JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BRITISH LABOUR PARTY LEADERSHIP RACE AND THE UGLY INFLUENCE OF SPECIAL INTEREST CHARGES OF "ANTI-SEMITISM" - A POISONOUS ACCUSATION USED TO DEFEND A HEAVILY-ARMED STATE THAT ABUSES AND BLOODIES MILLIONS FORCED TO LIVE UNDER ITS AUTHORITY - FOREIGN INTERFERENCE IN BRITISH ELECTIONS - WEAK POLITICIANS WHO FAIL TO CALL ON TRUTH - ISRAEL'S TERRIBLE "DEMOCRATIC VALUES" - TRUE LIBERALISM IS DEAD IN ISRAEL AND IN AMERICA - EMPIRE AND PRIVILEGED COLONIES HAVE NO ROOM FOR IT

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GILAD ATZMON IN UNZ REVIEW

“For the 0.5% Not the 99.5%”

“Our Labour leadership candidates have attended to whims uttered by a tiny privileged voice while ignoring at least 99.5% of the British public.

“Instead of returning to universal anti racist politics consistent with so-called ‘Labour values,’ the compromised contenders for party leadership bow to the demands made by the Board of Deputies…”


There is some important truth here.

Labour leadership candidates Emily Thornberry and Jess Phillips literally make your toes scrunch uncomfortably up inside your shoes when you read some of their squishy, self-serving pleas being passed off as principles.

But I regard their words and behavior more a matter of sheer political incompetence than anything else. Incompetence is to be found in politicians far more than is commonly realized.

As well, of course, we have corruption, as we saw with Tony Blair, who literally became wealthy in gratitude for his helping kill a million Iraqis to please Aerial Sharon. Tony’s “New Labour” meant a party dedicated to lobby funds and strongly pro-Israel policies. Tony helped lead the charge against Corbyn, too.

We saw no complaints about “anti-Semitism in Blair’s heyday. Somehow, after he left power, anti-Semitism just suddenly exploded inside the Labour Party the way Athena exploded from the forehead of Zeus. Extraordinary.

I long defended Corbyn as a decent and humane politician - qualities frequently missing in the profession - and I still believe that of him. The idea that he was ever "anti-Semitic" is bitterly laughable. And as a matter of fact, we have very little active anti-Semitism today in the West, and much of what self-serving Jewish fraternal organizations call anti-Semitism and enter as incidents in their computer records is just fair criticism of the barbaric policies of Israel, a heavily armed state abusing the powerless.

The whole campaign against Jeremy Corbyn was McCarthyism resuscitated in the service of a new cause. It should have been confronted exactly that way. Truth well-spoken can still be a powerful weapon. We have far too little of it in Western politics.

In the end, Corbyn did prove weak vis-a-vis the Israel lobby, but that's easier to judge from the outside than when you are being libeled and insulted and pelted with eggs week after week.

The lobby uses an old established principle. Throw enough crap at the wall, and some it will stick. It is a standard principle of the advertising industry and has always been instinctively applied by groups like Germany’s 1930s Brownshirts.

The lobby and Israel do not want fairness and decency anywhere near the affairs of Israel. You are not allowed to be fair. You must be totally for Israel and against anyone Israel regards as undesirable.

That was Corbyn unforgivable sin, being fair. And he could not be allowed near power. And talk about external interference, several Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, got directly involved in British party politics over the period of Corbyn’s leadership.

Israel - like a major part of racist cowboy America, notably all of Trump's crowd holding pick-up truck meets in Walmart parking lots - simply has no use for genuine liberals or progressives.

Why?

The essence of being a genuine liberal is deep regard for human and democratic rights. Obviously, Israel could not exist as it is today were liberal views to hold any sway.

And the same goes for America's imperialism abroad and its defense of the Plantation System in many parts of the world, as we see repeatedly in Latin America.

There almost are no liberals in America or Israel.

You do not even have a country in fact when you have an empire. Empire and military and security concerns dominate and provide most of the attractive career paths for talented people, crowding out everything else. The privileged rule, and ideology replaces thought. Resources are dedicated to war and secret security.

And what is Israel but a privileged strategic colony of the American empire? One pretending to represent high principles when the truth is literally the opposite. Israel’s best friends in the region are tyrants – Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince or Egypt’s Generalissimo - who keep their people suppressed and bloodied. Israel calls democratic organizations like Hamas “terrorists” for the same reason people such as Corbyn are attacked.

Some democratic values. But we do live in a world where painting the roses red has become an accepted practice. We see that in every word and activity of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. And there are uncomfortable echoes today of what authoritarian states always busy themselves with doing.