The odious Dominic Cummings wasn’t the only right-winger to be caught breaking the lockdown. So was Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, the notorious islamophobe. Robinson had been nabbed by the fuzz, which can be extremely painful, in Cumbria when he was trying to get to Barrow-on-Furness. The rozzers seized his equipment – his car, his phone and his camera.
This set the anti-Muslim bully-boy off on a long rant against Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter was caused by the radicalisation of people by Antifa, socialist, communist activists. It’s the product of identity politics imported from the US, and funded by the Americans, communism and Marxism. BLM was also supported by the media and ‘the whole remain movement’. Antifa were a ‘far-left’, Fascist organisation, which is an oxymoron. He also attacked someone called Anthony Joshua, who has apparently called for Blacks not to shop at White businesses. Robinson called him a Black supremacist and claimed he was being funded by Saudi Arabia.
Ominously, Robinson also said that he was coming to London this past weekend for a non-racist, patriotic demonstration. “It’s not an anti-Black Lives Matter protest. Many people were there for the right reasons, but you’ve been hijacked by Antifa, you’re being used … on Saturday, many non-white people will be standing with patriots – here Zelo Street interpolated the right interpretation of this clause – [patriots can clearly only be white, then] cos we cannot rely on the Police”.
But as the events on Saturday showed, it was an anti-BLM demonstration. Thugs and louts from the Democratic Football Lads’ Alliance turned up waving anti-Black Lives Matter placards. They were also seen setting fire to a BLM poster whilst describing the person on it as a ‘Black c***’. They were clearly hoping to start a fight with the BLM protesters, who had planned on demonstrating that day. However, those protesters had moved their event to last Friday. Denied their chosen targets, the Fashy idiots decided to attack the cops instead. One of them spat at and threatened a young woman, who was simply picnicking with her friends, while another was seen urinating next to the memorial for the policeman killed defending parliament from an islamist attack. He wasn’t actually widdling on it, as right-wing rent-a-mouth Julia Hartley-Brewer was keen to point out, as if that somehow exonerated this prize bit of drunken yobbishness. Well, no, but it still was a despicable sacrilege to the memory of a brave man. And as the peeps on Twitter also pointed out, urinating in public is still an offence, as it’s an act of public indecency. They were, in short, a disgraceful, drunken rabble, which, if you read the anti-racism, anti-religious extremism site, Hope Not Hate, is just bog-standard, typical behaviour for the far right.
Black Lives Matter has been imported from America, but I really don’t know if it’s funded from there. The BLM demonstrations seemed to me to be spontaneous and occurred all over the world. They are undoubtedly supported by the left, including socialists and communists, but I doubt very much they are an exclusive socialist or communist movement. For all that the various communist movements and parties would like to believe they are instrumental in mobilising mass protest, the truth is the opposite. The collapse of communism globally took most of the local, national communist parties with it. And they were never very popular anyway. The British Communist party reached its peak of popular support in the mid-’70s. When I was a schoolboy in the 1980s, I noticed that in one set of elections in Bristol – I think it was around ’82 or ‘3’ – the local Communist party got 45 votes, beating the National Front, who only got 40. Hardly anybody voted for them. The Socialist Workers’ Party, now the Socialist Party, has done its level best to infiltrate and colonise other people’s protest movements, but their efforts have always been counterproductive. When they inflitrated ‘Rock Against Racism’ in the early ’80s and tried to turn it into a satellite organisation, the mass of members simply left and the organisation, and their plan for using it to radicalise the masses towards Marxism – collapsed. The people who joined ‘Rock Against Racism’ did so because they were anti-racist, not because they were interested in revolutionary socialism.
I also don’t know how many supporters of anti-racist movements like Black Lives Matter are actually socialists. I got the impression that Jo Cox, the Labour MP murdered by racist fanatic Thomas Mair, was on the anti-socialist, Blairite right of the party. Anti-racism and feminism are liberal movements. They are about expanding democracy, opportunity and social participation to include marginalised groups, in this case, ethnic minorities and women. But that can simply mean improving opportunities for individuals, rather than improving conditions generally for the poor or the working and lower middle classes. Hence Blair could back anti-racism campaigns and the movement to get more women in business, science and parliament, without taking up nationalisation or turning away from the Thatcherite road of privatisation, welfare cuts, the destruction of the unions and selling off the NHS. Socialists have adopted anti-racism and feminism as part of a general concern to emancipate those excluded and exploited by capitalism.
I’ve already blogged about the real reasons for the Black Lives Matter protests, as opposed the stupid conspiracy theories about Marxists spouted by Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s primarily a reaction to the disproportionate use of lethal force by the police against Blacks. But it’s also caused by continuing racial inequalities and the grinding poverty of Black communities, as well as everyday anti-Black racism. It’s why the BLM protest in Cheltenham last weekend included a poem by a little girl, Nylah, about why Blacks should take no notice when people tell them they aren’t beautiful. It’s a subject that has haunted many Black people. I came across a similar poem about Black beauty in an issue I was sent at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum of the magazine of the Black and Asian Studies Association. That was 20 years ago, and it is a disgrace that after nearly fifty years of such campaigning, some Black people still somehow feel that they are less attractive than Whites. But it’s also a demonstration that Black pride and anti-racism are humanist movements that go beyond the ideological boundaries of socialism and communism, although both of the latter may and should support them.
Back to Robinson, by his own admission his phone contains footage of his activities. These includes turning up announced on his critics’ doorsteps with a few of his henchmen in order to intimidate them into silence. He also inadvertently doxes them, posting their private information online but telling his followers not to trouble them, and then deleting the information. It all looks suspiciously like incitement, while Robinson himself pretends the opposite. He didn’t want anyone to harass anybody, honest! Look, he’s deleted their information. Robinson did it to the parents of a lad, who persisted in criticising Robinson online and who had pointed out that Robinson’s expensive house showed he was definitely not the poor, working class lad he claimed. He did it to the anti-racist activist Mike Stuchbery, who was forced to leave his teaching job in this country after Robinson falsely claimed, or insinuated, that he was abusing children. And he did it to Tim Felton himself, the man behind Zelo Street. Naturally Tim hopes that the rozzers crack the codes and passwords into Robinson’s phone, and get all the sordid details. Including who is breaking privacy laws by giving Robinson other peoples’ private addresses.
