Category: KULTURKAMPF - The Greanville Post

ABOVE:

By NORMAN SOLOMON

We still don’t have any sort of apology or retraction from the Washington Post for promoting “The List” — the highly dangerous blacklist that got a huge boost from the newspaper’s fawning coverage on November 24. The project of smearing 200 websites with one broad brush wouldn’t have gotten far without the avid complicity of high-profile media outlets, starting with the Post.

On Thursday — a week after the Post published its front-page news article hyping the blacklist that was put out by a group of unidentified people called PropOrNot — I sent a petition statement to the newspaper’s executive editor Martin Baron.

“Smearing is not reporting,” the RootsAction petition says. “The Washington Post’s recent descent into McCarthyism — promoting anonymous and shoddy claims that a vast range of some 200 websites are all accomplices or tools of the Russian government — violates basic journalistic standards and does real harm to democratic discourse in our country. We urge the Washington Post to prominently retract the article and apologize for publishing it.”

After mentioning that 6,000 people had signed the petition (the number has doubled since then), my email to Baron added: “If you skim through the comments that many of the signers added to the petition online, I think you might find them to be of interest. I wonder if you see a basis for dialogue on the issues raised by critics of the Post piece in question.”

The reply came from the newspaper’s vice president for public relations, Kristine Coratti Kelly, who thanked me “for reaching out to us” before presenting the Post’s response, quoted here in full:

“The Post reported on the work of four separate sets of researchers, as well as independent experts, who have examined Russian attempts to influence American democracy. PropOrNot was one. The Post did not name any of the sites on PropOrNot’s list of organizations that it said had — wittingly or unwittingly — published or echoed Russian propaganda. The Post reviewed PropOrNot’s findings and our questions about them were answered satisfactorily during the course of multiple interviews.”

But that damage-control response was as full of holes as the news story it tried to defend.

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or one thing, PropOrNot wasn’t just another source for the Post’s story. As The New Yorker noted in a devastating article on Dec. 1, the story “prominently cited the PropOrNot research.” The Post’s account “had the force of revelation, thanks in large part to the apparent scientific authority of PropOrNot’s work: the group released a 32-page report detailing its methodology, and named names with its list of 200 suspect news outlets…. But a close look at the report showed that it was a mess.”

Contrary to the PR message from the Post vice president, PropOrNot did not merely say that the sites on its list had “published or echoed Russian propaganda.” Without a word of the slightest doubt or skepticism in the entire story, the Post summarized PropOrNot’s characterization of all the websites on its list as falling into two categories: “Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were ‘useful idiots’ — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.”

As The New Yorker pointed out, PropOrNot’s criteria for incriminating content were broad enough to include “nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post itself.”

Many mainline journalists and outlets jumped at the chance to amplify the Post’s piece of work. A sampling of the cheers from prominent journalists and liberal partisans was published by FAIR.org under the apt headline “Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited ‘Fake News’ Blacklist?” FAIR’s media analyst Adam Johnson cited enthusiastic responses to the bogus story from journalists like Bloomberg’s Sahil Kupar and MSNBC’s Joy Reid — and such outlets as USA Today, Gizmodo, the PBS NewsHour, The Daily Beast, Slate, AP, The Verge and NPR, which “all uncritically wrote up the Post’s most incendiary claims with little or minimal pushback.” On the MSNBC site, the Rachel Maddow Show’s blog “added another breathless write-up hours later, repeating the catchy talking point that ‘it was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign.’”

Yet “The List” is not a random list by any means — it’s a targeted mish-mash, naming websites that are not within shouting distance of the U.S. corporate and foreign policy establishment.

And so the list includes a few overtly Russian-funded outlets; some other sites generally aligned with Kremlin outlooks; many pro-Trump sites, often unacquainted with what it means to be factual and sometimes overtly racist; and other websites that are quite different — solid, factual, reasonable — but too progressive or too anti-capitalist or too libertarian or too right-wing or just plain too independent-minded for the evident tastes of whoever is behind PropOrNot.

As The New Yorker’s writer Adrian Chen put it: “To PropOrNot, simply exhibiting a pattern of beliefs outside the political mainstream is enough to risk being labeled a Russian propagandist.” And he concluded: “Despite the impressive-looking diagrams and figures in its report, PropOrNot’s findings rest largely on innuendo and conspiracy thinking.”

As for the Post vice president’s defensive phrasing that “the Post did not name any of the sites on PropOrNot’s list,” the fact is that the Post unequivocally promoted PropOrNot, driving web traffic to its site and adding a hotlink to the anonymous group’s 32-page report soon after the newspaper’s story first appeared. As I mentioned in my reply to her: “Unfortunately, it’s kind of like a newspaper saying that it didn’t name any of the people on the Red Channels blacklist in 1950 while promoting it in news coverage, so no problem.”

As much as the Post news management might want to weasel out of the comparison, the parallels to the advent of the McCarthy Era are chilling. For instance, the Red Channels list, with 151 names on it, was successful as a weapon against dissent and free speech in large part because, early on, so many media outlets of the day actively aided and abetted blacklisting, as the Post has done for “The List.”

Consider how the Post story described the personnel of PropOrNot in favorable terms even while hiding all of their identities and thus shielding them from any scrutiny — calling them “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.”

So far The New Yorker has been the largest media outlet to directly confront the Post’s egregious story. Cogent assessments can also be found at The Intercept, Consortium News, Common Dreams, AlterNet, Rolling Stone, Fortune, CounterPunch, The Nation, [The Greanville Post], and numerous other sites.

But many mainline journalists and outlets jumped at the chance to amplify the Post’s piece of work. A sampling of the cheers from prominent journalists and liberal partisans was published by FAIR.org under the apt headline “Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited ‘Fake News’ Blacklist?”

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]AIR’s media analyst Adam Johnson cited enthusiastic responses to the bogus story from journalists like Bloomberg’s Sahil Kupar and MSNBC’s Joy Reid — and such outlets as USA Today, Gizmodo, the PBS NewsHour, The Daily Beast, Slate, AP, The Verge and NPR, which “all uncritically wrote up the Post’s most incendiary claims with little or minimal pushback.” On the MSNBC site, the Rachel Maddow Show’s blog “added another breathless write-up hours later, repeating the catchy talking point that ‘it was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign.’”

With so many people understandably upset about Trump’s victory, there’s an evident attraction to blaming the Kremlin, a convenient scapegoat for Hillary Clinton’s loss. But the Post’s blacklisting story and the media’s amplification of it — and the overall political environment that it helps to create — are all building blocks for a reactionary order, threatening the First Amendment and a range of civil liberties.

When liberals have green lighted a witch-hunt, right wingers have been pleased to run with it. President Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947 to establish “loyalty” investigations in every agency of the federal government. Joe McCarthy and the era named after him were soon to follow.

In media and government, the journalists and officials who enable blacklisting are cravenly siding with conformity instead of democracy.

NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS • PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where he coordinates ExposeFacts. Solomon is a co-founder of RootsAction.org.

