Benjamin Netanyahu: in this image he’s wearing a smile very similar to Boris Johnson’s ‘duper’s delight’. Who had he just fooled? The Israeli electorate?
Israel’s hardline, far-right prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be out of a job and heading towards prison by tomorrow (June 2).
But it’s unlikely to mean any loosening of the (metaphorical) noose that his government is tightening around the necks of every Palestinian, as it involves a coalition between the equally hardline Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. Both have previously worked with Netanyahu.
But it could signal the end of Netanyahu’s 12-year rule of Israel – and if so, it wouldn’t happen a day too soon.
The Associated Press – apparently still bruised from the bombing of its Gaza office – explains:
Netanyahu has become a polarizing figure since he was indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in late 2019. Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s fitness to rule, and each ended in deadlock.
Netanyahu is desperate to stay in power while he is on trial. He has used his office as a stage to rally his base and lash out against police, prosecutors and the media.
It says much about the state of Israeli politics that
Netanyahu even attempted to court a small Islamist Arab party but was thwarted by a small ultranationalist party with a racist anti-Arab agenda.
What hypocrisy! Netanyahu’s anti-Arab position is evident in his policy towards Palestine, and never mind all his efforts to court favour with neighbours like Saudi Arabia.
It seems clear that – for him – retaining power is everything. Boris Johnson may well be a keen student of his politics.
If he is ejected from the premiership, he may devote his time as Opposition leader to undermining the new government by exploiting the deep ideological differences among the parties forming the coalition.
But his ability to disrupt his own trial will be hugely diminished.
It would be ironic if the first major blow against the corruption that is sweeping the political world was landed by a hard-right-winger, against someone with equally extreme views.
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Violence: after far-right Israelis marched through Jerusalem shouting ‘Death to Arabs’ it didn’t take long for violence to happen. Who do you think suffered the most harm as a result?
This is what happens when a country’s government demands that anybody not belonging to a particular ethnic/religious group must be second-class citizens.
The right-wing government of Israel has enacted laws to put Jewish citizens above anybody else who lives there – and has actually walled off Palestinian settlements (until such time as Jewish settlers can turf out the residents and take their homes).
It was only a small step from there to the scenes we witnessed in Jerusalem’s Old City, when hundreds of far-right activists took to the streets, shouting “Death to Arabs”.
It is an insult against their own history. After the Nazi Holocaust, Jewish people should be on the side of the oppressed, never that of the oppressors.
But it does conform to a very sad social phenomenon – that a proportion of people who suffer abuse go on to become abusers themselves. It is well-documented among individuals; now we see a society going the same way.
Let’s see some of the evidence. I present it with comments from Twitter users who provided it:
Hundreds of right-wing Israeli Jews are roaming the streets of Jerusalem tonight, chanting "Death to Arabs" and searching for Palestinians to assault. Their actions echo the racist and violent rhetoric of Israeli government officials:pic.twitter.com/Ag9hHGAhNs
Horrific. Over a 100 people injured by a bunch of far right thugs chanting "death to Arabs". No surprise things like this happen when there's already Israeli state sponsored violence against Palestinians occurring on a regular basis.#FreePalestinehttps://t.co/xHUfVgy7D9
The obvious response to the young woman in the last clip is that her sentiment was shared by people in Berlin in the 1930s and 40s – but they were referring to Jews.
In fairness, this was just one gang of far-right racists. Other Israelis have been lining up to condemn what happened.
But the only reason it happened at all is because their government created the conditions that allowed it.
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Brian Cox: This Site doesn’t always agree with him but he’s right about people who use phrases like “the will of the people”. There’s no such thing, and people who speak in such absolute terms are fascists.
The Daily Express‘s attack on Professor Brian Cox isn’t part of Boris Johnson’s “war on ‘woke'” – it’s an endorsement of the Johnson government’s fascism.
Normally This Writer wouldn’t leap to defend Prof Cox; he knows the score on the social media and he’s big enough to stand up for himself – but this non-story by a right-wing rag demonstrates an important topical point.
It refers to the broadcaster’s response after Priti Patel said – way back in August last year – that denying refugees access to the UK was the will of the British people.
