely recited the usual anti-racist slogans of ‘Fascist scum off our streets!’ and ‘Refugees welcome’. But they did not recognise that here there was a genuine, serious issue of the racist abuse and victimisation of White girls or demonstrate any support for the victims. When someone from the Lotus Eaters asked them if they did agree with the girls’ abuse, they said that of course they didn’t. But this isn’t good enough. They have to publicly show that they don’t. And they haven’t. Their failure to do so very much contrasts with Robinson’s own presentation of himself and his supporters. He claims not to be racist, and in the video he made of his rally there is a young Black man amongst his supporters, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Black and White Unite and Fight’. This is what the left should also be doing about these gangs.
For decades now, White people have marched in support of Blacks and other people of colour against racism and discrimination. I’m sure you remember the marches against the BNP and institutional racism in the 1980s and musical events in that decade and the ’70s by Rock Against Racism. I strongly believe that we need similar multicultural rallies against the grooming gangs. I realise that as head of equalities for Bristol your specific focus is tackling racism and improving conditions for the Black community. But the Black community, in my experience, is also able and willing to discuss racism and racist abuse directed against Whites. The I journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown authored an official report into anti-White racism by Blacks and Asians in 1997, and a Muslim Guardian journalist called for moderate Muslims and the White working class to unite against Islamist organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir. One of the complaints of moderate Muslims is that they are given no media coverage or support when they demonstrate against their religion’s preachers of hate.
I believe very strongly that the only way to tackle this is to organise a multicultural rally bringing Whites, Blacks and Asians together to condemn the gangs. We have to show unity, and that all forms of racism are equally unacceptable, just as White support for Black Lives Matter two years ago showed that the wider community despised anti-Black racism. I realise the gangs are a northern phenomenon, but there have been suggestions that it started in the south. And while Bristol hasn’t been touched by them, I believe the city could play a leading role in this because of its diverse population and the popularity of multicultural events such as the St. Paul’s Carnival and the Asian mela.
It is absolutely imperative that this should be done to show that Labour and the authorities are not complacent about any kind of racism, and that paedophile gangs of whatever colour are not welcome in our city.
As the head of equalities, I hope you may be able to organise such a rally for the city. If you cannot, I would be grateful if you could direct me to someone who could.
As I hope I’ve made clear, I’m am very definitely no fan or supporter of Tommy Robinson. He’s a thuggish Islamophobe, with a background in the BNP as well as various anti-Islam groups like the EDL and Pegida UK. He’s got a string of convictions for violence and other offences, and tries to intimidate his critics into silence by doxing them while at the same time telling his supporters not to harm them and taking the details down later. Or he turns up late at night at their house with a couple of his goons demanding a quiet word. He’s been very loose with accusations of paedophilia, which he’s used to smear Mike Stuchbery, a teacher, who has been forced to leave his job. According to the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Robinson’s in court today trying to avoid paying damages to a Syrian schoolboy he libelled as a racist bully, whereas the child was in fact the victim.
Robinson has been concentrating on the issue of the ‘Asian’ grooming gangs, which are in reality largely Pakistani Muslim men. He’s made a documentary about the gang in Telford and appeared in Birmingham to show it to the public a few days ago. Meeting him and his supporters on the other side of the police barricades was a counterdemonstration by Stand Up To Racism, who were joined by the Communist Party. Callum from the Lotus Eaters was also up there recording the event, and the right-wing YouTube channel duly put out a video with their own take on it. And really, I know that it’s biased, but the counterdemonstration looks extremely bad. They don’t tackle Robinson on the issue he’s talking about, but simply shout slogans like ‘Fascist scum, off our streets!’ and about welcoming asylum seekers and getting the Tories out. Which would be perfectly fine elsewhere, but when Robinson is talking about the sexual exploitation of White girls, it looks like Stand Up to Racism has either nothing to say about it, or worse, doesn’t care because it’s only racist when Blacks and Asians are victimised.
According to Robinson, the Telford gang comprised 200 suspects, of whom 11 were charged. One girl identified three men as her rapists – two Muslim and one Sikh. One of the Muslims fathered a child on her, and foetal DNA links him to her and the baby. But he was not charged, only the Sikh. There was also the allegation that a police inspector also took bribes from the gang to look the other way. Robinson tried to interview the inspector and the three suspected abusers. They either said ‘No comment’ or denied the accusation.
During the showing of the film a football hooligan firm, the Chelsea Headhunters, turned up looking for a fight. They were disappointed and so left again. They supposedly had nothing to do with Robinson, but Stand Up to Racism claimed they did. Then, when the film moved on to the girls telling the story how they were raped and abused, the counterdemonstrators left. Which gives the impression that they have no interest in protecting the White victims of horrific racial abuse.
This is not the impression they want to give. Callum went up to speak with them and asked them if they condemned the grooming gangs. Of course they did. But tribal politics prevented them from making common cause with Robinson. But I don’t think they need to have gone as far as that. What the anti-racist movement needs to do is assimilate protests against anti-White racism into their campaigning alongside prejudice, abuse and violence against Blacks and Asians. This would have the result of taking away at least some of Robinson’s ammunition, and demonstrate a much needed broader anti-racism that recognised it was more complex than simply Whites against people of colour.
I was so annoyed by the deeply mistaken conduct of the counterdemonstration that I sent this email off to Stand UP To Racism:
‘Dear Sir,
I regret that I am writing to you to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the apparent conduct of your Birmingham branch and their counterdemonstration at the public showing of Tommy Robinson’s wretched documentary about the Telford Muslim grooming gang. I have absolutely no regard whatsoever for Robinson: he is indeed an islamophobe and a violent criminal with a history of far right involvement. But the conduct of the counterdemonstration appeared so mistaken in its focus and arguments to seem apparently indifferent to the suffering of the grooming gang’s White victims, that in the hands of right-wing YouTube channels like the Lotus Eaters they actually looked worse than Robinson.
The major failing was that the counterdemonstrators did not tackle Robinson on the same issue. While Robinson talked about Muslim grooming gangs and their depredations on White girls, your counterdemonstrators shouted slogans against anti-immigrant racism and general condemnations of Fascism. But ‘refugees in, Tories out’, however well-meant – and would that the Tories were out! -, wasn’t the issue. It gave the impression instead, which I’m sure was not your intention, that you are not concerned about racism when its victims are White, and that you have nothing to day against that issue. Or, worse, that you and your organisation somehow feel that the sexual exploitation and abuse of White girls isn’t racism and indeed it is actually racist to protest against it. This is the attitude of some anti-racist activists, unfortunately. Last year there was a report in the Guardian that three BAME representatives at an anti-racist meeting had complained about the inclusion of anti-White racial incidents in government statistics. As this was the reason the police forces and local authorities around Britain did not tackle the gangs the counterdemonstrators therefore seem to present themselves as holding the same attitudes that allowed the gangs to escape justice for so long.
