Fan of Rachel Riley Starts Troll Campaign against Owen Jones

More trolling from the darker parts of the internet. Mike reported on Saturday that a hashtag campaign had been started against left-wing journalist and author Owen Jones. The hashtag declared in crude language that Jones practiced the kind of solitary behaviour that tradition has it makes you grow hair on the palms of your hands and ruins your eyesight. It started after a group of Alt Right thugs shouted ‘Oi, you w*nker’ at him live on British TV. Jones himself said of the incident that if he could survive fascists chasing him on the street, then he could survive a hashtag campaign set up by people who need their hard drives checking.

Laura Murray told him that the person – and I use that term loosely – responsible for the troll campaign against him is the same individual, who posts pictures of her in a bikini in various positions in order to degrade and humiliate her. This person is one ‘Basil Brush/Bruscetta’, who is a massive fan of Rachel Riley. He endorsed a thread from Riley in which she attacked a certain 16 year old girl as an anti-Semite. Bruscetta’s website didn’t last, and was taken down. So his supporters linked it to one attacking their idol. Which apparently was done by members of the GnasherJew troll farm, David Collier and another odious jerk, Jack Silver. Collier was moaning that Twitter’s removal of the hashtag against Jones showed it to be a fake news site, as Jones is an anti-Semite and therefore akin to a Nazi!

Saaaaaay whaaaaat!

In what parallel world are this idiots living? Jones is no kind of Nazi. Indeed, he’s been criticised by Tony Greenstein – also definitely not a Nazi – for being too accommodating to the anti-Semitism smear campaign of which Riley, Collier and co. are a part against critics of Israel and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour party.

As Mike explains, the clip used to troll Jones was of the abuse screamed at him from right-wing pro-Brexit campaigners when he was being interviewed outside parliament in January. Riley also tried to attack Jones with smears and shockingly inaccurate comments about his coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Mike concludes his article about this

She protested at the time that she is not a supporter of the far right. Maybe that’s true; I don’t propose to comment on it, one way or the other.

But questions need to be asked about why supporters of the far right seem so keen to link themselves with her.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/12/21/was-twitter-campaign-against-owen-jones-organised-by-supporters-of-rachel-riley-or-of-something-more-sinister/

There’s more that could be said about this. Much more. Alongside the comments about Jones’ supposed solitary practices was another line calling him a ‘Stalinist’. This obviously comes from the far right. In some ways it’s ironic. Stalin was a brutal dictator with a venomous hatred of the Jews. After the Nazis broke the pact they’d made for the occupation of eastern Europe with the former Soviet Union, Stalin lamented what the Soviet and Nazis could have achieved together. And one of the major figures in post-War American Nazism, Francis Parker Yockey – a bizarre figure who was very much like the Nazi playwright in Mel Brookes’ The Producers – was a supporter of the Soviet Union because he saw it as a bulwark of civilisation against the decadence caused by democracy. The real Alt Right have more in common with Stalin than they’d like to admit.

The hashtag campaign against Jones was also supported by Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, the man who broke UKIP. I think Sargon’s Jewish, and he has argued online with the Alt Right. But despite describing himself as a ‘classical Liberal’ – for which read ‘Libertarian’ – Sargon’s own politics are so close to that of the Alt Right that some have commented that he is a gateway to them. A soft introduction leading to the harder, more racist stuff further away from the mainstream.

Despite Collier and co.’s claim that they’re fighting anti-Semitism, they’re doing no such thing. Like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, they’re almost completely uninterested in real, right-wing anti-Semitism. They’re against anti-Zionism or simply criticism of Israel, which they deliberately conflate with anti-Semitism. And they attack it on the left for two reasons.

At the most superficial level, they do it because they’re bullies.

The people they attack, people like Mike, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Sally Eason and so on are decent people. They aren’t trolls, and so don’t response with the high level of abuse the real anti-Semites would. GnasherJew and Riley’s fan are not going to attack the trolls that post real anti-Semitic material, like those who consider the Holocaust a great joke, because their campaign of hate wouldn’t touch them. The trolls would just start making coarse comments on their sexuality, which would probably be homophobic and accuse them of being paedophiles. Further attacks on them by Riley’s fans and Collier and his fellow scumbags would just be treated with amusement, and provide them with further ammunition for trolling them. But the people on the Labour left GnasherJew and Riley attack instead aren’t like that. They can be bullied and cowed. And so they do.

And there’s no great mystery why racists like the Alt Right support Riley.

