The Ballad of Mike Sivier

January 20, 2018January 20, 2018 / Marlon Solomon / 5 Comments

Mike Sivier is the author of pro-Corbyn blog Vox Political. He was suspended for allegedly breaking the Labour Party’s rules on antisemitism. On Tuesday, his case was heard at the National Executive Committee (NEC) which now boasts of a hard-left majority with a new chair of the disputes panel to boot. The ousted chair, Ann Black, had received over 100,000 votes to sit on the NEC and was also elected chair of Disputes because her impartiality was implicitly trusted by all wings of the party to deal with very sensitive disciplinary cases including antisemitism.

A lot of antisemitism, in fact.

But as Luke Akehurst pointed out; the real reason for her ousting is because the chair of disputes “carries with it a seat on the NEC Officers Group that goes with that job, which is where the key decisions on appointing panels that control by-election & late selection shortlists are taken.”

So being trusted as the best person possible to deal with, as Ann Black herself said, the “obscene, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic sewage which we have to wade through,” is not the reason you now appoint someone to do that job in Corbyn’s Labour.

This was the first NEC meeting with a hard-left majority panel. Three cases of antisemitism were heard, one of which was Mike Sivier’s. He claims in his blog that “the recommendation to refer my case to the National Constitutional Committee with a view to expulsion was rejected” and downgraded to a warning with training.

Vox Political is a minor pro-Corbyn blog. Although around for several years before, from what I can surmise it’s circulation increased greatly after an article which ‘uncovered’ the Ha’avara agreement – the document which is supposed to exonerate Ken Livingston from bringing the party into disrepute after he casually claimed that the greatest antisemite of all time supported the bid for Jewish emancipation.

Springtime for Livingstone

Back in the barmy spring of 2015, when Corbynistas first found themselves with voracious appetites for exclusively pro-Corbs narratives, an army of bloggers suddenly found themselves with an instant audience of thousands by simply penning articles in favour of the Labour leadership’s position on… well, anything really.

If Corbyn wanted to put a litter of puppies in the microwave, a phalanx of would-be journalists would be on hand to defend it as a socialist experiment.

If the public didn’t buy it, they were either under the spell of a biased media or, as Sivier pointed out in his comment section in reference to Labour’s poor showing in the local elections in May 2017, simply “ignorant British people”. If only they would read Vox Political, It would change everything.

On Livingstone, Sivier chalked up nearly a dozen pieces of Ken-fending and many more claiming that antisemitism was a smear and that suspended members were the victims of a witch-hunt.

Antisemitism is complex. It can be transmitted unintentionally through ignorance. It has different forms. It can be overt or covert. Sivier evidently had no understanding of contemporary antisemitism; and armed with an equally shoddy knowledge of the vagaries of pre-Holocaust Jewish history in Nazi Germany he wrote these articles, which were read and shared by thousands of leftists, with a breathtaking arrogance.
Overt antisemites in Labour, those who know they hate Jews, are rare. Then there are those who believe they don’t have anything against Jews – it’s just ‘the Zionists’ that are the problem and employ conspiracy theories as justification. Billy J Wells, selected to be a candidate in the local elections – whose suspension was also downgraded to a ‘warning’ by the NEC yesterday – wrote on Facebook:

“It’s the super rich families of the Zionist lobby that control the world. Our world leaders sell their souls for greed and do the bidding of Israel. They see the evil but their love for wealth makes them turn a blind eye.”

Then there are those who think they actually like Jews it’s just Israel that’s the issue, so they resort to using Holocaust inversion to make a political point about the Jewish state which for them is an unparalleled evil. Michelle Harris, who was shortlisted to be a Parliamentary candidate for Hastings and Rye wrote:

“I have often said that the Holocaust victims who died with dignity must be turning in their graves at the horrors done in the name of Judaism. Gaza is a ghetto being shelled.”

This would-be parliamentary candidate, who is a barrister, believes that the six million Jewish souls, who weren’t even fortunate enough to have graves, died with dignity.

On the 16,000 person-strong Labour forum that Harris ‘moderates’, the above sentiment is tame. One comment of many claimed that Zionists exhibit ‘learned behaviour’ from the Nazis, another said that an Israeli MP should be ‘put to sleep like a rabid dog’ yet another expressed his frustration at the evils of Zionism by saying that he now boycotts Jewish people.

Or comments like this on The We Trust and Support Jeremy Corbyn Facebook Group

Fourteen people liked that comment.

This is what comes from a politics where Israel is placed at the centre of the world as a unique evil. It is what passes for normal everyday conversation on the plethora of pro-Jeremy Corbyn Facebook groups.

Most Labour members are genuinely disgusted by the antisemitism but there is a further culture of denial. Those who spend inordinate amounts of time downplaying, denying and obfuscating for pretty much every single instance of antisemitism in the party. Mike Sivier mostly fits into this category and is a decent, and often comical, case study in examining the lengths that anti-racists can go to deny racism.

The Lobby

Once the Al Jazeera ‘sting’ The Lobby had been aired, Sivier’s blog reached conspiratorial hysteria. Defences of Jackie Walker’s disgusting comments were numerous. Reflexive, unthinking defences of antisemitic statements and actions clogged up his feed.

On the Al Jazeera doc: nothing encapsulates Labour’s Jewish problem more than the 2016 Conference, where being Jewish marked you out for secret surveillance, entrapment and covert filming by Al Jazeera.

In spite of wining and dining a junior Israeli Embassy official for months – eventually succeeding in entrapping him to say a handful of incriminating words, the other two hours of this documentary were contemporary antisemitism’s answer to Flat Earth Theory. This documentary was nevertheless heralded as proof positive the Elders of Zion were alive and kicking in the Labour Party.

More needs to be said about this documentary, which accused the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) of making false accusations of antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel.

What actually happened to Jewish people at that conference in 2016 went more like this:

Essential reading on this can be found in David Hirsh’s full statement about what it felt like to be spied on for no greater crime than for being Jewish and a scholar of contemporary antisemitism.

“This man who posed as somebody who had read, understood and liked my work, this man who said he wanted to learn from me, at my university, was actually an antisemite who was hoping to portray me in an antisemitic way as part of an antisemitic project. Of course it is likely that he doesn’t understand himself as an antisemite at all. He understands himself as a hero of the Palestinian revolution. Or whatever. But he had read my work. He should know better.”

Sivier clearly has a weakness for conspiracism. He appeared on conspiracy radio show The Richie Allen Show in 2015, which is sponsored by David Icke. In one piece on Vox Political he references “Rothschild merchant bankers” – an antisemitic conspiracy theory all of its own – so it was a natural fit for Sivier to take The Lobby documentary as conclusive evidence that the antisemitism row was being manufactured in order to… go on, guess?

Shortly before the May 2017 local election, in which Sivier was standing as a candidate, his membership was suspended pending a hearing.

The absurdity of Labour’s antisemitism issue is elucidated in no clearer terms than the spectre of pro-Corbyn journalists writing articles claiming antisemitism in Labour is being manufactured, then subsequently being suspended from Labour for antisemitism. Kerry Anne-Mendoza, editor-in-chief of The Canary, who composes pieces comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, would presumably be similarly afflicted.

So these are examples of what Sivier has written. Links are provided as the author is insisting he has been taken out of context.

Sivier has:

Written over a dozen articles defending Ken Livingstone’s assertion that the man who wanted to murder all the Jews also wanted them to be free. (before he went mad)

#HitlerWasOkBefore1942

Written a defence of the memes that Naz Shah shared (for which she apologised) on the bizarre grounds that one of the memes was first published by Jewish anti-Zionist Norman Finkelstein. Not that it matters but no, it wasn’t.

Defended the SWP from charges of antisemitism for leaving Jews off the list of Holocaust victims. As you do. It was apparently just political correctness (although not gone mad thankfully)

“Your reference to the SWP in 2008 – I’m not going to comment on ‘thousands’ instead of “millions” because I don’t know, but the Nazi holocaust involved many other groups as well as Jews, and it seems likely that the SWP was simply being ‘politically correct’.”

Defended Jackie Walker’s disgraceful comments at Labour Conference and her previous comment… “Many Jews were chief financiers of the slave trade (my ancestors TOO)” even teaming up with Tony Greenstein for good measure.

For the uninitiated: Greenstein is a Jewish anti-Zionist, suspended from Labour for… go on, have a stab? He is now part of the Labour Against The Witch-hunt gang. When not anti-Zioning around, you may find him sending young Jewish women in the Labour Party tweets like this:

Legitimate Criticism of Israel

In the comments section of Vox Political, Sivier defended an antisemite who claimed, “Zionists start more wars and cause more murders than any other organisation…”

Sivier is probably more ignorant than antisemitic but it’s worth looking at this exchange to see how he dispatches the person (a Jew) who protested that the comment was antisemitic.

Defended Maalia Bouattia’s charming line about “Zionist-led media outlets”

“Your comment about Maalia Bouattia conflates Zionism with Judaism and so I discount it out-of-hand. The two are not the same and unless you have performed extensive research into what she meant and why she meant it, you have no business making such a suggestion.”

Suggested the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) are a front organisation for the Israeli government. In the comments section he agrees with the statement that UJS (which supports a two-state solution to the conflict) are “radicalised extremists.”
Defended Tam Dalyell’s comment that Tony Blair was “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers” from the charge of antisemitism:-

“I would point out that (without further information) concerns that Tony Blair was being “unduly influenced” by “a cabal of Jewish advisors” may have been entirely justified. No UK prime minister should be biased towards any special-interest group but should work for the benefit of everybody.”

Also a handy reminder that re-tweeting ‘anti-Zionists’ who put the word Holocaust in speech marks is never the best look.

(Word to the wise: I think you’re supposed to criticise the Holocaust.)

Claimed the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby proved the conspiracy of an antisemitism witch-hunt and insisted, for some reason that Jonathan Arkush – the President of the Board of Deputies – should be “pulled in and checked out”.

“It is time to root out every last one of these operators.

Anybody who has been involved in the anti-Semitism witch-hunt within the Labour Party last summer needs to be pulled in and checked out. That includes Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog. It includes John Mann, who accused Ken Livingstone. Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee when it was accusing Mr Corbyn, would be worth questioning – as would every member of the committee itself, as their performances in the evidence sessions made it clear that they had already made up their minds before asking a single question.”

Went on to claim that ‘these people’ who are part of the ‘antisemitism witch hunt’ were ‘very dangerous indeed’ but thankfully haven’t resorted to light munitions yet.

“I was warned off, you know. Good friends told me to be very careful of what I was saying, because the people I was accusing are “very dangerous indeed”.

Maybe they are, but facts have a habit of getting out. And while my articles back then produced a strong opposing – verbal – reaction from certain of our favourite figures and organisations (including a few of the kind of ad hominem claims mentioned below) there have been no bullets or bombs (yet).”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews pictured here (assault rifles and hand grenades out of shot)

When Livingstone’s case was finally heard ,Sivier jumped back into action – chalking up yet more articles about Hitler’s philo-Zionism.

Rebuffed David Baddiel’s emotive statement on why Livingstone’s comments were vile and calibrated to cause offence.

When Jeremy Corbyn and Dianne Abbott spoke out strongly against Livingstone’s historical revisionism it didn’t give Sivier pause, instead he doubled down with conspiratorial aplomb.

And on and on…

This is new-left media. It is to the Jew what the worst aspects of the right-wing press are to the immigrant. That’s why the great and good of new-left media, such as the editor-in-chief of The Canary, know who the real victim in all this is.

The State of Play

None of the above is now considered sufficient to expel someone from the Labour Party.

The NEC, now with a Momentum majority including Jon Lansman, its sole owner, voted to downgrade Sivier’s recommended expulsion to a warning with training. At Limmud last month Lansman said there was “no place for Zionist conspiracies in Labour”

I’m going to stick my neck out here and call… bullshit.

