I also found this book on Google Books in my search for studies on Fascism, and its blurb is very illuminating, not least for what it says about the thugs BJP president Modi is allied to.
In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism
Marzia Casolari
‘This book examines and establishes connections between Italian fascism and Hindu nationalism, connections which developed within the frame of Italy’s anti-British foreign policy.
The most remarkable contacts with the Indian political milieu were established via Bengali nationalist circles. Diplomats and intellectuals played an important role in establishing and cultivating those tie-ups. Tagore’s visit to Italy in 1925 and the much more relevant liaison between Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA were results of the Italian propaganda and activities in India.
But the most meaningful part of this book is constituted by the connections and influences it establishes between fascism as an ideology and a political system and Marathi Hindu nationalism. While examining fascist political literature and Mussolini’s figure and role, Marathi nationalists were deeply impressed and influenced by the political ideology itself, the duceand fascist organisations. These impressions moulded the RSS, a right-wing, Hindu nationalist organisation, and Hindutva ideology, with repercussions on present Indian politics. This is the most original and revealing part of the book, entirely based on unpublished sources, and will prove foundational for scholars of modern Indian history.’
Private Eye over a decade ago ran a piece about militant Hindu nationalism and the BJP, and stated that the RSSS were modelled on Italian Fascism. The RSSS are bunch of Hindu bovver boys, who go about beating up Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. This blurb and the book it advertises definitely puts more additional information on these links. Randranath Tagore’s book on nationalism is very definitely in print. I found it in Waterstones among the various classics. My guess is that it’s probably being read by liberal anti-imperialist types, but I wonder if its acceptability in those quarters would be harmed if they knew about Tagore’s visit to Italy and the links between Hindu extremist nationalism and real fascism.
A very short text report came up on YouTube from one of the Indian English-language news channels, reporting that the Indian authorities had raided the Beeb’s offices in Kolkata, or Calcutta as I think it used to be under the Empire, for a tax ‘survey’. There were no further details, so I don’t know what this is all about, But it brought out all all the Hindu Fascists in the comments section. They were denouncing the Beeb as anti-Indian and demanding that it should be banned along with al-Jazeera. At the moment Modi’s bunch of subcontinental stormtroopers are trying to silence opposition media. Apart from the Nazi persecution of non-Hindu minorities like Muslims, Sikhs and Christians – and they were even going after the Buddhists a few months ago, like they have any kind of reputation as a violent threat to civilised society – they were also clamping down on liberal Hindu and other journalists, who believe in the Congress party’s vision of a liberal, pluralistic India where peoples of different faiths and philosophies can live in harmony. I wonder if something like that is going on here, and that the Beeb has angered the goose-steppers of the BJP by reporting on their religious fanaticism, their corruption and the harm their neoliberal policies are doing to the poor. And that the tax ‘survey’ is a trumped-up investigation designed to exert political pressure.
Yesterday the Indian news agency, the Quint, put up a piece reporting that there had been a Hindutva fundraiser in Texas to close down illegal churches in India. This is Hindu fascism, the same people that organise riots and beatings not just of Christians but also Muslims and Sikhs. And not just them. A week or so ago I came across a piece reporting that one of these fanatics had also ranted about the threat from Buddhism. Because we all know how violent, intolerant and set on world domination the followers of Gautama Buddha are. And yes, I’m being very sarcastic. The persecution of Christianity by the Islamic and Communist regimes, such as Iran and China, is well known, but it’s certainly present in Modi’s India. I’ve come across reports of forced conversion by Hindu clergy. But you won’t see it on the news, even though Modi’s fascist regime is also clamping down on the poor and journalists genuinely devoted to the idea of a pluralist, secular India. But it also struck me that the same people, who organised that wretched piece of Hindu fascism, would scream and holler blue murder if their Christian neighbours treated them the same way and closed down what the considered to be illegal Hindu temples. The left has mostly been concerned with right-wing Christian extremism, but this shows that extremism is also present in immigrant communities in the west, who are hoping to push their homelands further towards racism and intolerance.
