Cynthia McKinney has started a nationwide tour sponsored by the ANSWER coalition centering on opposition to the NATO intervention in Libya. Although ANSWER may deny it, McKinney supports Qaddafi and her tour is an expression of that support. On June 16, she gave the first of the talks in L.A. Not everyone on the ANSWER mailing list was allowed to enter, however. Members of the Libyan community of the L.A. area were barred from attending by a bouncer who told them that they "seemed like they might cause trouble". The smirking bouncer was unmoved as the Libyans told him of unarmed family members who had been shot by Qaddafi's thugs before the NATO intervention started. When the Libyans told him that they have supported both McKinney and ANSWER in the past (specifically with respect to their anti-Israel activism), but now differ with them on Libya, the bouncer expressed skepticism, muttering "I've never seen you before at any of our events".
McKinney seems to be carrying out her promise to bring Qaddafi-style democracy to the U.S.
The billions stolen by dictatorships such as that of Libya's Qaddafi can buy many things. Not least among them is the support of professional activists who sell themselves as advocates of peace and universal principles of human rights. I use the phrase "sell themselves" advisedly. As has been widely reported, a number of universities, NGOs and public intellectuals have come under metaphorical fire for accepting money to provide cover for a dictatorship which has literally been killing many of those unfortunate enough to live under its sway for the past 41 years. That record of duplicitous support by alleged idealists for the most cynical form of tyranny has recently been made unavoidable by the tyrant's decision to unleash the sort of murderous abuse he formerly imposed on an individual, private basis in a more public and widespread manner. The entire country has become his torture chamber.
With that in mind, let's have a listen to Cynthia McKinney, 2008 Green Party presidential candidate and 2009 honoree of the Qaddafi's Society of the Supporters of the Green Book, a pseudo-NGO the dictatorship set up to honor itself using money it stole from the people of Libya.
Video Part 1:
Video Part 2:
At 0:44 of Part 2 of the video of McKinney's speech, she can be heard heaping praise upon the dictator for helping to spread democracy around the world. To thunderous applause she says:
Colonel Qaddafi should be highly commended for honoring our ancestors, the framers of true democracy, by reaching out from Africa to the entire world. We would like to thank him for this opportunity to discuss his thoughts as presented in the Green Book. We are hear to listen and observe, then to support and carry forth the ideas of equality and democracy, universal principles embodied in the Green Book -- the goal of our effort being to empower black and indigenous and depressed peoples worldwide for the betterment of the Earth and all its inhabitants.
We are acutely aware that the planet awaits a total ethical and structural change in governance. It is therefor necessary to be truly governed of, by and for the people. To these principles we have pledged out honor and fidelity. This is what we know, and to put our lives on the line for in our everyday work (sic). Far too often, we are alone in the battlefield in our respective struggles, so we are pleased to enter into a solidarity that shatters the limits of our separation. We must now all own that we are a community without walls. Like Che Guevara, we hold that an injury to one is an injury to all, everywhere. The univeral principles of the Green Book, although widely associated with the challenges facing developing nations, are equally applicable to the needs of people of the United States at this period of profound crisis for finance capital.
At 3:45 she says
We endorse the Green Book principles and offer to contribute to the success of their implementation. In economics, we hold that the wage system is bondage and should be replaced by shared responsibilities and rewards, true partnership and equal distribution.
McKinney's speech goes on to elaborate at length the idea that Qaddafi's Green Book represents the highest ideals of socialism and should be universally supported. She also calls (at 4:40 of the video) for "dismantling" the world's six largest media corporations, a view with which Qaddafi and his supporters would certainly agree.
Along with these videos, I found on YouTube the following videos of McKinney's "delegation" to this pro-Qaddafi conference.
I noticed among the U.S. delegates someone who looks a great deal like the conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen. (See 3:40 of the below-embedded video. The heavy-set man with beard and sunglasses appears to be Madsen. Under a blaring soundtrack of oud mood music, Madsen can be heard weaving a yarn concerning a conspiracy to have him killed.) Madsen is currently promoting on his website a conspiracy theory that Israel is secretly backing Qaddafi. His condemnation of Israel's imagined support for Qaddafi seems odd considering that Madsen actually participated in a conference supporting the dictator. This is made all the stranger by his website's report that People's Hall, the regime's main public assembly and the hall in which the 2009 Society of Supporters of the Green Book conference occurred, had been set ablaze by opposition forces. Madsen illustrates the story with an amateurish photo captioned "Inside People's Hall in Tripoli during WMR editor's visit to Libya in October 2009".
