Solidarity with Yogendra Yadav/NDPF against India Police Harassment!

The home of leading Yogendra Singh Yadav, a leading member of the National Democratic People’s Front (NDPF), a working-class organisation in Uttar Pradesh, India, was raided by police yesterday (16 March). At the time, comrade Yadav was not actually at home, and so his wife and daughter had to face the police alone. The raiding police did not even include any female officers. This put them in a regrettable position and caused some worry to the family: it is itself a form of harassment in the context of India.

It appears that the motive for the raid was to harass comrade Yadav for his activities in helping local farmers to resist privatisation activities by the very right-wing BJP administration in Uttar Pradesh, which is aligned with Modi on a national level. We in the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, based in Brazil, Argentina and the United Kingdom, and Class Conscious, based in Australia and the United States, condemn this police action. We demand the police keep their hands off working class and farmer activists and not harass and supress the activities of activists for the poor and oppressed struggling for improved conditions. We send our full solidarity to comrade Yadav, and his family, and the NDPF comrades.

Eco-Terrorism – NATO’s Dirty Secret War

By SH

Nord Stream pipeline sabotaged by imperialism, September 2022

A few days ago, an article appeared in the New York Times1 It revealed the decade-long campaign the CIA has funded in Ukraine sponsoring regime change, with military training and arms provision, long before the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) just over 2 years ago.

NATO’s war on Russia has been decades in the making, a war of psyops, lies and half-truths with built in deniability of outrageous provocations by proxy. Russia has responded with offers of negotiations, diplomacy and finally the pre-emptive invasion of the Donbass to protect the rights of the Crimeans who freely chose to join the Russian Federation after their overwhelming support via the 2014 referendum.

Despite the continual escalation of provocative aggressions by NATO, including the use of long-range missiles on Russian soil, bombing civilians, spy satellites and drones, Russia has matched the West, not escalated in turn.

Conspicuous on the part of NATO has been the willingness to use eco-terrorism as part of its arsenal alongside the financial tools of sanctions and media manipulation, especially censorship, misinformation and disinformation.

The blowing up of Nordstream 1 was the biggest man-made ecological disaster in terms of a single methane release so far, even if it only represents a few days release of the fossil fuel industry’s pollution world-wide. However, its subsequent consequences with increased need to transport US LPG from dirty shale via ship will cost both the environment, and European economies far, far more.

Similarly, the provision of depleted uranium2 by the UK and US in the form of munitions for tanks will pollute the environment for centuries to come, and we are forced to wonder why the Kiev regime is prepared to spill so much blood in order to regain land it is rendering toxic for the foreseeable future, along with hundreds of thousands of mines regularly aimed at civilians in both Ukraine and Russia, rather than troops. Unexploded mines will be a threat to the civilians for decades to come.

Finally, there is the constant shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant3, where the collaboration of the IAEA and Western media gives rise to the farcical assertion that Russia is shelling its own people in the power plant it occupies. In fact, Russia has so far prevented the Ukrainian regime carrying out their threat to create Chernobyl 2.0 with the help of a dirty bomb. Even as little as a few days ago Russian forces arrested 3 Ukrainians in possession of chemical weapons for a suspected attack on the power plant, to carry out a terrorist attack.4

This really shows the nature of the war the West is waging in Ukraine, which endangers the peoples of Europe, if not the world. This is why we should oppose it and defend its intended victims, the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass, and Russia itself. More and more people in the West oppose, and can see right through, the West’s oppression and massacre of the people of Gaza and Palestine, so people are beginning to see through the lies spread by Ukraine about the SMO.

The huge mobilisation in Britain in defence of Palestine shows the possibility of uniting more organisations in an anti-Nato, anti-fascist united front, to demand Britain out of Nato and to support the campaigns to stop sending weapons to Ukraine.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html

2. https://www.declassifieduk.org/explainer-why-should-we-be-concerned-about-depleted-uranium/#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20UK%20sending,using%20DU%20shells%20to%20Ukraine.

3. https://www.ans.org/news/article-5810/officials-sole-power-source-to-ukraine-plant-damaged-in-shelling/

4. https://tass.com/politics/1751953

Communist Fight, issue 2 of new series, is out now

The New issue of Communist Fight, issue 2 of new series, is out now.

This issue, like the previous one, focuses heavily on the genocide of the Palestinians. Carried out in plain sight of the world’s population, Israel’s genocide has produced revulsion among billions of people and united the vast bulk of humanity against it. In the imperialist countries, the unprecedented exposure of Israel’s massacres particularly through social media, and the obvious backing of most of the imperialist countries, from the US and UK to the EU, for the Zionist perpetrators, is creating a revolutionary change of consciousness among the population. This was shown in disparate ways by such events as the landslide victory of George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election on 29th February, where Gaza was central, and the self-immolation of a serving US airman, Aaron Bushnell, outside the Israeli Embassy to the US a few days earlier.  These are both clear signs of rage and angst at the genocidal crimes of Zionism and imperialism becoming a mass phenomenon.

The lead article focuses on the left-wing challenge that is emerging in Britain to the two main pro-Zionist parties, Labour and Tories, that are vying with each other as to which can be the most egregious advocates of genocidal imperialist militarism, in Gaza and Ukraine, and the most anti-democratic. The campaign of George Galloway, of the Workers Party of Britain, in Rochdale was analysed in an article published while the campaign was in full swing. Once Galloway took the decision to take on the Tories and Labour directly in a parliamentary seat, over the central issue of Gaza and the genocide, critical support became inescapable and obligatory, notwithstanding other flaws. Galloway’s victorious campaign was not conducted in isolation, but is the outrider to a whole series of other challenges to the pro-genocide parties in the coming General Election, the most prominent of which is the challenge to Keir Starmer himself in his North London seat by ‘proud leftie Jew’ Andrew Feinstein. The article motivates support for this and the growing number of other independent campaigns that are springing up around the country, challenging genocidal Zionist New Labour.

Other important articles in the same vein include: a defence, by Comrade Mark Andresen, of the democratic rights of the Muslim political group Hizb ut-Tahrir (‘Party of Liberation’) from the anti-democratic ban that the current Tory regime has instituted, on spurious accusations of ‘terrorism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’. Since Hizb ut-Tahrir is avowedly non-violent, this is both an outrage and may not even be sustainable legally in the longer term: previous attempts at suppression of this movement by Blair and Cameron failed. We also publish the full text of a letter to the Weekly Worker celebrating the victory of Professor David Miller, formerly of Bristol University, at an industrial tribunal after being sacked for his anti-Zionist views. The letter poses awkward questions for the WW about their own record of witch-hunting anti-Zionists, such as ourselves, whose views on Zionism parallel those of comrade Miller. Somewhat evasively, the WW published the letter but cut out the majority of the criticism of themselves.

We include two major statements, issued jointly by the Liaison Committee of the Fourth International and ClassConscious.Org, about the Zionist genocide in Gaza with particular reference to the provisional judgement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 26th January. The other being a joint statement denouncing the US/UK bombing of Yemen, aimed at defending Israel’s genocide in Gaza against the Houthi’s attempt to blockade Israel through stopping entry to the Red Sea.

