Category: Current Event Report

REPUBLICAN INDEPENDENTIST PARTIES WIN MAJORITY IN CATALAN REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

On By rebelbreezeIn Catalunya, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, National Liberation, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Popular Resistance, Rap, Rhyming Rapping & Ranting, Spanish StateLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time text: 12 mins)

DESPITE LOW TURNOUT DUE TO PANDEMIC FEARS, THE THREE CATALAN INDEPENDENTIST PARTIES TOGETHER HAVE A COMFORTABLE ABSOLUTE MAJORITY

Despite the Covid19 pandemic and bad weather causing a low turnout for the elections to the Government (Govern) of the Catalan Autonomous Region, elected representatives of political parties for Catalan independence won a comfortable absolute majority of their Parlament and, for the first time in recent history, won more than 50% of the total votes cast.

It is worth noting that although most of the Spanish and much of the European media (including shamefully the Irish) is referring to the victors in this election as “separatists” this is not the correct term and implies or at least leaves open to interpretation that there is some basis for their campaign other than a historic nation seeking independence. The Irish over centuries were not “separatists” with regard to England and the United Kingdom, they were independentists. And those Irish parties that wanted to remain with the UK were — and are – unionists, with a parallel too in the elections in Catalonia.

In a Parlament of 135 seats (absolute majority 68 minimum), the results are:

INDEPENDENTISTS

Total seats: 74

ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, traditional left-republican party of various trends)

33 seats (up one) 21.4% votes cast

JxCat (Junsts per Catalunya, independentist party consisting of various trends with origins in alliance with right-wing Catalan nationalist party PdeCat but split from them last year)

32 seats (up 12) 20.0% votes cast

CUP (Convergencia Unida Popular, a confederation of left-wing groups mostly active on a community and municipal level)

9 seats (up 5) 6.67% votes cast

UNIONISTS

Total seats: 53

PSC (Catalan branch of the Partido Socialista Obrero de Espana, social-democratic main government party in the Spanish State)

33seats (up 16) 13.9 % of votes cast

PP (Partido Popular, formed by Franco supporters after the Dictator’s death, main government party in the Spanish State after PSOE)

3 seats (down one) 3.8 % of votes cast

Cs (Ciutadans, Spanish unionist party formed by split from the PP)

6 seats (down 30) 5.6 % of votes cast

Vox (Spanish fascist and unionist party formed by split from PP and Ciutadans)

11 seats, 7.7 % of votes cast

OTHER

Total seats: 8 seats (no change) 6.87 % of votes cast

ECP (En Comú Podem [“Communs”], coalition of Podemos, Izquierda Unida etc, left-social democrats and trotskyists, in theory supporting the right to independence but in practice rarely supporting the independentists).

Results of February 2021 elections to the Catalonian Parliament. (Source image: Internet)

CONTEXT

Most of Catalonia is currently part of the Spanish state, with a small part around Pau, in the southern French state. Catalonia has its own political history and national language, Catalan but its autonomy was ended in conquest by the Bourbons of the Spanish Kingdom in 1741 and its language discriminated against. In 1936 the workers of Barcelona, the capital city, rose and defeated the forces of the Spanish military-fascist coup against the elected Popular Front Government of Spain. But after the victory of the military-fascist forces in 1939 in the Spanish Antifascist War, Catalonia, which had sided with the Government on a promise of autonomy, suffered repression, its leaders and supporters executed and language banned.

Map showing Catalonia in the iberian peninsula and part of southern France (without Pau picked out)

Catalonia is also considered by many to be part of the Paisos Catalans (Catalan Countries), which include the regions such of Valencia and the Balearic islands, where dialects of Catalan are spoken.

Although a small part of the Spanish State in terms of land and population, Catalonia is one of the most economically successful regions of the Spanish State. A wish for national independence gained renewed political support during the recent decade, growing apace when the Spanish State greatly reduced Catalan autonomy in a reinterpretation of the Statute of Autonomy in respect of Catalonia. Grassroots movements in favour of independence grew hugely, in particular the ANC and Omnium; they organised a referendum on independence to take place on 1st October 2017. The Spanish State sent its militarised police to seize ballot boxes and attack voters and protesters. Subsequently the Spanish State jailed the leaders of the Independentist party ERC, the grassroots organisations ANC and Omnium, along with politicians. It issued arrest warrants for a number of others, including the President of the Government and leader of JuntsXCat party and a leading activist of CUP, all of whom are currently in exile. 700 Town Mayors are under investigation for their role in the referendum and activists are in jail or on trial for their activities in protests and one-day general strikes (of which there have been three since 2017).

Man and woman celebrating and displaying the Vermelha, the socialist version of the Catalan independentist flag. (Source image: Internet)

ELECTION TIMING AND RESULTS

Quim Torra, Puigdemont’s replacement, who had been stripped of his position as President of the Catalan Parliament by a Spanish Court for displaying a banner in support of the political prisoners on a Government building during Catalan municipal elections, had threatened to call snap regional elections; these were expected around October last year but the Covid19 pandemic prevented that plan going ahead.

However, when the Catalan Govern because of the pandemic decided to postpone their elections until this summer,, it was forced by a Spanish State court (at the behest of unionists) to call them for 14th February. That of course led to a low turnout, which usually favours the Right and Unionists, thus making the results even more remarkable.

Catalans queuing to vote in the rain in the midst of a pandemic; the Spanish State did not permit them to postpone for couple of months. (Source image: Internet)

With the independentist parties achieving more than 50% of the vote for the first time and an overall majority in the Parlament, Catalans favouring independence regard the election results as positive overall. But their pleasure is tempered by the unwelcome gains of the Spanish social democrats of the PSC and the ten seats won for the first time in Catalonia by the fascist Vox party.

The PSC is the Catalan branch of the PSOE, the Spanish social-democratic party currently in government in coalition with Podemos-Izquierda Unida, the latter a kind of trotskyist coalition (of which the Catalan version is “En Comú Podems”) and both parties are essentially Spanish unionist, the PSOE bluntly so and the junior partner in practice.

Although the PSC were no doubt aided by having as a candidate Salvador Illa, the former Minister for Health of the current Government of the Spanish State, it seems that some of the votes to elect the PSC came from pro-Spanish unionist Catalans on the Right, deserting their more natural allegiances in order to achieve a strong unionist and Spanish government presence in the Catalan Parlament. The Catalan traditional unionist Right wing took a hammering, losing 31 seats as the PP went down from four to three seats and their upcoming replacement Ciutadants from 36 to just six. But newcomers and more clearly fascist Vox gained eleven seats. In terms of seats alone, as a crude measure, the PSC and Vox gained seats totalled 44, while PP and Cs together lost 31. Looked at that way, it seems clear that the increase of seats for the social-democratic PSC and the fascist Vox came from right-wing unionists, with a gain of another 13 seats unexplained.

The PSC and Vox successes have been of concern to many Catalan independentists. However those parties reflect existing realities in Catalonia with which the independentist republicans will need to grapple. The vote for Vox illustrates quite starkly that much of the base of the allegedly democratic right-wing conservative Ciutadans was in fact fascist, as suspected by more than a few and it is as well to be aware of it and to have that exposed.

The support for the PSC is a wider problem and, while some of it will remain irreconcilably Spanish Unionist for the foreseeable future, there are probably elements among its voters that are capable of being won over to the independentist position.

GOING FORWARD

As noted earlier, the three republican independentist parties have won a comfortable overall majority, in that they have 74 seats between them, six more than the 68 needed for an absolute majority in the 135-seat Parlament. Even if all the Spanish unionist parties vote together, social democrats voting with Right and Far-Right, they can only outvote the Catalan independentists, in the normal course of events, should one of the latter parties join their vote or abstain, which is hard to imagine occurring.

In the last Parlament, the CUP became a left-opposition to the coalition Govern of ERC and JxCat but never joined the unionist parties in voting against the Govern.

Immediately following the announcement of the results, the Communs leader in effect admitted she would try and split the independentist alliance by asking ERC to join with them and with PSC to form “a left-wing government” which is a shameful use of words since the independentist alliance has put forward more proposals of a socialist nature for Catalonia than have been presented by the PSOE in the state, most of them blocked by the Spanish Constitutional Court and the PSOE is in fact now about to renege on the rent controls it had agreed with its coalition partner. However neither its supporters nor the electorate would be likely to forgive ERC’s leadership should they take such a step and whether tempted or not, they will not go there.

Of course, the Spanish State could reduce the Independentist majority by finding some pretext to jail some of their elected members and such a scenario is far from inconceivable, given the nature of the Spanish State and its recent history in Catalunya. But that would be a very high-risk avenue, even for the Spanish State.

The very likely development is for ERC and JxCat to join in a coalition government, with or without CUP (who might choose to remain in opposition but in “confidence and supply” with the Govern, meaning that they would vote for them if necessary to defeat a vote of the unionist opposition). ERC and JxCat are quite deeply divided on how to proceed in relation to the Spanish State. Although ERC has a longer history of Republican opposition and even some armed struggle through the Terra Lliure resistance, and thinks of itself as “Left”, it is JxCat that has been most resolute in its attitude to the Spanish State. ERC wanted to sit down for talks with Sanchez, Prime Minister and leader of the PSOE, even though Sanchez has stated categorically that independence is not up for negotiation; JvCat ridiculed the very idea. When Sanchez needed other party votes to get his Government’s budget through the Cortes (the Spanish Parliament), ERC gave their votes along with the PNV, the Basque Nationalist Party. And now ERC has asked the Spanish Government to authorise a referendum on Catalan independence which, on past performance, can only be denied. In the absence of getting something substantial in return, JxCat refused to give their votes to support the Spanish Government’s budget (as did the Basque independentist members).

Going into the mid-term future, not only will Catalan independence be forbidden by the Spanish ruling class through its State but many of the measures the Catalan Government has agreed to take around social justice, for equality, against bullfighting and so on, will be frustrated by the Spanish State through its upper courts, as before.

There seems no way forward for the Catalan independentists other than at the very least a sustained campaign of civil disobedience to make Catalonia ungovernable by the Spanish State. In such a situation, it is difficult to imagine the Spanish State not sending its military to occupy the nation and repress the resistance. With whatever response that would arouse among Catalans.

End.

POSTSCRIPT:

Clerk in court, Pablo Hasél trial: “Do you swear to tell the whole truth?” Hasél: “I am here because of telling the whole truth.”

The jailing by the Spanish State of Catalan revolutionary socialist poet-rapper Pablo Hasél on 16th February has led to demonstrations and rioting in Barcelona in which both the Guardia Civil of the Spanish State and the Catalunya police, the Mossos d’Escuadra, have been engaged. The Spanish police have fired rubber bullets which are banned in Catalunya while the Mossos have baton-charged ferociously and, firing foam projectiles, took the eye of a 19-year-old woman. The protests are ongoing.

Over 400 visual artists, also of words and music, have signed a demand for the release of Hasél whose jailing has also been condemned by Amnesty International. Pickets in his support have been organised across the southern Basque Country and Navarran regional police, the Forales, fired rubber bullets at a march in Hasél’s support in Iruna (Pamplona). Other places including Madrid have also seen demonstrations protesting the jailing of the rapper.

