The Deep State vs Jeremy Corbyn

This film (released about a week ago) is about the collusion between British intelligence and the mainstream media to block Corbyn from becoming prime minister on December 12 – despite overwhelming public support.

The film begins with vignettes from prominent British and international prominent Jews, such as Noam Chomsky, Bernie Saunders and Norman Finkelstein shredding the outrageous smear (repeatedly echoed by every media outlet, including the BBC) that Corbyn and the Labour Party are viciously antisemitic. As with Bernie Sanders the radical policies Corbyn promotes pose a grave threat to a powerful elite that includes the British banking and arms industry, as well as the pro-Israel lobby abetting the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation of Israel.

British intelligence has been using the mainstream media to peddle disinformation about the Labour Party since 1948, when MI5 faked a document linking them to the Communist Party.

Filmmakers go on to castigate the British media for failing to confront the outright lies expounded by Corbyn’s Conservative and Liberal Democratic opponents. This section includes a clip of one of Boris Johnson’s ministers calling for the UK to replace the National Health Service (NHS) with a US-style system of private insurance. Another clip depicts Corbyn displaying leaked documents from Johnson-Trump trade negotiations that include the  the right of the US to bid on private contracts to run specific NHS services currently run by the British government.*

The film ends by reminding us of the true purpose of rigged political polls (currently showing Johnson with a strong lead) – namely to demoralize Labour supporters and discourage them from coming out to vote. They point to 2017, when Conservatives ended up with a minority government, despite all the polls predicting a strong Tory majority.

*In the week since the film was released, the mainstream media (based on an anonymous source on Reddit) is blaming the Russians for leaking the documents to Corbyn.

 

 

 

Witchhunt: How the UK Labour Party Suspended a Black Jew for Antisemitism

Witchhunt

by Jon Pullman (2019)

Film Review

This documentary is about the corporate media vendetta against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. Corbyn was  first elected to head the British Labour Party in 2015. Espousing many of the same socialist and anti-corporate views as Bernie Sanders, Corbyn vastly increased membership in the Labour Party, especially among young people. He has also survived repeated attempts by Blairite Labour members to remove him from the party leadership.

According to his supporters, Britain’s corporate elite are terrified of Corbyn becoming prime minister. They know he will repeal Britain’s anti-union laws and re-nationalize many of the public services that were privatized by the Conservatives and Tony Blair.

The film mainly focuses on the current media effort to portray Corbyn and his supporters as “antisemitic,” based on their longstanding support for Palestinian rights. It takes up the case of longtime Corbyn supporter Jackie Walker, a Black Jewish woman of Jamaican ancestry. Despite her own Jewish heritage, Walker has been suspended twice from the Labour Party for supposedly antisemitic comments she made on Facebook and in a public meeting. In both cases, the corporate media repeatedly misportrayed what she actually said.

The filmmakers play segments from an Al Jazeera investigation into an undercover Israeli intelligence operation to target British pro-Palestinian activists. There is strong evidence these Israeli agents are collaborating with various pro-Zionist groups and a compliant media to perpetuate this witchhunt against Corbyn and his supporters. Their primary goal is to counter growing British support for the BDS movement.*

The film features members of the Jewish Voice for Labour and other Jewish intellectuals who oppose the pro-Zionist’s lobby’s effort to label all criticism of Israeli human rights violations (described as “slow Palestinian genocide”) as antisemitism.

Witchhunt also includes scenes from Walker’s one-woman play called “The Lynching.” The daughter of a Jamaican mother of Jewish decent and an Ashkenazy Jew from Russia, Walker was born in the US, where her mother participated in civil rights struggles in the South. The family was deported owing to her mother’s refusal to testify in front of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC).

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*The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.

Why FDR Opposed the 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill

The Great Depression – Part 7 To Be Somebody

PBS (1993)

Film Review

This episode covers Depression-era lynching, racial segregation and antisemitism.

The 1930s saw a big increase in southern lynchings of African Americans. In 1935, this would lead to a major campaign by the National Association of Colored People to win FDR’s support for a federal anti-lynching bill. Still fearful of southern Democrats, Roosevelt declined to support the bill when it passed the house in 1937 and was blocked by a Senate filibuster.

In 1937 the Daughters of the American Republic (DAR) blocked African American opera singer Marion Anderson from performing at Constitution Hall. Instead Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of 25,000.

This episode also explores the 100+ Nazi groups that emerged during the thirties in the US. They would hold marches in full Nazi regalia in 19 cities. Without a following of over 10 million listeners, antisemitic radio host Father Coughlan delivered weekly rants about “America for Americans.”

After the November 1938 Kristalnacht* resulted in the mass destruction of Jewish businesses, the arrest of 20,000 Jews and the death of 38, human rights advocates pressed FDR to accept Jewish refugees from Germany. He refused.

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*Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians.

The Demise of Academic Freedom in the US

Watchtower

Press TV (2017)

Film Review

This documentary concerns three extremely popular and effective college professors who were denied tenure and/or fired after being targeted by the Jewish Anti-Discrimination League (ADL) for their views on Palestine. Two of the professors targeted (Dr Norman Finkelstein) and Dr Joel Kovel) were accused by the ADL of being “self-hating Jews,” owing to their support for justice for Palestine. The third, Dr Joseph Massad, a Jordanian whose family fled Palestine in 1948, was accused of being an “anti-Semite” who made Jewish students uncomfortable.

None of the above accusations were ever supported by the facts. In each case, the school that employed them (DePaul, Brooklyn College and Columbia) failed to follow their own established processes. Instead they were more concerned about bad publicity interfering with their ability to fundraise.  .

In 2008 Massad, who Columbia improperly denied tenure, sought the assistance of the the ACLU for the clear violation of his First Amendment rights. With their support, he finally won tenure in 2009.

One of the most ominous aspects of these three cases is the clear monitoring/surveillance role the ADL* is playing in all US institutions of higher learning. In Finkelstein’s case, this monitoring entailed dispatching outside non-student agitators to disrupt his classes.

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*The ADL has a long history of collaborating with the FBI to spy on progressive groups. In the mid-eighties they were involved in spying on a group I belonged to The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES): https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2000/12/27/12071.php