#MeToo & #Guardian Hypocrisy - Why did the Guardian Protect Nick Cohen, who for 20 years Sexually Abused Young Female Journalists?

How does Kath Viner & Jonathan Freedland Square #MeToo with paying off Cohen and Penalising the Victims?

#MeToo in the media Good Law Project

As the old saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue and The Guardian’s hypocrisy is indeed a vice.

If there was an award for the most rabidly racist, war-mongering, anti-Corbyn ‘journalist’ the name of Nick Cohen would come high if not top of the list. Despite his name he isn’t Jewish though he began to claim that too with an article ‘Hatred is turning me into a Jew’.

Seven years later, as the anti-Corbyn campaign was getting going, Cohen penned an article Why I’m becoming a Jew and why you should, too. Clearly his conversion was taking a long time!

 ‘My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew. Despite being called “Cohen”, I’ve never been Jewish before.

An open invitation from Nick Cohen for every racist troll to convert to Judaism

When anti-Semitism was a genuine form of racism, Jews were identified with the left and trade unionism. Zionism has managed to transform Jews into an object of admiration for the racist right.

Back in the early years of New Labour Cohen was a decent journalist, writing a weekly column on the back page of the Observer. His politics were Tribunite. He consistently attacked New Labour’s policies towards refugees. He even opposed the Blair government’s introduction of Holocaust Memorial Day.

My email to Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's Zionist Gatekeeper Goes Unanswered

Then 9/11 happened and with it the War on Terror. Cohen jack-knifed to the right, becoming an Islamaphobe and a supporter of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Thus was born the anti-Corbyn fiend and sexual predator that Freedland and Viner did their best to protect.

My favourite Cohen article is Don’t tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn which he wrote just before Theresa May called a general election in April 2017. This latter-day Nostradamus predicted that:

On current polling, Labour will get around a quarter of the vote. Imagine, though, how the Labour party will fare in an election campaign when its leaders are Corbyn, John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott… The Tories have gone easy on Corbyn and his comrades to date for the transparently obvious reason that they want to keep them in charge of Labour.

In an election, they would tear them to pieces. They will expose the far left’s record of excusing the imperialism of Vladimir Putin’s gangster state, the oppressors of women and murderers of gays in Iran, the IRA, and every variety of inquisitorial and homicidal Islamist movement… Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour MPs by the end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve it.

Cohen’s final paragraph to those supporting Corbyn was:

In my respectful opinion, your only honourable response will be to stop being a fucking fool by changing your fucking mind.

It is such sentiments that make Cohen an object of admiration for Hadley Freeman, Tanya Gold and all the other journalistic detritus.

This blog was alone in predicting Corbyn's unexpected success in 2017

In the wake of the June 2017 election, when Labour – despite the sabotage of the right - gained 30 seats and the highest swing since 1945 – I wrote a blog Jeremy Corbyn and the Humiliation of Nick Cohen. Almost alone amongst commentators I predicted the outcome. With the polls showing a lead of over 20% I wrote:

… it was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics. Seven weeks is a political eternity. Theresa May has taken a gamble that her 21% lead will hold. It is a gamble that she may yet come to regret.

There is only one direction that her lead can go, and that is down. Once her lead falls, then a snowball effect can take over. What is essential is that Labour marks out the key areas on which it is going to base its appeal. The danger is that Corbyn is going to continue with his ‘strategy’ of appeasing the right and appealing to all good men and women....

Theresa May is a cautious conservative. She is literally the product of her background - a conservative vicar’s daughter. Reactionary, parochial and small-minded, she is a bigot for all seasons.

On 3 June I wrote General Election - Is Labour on the threshold of victory? After the result I wrote to Kath Viner, offering to replace Nick Cohen at half his salary. For reasons which remain difficult to understand to this day Viner ignored my generous offer!

Nick Cohen Leaves The Guardian for ‘Health Reasons’

In January 2023 Cohen left The Guardian. According to The Telegraph Guardian News and Media (GNM)

did not mention that Cohen left the newspaper with a settlement following complaints of sexual harassment that spanned a period of 17 years

The Guardian said that Cohen’s departure was for ‘health’ reasons whereas the real reason was that he had had been a sexual predator, preying on young female journalists, some with mental health problems, others on temporary contracts.

The Guardian’s deception was only successful because other newspapers colluded with them. [See Nick Cohen, Phillip Schofield and British media’s own #MeToo reckoning, The Week, 1.6.23].

