Last Saturday’s show of strength by Britain’s burgeoning far-right movement outside the regional headquarters of the BBC in Salford, Greater Manchester, has received relatively little attention in the British press, despite the presence of several thousand people in a rally eulogising Tommy Robinson, a recent convert to the United Kingdom Independence Party (the organisers claimed 10,000 attendees while the local police counted around 4,000). The Pound Shop Brownshirt regaled the crowds with details of his supposed persecution by the “liberal media” while the obsequious UKIP leader, Gerard Batten, looked on with a smile. The whole event was charted and live-streamed on social media, YouTube in particular, including a laughingly inept broadcast of Robinson’s fake documentary, Panodrama; a preemptive strike against a forthcoming examination of the street activist by the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs show, Panorama. The rally brought together a whole range of alt-right and white supremacist figures from across the UK and North America, many sporting hi-visibility yellow jackets, the new blackshirt of European populism. It also drew the approval of James Delingpole, a regular columnist with the reviled website Breitbart, as well as with mainstream British publications like the Daily Mail, Express, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. Which illustrates the embedded nature of the neo-right tendency in Britain.
Tommy Robinson And BBC Panorama: Fake Victim, Fake Democrat
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Now you have me howling with laughter – the Lugenpresse were caught pants down, white working class exoricated by Tarquin and John Sweeney. About 6 to 8000 turned up against a hundred or so muesli eating antifarters. I don’t support Islamophobia – nor do I support getting a death threat from the same IP address which sent one to Tommy’s family,links to West Murkier Police.
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CG, it’s hardly unreasonable to say that leading figures in these escapades have been playing with far right approaches. They’re also huge self-promoters and narcissists of the worse sort. And yes, they are Islamophobes too – and as bad their own approaches as with TR’s antics over the trials are such that they completely contradict their own stated positions. The reason for the reporting restrictions was self-evident and in order to protect the proper course of the trial. Other media were willing to accept those restrictions in order that it could reach a conclusion. It takes some self-obssession to live stream outside an extremely important trial and potentially collapse said trial.
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I was going to partly agree but then considered that there are 2 laws, one for the rich one for the poor.
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What does that mean in the context of such a trial? It’s grand to accept that criminal justice systems are skewed in many ways, class being a dominant aspect, but in a specific instance where people are on trial for heinous acts and the trial is successfully moving to a conclusion then it is complete indulgence and showboating to do something that might collapse the trial. If you want to redress the many issues with the criminal justice system, or whatever standing outside such a critical trial is not the starting place.
What it is about is attempting to consolidate a very small base of people and alienating the larger mass of people. And that’s even before we get to the beliefs put out by those outside the trial which have little or no traction politically or in any other way amongst that broader mass. What was taking place there had nothing to do with the trial and everything to do with shoring up the dominant position of the most vocal in the small groups that were there. Some would call it cynical. Some would say it was much much worse than that.
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Well it looks like Labour wants a second referendum.
Not a bad idea.
Perhaps the best plan now would be to delay Brexit and agree to another election in four, five, or six years.
That would be a dicey call, but one has to be uncomfortable about such a decision being carried out based on such a hair thin majority in a country without much of a spelled out role for referendums in the first place.
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Depends on what you mean by Labour.
The members and the voters do. But the BLP MPs and leadership will pay lip-service and continue to obstruct, I suspect.
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I suspect that fear of a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, might push them that way.
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80 years ago his likes would have been against the Jews and wearing Black shirts , today the “enemy” is the Muslims, and who knows who is next
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I don’t understand why people invoke this sentiment.
If his likes would have been against the Jews 80 years ago, given all that has happened in the intervening years, shouldn’t his likes be even more against the Jews today. Robinson is deeply involved with political Jews and completely pro Israel.
Robinson is not focused by arbitrary hate of a smaller group identity, he is only focused on an outside group that drastically changed the place he grew up in, the change was an improvement of affairs for the immigrant population and a deterioration for the native population, that imbalance will inevitably cause a difference of opinion.
One related dynamic at play in Corbyn’s Labour party, is in relation to the immigrant groups that the Jews worked to bring into the country as an augmentation to their electoral influence. Those foreign identities are now more interested in furthering their own group interests than feeling sorry for or loyal to, the Jews that brought them in and protected them with various new laws. This is showing up in the repeated antisemitic accusations which are being investigated and found false, thus pushing Jews out of the Labour party.
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“…the immigrant groups that the Jews worked to bring into the country as an augmentation to their electoral influence.”
The international Jewish conspiracy? It that not one of the original myths powering old and new antisemitism?
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I am aware of the stories of international Jewish conspiracy, it often extends to unbelievable proportions.
Just because some people have created unfathomable and ludicrous stories about Jews controlling the world, even being responsible for every negative aspect of Western culture and I’m sure there is plenty more out there, this does not mean that Jews are practically perfect in every way nor above review.