And on the back page, we have an important article by Sunda San, on genocidal events taking place again in Congo, with its terrible history of previous genocidal massacres, some of the worst in history, at the beginning of the 20th Century. Today’s terrible events are driven by imperialism’s insatiable desire for Rare Earth metals and the like, found in Congo, that play a major role in computer and mobile phone technology. The article examines how today’s events are rooted in rivalry in Africa over these mineral assets between France and the United States. The latter previously made use of regional forces in Uganda and Rwanda to wage proxy wars against French interests, thereby triggering off the Rwanda genocide of 1994 as a by-product of this imperialist intrigue.

This issue has much to recommend in addressing the most crucial issues working class people are facing today.

Stop Genocide in Congo

by Sunda San

Activists protest in Goma, Eastern Congo, against fighting between pro-Rwanda M23 and Congolese Army

Congo is a beautiful country in central Africa, It is the size of western Europe, and the richest country on earth in terms of its mineral wealth. It has gold, diamonds, copper, oil, gas, cassiterite, tantalum as well as so called ‘tech’ minerals such as coltan and cobalt, needed for cell phones, computers etc.

The Kingdom of Congo had its first contact with Europeans during the late 15th century, when Portuguese traders arrived and gradually began fomenting strife in different parts of the Kingdom, until it disintegrated into a mass of mini states locked in unending conflict. The prisoners from those wars contributed to the numbers of people shipped across the seas to the Americas to become slaves.

In 1874, Henry Morton Stanley “explorer” (knighted by Britain and elected to Parliament) made his third trip to Africa, when he “attacked and destroyed 28 large towns and 2-4 score villages” (his words) as he pillaged and plundered his way into Africa. In 1879 Stanley again travelled to Africa on commission from King Leopold II of Belgium to colonise the Congo for him. Leopold took Congo as his personal property, robbed and murdered its people to build Belgium and enrich himself.

After Stanley left in 1884, Leopold sent in hordes of thugs to terrorise the people and ship out the wealth (See A Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost). Congo, like the rest of Africa, fell victim to the 1885 Imperialist Berlin Conference which carved up the continent among the European powers. Belgium got the Congo, and  in the next ten years King Leopold reduced the population from 31 million to 10 million. The greatest single holocaust in the 20th Century in numbers was the destruction of the Congo. Nobody lifted any voices against that holocaust which started 500 years ago and is still in progress.

Initially, the Europeans were mainly interested in ivory but then an Irishman, John Dunlop, discovered how to make an inflated rubber tyre for his bicycle. He set up a tyre company named after himself and the rest as they say is history. Rubber became the new gold. Wild rubber was all over Congo, but tapping it was very difficult. People who refused to gather rubber for the Belgians had their right hand chopped off. Even children were not spared. The violence continued unabated until the population declined so much that labour was not as available and killing people meant less profits. It was the decline in profits that reduced the killings. The Belgian Government was forced to ‘buy’ Congo from Leopold because his crimes were exposed by Sir Roger Casement’s report to the British Parliament. 

The French, Germans, and Belgians looted the Congo and the Belgians collected the severed hands of the Congolese as trophies in their mission to pillage the rubber resources of Congo. There is a museum in Brussels which has replicas of children’s hands decorating the exterior in homage to mass murderer Leopold.

Today all over Belgium there are monuments to the mass murderer Leopold, which continues to remind us of the suffering and horror and is irrefutable evidence of their lack of remorse. How would the world respond to a statue of Hitler in Germany?

Leopold (like the slave holders in the Americas) was paid 50 million francs as a mark of gratitude for his great sacrifice for the Congo”. So once again we see that evil is profitable and goes unpunished.

The Congo is still traumatised, psychologically destroyed and unable to recover from these atrocities and the up-to-300-million Africans deported and killed en-route to the Americas in the Transatlantic deportations.

Today the resources beneath the earth are at the root of the Congo’s suffering.  Many of these minerals are necessary for the functioning of modern society. Particularly in the technology sector e.g., coltan. Coltan is mined in Congo by virtual slaves who work just for a meal, have no protective garments to protect them from the toxic and radioactive minerals, and so will certainly die of cancer due to this exposure. Not to mention the pollution of the environment and the poisoning of the water table caused by mining these toxic minerals.

Recently released documents show that after independence Belgium and the CIA assassinated the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Last year the Belgians and the French admitted their role in the murder and said that after they tortured and shot him, they dissolved his body in acid, but kept a tooth for DNA purposes which they have just returned to his family.

Patrice Lumumba

After they murdered Lumumba they installed a corrupt despot, Mobutu. (See The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo de Witte and Chief of Station by Larry Deolin).  Since 1996 the US and Britain have waged a proxy (resource) war against Congo, using Rwanda and Uganda.

Over 7 million people have been killed (UN Report, Dec 12th 2008-Congo, Deadliest Conflict since World War 2) yet it is never mentioned in the news because Western corporations are benefiting from the slaughter. Colonial exploitation created a situation where various ethnic/religious groups vie for political power granting them access to economic resources. The French had at one stage favoured the Tutsi group in Rwanda but changed their position and favoured the Hutu group. This has resulted in civil wars displacing large groups and forcing them to flee.

In 1996 and 1998 there were two Civil wars in Congo, they were caused by the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which was triggered by the assassination of the Hutu President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. During the genocide extremist Hutus killed nearly a million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.  After this there was an ethnic cleansing of Hutus and over one million Hutus fled to neighbouring Congo

Kagame created a group of fighters from the Rwandan Army known as M23 which invaded Congo, committed summary executions and forced people to work in the mines which M23 seized. Rwanda is a very small country with no mineral resources.

On Feb 8th 2024 information was released from two EU sources (1. Nazionale Audiencie- Espana and (2) Tribunal de Grande instance de Paris-France) confirming that Bill Clinton and the US military were behind the plot which triggered the Rwandan genocide.

Michael Hourigan, Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from Australia discovered during an Investigation that Kagame and Clinton were responsible for the shooting down of the aircraft carrying the Hutu President of Rwanda (Habyarimana), triggering the tragedy.

16 years after this crime Hourigan called his boss in the Hague (Holland), ICTR Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour (Canadian).  She called New York to inform the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan knew that it was Bill Clinton who ordered the assassination of Habyarimana. So, Annan immediately informed Madelene Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State (it was Albright who chose Annan to replace Boutrous Ghali as UN Secretary General). Albright went immediately to Clinton’s office and said “Mr. President, our action against France in Rwanda has come out, the ICTR investigators have discovered we shot down the French aircraft” 

In order to cover up the story, Louise Arbour was ordered to fire the ICTR Prosecutor Michael Hourigan and kill the investigation. Kofi Annan was ordered to send Michael Hall from the UN Security Services to Rwanda to arrange Michael Hourigan’s swift departure from Rwanda. Bill Clinton then ordered Albright to pressure the ICTR Judges not to investigate the event which triggered the Rwanda genocide, the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s aircraft. A former aide to Clinton recalls Clinton saying “No one must know I shot down Habyarimana”. Clinton went to Rwanda and ordered Kagame to kill all the people who may know about the Habyarimana assassination, starting with people who were listed on the memo Hourigan sent to Louise Arbour at the Hague. This was the beginning of a long list of assassinations around the world. The two people who helped Clinton’s agents shoot down the plane, Seth Sendashonga and Theoneste Lizinde, were assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya a few weeks later.