Kath Viner got rid of its cartoonist of 40 years standing, Steve Bell, the only decent journalist left on the paper - Viner ruled that the appearance of Razan Al Najar - the 21 year old Palestinian medic killed by Netanyahu's snipers in Gaza, in Theresa May's fireplace was 'antisemitic'

My email to Guardian editor Kath Viner also goes unanswered

In a puff to gullible readers who are asked to fund Kath Viner’s half a million pound salary, The Guardian commits itself to delivering

fearless, investigative journalism – giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account.”

Novara Media on Nick Cohen cover up

Except, it seems, when the powerless happen to be young, female journalists in its newsroom.

The Guardian Investigates Cohen or Does It?

In January 2018 Lucy Siegle reported Cohen for groping her. Siegle started at The Guardian around 2001 as an editorial assistant. She described standing at a photocopier when Cohen appeared behind her, cupped her bottom with both hands, grunted and breathed heavily into her ear.

Siegle remembers returning to her desk, humiliated. She never considered reporting him. “I’m literally the least powerful person in the entire newsroom.”. For 14 years she avoided his desk and chaperoned interns “like a mother hen crossing a busy road.”

The #MeToo movement was sweeping through society on Feb. 1, 2018, when Siegle met with Guardian Managing Editor Jan Thompson. Siegle described what happened next.

The meeting began with me. I described why I was there, and went on to tell the senior executive about Nick Cohen’s assault on me. There was not much response at this point, just a blank stare which I felt to be slightly hostile. But when I mentioned that I was aware there had been another allegation, the senior executive became animated.

They set me straight (“That sort of Twitter allegation would not be investigated in that way ever…”) and pulled a face of disgust at the very idea of that allegation. The executive also denied any knowledge about any allegation.

The meeting continued and the exec pointed out a number of times that it would be difficult for me to proceed with my complaint anonymously and made it sound as if I will have to go head-to-head with “Nick”. He was called by his first name throughout, and there was lengthy speculation from the exec about what he might say and how he might be affected by such an allegation.

The main concern of Thompson was about the possibility that Siegle would write about what happened. Thompson’s main concern was the alleged abuse that Cohen faced for his political views, according to notes Siegle wrote afterward. She described the meeting as a “chaotic mess of defensiveness and attack.”

The exec then told me that Nick Cohen was frequently targeted for abuse because of his political standpoint. They sounded like they were defending a very precious asset, their star striker. I could not understand why this was remotely relevant, but my brain began to compute that this conversation was not welcome….

By the time the meeting finished, I felt like I had been in a laundry cycle, but also a bit like I’d been beaten up. As happens with these things, you pore over them afterwards to make sure that you haven’t been over-sensitive or misread.

Because of this hostile reaction, Siegle decided not to pursue the complaint within GNM.

You might think The Guardian’s response was strange given that in its Leader The Guardian view on #MeToo: what comes next? they wrote:

No woman should suffer socially, economically or professionally for challenging her abuser. But how much harder it is to speak out when the cost may be not only your career, but the ability to pay the rent or feed your children. And how much more likely you are to be targeted when predatory men know that...

Even now, women are paying a price for speaking out. Much discussion has skipped past the primary question – how women should be treated in the workplace – to fixate on how perpetrators should be treated, without pausing to acknowledge the penalties that victims have already paid.

The Guardian was keen to hear from victims of sexual harassment everywhere but the Guardian!

One week before Siegle’s complaint The Guardian solicited tips about workplace sexual harassment. They said:

We take all allegations of workplace harassment extremely seriously and aim to support victims in all circumstances. We have processes which anyone can use to raise complaints so that they can be fully investigated.

Siegle wrote of how she was aware of several other women who had also been “discouraged” by The Guardian from taking forward their complaints.

New York Times Breaks the story that the British press, including Private Eye, Wouldn’t Touch

On 30 May the New York Times [NYT] ran British Reporter Had a Big #MeToo Scoop. Her Editor Killed It about what had happened at The Guardian and the Financial Times [FT]. It spoke of 7 women who had made allegations against Cohen but no paper would touch it because ‘Britain’s news media has a complicated relationship with outing its own.’

Lucy Siegle is one of multiple women to accuse the British columnist Nick Cohen of unwanted sexual advances and groping.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The NYT revealed that FT journalist Madison Marriage secured a “potentially explosive scoop” on the real reason behind Cohen’s departure but her story was spiked by Editor Roula Khalaf. Marriage had evidence that his departure followed years of unwanted sexual advances and groping of female journalists.