It could also be considered that the counterdemonstrators also did themselves no favours by including the Communist party. For many people the Communist Party will forever be tainted with the horrors of the Soviet state and particularly Stalin’s gulags. Stalin’s regime was also responsible for the mass deportation of whole nations to Siberia and the Holodomor, the artificial famine in the Ukraine, as documented in Robert Conquest’s book The Nation Killers. I do not feel that such people have anything to say about racism without being hypocritical.
The counterdemonstrators also made themselves look extremely bad by marching off when the film moved on to the girls telling their side of the story. This looks like a gesture of contempt and again another demonstration that you are not interested in anti-White racism or its victims.
I realise that this is not the impression you wanted to give and that you are sympathetic to the plight of the abused girls. But this is certainly the impression many people will get.
I feel very strongly that, rather than covering up anti-White racism, it needs to be included in mainstream anti-racist activism and scholarship. Robinson has been able to exploit the issue of Muslim grooming gangs because they are ignored by mainstream, genuine anti-racist organisations. This has to change. I do remember how other anti-racist organisations did accept that Whites could also be victims of racism back in the 1990s, when the CRE published its report on Black and Asian anti-White racism. But this attitude seems to have changed. There is a fear to acknowledge that such racism exists in case it is exploited by racists and Nazis like Robinson and the BNP. But I believe it is disastrous not to include anti-White racism. If ‘silence is violence’, then the silence of the mainstream anti-racist organisations is a form of complicity with the criminals. I therefore feel that the best way to deal with this issue and others like it is to hold multi-faith, multiracial demonstrations against it, as you would against White racism, abuse and violence against Blacks and Asians. There should be no reason why Blacks and Asians wouldn’t join such a demonstration provided it is done in good faith by an organisation such as your with a proven record of genuine anti-racist action. Whites have been marching under the banner ‘Black and White, unite and fight’ against racism for decades. Now it seems to me that it should be the time for Blacks and Asians to do the same. The counterdemonstrators could therefore have marched under a banner showing White, Black and Asian victims of racist abuse saying, ‘Support All the Victims of Racism, Not the Fascists’ or something like it.
I hope you will give my criticisms and suggestions proper consideration. I would be very grateful indeed for a reply from you on this matter, as I am intending to put this up on my blog.
Yours faithfully,’
I’ll be very interested to see what reply I get back, if any.
I have had a couple of emails from the anti-racism/ anti-religious extremism organisation Hope Not Hate over the past few days asking if I would like to donate to their legal fund to fight Tommy Robinson, former head of the EDL, Pegida UK, jail bird, mortgage fraudster, and former member of the BNP. He’s a violent islamophobe with convictions for assault. His modus operandi in dealing with his online critics has been to dox them to his followers, leave the information up for a few hours, and then tell everyone he doesn’t want them touched or abused after this has no doubt happened. He also turns up to his critics’ homes, or those of their elderly parents in the middle night with a few of his thugs demanding to have a few words. One of his minions is the war criminal Avi Yemeni, an Australian-Israeli. Yemeni claims to have shot an unarmed Palestinian protester during his time in the IDF, and talks like he’s proud of it. Robinson also turned up at the home of Mike Stuchbery, a teacher, in the middle of the night, loudly insinuating that he was paedophile. This is pure invention, but nevertheless it led to Stuckbery leaving his job and moving to Germany.
A year or so ago Robinson was sued for libel for lawyers acting on a behalf of a Syrian refugee schoolboy, who had suffered a violent racial assault and bullying at school. Robinson, despite the evidence, immediately took the opposite view and decided that the lad’s White English assailant was really the victim. He interviewed him and put up the interview on YouTube. The Syrian lad and his lawyers won the case, and the beak ordered Robinson to pay £100,000 in costs and damages. Robinson has refused, pleading bankruptcy. Which is why Hope Not Hate are writing to me and others.
They’re not convinced Robinson is bankrupt, and are appealing to their supporters for funds so they can sue him and prove otherwise. Now as you might have gathered from the above description of Tommy Robinson’s sordid political career, I have no sympathy for him. In fact, I think he’s a counterproductive menace. He was jailed several times for contempt of court for his citizen coverage of the trials of Muslim grooming gangs. Except he broke all the rules real journalists have to follow to ensure that everyone gets a fair trial. He talked as if they were already proven guilty. This is dangerous, because if they were, but could claim that they didn’t get a fair trial thanks to Robinson’s reportage, they could get off.
But I have a problem with this, and with Hope Not Hate’s friends and allies. They’re connected to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Israel lobby organisation that was deeply involved in the witch hunt against supposed anti-Semites in the Labour party. Except those they accused of anti-Semitism were simply followers and supporters of Corbyn and campaigners and supporters of the Palestinians, who were overwhelmingly genuine, principled anti-racists and opponents of anti-Semitism. A very high proportion of the victims of this witch hunt are Jews. They are five times more likely to be accused of anti-Semitism as gentiles. As I keep banging on about again and again, many of them have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and violence, and have been threatened with further violence after these smears.
I am concerned about the safety of these victims of the smears, and especially Mike, from legal persecution. The Israel lobby uses lawfare – legal action – to shut down its critics. This was powerfully shown in the YouTube video Mike did with other victims of the witch-hunt to mark the release of a film refuting the Panorama claim that Labour was rife with anti-Semitism. I am also very concerned about how such legal actions, like the one Hope Not Hate wishes to bring against Tommy Robinson, will affect Mike.
As you know, Mike is currently in a legal battle with Rachel Riley, Countdown numbers person, who is suing him for libel. It’s a thoroughly unfair battle, as Riley is a rich woman – forget all that bilge from her oppo Tracey-Ann Oberman about jobbing actors. Mike, like the rest of us, is just an ordinary bloke with a limited income, and carer for missus Mike. He has been forced to rely on crowdfunding to help fund his battle. Riley and her expensive lawyers have attempted to stop this. They have also enquired how much money he has and whether this will make it worth their while to sue him. Her followers have also shown themselves to be deeply unpleasant, vicious people. They have gloated over the prospect of Mike being left bankrupt and homeless, looking forward to him losing the case and having to sell his house to pay her damages.