Robinson’s got a series of convictions as long as your arm. These include assault and contempt of court for his repeated violations of the very tight legislation governing trial reportage. That’s legislation intended to make sure the accused get a fair trial. In the case of the Asian grooming gangs and paedophiles, whose trials Robinson has insisted on covering, this means making sure that if they are guilty, their lawyers can’t have the cases dropped because Robinson’s stupid vlogging stops them getting a fair trial.
So far Robinson has had suspended sentences, or those of only a few months. But depending on what the police are able to get out of his phone, that really could change. And it could net some of Robinson’s vile collaborators with him.
Mike reported a little while ago that the Tories were going ahead with their plans to demand photographic identification of voters at polling stations before allowing people to cast their votes. This is supposedly to cut down on voting fraud, despite the fact that actual instances are so low they’re negligible. Of course, the people who will find it most difficult to produce such identification will be students and the poor. Which is why the Tories are introducing it.
It’s another trick they’ve learned from the American Republicans, who introduced similar legislation over there. It prevents the poor, students and Blacks – the demographics mostly likely to vote Democrat – from being able to vote. And such tricks to stop working class radicals and Blacks from voting have a long history in America. All the way back to the Populist movement in the 1890s. This was a left-wing movement of America’s rural poor against exploitation by the great landlords. Bhaskar Sankara gives a brief description of it, and its fall, in his book The Socialist Manifesto. He writes
But ferment was growing in rural America. The Populist Movement sprang from the 1870s struggles of indebted farmers in central Texas but soon spread throughout the country. As the price of cotton collapsed and the economy entered a depression in the 1890s, the Populists fervently supported Debs during the Pullman Strike, backed many demands made by labor, and were leading tenant and sharecropper efforts against the crop-lien system. Populist leader Tom Watson challenged white and black farmers to organise across racial lines, telling a crowd, “You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system that beggars both.”
In 1892, the movement formed a national political party around a progressive platform that called for a graduated income tax, nationalised railways, debt relief, and public works to combat unemployment. Planter elites responded with a campaign of electoral fraud and violence, including the lynching of hundreds of organisers, while the Democratic Party came to co-opt much of the movement’s platform in 1896. After the pro-Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryant’s election loss that year, the movement fell apart. Legislative efforts to disenfranchise blacks through poll taxes and biased “literacy tests” were expanded, helping prevent another multi-racial movement from emerging for decades. (pp. 163-4).
That’s the tactics of the Right. Keep whites and blacks attacking each other, so that they don’t unite against the system that’s oppressing both, and bring in laws to disqualify Blacks and the White poor from voting. The Tories also do both. But they haven’t yet started lynching members of the Labour party. So far, that’s been left to the far right. Thomas Mair and his assassination of Labour MP Jo Cox. Then there are the crazed Brexiteers who screamed at Anna Soubry that she was a traitor, and who took a model gibbet to their protests outside parliament, and the Nazi, homophobic thugs who beat up Owen Jones.
Perhaps after the Tories have introduced voter ID and similar legislation, they’ll bring back lynching as well. They’ve encouraged people to beat up the disabled already.
A couple of days ago the Supreme Court ruled that Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was wrong and illegal. Yesterday the honourable ladies and gentlemen filed back into the House to take their seats according to the democratic mandate they have received under the British constitution and from their constituents. Boris was stymied in his attempt to set himself up as temporary generalissimo, and he and his supporters in the Tory press showed it through colossal displays of bad grace and ill temper. Like Boris refusing to acknowledge John Bercow, the Speaker, when he left the chamber yesterday. But worse than that, BoJo has resorted to highly inflammatory language about his political opponents, which have left women MPs in particular frightened for their lives. Boris attacked the MPs – who come from across the political spectrum – who passed the legislation preventing him from getting a No Deal Brexit as ‘traitors’. He denounced the Act itself as a ‘surrender’ act, a ‘capitulation’ act, and a ‘humiliation’ act. His words alarmed six lady MPs, notably the Labour MPs Jess Philips and Paula Sherrif. Sherrif said that the language he was using was that of the people, who send death threats to MPs.
“We should not resort to using offensive, dangerous or inflammatory language for legislation that we do not like, and we stand here under the shield of our departed friend with many of us in this place subject to death threats and abuse every single day.
“They often quote his words ‘Surrender Act’, ‘betrayal’, ‘traitor’ and I for one am sick of it.
“We must moderate our language, and it has to come from the prime minister first.”
Philips stated that BoJob’s language was deliberately phrased to be as offensive and divisive as possible.
So how did Boris defend himself from these accusations? He denounced Sherrif’s statement as ‘humbug’, and in reply to concerns that his rhetoric would lead to another assassination like the murder of Jo Cox by a member of the Fascist outfit Britain First, he blamed it all on his opponents. It’s their fault for stopping Brexit that people are angry with them, and the best way they can honour her memory was by finally leaving the EU. Cox herself was a Remainer, and her husband Brendan commented that the debate had descended into a “bear pit of polarisation” and MPs had fallen into a “vicious cycle where language gets more extreme, the response gets more extreme and it all gets hyped up.
“It has real-world consequences… It creates an atmosphere where I think violence and attacks are more likely than they would have been.”
Earlier, the Times had temporarilyh released infamous right-wing hack Quentin Letts from his cage there, and sent him to join the baying hordes at the Scum. Where he penned what amounts to little more than an incitement for extremely intrusive scrutiny of the Supreme Court judges themselves. In fact, it was tantamount to a call for people to doxx them, revealing intimidate personal details of the judges themselves, their partners and their children. The odious Letts ranted that the judgment “could make life immeasurably hotter for judges and senior lawyers in Britain. From now on, their political leanings, their family and professional backgrounds, their social media records and all those juicy perks they enjoy at their Inns of Court are going to be fair game for public scrutiny”, and continued “Where do these top lawyers live, which clubs do they belong to and what are the political views of their spouses? All these – and more – will in future be legitimate fare” He then went on to say “But let’s consider other questions. Who did you sit next to at your last posh dinner? What charities do you support? Who gave your children their work experience internships? Do you have any overseas investments? Did you pay tax on them?”.