Sarah Champion was the Labour MP for Rochdale, who was forced to resign from the front bench after writing a piece in the Scum stating that the grooming gangs were made up of Pakistani men. Which they largely have been, though not exclusively. Champion was, however, defended by Sara Rowbotham, the council whistleblower who exposed the gangs and there was a letter in the Times by members of the Sikh, Hindu and British Pakistani communities defending her and applauding a female Muslim councillor, who also worked to bring these scumbags to justice. I found this report from the Huffington Post UK by Owen Bennett from the 5th September 2017. It begins
‘Religious Groups Defend Sarah Champion For Claim UK Has A ‘Problem’ With Pakistani Rapists
‘Victims are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.’
A number of Sikh, Hindu and British Parkistani groups have come to the defence of a Labour MP who claimed “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.”
In a letter to The Times today, representatives of the groups – including Lord Singh of Wimbledon – praised Sarah Champion for taking a “courageous stand” in highlighting “a clear trend in criminality.”
The letter also accused the Labour leadership of having a “weak response” to the issue of grooming gangs.
In a letter today, representatives of groups including the Network of Sikh Organisations, the British Pakistani Christian Association and Hindu Council UK, said: “We commend Sarah Champion and the Muslim councillor Amina Lone for speaking up on a clear trend in criminality: the conviction of men of largely Pakistani Muslim heritage in sexual grooming cases.
“Despite being sacked from the shadow cabinet, Champion continues to make a courageous stand.”
The letter argues that it’s not just “white girls who fall victim” to grooming gangs, but youngsters from their respective communities.
“The common denominator is that victims almost always tend to be non-Muslim girls,” the letter reads , adding: “We are dismayed by the Labour leadership’s weak response.
“We are not willing to see the betrayal of victims, who are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.
“It’s not racist or Islamophobic to raise a matter of significant public concern. Smearing those speaking an inconvenient truth is unacceptable.”’
This does indicate that there’s a religious component to the grooming gangs predations. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten either that whatever Tommy Robinson, Britain First or whoever else says, these men were definitely not practicing Muslims. Not when they were into drugs and alcohol, which are definitely forbidden to Muslims, and their crimes have nothing to do with Muslim sex slavery. They were just evil men, preying on the vulnerable, as rapists and child abusers among all races and religions do.
And despite the Tories’ divide and rule strategy, it was Labour MPs who stood up for these girls and who had the backing of a wide section of the Asian community.
As I’ve said in the previous article, the Tories and the populist right are trying to present the grooming gangs scandal as the fault of the Labour party, as the gangs were allowed to get away with their monstrous crimes in towns with Labour-run councils. This is part of a wider strategy of divide and rule to alienate the White working class from the Black and Asian community and the Labour party. But Mark Pattie, one of the many great commenters on this blog, has pointed out that it was the Labour MPs Simon Danczuk and Sarah Champion who worked to bring the gangs to justice. Champion, however, was forced to resign from the Labour front bench after writing a piece in the Scum stating that the gangs were Pakistani. This is largely true, though they also included scumbags of other ethnicities. She was accused of racism, but also had the support of Sara Rowbotham, the whistleblower on the council who exposed the gangs, as well as members of the Sikh, Hindu and Pakistani communities. Rowbotham was also played by the actress Maxine Peake in a BBC drama about the gangs, Three Girls. I found a piece by Rachel Wearmouth in the Huffington Post from 17th September 2017 in which Rowbotham defended Champion. It begins
‘Rochdale Grooming Scandal Whistleblower Defends Sarah Champion And Slams Austerity
Council worker played by Maxine Peake said the Labour Party has to encourage debate after race row.
The hero whistleblower of the Rochdale abuse scandal has said Sarah Champion should not have lost her job over controversial race comments she made in The Sun.
Champion was sacked as Labour’s shadow women and equalities minister after saying “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men” raping white girls in a column in the newspaper in the wake of fresh grooming prosecutions in Newcastle.
But Sara Rowbotham, the woman lauded for exposing a criminal gang who abused young girls in Rochdale, has defended the Rotherham MP.
Rowbotham, now a Labour councillor, said Champion should not have made “sweeping statements” but told HuffPost UK: “We should be exploring all the issues, not just shutting people down because we don’t like what they are saying.
“Sarah Champion has been a real champion for young people in Rotherham and she has worked hard, but she disappointed me by some of the things that she said, and that she said them in The Sun.”
Corbyn said the Labour Party was “not going to blame any particular group, or demonise any particular group.”
Asked if Champion should have kept her job, Rowbotham said “yes,” before adding: “We have to encourage debate.
