THE GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA ARE PRETENDING TO SUPPORT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY—BY OBEYING THE FAR RIGHT ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have just been rioting in Tel Aviv itself, with the match banned as a result. For the previous 72 hours, the British public were once again instructed, by the media and politicians, not to believe their lying eyes. Forget videos of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters running riot in Amsterdam in November, or of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters beating someone in Athens unconscious in March last year: banning Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from a game at Aston Villa is, according to the UK’s prime minister, antisemitic. It did not need confirmation from the Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs that the British government is now entirely obeying the diktats of the State of Israel. “A line must be drawn” Gideon Sa’ar reports having told foreign secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday (19 October), listing the measures necessary further to spread fear among, and alienate, British Jewish people. This included the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Sa’ar: “expressed our clear and unequivocal expectation that this disgraceful decision be revoked and that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans be allowed to attend the game”. The resulting campaign is just the most recent in a redoubled wave of attacks on fact and community, clearly at the Israeli state’s behest. It is worth examining the run up to it. At the start of October, thirteen UK citizens were among those kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli military. Millions of people worldwide had been watching live-streamed footage from the Global Sumud Flotilla; around 50 small, civilian boats on a humanitarian mission to break Israel’s 17 year-long blockade of Gaza. By 2 am on Thursday 2nd, around 13 of the boats had been boarded and seized by Israel, with the rest still under pursuit. In total, 462 peaceful flotilla activists, from around 45 countries, were eventually taken hostage. Many would later report being tortured. By Thursday evening, emergency protests in support of the flotilla crew had erupted across the world, through the whole of Europe through to Dhaka, Rio and beyond. The UK public’s response, while comparatively muted, was no different. Earlier that day, the British Transport Police had issued a warning. Protests were expected “in response to Israel detaining activists on the Global Sumud Flotilla in the early hours of this morning”. Emergency gatherings indeed sprang up that evening around the country, from Edinburgh to London Piccadilly. Later that morning, in Manchester, two Jewish people had tragically been killed, and others injured, after a terrorist attacked a synagogue. The feelings of shock, dismay and horror across the population were heartfelt: condemnations of the act, and support for the victims and the wider Jewish community poured in from across all spectrums – religious, political and communal. And then one of the largest of disinformation campaigns slammed into action. It was spread by a variety of actors with a variety of motives, but the strategy was the same. To start with: tell people that the UK flotilla protests were not protests in support of the flotilla. Tell them they were protests in celebration of the Manchester terrorist attack. The flotilla protests were “a shameful response to the Manchester attack” according to The Spectator. “Vicious Jew-hatred was indulged, yet again” agreed the Scotsman. “They weren’t demonstrating. They were, actually celebrating. I can’t even imagine whoever’s seen such vile scenes on our streets” Farage told his followers. “I could not take it that after such a horrendous terrorist attack, I could see marches of celebrations in London and other cities that celebrated this murderous attack”, Israeli deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel said, on Good Morning Britain. The next immediate target was larger; hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people: those who had marched peacefully through London, month after month,  against their government’s complicity in genocide. Suddenly, once again, the marches were “hate marches”, specifically a mass of “Jew hate”, and directly linked to the Manchester terror attack. “Everyone on pro-Palestine marches this weekend is complicit” threatened the Express. Social media was bombarded by posts from right wing accounts: “Anti Semitic mobs have been allowed to march through our streets, waving their terrorist flags and shouting Death to Jews” was one exemplar. “People like killing Jews” the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges clarified. Until now, coverage of the silent, seated, placard-holding Palestine Action protests had been sympathetic. It would, you would think, from the footage of priests, pensioners, Quakers and disabled people being arrested under the Terrorism Act, and