Wednesday, 4 May 2016

Friends

Today's Prime Minister's Questions was even more surreal than normal. Tomorrow, there are local government and regional elections taking place, as well as elections for Police Commissioners, and two parliamentary by-elections. Jeremy Corbyn, therefore, quite reasonably, asked questions on the topics that the vast majority of people are concerned with, in relation to their jobs, the health service, social care, education and so on, all of which are under attack from the Tories. But, David Cameron, showing his total disregard for the concerns of ordinary people, not only answered none of the questions – which has become quite common for him over the last six years – but did not even make an attempt to be seen to be answering the questions, instead going into an irrelevant rant over supposed anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

It shows just how out of touch with the real world, and the concerns of ordinary people, that Westminster bubble has become. But, what was also apparent is just how hypocritical the Tories, and also for that matter, the Blair-rights are. The real nature of the almost entirely confected furore over anti-Semitism, has been shown in recent days by the exposure of the Blair-right plans for using it as the pretext for launching a palace coup. But, it has also been apparent in the way the Tories have used it for their own short term purposes. The Blair-rights do not even seem to recognise how they have opened the door to the Tories, with their willingness to engage in political opportunism, for sectarian advantage, in relation to the issue.

The Blair-rights, in blowing up this storm of moral indignation, created an open door for the Tories, not just to attack Corbyn, but to attack Saddiq Khan. The Tories, who have been running a vicious smear campaign, against the Blair-right Khan, for his sharing of platforms with some pretty unsavoury characters, who have said some pretty unsavoury things, were only too glad to pick up all of the links to supposed anti-Semitism in the party. And to tell the truth, on the basis of the charges made against Khan, for the off the cuff comments he has made, in response to criticism of some of those unsavoury elements, if he were being treated on the same basis as some of those other councillors who have been suspended, he would now be finding himself also suspended.

That is not a suggestion that Khan should be suspended, but a suggestion that suspending people on the basis of guilt by association, and in response to pressure from the media is not a good idea. For one thing, once that media and your opponents smell blood, it only encourages their thirst for more of it. The Blair-rights seem unconcerned about that, and willing to sacrifice one of their own, in Khan, as a means to their sectarian end of dislodging Corbyn.

The fact, is that Khan, Corbyn, Livingstone and many others in the LP have shared platforms with some pretty unsavoury characters in the past. All of them have been no friends of the working-class. That is what comes from the mindset of “idiot anti-imperialism”, of seeing all opponents of imperialism as somehow in our “class camp”, no matter how reactionary, and indeed barbaric some of those people and forces might be.

But, of course, its not only members of the left that associate with these people. The only or main difference is that those on the left associate with them whilst they are still pariahs, whilst other bourgeois politicians associate with them only when they are themselves part of the establishment. Churchill, for example, suggested that the best response to Gandhi was to round up a few hundred of his supporters and shoot them. That was before Gandhi became an icon for the British establishment, who then made films about what a great man he was.

Churchill himself was a well known anti- Semite, whose views on Jews differed only be degree from those of the Nazis. He was not interested in fighting the Nazis for the benefit of Jews, whose fate in Germany he was well aware of during the 1930's, but only in the interests of British capital. In fact, leading Tories, at the time, were quite happy to share a platform with the Nazis, and Mussolini's fascists. They saw them as a useful means of fighting communists. The Daily Mail and other Tory rags continually ran stories praising the Nazis and Mussolini. And many of those same views have carried through into the modern Tory party, which is what makes it rather rich for them, today, to be standing up and talking about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

Go back a few years, and people like Corbyn were being criticised for standing on platforms with the terrorists of the IRA, like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness. Now, for me, I would not touch any such politicians with a barge pole, because like Hamas, or Hizbollah, these are not socialists seeking a socialist transformation of society, but are reactionary, petit-bourgeois nationalists, and no friend of the working class. But, it is rather rich for either the Blair-rights or the Tories to attack Corbyn and others for such associations when today they too stand shoulder to shoulder with Adams and McGuiness!  And, of course, in the past the same could have been said of prominent Israeli politicians such as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was a former leader of the Zionist terrorist group known as the Stern Gang.

The Stern Gang carried out many terrorist acts against the British in Palestine.  Its aim was to push the British out of Palestine by force, and to that extent as Wikipedia states, it

"... initially sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, offering to fight alongside them against the British in return for the transfer of all Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe to Palestine. Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis. During World War II it declared that it would establish a Jewish state based upon "nationalist and totalitarian principles". After Stern's death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move it towards support for Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In 1944 Lehi officially declared its support for National Bolshevism."