Riot police and people protesting jailing of Pablo Hasél. (Source image: Internet)

A FOOTBALLER AND RACISM WITHOUT COLOUR

On By rebelbreezeIn Britain, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Ireland, Mass Media Criticism, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 10 mins.)

Current media news reports quote James McClean, a player for the English Football League club Stoke City and for the soccer team of the Irish State1, protesting against being subjected to anti-Irish racism and his wife Erin also, not so much on her own behalf but in consideration of her three children. McClean points out that while other kinds of discrimination are rightly opposed, anti-Irish racism goes largely ignored by British society and by the football profession. Despite its existence for 800 years and its persistence today, anti-Irish racism has long been neglected in the study of racism and the struggle against it.

James MacClean, who comes from Derry, has been made a controversial figure by his refusal to comply with the expectation that he wear a Remembrance Poppy, which he correctly sees as a promotional emblem for the British Army. As a result he has been subjected to sectarian Loyalist abuse and anti-Irish abuse targeting him and his family.

Erin and husband and footballer James MacClean, enjoying a social occasion. They have been harassed by anti-Irish racism and threats to them and to their children. (Photo source: Internet)

The origins of anti-Irish racism can be traced back to the writings of Anglo-Norman Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) in the latter half of the 12th Century. Coming from a background of Norman feudal culture and a comparatively recent history of conquest of large parts of Celtic and Saxon Britain2, Gerald found little to admire in Gaelic culture3 or society and much to deride. The feudal Norman visitors were encountering a culture of clan ownership of land, of election of clan leaders and greater kings who might not be first-born, of a Christian clergy that was not celibate and in which women could own their own property before, during and after marriage with the right to divorce. A culture shock indeed.

The writings of Gerald helped justify the 1169 opportunistic invasion of Ireland at the invitation of a resentful overthrown Irish king. With that beachhead well-established and the Irish Vikings of Dublin evicted by Richard de Clare, “Strongbow” in 1170, anti-Irish racism served to justify the official invasion of Henry in 1171 backed up by the authorisation of Pope Adrian IV with the Papal Bull Laudabiliter, a 1155 letter of ecclesiastic authorisation, to bring the semi-independent Irish church to the Gregorian Reforms.4

Despite the early scorn and distaste of the Norman invaders for Irish culture, within less than two centuries they were becoming integrated with it to such an extent as to cause alarm among the English Normans. The latter drafted a number of laws forbidding elements of that integration, the most infamous being the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366, forbidding the Irish Normans from adopting native Irish customs, forms of dress and use of the Irish language; they had become “more Irish than the Irish themselves”, their critics in England complained. Inside the “Pale”, the central enclosures of the occupiers’ power, the Statutes could be enforced but not outside and so Ireland remained essentially Gaelic in culture, with some cultural transference from the Normans.

Control of Irish territory breakdown 1450 (Image sourced: Internet)

For the conquest to be secure, Ireland needed to be conquered entirely and plantations of people seemed the way to achieve this: send in settlers, give them expropriated land which they they would have to defend. This was the approach of the Tudor monarchs of England and to a requirement that the settlers would be English-speaking they added the new religion, that of the Protestant Reformation. Settlements had to be capable of defence5 and no “mere Irish” should be employed.

Dispossession, plantation and oppression continued through the 17th Century under Cromwell and King William and through the Penal Laws thereafter up to the 19th.

Land distribution in ireland after the Cromwellian Resettlement Act 1652 (Image sourced: Internet)

The native Irish (Gael) and now also the Norman Irish (Gall-Ghael) were the enemy surrounding these settlements outside the Pale, they had been dispossessed and would no doubt recover their lands and their sovereignty if given the chance. And they were by far the majority. Justification for conquest and dispossession required an appropriate ideology and this was found in the assumed superiority of the occupiers’ religions, language, culture and polities. And the natural corollary to that was an ascribed inferiority to everything among the natives: language, religion, cultural habits and mores, dress … Naturally practical physical measures were required also: oppression, discrimination and repression of resistance.

The Irish were characterised as savage, child-like, emotional, untrustworthy (they agreed to treaties when beaten but broke them later6), superstitious, violent (they kept resisting the lawful authority or even uprising), drunkards, dirty ….

Following the scientific breakthrough of Darwinism came “Social Darwinism” and some Victorian pseudo-anthropologists placed the Irish as a Celtic Iberian race below the Teutonic (with which of course they identified the English) but above the “African Hottentot”. The Irish and Latin “races” were described as of “feminine” nature: emotional, weak, charming at times, unintelligent, needing to be controlled; while the “masculine” Anglo-Teutonic “races” were strong, measured, logical and obviously the right ones to be in control.

Éire struggling with Famine, which was in reality an imposed holocaust — while the irish starved, due to a blight on their staple food of potato, their other products were collected for rent and left Ireland in ships for Britain. (Image sourced: Internet)

Irish uprisings increased the sense of insecurity of the conquerors and occupiers and intensified their efforts to justify their oppression and repression of the Irish so that Victorian Britain during Fenian campaigns churned out jokes against the Irish, along with nasty tales and horrible caricatures in popular newspapers. But not just popular newspapers: as the Irish starved in the Great Hunger of the mid-19th Century while their produce fed the British industrial revolution, the London Times, newspaper of record for the British ruling class, exulted in an editorial that the the Irish (survivors) were leaving and that soon an Irishman would be as rare in Ireland as the American Indians on the North-East Coast of the USA.

“The Irish Frankenstein” (sic) 1882, popular Punch magazine (Image sourced: Wikipedia)
Anti-Eviction Rally in they Land War, 1850 (Image sourced: Internet)

EXPORTING ANTI-IRISH RACISM

Not surprisingly, a central ideology such as anti-Irish racism accompanied the British wherever they went, despite the number of Irish in their armies and administrative layers. Boston, Massachusetts was particularly known for ant-Irish prejudice and discrimination and that may explain why the Irish community there was reportedly so clannish and defending its hard-won turf against all comers, including unfortunately competition from those considered even lower than the Irish, African Americans7. The anti-Irish ideology made itself felt in the white-ruled colonies, later Dominions of Australia, New Zealand and Canada too.

A common enough sign in Britain and white settler British dominions during certain periods (Image sourced: Internet)

A strange case of the dissemination of this virus was its export to Scotland, a nation although of Celtic origin, heavily settled by Normans and Saxons, and incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1707. This was in particular of Ulster origin and took the form of anti-Catholicism. The English occupation had consciously stirred up religious sectarianism in the 1790s in order to break up the growing unity of Protestant Irish of various backgrounds with the Catholic vast majority which was framed in a republican project for greater independence. An important part of that subversion was the creation of the Orange Order in Loughgall in 1795, which became active in helping to suppress the United Irishmen uprising of 1798 and especially in repression afterwards, both against Republican Protestants and Catholics in general. As the Republican element among the Protestants decreased dramatically due to repression and emigration, the Order concentrated almost exclusively on oppression of Catholics and repression of resistance, a role it plays to this day.

But with the decline of the Ulster weaving industry in particular due to Ireland entering the UK in 1801 and British preferential treatment of their own production, many Ulster emigrants came to Scotland and were in competition for work, with the Orange Order being used to infect the already widely Protestant Scottish society against the Catholics which meant essentially, against the Irish. That has continued to this day (see References) and finds its expression in an often violent rivalry for example between soccer football teams of “Catholic” and “Protestant” background8, in Orange marches celebrating the victories of King William in Ireland and in discrimination in other areas such as policing too.

ANTI-IRISH RACISM IN THE 20th AND 21st CENTURIES

Anti-Irish racism was whipped up again during the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish war of Independence (1919-1921), and not just against the Irish in Ireland but against the Irish in Britain, in the USA9 and in Australia10. It raised its ugly head (and bared its teeth) again during WW2 (inflamed by the IRA campaign in Britain and Irish state neutrality) and again during the recent 30 years’ war.

An allegedly common lodging house sign in Britain, the existence of which is now disputed. What is beyond doubt is that those three exclusions (and of children) were advertised though not all necessarily all together. (Image sourced: Internet)

In the 1970s anti-Irish articles, jokes and cartoons abounded in the British press and to this ideological offensive was added the 1971 weekly program of The Comedians (“stand up comedians”), of which a huge proportion of their material was anti-Irish racism, depicting the Irish in particular as stupid. I was London myself during that period and remember that a “comedian” only had to say “There was this Paddy on a building site” and the audience would be already laughing. Bernard Manning was the most infamous of those but there were many, many others.

Bernard Manning, perhaps chief among a long line of British racist comedians. (Image sourced: Internet)
Perhaps a better aspect of Bernard Manning (Image sourced: Find a Grave)

Those jokes and others were repeated not only by comperes and club comedians but of course also at work, in school, at college and in universities. They represented a deeply degrading ideological offensive on a cultural level against the whole Irish community.

Apart from the Comedians TV program, a number of media personalities made racist jokes about or references to the Irish without any apology from the media or repercussions from their employers. Angus Deaton, for a long time presenter of Have I Got News For You, the popular British TV comedy news and current affairs commentary show, made a joke about the Irish (although participant Paul Merton, who said his mother was Irish, riposted brilliantly). Caroline Aherne, a comedienne who brilliantly played the biting chat-show character “Mrs. Merton”, was one of the few to speak out publicly against the racist “humour” but both her parents were Irish. Billy Connolly, Scottish comedian of Catholic Irish background, while discussing comedy, admitted to having told an anti-irish joke once when feeling lonely on stage, which he regretted. To the urbane Irish presenter Terry Wogan’s great credit while judging a popular British TV talent show, he declared anti-Irish jokes were not funny.

1974 saw the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism (sic) Act and the framing and incarceration of two score innocent Irish people. Apart from raids on homes, spurious arrests without warrants, detention without charge and oppressive interrogations, thousands were questioned at ports and airports, often made to miss their flights at the latter. Though the charges falsely alleged involvement in “terrorist acts” the basis was Irishness, in a way very reminiscent to “Muslim” being considered sufficient justification today.

James MacClean playing for his club, Stoke City. (Photo credit: Northern Echo)

“INVISIBLE” RACISM

If a good working definition of racism is “discrimination against and disparaging of another ethnic group from a position of power”, then the Irish should have had no problems in gaining recognition as being racially oppressed and discriminated against. However, so many insisted that the Irish could not qualify because they were “white”. But in fact there already existed a “white” ethnic group which was widely acknowledge as having been discriminated against for centuries – the Jews. That however was explained by some as being a “religious discrimination” at root and not “racism”. The basic fact of the matter was and is that it did not suit the British ruling class or their intelligentsia to admit to anti-Irish racism – and not just because of guilt but for very practical reasons: they are still in conquest-occupation of nearly one-fifth of Irish territory. And the Irish diaspora is the oldest ethnic minority in Britain as well as, until recently perhaps, the largest11.

