Jeremy Corbyn and the Fascist Threat

“Those in authority should have stopped the obscenity of past-war fascism. They didn’t. So, we did.” Morris Beckman (The 43 Group)

Most people just want a life lived without unnecessary distraction, pain, or inconvenience. A few go out of their way to cause suffering, to coerce and to spoil the simple world we live in.  Miseducation is crucial in any attempt to control society. They create fear, but most important, they attempt to fashion us in their image, or at least, in the image they believe we need to fit.

I use the word “image” because they are akin to idolaters – their god is fashioned from an ideal they passionately believe we must follow – whether it is for their profit, our benefit or someone else's benefit is of no consequence because their self-belief is immutable and therefore any debate is also irrelevant.   They demand obedience from us and subservience to them.  Oppose them and you are damned.  If this sounds like fascism it is because it is just that.  I accuse the radical left (of which Mr Jeremy Corbyn is an honored member) of fascism for good reason.

Fascism can be defined in almost any way but its primary contemporary usage seems to have deteriorated so that it is now understood to be little more than an epithet to be used against those with whom we passionately disagree. But in his book “Liberal Fascism” Jonah Goldberg says “the liberal fascist project can be characterized as the effort to delegitimize good dogma by claiming all dogma is bad.”  I would modify that by stating that fascism is the replacement of one set of beliefs with another, using propaganda in place of fact; sophistry and mendacity as tools of trade.  Jeremy Corbyn and his kind provide good examples of this.

In an interview with Britain’s premier broadcasting network, BBC Television managed to educate a new generation of people about a Jewish blood libel while giving Britain’s leading Labour Party contender for leader of the opposition an easy ride that forgave him his iniquity in consistently siding with holocaust deniers, racists and antisemites.

The tools of fascism are simple – lie consistently and the people will replace the truth with your updated narrative.  A few days ago Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by the BBC about his past – he denied knowing that a friend was a holocaust denier and referred to meeting up with him some fifteen years earlier. Since that interview, a photograph has surfaced on the official internet site of holocaust denier Paul Eisen.  It shows Corbyn at a formal reception for Eisens’ organization (Deir Yassin Remembered), held in 2013.

Corbyn was also given the opportunity to explain to the BBC and its millions of viewers that Eisen’s organization was all about keeping in the public memory an atrocity allegedly carried out by “the Zionists” (failing to mention his organization being the vehicle for a holocaust denying Jew hater).  The BBC then showed bodies piled neatly up but unlike any other news program I have ever encountered failed to provide any warning that it was going to show the photo. Jeremy Corbyn deliberately misled the public on British national television when he stated that the massacre was the work of “Zionists”.  In 1948 there were Arabs and there were Palestinians – all organizations of administration and governance in Palestine with the name “Palestine” in the title were Jewish.

The radical left has followed the Arab/Muslim lead in dividing Jews into two groups, those who are anti-Israel and the rest.  Jeremy Corbyn deliberately misrepresented a conflict that was never that simple because central to the Arab-Israeli conflict is Arab conquest inextricably mixed with Islamic theological prejudice. Corbyn demonized all Jews living in Palestine at that time and if we follow through with his unspoken logic, accused all Jews of supporting terror simply by identifying with the Jewish right to self-determination.

The Arabs do not and did not (in 1948) kill Zionists – they kill(ed) Jews.  But massacres carried out by people are rarely, if ever referred to as massacres carried out by Muslims. They are carried out by ISIL (an acronym few people can break down by its constituent letters).  They are carried out by organizations. In Palestine the militias were identified as socialists, as right wingers or as Arabs dedicated to a pan-Arab unity against the rest.  The massacre was carried out by Palestinian fighters against local Arabs.  Specifically it was carried out by Irgun and Lehi fighters.  But Corbyn was scoring points, aided and abetted by the BBC.

Here is my problem with the fascist, Jeremy Corbyn.  He lies, he is indifferent to the consequences of his actions, and he is morally selective in his support of those who justify religious genocide. He calls an antisemite who propagates blood libels against Jews his friend. He dishonestly applies general principles to particular cases of moral conduct (in this case, his anti-Zionism is antisemitism because he deliberately chooses to ignore the prejudice and religious hatred that is fundamental to the beliefs of Israel’s enemies).