“If the Labour Party is a broad church then those views should be allowed to be heard but also be heard with something substantial that argues back against it, or that encourages the debate further.”
Rowbotham, who was portrayed by Maxine Peake in the BBC docudrama Three Girls, added: ”[Champion] is a knowledgeable, articulate woman. We benefit from having that debate with her.”’
I have the greatest respect for Danczuk, Rowbotham and Champion for acting against the gangs, even if some of Champion’s comments were tactless at best. And kudos too to the Asians who supported her. Their support graphically demonstrates that the grooming gangs are not some kind of intrinsic problem within the Asian community or Islam. The gangs were anti-White racists, but they were also just evil men preying on the vulnerable.
We need to bear this in mind and come together to oppose the grooming gangs, along with all other kinds of racism. And very definitely not let the Tories distort this to divide this country’s hard-pressed working people from each other to their benefit and that of an exploitative privileged elite.
One of the people Ed Hussain speaks to in his book Among the Mosques A Journey Across Muslim Britain is Saima Afzal, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Blackburn with Darwen council. Previously, all the Muslim councillors had been men and there had been considerable opposition to women standing. Afzal is described as having experience as an activist and police adviser, focusing on women’s rights and religion among Lancashire’s ethnic minority communities, for which she was a awarded an MBE 2010.
She was forced into a marriage at a young age in Pakistan, a marriage which she rejects as invalid and views her husband as her abuser. She has therefore campaigned against forced marriages, as well as honour-based violence, female genital mutilation, Child sexual exploitation and been involved in issues such as sexuality within Islam and children’s rights in Islam, as well as a number of other issues issues prevalent with communities in which human rights and religious beliefs are irreconcilable. She has set up and runs two organisations which do this, Saima Afzal Solutions and SAS Rights. She is concerned with women’s issues and wellbeing not just in Islam, but in all religions including Christianity, Skihism and Hinduism. She’s been criticised for not wearing the hijab, and there was intra-Asian racism against her election to the council, as the local Asian elders wanted a Gujarati woman. Hussain questioned her about the Muslim grooming gangs, to which she answered
‘What’s worrying us professionals in the field, and what the academic studies don’t explain, is why Asian or Muslim groomers operate are operating in gangs. White groomers often work alone. Don’t underestimate for a moment that White girls are seen as ‘easier’ and ‘available’. But Asian and Muslim girls are also victims of these criminals and perverts. Only the Asian girls don’t talk. There’s more fear, shame and dishonour of the family involved.’ (p. 83.)
She complains that ministers and officials do come up from London for what she calls ‘photo ops’ and ‘tourist fashion cohesion’ ‘because as outsiders they take photos with people of all colours and pretend that all is well. All is not well’. She then talks about how she’s been rejected for these photo shoots because she didn’t wear a hijab, an attitude that is no different from that of the Muslim elders. She also describes how one candidate endorsed by Muslim Council of Britain didn’t shake her hand or make eye contact when he met her, because he’d been advised not to by the council. This was because she was not considered sufficiently Muslim for her refusal to wear the hijab. She also talked to Hussain about other incidents of abuse within the Muslim community, which had to remain confidential. And she also described how the local government was empowering Muslim clerics and community leaders, who claimed to speak for the entire community, as well as corruption and an attitude of ‘Asian votes for Asians’ which means that certain candidates were re-elected.
On the subject of children, she talks about how one local headmaster withdrew girls from swimming lessons because he considered the swimming costumes inappropriate. She also told Hussain she was working on issues relating to the nikah, or Muslim marriage contract, and rulings about couples cohabiting rather than being married.
‘Finally she explains that racism is not a one-way street in the communities she works with. Muslim leaders often decry ‘Islamophobia’, yet frequently refer to White British people as ‘goras’, a racist term’. (p. 84).
This is all very important, especially her comments about the grooming gangs. Elsewhere in the anthropological literature about European Islam researchers have noted that there is an attitude among some Muslims that western women are viewed with contempt by some Muslims because of their sexual freedoms, an attitude that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown also commented on the Independent when she was worth reading. And much of the criticism about the grooming gang inquiry is that its range has been very restricted so that it doesn’t go far enough. As for the local and national authorities, I got the distinct impression long ago that they really don’t want to investigate and reveal some of the negative issues in minority ethnic communities and especially Islam because it threatens the image that everything is otherwise well in these communities and with multiculturalism.
