Tag: Censorship

RTE’s Biased Coverage of Palestine and Sinn Féin’s Call for a Review

On By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon comment, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Journalism, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25 November 2024)

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes

Sinn Féin has said that it would ask for a review of the national broadcaster RTE’s biased coverage of Palestine and other international conflicts.  They were criticised by almost all and sundry for doing so. 

They were accused of censorship and their own use of lawsuits to silence critics was raised once again.[1] 

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) came out with guns blazing, claiming it would be in breach “of the principles of the European Media Freedom Act and would set a dangerous precedent in terms of direct and indirect State interference in the remit of the existing regulatory body.”[2]

The NUJ has rarely challenged what it sees as state or private interference in the media before and less still at RTE.  RTE’s board is made up of cronies and business interests, people whose interest is served by limited coverage of financial and other issues. 

Many of them come from the financial sector.  Six of the eleven board members are appointed by the Minister for Communications, so there is already government interference in RTE.

The NUJ itself would not come out well of such a review, if the review were honest. For decades it implemented Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, censoring Sinn Féin, even when the party was standing in elections.

A brave RTE journalist Jenny McGeever was sacked because she broadcast one sentence from Martin McGuinness, “If that is ok with the Police, that is ok with us”, in reference to arrangements for the transport of three IRA volunteers’ bodies back to Belfast.[3] 

It was an innocuous statement.  The NUJ did next to nothing to defend her.  They did not defend her just as they meekly accepted the sacking of the RTE Authority in 1972.  Colum Kenny commenting on his time at RTE remarked that:

During my years at RTÉ, I became for a period what is known as ‘The Father’, or chairman, of the Programmes Chapel of the National Union of Journalists. I found no great appetite among its members, or indeed among the membership of another union representing many producers, for industrial action aimed at drawing public attention to the existence of the gagging Order known as Section 31.[4]

In other words, neither the union nor the members did anything about it.  They either agreed with it or decided the truth was not that important, not as important as their careers. 

The union will not look well, if coverage on Palestine is looked at, nor will it come out shining if coverage of Ukraine is also included, as on this issue, the union itself intervened directly in helping to shape a narrative at odds with reality.

It is as clear as day that on Palestine, Irish coverage has been very biased, in terms of who it gave interviews to, the issues it refers to and the kid gloves that apologists for genocide such as the Israeli Ambassador have been treated with. 

It is clear even in the language used.  The word ‘genocide’ is never used in reporting, unless quoting someone and even then, sparingly.  It is referred to as ‘the war’, ‘the conflict’ etc. 

It has mainly used the term when reporting on the case taken to the International Court of Justice and gave a succinct but incorrectly limited definition of what genocide is. 

It stated “In short, genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.”[5]  The definition is actually a lot broader than that and Gaza fits the bill on various counts.[6]

When reporting on the murder of civilians in Palestine, it never uses such terms.  It says ‘killed’ and the casualty figures are always referred to as “According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health”. 

The message is clear, that these figures come from an organisation that is considered to be a terrorist group and therefore the figures are not reliable.  But it is actually the elected government. 

The last time there was an election in Palestine, Hamas won, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, though it only assumed power in Gaza with the Vichy Palestine Authority appointed by Mahmoud Abbas undemocratically taking control of the West Bank. 

So, of course the Ministry of Health is run by the elected government.  This language is never used in relation to Israel, we are never told “according to the Likud-run Ministry of Defence”.  In fact, such caveats are almost never used, not even when quoting the most vile dictatorships in the world.

  At best, they state “according to an official government communiqué”, which is technically correct and does not have the same moral =laden judgement contained within it.

In Lebanon, they engage in a similar sleight of hand, referring to attacks on “Hezbollah strongholds”, which is the type of language they hope will give some justification to the bombings.  But what are Hezbollah strongholds?  They are areas in which the organisation has mass support.

You would be hard pressed to find in the media, in general, and RTE in particular any significant explanation of what Hezbollah is. 

Many viewers hearing about strongholds being bombed would not know and are never informed that what this means is areas in which the organisation has a support base, which is also electoral. 

We know which areas are Hezbollah strongholds because they are the areas where people voted for them.  It is an electoral and military force, increasing its number of parliamentary seats in the 2022 elections from 13 to 15, though its allies in parliament lost seats. 

But the point is, it is a force with a huge popular base.

Likewise, when Israel told Irish UN soldiers to leave, the President of Ireland described it as a threat — but the media was more hesitant. 

When Israel then used UN compounds as shields in their attacks, the resulting damage was described as damage caused by the exchange of fire between the two.  You would never guess that one of the sides deliberately used them as protective shields.