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“In the most deceitful manner, corporate news media fully adopt not only the official lies, but the role of “complicit enabler”, as a former White House press secretary under Bush would call the press, by promoting the whole narrative of “humanitarian invasions”, “responsibility to protect”, “terrorist links” and any other concoction designed to sell wars of aggression…”

War and elections are two very appropriate moments to analyze propaganda. As the former becomes more and more ‘normalized’ after a decade and a half of continuous wars (on terror?) in the Middle East, the latter brought us, with Trump’s victory, a sort of bonus I find rather illustrative: a mea culpa from a ‘liberal’ media incapable of reading into an important segment of the public.

Of course, the reasons for this failure are many times beyond the language and topics allowed in mainstream media debate, ‘liberal’ or not, and in the resulting contortions they practice while trying to explain them, important aspects of the propaganda apparatus reach the light of critical observation.

For corporate media, ‘liberal’ also means to leave behind all traces of impartiality and, despite massive popular disdain for both candidates in the 2016 elections, “describe the prospects of her (Clinton) presidency as one of responsibility, national security, business prosperity and political normalcy”.(1)

When we talk about ‘liberal’ media—with a profound spectrum shift to the right having taken place several generations ago —we are talking about a spectrum of opinion both pre-eminent and permitted within the mainstream. In this realm, what could pass as conservative is instead called ‘liberal’, while the modestly liberal is many times regarded as ‘radical’.

This is a simple way of framing reality that parallels the constant ‘moving to the right’, by both Republicans and Democrats (and political systems around the world as well, due to American influence). What was the ‘center’ a decade or two ago is now considered ‘leftist’, and so on.

“The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation… explained by Alan Greenspan as based substantially on ‘growing worker insecurity’. Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits and security”. (2)

The explanation above is beyond most ‘liberal’ media acceptable language. Note that it isn´t the mention or truthful explanation of neoliberalism, (consciously avoided in mainstream narrative for too long) but the direct and damning accusation which is, in the best of cases, on the margins of the MSM narrative, meaning the public won’t receive that kind of message in a repetitive and insistent fashion, experts will not be summoned to convince anybody of the blowback of neoliberalism on the vulnerable.

Instead, corporate media will indulge in many ‘theories’:

“We are talking about a problem at the very core of journalism: the unstated theory of change that could be summed up as: ‘society will get better when we show where it is wrong’. We are presenting what’s wrong with the world as if that’s all there is”, (3) explained David Bernstein and Tina Rosenberg (New York Times) stating that Trump benefited from the “hyper-cynicism” of people that results from news media’s disposition to show society where it’s wrong, which creates distrust in the establishment and institutions, driving them to outsiders, who many times pose for “change”.

“…the white working class”, they continue, “…have suffered serious economic and social dislocation. Many feel powerless and resent elites and journalists, whom they find arrogant and condescending”. (Emphasis added).

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s indeed telling that the white working class would group together and regard elites and journalists as sharing such characteristics. Perhaps it relates to the fact that much of mainstream journalism represents the interests of elites, and not society, much less the working class, white or not.

Being constantly exposed to the visible surface of human problems while avoiding their substance is, surprisingly, failing to bring about change.

In conclusion, if the central issue lies beyond the political framework news media create for certain (most) topics, the readers and viewers will be diverted into an understanding of that reality by the means of euphemism and scapegoats.

Ideological blind spots

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he inability of corporate media to foresee Trump could be explained by its blind spots when considering society’s setbacks surviving the economic policies in which corporations thrive. This, of course, is shared by a political establishment also oriented to cater for corporate interests.

The features of neoliberalism that are convenient for private wealth but nefarious for common people tend to circumvent mainstream narrative, in fact, part of the language needed to criticize them do not exist in their lexicon. For most ‘liberal media’, advocating for consideration of other economical orientations or alternatives is completely off-limits. It´s only natural then that they are unable to speak to or even understand important segments of society.

In the words of Craig Murray: “In neither the UK nor the US is a viable radical alternative going to be put before the electorate in the near future. Those who believe either Brexit or Trump presage a break from neoliberalism will be sorely disappointed. They represent the continuance of neoliberalism, but with popular discontent diverted into added racism“. (5) [Emphasis mine]

When the war efforts are finished, mainstream media soon forgets their role in it and the dire consequences of the catastrophe provoked, with complete disregard for valid criticism on them and the politicians whose lies they promoted.

We could list a number of scapegoats used by the mainstream media to explain Trump’s election, all reflecting realities which hardly defined it, but in whose name arguments can be put forward: misogyny, racism, xenophobia, nationalism, Facebook lies too much, etc.

First of all, the ‘lesser evil’ didn’t really conform to the qualities of progressiveness it was said to stand for (in discourse):

“Occupying the right wing of the Democratic Party, Clinton has aligned herself with a war culture that supports drone warfare and continues to support military policies that result in the needless deaths of millions of children in the Middle East, Yemen, Somalia, and other places that bear the brunt of America’s foreign policy. It is difficult to imagine, given Clinton’s coziness with the financial elite, big corporations, the military-industrial complex and the reigning war culture, that she will do anything that will lessen the violence to which children, both at home and around the globe, will face under her potential reign as President of the United States”. (6)

This is a concise excerpt of HRC’s affiliations, hardly the ‘lesser evil’ to a pampered billionaire celebrity with no experience in ‘humanitarian invasions’.

We can observe the similarities between news media representation of political leaders and their own discourse (therefore Obama is ‘progressive’) and then recognize the disconnection with the facts and their actions (destroying thousands of innocent lives remotely by drones, no questions asked and no due process).

Facebook “lies for Trump”

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ainstream media have accused Facebook’s failed algorithms and policies for giving an extra boost to news reporting the Pope endorsing Trump, among other fakes, and finally to Trump himself.

Lying, omitting crucial facts, the vital context, reporting the ‘official’ version unverified, especially when advancing war propaganda, among other common practices, are a privileges MSM jealously protect.

The scandal over Facebook’s putative carelessness over the dissemination of fake posts could misled us into thinking fake news are something rare in mainstream media, which is sadly far from the truth. The most scandalous lies and “fake news” in news media, as a matter of fact, exist and occur routinely in the corporate press, and they cost thousands of hundreds of lives, even millions (remember Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”, the “Viagra-filled” Libyan soldiers about to commit “an atrocity against their own people”? Only two recent examples).

Indeed, lies and fake news fly straight from “official” sources to the NYT front pages without verification when the need to create fear and blind support for violence abroad becomes urgent. This fake news are later reproduced around the world, where local, capitalist-owned mainstream media take the NYT or CNN as authority and anything they publish is automatically validated.

In the most deceitful manner, corporate news media fully adopts not only the official lies, but the role of “complicit enabler”, as a former White House press secretary under Bush would call the press, by promoting the whole narrative of “humanitarian invasions”, “responsibility to protect”, “terrorist links” and any other concoction designed to sell wars of aggression. (8)

When the war efforts are finished, mainstream media soon forgets their role in it and the dire consequences of the catastrophe provoked, with complete disregard for valid criticism on them and the politicians whose lies they promoted.

Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in 2003, said that journalists covering the war on Iraq had been “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation”. (9)

“The claim that Bush decided early in his presidency to attack Iraq is supported by earlier exposés. The leaked minutes of a highly confidential Downing Street memo dated July 23, 2002 records the words of Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British Intelligence service, MI6: ‘Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (both lies). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’”. (Parenthesis is mine) (10).