According to today’s Guardian, Labour’s zero tolerance policy on antisemitism now extends to downgrading recommended sanctions for people who deem the term ‘yid’ acceptable.

It just gets worse every day for Jews in the Labour Party. Life-long Labour member Peter Hutchinson claims, “When Darren Williams and Christine Shawcroft came to our CLP they both defended Livingstone strongly.”

Williams, also of Momentum, yesterday even took to Twitter to declare that Sivier was the real victim.

A telling admission from Williams, as Sivier’s warning and referral for training still implies guilt. Although training is certainly a worthwhile endeavour, most of it will be pointless. Antisemitism exists in the conspiracy theory and as such is unfalsifiable. Any evidence given to contradict the conspiracy theory is taken as the very essence of its validity. That’s why Sivier has immediately announced that he is refusing the training as he believes the Jewish Labour Movement are part of the “very dangerous indeed” group of people who are part of the conspiracy unearthed in The Lobby documentary.

The Jewish Labour Movement could not possibly be motivated by a wish to talk rationally and calmly and educate people about Jewish life and contemporary antisemitism with a view to making the left less hostile to Jewish people than it feels to them at the moment. Honestly, who’d believe a story like that?

Plus there is also a case to be made for ignorance no longer being an excuse, particularly if you are member of a political party and your task is to knock on doors and persuade the public to think like you.

Sivier’s case is important. He didn’t come to these conclusions through an obsessive hatred of Israel and Zionism. He got there via Livingstone and transmitted his supreme ignorance to thousands of leftists desperate to believe that any criticism of Corbyn’s Labour is a smear, even if that means closing their ears to the genuine concerns of an ethnic minority.

The ballad of Mike Sivier is a marker of Livingstone and the damage he has wrought.

Is David Icke Britain’s Leading Antisemite?

November 10, 2017November 18, 2017 / Marlon Solomon / 14 Comments

If David Icke is not Britain’s leading antisemite I am yet to come across anybody else who is preaching the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to thousands of bewitched followers in sold-out arenas in Britain. Former footballer and sports presenter David Icke has been Britain’s leading conspiracy theorist for decades; hugely popular throughout the world and capable of selling out venues usually reserved for those of rock star status. Most famous for his belief in multi-dimensional reptiles but unfortunately less well known for the ancient anti-Jewish prejudice that lie at the heart of so many of his theories.

That’ll be where I come in.

The Protocols of the Elder of Zion is a notorious piece of antisemitic propaganda. A forgery concocted by Czarist Russian secret police used to incite the Russian populace against its Jewish population. It tells the story of a secret meeting in 1897 where leading members of the Jewish community throughout the world convened to discuss the trivial matter of their secret plan to take over the world (hopefully with nibbles). To accomplish this dastardly plot they would infiltrate all political parties, take ownership of the press and media in order to control ‘both sides’ of the argument; they would even disseminate pornography alcohol and drugs to corrupt decent good folk.

They would do this in order to spread dissension which would lead to revolution which in turn would lead to all-out war. Down on their luck the people’s of the world would then look to the Jews, now in control of everything, to lead them out of the darkness the evil Jews had manufactured.

Mwahahah!

The publication of the Protocols in 1919 resulted in an intensification of pogroms which claimed the lives of over 100000 Jews. By 1921 the Protocols had found their way to Germany and were quoted extensively by Adolf Hitler both in his speeches and in Mein Kampf. In America they were promoted most notably by Henry Ford in The International Jew: The World’s Problem making their way around the world to become the second biggest selling book on the planet after the bible. The result of this conspiracy theory was catastrophic, contributing significantly to the anti-Jewish agitation which led to one of humanities most heinous crimes.

It is the blueprint for all future world conspiracy theories and still widely believed all over the world today.

Unsurprisingly antisemitism got a bad name in Europe after the Holocaust however by the 1950’s the Protocols made their way to Egypt and are now more popular than ever throughout the Arab world; where understandable anger at the Jewish state brings a ready-made audience of millions for this most diabolic of fictions. It is quoted in the Hamas covenant and pseudo-intellectual documentaries based on the Protocols are numerous. See this short clip from Iranian Protocol series Secrets of Armageddon for a taste.

It is a fusion of old European antisemitism and modern anti-Zionism. It makes up a large portion of David Icke’s current fare. It is the most pernicious and intoxicating form of antisemitism in the modern world.

Thus the Protocols departed Europe, received a new veneer in the Arab world and are now being fed back into European culture.

Icke at Wembley in 2010 explaining to the audience that then President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a Holocaust denier – does not dislike Jews (because he once met extreme antizionist ultra-orthodox Jewish sect Naturei Karta)

Members of Naturei Karta giving the ‘Quenelle’ – an inverted Nazi salute – at an anti-Israel rally. I can’t imagine what Ahmadinejad and David Icke see in them?

The potency of Icke’s modern brand of antisemitism is enhanced by its charade as an anti-racist doctrine. That it is solely concerned with promoting Palestinian justice. More traditional forms of antisemitism made no distinction between ‘good’ Jews (antizionists) and ‘bad’ Jews (Zionists) but Icke uses antizionism to hide what is, at times, little less than Nazi-strength antisemitic propaganda. Whether he does this consciously or not is of little concern as many people have been and are being fooled, or at best ignoring it, thus David Icke gets an unfettered pass to ply his trade in large scale venues in Britain.

Icke is a conspiracist omnivore: splicing all manner of esotericism, pseudo-science, New World Order end-times scenarios and melding them into a coherent ideology. He is an entrepreneur of improvisational millennialism; deftly capable of rearranging copious amounts of eclectic hidden knowledge and distrust of authority to construct an apocalyptic New-age rhapsody.

Doomsday scenarios are often impossible to resist within the conspiracist worldview as without them the conspiracy itself begins to either fall apart or must be reduced in scope.

But it is antisemitism that runs through the core of so many of Icke’s theories and as he places ‘Rothschild Zionists’ at the forefront of the ‘plan to kill you’ I shouldn’t need to spell out it’s potential dangers.

I have previously written about David Icke, his normalisation and why he is mistakenly viewed as a harmless conspiracy theorist. Although he is Britain’s leading conspiracist, Icke is from the American millennialist tradition of the early nineties; when the right-wing isolationist militia men and New World Order conspiracists coalesced with the New-age movement and ufologists to create a colossal galactic conspiracy.

As Michael Barkun noted in Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America “They construct these end-times scripts from an eclectic combination of ingredients, Babylonian mystery religions, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Masonic magicians and UFO’s, the Illuminati and the UN. As everything in the conspiracist’s world view is interconnected, so every source may be mined for something useful, no matter what taboos may be attached to it.”

For this reason, although laughable to many, super-conspiracism is extremely dangerous. Barkun concurs, “Indeed… the greater the stigma, the more attractive the source becomes, for the intensity of rejection is its truthfulness.” Thus the taboo around more pernicious conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial and the Protocols are very likely taken by Icke and his followers to be the very essence of their validity.

(This partly explains why on white supremacist sites and Neo-Nazi hang-outs Icke gets thousands of hits. His relationship to far-right activists in the USA and Canada throughout the 90’s was explored in Will Offley’s useful piece from February 2000 – David Icke And The Politics Of Madness: Where The New Age Meets The Third Reich)

Number of hits for ‘David Icke’ on White Supremacist site Stormfront

The apocalyptic milieu of pre-millennium hysteria inspired the creators of The X-files; the tagline Trust No One itself a homage to the paranoid style. This was the time when the Men in Black and the aliens became ‘in on it’ together. Known as super-conspiracism – or meta-conspiracism – all the conspiracies are linked together, often in a pyramidal hierarchy, with each smaller event and systemic conspiracy nested within. Above which there is a unifying supernatural force controlling the lesser earth bound conspirators.

For this super-conspiracist the Vatican is the supreme manifestation of the evil rulers of the world.

The main danger arising from writing off super-conspiracists as simply cranks who are of little consequence is that we stop listening to what they are saying. In my view they are too important to ignore. In his superb study of conspiracism A Year Among the Truthers Jonathan Kay cries out, “You cannot challenge the enemies of the Enlightenment if you do not understand them.”

Since being introduced to the Protocols by ultra right-wing ufologist William Milton Cooper in the earlier nineties Icke has been successfully touting them throughout the Western World. In Icke’s 1994 book The Robots Rebellion he describes them as “the Illuminati Protocols” in what appears to be a sincere attempt to distance the tract from Jews themselves. However over the following twenty years, as he got deeper into antisemitic theory, the Elders seem to have undergone a re-conversion back to Judaism and are now referred to as ‘Rothschild Zionists’. In fact he has used several different terms to reference these evil Jews – Zionists, Rothschild Zionists, Khazars, The Khazarian Mafia – one saving grace of which is that he appears to be committed to giving us cooler names.

Rothschild Zionism

In the section of his live show entitled ‘Rothschild Zionism’ Icke avoids mentioning the Protocols by name but his introduction closely echoes the canny note of prophecy:

“In the Matrix movie there’s something called the Zion mainframe. Well Zionism, Rothschild Zionism is a mainframe of this network… it is a secret society, putting it’s agents in places of power. A secret society within the web to massively contribute and control our global society.”

So, just the Protocols then.

But then over the next ten minutes he goes into standard hard-line anti-Zionist politics, the kind you would hear at a normal pro-Palestine engagement. He declares that he has nothing against Jews and separates good Jews (anti-Zionists) from the rest – at the last count around 93% of British Jews would fit into the not so good category.

Icke showing the audience a picture of anti-Zionist Jew Norman Finkelstein at Wembley Arena to demonstrate what a good Jew looks like.

Then, after enraging the audience with the plight of the Palestinians, he proceeds to go full Protocol; going through the most evil powerful Jews in control of the world often using Nazi-era antisemitic imagery.

Antisemitic Nazi cartoon from 1930’s depicting the ‘string pulling’ Jew in control of assorted dignitaries

Contemporary version of string pulling Jew depicting George Soros in control of Barrack Obama

Icke at Wembley Arena in 2010

Jews using world leaders as puppets to further their diabolic aims comes direct from the Protocols. Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is the most recent incarnation of the archetypal Jewish puppet master, evidenced in far-right demonstrations currently on the rise across Europe, where they blame Soros for everything from immigration to global financial crashes and terrorism. Gideon Rachman’s recent piece for the Financial times: “Soros hatred is a global sickness” gives a brief overview of how George Soros has become new the figurehead for far-right antisemitic hatred.

A Far-right demonstration in Eastern Europe

An effigy of George Soros dressed as an orthodox Jew is burnt during a Neo-Nazi demonstration in Poland.

Satanic image of Soros on Icke’s website

For a flavour of the antisemitic hatred that follows Soros – a Holocaust survivor himself – take a look at these replies under Soros’ recent tweet about the dangers of conspiracism.

“Our most powerful weapon will be freedom with which we will lure the gentile. We will blind them with the abstraction of freedom and replace their representatives as we would a worn-out glove. They will be at our disposal and easily disposable.” – from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Image from Icke’s live show denoting ‘Rothschild Zionist’ Rham Emmanuel (a Jew) as the Obama puppeteer.

“There may appear to be different ‘sides’ but so often they are controlled and manipulated by the same force”

The above image and caption is taken from David Icke’s Guide to the Global Conspiracy in his chapter on the Jews entitled The Cruellest Hoax. The illustration appears to be an amalgam of Jew portrayed as Devil, as per medieval antisemitism, whilst simultaneously pulling the strings of humanity. It gives a reasonable indication of how deep into antisemitic theory Icke is. Further reading in the same chapter gives more clues:

“Satanism is at the heart of everything the leaders of the (Rothschild) family do and one of their sources of esoteric influence and ‘magic’ is the Kabbalah.”

Back to Icke’s live show; going through the current the Elders of Zion (Rothschild Zionists) he indicts them for everything from wars to terrorism to climate change.