It is truly simple. If he is not anti-Jewish he has no problem sharing a platform with those people who are anti-Jewish, or, calling them his friends and proclaiming the validity of their causes. What does that make of the morality of the man who would be Prime Minister of Great Britain?

The man who would be prime minister has also worked for Iranian State TV – so he has received money from an organisation that is the international mouthpiece for a regime that again, denies the holocaust as well as hanging gays, persecuting its Baha’i minority, murdering members of the radical left (such as he), crushing free speech and killing protesters.

I started this blog with a quote from a founder of the 43 Group.  The 43 Group were an anti-fascist organisation set up after World War 2 by Jewish ex-servicemen (and women) as a consequence of the support given to British fascist and antisemitic organizations by the Labour government of Clement Atlee (not known for his love of Jews)!  I call it support because the fascists used the Public Order Act of 1936 and the Public Meetings Act of 1908 to prevent Jews from defending themselves against fascist incitement and violence.  In the years that followed the end of World War 2 news of Hitler’s death camps was often the subject of headlines and graphic newsreels.  And yet Labour governments were conspicuous by their inactivity against fascism. In the timeliness of their non-support for Britain’s returning Jewish servicemen and women (as well as ordinary citizens) Britain's Labour government encouraged and was therefore complicit in fascism’s antisemitic incitement.

The Left and not just the radical left have always had a problem with Jewish rights; we have the right to assume that this prejudice extends to Jews as a group and as individuals.  There will always be people who will point out the large number of Jews who have been ideologically and intellectually at the forefront of radical and left wing politics. But almost always this has been at the expense of any positive Jewish identity.  It is easy to understand why.  If acceptance means renunciation of part of ones own identity, Jewish Uncle Toms have been consistent in using a wholly specious anti-Judaism to gain that acceptance and speak with an essentially spurious Jewish authority when attacking Jews and Judaism.

The crux of the matter is that Jeremy Corbyn comes across as a true social democrat, a person who cares about people and supports minorities irrespective of their race, religion, sex or sexuality. At the same time he is politically in bed with people and organizations that are misogynistic, fascistic, murderous, classically anti-democratic and antisemitic.

Can we then trust him to be a leader for all the people of Britain? Only a fool would believe that.

Hate is the Plague Embraced by our Enemies

“Postmodernism has taught us that we live in an age of irony…where an undiscriminating skepticism brushes matters such as morality and political ethics aside as so much anachronistic detritus.”  (Humanity, an emotional history. Stuart Walton)

My children attended a school that had a significant Muslim population.  My children’s friends were of many faiths and ethnically diverse backgrounds. So I was concerned that there were times they felt under threat because of what they were not, as opposed to what they were.  The good Muslims would tell my children and their friends that they would protect them (from the bad Muslims).   Of course I was outraged.  We live in the UK and at least in theory, we are all equal, which means we are also educated towards equality.  This means we should all receive equal treatment from the moment of our birth and throughout our lives. I do not mean that we should all receive a private education, private health care and a free luxury car but there are certain inalienable rights which are consistent across all sections of society. Those rights should only be constrained when our actions prevent others from enjoying those same equal rights.

But I could rant and rave as much as I wanted to about how no-one is equal if they feel the need for protection, and it makes no difference whatsoever to the end result, which is that their generation, growing up in an environment of selective tolerance, has little if any faith in the established order, in authority, in government.  This is perhaps the greatest crime for which our politicians should be condemned.

So physical bullying and threats occurred and were ignored.  Teachers’ mouthed hollow phrases like “zero tolerance” while looking away.  It is easier to act against cyber-bullying than it is, to impose a sanction on the right kind of bigot.

If truth is subjective, it follows that it is also subject to partisan policies.  Therefore, the application of justice can be conditioned on circumstance and is consequently often, no more than an act of self-congratulatory illusion.

Resenting anything is a passive emotional response.  Hate is not a passive emotion.  It cannot surprise us that the activist hates any feeling of powerlessness and strikes out against whatever is responsible for that feeling even when the emotion is the product of a manufactured, systemic prejudice.