As Zelo Street pointed out, this was an incitement to doxx, and the very language used is that which led to the radicalisation of Thomas Mair, Jo Cox’s assassin.
As for BoJob’s own inflammatory rhetoric, the Sage of Crewe commented
‘if this language carries on, and is not only tolerated, but cheered on, by the Tory front bench, we won’t get Brexit done. We’ll get another Jo Cox. And that’s why all those baying Tories, and their pals in the press still prepared to back Bozo, need to stop and think, although they are not big enough, or sensible enough, to do so.
Tolerating a Prime Minister who is shamelessly and blatantly trying to echo Donald Trump in his ability to cause offence and dispense inflammatory language will lead, with the grim certainty of night following day, to a body count. Someone is going to get killed.
And that is not a price anyone should be prepared to pay to keep Bozo in a job.’
These aren’t idle fears either. Philips in her speech attack BoJob’s language demonstrated how his rhetoric and those of the idiots and fanatics sending death threats to her were one and the same by reading out one of the threats she’d received. Now it seems her fears were justified. Last night a man was arrested outside her offices. He had apparently tried to terrorise them by banging on the windows, attempting to smash them, and shouting ‘Fascist’ at them.
Philips is very far from either Mike’s or my favourite MP. Along with Luciana Berger, she formed a lynch mob of privileged White Blairites to support the fake and malicious accusations of anti-Semitism against Marc Wadsworth by Ruth Smeeth. Much of the abuse she receives I believe she calls down on herself through her obnoxious views and behaviour. But this time she is a genuine victim.
Let’s be clear about this. These are Fascist tactics and Nazi rhetoric. Hitler’s thugs used the same language to describe the Treaty of Versailles and the democratic parties that became the cornerstone of the Weimar Republic – the SDP, Catholic Centre Party and the two Liberal parties. They also vilified and smeared the judicial and police authorities, that also tried to maintain the new, fledgling German democracy. One of the left-wing bloggers – I’ve forgotten which one – has gone further and described the kind of language now being used by BoJob as a deliberate incitement to violence and assassination. They said the people using it – he was referring to Trump and his demonisation of immigrants – were well aware of the effect their rhetoric was having stirring up hatred and encouraging the far right in their attacks. Like the violence by the Proud Boys and other American Fascists at Charlottesville. However, they were careful not to make their incitement to assault and murder explicit, so they could always deny it.
And this is what BoJob and the Tory front bench are doing now. And if they’re not careful, someone will get killed.
This is a rather long video of a livestream held by male feminist and left-wing, anti-Fascist YouTuber, Kevin Logan, and Mike Stuchberry on Kevin Logan’s channel. It’s part of a series entitled ‘Let Them Eat Kek’, which as it’s title suggests, is about attacking the Alt-Right, and is a special devoted mainly to Tommy Robinson. It’s just under 3/4 of an hour long, and about half of it is the two discussing Robinson and his fans intimidating one of his internet critics and their family. The rest deals with a rather underwhelming UKIP rally with Tommy Robinson, which illustrates the depths of the Kippers’ decline, and the British imitators of the Yellow Vest protesters across the Channel. I’m putting it up because the conversations describes one instance of thuggish behaviour from Robinson, and shows why people like him should not be allowed anywhere near any political movement aspiring to respectability. And this in turn shows why UKIP’s present leader, Gerard Batten, is a disgrace for taking him and the rest of the far right YouTubers on.
The video was posted on the 16th December 2018, and the events they discuss occurred earlier that Monday. Robinson was annoyed at a piece posted on the Net by a long-time critic, Luke, a university student. Luke had amassed a sizable collection of videos posted on the web by Robinson, and used to put these up to show how Robinson contradicted himself or otherwise managed to make himself look stupid. What particular angered Robinson was a piece by Luke, in which he argued very persuasively that Robinson was not quite the working class hero he claims to be. Logan and Stuchberry believe that Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has an income in millions of pounds coming from crowd-funded donations, as well as funding by right-wing American think tanks like the Middle East Forum. Robinson lives somewhere on the outskirts of Luton in Bedfordshire. Luke found a house similar to Robinson’s – but which wasn’t the well-known Islamophobes – and from their similarity suggested that Robinson’s was worthy 950,000 pounds.
Robinson decided to show how outraged he was at this by driving up to Luke’s parents in Cumbria that evening in the company of his cousin and former bodyguard Kevin Carroll and Avi Yemeni. Yemeni’s a really repulsive individual, an Israeli-Australian, who claims to have shot civilians simply for throwing stones when he was a member of the IDF. The video contains a clip from one of the video’s Robinson’s band of thugs made of Yemeni boasting to Ali Dawah, another Islamophobe, about this. The trio then turned up outside Luke’s parents’ home at 2.30 in the morning and began filming. They were, in turn, filmed by one of the parents’ neighbours. This film of Robinson and co. is also in the video. For some reason Robinson didn’t take kindly to being filmed in turn. Luke was told of Robinson’s arrival at his parents by others on the Net. He went up there to arrive the next day. He then made some kind of agreement with Tommy Robinson which resulted in Luke taking his videos down. All of them. Robinson then drove back home to Bedfordshire, and posted at four O’clock or so that day a piece on the Net telling his followers not to harass Luke. Logan and Stuchberry aren’t impressed by this, as by that time the damage had been done. Robinson’s followers – the Tommunists, as they call themselves – had already bombarded Luke with threats and put up information about him and his family.
Logan and Stuchberry state that Robinson and his friends behaved like gangsters intimidating their opponents. They also discuss a Zelo Street article about the incident, which also states very firmly that Robinson and his gang were trying to threaten Luke and his parents. They also state that it’s rather hypocritical of Robinson, as he very frequently doorstepped people himself when he was working for Rebel Media. As a result of Robinson’s tactics, Luke was forced to lock down his Facebook and change his phone number. The two also ask how it is that Robinson remains free and not in prison when he pulls stunts like that. Robinson has served time for various offences, but it seems that he has just enough knowledge of the law to allow him to avoid being sent to jail for a very long time. They also think that the vast amount of money Robinson receives from his fans allow him to afford some very good legal advice. They also refute some of the allegations about the affair in the mainstream media, by stating that Luke did not actually reveal Robinson’s address or show his house.