Tony Greenstein has observed that historically, Zionism’s allies have always been the Far Right. The Islamophobic right in Britain – Britain First and the English Defence League strongly support Israel because they hate Muslims. Tommy Robinson even boasted that if there was a war with the Palestinians, he’d fight for Israel. They also admire Israel because it’s the kind of ‘ethnostate’ they’d like to create in the West. Richard Spencer, the founder of the Alt Right, appeared on Israeli TV, where he declared himself to be a White Zionist. Just as Israel is a racial state in which the only true citizens are Jews, so Spencer and co. wish to create a White ethnostate in America, where only Whites will enjoy full civil rights and Blacks, Asians and Hispanics will have been ‘peacefully’ cleansed.

And the Alt Right also have an enemy in common with Israel’s supporters, at least on the Right.

They hate and fear genuine left-wingers. Which is why they were both determined to bring down Jeremy Corbyn. He was both a critic of Israel and determined to bring back the welfare state, strong trade unions and a mixed economy. All of which are abhorrent to those on the Far Right, like Spencer and Sargon, and the Blairites in the Labour party. Which is why you had the Blairites in the Labour party, like Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel, sneering at Corbyn’s supporters in Labour as ‘Stalinists’, ‘Trotskyites’ and Communists.

I am not accusing Riley of being a Fascist or a member of the Alt Right. But she needs to think very clearly about the way she is supported by them, and do what she can to discourage it.

Otherwise some would be justified in calling her a hypocrite. If not worse.

The Abuse No-One’s Talking about: Ultra-Zionist Smears, Intimidation and Threats

The media’s been full of stories about how politicians are being sent abuse and death threats, with many of these stories focusing on the internet. It’s been going on for some time, and the Labour right tried to weaponise the issue against Corbyn. Following Hillary Clinton’s lie that Bernie Sanders’ supporters were all misogynist ‘Bernie Bros’, various right-wing female MPs tried the same smear against Corbyn’s supporters. They claimed that they were receiving sexist and misogynist abuse from them. Many of these stories fell apart on inspection, and by and large I don’t think the Blairite women were getting more abuse than anyone else. Half of the abuse directed at female MPs in the Labour party goes to Diane Abbott. Some of the tales of abuse couldn’t be supported, as it seems that the messages sent could not be found or shown. And other messages weren’t sent by members of the Labour party, and so Corbyn couldn’t be responsible.

The same smears of abuse were also used by the Israel lobby – Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement. And the same criticisms apply here. The existence of some of these abusive texts couldn’t be corroborated, some weren’t sent by members of the party and the actual numbers of real anti-Semites in the party is actually minuscule. But nevertheless the press was full of smear stories by Blairites like Ruth Smeeth and others that the Labour Party was not a safe space for Jews, not since Jeremy Corbyn became leader.

But what the press and media do not report is the extensive smearing and bullying by the Israel lobby and ultra-Zionist activists. This is immense and horrific. Anyone – anyone at all – who dares to make the mildest criticism of Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians is immediately accused of anti-Semitism. And this is particularly true of Jews. I’ve blogged about the way Jackie Walker receives horrific abuse after her smearing as an anti-Semite and expulsion from the Labour party. Jackie, despite being Jewish by faith and blood, is told she isn’t a Jew because she’s a woman of colour. They also call for her to be lynched – an especially serious threat, as her mother was a Black civil rights activist from the American Deep South – and her body to be set on fire and stuffed into bin bags. Tony Greenstein has received emails telling him that he and his family should have been murdered in the Holocaust. He has also been assaulted by an angry Israeli.

And it goes on. Peter Oborne in his programme on the Israel lobby for Channel 4’s Despatches ten years or so ago showed how respective journalists at the Guardian and BBC were subjected to the same smears by the Board of Deputies of British Jews when they reported massacres and atrocities committed by the Israelis or their allies, the Christian Phalange, in Lebanon. These accusations were leveled at Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin. When David Attenborough stepped in to deny them, he too was accused of being an anti-Semite. And this abuse has been hurled at people like Mike and other Corbyn supporters in the Labour party. Lobster also cites former Guardian reporter Nick Davies in their review of a book dismantling the anti-Semitism smears, Bad News for Labour. Davies described in Flat Earth News how reporters and journalists were subjected to horrific abuse and allegations from Israel’s supporters. John Booth, the author of Lobster’s review, writes

‘Journalists who write stories which offend the politics of the Israel lobby are subjected to a campaign of formal complaints and pressure on their editors; most of all, they are inundated with letters and emails which can be extravagant in their hostility,’ he writes.
‘Robert Fisk of The Independent has been told that his mother was Adolf Eichmann’s daughter, that he belongs in hell with Osama bin Laden, that he is a “hate peddler”, “a leading anti-semite and protofascist Islamophile propagandist” and a paedophile.’