There has always existed a selective freedom of speech which allowed for discrimination to be applied.  This is one of the human species most unattractive character traits.  We are a herd that cleaves to the collective as if our lives depended on it. In past eras it did. But in the late 20^th and early 21^st century our education system was supposed to have delivered a population able to think and act for itself and not as an unthinking mass in the thrall of the latest singer, actor, sportsman (or woman), aristocrat or orator. But this is the era of celebrity and perhaps because so much is asked of us and the choices are so diverse we are unwilling to commit to a position that is outside of a consensus that has been decided for us and with little credible discussion.

It follows on from the previous paragraph that demagogues have played an essential role in human history.  They have manipulated emotions, prejudices and passions and rarely if ever for altruistic reasons.  Power, domination and exclusion of anything or anyone that is contrary to ones own position is a primitive response to any challenge.  But it is also a very effective means of establishing dominance and control.  That elemental behavior is the reason that Israel is having such a hard time internationally.  People who are committed to a cause will usually, aggressively push that cause. Jews are neither used to reacting to aggression by returning it nor are they accustomed to behaving badly in response, but it is often the only way to react to aggression because it is the normal way that we establish reasonable rules of conduct.  Only an enemy that respects its opponent behaves with care.

But here’s the thing. In British universities, where Jews and their supporters are frequently assaulted under the assumption that they are “Zionists” (and if they are not, oh well!) the most senior court in the land, the High Court of Justice ruled that a perception of fear or a perception of intimidation was not a legally admissible behavior that could be used to define prejudice against the entire Jewish student community.   If members of the radical Left or Islamic faith experienced an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, a way would have been found to criminalize the perpetrators and rid the universities of the perpetrators influence.   It does say much about inequality within the British ‘justice’ system.

Selective equality infuses much of British and Western society today. One more example will suffice to demonstrate the art of that selective equality and the parallel incitement that accompanies it.  Within the last few days it was revealed that Britain’s main teachers union, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) had cooperated with an educational charity for children (‘Edukid’) to produce an antisemitic educational resource which was to be rolled out across the country and whose purpose it was to profile Palestinian suffering.  Apart from its omission of any historical context, the reason I refer to this document as antisemitic is that it does not refer to Israelis as Israelis but as Jews. Of course Muslims – Arabs are referred to as Palestinian. So Britain’s main teachers union adopts a Nazi tactic of propagating a prejudiced narrative against Israel which leads all British children taught by the NUT to erase any differentiation between Israeli's and Jews anywhere else in the world.

This resource was to be rolled out to all children, from three years of age.

This is only possible if the process is racist from its inception.   As obscene was NUT's pernicious defense that it works with the Holocaust Educational Trust to produce materials for schools.  So learning about dead Jews is OK (as long as some Muslim teachers do not have to present the material to their classes).

Maliciously, the NUT provides an illegitimately analogous equivalence between the Shoah and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

A conspiracy by a national British trade union (the NUT) and a British educational charity (Edukid) to role out an Arab (Palestinian) libel against Judaism and the Jewish state should result in both organizations losing their charitable status and both being heavily fined. Extinction is what both organizations deserve.  Individual initiators of this antisemitic conspiracy should be given a life time ban from receiving public funding.  In fact the only likely consequence will be enhanced credibility amongst Fascism's proudest supporters.

Of greater evil, the Israel-Arab conflict has its roots in Muslim attempts to deny its minorities, self-determination.  Fundamentalist Islam believes that any area once conquered or achieving Muslim majority becomes part of a holy Arab (Muslim) endowment which must never be relinquished to the infidel. It explains the intransigence of Iran and it explains the outpourings of HAMAS.  It is a war that is religiously dictated by Islamic injunction which will see Islam’s glorious fighters joyfully murder, down to the last baby, every Jew in the Holy land; another injunction from what we are so often told is the “Religion of Peace.”

The difference between the Hard Left, many sharing the Islamic faith and the extreme right is that the latter admit their prejudice while neither the Hard Left nor Islam have ever had to come to terms with the hatred and the bigotry that is the original sin of their birth and which crucially, continues to drive so many of them.

This is the war being increasingly fought throughout the Western world against Israel and against its supporters.  If there is any question of why so many Jews feel that conditions today are increasingly similar to what they were in 1923 (when Hitler and his ilk began their ascent to power) we have the NUT and Edukit to inadvertently remind us.