The two then move on to the ‘Brexit Betrayed’ protest rally by UKIP, which was also addressed by Robinson. Logan and Stuchberry state that this also shows how far UKIP has imploded. The organisers expected about 20-30,000 to attend, and instead the crowd only number 4-5,000, who were outnumber by the anti-racism protesters. The party’s decline has also been shown in the similar reduction in the number of its MEPs. At its height after 2014 election, the party had 24 MEPs. This number has been drastically cut to nine, mostly by MEPs having to resign in disgrace. They were, the pair argue, never really interested in attending except when it concerned their own expenses. Farage himself was an example of this. they also accuse the former Kipperfuhrer of hypocrisy, as while the rest of us will have trouble travelling to the continent after Brexit, his children will find it considerably easier as they have German nationality. As for Robinson, he wasn’t noticeably interested in Europe. It’s simply a bandwagon he’s jumped on. But he’s added his own particularly twist on it. He told the crowd that in order to resist the islamization of Britain the EU would also have to be tackled.
They also tackle the despicable views expressed by two of the marchers. One was a man, who turned up with a model gallows, complete with a noose, who declared that Tweezer should be executed. Logan states that he’s not particularly fond of May himself, but this is disgusting as it’s stating that Tweezer should be killed. He wonders how this man wasn’t arrested. He’s also not impressed with another man, who holds up a placard saying ‘Jo Cox False Flag’. This fellow obviously believes in the conspiracy theory that the assassination of the anti-racist Labour MP Jo Cox by the Nazi Thomas Mair was a ‘false flag’ incident staged by the authorities to discredit the ‘Leave’ campaign, because it occurred at the same time as the referendum on the EU. Logan concludes that the intolerance of these two men bears out what Richard Spencer, the leader of the Alt Right, had already said about the far right: they don’t really care about freedom of speech.
The video ends with Logan and Stuchberry talking about the attempts by a group of British protesters to copy the Yellow Vest protests in France. These succeeded in closing Westminster Bridge, Tower Bridge and London Bridge. This bunch were fellow travelers of Robinson’s, led by James Goddard and Tracey Blackwell, a pair who turn up at every far right-wing demonstration. They are very much unimpressed at these protest, which blocked the road, because one of the vehicles they obstructed was an ambulance. And they’re also not impressed with the way the mainstream media appears to have been fascinated with the protests.
In addition to the two talking, there are odd interruptions by people breaking into the livestream to heckle them. Such as by telling Logan to get a job.
Robinson’s deliberate intimidation of his opponent, Luke, is worrying. Logan and Stuchberry are right when they compare it to that of the mob. But it’s also the type of tactics used by the far right, which has always used violence and the threat of violence to silence their opponents ever since the days of the Nazis and Italian Fascists. And both those movements carried that lawlessness into power with them. This is a very strong argument for not voting for UKIP, quite apart from the racism and islamophobia that the party appears to be courting and encouraging through the recruitment of Robinson and various far right YouTube personalities, like Count Dankula and Sargon of Akkad. If Batten expected them to boost the party’s membership, he’s gravely disappointed. People are leaving instead because of them. I’ve already put up a video by one Kipper bitterly denouncing the party for recruiting the far right activists. One of the people, who has left because of them is Farage himself.
Robinson and those like him are an active menace to democracy, and UKIP is dying because it’s recruited him.
Entitled ‘The Patriot Game’, and just under 27 minutes in length, this documentary British Fascism was post on YouTube on Friday. Presented by the former Labour MP, founder of the Respect Party, and now presenter with RT, George Galloway, this is a potted history of British Fascism. Some sensitive souls might want to skip some of this. This are vicious, ugly people, and the documentary includes scenes of violence where the Fascists are fighting the anti-Fascists and the police. There are also newsreel footage of the gas ovens in Nazi Germany to make a mute refutation of Martin Webster’s attempt to cast doubt on the truth of the conventional ‘narrative’ about the Holocaust.
It begins with the assassination of Jo Cox last year by Thomas Mair, and the all-too real Nazism and vicious anti-Semitism of Britain First. Not only did they want Cox dead, they also conspired to kill another female MP. From there he goes on to talk about Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists and the Battle of Cable Street. This was when Mosley and his goons attempted to march through the East End of London. They were opposed by a huge crowd of trade unionists, Communists and Jews, determined not to let them pass. Violence broke out, but the Fascists were, as Galloway says, ‘routed’.
He then goes on to the Notting Hill riots of 1961 and the murder of Conseil Cochrane, an Antiguan carpenter. Now a very exclusive part of London, Notting Hill was then a poor area of slum housing and rapacious landlords. During three days of rioting, thousands of White youths rampaged to beat and attack Blacks. Galloway notes that the Daily Heil asked at the time ‘Should they keep coming?’ referring to the Black and Asian immigrants, who were there being attacked. The area was a hotbed of racism, and Colin Jordan was there with his White Defence League. There is then footage of Jordan at the microphone stating that if coloured immigration continued, it would lead to a mulatto (mixed-race) Britain, the extinction of the White race, and the fall of our civilisation. This is followed by Enoch Powell and his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. Galloway mentions how Mosley tried and failed to get back into British politics, but the BUF’s place was taken instead by the National Front, led by John Tyndall and Martin Webster. After that collapsed, it was succeeded by Nick Griffin’s BNP, which in turn was succeeded by Tommy Robinson’s Islamophobic English Defence League. Robinson is shown at one of his protests against the Rotherham Asian grooming gang, holding up a Qu’ran and claiming that the rapists’ actions were based on ‘this manual’. This has now been succeeded in its turn by John Meighan’s Football Lads’ Alliance, which is also vehemently anti-Islamic. Meighan is shown arguing that they’re against all forms of extremism and racism. But Meighan himself is a former football hooligan, who was given a nine month suspended sentence for affray and banned from every football ground in the country. And John Sillitt, of Stand Up To Racism, describes how, when they tried to leaflet an FLA demo, they were met with cries of ‘We hope they bomb you!’. He states that they are not a non-violent organisation, and that their members hate Islam, not just Islamic extremism. He notes that for all Meighan’s talk, there wasn’t a Muslim speaker with him on the podium. He also stated that Portinari, another Fascist and gunrunner for the UDA, the Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, is a member of this wretched organisation. The documentary also shows Meighan with Tommy Robinson and other members of the EDL in a pub in Bristol, behaving like a gang of Fascist yobs.
