What is it that the Bigots and Conspiracy Theorists fear about Drag Queens reading stories to children?

Demonstrators in Brighton and Hove see off an assortment of racists and fascists led by the King of Conspiracy Theorist, Piers Corbyn

Bigots & Piers Corbyn Demonstrate Against Drag Queens Reading Stories to Children

There was a demonstration by hundreds of people on Thursday at Brighton’s Jubilee Library against an assortment of fascists, cranks and conspiracy theorists who were attempting to prevent drag queen Aida H Dee from reading stories to children.

They were led by Piers Corbyn who seems to take pride in his idiocy. Leading chants of ‘your parents were straight’ and speaking of the New World Order it is clear that Corbyn has become gripped by a pathology that prevents all rational thought.

The pervasive idea that gripped the counter demonstrators was that by being read stories by a drag queen the ‘innocence’ of young children was being compromised and that they were being groomed.

Hove Bigots Demonstrate

These people have a fear of any sexuality which isn’t straight and believe that by coming into contact with those who are gay or transgender children will be contaminated and converted. Simply as a matter of fact children are sexual beings. They are inquisitive about their own bodies and that of other children. They will often play ‘doctor’ and play with themselves. That is a normal part of  growing up. For fascists and racists, children are innocent until they reach puberty. See Child sexuality.

The idea that children might experiment with different gender roles is a threat to those who cannot envisage anything other than male and female stereotypes. Anyone who has actually had children knows that they like to experiment in for example dressing up as the other sex or playing different roles.  But for the fascists and the assorted nutcases who gathered in Brighton and Hove this is a threat, not least to their own identity.

Not all those who demonstrated in Brighton and Hove were fascists but a good proportion were. I received an email a week ago from the outright neo-Nazi  Patriotic Alternative boasting that

‘Patriotic Alternative has led the charge to oppose this clear attempt to introduce children to sexualised material.’

We were accused by them of being paedophiles (a favourite accusation of neo-Nazis), grooming children and we were otherwise subject to abuse from these low lives. The irony is that it is the far right which has always contained within it numerous child abusers and paedophiles.

Hove Paedophile Woman

This should be no surprise since authoritarian political movements are a magnet for those who want to dominate others, including children. It is the Right and far-Right which have always supported beating children. Of course that was for their own good! Nothing to do with child abuse or their own sexual proclivities.

The woman in the video who accused us of paedophilia, was repeating a standard fascist trope belies the evidence. Below are a few examples.

Child abuse, paedophilia and the far-right

Despite his claim to campaign against child abuse, no one has been friendlier to paedophiles and child abusers than Tommy Robinson. Robinson has repeatedly equated Muslims with child abuse yet the statistics are quite clear. The actual data shows that the ethnic origins of those convicted of sexual contact with children are pretty much the same as the ethnic mix of the UK.

What is clear though is that fascists and neo-Nazis are over represented amongst those who are convicted. Below are a few examples:

1.            In 2010 Tommy Robinsons friend Richard Price was convicted of making 4 indecent images of children. Far from condemning Price a campaign was launched by the EDL for his release. Robinson wholeheartedly supported Price, claiming he had been “stitched up” and that “Price has no idea how they were on his computer.”

Since its formation, there have been at least 20 members and supporters of the EDL convicted of child sexual exploitation offences. At least 10 of these were active while Robinson was still leading it.

2.            The most shocking case was that of Robert Ewing, who murdered schoolgirl Paige Chivers. He was later prosecuted for abusing two other children.

3.            Leigh Mcmillan, a senior EDL figure was sentenced to 17 years after abusing a 10 year-old schoolgirl 100 times in the mid-1990s.

4.            In 2010, EDL supporter Brett Moses was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to sexual grooming.

5.            In 2011 John Broomfield, an active EDL supporter, admitted 20 counts of making indecent images of children. The police found 236 indecent images depicting children and babies on his computers.

6.            Also in 2011, Michael Coates was charged with a series of sex offences, including two attempted rapes. He was active in the EDL splinter group the North West Infidels.

7.            In 2011, a gang of racists attacked Redbridge Islamic Centre. Elliot Jones, one of the attackers on that day, was convicted of trying to incite a child into sexual activity.

8.            Mark “Archie” Sleman was an EDL supporter who was active in London and Exeter. He was imprisoned for nine years in 1994 for the kidnap and rape of a ten-year-old girl.

9.            In 2012 EDL member Matthew Woodward was charged with possession of images of children as young as 10.

10.       Michael Kinnear, who was active in the EDL was gaoled in 2015 after police found images on his mobile of a primary school aged girl “performing a type of striptease” and in a state of undress.