Cover of memoir by John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, lead singer of the punk band Sex Pistols. Lydon was of irish descent growing up in North London. (Image sourced: Internet)

The British Left, the leading parts of which have either gained access to management of the British State or aspire to do so, for the most part have denied or minimalised anti-Irish racism. It took Liz Curtis to put together a popular illustrated booklet on anti-Irish racism and the Irish in Britain Representation Group, founded in 1981 to campaign against it. The IBRG made official complaints to and about the media and picketed WH Smiths12 until they stopped selling “Irish mugs” with the handle inside. While supporting general equality, the IBRG made complaints to local authorities about racist measures that impacted upon the Irish and sought to have an Irish ethnicity identification choice in the British Census, which was eventually successful.13 An approach of theirs to the GLC convinced the Council, under the leadership of Ken Livingstone, to withdraw all their advertising from the London Evening Standard until the latter apologised for publishing an anti-Irish racist cartoon. The Editor refused to apologise and never again received any advertising from the GLC14, at a revenue loss to the newspaper estimated at £2 million.

Mostly the Irish community fought the racism on their own, without the support of most of the British Left or the liberal-social-democratic elements. Even after the 1965 Race Relations Act the widespread feeling was that whether one was for or against the Act, it did not apply to the Irish. The Act specifically excluded shops and boarding houses (i.e places where notices declaring “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish”) were widespread but they were included in the 1968 Act15. The 1976 Act was more comprehensive but the assumption of inapplicability to the Irish continued. It appears that it was not until the Killian case against the British pharmaceutical retail chain Boots in 1989 that an Irish person was successful in taking a case for discrimination16 under the 1976 Act.

James McClean for Ireland in International friendly match against Bulgaria at Aviva Stadium, Dublin, September 2019. (Photo credit: Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

The anti-Irish racist offensive mostly petered out at the end of the 1990s but flared up again in the British media during the whole Brexit saga. In 2015 Jeremy Clarkson flew into a rage with an Irish co-producer of the Top Gear show, abused him racially and punched him in the mouth. It is a virus or bacteria living deep in the British mainstream psyche; it recedes at times only to be reactivated whenever the British ruling class — or sections of the chattering class — perceive that the Irish are not acting in the best interests of Britain, whatever they perceive those to be.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1In the world of soccer football, there are two “national” teams competing for the championships: “Republic of Ireland” and “Northern Ireland”, a clear example of intrusion of politics into sport, for Ireland is one country and was recognised as such even by the English invaders (the inventors of soccer) from 1169 until they partitioned the country in 1921. Thus what is mostly recognised as the Irish national team has to compete against another team from a part of its own country in order to progress in championships!

2England suffered a Norman invasion in 1066 which gradually extended over the whole of Britain, the south-east of which had been already conquered by the Saxons.

3He admired Gaelic decorative art as expressed in illuminated manuscripts and harp-playing, describing them as “the work of angels”, almost expressing incredulity that they could have come from Gaelic culture. It is unlikely that he learned the Irish language, perhaps conversing with natives through the medium of Latin or an interpreter.

4The Gaels, who earlier had a pantheistic religion moderated by the druidic order, had been largely Christian by the 5th Century; furthermore the transition to Christianity in Ireland was not imposed by conquest and appears to have been largely voluntary; in addition the Christian monks recorded a great many of the pre-Christian myths and legends. During the Early Middle Ages the Irish Church sent out missionaries to many parts of Europe, establishing monasteries similar to universities as far away as Asia Minor.

5Hence the layout of triangle, square or diamond town centres of settler origin in Ireland, rather than native layout of lines of housing following road or river crossing and backing up behind, or congregating around harbour, fort or monastery. See also the design of even the small Protestant churches which look built to be used as forts, with strong doors and narrow windows, some even like arrow-slits.

6Compare this with the long history of conquerors, certainly including the English, repeatedly violating treaties they had made when victorious!

7Of course Boston was far from being the only US City where anti-black racism was the norm in Irish communities but it was perhaps the worst. Of course Irish anti-slavery, labour and civil rights workers also existed, some of them very prominent in their field.

8e.g supporters of Glasgow Celtic v. Rangers, of Hibernians v. Heart of Midlothian in Edinburgh.

9The British intelligence services were well aware that the Irish insurgency was receiving substantial concrete and moral assistance from the Irish diaspora in the USA.

10It had existed there before from in particular English settlers but reached hysterical proportions when two attempts to impose conscription in WW1 through referendum – because they feared to impose it otherwise – failed, a fact which was attributed by many to the Irish element in the (white) Australian electorate.

11Certainly the largest national diaspora

12 British equivalent of Easons in Ireland

132001; the opposition did not come from the British establishment alone but also from middle-class black activists keen to keep anti-racism as their preserve solely.

14The GLC was abolished by the Thatcher Government in 1985.

15Which was not applicable in the Six Counties, despite being a part of the UK

16 As in the early successful cases where the complainant was Irish, it was about discrimination in employment; later there were many about abuse at point of service as well of as employee.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

General history of Anti-Irish Racism
Nothing But the Same Old Story: Roots of Anti-Irish Racism, Liz Curtis, (1984) GLC; 1996 Sásta reprint)

Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature, L. Perry Curtis (1971, republished 1996 by Smithsonian DC

Ireland: The Propaganda War ; the British Media and the Battle for Hearts and Minds, Liz Curtis, (1984) Pluto Press; 1998 Sásta update and reprint)

The Irish Community – diversity, disadvantage and discrimination, Bronwen Walter, 1999 https://www.runnymedetrust.org/bgIrishCommunity.html

Anti-Irish Sentiment in Modern Britain: https://theyorkhistorian.com/2018/03/18/anti-irish-sentiment-in-modern-britain/

Snippets across the centuries: https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/anti-irish-racism/

Swift, Roger and Sheridan Gilley, The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939. London: Pinter, 1989.

Swift, Roger and Sheridan Gilley, The Irish in the Victorian City. London: Dover, 1985.

The use of the ‘cartoonist’s armoury’ in manipulating public opinion: anti-Irish imagery in 19th century British and American periodicals: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41932626?seq=1

A very rare occasion when a letter of mine was published by the Irish Times:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/anti-irish-racism-in-britain-1.4188132

MORE RECENT OCCURRENCES FROM PROMINENT BRITISH COMMENTATORS

2005 — comment on decades of anti-Irishness in the Daily Mail: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/anti-irish-newspaper-plans-to-launch-edition-here-26213160.html

Jeremy Clarkson and anti-Irish racism: http://littleatoms.com/society/jeremy-clarkson-and-being-lazy-irish-britain

Daily Mail, 2017: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/apes-psychos-alcos-how-british-cartoonists-depict-the-irish-1.3149409

Julie Burchill, 2018: https://london.eater.com/2018/1/26/16933806/julie-burchill-anti-irish-sentiment-nuala-es-mag-restaurant-review

John Cleese: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/john-cleese-has-a-faulty-sense-of-humour-about-the-irish-1.4294487?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fculture%2Fjohn-cleese-has-a-faulty-sense-of-humour-about-the-irish-1.4294487

Tony Abbot, leader of Australian Liberal Party at the time (2011): https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-jokes-about-irishmen-2370

CAMPAIGNING AGAINST ANTI-IRISH RACISM

James McClean and wife Erin speak out against threats and anti-Irish comments received by them and against their children: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemeehallwood/2021/02/15/anti-irish-racism-condemned-as-james-mccleans-wife-shares-social-media-threats-against-their-children/

A year-by-year record of many activities of the IBRG, regular campaigner against anti-Irish racism: https://lipsticksocialist.wordpress.com

Battle to have an Irish category in the British census: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20095-8_7, Chap 7.2, paragraph 2.

GLC banning adverts over anti-Irish cartoon in the London Evening Standard: https://books.google.ie/books?id=fVcGDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT94&lpg=PT94&dq=GLC+ban+on+advertising+evening+standard&source

Asian man who won first successful case against racial discrimination in Britain mentions anti-Irish racism: https://eachother.org.uk/racism-1960s-britain/

British media racist cartoonist JAK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Jackson

1977 comment: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/irish-suffering-in-britain-is-more-than-just-racist-jokes-1.85448

Exclusion of the irish from the anti-racism mainstream paradigm: https://discoversociety.org/2019/03/06/is-anti-irish-racism-still-a-problem-you-can-bank-on-it/

Commenting on anti-Irish Racism in Scotland

James MacMillan: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12398473.composer-celtic-fans-should-feel-free-to-sing-republican-songs-james-macmillan-claims-sectarianism-rules-out-pride-in-irish-roots/

Neil Lennon: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/nov/02/neil-lennon-sectarianism-racism-hibernian-scotland

TFN: https://tfn.scot/news/anti-irish-racism-is-rife-in-scotland

Event against anti-Irish racism in Scotland cancelled after threats: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anti-irish-racism-event-cancelled-as-venue-receives-threats-of-violence-k2wdjxl3z

“The armed wing of the State will come to take me by force …” –PABLO HASÉL

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Current Event Report, Political Prisoners, Rap, Rhyming Rapping & Ranting, Spanish State4 Comments

(translated from Castillian by Diarmuid Breatnach)

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

STATEMENT BEFORE MY IMMINENT IMPRISONMENT:

In ten days the armed wing of the State will come to kidnap me by force to imprison me because I am not going to present myself at the prison voluntarily. I don’t know to which jail they will take me or for how long (I will be detained). Among all the cases that I have accumulated through struggle, some with convictions pending appeal and others pending trial, I could spend up to almost 20 years in prison.

This constant harassment that I have suffered for many years and that goes beyond prison sentences, is not only due to my revolutionary songs, but also because of my activism beyond music and writing. The Prosecutor herself put it into words: “he is dangerous for being so well known and inciting social mobilization.” Putting the struggle I speak of in my songs into practice is what has put me especially in the spotlight, in addition to supporting organizations that have fought the State, being in solidarity with their political prisoners and raising awareness by denouncing injustices by pointing out the culprits loudly and clearly.

“Do you swear to tell the whole truth?”
“I am here because of telling the whole truth.”
(Image sourced: Internet)

It is very important to be clear that this is not an attack only against me, but against freedom of expression and therefore against the vast majority who are not guaranteed it like so many other democratic freedoms. When they repress one, they do it to scare the rest. With this terrorism they want to prevent their crimes and policies of exploitation and misery from being denounced, we cannot allow it. They know that I’m not going to give up because I’m in prison, but they they do it in particular so that the rest do. By not internalizing that it is an aggression against any anti-fascist, solidarity has been lacking to avoid my imprisonment like so many others. The regime grows in the face of the lack of resistance and every day it takes away more rights and freedoms without thinking twice when it comes to attacking us — we need to organize self-defense against its systematic attacks. Many people write to me asking what they can do. It takes a lot of diffusion so that everyone knows what they are doing and is aware of it, but above all organization is urgent not only to bring solidarity to the events in the streets and coordinate it well, also to defend all the rights that they trample on with impunity.

It is also necessary to call out the badly-named “progressive” Government1 for allowing this and so much more; while protecting the Monarchy and increasing its budget, they do not touch the gag law and other repressive laws, they have also added the “digital gag law”, they continue to keep jails full of fighters in terrible conditions, in addition to other policies against the working class. There is no doubt that if we were imprisoned during a government of PP and VOX2 there would be much more of a scandal, but these phonies who while claiming to be left-wing have not even firmly opposed this.