During the documentary he talks to Prof. Matthew Goodwin of the University of Kent, Rob Hoveman, of the Central European University, Budapest, and Francis Beckett, the author of Fascist in the Family, as well as Martin Webster, the Black rights activist, Lee Jasper, and Mike Yardley, a security adviser. Goodwin, Hoveman and Beckett provide very brief definitions of Fascism. Goodman states that it differs from Conservatism in that, while Conservatism looks to the past, Fascism is all about national renewal and looks to the future. Hoveman describes how Fascism is marked by a defensiveness, a belief that society is being undermined, whether by Jews, Communists or liberals. Francis Beckett, whose father was another one of Mosley’s Blackshirts, defines it as being about the belief in an infallible leader ‘which is about as close to madness as you can get’.
Lee Jasper talks about the real fear the NF and other Fascist groups provoked in Black people, and their threat of violence, which could end with you losing your life. Matthew Goodman describes how contemporary Fascists, like the NF and BNP differ from the old style storm-troopers of Mosley’s BUF. Mosley had quite developed ideas about the kind of society he wanted to create and what he wanted to do with the economy. Contemporary Fascists don’t have any of that, just a crude racism and conspiratorialism, so that they are White supremacist organisations.
In his interview with Galloway, Martin Webster rants on about the need to preserve the White race from racial intermixing, drawing a rather spurious comparison with campaigns to save the whale. Galloway asks him how he sees Adolf Hitler. Webster doesn’t condemn him. He states openly that he admires him for some of the things he did, like giving the Germans back their sense of pride and overturning the Treaty of Versailles, and saving Germany from financial collapse and political decadence. Galloway then asks him the obvious question: what does he think about the Holocaust. Webster then replies that he isn’t a Holocaust revisionist, before going on to repeat their arguments. He acknowledges that Poles, Jews and Russians were brutally treated, but claims that scientists and engineers have produced a list of questions about the Holocaust, which are not discussed and for which you are jailed in Germany simply for asking them. But he states that he does not believe that there was a ‘machine’ for the murder of the Jews. As he makes this statement, the film shows footage from the death camps, of a human skeleton in one of the incinerators used to burn the bodies, and a mound of other human bones, all of which show very clearly that Webster is wrong and lying. Webster states very clearly that ‘any sensible government’ would send illegal immigrants back to their country of origin. When asked about non-White immigrants generally, he replies that they’re not happy here, and mentions the Black on Black violence in some of the ghettos. ‘Blacks’ he says, ‘are murdering each other at a terrible rate. He then talks about the failure of integration. This hasn’t occurred in the way ‘they’ wanted. He complains about the adverts with Black and Asian people, and especially bed adverts showing mixed, Black and White couples. These are supposed to be there to encourage the rest of us to follow their example where it is not occurring in reality. Galloway asks him what would happen to people of mixed race, like his children. Two of them are Arab, and two Indonesia. Webster doesn’t really answer the question, just says something about putting the nation first, and how he isn’t going to put off that by questions like that, Galloway’s children excepted. When pressed, he says he would make Black and Asian people an offer like the Godfather’s one ‘they couldn’t refuse’. The camera cuts to Galloway, staring daggers at him. As any loving parent would the person, who despises their children and wishes to harm them, or throw them out of their own country. As for the British people putting up with race-mixing, Webster maintained that they wouldn’t, citing the Leave Vote for the European Union as a demonstration of this.
Yardley makes the point that these Fascist organisations are racist and homophobic, and identifies one of the problems of trying to comb them. These organisations are constantly splintering, and then reforming. He also complains that the media pays very great attention to the threat of Islamic terror, while ignoring domestic Fascist terrorist organisations. The documentary does show the aggressively Nazi Britain First screaming ‘Hail Victory!’ and making the Nazi salute, and Amber Rudd’s speech declaring that they were now banned.
The programme shows these groups as exactly what they are: violent thugs with skinhead haircuts, marching, giving Nazi salutes and chants. The footage of an EDL march, or an FLA march, shows them chanting ‘There’s only one Oswald Mosley’. The young men in these organisations look very much like grotesques Kevin O’Neill and John Hicklenton drew as Terminators in the ‘Nemesis the Warlock’ strip in 2000 AD, which used fantasy to attack racism and bigotry.
It’s a chilling documentary. I found the newsreel footage of Mosley and his fellow thugs particularly disturbing, as this showed mass crowds all greeting him with the Fascist salute. It also has clips of Mosley speaking at the Olympia Palace. Waving his arms around dramatically in a chopping gesture, this shows how desperate Mosley was to copy Mussolini and then Adolf Hitler. Fortunately, he never achieved anywhere near their level of popularity. Despite the menacing tone of this documentary, it’s hard to know how much of a threat these groups pose. They are a real threat to the lives and property of ethnic minorities and left-wingers, whom they attack with extreme violence, going as far as murder. But these Fascist groups are also numerically small. I don’t think any of them has come close to having one of their members elected as an MP, despite the success of the BNP in winning a number of council seats in the 1990s. As for the Leave campaign, many of the voters were actually left-wing, and had an issue, not with foreign immigration as such, but with the stifling neoliberal policies of the EU. It also shows the success of the anti-racist campaigning of the last several decades that Fascistic groups like the EDL and FLA have to hide their racism, and instead project themselves as simply against Islamic extremism.
I am certainly not saying that we should be complacent about them. We shouldn’t. They are a threat, though at the moment this is being contained. But there is much racism in British society and racist violence outside of their ranks, which also needs to be tackled. And there is the grim possibility that if western governments continue to follow neoliberalism, and push more people into desperate poverty, more Whites will become attracted to racist groups as their rage seeks a scapegoat for their own anxieties and fears.