Riley and Oberman and their supporters have shown themselves in their conduct to be nothing but litigious thugs in my view. I am deeply concerned that if Hope Not Hate uses this tactic against Tommy Robinson, the same tactics will also be used against Mike, and every other genuine anti-racist Riley or someone like her chooses to sue.
In normal circumstances I would have no hesitation in helping Hope Not Hate sue Robinson. I have considerable respect for the work they have done exposing and fighting genuine Nazis, White supremacists and Islamists.
But because of their connections to the militant Zionist witch hunters and smear merchants I cannot do so because of the danger this poses to decent people, simply because they support Corbyn, the Palestinians or the people who have been falsely accused.
I must therefore decline and strongly encourage others to think twice before contributing to their legal campaign.
This is probably going to be a very controversial post, as it is about a highly controversial woman, Kellie-Jay Keen, and a very controversial issue, Asian grooming gangs. Kellie-Jay Keen is a woman’s rights activist, who contends that transpeople aren’t the members of the sex they transition to, and should be excluded from biologically natural women’s spaces, changing rooms, toilets, bathrooms and women’s sports, because of the dangers they pose, Last week she posted this video asking why people weren’t kneeling for abused girls and women, as they have kneeled and marched for issues like Black Lives Matter. She talks about someone she can’t name making a video about the abused girls in Rotherham, whose abusers were allowed to continue assaulting and exploiting them for twenty years because they were Pakistani and the authorities were afraid of starting race riots and destroying community cohesion. She states that someone she can’t name is making a film about this, in which the abused girls and women present their own stories and testimony. Despite the film-maker being an unperson, subject to cancellation, she has no time for any kind of purity considerations and urges people, whatever their ideological and political alignment, to watch the film. From the hints and information elsewhere, it looks like this film is being made by Tommy Robinson, aka Stephen Yaxley Lennon, former leader of the English Defence League, Pegida UK and someone, who could be fairly described as a racist, islamophobic thug.
Robinson is a formerly member of the BNP. He has, I believe, been jailed for assault and convicted of mortgage fraud. He has intimidated his critics by turning up on their doorstep or that of their close relatives in the middle of the night with his fellow thugs demanding a word. He did this to Mike Stuchbery, an Australian academic and teacher, whom he falsely claimed was a paedophile. As a result Mike has lost his job and is now working on the continent. He also falsely claimed that the Syrian victim of racist bullying in school was really the perpetrator, for which he was sued for libel. He has posted a series of videos commenting on the trials of various Asian men accused of grooming and rape outside the courthouses were they were being tried, making it very clear he believed the men were guilty. This is against the strict rules governing the reporting of such trials. It may even assist the guilty to get off, as they may claim that they were subjected to a mistrial due to Robinson’s biased videos.
Keen herself, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be racist at all. She talks freely about White paedophiles and abusers such as clergy and scout leaders. She also describes how, when she was studying theology at university, she was sent to interview a White family where the mother and eldest daughter were prostitutes and the youngest was being pressured into it. The eldest daughter was 15, the youngest 13. The husband and father told her that they were all ‘on the game’, but she was too naive and ignorant at the time to know what this meant. And so she let this abuse get past her unstopped.
The issue of Pakistani grooming gangs preying on White girls is a real one, and despite recent revelations and action it seems there is still cause for concern. The Lotus Eaters mentioned on one of their videos about ‘Diversity Failing Girls’, that the police in certain cities are not recording the ethnicity of the abusers in many cases. The issue is being played down, almost certainly because of racial sensibilities.
I fully appreciate the reasons why. Crime by Blacks and Asians has been subject to considerably biased reporting in the past by the racist, right-wing press in order to stoke up hostility and resentment. And the danger that the real far right, apart from Robinson, will use anti-White hate crime to boost their own popularity is very real. Way back at the turn of the century racial incidents against Whites formed the majority of such crimes. Independent and I journo Yasmin Alibhai-Brown were a report about this for the-then Committee for Racial Equality and the issue was being discussed in the press and media. However, Nick Griffin and his storm troopers in the BNP also turned up and launched a campaign to encourage White schoolchildren to imagine they were the victims of racial abuse and discrimination. The BNP became much more popular, winning seats on local councils, culminating in an infamous edition of Newsnight which included Griffin as a panel guest. The wretched party and its fortunes plummeted following a massive backlash by severely normal Brits, and I think the BNP is now more or less extinct, along with other similar parties. There is a real danger that the exploitation of the issue of Pakistani grooming gangs and other anti-White racism by people like Robinson could lead to a resurgence of real Fascism in this country.
But I also believe that part of the problem is the institutional attitude towards racism in this country. The various anti-racist organisations in this country were set up to deal with the real, vicious racism and discrimination directed against people of colour. I think they therefore find it extremely difficult to tackle anti-White racism. Thus a few years ago three BAME racists, two Asian and one Black, objected to anti-White incidents being recorded as hate crimes. One of them said explicitly that he didn’t think it was right, because anti-racism was created to protect Blacks and Asians. And there was a furore in 2017 when Labour MP, Naz Shah, liked and retweeted a message stating that the Rotherham victims should shut up in the interests of diversity. Shah later deleted her tweet and disliked the post. Nevertheless, I think her actions show the reluctance some members of the Black and Asian communities feel about acknowledging such crimes. Another of these is Diane Abbott. She was asked about the issue of racism by other ethnic groups apart from Whites by, if I remember rightly, an Asian gent. He was told that it shouldn’t be tackled because ‘they’ would use it to divide and rule.
This is the wrong approach. I believe anti-White racism can and should be integrated into the general, mainstream anti-racism movement, and that people would be as willing to march for the White victims of racism as they would for Black, Asian and other ethnic minorities. There’s little doubt that one of the most powerful motives behind the Brexit vote was anti-immigrant sentiment, but not all Brexiteers were racists. Many of them were left-wing anti-racists, and one of the complaints they made was that the media ignored pro-Brexit marches which included Black and Asian demonstrators. I also remember reading an article in the Independent years ago in which one of their reporters went to see if UKIP really was as racist as it was claimed. He found a small shop selling anti-EU merchandise, including T-shirts showing a British bulldog with a torn EU flag in its mouth. But to his surprise the couple running the shop weren’t White skinheads, but a pair of Ugandan Asians, who were grateful to this country for taking them in.