11.      47 year old Paul Whiteside was given a 10-month jail sentence suspended for two years for abducting a school girl. Whiteside had previously campaigned against ‘Muslim grooming of young girls in Lincolnshire.’

12.            Other EDL child abusers and sex offenders include Bradley Daniel Alford, Alan Boulter, Pete Gillett, Luke Atkinson, Dean Chambers and Bruce Cordwell amongst many others.

13.       More recently, Robinson once again found himself allied with a sex offender. In June 2017, he shared a stage with William Charlton at a rally in Sunderland at an event where the sexual abuse of children was the key theme of the speeches. It later transpired that Charlton was found guilty of distributing an indecent photograph of a child. 

I could go on but as I said, fascism attracts people who love uniforms and worship authority. Children are their ideal targets because of their vulnerability which is why their accusations of paedophilia are a means of projecting their own inadequacies onto others.

Gender Criticism

However there is also another aspect to this fear of people who don’t conform to ‘normal’ gender stereotypes.

As people will know from previous blogs, I do not agree with much of transgender ideology when it comes into conflict with women’s demands for autonomy.  In particular I find it difficult to accept the claim that a transwoman is a woman sexually when that clearly isn’t the case biologically.  Likewise I can’t accept that mere self-definition without more therefore means that a man can claim to be a woman.

However I have always been clear that we should not countenance prejudice or discrimination against transgender people. I find it strange that this debate focuses primarily on transwomen and not on transmen even though the majority of trans people are the latter. I have no doubt that a section of transwomen are imbued with what might be called masculinist ideology. For example the attack on a group of feminists by transwomen in 2017 in Hyde Park.

What has though shocked me is that someone who I know as a gender critical feminist posted to me an article critical of the drag queen story telling and when I pointed out the far-right connections she was nonchalant about this. 

Last year the Institute of Race Relations published an article by Sophia Siddiqui arguing that gender critical feminists were peddling a far right agenda. I wrote to them at the time saying that they might find that they were embarking on a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Feminists around Womens Place UK and other gender critical feminists have a responsibility to clearly and explicitly dissociate themselves from the fascist inspired demonstrations in Reading, Brighton and Hove and other places.  Otherwise their gender critical   ideology will be seen as nothing more than an attack on trans people per se.

Piers Corbyn

I have a few words to say about Piers Corbyn who I have just unfriended on Facebook. I sent him a message:

After today I am removing you as a friend. You have come a long way from a squatters leader and member of the IMG to someone who demonstrates alongside Patriotic Alternative and assorted fascists and bigots. I have no idea what has taken hold of you but you are working with an assortment of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Clearly socialism and a class analysis play no part in your world outlook or analysis. From always being an eccentric you have made idiocy your byword.

I first knew Piers over 40 years ago when he was the leader of the London Squatting Union as well as a member of the International Marxists Group. Now he comes across as a deranged conspiracy theorist, a climate denier and anti-vaxxer who happily works with fascists and other freaks.  He has now decided to join these people in ‘protecting children’.  It is true that children do need to be protected but primarily from Corbyn and his fascist friends.

Hove Paedophile Woman

The irony is that it was the parents of the children who were taking them to the story time, so it was they who were being accused of being paedophiles and groomers by these misfits and bigots.

This was undoubtedly distressing to the parents which was why it was necessary that we outnumbered them. CNN quoted one parent who had to pass through a Patriotic Alternative demonstration in Reading:

Rosie said she was unprepared for the vitriol she encountered at the library, where protesters waved signs reading "Stop grooming children" and a line of police officers ushered parents into the building. At least one mother was crying inside as protesters played the theme song to British TV show "Jim'll Fix It," whose late host was a notorious ​child sexual abuser, on loudspeakers outside the library.

"It was just horrible. I was expecting it to be a joyous thing, considering it had been Pride a couple of weeks ago in Bristol." Instead, she said the harassment by protesters was "very backwards and (I feel) naive to think there's been any progress."​​

Bigots and fascists chant 'Antifa Out' - an obsession of Trump loyalists and assorted White Supremacist groups

At least one person chanted ‘antifa out’.  Antifa being an anti-fascist organisation that Trump demonised in the United States. These are the people that Corbyn has decided to link up with.  He should remember the saying about those who lie down with dogs get up with fleas!

Tony Greenstein 

Rats in Sheep Clothing

The Vectors of neo-Fascism

November 2, 2017

Guest Post by Yoav Litvin

Rats are opportunistic social mammals that can adapt to – and survive in – a plethora of environments. They are skilled diggers, climbers and swimmers, have highly developed olfaction and hearing and communicate by leaving scent markings and emitting ultrasonic vocalizations.

