Demonstrate Against Sir Scabby Starmer Outside Unite Conference, Brighton Conference Centre, Thursday July 13 12.00 p.m.

Sharon Graham May Have No Pride But We Call on Unite Delegates To Let Starmer Know What Members Think of This ‘Real’ Conservative

Sharon Graham’s election in August 2021 was greeted with relief by most of the left, especially as the scab candidate of the Scum, Gerard Coyne, came third.

Unfortunately Sharon Graham has proved a big disappointment. It was revealed last December that Jack Clarke, Graham’s husband had been appointed Head of Bargaining and Dispute Support in Graham’s office without the approval of the National Executive Committee.

Sharon Graham has refused to deny this story let alone intervene with West Midland's region where 3 members made this decision to support a scab

This clearly smacked of nepotism, yet the response of Unite’s press office to Skwawkbox was to refuse to deny the report.

It was then revealed that complaints of bullying and threats of violence against other staff members by Clarke had been covered up

Unite has declined to deny reports that Unite’ general secretary’s Sharon Graham tried, before she became the union’s general secretary, to have evidence against her husband destroyed – or to answer questions as to whether the evidence was in fact destroyed after she took up the General Secretary position.

It was then revealed that Brendan Ogle of Unite Ireland region, had been victimised after he returned to work after treatment for cancer, because he didn’t support Graham in the election for General Secretary. The Irish Examiner reported that:

Brendan Ogle, who is the effective head of the Unite union in Ireland, claims he was urged to take a more junior role in the organisation that would necessitate a 100 mile daily commute. Following discussions with Unite, he continues to work in Dublin with the same title and pay he held prior to his illness.

…  he is being excluded from his organisational role in Right To Water, the group he set up through the union to campaign for a referendum on the public ownership of the water infrastructure….

 “He was told that was coming from head office in London. The only thing that has changed while he was out sick was the leadership in London where a new general secretary was elected,” ….

Mr Ogle has been a leading figure in the trade union movement for over 20 years since he was general secretary of the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association, where he organised a rail strike in 2000. He was also the head of the ESB group of unions prior to joining Unite.

Why is Unite inviting a 'real Conservative' to its conference?

The invitation to Starmer, who has refused to support workers in struggle – be they nurses, train drivers, teachers or post workers, is an insult to Unite members. Starmer is a neo-liberal who has torn up the 10 Pledges that he made at the time of his election. as Labour leader. As Jenny Chapman admitted he said what was need to get elected rather than what he believed in.

Pledge No. 5 that ‘Public services should be in public hands’ and to ‘end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.’ This has been discarded. Instead West Streeting has announced that private sector involvement in the NHS will increase.

The film Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie has been banned from Unite premises at the behest of Starmer and his supporters. On 5^th July Sarah Carpenter, Regional Secretary of Unite SE wrote informing me that:

After careful consideration by senior union officials, the decision taken [to ban the film Corbyn the Big Lie] was grounded in our focus to prioritise resources to fight for members pay, terms and conditions and issues facing our local communities.

It was of course a lie. The decision had nothing to do with prioritising resources. Carpenter went on to inform me that under Rule 17.3 of the rule book our branch was forbidden from making a £250 donation to Platform  Films, who produced the film, despite them having made films for trade unions for years, including the T&G Story, a history of the T&GWU, which was the precursor of Unite.

Tony Benn wrote that:

“By making these brilliant films over the years, Platform has filled a gap that is so obvious in the media – that it doesn’t cover labour and progressive causes properly.”

And Bob Crowe likewise said that:

“RMT is proud to be associated with a film company that unashamedly knows which side it is on, and is carrying the tradition of gutsy, agitprop, socialist film-making to a new generation in the 21st century.”

But for the right-wing bureaucrats who have taken over Unite, none of this counts. As Sharon Graham cosies up to Keir Starmer the Corbyn era is wiped from memory and workers rights are abandoned.

Only this week Keith Ewing and John Hendy QC wrote an article for Tribune ‘Is Labour Backsliding on Workers’ Rights?’ They wrote:

Labour has quietly dropped key policies to guarantee basic rights and protections at work and strengthen trade unions – a U-turn that would harm millions of the country's most exploited workers.