Remember Jo Cox, the Yorkshire Labour MP, who was shot and stabbed to death by Thomas Mair, a Nazi, because of her defence of Muslims and immigrants? Mike this morning posted up a piece reporting that the Macclesfield Goebbels, Nick Robinson, appeared on Radio 4 to deny that there was any substantial connection between Mair and Britain First. Yes, Mair shouted ‘Britain First’, but that doesn’t mean that he was connected to them.
Oh yeah? Mike therefore quotes Devutopia’s Tweet, showing Mair standing proudly behind one of their banners. Devutopia states Robinson Goebbels as a fake journalist, and demands that he goes.
Mike concludes his article with the question, ‘Do you agree?’
Absolutely. Robinson is a partisan, hack propagandist. This isn’t the first time he’s been blogged about in connection to Britain First. He was photographed the other year with one of the leaders, Jayda Fransen. Britain First is a Christo-fascist organisation with a crusading attitude towards Islam and Muslim immigrants. They’ve also made common cause with Zionists, including Jews, protesting against pro-Palestinian events around London. You can only describe this as Fascists of the world uniting to beat up a third group.
A few years ago I drew this caricature of Robinson and Fransen to express my disgust at his attitude when meeting her.
And Robinson has otherwise been very blatantly mendacious. Who can forget the way he selectively edited out Alex Salmond’s very full response to his question about whether the financial houses in Edinburgh would move from Scotland if Scotland achieved independent. Salmond said no, based on his own discussions with their leaders. This was too much for Robinson and the Beeb, who subsequently edited it down, claiming that Salmond didn’t answer question fully, and then finally that he avoided it altogether.
He’s a disgrace to objective journalism, as Laura Kuennsberg, and the two should be shown the door as quickly as possible.
The election of Donald Trump in America and the Brexit vote in Britain last year has led to a massive growth in racial bigotry and intolerance in both countries. Mike has put up on his blog today a critique of the government’s statement that migration to the UK has gone down. He points out that this is hardly surprising, given that hate crime has risen by 41 per cent. This includes assaults, arson attacks and canine excrement thrown at doors or shoved through letter boxes. He wonders if any of the Tory and UKIP politicos – David Cameron, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson or Michael Gove are really worried about this. It is, after all, not them or their class that’s being attacked, but Johnny Foreigner. Mike reminds us that Jo Cox, a politician, was murdered in a racist attack by Thomas Mair, and notes that the Commons yesterday cheered a move to commemorate the anniversary of her murder with the Great Get-Together, an initiative intended to bring communities together.
But he also remarks that there’s a bit of hypocrisy in their support for it, saying that
It would be hypocritical for them to applaud a drop in net migration fuelled by the same hate that ended Mrs Cox’s life.
The fact that violence is the real reason net migration has fallen means this is not a success for the United Kingdom and Theresa May.
The Young Turks on Tuesday reported the anti-Semitic desecration of about 200 graves in a Jewish cemetery in University City near St. Louis. One elderly lady from the community states that she no longer feels safe after the attack. This is not the only Jewish community has been attacked. So far 54 Jewish community centres have been threatened this year, including 11 in the past week. Discussing the incident, the two presenters, Ben Mankiewicz and Ana Kasparian, make the point that this hate has partly been unleashed by Donald Trump and his rhetoric and campaigns against Muslims and other groups, with Kasparian mentioning the misogyny in his speeches. They make the point that it is no accident that Trump’s cabinet includes Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, an anti-Semite and White supremacist, and his supporters include Richard Spencer, the leader of the Alt-Right. Spencer was interviewed by the left-wing news host, David Pakman, on his show. While Spencer denies being a Nazi, he refused to denounce Adolf Hitler. He said instead that he wasn’t ‘going to play those games’. He did state that the Third Reich was a failure. Which is something, but not the same as condemning it or Nazism. They also note that in his speech for Holocaust Remembrance Day, Trump somehow forgot to mention the Jews. Despite his own denial that he is anti-Semitic, Trump was very reluctant to disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Mankiewicz and Kasparian make the point that the people listening to Trump’s hate, and who feel emboldened and encouraged by it, aren’t going to limit their own hatred and attacks merely to the groups he’s selected. So even though Trump has denied that he is anti-Semitic, pointing out that his son-in-law is Jewish, and his daughter converted to Judaism to marry him, Trump’s own racist campaigning is responsible for encouraging these attacks on Jewish communities.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, has drawn fire for her father’s opponents, as she has tweeted a statement condemning the attack, which points out, quite rightly, that America was founded on religious toleration, and that we need to defend each others houses of worship.
There have also been an attempt by one right-wing journalist to blame the Left for the attack. Wolf Blitzer claimed that the cemetery was desecrated by Progressives. This seems to me to be complete and utter bilge. The Left, by and large, is very anti-racist. This accusation just seems to me to come from that part of the Republican and Libertarian ideologies that think that the Nazis were Socialists, ’cause Hitler put ‘Socialism’ in their name. He did, but only to draw some supporters away from the parties of the Left, such as the Social Democrats, the German equivalent of the Labour party, by making it appear that they were socialists. See the appropriate page in Joachim C. Fest’s biography of the nauseating little man, Hitler. And Hitler had to overcome the resistance of the other, founding members of the Nazi party, who bitterly despised Socialism and very definitely did not want their party to be associated with it. It also seems to me that the smear also owes something to continuing attempts to attack the BDS campaign against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This is an anti-racist campaign, supported by very many Jews as well as gentiles. But the Zionist lobby have always responded to criticism of Israeli imperialism and racism by smearing their opponents as anti-Semites. Many progressives as doubtless involved in the BDS movement as part of their general campaign against all forms of racism. But for the Israel lobby and their journalistic supporters, the progressives involved in the BDS campaign and similar movements must be anti-Semites. And from their it’s only a short leap to claiming that Progressives must somehow be responsible for this and similar attacks.
