Another article alleges anti-Semitism about me. Author refuses to acknowledge his mistake

Last Updated: March 5, 2018By

Not letting the facts get in the way of a story: Kieron Monks (left) and Gary Spedding (right).

I didn’t hold out much hope for an article headed Understanding Labour’s anti-semitism problem, and inasmuch as it mentions me, I was right.

Let’s give author Keiron Monks his due – he does at least try to acknowledge the possibility of “false, malicious or opportunistic claims”, but fails to recognise that such claims have been made about me.

I’m prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to the words about “activist Mike Sivier, who has been accused of Holocaust revisionism” – because I have indeed been accused – falsely.

But the claim that I “wrote in defence of a comment that Tony Blair was ‘unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisors'” is plainly untrue.

So I tweeted Mr Monks and pointed out his mistake. Here’s the dialogue:

Notice how these guys simply cannot quote me accurately? They have to miss out important passages, or simply clip out small phrases they think they can use, and then present them, devoid of context, as proof of a claim that simply does not stand up.

I added:

Here’s the reply:

How many times, in the above, is the point made that “concerns” are what “may have been entirely justified”? I reckon I’m pretty hot on that subject.

Yet – in the face of the facts – Mr Monks tries to tell me I’m saying “the comment” is what “may have been entirely justified”. Can you see why I’m more than a little exasperated by this behaviour, which I consider to be deliberate refusal to acknowledge the evidence in this matter?

In the name of reason, I tried one last time:

See, the words, “may have been entirely justified” have to refer to the “concerns” of the person hearing the claim because that is the only person in the hypothetical dialogue who would require “further information”.

The person making the “comment” may be reasonably expected to have all the further information he or she needed to justify making it, you see.

Faced with an argument that cannot be disproved, what do you think Mr Monks did?

That’s right – he went away. At the time of writing, I’ve had no reply from him since.

Instead, the argument was taken up by Gary Spedding, a contributor to the article by Mr Monks. He tweeted:

Anti-Semitism accusers love taking screenshots and showing them to the accused – and to anyone in a position of authority in order to get the accused person into trouble. They have one real problem, though – the screenshots rarely support the point they are trying to make.

That is certainly true here. The paragraph about Marx is unrelated to the matter of the “cabal of Jewish advisors”, and I have explained all but the last sentence in the second paragraph.

That sentence – “No UK prime minister should be biased towards any special-interest group but should work for the benefit of everybody” – is a truism. It could – possibly – be related to the assertion, but not in this context. It is provided to support my own assertion that, without further information, anyone hearing the claim would be justified in feeling concern. They would be justified in feeling concern because no UK prime minister should be biased towards any special-interest group but should work for the benefit of everybody.

Mr Spedding’s tweet that my comment about UK prime ministers not being biased towards any particular special interest group “is further concrete proof” of anti-Semitism on my part makes absolutely no sense to me. Does it make any sense to you? My comment means exactly why I have stated, above.

Given all of the above, I find it hard to come to any conclusion other than that Mr Spedding – and possibly Mr Monk – has an ulterior motive in attacking me, that has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. So I put it to him:

That’s the truth, by the way. Anti-Semitism is literally hatred towards Jews. Even the not-very-good IHRA definition states: Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Find the hatred of Jews in my words. There isn’t any. All I said was that a person hearing that the UK’s prime minister was being “unduly influenced” by a special interest group – when the UK prime minister holds an office requiring the holder to work for the benefit of everybody, rather than for any special interest group – and lacking any further information about the claim, may be justified in feeling concern.

Perhaps Labour’s biggest anti-Semitism problem is the zealots who are determined to find it when it isn’t there.

People who make “false, malicious or opportunistic claims” that others are anti-Semites, possibly including the two mentioned above, often do so in order to suppress or silence political views they don’t like. That is certainly why the claims reported in the national newspapers were made about me.

If you want to support me, currently the best way is to donate to This Site. The funds will enable me to keep publishing stories about political issues that my accusers would rather didn’t see the light of day. The box is directly below this article.

Afterword: It may interest you to know that, subsequent to our dialogue, Mr Spedding has blocked me on Twitter. Guilty conscience?


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8 Comments

  1. G Millward March 5, 2018 at 10:08 pm - Reply

    Good for you Mike … reading that made me laugh out loud. What you said about there being a political motivation hits the nail on the head.

  2. First Night Design March 5, 2018 at 10:16 pm - Reply

    It’s like dealing with somebody who has severe ADHD (I have long experience). They will argue that black is white and are seemingly unable to see the the truth, the reality. You have my sympathy, for what it’s worth. My regards to you and Mrs Mike.

  3. Pat Sheehan March 5, 2018 at 10:25 pm - Reply

    Messrs Monks and Spedding are clearly ‘twats that tweet’! Badly too!
    Twots or twits will do if twats is unacceptable to Vox Political!

  4. Roland Laycock March 5, 2018 at 10:32 pm - Reply

    O’Dear Mike these people can twist anything

  5. rotzeichen March 5, 2018 at 11:25 pm - Reply

    I have found it common place when dealing with right wing critics, having made a statement, they pick a small out of context area and reply as though one had actually said it.

    Once one has replied pointing out that they are making assertions which did not exist before and the respondent is put in a corner which they can’t extricate themselves from, a second individual suddenly makes a comment and the other disappears.

    I have in the past linked to all my comments and highlighted the discrepancies in their argument, where they then go off completely on a tangent and make some ridiculous retort that is again totally irrelevant to the case in point. They don’t care about their reasoning, just that they divert attention away from the obvious salient point made from the outset.

