Stephen Pollards Defence - The Truth is a Lie When You Attack a Zionist
Below is an update on this story from the ‘Sam Loves Hummus’ Blog. Apparently Stephen Pollard has tweeted that the truth about the JC providing a blog page to the BNP candidate for London, Cortiglia, is a lie. True Orwellian stuff to claim that the verifiable truth is a lie when screen shots of the JC blog are all over the net. But then Pollard was never the brightest star in the galaxy or to use a colloquial phrase, he is widely recognised as being a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Getting rid of the evidence, as the Jewish Chronicle has now done, doesn’t mean you can erase history that easily.
Tony Greenstein
Apparently, Jewish Chronicle editor, Stephen Pollard, has tweeted that the claim they hosted Cortiglia is an “outrageous lie”
Think I might start a competition for most outrageous lie told by anti-Israel activists. Weirdest today is that JC is giving a column to BNP — Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) April 18, 2012
and that the claims are “utter nonsense”
'A bunch of liars have been putting it about we are to publish views of a BNP candidate. Utter nonsense of course.' — Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) April 18, 2012
Pollard and the Jewish Chronicle are right to be ashamed to host a blog by a candidate for a fascist, Islamophobic party whose leader once said about the Holocaust “I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter-day witch-hysteria.”
Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said about the BNP in 2008: ”Whatever other sources of anti-semitism there are, we are still very concerned by the threat that comes from the far right… Despite all its attempts to portray itself differently we know it is still the same antisemitic, racist party it always was.”
Being a fascist is, it seems, no barrier to getting a blog published on the Jewish Chronicle website, so long as you write the right things supporting Israeli apartheid against Palestinians.
Update
This post was published on Apr 18 at 15:11. At 15:32, Ben White retweeted it. 8 minutes later at 15:40, Stephen Pollard tweeted
Just to clear up the lies: JC had open access blogging. We were alerted a BNP member had set one up. We barred him. — Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) April 18, 2012
and then at 15:43 he tweeted
Anti-Israel liars claiming we ‘host’ BNP blogger. We don’t. We blocked him. They lie about Israel. They lie about @JewishChron — Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) April 18, 2012
Note how Pollard’s line moves from outright denial to admitting that the blogger was hosted (sorry, ‘hosted’) at the JC when he realised that the evidence was still visible online, although he still calls us “liars,” though it’s not clear about what exactly; it would seem that he was the one being economical with the truth.
Of course, it’s possible that this was a genuine mistake on the part of the Jewish Chronicle, though it’s still worrying that a fascist was able to use their imprimatur unobstructed for seven months until a “bunch of liars” pointed it out – and I think I’m being very generous here to an editor who had no compunction about publishing a piece describing the author’s “pleasure” in the murder of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni, my comrade.
Anti-Zionists Banned – Fascists and Racists Welcome to Blog with the Jewish Chronicle
Hat tip to Brian Robinson!
One of the Zionists’ favourite tricks is to pore over an anti-Zionist site or blog such as this and see if you can discover a link to an article on a far-right site. Now most of us are caught out at some time or other. After all it is often virtually impossible when blogging quickly to see if a site is kosher. Usually it is, but given the web is thick with conspiracy and far-right sites, then it is inevitable that you will link to such a site inadvertently.Sue Blackwell, Stephen Sizer and myself have all been caught out. Why, I once linked to a neo-Nazi site deliberately, because it was the source of information on Atzmon’s neo-Nazi links, and the anti-Semitic Mary Rizzo complained! Quite a Zionist sometimes!
Well Stephen Sizer, the anti-Zionist vicar from Dorset has had the last laugh. He was also a victim of this Zionist trick. And what conclusions do the Zionists draw? Why we’re all anti-Semites of course.
So what do you say when Britain’s premier Zionist newspaper, albeit one edited by Stephen Pollard, ex-editor of the EDL supporting Daily Express, allows the BNP’s mayoral candidate in London, one Carlos Contiglia, to post no less than 4 articles on his blog.
I understand that Pollard has been tweeting to the effect that all readers can have a blog (strange one that!) and Carlos was no exception. So, if Pollard is correct, any neo-Nazi can have their own blog on the Jewish Chronicle’s site.
Not true I’m afraid. Until about 6 months ago, I used to sometimes post replies to attacks on me on the various licensed JC blogs, in particular Jonathan Hoffman’s. Then there was a hue and cry by these Zionist democrats, who complained that their lies and vitriol were being answered by their targets. The JC was sponsoring nasty anti-Zionist types like myself and, sure enough, one day my posting rights were cancelled and I was unable to respond to such attacks. Note that I have not returned the compliment and still allow Hoffman to respond to criticism of him. Zionists however are not democrats and do not take kindly to debate or any expose of their politics. They rely on power politics not persuasion.
