How stupid and arrogant is Rees-Mogg? I’ve put up several messages I’ve received from Open Britain and other internet campaigning organisations giving their assessment of the Voter ID laws. Not surprisingly, they’ve been wholly negative because of the way severely normal Brits were turned away from polling stations because they either didn’t have ID, or didn’t have the right ID. In Somerset 400 people were so denied their right to vote. Open Britain has argued very strongly that this is part of the Tories’ attack on British democracy. They’ve also given sharp criticism of Keir Starmer’s plans for constitutional reform, expressing their concerns over what he leaves out, such as proportional representation and repealing the highly authoritarian legislation stifling the right to protest. There always was a very strong whiff of gerrymandering about the Voter ID legislation. The amount of electoral fraud is low. I think there have been only seven or so recent cases, and so there’s no need for it. The Tories introduced it following the example of the Republicans in America. Left-wing commenters over there pointed out that many of the people affected by the new legislation – Blacks, the young, the poor and students, the sections of society least likely to have such identification – were also the parts most like to vote Democrat. One Republican politician even admitted it was done to the nobble them.
And now Jacob Rees-Mogg has also admitted it on this side of the Atlantic.
The man one of the great commenters on this blog dubbed ‘Jacob Reet Snob’ let the cat out of the bag at the National Conservative conference. National Conservatism is the trend in transatlantic politics towards nationalism as a reaction to the collapse of globalism. Andrew Marr did a very good analysis of it for the New Statesman YouTube channel a week or so ago. Although it’s becoming influential in the Tory party, its roots are in America with the right-wing Edmund Burke Society, and its leadership seems to be American. Mogg was speaking at the conference about the threat to British sovereignty and Brexit posed by Keir Starmer’s statement that he would give the vote to the 6 million EU citizens in Britain. This has naturally panicked the nationalistic, Brexiteer right. Mogg sought to calm them by telling them that such gerrymandering never works, and rebounds on the party that did it.
Which he illustrated using the example of the Tories’ Voter ID laws.
They had, he said, been put in to stop people voting Labour. But they harmed the Tories instead, because most of the people turned away were Tory-voting senior citizens.
I found this short video commenting on Snob’s speech on the News Agents’ YouTube channel. The man in the video is absolutely amazed at Snob’s admission. He states that when he spoke to people in America about the Voter ID laws over there, they all defended it by telling him it was about protecting democracy. Presumably he didn’t meet the Republican politico who was open about it being a ruse to stop Democrat supporters voting. But there Mogg was, telling his audience that it was a piece of deliberate gerrymandering.
So why was Mogg being so open about it?
Maximilien Robespierre did an interesting video the other day talking about how bonkers Snob and the other headbangers demanding the return of Boris Johnson were. He’s part of a group which includes Nadine ‘Mad Nad’ Dorries and Priti Patel, the woman who makes up her own foreign policy. They had declared that the Tory party had been stupid to get rid of such an electorally successful Prime Minister as the huffing classicist. Well, the Tory party had done the same to Thatcher. She was massively successful, but when it seemed she was becoming an electoral liability, they got rid of her. She was replaced by her chancellor, John Major, just as Johnson had been replaced by Sunak. But Robespierre also wondered if the three weren’t also trying to scupper the Tory party’s chances at the next election by reminding everyone just how terrible Johnson was. Bozo had promised to build 44 new hospitals, of which only one has been built, if that. And that’s only one of his failures and broken promises.
Now comes this admission by Mogg, which tells anyone seriously worried about the state of British democracy that they shouldn’t vote Conservative. Is this part of the same plan to destroy the Tories’ chances from within? Cosplay priest Calvin Robinson has appeared on one video at some kind of right-wing political gathering saying that the Conservatives are no longer conservative, and the party needs to die to save Conservatism. Does Mogg share that view?
I doubt it. I think it’s just arrogance.
I think he came out with it because he either doesn’t believe it will do the Tories any harm and/or he thinks that the media won’t pick up on it and it won’t become a major issue. He probably has a point about that, as I have seen many people in the lamestream media commenting on it. The big news about the National Conservatives yesterday was about the Extinction Rebellion protester being thrown out for comparing them to fascism. I’m sure he was right and the parallels are there. But so far I haven’t seen anyone, outside of left-wing YouTubers, comment on this.