In terms of RTE bias and coverage, whilst it has reported on Palestine over the years, once October 7th happened, the official discourse emanating from RTE and most other media outlets was that history began on October 7th. 

No attempt was made to look at the history of the region, nor the context of Israeli aggression and crimes against humanity prior to October 7th.  Previous Israeli attacks and crimes were rarely if ever mentioned. 

It made one attempt at explaining what Hezbollah was in an article published on its site.[7] 

The article recognises that it has political support, but constantly refers to the fact that it is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US and that other bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have never been elected. 

Saudi Arabia, despite having a nominal parliament is led by a bunch of royal head-chopping kleptocrats.  Though RTE quotes them favourably as a source of analysis on the nature of Hezbollah. 

The organisation is according to RTE nothing more than a group that “…has risen from a shadowy faction to a heavily armed force with major sway over the Lebanese state. The United States, some Western governments and others deem it a terrorist organisation.”

The headline on the piece reduces Hezbollah to just being a group that supports Hamas. And that was about it from RTE on the nature of the organisation.

Likewise in Ukraine, though RTE had reported on the country previously, once again history started on a particular date, this time February 22nd 2022. 

They ignored the 2014 Maidan Coup, the breaking of the Minsk Accords by Ukraine, the repression of non-Ukrainian cultures, which included not just Russians but also gypsies and others. 

The promotion of WWII fascist Stepan Bandera, the fascist nature of the Azov Battalion were all ignored to favour a simplistic account.  Previous acts such as the burning to death of trade unionists in Odessa by fascists in 2014 were never mentioned again. 

RTE presenters even questioned why NATO wasn’t pushing for all-out war with Russia, and they included in that the possibility of going to the brink of nuclear war. 

The Irish Times has recently doubled down on this, basically resurrecting the “Russia will invade and attack everyone scenario” so common when the war began.

It argued in a piece written by Kier Gillespie from the right-wing think tank Chatham House that Ireland should abandon its “neutrality” and Europe should get ready for all-out war with Russia.[8]  Incidentally, a sentiment echoed to some degree by the “pro NATO left” in the Irish parliament.

The NUJ for its part, whose members push the narrative on Palestine and Ukraine were not content with the complicity of its members in a particular narrative but organised a protest to skew the debate altogether. 

Shortly after the war started the NUJ organised a protest at the Russian Embassy to protest the lack of press freedom and attacks on journalists by the Russian state.  The Russian state has a dreadful record on the matter, but so does Ukraine. 

Moreover, in its attempt to portray the Russians as the only threat to freedom of the press the NUJ invited ambassadors from other countries to join in with it at the protest. 

Fine, except with one exception, those ambassadors represented countries with a poor record in the matter, such as Georgia, Poland and Ukraine coming in 89th, 66th and 106th respectively in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index for the year 2022. 

By doing this the NUJ set a narrative that the only threat to press freedom was Putin and whitewashed a number of regimes with dubious records themselves. 

Whilst it has condemned the deaths of journalists in Gaza it did not protest at the Israeli Embassy but held a vigil instead at an art gallery.[9]  You couldn’t make such cowardice up.

So, an investigation of bias in the coverage of conflicts would be welcome.  Neither Sinn Féin, RTE, nor the NUJ would come out of it well.  But the problem is political. 

The reason why RTE does that, is that it gets away with it because there is no challenge to its bias. Sinn Féin and the Irish left represented by such stalwarts of mediocrity like People Before Profit, applauded and egged on the push for war and bias about Ukraine.

They now find the media supporting those same reactionary forces (NATO, US, EU) in their assault on Palestine.  The penny has almost dropped for them, but not quite.  RTE was biased on Ukraine and they agreed with it, now it is biased on Palestine and it is too late. 

But RTE and the Irish media in general represent the interests of the Irish state and so it should come as no surprise that it is biased. 

This does not mean we should accept it lying down, but you can’t call for bias on one issue in favour of a NATO proxy (Ukraine) and against bias in favour of another proxy, Israel.  The two are linked.

In the case of Palestine, the NUJ is passive, passing resolutions and issuing communiqués. 

As with the Irish censorship law Section 31, the union is content to not take any industrial action on the issue and let its members lie, downplay the seriousness of it all, treat the Israelis with kid gloves and use language that deliberately distorts what is happening. 