I believe that the size of the historical Black population in Britain has been exaggerated, but it was there. There were Black and Asian MPs before the election of Diane Abbott, Bernie Grant and Paul Boateng in the 1980s. And even if the majority of the Black and Asian community has only been here since Windrush, this is still three generations. They’re British, and deserve to be treated as such. Which in my view means that as well as being protected from racism and discrimination, it should also be exposed without fear or prejudice when it occurs in their communities. I realise that this won’t be easy and will require tact and sensitivity, but I do believe that Blacks and Asians will march in support of White victims just as Whites have marched to support Blacks and Asians. The slogan ‘Black and White, unite and fight’ must cover everyone, including Whites, subject to racist abuse, violence, and injustice.
In my view it is only by doing so that we can truly combat racism as a whole and keep it from being exploited by people like Robinson.
In a previous piece Tony Greenstein wrote protesting against the rabid witch-hunters of the Zionist Jewish establishment attacking Bristol Uni lecturer David Miller, he described the close relationship and collaboration between Israel and its supporters and real Fascists and islamophobes. Like Katie Hopkins and the noxious founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK, and all round thug, Tommy Robinson. He illustrated this with several damning photos. The one below shows Israeli flags being waved alongside the banners of the English Defence League at an EDL rally.
There’s also this Tweet from Gabriel Kanter-Webber, whose name suggests to me that he might be Jewish, asking why the Zionist Federation invited ‘Hatey’ Katie Hopkins to their annual dinner.
And then there’s this pic of the Israeli flag being waved alongside the Confederate flag at a pro-Trump rally at the Capitol, attended by real Fascists and White supremacists.
Tony writes of these shameful incidents
‘Who can forget the flying of an Israeli flag outside Capitol Hill on January 6th alongside the Confederate flag and an assorted group of neo-Nazis and White Supremacists? Our own fascist groups such as the EDL fly the Israeli flag at demonstrations. Tommy Robinson and his Football Lads Alliance have worked closely with a group of far-Right Zionists led by Jonathan Hoffman, a former vice chair of the Zionist Federation without any criticism from the Board. That darling of the far-Right, Katie Hopkins, was a guest at an Israeli Embassy dinner and had her picture taken with the Ambassador Mark Regev.’
This should shock many Jews, as there is a proud history of American Jews supporting Blacks in their campaign to end segregation. Jackie Walker’s parents are a Black American civil rights activist, and Russian Orthodox Jew, who met during a civil rights rally. But now it seems that Israel’s supporters have turned their back on such genuine anti-racism. Over here it seems that support from the official Jewish establishment towards such anti-racism was always somewhat lukewarm. David Rosenberg has said on his blog that the Board of Deputies tried to stop young Jews from attending Rock Against Racism events, because they were afraid this would expose them to SWP anti-Zionist propaganda. Now it seems the Zionist establishment is actively allying with real racists and Islamophobes.
And so long as this alliance continues, the ultra-Zionist organisations have no business lecturing anyone about racism.
The Board of Deputies is one of the leading organisations of the British Jewish establishment taking a major role in the anti-Semitism witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party. This isn’t because Corbyn and their other targets in the Labour left are really anti-Semites, but because the Board, as stated in its constitution, is a Zionist organisation. It has always ardently defended Israel. There would be nothing wrong with that if the Board did not do so by demanding that the country’s critics remain silent about its atrocities and history of persecution and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinians. As well as other groups, such as Arabic and Black Jews. Those who dare to state that Israel is a deeply racist society are abused and vilified as anti-Semites, even when they are self-respecting Jews and allied gentile anti-racists, who have taken abuse and lumps from real anti-Semites. The Board loves to lecture others about racial hatred towards Jews, but several of its own members have caused scandals themselves with their own venomous prejudice against Muslims and Arabs.
Tony Greenstein has mentioned a couple of them in his open letter to Bristol University’s chancellor, complaining against the university’s failure to defend David Miller, a lecturer at the Uni who is being targeted because he had the audacity to say that that Zionism needs to end. This is not anti-Semitic. Zionism is an ideology, not a people. It emerged first among Christian anti-Semites, who believed that the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland would bring about Christ’s second coming. Many of them also saw it as a way of purging their own countries of Jews, who were believed to be incompatible with Christian, gentile culture.
In his open letter, Tony discusses the noxious comments Roslyn Pine made about Arabs and Muslims, and how another deputy, Robert Festenstein, appeared in a promotional video for a right-wing media website, having a friendly chat with notorious Islamophobe and general thug, Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK. One of Robinson’s close associates is a former member of the IDF, who claims to have shot unarmed Palestinian opinions. Robinson himself has said that if there was a war between Palestinians and Israelis, he’d fight for the Israelis.
Tony wrote
‘The Board of Deputies which is leading the attack on Miller is riddled with Islamaphobia and anti-Arab racists. Roslyn Pine, a deputy for Finchley United Synagogue, shared tweets describing Muslims as “the vilest of animals” calling Arabs “so evil”. Although she was suspended for 6 years by the Board she was later quietly readmitted.
The Jewish Chronicle described how Robert Festenstein appeared alongside Tommy Robinson ‘in a politically motivated video made for a right-wing media website.’ Festenstein was introduced by Robinson as ‘a legal adviser’. The Board didn’t even bother to call Festenstein, the Deputy for Prestwich synagogue, to account because it knew that once it set out on this road it would have few members left.
None of this should be of any surprise. The Constitution of the Board mandates it to‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing.’ Not once has it condemned Israeli war crimes such as the practice of imprisoning Palestinian children as young as 12 or demolishing Palestinian homes. Even Tory Minister James Cleverly condemned the demolition of Humsa Al-Baqai’a, a village which housed 73 people, including 41 children, who are now homeless.’
Tony’s letter also amply describes the radid islamophobia and racism in the other Zionist organisations responsible for the witch-hunt, including the woefully and deliberately misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the violent paramilitaries of the Community Security Trust.
In my view, all these organisation are posturing, racist hypocrites, who shamefully exploit the real, genuine history of horrific persecution of the Jewish people to defend a persecutory, viciously intolerant state, merely because it is Jewish. In doing so they have outrageously smeared and attacked eminently decent men and women simply because they have spoken out against these atrocities.
These poisonous bigots and apologists for mass murder, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the torture and imprisonment of children, have zero right to lecture anyone about racism whatsoever. And until the Board changes its attitude, it should have no place in decent politics.