The FT’s explanation was that “Some reporting leads to published stories and some not.”

Jane Bradley interviewed more than 35 journalists at The Guardian and FT to examine sexual misconduct in Britain’s news media.

Marriage had already begun investigating Cohen but Roula Khalaf halted the investigation, telling Marriage not to contact any new sources. Her team had already interviewed five of Cohen’s accusers.

Two women were willing to speak openly, and Marriage had supporting documentation on others. Khalaf said that Cohen did not have a big enough business profile to make him an “F.T. story”. Publicly, the FT had declared “no topic or scandal off limits.”

In February Khalaf said she would not run the investigation as a news article, several journalists recalled, and suggested that Marriage file it as an opinion piece. She did, but it still did not run.

The Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf during an appearance last year on the BBC. Credit...James Manning/PA Images, via Getty Images

A native of Lebanon, Khalaf is not a British media insider. Colleagues described her as a cautious editor, and some said the Cohen article had fallen victim to an institutional conflict between the newspaper’s investigative aspirations and its conservative, business roots.

The spiking of the FT article hit Siegle especially hard. ‘Now it seemed the whole industry was protecting itself.’ She described how the response to the story showed

“#MeToo is nothing but a convenient hashtag for the British media. The silence on its own industry is just really conspicuous.”

Cohen was seen as someone with influence, former colleagues said. Credit...Marco Secchi/Getty Images

Cohen however was unrepentant. He told the NYT that it wasn’t the women he abused who were the victims: He was the “only person whose life is turned over because of this”. 

A GNM spokesperson told The Telegraph that the organisation “instigated our own HR investigations” in 2018, but the group said the victim “did not wish to pursue the complaint”. Siegle asked

If Britain’s most stridently liberal newspaper fails to deal with claims of sexual harassment by one of its leading writers, what does it say about the supposed progress of the #MeToo movement

On October 6 2021 Siegle posted on Twitter describing her experience at The Guardian.

“I don’t normally read Nick Cohen’s column in the Observer. Ever since he ‘groped’ me at the photocopier (zero marks for originality) at work when I was an admin assistant in my early 20s I have avoided being anywhere near him. But I do think he is a total creep…. lurking in the shadows to lay your hands on an underling (or anyone) is not to my mind compatible with the position he presents.”

It was through going public that she heard from other victims of Cohen, as did the Good Law Project [GLP]. The experiences of Women 1-5, as the GLP refers to the complainants (Siegle is W2) featured in a thread posted by Jolyon Maugham. Many more have come forward since.

GNM turned down a request for an independent inquiry into its complaint processes and handling of the complaints. Siegle told how

Nick Cohen is now co-operating with GNM on an investigation and his column has been “paused”. He has previously denied allegations as “vile and untrue”. I am sure that if Jolyon, myself, and the other Ws had not pushed and posted threads it would still be business as usual in Guardian HQ.

On 4 August 2022 Siegle wrote, not in The Guardian but the New European that

It was during this time as an admin assistant that I was assaulted by Nick Cohen, a prominent and highly-regarded journalist and, until this week when his column was “paused” as he is investigated by the company, still a star columnist on The Observer, as well as other publications including The Spectator and Private Eye.

Cohen spent two decades as a columnist for The Observer. ‘Inside the newsroom, he was seen as influential, colleagues said, someone who could help your career.’

His resignation in January cited “health grounds.” Secretly, the newspaper group paid him a financial settlement for quitting and agreed to confidentiality, according to three colleagues and an editor with whom Mr. Cohen spoke.

This cartoon was also deemed 'antisemitic' by Freedland's witchhunters

In his farewell, editors praised his “brilliant” and “incisive” coverage. Seven women told the NYT that Cohen had groped them or made other unwanted sexual advances over nearly two decades. Four insisted on anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.

Siegle recounted Cohen grabbing her bottom in the newsroom around 2001. Five other women described similar encounters at pubs from 2008 to 2015. One said Mr. Cohen had pressed his erection against her thigh and kissed her uninvited when they met to discuss her career. A seventh said Mr. Cohen had repeatedly offered to send her explicit photographs in 2018 while she worked as an unpaid copy editor for him.