Their role in echoing Their Master’s Voice should be exposed, though Sinn Féin is not the best -placed organisation to do so, given its prioritising of its relations with Washington and its own attempts to censor Palestinians in Ireland who did not follow the Palestine Authority line.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

[1] Irish Examiner (19/11/2024) LIVE: Election 2024 — Sinn Féin promises ‘peer review’ of RTÉ’s Gaza coverage if elected. Paul Hosford and Cianan Brennan. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41519792.html

[2] RTE (20/11/2024) McDonald defends Sinn Féin plan to review RTÉ’s Gaza coverage.  Tommy Meskill. https://www.rte.ie/news/election-24/2024/1120/1481906-ireland-politics/

[3] Sunday Business Post (20/04/2003) How RTE censored its censorship. Niall Meehan.  Archived at CAIN https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/media/meehan/meehan03.htm

[4] Colum Kenny (2005 ) Chapter 5 Censorship, Not ‘Self-Censorship’ https://doras.dcu.ie/24076/1/Kenny,%20Colum.pdf

[5] RTE (11/01/2024) Explained: Ireland’s position on the genocide case against Israel. Juliette Gash. https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0111/1425974-genocide-case/

[6] See Genocide Convention https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/genocide-conv-1948/article-2?activeTab=undefined

[7] RTE (31/10/2023) What is Hezbollah, the group backing Hamas against Israel? https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/1031/1413861-hezbollah-lebanon/

[8] Irish Times (23/11/2024) If Russia is indeed planning an attack against a Nato state, distance and neutrality will provide no defence.  Keir Gillespie.  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/11/23/if-russia-is-indeed-planning-an-attack-against-a-nato-state-distance-and-neutrality-will-provide-no-defence/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGxRsdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVXgrcEEXPDpG2Am4EF_a_67yPZPmEio-r1l3dlQxOftB3W7EWIxEl8S_w_aem_LGtv72o-qvSLNNgSLdrWrw

[9] NUJ (30/04/2024) Dublin vigil for slain journalists. https://www.nuj.org.uk/resource/dublin-vigil-for-slain-journalists.html

MAJOR PRO-SETTLER CENSORSHIP BY META

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

Meta, the company that runs the social media platform Facebook, is banning1 the use of the word Zionism by FB users, claiming the word is used interchangeably with ‘Israel’ and Jewry and is ‘anti-semitic’ and that their ban is in defence of Jews.

The word Zionism is often used in connection with Israel but it does not follow that its use is synonymous with Judaism or that it is therefore antisemitic, any more than to use the word “Nazism” in the 1930s and 1940s would have necessarily been anti-German.

The word ‘Zionism’ is associated with the state of ‘Israel’ for a very good reason – it was founded precisely as a Zionist project, a homeland for people of Judaic background. Palestine happened to be already occupied and so the initiative became also a European settler project in the Middle East.

Christians who support the project for religious – as distinct from political — reasons, mostly in the US, are also regularly described as “Zionist Christians” and form the majority of US Zionists.

But Zionism, rather than describing a religious movement, is essentially political. The Israeli State gives right of citizenship to those from anywhere who can prove being of Judaic background but does not require them to practice the religion or, in fact, to believe any Judaic tenet.

A Gallup survey in 2015 had 65% of Israelis self-identifying as being either “not religious” or “convinced atheists”, while 30% identified as being “religious”. More recently, polls found only 55% identifying as non-secular.

But its Jewish citizens being religious or not, the State is Jewish and the result of a Zionist movement with 19th -Century origins.

Of course, not all Israelis are Jewish either – there are also Muslims, Christians of various Eastern varieties and some western, Druze and others.

The Israeli State came into being on 14 May 1948 as a Zionist state, the culmination of decades of Zionist planning and search for a location, also a settlement project in Palestine promoted by British imperialism and a terrorist campaign against the indigenous Palestinians.

Theodor Herzel, key founder of Zionist Movement and author of Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) and one of his statements. (Image sourced: Internet)

Origins of Zionism

Zionism as an ideology and movement was founded “in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire.

“The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).

“At that time, Herzl believed that Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine, particularly among poor Jewish communities, unassimilated and whose ‘floating’ presence caused disquiet, would be beneficial to assimilated European Jews and Christians. 

“Political Zionism was in some respects a dramatic break from the two thousand years of Jewish and rabbinical tradition.

“Deriving inspiration from other European nationalist movements, Zionism drew in particular from a German version of European enlightenment thought, with German nationalistic principles becoming key features of Zionist nationalism.

“Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to Jewish assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the historic territory of Palestine.

“After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, it became dominant in the thinking about a Jewish national state.

“During this period, Zionism would develop a discourse in which the religious, non-Zionist Jews of the Old Yishuv who lived in mixed Arab-Jewish cities were viewed as backwards in comparison to the secular Zionist New Yishuv.”