This is only part of the facts and truths not introduced into mainstream narrative, part of their lies and fakes. It resembles all the unclassified intelligence correspondence and WikiLeaks files regarding Syria in the years leading to its ongoing war, explaining the true aims driving US foreign policy there and the nature of the uprising, also disappeared from history by MSM.

This applies like a rule on most armed conflicts where Western interests must be protected, and wars should be “presented in a way that (is) consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation”.

Yesterday, Steffan de Mistura, UN envoy to Syria, proposed to create an independent administration for Aleppo, aiming to stop the violence between the Syrian Army and the rebels which Mistura himself admitted, are 50% al-Nusra, al-Qaeda affiliate. (11) The unclassified intelligence documents mentioned above mention in clarity about the creation of a “Salafist Principality in Syria” as a political possibility for the ongoing war. (12)

Just to be clear, Nicholas Kristof was not referring to Bush, Cheney, Blair, Cameron or Obama when talking about “nuts” being empowered by fake news. But perhaps we are going too deep in actually investigating the subjects we report.

Somehow, the idea of mainstream media lying to its public or ignoring facts remains bizarre and outlandish to many journalists, which seems either disingenuous or dangerously naive:

“The point was, my daughter had some facts. Or thought she had some facts. The gist was that these so-called facts, which she’d picked up online, were not only enormous and significant, but were being suppressed by the mainstream media. Everyone knew about these facts but were determined to ignore them, because these facts reflected badly on the government. I pointed out to my daughter that I had some little experience of journalism and the news media, and that such a scenario was excessively unlikely”. (Tim Lott, How do I tell my daughter that her online ‘truth is a conspiracy theory? The Guardian, 11/11/16)

I honestly don’t think Tim Lott is lying to her daughter nor himself. What am I missing?

Another concerned parent, writing for Buzzfeed, shared:

“The question unspooling in my mind… the question I kept asking my husband and our equally horrified and bewildered friends, was how on earth we would face our children and clear the breakfast table gauntlet the morning after. How could we possibly explain to our daughter that, given the choice between a hardworking, imperfect, eminently qualified stateswoman and a reality-television star running on a platform of hatred and fear, so many people — including many of our neighbors, friends, some of our family members — chose the latter?” (Nichole Chung, The Day After the Election, I Tell my Daughter the Truth. Buzzfeed, 11/10/16)

Those are the hardships of a bourgeois childhood. A few years later they might be facing a harsher truth: their parents indulged in an image of their admired leaders completely divorced from reality, but closer to their own discourses and the way mainstream media would like us to see them. After all, they represent powerful interests, and must be allowed to act on their behalf by faking legitimacy.

Facebook is lying for the wrong interests today, but it’s being fixed so “fake news”, many times an ambiguous and biased characterization, will only translate the desired channels in the right direction.

Notes:

James Petras. Clinton and Trump: Nuclearized or Lobotomized? (Global Research, 05/18/16) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/clinton-and-trump-nuclearized-or-lobotomized-the-road-to-nuclear-war/5525873]

C.J. Polychroniou. Trump in the White House: An Interview with Noam Chomsky. (Truthout, 11/14/16) [http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky]

D. Bornstein, T. Rosenberg. When Reportage Turns to Cynicism. (New York Times, 11/14/16) [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/opinion/when-reportage-turns-to-cynicism.html?_r=0]

Ibid.

Craig Murray. Neo-Liberalism Under Cover of Racism. (Author’s blog, 11/15/16) [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/11/neo-liberalism-cover-racism/]

Henry A. Giraux. Unthinkable Politics and the Dead Bodies of Children. (Truthou, 11/01/16) [http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38201-unthinkable-politics-and-the-dead-bodies-of-children]

Nicholas Kristof. Lies in the Guise of News in the Trump Era. (New York Times, 11/12/16) [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/opinion/sunday/lies-in-the-guise-of-news-in-the-trump-era.html]

Brian Stelter. Was Press a War ‘Enabler’? 2 Offer a Nod From Inside. (New York Times, 05/30/08) [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/washington/30press.html]

Quoted in: Media Lens. “Complicit Enablers” – UK media ignores US whistleblowers (Media Lens, 06/11/08) [http://www.medialens.org/23_fg_75_lc/viewtopic.php?t=2772&sid=0ff6c643a1802af0c01773d52db5f7d3]

Ibid.

BBC news Online. Syria war: Aleppo self-rule plan rejected by government. (BCC.com, 11/20/16) [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38043157] AND: Ruptly Tv. LIVE: UN Security Council meets to discuss situation in Syria. (Online Video clip) Youtube, published on 09/25/16. [Recoverd: 11/21/16 (CHECK min. 28) at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx3XbFYqOoo]

Judicial Watch. JW v DOD and State 14-812 DOD Release 2015 04 10, página 289. (Judicial Watch, 18/05/15) [http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-dod-release-2015-04-10/]

NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS • PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP INSTALLATION

BY KIM PETERSEN

Bill Blum

Respected writer William Blum understands US hegemony and imperialism on a global scale. In his important book Rogue State, he provided a comprehensive account of US imperialism around the world.

Recently, Blum wrote a trenchant article that compellingly ridiculed the nonsense that Donald Trump is a greater evil than Barack Obama. Blum tore the veneer off the Democratic Party and corporate media’s hypocritical demonization of Trump. As a clincher, Blum finishes his piece with sarcasm: “And if you like Barack Obama you’ll love Hillary Clinton.”

Trump, Obama, and Clinton are three evils. Of the three, Trump is the lesser evil. What is important is that come election time, the ballot is not confined to a lesser-evilist choice. The Green Party’s Jill Stein is not evil.

In the otherwise excellent piece by Blum appears a paragraph that I find superficial, void of historical validity, and above all, it seems to be repeating indoctrinating patterns typical of Islamophobia:

Obama’s declaration that ISIS “has nothing to do with Islam”. This is standard political correctness which ignores the indisputable role played by Islam in inspiring Orlando and Long Beach and Paris and Ankara and many other massacres; it is the religion that teaches the beauty and godliness of Jihad and the heavenly rewards of suicide bombings.

Does Islam play a role? Blinkered proponents of US and Israeli imperialism consistently blame Islam for the commission of terrorist acts. Blum is not such a proponent. However, framing Islam as “the religion that teaches the beauty and godliness of Jihad and the heavenly rewards of suicide bombings” decidedly opinionated and pre-restructured approach that deliberately ignores the Islamic teachings of peace.1 If Islam is the motivating source for terrorism, then how does Blum explain that there was not any act of so-called Jihadist terrorism in the period 1945-1967 (from the end of WWII until the Israeli war against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan)?

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ogically therefore, Arabs, be they mixed Christian and Muslim (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine once lead by the late Christian Orthodox George Habash; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by the Catholic-Marxist Nayef Hawatmeh) or predominately Muslim (such as Hamas and Hezbollah) have all used violence as counter measures to the US and Israeli violence. To call their violence “terrorism” while calling western and Israeli violence a “responsibility to protect or humanitarian intervention” [2] is an utmost act of malediction.