But worryingly, the Tory gerrymandering isn’t going to stop with the Voter ID laws.
Snob says in this snippet that the real problem was the postal votes.
So how long do you think it will be before they devise a plan to gerrymander those as well?
I got this email on Saturday from the internet pro-democracy organisation, Open Britain. They’re organising a campaign to make people aware of the new laws demanding photographic identity before people are allowed to vote, and to get them to get that ID.
‘David —
Too many people in the UK don’t use their greatest democratic weapon, their vote. There are a lot of reasons why this could be, but sadly a good number of people are just disillusioned.
We’re frightened that the next elections could be the worst election yet. Changes in the rules means that people who want to vote may be turned away. The new rules have been rushed in, so people must make sure they plan to vote.
This doesn’t just impact those without ID for elections, it also impacts those who don’t carry formal ID with them every day. Do you even carry around an ID every day? It’s never been a requirement to do so and many don’t. This is why we will be rolling out a campaign encouraging everyone to vote.
We want to reach everyone. Open Britain, and its partners, have a plan. We will take our message to people where they live, work and relax. We will go to the people most at risk of losing their vote because these people won’t come to us.
We will be developing a new cutting-edge campaign utilising new and old methods to reach deep into communities. We will be using local volunteers and modern digital techniques backing that up.
People will be the core of our campaign, we see this as a real national campaign driven by our communities.
Making sure every voter in the UK knows to bring ID to vote will be a challenge, but we won’t hide from challenges. I bet you have friends, family members or colleagues who forget to vote. Let’s remind them.
If you have any ideas that you’d like to contribute please get in touch by replying to this email. Together we will get people voting.
Best
Joel’
This is, unfortunately, a very necessary campaign. There’s precious little voter fraud going on, so the legislation demanding proof of identity with a photograph is unnecessary. But that’s not why it was passed. The Tories are just following the Republicans in America, who passed it as a way of covertly disenfranchising the various groups that vote for the Democrats – the poor, the young, students and Blacks. The same people, who in this country are more likely to vote Labour.
As for dispelling disillusionment, that’s a far greater ask. And Starmer is no solution. Novara Media put up a piece today talking about the less than enthusiastic vision of a Labour victory held out by Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner. One of the two said that they weren’t going to promise all that they’d like, and a Labour victory at the next election wouldn’t be like the excitement she felt, dancing home with two red flowers in her hand the night of the 1997 Labour victory. But the important thing is to get the Tories out. And then things would be better. Not great, but better.
Michael Walker and main woman Ash Sarkar pointed out that the enthusiasm that inspired millions to join the Labour party and support Corbyn didn’t come from Corbyn as a person, but because he stood for the reforms they believed in. And when Blair’s Labour entered office, they just carried on with Tory business as usual, but with the addition of an imperialist war that destabilised the entire region. Corbyn stood against all that. If he had got in, working people would have been empowered and there would be no more wars like that from Labour.
But any kind of vision seems to have been abandoned by Labour, who are just telling us that they’ll be better managers than the Tories, but won’t tell us what kind of state they’ll manage. And, oh yes, it’s still going to be crap.
It seems it’s not just George Bush senior who doesn’t have the ‘vision thing.’
And unfortunately, cynicism and disillusionment, because politicians are all the same, is just as corrosive of democracy as gerrymandering and stupid, unnecessary ID law.
You may well have seen the adverts telling us on TV that the laws have been changed so that photo IDs will be demanded as proof of identity before you can vote at elections. This is supposedly to prevent electoral fraud, and was introduced by the Tories on the back of similar legislation in America. That was criticised by the American Left, including The Young Turks, because the most likely sections of society not to have photographic IDs are the poor, Blacks, the young and students, precisely the sort of people that vote for the left. And one Republican politico even admitted that it was done to keep the Dems out.
The pro-democracy group, Open Britain, have issued this message to their supporters informing them that they are staring a campaign to make sure everyone is aware of the changes and has such identity documents so that they can vote.
‘Dear David,
Did you know that millions of eligible voters may be turned away from the ballot box at May’s local elections? The government rushed through new voter ID requirements ahead of this year’s May 4th local elections – and it’s going to impact you.