It isn’t – it isn’t even the will of the majority. And even the minority who support Johnsons fascists might be divided after learning how Patel treats people who manage to get here.
We’ve all heard the horror stories about the concentration camp that turned into a Covid-19 breeding ground, and last week we learned that she had tried to deport a witness to a death in another Home Office facility, in an attempt to undermine an investigation that would show that the government had contributed to the death.
But there it was in black and white. Patel stated: “We need the cooperation of the French to intercept boats and return migrants back to France. I know that when the British people say they want to take back control of our borders – this is exactly what they mean.”
Professor Cox responded: “I’m so sick of this ‘the British people’ nonsense.
“It’s inflammatory and divisive and also errant vacuous nonsense with no meaning in a multi-party democracy.
“The phrase should be banned from political discourse.”
There is a valid criticism to be made about these words – and it is that they do not address exactly why those words are problematic.
Fortunately, he followed up with a further comment, in order to remove any doubt:
“The point is that invoking ‘the will of the people’ or derivatives in promoting policy is a well-rehearsed propaganda technique and has no place in our democratic dialogue.”
(Here’s the proof of what he said)
#ImWithBrian Brian Cox is quite right. Evoking 'the British People' is shallow nationalism, along with 'the will of the people' meaning 'a sake dear majority of folk'. Not in my name, Home Secretary. https://t.co/DflafrvI7H
But because the Express dredged up this moment in a current news story, suddenly he has been on the receiving end of a huge gammon-flavoured dogpile by the kind of “British people” who think that their far-right views are shared by everybody.
Wetlipped permagrinner Brian Cox wants to erase the term "British people" from political discourse (although happily uses the term "European citizens"). British people – I see you. I hear you. You are valid. You are loved.
— Leo Kearse – political comedian/comedic politician (@LeoKearse) April 16, 2021
That’s not what “right-thinking” really means, folks.
Fortunately, plenty of genuinely right-thinking people have stood up to defend Professor Cox, and to point out that the Express article is built around a misinterpretation of his words that is no more or less than a lie.
The fash are out for Brian Cox today as he criticises Patel's illegal immigration and refugee strategy.
The people of Wales, Scotland and NI did not vote for the Tories, so how can Patel claim 'what the British people want'?
Sorry to the those that disagree with the *take* Brian Cox has on the term British People, because he's correct in this context. As a British person I'm sure I've got far more in common with the poor buggers trying to cross the channel that with Priti Patel!
— Politically Homeless #ShockDoctrine #NHSPay15 (@respeak_uk) April 16, 2021
I want to know why the article’s writers and editors of the Express were trying to distract us with this dead cat. What have the Tories done that needs this to take our minds off it?
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Zahawi, originally an Iraqi Kurd, has a Christian background but that cannot excuse him publishing an image that some would describe as blasphemy.
An image containing a Christian symbol, with the Tory logo attached to it, on one of the holiest days in the Christian year, is not only tasteless; it is shocking.
The Conservatives are not Christian in either outlook or behaviour. Jesus Christ often preached against the selfishness of people with Conservative values – perhaps most famously when he said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Apparently many other Tory MPs have tweeted it too, which suggests that it has come from Conservative Central HQ.
So this image can serve no other purpose than to attempt an intertwining of religion and government, as defined in fascist ideology.
There has been a backlash, of course.
I have part-paraphrased Clare Hepworth’s tweet already. She also said that although she is an atheist, she respects the icons, rituals and symbols of all of them – and described the Tory image as “tasteless and just plain wrong”.
Here are some more:
Nadhim, please consider deletion. Good Friday marks the death of Jesus Christ. Not normally something you would stick a party logo on.
I am not a Christian but I find this deeply offensive, I wonder what Jesus would have made of food banks, school children going hungry in the holidays and the herd immunity policy that left the most vulnerable to die?
Well, I guess all of us pesky Christians being distressed by this appropriation of a deeply sacred symbol on the most solemn holy day of the year for us is attention of a kind but honestly, it's is deeply, abhorrently offensive. Christ transcends politics.