Clinton advised Kagame to assassinate Rwandan General Faustin Nyamwasa in South Africa. The assassination failed so Clinton went to South Africa to press for a cover up.

 On November 25th 1987 General Colin Powell went to President Regan and said “Mr. President, the Cold war with the Soviets is over, the Kremlin no longer has the stamina to carry on, Defense Secretary Shultz has reached a nuclear deal with the Soviets”. Reagan asked General Powell to ”find a new enemy to fight” The new enemy would be the French Empire in Africa. It was decided that the resources in Congo were crucial and must be seized at any cost, including genocide…

The French President Mitterrand perceived the threat and attempted to subvert it by calling together all the African Presidents under French control and proclaiming a new democracy…to correct “French mistakes”. Washington was intent on capturing Congo’s immense mineral wealth, the Pentagon decided to invade Rwanda via Uganda, using the RPF rebellion as a cover. On the 1st October 1990 Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was in Washington and the State Department offered him asylum, in exchange for giving all power to Kagame’s RPF. He refused and went back to Rwanda. From October 1990 to January 1993 the Pentagon provided Kagame with money, materials, everything he asked for in order to overthrow the Rwandan Government. When France landed its troops in Rwanda to ask for negotiation between the Rwandan Government and Kagame’s RPF, Washington realised that they could not invade Congo if there was a democratic government in Rwanda. Washington decided they should assassinate the Hutu leaders.

In September 1993 Clinton ordered the Pentagon and the CIA to help Kagame to assassinate the Hutu President of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, Rwanda’s neighbour and ally of France. On the 20th October 1993 Kagame, his death squads, and CIA agents flew to Bujumbura. President Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated. When Kagame flew back to Rwanda, he met the USAID Director to finalise the plan of assassinating Rwandan President Habyarimana. An informer recalled that Kagame was reluctant and warned of the consequences of such an act. But Clinton, through his ambassador George Moose, told Kagame that assassinating Habyarimana was the only way to win the war quickly. The CIA had estimated that 50 thousand people would be killed as a consequence of Habyarimana’s assassination and that this was a good sacrifice for a just cause. The Pentagon would provide everything necessary for the job, including military assistance. 

Kagame invited two Hutu rebels and former allies of the Rwandan President, Lizinde and Kanyarengwe, to prepare the assassination plan. They decided to shoot down the plane near the airport at Kagera Park. The Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the Tanzanian President were in on the plot. Habyarimana’s plane was hit by two missiles during descent to the runway. No one on board survived. Anthony Lake, National Security Adviser to Clinton, went to him with the news. “We did it – Congo will be American” Clinton agreed to support Kagame’s rebels in return for Kagame acting as a US proxy to invade Congo and overthrow Mobutu. Clinton, using Kagame as his cover, invaded Congo and killed 8 million people including Spanish nationals, overthrew France, and looted Congo.

Hundreds of millions of US dollars ended up in Clinton’s pocket and Kagame could then afford two luxury private jets and a huge building in London with Tony Blair as co-shareholder.

In January 2009 when Obama became President, he ordered Kagame to arrest the Congo General Laurent Nkunda. Kagame was furious and plotted to kill Obama. He sought help from Clinton and Tony Blair to shoot down Air Force One. The information became public so Clinton had to distance himself from Kagame. At that same time the ICTR revealed the perpetrators of the Habyarimana assassination so the families are now seeking justice in the Courts.

The Lawsuit is seeking 350 million US dollars for compensation for wrongful deaths in the terrorist assassination over Kigali Airport on April 6th 1994, money Kagame cannot afford. Kagame killed 8 million people including Spanish nationals during the illegal invasion of Congo on Clinton’s orders.

The Congolese government is unable to control M23 as well as other armed groups in their struggle to seize mineral rich territories; this has now provoked a prolonged humanitarian crisis in Congo. Millions are now in need of food, shelter and healthcare.

The ‘international community’ has remained indifferent to the suffering in Congo. There has been no initiative to engage all parties to negotiate to bring an end to the conflict.

The UN security force has been in Congo for 25 years, yet the violence continues unabated.  Since 1996 the Civil War has killed more than 5 million Congolese. 

In September 2023 the Government asked the UN to leave. On the 3rd November 2023 a UN drone crashed in Eastern Congo and when people went to the crash site to render help, they found piles of gold bars and guns. A week later a UN ambulance crashed and again the people found gold bars in the vehicle. This has led the people to believe that the UN is causing instability and resource plundering, rather than providing security and peacekeeping as the UN claims. On the 12th February 2024, there were huge protests outside the French, British and US embassies in Kinshasa. The people attempted to burn down their embassies.

Unless Africa reverses what was done at the Berlin Conference 1884-85, (the boundaries drawn on policies of divide and rule), there will be no meaningful unity of the peoples of Africa. Africa must unite to fight and win against Imperialism.

Labour’s Genocidal Zionism Fuels Leftist Opposition

Critical support to George Galloway in Rochdale!

Support Andrew Feinstein, Leanne Mohammad, Newham Socialist Labour, Liverpool Community Independents, Transform and all Socialists Challenging Genocidal Zionist New Labour!

The by-election in Rochdale is an outrider for a challenge to Zionist New Labour in the coming General Election. George Galloway’s campaign is the first of a series of challenges that are taking shape as the political expression of the revolutionary change of consciousness that is underway in the imperialist countries which support Israel’s genocide.

This provides a huge opportunity to challenge Zionist New Labour. In the context of the slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza, in which the US and UK are direct participants by providing military and diplomatic support to the Netanyahu government.  The overriding issue is Palestine. George Galloway’s challenge, whatever his other flaws, poses this point blank. He has been active in defence of the Palestinians for many decades, he is fearless in confronting Zionists and their friends in high places, and he has been brutally beaten for this by Zionists.

He was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for a remarkably radical stance on the Iraq war, going beyond the pacifism of the Labour left, supporting, and demanding, armed resistance from Arab bourgeois regimes to the imperialist invasion. Galloway has several times organised convoys bringing material aid to the Arab peoples, from Iraq to Palestine. From the Mariam Appeal in the 1990s that sought to break imperialism’s starvation blockade of Iraq (which caused the death through starvation and lack of medicine of half-a-million Iraqi children), to Viva Palestina after the Israeli massacre of Operation Cast Lead in 2009, where he was deported from Egypt by the collaborationist regime. Galloway became a hate figure for ‘left’ Islamophobes and semi-Zionists on the so-called ‘far left’ because of his uncompromising defence of Arab peoples against Zionists and neocon warmongers. Whose project was always genocidal. He twice defeated New Labour in parliamentary elections: in a hard-fought campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow during the height of the Iraq conflict in the 2005 General Election, and at Bradford West in 2012.