Climate change.

Is he really blaming the Jews for the weather?

Well, he is a British antisemite.

And speaking of Blighty…

Wembley Arena 2010

Even Ed Miliband (Jewish himself) who wanted to recognise the state of Palestine, is constructed as one of the malevolent ‘Rothschild Zionists’.

To begin his section on Rothschild Zionism Icke declares… “What I’m about to say now, virtually no one else (is touching) there are some, and some of them are characters I wouldn’t like to spend an evening with…”

That’s because they’re Nazis aren’t they Dave?

You silly sausage.

ROTHSCHILD SOUP

Icke’s obsession with the Rothschild conspiracy is longstanding, it is a conspiracy that has been used to indict Jews for over 200 years.

1940 Goebbels produced Nazi propaganda film used to incite the German populace against the Jews.

But its not just a couple of evil Jewish bankers that Icke’s interested in…

“Hundred’s of thousands of Rothschild offspring, most of them produced in sperm bank breeding programmes to ensure that the genetic ‘purity’ is both maintained and expanded.” – David Icke’s Guide to the Global Conspiracy

“The administrators, who will be their advisers (will be) specialists bred and reared from early childhood to rule the affairs of the world.” – from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

Holocaust Denial

Icke has been promoting Holocaust denial since the late 90’s, losing a publishing deal as a result. His website is teeming with links to far-right websites, including to the Institute of Historical Review (IHR) a beacon of the international Holocaust denial movement with numerous links to Neo-Nazi organisations. He has promoted James Bacque’s book: Other Losses. He has supported notorious Holocaust denier Ernest Zundel – though Icke claims to do so only in support of free speech. Although as the Critical Thinking website wryly observes… “one would imagine however that a more worthy symbol (of free speech) could be found than a pro-Nazi propagandist who has appeared at a trial in a concentration camp uniform and who has disseminated stickers such as “Holocaust teaching is Child Abuse”.

In his self-published And The Truth Shall Set You Free Icke has denounced the Nuremberg trials as a ‘farce’ and “a calculated exercise in revenge and manipulation”. He continues… “why do we play a part in suppressing alternative information to the official line of the Second World War? How is it right that while this fierce suppression goes on, free copies of the Spielberg film, Schindler’s List, are given to schools to indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events.”

David Icke insists he is not a Holocaust denier.

“I am not a Holocaust denier. I have never denied the Holocaust” said David Icke

Although his website tells a different story.

In July a concerned Jewish resident of Manchester tweeted The Lowry Hotel and asked them why they were hosting a Holocaust denier and linked to a page on his website which talks about “the alleged persecution of the Jews” and the “fake Jewish Holocaust narrative.” Above these words it is emblazoned “BY DAVID.” Now I’m not claiming to be Agatha Christie but I would think it reasonable to deduct from this that David Icke is a Holocaust denier.

The Lowry Hotel swiftly cancelled his show, followed by venues in Sheffield and Liverpool. The Manchester Evening News and ITV.com immediately picked up on the story. Within an hour they were threatened by Icke’s legal team and removed the article.

Icke’s get out clause is that the words are not his. He simply quotes and links to other websites – usually far-right websites – which leaves him clear from charges of Holocaust denial. Ironically the page on his website mentioned above is filed under the section ‘MIND CONTROL AND POLITICAL MANIPULATION.’

But seriously…

There is some truly sickening, blood-curdling stuff on Icke’s website which is frequented by many thousands of people. As a couple of examples: Icke in his own words calls Elie Weisel a “Holocaust Fraud” (I have archived the link here should it mysteriously vanish.) On this post he simply links to a genuine article from the Jewish Telegraph Agency where 81 year old Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel – still alive at the time – gave a speech in Hungary warning of the dangers of Holocaust denial and the rising popularity of antisemitic publications.

To put this into some kind of perspective: Wiesel was an inmate at Buchenwald and Auschwitz – taken from his home with his family and deported to the camps – this story told in his book Night won him the Nobel prize for literature. On his arrival to the camps his mother and younger sister were immediately led away to the ovens. “I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…” He watched his father slowly die in agony from dysentery.

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.”

David Icke’s Own Words

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” ― Elie Wiesel, Night

Another example, from many, is a story on his website entitled World Jewish Congress Approves Resolution Calling for Criminalising Holocaust Denial under which – again in his own words – he writes…

“The arrogance of these people knows no bounds. What about the Palestinian holocaust? The Native American holocaust? The Cambodian holocaust? And all the holocausts instigated by Rothschild Zionism? You know what they call ‘anti-Semitic’ most of all? The truth.” (my emphasis)

Under these words hang the link where you can ‘read more’ which connects the user to what looks like a Neo-Nazi blog called The Ugly Truth which has the charming tagline – “Intelligent ‘anti-Semitism’ for thinking Gentiles” and this image:

Icke probably wouldn’t put an image like that directly on his site but deliberately directs his followers to other sites that do. And Icke goes further than Holocaust denial. As with the image above it is Jews who are responsible for the Holocaust. In short, the bad Jews killed the good Jews.

“I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War.” – And The Truth Shall Set You Free, David Icke

Icke promotes the Khazar Hoax theory – that 90-95% of Jews (Ashkenazi Jews) originate form the Khazar region rather than the Middle East. (some people have to pass the time I guess) He quotes Jack Bernstein in his book “Regarding the tie between the elite Ashkenazi Jews and the Nazis, take a look at the word ‘Ashkenazi’ – look again – ‘AshkeNAZI.’ interesting isn’t it?”

(They thought you’d never figure it out)

This is what David Icke is promoting. Hardcore, Nazi-strength antisemitism. If you see people sharing David Icke stuff this is what they are mixed up in. And yet Icke can threaten publications with legal action for calling him a Holocaust denier.

The antisemites are winning.

Isreal and Antizionism

This meme and many like it pour out of David Icke’s twitter feed daily. This particular image is a good distillation of old antisemitism dressed up as modern anti-Israel propaganda – the all-seeing omnipotent Jew operating in the shadows. Antisemitism has always painted it’s victims as superior rather than inferior unlike most other forms of racism. It is one of the main reasons why it has been so effective throughout history.

Antisemitic image used by Icke showing Israeli Prime Minister as the archetypal string pulling Jew behind all the world’s problems: in this case Syria, ISIS and the Paris attacks.

A David Icke meme common in both far-right and far-left circles claiming ISIS is Israel’s creation.

When Israel becomes responsible for all wars and global terrorism it safely exceeds what is commonly known in the trade as ‘legitimate criticism of Israel’, the Jewish state becoming in essence the world’s Jew.

Apparently, one of the reasons why you can be sure that Israel is behind ISIS is that they haven’t attacked Israel itself. Not only is that not true but one would think with limitless power and predatory deceptive skills they would be capable of staging a ‘false flag’ in Israel itself and blaming it on ISIS… or how about just hiding the word Nazi properly guys? But let us leave aside the plot holes of this tedious drama.

Cephalopods

1938 antisemitic Nazi cartoon

These are classic antisemitic images of the Jew as an Octopus, in control of the world. The above image is a Nazi cartoon published in 1938 – an image used in the German publication of the Protocols. (note the blood seeping from the wounded earth echoing the Blood Libel)

A similar image from early 20th century American antisemitic propaganda depicting Jewish infiltration of New York City’s Tammany Hall as part of their quest to take over the City.

A similar antisemitic cannard from the American edition of the Protocols ‘The International Jew: the World’s Problem” this time incorporating the Rothschild conspiracy.

Contemporary antisemitic image used by David Icke showing the Octopus smothering the White House. With this image there is one striking difference; the letter ‘Z’ has been slapped on the Star of David. Icke and other antisemites thus defend it as criticism of Zionism and not Jews.

They know what they are doing. Same shit. Repackaged with a ‘Z’ on it.

(Thank you to Lee ‘budgie’ Barnett for the above examples.)

This image of Jews controlling Hollywood is an offshoot of the antisemitic epithet about Jewish media control explicit in the Protocols. In his live show Icke says “Rothschild Zionists control the media and Hollywood, don’t take my word for it…” and then goes on to quote a satirical humour column from Joel Stein.

A close look at the image again shows the Star of Davids in the Hollwood sign and just visible on the horizon is the Israeli flag; inserted to evade charges of antisemitism.

Blood Libel

A closer look at the red carpet of Jewish controlled Hollywood reveals the blood and inside the blood are what look like the victims of a Holocaust.

Make no mistake this is real extremism; given a pass because Icke is seen as a likeable fool rather than the dangerous hate preacher he really is. Racist propaganda has real-life consequences no matter how it is dressed up and repackaged. Antisemitism is an ever mutating virus. With three terrorist plots foiled on Jewish premises in Britain, two Kosher shops firebombed in Manchester two months ago, antisemitic incidents up by a third last year and Jews shot dead because they were Jews in Toulouse, Paris and Copenhagen in the last few years we should take what David Icke is saying very seriously. Millions of people watch these videos – it incites people to hurt Jews in the same way that the EDL crew incite people to hurt Muslims with only one difference…

Could you imagine the leader of the EDL or Nick Griffin hiring a venue and speaking to 3000 people wihout so much of a murmur of protest from anti-racists?

There is a different rule for Jews.

Replace the word Jew with Zionist and you can get away with it. Sadly this is also damaging the pro-Palestinian cause where the refrain of ‘antizionism is not antisemitism’ is often played on a loop. Antizionism needn’t be antisemitism but unfortunately some of it is. The accusation of ‘conflation’ is constantly levelled at Jews rather than at people like Icke which is counter-productive to what is a righteous cause.

This is why most British Jews, myself included, feel completely abandoned by the anti-racist movement. This largely has to do with anger at the policies of the Israeli government but in turn this opens up a space for real antisemites to preach ancient anti-Jewish hatred in this new guise and get away with it.

Images above used by Icke’s to demonstrate ‘Zionist’ influence. I must give credit to Icke’s illustrator David Dees, ever thorough with his attention to antisemitic detail, who once again pays homage to the blood libel, shown by the red goo oozing from the Whitehouse.

“Jewish people (who, like the rest of us, are evolving consciousnesses which happen to be experiencing a Jewish lifetime), will never be free until they step out of the mental and emotional control of this tiny clique, which uses them in the most merciless ways to advance its own sick and diabolical ambitions” – David Icke

Well that’s good to know.

Following Icke’s sold out 12-hour lecture at the Apollo in Manchester in January 2017, The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) had the novel idea of asking Icke’s followers – who attended the show – whether they believed there were any antisemitic themes expressed therein. David Icke dutifully obliged and placed their request on his website.

Below is a small sample of the responses:

“Just because he believes a Jewish elite run the world doesn’t make him an antisemite.”

“May I recommend you read a book called ‘The falsification of history’ by John Hamer. Here you will find documented and remembered proof about the Hitler myth. (I am NOT a neo-Nazi, by the way, before you start accusing me of causing all the s*** the ‘Jews’ bring on themselves for self pity. Check it out, they even have a word for it.) There’s a great video on YouTube called ‘Adolf Hitler – the greatest story NEVER told’

“Mr Icke did indeed mention the Rothschild Zionists and global elite who are factually running things in this world. He also gave proof of this in his presentation. More and more people understand what the Rothschild Zionists have done to the world.”

“It is my understanding that he believes, upon conducting extensive unbiased research, a group of Zionists control the media, many political decisions that affect us all. How is that antisemitic?”

David Icke’s argument is one of free speech. And thankfully he has it. In Britain a person can virtually say what they like as long as it doesn’t incite violence. Icke has the freedom to make videos and write whatever he wishes on his website. But if you owned a venue would you be happy enabling him to not only spout this stuff but profit from it financially?