For the first time in England, voters will be required to present photo ID to vote—and not all photo IDs will be accepted. If you show up to the polls with an 18+ Oyster card or a student ID, for example, you may be denied your ballot, while IDs like 60+ Oyster cards will be accepted.
It doesn’t seem very fair does it?
While the Electoral Commission has launched a public awareness campaign, many fear that the new law will harm our democracy with voters unaware of the requirements. The [rushed] enactment of these restrictions is meant to target voter fraud (with very little evidence that this is an issue in the UK ) and will cost millions in taxpayer funds, while the public still faces an urgent cost-of-living crisis.
Similar laws have been enacted in the American South to suppress votes, particularly those of society’s most disadvantaged. We cannot go down this undemocratic path in the UK. Any eligible voter denied this May is unacceptable, so we must act to ensure that everyone is able to plan to vote ahead of time.
The Electoral Commission simply can’t do enough on its own, so we must take direct action to spread the word to our family, friends, and communities. The most effective thing we can do is to ask those around us if they know about the new rules, have proper ID, or if they need help applying for a Voter Authority Certificate.
Everyone deserves a fair shot at having their voices heard, and Open Britain remains committed to ensuring that this is the case. This May, you, your loved ones, or your communities could be unjustly disenfranchised, so we all need to set out a plan to vote. Open Britain has launched a Plan to Vote campaign, and the hard work begins now.
Yesterday, Christmas Day 2018, Mike also put up a piece and a short film, about ten minutes long, Targeting Protesters, produced by Gathering Place. The film-makers have been working on a long form documentary about fracking in the UK, during which time they have observed some features of this issue they found ‘surprising’.
They contacted Mike after he put up a piece last week about how the rozzers were reporting disabled people at anti-fracking protests in Lancashire to the DWP. The assumption seems to be that any disabled person out on protest is committing benefit fraud, as if their condition was genuine, they would be in no condition to attend. The DWP’s response to any allegation of fraud is to suspend benefits during the investigation, so that disabled people are automatically denied the money they need to live on before the Department has made a decision on whether or not they are guilty. Opponents of the police’s actions have called it ‘ableist’, and stated that it’s based on a very simplistic view of disability. Not all conditions, that mean someone is unable to work, are obvious, and the severity of many of them can vary from day to day. They have also argued very persuasively that the police seem to be doing this to intimidate disabled people as a deliberate strategy to prevent them going on these demonstrations.
Mike quotes the film’s publicity, which states
“The police have identified and targeted prominent anti-fracking campaigners, key protest organisers and invariably protesters with disabilities – in order to undermine or neutralise their effectiveness in challenging the interests of the shale oil and gas industry.”
The film has been posted on social media by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, and features their coordinator, Kevin Blowe. Blowe explains that the police have a deliberate strategy of targeting particular individuals for arrest. These are people, who are respected by the other protesters. They are either in a position of leadership, or can make critical decisions and actions when the moment comes. They also stop people travelling to the protests. The film shows an example of this, in which a carload of people are stopped by the cops at the side of the road. A woman, one of the crew, asks why they have done this. The policeman states that they are stopping them because they have information that their car contains a tripod. It’s a trumped up charge, and the woman asks them if they really think a tripod can fit in her car. The cop doesn’t respond and simply walks away. Later in the video Raj Chada, a member of a firm of solicitors, states that the cops’ charge that a woman was using a car illegally was complete ridiculous. The police haven’t charged her, or applied to the courts about it. Their arrest is simply a way of stopping free speech, which is unacceptable. It’s against the culture the police should have, which should be about facilitating those, who want to protest. The video also shows Labour’s John McDonnell talking to a group of protesters about the way they’ve been harassed. The film shows another woman, who has been grabbed by the rozzers, just as they release her. She says that it’s the second time that day the police have grabbed her.
Blowe states that the police target particularly influential people. This may sometimes involve arresting them, and pushing that arrest right up to taking them to court, even though the accused person would normally get off in other circumstances. If the targeted individual is local, the cops may continually go round to their homes or disrupt their business, deliberately making it very clear to them that they are under scrutiny.