Starmer is a neo-liberal, a racist and a ‘Zionist without qualification’. But for the right-wing Graham, none of this is stopping her wooing Starmer despite his anti-trade union policies, his warmongering, racism and chauvinism and his hostility to basic civil liberties and the right to protest.

The invitation to Starmer is the final straw. Many on the left like the SWP and the Socialist Party made the mistake of backing Graham in the General Secretary elections. Her support for industrial action blinded them to her right-wing stance on everything else. e.g. Unite’s support for increased military expenditure at the TUC Conference.

The latest scandal is Graham’s refusal to deny the claim of Gerard Coyne that Unite backs him as the candidate for the parliamentary seat of West Bromwich East. Members who have written to Unite have not received any denial.

This is why we must demonstrate outside Unite’s conference tomorrow. We refuse to allow the union to be taken over by Starmer’s lackeys and a self-serving and nepotistic leadership.

Tony Greenstein

The NHS is dying before our eyes and all we are doing is watching and waiting

 Dr Bob Gill explains how privatisation is destroying the NHS as Starmer & Streeting support its takeover by vulture capital

If you want to understand why it is that the NHS was so unprepared for the COVID pandemic and why it is that we have unprecedented waiting lists, then watch this 20 minute video of Dr Bob Gill who explains it all quite succinctly.

The NHS was the greatest achievement of the post-war Attlee government. Gone were the days when if you couldn’t afford to see a doctor or pay for drugs you simply had to suffer in silence or hope that a charity cottage hospital would treat you.

We live in the age of neo-liberalism, which is another way of saying that everything public is bad (except the Police/Army and Monarchy of course) and everything private is good.

Dr Bob Gill

Yet we cannot rely on the Labour Party under Starmer to oppose privatisation. His shadow Health Secretary West Streeting openly supports the involvement of private companies on the pretext that it will help cut waiting lists.

Yet this is a lie. The way to cut waiting lists is to train more doctors and nurses, build more hospitals and transfer the money from our increasing ‘defence’ (i.e. war) budget to health care. Private firms are interested in one thing only – profit.  And where does that come from?  Money that would otherwise go into the NHS (and also further exploitation of NHS workers).

Streeting is a brazen liar. Why else would John Armitage, a hedge fund founder and manager, who has given over £3 million to the Tories, give £15,000 to Streeting? The Electoral Commission’s register of donations shows that Streeting reported receiving this donation in January 2022.

Armitage, number 138 on the 2021 Times ‘rich list’, is co-founder and director of the Egerton Capital hedge fund. Among its almost £19bn of investments, Armitage’s fund owns shares worth almost £834m in UnitedHealth (UH), a vast US private health corporation that has spent millions lobbying US politicians for its interests.

UH has played a key role in the ‘americanisation’ of the NHS that began under New Labour and continued apace under the Tories. See Shadow Health Sec Streeting takes large sum from Tory donor with huge private health interests.

Not only Streeting but Starmer himself has received £12,500 from Armitage. Now why would this be? The answer is clear. Starmer intends to continue from where the Tories left off. Nothing could better illustrate the political bankruptcy of the Labour Party today and yet the ‘Socialist’ Campaign Group says next to nothing. It refuses to call for Starmer to stand down whereas the Labour Right had no such problems when Corbyn was the leader.

But the NHS trade unions have also been pathetic. UNISON and GMB have stayed silent. Indeed it is difficult to know whether or not the GMB is even concerned about the effect of privatisation on its members.  UNITE has called out Streeting over his receipt of Armitage’s donations but it has not done much else.

If anyone is in any doubt about what a catastrophe a private insurance health system is they should look to the United States where some 46 million adults don’t have private health care insurance.That is almost  1 in 5 adults. What that means is that if you are seriously ill you cannot get treated until it is classified as an emergency and then you can be admitted via an A&E.

Yet even if you do have private health insurance you often end up having to pay for extras, things like drugs and other extra charges. The insurance companies, mindful of their own profits, haggle over the nature of the treatment and sometimes simply refuse to pay out if, for example you don’t get their permission for treatment in advance or if you go to a hospital that isn’t on their list. These are the benefits of privatisation.