carried off by reluctant police, be difficult to sell this as an antisemitic hate event. But not this time. “We’ve had Swastikas, pro-Hamas posters, pro-terror posters and calls for Intifada”, Dan Hodges asserted, of the most recent Palestine Action protest in Trafalgar Square on 4 October, which he does not appear to have attended. The supposed evidence for this came from three photos of people on the fringes of the protest: a grey-haired man with a t-shirt which compared the Israeli government to Nazis, and one person with a placard saying they supported Hamas’ right to resistance. A banner from Cage, the campaigning civil rights organisation demanding that the government “Abolish terror laws” was presumably “pro terror”. The Times’ Matthew Syed, wandering around the sombre square on Saturday, was asking people, there to protest their government’s support of an ongoing genocide, whether “Hamas were partly responsible”. Told to piss off with his stupid questions by women there to witness the protest, Syed extrapolates this into a “hatred of Jews”. Many participants in the protest were Jewish and the protest itself was supported by Jewish organisations, including Jewish Voice for Labour and Na’amod. There were placards affirming the general grief for Manchester, but Syed comes away with “the pervasive view that the Manchester atrocity was not a heinous attack but righteous comeuppance for an evil people”. The protestors, from priest to Quaker, were “almost gloating over the Yom Kippur attack” the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews later told his Jewish audience. Coasting on the back of this, like a surfer upon sewage, was the British government. Naturally they wanted to end the protests; the public accusations of their engagement in the mass slaughter of defenceless people. And yet, interviewed by Owen Jones and Rivkah Brown at the Labour Party conference last month, it was clear that they were not about to do this by stopping their diplomatic and military support for the current Israeli government. Indeed, the government can do nothing to go against the Trump/Netanyahu axis, or so it has persuaded itself. Consider the haunted grey face of Yvette Cooper, questioned by Jones over Gaza. Or Jess Phillips, pursued by an incredulous Rivkah Brown with questions about the proscription of Palestine Action. “We’re just doing what we’re told” shrugged Phillips’ body language. “Are you daft, or something?” “I just do as I’m told, you know”, Labour’s Peter Prinsley confirmed to Declassified UK outside the conference. So this ideologically authoritarian, blindly in thrall government doubles down. The Prime Minister told the country that there are “people on our streets calling for the murder of Jewish people”. He did not mean the threat, to all people, of insane extremist violence; he meant what Gideon Sa’ar has instructed him to mean: the schoolgirls, students, pensioners, white and brown, singing “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. According to Sa’ar, and the right wing press, and their supporters, this calls for “the elimination of the State of Israel” – and is therefore antisemitic. Legislation, said Sa’ar, was needed. And thus the UK’s right wing, and its convenient dupes, flog the fallacy that the majority of the country who demanded arms sales to Israel be suspended, or who think banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans is a good idea, simply hate Jewish people. Meanwhile, the Israeli state not only invites in, but parades, a man known as one of the UK’s most unwanted Nazi-adjacent mortgage fiddlers. The shock among the British Jewish community when Tommy Robinson’s trip was announced was palpable, including from the British Board of Deputies of British Jews, which described him as a “thug” who represented “the very worst of Britain”. Robinson was urging supporters to rally at the Maccabi Tel Aviv/Villa game, where the Prime Minister and his accomplices are simultaneously attempting to expedite, as directed by Sa’ar, an influx of notoriously violent foreign race-haters, screaming “antisemitism” if challenged. If there were a better way to spread fear, division and hatred among our Muslim and Jewish communities, it is difficult to think of one. “If Tommy Robinson wants to show he’s a friend of Jews I urge him not to go after Jewish journalists just because they happen to disagree with him” pleaded one Jewish journalist. It is a terrible and damning game that this government and its allies are attempting: pretending to support the Jewish community by obeying the far right. Meanwhile, excluding figures from London, religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims rose by 19% in the year before March, including direct attacks on mosques and Muslims themselves. Communities are standing up to this, as they have, and they can, and they will.  The government, clearly, will not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Israel Police / Sports5. Maccabi Tel Aviv banners read “We’re back from reserve duty” and “Harbu Derby“ The post Red card for reality appeared first on Freedom News.