Former Israeli prime Minister, Menachem Begin, was also a former terrorist, who took part in atatcks on the british in Palestine.  But, when all these terrorists and ne'er do wells become part of the establishment, Tories and right-wing social democrats are quick to embrace them, and honour them.  Give it time, and some future Tory Prime Minister will be telling us what a wonderful fight for liberation Hizbollah conducted!

The same is true of Nelson Mandela. Thirty years ago, Tories like Thatcher had no question that he was a murdering terrorist who no right thinking person should come near. Again, I would not have made any kind of alliance with Mandela and the ANC, which was again a petit-bourgeois nationalist outfit, and no friend of the working-class. The truth of that has been seen since the end of apartheid, as the ANC, in government, has continued to attack black workers in much the same way that the apartheid government did before, and with leading ANC politicians accumulating massive fortunes, and engaging in the most grotesque conspicuous consumption.

But, of course, today, all of the bourgeois politicians have no problem in proclaiming Mandela the greatest thing since sliced bread, a true hero and humanitarian, an historic force for peace, and global treasure.

Cameron's attacks on Corbyn are the most sickening hypocrisy. Corbyn and others have placed themselves in this predicament by some of the company they have kept, but the questions about his comments in relation to “our friends from Hamas” and so on, were brought up and dealt with during the Labour leadership campaign. Corbyn explained the context in which those phrases were used, and it is only the most swivel eyed Tories who think, or try to pretend, that Corbyn is in any sense anti-Semitic, or that he supports policies for the genocide of Israeli Jews at the hands of Hamas or Hizbollah. He again repeated his opposition to any such idea again today, despite the fact that it was supposed to be Cameron that was answering the questions not asking them.

But, what crass hypocrisy by Cameron, even in that regard. The ideology that fuels the jihadists in the Middle East stems from Wahhabism. The fountainhead of that ideology is the Saudi regime. It is the Saudi regime that finances all of the madrassas around the globe, which preach the hatred that fuels jihadism, and from which the recruits for the various jihadi recruits are garnered. It is the Saudi regime, along with the other medieval feudal monarchies in the gulf that have financed and armed the jihadis that fought in Iraq, in Syria and in Libya. It is those same gulf regimes that sent special forces to fight alongside special forces from Britain, and France to overthrow the regime of Gaddafi, and they have tried to do the same with Assad, aided and abbetted by NATO member Turkey.

Turkey has been a conduit for a stream of jihadis like Jihadi John, coming out of Britain, France and other European countries, allowed to move freely by the states in those countries, to go and fight in Syria, just as they went to fight in Libya. Cameron and co. don't stand publicly on platforms with such people, who they continually tell us they are fighting, but the reality is that they, along with their feudal gulf allies, created those forces to act as mercenaries fighting in their cause, just as previously they created Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and they used Bin Laden to create the KLA in Kosovo.

Cameron read out a series of reactionary things that some of these Islamists have said. Yet, even after it had been pointed out to him that one of those very Islamists was an active Tory Party member, he continued to refer to his comments! And, if anyone could be bothered to look it would surely not be hard to find a string of comments by Tory members, past and present, that have said things even more explicitly racist and anti-Semitic. This is after all the party of Enoch Powell, and it has been the spawning ground in the past, particularly from the Federation of Conservative Students of members of the National Front, the BNP and a range of other fascist parties. It remains the main source of support for UKIP, both in terms of members and voters.

And, while Cameron may not stand on platforms with the Islamists fighting his battles in Syria and Libya, preferring instead to do that vicariously through the Gulf regimes, he does stand openly and shoulder to shoulder with the Islamist rulers of those vicious regimes. Cameron not only has no problem referring to the Saudi kings and princes who implement as official state policy all of those ideas that he so vehemently condemned in Parliament, but Cameron provides those regimes with the weapons, with the police and military training to be able to carry out those policies of oppression against women, minorities, homosexuals and so on!

Not only is Cameron and his Ministers happy to call such tyrants his friends, and to provide them with weapons and so on, but he is also happy to fete them, to invite them to rub shoulders and attend the tax payer funded jamborees hosted occasionally by their British equivalents in the British Royal Family.

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