I strongly believe that the left should be open about these issues and should tackle them. It’s partly a matter of simple honesty and doing the right thing, but also because, if the left doesn’t, then they’re going to be exploited by the real bigots and Islamophobes like Tommy Robinson and the EDL.
One of the books I’ve been reading recently was Jonathan A.C. Brown’s Slavery and Islam. I did so partly to see whether there was any truth in the accusation by the islamophobic right that the Muslim grooming gangs were rooted in Muslim sex slavery. They aren’t. They’re just evil men with a racist attitude to Whites, who wanted to rape and degrade young girls. Brown states in his introduction that his book was a response to the shock he and the overwhelming majority of Muslims the world over felt when ISIS revived sex slavery. His book is also partly an attempt to answer the question why, if slavery is such a monstrous crime, did it take so long for Christians, Muslims and other religions and philosophies to ban it. His conclusion is that slavery wasn’t condemned but regulated by religions like Christianity and Islam because it was too much a part of everyday life for previous civilisations to consider outlawing it. Not even rationalist philosophers like Aristotle argued against it, because they felt it was too indispensable. Aristotle apparently said that it could only be banned ‘when looms drive themselves’. Brown therefore concludes that abolitionism arose in the west when a series of social and technological changes showed that society could still survive and prosper economically without slavery. Part of his argument is that it survived so long in Islam because Muslim slavery was more benign than western chattel slavery and even the western treatment of free workers. It was heavily regulated, slaves had rights, most could expect to be manumitted in 8-10 years and female slave concubines could rise to become powerful women, the mothers of Ottoman emperors and caliphs.
Brown’s a White American convert to Islam and a professor of the religion at one of the American universities. He amasses a wealth of information and sources to prove his point. At the same time, it strikes me that he’s producing a biased account of Islamic slavery intended to impress the reader with its comparative mildness. Others have produce much more critical studies to Islamic slavery. The White European and American victims of the Barbary pirates complained of constant beating by their masters. They were given meagre rations and expected to make money for their masters. They lived in particular fear of being pressed into the pirates’ galleys. As oarsmen they were kept chained to their benched night and day, fed little and deprived of sleep. Many were driven to ‘strange ecstasies’ – madness. Another fear was that, if their relatives and friends back home could not raise the money to ransom them, their masters would sell them on to the big Ottoman slave market at Constantinople, and they would be lost among the enslaved masses of the Ottoman empire for ever.
Nevertheless, despite the book’s bias, Brown chronicles the process of abolition in the Islamic world and the attempts by Muslims themselves to abolish slavery. Sometimes this was by sincere reformers, who felt that Muhammed had intended slavery to be banned eventually, but circumstances prevented him from doing so in his own time. Sometimes the bans were simply for reasons of diplomatic expediency. Islamic states and rulers wanted to make treaties with western nations. These wanted to ban slavery around the globe, and so their Islamic partners did so. Brown notes the existence of radical Muslim groups we haven’t heard about in the West, because their radicalism is that of left-wing opponents of racism, sexism and homophobia in the West. These include movements like the Progressive Muslims.
But unfortunately, despite the hard work put in by Islamic abolitionists, the fanatics are coming back to preach aggressive jihad and the enslavement of the kufar.
Harris Sultan and Nuriyeh Khan are two ex-Muslim atheists with their own channel on YouTube, which attacks religion in general and Islam in particular. They are very concerned about the rising intolerance in the Islamic world, like Pakistan where people have been murdered on the mere accusation that they have committed blasphemy. A few days ago they discussed a recent case in which a schoolteacher was murdered by three of her pupils, because one of them apparently had a dream in which the teacher blasphemed against Islam. It’s sheer, mindless fanaticism, though there’s also the suspicion that there may have been more mundane motives for the killing. They’ve also attacked similar trends among extreme right-wing Hindus in India and also among the Sikhs. and recently they’ve put up a couple of videos showing Muslim preachers calling for or defending aggressive jihad and the enslavement of non-Muslims.
One was an Indonesian preacher on Zakir Naik’s PeaceTV. Naik’s a Muslim anti-Christian polemicist. This delightful preacher told his congregation that in 50-60 years, Muslims would be strong enough to make war and invade the non-Muslim world. If non-Muslims allowed them to take over their countries without struggle, they would be allowed to keep their homes and property. If, however, they fought back, or continued with un-Islamic practices like nightclubs after they allowed Islam to take over their countries, they would be conquered by military force and enslaved.