Rats can serve as vectors for a variety of diseases. For example,  the “Black death” pandemic (aka “plague” and “Bubonic plague”) of the 14^th century that killed up to a third of Europe’s population was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria, which was transmitted to humans by the bites of the Oriental rat flea. The infected fleas were transported to Europe from China through trade routes in Central Asia most likely on the backs of Black rats (Rattus rattus), which typically served as vehicles in a rodent-flea-rodent enzootic cycle, but were sometimes the fleas’ initial victims. Humans entered the plague’s cycle only accidentally due to a convergence of conditions that enabled its propagation.

Rats are nocturnal animals that tend to live in damp, tight and dark places such as gutters and burrows and avoid interaction with humans. As a result, rat sightings during daylight are (correctly or not) associated with major infestations. However, repeated daytime rat sightings may better indicate a diseased population rather than infestation.

Throughout the spread of plague many infected rats likely surfaced during daylight as a result of their disoriented diseased state. Dying and injured rats tend to exhibit abnormal defensive behaviors. Thus, it is likely that sick, Oriental flea-infested rats occasionally attacked humans, and were blamed for directly transmitting the plague via bites or scratches, even though the real culprits were their resident fleas.

Nonetheless, rats served a critical function in the spread of plague and have been vilified for centuries as purveyors of death and disease.

The Black Death of the 20^th century

In a similarly ruthless fashion to the plague of the 14^th century, the Black Death of the 20^th century – Nazism/fascism – destroyed much of Europe.

But Nazism did not easily infect the German public and by extension everything the Nazi war machine touched. Nazism was able to proliferate due to a convergence of conditions in Europe in general and in Germany in particular and was normalized by its own version of rat vectors who bridged the gap between the plague of Nazism and the German public.

Nazism’s rats, Goebbels and other propagandists, had the essential role of normalizing Hitler and Nazism, a process known as Gleichschaltung, or Nazification, i.e. infection of German society with fascistic thought. This process relied on systematic smoke and mirrors that involved lying, diversion and scapegoating as a means of enabling Hitler and his Nazi party to dominate past the point of no return.

One such example of scapegoating was the Nazis’ portrayal, vilification and targeting of Jews. In an astounding case of psychological projection, Nazi propaganda created images and even a motion picture – Der Ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”) – which depicted Jews as invasive species that infested and plagued Europe while devouring its precious resources.

And just like the Bubonic plague, Nazism had its own enzootic cycle, maintaining a healthy population of rat carriers, while infecting and killing a minority; Hitler infamously used people to propagate his ideas, only to kill them once they served their purpose and/or became a threat. The case of Gregor Strasser who was murdered on Hitler’s orders on the purge of the “Night of long knives” in 1934 was emblematic of this phenomenon.

Today’s neo-fascism

Fascism, the plague of 20^th century Europe, had to be forcefully crushed in order to stop its global spread. All attempts to defeat it through diplomacy or attrition failed.

Since its defeat, the plague of fascism has been lying relatively dormant, restricted to local and very limited outbreaks. As such, fascism’s vectors have also been contained to their dark and hidden burrows, away from the general public, confined to esoteric publications and the dark corners of the internet.

But the years 2016-2017 have signified a rise to power of a mutated yet distinctly related form of fascism – a 21^st century neo-fascism, propelled by a unique set of variables, which have enabled its outbreak.

Though dissimilar to the 20^th century version in some ways, 21^st century neo-fascism has many of the attributes of its ancestor. In line with Umberto Eco’s simple and useful characterization of 20^th century fascism, Trump’s contemporary version has, among others, the following symptomatically fascistic attributes: (i) traditionalism (e.g. Make America Great Again!); (ii) a distrust of the intellectual world (e.g. climate change denial, unfounded conspiracies); (iii) fear of difference (e.g. Muslim ban, the US-Mexico wall); (iv) appeal to a frustrated middle class (see here, here and here); (v) militaristic elitism and contempt for the weak; (vi) machismo and; (vii) newspeak.

Donald Trump echoes a form of demagoguery reminiscent of Hitler’s in many ways. Trump’s pathological lying, his buffoonery and his anti-Semitic, misogynist and xenophobic appeal to the masses have kept people off balance and enabled his fascist creep into power.

Trump is skillfully using trial balloons to test public resistance before creating precedents that would serve to shatter acceptable taboos as a prelude to authoritarianism.

Though still incapable of fully consolidating power, Trump has been able to manipulate a corrupt and often times subservient media to serve his purposes of distraction and scapegoating, which mask his ongoing looting of the American democracy and public sphere.

What’s more, the surge of the plague of neo-fascism has stimulated an accompanying emergence of its rat vectors from their hideouts. For example, Breitbart news, a fringe, conspiracy-ridden and White supremacist haven, has been virtually normalized and mainstreamed, tragically also by figures associated with the Left.