That Madsen was a delegate to this conference is further supported by a column written by another delegate, Bob Fitrakis, a professor at Ohio's Columbus State Community College, 2006 Green Party candidate for Governor of Ohio, and editor of a website called The Free Press. Fitrakis' peculiar column describing the conference claims that he initially thought that he was participating in the conference as a journalist, but was named without his knowledge as the chief of the U.S. delegation after McKinney was designated the chief of the North American delegation. Fitrakis indicates that, while he did not actually volunteer for this role, he more than made up for that by reading a speech to the conference which, he was told, had actually been drafted by Qaddafi himself. Consider his column's concluding assessment of Qaddafi, which he wrote in November 2009, as you watch reports of the horror currently unfolding in Libya.
(I)t is intriguing that a robed, revolutionary Bedouin living in a tent in Tripoli seems to have a more realistic assessment of the U.S. economy and the state of our democracy than many of our own elected officials.
Fitrakis' column is available in a cached version here and on his website here.
For understandable reasons, Fitrakis and McKinney have been silent on the amazing events unfolding in Libya. While they were more than happy to offer their support for Libya's dictatorship in the days when the killings were done behind closed doors, they have had nothing to say since the killing has gone public. McKinney and Fitrakis enthusiastically promoted the lie that Qaddafi was a beneficent, democratic and progressive leader. Now that the people of Libya have risen up to rid themselves of his brutal yoke, McKinney and Fitrakis have grown uncharacteristically silent.
Also for understandable albeit more blatantly absurd reasons, Wayne Madsen now portrays his former friend Qaddafi as a Zionist stooge. If you have any doubt that Madsen's anti-Jewish conspiracy theories represent the world in a fun house mirror, let this serve as the last straw.
U.S. delegation to the 2009 Society of Supporters of the Green Book conference. McKinney is at the center, Fitrakis is on the left of the second row, Madsen is second from the left in the front row. (From The Free Press)
Cynthia McKinney at the 2009 conference at People's Hall in Tripoli. (From The Free Press)
The burned-out People's Hall as it appeared on February 21, 2011.
New York 9/11 Memorial "9/11 Truth" Conference to Highlight Conspiracy Theories
Both anti-mosque fanatics and 9/11 conspiracy theory fanatics are targeting NYC for major rallies around 9/11. Nine years after the attacks there's been a shift in thinking about them. The city that was the main target of the attacks is now fair game for those who stand to gain politically from exploiting them.
It's bad enough that Pamela Geller is planning an anti-Muslim rally to commemorate and/or desecrate 9/11 in New York City this year. (Geller is campaigning to make Lower Manhattan a First Amendment-free zone.) Now New York will also be subjected to a series of 9/11 truth conspiracy theory meetings and rallies to mark and/or mar the tragic anniversary, featuring a number of speakers associated with extreme anti-American and anti-Israel views verging on the paranoid. (Read here.) Under the aegis of a 9/11 truth group called WE ARE CHANGE, the scheduled speakers include a number of potentially offensive participants. Here's a partial list, highlighting some problematic participants:
Jonathan Elinoff
Cynthia McKinney
Wayne Madsen
Mike Gravel
George Galloway
Paul Craig Roberts
Jonathan Elinoff is a conspiracy theorist who blogs with the makers of the most most popular truther video, Loose Change. In 2009, Elinoff made his own video called In the Shadows, the first of an intended series called Core of Corruption. He has devoted his career to promoting the idea that a small army of Israeli intelligence officers pretending to be art students infiltrated the United States and carried out the 9/11 attacks. An example of his writing on this can be read here: Israeli Art Students Had WTC Construction Passes. Here's the trailer for his video:
Cynthia McKinney has in recent years gone from being a U.S. Congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, to devoting herself to campaigning against Israel and promoting absurd conspiracy theories, sometimes making common cause with the racist far-right to do so. (Read here and here and here.) She has, in recent years, argued that the United States government is completely under the control of "Zionist agents", and that it deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen. She has also endorsed the conspiracy theories of Matthias Chang who claims that a conspiracy of Zionist "shadow money-lenders" is destabilizing the world both via false flags attacks and economic crashes in order to take it over.