This cartoon too was deemed 'antisemitic' by Freedland's witchhunters

Cohen’s reputation was widely known in the newsroom, according to 10 former colleagues. Five women said he had groped them after work at pubs, including one who said he had groped her “five or six” times in 2008. One said she and other female journalists had used a different entrance to a pub to avoid being groped by him. Another woman said she had avoided the bar downstairs from the newsroom after Mr. Cohen grabbed her knee during work drinks.

Private Eye too did not cover his departure. When a reader emailed asking why, Editor Ian Hislop replied:

“Coverage of Nick Cohen’s departure from The Observer is obviously more problematic for The Eye than the others that you mention due to the fact that he used to write a freelance column for the magazine.”

Hislop said he had discussed the terms of The Guardian’s deal with Cohen. “Instead of any conclusion,” Hislop said of The Guardian investigation, “it ended up with a secret agreement and a big cash payment.”

In the end the ratbiter was bitten where it hurts most but Ian Hislop joined the Street of Shame in not telling the Eye's readers why

Cohen’s column in Private Eye was called Ratbiter, which regularly defamed Corbyn supporters including Greg Hadfield and myself. It was a litany of lies but Private Eye supported Cohen’s false ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations. Cohen’s departure from the Eye was mentioned only in The Press Gazette, a media trade website.

In a phone interview with the NYT, Cohen said he did not have the “faintest idea” about Siegle’s accusation and questioned why she had waited so long to report it. He said the conversation with the copy editor was “joking” among friends. He blamed the accusations on a campaign by supporters of Russia and transgender rights!

Steve Bell - the only honest journalist on the Guardian was sacked by Kath Viner

Informed that seven women had complained Cohen exclaimed, “Oh, God. I assume it’s stuff I was doing when I was drunk”. In a subsequent email, Cohen did not respond to specific accusations.

“I have written at length about my alcoholism. I went clean seven years ago in 2016. I look back on my addicted life with deep shame.

Jean Hannah Edelstein, an assistant at The Observer from 2007 to 2009, said Cohen was not alone in his behaviour. She recalled her editor hitting her with a sex whip as she walked by. Over one boozy lunch, she said, the same editor offered to help her career and suggested that she pose naked to promote her book.

Another woman, a freelancer who had recently been homeless and had depression, said she had met Cohen at a pub in 2010 to discuss her career. As they chatted, she said, he suddenly kissed her on the mouth and pressed his erection against her thigh. She said she fled.

“I just remember walking along Waterloo Bridge and thinking, ‘I can’t go to The Guardian with this. Who would they believe? He was one of their stars, and I was a freelance journalist with mental health issues.”

Heather Brooke, an investigative journalist, said she had initially dismissed her encounter with Mr. Cohen at the 2008 awards ceremony as “a one-off drunken mistake and didn’t take it further.” (“Nick Cohen got drunk and slapped my ass … ugh!” she wrote in her diary the next day.)

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca Watson, a writer and commentator, said Cohen had grabbed her bottom at a book party in 2009.

“To sexually assault a stranger at a book launch, to be one of the more prominent people there, and to just assume there will be no comeuppance,”

Not long after Siegle lodged her 2018 complaint records show that Cohen began working with a freelance copy editor, a single mother with autism.

She worked remotely for Cohen, unpaid. On June 29 2018, a work conversation on Twitter became punctuated with mutually flirtatious jokes. Cohen offered to send an explicit photograph. The woman declined. Cohen persisted and she deflected again.

In the following days, the copy editor said, Cohen turned cold. In messages, she apologised if she had misread the situation. Eventually, she told him continuing to work together “would be at a cost too high for my own mental health.”

Cohen, in an email to the NYT, said this was the only accusation to surface since he quit drinking and said it had been misrepresented.

It involves a friendship with a woman I never met that, sadly, went badly wrong.

In 2019, the copy editor asked The Guardian’s HR team about the process for raising sexual misconduct claims. She described the incident without naming Cohen, saying she felt “huge pressure” to go along with his “banter.”

Because she was not an employee, the copy editor said she was told that she would not be informed of the investigation’s outcome. Being frozen out of the process terrified her, so she backed off. This is almost certainly unlawful and someone personally contracting to do work is covered by discrimination legislation.

In the autumn of 2021, Siegle wrote on Twitter about her experience. Her lawyer, Jolyon Maugham, began making noises. Jan Thompson immediately emailed Siegle offering an investigation and accusing her of turning down a previous offer in 2018, which Siegle denied.

Eventually Cohen was suspended and The Guardian hired a law firm to carry out an independent inquiry. Neither Siegle nor the copy editor agreed to participate.