WHILE STARMER FLASHES HIS MORAL VOID AND FARAGE GETS A BBC FLUFF JOB, THE PEOPLE CARRY ON FIGHTING ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ For UK comedy, these days one has to depend on the promotional videos still scuttling out from the Prime Minister’s office, like perky little cockroaches. In the recent attempt to launch “Phase 2” of the government, together with “a more powerful Number 10”, the feet of Downing Street staff trudge upstairs (“don’t show our faces!”); the Prime Minister tries to place papers neatly into a folder, and fails; the Prime Minister tries to enthuse his team with “good spirits, confidence and conviction”; someone’s hand fiddles, too menacingly, with a ballpoint. A final close-up shows the Prime Minister clicking, with great concentration, followed by a smirk of triumph, on a mouse. There isn’t, curiously, an England flag in sight—not even a Union Jack; just a sizeable painting of a large, vaguely human-shaped, melting, black blob, directly behind the prime-ministerial chair. It’s not, of course, a depiction of a lost soul, but still the country flails, trapped in Starmer’s moral dissolution. Racists waving flags menace asylum seekers, people of colour, and their allies: Starmer says he loves flags. People swallow vicious, hate-filled lies, egged on by billionaires and supremacists: Starmer “gets” the lies; Great Yarmouth faces a weekend of “the UK’s biggest white power gig for a decade”: Yvette Cooper is wheeled forward to confirm that her house is permanently tricked out like a mini-roundabout. Since then, we’ve had a Cabinet reshuffle which resembles nothing more than the Cups and Balls trick. “You thought David Lammy was under here? No, he’s miraculously turned up here! Oooh, where’s Yvette Cooper gone?”—except that nobody cares where the balls are, and there’s already far too much bollocks to cope with. Assisted suicide! Badgers! Farm tax! Water shit! Cost of living! Welfare cuts! Peter Mandelson! The British public, welded to the rails, stares down the barrel of a train tunnel, from which a puffing, jeering, farting, purplish monstrosity lurches towards them. But worry not, Parliament has been back at work since 1 September and is carrying on as usual. A peaceful young woman in prison is on hunger strike, and in critical condition, detained for 9 months so far without trial. Police are holding back tears as they arrest peaceful protestors for terrorism. Meanwhile the Israeli government continues to starve Gaza and erase it, and increase the conquest of the West Bank. More IDF soldiers have kill themselves. Presumably in later years Starmer will think back fondly to the time he united opposite poles at asylum demos, with the chants of “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” coming heartily from both sides. That’s the cost of holding the centre, say the grown-ups, shaking their heads, but the centre has not held, even if “being a bit murdery” could exist, and, sadly, anarchy has yet to be loosed upon the world. Instead, Labour’s backroom boys are now “fighting like rats in a pack” over the leadership succession, which, again, no-one else cares about—unless perhaps someone is busy trying to reanimate Margaret Thatcher’s corpse. What’s to say about Reform UK, except that the large majority of the country seriously do not want them, despite continuing, slavishly fawning publicity from the mainstream media? Almost every time the mobile group of flag-wavers appear in front of what everyone persists in calling “hotels”, they’re outnumbered. Reform are losing councillor after councillor. Their four MPs, and the leadership, already fight like venal politicians in a sack. The Great Yarmouth white power gig turned out to have sold around 500 tickets, about the size of a bowls club, and has now, thanks to locals and campaign groups, been cancelled. Nigel Farage, who, as Il Duce-elect, still needs to retain his parliamentary seat, has come out as hating his own constituency. Fail not the BBC, which can make Uriah Heep look like a man of principle on a Sunday. Never mind what the people want: Reform, with its lies and racists and fear-mongering and riot-stoking and threats and long-held desire to make handguns freely available is what, we’re being told, they are going to get. “Unless Starmer is able to meet this moment”, falters the Guardian hopefully, like someone trying to insert a metal key into an electronic lock. And lo! Into this horrible scenario gallops Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, his stallion of truth for once charging down the media bull, meriting not only more coverage in 5 minutes than the Green Party has had in a decade, but a picture in the understandably conflicted Guardian which made him look like a vampiric Shrek. And yea! Looming in the background are Corbyn and Sultana’s “Not Your Party” which manages to be far more attractive than Reform, despite not having a leader, or leaders, or even a manifesto—by golly it’s the Paris Commune! Or maybe State and Revolution. All the while, the people carry on, fighting against this genocidal black pall. From the heart of the Cotswolds to the centre of Edinburgh, from the doubling of numbers queuing for arrest in London’s Parliament Square, to the thousands on the streets of Belfast, the last few days alone are bursting with increased opposition. It’s astonishing. We should do all we can to make it effective, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Peter Marshall The post Farts, flags, and the melting black blob of UK politics appeared first on Freedom News.

