EXCLUSIVE: ‘Anti-Semitism Czar’ John Mann declares war on The Canary and Skwawkbox –in the name of fighting ‘anti-Semitism’!

When Theresa May appointed John Mann to lead the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’ it was a case of one racist appointing another racist

Perhaps the best description of John Mann came from the Employment Tribunal case of Fraser –v- University College Union. This was a case brought by a Zionist  academic, Ronnie Fraser against his own trade union, UCU, for anti-Semitism. UCU’s offence was supporting the Boycott of Israel. Their judgment (paragraph 148) concerning Mann’s evidence was that:

Mr Mann could manage without even that assistance [the MacPherson Report].

He told us that the leaders of the Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing differently.

He did not claim ever to have witnessed any Congress or other UCU meeting. And when it came to antiSemitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he announced,

“It’s clear to me where the line is …”

but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.

None of this stopped Theresa May, back in July 2019, appointing John Mann MP as her advisor on ‘anti-Semitism’. As his parting shot Mann launched an attack on Jeremy Corbyn for having given the ‘green light’ to anti-Semites.

“Every time I go into a meeting with a group of Jewish people, I wince when they raise the issue of the Labour party and Corbyn. It is impossible to overstate the anger that I have about that. He has not just hijacked my political party – he has hijacked its soul and its ethics. I will never forgive him for that.”

When John Mann talks about ‘ethics’  I feel like reaching for my gun, to quote Goebbels. Mann has about as much acquaintance with ethics as a mafia chief.

You might therefore be forgiven for thinking that during John Mann’s 18 years in parliament that he was a vociferous opponent of racism in all its forms. If so then I’m afraid you will be disappointed. There was no greater parliamentary racist than Mann. A bigot for all seasons.

Mann was one of the few Labour supporters of Brexit in Parliament. Brexit, which was motivated at its core, by fear and hostility to migrants and dreams of an independent ‘Great’ Britain of Empire past, was at one with the rest of Mann’s toxic views.

John Mann, throughout his time in parliament, has also been distinguished for his pro-war record, voting in support of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Not once did Mann speak out against New Labour’s demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers. When the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was ejected by an Election Court from the House of Commons for having lied about his Lib Dem opponent at the 2010 General Election, he had no greater supporter than John Mann.

Mann was described by the Guardian as Woolas’s “best friend, best man and political ally since the first day at Manchester University”. Woolas, he said, was “never reckless and never thoughtless”.

When Harriet Harman, the acting Labour leader suspended Woolas from the Labour Party after he had been convicted of lying, she faced “a backbench revolt” There were calls for her resignation.

Among those to have spoken out in support of Woolas was John Mann, a close friend of his. (UPDATE: Although I should make clear that he was in Canada at the time and has been backing Woolas via telephone calls with a journalist at the Guardian).

Mann was quoted as saying that Woolas’s ejection:

has got profound implications for British democracy. The idea that a judge rather than the electorate can remove an MP is farcical”. Woolas’s is the first case of an MP being disbarred by the courts for malpractice since 1911.

Let us remember that Woolas did not just lie when he alleged that his opponent supported violent Muslim Jihadists but he deliberately sought to stir up a white working class vote by demonising Muslims by as terrorists and violent jihadists. A decision was taken by his campaign:

to ‘make the white folk angry’ by depicting an alleged campaign by those who they described generically as Asians to ‘take Phil out’ and then present Mr Watkins as in league with them.

When it came to the 2014 Immigration Act, which enacted the ‘hostile environment’ policy which led to the Windrush Scandal, Mann abstained, which in parliamentary terms is the equivalent of supporting the government of the day.

In 2007 Mann produced ‘the Bassetlaw Anti Social Behaviour Handbook. It told local residents how to deal with problems of anti-social behaviour. Included amongst those problems were Gypsies and Travellers. It said:

This handbook is designed to help you deal with problems you may face in your street or in your community. There are lots of different types of anti-social behaviour, including vandalism, abuse, noisy neighbours and fireworks.

Amongst these examples were to be found Travellers. Mann’s advice was

The police have powers to remove any gypsies or travellers, and have powers to direct people to leave the land and remove any vehicles or property they have with them

In 2016 Mann was interviewed by Police in connection with this pamphlet.  Gypsies are protected from racial discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. 