While many fracking protesters are local, some do come from outside the area. They are also deliberately targeted by the police, who will visit their camps and make it clear that they are being targeted for arrest. They will also claim that any public order offences are due to people from outside the area. One protester from elsewhere in the country states that not only do the police target them, they also target anyone who associates with them, and that they can’t go anywhere without having a police escort. McDonnell also states that he’s concerned about the level of physical force used by the police, and particularly the incident where the police tip a disabled man out of his wheelchair. The film shows this happening, and the man says that it has happened to him three times already. McDonnell explains that the people on these protests are locals concerned about fracking in their area, and that most of them have had no interaction with the police before. The cops’ actions have shocked them, just as they’ve shocked him. The video shows another disabled man, in an orange T-shirt, being seized by the police, who then appear to strap him down physically into his chair. Blowe explains that the police will target someone, who appears vulnerable, in order to show that they will do absolutely anything possible to stop this person being as effective as they could be. Another disabled man tells the camera how the police told him that they had informed Motability that he was using his car for illegal purposes. The same man appears a few minutes later telling John McDonnell that the police have tried to stop his benefits, and passed on to the DWP a years worth of footage of him and other protesters. McDonnel states that this is unacceptable, and that this person should take it up with their MP, so that it can be discussed in the House of Commons. It appears to be done to prevent disabled people protesting, when they should have the same rights and ability in society to protest as everyone else.
Blowe also explains how the police will try to create ‘a situation’ where they can start arresting people by picking on someone vulnerable, like someone in a wheelchair or an older person, so that the other protesters will react. This is done so that the fracking lorries can get through. Sometimes the police is reactive, such as when the police on the day arrest particularly influential people. But they will also target otherwise unlikely targets, like women. They also target the young in order to give them the message that they are vulnerable, and the police consider them to be at risk of getting sucked into extremism. But it’s also a way of letting that person know they’re on the cops’ radar, and they have identified them for harassment. Blowe’s comments are accompanied by footage of a tall, long-haired young man being seized by the police, and forced onto the ground with his head all but in the gutter, before being dragged off. The man then briefly explains in a piece clearly filmed later that he was frightened after this happened to him in the short term, but in the long term absolutely not. Blowe then continues, explaining that this is all about identifying the key people to disrupt and end the protests.
Keith Taylor, an MEP from the Green Party, appears, and makes the point that many people still remember Orgreave from the miner’s strike, and that when the police follow orders, heads get broken. This is not the future that either he nor the community groups want to see.
John McDonnell then appears in turn to say that some form of inquiry into the conduct of the police is needed, and the evidence he’s seen is deeply worrying, and he believes other people seeing it will feel the same. There’s a level of physical force that’s unacceptable, and that therefore needs to be addressed.
Blowe explains that it’s all done to reduce the level of protest in an area, to cut down their duration time of months or weeks, to cut the numbers of people on these protests down to numbers they can manage, and to stop the mass opposition to fracking.
The film ends with the young chap, who was arrested, stating that he knows it’s all done to put people off, and that knowledge itself completely overrides any fear they would try to put upon him or others.
Taylor’s right when he says that it will remind many people of the miner’s strike. It seems very similar to the way Thatcher used the police in the 1980s to break the miner’s union. This was very much a political strategy on the part of the Tories. They remembered and resented the way the miners had defeated Ted Heath’s government in the 1980s, and were determined not to let this happen again. I can remember going to a meeting of the Fabian Society in Bristol, where one of the speakers explained how the efforts of the police, the Tory government, and Tory local authorities were very carefully coordinated and planned, with the same Tory politicians and activists appearing again and again around the country to try to break the strikers and the picket lines.
As for targeting women, they tried doing it to one of the members of my family. One of my female relatives was amongst the people protesting against the poll tax in London, and the police tried to grab her and pull her away, but her friends managed to hold on to her and pull her back. And I can very well believe that this is done deliberately to provoke the crowd to violence, so that the police will have an excuse to crack heads and arrest people.
The police did very well under Margaret Thatcher. They were well paid and given a range of benefits, like cheap or subsidized housing. Since then many very senior police officers have made it plain that they regret how they were used, stating that they were used by Thatcher as her private army. Recently the police have been decimated under Cameron and May through cuts in funding, which have led to a drastic fall in the numbers of police officers. Because the Tories clearly don’t think ordinary people and their homes and property are worth protecting as much as the rich. And they still probably believe that twaddle about neighbourhoods funding their own policing through hiring private security guards.