So there we have it. Because he is not an anti-Zionist, and therefore doesn’t figure on their racist radar, Contiglia is allowed to post untroubled, until various Zionist critics (see below) cotton on to the fact that a pro-Zionist neo-Nazi is being given space on the JC’s blogs. The real reason why Contiglia was not troubled was because the JC is focussed almost entirely on the left and anti-Zionists, hence he was left undisturbed.
It’s no wonder that Pollard and Hoffman get on so well. Both of them lurch from one disaster to another.
Incidentally I disagree with Electronic Intifada's excellent journalist here, Asa Winstanley. Yes the BNP's policies are more extremist (although even this is debatable since the contexts are so different - the BNP isn't opposed to the NHS - at least not openly! but nor is it more influential than the Tea party).
Tony Greenstein
Stephen Sizer
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye." (Matthew 7:3-5)In January the Jewish Chronicle published an article about me, Bishop: anti-Zionist vicar 'no antisemite' concerning criticisms made for a link to an article Israel's Window to Bomb Iran by Ray McGovern. His article, written exclusively for Consortium News, had been reposted within days on hundreds of websites, including a racist website, the UglyTruth. I made the mistake of linking to that copy on my Facebook in October rather than the original. When the unfortunate link was pointed out to me in January, I removed it straight away.
Now it transpires that the Jewish Chronicle itself has allowed Carlos Contiglia, the BNP candidate for the London Mayoral elections, to blog under their name from 12th September 2011, just three days after the BNP announced that their Press Officer, a member since 2001, would be standing for Mayor.
Yesterday they pulled his four articles after MPACUK exposed the link and Richard Silverstein blogged about it UK Jewish Chronicle Hosts BNP White Supremacist Blogger. Were the JC really unaware or just complacent to allow the BNP Press Officer to blog on their website for seven months? Maybe they should conduct a poll to see if the editor should be sacked.
UPDATE: I e mailed the Jewish Chronicle editor asking about Cortiglia’s status as a JC blogger. No one replied, but Ben White has noticed that the BNP leader’s posts are no longer publicly available on the site. So the response to my inquiry must’ve been to take the posts down. Their approach seems to hush this up so the embarrassment will not be too public. Hopefully, we can disabuse them of that notion.
Another JC reader notes that apparently any JC reader can set up their own personal blog on the newspaper’s website, which is what Cortiglia did. I’ve corrected my post title and text accordingly. Finally, Cortiglia’s four posts are were still available using these links (here and here). Whether or not Cortiglia was a featured blogger or a reader-blogger on the JC site, the fact remains that they published four of his posts, made them publicly accessible for eight months, and gave him a platform he wouldn’t otherwise have enjoyed.
UPDATE I: The JC has totally removed Cortiglia’s four blog posts, but we have screenshots for every one. I understand the JC is trying to claim they took down his blog in September, 2011. The accompanying screenshot disproves this, as the four posts were on the site and freely accessible till yesterday.
* * *
Stephen Sizer reports that the UK national Jewish community’s Jewish Chronicle has offered a blog-column to Carlos Cortiglia, a leader of the British National Party, the nation’s leading white supremacist political party. Cortiglia is the BNP candidate in the London mayoral race.I asked Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley to put BNP’s politics in a U.S. context, and whether it could be compared to the Tea Party. He replied that BNP carries more political weight, but its politics are more extreme:
Although they have moved towards a focus on Islamophobia and the counterjihad movement in recent years, their background is in the more traditional European neo-Nazi context and the National Front…
They used to be solidly anti-Semitic and it’s said [their national leader, Nick] Griffin used to deny the Holocaust. In recent years and especially since 9/11, they’ve decided they hate Muslims more than Jews or blacks so have put the focus on agitating against Muslims…
As part of their appeal to unite against Islam, they’ve made more recent attempts to distance themselves from anti-Semitism (although it can’t be far underneath the surface). Interestingly they are also now very pro-Israel.
This seems part of the growing convergence of the European far-right and pro-Israel ultranationalists. A perfect representative of this is of course Anders Breivik, who’s just gone on trial for murdering 77 young Norwegians. I’ve also written here about a group of Russian neo-Nazis who were welcomed to the Knesset by two far-right Jewish MKs. The operative concept here seems to be that the enemy of my Muslim enemy is my friend, even if he’s a Nazi.
But white supremacists? Is this how low the mainstream UK Jewish leadership are prepared to go? To make common cause with those who only a decade or so ago admired Adolf Hitler and denied the Holocaust?
On a somewhat related subject, Electronic Intifada reports that the faux progressive UK Jewish rights group, Engage, surreptitiously accepted funding from the UK Jewish Board of Deputies in order to mount an anti-BDS campaign. All the while Engage touted itself as an independent Jewish progressive voice, when it was a paid shill of the monied pro-Israel interests of the UK Jewish leadership. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have you develop a sense of smell about groups like this. They make a pretence of believing one thing and do something entirely different. Engage is one, as is StandWithUs.
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