By Ian Donovan
Turan B’s ‘apology’ to Socialist Fight regarding the late 2019/early 2020 faction fight that resulted in the foundation of the Consistent Democrats is rather strange, once you know a couple of basic facts. One is that Socialist Fight barely exists today. It is a website that is very infrequently updated, and a journal that is the sole product of Gerry Downing, that appears occasionally. The site hasn’t been updated since March 2025. Not only that, but Turan had been a member of the Consistent Democrats group from early 2020 up to late 2025 – for more than 5 years. He was a member of Socialist Fight for no more than three years before that, from 2017 at the earliest. It is rather strange, and a product of desperation, to apologise to an (effectively defunct) organisation one was in for a (relatively) short time for one’s much longer membership in a successor organisation that is still regularly politically active. Most people, in leaving any organisation with political differences, would simply move on and do what they want to do, not look back and weep in such a maudlin manner.
The real reason Turan is doing this, and suddenly feels an affinity to Gerry Downing, is because of what they both have in common. They have both capitulated to social pressure from elements on the Jewish left who are implacably hostile to the consistently anti-capitalist, anti-ethnocentric criticism of Zionism represented by Socialist Fight in the earlier period, which endorsed the ‘Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism’ (https://www.consistent-democrats.org/draft-theses-on-the-jews-and-modern-imperialism-sept-2014/) that I authored in September 2014, which has been since 2020 one of the basic documents of the Consistent Democrats, British Section of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, and continues to be so going forward.
This document is not popular with the Jewish left, where softness on liberal Zionism is still quite endemic even among a great many (not all) professed anti-Zionists because of social pressure of the many Jews who support Zionism. The Jewish-Zionist caste within the imperialist bourgeoisie, described in those Theses (though that term was formulated later), is defined by a material interest in the state of Israel, which is the purpose of its racist Law of Return citizenship law, giving citizenship rights in Israel to any Jewish person born anywhere in the world, while denying them to Palestinians native to that territory, which was seized in 1948.
This created a material bond between overseas Jewish bourgeois, particularly in the older imperialist countries, and the Israeli bourgeois state, and gave them a common national/class interest with the bourgeoise of Israel. Taken by pure size alone, Israel would be a minor imperialist power comparable to Denmark, but in fact with the imperialist caste described above, the Israeli imperialist bourgeoisie overlaps with the imperialist bourgeoisies of North America and West Europe (the only imperialist power unaffected by this phenomenon is Japan). So, with this specific international extension to its bourgeoisie, Israel acts like a superpower in the Middle East, because it has the unflinching support of the bulk of the older imperialist powers, particularly the US but only slightly lesser in Western Europe. The social weight of Jews in the imperialist ruling classes of Western Europe is one of two more crucial factors that give this caste its remarkable power in Western politics. I cited in my 2014 Theses an article in Jewish World Review, from 2007, that in the United States, put the representation of Jews among billionaires, the most powerful elements of the capitalist elite, at between 40 and 48% – nearly half. Norman Finkelstein, in his 2018 essay Corbyn Mania, noted the following:
“The three richest Brits are Jewish. Jews comprise only .5 percent of the population but fully 20 percent of the 100 richest Brits. Relative both to the general population and to other ethno-religious groups, British Jews are in the aggregate disproportionately wealthy, educated, and professionally successful. These data track closely with the picture elsewhere. Jews comprise only 2 percent of the US population but fully 30 percent of the 100 richest Americans, while Jews enjoy the highest household income among religious groups. Jews comprise less than .2 percent of the world’s population but, of the world’s 200 richest people, fully 20 percent are Jewish. Jews are incomparably organized as they have created a plethora of interlocking, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing communal and defence organizations that operate in both the domestic and international arenas. In many countries, not least the US and the UK, Jews occupy strategic positions in the entertainment industry, the arts, publishing, journals of opinion, the academy, the legal profession, and government. “Jews are represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the population,” British-Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer notes, “in both Houses of Parliament, on the Sunday Times Rich List, in media, academia, professions, and just about every walk of public life. The wonder would be if these raw data didn’t translate into outsized Jewish political power.” (https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/finkelstein-on-corbyn-mania/)