As for the word “Jihad” [used to express a struggle for anything (life, work, family) — including, of course, the early Islamic struggle to spread the word of Allah (God Almighty in Arabic)] — there is a story to tell. After the defeat of the crusaders in Syria in 1187, the word was used sporadically by the Ottoman Turks to recruit Muslims for the conquest of Europe. Politically that word generally disappeared from the popular usage (except from national movements seeking to use Islam as a rallying cry of battle as in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighting the occupiers of Palestine) until former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Wahhabi Saudi regime resurrected it to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Surprisingly, unmentioned in Blum’s piece is the “teachings” of violence by Blum’s people [3] in the Torah or the Bible’s teachings of violence. For example, do the teachings of Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim that it is okay to rape Gentile women represent an indisputable role of Judaism that teaches the beauty and godliness of raping non-Jews or does it represent individual extremism based on lopsided interpretation?

Representation of Saladin in a 14th century gravure. There are no reliable images of Saladin, but it is clear he was an extraordinary military and political leader, magnanimous in victory and noted for his generosity. The West has never produced a leader of such moral caliber.

I am very familiar with the greetings exchanged by Muslims: “As-Salaam-Alaikum” (“peace be upon you”) and “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam” (“and peace upon you”). I know peace to be emphasized by Islam. However, just like in the Bible where one finds invocations to peace, one also finds commands to commit violence. I asked if Blum had read the Qur’an, but he did not reply to this question. I asked if he had lived in a Muslim land? To this he did not reply either. I humbly submit that I have read the Bible, Qur’an, hadiths, and The Life of Mohammed among other texts. I have lived a number of years in Muslim countries. In Jordan and Egypt, Muslim people proudly recited stories to me of the prowess, tolerance, and virtue of the Muslim sultan and military leader Saladin who defeated the Crusaders, retook Al Quds (Jerusalem), and showed great mercy to his Christian and Jewish opponents. However, I am far from an expert on Islam.

I wrote to William Blum.

Kim Petersen: I just have to add since you took on Islam that your article would have read less tendentious if you had noted that the Bible’s God smites first born children, urges God-fearing people to commit genocide, condemns homosexuals, etc, etc — the point being that Christianity has nothing over Islam.

William Blum: But one is carrying out horrible terrorism today, even as we speak, threatening you and I. The other is ancient, ancient history. If in fact it ever happened.

KP: With all due respect, are the predominantly Christian nations not carrying out horrible terrorism today? And does not state terrorism dwarf retail terrorism?

And to be clear, it is not a religion carrying out acts; it is supposed adherents of the religion carrying out the acts in the name of their God/Allah/Yahweh. All are deplorable.

Blum responded in the email separately to each of my above preceding paragraphs.

WB: The Christian nations are horribly violent, but they do not purposely bomb crowded restaurants, or behead people, or purposely destroy ancient buildings, or ban education for women, sex and music.

It’s the teachings of Islam that inspire the Islamic terrorists to carry out Jihad and suicide bombings. Why else are they doing these things? If they hate US foreign policy why don’t they attack US military installations and American embassies, not people and targets with no connection whatsoever to any government. That’s terrorism by definition.

KP, additional comment: “If they hate US foreign policy why don’t they attack US military installations and American embassies”: They do, for example, the 1983 bombing of a US military installation in Lebanon demonstrates, but it does not matter what the target is: any act of resistance to the primordial acts of violence, even by a foreign interloper will be labeled terrorism. This is a label that is not applied by the same corporate media to the aggression of the US or its western acolytes.

[Arab individuals and organizations of diverse philosophical and religious backgrounds ](Catholic, Marxist, Islamic, etc.) have all used violence as counter measures to the US and Israeli violence. To call their violence “terrorism” while calling western and Israeli violence a “responsibility to protect or humanitarian intervention” [2] is an utmost act of malediction.

Moreover, Blum seems in contradiction with himself. Earlier he blamed US violence rather than Islamic teachings for terrorism.

Why do terrorists hate America enough to give up their lives in order to deal the country such mortal blows? Of course it’s not America the terrorists hate; it’s American foreign policy. It’s what the United States has done to the world in the past half century — all the violence, the bombings, the depleted uranium, the cluster bombs, the assassinations, the promotion of torture, the overthrow of governments, and more. The terrorists — whatever else they might be — are also rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States. [4]

It is assessment with which I agree.

Next, I respond sequentially to each of two preceding paragraphs where Blum writes 1) that Christians do not purposely commit horrible acts and 2) Islamic teachings serve as a fillip to terrorism.

KP: Christian nations do not drop nuclear weapons on civilian cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)? Do not firebomb civilian cities (Tokyo, Dresden)? Do not place a city under siege and bombard it (Fallujah)? Lynch and scalp non-White peoples? Purposely destroy hospitals (Afghanistan), the cultural heritage of a country (Iraq)?

Christianity and its teachings, as self-servingly interpreted by zealous western Christians, are deeply permissive and supportive of the West’s capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism that have caused far more destruction and death than a revanchist Islam that rose in resistance to western hegemony and terrorism. Based on available literature, it is known that Al Qaeda is a response to US military in Saudi Arabia and US support of Israel’s slow motion genocide (state terrorism) against Palestinians and their neighbors. Daesh was spawned by US militarism against Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

*****

I could have listed plenty more examples of murderous US imperialism, but I am talking to the expert on the topic. See Blum’s Master List.

Moreover, persuasive evidence suggests that Daesh is a US creation to further discredit Islam thus giving US imperialism more pretexts to attack Muslims.

I am in solidarity with the bulk of what Blum writes. He is exceptional when it comes to perfidious American policy and actions abroad. However, blaming Islam for the acts carried out by people is misdirection. Accounts vary somewhat, but in general, Muslims believe the Qur’an is Allah’s word relayed by the archangel Jibreel (Gabriel) who enabled the illiterate prophet Mohammed to read Allah’s message. Each person derives the meaning of the verses through his own interpretation or acceptance of another’s interpretation.

It is entirely possible that Islamic “teachings” can be bent to inspire/manipulate men into violent acts, but it is entirely possible that benevolent “teachings” of Islam can draw people toward peace. There are several ideologies that can be warped to untoward ends among susceptible people.

However, in the absence of imperialist evil wreaked against them, would these people professing to be Muslims have been inspired/manipulated into violent reprisals?

And why is religion or an ideology being used to spur people to violence? If the radicalized teachings are a reaction to injustices against a people, it seems unreasonable to focus blame on a religion rather than the injustices that brought about the radicalized teachings.

Nonetheless, whatever is cited as a motivating factor, the acts are solely the responsibility of the perpetrators of the acts.

People who claim to be Christians have launched crusades, set up Inquisitions to fight heresy, wrote Papal Bulls to allow dispossessing non-Christian Indigenous peoples of their territory, and started world wars, among other grave crimes. People professing to be Christians continue, to the present day, to wreak genocidal wars throughout the world.

I have no intention to indict any religion because the main issue is those who use religions as alibis for their actions and policy.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are beliefs. People choose to adhere to whichever one of these monotheisms (or other theisms) based on faith — or are more likely believe they were divinely led to the true belief. All three of these monotheistic religions contain “teachings” of violence and peace. Thus, to ascribe terrorism solely to the “teachings” of one religion is biased and wrong; and it leads to questions as to what is the interior motive driving such summary judgement without addressing the basic issues that generate terrorism.