He was notably smeared by the bourgeois press as the recipient of oil money from Saddam Hussein. In 2004 he defeated the Tory-Zionist Daily Telegraph in libel court and again when they appealed. Islamophobes on the fake left still rant on to this day about his alleged ‘toadying’ to Saddam Hussein in the course of agitation against sanctions. One particular quote makes Galloway a bête noire: at a televised mass meeting presided over by Saddam in Baghdad in 1994, he concluded his speech thus:

“It is my belief that we must convey the very clear picture that 1994 has to be the year of the ending of the embargo against Iraq. Otherwise, famine and all the awful consequences, including acts of despair by Iraqis, will be the result; and this is the message we must convey to civilized opinion in Europe…Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem].”

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Galloway

Galloway is a classic parliamentary orator, for whom it is common to address a wider public through the chair. Many speeches in parliament are addressed to a wider public through “Mr Speaker” etc. For Fleet Street hacks and phoney lefts alike, this mundane form became ‘proof’ that Galloway was a ‘stooge’ of Saddam. It is clear that the speech was a salute to the Iraqi population resisting imperialism, through Saddam as presiding chair. Various real stooges of Zionism and imperialism projected their own toadying onto Galloway. These reactionary smears deserve no quarter.

Galloway became the ultimate hate figure for the British ruling class and Zionists. Parliamentary niceties and ‘democracy’ were dispensed with in August 2014, during the Israeli Gaza massacre of Operation Protective Edge. 60-year-old Galloway was attacked in London and brutally beaten by a 40-year- old Zionist, Neil Masterson, breaking a rib and causing extensive bruising and scars. He was visibly betrayed by the Labour left and the capitulatory ‘far left’; there was very little solidarity from anyone. The only Member of Parliament who publicly denounced the assault was the sole Green MP, Carolyn Lucas. Even Jeremy Corbyn only signed a private message of support from STW people, though this was mentioned by Stop the War in a brief note introducing an article by an independent blogger, which appears to be the only public reference to the existence of this letter anywhere (https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/george-galloway-responds-to-the-shameful-silence-of-mps-following-his-savage-beating-in-a-london-street/).

Galloway suffered a major loss of political coherence, and left-wing commitment, after that. That was a terrible betrayal by a left that capitulated to Zionism. Apart from individual leftist bloggers, such as that run by one of our political predecessors Communist Explorations, (see https://commexplor.com/2014/11/11/state-collusion-jewish-extremist-escapes-trial-for-religious-assault-on-galloway/) hardly anyone on the far left even made a fuss about it. Unfortunately, those events politically damaged George, and his partial and contradictory disillusion was expressed in a degree of sympathy for right-wing populism. At times since he has trampled over his own honourable past, which was considerable, despite his Catholic-derived opposition to abortion, which was always an important flaw.

He once boasted of being most pro-immigrant MP in Britain. His defiance of the US/UK war in Iraq was legendary – his attack on the Neocon US Senate shortly as a RESPECT MP in 2005 was exemplary. He was hostile to any whiff of anti-immigrant politics in those days, even though he could not oppose immigration controls in principle … having too much national-reformist baggage. But nevertheless in 2009 he refused to support Bob Crow’s No2EU left-wing Eurosceptic election campaign because he did not like its implicit nationalism.  In the spring of 2014 he ran a principled, working-class campaign (“Just Say Naw”) against Scottish separation, and correctly attacked the Labour Party for its ‘Better Together’ anti-independence campaign jointly organised with Tories.

But in 2016 he supported Brexit and tried to work with Nigel Farage. In 2019 he called for a vote to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, and even attempted to become a candidate. In 2021 his ‘Alliance for Unity’ Campaign in the Scottish Parliamentary Election called for votes for Tories against the Scottish National Party, in complete contradiction with his earlier denunciation of ‘Better Together’. He seemed to have lost his political moorings, and was flip-flopping all over the place.

Critical Support Sui Generis

His more recent activity has been even more contradictory. His initiation of No2NATONo2War as a alternative anti-war umbrella over Ukraine was an excellent idea, that unlike Stop the War took a side against the imperialist-Nazi proxy war against the people of the Donbass, aimed at dismembering Russia. Its launch in early 2023 drew thousands. But it proved abortive, and one important reason was that he insisted in including dissenting elements of the far right, centred around David Clews of Unity News Network, fellow travellers of the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative which has been responsible for vile attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers. This completely undercut No2NATO’s potential appeal in the labour movement, as most labour movement activists correctly do not want to be allied with dangerously racist elements like Clews.

In this situation, things are somewhat different. The dominant expression of reaction today, which pretty much overshadows all others, is the Gaza genocide. We need to give whatever political expression we can to mobilising the mass anger and radicalisation against it. This is the biggest change of consciousness in the lifetimes of even the 1960s/1970s and 1980s generation of labour movement activists, let alone younger layers of the population who are becoming politicised by this horror. In this situation, critical support for Galloway becomes an obligation. Though not in the spirit of Lenin’s famous remarks about hardened reactionary Labour leaders like Snowdon et all, of support similar to “a rope supporting a hanging man”. Galloway is a contradictory, sometimes heroic figure, and the left should see this as an opportunity to bring him and his followers in from the cold. While not going along with those elements of populist chauvinism that marrs their politics. This is aimed at overcoming that.

Galloway on his own with his mixture of anti-imperialism and pandering to xenophobia, would be highly problematic. But if he can be drawn into something broader, a left-wing movement that does not share his weakness for right-wing populism and worse, then there is a good chance that this weakness can be marginalised and transcended. His strengths are also considerable – he is an immensely powerful orator particularly when he speaks up for Palestine. What is excellent is that there are serious signs of such a broader challenge crystallising, offering hope for the future emergence of a new mass workers party capable of developing programmatically towards a revolutionary programme and outlook. Such a development is the logic of the failure of social democracy, the complete capitulation of Labour to the most reactionary manifestations of neoliberalism (Zionist genocide!) and the failure of the Labour left under Corbyn to stand up to this reaction. And its collaboration with its own downfall, apologising for non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’ and throwing his most dedicated supporters, anti-racist opponents of Zionism, under the bus.

Challenges to Starmer Multiply

The selection of Andrew Feinstein, the strongly anti-Zionist former South African MP, anti-war activist and “proud leftie Jew”, to challenge Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras, is an excellent development. This was brought about by the exiled Corbynite campaign group OCISA (Organise Corbyn-Inspired Socialist Alliance) which has been sinking roots into Starmer’s constituency for the past few years. The huge discredit that Starmer’s approval of Israeli genocidal measures has caused, brought about an explosion among Labour’s mass base particularly in the immigrant-derived working class in cities like London. The challenge of Leanne Mohammad, a well-known Palestinian activist, to arch-Zionist neoliberal Wes Streeting in Ilford North is also very promising – independent lefts are now the main opposition on the local Council. As Skwawkbox pointed out:

“With neighbouring Tower Hamlets already run by Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire party after a landslide in the last council and mayoral elections and Newham Independents romping home in recent by-elections and scheduled elections, Labour and Streeting, who has been the target of protests and boycotts by outraged locals for his Gaza weaselling, have cause to be worried.

https://skwawkbox.org/2024/01/16/independents-select-palestinian-leanne-mohamad-to-stand-against-streeting/

A number of left Labour MPs, Corbyn himself, Diane Abbot and Kate Osamor, have been deprived of the chance to stand for Labour, and will have little choice but to stand as independents if to preserve their access to the Parliamentary platform. They will most likely win if they fight.