THE CLUMSY ATTEMPT TO SILENCE ARTISTS OPPOSING GENOCIDE ONLY MAKES THEIR MESSAGE LOUDER ~ Stanton Cree ~ Over the last week I found myself in the interesting position of having to navigate the British establishment’s censorship just to listen to a bit of music, watch some TV, and a film. I started my weekend wanting to catch Kneecap‘s Glastonbury set. I had to wait, however, until the BBC uploaded it to iPlayer after caving to government pressure and declining to livestream the group. Having missed Bob Vylan, I then had to search for a recording, as the BBC refused to upload it after an explosion of outrage from politicians and journalists. Next, I had to make time to watch To Kill a War Machine before it will presumably get banned for supporting non-violent direct action terrorism. Finally, I got to watch Gaza: Doctors Under attack on Channel 4 as the BBC, once again, refused to show it. By now I’m sure you’ve realised the thing that connects all this together is Palestine, and the suppression of anyone or anything that draws attention to the ongoing genocide. Enough has been said about the blatant hypocrisy of the garden-variety ‘Free Speech Warrior’ working to silence those speaking out against racism, sexism, homophobia, and genocide. What we are witnessing now, however, are very obvious examples of state censorship—ironic given those in government are always banging on about a ‘Free Speech crisis‘. Given my low opinion and regularly validated distrust of government, state censorship isn’t particularly surprising to me. The BBC has traditionally aligned itself with the imperial status quo, and the Labour party is just as much part of the establishment as the Tories. State intervention to deny artists their rights to expression is unfortunately nothing new either—an ongoing example is the cops’ continued gagging of Grime and Drill artists. What I do find astonishing is how quickly the pretence of state non-interference in the arts has been discarded. Politicians and media have shifted from quietly ignoring censorship to openly endorsing it when it comes to Kneecap and Bob Vylan—who have consequently had shows pulled. What is it that the powers that be find so egregious? Apparently, the idea that genocide is not just wrong but should also be resisted. What’s impressive is the lengths the establishment is going to in order to make such a mundanely moral stance as “stop genocide” seem sinister. The BBC and politicians have rushed to condemn the “antisemitic sentiments” and “hate speech” supposedly expressed by Bob Vylan, but none have bothered to show their work. Exactly what they’re referring to is left to speculation. Desperate to vilify the Vylans, the BBC’s cultural editor went as far as conflating two separate statements made during the set, which seems to be the basis for further erroneous claims that Bob Vylan were “calling for the death of Israeli troops”. But why let a little thing like context get in the way of a juicy story? The Mail on Sunday went even further, entirely inventing a quote to justify their unhinged front page demand for the state repression of musicians. Most of the focus has been on the chant of “death to the IDF”, which has been presented without any context even by supposedly unbiased, centrist, and liberal individuals and publications. International law recognises the legitimate use of force against an occupying army. The claim that the chant somehow calls for death to Israelis (let alone all Jews) makes about as much sense as saying that “death to fascism” was a call to kill all Italians. As for antisemitism—it is a common tactic of propagandists to muddy the waters by conflating the Israeli state with its citizenship or with the Jewish people as a whole. By saying an attack on the Israeli military is an attack on all Jews, they are playing right into the hands of Israeli state propaganda. The evolution of a lie, courtesy of BBC Culture Editor, Katie Razzall Bob Vylan have never hidden what they are about. They are aggressively and unapologetically political, snugly fitting within the traditions of both Punk and Rap. Their songs are typical anti-racist and anti-fascist fare and the combination of anarcho-punk with Grime hits hard and doesn’t leave much room for misunderstanding. Glastonbury’s own website describes their shows as “a cathartic experience where rage and protest meets positivity and joy”. Which begs the question, why pretend they didn’t know what they were getting? Yet now even Glastonbury’s organisers, who have long presented the festival as an open forum for left leaning politics, went from Michael Eavis saying last week that “People that don’t agree with the politics of the event can go somewhere else” to abruptly following establishment voices in distancing themselves from Bob Vylan. An impressive U-turn after their initial support of their line up. With no remarks regarding acts such as Amyl and the Sniffers, Inhaler, CMAT, and of course, Kneecap, it certainly appears to be a response to political pressure. The condemnation of Bob Vylans’s supposed ‘incitement to violence’ stinks of exactly the kind of liberal pearl-clutching addressed in the duo’s 2021 song “Pretty Songs”. As a society we have been conditioned to accept the idea that any grave injustice should be passively resisted and that any kind of physical resistance is morally questionable. The irony of the government condemning moral support for militant action, while it actively actively remilitarises and sells weapons abroad, should not be lost on anyone. Fortunately, the censorship crusade already seems to be backfiring in the most predictable way. The more power used to suppress the message, the louder it gets. Drawing attention to Bob Vylan, along with Kneecap, Palestine Action and others just increases support for them. The clumsy attempts to demonise these groups further exacerbates the growing rupture between the people and the political establishment. There is nothing ethically dubious in stating support for the right of victims to fight those carrying out a genocide. To suggest otherwise clearly favours annihilation. Pacifism is merely a pretty ideal that benefits the elite and those who seek to maintain the status quo. The appeal to pacifism and the presupposition that any and all violence is inherently wrong, strikes to the very heart of this storm in a teacup. Bob Vylan are under no obligation to pander to such sensibilities, and neither are we. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top photo: Brian J. Matis on Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The post Vilifying the Vylans or: How I learned to stop censoring and call for death to the BBC appeared first on Freedom News.

