Tag: Propaganda

White, working class and perfectly safe in Bury Park

As hate crime rises again in the wake of Boris Johnson’s far right ‘nasty party’ victory I thought it worth dusting this old 3 minute video down for another airing. This is me not being harassed, attacked or even looked at in a funny way in the supposed ‘no go’ area of Bury Park in Luton.

Labour versus Marxism

One of the right wing’s most successful deceits has been to convince voters that the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn is a Marxist organisation. Actually, that’s just nonsense but the likes of Rees-Mogg, Farage and latterly Swinton seem quite unrestrained by what the rest of us think of as ‘the truth’.

Here’s a short video outlining just why the Labour party is no more Marxist than the tories, the Lib Dems and even the far right Brexit party.

Labour’s Brexit confusion?

For months now people have been telling me that Labour is confused about Brexit. The argument goes something like this…

Labour wants to negotiate a new Brexit deal with the EU and then vote against it. They can’t make up their minds what they want.

This argument is often persuasive but it’s also just plain wrong.

Labour’s confused Brexit from Left eye view on Vimeo.

If you have to lie…

If you have to lie to make your point, your point isn’t worth making!

It’s late October and the next seasonal slight against British Muslims is making the rounds again. Year after year, from Facebook to Breitbart the same old crap is posited in Memes and articles. And year after year those of us with more than a handful of cranial axons to work with find ourselves responding.

Like Canute before the ocean we strive to hold back the growing Tsunami of deceit and discrimination as wave after wave of far right bollocks finds its way into our ‘news’ feeds. This is no mere paddling pool of right wing bollocks – this is a full blown flood complete with alt-right lies that really ought to be easy for even the least well-informed citizen to disprove. Unless, of course, they want it to be true.

The Royal British Legion is gearing up its annual poppy appeal, a yearly fundraising drive that will reach its zenith at cenotaphs across the nation at the striking of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. A moment of reflection when we remember and feel gratitude for the sacrifices of so many who gave their lives first in the Great war and then 20 years later in the struggle against totalitarian fascism. It’s the moment when we recall the great price paid by men and women of every race and creed to safeguard our democracy, our liberty and our right to survive.

And as we remember that sacrifice we owe it to those brave heroes to remember that diversity. In particular, given the toxic lies currently circulating on social media, we need to remember the many Muslim martyrs who lost their lives defending our freedom, our liberal democracy. They gave their lives so that we might be free.

So remember – when your auntie Mabel shares a meme claiming that Muslims are offended by the poppy or the flag to put her right. When some bloke at the social club holds court about ungrateful Muzzies not liking to be reminded of the proud Brits who fought for this country, when the loudmouthed dickhead Gammon in the beer garden makes speeches about deporting unpatriotic Moose limbs who disrespect our war dead let them know loud and clear.

Many of the war dead they revere so much were themselves Muslims. Indeed, without Muslim and Indian sepoys we might well have lost – twice! Many British Muslim families will be remembering their own British war dead this November. So make sure you speak out and let the Gammony bigots know just how ridiculous they sound when they claim that Muslims are offended by the Poppy.

It’s their poppy too, for fuck’s sake!

Fixing Fash fatigue

It’s a common phenomenon. Sick and tired of hearing far right tropes at work, in the pub, on social media and pretty much everywhere else, decent people, armed with only a sense of justice and the best of intentions eventually decide that is enough is enough and decide to give the Fash a piece of their mind. And then the trouble starts.

Like trench warfare but without the guns, like the German assault on Verdun or General Winter’s relentless destruction of Napoleon’s forces in Russia, the war of attrition begins. Anyone daring to suggest that desperate refugees might need some help or who has the temerity to suggest that Nigel Farage might not have the best interests of the working class at heart is instantly depicted as (tick as appropriate)

ÿ A traitor

ÿ A paedophile

ÿ A closet Muslim

ÿ A race traitor

ÿ A cuck

ÿ Anti-British

ÿ Anti-white

ÿ Communist

ÿ Fascist

Such people are apparently deserving of (tick as appropriate)

ÿ Death by hanging

ÿ Gang rape

ÿ Deportation

ÿ Torture

ÿ Life imprisonment (without parole)

ÿ Death by firing squad

ÿ Death by various other creative but ultimately highly impractical alternative methods.

Understandably enough, when faced with these daily tirades from relatives and former friends, as well as complete strangers our intrepid heroes aren’t always as indefatigable as they might have hoped. It’s easy to become despondent in the face of so much undeserved abuse for the crime of showing a little compassion and understanding. The decent people grow tired. They develop Fash Fatigue.

But take heart. This little article is intended to help lift the spirits of the decent folk. The ordinary people who know intuitively that so much bitterness and hatred is the wrong way to go. Those who can see the need for a little compassion in the world, who aren’t frightened of the fact that not everyone enjoys Jellied eels and Melton Mowbray pork pies, who are quite able to walk past a Mosque or a Synagogue without feeling the need to set it alight.

If you don’t see brown people as the enemy. If you understand how ludicrous the idea of miscegenation and race replacement is. If you can’t stop laughing whenever anyone seriously suggests that white genocide is a thing then this is for you.

Keep your chin up, keep plodding on and have faith in the fact that British society, despite having lost its way for a brief moment in time, is better than all that.