Nor is this a London phenomenon, as Galloway’s intervention in Rochdale shows. The challenge by Liverpool Community Independents’ Sam Gorst to Maria Eagle in Liverpool Garston is another left-wing challenge to an arch-Starmerite and witch hunter. And North Tyneside Mayor Jamie Driscoll, a Corbynite, defied Starmer’s attempt to purge him and will be standing as an independent in May.

Over Gaza, there have been resignations and defections of councillors all over the country, with Labour losing control of some councils, notably Oxford and Burnley. And there are a number of aspiring leftist parties challenging Labour across the country, from the new Transform party, to TUSC.

And as result of Starmer’s support for the Gaza genocide, Labour’s huge lead in opinion polls is showing signs of narrowing. The Zionist balls-up of the Labour candidacy in Rochdale is a prime example of what is involved. Starmer will likely win the election by default given the huge popular hatred of the Tories, who have impoverished Britain hugely in the past 14 years, and their effective political collapse into far-right politics. But his regime will be both disgustingly neoliberal and Zionist, and tainted from the get-go. Unlike Tony Blair, whose political ‘honeymoon’ lasted for his entire first term (1997-2001) Starmer is going to face a burgeoning leftist opposition right from the start.

Communists and the Labour Movement

The basis is being laid for a much broader working-class alternative to crystallise. A new working-class party will need to play a radicalising role in the trade unions, which have not been an effective force in the class struggle faced with the severe austerity and inflation the working class have suffered in this period.  The job of Marxists in this situation is to both play a unifying role, and act as a yeast for revolutionary programmatic advance, pointing the way forward for the labour movement as a whole. As Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto:

“The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

“They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

Imperialist Bloc Escalates Zionist Holocaust, Trying to Stave off Defeat

Gaza Genocide is ‘Plausible’ and ‘Prima Facie’, Admits Bourgeois ICJ

Joint Statement of the LRCI and ClassConscious.Org

ICJ President Joan Donohue reads out provisional judgement on Israel genocide indictment by South Africa, Jan 26th

In the current mass slaughter in Gaza, Israel has already killed 30 thousand Palestinians, approximately, the same number of people as the Argentine dictatorship of 1976-82, the most bloodthirsty in South America. The provisional judgement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), based in The Hague, Netherlands, delivered on 26th January, is the judicial expression of the massive protest movement against the monstrous slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza since early October 2023. It is the product of the pressure of the worldwide mass movement refracted through a bourgeois court.

The judges, who are primarily accountable to the UN General Assembly, were confronted with a detailed indictment by South Africa of Israel’s systematic attempt to destroy Gaza Palestinians since October, and a call for them to demand provisional measures to stop the slaughter before the court determined in detail if genocide was involved.

The ICJ did not dare directly confront the imperialists by agreeing to South Africa’s initial two demands that Israel ‘immediately suspend’ its military operations ‘in and around Gaza’. That obviously means a total ceasefire by Israel. But they did demand that Israel stop virtually everything they are doing to destroy the Gazans.

That was the influence of the global mass movement and the heroic resistance, of Palestinian fighters in Gaza, of the Houthi and others in West Asia, as well as political pressure led by South Africa. The judgement was emphatic: the votes among the 17 judges were publicly announced as is customary. Only an ad-hoc Israeli judge and one obvious foul-maverick Ugandan voted against the most damning elements of the judgement.

These concretely accepted that ‘plausible’evidence, and therefore ‘prima facie’ jurisdiction under the Genocide Convention exists, of genocidal Israeli actions against the substantial part of the Palestinian people that live in Gaza, as a human group, killing members of the group, causing serious bodily and mental harm to them, deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, and preventing Gaza Palestinians giving birth. As formulated in the Genocide Convention. They also noted that the overwhelming majority of Gazans have been driven from their homes, and forced to flee from one supposed refuge to another, where they can be and are attacked with deadly weapons both where they flee from, and where they flee to, and on the march between…

Instead of the demand for a cessation, the court demanded that that Israel ensure that these be prevented, that direct and public incitement to genocide by prevented and punished, that basic services and humanitarian assistance be provided, that evidence of genocide be preserved and protected from destruction (by Israel), and that Israel must report to the court on the progress of all these things in one month. (see https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-south-africa-icj-provisional-ruling-read-gaza-genocide for the full text of the judgement).

A Symbolic Humiliation for Zionism and Imperialism

Mass grave of Palestinian victims of Zionist murder in Gaza

At one level this could be dismissed as cowardly and a betrayal. Evidently the court simply did not have the basic principle and political courage to defy not only Israel, but also its imperialist protectors, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and many of their other smaller imperialist partners, who attempted to dismiss South Africa’s indictment and rubbish its basis in fact. Not to mention the usual, psychotic smears of Israel itself, which attributed the South African indictment, and after the judgement, the position of the court itself, to ‘anti-Semitism’. Such obscene racialised abuse from Zionists is itself a factor of intimidation that is often effective in warping even bourgeois politics, and may also have been a factor in intimidating these high bourgeois judges, from a variety of countries, some imperialist, some not, from outright confrontation with Israel, and thus diluting their judgement.

However, the categories of evidence that they conceded were plausible and ‘prima facie’ evidence, are irrefutable. If anything, the numerous summary murders by IDF troops in Gaza were less than fully depicted in the indictment, but it was only a first tranche of what could be documented and no doubt will be. And given that Israel’s response to the court judgement has been to continue exactly the same massive murder of the civilian population in Gaza as before, and in fact to escalate the killing, it is inconceivable that the court could credibly decide in the future, that somehow that evidence could be discounted or refuted. Particularly as Israel continued to attack the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few hospitals still (just about) functioning in Gaza, immediately after the judgement, having previously rendered the vast majority of Gaza’s healthcare facilities unusable though savage military attack. Continuing the attack on Nasser hospital immediately after the judgement was a big FUCK YOU to the ICJ, predictable, but another savage, genocidal attack nevertheless, clearly calculated to destroy the conditions of life of Gaza Palestinians.

Even more so is the threat to the population, now that at least three quarters of the Gaza population have been compacted through Israeli mass terrorism into the area of Rafah, on the Southern tip of the strip. Netanyahu is talking of a mass ‘evacuation’ of this population as a ‘solution’ to the Gaza ‘problem’, which ought to remind the world that Hitler’s ‘first draft’ of the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘problem’ of European Jewry was a plan to deport them all to Madagascar. When that failed the Nazis turned to mass murder. Netanyahu’s problem is that an attempt to drive nearly two million people over the Egyptian border has already been ruled out by Egypt, and may result in an armed clash that could destroy the Begin-Sadat ‘peace agreement’ of 1979. Jordan has also publicly given a similar warning (both have no choice, because of popular rage against the Zionist genocide). He is trying to bribe various African and other countries to be the recipients of mass deportees, but that would also lay them open to possible consequences from the ICJ etc. down the line.