Jewish use of the word

It was the Jewish Zionists who tried to equate Judaism with Zionism, an effort that was initially repudiated by many (probably most) Jews around the world prior to the Holocaust. After that and in particular with the creation of ‘Israel’, the majority seemed to identify with the Israeli state.

But there was always opposition to that among Jews, including famous ones. The Jewish historian of nationalism Hans Kohn argued that Zionism nationalism “had nothing to do with Jewish traditions; it was in many ways opposed to them”.2

Zionism had its critics from early on and the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am in the early 20th century wrote that there was no creativity in Herzl’s Zionist movement, and that its culture was European and specifically German.3

“He viewed the movement as depicting Jews as simple transmitters of imperialist European culture.”4

In recent decades the Zionists worked harder to demonise anti-Zionist Jews, calling them “self-hating Jews” and hounding those who spoke out against Zionism and the apartheid and genocide of the Israeli state, even destroying the employment prospects of such academics.

However, increasingly non-Israeli Jews around the world, including some commentators think the majority of their youth in the USA, are non-Zionist and even anti-Zionist. Many have been prominent in Palestine solidarity and anti-Israel actions.

A well-established Jewish sect that rejects Zionism and therefore the State of Israel. (Image sourced: Internet)

Jews using the term “Zionism” seem to be clear about its meaning and increasingly tend to identify themselves as either Zionist or Anti-Zionist. But most Jews in Israel might be considered ‘Zionist’ in the de facto sense of special ethnic entitlement status and occupation of Palestinian land.

Meta’s ban on use of the word on its social media platform therefore has nothing to do with defending Jews from anti-Semitism and in fact is aligning itself with the Zionist coercion of Jews from which a large section around the world are escaping.

By equating Judaism with Zionism, with the genocidal actions of the Israeli State, Meta is actually strengthening anti-Semitic thinking in many parts of the world.

Jews in solidarity with Palestine and therefore presumably anti-Zionist, photographed on Palestine Solidarity march in London recently. (Photo: Morning Star)

Non-Jewish Use of the word

It may be that not everyone is clear on the difference between Jews and Zionists but the likelihood is that despite obfuscation by the Zionists themselves, most understand the difference.

It is also possible that some may disguise their anti-Semitism by denouncing Zionists when they mean “Jews”.

Even so, that cannot serve as an excuse for banning the use of an appropriately descriptive and historical word, one in addition based on a political movement created — and practice carried out — by Jewish Zionists themselves.

Effect of the ban

The immediate effect of the ban is to increase the one-sided censorship which is already prevalent in the West, sheltering the European Settler State in the Middle East from much criticism for its genocidal policy and actions against the Palestinians.

The effect of that “sheltering” (and in many cases its objective) is to assist that state to continue its genocide and also to facilitate the western states’ support for that genocide in politics, journalism, sport, culture, trade, finance and armament.

The longer-term effect will be to energise the search for other platforms that will not impose such bans on speech. Already Telegram is gaining many users on both Right and Left ends of the political spectrum. This does not mean however that the State cannot find the means to spy on them.

Those wishing to use terms that describe what the western imperialists do not wish described may abandon platforms owned by Meta in favour of others, at the same abandoning many mainstream Meta users to the dominant discourse and ideology.

Image sourced: https://palestinelegal.org/distorted-definition

Other pro-Israeli censorship

Meta previously banned the word Shaheed, meaning “martyr”, which it lifted after a period of a year. This is a term regularly used by the Palestinians to describe their dead, their fallen Resistance fighters but also the huge number of civilians killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces.

The term is also used in a similar way in relation to other other Arab resistance groups from the Lebanon to Yemen. Meta suspends accounts or closes them for promotion of resistance organisations (termed “terrorists” by Western states) across the globe, not only in the Middle East.

Ex-Minister for Home Affairs for the UK Suella Braverman attempted to ban the slogan “From the river to the sea” in Palestine solidarity context,5 claiming that because it encapsulated the desire for a Palestinian state, it was anti-Israeli and therefore anti-Semitic, a giant anti-logical leap.

A small group of anti-Zionist protesters in ‘Israel’ some weeks ago was suppressed by Israeli police and one of the latter was filmed loudly declaring that any placard or banner including the word “genocide” would be removed, an attitude mirrored by police in Germany.