“From above they mock the past, they tread on us in the present to rob us of our future.” (Image sourced: Internet)

I will not repent3 to reduce the sentence or avoid jail, serving a just cause is a cause of pride that I will never renounce. If they release me before the end of my sentence, it will be because solidarity pressure conquers them. Prison is another trench from which I will continue to contribute and grow, like so many other people I began to fight inspired by the example of resistance and other contributions of numerous political prisoners. I hope that this serious outrage will be used to add more people to the fight against the regime, enemy of our dignity, that if they imprison me to silence the message, they will give rise to a much greater voice and lose out. With regard to going into exile,4 I decided to remain here so that this opportunity can be used to expose them even more. This blow against our freedoms can turn against them, let’s get down to work.

Pablo Hasél.

(Image sourced: Internet)

BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PABLO HASÉL:

Pablo Hasél (Pablo Rivadula Duró), poet, writer, political rapper and activist from Leida in Catalonia, 32 years of age, has described himself as a revolutionary Marxist. Since 2011 Hasél has been convicted in Spanish courts on a number of occasions of “promoting terrorism” and for “slandering” Spanish State and Royal institutions in his lyrics, as well as for allegedly assaulting a TV3 reporter and being party to an assault on a Catalan far-right group.

Pablo Hasél burning the colours of the Spanish monarchical state during a performance. (Image sourced: Internet)

Hasél began his recording in 2005 with Esto no es un Paradiso (This Is Not a Paradise) since when he has recorded another 64 discs on his own and another 35 in collaboration with others. In 2020 alone Hasél recorded two discs. He is also that author of nine poem collections, four of which are in collaboration with Aitor Cuervo Taboada, and one collection of stories.

FOOTNOTES

1The current Government, a coalition between the PSOE and Podemos. The former is the social-democratic party of the two-party system of the Spanish State which has been breaking down of late. Podemos-Izquierda is a coalition of trotskyist Left tendencies, Left social-democrats and the old Spanish Communist Party.

2The PP has been the right-wing conservative party of the two-party system of the Spanish State while Vox is even further to the Right.

3The Spanish penal and judicial system requires prisoners to repent of the “crimes” of which they have been convicted if they are to be moved to less harsh prison conditions or to be paroled. This is a particularly crushing requirement of inmates convicted of politically-inspired actions who are serving long sentences of a number of decades.

4 In May 2018, the day before he was due to surrender himself to Spanish jail, rapper Valtónyc (José Miguel Arenas) went into exile in Brussels.

IRISH FASCISTS HIDE BEHIND THE HOMELESS

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Housing, Ireland, Political Analysis, Public HealthLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

The Far-Right in Ireland have been been for some time hiding behind the homeless. Fascists, other racists and even anti-vaxxers have been organising public demonstrations while pretending concern for homeless people and the crisis of homelessness within the state. But recently they sank to a new low – impersonating the homeless.

Fascists are unable to go to the public with their true intentions unadorned, which is understandable. Why would most people support a capitalist dictatorship built on the suppression of all defence organisations such as trade unions and all other democratic organisations? So fascists need to point to false enemies and false problems, along with false solutions to real problems. One section of the false enemies are migrants and therefore immigration is a false problem. But in a real problem, the ongoing homelessness crisis within the state, they propose a false solution: “house the Irish first”.

The Far-Right ignores the real source of that crisis, that local authorities are not building municipal housing for rent and that for several decades governments have denied them the finance to do so. It is not migrants, who struggle to pay high rents in often sub-standard accommodation, who benefit from that situation but property developers and landlords. And their credit-extending backers, the banks, that our governments forced us to bail out not so long ago at the price of an austerity program and interest-repayment schedule to run for decades.

It is rational for the Far-Right to shift the blame to the blameless and away from the real causes for to do otherwise would bring them up not just “against the Government” but against the capitalist system that all our governments have represented and continue to act for.

When the Irish Yellow Vests started up in Ireland a few years ago, a number of Socialist and Republican activists, along with people not active previously, unaware perhaps of how the Far-Right in France had infiltrated the movement there, joined the rallies and marches. But it quickly became clear that this “movement without leaders” did indeed have leaders and that they were of the Far-Right, one a prominent islamophobe and the other a self-promoting opportunist1. And that fascists and racists were working within it using, among other things, the homelessness crisis and promoting “house the Irish first”. Landlords were only targeted for housing migrants and property developers and the banks not at all.

The theme continued as other sections of the Far-Right accused migrants and asylum-seekers of being housed in luxury accommodation and at public expense. Fascists and other racists organised against buildings being used as asylum-seeker hostels and whipped up fears of invasions by thousands of muslim terrorists and in at least one case, set fire to a proposed hostel building.

Another opportunist and cynical use of the homelessness crisis has been the holding of anti-vaxxer rallies and other publicity-seeking events while claiming to be doing so “for the homeless”. Carey has been holding little rallies for a number of Saturdays at the Garden of Remembrance, having himself videoed there, also broadcasting regular videos of himself sitting in his car, addressing his supposed public support group that is regularly failing to show up. Carey claims that his actions are designed to help the homeless but they neither challenge the cause of the problem nor supply relief, for example through delivering free food or clothing services. Oh yes, he did have a fundraising appeal but where did the money go? Carey was also at one of the early Irish Yellow Vest gatherings on Custom House Quay, Dublin, where he was videoed by their own people behaving aggressively towards a tiny group of antifascists who were present there, also attempting to snatch one of their flags.

This is Carey who started his Irish fascist career with Irish Yellow Vests and then branched off to form his own anti-vaxxer group protesting at the Garden of Remembrance, Dublin, allegedly “to help the homeless”.

A similar publicity stunt was a supposed “walk from east to west” by another anti-vaxxer, Alan Sweeney, who was raising money “for the homeless”. His call for people to join him seems to have resulted only in one woman who was doing it, she said, “for the mentally ill”. Among wide disbelief that he is walking all the way, his sparse videos showed him occasionally walking or, in at least one case, having a confrontation with staff in a shop who didn’t want him in there without wearing a protective face covering. On that occasion, it is the woman “doing it for the mentally ill” who is videoed by Sweeney while she gets served in the shop twice without a mask and goes in a third time to get the confrontation she is seeking.

While they manage to keep both staff (apparently brothers) in pointless argument, what seems to be the no-nonsense father comes along and pushes them out the door. No physical reaction from the bold Sweeney, who was videoed last year aiming a kick at and spitting on a disabled woman on the ground, an antifascist protester who had been knocked down and kicked by another nazi warrior.

Alan Sweeney attacks disabled antifascist woman who has been assaulted by one of his fascist mates in Dublin (and bringing shame on to the Tricolour); clip taken from video. (See Sources)

All that is reasonably well known and much of it in the public record though it might take a little digging to unearth it. But last weekend the Far-Right went beyond pretending to support the homeless to actually pretending to be homeless themselves.

CONVOY & RALLY AGAINST THE LOCKDOWN

On Sunday (10th January 2021), QAnon called for an anti-vaxxer2 “anti-lockdown” convoy from Belfast to Dublin. QAnon is one of the negationist groups who proclaim that the pandemic is either not real or not serious, that the (rather insufficient) preventative measures brought in by the Government are just intended to restrict the freedom of assembly for other purposes. They also have a range of other conspiracy beliefs that include, according to which individual is speaking, Jewish financiers or the Chinese Communist Party or Millionaire George Soros being behind it all and financing their opponents, Republicans, Socialists, “Antifa” etc. Or that all are in the service of paedophiles. And that the vaccines are going to inject nanomachines into people’s bloodstream which will allow the Government to control them.

There are a number of QAnon groups around the world and they are especially prominent in the USA, where they have been enthusiastic Trump supporters and were among those who stormed the Capitol building just recently (and where the woman shot by police was a duped by QAnon supporter3).

Anti-Vaxxers harassing (and undermining health advice) on the Dublin LUAS system last August, free from any Garda restriction and no action despite evidence.

On the day of this intended great “convoy”, Covid 19 reported cases within the Irish state were just starting to fall again, at 153,000 with 2,532 reported deaths.

Advertised to start with meeting at Dublin Airport at noon, the anti-vaxxers were going to head north to Belfast and then swing around to come into Dublin with a number of stops along the way to meet at the GPO, a regular weekly rallying point of QAnon in the past. The bringing in of individuals and small groups of people from different parts of the country has been a regular feature of Far-Right rallies to make them seem as having much more public support than is actually the case. Despite current travel restrictions being in place as part of the tardy effort of the Government to prevent or reduce the spread of Covid19 infection, currently at 5 kilometres for exercise, and no outside activities to be organised, the anti-vaxxers clearly had no fear of their convoy and rally failing to attract their supporters nor of any interference by the State.

Although anti-virus contagion measures on a number of occasions have put travel restrictions in place, until now the Far-Right have been able to travel about freely, and assemble unmasked without social distancing. On one occasion in Dublin they marched to the Garden of Remembrance (dedicated to the martyrs who fought for an independent Ireland) and chanted in triumphant mockery “Where’s your Lockdown?”

But last Sunday was a different case.

IMPERSONATING THE HOMELESS

Last Sunday, the Gardaí (police force of the Irish State) had roadblocks out and were stopping traffic to question the drivers on their starting point and destination. The British colonial police force, the PSNI did too and turned up to a score of the anti-vaxxers back at Newry. On the quays in Dublin, Gardaí checkpoints stopped a number of other anti-vaxxers and fascists, such as Alan Sweeney4, who had himself videoed in a short argument from his car refusing to tell a Garda where he was bound or the reason for his journey (which at one point he claimed was for “family”) or to give his address, which he quickly did when threatened with arrest and a hefty fine. Later, on foot, while shouting at Gardaí carrying out other checks, he claimed he was “of no fixed abode” and “homeless” before giving his address, again under threat of arrest. Alan Sweeney does have a home, which is in the lovely area of Kinvara in Co. Galway (sorry, Kinvara but we know he does not represent you) and is 213.3 km from Dublin city centre.

Having reached the GPO without making most of the scheduled stops, Dolores Webster, one of the leaders of the QAnon group regularly rallying there who broadcasts videos under the nom de guerre of “Dee Wall” (and known to her opponents by other names such as “Deemented”, “Off Dee Wall” and “the Screech”) was approached by Gardaí. She claimed she was homeless and was waiting for the homeless feeding service5 to set up but eventually she and her coterie ran out of excuses and had to disperse.

May 2020 Anti-Vaxxers protesting lockdown, Dee Wall (centre photo) with microphone. (Image sourced: Internet)

There are an estimated in excess of 8,000 people without a permanent home in the 26-County State, only part of which were the 1,117 families who accessed emergency accommodation in October 2020, including 2,642 children. The use of the homeless as a cover for fascist and racist mobilisation, as a pretence for targeting migrants and asylum seekers, for fund-raising and, in the end, as a cover for violating contagion prevention measures, shows the total cynicism of the Far-Right. Furthermore it exposes their total lack of any concern or feeling of social solidarity for the victims of the capitalist system, in addition to their complete lack of any intention of resolving the real crisis of homelessness.

End.

Evening free food service queue including children outside the GPO building Dublin (yes, the same place the anti-vaxxers choose to have their daytime protest). (Image sourced: Internet)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Go raibh maith agaibh to a number of people who supplied information for this article, including the Ireland Against Fascism FB page: https://www.facebook.com/IrelandAgainstFascism/

FOOTNOTES

1 Glen Miller is a prominent islamophobe and Ben Gilroy has often been a speaker for it, when not being a self-publicist.

