I have generally and perhaps timidly tended to avoid some of the most controversial issues of our times and indeed politics generally in this blog, making exceptions for Trump and Starmer and his nature hating government and their lies. Now with the elections two days away I am screwing my courage to the sticking plate, putting my head over the parapet, grasping the nettle and other metaphors.
So this is going to be all about Zack Polanski and the Green Party. Please look away if you are likely to be offended.
I think Polanski is terrific and I hope I will not be proven wrong. He has been accused of many things, including ignoring environmental issues, but we have long known the Green Party’s stance on those. What he is doing is talking about how they plan to do everything else.
In a rather disparaging article and interview by Decca Aikenhead in the Sunday Times, she lists his what she calls his ‘eco-populist refrains as “four families in the UK have more money than 20 million of us. Why is it always tough choices for working-class people and never tough choices for the super-rich? It’s not migrants in small boats that are to blame for our problems, its the billionaires in private jets. Let’s end the genocide in Gaza, tax the rich, fight for LGBT rights, save the planet and “Make hope normal again”.” These seem to be utterly laudable, questions worth asking again and again as we are constantly lied to by other politicians about them.
“His strategy”, she says, “is to publicise policies not directly related to environmentalism on the grounds that voters alredy know about his party’s green agenda [of course]. He wants to decriminalise all drugs [the war on drigs has hardly been a success] and sex work, nationalise the water, energy and rail companies [their nationalisation having been disastrous for the British people, hugely profitable for the few], introduce rent controls, a wealth tax, a universal basic income and trans-gender self-identification, scrap university tuition fees, leave Nato [sic], treat all migrants as if they are citizens and work towards a world without borders.” I am not sure about NATO but otherwise I am in complete agreement with all of this.
So what’s the problem? There is the rather strange and distasteful matter of his hypnotherapy con but if that’s the worst there is (and heaven knows they will have been digging), I can live with it. No undeclared millions of pounds in donations and expression of racist views on Cameo for money for a start.
The Daily Mail, with typical restraint and even-handedness has a headline screaming “Beware the Green Menace”. Ed Balls, equally typically, attacked him like a playground bully on Good Morning Britain – there were 16,000 complaints to Ofcom and calls for his resignation after his disgraceful display of bias, bearing in mind his ongoing links to the Labour Party. I watched as Balls’ dead eyes hardened to show what looked very much like hatred. ITV have defended the interview but also said that it would not be shown again. Why not if there was nothing wrong with it?
Then there is the big one, the accusations of anti-Semitism. Was it just me, I wondered, or was this a repeat of the methods used by the right-wing media to bring down Jeremy Corbyn, who has always seemed to me a thoroughly decent man, when his popularity was burgeoning? I realise I am on dangerous ground here but there are two things I have never understood. The word “semitic” refers to the languages and speakers of, particularly, the languages Hebrew and Arabic. It does not specifically refer to Jewish people, although it is usually taken to do so. That aside, why and how is criticism of the Israeli government in any way anti-Jewish? I have never got my head around it. Criticism of, say, Trump, Starmer and Farage, is not greeted by howls of outrage about being anti-British, anti-American (quite the reverse really) or anti-Caucasian.
The current systems and unfettered capitalism are clearly not working, not working for the majority of people and driving planetary destruction, eco-suicide.
Polanksi’s remarks on the police arrest in Golders Green were perhaps hasty and made in the wrong place but surely the police should always be held to account. Starmer wants to ban pro-Palestinian marches completely in the wake of his decision to classify peaceful protesters as members of a terrorist organisation. But what is actually the connection with the appalling recent attacks on Jewish people? Historically these things are associated with the far right.
Polanski is himself Jewish, albeit non-practising. Yet the Telegraph has published on average two articles per week since February and one a day in the last week accusing the party of anti-Semitism. The article below is well worth reading. Clearly he has the other political parties very worried indeed and this confirms my thoughts above: “Media outlets are once again pumping out headlines attempting to “Corbynise” Zack Polanski and the Green party with the same allegations of antisemitism that brought down the Labour party in 2019.” A Daily Mail journalist even went so far as to approach members of Polanski’s family for confirmation, but his immediate family actually refused to speak to her at all. It has now emerged that “Labour Together” then headed by Morgan McSweeney (!), “funded by undeclared donations, were anonymously planting stories in the media about institutional antisemitism within the party: a cloak-and-dagger way to undermine Corbyn from within.”
We can only hope that the right-wing media are shooting themselves in the foot – we have heard and seen all this before. It is up to us not to fall for it again. No one is saying that anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, isn’t vile and certainly not that it doesn’t exist, but it is not the same as speaking out against genocide.
Who’s afraid of Zack Polanski and why? | Jewish Voice for Liberation
The family voting allegations in the wake of the recent by-election in Manchester, won by the Green Party, have been disproven by the police. These are distraction techniques with which we are all too familiar. Why should we not welcome migrants to this country with compassion and acknowledge the great deal so many have to offer? Why is that so terrifying to so many, or, rather, made to seem so by the rabble-rousers? You don’t cross the English Channel in a small boat because you’re having a really lovely time where you are. All of those headlines: “Illegal migrant commits crime” … That’s only fair if you also treat every criminal in the same way. But we don’t ever see “White British person born here does terrible thing”.
So I will have my fingers and everything else crossed for Thursday, hoping that humanitarianism, kindness and a wish for a more egalitarian society will predominate. Polanski has been wonderfully robust in the face of his attackers. It could even be a turning point in the way in which we treat our precious, beleaguered planet.
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