More positively, a Muslim organisation has come forward and raised money for the cemetery’s repair. Linda Sarsour, a Muslim activist, and one of the four principal organisers of the Women’s March on Washington, set up a website to raise the money. She wanted to get $20,000. Instead she raised $71,000. This is more than is needed for the cemetery in St. Louis, so the money will also be used to help other Jewish communities that have suffered attacks. The website states that it was set up to send a clear message from the Muslim and Jewish communities against such intolerance.
The programme’s hosts, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian state that this shows the best of America, and that people are coming together to defend other victims of intolerance, whether it is over skin colour or religion. Kasparian states that she feels that there isn’t enough coverage of movements and events like this, as quite often the focus is dominated by the negative things now happening. But this makes her feel more positive and hopeful.
I don’t think this is the only incident in which the members of one religion have reached out to aid those from others, which are in need. There have been cases like it in this country, one of the most recent examples being the decision of some Asian restaurants and takeaways in Britain to stay open on Christmas Day to supply meals for the homeless. The Get-Together campaign cheered in the Commons yesterday is only the latest and most prominent of these events and movements. And there will undoubtedly be more of them, as more people come together to tackle the intolerance and Fascism unleashed by Trump and Brexit.
Mike’s put up a post commenting on Nigel Farage’s bigoted, insulting and possibly libellous comments about Brendan Cox, the widowed husband of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, and the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, on Twitter and LBC radio this morning. The former generalissimo of UKIP was talking about the murder this morning of 12 shoppers and the wounding of another 48 in Berlin’s Christmas Market, when they were deliberately mown down by a truck. This is being treated as a terrorist attack, and a Pakistani immigrant to Germany has been arrested.
Farage commented that this was ‘no surprise’ and that ‘events like these will be Merkel’s legacy’.
Brendan Cox tweeted back that blaming politicians for the actions of extremists was a slippery slope.
To which the Fuhrage gracelessly responded on LBC that Mr Cox ‘would know more about extremism than me.’
He also said of Hope Not Hate and similar organisations that they “masquerade as being lovely and peaceful but actually pursue violent and very undemocratic means”.
Hope Not Hate has responded:
“We are aware of a serious and potentially libellous statement made about HOPE not hate by Nigel Farage on LBC radio this morning. We have no idea on what Mr Farage bases his outrageous comments. HOPE not hate has a proud history of campaigning against extremism and hatred. We will not be making any further comment until we have had the opportunity to consult with our lawyers.”
Mr Cox simply replied with the commenter ‘Haters gonna hate.’
Mike makes the point that Jo Cox was killed due to the bitter political divisions created by the Brexit referendum, which no-one wanted except a few Tory backbenchers, who threatened to block David Cameron’s programme of legislation. Mike also states that Brendan Cox’s comment on Farage blaming Merkel could be interpreted as warning that this blamed the victims, including his own wife, Jo, for their murders.
He also makes the point that Farage’s attack on Hope Not Hate is probably not at all coincidental, given that the organisation has been attacking UKIP for its perceived racism.
Hope Not Hate have also issued this statement, and are appealing for donations.
This morning, on LBC radio, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage launched an outrageous attack on us, on Brendan Cox, husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, and by association on everyone who believes in HOPE not hate. Our lawyer has just sent Farage a letter demanding he retracts and publicly apologises or we will begin legal proceedings against him.
Farage’s comments are disgraceful, as Mike points out. Brendan Cox certainly does have more personal experience of political extremism than most people, simply through losing his wife in a savage act of assassination carried out by one, Thomas Mair. Even though he disagreed with Cox’s views on immigration, simple human decency should have led Farage to choose his words with far more tact, rather than indulge in what could be construed as a dismissive sneer.
I am not surprised by Farage’s sneers directed at Angela Merkel. From my own experience, many UKIP supporters despise Merkel passionately because of her decision to give the million or so immigrants from Syria and North Africa, who broke into the EU last year, sanctuary in Germany. It’s part of the bitter anti-immigrant stance and rhetoric that has led Hope Not Hate to target UKIP as an extremist party, despite the efforts of its leaders, including Farage, to distance themselves and play down its connections to the blatantly Fascist parties.
As for his comments about Hope Not Hate being violent and undemocratic, it is fair to say that some anti-Fascist activists and organisations are violent. Some of the clashes between Fascists and anti-Fascists were caused by the anti-Fascists attacking first. I have not, however, seen any evidence that Hope Not Hate has ever encouraged or been responsible for physical violence. My impression has been that it uses legal, constitutional means to combat racism and Fascism. This includes the democratic right to express one’s political views through peaceful marches and demonstrations. It has shown itself willing to use legislation to combat Fascist and racist organisations. This can be controversial, as many people do feel that legislation against hate speech contradicts the right to express political opinions, no matter how vile. On the other hand, such legislation is designed to stop the hatred and vilification of minorities, that leads to more serious, violent crimes such as the assassination of Jo Cox and the organised persecution of ethnic minorities, such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. It’s why the German Basic Law forbids anti-democratic parties and organisation, and the country has very strict legislation banning the display of Nazi insignia. I also think that Merkel’s grant of asylum in Germany to so many of the refugees last year was also part of her country’s genuine attempts to show that it has put the Nazi era firmly behind it, and is now a pluralist, multicultural democracy like other western nations.
This is an attitude that many Kippers don’t share. And Farage’s comment about Merkel shows that he shares the same bigotry towards Muslims as Donald Trump, viewing them simply as potential terrorists.
The mass murder and malicious injury of 60 people in Berlin this morning is an horrific crime. But it is also disgusting that Farage should use it both to sneer at the victims and spread his own hateful intolerance.
Morris Dees with James Corcoran (London: HarperCollins 1996).
A few minutes ago this evening I put up a post about an article on Hatewatch, a site by the Southern Poverty Law Centre that monitors extreme right-wing terrorism in the US, about the contacts between British Nazis, such as Thomas Mair, accused of the murder of Jo Cox, other extreme rightists, like Anders Breivik, and the National Alliance, the main Nazi organisation in the US. Twenty years ago, Morris Dees, the chief trial counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, wrote this book about the emergence of the militia movement in the US. These are right-wing paramilitary organisations, which came out of the survivalist movement in the 1980s. Their immediate impetus was the FBI’s killing of the wife and son of Randy Weaver, a right-wing extremist during an attack on his home at Ruby Ridge. The militias included fringe Christian groups, such as Christian identity and the neo-Nazi compounds and organisations at Hayden Lakes. It was the nexus that published the Turner Diaries, written by William Pierce, a Fascist fantasy about a White supremacist rebellion against a future America dominated by ZOG – the Zionist Occupation Government – Jews and Blacks. This was the book that inspired Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma.