Wayne Madsen is an internet journalist and conspiracy fabulist who runs a website called the Wayne Madsen Report, where he promotes conspiracy theories blaming Israel, "neo-cons" and "Zionists" for 9/11. Read here for examples. He somehow connects his Mossad 9/11 conspiracy to everything from Israelis working at shopping mall kiosks (read here) to alleged Pakistani intelligence involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (read here) to the influence of "Jewish mobsters" (read here). Madsen routinely writes columns without any indication of sources, making outlandish and unsupportable claims without any provenance, such as that he made in a 2009 column alleging that Israel is secretly colonizing Iraq (read here and here). The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan reported that Madsen's anti-Israel columns were translated into Arabic and published in Iraq and other Arab countries, where they actually had their desired effect (read here.) Those who fail to take the lunatic fringe seriously should take note of this dangerous real world impact of throwing rumors into an already smoldering conflict. On a more comical note, one of Madsen's most recent conspiracy theories claims that Obama is literally a "CIA creation". Madsen writes that, not only was Obama groomed for the presidency by the CIA, but that this grooming started with his actual conception, which Madsen comically claims was a CIA covert op. (Read here and view video below.) (Warning: if you're not used to reading this sort of stuff, prepare yourself to laugh hysterically.)
Madsen, like Lyndon LaRouche, also implicates financier George Soros in a sort of unified field theory of conspiracies, writing that (read here):
Soros’ agents of disinformation and influence have moved in to “manage” the stories about jailed Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman, the 2004 vote fraud in Ohio, the Turkish and Israeli intelligence penetration of the highest echelons of the U.S. government, the presence of Israeli spies among the accused 9/11 hijackers in the months prior to the terrorist attacks in 2001, and Russian-Israeli “Kosher Nostra” criminal activity from London to Kyiv and New York to Moscow.
Mike Gravel, a former U.S. Senator from Alaska and a quirky pro-peace candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries, only made my list for one reason. In 2003, he participated in a Holocaust denial conference featuring neo-Nazi participants. (Read here.) He subsequently claimed that he didn't notice the goose-stepping going on all around him. He said that he thought that it was just a quirky pro-peace group. That seems consistent with his attendance at the truthers' conference.
George Galloway, as readers here undoubtedly already know, is a former Member of Parliament who had extensive ties to Sadaam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, with whom he is said to have had a profitable business relationship, and to Hamas, to whom he has provided material support via his Viva Palestina group. He currently works for PressTV, an English-language propaganda television station owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and under the control of the mullahs. In a relatively brief period of time, Galloway seems to have gone from a 9/11 conspiracy theory doubter who warned the left not to discredit itself by associating with nuts (watch here) to a truther who is willing to throw at Israel and the U.S. any accusation his constituency will buy (listen here).
Paul Craig Roberts has had the most dramatic transformation of anyone on this list, having gone from being an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and an editor at the Wall Street Journal to a being a far-right, conspiracy-bedeviled internet columnist with a penchant for prophecies which fail to come true. His columns are widely posted on the websites of that fringe beyond the mainstream left and right, including the white supremacist website VDARE, Willis Carto's American Free Press, Pat Buchanan's American Conservative, Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell, Information Clearing House and Counterpunch, -- places where resume gravitas is sometimes in short supply. Roberts not only believes that 9/11 was an inside job, carried out with planted explosives, not planes (read here and here), in 2006, he also stated that George W. Bush was planning another such attack, a warning which was obviously not worth the bandwidth it was written on. (Read here.) That the extremely paleo-conservative Roberts' anti-Israel extremism is central to his world view can be gauged by his habit of referring to the U.S. government as a puppet of Israel (read here), and decrying Jewish influence on the news media (read here). Roberts blames precisely that influence for concealing what he sees as the true story of 9/11.
Conclusion
In choosing New York City on 9/11 for their anti-freedom rallies, Pamela Geller and other anti-mosque activists desecrate the sacred ground they purport to defend. Similarly, the 9/11 truthers, in choosing New York City on 9/11 to promote their paranoid world view, desecrate not only the site of that terrible crime against humanity, they desecrate the truth.
As part of my ongoing watch of Cynthia McKinney's increasing work with the political right, here's a link to her most recent column,Leaders' Lack of Respect for Rule of Law Makes Us All Victims of 9/11, which is posted at Lew Rockwell's website. Rockwell is best known as the longtime chief advisor to Ron Paul, the chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and as a libertarian/paleo-conservative commentator. His purported ghost-writing of several years worth of racist columns signed by Ron Paul and published in Paul's newsletter (which Paul later claimed not to have noticed) was the focus of controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign. (Read here.)
In her column on Rockwell's website, McKinney asserts that
President Obama defend(s) war, erosion of civil and human rights, creation of the police state, ignoring the US Constitution and the norms of international law.