This abuse has reached the point that according to the Lobster article, Jewish journalists are afraid to publish articles critical of Israel. Evening Standard journo Mira Bar-Hillel, who was born in Jerusalem, says that they fear retribution if they do.

And left-wing supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have also received this horrific abuse in the Labour party. Sally Eason, the founder of Labour Left Voice, was forced to leave the Labour party because of her criticisms of Israel. Eason’s Sephardic Jewish on her mother’s side. And so she was targeted for concerted abuse and trolling by a network of right-wing scumbags, including David Collier and the Gnasherjew troll farm, which was cheerfully reblogged by ‘jobbing actor’ Tracy Ann Oberman. Mike also suffers vicious abuse from people, who continue to believe the smears that he’s an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier despite his success in getting these utterly false allegations retracted from the papers that printed them. And last week I was insulted by someone angry at my support for Corbyn against the anti-Semitism smears. They sent the comment ‘Fuck you. From a Jew’. It was only one such insult, and it’s mild compared to that sent to people like Mike, Tony and Jackie. But it does show the abusive nature of Israel’s most ardent supporters.

But if you believe the media, the abuse is all one way. It’s all those evil anti-Semites in the Labour sending hatred and death threats to women and Jews. The reality is that Corbynites have also been on the receiving end of horrific abuse, much of the abuse the Blairites claim was sent to them seems to be nonexistent. And some of the most vicious, and viciously anti-Semitic abuse is that sent by the Israel lobby and supporters of Britain’s Jewish establishment. And thanks to the abuse sent by people like David Collier and his friends in Gnasherjew, Israel-critical Jews do not feel safe.

That is real, viciously dangerous anti-Semitic abuse. And it is not reported in the Media. Disgusting!

Lobster’s review of the book, Bad News for Labour: Anti-Semitism, the Party and Public Belief, by Greg Philo, Mike Berry, Justin Schlosberg, Antony Lerman and David Miller is at: https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster78/lob78-bad-news-labour.pdf

Ultra-Zionists’, Blairites’ and Tories’ Anti-Semitic Abuse of Labour Pro-Palestinian Activist

On the 27th October last year, 2018, Labour Left Voice put up a post about the disgusting anti-Semitic abuse hurled at their consultant and convenor, Sally Eason. Eason had been on the receiving end of abuse twitter messages from Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents in the Labour Party, whom she had outed as members of a troll network. This continued for several years without anything being done about it, even though she complained to Sam Matthews and Labour’s Compliance Unit. So she left, setting up Left Labour Voice as a support network for socialists who were in the same position as herself.

Her departure from the Labour party has not stopped the abuse, and the post reports that there is now a third twitter account parodying her. This one does so as ‘Sally the Jew’. It’s because Eason is of Sephardic Jewish descent on her mother’s side. The Sephardim are the branch of the Jewish people, who settled in the Iberian peninsula. Their vernacular language, Ladino, was a form of Old Spanish. They are named after a Biblical Hebrew term that was believed to refer to Spain.

This troll account attempts to dox her and reveal her location as well as intimidate her. Labour Left Voice also notes that it’s stolen their logo.  It’s followed by a number of the anti-Semitism witch-hunters, including the head of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. It lists those following the troll account as

*Emma Feltham (Picken) Lewisham East CLP Labour currently under investigation JLM

*Euan Philipps (AKA @Bellatrixlittle) Tonbridge & Malling CLP Labour currently under investigation JLM

*Labour Against Antisemitism – Official

*Tracy Ann Oberman – Actress Ex Labour

*Simon Myerson QC Ex Labour

*Saul Freeman @nudderingnudnik – Ex Labour – LAAS

*Mark Hopkins – @lifeonacanal Conservative

*Professor David Hirsh – Ex Labour

*Matthew Ravenhilll – Chair Taunton West branch Labour Party.