Suffice to say The Guardian has not offered Lucy Siegle or any other woman journalist the opportunity to put their side of the story. Freedom of the press and #MeToo  has its limits, after all!

Tony Greenstein

The Financial Times building in London. The newspaper spiked an investigation into Nick Cohen, a columnist at The Observer. Credit...Andrew Testa for The NYT

In the Face of Fierce Competition ‘Lord’ John Mann Has Won the Award for Most Dishonest Politician of the Year - Again

 Mann combines Opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ with Virulent Racism against Gypsies, Black and Muslim People

Loudmouth Mann confronts Ken Livingstone

I have covered John Mann before when he lied about and harassed a 90 year old Jewish Dr Glatt.

In July 2019 John Mann was appointed by Theresa May as her advisor on ‘anti-Semitism’. In September Mann was made ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ and elevated to the Lords by Boris Johnson.

When Theresa May appointed John Mann to lead the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’ it was a case of one racist appointing another racist

As ‘Anti-Semitism Czar’ Mann saw it as his duty to try and close down media outlets which didn’t conform to his racist Apartheid agenda. Mann is not a man to appreciate irony because if he did he would have known that before the advent of Hitler, Czar Nicholas II was the world’s most infamous anti-Semite who presided over the deaths of thousands of Jews.

Having failed to close down The Canary and Skawkbox, Mann then set his sights on indoctrinating school children. Citing a report from the Henry Jackson Society, a byword in Islamaphobia, he said that he said that

"It is not enough to teach about the Holocaust,"  quoting the report and urged ministers to guarantee funding for schools to teach about contemporary anti-Jewish hatred (i.e. anti-Zionism).

You can get a flavour of the HJS's views on racism from its Associate Director (2011-2018) Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe’. The theme of the book is summed up in its title:

Europe is dying — being murdered, in fact — by hordes of Muslim immigrants, aided in their task by craven liberal politicians The Far Right Is Obsessed With a Book About Muslims Destroying Europe

Murray gave an intellectual veneer to the White Replacement Theory which found its voice at the neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally in the United States when anti-fascist Heather Heyer was murdered as the marchers chanted ‘The Jews Shall Not Replace Us’.

Douglas Murray

The Guardian reported that

Douglas Murray, complained last year that London had “become a foreign country” because white Britons were a minority in 23 of 33 London boroughs.” Murray has also been pictured with Robert Spencer, the far-right US anti-Islam campaigner banned last year from Britain by the Home Office.

In 2012 the HJS's director William Shawcross said “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”.

The White Replacement Theory leads inexorably to the idea that the White races are under threat because the Jews have encouraged and helped stimulate Black and Muslim immigration whilst keeping their own Jewish state racially pure.

Mann is fond of quoting from the HJS because the anti-Semitism he is concerned about isn’t about hatred or hostility to Jews but about criticism of Israel - the ‘new anti-Semitism’.

Mann is best described by the findings of the Employment Tribunal in Fraser –v- University College Union. The case was brought by a Ronnie Fraser against his own trade union, UCU. He alleged anti-Semitism. UCU’s offence was supporting a Boycott of Israel. Their judgment (para. 148) stated:

Mr Mann … told us that the leaders of the Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing differently. He did not claim ever to have witnessed any Congress or other UCU meeting. And when it came to antisemitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he announced, “It’s clear to me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.

As his parting shot on leaving the Commons Mann launched an attack on Jeremy Corbyn for having given the ‘green light’ to anti-Semites.

He (Corbyn) has not just hijacked my political party – he has hijacked its soul and its ethics. I will never forgive him for that.

When John Mann talks about ‘ethics’ it is like a mafia chief giving a lecture on crime prevention or Harold Shipman lecturing on care for the elderly.

If Mann was seriously concerned about anti-Semitism then one would assume that in his 18 year parliamentary career that he was equally vociferous about all forms of racism. In fact no other form of racism disturbed him. But that may be because there were no freebies or parliamentary jaunts to be had.

Mann was one of the few Labour supporters of Brexit in Parliament. Brexit, which was motivated by fear and hostility to migrants and dreams of Empire past, was at one with Mann’s toxic views.

Throughout his time in parliament, Mann was distinguished for his pro-war record. He voted in support of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Not once did Mann speak out against New Labour’s Islamaphobia and demonisation of refugees. When racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was ejected from the Commons for lying about his opponent at the 2010 General Election, he had no greater supporter than Mann.