Rats in sheep clothing

Infiltration of Left-wing spaces is a common and insidious form of normalization of fascistic ideology, politicians and policies. Such vectors of the fascist plague – rats in sheep clothing – seek to promote “red-brown” alliances, and squash any meaningful threat from a mobilized anti-fascist Left.

Rats in sheep clothing are easier to spot if one knows what to look for. In essence, these propagandists perpetuate a con job by using pseudo-intellectual, ahistorical analyses, and ambiguous, manipulative and convoluted language to mask their underlying motivations.

Rats in sheep clothing provide the smoke and mirrors necessary for the fortification and domination of the reactionary, White supremacist, anti-Semitic, counter-revolutionary forces they champion, and will attack and ridicule their sworn enemies – anti-fascists and anarchists, from a so-called Leftist perspective.

Rats in sheep clothing will deny the very existence of fascism, scapegoat Jews and other “out” groups such as immigrants (also groups that are more sensitive to growing bigotry), convey opinions as facts, and heavily rely on a contrived “unity” to deflect challenges to their writings and actions (see here).

Finally, due to their syncretistic and often contradictory set of belief systems, rats in sheep clothing will continue the fascist tradition of psychological projection and scapegoating, accusing their enemies of their own inadequacies.

A case study

The recent articles by the writer Diana Johnstone: “Antifa in theory and in practice” and “The harmful effects of Antifa” both published on CounterPunch, are examples of this phenomenon.

The first article begins with a quote by Ennio Flaiano, which equates fascists with anti-fascists. This sort of immoral equivalency was unsurprisingly echoed by Donald Trump himself after the tragic events at Charlottesville.

Johnstone continues by denying the very existence of fascism, a word she often places in double quotes, mocking antifascists as “more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin”, and attributes the alarm over the American and global trend to the “ancestral fear in the Jewish community”:

“The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism.  This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves.”

– Diana Johnstone; “Antifa in theory and in practice”

This ahistorical assessment (one of many in her piece, see here), which depicts national borders only from an exclusionary and limited uniformity perspective and not as borders of oppressive/racist/fascist regimes beyond which is refuge, contradicts the aforementioned symptoms evident in Donald Trump and his administration, blaming them on a sort of Jewish hysteria. What’s more, it denies the indisputable trend in Europe, which has plagued Germany, Austria, and Greece, among other countries.

It is unsurprising that Johnstone would protest against “criticism of immigration”, as she whitewashed the racism and nativism of the far-right French candidate Marine Le Pen before the elections in France, and even went so far as to claim that Le Pen was on the Left of the French political map (for more see here).

The reference to Jews’ “ancestral fear… of being excluded” is a regurgitation of an anachronistic, factually false and anti-Semitic trope. Nowadays, many Jews continue to be in line with the Zionist notion of nation-states and global apartheid rather than “rejection of national borders”. In fact, it is Zionist ideology itself that manipulates Jewish fear to justify its exclusivist national borders, not their rejection.

Palestine solidarity movements, including but not limited to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) one, have been plagued by infiltration of Johnstone’s brand of propaganda, which masks itself as “anti-Zionist”, but is quite harmful to the Palestinian fight for justice. Notably, the BDS movement has explicitly come out against racism and bigotry of all kinds, including anti-Semitism.

Tellingly, in an email exchange Johnstone could not provide a reference for the above quote, claiming it was a conclusion that she arrived at after “a long lifetime of observation”. When probed further she referred to the activities of “influential Jews as George Soros, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and Bernard-Henri Lévy”, and sent a reference from a “totally Jewish source”.

Finally, Johnstone’s writing continues a tradition of psychological projection when she refers to Antifa as “storm troopers of the neoliberal war party” (in “Antifa in theory and practice”). Her brand of writing serves as a vector for the epidemic of neo-fascism, which only expands on and continues the neoliberal establishment policies of its predecessors, and is now at the helm of the American empire.

Lessons from history

The Left must learn the lessons of 20^th century fascism and apply them to the rising tide of 21^st century neo-fascism.

The spread of neo-fascism and the neutralization of its opposition depends on propagandists who normalize fascist ideology and enable it to dominate. In order for the Left to protect itself against infiltration of rats in sheep clothing, it must learn to detect their modus operandi, refuse to coddle them or participate in propagating their ideas. Lefty anti establishment outlets should preserve their integrity and learn from the example of the Munich Post, which relentlessly and fearlessly documented the Nazi party’s atrocities and Hitler’s dubious and duplicitous political maneuvers, up until the outlet was forced to close.

Only by keeping to principles of truth, justice and equality, and chasing the rats/propagandists back to their natural dwellings – the gutters and burrows of the media world – will humanity have a chance to survive the looming neo-fascist plague.

Art by Banksy; Photo by Yoav Litvin