David Miller has cited Forbes statistics that say that on a world scale, 10% of billionaires are of Jewish origin, while only 0.2% of the world’s population is of Jewish origin (these Jewish elements of the super-rich are unsurprisingly concentrated in North America and West Europe). That is 50 times overrepresentation. But though this might seem a bit counter-intuitive, it is a product of the fact that in much of the semi-colonial world, even the bourgeoisie is so relatively poor that billionaires are much rarer. In the imperialist world, where billionaires, and the Jewish population are more concentrated, the proportion of both among the general population is relatively higher. So, in Britain, where around 0.5% of the population is of Jewish origin, and the US, where approximately 2% of the population is of Jewish origin – 20 times overrepresentation appears to be the approximate ballpark figure. Billionaires are not the be-all and end-all – other bourgeois layers fall short of the magic billion. However, there is no particular reason why their composition should be massively different. Be that as it may, overrepresentation among the very wealthy in a capitalist society does not guarantee overwhelming power, – it can help, or hinder, depending on conditions. At some times in history, aspects of this have led to persecution, with this Jewish layer of the bourgeoisie being regarded with suspicion or hatred by the non-Jewish bourgeoisie, as frequently before WW2.
The opposite is true today. They are regarded with reverence. The reason why is explained quite simply in my 2014 Theses:
“It [i.e., the Jewish-Zionist caste] is therefore both a powerful imperialist formation, and deeply unstable. In this epoch of declining capitalism, it plays the role of a kind of ‘vanguard of the bourgeoisie’ – not quite the mirror-image of Marxism but with aspirations along those lines. It has been instrumental in pushing the nationally limited imperialist bourgeoisies to partially transcend their own national particularisms. Hence the ‘traditional’ imperialist bourgeoisie, based on the nation-state, having overcome their previous fear of the supposedly proletarian-internationalist role of the Jews as a result of the outcome of WWII, now regards Jewish ‘cosmopolitanism’ and bourgeois semi-internationalism as a good thing, and to a considerable degree defers and follows the leadership of the Jewish/Zionist bourgeoisie.”
(https://www.consistent-democrats.org/draft-theses-on-the-jews-and-modern-imperialism-sept-2014/)
This is expanded on in another article on Political Zionism and its Genocidal Hegemony in the Imperialist World (https://www.consistent-democrats.org/uncategorized/political-zionism-and-its-genocidal-hegemony-in-the-imperialist-world/), whose original version was published by Socialist Fight in January 2016 (https://socialistfight.com/2016/01/07/political-zionism-the-hegemonic-racism-of-the-early-21st-century-by-ian-donovan/), before Turan joined SF. It wrote about the change of attitude of the bulk of the imperialist bourgeoisie, after WWII and with the rise of Zionism, to this Jewish-Zionist layer:
“Whereas previously they had often looked at the Jewish bourgeoisie with suspicion, as a potential danger to them, now with the defeat of the Jewish left, they began to develop the opposite conception, which is the case today. As part of the outcome of these events, the non-Jewish bourgeoisie has come to regard its Jewish compatriots as a priceless resource of the capitalist system itself, a kind of vanguard, class conscious layer, the bearer of a culture whose connection with commodity exchange is older than capitalism itself, as a system based on the generalisation of commodity production and exchange. This became clear in the post WWII period, particularly after the rise of Israel and the 1967 war. It was manifested in the rise of neo-liberalism, with ideologues like Milton Friedman, and then neo-conservatism in Cold War II and later the neo-colonial wars against the Muslim world, with the very prominent role of Zionist ideologues, often Jewish, in these bourgeois political movements and trends which have become pretty well hegemonic in bourgeois politics.”