People, including supporters of Juedische Stimme (Jewish Voice), a Jewish organisation, gather for a ‘Global South United’ protest to demand freedom for Palestine on 28 October 2023 in Berlin, Germany. [Getty]

Challenging Israeli atrocity hoaxes of the Palestinian resistance beheading babies or mass raping Israeli women has also drawn fire and accusations of “anti-Semitism”. Placard representations likening Israeli actions to those of the Nazis were often suppressed in the West.6

The issue of banning publication of certain words is not an easy one though liberal and social-democratic trends present it uncritically. We may object to the use of any of a huge number of racist epithets, for example and understand that these can be used to build up racist cultures.

However, when the State is asked to ban these and other kinds of speech, it is in effect being publicly empowered to ban what is in the interests of the elite to ban, i.e those words that convey unpleasant images of the ruling class, however valid.

“Property speculator”, “vulture capitalists”, “imperialists”, “colonialists”, “sectarian”, “collaborators”, “quisling” and “settlers” could be on a future list for banning under “hate speech”, along with combinations of words such as “police” with “brutality” or “politician” with “corrupt”.

Liberals and social-democrats tend to forget at times where the real power lies and what interests are served by the State.

Meta’s ban will be circumvented in many ways of course but it represents a major attack in social media on democratic freedom, all in the service of a genocidal colonial state which itself is in the service of imperialism.

End.

Footnotes:

1 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/09/meta-hate-speech-policy

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zionism

3Ibid

4Ibid

5Though it has also been used as a slogan of Zionist expansion, including by Netanyahu.

6Including by mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations.

Sources:

Meta banning most use of the word: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/09/meta-hate-speech-policy

Zionism: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/zionism

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism

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

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/12/24/zionism-anti-semitism-and-colonialism

https://palestinelegal.org/distorted-definition

Religion in Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel

A New Wave of Censorship and Repression

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Left, Israeli Zionism, Palestine, Political Analysis1 Comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 18 April 2024

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

There is no doubt that the ghost of Joseph McCarthy wanders the earth through many a hallowed university hall, newspaper editorial room, police headquarters around the world and of course the cabinets of many western governments.

Censorship when it raises its ugly head, does so in a similar fashion to its past incarnations, though with new twists and turns that perhaps take us by surprise.

However, it should come as no surprise to see that voices on Palestine are being shut down, though the recent German police assault on an international conference in Berlin was a major escalation in government attempts to criminalise those critical of the genocidal regime that holds sway in Tel Aviv and the white supremacist philosophy that is Zionism.(1)

Various issues are thrown into the mix.

Palestine and Palestinian demands are presented as hate speech by governments and right-wing media, but so too is any defence of women’s spaces, though in this latter case the right-wing governments find some support from sectors of the Left.

These think that when they argue for censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech that somehow it will never be applied to them.

The German police stormed the three-day event as the first speaker was addressing it.

They claimed they did so to prevent antisemitic statements being made i.e. not only are we in McCarthyite land of criminalising certain ideas by labelling them as antisemitic but we are in the land of Minority Report(2) where thought crimes can be punished in advance, before they have been committed.

This is not that far removed at all from the Irish Hate Speech Bill that some on the Left have given support to, as the Police may inspect computers and phones and you may be charged with possession of material that may be used to commit hate speech.

It was laughable and ironic that one of the photos of the police intervention of the Berlin event was the arrest of a young Jewish man, wearing a kippa, who was there in solidarity with Palestinians. Following the event a number of Jews were charged with antisemitism.

Not only that but some of the speakers were banned from entering the country, amongst them Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah who was an eyewitness to what was happening in Gaza and is also the Rector of the University of Glasgow.

The former Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from entering Germany and both were warned that they could not participate even by Zoom from another jurisdiction, an unlawful extension of German jurisdiction and a suspension of the free movement of European citizens within the EU.

This is part of a wider criminalisation of protest and the criminalisation of thought.

Though some on the Left in Ireland such as People Before Profit T.Ds like Paul Murphy who support hate speech legislation believed in the benevolence of capitalist leaders when restricting commentary on women’s rights would never be extended to them, it has and for obvious reasons.

Most right-wing governments, particularly those that claim some liberal kudos on certain social issues have taken advantage of the defeat of workers, critical thinking and any opposition at all to capitalism to advance right-wing hate speech legislation and restrictions on academic freedom.

This includes the dismissal of staff, limitations on the right to voice opinions that go against government policy and in the process have garnered the support of many liberal currents and of course major NGOs who depend on government largesse to finance themselves.

The German event is not an isolated incident. Over the years various lecturers in the US have been suspended or not had their contracts renewed for speaking out about Palestine.

Zionists were the original cancel culture specialists who managed to turn spoilt students whining into action, getting staff sacked and silencing other students.

Recently, a professor of 30 years standing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the US was suspended over a contribution made to a blog.