The other day they put up another video of a female professor of Islam at one of Islam’s most prestigious universities, al-Uzzah, as recorded and translated by Memri TV. This woman attacked the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis. But she was in favour of Muslims enslaving non-Muslim women as sex slaves, because this would humiliate them. This particularly shocked Nuriyeh Khan. As a modern, liberated woman she found it deeply distressing and incomprehensible to hear another woman advocating such vile treatment of the members of her own sex. Sultan also made the point that the Israelis weren’t enslaving Palestinian women for sex. If they did, this would be a crime against humanity and would be condemned by the international community. This is probably true, but condemnations by the UN haven’t stopped the decades long process of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the Israeli state, the erection of a system of apartheid or the imprisonment and torture of Palestinian children.
To show what these policies meant in practice during Ottoman history, they show clips from a Hungarian TV series about Magyar, Serb and Croat girls, who are carried off into slavery by Ottoman raiders. These kill the girls’ fiances and husbands. At the slave market they are stripped and humiliated with their breasts and buttocks prodded by prospect male buyers. This is historically accurate. Under the sharia the only legitimate source of slaves was prisoners of war, and so Muslim states were engaged in warfare and raiding for slaves to supply the slave markets. And Brown states in his book that female slaves were treated like this.
Now this TV series raises a number of issues. There’s a bitter hatred of Muslims in Hungary and the Balkans. These countries were invaded and conquered by the Ottomans. The Turks only succeeded in conquering two-thirds of Hungary, and it was later reconquered by the Austrians, hence the Austro-Hungarian empire. But Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Greece, for example, spent five hundred years as provinces of the Ottomans. Most of the hatred, though, dates from atrocities committed by the Muslim forces during these nations’ wars of independence. A revolt on one of the Greek islands was put down with terrible massacres in the 1820s, after which 17,000 + Christian Greeks were enslaved. It should be noted too that the Christians were also capable of committing atrocities of their own against Muslims, but this received much less publicity in the west. During the Second World Bosnian Muslims united with the forces of Croatian Fascist leader Ante Pavelic to perpetrate appalling massacres on the Serbs. The Fascists wanted to have 1/3 of the Serbs converted to Roman Catholicism, a third forced in slavery and another third simply wiped out. Concentration camps like those for Jews in Nazi Germany were set up. Captured Serb women and children were thrown off mountains to kill them.
It was memory of these horrors that spurred the Serbs in their turn to commit horrific atrocities against Bosnian Muslims during the War in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. One of the paramilitary groups responsible, under a particular vicious brute called Arkan, had taken part a few years earlier in a re-enactment of the Battle of Kosovo Polje at the end of the fourteenth century in which the Ottoman forces defeated the Christian armies and conquered Serbia. However much based in fact the Hungarian TV series is, it worries me that it has the potential to inspire a similar genocidal hatred of Muslims. Hungary has attracted international criticism from the EU amongst other for refusing to admit Muslim asylum seekers. I also seem to recall that Serbia also refused to let the mass caravan of migrants from Syria and the Middle East pass through their country on the way to western Europe in 2012. But I might be wrong. At the moment Britain is going through a period of post-imperial guilt because of the enslavement of indigenous peoples during the empire. But I wonder how tolerant we would be, if we had not been the conquerors but the conquered.
But the Hungarian TV series also raises questions about TV series about the enslavement of Blacks in America and Europe, such as Alex Haley’s landmark book, Roots in the 1970s. Since then there have been a number of films, TV shows and documentaries about the enslavement of Blacks by westerners, such as Amistad and 12 Years A Slave. These are partly a response to the poverty, racism and marginalisation experienced by many western Black communities which it is argued have their basis in their enslavement. But if it is not only permissible but laudable to produce such historical dramas about transatlantic Black slavery, why shouldn’t series about the enslavement of Whites by Muslims also be shown? I doubt that any mainstream western European or American TV station would want to show such a series like the Hungarians because of the fear that it would promote islamophobia. But nevertheless, this occurred, and its legacy is felt in Orban’s Hungary and other parts of the Balkans.
But it’s also frightening to see that, after ISIS shocked decent people across the world, the preachers of hate in the Dar al-Islam by picking up their ideas and calling for jihad and sex slavery.