    In your case, it is not so much that they want to substantiate what they say, they merely think that by constantly repeating the lie, that more will believe there is substance in what they say.

    Each time this happens, perhaps like Jeremy Corbyn, getting a solicitor’s advice and involvement, could be beneficial, or just call them out in the most direct manner possible, I usually state they are openly obfuscating and trying to mislead.

  6. aunty1960 March 6, 2018 at 6:12 am - Reply

    They don’t F’ing read and if they do they decide they will ignore it and go along with the wave of popularist sentiment and hang you for the same crime again.

    Really bad journalism to say Well you said it, and decide to ingore in what context

    I had a problem with Infant Child Prodigy Phil Hensher a few years ago. went through my who feedback of disabled going through the assessments, like a Nazi guard wandering the corridors of trains full of refugees and victims looking for the one that may be a fake

    He thought he found one, when one said he had difficulty getting out, agoraphobic and sociophobic. said he had to get off the bus in panic and walk 5 miles to get to Atos centre

    Hensher just noticed he walked 5 miles

    The persons testimony if full was there. did not have a problem until a few years before. had normal life suddenly extremely phobic and panic attacks, was clearly active in trying to combat his illness. No pity from Hensher.

    My followers and disabled went nuts at him, drove him off social media

    I tried to contact him to make amends and sought things out as he had taken things out of context He would have none of it and threatened to sue me for my “mob”of disabled to attacked him on social media.

    Very nasty piece of work, did not care anything about anyone else. One Man Ego which I think you have here.That and little snitch Piggot who took my stuff used my disabled victims for his minute of fame in Private Eye, purposely misrepresented and misquoted Atos victims

    Journalists. I could really hate them. They are so in control and responsible for peoples perceptions

    Carry on Mike he sounds like a little jumped up snitch getting on a band wagon he thinks popular. I dont think people should talk about anti semitism unless they are jewish or know what they are talking about.

  7. George Brennan March 6, 2018 at 6:17 pm - Reply

    |Is Robert Peston an antiSemite? This is an askable question, and Peston himself has made it so. Three Sundays ago he suggested that it was anti-Semitic to be unsure how many Jews died in the Holocuast . The object of the smear was one Mike Sivier who, it turns out, was merely unsure how many non-Jews (LGBT, trade unionists and disabled people) had been “slaughtered” during the Holocaust. But Sivier suggested this might be millions rather than thousands, as had been put to him.

    http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/nec-readmits-leftwingers/

    As regards Jews said Silvier has verifiably always used the “high” figure of Six Million.
    The only calculation with serious intellectual pedigree was made by the Institute for Jewish Affairs immediately after the war. On their evidence, the maximum Number of Jews who disappeared, most of whom may be presumed to have died, was by that reckoning 5.7 million. How was this arrived at?. I looked into it.
    The Institute of Jewish Affairs reported to The World Jewish Congress in June 1945.
    “Statistics on Jewish casualties during Axis Domination”. It can be found online.
    Of the prewar 9.6m Jews living in Nazi dominated European countries, according latest published census data in those countries, only 3.9 could be counted as surviving in 1945, leaving by subtraction a remainder 5.7 million who were missing believed dead. Excluding the few who would have died normal demographic deaths over five normal years, the report declares that “most must have perished at the hands of the German murderers.” This is reasonable, but only if it means that nearly all the 5.7m died as a consequence of Nazi persecution; but not if it means this number were all directly murdered. As well as whatever tiny fraction was due to the normal death rate over four years, a very big fraction of the 5.7 missing must be subtracted as a result of exhaustion and disease and hunger in the camps and ghettos. This is especially true of German and Hungarian Jews. The JIF report was not put in as a document at Nuremberg, as far as I can find, but its conclusions found their way in garbled form into the indictment. The figure of 5.7 million missing believed dead from prewar numbers is the only number with intellectual pedigree. The Nuremberg judges cited a hearsay figure of six million directly murdered, quoting what one Nazi neck-saving scoundrel Hoetl said he had been told by another scoundrel Eichmann, who denied it when caught. The serious scholar Raoul Hilberg did not go for the “high” number; his calculated dead from from all causes was 5.1 million. But that is a grand total of several rather opaque subtotals.
    So on the best evidence, IJA evidence, it is a fair approximation to say that six million Jews perished during the Holocaust. Peston probably believes that six million were directly murdered because that is what he has always heard. It is a roughly true belief. But Plato tells us that knowledge is not just true belief even if true belief is exact. Knowledge is true belief plus a Logos. A logos is the ability to provide a proof – or, if we are less demanding than Plato, adequate supporting evidence . The very patient reader has just read a Logos, easily verified. Unlike Robert Peston and every other shallow Sunday journalist s/he can now claim really to “know” how many Jews perished in the Holocaust.
    Does that make Peston who does not really know anything, an anti-Semite? I would hesitate to say so, if only because Peston is not a member of the Labour Party and therefore cannot be safely smeared.
    gb

    • Mike Sivier April 22, 2018 at 11:45 pm - Reply

      I wasn’t unsure how many people had been killed in the Holocaust – I had all the figures. And I knew those figures were in the millions, not the thousands. You’ll have read my articles on the subject of the accusations against me so I won’t repeat those arguments here.
      Your comment is very interesting, though.
      I wouldn’t suggest Robert Peston was an anti-Semite either.

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