Contrast this with Cuba, 50+ years under a blockade from the United States. Despite its lack of resources child mortality rates (under 5 years, infant and neonatal) in Cuba have been lower than in the USA for many years. WHO figures for 2016 for under 5 child mortality (U5M) show that Cuba has a U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births, whereas the USA has a U5M rate of 6.5 and Costa Rica has a rate of 9.7.¹ Cuba has the second-lowest U5M in the Americas behind Canada with a rate of 4.9.

Despite the fact that one-fifth of its population are excluded from coverage, the USA spends more per capita on health care than any other country. Why?  Because each stage of the insurance process sucks up money, the process of billing, accountants etc. add to the cost plus of course the mega profits at each stage.

So privatisation not only costs more but it is less efficient all round yet Starmer and Streeting want to increase the privatisation of the NHS and the trade unions that NHS workers belong say and do next to nothing.

That the GMB says nothing is not surprising.  They have been found by the Report they themselves commissioned to be institutionally sexist (and it implied institutionally racist too). A corrupt, right-wing union, the main concern of Gary Smith, its General Secretary and those around him is their own perks and privileges. And defending the apartheid State of Israel.

We can already see what the future holds for the NHS from the crisis in dentistry.  9/10 dentists cannot offer appointments to adults on the NHS and 8/10 can’t do the same for children. The BBC has revealed that we are at tipping point. The British Dental Association has said that the BBC’s research is ‘the most comprehensive and granular assessment of patient access in the history of the service’.

People are resorting to pulling out their own teeth without anaesthesia yet our so-called  Opposition says nothing about this because it’s more concerned with rooting out a non-existent anti-Semitism.

I recommend watching Bob Gill’s video because what it shows is frightening.

George Soros - a unifying figure for Trump, the Zionists and the antisemites of the Alt-Right

Soros the ‘Puppet Master’ is at the heart of the anti-Semitism which Zionism Koshers

When the Tory tabloids ran a series of anti-semitic headlines attacking George Soros, including the Nazi term Puppet Master the Zionist 'opponents' of antisemitism like the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism remained silent

One of the central features of anti-Semitic ideology is the all-powerful global Jewish financier. In previous times the Rothschild family fulfilled this role, today it is George Soros. The Jewish World Conspiracy Theory, whereby Jews control both capitalism and communism is personified in such a person. Jewish capitalists were supposed to have funded the Bolshevik revolution and Hitler’s anti-Semitism stemmed from his belief that Communism was a Jewish creation. [Jewish Bolshevism]

It needs to be said that Soros, who was one of those who funded a range of anti-Communist groups in the former Soviet Block is no revolutionary. But his funding of liberal and civil society groups, including human rights organisations and his opposition to Brexit has aroused the ire of a broad swathe of the Right, including the neo-Nazi and overtly anti-Semitic Right.  The image of Soros that the anti-Semites portray is a fiction, it is the traditional anti-semitic image of the manipulative Jewish financier.  It bears no resemblance to Soros just as anti-semitic imagery also bears no relation to Jews. But the fact that Soros is a billionaire speculator is no justification for anti-semitic attacks on him.

Battle of Waterloo

In 1940 the Nazis produced a film Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo about Nathan Rothschild and how he made his fortune out of the bloodshed of Waterloo. It was based on a pamphlet which took the Europe of 1846 by storm. It still resonates to this day.

There are even some fools in the Palestine solidarity movement who trace the existence of Israel to ‘the Rothschilds’. In fact the actual relationship between this family and the Zionist movement was a very mixed one. At the outset ‘Herzl appealed in vain to wealthy Jews such as Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the national Zionist movement.’ Lionel Nathan de Rothschild founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews in 1917.

The Rothschilds have been replaced by the figure of George Soros, who was a child survivor of the Hungarian Holocaust. Soros has become the unifying figure for the anti-Semitic and Zionist Right.

Glenn Beck outlining the tentacles of George Soros, the great financial manipulator

According to Glenn Beck Soros was “the puppetmaster” – a Jewish financier with ties to no nation, intent on creating a “one world government” and subverting the United States. It is an anti-Semitic phrase that the Sun also used on a headline when attacking Soros over Brexit before quickly withdrawing it.