It is clear, however, that the link between the Tory party, the police and private industry still remains strong, at least as regards the fracking industry. Such politicised policing is a threat to the environment and democracy. McDonnell is right. We need an inquiry. Now.
This is another fascinating video from Telesur English. It’s from an edition of the Empire Files, in which the host, Abby Martin, interviews Dr. Gerald Horne, the chair of History and African American Studies at the University Houston. Dr. Horne is the author of 20 books on slavery and black liberation movements. The blurb for the video on YouTube states that his most recent work is The Counterrevolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States.
The video is just over half an hour long, and it completely overturns the entire myth of the founding of the United States, in which the Founding Fathers were noble idealists, intent on bringing about a truly democratic state in which all men would be free. In fact the opposite was true. The Founding Fathers were either slave-owners, or else otherwise deeply connected to slavery and slave trade through their business interests. Instead of noble liberators for everyone, they were deeply opposed to granting Black Americans their freedom.
Dr. Horne argues that they were the products of British imperialism and its slave trade, which was first introduced into the Caribbean and then shifted north to the English colonies in North America. He traces the history of Black enslavement and anti-Black racist movements from the American Revolution to the American Civil War, and thence to the formation of successive waves of the Klan. His intention is to show that Trump is not an historical aberration, a strange historical throwback on America’s long progress to freedom and liberty, but a product of America’s racist history and the mass support anti-Black movements have enjoyed and exploited throughout it.
The programme begins by explaining the background to the Confederate monuments, which the Unite the Right stormtroopers marched to defend in Charlottesville the week before last. These were not simply memorials to great generals or valiant soldiers, as the myth around them says. Most of the Confederate monuments in the US were erected in two periods – the period of Jim Crow in the 1920s and ’30s, when the segregation laws were being introduced, and the 1950s when the Civil Rights movement was beginning. They were set up to convey a very specific message: that while Black Americans were technically free, the ‘Negro’ had better know his place beneath the White man. Or else.
He then goes on to describe the emergence of slavery in the US. He states that Britain at the end of the 16th century was ‘a failed state’. The British Civil War of the 1640s between Charles I and parliament was a quasi-bourgeois revolution, which gave some rights to the British merchant and middle classes. The real bourgeois revolution was the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which allowed the middle classes to exert more political control, and allowed British merchants to wrest control of the slave trade away from the Crown as a royal monopoly.
The most important part of the British empire in the New World at the time was the Caribbean, and particularly Jamaica. These colonies became immensely profitable due to sugar. However, in the 1720s there was an economic crisis in Caribbean slavery, so some of the major Caribbean slaveowners moved north, to Carolina and other parts of the US. It was from these slave-owning families that the Founding Fathers were descended.
Horne also briefly discusses the role north American slavery played in the definition of White identity. Back in Europe, the different European peoples saw themselves as members of separate nations – English, Irish, Scots, French, Germans and so on. it was only when they crossed the Atlantic to America that they created an overarching racial identity to differentiate them from their Black slaves.
Horne then goes on to argue that the major catalyst for the American Revolution was the American colonists’ frustration at the British governments attempts to limit slavery and stop further colonial expansion beyond the Alleghenies. One of the critical moments in this was the Somerset Case, which ruled that slavery was illegal in England. The ruling was expanded to Scotland a year later. The taxes against which the Boston Tea Party was staged included those levied on slaves. They had been imposed by the British government as a deliberate anti-slavery measure. The British government was also tired of expending men and treasure in the various wars against the continent’s indigenous peoples. This angered the colonists, who longed to expand and seize native American land to the west. One of those, who stood to make a profit from this, was George Washington, who was a land speculator. As indeed, in a curious historical parallel, is Donald Trump. The Founding Fathers also feared and hated Black Americans, because the British had given their freedom to all Black Americans, who remained loyal. As a result, the Black Americans were solidly behind the British against the emerging independence movement.