I wish the heirs of the great Islamic abolitionists every success in combating these intolerant fanatics, and the continuation of an international order marked by peace, respect and dignity for everyone, regardless of their colour or religion.
I haven’t posted the videos by Harris and Sultan here, because they make harsh comments about Islam as a whole. I’m not an atheist and genuinely don’t wish to upset Muslim readers of this blog. This is a time when the Conservatives are forcing working people of all religions into ever greater poverty. European Muslims are, in general, the most impoverished group after Blacks. See the book The Crisis in Islamic Civilisation. It shouldn’t matter what our individual religious faiths are or their absence thereof. We all need to stand together against genuine intolerance wherever it is found, and the Tories’ and neo-liberals to drive us further into poverty and despair.
If you want to see their videos, please look for them on YouTube. Their titles are
Ketanji Brown is Biden’s new nomination for the US supreme court. She’s a Black woman of progressive views, and the Republicans have been giving her a right grilling over the past week. There are several objections to her taking up her position. One is that she has a history of giving very lenient sentences, frequently below the recommended length, to perverts possessing child porn. The second is that she is unable to define what a woman is when asked. One of the female Republican politicos asked her that very question, and she replied that, not being a biologist, she couldn’t answer that question. The common sense answer, and the one that nearly everyone would have given a decade ago, is the straight dictionary definition: adult human female. But such straightforward definitions based in biology have become intensely controversial since the rise of the militant trans movement. This instead seeks to define womanhood and masculinity through gender – social sex. A woman, in their view, is simply someone who identifies as one. This has major implications for women’s privacy, safety and sport. Lia Thomas’ victory over his biologically female competitors last week enraged many women because Lia is a biological male with all the advantages. He was able to compete as a woman because he identifies as one. The incarceration of biological men in women’s prisons, simply because they identify as female, is also a major issue. Many of these men are rapists and sex criminals, and there have been a series of assaults and rapes on the biological women they have been incarcerated with. But Brown isn’t the only politico, who can’t give a coherent answer to what a woman is. Jo Swinson, then leader of the Lib Dems, couldn’t when asked last year. Keef Stalin couldn’t when asked if women have cervixes, and declared that it was a question that shouldn’t be asked. Anneliese Dodds and Stella Creasy, also Labour, couldn’t answer it when they were interviewed about International Women’s Day. And Labour’s James Murray also couldn’t answer it when interviewed by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio, but simply rejected the biological definition.
But what is also worrying is her attitudes to race. She seems to be a supporter of Critical Race Theory, which seems to me with its rants against ‘Whiteness’ to be simply postmodern anti-White racism. She was asked about a children’s book about raising an anti-racist baby. Aimed at children, this declared that ‘Whiteness is a pact with the Devil’ and shows a White person making just such a deal with Lucifer. I realise that this is intended as a metaphor and that it’s talking about ‘Whiteness’ rather than Whites, but it’s only a very short semantic step from one to the other, a step which critics like James Lindsey see as coming. And metaphorical it may be, but it is similar with how many Blacks really do believe that Whites are demonic.
There’s footage on the web of a Black woman, Angela Shackleford, telling a class of Whites that they ‘were not born into humanity’, will always be the same and are ‘devils to me’. In the realm of religion you have the Nation of Islam, which holds that White people are albinistic mutants created by the evil Mekkan scientist Shaitan to destroy the purity of the Black race. I was told years ago that Rastafarianism also states that White people are devils. And then there’s the Ansaaru Allah Black Muslim sect, whose leader calls Whites ‘Amalekites’ after the Semitic people who warred against Israel as they were passing through the desert on the way to the Promised Land. Their leader’s writings in his text Message to the Blackman in America, is full of anti-White rants, including the remarkable claim that the antichrist has already been born and is a blue-eyed Amalekite. This language is dangerous, because it has been used to stir up real hatred and prejudice against religious and ethnic minorities. For example, in the Middle Ages it was believed that Jews were literally the children of Satan, and this helped foment the pogroms, violence and expulsions directed against them.
And the threat of anti-White racist violence shouldn’t be played down. In 2005 the Guardian reported that racially motivated murders of Whites were almost at the same level as Blacks. Around about the same time it was also reported that Whites constituted the majority of victims of racial abuse and assault. There was also the controversy over the publication of White Girl Bleed a Lot. This argued that there was more mass, communal violence against Whites by Blacks than the other way round. It was denounced as racist, not least because the author seems to have had connections to the far right and had written for World Net Daily. Other criticisms were that his reporting of various events were factually inaccurate.