I am an atheist but even so, I find this tweet to be deeply offensive. How dare you sully the faith of those that are spending today in quiet reflection, by linking their religion to the most morally corrupt political party of my lifetime? Poor decision making, as usual.
Some Tories have tried to counter by claiming that the image was no worse than when the Labour Party has posted images to Muslims saying “Eid Mubarak”, but it is an argument that does not work. Here’s the reason:
I don't regard this as well-intentioned. It's turning the Cross into a Conservative Party symbol. .
— (((Frances 'Not A Monster' Coppola))) 🌷🌷🌷 (@Frances_Coppola) April 2, 2021
Just so. Labour wasn’t appropriating Muslim symbols when it sent its message to Muslims, but that’s exactly what this message did.
And that means Zahawi and the Tories have crossed the line into full-on fascism. What a time – and what a way – to do it.
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Whistleblower: this image is representative (the revelations in the article were made by a woman). Many whistleblowers suffer for their principles, in spite of assurances that this won’t happen. It will be interesting to see what happens to Alice O’Keeffe’s career from now on.
The timing is exquisite.
On the day This Site published an article about allegations that a report on institutional racism was scripted by the Tory government to support a lie that there isn’t any in the UK, a whistleblower attacked another report – on the policing of protests – saying it was scripted by the Tories too.
The claim is a huge blow to the credibility of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services. Another blow to its credibility is the fact that it will apparently examine whether there is any truth to it.
For clarity, whistleblower Alice O’Keeffe has said
The official policing inspectorate showed repeated bias in favour of the police and against peaceful protesters…
[The report] was skewed in favour of the government view, with conclusions reached before evidence was gathered and assessed.
The civil service code was breached.
HMICFRS told the home secretary in a private letter it backed the need to change protest laws five months before its report was published.
Some in the inquiry team… likened peaceful protesters to the IRA, which waged a terrorist campaign against the UK.
Ms O’Keeffe’s written complaint was made as HMICFRS worked on a separate report on the policing of a vigil for Sarah Everard. She said the biases she had seen left her fearing a report into the policing of the vigil would be a whitewash.
That report totally exonerated the police and found fault with those of us who criticised police violence against and manhandling of women at the Clapham Common vigil.
HMICFRS has defended itself by claiming independence – based on nothing more than reputation. But reputations can be broken by facts.
And Ms O’Keeffe has spent five years working for the police inspectorate, so it is reasonable to believe she may know her subject.
Well, I hope she made copies of her evidence and put them in a safe place because if HMICFRS holds any information corroborating her claims then you can bet the hard drives have been wiped and the hard copies shredded already.
The upshot of all this is that in the short term we have another reason to distrust a police service that seems to be working for a totalitarian Tory government – and against us.
And in the long term?
We can expect another report that whitewashes the Tory-supporting inspectorate and gives us even more reason to live in fear of our government and the police force that smashes our heads in its name.
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Sound and fury from 2011: discontent with the government of the day boiled over into riots – and for much less reason than might present itself in 2021. Boris Johnson is hastily banning large protests – but will anybody care?
Here’s a disturbing truthbomb from Richard Murphy:
He makes good points.
Boris Johnson is promising a much better summer than we had in 2020 but the early indication are that he will disappoint us yet again.
As matters stand, history is sure to remember him as the prime minister who promised us the world and then took our world away from us instead.
So he reckons Covid-19 will be under control. Why are our health experts planning for another surge in cases, to hit us around July?
At the moment, half of the UK population is half-vaccinated, and there will be shortages from April onwards. That’s the reason variant strains of Covid are appearing; the virus is mutating to beat the defences of a half-protected population.
Johnson reckons we’ll all be able to resume our foreign holidays. How can we, considering the state of foreign nations’ vaccination regimes?
And Johnson reckons the UK’s industries are going to bounce back – what’s the phrase? “Build back better”? – with a boom during the summer. But post-Brexit problems indicate that any such economic explosion is likely to be a damp squib.
He knows all this.
Why else do you think his government has legislated to restrict protest events to the point where anything that is actually noticeable is to be punished with imprisonment?
It is exactly the wrong response. But he’s a Tory and doesn’t know how to do anything apart from punish the poor.