Dr. Horne then goes on to talk about the American Civil War, and Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves held by the Southern states. Horne points out that it was felt at the time that Lincoln had somehow broken the rules of war, and done the unthinkable by arming the slaves. As for Lincoln himself, he didn’t have much sympathy with them, and was considering deporting them after the end of the war. Horne goes on to discuss how the deportation of Americans of African descent continued to be discussed and planned at various periods in American history afterwards. It was yet again discussed in the 1920s, when there was a movement to deport them back to Africa.
After the ending of slavery in American following the defeat of the South, many of the American slave-owners and traders fled abroad, to continue their business overseas. Several went to South America, including Brazil, while others went to Cuba.
After the Civil War came the period of reconstruction, and the foundation of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 19th century. Horne also talks about the lynching movement during this period of American history, which continued into the early 20th centuries. Not only were these intended to terrorise Black Americans to keep them in their place, but at the time they also were also almost like picnics. Photographs were taken and sold of them, and White spectators and participants would cut the fingers off the body and keep them as souvenirs. Dr. Horne remarks that, sadly, some White homes still have these digits even today.
He also talks about the massive influence D.W. Griffith’s viciously racist Birth of a Nation had on the Klan, boosting its membership. Klan groups began to proliferate. In Michigan, one branch of the Klan concentrated on fighting and breaking trade unions. Later, in the 1950s, the Klan entered another period of resurgence as a backlash against the Civil Rights campaign.
Horne makes the point that in this period, the Klan was by no means a marginal organization. It had a membership in the millions, including highly influential people in several states. And the Klan and similar racist organisations were not just popular in the South. The various pro-slavery and anti-Black movements also had their supporters in the North since the time of the Civil War. He also argues that the campaign against segregation was extremely long, and there was considerable resistance to Black Americans being given equality with Whites.
He also states that one of the influences behind the emergence of the Alt-Right and the revival of these latest Fascist and White supremacist movements was the election of Barak Obama as the first Black president of the US. Obama was subject to rumours that he was really Kenyan, with the whole ‘birther’ conspiracy theories about his passport, because he was Black, and so couldn’t be a proper American. And it is this bitter hostility to Obama, and the perceived threat to White America which he represents, that has produced Trump.
Watching this video, I was reminded of Frederick Douglas’ great speech, What To the Slave is the Fourth of July? Douglas was a former slave and a major voice for abolition in America. His speech noted how hollow the rhetoric about the Founding Fathers protecting Americans from slavery under the British, when they themselves remained slaves in reality.
He’s right about the rule of the sugar economy in saving the British colonies in the Caribbean, though from my own reading about slavery in the British Empire, what saved these colonies first was tobacco. It was the first cash crop, which could easily be grown there.
The role opposition to the British government’s refusal to allow further colonial expansion in provoking the American Revolution has also been discussed by a number of historians. One book I read stated that British colonial governors were encouraged to intermarry with the indigenous peoples. Thus, one of the governors on the British side actually had cousins amongst one of the Amerindian nations. The same book also described how the British granted their freedom to Black loyalists. After their defeat, the British took them to Canada. Unfortunately, racism and the bleak climate led them to being deported yet again to Sierra Leone. There were also Black loyalists settled in the British Caribbean colonies. One report on the state of colony instituted by its new governor in the early 19th century reported that the former Black squaddies were settled in several towns, governed by their own N.C.O.s under military discipline. These Black Americans were orderly and peaceful, according to the report.
As for the former American slave traders, who emigrated to Latin America, this is confirmed by the presence of one of the witnesses, who appeared before the British parliament in the 1840s, Jose Estebano Cliffe, who was indeed one of the émigré merchants.
Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks have also described the horrors of the lynchings in the Deep South, including the picnic, celebratory aspect to these atrocities. They made the point that if news reports today said that similar lynchings had been carried out by Arabs in the Middle East, Americans would vilify them as savages. But that attitude doesn’t extend to those savages in the US, who carried out these atrocities against Blacks.
It’s worth mentioning here that Blacks weren’t the only victims of lynching. Tariq Ali in an interview in the book Confronting the New Conservatism about the Neocons states that in Louisiana in the 1920, more Italians were lynched than Blacks.