“And that is the take-off point for the situation we have today. Zionism has become the vanguard of racism in the main, traditional imperialist countries. Zionists are the vanguard of anti-Muslim agitation, they have been the core of the neo-conservative movement that has been, and still is, the vanguard of imperialist militarism in the Middle East. To a real extent, they are seen as a vanguard by the imperialist ruling classes in the most advanced countries. This has a material basis; for the historical reasons mentioned earlier, Jews have always been over-represented in the bourgeoisie of the advanced Western capitalist countries. In the earlier period of Jewish involvement in genuine revolutionary anti-capitalism, this was seen as threatening by many non-Jewish bourgeois in the imperialist countries.
“But with the revolutionary change of consciousness referred to earlier among both Jews and the non-Jewish bourgeoisie, this has been transformed into its opposite. Jews are now seen as almost the Holy of Holies by the Western imperialist bourgeoisie. This process was inseparable from the rise of the state of Israel with its peculiar citizenship law, the Law of Return, which gives everyone regarded as Jewish in the conventional sense the right to Israeli citizenship. Thus the overrepresentation of Jews in the ruling classes of the imperialist countries added an additional element; that overrepresented layer acquired a material stake in another state, one they had already been considerably involved in funding and bringing into existence in the earlier period on the basis of a Zionist-nationalist vision. What in effect happened is that part of the ruling classes of the Western countries came to overlap with the ruling class of Israel, the most recently and artificially created of the advanced-capitalist, imperialist states. That is the material basis of Zionist power in the advanced capitalist countries; the ‘moral’ authority of Zionism and Israel has had its own autonomous elements, but materially it is based on that.”
These views were accepted by Gerry Downing in 2016. He even went on the Daily Politics TV show in March 2016 to defend them. These were the politics of Socialist Fight. Turan was recruited to them around 2017 and agreed with them until very recently. But over the past two years he has become socially distanced from the group for what seemed like personal reasons and no longer participated, except occasionally, in its frequent political events. It appears he has gained new social and political connections that have put him under social pressure to renounce his previous political history. But his efforts to minimise his own role are disingenuous, to say the least.
He writes:
“At the time, I gave my full support to an individual opposing Socialist Fight’s decision to expel him. My objection was not entirely rooted in political alignment, but in my discomfort with how quickly and in an opaque manner the process was handled. With hindsight, and knowing what I know now, I realise I would have voted differently if the process had been more balanced and transparent. That episode culminated in a rupture, leading those who left to form a new group, the Consistent Democrats.”
What he does not say is that there was no ‘decision’ by ‘Socialist Fight’ to expel anyone. Turan was a member of the Trotskyist Faction, the precursor of the CD group, there were three of us: Turan, comrade D (who is no longer involved), and me. We were half of the membership of SF. The others were Gerry Downing, and two other comrades who were effectively neutral, and both of whom subsequently joined the Consistent Democrats (one remained nominally in both groups).
In fact, Downing did not just claim to have expelled me as an individual, he actually said, under the headline “Socialist Fight has expelled Ian Donovan” the following:
“Socialist Fight has expelled Ian Donovan and his ‘Trotskyist Faction’ from the group at its meeting of 19 February by a unanimous vote. They were expelled for antisemitism and support for the racist, antisemitic and left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist Gilad Atzmon.” (https://socialistfight.com/2020/02/20/socialist-fight-has-expelled-ian-donovan/)
Since Turan and D were members of the Trotskyist Faction at the time – there were three of us – this passage claims that all three of us were expelled. Turan is clearly, knowingly trying to falsify his own political history here, and degrading himself. For what reasons? Who knows? During that period, he was even racially abused by some hysterical ’unaligned’ backers of Gerry Downing. In any case, the claim that there was some kind of meeting of ‘Socialist Fight’ at that time that ‘unanimously’ expelled the Trotskyist Faction is preposterous. The TF was half of the membership. And two others were neutral. So how is that numerically even possible? What actually happened is that Gerry Downing expropriated the website from the group and decided in the manner of a pint-sized version of his original mentor Healy, to publish any old abusive rubbish about those he disapproved of, even stuff that was obviously not true and not possible.