I really don’t believe that such books and Critical Race Theory in any way help tackle racism. Rather they are intended to teach that all Whites are racist, and that all Blacks can expect from them is racism. Books like that have been around for a very long time. When Mum was a school teacher, she received along with her teaching magazines a list of what the NUT seemed to believe were suitable anti-racist books. There were 20 on the least, and with only a single exception they were all about Black children being racially bullied by Whites. The exception, and the only one I would want to use with a class, was about a young Sikh lad using his swordsmanship skills to survive after the collapse of civilisation. I feel that the proper way to tackle racism in literature and entertainment is to show people of all races cooperating and getting along, in situations that seem natural and unforced. Critical Race Theory does the opposite. It promotes hatred and division, and for that reason many Blacks also despise it. There’s a video online of angry Black father telling a school meeting that he doesn’t want his son taught it. The father hasn’t suffered racism, and he doesn’t want his son taught that it is something he will have to expect either. He wants his son to believe that in America there are no bars to him achieving on the merits of his talents alone. It’s the classic American dream, and although this has certainly not been the experience of everyone, and particularly not people of colour, it’s still admirable.
And definitely better than Critical Race Theory, which is simply anti-White racism with a postmodern twist. Like all racism, it should be discarded and its supporters severely questioned over their suitability to teach and legislate.
Even if, and especially if, they are being nominated as a supreme court judge.
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 hope everyone’s had a great Christmas and/or holiday season, depending on their religious beliefs or lack thereof, despite the threat of another lockdown. Still, if it saves a few lives from the Coronavirus, it will have been worth it no matter how awkward and difficult it is for the rest of us. I really shouldn’t be giving the mad right-wing YouTuber Alex Belfield any more publicity, but I caught one of his videos today commenting on the intruder, who tried to get into Windsor Castle with a crossbow to kill the Queen. According to the news, the would-be assassin was a 19 year old man, Jaswant Singh Chail. Chail said that he wanted to kill her to avenge the 1919 Jallianabagh massacre, in which British troopers fired on unarmed protesters in the Punjab. He also wanted to avenge everyone who had suffered racist persecution. Chail is believed to have mental health problems, and his father has said something about him hopefully getting the help he needs. As the lad has also declared that, in addition to being a Sikh, he’s also a Sith called ‘Darth Jones’, I think his father and the arresting authorities are probably right. But not so Belfield. He has said he finds it interesting that Chail’s been diagnosed as mentally ill following his intrusion, and thinks that there is an elephant in the room we’re not being told about.
This seems to me to be wrong and potentially dangerous. I might be reading him wrong – I hope I am – but it looks like a piece of dog whistle racism.
I don’t believe for a single minute that this is the case. I realise that there is good and bad in every people, but the Sikhs I’ve met weren’t any kind of angry fanatics. I used to work with a Sikh lad, who was very spiritual and wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose. In fact, he was worried about the sectarian tension and violence between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in India. A few years ago I was on the bus and there was an older Sikh man in full traditional costume, turban, orange sash and robes standing near the driver, and the two were laughing and chatting. When I was studying religion as part of my minor degree at College back in the 1980s, as part of the course on sociology of religion we had to go to a different place of worship and observe what was going on. I’m an Anglican with Roman Catholic relatives, so they simply took me to the local Catholic church for mass. One of the girls in the class was taken by her sister to a Sikh wedding. The girls were Christians, but were nevertheless made very welcome by the people there. As far as I can remember, the last time there was mass protests or disaffection in the British Sikh community, it was in the 1970s when the government brought in the law that bikers had to wear helmets. I think some Sikhs protested because it made it difficult for them to wear the turban. And that was very definitely decades ago.
So no, I don’t believe there is more to it than an angry young man, who’s spent too long brooding about an historical injustice and no doubt his own experiences as a victim of racism. He may not be serious about the claim to be a Sith. ‘Darth Jones’ sounds like a spoof of a Sith name, rather than something genuine sinister like Darth Sidious, but I don’t think there’s any more to it than a grotesque sense of personal grievance.
It really doeslook to me like he was a disturbed loner, and any suggestion that there’s more to it is just dangerous fear-mongering.
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