The video’s also worth watching for some of the images illustrating Dr. Horne’s narrative. These include not only paintings, but also contemporary photograph. Several of these are of the slaves themselves, and there is a fascinating picture of a group of Black squaddies in uniform from the Civil War. I found this particularly interesting, as the photographer had captured the character of the soldiers, who had different expressions on their faces. Some appear cheerful, others more suspicious and pessimistic.
There’s also a very chilling photograph of people at a lynching, and it’s exactly as Dr. Horne says. The picture shows people sat on the grass, having a picnic, while a body hangs from a tree in the background. This is so monstrous, it’s almost incredible – that people should calmly use the murder of another human being as the occasion of a nice day out.
This is the history the Republican Party and the Libertarians very definitely do not want people to read about. Indeed, I put up a piece a little while ago at a report on one of the progressive left-wing news programmes on YouTube that Arizona was deliberately suppressing materials about racism, slavery and segregation in its schools, and making students read the speeches of Ronald Reagan instead. As for the removal of Confederate monuments, right-wing blowhard and sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly, formerly of Fox News, has already started making jokes about how ‘they’ want to take down statues of George Washington. Nobody does, and the joke shows how little O’Reilly really understands, let alone cares about the proper historical background behind them. I’ve no doubt that Dr. Horne’s interpretation of history would be considered by some an extreme view, but it is grounded in very accurate historical scholarship. Which makes it an important counterbalance to the lies that the Republicans and Libertarians want people to believe about the country and its history.
Except when they decide that this radical upstart needs to be given a metaphorical good kicking, of course.
In this clip from The Young Turks, anchor Cenk Uygur talks about the massive growth in popularity of Bernie Sanders on the internet. The progressive senator from Vermont uses Twitter and has his own Facebook page, where he posts videos of himself discussing issues with other leading academics, writers, people of faith, scientists and broadcasters.
The figures of the number of people following him and viewing his page are impressive. He has 4.7 million followers on Twitter, and his Facebook page has so far garnered 7 million likes. This is more than double his nearest Congressional rivals Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker. His Facebook page has also had 164 million video views since the beginning of the year. Last week, 1.8 million people were talking about his Facebook page. This was more than the New York Times, MTV, Vice and some network news outlets. Even a 40 second video of Sanders standing next to a ficus plant talking into a phone got 14 million views. This is beyond the figures for anyone on cable news, including Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.
So who does he get on his show as guests? They’ve included Rev. William Binder, the leader of the ‘Moral Monday’ movement, Josh Fox, the anti-fracking film-maker, and Bill Nye, the former ‘Science Guy’. Sanders’ discussion with Nye about climate change got 25,000 shares.
Uygur points out that this is part of Sanders’ concern to get his message out to as many people as possible. When he was in Vermont, he started his own PBS show. Since then, he’s also started his own TV and radio shows.
However, no matter how good these viewing figures are, you won’t have heard about it from the mainstream media. Uygur states that he only found out about Bernie TV last week through reading a hostile article about it from a right-wing journo. He contrasts this with the massive amount of publicity Trump was given by the mainstream media, who were falling over themselves to tell everyone how this orange atavistic disaster was going to set up ‘Trump TV’ if he didn’t win the presidency. Trump tried, and failed. It’s gone the way of so many of the great entrepreneurs other massive flops. Like Trump steaks and vodka, which he tried selling to the Russians. If there’s one thing the Russian Federation does not need, it’s more booze.
Uygur also comments on the excuses a mainstream media company would give for not showing any of his programmes. For example, in one segment, shown in the clip, Bernie talks about the role of various right-wing think tanks in setting up a fear about ‘voter fraud’, thus enabling the Republicans to pass legislation preventing the poor, people of colour, the young and the elderly from voting. These parts of the American populace tend to favour the Democrats, so the Republicans definitely want to exclude them from the ballot box.
Watching the video, a mainstream executive would complain that it was too boring to get people to watch. It’s just Bernie in a room talking to an academic, who has researched this. That’s it. No frills, just 25 minutes of conversation in a businesslike studio. But those 25 minutes have got millions of people watching and listening, against the received wisdom of the mainstream media.