The Guardian described Mann as Woolas’s best friend, best man and political ally since the first day at Manchester University”. When Harriet Harman suspended Woolas from the Labour Party after his ejection from Parliament, she faced “a backbench revolt”

Among those to have spoken out in support of Woolas was John Mann, a close friend of his… (he) has been backing Woolas via telephone calls with a journalist at the Guardian).

When Harman cast Woolas adrift Mann said that ‘A period of silence from Harriet Harman would now be very welcome.’ Clearly Mann did not understand the irony of him telling anyone to be quiet.

Mann was quoted as saying that Woolas’s ejection had

profound implications for British democracy... Woolas is the first case of an MP being disbarred by the courts for malpractice since 1911.

Woolas did not just lie when he alleged that his Lib Dem opponent supported violent Muslim Jihadists, he deliberately sought a white working class vote by portraying all Muslims as terrorists and violent jihadists. A decision was taken by his campaign team:

to 'make the white folk angry' by depicting an alleged campaign by those who they described generically as Asians to 'take Phil out' and then present Mr Watkins as in league with them.

When it came to the 2014 Immigration Act, which led directly to the Windrush Scandal, Mann abstained. Being an Opposition member it was the equivalent of supporting the government. It was the ‘anti-Semitic’ Corbyn who was one of only 6 Labour MPs who voted against the Act.

In 2007 Mann produced ‘the Bassetlaw Anti Social Behaviour Handbook. It described Gypsies and Travellers as “anti-social elements” in terms similar to the Nazi depiction of Gypsies.

This handbook is designed to help you deal with problems you may face in your street or in your community. There are lots of different types of anti-social behaviour…

Amongst these problems were Travellers. Mann’s advice was

The police have powers to remove any gypsies or travellers, and have powers to direct people to leave the land…

In 2016 Mann was interviewed by Police in connection with his pamphlet.  Gypsies are protected by the Equality Act 2010. 

Ben Bennett, a 13 year old Traveller, who made a complaint to the Police, described how Mann’s pamphlet made him:

‘very upset’. I can’t understand why John Mann MP would choose to talk solely about my community in such a derogatory manner.’

Mann claims he is motivated by the 6 million Jews who died in the holocaust but he has nothing to say about how up to one million Gypsies were exterminated in the Porajmos. The Nazis considered criminal, asocial elements just like Mann.

It is no surprise that Boris Johnson, who was notorious for his racist and anti-Semitic comments, made Mann his ‘anti-Semitism Czar’, elevating him to the Lords.

Mann made his intentions known from the start. He was going to concentrate on the Left press. Someone who was genuinely concerned with racism would have focused on the Daily Mail or Sun. Mann’s targets were the alternative media - The Canary and Skwawkbox.

In an article Corbynite sites feature far-right tropes by ‘liar’ Lee Harpin, whose inaccuracies cost the Jewish Chronicle a small fortune, Skwawkbox and The Canary were accused of a “heavily negative coverage of Jewish issues” to anti-Semitic audiences.

What were these ‘Jewish issues.’ Harpin did not say but we can guess - Palestine and Israel. The same Israeli state which has been condemned as an Apartheid state by the world’s main human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Mann has consistently engaged in the guilt-by-association tactics favoured by Joseph McCarthy. If you want a lesson in how to corrupt the English language, take the paragraph below which equates The Canary and Skwawkbox with neo-Nazis on the basis of an alleged opposition to capitalism. Fascists have never opposed capitalism. The Nazis called themselves ‘national socialists’ yet the first thing they did when they gained power was to put trade unionists and communists in concentration camps.

“despite the huge differences in the beliefs that are most foundational to their ideologies, articles published on all three sites share an opposition to capitalism, globalisation, and liberalism, adopt similar positions on many questions of foreign policy, and fulminate against a supposed adversary whose Jewishness is extensively highlighted (even if in different ways).

John Mann - Supports all forms of racism except 'antisemitism'

Even though the Report Antisemitism and the alternative media, which Mann commissioned concedes ‘huge differences’ in their ideology, it draws an equals sign between the alternative media and neo-Nazis. How then does the Report explain the pro-Israel stance of Tommy Robinson? It doesn’t. Instead it say:

TR News, the official website of far-right activist… Tommy Robinson, has intentionally attempted to take the side of Jews and Israel, 

Robinson, like most anti-Semites, openly supports Zionism. Mann’s polemics ironically owe their origin to Nazi propaganda techniques which sought to portray opposites as being equal. For example they equated capitalism and communism, which they held were controlled by Jews. John Mann is a walking conspiracy theory:

TR News has resorted to defending those Muslims who were seen to embrace pro-Western right-wing ideology, the two left-wing websites sought to declare allegiance with the minority of Jews who supported their own viewpoint.