2A collective term for people opposed to vaccines but in particular those campaigning against their use.

3Ashli Babbit, a former member of the US military, her QAnon support confirmed by posts on her FB page and reported interviews with family and friends.

4Sweeney has regularly been associated with the fascist National Party headed by Justin Barrett.

5There are feeding services for the homeless and poor people in hostel accommodation etc provided at the GPO by voluntary organisations, religious and secular, every week. The General Post Office is a grand building in the middle of Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street and was the HQ of the insurgents in the 1916 Rising.

REFERENCES

Woman shot by police during Capitol riot was a QAnon supporter: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/01/07/dc-riots-ashli-babbitt-killed-capitol-attack-military-veteran/6577488002/

Leadership of Irish Yellow Vests: https://www.thejournal.ie/yellow-vest-ireland-4440420-Jan2019/

Alan Sweeney assault on disabled woman on the ground: https://twitter.com/gemmentedod1/status/1292947424911204361?lang=gl

Level 5 travel restrictions: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/2dc71-level-5/

Covid19 infection and death statistics on Sunday 9th January: https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+19+statistics+ireland+on+9th+January+2021&oq=covid+19+statistics+ireland+on+9th+January+2021&aqs=chrome..69i57.54134j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Statistics of recent homelessness: https://www.focusireland.ie/resource-hub/about-homelessness/ and https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp5hpi/cp5hpi/hpi/

In this Together
In this Together

THREAT TO IRAN OVER NUCLEAR EXPANSION?

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Imperialism, Mass Media Criticism, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Iran has informed the International Atomic Agency that it is stepping up its uranium enrichment to 20% purity, which significantly exceeds that set by the restrictive 2015 Agreement and which according to media reports places it one step away from achieving weapons grade. This has set off concerns and what might even be interpreted as threats from other states but whether we agree with the existence of nuclear weapons or not, what gives some states the right to have them and to tell others that they can’t?

Iran entered into that Agreement in exchange for ending of the economic blockade on it by the USA. However, recently Trump withdrew the USA from the Agreement, leaving little incentive for Iran to continue restricting its development of nuclear fuel.

Three big European powers signed a public call on Iran to return to the Agreement levels in the hope that Biden will bring the USA back into the Agreement (which he has indicated he will). Meanwhile, some media are reporting that a similar step by Iran prior to the Agreement led Israel to prepare to launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And Israel is in fact believed to have assassinated Iran’s foremost nuclear scientist, Mohseh Fakhrizadeh last year.

Map showing states with estimated numbers of nuclear warheads. (Source image: Arms Control Association)

NUCLEAR WEAPONS GATEKEEPERS

Whether we agree with any state having a nuclear arsenal (and I don’t), what gives some states the right to dictate to others that they can’t have them? And what is the record of these “nuclear weapon gatekeepers”? The partners in the 2015 Agreement were: USA, UK, Germany, France, Russia and China. These are, if we believe the slant of much of the mass media, the states that are justified in telling others that they cannot be permitted to have nuclear weapons.

The USA is one of the states with most nuclear weapons in the world (according to some estimates, Russia has the most, followed by the USA), a state which has been involved in wars of aggression against other peoples and states almost since its creation (10 directly – not through proxies — in the last 20 years alone). Furthermore, it is the only state to have attacked another with not only one but two weapons of mass destruction, causing at least a million casualties of mostly civilians.

Map showing estimated US troops officially based in the Middle East in January 2020 (Source image: Newsweek)

The European states that made that public call on Iran are Germany, France and Britain, of which only Germany does not have nuclear weapons of its own (though it permits them to be sited there). The reason that Germany does not have them is probably because its European neighbours and in particular world powers France and the UK would not allow them to have them, with memories of two world wars in four decades during the last century.

France and the UK are imperialist states with massive armed forces which, when they have not been at war with the other, have attacked nations and peoples across the globe.

The other owners of nuclear weapons are Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. And Israel, a Zionist occupation-settler state established through ethnic cleansing and which, since its inception, has been at war with its neighbours. And massively supported by the USA, financially, militarily and politically.

IRAN

The Islamic Republic of Iran, on the other hand, has been at war with no-one since it came into existence except Iraq, when the Western powers were supporting Saddam Hussein and all his atrocities because he was attacking Iran. Saddam attacked Iran very soon after the latter’s revolutionary change of regime but within three months its offensive stalled and it began to get pushed back despite the support of the Western powers (including the supply of chemical weapons by the USA and Germany) and the international isolation of the Iranian clerical leadership. Nevertheless the war lasted eight years and was extremely draining for Iran, in particular since it was also facing US-led economic and financial sanctions.

Currently Iran has full diplomatic relations with 97 states and although it has some territorial disputes with the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf and some Caspian sea disputes with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, along with some outstanding issues from the Iraq-Iran war, these are being dealt with on the whole peacefully.

In the midst of slanted or even hysterical “reporting” — or beating of war drums — we should be aware of these facts.

End.

USA Ally States with Bases Surrounding Iran. (Source image: Internet)

NOTE: NOT “NATIONS”

By the way, the news report headline “European nations urge Iran” etc. (see below) is inaccurate: France and Britain (sic, actually the UK) are not “nations” but states, each one containing a number of nations and for example in a number of sporting bodies the existence of nations within the UK is recognised. That a number of such states are permitted to call themselves “nations” for membership of various bodies does not change that fact and journalists should be more exact in using the term.

End.

SOURCES:

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/european-nations-urge-iran-to-reverse-nuclear-enrichment-move-1060347.html

Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55128970

Nuclear weapons sited in Germany: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/05/11/nato-chief-backs-german-vow-to-keep-war-ready-us-nukes/

List states with nuclear weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons

CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY, TRUMP AND FASCISM

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Political Analysis, USALeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

In the capital city of the USA, the most powerful superpower in the world, supporters of the President who lost the elections stormed the Capitol, seat of the Congress of Representatives and of the legislative branch of the USA. The Trump supporters invading the building, according to some witness and police reports, carried weapons such as steel bars and chemical sprays and wounded 50 police officers, some seriously. Four people died in the Capitol grounds, at least one shot by a police officer.

Those who forced their way into the Capitol building were apparently intent on preventing Congress, the parliament of the USA, from discussing the Presidential election results and probably voting that they were legal and correct. They had been whipped up through weeks of President Trump claiming that the vote that ousted him was rigged and then yesterday again by him in person addressing a mass protest meeting in the Capital.

While mainstream opponents of Trump and some of his erstwhile supporters are calling these incidents an attack on democracy, I cannot agree. I certainly agree that current Trump supporters generally and those in the riot in particular are hostile to democracy – many of them are racist, fascist and violent. However I cannot agree that the system of government in the USA is democratic, much less representative — but more about that anon.

THE COPS AND THE FAR-RIGHT

I feel pretty confident in saying that if that rioting crowd had been black – or socialist – that there would have been a lot more than four dead. The Capitol steps and the ground around would have been dark with bodies and awash with blood. US police forces carry guns and are not shy of using them. Nevertheless, at most they shot four and possibly less out of an armed crowd that assaulted them and stormed the building of the government of the USA. What could explain that degree of restraint on the part of the cops?

Washington DC Trumpist rally prior to the Capitol invasion. (Photo source: Internet)

The Capitol’s Chief of Police Steven Sund, responding to criticism of lack of police preparedness, said that his force had a good plan worked out but that it was for a peaceful demonstration. OK — but why that assumption? There have been many examples of the violent behaviour of that Trumpist sector in many cities where the Right are in minority and one as recently as 14th November 2020 in Washington itself (reported on Rebel Breeze, see below). On that evening, far-Right Trump supporters, angry at the election totals in favour of contender Joe Biden and at Trump losing the election, rioted in the capital city and attacked people who did not agree with them.

Ah, yes, but you see, that violence was not directed at the police – in fact, it was directed at people who the police tend not to like either. Like socialists. Like people of colour. Trumpists attacked people of colour and left-wingers while police mostly stood by or attacked the victims defending themselves. The police have come to regard most of the Far-Right in the USA as being the right kind of people with the right kind of thinking – i.e Right-wing. Which is because the police themselves, for the most part, have the same kind of thinking. They expected the demonstration to be peaceful because they did not expect the Trumpists to attack the police.

The cops have got so accustomed to the Far-Right attacking the traditional targets of the cops, so used to colluding with them on many occasions, even in murders, that it seemed inconceivable to them that they would actually attack cops to get where they wanted to go. And we see this often, don’t we? The PSNI shocked at the violence towards them from the Loyalists in the Six Counties because normally, they collude against the Republicans and the nationalist areas. French police shocked when French fascists turn on them instead of both attacking the Algerians, Africans, commies ….

The US Acting Attorney General announced that they were processing evidence and expected to have 52 participants charged on Thursday as well as possibly others later. But what about charging Trump as the instigator?

A Trump supporter in the Capitol with Confederacy flag, an even more reactionary flag than the usual. (Photo source: Internet)

TRUMP WENT TOO FAR?

Twitter gave Trump a 12-hour ban only after he appeared to condone the rioting and Facebook has banned him until he steps down from the Presidency. I don’t view that as democratic defence action since I have seen comrades and other activists regularly suspended and banned from Facebook for doing no more than telling the truth about the behaviour of the PSNI or of the Israeli Zionist state. But to ban a right-winger and the President of the USA! What that says to me is that there is a growing consensus in the ruling class of the USA that Trump has gone too far, that he is a danger – not to democracy but to their class. That he has taken his ego above the needs of the class of which he was a member and which sustained him.

Trump addressing rally of his supporters in Washington DC prior to their storming the Capitol building. (Photo source: Internet)

That consensus is growing with resignations from his administration, including one of the Secretaries (like a government Minister in many European state parliaments). And also with cries for his impeachment again (he beat the process in 2019!), i.e something like being put on trial by the legislature and losing his position as President. Of course, the majority may wish to wait until January 20th when Trump has to step down anyway, as apart from him, only two other US Presidents have faced impeachment: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton (Nixon resigned before it came to that). But there is no doubt that Trump’s actions and the attack and invasion of the Capitol have rattled the elite so what they will do is not certain yet.

“DEMOCRACY”

Though they may be concerned about the members of their class sticking to agreed procedures and respecting their institutions (at least on the surface), their alarm has nothing to do with defending democracy. The USA Congress is not a democratic institution; just over half the members of the House of Representatives are at least millionaires and many billionaires – hardly representative of the population of the United States. Successful election campaigns are funded by financial, industrial and military interests that then expect payback in voting favourable legislation, tax cuts and other measures. And voting down “harmful” proposals such as reducing the damage to the environment or taxing corporations adequately. In my time alone I have seen all US Presidents lie blatantly about foreign policy (Trump perhaps less than some others), one instigate burglaries and tell lies, another bring the country to war based on blatant lies, another use government offices for liaisons and then lie about it … and so on.

Although the USA is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of corrupt government on a huge scale, all capitalist government is like it, albeit possibly to a lesser degree. The most we may expect from capitalist democracy is to be given a choice as to which party of the exploiting capitalist class we can put into government.

AND THE FASCISTS ….