Uygur states that the real reason why the mainstream networks don’t want to give Bernie any coverage whatsoever, is because they themselves are heavily influenced by the same right-wing groups, like the outfit that produced that steaming pile of effluent about the danger of voter fraud. They want something nicely prepared by a thinktank that they can present on their programme and so give a false impression of neutrality. The Democrats say one thing, but the Republicans say another. All done without mentioning where the information comes from or how trustworthy it is.
Uygur also remarks on how the article questions how ‘competitive’ Sanders’ TV show is. One of those the hack asked was one of the workers on The Young Turks. He replied that this question simply didn’t apply. They weren’t concerned about how ‘competitive’ it was, because unlike the mainstream network, Bernie and his co-workers believed in their message.
In my last post, I quote Robert Brady on the similarity between Fascist attitudes and those of American businessmen. Both of whom viewed man as a rapacious predator. He observed how American businessmen were quite content to see the US invade and attack other countries purely from economic interests. The same attitudes also led the US to send in the army against domestic protestors, such as strikers, share-cropper and hunger marchers.
Brady also considered that business would prefer autocratic rule, and remarked on the business class’ absolute contempt for the unemployed, and their indifference to poverty caused by poor wages.
The condition of society in which the business men would rule would be that one which is natural to them. It would, as a matter of course, be centralised, autocratic, and intolerant, and it would be so constructed that each would get exactly what he deserves for the simple reason that according to the rules he deserves whatever he can get. It is the well accepted business view that most, if not all of the unemployed are shiftless, worthless, irresponsible, and undisciplined. It is taken as axiomatic that the lowest wage-earner receives all that “is coming to him” since if he could get more by any means which does not disturb business routine it is obvious that he would. His failure is the measure of his incompetence, and with that all has been said about it that may be mentioned by gentlemen of good breeding and respectable station!
Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are passing legislation, under the guise of reforming electoral registration, designed to strip the vote from the poor, ethnic minorities and the young. The idea that unemployment is due to personal character defects is behind the ‘less eligibility’ attitudes towards welfare benefits, in which workfare and sanctions are used to force the unemployed off jobseeker’s allowance, DLA and ESA. It’s behind the work capability assessment and the planned use of CBT by ‘job coaches’.
And the same attitude is also behind the Tories’ manufacture of a low wage economy, in which workers are forced into part-time work, zero-hours contracts, or compete for internships and are placed on workfare, all to provide cheap labour for business.
This is another revealing quote on Fascist attitudes from the Fascists themselves, in Brady’s book, ‘The Structure of German Fascism’. Nazism was based partly on the idea of the biological inferiority of certain groups, and the supposed need to eliminate them or prevent them from breeding. These included recidivist criminals, the physically or mentally handicapped, and the unemployed. The last were seen as biologically inferior simply through their inability to hold down a job and support themselves.
The Nazis boasted that their eugenics campaign was definitely not a novelty, and was based on arguments and programmes put into practice in other nations. Such as America, where 26 states passed legislation providing for the sterilisation of the mentally handicapped. Here’s a statement from one American Fascist demanding an end to liberal democracy, because of the support it gives the biologically inferior.
” … most well-mannered debaters carry on with the White Lie of Democracy; and thus they reach worthless conclusions. A land swarming with tens of millions of morons, perverts, culls, outcasts, criminals, and lesser breeds of low-grade humans cannot escape the evils all such cause. … So long as we have an underworld of 4,000,000 or more scoundrels willing to do anything for a price, and a twilight world of fully, 40,000,000 people of profound stupidity or ignorance or indifference, and a population of nearly 70,000,000 who cannot support themselves entirely and hence must think first of cost, whenever they buy things, we shall have a nasty mess on our hands … “
(Pitkin, Let’s Get What We Want, pp. 72, 283).
These sentiment aren’t that far from the Daily Mail. And as Mike has pointed out on Vox Political, and Johnny Void on his blog, the government is effectively criminalising the unemployed by forcing them to do unpaid community work.
And the Tories over here, and Republicans in America, are also passing laws designed to ensure they win the election by stripping the franchise from the poor, young and ethnic minorities. All in the name of reforming voter registration. In this country the Tories are debating stripping the right to vote from Irish people, and the citizens of Commonwealth countries resident here.
This is a government which has adopted policies that could rightly be called ‘Fascistic’. They just haven’t formally overthrown democracy yet and started wearing the black shirts and jackboots.
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