Three dates for his upcoming book launch – which includes The Troxy in London. It promises… “A 30-minute discussion between David Icke and Richie Allen on the explosive content of the book… The book is destined to go down in history as one of the most controversial ever written (even for David Icke) and it’s not to be missed.” – tickets – which include dinner – are priced at £90.

It is worth noting that the only country which refused to host Icke for his world tour in 2016 was Germany; where both of his shows in Stuggart and Berlin, were cancelled.

Jan Rathje of the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, an NGO that tracks racism in Germany, welcomed the cancellation of the German events. “David Icke has a lot of influence on the conspiracy ideological scene, especially through the anti-Semitism he spreads, which appeals to people in Germany because it offers some relief from the guilt of German crimes against humanity in the Holocaust,” he told DW. “David Icke denies the Holocaust, and I think that’s more important than focusing on the fact that he sees reptilians in power behind everything,” Rathje added.

It’s almost as if the Germans don’t want a messiah type figure peddling antisemitic theory to large arenas of brainwashed people.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why.

The Richie Allen Show

For the discerning Icke-ist their daily fix is delivered via internet radio programme The Richie Allen Show. Available on numerous platforms it boasts of being ‘Europe’s No.1 independent radio station’. It has 50000 subscribers and all episodes are available as podcasts and many are on Youtube. The show sprang from the embers of now defunct internet TV show The People’s Voice which Icke founded. Allen is Icke’s protege, plying his trade at Fab Radio International in Manchester, broadcasting six times a week.

On the show nothing is taboo. As long as you are a conspiracist you get an easy ride from the presenter who claims his guests come on to ‘debate’ but as yet – and I’ve listened to hours of the stuff – I am yet to hear anything approaching real debate. To head off any potential criticism Allen often states ‘I’m just asking questions’ but as this is Icke-ism so many of the questions seem to be about those bloody Jews.

On the 27th January 2016 The Richie Allen show hosted ‘friend of the show’ Nick Kollerstrom – one of Britain’s leading and most extreme Holocaust deniers – on to discuss his book Breaking The Spell: Myth and Reality of the Holocaust

Kollerstrom said:

“The number of Jews who died I would put an absolute ceiling on 200,000… there’s no trace of any extermination policy, no trace of any scorn or contempt towards for example Jews in the camps… I think Jewish people should very happy to hear that their ancestors didn’t go into big gas chambers and that the deadly Nazi Cyanide chambers killed bugs and not people and they had clothing put into them and not human beings, they should be glad and happy to be told that. I would recommend that people discuss the function of the German Labour camps without harping too much on the Jews they were only a minority of the people there… it was quite a multi-cultural experience.”

The 27th January is Holocaust Memorial Day.

It is glaringly obvious from the interview that Kollerstrom is also a Nazi sympathiser. When he says “the real Holocaust was perpetrated on the Germans” it is a bit of a giveaway. When half-challenged by Allen who put it to him that the Nazi’s ‘were bastards’ Kollerstrom replied “I prefer to look at the science.” – this was not followed up by the presenter.

(It never is)

Richie Allen and David Icke are currently supporting and hosting Alison Chabloz, a Neo-Nazi who writes songs mocking Holocaust survivors. She is currently being prosecuted for hate speech. You’ll often hear Chabloz on Aryan Radio (if that’s your thing) but as Richie Allen is quick to point out, lest anyone think her an antisemite, her Holocaust denial ditties are simply “satirical songs.”

A sample of Alison’s ‘satire’:

I saw them taking babies and then tearing them in two
And creepy Dr Mengele he removed my tattoo
They tried to turn my brown eyes blue
Make lampshades from my skin
For months I swallowed diamonds
And shat them out again.

Come on, my brother
Tell us another
Story for cover
Of tribal gain
Safe in our tower
Now is the hour
Money and power
We have no shame

Let’s cheat and lie on film
No one suspects a thing
Bigger the lie is better for us!
Every fake survivor
Every fake survivor’s laughing
Fake survivors’ tongues are wagging
All us frauds are busy blagging
Spin and yarn there’ll be no gagging
You shall pay
All the way
Every night and day!

My name is Elie Wiesel may I show you my tattoo
[Talks … “Oh … Where’s it gone?”]
I wrote a book for US kids to study while at school
It’s full of nonsense tales of course
What do you all expect?
But it made me very wealthy
As a liar I’m the best

The presenter himself is not as extreme a Holocaust denier as Chabloz and Kollerstrom but he does practice his own version of ‘soft-core’ denial or minimisation. He says he believes the Nazis were ‘maniacal’ but continues, “I have massive massive problems with the numbers (of Jewish dead) how they would have done it and I have massive problems with the teaching of the narrative to generations of children throughout the world”
On Holocaust Memorial Day he described the plans for a permanent Holocaust memorial in London as ‘sinister.’

Coming up next on The Richie Allen Show we’ll be discussing rampant paedophilia in the Jewish community.

If only that was satire.

American website Right Wing Watch commented on a recent episode in which Liz Cronin was a guest:

“Recently, Crokin appeared on The Richie Allen Show to discuss the current Hollywood sexual abuse scandals. After nearly an hour of attempting to avoid the host’s persistent efforts to link the scandals to Jews, Crokin eventually stopped resisting the anti-Semitic undercurrent of the discussion and found a way to link the death of Rich to the supposed problem of “rampant” paedophilia within the Jewish community.”

“Paedophilia is rampant within the Jewish religion, from what I’ve researched,” Crokin said. “I’ve also discovered that predators prey on children at Jewish camps. Now, it is interesting how paedophilia has been exposed within the Catholic church but there hasn’t been a huge scandal about the paedophilia that goes on within the Jewish community. We do know that the Jews control most of the mainstream media and Hollywood, so you’re probably on to something with that.”

Richard Bartholomew also notes on The Richie Allen Show: “Conspiracy-mongers from left and right are apparently equally welcome, although the vibe is more ‘left alternative”’than right-wing fringe.”

Richie Allen describes himself as a ‘former socialist’ with a previous empathy for the SWP, he claims to be in close contact with trade unionists in Manchester, speaks of ‘our friends on the left’ when in conversation with The Canary’s Kerry-Anne Mendoza and was possibly involved with the Occupy movement.

Conspiracism can often act as a conduit for ideas to be passed from the far-right to far-left and whereas Icke has been in close proximity to far-right isolationists in America and in Britain Combat 18 – who once heralded his work – these days Icke’s output has much more traction on the radical, libertarian left.

A comment left by a former political scientist on my previous Icke post is quite revealing:

“I have been reading Icke’s website and his fora for some time. A few years ago at an interfaith meeting in London where the guest speaker was a barrister who had written a book about antisemitism, I was laughed at by the audience when I mentioned Icke and the dangers he poses. Even then I could see that the demagogue was attracting large post 9/11 audiences eager for someone to ‘make sense of events’. The barrister dismissed Icke as a crackpot who would not gain traction. However, I had visited the Occupy camp at St. Paul’s cathedral and saw the sheer number of people engaging with Icke’s followers. The menacing antisemitism was there both explicitly and coded.”

Correspondingly the most vitriol for my previous post on Icke came from the Occupy Movement which appears to be Icke’s core fanbase. The reaction on their Facebook page reveals that not only does Icke have real traction in these circles but his supporters eschew much of his spiritual battery, particularly the reptilian meme. (To sum up, he may be wrong about the lizards but he’s right about the ‘Zionists’) This is concurrent with what Icke is actually peddling. Scroll down his twitter feed. You won’t see a lizard. Not even a scale.

What will you will find is the full battery of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Zionist, anti-semitic, anti-capitalist, anti-modernity, anti-EU, anti-Nato, pro-Assad, pro-Iran and pro-Putin propaganda: all seductive ideologies in many parts of the left – a part which has grown significantly in the last two years as Corbynism has brought radical, fringe leftists into the mainstream.

In post-Brexit post-truth Britain we write off fringe ideas at our peril. It would be unthinkable a decade ago for Icke to be this engaged in mainstream politics but let’s face it, the world has gone a bit Icke. His output for the last couple of years largely emanates from Russia Today with plenty of links back to Iranian state broadcaster Press TV. With these outlets being avowedly anti-western and a hotbed of conspiracy theory it is a natural fit for Icke and Allen’s paranoid fare.

These days of fake news and alternative facts have been a boon for cranks like Icke. On a recent video after the Manchester and London terror attacks he remarked at how pleasantly surprised and encouraged he was to see how many people were questioning the official version of events.

Right now the conspiracists are winning.

Icke has always been an entrepreneur so perhaps he wishes not to scare away a whole host of potential new customers by banging on about lizards.

Or maybe there is enough madness occurring in real politics to keep him occupied.

As ever the truth will probably lie somewhere in between.

***This post is the first in a series of three. (I know, you can’t wait.)

“I go into the Protocols because they’re very very important… don’t let people tell you what to do and what to read. If you give them a read, you can get them on Amazon, read them dispassionately and look at the world and how it’s been manipulated over the last hundred years. They mirror each other.” – David Icke, 2014

Another Antisemitic Voice

July 1, 2017October 22, 2017 / Marlon Solomon / 11 Comments

I am often asked about antisemitism on the Right when I am discussing the current trend of Left antisemitism. Isn’t there just as much if you look hard enough? Antisemitism is transitory. It exists all over the political spectrum, it ebbs and flows, currently it has found a home on the left.

For the doubters I would recommend examining the way Jewish matters are discussed in alternative left-wing media outlets. Take Mike Sivier, the author of Vox Political, one of the many pro-Corbyn blogs that sprung up or surged in popularity to compensate for Corbyn’s slaying at the hands of the mainstream media (MSM).

(Every time I type the letters MSM a little part of me dies)

In April Sivier announced that he was standing for Labour at the local elections. Sivier had written scores of articles defending Ken Livingstone. In fact he had penned pieces in defence of every high profile member of the Labour Party disciplined for alleged antisemitism. He had even posted links to far-right websites in defence of Livingstone and went as far as to claim that it wasn’t antisemitic to say that Tony Blair was “unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal” – six words so laden with antisemitism it would make George Galloway blush.

Eventually he was suspended pending investigation but refused to apologise, preferring instead to hold his ground and argue his case on the pages of his tawdry blog.
The problem here is manifest. It is not simply a few bad apples. This is a man with tens of thousands of readers. He has a voice that is influential in parts of the left. He tells his audience that Jews lie about their history, that they cry antisemitism for their own malicious ends. And now many thousands of left wingers can rest assured that claiming their most despised politician was so despicable because he was unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal is not in the slightest bit antisemitic.

So if this is happening just as much on the right, show me? Stop asking Jews to find it. Go and find articles outside of Neo-Nazi fanzines that are doing this.

Off your marks…

This is a 200ft antisemitic banner unfurled in Bristol by Labour members two days before the general election. It shows Theresa May wearing Star of David earrings. Our most powerful politician is at the service of the Jews. This is straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, something that twenty years ago you would most likely find in a vile Neo-Nazi cartoon.

For The Many Not The Jew

That caption I have added is not sarcasm. It is what the banner is saying. The Many vs The Few. And behind the privileged few are the Jews. This is not criticism of Israel.

This is age-old antisemitism.

This is not about what people think about Jews in their hearts, (I am so tired of hearing “Yeah but he’s not actually antisemitic” as though that should somehow compensate for an antisemitic remark or deed) It’s about what people say, and do, who they endorse, what they write in their blogs and on social media. It is about their political actions and inactions.

Last night I chanced upon an article in Another Angry Voice (AAV) entitled, Theresa May’s gift to the pro-Israeli lobby. AAV is a widely read blog from Thomas G. Clarke who presumably – given his moniker – is full of righteous indignation for our unequal and divided society: and also it appears the working International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by UK government, has provoked his ire.