To iterate, it is plain wrongheaded to criticize Islam – and Islam exclusively among religions – for spurring terrorism. To gain understanding, it is crucial to put terrorism and violence in proper context since terrorism against the West did not arise out of a vacuum. Neither does the Qur’an instruct Muslims to attack friendly nations. So-called Jihadist terrorism is in response to the far greater preceding terrorism and unremitting oppression from the Christian West and the Jewish Israel. By way of simple analogy, if someone punches you in the face without reason, and you punch that person back, yes, you used violence, but who deserves greater condemnation: the initiator of violence or you who responded to the violence with violence? Or should you and the initiator of violence be equally condemned? And if you had turned the other cheek to the person who first punched you, what lesson would that impart? Would the perpetrator be deterred from punching you again?

Finally, among religions, it is predominantly — and unquestionably — the nations and people that profess Christian beliefs that have wreaked and spawned the most horrific terrorism throughout history, including today. Nonetheless, I do not believe Christian “teachings” have much to do with US genocide against Arabs. US elitists are spurred by greed for control of resources, territory, information, and power. When elitists use religion, nationalism, and terrorism against other peoples to kill, rob, occupy, humiliate, and oppress them, why place the culpatory focus on the violence in resistance to the initial violence of forces manipulated by western elitists? The victims of violence, of course, must be accorded the right to resist violence. [5]

ENDNOTES

See Peter Standring, “Koran a Book of Peace, Not War, Scholars Say,” National Geographic Today 25 September 2001. Karen Armstrong, “The True, Peaceful Face Of Islam,” Time, 23 September 2001.
To be clear, Blum does not mislabel western interventionism.
In Blum’s recent article, he writes “… in the immortal words of my people — a schmuck!” Emphasis added.
William Blum, “Why Terrorists Hate America,” Third World Traveler. Daesh are terrorists, yes?
I explain here: “Progressivist Principles and Resistance,” Dissident Voice, 27 September 2010.

Noblesse n’oblige—
Julian Fellowes’ dubious tears for a morally suspect social order
Downton Abbey is a hidebound reactionary’s wet dream concretized on television, albeit with a peeling high-brow patina…

The British are especially apt to deplore what is irretrievably lost, namely their power over 1/5^th of the globe. Instead of which they are very cleverly now re-creating a quite phantasmagorical image of superior moral rectitude, much of which is part of imperial justification like US exceptionalism. Having long been considered the ruffians of Europe, their war-like might and business acumen and ruthlessness (after all Napoleon, and no slouch he, called them the grocers of Europe) permeated into their colonies which is preserved till today. (The Brits were one of the first caste-bound aristocracies to allow for the entry of commercial fortunes into their ranks—a phenomenon that could be seen as some sort of “regressive meritocracy” system. All the thick pretenses aside, money talks loud in the British way of things.)

In that vein their television dramas are laudatores actis of a society that brought forth in Victorian times the horrid deprivation of much of their population as correctly described by Dickens.

Vehicles like Downton Abbey, dripping pomp and circumstance, serve to justify British chauvinism and the rule of reactionary specimens like David Cameron and his neocolonialist ilk.

The ownership of land, which was always a measure of wealth, prevented what the French Revolution created, the very idea of private property, promptly annexed by the manufacturing owning classes. Deprived by legislation of their Commons, land which was at the disposal of everyone, indigent peasants looked for employment in the increasingly huge estates that the income from colonial exploitation and the indentured rural workers created. These were in fact if not in name like the Roman latifundia where the slaves created the wealth for their owners. With the male primogeniture system that earmarked the feudal systems in Europe came the result that younger sons and daughters had to find work with the aristocracy. This created especially in England with the wealth from their colonies, enormous households serving a small coterie of owners, who held to their own set of rituals and behavior. Coupled with what was considered to be an elitist and very educated form of English, it easily excluded those who were not part of “society,” i.e. a privileged and equestrian group (still very much in force today even though entirely without its previous glory).

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ostalgia for former power and exclusion of lesser humans is now expressed in the many television dramas like Upstairs, Downstairs which tried to gloss over the humiliation and exploitation with a markedly hypocritical talent, showing a ‘refined’ upstairs sensitivity with a glorified downstairs nobility, both of which are fake. The treacherousness of the upper classes who know no loyalty except to their survival is beautifully illustrated in the movie The Remains of the Day, which is an exception, like the equally quite superb depiction of betrayal in the movie the Glorious 39, but, well, as I say, they are the exceptions. What we have now in the television medium are what the editor very aptly described as aristo-voyeurism, a type of nefarious peepshows designed to show that elites are also people with ‘normal’ reactions and feelings. Their fictional benevolence and rectitude equals the virtuousness of their servants and flunkies. In that manner, wittingly or not, these television shows are a clever tool for bolstering the status quo as they convey that with hard work and ‘duty’ one can attain the serenity, self assurance and benefits of the reigning elite.

The British class system in films and television, in the postwar.

Pride & Prejudice, an Austen romantic novel written in the Napoleonic era, was made into a blockbuster TV series by BBC in 1995. P&P remains an insightful portrait of class mores in the upper reaches of British society, as witnessed by a perceptive member of the lower landed gentry. The book, however, is a reaffirmation of upper class rule, depicted as flawed, but ultimately just.

P&P: The Bennet girls. Their climb to fortune and happiness via marriage to rich men supposedly sitting in the upper pegs of English society is at the center of Austen's plot.

The horrid inequality of British society was well depicted in Dickens' novels, among which Oliver Twist stands out as one of the most eloquent. (Barney Clark, as Twist, in one of the book's many film versions). Dickens, however, often gave his novels happy endings.

With superb performances by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, The Remains of the Day (1993) presented an absorbing portrait of the British gentry in the pre WW2 period, including their widespread support for fascism. The novel and film also examined the misplaced trust and acceptance of the aristocratic order by the servants.

Tunes of Glory (1960), a film adaptation of the James Kennaway novel, directed by Ronald Neame, examined the British class system through the prism of officer conflict in a Scottish regiment. Alec Guinness as Jock Sinclair, and John Mills as new commanding officer Basil Barrow, starred, with Dennis Price, Kay Walsh, Susanna York, and Gordon Jackson in key supporting roles.

In Jack Clayton's powerful drama Room at the Top (1959), Laurence Harvey had to choose between his true love for a married woman (Simone Signoret) and a golden future with the besotted daughter of an industrialist. The 1960's was a period of British neorealism, with excellent offerings looking at working / ruling class life and the many obstacles in the path of social advancement.

The present and possibly most intrusive assertion of this myth, a veritable cultural fungus irresponsibly disseminated in America by PBS, is the haughty British soap opera Downturn Blarney, sorry, we mean, Downton Abbey, a vehicle that uses the faux château of the ancient Herbert family as its main stage.

The series mastermind, sometime actor and author Julian Fellows, himself a member of the aristocracy, albeit with some trepidation.

The concoction is so full of calculated deceit and so steeped in pretension that one hardly knows where to begin. Lordy lordy, the writer Fellowes has a hate/love relationship with his betters (at least as he sees them) and also a hardly hidden contempt for the poor souls who had to service these dolts out of simple poverty. England never had a revolution, per se, despite its bloody civil wars in which the very same class who finally hijacked the French revolution managed to take power and commit regicide a full half century before their gallic counterparts. The Restoration notwithstanding, bourgeois power, now entrenched in parliament, was never fully relinquished, especially when one monarch after another, despite savvy courtiers, proved altogether inept at holding back the forces of modernity.