Beck described how “Eighty years ago George Soros was born, little did people know that economies would collapse, currencies would become worthless, elections would be stolen.” Gideon Rachman describes how ‘The nastiest moment (amongst much competition) comes when Beck tries to claim that the 14-year-old Soros came from an anti-semitic family and himself participated in the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.’

In April Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in a campaign against the absent Soros. Orbán ran his campaign on the single issue of migration. Orban accused Soros of a ‘plot... to send millions of migrants to Hungary.’

All of Orban’s anti-Semitic venom was encapsulated in his speech of 15^th March commemorating the 170^th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. It is, to be sure, a classic summation of the caricature of the Jew as a rootless cosmopolitan, owing loyalty to nothing but his own purse.

“We must fight against an opponent which is different from us. Their faces are not visible, but are hidden from view; they do not fight directly, but by stealth; they are not honourable, but unprincipled; they are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs. They are not generous, but vengeful, and always attack the heart—especially if it is red, white and green.”

Evolve politics, which describes itself as ‘truly independent’ thus making me immediately suspicious, describes how the Tories have appointed one Roger Scruton, on the far-Right of British politics to chair an architecture quango.  Scruton was Editor of the Salisbury Review, a Tory magazine which believed Margaret Thatcher was a dangerous radical, for 18 years. 

Luciana Berger, Labour Zionist MP, takes objection to the appointment of Roger Scruton whilst turning a blind eye to Israel's love affair with Orban

More hypocrisy from an MP who is a last ditch defender of Israel's racist policies

In an example of the hypocrisy that passes for Zionist politics Luciana Berger, the Labour Zionist MP who fronts the Jewish Labour Movement and spends most of her time attacking Jeremy Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’ had the audacity to say that ‘An individual who peddles antisemitic conspiracy theories has no place advising government about anything.’ Quite why this should be so when Sir Eric Pickles was until recently in the Cabinet is difficulty to understand.  Naturally opportunist rent a mouth MP Wes Streeting joined in. Both of them were aghast because Scruton was a supporter of Viktor Orban.  Why the surprise?

Tory MEPs have just voted to defend Orban in the European parliament. The same Tory MEPs sit in the European Conservative Reform group with at least 3 anti-Semitic parties with barely a murmur from the Zionists.

Orban's 'outstanding statesman' with friend - Zionist labour can't criticise the Tories support for Orban without asking why Orban was a guest of honour in Israel last July

I have repeatedly written that Orban has called Admiral Horthy, the pro-Nazi ruler of Hungary who presided over the deportation to Auschwitz of nearly half a million Jews an “exceptional statesmen”.  None of this prevented Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visiting Orban on a state visit in the summer of 2017.

Add caption

I also described how ‘Orban dedicated a nasty and vicious poster campaign to attacking Soros last year, replete with all the anti-Semitic dog whistles that only he was capable of.  Hungary’s Jewish community was up in arms.’  Why are anti-Semitic regimes so attractive to Israel and the Zionist movement?

Anti-semitic Republican cartoon attacking Democrate candidate - with fistful of dollars in her hand - the dogs are whistling

Reuters reported last year that ‘Israel’s ambassador to Hungary issued a statement denouncing the campaign, saying it “evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear”, an apparent reference to Hungary’s part in the deportation of half a million Jews during the Holocaust. But here’s the strange thing. Netanyahu ‘hit the roof. He wasn’t going to have his closest ally in Europe attacked because of a little local anti-Semitism.’

Hours after the Ambassador made his comments, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, issued a “clarification” saying that Soros was a legitimate target for criticism. Surprise, surprise!

In 2017 Orban launched a poster campaign against George Soros in Budapest as part of his campaign to close Soros's European University - when the Israeli Ambassador uttered a few mild criticisms he was forced to retract by Netanyahu

“In no way was the statement (by the ambassador) meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments,” said foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, adding that Soros funded organizations “that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself”. Israel backs Hungary, says financier Soros is a threat

As Evolve observes

‘Orban even went as far as commissioning a deeply antisemitic advertising campaign that plastered Soros’ grinning face on billboards with the caption “Don’t let George Soros have the last laugh.“

What Netanyahu is saying is that Soros helps fund Israeli human rights groups like B’tselem and in Netanyahu’s eyes this counts as ‘undermining’ his police state regime. All of this took place without a murmur from Luciana.  Because of course she had bigger fish to fry namely Corbyn and it wouldn’t do to criticise her favourite state (Israel in case you wondered) as anti-Semitic.