Ben Bennett, a 13 year old Traveller, who made a complaint to the Police, told Skwawkbox that Mann’s pamphlet made him feel

‘very upset’. I can’t understand why John Mann MP would choose to talk solely about my community in such a derogatory manner.’

If Mann was sincere in his opposition to anti-Semitism then his remarks are incomprehensible. We hear a lot about how 6 million Jews died in the Jewish holocaust but little about how between half and one and a half million Gypsies were also exterminated by the Nazis in the Porajmos. They were called a criminal and asocial elements. Precisely what Mann called them in his pamphlet.

It is no surprise that Theresa May, the author of the ‘hostile environment’ policy, should embrace a fellow bigot.

Nor is it surprising that Boris Johnson, who is notorious for his racist including anti-Semitic comments, upgraded Mann’s role to become ‘anti-Semitism Czar’, elevating him to the Lords. It is a rather unfortunate title as the Czars were infamous for their anti-Semitism. Still, on reflection, the title seems apt.

Mann made his intentions known from the start.  He was going to concentrate on the Left press. You might think that someone genuinely concerned with racism would focus on the Daily Mail, Sun, Express etc. However Mann’s targets are the alternative media such as the Canary and Skwawkbox.

In an article Report: Corbynite sites feature far-right tropesby ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin, whose inaccuracies have cost the Jewish Chronicle a small fortune in libel damages, the Skwawkbox and The Canary are accused of a “heavily negative coverage of Jewish issues” to audiences that are “associated with antisemitism”. We are told that there are ‘parallels between editorial lines taken by the two sites and that of the extreme far-right online outlet Radio Albion.’

Note ‘editorial lines’ not actual content.  So if, for their own reasons, fascists oppose a war abroad then if the left press oppose those wars they are likewise fascists. This is the reasoning applied throughout the report.

What are ‘Jewish issues.’ We are not told but we can guess. Palestine and Israel/Zionism. The same Israeli state which has just been condemned as an Apartheid state by the country’s main human rights group, Btselem.

What Mann is engaging in is a crude form of guilt-by-association. Mann has learnt well from Joe McCarthy. If you want a text-book lesson in how to corrupt the English language, take the paragraph below which equates The Canary and Skwawkbox on the basis of a supposed opposition to fascism. In fact fascists have never opposed capitalism. Of course they pretend to oppose capitalism. The Nazis called themselves ‘national socialists’ yet the first thing they did when they gained power was to put socialists and communists in concentration camps.

“despite the huge differences in the beliefs that are most foundational to their ideologies, articles published on all three sites share an opposition to capitalism, globalisation, and liberalism, adopt similar positions on many questions of foreign policy, and fulminate against a supposed adversary whose Jewishness is extensively highlighted (even if in different ways).

So even though Mann is forced to concede ‘huge differences’ in their ideology, i.e. the Skwawkbox and The Canary are anti-racist unlike fascist sites,  Mann draws an equals sign between them.

How does Mann’s Report explain the pro-Zionist stance of TR (Tommy Robinson)? 

‘TR News, the official website of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, popularly known as Tommy Robinson, has intentionally attempted to take the side of Jews and Israel, 

Perhaps that’s because Robinson is an openly declared Zionist, like much of the far-Right today? Mann’s polemics actually have a lot in common with Nazi propaganda, which also sought to portray opposites as being the same e.g. when they equated capitalism and communism, both of which were controlled by the Jews.

TR News has resorted to defending those Muslims who were seen to embrace pro-Western right-wing ideology, the two left-wing websites sought to declare allegiance with the minority of Jews who supported their own viewpoint.

In other words pro-fascist Black and Asian people, such as the racist supporters of India’s BJP government are no different from anti-Zionist Jews who oppose all forms of racism. This is the kind of intellectual sleight of hand that Mann has made into a fine art.

The ‘research’ for Mann’s Report was carried out by Daniel Allington, Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, and Tanvi Joshi. They selected the 20 most recent articles on each site that featured the words ‘Jew’ or ‘Zionist’ for analysis. Perhaps it did not occurred to Mann that what fascists mean by ‘Zionist’ might differ from what socialists mean and therefore his whole matrix isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The whole Report is based on the assumption that ‘Jew’ = ‘Zionist’.