His decisions are all wrong. They are equivalent to clamping the lid on a pressure cooker and turning it up to maximum. What do you think will happen?
I hope I’m wrong.
If I’m not, I just hope that anyone resorting to violent protest remembers that indiscriminate vandalism won’t do anybody any good – 2011 taught us that. It is pointless harming the innocent.
If you’re angry with the government, make sure it’s the government – and its enforcers – who feel the brunt of that anger.
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Flag-shagger: Boris Johnson’s insistence on having a Union flag behind him whenever he is seen on TV, and his government’s demand that government buildings fly that flag at all times, indicates an alignment with “powerful and continuing nationalism” of the kind promoted by organisations like the BNP and Britain First: fascists all.
All UK government buildings have been ordered to fly the Union flag every day in the Johnson government’s most blatant display of fascist principles yet.
The first characteristic of fascism, according to Laurence W Britt’s famous 14-point list, is “powerful and continuing nationalism”.
This is most strongly evidenced by the use of flags. You see it in the behaviour of far-right extremists like the BNP, Britain First and so on, whose insistence on adopting the Union flag for themselves has dragged it into disrepute.
Johnson may claim that he’s taking it back but in fact he is merely aligning his government with those other fascists.
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RIP democracy: this image of Boris Johnson in a Hitler moustache was stuck to the door of the Conservative office in Beverley, near Hull.
This Site has been saying it for some time so I’m sure you can understand why I agree with Richard Murphy’s list of reasons why Boris Johnson is a fascist and so is his Tory government.
He has published an article on his Tax Research UK website that quotes Laurence W Britt’s 14-point list of the characteristics of fascist regimes.
They were:
Powerful and continuing nationalism
Disdain for human rights
Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
Supremacy of the military
Rampant sexism
Controlled mass media
Obsession with national security
Religion and government intertwined
Corporate power protected
Labour power suppressed
Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
Obsession with crime & punishment
Rampant cronyism & corruption
Fraudulent elections
Mr Murphy adds that an intertwining with religion is no longer of any popular relevance and, given recent announcements on defence spending and nuclear weapons he is not now sure that the supremacy of the military over other claims on the public purse can be dismissed any more.
He was challenged in his ‘comment’ column by people who claimed he had Googled (other search engines are available) the definition of fascism most likely to serve his purpose – but was then supported by others.
One reader provided another list – originally created by the author Umberto Eco, with examples of the way the Johnson/Tory regime fits it, as follows:
1. Cult of tradition – a defining characteristic of Conservatism.
2. Rejection of modernism – that is, rejection of Enlightenment values. You see this in the scorn for a “woke” liberal metropolitan elite in favour of the earthy values of an intolerant silent majority.
3. Cult of action – in essence, anti-intellectualism. We have had enough of experts.
4. Disagreement is treason – dissent is unpatriotic.
5. Fear of difference – institutionalised racism, and hostility to foreigners (including our attitude to our former friends in the EU) and immigrants.
6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class – the fear that Middle Englanders could find themselves excluded from any chance of joining the one percent but instead condemned to join the underclass they have demonised for so long.
7. Obsession with a plot – any number of threats, some real and some imagined. Russia, China, the EU, Islamic terrorism, BLM, women, “cultural Marxism”.
8. Enemies both too strong and too weak. Such as the EU, both abusing their power to make unfair impositions on the UK, but also too slow and inward looking, holding back buccaneering Britain from its rightful place of dominance on the world stage.
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy – one we are not quite meeting yet perhaps, although you could see the military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria in this light.
10. Contempt for the weak – in spades. The old, the disabled, the poor. Anyone from a marginalised minority.
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero – again, not quite there perhaps, although poppy worship and clapping the NHS has some of this flavour.
12. Machismo – disdain for women and LGBTIQ+ people.
13. Selective populism – “Will of the People”. As announced and interpreted by our glorious blond Leader and his acolytes.
14. Newspeak – lies and propaganda. Speeches in front of flags. Words losing their meaning. Brexit means Brexit. They need us more than we need them. Teething problems. World beating test and trace.
So there it is.
If you are in the UK, you have a fascist government.
What are you going to do about it?
Nothing? Wait until the jackboots come through your front door?
