By Tord Björk
The attacks against Jeremy Corbyn is not only attacks against his politics. It is part of an attack against peace, environmental, social rights and anti-racist movements and their attempts to come to terms with the state apparatus and its close links to business interests.
In the long waves of popular struggle for peace on and with earth the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour party is telling us something. It comes in a time when all over the world we are asking ourselves how we can get a better, less stressed daily life at the same time as acting against the threats to the survival of mankind and biological diversity. To be able to do that we must find a way to a fruitful relationship, instead of a gap between our local experiences where we live and formal economics and politics.
Labour under Corbyn was able to bridge that gap and opened up for a fruitful dialogue with independent movements and people’s daily life experiences. A strong democratic momentum emerged raising the party membership threefold. Movements for climate, antiracism, peace, social justice, and several other issues found a voice inside the formal political system willing to listen to their message. Corbyn was suspended for telling the truth that the attacks against Labour for being antisemitic were exaggerated. The suspension is an attempt to dismantle the democratic progress that has een made. The role the UK and Anglo-American influence have in the world makes it necessary with an internationalistic support of this democratization and answer on the attack against it, which is also an attack against us.
The forces against this democratic progress are strong but will not succeed. The revitalization of linking daily life experience with politics is of too large importance both domestically and internationally. It is a decisive step forward in a country that was at the forefront of establishing racist imperialism globally, which continued today under the aegis of the finance industry in London.
Most reactions against the suspension of Corbyn lack the understanding of the historic opportunity to mobilize broad international support for this democratic progress. Instead, the reactions limit themselves to the playing field set up by the opponents to Corbyn. It is a defensive reaction saying we are not racist, being critical towards Israeli policies is not the same as being an antisemite. We who work for peace, as Corbyn consistently did, must defend ourselves against the military industrial complex. This is an attack against the UK left and we have to defend ourselves against the right.
A response kept within moral, single issue, ideological and national frameworks does not address the severity of the situation. What is under attack is of historical and international importance for the relationship between movements based in daily life and the parliamentarian realm. Movements that are political actors also rooted in the moral realm. A broad range of independent movements including those that are not carried forward by a left wing ideology. Acknowledging this dimension of a mutual general relationship beyond policymaking between movements and formal politics is the key to understanding why Corbyn is so feverousily attacked.
It is an attack organized by several forces joined by coinciding interests with seemingly unquestionable authority. It is not only those opposing the democratization within the parliamentary parties including some Labour MPs. It is also the overwhelmingly dominant part of mass media that selectively chooses what kind of racism to look for. This national press printed more than 5000 biased articles accusing Labour under Corbyn for antisemitism. There is also a long tradition of using secret and open collaboration between secret services, NGOs, business interest, part of mass media, and politicians to attack the kind of democratization, anti racist, peace, and social justice which Corbyn represents.
The biased attack against Corbyn has been systematic from many forces as part of a long UK history of misuse of propaganda against peace movements and Labour. Modern war propaganda was invented by the British Foreign Office during WWI. With the help of an internationally recognized academician a report was published with false accusations against German soldiers claimed to have chopped off the hands of babies in Belgium. During the 1920s and 1970s secret service agents in collaboration with business and likeminded forces conspired against the Labour government and was able to bring it down at their first attempt in 1924.
The British state is sometimes acting with the help of secret agents or the help of funding NGOs to secretly or openly interfere in other countries democratic life as well. With the help of methods such as having sexual relationships under false pretensions and other morally disgusting and antidemocratic provocative methods, British agents have infiltrated the antiracist, environmental, climate and other movements internationally. This has caused severe damage in the trust among people and to public life. The British state also funds NGOs like Integrity Initiative led by former military intelligence agents that have set up secret networks in other countries to attack the peace movement under the pretext of acting against Russian disinformation. The reaction to this British interference in other countries has mainly been to criticize how the Integrity Initiative was used against Corbyn and the Labour party. Instead, we need is to see that we have to jointly act against this British state funded attacks against peace, environmental, and antiracist movement and their relations with political parties.
We cannot any longer be silent about the forces that have united themselves against Corbyn and who also attacks many movements internationally. Instead we need to dismantle the legitimacy of the joint antidemocratic forces and their coinciding interests. This makes it necessary to systematically expose how the suspension of Corbyn and the collusion between the forces against him also operates internationally. It is done in similar ways and have malign effects on open democratic culture. Instead of being on the defensive we need to move the issues over to the side where they belong.
It is not we who continuously organize against racism that are racists, it is those that separates the moral issue from state racism. It is not us working for peace opposing all forms of militarism that increase our vulnerability. It is those that raise the vulnerability of all countries by promoting external and domestic enemy images.
Popular movements in opposition to the present racist world order are in need of addressing the unequal international relation between the North Atlantic countries and the rest of the world. The idea that European values or US exceptionalism are unique and calls for a right to act globally in their own interest must be opposed. This together with the revisionist idea that threat in the world comes only from totalitarian extremist ideologies as nazism, communism and islamism. To this end EU has started a museum and writes parliamentary resolutions erasing the rest of the world outside Europe from WWII history, blaming communism to be as genocidal as nazism. We have to put global history at the centre of WWII showing that the world war both in Asia and Europe was the result of fascist aggression during the 1930s started by Japan against China with mass terror against civilians in 1937 opposed by the nationalist and communist armies. Later in 1939 it started in Europe ending after six years on this continent before it ended with the Japanese capitulation in 1945.