A caveat: AAV is not one of the alt. Left media sites teeming with articles which downplay, deny and justify left-wing antisemitsm. It does not have an obsessional pre-occupation with ‘the Zionists’ plus Clarke appears to be smarter than most of his rival bloggers. Thus the manner in which he attempts to dismantle the IHRA definition of antisemitism belies a rapidly growing culture, even in parts of the mainstream left, which treats Jewish concerns about antisemitism as though they are a bad joke.

The definition

Clarke declares it ‘reasonable’ that holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of a few and harming or killing them is antisemitic.

Well, it’s a start.

One of the items he describes as ‘unacceptable’ in the definition is “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

He describes Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as a ‘stain on humanity’

For the record I am not taking issue with that… so long as he treats Syria, Chad, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, Yemen, North Korea, China, Tibet, Eritrea, Burma, Cuba, Venezuela and all the other oppressive regimes and war-mongering governments in the same manner.

But of all those ‘humanitarian stains’, many of them far, far worse than Israel, Another Angry Voice would like to defend people’s right to choose the only conflict that involves Jewish people and reserve the right to invoke the Nazi metaphor.

This is 2017 on the British mainstream left, folks. Mr. Clarke should note that there are still Holocaust survivors alive whom one presumes would be horrified to hear a left-wing writer defending the right to call a Jew a Nazi in the name of anti-racism.

In Syria more people were killed in the first 18 months of that conflict than in all the Arab/Israeli wars in the last 100 years combined, and that includes Israeli deaths. Far more in fact. Bashar-Al-Assad’s regime is directly responsible for well over 90% of those needless deaths many of them through unspeakable torture.

So here’s an experiment you can do at home kids:

Type ‘Netenyahu Nazi’ into Google Images and compare that to ‘Bashar Al-Assad Nazi’

Do get an adult to help you with this one

The Nazi metaphor is reserved almost exclusively for the Jewish state where other angry voices calibrate their condemnation to isolate and offend as many Jewish people as possible, including those who are hugely critical of the Israeli government.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism is not enshrined in law, it cannot be used to prosecute someone. But it is there to protect Jewish people from this…

Woman holds sign showing Star of David overlaid with swastika in Palestine Land Day protest opposite Israeli Embassy in solidarity with the Global March to Jerusalem

To quote Owen Jones, “There are those who compare the occupation of Palestine to Nazi tyranny. This is an attempt to say to Jews — “look, you are now doing to Palestinians what Hitler did to you.” It is deeply offensive and wrong. The occupation of Palestine is bad enough on its own terms. It is oppressive and stifling and brutal. It does not represent — or even close — an attempt to physically exterminate an entire people.”

Clarke is concerned that anyone who compares a Jew to a Nazi would be labelled an anti-Jewish bigot.

Clarke is worried about the antisemite, not the Jew.

And anyway this is not the case. If it is explained to someone why that is unacceptable and they listen and (God forbid) apologise then that is a positive, not a negative. I would much rather open a dialogue about why that is unacceptable than to label someone an antisemite. Take my own Labour MP – Afzal Khan – who tweeted in 2014 that Israel was a Nazi state. He subsequently apologised. Sincerely. And I was happy to endorse him as the Labour candidate in my area.

It can be that simple. We are capable of showing each other that sort of respect and moving on. We are supposed to be ‘of the Left’ after all.

The Holocaust

One of the most damning aspects of this current culture on the Left can be seen in an attitude whereby a complete insensitivity to the Holocaust has taken root and become commonplace

I spent 17 days on the largest Labour Party Forum (35000 members) around the time of the Livingstone verdict. The manner in which the Holocaust was discussed shocked and sickened me. You would hear more compassion on a UKIP forum. Jewish history booted around as though people were discussing Tory austerity. There is a growing culture of this on the left and on a personal note, I find this the most depressing aspect of the whole left-wing antisemitic enchilada.

The IHRA defines Holocaust denial as antisemitic thus:

“Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).”

What could possibly be wrong with that?

Please take to the stage Another Angry Voice who manages to find something to quibble with.

But first, I’d like again to draw on Owen Jones’ recent post, A Left Take on Israel, Palestinian Justice and Antisemitism.

This is what Jones says about the Holocaust in relation to Jews and antisemitism today. He calls for a recognition that:

“The Shoah is the biggest single crime in human history by virtue of intent and means. Human history is littered with terrible, terrible crimes: from British imperialism in India and Ireland, to King Leopold in the Congo, to Stalin’s gulags, to the slave trade. What makes the Shoah so unique is an industrialised, systematic, bureaucratic attempt to exterminate an entire people without trace.”

That’s how people should approach this topic. Compare that to Clarke’s piece and the manner in which he discusses denial of the Shoah as though it were an exercise in quantitative easing:

The big problem is the use of the word “scope” because it implies that the true scale of the Holocaust is a known quantity when it isn’t. In 1953 Gerald Reitlinger estimated the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust at 4.2 – 4.5 million; Raul Hilberg estimated the number of deaths to be 5.1 million; The Encycolpedia of the Holocaust estimated between 5.59 million and 5.86 million; Jacob Lestschinsky’s estimate was 5.9 million; and the Technical University of Berlin estimate is between 5.29 and 6.2 million.”

Clarke manages to assert that outright Holocaust denial is ‘extremely distasteful’ and goes further by suggesting it is ‘very often’ motivated by anti-Jewish hatred. So presumably he thinks it is occasionally motivated by philo-semitism.

But in the complete article there is no mention of what the Shoah actually was, nothing about the effect that Holocaust denial has on Jewish people, including survivors and he doesn’t even get round to saying Holocaust denial is an antisemitic act.

Here’s a tip for anti-racists: if you are obfuscating for the denial or minimisation of a race crime which killed approximately 6 million Jews try and approach it something like this:

“The intensity and ferocity of the Holocaust is unique in human history and thus the denial or minimisation of this most unspeakable of acts is to do nothing less than continue the crime. We must all stand together in fighting the denial or minimisation of this most heinous chapter in our shared human history. However should someone wish to draw on Gerard Reitlinger’s assertion, made in 1953, that between 4.2-4.5 million Jews were killed, this may not be classed as Holocaust denial/minimisation but only if they can justify why they are specifically choosing Reitlinger as opposed to virtually all of the subsequent historians who put the figure much higher – between 5.1 – 6.6 million.”

No one knows how many Jews died in WWII, it is an approximation based on available data. So if a person points to a figure decided in 1953 and ignores all the subsequent historian’s work which gives a higher figure, why are they doing it?

Are they consumed by the quest for the truth to find out exactly how many Jews died in WWII? Have they spent years sifting through the archives of the Third Reich?

Or is it something else?

Are they someone who seeks to delegitimise the Jewish need for a homeland after WWII by attempting to minimise the crime as much as possible to suit their political goals?

And the IHRA definition is not enshrined in law, despite what this dreadfully researched and immature article asserts. They are recommendations. To protect Jews.

A member of the Labour Party, not the BNP.

Take this insidious comment on the largest Labour Party forum which I encountered only a few hours after joining – it was not the only comment I saw like this, far from it. Putting aside that a left-winger thinks there are two sides to the Holocaust. That Zionists – the people who wanted to escape to a safe place because they were being treated as a racial infection – were not as equally evil as the Nazis. (Gosh it’s the end of days isn’t it?) But the idea that ‘the Zionists’ have inflated the number of Jewish dead for their own malicious ends is an idea nurtured on the far-right. It is now not uncommon to hear this in the Labour Party.

Clarke gives this person an out. Couldn’t she reasonably say “Oh sorry I’m not in anyway denying the Holocaust I was just pointing to Reitlinger who ‘the Zionists’ are choosing to ignore?”

Clare is concerned about the antisemite not the Jew.

Jones’ article is damning in it’s criticism of the actions of the Israeli government in which he advocates for a boycott of settlement goods. Yet he is also damning of the current culture of left-wing antisemitism. They are not mutually exclusive. A person may hold both positions.

Let me as clear as possible: Alternative left-wing pro-Corbyn media outlets such as AAV, Evolve Politics, The Canary, Vox Political and many more… incite left-wingers to be antisemitic in exactly the same way the right-wing tabloids incite right-wingers against Muslims. Only the latter is more overt and crude. If you use the #DontBuyTheSun hashtag or criticise the Mail Online for its racism whilst sharing articles from the above alt. Left sites you are a hypocrite choosing which minority group it’s ok for publications to incite people against.

With two Kosher shops firebombed in Manchester in the past month and Jewish MP’s receiving death threats from people on the Left it’s high time lefty media outlets got a grip. They have a responsibility, just like the mainstream media has it’s responsibilities.

Clarke also describes this as ‘unacceptable’ in the definition:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”

Can someone order me a large slice of nuance please? Ta!

Nuance Pie…yum yum

Whether Clarke has done this deliberately or not I do not know but his counter argument uniformly changes the word endeavour to state.

Leaving aside Clarke’s predictable error of neglecting to seperate the Occupied Territories from the Israeli state proper – where non-Jews have equal rights – claiming Israel is a racist state is not defined as antisemitic. Personally I think Israel has a huge problem with racism with extremist elements creeping into the Knesset and I believe the Israeli government has policies which have a racist outcome for the Palestinian people. And don’t get me started on the Ethiopian Jews….

See? What’s antisemitic about that?

But to say Israel is a racist endeavour is a kettle of fish with an entirely different hue.

The endeavour came from a people who were the victims of racism, not racists themselves. The idea of a sanctuary for the Jewish people as a refuge from European antisemitism is the endeavour. The reality of 2017 in the occupied territories is wholly different to the 1897 idea.

In a poll conducted in 2015, 93% of British Jews say Israel forms part of their identity but only 60% say they’re Zionists. See that differential? Pass the nuance again. This endeavour is an intrinsic part of Jewish identity for 93% of British Jews (it would be weird if it wasn’t) within which there are a huge variety of views. To say the endeavour is racist is to indict the 93% as racists themselves. This makes Jews a target, specifically for the ‘anti-racist’ left.

The IHRA definition seeks to protect Jews becoming targets in that fashion so it specifically chooses the word endeavour which was specifically ignored by Another Angry Voice and changed to state.

Dishonest? I don’t know.

Stupid? Absolutely.

And finally… the prestige.

MP’s, including Corbyn, are “afraid of the backlash from the pro-Israel lobby” if they reject the IHRA definition.

The lobby, the lobby, the lobby.

It’s Jews, mate.

You mean Jews, bud.

It’s Jews who wish to define their own prejudice. It’s Jews who are asking for Nazi comparisons to be withheld from political discourse involving Jewish matters, It’s Jews who will remonstrate and provide the ‘backlash’ if the IHRA definition is rejected. We are not the pro-Israel lobby, we are Jews.

In this way Clarke delegitimises not only Jewish concerns but dehumanises Jews as a people. What we think about Holocaust denial, how it feels when a Jew is compared to a Nazi, what it means to indict most of us as racists are not the genuine concerns of a minority; to Clarke and those on the left who think like him, these concerns are the machinations of a powerful cabal of malevolent Jews covertly using this definition of antisemitism as a smoke-screen to advance their own malicious political goals.

And that, right there ^^^^^^^ my fine friends, is left-wing antisemitism.

Google any of these alt. Left publications along with the word ‘antisemitism’ and you will mostly find tawdry defences of left-wing antisemitism and counter-claims of malicious intent on the part of the accuser. So… only articles and posts about…

Bad stuff wot them Jews do

Just as The Daily Mail carry only negative narratives about the immigrant, so alt. left media does the same with Jews.

If you wish to challenge this assertion then you must explain why there are virtually no positive articles about Jews or any admission that the left has a specific problem with antisemitism.

Why did no one cover (to my knowledge) the Jewish Labour Movement’s (JLM) campaign for the government to uphold the Dubs amendment? It was JLM who led the campaign and Lord Dubs was a Jew who came to Britain on the Kinder transport. When Owen Jones spoke at a JLM meeting – which represents over 95% of Jews in Labour -he received articles and tweets like this:

Where is the condemnation for filth like that in the alt. Left media?