He could launch his own ‘Final Solution’ with an all-out extermination of the displaced in Rafah by bombs and summary murder by the IDF, but that is at the front of world politics and the popular backlash internationally could sweep away the Israel lobby in a tide of popular rage. In this context, Hamas’ proposal for an extended truce in three 45-day phases, a large-scale exchange of prisoners, etc. massive aid and a phased rebuilding of Gaza with international guarantors (including Egypt, Turkey and Russia) dovetails well with the demands of the ICJ, and though it has been rejected for now, may well be a factor later. Such a deal may well finally bring down Netanyahu in Israel, which is itself in deep trouble economically and has just been downgraded by the credit agency Moody. Its tourist industry, particularly hotels, are now being used to put up Israelis evacuated from the wide areas close to both Gaza and Lebanon.

The court’s judgement, though it is a bourgeois judicial organisation and the questions involved are refracted through that, is a serious political defeat for Zionist imperialism and its allies/partners in the older imperialist countries, who scratch Israel’s back (and vice-versa). Over the last several decades since the 1970s at least, they have protected Israel from serious condemnation in any bourgeois international forum. Being credibly accused of genocide by an authoritative bourgeois international court, with all the ‘provisional’ caveats, is serious criticism, as serious as it gets. Of course, the court cannot enforce its judgements – it depends on the UN Security Council to do so, and the US habitually protects Israel from all manner of critical and particularly binding, Chapter 7, votes. But the court has considerably greater soft-power than mere votes in the UNSC or even the General Assembly – its judgements potentially have legal force in those countries that have ratified the Genocide Convention. For a state that the Western powers promote as a fellow ‘democracy’ to be credibly accused of genocide by such a body is a major ideological reverse for imperialism.

Imperialism’s Counterthrust – Starve Gaza Even More!

UNRWA clinic in Gaza City destroyed by Israel. Cutting off aid to UNRWA by US/UK and many EU countries on Israel’s say so is a direct genocidal attack on Palestinian population.

Israel’s imperialist backers, centrally the Biden administration in the US, the British Tory government of Sunak (echoed by the Tory second eleven in the imperialist Labour Party, led by Zionist ‘without qualification’ Keir Starmer), Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and Finland struck back directly against the judgement of the court within a day of its judgement being announced. They did so by cutting off aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the main organisation that has distributed aid to the victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing since 1948. Its job is to keep millions of effectively stateless Palestinian refugees, who have virtually no rights, from starvation. Since the Israelis began their outright extermination of the Gaza population, over 100 of their staff have been murdered by the Israeli state while trying to deliver aid to Gazans in conditions of ferocious Israeli bombardment of the entire strip. But because Israel has now accused some staff of UNRWA, on the basis of ‘evidence’ and ‘concessions’ extracted under torture (which is simply normal for Zionist state forces) of being involved in the Hamas-led prison breakout on 7th October, aid has been cut off to UNRWA, which millions of Palestinians depend on to survive.

This is a genocidal act, and a punishment of UNRWA, not for any supposed dereliction over the 7 October, but in reality, for providing considerable evidence to the ICJ of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. So, this attack on UNRWA is clearly, by proxy, an attack on the ICJ by Israel and its partners in this crime of genocide, and it is now clear, by this action, that the US, UK, Germany etc., are not merely accessories and accomplices in the extermination of the Gaza Palestinians, but actual, direct participants in the extermination through carpet bombing, starvation and deliberately created epidemic disease.

In this context, as the genocidal proclivities of the imperialists become clearer, their attacks on democratic rights at home escalate.  In Britain, there have been a number of outrageous arrests of left-wing opponents of the genocide, of leading figures in Palestine solidarity movements in England and Scotland.

Cowardly IDF Killers Suffer Reverses

In different ways, the main imperialists are in a cleft stick, because Israel has bitten off more than it can chew with this Gaza genocidal attack. They are not winning the war against Hamas and are taking heavy casualties in Gaza. The IDF is a cowardly army that can massacre civilians at the drop of a hat but flinches in the face of determined, capable and courageous opposition. Many Hamas videos have been released showing intrepid resistance fighters using a mixture of daring and guile to blow up Israelis troops in their tanks, etc.

News of such reverses has been supressed from the Israeli population to a considerable extent, but it is now leaking out.  They were unable to suppress news of the deaths of between 21 and 28 (the full toll is not completely clear) on 22 Jan when a building the IDF were mining to try to destroy was instead detonated by Palestinian fighters with IDFers inside it. But other accounts in part of the Israeli media say that up to 11,000 IDF troops have been injured since they tried occupying Gaza in late October.

It is normal for such injuries in armed conflict to be around 3 and 4 times the number of deaths. But the Israelis have only admitted so far to around 500 deaths. This strongly suggests that the real IDF death toll is between 3000 to 4000, which probably explains why Israel has pulled out a number of quite elite troops, such as the Golani Brigade, from Gaza over the last month or so. They need to preserve their troops for other things. This is not a sign of strength.

Earlier on in Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, the US moved its newest aircraft carrier, the Gerald R Ford into the Eastern Mediterranean to threaten Hizbullah, and deter any solidarity action against Israel for the Palestinians in Gaza. But at the end of the year, it was withdrawn back to the US as the more likely scenario became an Israeli attack on Hizbullah, as they indulged in threats of expanding the destruction of Gaza to Lebanon seemingly to divert attention from their difficulties in Gaza. The US did not appear too keen on being drawn into an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, no doubt being acutely aware of what happened the last time this happened – the destruction of 241 US marines at the hands of proto-Hizbullah in October 1983. Hizbullah is far stronger now, and has the evident capacity to devastate much of the North of Israel, which is why large sections of the Israeli population have been evacuated from that region.

A Wider Conflict Threatens US Domination in West Asia

The drone attack on US troops on the Jordan-Syrian border on 28th January, which killed three US troops and injured several others, caused the US Ziocons to go into apoplexy, demanding a US attack on Iran in response. Netanyahu and his Kahanist cohorts undoubtedly are licking their lips at the prospect of a US attack on Iran. But Biden flinched from that and instead engaged in a series of 85 bombings on 2 February against local militant anti-US/Israel militia groups in Iraq and Syria. This itself is escalatory, is destabilising Iraq, which has a Shi’a government which is friendly to Iran, and has popular legitimacy for its demands for the US to leave Iraq. In attacking ‘pro-Iran’ forces in Iraq, they are effectively and implicitly attacking Iraq’s government itself.

US attacked Kataib Hizbullah, Shi’a radical movement based mainly in Iraq but also Syria. This attack drew condemnation and demands for US withdrawal from Iraq’s government, sympathetic to Iran, which reflects the views of Iraq’s majority Shi’a population. As with the Houthi in Yemen, these movements reflect overwhelming popular sentiment. The US, in supporting Israel’s genocide is in conflict with overwhelming popular sentiment in West Asia.