Dr. Allington is the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s favourite academic. His research is deliberately tailored to achieve the results he wants. He basically reaches the conclusion first and then reverse engineers his research! This work is wholly bogus and contrived. 

Together with Zionist academic David Hirsh he devised a Generalised Anti-Semitism Barometer for the CAA which found that anti-Semitism was more prevalent on the Left than the Right. Of course the Zionist and Tory press lapped it up.

What had changed from all previous surveys that found anti-Semitism was far more prevalent on the Right than Left? If true this was a staggering finding. However what the CAA didn’t put in their press releases was that they had only achieved this result by adding 6 questions to the original 6 questions (which were themselves debatable as Anshel Pfeffer showed in Ha’aretz).

That the CAA is a dishonest political organisation masquerading as a charity is one thing. That Dr Allington and Dr Hirsh should allow their support for Zionism to colour ostensibly neutral academic research should raise questions as to their academic integrity. The questions were

1.    “I am comfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel.”

2.    “Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

3.    “Israel is right to defend itself against those who want to destroy it.”

4.    “Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on our democracy.”

5.    “Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media.”

6.    “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”

None of these statements are in any way anti-Semitic according to the Oxford English Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism: ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’

I wouldn’t be comfortable spending time with supporters of General Franco. Does that make me anti-Spanish? Israel’s right to exist as a homeland for Jews assumes that Jews aren’t already at home where they live. Israel having the right to defend itself assumes that it is under attack for existing rather than for its racist policies. Clearly Israel’s supporters are bad for democracy, as the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism demonstrates. And yes the supporters of Israel do control the media. Rupert Murdoch is not an anti-Zionist and neither is the BBC! It’s only anti-Semitic if you assume Zionists and Jews are the same, which is an assumption built in to supposedly academic research.

The most popular ‘anti-Semitic’ statement was no. 6; comparisons between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and how the Nazis treated the Jews. But this is a political statement. It may be right or it may be wrong but how is it evidence of anti-Semitism?

If Mann is correct then a number of holocaust survivors such as Israeli Professors Ze’ev Sternhell and Yehuda Elkana were also anti-Semitic. This is the academic employed by John Mann. Both are charlatans. One example of Skawkbox’s ‘racism’ was

“making throwaway references to ‘a former Chief Rabbi with a history of supporting racism’ could contribute to the creation of an impression of Jewishness as inherently suspect.”

So if you accuse former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of being a racist, which he was, that is anti-Semitic because he is Jewish!

When Sacks died, I wrote an Obituary ‘An establishment bigot.’ and blogged it. Sacks, who had the audacity to compare Jeremy Corbyn with Enoch Powell endorsed an openly racist book which advocated the White Replacement Theory by Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe. Even Owen Jones found the hypocrisy too much.

Owen Jones, an identity politics supporter of the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ drivel was also guilty of ‘the creation of Jewishness as inherently suspect.’ This kind of logic would fail a high school student yet its part of a government report.

Dishonesty permeates the Report. Because the far-Right indulges in Jewish conspiracy theories, the support of Skwawkbox and Canary for the undercover Al Jazeera programme The Lobby about the influence and activity of the Zionist lobby is therefore anti-Semitic.  No matter that the latter is true unlike the former. What all these allegations have in common is a deliberate confusion of ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’.  And who does this regularly?  The same anti-Semites and fascists that Mann purports to oppose.

Liar Lee’s article concludes with a quote from Dr Allington:

 “Government and civil society must encourage use of high quality, reputable sources of information at the expense of low-quality fringe sources,” it said. “We need not be helpless in the face of hatred.”

One wonders just who they mean by ‘high quality reputable sources of information’ Could it be Britain’s tabloid press, the Mail, Sun and Express? Clearly there is no criticism of Britain’s rabidly racist tabloids. Clearly Mann’s real concerns are not Jews or anti-Semitism but Zionism and Israel.

The only good thing about Mann’s Report is that it reflects his own mediocre intellectual talents.  It is so poorly argued and makes such obviously devious and dishonest analogies that only a simpleton or a rogue like Boris Johnson would fall for it.

It would seem that Mann has deliberately leaked his Report to the Jewish Chronicle where it can be guaranteed a warm reception. Let us see whether the rest of the British press is going to go along with this tendentious and transparent nonsense

Tony Greenstein