It can be observed that the typical behaviour of Jews outside Israel, living in democratic nations, has been to promote immigration and protection for other immigrants as a method to strengthen their political influence and weaken the host nations.
It can also be observed that Jews with their own state, Israel, typically behave in the opposite manor, they have repeatedly strengthened the laws to protect their Jewish nation at the expense of immigrants.
Is it an original myth? I would not think so, Spain 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella produced an edict of expulsion which was not concerned with an international Jewish conspiracy:
“there remains and is apparent the great injury to the Christians which has resulted and does result from the participation, conversation and communication which they have held and hold with the Jews, who have demonstrated that they would always endeavor, by all possible ways and manners, to subvert and draw away faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith, and separate them from it, and attract and pervert them to their wicked belief and opinion, instructing them in the ceremonies and observances of their law, holding fasts during which they read and teach them what they have to believe and observe according to their law, causing them and their sons to be circumcised… notifying them of the Passover feasts before they come… giving them and taking to them from their houses unleavened bread and meat slaughtered with ceremonies… persuading them as far as possible to hold and observe the law of Moses, giving them to understand that there was no other true law but that; the which is clear from many utterances and confessions, not only by the Jews themselves, but by those who were perverted and injured by them, which has resulted in great harm, detriment and opprobrium to our Holy Catholic Faith.”
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But is that not just arguing the magnitude of the international Jewish conspiracy rather than rejecting it’s existence in the first place? You’re essentially saying that it’s true, just not as bad as some would make out. It still leaves the allegation in place, which is one of the cornerstones of classic anti-Semitism.
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The patterns I have said can be observed, may either be observed or, may not be observed, that is the only argument I have made.
The international Jewish conspiracy is an irrelevant topic, I see it brought up time and time again to invoke ludicrous notions that become a useful distraction far away from the original argument.
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I wouldn’t say this is “typical Jewish behavior” at all.
Jews actually tend to care about the well-being of any country where they can live in relative safety and freedom. The reason is simple. In a world full of Pogroms and Inquisitions, even before the Holocaust and especially before the state of Israel-it was in the interest of any Jewish community living in a country where it enjoyed relative freedom and tolerance, to ensure that country enjoyed relative stability and prosperity. So long as that country remained stable and prosperous they would usually continue to go on enjoying that degree of safety and freedom.
Jews have historically tended to be the last people to want to undermine a country where they have at “good thing going” so to speak. Why? Because when the shit hits the fan they tended to end up as the scapegoats, for one thing.
I know people who remember a time when Jewish participation in the US Civil Rights movement was believed to be motivated by a desire to “manipulate the blacks” to shore up their own power. There was also a time, when their relative sympathy for Irish immigrants (not long after the famine) was looked up on in that light-it was believed that Irish people were so stupid as to be easy for “them to control”.
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We live in times where it is perfectly okay to produce extensive media which alleges over-representation of white males, and historically blames them for the worst crimes in history while organizing often militant groups intersectionally against them. But one among these thinkers cannot even point out Jewish representation at colleges etc. Why?
You can keep rocking the whole it’s anti-semetic tropes. It will go against these same people when criticism of Israel is defined as anti-semetic, maybe even by the very hate speech law they are advocating to stymy the rights of Irish men and women to shape their countries future. That cannot happen when being Irish is nothing but a sheet of paper.
Much of the criticisms of Jewish power are factual, perhaps the only reason for full on anti-semitism in a modern context is because ones life is destroyed for even questioning it.
As it is for all other groups but native Irish, Germans, French and so on. They don’t exist anymore, but we can speak of “Semetic” people all day.
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But what is “Jewish power”? To claim that such a thing exists, to imply that it is pernicious and widespread, is to argue the same old antisemitic trope. A centuries old myth and a modern conspiracy theory.
Now, arguing against the equation of criticising Israel for some of its actions with being anti-Jewish is a fair argument to make. The two do not go hand in hand. But the rest is just old fashioned ethno-religious intolerance and paranoia.
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Grace, tens of millions of dead Russians would disagree with your whitewashing of history, the Bolsheviks have a lot of blood on their hands, with Jews playing many leading roles.
Even your civil rights example is a perfect example of the patterns I say can be observed. Jews spearheaded the 1965 immigration act, which resulted in the single largest migration of people in recorded history.
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There were Russians and people of all other ethncities involved in the Bolshevik revolution. Very religious Jews were rarely involved and often persecuted by the Bolsheviks. To blame that one of the Jews? Sorry that doesn’t wash.
The main reason the Bolshevik Revolution occurred is because other attempts of liberalizing Russia had either failed or been suppressed by the Tsar’s people.