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Dictator Johnson: like all fascists, the only rights that interest Boris Johnson are his own – which is why he has announced he intends to abolish yours – and stop the courts from ruling that anything he does is illegal.
The last week in UK politics was seismic – in terms of the changes it announced.
Boris Johnson is using the Tories huge Parliamentary majority to change our way of life, fundamentally.
Here’s what they have started. But what can you do about it?
1. The Conservatives are ending your right to protest.
And they announced it at precisely the wrong moment. After a vigil for a woman who had been kidnapped and murdered – allegedly by a policeman – turned into a riot when policemen started attacking the female participants, Home Secretary Priti Patel introduced a new law that allows police to arrest anybody for making a demonstration that is noticed by anybody else.
There’s no point in protesting if you’re not allowed to make enough noise for other people to notice it, of course.
The move has been interpreted – correctly – as an attempt to head off protests against the Conservatives’ planned political changes that will alter the UK from democracy (albeit a not-very-progressive one) into a full-blown dictatorship.
2. The Tories are giving the police huge new powers of oppression
The example I used was the new power to arrest travellers – not for committing a crime, but on suspicion that they might do so in the future. This comes with a power to confiscate their homes.
Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is full of similar increases of oppression, against people in all parts of the UK’s society, we’re told.
3. The Conservatives are continuing to turn a blind eye to crimes against women – especially if they are committed by the police
Hate crime is the trademark of Conservative governments in the UK since 2010. They have stirred up hatred against migrant workers; they’ve stirred it up against people with long-term illnesses and disabilities. Their new Police Bill will stir up more hate against minorities, while failing to protect more than half the population from crime.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill sets the penalty for attacking a statue at 10 years imprisonment. That is twice as long a term as the starting-point sentence for rape.
We discovered this in the same week that a serving police officer walked free from a court after admitting assaulting a woman who was just walking home at night, using his police training to try to wrestle her to the ground while flinging misogynistic verbal abuse at her. His colleagues had tried to ignore her complaint when she first filed it.
Oh, and after we were told the Metropolitan Police had learned its lessons from an incident when two of its officers published WhatsApp posts of them posing with the dead bodies of two murdered women, another Met officer was alleged to have sent a “vile” post about Sarah Everard, while guarding her body.
4. The Conservative government thinks giving £2.6 million to a firm based in a country that is hostile to the UK – for communications equipment (think about it) – is money better-spent than giving nurse’s an above-inflation pay rise in reward for their work against Covid-19.
5. The Tories are hoping to strike trade deals with nations across the word that violate the human rights of their citizens.
Like is attracted to like, it seems; the Tory government is ripping up the human rights of UK citizens.
6. The Conservatives have announced that they will spend billions of pounds adding 65 warheads to the UK’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The UK does not have the facilities needed to fire all of these missiles and in any case it would be madness to do so, as it would certainly lead to the destruction of the entire nation in a retaliatory nuclear inferno.
7. The Conservatives have announced an attack on democracy with a plan to change the voting system at local elections to favour them.
They are using the result of a 2011 referendum – about a different subject – to justify changing the system by which Combined Authority mayors, the mayor of London and police and crime commissioners are elected from a form of proportional representation by which those elected must be supported by more than half of the electorate to the old FPTP (First Past The Post) system by which the candidate with the most votes wins, even if supported by a tiny minority of the electorate.
8. The Tories are following through on their threat to end the separation of powers that prevents the UK from falling into dictatorship, by curbing the courts’ ability to rule government actions illegal.
Boris Johnson was caught breaking the law over Brexit and the prorogation of Parliament in 2019 – when he actually misled the Queen in order to get her to end a Parliamentary session early – and he’s butt-hurt about it.
As a result, he intends to ensure that the courts will not be able to stop him from doing anything he likes in the future – no matter how many laws he breaks.
These are just the highlights – of which the worst must be Boris Johnson’s plan to put himself and his government above the law while subjecting the rest of us to increasing oppression.
The big question now is: what are you going to do about it?
We know that a quarter of the UK’s population is 100 per cent behind Johnson because they voted for him and his party – right? Granted, a small number of them might be wavering now because of the extremism of the changes listed above – and remember, they are only events that happened last week – but there remains a significant rump of Tory support.