In their suspension of the employee the president stated that “I find her comments repugnant, condemn them unequivocally, and want to make clear that these are her personal views and not those of our institution.”(3)

It was liberals, the wokerati and even some Marxists who pushed for employers to take action against employees for their personal views and activities outside of the workplace and now it has come back to bite some of them, though not all, as many liberals and wokerati in the US are Zionists.

Some of those who had been targeted were vile racists who shouted “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with torches. But you fight Fascism, you don’t give employers control over employees’ lives, ever.

As Trotsky once quipped, if you can’t convince a Fascist, acquaint their head with the pavement. He didn’t say give your boss and the state more control over you and beseech them to act in your interests.

A few days prior to that, Columbia University had suspended six students for allegedly participating in a panel discussion on Palestine.(4)

And in a further sign that jackboots are once again goose-stepping through Germany, the University of Cologne rescinded a job offer to Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American professor of philosophy, over her condemnation of killings in Gaza.(5)

They will not stop at that and it is not limited to issues such as genocide, but even local domestic politics.

In April 2023, a French journalist Ernest Moret was arrested by British anti-terrorist police due to his involvement in protests in France against the Macron government’s pension proposals.

He refused to give the police access to pass codes for his electronic devices and was charged with obstruction.(6)

There are other precedents for this, one of them being the arrest of David Miranda, Glen Greenwald’s now deceased partner, in Britain when returning from a meeting with another journalist who had also worked on the files released by Edward Snowden.(7)

The courts later upheld his detention to be lawful. Police held him and demanded access to his electronic devices.

Then there is the jailing and punishing of Julian Assange. The charges against Assange were dressed up in various disguises.

The first of them was the now discredited rape charges in Sweden which were dropped and also espionage charges when the real reason for jailing Assange is that he, as a journalist, exposed US war crimes in Iraq.

The message is clear, censorship is the order of the day as is the hounding of journalists who hold unpopular views and expose the crimes of the state. Assange did not receive the support he should have, due to the trumped-up rape charges, with many on the Left, like cowards running for cover.

Even today, when the rape charges have been exposed for the lies they were and have been dropped there are those who refuse to speak out on his behalf for this very reason.

There is no world in which right wing governments suppress freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of assembly and criminalise broad opinions that they label as hate speech and don’t target the Left. It has never happened and never will.

When they stood aside on Assange, they prepared the way for the assault on the Berlin Conference. When they harassed and tried to silence women defending women’s spaces they prepared the ground for the assault.

When they advocated and supported right-wing governments’ attempts at introducing hate speech legislation they paved the way for the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine.

When the Hate Speech Bill comes back before the Irish parliament, they should take note and do the correct thing and oppose it, unequivocally.

Leftists who advocated employers taking control of employees lives and opinions, those that demanded that JK Rowling and others like her be hounded from the public sphere and that what they termed hate speech, in reality thought crimes, should be punished in law have aided and abetted right-wing governments in getting us to where we are now, which is that it is now very easy to criminalise pro-Palestinian voices.

All you have to say is “Hate Speech!” Meanwhile Rushi Sunak in Britain is pushing ahead with a very broad and loose definition of extremism which will see almost everyone who does not support Sunak or Starmer in the dock.

Notes

(1)  See interview with Yanis Varoufakis  https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/germany_palestine

(2)  Minority Report is a Tom Cruise film in which three mutants can see the future and predict who will commit crimes and they are arrested, charged and sentenced in advance before the crime is committed.  In the film the system unravels.

(3)  WXXI News (16/04/2024) Hobart and William Smith Colleges professor suspended for comments on Israel-Hamas war. Noelle E.C. Evans.  https://www.wrvo.org/2024-04-16/hobart-and-william-smith-colleges-professor-suspended-for-comments-on-israel-hamas-war

(4)  WSWS (09/04/2024) Columbia University suspends and evicts pro-Palestinian students.  Tim Avery. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/09/yimz-a09.html

(5)  The Guardian (10/04/2024) German university rescinds Jewish American’s job offer over pro-Palestinian letter.  Kate Connolly. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/10/nancy-fraser-cologne-university-germany-job-offer-palestine

(6)  The Guardian (18/04/2023) French publisher arrested in London on terrorism charge.  Matthew Weaver.  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/18/french-publisher-arrested-london-counter-terrorism-police-ernest-moret

(7)  The Guardian (19/08/2013) Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow

GENOCIDAL SLOGANS?

On By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Recently then-Minister for Home Affairs of the UK Suella Braverman claimed the common Palestinian solidarity slogan, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free! to be antisemitic, genocidal in effect and looked set to try to have it banned.