Most fascists pretend most of the time that they support democracy, by which they mean the kind of capitalist democracy which I have just been describing. Socialism, on the other hand, is “undemocratic”, they claim. But when fascists feel what they want is being threatened, they quickly drop all appearance of democracy, even capitalist democracy. That is when fascists burn government buildings (like the Reichstag in Germany in 1933) or when they stage coups (as in Austria 1934, Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1944). Or when they storm the Capitol because they didn’t get the candidate they wanted reelected as President of the USA. Democracy, for fascists, is what gives them what they want.

Trump supporters overwhelm cop lines and storm the Capitol building. (Photo source: Internet)

Not only that, they lie and put the blame on their enemies. Like they tried to blame communists for the burning of the German Reichstag in February 1933 and anarchists for the bombing of the Basque Town of Gernika in April 1937. Like some blamed the Washington violence last November (including in a rant to Rebel Breeze) on “BLM and Antifa”. And like some are already, incredibly one might think, blaming the Left for having “taken over” the Capitol “demonstration” (see RTÉ report below).

End.

SOURCES:

Capitol riots and politician reactions: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/pelosi-threatens-to-impeach-trump-after-armed-insurrection-against-america-1061189.html

Previous recent Trump supporters violence in Washington DC: https://rebelbreeze.com/tag/far-right-2/

Police Chief comments: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/capitol-police-chief-condemns-protest-and-identifies-woman-who-died-1061106.html

Calls for impeachment: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/donald-trump-vows-orderly-transition-but-calls-mount-for-him-to-be-ousted-1061161.html

Minimising the violence and blaming the Left (from RTÉ reporting):

“American conservative media has played down the gravity of the storming of the US Capitol citing anger at the establishment and accusing the hard left – without proof – of having infiltrated the crowd.

“As well as Fox News, new ultra-conservative outlets battling to nibble market share from the television news giant sought to dissociate Trump supporters from the chaos in Congress.

“The demonstrators “pushed and shoved but for the most part, that was about it,” said Kevin Corke, a Fox News reporter.

“ “Most of what we saw was beautiful today,” said Ben Bergquam, a reporter for the small online channel Real America’s Voice.

“Outlets including Real America’s Voice, Newsmax and the One America News Network (OAN) – which Trump has recommended several times in recent weeks – claimed without any evidence that the crowd had been infiltrated by small ultra-left groups.

“ “I think they were undercover Antifa,” Gina Loudon, presenter for Real America’s Voice, said of the rioters she encountered in the corridors of the Capitol.

“While denouncing the violence committed in the precincts of Congress, Greg Kelly, of Newsmax, said it nonetheless followed a certain logic.

“ “If you steal an election,” he explained, echoing Trump’s discredited accusations, “there are going to be a lot of angry people.”

“ “There’s a reason this is happening,” said Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. “It is happening because the people with all the power have decided to clamp down so harshly on the population that things explode at a certain point.” ”

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0107/1188165-world-live-updates/

BASQUES MARK THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BURGOS MILITARY TRIALS

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Basque Country, Current Event Report, Executions, Guerrilla Action, History, Internationalist Solidarity, National Liberation, Political Prisoners, Popular Resistance, Song in Struggle, Spanish StateLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Basques marked the 50th anniversary of the Burgos military trials by the Franco dictatorship of 16 members of ETA, the armed Basque socialist independentist organisation. A few days ago a group went to the town of Burgos itself and posted slogans on the wall of the Spanish Ministry of Defence building there declaring that the Spanish State had not succeeded in its repression in 1970 and would not do so in future. In the Basque Country itself events were also held in commemoration.

The military trials of 16 members of ETA took place between 3rd and 9th December 1970 in the Spanish city of Burgos in Castille (north-central Spain). The trial concluded on the 28th with sentences of death on six and sentences up to 70 years on the remaining ten. Intended to be a mortal blow to ETA and to Basque resistance the trials instead inspired greater and more united resistance in the Basque Country and became an international publicity debacle for the Franco dictatorship.

Within the Basque Country, demonstrations and pickets took place and a general strike saw 100,000 workers there out on strike. ETA distributed pamphlets and leaflets among the people and in its repressive measures the Spanish police beat many workers and killed a number, as in Etxarri in Nafarroa (Navarra) province.

Internationally, protest demonstrations took place across Europe and other parts of the world, particularly outside Spanish Embassies, often leading to battles with the police of the host country. Pope Paul VI appealed for the death sentences to be commuted and Jean-Paul Sartre, a leading intellectual of the French Left and with an international literary reputation congratulated the defendants on having brought the situation of the Basque Country under Franco to international attention.

ETA hired prominent lawyers of Left and Human Rights reputation to defend the sixteen. The organisation also kidnapped the German honorary Consul as a hostage (and later released him unharmed). The defendants themselves used the trial politically, turning it into an exposure of the Franco regime and its repression. A number described the tortures to which they had been subjected, all of them declared their commitment to socialist freedom and some even stated that they were fighting for the rights of all working people.

Protest demonstration in front of Spanish Embassy, Caracas, Venezuela in December 1970 (Photo sourced: Internet)

The military judges, aware that the publicity of the trial was going against the Dictatorship, began to clamp down and restrict the defendants from saying anything that was not directly, as they saw it, pertinent to the charges, after which the defendants refused to speak at all. At one point during the trial the defendants all stood and sang the battle-song and national anthem of the Basque nation, Eusko Gudariak1. An even greater sensation occurred in a brief incident when the final defendant to speak, Mario Onaindia, attempted to attack the judges with an axe.2

Demonstration in Barceloneta, Catalonia in solidarity with Burgos defendants, December 1970
(Photo sourced: Internet)

BACKGROUND

A military-fascist uprising against the elected Popular Front government of Spain took place in 1936 and in the Spanish Antifascist War that followed, the Spanish Republic was defeated by the military with substantial assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, while the UK and France blockaded the Republican forces.

Hitler and Franco reviewing invader Nazi troops in Hendaye, French Basque Country. (Photo source: Internet)

A military-fascist dictatorship with the strong assistance of the Spanish Catholic Church followed amongst huge repression, making Spain the state with the most mass graves in Europe and second only to Cambodia in the world.

The Popular Front Government had granted autonomy to the Basque Nation (and to Catalonia) for the first time in centuries of the Spanish State, although Nafarroa province had sided with the military-fascist forces. Any notion of autonomy was withdrawn under the Dictatorship and even use of the Basque and Catalan languages in public or in education was forbidden.

Some guerrilla resistance continued for a period in the mountains of the Basque Country, Catalonia and other parts of the Spanish state territory but the fighters were hunted down or fled the Spanish state. The Communist Party and some socialist organisations continued an underground existence and built illegal trade unions but the CP of Spain did not support independence for the Basque Country or for Catalonia, on the theory that this would “break up the Spanish working class” (however later they all mobilised against the Franco Dictatorship and in solidarity with the Burgos defendants).

Euskadi3 Ta Asakatasuna (Basque Land and Freedom) was formed in 1959 out of a coalition between a left-wing Basque youth group and the youth wing of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) who were discontented with the lack of action of their elders. In June 1968 ETA carried out its first armed action against Spanish police when killing a police officer asking for their identification papers at a checkpoint and shortly afterwards one of the ETA pair was gunned down by police. Two months later the organisation carried out its first planned attack when they killed Melitón Manzanas, Commander the Political Police Brigade in Alava Province. Manzanas was a notorious fascist and torturer who had hunted down Jewish refugees to turn them over to the Nazis during WWII.

The Burgos trials was intended to smash ETA completely but as outlined above, had an entirely opposite effect. The death sentences were commuted in an attempt to reduce the damage the trials had caused the international reputation of the Spanish State.4

Solidarity with Burgos Defendants in Paris, Dec. 3rd 1970 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Angry Brigade Communique on machine-gunning of Spanish Embassy, London on 3rd December 1970. (Photo sourced: Internet)

AFTER BURGOS AND TODAY

ETA continued its armed and non-military actions and other revolutionary armed communist resistance began to take shape elsewhere in the Spanish territory.

Despite the huge success of the Basque solidarity mobilisations to prevent the executions in 1970, five years later a similar wave failed to prevent the executions of another two ETA members and three FRAP (Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Patriotic Front) members: Ángel Otaegui Etxeberria; Juan “Txiki” Paredes Manot; José Humberto Baena; Ramón García Sanz; and José Luis Sánchez Bravo.

French solidarity with ETA defendants 1975. This time the international campaign was unsuccessful and the Spanish State executed the two ETA and three FRAP activists (Photo sourced: Internet)

ETA counted some actions notable for the harmful effect on them but also some spectacular successes in its armed campaign. Included in the latter were the assassination in Madrid in 1973 of Admiral Carrillo Blanco, Franco’s appointed successor and the abandonment of the nuclear reactor project in Lemoiz5 in Bizkaia in 1983. Blanco’s assassination and the death of the Dictator Franco in 1975 hastened the Transition of the Spanish State to an alleged democracy and a monarchical and unitary state constitution in 1978.

The Basque resistance constructed a network which beyond the armed group consisted of trade unions, youth organisation, social centres, daily bilingual newspaper and political parties. The Spanish State waged war against that movement with repressive laws, arrests, torture, jailings, closure of organisations and media, along with armed action against ETA. In addition, it organised and funded a terror and assassination campaign over a period of 26 years6.

In the late 1990s the Basque Left-Independentist movement began a process of unilateral disarmament and change in political direction which led first to an indefinite ETA truce in 2010, then to decommissioning of arms and finally to the dissolution of ETA in 2018. However around 250 Basque political prisoners remain in jail, a tiny group of which have declared their dissidence from the leadership’s path and are supported outside the jails by a growing movement which has a very different line to that of the “official” leadership.

The Spanish State insists that the only possible relaxation of prison conditions, end of dispersal7 or granting of parole for the prisoners is “if they recant their beliefs and apologise to the victims.”

Political repression continues at some level within the Basque Country. There is no indication that there is any intention in Spanish ruling circles to grant independence to the southern Basque Country – quite the contrary (as seen also in Catalonia).

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY

A group of activists from the official Abertzale Left carried out a publicity commando raid in Burgos recently (see video below) and attached a banner poster to the Spanish Ministry of Defence building which read: “NEITHER WERE YOU ABLE to repress the struggle of the people NOR WILL YOU BE ABLE” and LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC!

A number of public meeting and on-line events were also held this month, including the commemoration in Etxarri of two Basques who were killed by Spanish police during the Burgos Trials protests.

In Eibar city in Gipuzkoa province around 100 people assembled despite Covid19 restrictions in the open air to mark the anniversary and included one of the Burgos trial defendants who, along with another woman, read out a manifesto which has been signed by many in the Basque independentist movement.

Burgos Trials 50th Anniversary Commemoration in Eibar, Gipuzkoa, Dec.2020. (Photo source: Naiz.eu)

“The Franco regime wanted to prosecute, punish and subdue again a people that in the darkness of the dictatorship had dared to rise from the ashes of war,” they read, introducing the manifesto.