About a third of those who are left are children who are too young to have their opinions taken seriously by the political elite.
That leaves around half the UK’s population to stand up for democracy.
But the question remains: How do you protect your freedoms when your right to do so is being taken away?
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Travellers: this is a council-run traveller site, so it looks orderly enough. But a proposed law means that even here the police could confiscate travellers’ homes, if officers don’t like the look of them.
Roma (or Romani); travellers; gypsies; diddycai; tinkers if you like. There are plenty of words for these almost universally maligned people.
They have a bad reputation because some of them are trespassers who will camp on any land, whether it is privately-owned or common, some of them are dirty and will leave their campsites filthy with litter, and some of them are prone to criminal behaviour.
In 1930s Germany, Hitler ramped up already-existing anti-gypsy laws to establish the pre-supposition that they were a “nuisance”, that they were criminal by their nature (so it follows that the authorities were allowed to assume they were criminals without them actually having to commit a crime), and that they should be moved on from encampments that were considered to cause a disturbance to the rest of the German population (in Hitler’s Germany, they were moved on into concentration camps where they were murdered in a holocaust that was every bit as brutal as the attempted genocide of the Jews).
Boris Johnson has been stealing policies from Hitler, it seems. Just take a look at his plans for travellers, as written into the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that has just won its first major vote in the House of Commons. Here’s Ian Dunt to explain it to you:
Quick thread on an aspect of the policing bill which has been under-discussed: the provisions on trespass. This section targets Gypsies and Travellers.
Previously, police could take action against Gypsies and Travellers if they had done something wrong. They had to have "caused damage to the land or to property on the land or used threatening, abusive or insulting words".
And they do not need to have done anything at all. The police officer just needs to suspect that significant damage or disruption "is likely to be caused".
There. Police only need to assume that, because a traveller is there, they are likely to engage in criminal activity, and they can then treat that traveller as if they had been seen to commit such an act (even though they haven’t).
In other words: You do not actually need to have done anything. All that is required is that the police *suspect* you will do something.
It’s like “pre-crime”, as described in the movie Minority Report, which turns the law on its head, allowing people to be arrested on the basis of predictions that they will commit crime. In the film, these predictions were not necessarily accurate. In this law, there isn’t even a requirement to be.
So on the basis of a suspicion that a Gypsy or Traveller might in future insult someone, they can take away all their belongings.
To recap: on sight of a traveller, the police may confiscate everything they own. And what will happen to them then? An arrest for vagrancy?
Sure, they can challenge. They can get their day in court. But at that moment when the police officer arrives, they can take everything from them if they do not comply with their demand that they leave.
This bill is massive. Hundreds of pages. And everywhere you look you find draconian powers, handed to police, to do as they damn well please, targeting the most vulnerable and marginalised people in the country.
It sets innocent people up to be criminalised because of who they are, which is a well-recognised form of prejudice. Suppose Johnson targeted Jews. It would be an attack on these people because of who they are, not what they do. That is what we have here.
It isn’t quite racism, and it can’t be anti-Semitism, but the lesson of Hitler tells us it is just as bad.
Oh, and by the way, illegal traveller encampments could have been made a thing of the past if only local authorities had obeyed a 1968 law (the commenter below was adrift by a few years) that ordered them to provide standing sites for travellers to camp:
Back in the 1970's laws were passed where every council had to provide sites for travellers. This law was ignored by majority of Tory led councils – Petty Patel seems totally unaware of this law – the councils are the criminals for not providing the sites. https://t.co/gw6ImwL7Ly
The Caravan Sites Act of 1968 led to the creation of 400 sites, but was ignored by many local authorities. I recall Powys County Council dragging its heels over demands for such sites within the last 10 years.
By breaking the law, council leaders (many of whom, I have no doubt, are Conservatives) made it possible for the current Conservative government to create the current legislation that demands that they be treated as criminals for no reason at all.
The Bill is sponsored by Priti Patel, who is already running concentration camps for refugees from foreign countries.
Where do you think she’ll open her first concentration camp for travellers? And what will they do next?
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