As Asa Winstanley, another anti-racism activist falsely expelled from the Labour Party for anti-Semitism remarks, this is beyond thoughtcrime. It’s pre-crime. Mike in his article about Keir Starmer reprimanding the respected Black women MPs Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy also mentions that the witch-hunters are demanding he censure their next target, Salma Yaqoob. Yaqoob is a prospective Labour candidate for mayor of the West Midlands, and a patron of the Stop the War Coalition. She is also due to appear in an online discussion from the Coalition about the new Labour leadership’s position on anti-war issues and Palestine on the 8th of this month, May 2020, alongside Paul Kelemen, the author of The British Left and Zionism: A History of a Divorce, and Tony Greenstein, ‘Jewish socialist and anti-war campaigner’. And it is his appearance on the panel that has sent the witch-hunters into a fearful bate, as Molesworth would sa.
Greenstein is very definitely a Jewish socialist and anti-war campaigner. He a fierce, bitter opponent of Fascism and racism. This means that he also criticises Zionism for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and the movement’s own crimes against Jews. He has pointed out again and again that throughout their history Zionists and the Israeli state have supported Fascists against Jews and other ethnic minorities when it has served their purpose. Israel sought out an alliance with another White Supremacist state, apartheid South Africa. In the 1970s and ’80 they also allied with Fascist regimes in South and Central America, including Guatemala during its dictatorship’s genocidal civil war with the Mayan Indians, and the neo-Nazi regime in Argentina, which targeted Jews for torture, massacre and murder. At the same time, the Board of Deputies of British Jews attacked the Anti-Nazi League in this country, forbidding Jews from joining it or allowing it to hold meetings in synagogues, because the founder was an anti-Zionist. Some left-wing Jews, who defied the ban and joined it nonetheless, like David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group, say that there were rumours that the Board opposed it for different, racist reasons: they didn’t want Jews joining the Black and Asian fight against racism.
Yaqoob’s appearance was picked up by Ian Austin, the former Labour MP complaining of anti-Semitism while the real reason was that Jeremy Corbyn had returned it to its socialist ideals. He has complained to Starmer and demanded Yaqoob’s suspension. Hence Asa Winstanley tweeted
This racist fanatic wants a prominent Muslim woman expelled from Labour for a future event with the “wrong” kind of Jewish person.
This is beyond Thought Crime, it’s Pre-Crime.
Jackie Walker, another Jewish anti-racism activist smeared as an anti-Semite and expelled from the Party, also commented: It’s open season on black women.
Kerry-Ann Mendoza, the mighty head of The Canary said
During the smear campaign a few years ago, the Board, Campaign for Anti-Semitism, Jewish Leadership Council and the other pro-Israel groups and their supporters waved placards at their protests bearing the slogan ‘Labour Party – For the many, not the Jew’. It was a play on Corbyn’s slogan ‘Labour – for the many, not the few’. According to Tony Greenstein, it was made up by British literary author, Howard Jacobson, when he was living in New York. It was supposed to show how anti-Semitic the Labour Party is. But the witch-hunters themselves have particularly targeted Jewish critics of Israel and pro-Palestinian activists. These entirely decent, self-respecting men and women have been viciously smeared as ‘self-hating’. The Board and the other pro-Israel organisations have also misrepresented themselves as standing for Britain’s Jewish community as a whole. They don’t. Board doesn’t represent Orthodox, Haredi nor secular Jews. It really only represents the United Synagogue. I find it very significant that when the I ran an article from a Jewish journalist denouncing Labour as anti-Semitic apart from their own columnist, Simon Kelner, that journo was always described as a member of the United Synagogue. As a Zionist organisation, the Board also doesn’t represent anti-Zionist Jews. The Board and the other organisations attacking Labour and Corbyn were also incensed when the Labour leader attended a Passover Seder with Jewdas, a left-wing Jewish group. This was another anti-Semitic affront to the Jewish community. They were the wrong kind of Jew! Which is itself a noxious, anti-Semitic gesture.
In fact the Board and the other witch-hunters targeting of Jews means that you could reasonably invert their slogan so it reads ‘Board of Deputies – For Israel, not the Jew’.
It was Tony Blair’s administration that launched the invasion of Iraq, against which the Stop the War Coalition protested, and the Blairites shared the same goals as the Neocons. After George Dubya left office, and was replaced as President by Barack Obama, it was Blair and Sarkozy in France who really wanted an attack on Libya and the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafy. The result has been the destruction of one of Africa’s most prosperous states, which had a strong welfare system and was relatively secular. It has now been replaced in some areas by a hard-line Islamist theocracy, which has returned to slavery with Black migrants now being openly sold in markets. Before the appearance of Coronavirus plunged the world into lockdown, the American right seemed also to be preparing and agitating for a war with Iran. The Neocons also want that country’s regime overthrown because of its militant opposition to Israel, accompanied by frankly genocidal rhetoric, and its defiance of American hegemony in the Middle East. They and their Saudi allies also covet its oil reserves, which they also wish to seize, just like they did Iraq’s.
And there’s also a streak of islamophobia in the witch-hunters a mile wide. People have turned up at pro-Israel and anti-Palestine protests wearing Kach T-shirts. This is a far-right organisation banned in Israel for terrorism. They also wear T-shirts and wave placards for its successor, the Jewish Defence League, which is also banned. One of the witch-hunters turned up next to one anti-Palestinian demo two years or so ago next to Paul Besser, the intelligence officer of the infamous islamophobic group, Britain First. These pro-Israel demonstrators also include open supporters of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK. One of the Board’s members even appeared with him in a video for Rebel Media, a far-right Canadian internet broadcaster.
It therefore very much seems to me that Austin and the other witch-hunters, by making this complaint against Yaqoob, are desperately trying to keep debate and criticism in the Labour party of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians very firmly closed. They are also seeking to keep Blair’s Neocon agenda alive in Labour. And they are terrified of Muslims and Muslim influence in the Labour Party. There have been polls showing that 85 per cent of British Muslims support Labour. Muslims are one of the largest ethnic minorities in contemporary Britain. The Radio Times a few years ago covered a radio programme about Jewish comedy and literary festivals that were being held up and down the country. These festivals were open to the wider British population. According to the Radio Times, they were partly being held in order to encourage the broader population to support the Jewish community at a time when that community felt its respect was slipping away and being replaced by concern for other ethnic groups.
Now I’ve got absolutely no objection to such festivals, whether by Jews or any other religious or ethnic group. And with the Far Right on the rise in Europe, Jews do need the support and solidarity of non-Jewish anti-racism activists. But Austin’s complaint about Yaqoob, a Muslim patron of the Stop the War Coalition, suggests that the general insecurity felt by part of the Jewish population is shared by the Israel lobby. And they’re scared of competition from Britain’s Muslims for our sympathies.