In fact, Gerry was so desperate to somehow get a majority in the group, which he didn’t have, that he tried to pay subscriptions for several semi-sympathisers so he could eventually get them a vote (for him). This is a practice so immoral that if anyone tried it in the Labour Party (before Starmer), they would likely be expelled for corruption. Gerry bitterly complained in another article that:
“We have been now forced to set up a new bank account because Ian and Turan have control of the Socialist Fight bank account and this, they believe, should give them control of the group. Ian has refused to accept the votes of the majority of the group. He has decided that John Carty is not a member and his membership subscriptions are ‘donations’ and not subscriptions. My daughter, Ella, Gareth Martin, and Charlie Walsh cannot join as candidate members for six months because he disagrees with them over what Gilad Atzmon’s politics are. He has refused to bank their subscriptions that I sent to him, said I was buying their membership and he was keeping the cheques as evidence of my ‘corruption’.” (https://socialistfight.com/2020/02/24/socialist-fight-ian-donovan-and-the-trotskyist-faction/)
When Gerry published this, he simply made himself a joke. It is obvious he was trying to rustle up a majority which he didn’t have by dubious means. Why should a faction that is marked for a purge cooperate with such a corrupt procedure directed against itself? Turan, with myself, was central in spiking this corruption, which ensured there was no ‘expulsion’ of anyone. Gerry did not expel us, he just took his ball home, and destroyed SF. The CD group took its place over time as the British Section of the LCFI. We do not engage in this kind of irrationality and are not going to disappear anytime soon.
Turan claims that: “Let me be clear: my politics are not “soft” on Zionism. I advocate for one secular state with equal rights for all. I have no interest in reinventing myself for any political gain”. Likewise, he states that “I also want to make it clear that my aim here is not to distract from, or in any way compromise, solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are enduring a genocide carried out by Israel with the full participation and support of Western imperialism.” But he protests too much, he obviously is trying to ‘reinvent’ his own political history by not mentioning the Trotskyist Faction, the precursor of CD, which he was one of the central figures in.
And while it is true that he acknowledges that the genocide is being carried out “by Israel” he is allying with people like Downing and others who effectively deny that the primary role is played by Israel and pretend that Israel is just a puppet carrying out the wishes of other imperialist powers. When in fact, in this genocide, it has been the other way around. It is true that this genocide has taken place with the “full participation and support of Western imperialism” who have armed imperialist Israel, but it is obvious that the prime driving force of this genocide is the drive for Greater Israel, which comes from within the Zionist entity itself and its international extensions in the JZ caste. It is Western politicians who are cult followers of the JZ caste that have driven attacks on democratic rights in the major Western powers, from Trump’s attacks on dissent over Palestine around the US to the attempt to proscribe Palestine Action here.
This is now facing a major crisis here as much even of the ruling class is uneasy at such irrationalities as the Palestine Action ban, and other idiocies such as the attempt to force violent Tel Aviv Macabees football thugs on the Birmingham police, with leaders of all four major parties accusing the Birmingham police and local Independent Muslim MP, Ayoub Khan, of ‘anti-Semitism’ for banning the Macabees thugs, and looking utterly ridiculous when the same thugs rioted in Tel Aviv itself. It is also in crisis in the US, as important figures in Trump’s MAGA base are splintering away because of his obvious role as a lackey of Israel, around such important figures as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the late Charlie Kirk, who it appears likely was assassinated by Mossad for what they consider very dangerous dissent from subservience to the Israel lobby.