In other words fascist Muslims and Hindus, such as supporters of India’s BJP government are no different from anti-Zionist Jews who oppose all forms of racism. This is the kind of intellectual sleight of hand that Mann has made into a fine art.

The ‘research’ for Mann’s Report was carried out by Daniel Allington, a King’s College lecturer. Allington selected 20 articles on each site that featured the words ‘Jew’ or ‘Zionist’ for analysis. It clearly did not occur to Mann that what fascists mean by ‘Zionist’ differs from what socialists mean. The report is based on the assumption that ‘Jew’ = ‘Zionist’.

Allington is the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s go to academic. His ‘research’ is starts off with the conclusions and then looks for evidence. In other words he reverse engineers his research!

Together with Zionist ‘academic’ David Hirsh, Allington devised a Generalised Anti-Semitism Barometer for the CAA which found that anti-Semitism was more prevalent on the Left than the Right. The Zionist and Tory press lapped it up.

If true this was a staggering finding. Why then had all previous surveys found that anti-Semitism was the property of the Right? What the CAA didn’t advertise was that they had added 6 questions to the original 6 questions (which were themselves debatable).

That the CAA is a dishonest McCarthyist organisation is one thing. That Allington and Hirsh should allow their support for Zionism to fix the results of ostensibly neutral academic research raises questions as to their academic integrity. The questions they devised to ‘prove’ that the left is more anti-Semitic than the Right were:

1.    “I am comfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel.”

2.    “Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

3.    “Israel is right to defend itself against those who want to destroy it.”

4.    “Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on our democracy.”

5.    “Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media.”

6.    “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”

None of these statements are anti-Semitic. According to the OED anti-Semitism is ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’

The dishonesty of Allington’s ‘research’ is staggering. I wouldn’t be comfortable spending time with supporters of Franco. Does that make me anti-Spanish? Israel’s right to exist as a homeland for Jews assumes that Jews aren’t at home where they live. Israel having the right to defend itself assumes that it is under attack. Obviously Israel’s supporters are anti-democratic, as the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism proves. Supporters of Israel do control the media but who says Rupert Murdoch is Jewish? It’s only anti-Semitic if you assume that supporters of Israel and Jews are the same.

The most popular ‘anti-Semitic’ statement was comparisons between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Nazi treatment of Jews. But this is a political statement. Were holocaust survivors Ze’ev Sternhell and Yehuda Elkana anti-Semitic for writing ‘In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’? and The Need to Forget? Is it anti-Semitic to point out that Nazi mobs chanted ‘death to the Jews’ and Israeli mobs chant ‘death to the Arabs’.

One example of Skawkbox’s ‘racism’ was

“making throwaway references to ‘a former Chief Rabbi with a history of supporting racism’ could contribute to the creation of an impression of Jewishness as inherently suspect.”

So accusing Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of being a racist is anti-Semitic because he was Jewish! Is accusing someone Jewish of fraud, even if they’re guilty, also anti-Semitic because it might imply that all Jews are frauds. This is the infantile level of analysis  of John Mann.

When Sacks died, I wrote that he was ‘An establishment bigot’. Sacks, who compared Corbyn with Enoch Powell endorsed the Strange Death of Europe.

Dishonesty permeates the Report. Because Jewish conspiracy theories permeate the far-Right, the support of Skwawkbox and The Canary for the undercover Al Jazeera programme The Lobby about the influence and activity of the Zionist lobby was anti-Semitic!

But the latter was true. What these allegations have in common is a deliberate confusion of ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’.  And who does this? The same anti-Semites and fascists that Mann purports to oppose.

Liar Lee’s article concludes with a quote from Allington:

 “Government and civil society must encourage use of high quality, reputable sources of information at the expense of low-quality fringe sources,” it said. “We need not be helpless in the face of hatred.”

What Mann and Allington are advocating is state censorship. The reference to ‘high quality reputable sources of information’ is police state stuff. Who decides what’s ‘high quality’? Turkey’s Erdogan would agree with this. Is it the Mail and Sun? Britain’s racist tabloids escapes unscathed. Mann’s concerns are not Jews and anti-Semitism but Zionism and Israel.