These were and are armed groups that believed that America was run by a secret Jewish government intent on enslaving gentiles and determined to destroy the White race through racial interbreeding with Blacks. Flicking through the book again, I found a photo of Col. ‘Bo’ Gritz. Gritz claimed to be the real person on which Rambo was based, and for years supposedly toured Vietnam looking for missing American soldiers still kept in prison camps after the War. Apart from his paramilitary activities, Gritz also had some very strange metaphysical views. He turns up in one of the pieces by Adam Palfrey, collected in Cult Rapture and Apocalypse Culture, in which he is interviewed after a meeting with a little old lady, who was one of the New Age channellers, who appeared in the ’80s and ’90s. Most Channellers seemed to have been essentially decent types, offering fairly banal warnings about the importance of love, peace, spiritual values and the need to save the planet from a various cast of interplanetary aliens and Ascended Masters. Unfortunately, the interstellar authority this one channelled was Hathon. He was a 9 1/2 foot tall reptilian from the Pleiades and a Nazi, who told people that there really was an international Jewish conspiracy and UFOs were a Nazi secret weapon. It’s the kind of stuff Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke describes in his book on modern Neo-Nazi pagan cults, The Black Sun.
At the time, there was a real fear that the Militias would try to organise some kind of coup, or at least begin a wave of extreme right-wing terror. Those fears largely haven’t materialised. One demented woman, who claimed to be a militia commander, tried to organise the Militias to form a mass march on Washington, but this never got off the ground as most of them suspected her of being a federal agent provocateur. And not all of them were racist. The commander of one of the Militias was Black, and there was a Jewish Militia, whose members believed that Jews should arm themselves against the possibility of a renewed Holocaust. Nevertheless, extreme rightwing terrorism is still very much a threat in America. In contradiction to the impression you get from the media, there’s more terrorism by White Supremacist and Neo-Nazis in America than from the Islamists. This is part of the milieu that’s produced the extreme right-wing radio hosts, who tell their listeners that America is in the hands of an atheist/ Communist/ Nazi/ Muslim conspiracy to kill good patriotic Christian Americans. The type of people, who blithely state over the airwaves that Obama is going to kill more people than Pol Pot. They’re part of the same milieu that has produced the Nazi supporters of Donald Trump, and that may be their most lasting and pernicious legacy to American politics.
Thomas Mair, the suspect for the murder of the Labour politician Jo Cox, was a long-time members of the extreme Right, who had ordered about $600 worth of books on how to build home-made guns and ammunition from National Vanguard Books, the publishing arm of the National Alliance, the main American neo-Nazi organisation.
Michelle, one of the many great contributors to this blog, sent me this link to an article on Hatewatch, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Centre that documents the activities of right-wing extremists: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/21/thomas-mair-brexit-and-us-uk-neo-nazi-connection. The Southern Poverty Law Centre has been around for decades. In the 1990s its leader, Maurice Dees, published a book on the threat of the Militias, independent, private armies of right-wing survivalists, bitterly alienated from the federal government, entitled Gathering Storm. The above article by Heidi Beirich, their intelligence director, describes the links to the National Alliance and other American Nazi organisations not just of Thomas Mair, but also Zack Davies, who carried out a brutal attack on a Sikh doctor in Mold in North Wales; Mark Cotterill, a former BNP member, who recruits for the National Alliance in Britain through his Heritage and Destiny website, Andrew Lovie, a former member of UKIP, and BNP stormtrooper, who has posted on the neo-Nazi website, Stormfront, in America. Among merchandising Lovie ordered from the National Alliance was a video game, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, where the player goes around shooting Blacks and Jews. As grotesque and incredible as this sounds, it is all too plausible. When I was at College thirty years ago, the German Republican Party had got into the news and very hot water because of a computer game they launched, in which the player took the part of a the commandant of a concentration camp and had to prevent Jews, gays and leftists escaping. The article also describes the activities of two Brexit advocates, Andrew Tait and Matthew Tait, and Arthur Kemp. Andrew Tait ran a pro-Brexit website, ‘Vote Leave Take Control’, while Matthew Tait was a former BNP activist, who has spoken several times at conferences by American Renaissance, a racist outfit on the other side of the Pond. Tait also has his own website, Western Spring, in which he posted a pro-Brexit piece arguing that the EU was a Communist organisation to destroy the White race. Kemp’s a racist South African, who was a former officer of the BNP, and was at one time the media director of the National Alliance. Kemp also has a racist website, the New Observer Online, in which he calls immigrants ‘invaders’ and ‘rapefugees’.
Other Nazi assassins elsewhere in Europe also have contacts with American Nazi organisations. These include Anders Breivik, who was a member of Stormfront, Peter Mangs, another National Alliance member, who killed three people in Sweden, and Maxime Brunerie, a French Fascist, who tried to kill the-then president, Jacques Chirac. David Copeland, the infamous Nazi, who killed a number of people in a bombing campaign in London targeting gays, Blacks and Asians, was partly inspired by the Turner Diaries, a work of fiction describing a future extreme-right coup in America, sold by the National Alliance. And then there’s Frank S., a German skinhead, who stabbed Henriette Reker, a mayoral candidate for Cologne. He also was active online. The current Chairman of the National Alliance, Will Williams, is also living on welfare due to psychological problems, and has a history of victimising women. He celebrated the death of Jo Cox, stating that she had placed a target on her back.
Politically, the membership of extreme right-wing organisations in Britain is very low, but they are extremely violent, and as this article shows, several of the most vicious have transatlantic contacts. And there is a real danger that this violence will be spread and encouraged by Brexit. As one of my brother’s foreign friends has found, the amount of racism has increased and become very personal.
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