That said, one seeks answers for the relative ease with which the British masses fell back into the nobility trap after tasting an admittedly flawed but more egalitarian republicanism. Perhaps brute force, entrenched traditions, a fragile self-image and very clever propaganda by the ‘upper classes’ made the slaves consent once again to be exploited and heartily despised. But like the Stockholm syndrome or at least pretended to be so by Fellowes, they adored their masters and did everything to please them instead of coshing them over their snotty heads like they smartly once did in France.

Mr Carson, the Butler. “Plus royaliste que le Roi.”

One of the most tragicomic and despicable figures in the pantheon of classist society is doubtless the servant who makes it his business to climb the greasy pole by displaying more loyalty to the interests of his “betters” than they themselves can muster. Thus Fellowes in DA has constructed a poor butler who is plus royaliste que le roi, a man who has no doubts about his sacred duty to keep the rest of the underground grovelers in line while the above ground crowd indulges in silly games and in pseudo-problems. (Raffish communists, having no respect for genteel manners, accurately depicted these characters as “running dogs of capitalism.” Of course, while the label may strike some as a bit too harsh, it is 100% precise, even if, in general, the capitalist running canines perform many other duties well beyond and more critical to the well-being of the privileged than running a household, things like serving as foreign policy advisors (think Kissinger, Condi Rice, etc.) for example, or as bemedalled henchmen, or, as working lordship baron Fellowes does, as a clever propagandist.)

Speaking of the tinseled crowd upstairs, nobody in this moving-picture photo romanza is believable, from the holier-than-thou Mrs.Crawley to the grumpy old drama queen Violet Grantham played by Dame Maggie Smith, who acting the dowager behaves more like an upper-middle class British bourgeois snob (and probably reflects Fellowes’ own attitude rather closely) regaling us with snide comments that a Victorian / Edwardian aristocrat would surely might have found beneath her dignity to make. The only one who really comes across as believable is Lady Sybille, who is therefore mercilessly offed in the script. Americans who luckily never had to cope with the likes of Grantham and his worthless family (although far too many American plebs lacking in self-dignity are willing to bow and scrape before the native industrial royalty, the spectacle of celebrities kissing the rump of egotist Doanld Trump in The Apprentice is quite telling), view this photo novella as amusing and as an accurate insight into the lives of these ci-devant bollixes, the Creepy-Crawleys. As the conservative but brilliant writer Shakespeare said: “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”, a Machiavellian thought much appreciated by elites but a dire warning to those who would think otherwise.

BELOW: Some remedial views of what it meant to serve in these grand establishments, by direct witnesses and descendants of servitor class.

APPENDIX

Who owns Britain today?
You’ll be surprised. Click on the bar below and find out.

WHO OWNS THE UNITED KINGDOM? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

Look who owns Britain: A third of the country STILL belongs to the aristocracy

By TAMARA COHEN FOR THE DAILY MAIL \ UPDATED: 10 November 2010

More than a third of Britain’s land is still in the hands of a tiny group of aristocrats, according to the most extensive ownership survey in nearly 140 years. In a shock to those who believed the landed gentry were a dying breed, blue-blooded owners still control vast swathes of the country within their inherited estates. A group of 36,000 individuals – only 0.6 per cent of the population – own 50 per cent of rural land.

Do click to examine to max. resolution.

Their assets account for 20million out of Britain’s 60million acres of land, and the researchers estimate that the vast majority is actually owned by a wealthy core of just 1,200 aristocrats and their relatives. [For reference: In a nation as small as Britain, these folks control a surface as big as three Belgiums.—Eds]

Life is good: The Duke of Westminster. This laddie has a property portfolio totalling around £6billion

The top ten individual biggest owners control a staggering total of more than a million acres between them. These figures have been uncovered by the ‘Who Owns Britain?’ report by Country Life Magazine, thought to be the most extensive survey of its type undertaken since 1872. The top private landowner, not just in Britain but Europe, is the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, whose four sumptuous estates cover 240,000 acres in England and Scotland. But while his land is the most vast, it is not the most valuable, as the net worth depends on how much is farmland, as well as the value of the property and sporting and heritage activities on it.

The most valuable land belongs to Number 4 on the list, the Duke of Westminster, whose Grosvenor Estate, worth a whopping £6billion, takes in the wealthiest areas of London, including Belgravia and Mayfair. Second on the list of the most land owned is Scottish magnate the Duke of Atholl. His 145,700 acres have pushed Prince Charles, who as Duke of Cornwall has 133,000 acres, into third place on the list of individual owners. Yet all are dwarfed by the incredible reach of corporate land-ownership, which barely existed 100 years ago. As the biggest 19th-century landowners such as the Church have been sidelined by economic and social changes, their land has been snapped up by the state, charities and the private sector. More than 2.5million acres – 4 per cent of the country – is in the hands of the Government-run Forestry Commission, which the Coalition plans to privatise.

Second on the list is the fast-expanding National Trust, with 630,000 acres. Most of the report’s information has been uncovered only in the past five years after a registration campaign targeting huge landowners who had previously avoided disclosing their assets.

The report’s author, Kevin Cahill, who has been researching land ownership for ten years, told the Daily Mail: ‘A small minority still own a huge amount of Britain’s land and what surprises many people is that over the last 100 years, not a lot has changed. ‘For the rich the pursuit of land is as important as it’s ever been. They receive subsidies and most of their assets are held in trust, avoiding inheritance tax. ‘The biggest change in land ownership in the past 100 years is that people who live in cities now finance the countryside whereas it used to be the other way around.’ Read the full report in Country Life, on sale today.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Patrice Greanville is a social and media critic, and editor in chief of The Greanville Post. Both authors detest institutionalized snobbery and the devious glorification of social inequalities. They reside in the New York City metro area.

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LONDON DISPATCH
By Michael Faulkner

“I swear by God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors and that I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend Her Majesty against all enemies.” The Armed Forces oath of allegiance to the Queen.

Let’s start by turning the clock back a century. In Britain during the years immediately prior to the outbreak of the imperialist war in 1914, rising tensions in continental Europe and beyond had not been a matter of great concern. After 1911 it was rather the “Irish Question” that dominated political discourse on domestic and foreign affairs, and, specifically, the near-certainty of the passage through parliament of a Bill that would grant a form of limited Home Rule to the whole of Ireland. Such an outcome, it was hoped, would end a conflict between Irish nationalism and the English colonial ruling class that had rumbled on for much of the nineteenth century. After twelve years of unbroken Conservative rule a Liberal government had been elected in 1906 which, together with 83 Irish Nationalists and 30 newly elected Labour MPs held 512 parliamentary seats, a huge majority of 354 over the 158 Conservatives. By 1911 the prolonged battle between the government and the unelected, Tory dominated House of Lords over the “People’s Budget” had led to the Parliament Act which removed the right of the second chamber to reject money bills passed by the House of Commons and replaced their power of veto over other bills by the right to delay them for a maximum of two years. Astonishing as it seems today, even these limited encroachments on the bastion of power and privilege were regarded by its defenders as signs of diabolic revolutionary intent. It is against this background that the Asquith government in 1912 introduced the long-delayed and obstructed Irish Home Rule Bill.

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE FOR BEST RESOLUTION

In almost every country the military is an institution apart, separated from society by its own set of values and sense of mission.

