Corbyn's Shameful Abandonment of Livingstone will come back to haunt him
In happier times - Livingstone, Gerry Adams and Jeremy Corbyn |
No one will be happier with the resignation of Ken Livingstone than the racists and the Zionists. No doubt the Luke Akehursts, John Manns and Wes Streetings, who applauded the Israeli army snipers as they slaughtered unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza last week will savour their moment of victory. But if it has been a victory for the Right it has been because of the abject cowardice of much of the Left, Momentum’s Jon Lansman in particular.
After two years of persecution Ken Livingstone has succumbed to the pressure believing, wrongly in my opinion, that the pressure would be lifted on Jeremy Corbyn. On the contrary the Zionists will feel emboldened to go for new victims, of whom Jackie Walker will be the next target. And after that Chris Williamson MP and anyone else who sticks their head above the parapet in order to denounce the world’s only apartheid state.
No doubt Lansman and his Momentum sycophants will be prepared to sacrifice more socialists to the Zionist movement – the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel - as part of what they believe is the price of eventual victory. They are likely to be sorely disappointed. The more you feed these animals the more they will want until they devour their final victim, Corbyn himself.
In the last act of the malevolent Iain McNicol, Livingstone’s suspension was made indefinite. In an abject act of cowardice Corbyn rewarded this detestable man, who tried to keep him off the ballot paper two years ago in the leadership election and who locked Corbyn and his staff out of Labour’s HQ on election night last year (believing that the election would be a disaster) with a peerage. Corbyn rewarded this crook with a peerage and in return he will suffer further treachery.
Ken Livingstone pioneered anti-racism in local government. He supported the Republican movement in Ireland and advocated speaking to Sinn Fein when it was unpopular. He was unflinching in his support of the Palestinians and in his opposition to Zionism. Those who remember the Greater London Council remember one of the few genuinely radical local authorities in Britain which supported the miners, taunted Thatcher with its banner figures of unemployment and established lasting links with Britain’s Black community. As a two-term Mayor Livingstone was equally successful.
Livingstone has been forced out of Labour precisely because he is an anti-racist who stood up to Jewish racists and Zionist chauvinists and their non-Jewish sponsors. It is to the eternal shame of Corbyn and McDonnell that instead resisting they allowed John Mann to set the agenda.
It was appropriate that Lansman should see fit to quote from the notorious racist politician Enoch Powell |
Corbyn and McDonnell threw Livingstone to the Zionist wolves without realising that Livingstone was only the hors d'oeuvres. Of course they were not the only ones to abandon Ken. Lansman quotedappropriately from Enoch Powell, when informing Ken that ‘all political lives end in failure.’
Lies take on a life of their own in the yellow press. Livingstone was repeatedly accused of saying that ‘Hitler was a Zionist’ which would have been an idiotic thing to say. However the transcript of what he did say is easily available. The Independent publishedthe transcript on 28th April 2016. Defending Naz Shah MP, who had herself had been suspended for a satirical joke about transplanting Israel to the United States he said:
“It’s completely over the top but it’s not antisemitism. Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism– this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.
After two years idiot journalist Deborah Orr could not get a simple thing such as what Livingstone actually said correct |
None of this stopped idiot journalists like Deborah Orr of the ‘I’ calling Livingstone a ‘fool’ only last week whilst repeating the ‘Hitler was a Zionist’ lie. Lazy unprincipled journalists like Orr can’t be bothered to move out from under the Westminster bubble. It is easier just to recycle other pundits lies. Orr wrote:
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has been riven for many months now by unquenchable accusations of anti-semitism. Hardly surprising, when such fools as Ken Livingstone find it acceptable to declare that “Hitler was a Zionist”, seemingly unaware of the grotesque inversion of the truth that his sophistry entails.
Last week we had the unelected political lightweight, Shami Chakrabarti, declaring that Livingstone should be expelled from the Labour Party. Chakrabarti who has not been a member for two years yet took it upon herself to declare that Livingstone should be expelled for having given ‘offence’ albeit that he spoke the truth. [Anger is not a substitute for ignorance]
Livingstone has issued a dignified statement rebutting the lies that have surrounded him for these past two years and a shorter statement for the press.
Ken vigorously rebuts the libel that he is in anyway anti-Semitic and reaffirms that what he spoke was true. In particular he defended his statement, which so irked the Zionists, that Hitler supported Zionism:
‘I was also told I caused offence using the word ‘support’ when I said Hitler supported Zionism. However, the respected professor of Holocaust studies, Francis Nicosia, in his book Zionism and Antisemitism in Nazi Germany, said ‘there was almost unanimous support in German government and Nazi party circles for promoting Zionism among German Jews.’ Nicosia detailed that support in his December 1978 article ‘Zionism in National Socialist Jewish Policy in Germany, 1933-39’ (University of Chicago, Journal of Modern History).
Exactly the same conclusion was drawn by Zionist historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz in her War Against the Jews and David Cesarani’s The Final Solution. It is of course offensive to Zionists to be reminded that their movement, Zionism, despite its accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ today, was a movement of collaboration.
By throwing Livingstone overboard, Corbyn and McDonnell have not made it easier for themselves. Livingstone was one of the few heavyweights of the Left on the National Executive Committee until his suspension. With the departure of Christine Shawcroft, who was personally told by Corbyn to resign, there is no serious socialist left on the NEC.
Compare the left on the NEC today to the left in a previous generation – people like Tony Benn, Eric Heffer, Norman Atkinson, Joan Maynard. Today we have Momentum lightweights whose main preoccupation is advancing their career, with barely an idea between them.
Lansman and the leadership of Momentum, whilst voting with Corbyn have effectively abandoned any strategy that involves confrontation with the Right.
From now on the game will be to increasingly appease the Right. A Right that may, in the event of electoral victory (which is becoming increasingly unlikely) is likely to refuse to support Corbyn as Prime Minister. The lesson from the 1930’s was that appeasing Hitler led to more and greater demands. Likewise having sacrificed Livingstone, Corbyn will find that their opponent’s appetites will be whetted still further until there is only one sacrifice left – and that will be Corbyn himself.
Tony Greenstein