Turan says that Gerry Downing has been ‘vindicated’ and yet denies that there is any softness on Zionism in his political volte-face. One wonders what he thinks of a grossly pro-Zionist passage penned by Gerry Downing when he broke from the LCFI later in 2020, in the light of the current genocide. Gerry Dowing denounced me for writing the following:
“But Zionism can quite conceivably exterminate the Palestinians because the Zionist colonisation is that of the exclusion type, not the exploitation type, as Machover put it. Ronnie Kasrils, of the SACP and ANC in South Africa, was making the same point when he said that Zionism is worse than South African apartheid. It is also worse than Jim Crow. It is closer to Hitlerism for the genocidal threat it poses to the Palestinian people.” (https://www.consistent-democrats.org/uncategorized/gerry-downing-political-decline-and-centrist-capitulation/)
And Gerry responded thus:
“What Zionism might potentially do in the future is certainly not worse than what the KKK might do if afforded the opportunity. Zionism is not fascism. There are Zionists who are fascists, and we will no-platform them like we will attempt to do to all fascists. But we will never equate racists in general with fascist racists. We distinguish between the racism of the oppressor and the racism of the oppressed, we distinguish between the fascist Zionism of the oppressor and the racist, apartheid or liberal Zionism of the oppressed, many of whom genuinely fear the return of the Holocaust and so support the state of Israel.” (https://socialistfight.com/2021/02/15/socialist-fight-breaks-with-the-lcfi/)
Gerry thus said that Zionists generally, except for those who openly declare themselves to be fascists (such as the Kahanist Ben Gvir and the clerical-fascist Smotrich), represent “the racist, apartheid or liberal Zionism of the oppressed, many of whom genuinely fear the return of the Holocaust and so support the state of Israel.” He thus said that the mainstream of Zionism, from Netanyahu leftward, represents the “racism of the oppressed”. In the light of the current genocide in Gaza, this ought to be extremely offensive to any opponent of the genocide. It is very clear that the CD group were correct in their prognosis in 2020, and that Zionism was destined to become genocidal in ways that South African apartheid, and Jim Crow, were never able. Turan both claims that Gerry Downing was “vindicated” in his political attack over me on Zionism and yet that his own politics are “not ‘soft’ on Zionism”. It is clear when he wrote this recantation of a principled political position he was not thinking of the Palestinian victims of Zionism, but his own growing comfort with semi-chauvinist elements on the Jewish left, who he seems to have got closer to in his activities as a roving photographer. There is nothing wrong with what he was doing regarding this, so long as you keep your political wits about you. But he seems to have failed to do so.
Which is where David Miller comes in. It should be noted that defence of David Miller in his current legal battles with Zionists is a question of class principle. Much of the left is flinching on this – from the SWP to the CPGB/Weekly Worker to Jewish Voice for Liberation (formerly Jewish Voice for Labour) to Gerry Downing. And now Turan has split from the CD group because we refuse to capitulate to the reactionary outcry against Miller. Of course, David’s original victimisation by Bristol University, fuelled by an open letter demanding his sacking from MPs of all major parties, and some minor ones, even the Green Party, was a Zionist campaign against him for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’.
We have some differences with David Miller, but mainly where we consider that sometimes his approach is a bit too rigid. Like where he recently said Jeremy Corbyn is a Zionist because he supports a two-state solution in the Middle East. We certainly concur with Zarah Sultana’s criticism that Corbyn’s leadership capitulated to Zionism and the Zionist witchhunt against him, but that begs the question of, if Corbyn were simply a Zionist, why there should be a witchhunt against him in the first place! This in our view is an example of over-rigid thinking by David Miller. But despite such rigidity, unlike for instance Gerry Downing, his heart is clearly in the right place, and he is clearly driven by righteous anger at those who are in any way politically soft on Zionism in the context of this genocide.
Likewise for the supposed ‘rabbit holes’ Turan complains about. He apparently says that “Jewish anti-Zionists are compromised by ‘residual Zionism.’”. Which is apparently terrible, because:
“This logic is nothing less than condemning Jews for being Jews; damned if they support Zionism and damned if they don’t. Jewish anti-Zionists have long been among the Palestinian movement’s strongest allies, precisely because their existence disproves the false claim that Israel represents all Jews.”