Recalling the moment when the defendants rose in court and with upraised clenched fists sang the Eusko Gudariak, the manifesto commented: “With their courage, that handful of young militants taught us to stand up even when it seems impossible, and their example lives on today in us and in the future in the actions and dreams of the new generations.”8

The manifesto also states that the Burgos Trials were “a milestone” for the survival of Euskal Herria. However today, 50 years later, the substantive process has not concluded, since “they continue to take Basque youth to court, thinking that by disciplining them they will quench the desire for freedom of this people, and the states that surround us have not abandoned their strategy against the independence movement.”

The anniversaries of milestones in the struggle, of successes and failures, of martyrs, continue to be marked. And the journey is far from finished.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1“Soldiers of the Basque Country”, very similar in title and theme to the Irish national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann/ The Soldiers’ Song.

2How Onaindia managed to get his hands on an axe in court is one question but the significance of the axe cannot be underestimated – it was a traditional tool of foresters but also of ancient Basques in war and formed one part of ETA’s emblem, the other being the snake, representing wisdom.

3Formerly used to describe the whole Basque nation, “Euskadi” nowadays mainly describes the Basque Autonomous Region of the provinces of Bizkaia, Alaba and Gipuzkoa. “Euskal Herria” (The Country of Basque Language”) is more commonly used today to describe the whole seven provinces of the Basque nation, four currently within the Spanish and three within the French states.

4It also increased the pressure on the Spanish ruling class from the USA and European states to become more moderate politically and less vulnerable to revolution.

5This was in addition to frequent large protest mobilisations.

6Much more than the notorious GAL – see for example https://rebelbreeze.com/2020/12/23/november-month-of-murders-of-basque-activists/

7The vast majority of the prisoners are in jails dispersed throughout the Spanish and French states, between hundreds and even a thousand kilometres from their homes, placing a huge burden on their families and friends in visiting them.

8Comment: One wonders whether they felt any sense of irony in reading that out, considering that only in September last year 47 Basque prisoner solidarity activists pleaded guilty in a plea deal that ended their trial in 25 minutes with suspended sentences for all except for a few months’ jail for a couple of them. The deal came as a total shock to the estimated 50,000 people who had, only two days earlier, marched in solidarity with the accused, defending their right to do solidarity work without being persecuted or prosecuted.

SOURCES

https://www.naiz.eus/eu/info/noticia/20201228/ni-pudieron-ni-podreis-mensaje-en-la-an-y-el-gobierno-militar-de-burgos-50-anos-despues

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgos_trials

https://www.naiz.eus/en/info/noticia/20201129/personalidades-del-ambito-independentista-recuerdan-el-50-aniversario-del-proceso-de-burgos

DECEMBER DUBLIN SOLIDARITY PICKET FOR REPUBLICAN PRISONERS

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Around 30 Republicans and Socialists gathered on a very wet O’Connell Street in the Dublin City centre on Friday evening in solidarity with Irish Republican prisoners. Despite the rain and darkness, many passers-by took an interest in the banners and placards and some stopped to converse with the picketers. Behind the picket line other events were illustrating the sad state of a section of Irish society: one voluntary free meals service finished and another began, a Muslim one, with a queue along half the length of the General Post Office.

View of picket line from across the road (Photo: C. Sulish)

The December prisoner solidarity event is organised annually by the Anti-Internment Group of Ireland, an independent collective of activists which also organises other awareness-raising pickets during the year; this evening it was supported by Irish Republicans and Socialists of different organisations and by independent activists.

(Photo: C. Sulish)

As the picket drew near to its scheduled end, placards were gathered, banners rolled up and picketers gathered (though some had already left) to hear a few words from the organisers.

The man speaking on behalf of the AIGI spoke a little in Irish welcoming those present before doing so again in English.

(Photo: C. Sulish)

“60 POLITICAL PRISONERS IN IRELAND BETWEEN BOTH ADMINISTRATIONS”

“We send solidarity greetings from here to the political prisoners in jail,” he said. “We do this every year at a particularly difficult time for the prisoners and their families and friends.”

He went on to say that they also did it to remind people, “those who would like to be reminded and those who would not” of the existence of “60 political prisoners in Ireland between both administrations.”

In reference to the pandemic, the speaker noted that it had been a difficult year for ordinary people but even more so for the prisoners, their families and friends, with restrictions and reduced visits and that in some cases the authorities had used the health restrictions “as a stick to beat the prisoners with.”

“It’s been a hard year too for Republicans, for some more than others”, he continued, alluding to house raids, arrests, incarcerations, cars stopped and searched, intimidation and harassment of pickets by the police.

On the other hand, the AIGI spokesperson stated, “anti-vaxers, racists and fascists” had been “strutting around” pretending to be patriots and “desecrating our national monuments”, without any attempt being made to compel them to adhere to the pandemic regulations.

(Photo: C. Sulish)
Closeup Saoirse Banner (Photo: C. Sulish)

The speaker said that when Republicans and socialists had confronted with approaching or equal numbers those elements, they had “seen them off” clinging to “the protection of the British colonial police or of the Gardaí.” He pointed out that “They scream about ‘freedom’” but “they don’t know what freedom is”, pointing out that they are not being jailed for being active for the freedom of their country (implying that such is what is happening to Irish Republicans).

View of section solidarity picket line looking southward (Photo: C. Sulish)

“We are here today,” said the spokesperson, “for those who cannot be, who would be here for us if we, in turn, could not.”

He thanked all who had attended the event that evening, “go raibh maith agaibh, particularly those who have supported our picket during the year.” On behalf of Anti-Internment Group of Ireland he thanked those present again and wished them and the prisoners, along with their friends and families all the best for the festive season.

The AIGI spokesperson concluded by saying. “Feicfimíd sibh arís ar an tsráid. We will see you again on the street.”

end.

NB: An updated list of political prisoners and the addresses of the prisons may be found on the End Interment FB page.

View of section of solidarity picket line looking northward (Photo: C. Sulish)

Far Right Thugs Foment Night of Violence After Pro-Trump Washington D.C. March

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Fascism, USALeave a comment

Geoff Cobb

(Reading time text: 2 mins.)

The ugly violent pattern that has become a norm for far-right thugs again repeated itself Saturday night in the America’s capital city as thousands of pro-Trump extremists descended on the city to support their leader’s fraudulent claim that President-elect Joe Biden stole the recent presidential election. Saturday night’s violence surprised few and was merely a repeat of scenes that repeatedly took place this summer and autumn in other liberal cities such Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Line of Washington DC cops backlit by flames of night of Far-Right violence on Saturday. (Photo source:Getty images).

Many infamous hate-group street-brawlers showed up Saturday including The Proud Boys, American Guard, Oath Keepers, and Groypers. These groups mingled in daytime with other Trump enthusiasts who carried flags and banners reading, “Trump 2020: Keep America great”, “Trump 2020: No more bullshit”, “All aboard the Trump train!” and “Trump 2020: Pro- life, pro God, pro-gun”, while Trump’s faithful shouted “USA! USA!”, “We want Trump! We want Trump!” and “Four more years! Four more years!”

The crowd’s wishes were answered when Trump himself emerged from the White House in his limousine to raucous applause, cheers, waving and whistles from hundreds of supporters lining both sides of the street. They raised fists in salute, took pictures with phones and held signs that included “Best prez ever” and “Stop the steal.” Some supporters ran excitedly behind the presidential motorcade chanting, “We want Trump! We want Trump!” and “Four more years! Four more years!”

(Photo source: Deutche Welle).

Far right-wing celebrities egged on the crowd including notorious Info Wars rabble rouser Alex Jones and Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the extremist Proud Boys group who gained nationwide notoriety when Trump famously acknowledged them during a Presidential debate claiming they should “stand down and stand by.” Jack Posobiec, who promoted the infamous “Pizzagate” conspiracy was also part of the march.

Trump has still not conceded, denying the validity of the results of the presidential election, adding to the sullen and vengeful mood of the marchers. Many of his aggrieved supporters were not only there to protest. They were there for violence and waited until nightfall to swing into action. Large menacing throngs of Proud Boys and other violent pro-Trump brawlers combed downtown streets and commenced an orgy of violence including punching, shoving, kicking and stabbing protesters, while Metro Police seemingly ignored the brawlers and focused on restraining the Anti-Trump demonstrators. According to the Washington Post twenty people were arrested, including four charged with gun possession. One person was stabbed and had to be hospitalized.

Conflict between Far-Right and Trump opponents. The former seem to be on the left (with substance spray?), the latter on the right of photo. Allegiance of person on the ground uncertain. (Photo source: Daily Kos).

Instead of condemning the violence Trump’s tweet seemed to revel in it: ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back. Antifa waited until tonight, when 99% were gone, to attack innocent #MAGA People. D.C. Police, get going — do your job and don’t hold back!!!

Trump retweeted a misleading video posted by right-wing pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo, depicting a Trump supporter being knocked out from behind by an antifascist protester. “Human Radical Left garbage did this,” Trump wrote. “Being arrested now!” However, Ngo’s video was deceptively edited to blame antifascists for the violence. Another unedited video clearly shows that the Trump supporter started the altercation by punching and shoving a protester who had been using a bullhorn, then brawling with a number of other protesters, before finally receiving a knockout sucker punch.

Far-Right protesters attacked any Trump opponents. One with weapon disguised as flag while another using a (pepper?) spray (Photo source: Independent UK).
(Photo source: Standard Co.UK).

The Proud Boys instigated other acts of violence, deliberately attacking people who voiced opposition. The cops intervened but directed their attention at the protesters, not at the Proud Boys, who had clearly instigated the violence. Melees broke out in the middle of intersections where protesters sometimes gathered. At other times, gangs of pro-Trump rally-goers chased protesters down and beat them up. In one horrifying instance, Proud Boys knocked out a black female and left her unconscious in the street.

One of the victims wounded in the melees was journalist Talia Jane, who was stabbed from behind in the ear. Jane was also punched by an assailant who simply approached her and knocked her down. She got treated and continued reporting the rest of the night with a bandage wrapped round her head. Other journalists were harassed and even chased. MSNBC reporter Ellison Barber was chased by Trump thugs who chanted ‘fake news, fake news. ”

During the evening, a crowd of pro-Trump thugs were filmed destroying six large Black Lives Matter signs on the front of the Laborers International Union of North America building, near McPherson Square, while police stood by and failed to intervene. They then stomped on and destroyed other BLM signs.

(Photo source: Daily Kos).

Amazingly Trump and his supporters in the media have blamed such violence not on right wing extremists and brawlers, but on Antifa and sadly, millions of Americans have believed this false narrative. Hopefully, the new administration will crack down on these thugs and end the orgy of violence on the streets of America’s cities.

End.

Rebel Breeze postcript, from Wikipedia: Gavin McInnes co-founded Vice magazine in 1994, but he was pushed out in 2008 due to “creative differences”. After leaving, he began “doggedly hacking a jagged but unrelenting path to the far-right fringes of American culture”, according to a 2017 profile in the Canadian Globe and Mail.[43] The Proud Boys organization was launched in September 2016, on the website of Taki’s Magazine, a far-right publication for which white nationalist Richard B. Spencer had once served as executive editor.[5] It existed informally before then as a group centered around McInnes, and the first gathering of the Brooklyn chapter in July 2016 resulted in a brawl in the bar where they met. The name is derived from the song “Proud of Your Boy” originally created for Disney’s 1992 film Aladdin but left out following story changes in production and later featured in the 2011 musical adaptation. In the song the character Aladdin apologizes to his mother for being a bad son and promises to make her proud. McInnes interprets it as Aladdin apologizing for being a boy. He first heard it while attending his daughter’s school music recital. The song’s “fake, humble, and self-serving” lyrics became a running theme on his podcast. McInnes said it was the most annoying song in the world but that he could not get enough of it.