The witch-hunter’s targeting of Salma Yaqoob is therefore about preserving the Neocon project and protecting Israel from criticism by silencing genuine anti-racism activists, particularly Jews and Muslims. It’s yet another example of the racism of the Blairite Right.
Mike put up a piece on Saturday reporting that Labour leader Keir Starmer had caved in to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and reprimanded two leading and highly respected Black women MPs, Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
These two ladies offended the Board because they appeared in a conference on Zoom, whose audience included Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, who asked questions. The Board objected, as Jackie and Tony were two of the many people smeared as anti-Semites and expelled from the party. One of the noxious Ten Pledges that the Board persuaded Starmer and the other leadership contenders to sign was that no Labour member would share a platform with someone expelled for anti-Semitism. Hence Marie van der Zyl, the Board’s current president, sent in a complaint about the incident to Starmer calling for him to deal with them.
However, the Board’s complaint is wrong for a series of reasons. Firstly, Jackie and Tony weren’t actually expelled from the party for anti-Semitism. And as Mike says, saying that they’re anti-Semites simply because the Labour party said so has less weight than gossip.
Secondly, the two women weren’t sharing a platform with the two accused. They were merely in the audience. The fact that the van der Zyl and the Board chose to attack the two women anyway not only shows their determination to attack them, but also their failure to understand how Zoom works. Perhaps they’re like the American congressman, who was so ignorant about the internet when it first emerged in the ’90s that he asked if you needed a driver’s licence to go on the information superhighway as it then was.
Thirdly, while Starmer and the others are free to sign anything they wish, decisions affecting the party as a whole have to be ratified by conference. And the Ten Pledges weren’t. Starmer’s disciplining of the two women is therefore constitutional.
The Board’s complaint also looks more than a little racist itself. Zionism has a long history of collaborating with real anti-Semites and Fascists so long as its purposes are served. And these are frequently against the safety and wellbeing of the Jewish people as a whole. The Zionists in Nazi Germany supported the Nuremberg Laws, which defined Jews as racially distinct and incompatible with gentile Germans and signed the infamous Ha’avara Agreement in which the Nazis sent Jewish emigrants to Israel. During the War, the head of the Zionists in Hungary, Rudolf Kasztner, also made a pact with the Nazis to send tens of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz just so that a few could be sent to Israel. Israel has also supplied weapons and expertise to a string of Latin American dictatorships, including Guatemala when that nation’s government was exterminating the Mayans. When a neo-Nazi government took power in Argentina in the mid-70s and began persecuting Jews there, the Israeli government did not scruple to supply them with arms. Arms that were used against us during the Falklands War.
The Board defines itself as a Zionist organisation. It’s also politically right-wing, although perhaps not all its members are members and supporters of the Tories. And the Tories have hated Diane Abbott ever since she entered parliament in the 1980s. She was a left-wing firebrand, one of the first Black women MPs, who was determined to attack anti-Black racism. Over half of all the abusive messages sent to MPs go to her. She was one of those racially bullied by the Blairite plotters, according to the leaked anti-Semitism report. Not only did the scumbags reduce her to tears, but they told journalists where she was crying. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth, who was accused of anti-Semitism and reducing a Jewish woman to tears after he caught her passing information on to a Telegraph journo at a meeting at which he was speaking. Yet instead of suspending the plotters, Starmer instead has disciplined Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy.
The Board’s record when it comes to defending Britain’s Jews against Fascism is blotchy. In the 1930s when Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was marching through the East End of London in order to intimidate the Jewish inhabitants, instead of standing up to them the Board advised Jews to stay indoors out of the way. Fortunately many courageous people ignored it, and joined Irish people, trade unionists and Communists in blocking Mosley’s march and giving his storm troops a well-deserved hiding.
The Board also showed the same twisted mentality forty years later in the 1970s when the National Front was on the rise and trying the same tactics. Instead of attacking them, the Board turned its fire on their opponents, the Anti-Nazi League. Jews were forbidden to join the organisation or allow it to hold meetings in synagogues. This was ostensibly because its founder was an anti-Zionist, and they were afraid of Jews hearing anti-Zionist propaganda. But others suspect that it was because the Board itself had White supremacist views.
Tony Greenstein has written a piece on his blog taking the Board and Starmer to task for their treatment of Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy. He discusses the shameful behaviour of the Board towards British Fascism, and quotes Maurice Ludmer, the Jewish founder of the anti-Nazi magazine, Searchlight. Ludmer wrote in issue 41 of the magazine
“In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots… It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930’s, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. “
The-then secretary of the Anti-Nazi League, Paul Holborrow, also wrote that they were under attack from the Board. Tony is annoyed that genuine anti-racists like himself are smeared as anti-Semites for opposing and criticising Israel, while genuine racists, like Katie Hopkins, were given an invitation by the Zionist Federation to attend their gala dinner and meet the Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev. As for the Board, its previous head, Jonathan Arkush, welcomed the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s a racist, and his cabinet included real anti-Semites. However, he got a pass because he supports Israel.
Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy issued an apology for their actions. They had no call to do so, being blameless and actually the real injured parties in this sordid case. Greenstein in his piece advises them to stand firm and act like two of the heroes of the civil rights struggle in America, Paul Robeson and Angela Davies.
Robeson was a member of the Communist Party, and was thus hauled before the House Inquiry on Un-American Activities. When McCarthy asked him if he was a Communist, Robeson refused to answer, challenging the senator instead to stand behind him the next time he voted and fish his voting paper out of the ballot box to see. Greenstein also doesn’t mention it, but it is a significant fact here that Robeson was also an opponent of anti-Semitism. He gave a concert in Moscow after the War at the end of which he sang a Yiddish song by the Jewish resistance fighters against Nazism. This was not just to celebrate the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis, but also the millions of Soviet citizens murdered by Stalin.
Angela Davies is a Black American civil rights activist, who last year, 2019, was given the Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award by the Civil Rights Institute of Birmingham, Alabama. However, the Alabama equivalent of the Board got mightily offended and complained, because Davies is a critic of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians, which she compares to the police’s maltreatment of Black Americans. The Alabama Board complained, and then issued an embarrassed retraction and apology for their own racism when Davies stood her ground and called them out instead.