Yair Netanyahu's anti-semitic cartoon of Soros attracted rare praise for a Jew from the Daily Stormer - possibly a first

Daily Stormer

None of this is surprising, because to Netanyahu Soros is the anti-Christ (we don’t have an anti-Moses!). Netanyahu’s son, Yair, helpfully posted a nice anti-Semitic cartoon of Soros at the centre of a conspiracy, complete with Lizard to undermine the Israeli state.  Praise came from neo-Nazi former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke no less.  Indeed Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer joined in the congratulations, which is no mean feat since he has sworn never to talk to or meet a Jew.

David Duke, neo-Nazi ex-KKK gives his approval to antisemitic cartoon by Netanyahu's son Yair

Not it should be thought that Orban is the only anti-Semite that Netanyahu has close and friendly relations with.  Poland’s Law and Justice Party is just as close which is why when Poland passed a law making criticism of Polish collaboration with the Nazis a criminal offence, Netanyahu moved quickly to head off criticism by concocting a deal with them that left the legislation in place. The Real Reason Netanyahu Gave Cover To Holocaust Deniers

Holocaust survivors and anti-racist Israelis picket Yad Vashem during Orban's visit 

Naturally, having been invited to visit Hungary on a state visit Netanyahu returned the favour and last July Orban found time to visit his best friend.  As is normal on these occasions Orban paid homage at the Holocaust propaganda museum that Israel maintains, Yad Vashem. We therefore had the ludicrous situation of someone who thinks Horthy, who sent nearly half a million Jews to their deaths, is an ‘exceptional statesman’ paying homage to the 6 million.  Pass the sick bag Alice, as Private Eye used to say.

However none of the claque of Zionist Labour MPs had anything to say about this.  It was left to some of Israel’s Holocaust survivors to picket Orban when he paid homage at Yad Vashem. The Times of Israel’s report of the demonstration Livid protesters block Hungarian PM Orban as he leaves Yad Vashem quoted Yad Vashem as saying that ‘its hosting of Orban was determined by Foreign Ministry directives, which require foreign leaders and other visiting dignitaries to visit the memorial.’  If Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, which has always produced a Zionised version of Holocaust history, erasing for years the name even of the Auschwitz escapees Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (because they were not Zionists) cannot even refuse entrance to a known anti-Semite because it has to follow government instructions then there is no other way to describe it other than a propaganda institution.

Below is an excellent article in Jewish Currents, a left-wing American Jewish publication on what it calls The Soros Myth.

Tony Greenstein

The Soros Myth - Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Undermining and Delegitimizing of Protest

Racism, Antisemitism, ideas of “outside agitators” are the right’s most effective tools for delegitimizing the message and messengers of social justice. If protest can be blamed on those outside, both the message and the messenger are untrustworthy.

October 11, 2018 Dove Kent; Jewish Currents (Portside)

Protestors opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, September 2018., Photo: Mobilus In Mobili via Flickr // Jewish Currents

For decades, the right has undermined Black protest and resistance movements as “violent,” “dangerous,” and “un-American” and has responded with militarized force. Under this administration, Trump and his allies are replicating and amplifying this strategy, using misogyny and antisemitism to further erode the basic foundations of political participation.

In response to weeks of women and trans protests demanding that Judge Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault, be removed from consideration for the Supreme Court, Donald Trump tweeted out:

The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers

This was quickly followed by a retweeted antisemitic message from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and a longtime Republican leader, calling Soros the enemy of Christ:

Follow the money. I think Soros is the anti-Christ! He must go! Freeze his assets & I bet the protests stop.

Trump and his allies’ deployment of misogyny and antisemitism in this moment are attempts to  undermine our movements, echoing ways the right wing has long attacked protest movements on the left. The power of protest lies in its credibility as the voice of public opinion. If women and trans protestors can be dismissed as pawns or operatives rather than agents of social change, then the power of protest is weakened. If a single Jew can be blamed for orchestrating the whole affair, then the power of protest is further eroded.