In some other western institutions, for example Columbia University USA, it HAS been banned and a Palestine solidarity student group has had its rights within the University revoked despite, reportedly, the opposition of the majority of students to that sanction.

Suella Braverman, MP, former UK Minister for Home Affairs. (Photo sourced: Internet)

How can a basic solidarity slogan be claimed to be genocidal?

Definition of a genocidal act: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group …1

Obviously there can be such a thing as a genocidal slogan and, in fact, there are many examples in history: “The only good Indian (sic) is a dead Indian”2; “Juden raus”3; “To Hell or to Connaught”4; “Nits make lice”5; “Kill the cockroaches”6; “There are no Kurds, only mountain Turks”.7

Anti-Jewish racist and genocidal slogan in German with the Nazi Swastika symbol on wall in Florence, Italy.

But really, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”? Genocidal? For the Palestinian people to be free and in control of their own land, there has to be genocide?

Would “Scotland Free from Dunnet Head to Tweed” be considered a genocidal slogan? Or for example slogans such as “Ireland free from Donegal to Cork” or “A 32-County socialist Republic” be thought genocidal?

“Oh, but the Palestinian one means Palestine for the Arabs only, no Jews!” Really? And you know this how? Before the British started driving Jews into Palestine the maximum size of the Jewish population there was 6% but there was no attempt by the mostly Arab people to drive them out.

Could the slogan not equally or even more likely be a call for a free, equal, democratic state across the whole of the original Palestine? Such as the stated objective of a number of Palestinian resistance organisations, the PFLP for example?

The nationalist slogans for Ireland and Scotland could be interpreted to mean clearing out all non-Scottish and non-Irish respectively but for the vast majority they not mean that nor are they generally thought to do so. So why suspect genocidal intention of the Palestinians?

The opposition to the slogan is not at all based on fear of genocide but in fact on support for it: the Zionist genocide against the Palestinians! It is based on denying the right to self-determination of the indigenous Palestinian people, of which a huge majority are Arab.

To deny the right of the Palestinians to self-determination is to support the right of the Zionists to colonise, a project entailing expulsion or massacre of the ethnically Arab Palestinian majority that existed in Palestine even up until 1948.

That Zionist project has continued with a constant ethnic cleansing pressure and genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people.

And the same people who oppose the slogan “From the River to the sea” etc support such slogans as “Israel has a right to self-defence” and “The Jewish people have a right to their own state”, which ARE racist and genocidal statements based on Zionist and European colonial ideology.

If Israel has a right to self-defence, what that means is that those who occupy a territory, steal the land and resources, colonise it and attack the indigenous people … have the right to defend themselves against the legitimate resistance of the people.

It gives the settlers the right to defend their occupation and repress the resistance, which naturally is given no rights at all. The robber has the right to the loot.

If the Jewish people have a right to their own state, where is that to be? Where will a land be found without people in it for them to take as their own?

And if such an empty land does not exist – which it does not – then what gives Jews or anyone else the right to occupy and settle a land, removing the rights of the indigenous people? An alleged promise by a being of religious belief? Or the backing of imperialist colonial powers?

The defence of the solidarity slogan’s content and the right to use it across the world are important democratic standards in the peoples’ struggles for justice and to express and build internationalist solidarity across the world.

The realisation of the slogan will be an important contribution to peace and justice in the world.

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Article II, UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

2Whether correctly attributed to General Phillip Sheridan of the US Army or not it was certainly a popular saying in the white US colonial wars against the Indigenous native people.

3Nazi slogan, literally “Jews out!”

4Attributed to Oliver Cromwell in his mid-17th Century genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Irish Catholics.

5Horrific slogan justifying the killing of children because they will grow up to be the hated/ feared people. This slogan or saying has probably been heard at one time or another in most parts of the world but certainly against Native Americans in the USA; among Nazis against Jews, Slavs and Gypsies; in Israel against Palestinians.

6One of the slogans of the Hutu against the Tutsi in the 1994 ethnic cleansing and massacres in Rwanda.

7Remark attributed to the Turkish nationalist Kemal Ataturk with regard to the very large ethnically distinct Kurdish people in Turkey.

SOURCES

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/16/suella-braverman-rows-anti-israel-chant/

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

WOKENESS GOES TO UKRAINE

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, WritingLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Whilst many of the Wokerati repeat uncritically any statement from the Western media or even NATO on Ukraine, wokeness itself was not to be found in Ukraine.

The rabid right wing homophobic sentiment expressed at gay rights marches before the war, was not a fertile ground for the Wokerati.

Homophobia abounds, as does racism, something we saw when black people were taken off or prevented from boarding trains leaving Ukraine at the start of the war.