Attacking Iran would be a huge step for the US, which really would send the whole region up in flames. The US has repeatedly made deals with Iran, fearing a war with a much more powerful and populous country than either Iraq or Syria, and such things as the deal over Iran’s potential nuclear capacity are an expression of that fear. Junked by the arch-Zionist Trump, Biden did attempt to reinstate it, at least partially. The mendacity and fear-mongering among Ziocons about Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions is belied by Iran’s firm denial of any such aspirations, which the clerical Iranian government says are contrary to its religious ideology in any case. But by playing a role in support of Russia in the Ukraine war, supplying Russia with improved drones, etc, Iran may have solved the problem of the repeated bilious Israeli threats of attack, which imply a nuclear threat. Such a Zionist nuclear threat (which is not even controlled by the USA, and is solely at the mercy of the contingencies of Netanyahu) is a possibility of this Nazi-like government, which cornered is doubling down on the regional expansion of the war and Palestinian extermination. As a result of its admission to BRICS, and this military collaboration with Russia, the imperialists – including Israel – now have reason to consider the real possibility that Iran might be covered by the Russian, and maybe even Chinese, nuclear umbrellas, as the Brazilian geopolitical commentator Pepe Escobar recently noted. In any case, it will be remembered that Trump flinched and cancelled a US attack on Iran that he had driven when he was in office. Because he feared the consequences.

In Syria, the Assad government never had any say over the US troops that sneaked into the East of the country under the cover of Syria’s imperialist sponsored civil war. Trump as President openly boasted that they were there to steal Syrian oil. The result may be the eruption of major guerilla conflicts with Kataib Hizbullah and other Shia radical forces in both Iraq and Syria, which is highly likely to develop into an anti-imperialist war of national liberation in both. On top of having declared war on the Houthis in Yemen, even without an actual attack on Iran, this looks set to develop into a conflict on a scale that the US will likely find impossible to handle.

Both Iraq and Eastern Syria were invaded and occupied by the US as part of the neo-con project of supposedly ‘liberating’ the Arab world from ‘anti-imperialist’ supposed despots, to replace them with pro-imperialist despots in the guise of exporting ‘democracy’ through ‘humanitarian intervention’. Even though the US claimed to be fighting Islamic State/Daesh, which in fact it sometimes supported (when it was useful to it to do so to destabilise Assad). But the whole of the world can see in the Gaza holocaust, which is also spreading and accelerating on the West Bank, what the real content of such ‘humanitarian intervention’ really is. Israeli barbarism in Gaza, and that growing in the West Bank, far exceeds IS/Daesh in its ferocity.

Defeat Imperialism. For a World-Revolutionary Movement!

The imperialists are losing in Ukraine militarily, but in terms of the population of the imperialist countries themselves, the visibility of this is still relatively small. This is not however true of Gaza where the huge discredit of the genocide is causing what looks like a revolutionary change of consciousness among major sections of the population. It is part of the decline and discredit of Western imperialism both ‘at home’ and abroad which is mushrooming, and is one of the preconditions for revolutionary developments in the imperialist countries. A global movement has grown up which is bigger than the mass movement against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s, let alone the less radical movement against the war in Iraq. These varying understandings of the different conflicts, in West Asia and Ukraine, need to merge, and it is a key task of revolutionaries to make understood their essential interdependence as part of one struggle against US imperialism, its Zionist partner and other imperialist allies and clients. Such a unitary anti-imperialist movement is key for developing the kind of international working-class revolutionary movement this dangerous situation requires for a progressive resolution of the developing crises of US hegemony and Zionism.

Stop all censorship and police/judicial attacks against opponents of the Zionist genocide!

Immediate and unconditional freedom for Julian Assange!

Defeat the Genocide – Demand a Full Ceasefire Now!

Solidarity with Yemen, with the entire Axis of Resistance and all forces in West Asia that resist Zionist and US/UK/EU imperialist domination and genocide!

For a Multi-Ethnic Workers State of Palestine from the River to the Sea!

David Miller Victory Against Zionism: Letter to Weekly Worker

In the light of David Miller’s victory at the Industrial Tribunal against Bristol University, this letter was sent to the Weekly Worker, a publication which had previously solidarised with witchhunting allegations coming from some on the ‘left’ that David Miller’s views were ‘anti-Semitic’. They published it, but cut it virtually in half, and though of course they make their own editorial decisions, it has to be said that the portions cut out of the letter would have posed some pretty embarassing questions to their supporters about their own history of witchhunting those to their left on the question of Zionism. The socialist public can judge them (and us) on these issues, and we are quite content that they do. Whether they are so content is somewhat doubtful however…

Dear Editor,

It is magnificent news that David Miller has won his Industrial Tribunal against Bristol University. He had been sacked for his anti-Zionist views, and commented after his victory, in a statement agreed with his lawyers, that:

“I am extremely pleased that the Tribunal has concluded that I was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed by the University of Bristol.  I am also very proud that we have managed to establish that anti-Zionist views qualify as a protected belief under the UK Equality Act. This was the most important reason for taking the case and I hope it will become a touchstone precedent in all the future battles that we face with the racist and genocidal ideology of Zionism and the movement to which it is attached.

[…]

“I also want to note that this verdict is a massive vindication of the approach I have taken throughout this period which is to say that a genocidal and maximalist ideology like Zionism can only be effectively confronted by a maximalist anti-Zionism.  Apologies, debate, and defensiveness of the sort illustrated by many on the left, and even in the Palestine Solidarity movement will not work.  The Zionist movement cannot be negotiated with.  It must be defeated.” (https://www.rllaw.co.uk/rahman-lowe-secures-landmark-victory-in-employment-case-for-professor-david-miller-against-bristol-university/)

In particular, the legal precedent that anti-Zionist views are a protected characteristic under British law is a real advance and conquest, and complements the previous victory won by Keith Henderson in a 2013 Industrial Tribunal that left-wing socialist beliefs are also such a protected characteristic under the same laws.

I would observe that David Miller’s victory is no thanks to some sections of the left, including Jewish Voice for Labour, the SWP and the Weekly Worker, who even when David was waging his ultimately successful campaign, joined in the witch-hunting by denouncing him as ‘anti-Semitic’ for making factually correct statements about the material basis of Zionist social power in countries outside Israel. All of those attempted to scandalise him for the following observations in a tweet:

“1. Jews are not discriminated against. 2. They are over-represented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power.

3. They are therefore, in a position to discriminate against actually marginalised groups.”

While covering itself in a bourgeois-libertarian position of defending the supposed democratic rights of all racists including even fascists, the Weekly Worker solidarised with the SWP’s own wretched attacks on David Miller thus:

“Socialist Worker offers good grounds to suppose that the tweet was anti-Semitic: e.g, his words ‘lump together all Jews without any recognition of class or other differences. Miller targets Jews, not the actual ruling class, and plays on the idea of Jews as ultra-rich and manipulative’”

This is simply a smear and a non-sequitur, an example of liberal-moralist, Zionist-influenced prejudice on the part of the SWP, WW and JVL who make similar points. Far from ‘ignoring’ class differences, this analysis is based on them, when properly understood. The social composition of the Jewish population, its disproportionate representation in positions of property and financial power, has obvious bearing on the influence of Zionist Jews in capitalist society today, simply because the dominant ideology of bourgeois Jews is political Zionism, and disproportionate Zionist influence in ‘high places’ flows inexorably from that.

