Mike Names the Tory September Brexit Criminals

‘November Criminals’ was the insulting name the Nazis gave to the German socialist president, Fritz Ebert, and the other democratic politicos who signed the armistice finally ending World War I. They hated them for the humiliating peace that the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany and the creation of a the new, democratic Weimar republic.

Rigorous press censorship meant that ordinary Germans were not informed of the country’s defeats. Not even the Kaiser himself was told. His generals had a policy that he should only be given the good news. As a result Germany’s defeat was a complete shock. It led to the vile conspiracy theories about the Jews that ultimately led to the Nazi seizure of power – that they had stabbed Germany in the back. It was a total lie. Jews were amongst the most patriotic of the German population, and as a percentage constituted a larger proportion of German recruits than other groups. The captain who put up Adolf Hitler up for his Iron Cross was Jewish.

The defeat led to the complete collapse of traditional parliamentary government and its replacement in the German Council Revolution of 1919 with workers’, soldiers and peasants’ council rather like the soviets of Communist Russia. In fact it seems that many of these councils, far from dominated by the extreme left, were moderates simply taking over the governmental functions that had collapsed. The Kaiser himself raved about leading his army as their warlord back to reconquer Germany with steel and poison gas until one of his leading generals pointedly asked ‘What army? What warlord?’

Ebert himself had lost several of his sons in the War, and was no radical. It may be due to him that Weimar Germany was a democratic republic. The KPD – the German Communist party were about to declare Germany a republic. Ebert heard about it, and narrowly managed to head off their proclamation by hurriedly announcing it himself. He was also responsible for using right-wing paramilitary units – the Freikorps – to crush the council republics that had been set up throughout Germany. This led to the murder of Bavarian president Kurt Eisner, and earned the SPD the nickname ‘social fascists’ by the German left.

And however humiliating the terms of the Versailles Treaty was, it was actually no worse than the peace of Brest-Litovsk the Germans had imposed on the defeated Russians. And they planned similar crippling reparations on England, France and the allies if they had been victorious.

But if the term ‘November Criminals’ is a grotesque slur on the democratic politicos that ran Germany during the Weimar republic, ‘September Criminals’ is an apt description for the 340 Tory MPs who trooped through the lobby to support Boris Johnson’s Internal Markets Bill. This tears up the previous agreements made with the EU. It is illegal, and a stream of senior lawyers and former prime ministers, including John Major, David Cameron and Gordon Brown, have condemned it. It will mean that Britain will lose the trust of other nations, vital as we need to make deals with them after we leave Europe. Brexit is threatening to tear apart the Union of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which has persisted for three centuries. It is threatening to return Ulster to sectarian bloodshed and violence through its breach of the Good Friday Agreement. It also seems that Boris and his clique are deliberately aiming for a No Deal Brexit that will ruin Britain’s industries, because this will benefit the hedge funds that are now the chief donors to the Tory party.

The Tory press and media has smeared Remainers and critics of Brexit as traitors. But it more accurately describes the Tories themselves, and the way they are ruining this country. All while trying to convince its sheeple that they’re the real patriots through waving the flag and demanding the singing of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘Rule, Britannia’ at the Last Night of the Proms and demonising asylum seekers as invaders.

Way back in the 1940s members of the British left wrote the pamphlet The Guilty Men, fiercely attacking the members of the Tory party, whose collaboration with the Nazis they believed was responsible for the War. Another, pseudonymous book was published by the Left Book Club which similarly denounced the Tory MPs, who were blocking the legislation that would set up the National Health Service. Which the Tories have also been trying to destroy for the last 40 years since Maggie Thatcher.

It’s time to turn the tables on the Tories. They are the real traitors, and the 344 Tories supporting Johnson’s lawbreaking bill deserve to be called ‘September Criminals’. I don’t want them to receive abuse, death threats or worse like the Nazis inflicted on their victims.

But their names should live in infamy, like the Guilty Men who betrayed us and the other European nations to the Nazis, and the Tories, who tried to block the creation of the NHS. Remember their names, and kick them out!

For the full list of their names, go to:

#ToryLawBreakers: the 340 MPs who voted like sheep to turn the UK into a rogue state

No, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, You and the Press Are also Guilty for Enabling Johnson’s Dictatorship

Yesterday the I’s columnist, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown took it upon herself to identify the ‘guilty men’ responsible for enabling Johnson’s seizure of dictatorial power yesterday. This followed an anonymous piece by someone calling themselves ‘Cato the Younger’, with the title of ‘The Guilty Men’. ‘Cato’ blames thirteen western leaders, two of whom are women. Alibhai-Brown, however, put up her own, shorter list of six men. They are George Osborne, Nigel Farage, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. Now I agree with her identification of all the above as causes of the crisis, with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn. She includes him because he

has been another unknowing collaborator. He still can’t find the voice or moral clarity to oppose Brextremism, and is worryingly beholden to his close, maniacally anti-capitalist advisers. He could come out for Remain and let, say, Caroline Lucas lead a temporary government of unity. It won’t happen. Not even in our dreams.