In Ireland support for home rule was strongest among the Roman Catholic population which made up 73% of the whole. The Protestant population was concentrated predominantly in the nine northern counties of the province of Ulster. Protestants formed a majority in six of these counties. The other three, Donegal (the northernmost county in Ireland), Monaghan and Cavan had Catholic majorities. Ulster Unionists at the time made much of the need to defend the Protestant people of Ulster from being submerged by the Catholic masses that would subjugate them if the Nationalists were to achieve home rule. But their real aim was to preserve the Union at all costs and by whatever means.

Charles in one of his many uniform inspecting the Army Air Corps Regiment.

Prince Charles in one of his many uniforms inspecting the Army Air Corps Regiment.

The outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 shelved the Home Rule issue for the time being on the assumption that the war would be short. In the perspective of history it has also tended to eclipse the dark and disreputable political and military intrigues that, between 1912 and 1914 brought Britain closer to military rebellion and civil war than at any time since the Jacobite rebellion. Those events are hardly remembered or referred to now (except in Ireland) and when they are it is usually claimed that things were not as serious as they seemed and that there was never any real threat to democracy or of military coups. While the armed forces can and do overrule parliamentary government in some countries, it could never happen here.

Unionist opposition to the Parliament Act of 1911

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Parliament Act of 1911 was hardly radical. A radical act would have abolished the unelected, undemocratic second chamber as a relic of medieval aristocratic power. But that would have been beyond the wit or wishes of a Liberal government that was still denying the vote to women and committing to jail those who actively demanded such rights. But the Tory Unionists realised that the Act rendered useless their domination of the House of Lords as it no longer gave them the power to veto the Home Rule Bill, only to delay its enactment. They and their allies in the armed forces therefore argued (spuriously) that since the constitutional means to prevent the break-up of the United Kingdom no longer existed, they had no choice but to resort to extra-parliamentary means. That was the view taken by the Ulster Volunteers who organized and trained to resist home rule by force. Their leader, the demagogic Unionist MP, Sir Edward Carson (left), was a lawyer who had successfully prosecuted Oscar Wilde for homosexuality. He was described by the historian LCB Seaman as “reckless, dangerous and unconstitutional.” The Ulster Volunteer Force, as it became in 1913, was openly encouraged by Bonar Law, the Ulster- born Canadian leader of the Tory/Unionist opposition in Parliament who was later to become prime minister. It is sometimes claimed that the Unionists were bluffing, actually trying to force Asquith to abandon home rule, or to force him out of office. The new monarch, George V, made no secret of his opposition to Irish home rule, telling Asquith that there should be another election before the Home Rule Bill was put onto the statute book, although there was absolutely no constitutional obligation to do so. In an attempt to deny the government the ability to use the army to enforce home rule once the Bill had passed, they attempted to disrupt the passage of the Army Act.

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 13: Troops advance down the Mall during the Trooping the Colour on June 13, 2015 in London, England. The ceremony is Queen Elizabeth II's annual birthday parade and dates back to the time of Charles II in the 17th Century, when the Colours of a regiment were used as a rallying point in battle. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Trooping the Colour on June 13, 2015 in London, England. The ceremony is Queen Elizabeth II’s annual birthday parade and dates back to the time of Charles II in the 17th Century. Like many old nations’ armed forces the British Army cherishes authoritarianism, pomp and tradition.

Army top brass such as former Commander in Chief Lord Roberts, of Kandahar and Boer War fame, and Sir Henry Wilson, Director of Military Operations at the War Office, made no secret of their opposition to home rule and of their support for Bonar law and the Tory/Unionist opposition. The crisis intensified in the early months of 1914. Carson hinted in a speech to parliament that he was about to organize a military coup in Ulster. The army C in C in Ireland, Sir Arthur Papet, announced that officers at the Curragh army headquarters near Dublin would resign en masse or simply disappear if they were ordered by the government into action against the UVF in Ulster. This amounted to a threat of military rebellion endorsed by the Tory/Unionists and the highest ranking officers in the British Army. The UVF smuggled 30,000 rifles and 3-5 million rounds of ammunition supplied by Germany, into Ireland at Larne, Donaghadee and Bangor. Despite the illegality of this operation, the British Army and the Royal Irish Constabulary did nothing to intercept it. They simply turned a blind eye. When, in a nationalist counter-operation an attempt was made near Dublin to smuggle arms to the National Volunteers which had been formed to resist the UVF, 3 Irish nationalists were killed and more than 20 injured. Faced with the threat of military rebellion the Asquith government effectively capitulated to the Unionists. Any hopes of home rule would only proceed on the basis of partition – the separation of part or all of the province of Ulster from the rest of Ireland.

100 Years Later. HM Armed Forces and Politics Today

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]ould anything similar happen today? To seriously suggest that there could be circumstances where it might happen is to lay oneself open to ridicule. Britain is a democracy, it is argued, and the notion that there could be anything resembling a military intervention against the elected government is the stuff of loony-left fantasy. It is less likely to happen here, we are given to believe, than anywhere else in the world.

Laborite PM Wilson: The man who caved in.

Laborite PM Wilson: Check mated by white supremacists, home reactionaries, and a military in almost open rebellion.

Well, fifty years ago something similar did occur again. In 1964 a Labour government led by Harold Wilson was returned to office for the first time since 1951. Shortly afterwards in 1965 the white minority racist administration in the British colony of Rhodesia unilaterally declared itself independent. This Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was illegal and clearly intended to prevent Rhodesia following the negotiated de-colonization trend of the 1960s towards majority rule in Africa. Many white Rhodesians, including members of the Rhodesian Police, were former British servicemen. The proper course would have been for the Wilson government to issue the Smith regime with an ultimatum to rescind UDI and, if they failed to do so, to send in the army against them. UN military support might also have been requested, and would have been forthcoming. Wilson refused to take this course and there was no British military intervention. Why not? The Smith regime and the right wing press in Britain warned ominously of the consequences of sending British soldiers to subdue their “kith and kin.” According to Denis Healey, who was secretary of defence in the Wilson government at the time, there were “mutinous mutterings among senior officers.” The government opted instead for sanctions against Rhodesia. These were completely ineffectual as it was known they would be. They were broken with impunity by South Africa and Portugal. The national liberation struggle continued for another 15 years until Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980.

1960s and 1970s: Plots against Wilson…..

There is overwhelming evidence that MI5 plotted over many years to remove Harold Wilson from power. Wilson was a mainstream social democratic Labour leader. Nothing in his tenure of office as prime minister for eight years between 1964 and 1976 suggests that he was a radical leftist. Nevertheless MI5 had a permanent file on him started in 1945 when he held ministerial office in Atlee’s government. Preposterously, they believed him to be a KGB agent. Cecil King, head of the International Publishing Corporation tried to enlist Lord Louis Mountbatten in a plot to remove Wilson from power in a coup and lead a government that would, King claimed, have the respect and support of the armed forces. Mountbatten declined the offer. There is strong evidence that the occupation of Heathrow in an army exercise in 1974, about which the government had been given no information, and which was later explained as a practice run for action against the IRA, was actually linked to the plot to topple Wilson. There remains much that has not been explained about Wilson’s sudden and unexpected resignation in 1976. A veil has been drawn over these murky intrigues involving the security forces and the military. There is every reason to be concerned that the same combination of anti-democratic forces in the higher echelons within the ruling class establishment are no less reactionary and no less alert today than they were in the past. Occasionally the veil slips and we get an insight into their mind-set and preoccupations.