LABOUR’S DESIRE FOR AUTHORITY COMES FROM AN INSTINCT TO PROVE THEY CAN MANAGE THE WORKERS BEST ~ Jon Bigger ~ Two themes have been ever-present in Labour Party history. The first is an elitist view of the working class, in which the best voices, the most intelligent and responsible voices, will be found at the top of the party. The Labour Party’s founders did not have a positive view of the masses. The party existed to elevate the working class by giving voice to its perceived interests. This patronising looking-down upon the working class has never been fully shaken off. The second theme is a desire to appear tough on crime. The Tories have always been presented as the party of law and order whereas Labour are depicted as weak. The Tory instinct towards hierarchy and authority comes from a desire to keep the old order in power (initially the crown and aristocracy and later simply the rich). Labour’s desire for authority comes from an instinct to prove they can manage the workers best. These two instincts within the Labour Party cause it to forever patronise and criminalise its potential core supporters. When it comes to our current age of rising authoritarianism, these instincts could take the UK is some startling directions. Building on the previous Tory government’s curtailing of protest rights, we now see the Labour government preparing the ground to ban Palestine Action. If that comes to pass it will be illegal to promote the group as they will be considered in the same bracket as Islamist terrorist groups and some fascist groups. So while I can legally do so I just want to applaud their actions. They have been peaceful and disruptive. Their actions have shone a light on the continuing genocide perpetrated by Israel. They have been brave and imaginative and I hope they can continue. Working class Labour Party members who take an internationalist approach to their politics must be wondering why they still support the party. Palestine Action has consistently acted to support working class people in Palestine; Labour Party policy actively results in those people facing famine and brutal death at the hands of the Israeli military. Now, that same Labour Party will absurdly label the people they disagree with as terrorists, while aiding the Israeli state to carry on its sickening campaign of collective punishment—with arms sales, vocal support and possibly military help in its new war with Iran. The current Labour Party has also framed itself in terms of what it is not. It wishes to point out not only that it can manage things better than the Tories, but also that it is categorically not the party of Jeremy Corbyn. The desire to prove this time and again has compelled Keir Starmer to take the worst possible line on Israel. The issue of antisemitism within the party during Corbyn’s leadership blurs with its response to the Hamas aggression on 7th October 2023, when it was still in Opposition. There’s no obvious connection between these things except a desire to appear nothing like Corbyn. Wholehearted support for Israel’s so-called right to defend itself has meant turning a blind eye to the obvious genocide playing out in front of us. We could take the view that the ‘working class party’ has been corrupted by power, and this is the inevitable compromise such Social Democratic parties have to make in order to attain and stay in power. There is a truth in this analysis. The Labour Party does want to appear suitable for high office and nimble enough to deflect some of the inevitable criticism from Tory supporting newspapers. But we shouldn‘t forget that the urge to manage the working class was baked into the party from the very beginning. That emphasis on the hierarchy of the party never went away. They may never have been a revolutionary Marxist party but they share a great deal in sentiment when it comes to their visions of the working class: it is to be moulded by them, represented by them, with the rough edges ironed out. The leaderships know best. They’ve read the sacred texts and understand them. Both the Leninists and Labour see the working class as their party’s greatest asset and their greatest weakness. It is in this context that the Blair government moved further from social democracy and ignored the masses who marched against war with Iraq, introduced anti-social behaviour orders, and tried to database the population with an ID Card scheme. Keir Starmer is playing his Labour’s Greatest Hits album in the hope it works twice. Last year’s election manifesto included a large section on anti-social behaviour and floated the idea of Respect Orders, which could be used to ban people from town centres. The framing of the entire manifesto is that Labour will be better managers than the Tories. What they are managing is us. The attempt to ban Palestine Action is a blow to imaginative peaceful resistance. Embarrassed that a RAF base can be broken into at ease by people with wire cutters and paint, the State resorts to authoritarian means to shut the protests down. Unless it faces powerful grassroots resistance, Labour will likely go further in its efforts to manage and stifle working class voices that embarrass them. The post Labour’s authoritarian urge appeared first on Freedom News.