In the run-up to the Union elections Gerard Coyne gave an interview to a Jewish newspaper. He received stuff like this:

Legitimate Criticism of Israel

When Coyne referred to this on Question Time and said that Labour had an antisemitism problem he was called ‘treacherous’ by Diane Abbott. This is how institutional antisemitism works.

Jewish MP’s, particularly Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger, have received tens of thousands of abusive and antisemitic messages, much of it from the Left. Ruth Smeeth in particular has faced death threats from people specifically on the left. Where are the articles saying “Guys we may disagree with Ruth Smeeth’s politics but this racist, misogynistic abuse has got to stop!”

Many MSM outlets wrote articles of that nature for Diane Abbot (and rightly so, the whiff of misogyny and racism around the abuse she gets is palpable) but for an alt. left media outlet to name and shame the perpetrators of left-wing antisemitism is seemingly beyond the call of their anti-racist duties. Why is that?

Occasionally right-wing tabloids do get held to account for their racism. But alt. left publications have no-one to answer to. An army of bloggers and would-be journalists with large audiences and a contempt for the mass of Jewish people is causing a great deal of damage.

Every article, every comment, every day a Jew deserts the left. Until it’s safe to return I’ll just be Another Angry Jew.**

*There are, of course, a small number of Jews who reject IHRA definition. These are anti-Zionist Jews and alt. Left publications will usually point to these Jews to uphold their arguments. The vast, vast majority of Jews endorse and support the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism – something Another Angry Voice thought superfluous to an article about the definition of anti-Jewish prejudice.

** See what I did there?

Forget The Lizards: David Icke Is Dangerous And We Should Take Him Seriously

January 4, 2017March 16, 2017 / Marlon Solomon / 77 Comments

**“Just because Hitler used the knowledge for negative reasons doesn’t reflect on the knowledge itself.” – David Icke**

David Icke is a former footballer and sports presenter who has been one of the world’s leading conspiracy theorists for over twenty years. He believes that an evil agenda is being enacted on the human race by the ‘Babylonian Brotherhood’ – supernatural reptilian overlords.

You know, the obvious stuff.

Icke believes that we are literally living in The Matrix. “We are like droplets of water in an ocean of…awareness. We are ‘individual’ at one level of perception but still part of the infinite whole.” He calls this the Infinite Awareness. Unfortunately for us these malign reptilian overlords are mucking the whole thing up. They project their extra-dimensional consciousness onto elite corporal hosts. The reptilian ‘human-hybrids’ have inveigled every nation and system on Earth, in order to fulfil their dastardly ambitions, where humans will soon be micro-chipped and live as slaves under their One World Government.

(To lighten the mood when trawling through this guff I find it helps to say One World Government in the American movie-trailer voice)

Icke’s politics today are combination of most of the dominant themes of contemporary neo-fascism, mixed in with a smattering of topics culled from the U.S. militia movement, European and Middle Eastern conspiracy theories and most recently (and predictably) Russian State propaganda. In America, for instance, he opposes gun control as a plot by the ‘elite’, which has deliberately orchestrated numerous mass shootings to whip up opposition to guns.

Far-right daily’s such as Veterans today and White Supremacist site Stormfront are teaming with links to Icke’s articles and videos. In fact one cursory search on Veterans Today brings well over a thousand results for David Icke.

Icke is on a mission to educate and free the subjugated masses; he offers hope and freedom from the grip of our Satanic blood-drinking rulers. He assures us that if we can tune into the ‘Truth Vibrations‘ we can rise up as one against the reptilian overlords.

The problem is that these overlords are Jewish.

Well of course they are.

So how does a fascist ideologue incite hatred against Jews to sell-out crowds in Britain and get away with it? It’s the question the UK media has been neglecting or unwilling to answer and is the point of this hastily convened blog. Icke is playing to a sell out crowd in Manchester next week; a city with a large, thriving Jewish community dating back over a hundred years and one that I am a part of.

Yet I seem to have awoken in a world where extreme antisemitic rhetoric and incitement is ignored and deflected because the perpetrator also believes in aliens. A place where belief in ET precludes you from being a bigot. Perhaps we need to be more attentive to Icke when he unironically says ‘it’s time to wake up.’

Icke is in fact selling out stadiums worldwide and has been doing so for years; preaching ancient and modern antisemitic conspiracy theories and inciting his bewitched followers to rise up against these – mostly Hebrew – totalitarian overlords.

Icke is more popular than ever: No other conspiracy theorist sells out to theatres and stadiums worldwide. He is clearly seen by many as simply ‘that bloke on Wogan who said he was the son of God.‘ Perhaps it would be more prudent to go with ‘he’s that Holocaust denier who spreads anti-Jewish hatred and neo-fascist ideology to sold out venues across the world.‘

Not quite as catchy, I know.

We seem to see Icke as a likeable fool rather than the dangerous individual he really is. As Justine Ehrlich pointed out to me.. ‘It’s the kind of crypto-fascism you need to get knee deep in to call, that in part is why it is so dirty.’

And no one is calling it out. If an Imam was publicly heard spouting 10 per cent of Icke’s repetoire the right-wing press would have a field day yet Icke preaches his psychotic malady to full theatres while barely a murmur of protest will be heard from anti-racist organisations and Jewish groups.

Icke is a mere footnote in the incisive and compelling works on conspiracy culture by David Aaronovich (Voodoo Histories) and Jonathan Kay (Among The Truthers). However it is rather telling that he gets more attention in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s excellent work on far-right sects, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and The Politics of Identity. Concerning Icke’s 1994 work The Robots Rebellion ‘(Icke) combines an anti-elitist, ecological and spiritual gospel, the complete battery of far-right conspiracy theories and militia concerns: secret societies, Freemasons, banking and hidden elites, the New World Order, microchip control, extraterrestrials and gun control.‘

The corollary between Neo-Nazism/Fascism and New World Order conspiracism is well documented and was around a long time before David Icke. To see the attraction New World Order conspiracism has for Neo-Nazi groups Goodrick-Clarke writes, ‘By declaring war on a secret ruling elite that enslaves modern people, the conspiracy theorists invoke a lethal projection. The elite is identified as totalitarian, anti-democratic, contemptuous of the people; the people are portrayed as helpless, unsuspecting victims of viscous plots, alien abductions, implantation and all manner of personal violations…. Covert actions, violence, terrorism – all the means the elite stand accused of employing themselves – are permitted to the victims as well so they may exterminate the conspirators and recover their lost autonomy.’

This is why David Icke is a pin-up for some on the far-right but with his antisemitic ant-globalism he probably has more acolytes on the fringes of the far-left. Either way, he is undoubtedly a dangerous individual.

In The Robots Rebellion he borrowed heavily from Behold a Pale Horse by Bill Cooper – a UFO conspiracist who introduced Icke to The Protocols Of The Elders of Zion. The Protocols are a fabricated antisemitic document used by Czarist Russia to incite pogroms against the Jews in the early 20th century. (Much of Manchester’s Jewish community – including this author’s family – fled those very pogroms and found sanctuary in the city) In Germany, Hitler endorsed the Protocols and weaponised them. It was his Warrant for Genocide. This hideous document is the most malign and destructive conspiracy theory in human history. It was compulsory reading in schools for the Hitler Youth and instrumental in inciting the German people against the Jews. As historian Norman Cohn wrote in his book about the Protocols, “There exists a subterranean world where psychological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and the superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people.”

When asked about the Protocols Icke retorted, “Just because Hitler used the knowledge for negative reasons doesn’t reflect on the knowledge itself.” Indeed when Hitler himself was told beyond all doubt the Protocols were fabricated he responded, ‘Well that proves the Jews wrote it.’

The Robots Rebellion sold out and was reprinted twice. In his next books Icke began to flirt explicitly with Holocaust denial and lost his publishing deal as a result. In And The Truth Shall Set You Free Icke repeated his previous claims that the Protocols were true, and went on to state: “I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War…. They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the funds available for his rearmament.”

He described the Nuremberg Trials as a ‘farce’ and went on.. “why do we play a part in suppressing alternative information to the official line of the Second World War? How is it right that while this fierce suppression goes on, free copies of the Spielberg film, Schindler’s List, are given to schools to indoctrinate children with the unchallenged version of events….The “All-Seeing” Jews, however, and their non-Jewish conspirators, use the smokescreen of “anti-Semitism” and the genuine suffering of real Jews to prevent investigation of their sinister activities.”

The internet is extremely thin on Icke’s antisemitism, apparently because no one can be bothered to trawl through his books and videos except the conspiracy theorists themselves. Will Offley has written a page on Public Eye and gathered more quotes from And The Truth Shall Set You Free; they can be found here.

That was back in February 2000 but precious little has been written about him in the intervening years. Since then Icke has immersed himself in anti-Zionist conspiracy theories, much of it from the Middle East, fusing them with old European antisemitic conspiracies of which there is an endless cultural reservoir. These days Icke’s Twitter timeline is heavily consumed by Zionism which he sees as the most malignant and destructive secret society on the planet.

After losing his publishing deal Icke was subsequently sued for defamtion in the US. He learned his lesson and has since avoided the word “Jewish” where possible. Instead; his books, videos and live shows refer to Rothschild Zionists, Kahazar/Sumerians/Ashkenazi or as he puts it in one of his recent texts The Global Conspiracy:- AshkeNAZI. In the same book he attempts to distance himself from his previous claims of a Jewish plot to control the world by saying there is a Jewish plot to control the world.

“I am not saying that there is a ‘Jewish’ plot to control the World. I am saying that their leading families are serious players in the reptilian bloodlines that have infiltrated all peoples and nations with the aim of manipulating themselves into power.”

How To Normalise a Fascist

Most recently Icke appeared on the BBC’s This Week as he embarked on his Wide Awake World Tour. He was asked about 9/11 and shape-shifting Lizards but any links to Neo-Nazi and neo-fascist groups were predictably ignored. Loathe as I am to criticise this programme; surely it would be prudent for politically high-brow shows such as This Week to hold Icke accountable for the extreme racial bigotry he propagates to sell-out crowds.

Much more menacing was an article published in the Independent during Icke’s last world tour. The journalist seems to have found the whole thing rather amusing, ‘It is all – largely – entertaining stuff, and clearly highly believable to many.’ Not one word in the article is given to the antisemitism explicit during said entertainment nor was it suggested that anti-vaccination conspiracy theories are inherently dangerous to the lives of children. All this and more was also ignored in a Mail online article published in July 2016.

Steve Mason, formerly of the sublime Beta Band, shows just how cool you can make Icke look. On his record Fight Them Back we hear an excerpt of David Icke talking about ‘reorganising society‘ spliced alongside Tony Blair saying ‘Libya is a goldmine of a country.’ Mason was challenged by one Twitter user at the time…

This is how Icke wins. How an audience at an Icke show will see right-on lefties sitting alongside far-right activists. It’s the conspiracy theory that glues these lost souls together with antisemitism the very marrow in their bones.

Pseudo-intellectual Russell Brand has broadcast several sycophantic conversations with Icke. Chummily discussing the nature of reality, media manipulation, globalisation; Icke is not only normalised, he is exalted as a heroic revolutionary crusader to Brand’s legion of fans; ‘I would concur David that most of us tend to live in a prescribed reality and that freedom is an illusion because freedom exists in such narrow parameters that ultimately we are enslaved by a very manipulative ideology.’ Brand is clearly far too intelligent to ask Icke about his support for Bashar-al-Assad and Vladimir Putin, his anti-abortion, anti-vaccination articles, his climate change denial, his support for the NRA, his conviction that the current migrant wave has purposefully been engineered to eradicate the native cultures of Europe. Russell Brand shows that if you’re ‘right-on’ you can be as racist as Nick Griffin on a particularly racisty day. It seems anything goes if you’re against the system.