While genuinely anti-Zionist Jews are indeed important allies of the struggle against Zionism, this is overstated. To understand it properly, you must understand that what we call the JZ caste is an imperialist formation that operates in the major North American and West European imperialist countries as a social and political agency of imperialist Israel. As previously noted, the racist Israeli Law of Return gives the Jewish imperialist bourgeoisie in those countries, where they mainly live, a direct material stake in the Israeli imperialist-bourgeois state, as their state in class/communal terms. But of course, the same racist law also covers all Jews – and creates a form of ‘national’-imperialist identification among non-bourgeois Jews, those without proletarian class consciousness at least – and this in a population that (as Tony Greenstein, no less, pointed out) no longer really has a proletariat.
In this context, saying that “Jewish anti-Zionists have long been among the Palestinian movement’s strongest allies” is akin to saying that the British working-class movement is one of the “strongest” allies of the Irish people against British imperialism. It simply is untrue. The British labour movement to this day is riddled with support for anti-Irish, pro-imperialist sentiment over Ireland. It may be dormant as currently there is not a mass struggle against British rule in the six counties, but as was shown in the period of the previous Irish war, the British labour movement was anything but “one of the strongest allies” of the Irish people. Unfortunately. And Jewish anti-Zionists, while we welcome their political activism and seek to radicalise it more, are anything but the “strongest allies” of the Palestinian movement.
If you want a barometer of that, look who among Jewish anti-Zionists is prepared to tolerate and solidarise with those who criticise the activities of the JZ bourgeois-imperialist caste in the West. Anyone who attempts to ‘cancel’ or ban criticism of the JZ caste by Marxists is a social-imperialist – a political agent of the imperialist bourgeoisie in the workers movement. But the political layer of the bourgeoisie they are acting for is not the British or US bourgeoisie in the traditional sense; they are acting as political agents of the Jewish-Zionist imperialist-bourgeois caste itself, which is the prime mover in today’s genocide. Such social- imperialists encompass all those on the Jewish left who have denounced David Miller for supposed anti-Semitism, and all those who denounced Socialist Fight between 2015 and 2020, and since then the Consistent Democrats since for supposed ‘anti-Semitism’ for pointing out the existence of, and producing a Marxist analysis of, the Jewish-Zionist caste among the imperialist bourgeoisie. Those, like Tony Greestein and Jewish Voice for Liberation (formerly Jewish Voice for Labour), in seeking to ban criticisms of the JZ caste in the workers movement, no matter how much anti-Zionist rhetoric they use, and no matter even if they take part in supportable actions and are victimised for them (in which case, like Tony Greenstein, they should be defended tooth and nail), nevertheless in doing this are acting for what is objectively their ‘own’ ruling class, acting as enemies of workers democracy and political agents of the JZ caste, part of the imperialist bourgeoisie, in the working class movement.
So, when Turan complains “Miller has gone so far as to claim that the UK is now an Israeli colony run from Tel Aviv”, Turan is answering, assuming DM did say literally that, an empirical observation with a flat denial of reality. The explanation for the subservience of the bulk of British bourgeois politicians to Zionism, grotesquely demonstrated recently over Aston Villa/Tel Aviv Macabees recently, is not that Britain is literally a colony, but rather that there is bizarre political cult of Zionism among the imperialist bourgeoisie in the West, the mirror image of the old bourgeois anti-Semitism. Which leads them to behave so that it superficially appears that way. But if Turan wishes to say that there is nothing out of the ordinary about such incidents as the Macabees affair, that it is normal functioning of British capitalism, then it is he who is at odds with reality, not David Miller.