Birds of a feather and all that

This antisemitic rhetoric from the state echoes among white nationalists. In the days following Trump’s tweet and Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, fliers (created by the Daily Stormer) appeared on college campuses and in cities in California and New York. The fliers blamed Jews for orchestrating the assault allegations brought against Judge Kavanaugh. They read: “Every time some anti-white, anti-American, anti-freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it.” The Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center (the community center I grew up in) was vandalized with dozens of swastikas.

Trump’s white nationalist audience knows what he means when he points the finger at Soros—he’s invoking a time-tested antisemitic strategy for undermining social movements. According to Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) Board Member Dania Rajendra:

Antisemitism and the idea of “outside agitators” is the right’s most effective tool for delegitimizing both the message and messengers of social justice. If protest can be blamed on those outside of the state, then both the message and the messenger are untrustworthy. Delegitimizing both is necessary to eventually repress or expel said “troublemakers” by the forces of “law and order.” And in fact, we saw the president say exactly that to a conference of police the same week as his post-Kavanaugh-protest Soros tweet.

We know that we need a strong, vibrant, awake electorate holding elected officials accountable. Undermining the credibility of protest is an extremely effective tool of protecting those in power.

Right-wing regimes have long broken down the fabric of political protest by using the antisemitic notion of rich Jewish financiers as the “puppet masters” of social unrest. During the Russian Revolution, the Tsar’s secret police published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fictional account of a meeting of rich Jews plotting to break down the society of their “host countries” and rule the world through the promotion of social upheaval. For a period, the Protocols did its job to undermine and destabilize the revolution against the Tsar. Because of its success, it’s been translated and promoted by right-wing ideologues around the world ever since.

The Protocols gave us dog whistle terms like “globalist,” a slur associated with Jews that paint them as untrustworthy, ready to betray the nations of their residence in service of an unseen authority. The general idea, from JFREJ’s resource Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to our Movement, is that “Jews are a powerful, corrupting influence on otherwise good, pure people—insidious troublemakers with a nefarious agenda at odds with that of the good, ‘true’ citizens of a nation.”

During McCarthyism, these well known stereotypes about Jews were used to tar communists and leftist movement activists (Jewish and non-Jewish) as untrustworthy, two-faced “troublemakers” with foreign loyalties detrimental to the United States. The over-representation of Jews and non-Jewish people of color (always seen as suspect by the white owning class) in leftist movement circles made these claims plausible. Through institutional state repression and violence—blacklisting, closures of organizations, and ultimately the public execution of the Rosenbergs—the Red Scare successfully decimated the social fabric of leftist movements.

It is deeply troubling to see these same tropes, indeed some of the very same language, being used against today’s social movements by the president and leaders of the Republican party. Trump and other Republicans have regularly claimed that George Soros (the central target of this anti-Semitic messaging) is entirely behind the Movement for Black Lives. Here racism and antisemitism intersect: rather than admit that a strong, powerful Black liberation movement is growing throughout the US, some white people would believe that it is one or a few rich Jews propping up Black people to cause unrest in the streets and undermine white Christian society.

It's not just antisemitism on its own, but antisemitism deployed against the left that gives the lie about Soros its cultural power. Our side can point out that right-wing efforts are funded by the Koch, Walton and Mercer families all day long, but that fact and its broadcast never delegitimizes their endeavors. That's because the Soros lie—the invocation of the idea of the scary, untrustworthy Jew—is built on top of a bunch of other assumptions: that "real" Americans are Christian and white, and hew to patriarchal gender norms and racial segregation.

Luckily, we know how to fight back. We can recognize the ways in which racism, antisemitism, and misogyny are deployed to keep our movements weak and divided and we can refuse to fall for conspiracy theories. We can join together in the raw, tough, honest work of building multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-class, multi-faith movements. We can center the leadership of those most impacted. We can collectively disinvest from whiteness and practice multi-racial democracy in everything we do.

In the face of the destructive attacks of the extreme right wing, we have an opportunity to respond with a solidarity that buttresses and expands democracy—a rebuttal to an oppressive past and a promise for a liberated future.