Icke’s current world tour began in Australia in July. The Sydney Morning Herald is one of the rare media outlets who gave Icke his due. Ori Golan penned an article explaining what shouldn’t have to be explained… ‘A person who writes such things and makes home videos titled The Lizards and the Jews and Zionism, the cause of World Mayhem*, is not just a nut job; that person is anti-Semitic.’

The Mainstream

Russell Brand lucidly demonstrates how Icke is so successful. Given the populist political climate of the hour, anti-establishment sentiment can propel bizarre fringe beliefs into the mainstream. And Icke does appear in the mainstream. Only recently the video of Eva Bartlett and the degenerate conspiracy theories surrounding the White Helmets in Syria were shared on social media by people with otherwise relatively mainstream beliefs.

Eva Bartlett has appeared on David Icke’s show which Louise Proyect discussed in a recent article “This sort of toxic sludge can be found in a number of Assadist websites that combine 9/11 theories with unending and often ludicrous attempts to smear Syrian rebels as perpetrators of “false flag” incidents, including VoltaireNet, Off-Guardian and Global Research. That they overlap with outright fascist platforms such as Infowars and David Icke’s website should have provoked some soul-searching long ago.”

Icke on Syria:

“Assad is a tyrant oppressing his people! Does anyone really believe that!? The story that we must help the people of Syria is frickin’ bollocks.”

On Hilary Clinton:

“Hilary is another cocaine user (of course) and a lesbian.”
In Icke’s book Global Conspiracy he alleges that Hilary Clinton uses female sex slaves and is turned on by female genital mutilation.

On Jo Cox:

“That dead person is being deified out of all proportion… Today, with her body barely cold, her husband Brendan Cox is tweeting out a Go Fund Me link to his wife’s favourite causes…The White Helmets. The White Helmets are the military propaganda arm of the Allies attempt at regime change by destabilising Syria.”

(Not uncommon discourse in mainstream politics these days)

Icke has published nearly 50 articles in the past six months in support of Vladimir Putin.

Piers Corbyn has appeared several times on David Icke’s nightly radio programme – The Richie Allen Show. Piers, who also publicly shares platforms with Holocaust Deniers seems to have much in common with Icke and is doing his brother no favours at all by validating Icke’s theories. Peter Tatchell, amongst many others, has appeared on the same show.

Richie Allen marked Holocaust Memorial Day 2016 by inviting Holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom on his show where he stated that 200,000 Jews died in the Holocaust and that there is ‘no trace of any extermination policy, no trace of any scorn or contempt towards for example Jews in the camps, they’re described in a perfectly respectful manner.’

The Labour Party

What internal crisis in a major British political party in 2016 could propel David Icke to intervene?

If you said Labour’s antisemitism crisis you win a falafel.

These images are from articles on Icke’s website published in the last year.

Alongside his website The David Icke Forum is a crucible for extreme conspiracy theorists to discuss evil plots and their machinates. Ruth Smeeth, the Labour MP who has received over 25,000 antisemitic and misogynistic messages in the past year, including long explicit death threats from far-left and far-right activists, has several pages of hate dedicated to her on Icke’s rancid forum. (There is a direct corollary between misogyny and racial hatred with female Jewish MP’s suffering far more abuse than their male counterparts) Good and brave people like Ruth Smeeth are feeling the real-life consequences of the cauldron of hatred whipped up by these frenzied maniacs who congregate in the cesspit of Icke’s website.

Live Show

His last tour The Lion Sleeps contains a 25 minute section of explicit antisemitic anti-Zionism, which if you can stomach – not recommended – is available here.

A small portion of the antisemitic images that Icke uses in his live show

His current show promises to be much worse. The trailer for his new show is over ten minutes in length during which he cannily avoids references to otherworldly reptilian phenomena. Only at the end are we briefly shown this image:

All powerful.

Not human.

Malign.

Sound familiar?

This is how Nazis portrayed the Jews; except the rats have become lizards, a new twist on an old theme. These memes and modes of thought don’t just simply vanish.

What’s To Be Done

Make a fuss. Take the man at his word. Take him seriously. He means what he says, he is a doyen of antisemitism and a purveyor of our darkest ideologies. He is a hate preacher.

I’ll defend Icke’s right to say what he wants but cannot defend Jewish community leaders and anti-racist organisations who remain passive in the face of overt antisemitic grandstanding in their community. But this doesn’t just concern Jews. This concerns feminists, ethnic minorities of all persuasions, anti-fascists, anti-racists, Syrians, people who don’t want the memory of Jo Cox sullied and her husband abused, environmentalists, in short: anyone who wants to be a member of the Anti-Stupid Party.

David Icke is performing a sold-out show at The Manchester Apollo on Saturday 14th January followed by a show in Ireland and then a European tour plus two shows in Canada.

I’m currently reading the 2007 book David Icke’s Guide to the Global Conspiracy – or as I’ve come to know it Mein Kampf for Dummies. Whether Icke contravenes hate-speech laws or not is of little concern; I believe good arguments will never chase out bad ones if we refuse to have them. But the line is drawn at incitement. Given that the Global Conspiracy referred to in the title of his book is mostly being enacted by Jews, it’s worth pausing for a moment and taking in the books’ complete title:

The David Icke Guide to The Global Conspiracy: And How To End It.

For now I’ll leave you in the safe, warm hands of Christopher Hitchens speaking in 2007 at the Jewish Literature Festival:

“Antisemitism is a very, very serious cultural danger, and it’s only a fool who thinks that it is a threat only to Jews. Antisemitism is a very, very toxic threat to everything we can decently call ‘civilization’… If someone says they don’t like West Indians, because of their — I don’t know what it might be — their music. Or they don’t like Indians because of the smell of their cooking. Or they don’t like Koreans for their Kimchi — whatever it might be. Every minority and majority in the world has a version of this kind of prejudice.

But, as Freud pointed out, they’ll all sink their differences when it comes to the Jews. And with the Jews it’s not their cooking or their sex lives or any of this, and it’s not just vulgar prejudice about skin color or smell.

It’s a theory.

It’s a paranoid theory that tries to explain quite a lot. It’s fascinated with gold, with secret documents, with missing codices in ancient treaties, with the idea of an invisible and secret government. It’s a very, very, very dangerous, pseudo-intellectual prejudice.”

(The full conversation is available here)

Marlon Solomon – Jan 2017

@supergutman

*The Lizards and the Jews and the Zionists the Cause of World Mayhem… was in fact the Youtube title of a Jon Ronson documentary on David Icke and not a film by David Icke as stated in the essay. Instead David Icke has films called Rothschild Zionists, World War III and the New World Order.

The Livingstone Fall Out

October 16, 2016April 4, 2017 / Marlon Solomon / Leave a comment

The Home Affairs Select Committee report, into modern antisemitism in the UK is a robust and damning indictment of it’s current culture; with a justified focus on its’ inexorable rise in the Labour Party. The report exposes the lack of understanding of modern antisemitism, it’s current prevalence and importantly states how ‘the unique nature of antisemitism requires a unique response.’

Jeremy Corbyn’s response has been to claim that the Home Affairs report is biased and has a ‘disproportionate emphasis on Labour.’

Dear Jeremy,

There wouldn’t be a Home Affairs report into antisemitism if Her Majesty’s opposition hadn’t suspended up to 50 members (many of them elected) for alleged antisemitism since you became leader.

Kind Regards

Nearly Everyone Else

If I could add one thing to this substantial report it would be on the rise new Left-wing media sites that have cropped up in the last year. Whilst the criticism of Twitter’s inertia on hate speech is welcome it may have been appropriate to discuss antisemitic narratives propagated in new left-wing media.

The Labour Party now lauds itself as being the biggest left-wing political party in Europe. It has over half a million members; over 300000 of which voted for the current leader in the last internal election. The Labour leadership is rarely shy of refracting its’ low opinion polls towards the huge mandate; yet it cowers and hides from the added responsibilities and issues such a change brings.

From the evidence on social media – there is a sizeable proportion of the mandate (including elected officials) that have little or no understanding of Jewish history, Jewish culture and Jewish sensitivities. Jews make up less than 0.5% of the UK population. Nearly half this country will go to their graves having never knowingly met a Jewish person. To many people there is simply nothing more ‘other’ than Jew.

Many new members of the Labour Party became disaffected with The Mainstream Media and began to feast exclusively on alt. left media outlets. Suddenly there was a surge in popularity for more outlets that were exclusively pro-Corbyn and numerous Canary copycat sites appeared. The Canary itself went from being a blog with 10000 subscribers to a news source that regularly gets over 300,000 readers per story, in less than a year.

To demonstrate how new Left-wing media has propagated antisemitic discourse I am a useful case study. I used Twitter rarely and my Facebook feed was mostly constructed from mainstream left-wing political opinion and pictures of new-born babies. Then Livingstone opened his big mouth and suddenly a flood of very dubious material appeared on my Facebook feed. Over nine years on Facebook and I hadn’t seen anything I would deem antisemitic. I have Muslim friends and others who campaign for Palestinian rights and frequently post on this matter yet never once felt any of this to be antisemitic. Unbalanced? Sometimes, yes. However I knew it was coming from the right place and I also knew that they took care to avoid antisemitic tropes.

This changed overnight post-Livingstone and it didn’t come from people I knew who had previously been vocal about Palestine, it came instead from newly politicised members of the Labour Party who had never, to my knowledge, been actively involved in Israel/Palestine or any Jewish issues until this point.

I followed their journey…

liv-1

liv-3

liv-4

liv-5

liv-6

liv-10 liv-11

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cuntbarrowmeme

liv-9

And finally the journey was complete.

It is a tribute to the endless cultural reservoir of antisemitism which exists on and offline that it is able to vault new adherents to such extremist positions in a matter of weeks. It is tribute to the perpetual nature of this ancient prejudice. It is a tribute to those who want us to forget what a dangerous pseudo-intellectual hatred antisemitism is.

“The French government claims it wants to prevent ISIS, a US and Israeli creation, from gaining access to videos of the attacks for the purposes of propaganda.

Israel-based Nice System operates all the 5,000 CCTV cameras in several French cities including Nice.

Richard Gutjahr, who filmed the Nice carnage, is a German Zionist Christian who studied in Germany, France and United States. He is married to former Israeli Mossad agent and Knesset member Lieutenant Dr. Einat Wilf. She is a senior fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute, an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and a roving global ambassador for Israel Hasbara Committee.

The problem for the Labour Party is that these sites are pro-antisemitism and vociferously pro-Corbyn. They are numerous and growing.

Final example is a new site called Evolve Politics that appeared on my Facebook feed a few weeks ago. As usual it’s pro-Corbyn/anti-Tory/anti-austerity with the odd conspiracy thrown in the mix. It’s a few months old and already has 70000 readers. It is not a conspiracy site yet it posted something that can only be described as a Holocaust denial initiation ceremony.

Here it is promoted on new left-wing site Evolve Politics

Here it is promoted on Neo-Nazi site Veterans Today.

As Christopher Hitchens deftly put it, ‘These guys will sink all their differences when it comes to the Jews.‘

Is there anything to be done? Possibly. If a site is found to have continual racist material, which is beyond the pale, it should be blacklisted for elected politicians who are culpable if they promote such sites on social media. This includes articles which are not racist but come from blacklisted sites. It may also make alternative media sites think harder about their content. Then again, I might also grow a third testicle.

Even after all the focus on antisemitism a Labour councillor still felt it appropriate to post this two weeks ago:

capture

This is something you’re most likely to find on an extreme-right noticeboard or a David Icke show. Instead of just suspending this councillor it would be worth blacklisting this highly antisemitic site for all elected officials of the Labour Party. Could it be done?