The only good thing about Mann’s Report is that it reflects his own intellectual deficit. It was so poorly argued in its deviously dishonest analogies that only a rogue like Boris Johnson could fall for it.

Before becoming a Czar, Mann was Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. The Committee played an important part in the lead up to Labour’s anti-Semitism smears. The APPGAA was stuffed with members of the Friends of Israel groups such as Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth, Wes Streeting and Bob Blackman. None of them had ever criticised Israeli racism. Bob Blackman was a racist in  his own right. See Tory MP accused of Islamophobia after posting anti-Muslim article on Facebook

The Committee, chaired by Labour MP Dennis McShane, gaoled for his part in the expenses scandal, produced a Report into Anti-Semitism in September 2006. Its ludicrous observations included:

The Israeli government itself may, at times, have mistakenly perceived criticism of its policies and actions to be motivated by antisemitism, but we received no evidence of the accusation of antisemitism being misused by mainstream British Jewish community organisations and leaders.

Ten years later the President of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Arkush, attacked Corbyn as an anti-Semite and stated that a Jewish group, Jewdas were ‘the source of virulent anti-Semitism’

The Report stated that ‘anti-Zionist discourse can be polluted with antisemitic themes’ but ignored the far more widespread incidence of Zionist anti-Semites. E.g. Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right and organiser of the demonstration in Charlottesville, declared himself a White Zionist. As Ha’aretz noted:

‘In a series of tweets, Spencer writes of his admiration for the law, which confers the right to national self-determination in Israel to the Jewish people alone, and says Jews are 'showing a path forward for Europeans'

Israel provides a model for White supremacists. The Jewish Nation State Law excluded Arab Israelis from any claim to the land they live in. It was a blueprint for Jewish supremacy. Yet Mann and the APPGAA never once mentioned that the incidence of Palestinian supporters using anti-Semitic rhetoric is far outweighed by Zionist anti-Semites like Spencer and Steve Bannon who combined anti-Semitism with Zionism (see his description of Jewish children, whom he didn’t want his children to go to school with, as ‘whiny brats.’).

There was no understanding that criticism of Israel was motivated by opposition to Israeli racism. In December 2018 the Knesset rejected by 71-38 a Bill which affirmed a citizens' right to equality and it refused even to debate a bill ‘calling for Israel to treat its Arab and Jewish citizens equally.’

Speaker Yuli Yoel Edelstein denounced the bill saying that:

“This is a preposterous bill that any intelligent individual can see must be blocked immediately. A bill that aims to gnaw at the foundations of the state must not be allowed in the Knesset,”

John Mann was one of the main Labour witchunters. In April 2016 Mann staged a confrontation with Ken Livingstone for saying that Adolf Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews” calling him a ‘Nazi apologist’ for saying that the Nazis had supported Zionism.

The only problem was that the Nazis did support the Zionists, who were 2% of the German Jewish community. In Zionism During the Holocaust I quote Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s main theoretician, who wrote in 1919 that

Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.

Mann called for my expulsion, calling my membership of the Labour Party ‘hugely inappropriate’. Presumably only racists like himself were entitled to be members.

In January 2018 Mann wrote an article attacking Jackie Walker, suggesting that her claim of a witch hunt was a conspiracy theory. He accused Jackie, a Jewish woman, of promoting anti-Semitic tropes. Jackie responded by saying that it was obvious that she was targeted for being a Corbyn supporter and that she had been fighting fascists and anti-Semites on the streets for years and was never accused of promoting anti-Semitic tropes before Corbyn became leader.

Other examples of Mann’s false and dishonest allegations of anti-Semitism were when, in 2012, Mann’s wife was sent a dead bird by a disgruntled local (Roger Dyas-Elliott). Mann later reported this as an incident of anti-Semitism and attributed it to Momentum activists. But Momentum wasn’t set up until 2015 (3yrs after the incident) and was established by Jewish members of the Labour Party!

In August 2018 Mann called for special privileges for Jewish Labour MPs, calling for them to be “automatically reselected at elections”.

In October 2018 the BBC reported that Mann had registered more trips than any other MP, with eight overseas visits on the Register of Interests. Mann claimed the trips were "part of the job". Most were related to his role as UK chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism. Opposing ‘anti-Semitism’ has been very profitable for John Mann.

Tony Greenstein