We’ve come a long way in the last 100 years. Yes, it’s true that racism and fascism is rearing its ugly head again within these islands but it’s only a blip. It’s only ever a blip when this happens. Hold your nerve. Another few years will see the current batch of racist, fascist bully boys fade into the same insignificance their predecessors of the National Front, the British National Party, the English Defence League and the New British Union of Fascists currently ‘enjoy’.

Far right parties never last here. We gave Mosley and his Black-shirts short shrift in the 1930s, we laughed the NF and the BNP into obscurity in the 70s, 80s and 90s and we’ll ridicule UKIP and the Brexit Party into oblivion too.Not that this is a Brexit issue per se.

There are many non-racist, non-fascist Brits who want us to leave Europe and that’s OK. That’s democracy. But I have never met a single fash who didn’t want us out of Europe. I’ve never met a single UKIP or Brexit Party leader who cared about anyone but himself and I never heard of a UKIP or Brexit party leader whose political career isn’t smeared with the foul-smelling defecant of racism and far right bigotry.

So when you get despondent and exhausted by Fash fatigue, take heart. The journey is never as long as it seems and most of the ordinary Brits screaming abuse at you aren’t really the hard-core Fash they appear to be. They’re our brothers and sisters who, duped by a sustained and deceitful media campaign have come to believe that the only way to ‘save’ UK is to close our borders, to leave the EU and to vote tory. But they’re not the enemy. They’re ‘us’. They’re our friends and neighbours and they will come to their senses soon enough.

Even now, for the most part they genuinely want what’s best for everyone. They’re not usually racist and they’re not usually fascist. But they are for the moment sitting on a tiresome, abusive bandwagon because they haven’t yet sussed where it’s heading. They’ll jump back off it soon enough. When that happens it’ll be up to us to rebuild the bridges that are currently burning. It’ll be up to us to realise that only a small minority of the apparent Fash really are Fash. The rest are decent people who’ve been swept up in the storm. If the UK is ever to get beyond this conflict, this divisive, bloodthirsty civil cold war it’ll be up to us, the decent people to make the first move.

One day, in the not too distant future, we will need to reunite our nation or lose the rights our ancestors fought and died to win for us. The people of Britain, especially the working class cannot survive if we remain divided.

So don’t worry about your Fash fatigue. Take a break – do something enjoyable and calming. Read a book and then, when you can, come on back and keep on arguing for peace, for compassion and for good sense to prevail.

United we stand – divided we fall.

Boris’ false dichotomy

Boris’ letter to parliament doesn’t include every possibility. We could simply withdraw article 50. But what would his vulture, currency-speculating backers make of that. If he doesn’t sink the UK economy he and his mates won’t increase their piles.

Yeah, well. They’re stinking rich already. Let them be satisfied with what they’ve got! I say withdraw and save the country. That’s my way to ‘get Brexit done’.

Over and done – consigned to the dustbin of mistakes we almost made.

Propagandists past and present

Is it fair to compare modern anti-Muslim propagandists to Hitler’s arch rabble-rouser and Jew-baiter?

Julius Streicher was a Nazi party member from the beginning in post WW1 Germany. He was also the editor of Der Sturmer, an anti-semitic propaganda tabloid and a Gaoliter (a regional official) once Hitler came to power. Hated for his vindictiveness and uncouth manner even by his fellow Nazis, Streicher dedicated his publication to disseminating libellous slurs towards Jews, trade unionists, socialists and all who opposed Nazi ideology.

He incited hatred and violence and was instrumental in fuelling the intense prejudice against innocent Germans that contributed to the horrors of Kristalnacht and the atrocities of the holocaust. Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for his crimes against humanity in 1946.

Katie Hopkins is renowned for using her social media presence, her newspaper column and her radio and television appearances to spread lies, hatred, exaggeration and generalisations in an effort to whip up hatred against Muslims and immigrants just as Streicher did against the Jews. Across the Atlantic, Steve Bannon used these same techniques and prejudices so effectively he used the alt-right Breitbart online media machine to get a 70 year old vindictive, narcissistic, overgrown child elected into the Whitehouse.

Just as Streicher used the media of his day to commit and incite crimes against humanity so Hopkins and Bannon do the same with the media opportunities of today. Less prolifically but equally dangerous are the likes of Boris Johnson who cynically jumps on the discriminatory bandwagon because he thinks it will get him a few votes. British newspapers have jumped on the same bandwagon, routinely publishing headlines and articles that would have been unthinkable in this country just a few years ago.

The similarities between Streicher’s Der Sturmer and some of our domestic tabloids are both striking and terrifying. Is it any wonder then that hatred against foreigners and Muslims is rising across the West? Hate crimes are still rising here in UK, proving that the idea of a ‘post-referendum’ spike was false. There is a sustained hostility toward immigrants and Muslims nurtured by regular additions of anti-Islamic, and xenophobic slanders from these modern day Streichers.

I wonder how much more Western societies can take before we have to start prosecuting them for incitement to violence. Freedom of speech is one thing but deceptive incitement to commit violence has never been protected by free speech in any modern civilisation, not even America, a nation that probably enjoys the laxest free speech laws of all.

I say we need to stop winking at these hate-mongers and start prosecuting them. After all, it’s not as though we don’t know where this sort of publicised hatred leads, is it?