And the British Board deserves to be called out on its racism. It includes as deputies individuals like Robert Festenstein, an islamophobe who appeared in a Rebel Media video with Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK. Arkush and van der Zyl have also appeared at meetings in which members of the audience sported Jewish Defence League T-shirts. The JDL is a Judaeo-Nazi organisation, whose predecessor, Kach, is banned as a terrorist group in Israel. Unlike the majority of modern Jews, who strongly reject any idea that their religion makes them superior to anyone else, Kach was founded by Meir Kahane, an extreme right-wing rabbi. He really did believe that Jews are superior to gentiles, and urged Jews to arm themselves. He also absolutely believed that the Holy Land belonged solely to the Jews, and demanded the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people.
There’s a connection here to the militia movement that emerged in America during the ’90s. These were the successors to the Survivalists of the 1980s. They were arming themselves against the American government, which they believed had been corrupted by liberalism and was about to establish a murderous totalitarian dictatorship. According to their critics, such as the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the militias were White Supremacists with close connections to American Nazism and the Klan. However, according to Adam Palfrey’s Cult Rapture, an examination of American fringe culture in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing, there was also Jewish militia. This group also based their ideology on that of Kahane’s. Palfrey sees them, as well as the fact that the leader of one of the other militias was Black, that the movement as a whole wasn’t White Supremacist. I think he’s wrong, and it’s just that some parts of the movement were less strict in their racism than others, and were prepared to include Jews as fellow White Supremacists.
Now Arkush and Zyl did not meet the American Kahanists. But by speaking at meetings attended by their British cousins they have shown a culpable willingness to tolerate real Islamophobes with paramilitary sympathies. They deserve to be called out on this, as should the Zionist Federation for its endorsement of Hatey Katie.
Starmer should not be kowtowing to the Board and punishing real anti-racists like Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy. He should be backing them instead and holding the Board to account for their racism. As Angela Davies’ case shows, it can be done.
Last Monday, 13th May 2019, the great man at the Zelo Street blog put up an article explaining how Tommy Robinson was avoiding the more prosperous areas of northwest England to concentrate instead on the poorest, and those areas with the highest levels of depression. The virulent anti-Islam campaigner, late of the EDL, Pegida UK and the BNP, was avoiding towns like Crewe, Chester, Southport, Lancaster, Northwich, Winsford, Runcorn, St Helens, Ellesmere Port, Chorley, Wilmslow, Ashton-under-Lyne, and places like them. Instead, he was concentrating on towns like Brinnington, Birkenhead, Blackpool, Rochdale, Burnley, and Barrow-in-Furness.
Brinnington has the highest levels of clinical depression in the north and midlands. According to the Groaniad, it accounted for 23.6 per cent of all cases seen by GPs in the town. Four other areas with the highest levels of depression are in or near Birkenhead – Bidston Hill, Tranmere, Woodchurch and Birkenhead Central. Another two are in Fleetwood, near Blackpool. Robinson is due to visit that fair town, as well as Carlisle, which has another area with a very high incidence of depression. Three more areas are Rochdale, whose Heywood area Robinson was due to visit on Saturday. Robinson cancelled a visit to Blackburn, but turned up in Burnley, which has two of England’s most deprived towns near it. He also planned on visiting Barrow-in-Furness, which has an acute heroin problem.
Zelo Street concluded
And by pure coincidence, Stephen Lennon is favouring the area with a visit this week. All the while, The Great Man is waving his begging bowl, telling those amongst whom he comes that he needs their help. That they live on the margins of society, and he lives in the lap of luxury, does not seem to occur to those willing to cheer him on.
Living high on the hog while preying on misery. Welcome to the Tommy Tour.
It’s not just that Robinson is exploiting the poverty and poor mental health afflicting the people of those towns, he’s also trying use their misery to distract them from the real economic and political causes of their problems. These areas have suffered from the decline of traditional industries, resulting in high unemployment rates. Which would also account for the massive rise in depression due to the lack of self-esteem, hopelessness and sheer despair. These are areas that have not been helped by the neoliberalism embraced and enthusiastically promoted by the Tories, the Lib Dems and Blairite Labour. Thatcher made it very clear that she did not believe in providing any help to failing industries or direct state interference in the economy. Failing companies were to be allowed to fail, on the grounds that state aid was inefficient and would prevent the operation of the market forces that would see new industries take off to provide work and prosperity.
This hasn’t happened. These areas are still poor and depressed. And it was situation made worse in the 1990s when the Tories decided to destroy whatever remained of the British mining industry. This was touted, again, as saving the country from supporting a failing and uneconomic industry, but the real reason was to destroy the NUM, which had overthrown Heath’s government in the 1970s.
But Conservative ideology prevents any discussion of the failings of private industry or the precious market forces, which the supporters of the free market are constantly telling us must be obeyed at all costs, and will ultimately bring back jobs and wealth. And so scapegoats must be found to explain why the free market isn’t working as it should, or to direct popular anger away the businessmen, think tanks and politicians pushing these policies. And so Fascists like Robinson accuse racial or religious minorities or outside groups of causing these problems. The Nazis made Jews synonymous with capitalism, and so claimed they had created a socialist Germany when they persecuted and murdered them. Capitalism, however, was retained and encouraged, although private industry was subject to a complex system of state planning. George Orwell described it as ‘the socialism of fools’. And right-wing populist politicians across the world, from Trump in America to the EDL, UKIP and the Brexit party in Britain are doing it today. Aided by mainstream Conservatives.
The right-wing press, and particularly the Heil and Speccie, have been telling their working class readers that their poor and underprivileged, not because of Tory policies that have decimated manufacturing industry and are destroying the NHS and welfare state for the profit of big business. No, it’s because high-spending Labour authorities and liberal ‘political correctness’ are deliberately diverting funding to undeserving groups, like Blacks, other ethnic minorities, gays and in the case of Tommy Robinson and his supporters, Scary Muslims.
The right have been doing this since Bacon’s Rebellion in 17th century. This was a revolt in Virginia where the slaves were joined by White indentured servants. The rebellion was put down, but to ensure that Blacks and poor Whites never united again to challenge the social hierarchy, laws were passed that separated Blacks from Whites, and gave Whites a higher social status. But crucially, these laws did not improve conditions for the indentured White servants. Materially, they gained nothing from these laws. Nevertheless, they had the psychological effect intended. From then on, White indentured servants didn’t make common cause with the slaves against their exploitation, or at least, not so much, because Blacks were now their social inferiors.
And it’s the same here. Robinson fully supports neoliberalism. Indeed, in his attack on a female academic at Liverpool John Moores University, he defended it against left-wing academics such as herself. He and his supporters offer precious little that will make the lives of ordinary working people better. The only thing they offer is more division and hatred.