Nowhere in this analysis does any alleged characteristic of Jews as being ‘manipulative’ manifest. Such psychologising is not remotely necessary since the behavioural traits of classes, not ethnic groups, are being discussed here. The unique history of the Jews is marked by an earlier evolution before capitalism, as in the main a commodity trading people-class (analysed by the Jewish Marxist theorist Abram Leon) which to historical materialists explains much today about the class structure of the Jewish population. There is no need for racialised stereotypes to explain such things, it has always been a matter of class, something which no genuine Marxist can ignore.

David Miller’s views on Zionism appear quite close to my own. He has won an enormous victory for the basic democratic right to make the most trenchant criticism of Zionism and humiliated all the Zionist Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and Scottish Nationalist politicians who earlier signed an outrageous letter basically demanding that he be sacked. But at least he was victimised by ruling class politicians and their open servants.

I recall that I experienced similar victimisation in 2014 from ostensible communists (the CPGB/Weekly Worker). Having thrown me out of the Communist Platform, a bloc within Left Unity that I was one of the founders of, for supposed ‘anti-Semitism’, WW ran a disgusting cartoon that tried to equate my Marxist views on the Jewish question, derived from Abram Leon – who was murdered in Auschwitz – with the Nazi genocide. That cartoon was worthy of the sinister Zionist ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’ which now cheers for the holocaust in Gaza.

In 2020 I, along with Gerry Downing, was expelled from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for similar reasons. The architect of this purge was PSC secretary Ben Soffa, who for the first three years of Starmer’s reign of terror against the remnants of the Corbynite left on behalf of the Zionist lobby, worked for Starmer as his Head of Digital Communications. A huge conflict of interest! He was only removed after 7 October. The PSC leadership expelled me, but put Emily Thornberry on its platforms as a Zionist they could have ‘dialogue’ with. When questioned on Yoav Gallant’s 8th October order to starve the Gaza population even of drinking water at the beginning of this genocide, she refused to condemn this and said it was “appropriate”.

Even some elements who were supposed to be my co-thinkers capitulated to the pressure. That’s how insidious the all-encompassing Zionist attack on democratic rights is, and was, and how weak the left has been in standing up to it. This has to change. This victory of David Miller is a straw in the wind. Of change. Now that the Zionists have been exposed before the masses as akin to Nazis there needs to be a counter-attack. There needs to be an end to fratricidal capitulationism and witchhunting on the left, and instead zero tolerance for Zionist genocidal racism and attacks on democratic rights. Zionism needs to be fought the same way as fascism!

Finally, I would note that even though they made the right decision, the Industrial Tribunal is still weak in trying to ‘partly’ blame David for his victimisation. Presumably for being too ‘uppity’ in defence of his protected beliefs! It’s typical that even when a bourgeois court gets things right, they still genuflect before Zionist ideological terrorism. We saw something similar at the ICJ. Even when they get things right, they flinch.

Ian Donovan

Consistent Democrats

Harry’s Place: Far-Right Zionist Scammers Attacking the Left

Someone doesn’t like the Consistent Democrats. The crypto-fascist/Zionist hate site Harry’s Place is complaining bitterly that our comrades were quite legally selling our (completely legal) journal on the Palestine Solidarity demonstration on 3rd February. No doubt they would like to see us rounded up by some blue-uniformed Gestapo, our comrades done away with IDF style, and our journals burned the way Hitler liked to burn Communist literature.

They are illiterate and stupid. Or so enraged that they cannot read. Look at the picture, and compare it with what they write. A) Its obvious that the paper is called Communist Fight, not Socialist Fight. It says so in the picture. B) The organisation is the Consistent Democrats, not Socialist Fight. It says so in the picture. C) It’s not a leaflet but a signed article on the front page of a journal. It says so in the picture. D) It wasn’t being given away free but selling for £1.20 an issue. It says so in the picture. And E) Gerry Downing is not one of the publishers. If they had bothered to read the journal they were complaining about they would be able to discern that from the Editorial Board.

Those of us who have been around for years remember when one of their regular contributors, Terry Fitzpatrick, was convicted of racially-aggravated harassment of Lee Jasper, the well-known London activist of Operation Black Vote.

Harry’s Place has been something of a fixture in very right wing Zionist politics, that however does try to intervene and attack the left with various trojan horse type activities, for around 20 years.

 It was originally founded by a renegade from official Communism, Simon Evans, who was using the name “Harry Steel” at the time this blog was founded.

He was a con-artist and stole that pseudonym from a different person entirely, Fergus Nicholson, the founder of the pro-Moscow Labour-entrist paper Straight Left which was a key part of the rallying of pro-Moscow Stalinoid opponents of Eurocommunism within the original Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1980s.

The pseudonym “Harry Steel” was a composite, of the name of CPGB long time leader Harry Pollitt, with Stalin, whose celebrated pseudonym (his real name was Djugashvilli) means “Man of Steel” in Russian. That was the original meaning of “Harry Steel” as used by Fergus Nicholson in the 1980s.

But Simon Evans was a con-artist and used that name to give the false impression that he was Fergus Nicholson, or might be. He did this to wage a vendetta against supporters of Jack Conrad and the Weekly Worker, who were a small left-wing faction of the old CPGB and when the Eurocommunist-led party renamed itself the Democratic Left, the Weekly Worker/Leninist group took the name ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’.

As I said, Evans was a con-artist and used the ‘Harry’ name to fish in troubled waters as there was a lot of resentment among ‘official’ Communists about Conrad’s group taking the name.

But he was not a Communist of any kind by then. He was a right-winger with Zionist sympathies who gathered around himself a whole bunch of virulent racist Zionists. He founded Harry’s Place but after a year or so effectively retired and handed it over to them.

They not only supported the Iraq War but spent a huge amount of effort trying to witchhunt and destroy opponents of that war. Their rantings against Muslims and ‘uppity’ black militants were extremely virulent. Hence the role of Terry Fitzpatrick, who appears to reflect part of a particular elderly Jewish white demographic who became sympathetic to the BNP.

They were particularly driven by hatred of George Galloway and his Muslim supporters in the East End. Much of their material about this is as toxic as the rantings of any Hitlerites.

For the last two decades or so they have been basically an anti-Muslim, anti-black race hate site. But they used the ambivalence of much of the left about Zionism to try to disguise that a bit.

The experience of this genocide is killing that ambivalence, however, and exposing what racist scum Zionists generally actually are. Hence the hysteria.

Harry’s Place is a racist endeavour and has been for many years. The Consistent Democrats, modelled on the Bolshevik Party that used that name in illegality under Tsarism, is the complete opposite. The most consistent anti-racist endeavour, opponents of all kinds of racism including Zionist racism which is now seeking the extermination of the Palestinian people.

Harry’s Place is a far right, wannabe Gestapo hate site, similar to Redwatch.