TEENAGE ANTIFASCIST MARTYR INSPIRES CONTINUED RESISTANCE

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Event Report, Fascism, Racism, Spanish StateLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

On a wall near the Madrid Metro station of Legazpi, there is a plaque. Those who stop to look at it will learn that it commemorates the antifascist Carlos Palomino, who on 11th November 2007 was fatally stabbed by a career Spanish soldier who was also a neo-nazi “skin” (or “skinhead”). The plaque placed by antifascists on the station entrance has been defaced by fascists a number of times but was always restored; it was also destroyed but soon replaced. In May 2016 Madrid’s City Council erected a plaque on No.145 Paseo de las Delicias where Carlos Palomino died while being given emergency aid. The plaque states:

Here was murdered on 11th November 2007 Carlos Javier Palomino Muñoz, of 16 years of age, a fighter against fascism and racism.

Plaque placed by Madrid city council commemorating Carlos, “fighter against fascism and racism” (Photo sourced: Internet)

MURDERED BY A SERVING SOLDIER AND NEO-NAZI

A Google search featuring the name “Carlos Palomino” throws up the Mexican heavyweight boxer – one needs to refine the search to come up with the antifascist youth. Palomino was 16 years of age when he went with friends to counter-protest the fascist organisation Democracia Nacional that was holding an anti-immigrant demonstration at Usera, a south Madrid district of noted migrant habitation, particularly of Latin American and Chinese background.

The antifascists boarded the metro carriage at Legazpi station on Line 3, unaware at first that 23-year-old Josué Estébanez de la Hija, a neo-nazi “skin” and professional member of the Spanish military, was on board, on his way to participate in the fascist demonstration. Seeing the youth and identifying them as antifascists, Estébanez drew a knife he was carrying, the blade of which was 25 centimetres (nearly 10”) long and held it concealed behind his back.

Not noticing the knife but becoming aware that Josué Estébanez was wearing a Three-Stroke sweatshirt, known as a label worn by neo-fascists, Carlos began to remonstrate with Estébanez, who then stabbed him fatally. Another youth was gravely injured and lost two-thirds of a finger to the knife attack1.

Josué Estébanez then fled the carriage and the station, pursued by antifascists, who caught him and were administering a severe beating when a passing police patrol rescued but also detained him. Carlos’ mother and Movement Against Intolerance were the civil society prosecutors (a provision in the Spanish legal system which is more typically availed of by organisations of the Right) at Estébanez’s trial. During two years of legal procedure Josué did not once express regret for what he had done until the last moment of the trial, having been found guilty and about to be sentenced.

Metro video footage produced during the Madrid trial clearly showed the sequence of events in the carriage and contradicted the neo-nazi’s claim of self-defence. During the trial Estébanez pretended he had not been on his way to the demonstration but instead was going to meet friends but failed to produce corroborating evidence. He denied being a fascist but the video record showed him giving the nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler!” His attempts to deny his neo-nazi sympathies were not aided by the number of fascist organisation in Spain and across Europe that publicly declared in his support.2

Fascists in Paris demanding freedom of the fascist murderer

Josué Estébanez was from Galdako3 in Biskaia province in the Basque Country, a country where the majority had a long tradition not only of antifascism but also of resistance to service in the Spanish military. It would be interesting to know how he came to enlist in a military career and to be a neo-nazi, though both things are probably not unconnected. According to a press report, his neighbours in Galdako didn’t know he was in jail until the news reached them and hadn’t even known he was in the Army. His mother had not seen him for some time.

Estébanez’s defence team sought a total of nine months’ jail, six on conviction for reckless manslaughter and three for causing grievous bodily harm to a second person. The family prosecution sought 37 years’ imprisonment and compensation, while the civic association joining in the prosecution, Alto Arenal or Movement Against Intolerance asked for 30 years’ jail as a “hate crime”.

Josué Estébanez was sentenced to 26 years in prison and to pay a compensation of 150,000 euros (not a cent of which was ever paid). On 22nd April 2010, the Spanish Supreme Court confirmed the sentence.

THE MOTHER

Carlos Palomino’s mother, Mavi Muñoz attended all days of the trial of her son’s murderer, accompanied by her own mother and other family. When on the very last day, just before sentencing Estébanez turned to her and apologised for the suffering he had caused her, she replied: “I wish you all the worst.”

Mavi became an antifascist activist and founded the Association of Victims of Racism and Homophobia4 and entered the organisation Mothers Against Repression, of which she has been made the honorary president.

Public meeting of Mothers Against Repression (Mavi is 2nd from the left in photo). The flag on the wall on the left of photo is that of the Spanish Republic. (Photo source: kaos en la red)

When the Madrid city council at last erected the plaque to commemorate her son’s murder, she was there and, among other events, attends the annual demonstration in remembrance of her son. Every year a public demonstration is held on the 11th November in Madrid to honor the memory of Carlos Palomino and to reaffirm resolute opposition to fascism and often fountains are dyed red.

On the 10th anniversary of his murder, the demonstration in Madrid easily exceeded a thousand and antifascist demonstrations were held in many other parts of the Spanish state. Mavi Muñoz sent the following message that year:

“Let his blood not have been (shed) in vain”

“Now more than ever, on this tenth anniversary, not only for Carlos, but for all those who have fallen at the hands of fascism, I pray that their blood has not been shed in vain. That blood has been shed for defending a better world, I believe that there is a better world, but we have to find it, we have to fight for it, and there is no fight without sacrifices. I ask the anti-fascist movement of today, the anti-fascism of now, to commit itself, that the fight continues, that we do not allow ourselves to be stepped on, that we realize that the fascists are advancing, that we cannot allow that. Our motto is They will not pass! and it’s time to put it into practice. We have to reorganize and restructure all of us, because there are many more of us and we can handle them. We have to show it and not allow them (to spill) more of our blood. We are not going to allow one more of us to fall. And to each attack there must be an effective response.”

13th CARLOS PALOMINO ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION WEDNESDAY 11th

Many hundreds turned out in Madrid on the evening of the 11th of this month for the annual commemoration of Madrid’s latest antifascist martyr in a march convened by Friends and Relations of Carlos and supported by other organisations, including the Madrid Antifascist Coordination. They rallied outside the Atocha Metro station – it was in Atocha that a lawyers working for the trade union movement led by the Communist Party were massacred by fascists in 1977 — one of the many attacks on the Left and democratic forces of the “Transition”, to ensure that post-Franco Spain remained in the hands of the same people but in a “democratic” form.

Part of the commemoration march on Wednesday, holding placards with images of Carlos Palomino. (Photo sourced: Internet)

This week the marchers proceeded from Atocha in columns, maintaining social distancing, with his image on placards and led by a banner declaring “Carlos vive, la lucha sigue” (“Carlos lives, the struggle continues”). The march passed through Paseo de las Delicias, where Carlos Palomino had died.

Banner leading the commemoration march: “Carlos lives, the struggle continues; the best homage is to continue the fight”.

Then they lined the route through which a small group passed, holding up a placard recording the murder, along with his image on another placard, with red flares burning (see video) to bursts of applause and cheering.

MADRID

Madrid is a city of wide disparities. There are the imposing buildings, monuments and fountains of an imperial past for example around Puerto del Sol and la Plaza de España on the one hand and on the other, areas like Valences, more on the outskirts, with its radical traditions, mixed ethnic population, the Rayo Vallecano football team with it anti-fascist ultras, the Bukaneros (of which Carlos was one). Carlos lived with the Palomino family there. Even down a few minutes walk from the Plaza de España, one finds small areas like the Cuchilleros where the ambience is more antifascist and tolerant of difference in sexual preference; there are many areas like that in Madrid, close to the city centre (if Madrid can be said to have just one city centre).

The city is split politically between extremes of Right and Left. The Right are the political heirs (and often the actual descendants) of the victors of the fascist-military uprising in 1936, their current fortunes often the prizes awarded by the Dictator, General Franco. On the other hand, the Anarchists and Communists of various types – the heirs of those who lost. Madrid was successfully defended against the fascist-military coup in 1936 but then besieged by land and bombarded from the air. Franco had airplanes and pilots from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, along with land transport vehicles and armaments, while the European states blockaded the elected government of the Spanish state.

No pasarán!, “they shall not pass”, was the cry for the defence of Madrid in 1936 (and actually at the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End that year too). But sí pasaron, they did pass. The city fell on 28th March 1939 and, like in all other conquered Spanish, Basque and Catalan cities, the hunt began for “the Reds” — i.e antifascists of any kind. Huge numbers found their end against blood-spattered walls.

But still the resistance did not end. On 5th August 1939, the JSU, a communist youth organisation assassinated Isaac Gabaldon, Commander of the paramilitary police force, the Guardia Civil, after which 51 female and male antifascists, the “Thirteen Roses and the 38 Carnations”, were shot by firing squads (see article on that elsewhere on Rebel Breeze). In the 1970s the antifascist workers’ movement forced the post-Franco “Transition” for fear of revolution.

The antifascist resistance still lives in Madrid today.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1The knife was identified as an Army one by the family prosecution but by the trial had disappeared.

2Brenton Tarrant, mass murderer of 51 innocent Muslims in New Zealand in March 2019, had names of some of his heroes marked on his weaponry, among which was that of Josue Estébanez. Unlike his hero in Spain, Tarrant admitted to all charges but like him, expressed no regret during his trial; he was sentenced to natural life in prison.

3As I was writing this today the news came of the arrest of two supporters of the Amnistia movement against repression (not part of the official Left Abertzale leadership), one of whom is from Galdako.

4The title seems a reply to the right-wing Association of Victims of Terrorism, which counts many military and police and their relatives as members.

SOURCES AND FURTHER INFORMATION

Erection of the plaque: https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/libertades/30374-placa-para-recordar-carlos-palomino.html

The murder and trial: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asesinato_de_Carlos_Palomino

Commemoration in Madrid on Wednesday (reports, photos, videos):

https://kaosenlared.net/a-13-anos-del-asesinato-fascista-de-carlos-palomino-a-manos-del-militar-neonazi-josue-estebanez/

https://www.eldiario.es/madrid/colectivos-antifascistas-manifiestan-madrid-recordar-carlos-palomino-asesinado-soldado-neonazi-13-anos_1_6405758.html

https://www.publico.es/sociedad/carlos-palomino-madrid-antifascista-vuelve-rendir-homenaje-carlos-palomino-13-aniversario.html

https://www.madridiario.es/manifestacion-con-motivo-xii-asesinato-carlos-palomino-grito-madrid-tumba-fascismo

Was a hero of mass murderer in New Zealand: https://elpais.com/ccaa/2019/03/15/madrid/1552645383_279994.html

Estébanez neighbours in Galdako and studying law and pottery in jail: https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20181116/asesino-neonazi-carlos-palomino-josue-derecho-alfareria/352744736_3.html#img_12