As for the immigration act of 1965 it was passed by a majority Anglo-Protestant Congress and was signed by LBJ-who last time I checked wasn’t Jewish.
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A neglible % of the population, who were not native, took over a majority of the top government roles, then oversaw the murder of tens of millions. It’s a damning example.
Yes, mass murder happened because of liberalism. I can imagine the torrent of abhorrence expressed here if anyone was to explain away the Holocaust as just a natural requirement of Nazi political expediency, since nothing else worked.
The 1965 immigration act was the culmination of 40 years of activism from Jewish organizations, Jewish-organized and Jewish-funded committees, and Jewish legislative leaders, it was not something the American people wanted or pursued.
It fits the pattern I described, perfectly.
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But the majority of Communist leaders in Russia c. 1900-1925 were Orthodox ethnic Russians, with other ethnicities from the Russian Empire/USSR in the minority. Jewish-Russians we’re a negligible minority, and even more so after the political purges that were to follow. If Jews were so all-powerful how did ordinary Jewish families and communities suffer so disproportionally during the revolution and civil war?
How did liberalism contribute to mass murder? The Russian civil wars were fought between a complex mix of ethnic, national and ideological forces very few of which were remotely liberal as we would understand it.
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With the notable exception of Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov), most of the leading Communists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews. Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) headed the Red Army and, for a time, was chief of Soviet foreign affairs. Yakov Sverdlov (Solomon) was both the Bolshevik party’s executive secretary and — as chairman of the Central Executive Committee — head of the Soviet government. Grigori Zinoviev (Radomyslsky) headed the Communist International (Comintern), the central agency for spreading revolution in foreign countries. Other prominent Jews included press commissar Karl Radek (Sobelsohn), foreign affairs commissar Maxim Litvinov (Wallach), Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and Moisei Uritsky.
Lenin himself was of mostly Russian and Kalmuck ancestry, but he was also one-quarter Jewish. His maternal grandfather, Israel (Alexander) Blank, was a Ukrainian Jew who was later baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church.
A thorough-going internationalist, Lenin viewed ethnic or cultural loyalties with contempt. He had little regard for his own countrymen. “An intelligent Russian,” he once remarked, “is almost always a Jew or someone with Jewish blood in his veins.”
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That’s total bullshit.
At any given time the vast majority of the Communist party consisted of ethnic Russians. Of among the non-slavic minorities on the Politburo there were about as many Georgians as Russians.
Lenin’s ethnic background has been debated, but Jewish was never really considered likely. Stalin was Georgian, and pretty much all the leaders after that were Russian or Russo-Ukranian.
If Lenin was skeptical of nationalism that was as much about communism as anything else.
Nor could any one knowledgeable about Russia’s many scientists and intellectuals could say that an intelligent Russian must actually be a Jews. Last time I checked Dmitri Ivanovich Mendelev was a Russian with no significant/known Jewish connections.
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Lenin’s (Vladimir Ulyanov) background is not debated.
Lenin’s grandfather, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who took the name Lenin (pseudonym) as a young adult, was born in Odessa in the early 1800’s with the name, ‘Sril Moiseyevich’, which in English would translate to ‘Israel Moses’ Blank.
You may not agree with the sentiment, but 1/4 Jew, Lenin, still thought it and said it.
https://books.google.ie/books?redir_esc=y&id=ipeEAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%E2%80%9Cis+almost+always+a+Jew+or+someone+with+Jewish+blood+in+his+veins.%E2%80%9D
Please explain “If Lenin was skeptical of nationalism that was as much about communism as anything else.”
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There’s a very, very similar conspiracy theory on the US right. It says that the conspiracy was for “liberals” to invite a lot of Mexicans into the United States in order to do one or both of the above.
1) Destroy labor unions by having a lot of cheap labor around.
2) To get rid of Protestant Values and replace it with a Catholic Peasant cultures that it innately incompatible with Jeffersonian Democracy, and ensures an impoverished welfare dependent, wife-beating, subservient, un-educated, and drunken Democratic base.
Does number #2 sound a bit familiar? To most educated Americans and nearly all people of Irish origin it does and should.
Point is that these crazy conspiracy theories. Seem to keep popping up with different versions in most and possibly every modern country.
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God I hate the weasely dissembling backsliding carry-on of the new racists. I wish they’d just come out and say it.
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Fascists always need someone else to blame for their problems. It seems Muslims are the new scapegoats.
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Since I can’t link to some comments above, I will say that I’m not a fan of treating “white male” power as a global entity. I don’t believe a Canton in Switzerland, the Vatican, a labor union in Iowa, a Jim Crowe state government, and The House of Lords as part of the same entity simply because they are run by white men.
What that amounts to in my mind is not so much “reverse discrimination” as the right understands it as a case of a VERY slovenly lazy syllogism.
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