Gay rights and racism are not woke issues per se, in fact the Wokerati in the West have abandoned gay rights, particularly Lesbian rights, in favour of male heterosexuals invading women’s spaces. But you get the general idea about Ukraine being a hostile terrain.

Not any more, wokeness and its methods have come to Ukraine. How it has done so, and on what issue, is illustrative of the reactionary nature of wokeness. When Russia invaded Ukraine, ridiculous calls were made to ban everything from Tchaikovsky to Tolstoy.

In doing so, they emulated woke calls for authors to be banned from the airwaves and also the rewriting of history with long dead authors being judged by current understandings of society on issues like race, but not class.

Class was still fair game, in fact it is the target of many woke comedians, whose middle-class audiences like to show their social sense of rightness by frowning on historical authors on issues, like race, women (to a degree only) and others.

So, we are only a few steps from Shakespeare, John Donne and others getting chopped, but they have no problem with working class people being the target of their jokes.

Now the Ukrainians have got in on the game with calls for the closure of a museum in Kiev dedicated to the writer Mikhail Bulgakov.1 Yes, I had to look him up too. I have to confess to the woke literati that he was never on my radar before this moment.

I mean, he is not Tolstoy, is he? And he is certainly not anything closer to home like Beckett, or even the English author Thomas Hardy, both of whom have survived the woke banning spree so far, but this might be because their stuff is a little dense and maybe they haven’t read them yet.

I know I haven’t, though as a child my Da would read them and sometimes out loud. So, I knew not to bother with them at an early age, unless you were going to get very serious.

Bulgakov’s crime was that he wasn’t enamoured with Ukrainian nationalism and so he must be expunged from the record.


Mikhail Bulkakov Museum Kiyv (Photo sourced: Internet)

Ukraine’s national writers’ union has called for the museum at number 13A Andriivskyi Descent – a historic cobbled street linking the upper town with the district of Podil, on the banks of the Dnipro River – to be closed down.2

Apparently, he even criticised some Ukrainian nationalists of his time and Stalin was fond of some of his plays, though he censored him at the same time. Bulgakov opposed the idea of an independent Ukraine.

And even The Guardian acknowledges that this was a common position at the time. He was not alone.

The museum’s director, Lyudmila Gubianuri, has also hit back against criticism, calling Bulgakov “a man of his time”.

“He was born and lived in the Russian empire. Bulgakov had an inherent imperial mindset, but neither he nor his family were ever Ukrainophobes,” she stressed. “Bulgakov did not believe in the reality of an independent Ukraine, like quite a lot of people at that time.”3

Mikhail Bolgakov (Photo sourced: Internet)

Were we to do this in Ireland, lots of people would come a cropper. Seán O’Casey would get it in the neck. Joyce would be frowned upon as well, not for the views that saw the Catholic Church come down upon him, but perhaps his general view of Ireland.

Brendan Behan was certainly in favour of Irish independence, but he joined the IRA and was arrested on bombing charges, so in the new climate of blessing the British government for taking up the White Man’s Burden in relation to us, he might also get it.

There is no end of writers who might be banned. Roddy Doyle, is no friend of Irish independence. His unpublished play My Granny Was A Hunger Striker, written shortly after the 1981 hunger strike which saw ten men die, gives you an idea of where he stands.

Maybe in the future someone might call for his works to be removed, no more The Van or Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha, or his work on violence against women in the home, The Woman Who Walked into Doors. I knew I should never have read him or even Behan, Joyce or Casey.

Yes, I actually read them, unlike Beckett.

The reactionary nature of wokeness can be seen in its arrival in Ukraine. It is about stifling dissent and debate and generally promoting reactionary ideas. It is something more at home in an authoritarian regime like the Ukrainian one.

Russia has been more straightforward in its censorship, though now a capitalist regime, its take on repression and censorship, has been borrowed straight out of the Soviet era book.

The Wokerati under the guise of liberalism also want to shape a view of society on the basis of authoritarian methods, such as social shaming and the banning of literature to the literary equivalent of Outer Mongolia and have had some success.

Liberals ban books and place authors in quarantine, Ukrainian nationalists adopt the same tactics. Tells you everything you need to know about both.

Though, that the Western Wokerati were streets ahead in the book burning club probably means they have the edge over the zealots of the East and this is also telling.

Notes

1Luke Harding (31/12/2022) ‘Propaganda literature’: calls to close Mikhail Bulgakov museum in Kyiv. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/dec/31/mikhail-bulgakov-museum-kyiv-calls-to-close

2Ibid.

3Ibid.