….2015 – 2020: Plots against Corbyn?

Such was the case when in September of last year an unidentified “senior serving general” was quoted by the Sunday Times as saying that “feelings are running very high within the armed forces” about the possibility of a Corbyn government. “You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security. You would see…generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn over …Trident, pulling out of NATO and any plan to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces…There would be mass resignations at all levels…which would effectively, be a mutiny.” He was reported as claiming that if a government led by Corbyn attempted to take such radical steps “the army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of the country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that.”

Jeremy Corbyn: Corraled into ineffectiveness even before assuming any real power.

Jeremy Corbyn: Corralled into ineffectiveness even before assuming any real power. Yet the myth of British democracy lives on.

The comments of this anonymous “senior serving general” amount to approval of military rebellion and coup d’etat. But his remarks have made no great stir. There has been no clamour to demand his identity and prosecution. The Ministry of Defence has limited itself to the observation that the general’s remarks were ”not helpful.” But they ruled out any leak inquiry as they claimed that there was no possibility of identifying him. It is difficult to avoid the impression that for the MoD his remarks were “not helpful” because he let the cat out of the bag by blurting out widely held opinions among high ranking officers that should not be made public. As the Sunday Times revealed that the officer had served in Northern Ireland it shouldn’t be beyond the powers of military intelligence to discover his identity if they really had any interest in doing so.

“The comments of [an] anonymous “senior serving general” amount to approval of military rebellion and coup d’etat. But his remarks have made no great stir. There has been no clamour to demand his identity and prosecution…”

The intense hostility towards Corby in such circles comes as no surprise. It is shared by the Tory leadership, most of their supporters in the Tory press and much of the political establishment. Cameron has described Corbyn as a “Britain-hating” apologist for terrorism. His failure to join in the singing of God Save the Queen and bow sufficiently obsequiously to the monarch is treated as evidence of base disloyalty to the nation. His opposition to nuclear weapons and his commitment to British nuclear disarmament mean he refuses to defend the country against attack. In short, he is unpatriotic and unfit to lead the country. Given the ubiquity of such hostile accusations against him, it is hardly surprising that there are those in the higher ranks of the armed forces who think like the unidentified serving general quoted above, and, faced with the prospect of Corbyn becoming prime minister, “just wouldn’t stand for it.” The same line of thought is evident in the response of the Head of the Armed Forces, Sir General Houghton when asked what he thought of Corbyn’s pledge never to use nuclear weapons if he were to become prime minister. He replied:”It would worry me if that thought was translated into power.”

The Loyalty Oath

In a Guardian article (Unfriendly Fire: Would a Corbyn government lead to a military revolt? 25. January 2016) Andy Beckett quoted a posting on the Army Rumour Service website (Arrse): “What’s wrong with a coup if the generals are loyal to the Crown. Let her [the Queen] decide who runs the country.” This may be laughed off as the wish-dream of an immature fascist-inclined ignoramus, but there are likely to be those in more senior ranks who, albeit with greater sophistication, hold similar views. Members of the armed forces swear an oath to bear “faithful and true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors.” They swear to defend her against all enemies. The armed forces are authoritarian and hierarchical. Some would say all armed forces have to be. People who voluntarily join the armed services generally do not do so because of any passionately-held belief in democratic principles or practices. A culture exists and is nurtured which distinguishes between “us” (the armed forces) and “them” (civilians, or “civvy street”). “We” defend “them” from whoever we are told are “the enemy.” In the hierarchical class system with its plethora of absurd ranks and titles that passes for democracy in Britain, it is taken for granted that an unelected head of state in the person of a hereditary monarch will reign in perpetuity. That everyone should be duty-bound to abjure the principle of democratic citizenship in favour of the status of “subject” of the monarch, is to any serious democrat patently absurd and demeaning. Yet the armed forces oath of loyalty rests firmly on this premise. All who swear the oath are in duty bound to do so “honestly and faithfully.” The oath binds them, not to defend a democratic constitution, but rather to serve and defend a named unelected head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, and her heirs and successors. In this respect it is very similar to the oath that, from 1934, members of the German armed forces were required to swear to a named individual as head of state – Adolf Hitler.

Wehrmacht soldiers swearing allegiance to Hitler. Loyalty to the Fuhrer, loyalty to the Queen—where is the essential difference?

Could it happen here?

In the past, as we have seen, high ranking officers and members of the British intelligence services have, in their fervid imaginings, concluded that democratically elected governments and political leaders posed a grave threat to Britain’s national security. They have spoken and sometimes acted as though they were the true guardians of “the national interest” , believing that they were entitled to use whatever means “fair or foul” might be needed to bring down an elected government.

Members of the British ruling class generally like to present an image of moderation and reasonableness. It is assumed that any government of the left would never try to move beyond the parameters of what is acceptable to the mainstream political establishment. But if, perhaps in the not too distant future given the unprecedentedly unstable state of the world, a government they chose to regard as “far left” were to be elected, committed to a radical shift towards socialism in domestic and international policy, can we be sure that those same forces who have in the past become so agitated with such little cause, would remain confined to barracks?

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Britain today is a “universal surveillance” state. The close association between GCHQ/MI5 and the NSA/CIA has been exposed by Edward Snowden beyond possibility of denial. Under the cloak of the “war on terror” everyone can be spied upon all the time. But while in other countries where the intelligence services have amassed such vast powers of surveillance there has been widespread public opposition, in Britain the response has been muted. With one or two notable exceptions the liberal media, far from expressing outrage, have meekly acquiesced. Partly, at least, this may be explained by the glamorous aura that in the public imagination pervades the British intelligence services. The glories of empire have long since faded away, but the myth of a heroic British agent bestriding the narrow world like a colossus of righteousness, fighting for justice and slaying the dragons of evil, was brought alive more than 60 years ago. In the twilight days of the British Empire, the racist imperialist Ian Fleming, following in the footsteps of such predecessors as G.A. Henty, P.C. Wren and John Buchan, created his alter ego in the person of James Bond. For 54 years cinemagoers have followed his exploits on the screen, where the worst (though not all) of Fleming’s racism, sexism and homophobia have been expunged. The fantasy world in which Bond operates has made a successful transition from the cold war era of the late twentieth century which provided a barely plausible raison d’etre for the earlier movies, to the less predictable and more chaotic twenty first century. The one element that has remained unchanged is the myth of a post-imperial hero who keeps the flag of freedom flying while on Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Actors who played James Bond down the decades. Probably not a single one realizes that he was helping to maintain a myth profoundly injurious to peace and democracy.

Actors who played James Bond down the decades. Probably not a single one realizes that he was helping to maintain a myth profoundly injurious to real peace and democracy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MIKE FAULKNER, serving as Senior Contributing Editor; London Correspondent is a British citizen. He lives in London where for many years he taught history and political science at Barnet College, until his retirement in 2002. He has written a two-weekly column, Letter from the UK, for TPJ Magazine since 2008. Over the years his articles have appeared in such publications as Marxism Today, Monthly Review and China Now. He is a regular visitor to the United States where he has friends and family in New York City. Contact Mike at mikefaulkner@greanvillepost.com

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