Then there is the crescendo of Turan’s attack on Miller, that he has discussed the question of supposed Jewish ‘super intelligence’ with some elements of the far right, among the few that have not simply declared their loyalty to Israel as the most successful (so far) example of a racist ethnic state that ever existed. But this question arises from time to time among those attempting to get to grips with the Jewish question – the reason for the apparent domination of Jews in some spheres of intellectual life. Those who are trying to understand Jewish history properly are well advised to read a wide variety of views on the subject, to try to understand it comprehensively. At the same time some discretion is advised, as we do not seek to platform such people.
The actual explanation for such phenomena is in the sphere of class – the role of Jews as the embodiment of commercial capital under pre-capitalist natural economy, in Europe and indeed in some other places, did tend, because of the international connections of such traders, to broaden their understanding the outside world and give them an intellectual advantage over those not involved in what Abram Leon called the “people-class”. Some who have investigated aspects of Jewish history say that some Jews actually at least dabbled in eugenics to try to enhance this phenomenon. This is possible, as there appears to be evidence that Brahmins in India, for instance, at the summit of the caste system, did similar things. These are entirely valid subjects to study, even if it is a mistake to engage in public exchanges with elements of the far right about it.
This is what Gilad Atzmon called the ‘cognitive elite’. It is a product of class, not ‘race’, and is in some way like what the European aristocracies call ‘blue blood’. Symmetrically opposite phenomena can exist among those who were enslaved; degraded cultures as noted by G.E.M. De Ste Croix in his enormous work The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981).
In any case, it is grossly hypocritical for Gerry Downing to denounce David Miller for such a mistake and demand his ostracism, along with Turan, who now says that Downing is ‘vindicated’. Gerry Downing regularly writes for the Weekly Worker, he does not ‘ostracise’ them. Even though, as is their policy, they periodically publish material from people on the far right in their letters page, and even sometimes allow debates to develop with such people on that page. I have long held this to be wrong; at times in the past, I have found my sharply critical letters refused publication while some Yaxley-Lennon supporter gets their letter published. But I would not smear the Weekly Worker as pro-fascist because of this error, even though they have sometimes tried to smear me like this. In joining this campaign against David Miller, the fake-left, the SWP, WW, Gerry D and now Turan, are capitulating to a reactionary outcry in some ways like that against Julian Assange in the past.
David Miller, in spite of being sacked for supposed ‘anti-Semitism’ by Bristol University after a virulent Zionist campaign including the all-party letter by MPs demanding his sacking, won his industrial tribunal case against the University, and this set a legal precedent that anti-Zionist views are a protected characteristic, a valid philosophical belief, under the Equality Act, making it unlawful for someone to be victimised because of their anti-Zionist views. That was an important victory for all anti-Zionist militants over the Israel lobby, really over the J-Z caste, and a real gain for the working-class movement. There is a hysterical campaign by Zionists to reverse that gain, through their sponsorship of an appeal by Bristol University to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, to be heard this month (November).
David Miller was also outrageously held and questioned under the Terrorism Act when he returned from covering Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon as a journalist several months ago. The police had no valid reason for doing so; it was done for the Zionists. And the Zionist fake-charity the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAAS) have tried to instigate a private prosecution against him for some tweets that they alleged were in some way hateful; just a couple of weeks ago the CAAS suffered a major setback as the judge in that trial noted that they had unlawfully withheld crucial evidence regarding context in this case, and gave them 28 days to hand it over to the court. It looks likely their case could collapse because of this. But the whole thing is obviously part of a Zionist campaign to overturn the ET ruling in his favour, and thus also overturn the gain made for all anti-Zionists that his original victory represented. This is why the ‘left’ campaign against David Miller crosses class lines.
As I said, the Zionist campaign against David Miller resembles in some ways the campaign against Julian Assange. And like in that case, much of the left is crap on this question. Those echoing the Zionists campaign against his supposed ‘anti-semitism’ in these circumstances are doing the Zionists work for them and trying to undermine solidarity in a struggle that is in the interests of all opponents of Zionist terrorism. We in the Consistent Democrats utterly reject this betrayal of basic class principles and express our full solidarity with David Miller against the witchhunters.