*Steve Silverman – Head of Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA)

*Dan Fox – Ex Director of Labour friends of Israel

*Jonathan Hoffman – Consultant and activist LAAS – member of Herut UK

*Labour Intl CLP Moderates – AKA TheGreenKnight200 / RosalieJulius / JewsagainstJC – Jessica Jacobs-Schiff Ex Intl Labour / JLM LAAS

*Rosemary Emery – LAAS, Llanelli CLP JLM

*Chris Evans JLM, Labour and LAAS

*Zoe Kemp (78Soylentgreen) LAAS, JLM – formerly Hampstead & Kilburn CLP

*Denny Taylor – Current Labour member LAAS JLM

*Karen Bradley (RedTory2016) Ex Labour

*Gnasherjew – David Collier, Richard Millett, Simon Cobbs, Joseph Elfassy, John Arnott, CAA.

How anti-Semitic are the posts? Very. This is an example.

The post quotes Buddy Hell, of the Guy Debord’s Cat blog, as saying looking at them is like ‘bathing in sewage’. It makes this observation on the membership of this troll network and their objectives: to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and his leftist Jewish supporters.

What is clearly obvious here is that rather than the left being antisemitic. We have a mix of Labour Right, Tories and the Far-Right who are working together to ATTACK leftist Corbyn supporting Jews. Their common interest: Ultra Nationalism and the fear of Jeremy Corbyn recognising Palestine. Jonathan Hoffman is a Conservative and member of Herut UK, a Far-Right organisation and can be seen marching with the EDL on protests but is also bizarrely the consultant for the outfit Labour Against Antisemitism, whose non Jewish operators Euan Philipps, Emma Feltham and Denny Taylor also follow the above parody.

It also reproduces a number of anti-Semitic tweets attacking her from various sock accounts connected with the Gnasherjew troll farm. Like the one below.

Some of those sending Eason abusive twitter messages were Euan Philipps and Mandy Blumenthal of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. The post goes on to describe the problems Eason has had combating these troll accounts. It says

Sadly Twitter has been no help at all despite continuously reporting the problem for 2 years at least. The previously Twitter suspended Gnasherjew brags of being reinstated by the CAA and CST and that they have a ‘human handler’ at Twitter. The problem is as shown above, that the CAA are part of the abuse. There is a conflict of interest. The CAA is worryingly also a police agency – although we suspect that the current Met police investigation into the CAA incitement of death threats to Corbyn will alter that relationship.

Another problem here is that Twitter is US based and the extremely Pro Israel Anti Defamation League (ADL) took over as Account Managers in around February of this year as monitors for antisemitism across all of America’s Social Media. Many times the UK police have said that US Twitter refuse to pass over details of the troll accounts. There is a political impasse.

The post states that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism are – or were – under investigation for inciting death threats against Jeremy Corbyn. LLV reiterate that their mission is to help Left Labour/ Pro-Corbyn members, who were under attack for their beliefs by the above accounts and their superiors at CLP level. They ask victims of such attacks to get in touch with them and share their stories, whether its of vexatious claims or targeted attacks by the above, and give the email address which can be used to do so. They also conclude

We will keep you informed of the progress in the current police investigation as and when we are updated with any major news. As for now, we encourage all socialists to block the above accounts, be careful of the tone and language used in your posts and deprive these agenda driven accounts of a target.

At the time of writing JLM, CAA, BoD and the Labour Party have not responded to our tweets.

See: https://lableftvoice.co.uk/your-shout/f/october

Eason’s not the only one to receive anti-Semitic abuse, simply because she’s a person of Jewish heritage, who supports Corbyn. It’s been dished out to Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, and I’ve no doubt any number of others. Just as gentiles like Mike have also been abused and smeared as an anti-Semite for the same reason.

What is particularly interesting is that among the abusers from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Labour Against Anti-Semitism, Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel are our old friends Tracy Ann Oberman, Jonathan Hoffman Karen Bradley – the one from The Apprentice?  – and David Collier, John Arnott and chums from Gnasherjew.

These scumbags have, in my opinion, no call whatsoever to accuse anyone else of being anti-Semitic. Not when they appear to be posting vile anti-Semitic abuse themselves. And anyone wondering if there’s any truth to any of their claims should take a look at the abuse they produce and spread and then ask themselves the following:

Who is going to be more trustworthy – decent, genuinely anti-racist people, both Jews and gentiles, who are targeted for abuse, like Eason, simply because they support Jeremy Corbyn? Or a bunch of vile, abusive right-wing trolls, who fling around anti-Semitic smears while hypocritically claiming to combating it? 

Because that’s how I view them.