This is utter balderdash, just Centrist, anti-Corbyn propaganda. Corbyn has made his views on Brexit very clear. He was going to get Britain the best deal he could. If he couldn’t, he would hold a general election and/or second referendum. This, however, has not been reported in the press and media, which still continues to trot out the pat lie that he never campaigned properly for Remain. Swinson, the leader of the Lib Dems, was asserting this outright lie again the other day, claiming that Corbyn was ‘nowhere to be seen’ at the Referendum campaign. He certainly was. Matt Thomas posted a tweet declaring that Corbyn made 123 media appearances, attended 15 rallies and posted 118 pro-Remain tweets. Swinson herself posted only a couple of tweets for Remain.

And Tory Fibs also tweeted

That is a provable lie. During the EU Referendum Campaign 7 May-22 June 2016, Corbyn, over 46 days, campaigned as follows:

• Traveled 5851km
• Spoke at 15 rallies
• Sent 100 Remain Tweets
• Achieved 33,760 retweets
• Received media exposure 120 times

and contrasted this with Swinson’s own lamentable performance. While Professor Andrew Russell pointed out that the Lib Dems, by contrast, were ‘conspicuous by their absence’.

Academic exposes ‘invisible’ LibDem’s Brexit hypocrisy. Swinson pushing UK toward no-deal Brexit

As for Corbyn being ‘worryingly beholden’ to ‘maniacally anti-capitalist advisers’, this is just a bit of doubletalk trying to stir up the Red Scare about Corbyn and the Labour party a little more. One of Corbyn’s advisors is hard Left. Seumas Milne is, I believe, a real Stalinist. But Corbyn isn’t, neither is he a Trotskyite, or any other kind of Communist. And the Labour party’s programme is simply a return to the mixed-economy, strong welfare state with strong unions that gave Britain three to four decades of prosperity and economic growth after the War.

And then there’s Alibhai-Brown’s whinge that he didn’t make way for Caroline Lucas’ female-only unity government. But this was never a realistic proposal. It was profoundly sexist, and ignored the profound differences between all of the women Lucas invited to join her. It looks to me far more like an attention-grabbing stunt than a serious proposal. It also belies Alibhai-Brown’s claim to be concerned about the poor. Earlier in her article, attacking George Osborne, she states quite correctly that he

punished the neediest, weakened the welfare state and rewarded the richest. Those “left behinds” who voted for Brexit were deliberately left behind by this coldly ideology, small-state Tory.

All of which is correct. And it also describes precisely many of the women Lucas invited to join her unity government. They were also ideological Thatcherites, determined to punish the poor, reward the rich, and destroy the welfare state. And it’s remarkable that Alibhai-Brown, who has spent her journalistic career fighting racing, hasn’t pointed out that not one BAME woman was included on Lucas’ list.

Of course, the real reason Alibhai-Brown is trying to dump on Corbyn yet again, is because she shares her masters’ fears about a Corbyn government that would really empower working people and bring the profiteering super-rich to heel. And so a fair amount of the blame for BoJob’s seizure of power should go to the men and women of the Fourth Estate. 

Murdoch’s papers naturally share a very large part of the blame, because they have relentless hyped and promoted the Tories and particularly Boris Johnson. So have the Torygraph, owned by the weirdo Barclay twins, while the Heil and Depress have also pushed the same extreme right-wing views.

But the nominally left-press should also shoulder their fare share of the blame. The Groaniad, Absurder and the I followed the Tory press in lying about, vilifying and smearing Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, for exactly the same reasons as the Tory papers: they are afraid of anything that really empowers the working class. The only difference is that they have tried to dress up their Thatcherism with some shreds of progressive ideology. The I, for example, tried promoting Sandi Toksvig Women’s Equality Party. That feminist organisation’s credentials went out the window when Toksvig declared her backing for Hillary Clinton in the American presidential election. Clinton shared her husband’s attack on the American welfare state, such as it was, passed racist legislation designed to come down hardest on Blacks supposedly to tackle the ‘war on drugs’, and presided over an aggressive programme of regime change every bit as militaristic as George Bush’s. Clinton was very much a member of the American establishment, but she tried telling everyone she wasn’t, ’cause of her gender. Now we have Alibhai-Brown trying out the same tactics in promoting Lucas against Corbyn. And in doing so Alibhai-Brown shows what a hypocrite she is.

She, and the rest of the press, have also contributed to Johnson’s resistible rise. All of them have supported the neoliberal economics that have empowered the Tory Brexiteers, even when, like Swinson, they claimed otherwise. The left-wing press could have got behind Corbyn. They didn’t. And so they deserve their share of the blame, along with the Tory rags, for keeping the Tories in power, and allowing Johnson to elevate himself to virtual dictator.