[Dove Kent is an organizer, educator, and movement builder based in Durham, North Carolina. She is the former Executive Director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.]

Trump and McConnell Take Gaslighting to New Level in Kavanaugh Confirmation Fight

The use of an anti-Semitic trope to condemn protesters for exercising their First Amendment rights signals a turning point in the authoritarian trajectory of our politics.

By Adele M. Stan

October 5, 2018
The American Prospect

President Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Rochester, Minnesota, on October 4, 2018. credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci  //  The American Prospect

The confirmation process for President Donald J. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, continues to be a significant test of the U.S. form of government, and a display of high drama.

Washington, D.C., was only on its third cup of coffee when the presidential tweethit: “The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad,” wrote Trump. “Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers.”

He was speaking, of course, of the sexual assault survivors—mostly women—who have been following the example set by Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher when they famously confronted Republican Senator Jeff Flake by holding his elevator door open and imploring him to consider the experiences of those who have been targets of sexual assault when deciding whether to vote for moving the nomination to the Senate floor.

Before long, speaking from the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had recently promised the religious right that he and his caucus planned to “plow right through” the confirmation—complained of the “harm” he said was done to Kavanaugh and his family because of allegations of sexual assault made against him by Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor from California. Then McConnell cast the thousands of protesters who have come to the U.S. Capitol buildings in opposition to the nomination as “the mob.”

In both instances, these national leaders branded people exercising their First Amendment rights as dangerous.

In both instances, these national leaders branded people exercising their First Amendment rights as dangerous.McConnell complained of security threats to senators. And Trump trotted out the right’s favorite code word for its ideology of anti-Semitism. That word is “Soros.”

In both the fever swamps of the American right, and the forests of Europe’s right-wing nationalist movements, the hedge fund billionaire George Soros—a Jewish Holocaust survivor born in Hungary—has become a favorite bogeyman because of his support of liberal and civil-society groups. In Europe, he is cast as a destroyer of Europe’s Christian values. (His Open Society Foundation was pushed out of Hungary, which also recently passed anti-immigration legislation dubbed the “Stop Soros” law.) He’s also a favorite target of the U.S. right, where invocation of his name carries the same sort of anti-Semitic code. Here, he’s reviled for donating to progressive and liberal groups, and has consequently become fodder for the conspiracy theorists of the right.

One racist congratulating another

Characterizations of Soros by right-wing figures follow the outline of old anti-Semitic tropes such as the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and conspiracies supposedly involving the Rothschild family.

This is the strategy of authoritarians. Create fear that chaos created by backlash to the authoritarian’s exercise of raw power is really taking place at the direction of one very powerful enemy. Discourage people from public protest by painting the opposition as “evil,” as Trump did in the Mississippi rally he led this week, where he mocked Ford for her inability to remember every single little detail of the 1982 evening on which she says she was assaulted by Kavanaugh.

“These are really evil people,” Trump said of Ford and the Democrats who insisted on her right to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose job it is to vet nominees to the federal bench. Note that among the right-wing evangelicals who comprise much of Trump’s base, “evil” is regarded as an existential spiritual threat, the stuff of Satan.

As I write this, the outcome of the final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit on the highest court in the land is not certain. But the clampdown is coming—a clampdown on dissent, a clampdown on access to the levers of congressional process by the president’s opponents.

As I write this, the outcome of the final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit on the highest court in the land is not certain. But the clampdown is coming—a clampdown on dissent, a clampdown on access to the levers of congressional process by the president’s opponents. As McConnell promised, he really has “plow[ed] right through” this nomination process, complete with a final FBI report on the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh that, through circumscription of inquiry imposed by the White House, amounted to a whitewash.

The exercise of authoritarian power is not anything that Trump, McConnell, and their allies even attempt to conceal at this point. It’s happening in front of your face. Pay attention. Take note of the signs. But don’t let it keep you from the streets, or from the voting booth.

The republic as we have known it could cease to exist if we allow it. And that time is growing closer. They’re playing for all the marbles. They mustn’t be allowed to win.

[Adele M. Stan is a columnist for The American Prospect. She is research director of People for the American Way, and a winner of the Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism.]