EU relativizes the Holocaust and supports a far right ideology by claiming that both Soviet Union and Germany committed equally immoral genocides. Soviet Union as well as Western powers like the UK used large terror and mass starvation to impose their forced modernization in its own country or overseas, but this is not comparable with the German extinction of the Jews which was unique during the WWII era. The relativization of the Holocaust promoted by the EU, business interests and centre-left parties helps growing antisemitism in many places. Local Jew survivors in Central and Eastern Europe are still blamed for being Communists and thus as Jewish partisans or in the Soviet army guilty og genocide against people in Lithuania, Hungary and other similar countries.
Popular movements opposing the present world order need to criticize this double genocide theory. The way EU and those attacking Corbyn are taking antisemtism out of its political context and relativizing the Holocaust must be held responsible for helping antisemitism to grow.*
It is necessary to confront the racism inherent in the separation of the moral and the political side of racism. This in an unbiased way both in the case of antisemitism, islamophobia or any kind of racism.
The attack against Corbyn goes beyond the issue of racism. All movements that question short term profit at the expense of environmental destruction or building a society free of oppression are under attack. The independent movements in Britain had found a fruitful relationship with a party willing to listen to them without co-opting the movements. Both participators in this relationship set an example for the rest of the world.
The way vested interests secretly and openly oppose this relationship to enable more free room for militaristic and finance interests to rule the world needs to be studied and acted upon, especially the international dimension that has been addressed to little. The secret forces attacking Corbyn have also been paid by the British state to do the same thing in other countries. We cannot any longer let a combination of diverse forces attack us one by one. It is time to fight back by simultaneously continuing constructing alternatives, resisting wars and ways to make every social relationship and nature into a commodity. We can defeat divide and rule tactics by those in power by seeing ourselves as historical subjects with a common need of supporting each other rather than objects of oppression. When we see ourselves as people giving hope to our communities and the world in a mutual relationship with those members of political parties that oppose the present world order can we defend ourselves better when necessary, without losing our course. We can change our societies and make the world a better place to live in.
Tord Björk
* The webinar Holocaust and the rewriting of History addressed new forms of relativizing the Holocaust in the interest of business and continuation of European access to natural resources.This with the help of military means if necessary all over the world. The webinar was organized by Activists for Peace together with Prague Spring 2 network against right wing extremism and populism on 27th of October 2020.
Webinar on the Holocaust and rewriting of history with Dovid Katz and Tord Björk October 27 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpnTQMBD6Fo&feature=emb_logo
Tord Björk
coordinator of the EU committee in Friends of the Earth Sweden
Co-founder of the Prague Spring 2 network against right wing extremism and populism
Co-founder of Activists for Peace
Member of the International Council of the World Social Forum for the Gandhian Network Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
Some links:
Novara media – David Graeber: A celebration of his life, At 1:32:27 Corbyn about this Anarchist and his he contributed to a new relationship between the movements and the party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZlXJ3YqkMA
The books exposing the fake character of the attack against Labour under Corbyn:
Antisemitism in the Labour party (can be downloaded for free).
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3215-antisemitism-and-the-labour-party
How Labour Became “Antisemitic”, AN INTERVIEW WITH GREG PHILO
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/labour-party-antisemitism-claims-jeremy-corbyn
The article refers to the book Bad News for Labour:
https://www.plutobooks.com/9781786805720/bad-news-for-labour/
The Labour Antisemitism Report Has Always Been a Politically Motivated Travesty, Daniel Finn
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/labour-antisemitism-report-ehrc-corbyn-commission
The Fallout From Jeremy Corbyn’s Suspension | Novara Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3dZsXKcQ4Y
Spycops in context: a brief history of political policing in Britain
and A brief history of political policing, Connor Woodman
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/spycops-in-context
The purpose of the Integrity Initiative and what it does – We are all in an ongoing war according to Chris Donnelly, founder and director of The Institute for Statecraft and former NATO advisor
https://activistsforpeace.wordpress.com/2018/12/
Undermining Democracy, Not Defending It: The ‘Integrity Initiative’ is Everything That’s Wrong With British Foreign Policy, Aaron Bastani
https://novaramedia.com/2018/12/10/undermining-democracy-not-defending-it-the-integrity-initiative-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-british-foreign-policy
Dovid Katz: The “Double Genocide” Theory, The New and Official form of Holocaust denial:
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Dovid Katz and his collaborators website:
https://defendinghistory.com
Holocaust and the rewriting of history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpnTQMBD6Fo
Tord Björk, rewriting of history in Brussels: https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/11/23/rewriting-of-history-in-brussels-at-a-strange-new-museum-house-of-european-history/
Tord Björk: Liberal rewriting of history, more detailed version of the article in Algemeiner:
https://activistsforpeace.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/liberal-rewriting-of-history
European Parliament resolution: Importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe
“Letter in support of critical social sciences in France” opposing governmental Islamophobia
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflP9uybkW7eaK8Kl2CNpq-YYT40ojW-IroF5cnHmAcW57DfA/viewform
The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-oOg2J0aYc
Activists for Peace 