There are issues with Islam, such as the continuing malign influence of the preachers of hate and the dangers of self-radicalisation for the young and disaffected through the internet. And authorities have targeted ethnic minorities for a greater proportion of aid because these groups are, or have been, more deprived, or have specific needs that can only be addressed through projects directed to them. Like the rape helpline for women from ethnic minorities, which Robinson so grossly misrepresented as deliberately excluding Whites and legitimising the assault of White women. It wasn’t the case, and his vile tweets about it resulted in the phone line having to be shut down because of the abusive calls they were receiving, thus depriving extremely vulnerable women of the help they needed.
Fortunately, Robinson’s tour of the northwest isn’t going as smoothly as he planned. A string of towns have made it clear that he is not welcome, there have been large counterprotests. And to cap it all, the internet platform, Stripe, that makes it possible for people to donate their hard earned cash to him, has thrown him off. Which makes it a bit more difficult for him to scrounge off the poor and misinformed.
Robinson poses as a member of the working class, defending them from the politically correct Left and militant Islam. He isn’t. He’s a very rich man, thanks to the money he’s been given by his followers. And he offers nothing to the working class except more neglect and poverty, but with racial hatred and suspicion added. He’s a disgrace.
This Thursday, those who really want to see working people’s lives improved should ignore him, and his lies about Europe and Muslims, and vote for somebody else instead.
More internet fun at the expense of another far right, aspiring politico. This time it’s Carl Benjamin, aka the internet ranter known as ‘Sargon of Akkad’, amongst other, less polite epithets.
Sargon’s one of the extreme right-wing internet figures that Gerard Batten has invited into his party in order to restore its flagging membership and electoral viability, like Infowars’ Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Meechan, alias Count Dankula, and Tommy Robinson. Dankula’s notorious as the idiot, who was convicted of anti-Semitism after he trained his girlfriend’s pug to make the Nazi salute when he shouted ‘Heil Hitler!’ and ‘Gas the Jews’. He put videos of it on YouTube, and claimed it was all just a joke. The Glaswegian Jewish community thought otherwise, prosecuted, and the judge agreed with them. And Tommy Robinson, aka Stephen Yaxley Lennon, is the islamophobe who founded the EDL, then was involved with Pegida UK. After having been in the BNP, of course. He’s now Batten’s special adviser on Islam and prisons, because he’s been in a few, and not just for hate speech and contempt of court, but also for other crimes like assault and mortgage fraud. And now UKIP have chosen Sargon to be their candidate for the European elections for the southwest. Which isn’t surprising, as he comes from Swindon.
A few days ago Sargon put up a five minute people announcing his candidacy. Kirsti Winters, an American academic teaching in Germany, who is a feminist and a political scientist, put up this spoof video. It’s another piece of careful editing done to make Sargon look stupid. The video begins with the statement that UKIP is a ‘rational party for rational people’. It then shows Sargon introducing himself, and saying that he doesn’t want to be elected to the European parliament, and pleading with people not to elect him, as he won’t do sh*t. He also claims that he’s a ‘centrist moderate’ but comes from a part of the community, whose voice isn’t being heard. And he is firmly opposed to far-left ideology, which he will expose on the internet if he comes across it.
Well, Sargon is many things, but he most definitely isn’t a ‘centrist moderate’. For some bizarre reason he sees, or claims to see himself as ‘centre left’, but that’s only by the standards of the mid-19th century. He also describes himself as a ‘classical liberal’, which means that he stands for absolute free trade, the total privatisation of the economy and the destruction of the welfare state. As for being a member of a section of the community whose voice is being stifled, I have heard that Sargon’s Jewish and has a Black grandfather. But those aren’t the ethnic groups he means. Sargon’s a member of the manosphere, that section of the internet that believes feminism has gone far too far, and is a seething mass of resentment about how White men are under attack from aggressive feminism, anti-racism, ‘social justice warriors’ and other extreme left-wing ideologies. He has several channels in which he finds the most extreme or ridiculous feminists, Black or other ethnic minority activists or campaigners for gay and trans rights, criticises them and tries to claim that they are somehow representative of all feminists, Blacks, gays and transgender people.
I mentioned him a few days ago in a piece I put up about UKIP’s choice of Count Dankula as one of their candidates for the European elections. Zelo Street put up another piece on the pair at the same time, which gave a few more details of Sargon’s unpleasant opinions. Like the tweet he sent to Jess Philips, when she was talking about the vile misogynist messages she had been sent, including rape threats. Sargon’s tweeted ‘I wouldn’t even rape you.’ He also told a group of other extreme rightists on a livestream, in which he was taking part, that they were ‘behaving like a bunch of n****ers’ and ‘White n****ers’ when they started to fall out among themselves. Sargon isn’t, as far as I know, actually a member of the Alt Right. He defines himself as a civic, rather than ethnonationalist, which means that he believes that anyone born in a country is a citizen, regardless of their colour or ethnicity, rather than that only Whites have citizenship. On the other hand, he does hold many of their views, so that one of the leaders of the Alt Right has said that he’s a gateway into them. He’s certainly said that an Alt Right government would be less of a threat to him and his family than an ‘SJW’ (Social Justice Warrior) one.
As for the slogan underneath the spoof UKIP banner at the start of the video, ‘Service guarantees citizenship’, SF fans will spot that as the motto in Robert Heinlein’s highly militaristic novel, Starship Troopers, filmed in the 1990s by Paul Verhoven, the man who gave us Robocop and Total Recall. In the film and the novel, only those who have served in the military qualify as citizens with the right to vote. Heinlein started out as a socialist before moving to the extreme right, and he really believed this. So, apparently, do many UKIP officials and politicos, as they’ve also repeated it. Whether they really believe it, or even know where it comes from, is debatable. It may be they’re only using it to draw in extreme right-wing SF fanboys. But it’s there, nonetheless.
As for ‘a rational party for rational people’, Sargon’s party of the internet sceptic community, but it seems that this has increasingly given up promoting atheism or attacking ‘unscientific’ beliefs, and become dominated instead by self-proclaimed right-wing intellectuals attacking anything to the left of them. So much so that it’s fair to say that parts of it do resemble the League of Gentlemen’s Royston Vesey and its bizarre, twisted, deeply insular inhabitants. Like Tubbs and Edward and their ‘local shop, for local people’.
The best thing genuine liberals, moderates and leftists can do is take Sargon’s advice, and not vote for him or UKIP, if they don’t want this country run by a horde of deeply xenophobic, misogynist gammon. Some of whom may well have Tubbs and Edward’s snub noses.
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