A final thought on the report itself:

In 2006 sociologist David Hirsh created the Livingstone Formulation,

The key elements of the Livingstone Formulation are as follows:

To refuse to discuss the content of the accusation by shifting focus instead onto the hidden motive for the allegation.
To make a counter-accusation that the accuser is not mistaken, has not made an error of judgment, but is getting it wrong on purpose.
To collapse everything, some of which may be demonization of Israel, support for boycott, or antisemitism, into a legitimate category like ‘criticism’.
To allege that those who raise the issue of antisemitism are doing so as part of a common secret plan to silence such ‘criticism’.

To see this in action one need only read the first page of the Home Affairs report: ‘A survey of Labour Party members who joined after the 2015 General Election found that 55% agreed with the notion that antisemitism is “not a serious problem at all, and is being hyped up to undermine Labour and Jeremy Corbyn, or to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel”’

The Canary Ate My Hamster

August 21, 2016November 8, 2016 / Marlon Solomon / Leave a comment

To know what an inflammatory issue the Arab-Israeli conflict is, is to know that there are those who have already dismissed these words because of my use of the word ‘conflict’. That’s where we are.

The policing on both sides of this issue is so fiercely enforced that I have always been wary of entering into it with either side, and most of all this includes my parents who are pro-Israel to the point where discussing it could ruin yet another Christmas:

“You cannot say ‘we made the desert bloom’ anymore. THIS IS 2016!”

(silence)

“Pass the stuffing.”

But that is not what this is about.

However, seeing as this post involves Israel – and my surname is a tad Semitic – I better lay my ideological cards on the table:

*deep breath*

I support the Palestinian right to self-determination; I stand for a peace that includes security for both Palestinian and Jewish people alike. I stand against Israeli right-wing expansionist policy, (pretty much any right-wing policy) and heavy-handed military reprisals. I also stand against Hamas who do not have the best interests of their people at heart and quote The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion in their manifesto. As Hitler used this fabricated document as his warrant for genocide, I’m just not that into it.

*and exhale*

It’s an extremely simplified position but that’s roughly where I stand on Israel/Palestine – in the wishy-washy middle – so what’s the point in entering into the debate when all I can offer is an unwanted lecture on tolerance and a two-state solution?

Pass the sprouts.

Recently I began to feel the need to become more involved as a few ‘items’ started appearing on my Facebook feed which were overtly or covertly antisemitic. I needed to know why.

Having been on Facebook for nine years I had never seen anything apart from legitimate criticism of Israel so it came as something as a shock. Antisemitism is often hidden and thus unknowingly propagated so the cause can require a little excavating to get to the nub. Most of the routes in seem to revolve around conspiracy theories but there are other less travelled roads and thus a few days ago I found myself reading The Canary.

The Canary is an alternative online news publication. It was founded by Kerry-Anne Mendoza who is on the radical left and an activist in the Occupy movement. The Canary was originally a blog called Scriptonite Daily which had nearly 10000 subscribers. It morphed into a news website after Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the opposition in order to put some positive spin on the man who was getting flayed alive by The Mainstream Media (MSM). All fair enough.

Whatever anyone’s feeling about Jeremy Corbyn there is no doubt that he was stigmatised by an extremely hostile media – particularly in those first few months. Thus it is rational that his supporters should look elsewhere for the news. However that is where my diplomacy ends. After reading a disturbing story in Private Eye a few days ago and doing a little research, I found The Canary to be nothing better than what I would expect from a Paul Dacre rag. I must say at this point there will be no political point scoring about Jeremy Corbyn here…

That is not what this is about.

To sum up the Private Eye article:- it condemns The Canary for using ‘click-bait’ to lure traffic from tabloid newspapers to their own site, basically using the same deceitful tactics employed by the publications they profess to be against. It goes on to say that journalists on The Canary ‘turn tricks for clicks’ so employees get paid in direct correlation to how much traffic their article receives. Not how truthful, insightful or accurate their reporting is. The Eye also mentions one of the Canary’s leading journalists posting a series of anti-Jewish tweets and – as has become almost a daily ritual – I perform an epically long sigh.

The tweets come from The Canary’s own ‘firebrand’ journalist Steve Topple who is also a member of The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition.
Here are just a few of his greatest hits:

Over a series of three years 2013-2015 he posted tweets that are obscenely antisemitic. As a committed conspiracy theorist he found himself hobnobbing with Neo-Nazis and far right morons.

As all antisemites on the left quickly find out, they end up having more in common with the far right than they do with their own. You can find out more about him and his twitter mates here but that is only for those with strong stomachs.

After three years of racism Mr. Topple apologised. I believe his apology, just a shame it came at around the same time his journalistic career moved on to things.

Referring to his tweets he opines… ‘they have appeared to be disparaging to Jewish people.’ Not that they were disparaging, they just appeared so. I don’t believe that needs any further comment.

So next I wanted to take a look at yer actual Canary. First article was about Israel.

It’s headline:

Israel is paying Facebook to spread a cruel lie about the Palestinians

You can read the Canary article here but to summarise:
The Israeli government have arrested Waheed Borsh who works for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Israeli’s claim that Borsh has been subverting money from a vital aid programme and giving it to Hamas to make weapons instead of rebuilding houses.

The article moves on to mention Israel itself; mainly the killing of 2000 people during the conflict in Gaza two years ago and also dismisses accusations that Hamas are a terrorist organisation. Although I would like to comment on the latter claim, I am not taking issue with anything the article says about the situation in Gaza or Hamas…

You see, that is not what this is about.

From what I already knew about this story, coupled with a little research from such unfashionable sources as The Independent, I pieced together what we actually know for sure:

We know the guy has been arrested. We know the Israelis say there is evidence to show that he’s guilty. We know that Hamas says it’s a lie. We know the UN demands a fair trial. We know the UNDP is concerned but have doubts that as much as $22 million has been siphoned. That’s all we know, so how do we come to an informed decision?

Well we can’t. That’s the point. Unless we see the evidence and come to said decision.

The reason I am so interested in this article is that it actually seems quite a unifying story in a sense. Let’s say the man in question is guilty; it would be in the best interests of the Palestinian people to find out where their aid has gone whilst it’s in the best interests of Israel to stop Hamas arming itself. Palestinians and Israelis sharing a common interest? Sounds good to me. But gleefully not for The Canary. They claim the guy is innocent and the Israeli’s are lying. How do they know? They don’t, of course. So The Canary is lying and in the process they have taken a potentially unifying cause and used it drive people further apart on what is already the most polarised issue on planet Earth. I think that’s pretty despicable. The Canary is not a solution to the problem, it is a perpetuation of it.

Or maybe not, because the Canary article goes on to say:
‘But despite the Israeli authorities’ assertive language, ‘indicted’ does not mean ‘convicted’. It means he is accused of the deed, but it is still to be proven that the deed was done.’

Well that’s alright then.

Until you remember that the headline says it is ‘A cruel lie.’ That’s some double-think right there.

The UN have demanded an open and transparent fair trial. The Independent reported:

‘Responding on Monday to the Israeli indictment against Mr Halabi, the U.N. Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Robert Piper, called for a fair and transparent trial.

“If proven by a due legal process, these actions deserve unreserved condemnation; Gaza’s demoralized and vulnerable citizens deserve so much better,” he said in a statement.’

Well can’t we all at least agree on that?

Also, The Canary only wants to discuss the issue of ‘rubble’ stolen but doesn’t mention any of the money that has allegedly been pilfered. Why?

Amusingly, The Canary article has numerous hyperlinks which keep going back to the same two publications… The Guardian and The Independent – seems they’d be a bit lost without MSM.

Although they are lying and sensationalising, I do not expect folk to feel sorry for Israel because of a smear, far from it.

That is not what this is about.

I think we can assume that some Canary readers take it all with a huge pinch of salt but many clearly use it as replacement for and a reaction against MSM. This may be understandable because of the Corbyn-bashing but is nevertheless not without it’s peril.

Back to the article in question which we’ve deconstructed to a point where we know what’s true, what’s conjecture and what’s a lie. Next question. What is the ‘cruel lie’ being spread about The Palestinian ‘people’? One man has been arrested and charged with an offence. How is that a lie about an entire people as the headline suggests? Talk about inciting hatred…

But sadly it’s far worse than that. The most damning indictment of the whole enchilada is summed up by the opening four words of the headline which I want to take another look at…

Israel is paying Facebook to spread a cruel lie about the Palestinians

So I clicked on the hyperlink on The Canary article and found myself on the Facebook homepage of The Israeli Ministry of Home Affairs.

Well, that was a first.

Now, large professional institutions spend money on social media to get information in the public domain. Political institutions spend money on social media to get information into the public domain. My band pays money to social media to promote our next gig. What is the story here?

Finally we have arrived – well we never really left – at the most vile and despicable trope of all… ‘Israel Is Paying Facebook’ Well of course it pays Facebook! Who doesn’t? It is a sponsored post. Whalley Range Liberal Democrats have a sponsored post. Give me strength.

The problem is that it is purposefully pandering to the most pernicious form of antisemitism. The Jews control the media… that strain again. The Jews control the media, the Jews control the banks, the Jews control my bum.

It recently hit home to me how many people believe or half-believe various bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories. Sadly there is a prevalence of these beliefs with people who have become disenfranchised with MSM and thus seeking information in dark, dangerous and often intensely antisemitic avenues. If you don’t know, pretty much all conspiracy theories end up at Jew. Jews did 9/11, ISIS stands for Israel Secret Intelligence Service and the mother of them all… The Protocols of The Elders of Zion – a fabricated document published by counter revolutionaries in Russia in 1919. It contributed to Jews being murdered and driven out of their homes during the Pogroms, a contributing factor for my family, who fled to Manchester from Lithuania in 1919.

The document is the minutes of a meeting (which they mislaid – oops) between the most prominent Jews in the world in 1897, whereby they set out their vision for world domination, control of the banks and the media. It was used by Hitler as his warrant for genocide and belief in this gross fabrication is once again on the rise. People really believe this guff. They walk with us.

As an example; yesterday I confronted the worst offender I know – he believes that 1.25 million Jews died in The Holocaust, that American Jewry orchestrated the whole thing and in fact wanted it to happen – but more on that another time.
But yes. Really. That’s where virtually all conspiracy theories end up folks, there’s no way around it. Jew, Jew, Jew.

Back to The Canary. Until last year one of their leading journalists Steve Topple was a ‘truther’ who believed all kinds of these racist and crazy conspiracy theories involving Jews. The Canary knows that people who paddle in the pool of Alternative History do so outside The Mainstream Media. The Canary knows what it is doing when it’s first four words are ‘Israel Is Paying Facebook’ because remember, that is not what the story is about!

The Canary knows that it is click-bait for people who believe what it’s own ‘firebrand’ journalist Steve Topper believes/used to believe.

The Canary knows what its doing when it writes this headline.

The author of the piece, Carlyn Harvey, says she is attracted to The Canary because she… ‘has been struck by the mainstream media’s ability to be as creative with their reporting as she is in her fiction.’

I am not saying Carlyn Harvey’s headline or article is antisemitic. But I am saying it panders to antisemitic tropes and it does it knowingly, wilfully and deceitfully.

That is what this is about.

It is gutter gutter journalism and it gives me the same sick feeling I get when I see a headline like The Man Who Hated Britain or Asylum Seekers Go Home. The Canary is playing to the gallery, and the gallery is full of conspiracy theorists and antisemites. My well-meaning friends in the stalls need take note.

I am not against alternative media whatsoever, I just see The Canary
as The Daily Mail in a different guise.

Former Canary writers interviewed by Buzzfeed said…
‘“You can earn anything from £100 to £4,000 month depending on how viral you go.”

He was also “uneasy about some of the hyperbolic headlines the editors were asking us to come up with for our articles”, which he found “a little embarrassing” and called The Canary’s business model “hyper-capitalistic.”’

The Canary is the answer to The Mainstream Media if the question is: can you find an alternative news stream that is more dangerous and corrupt than The Mainstream Media?