She also states that
All of us in the peace community, who stand for justice and human dignity, have become victims of 9/11... And sadly, the entire global community that expects national leaders to respect the rule of law and tell them the truth are now victims of 9/11.
The column concludes by asserting that the facts believed by the general public concerning 9/11 are in fact falsehoods deliberately promoted by the Bush administration, asking the rhetorical question
Why must the world continue to live inside a lie? I remain hopeful that we will learn the truth because more and more people around the world are demanding it.
Cynthia McKinney, who in recent years has worked increasingly with the racist far-right, has said in an interview with Chris Hedges that
“It is time for us to stop talking about right and left. The old political paradigm that serves the interests of the people who put us in this predicament will not be the paradigm that gets us out of this. I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists... I am willing to reach across traditional barriers that have been skillfully constructed by people who benefit from the way the system is organized."
I've written extensively about McKinney's connections to far-right racists (most recently here). McKinney has grown increasingly bold in making common cause with figures of the far-right, largely around opposition to Israel and promotion of conspiracy theories (read here). I believe that this is the first time that she has commented about such connections in an interview, albeit in vague terms to those unaware of her right-wing ties.
From reading his column, I doubt that Hedges is aware of McKinney's work with the far-right. He takes McKinney's statement to mean only that that the greatest threat Americans face comes not from "extremists", but from the government and "elites", a belief which is a focus of Hedges' current work. He sees McKinney using white supremacists merely as a point of reference for this relative threat, not attempting to justify actually working with them. Similarly, McKinney's renunciation of the distinction between left and right comes across in the column as arguing that our representatives are equally bad regardless of whether they're left or right. As for Hedges' view of McKinney's willingness to work across ideological lines, he has no comment. He lets the comment stand for itself as a sort of search for common ground across ideological lines.
I wonder how Hedges would feel about McKinney's statements if he knew that she has been happy to work with a number of supremacists in recent years, and that she shows every sign of believing that the distinction between left and right (including far-right) is unimportant? I suspect that, if he knew just how literally McKinney was speaking, he might have had a much different impression of her comments.
[CORRECTION (4/2/10): I've been in touch with Hedges since this was originally posted and he says he was aware of some of McKinney's work with far-right racists.. He also says that he supports working with far-right and racist groups and individuals when working against a more powerful enemy. I intend to write more about this soon.]
About a year ago, I wrote a number of pieces on Cynthia McKinney's increasing connections to far-right bigots such as former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Mahathir; his chief aide, conspiracy theory author Matthias Chang (read here and here); and Islamic Party of Britain leader David Pidcock (read here). I also wrote about her anti-Semitic interviews with hate bloggers Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan (read here). McKinney's supporters and representatives of the U.S. Green Party have defended her work with this motley crew, sometimes stating that condemning McKinney's work with them amounts to "guilt by association", acknowledging by implication that this group has some troubling beliefs or worse. At other times, McKinney supporters have actually defended the extreme views of this group.
Now I've found two additional far right figures for whom McKinney has expressed her support and with whom she's made common cause. I've also discovered that she's done another interview with the two hate bloggers about whom I wrote last year.
Non-denial denials
The information about McKinney's ties to Chang and Pidcock which I published here last spring appears to have been the basis at least in part for an article written by Rob Waters which was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in their December, 2009 Intelligence Report. (Read here.) For that article, Waters got Scott McLarty, a Green Party official, to go on the record to deny that McKinney shared the views espoused by her far-right associates, calling such a conclusion "guilt by association". However, McLarty failed to find any problem with a lengthy quote from Chang's book The Shadow Money Lenders which McKinney posted on a Green Party website, in which a long list of Jewish bankers were accused of plotting to destabilize the world in order to take control of it.
Anita Stewart, a Green Party official and staffer to McKinney (during the 2008 presidential campaign and, since then, with McKinney's Dignity Action Network), posted a gnomic comment to one of my articles about McKinney's ties to Chang. She defended McKinney's endorsement of Chang's conspiracy theories as intrinsically valid. Stewart's response, which, like McLarty's, failed to contend with the bigotry or far-right ideology of McKinney's allies, stated that, if McKinney agrees with them, they're probably right. (See comments here.)
As you read McKinney's praise of Chang, and McLarty's and Stewart's defense of that praise, keep in mind that Chang has written that he was inspired by "the American Free Press, The Barnes Review, The Spotlight, and the truth seekers that I have long admired, Harry Elmer Barnes, Willis Carto, Michael Collins Piper, Christopher Petherick, Eustace Mullins (whose life-long persecution by the Police State is a disgrace to the Constitution), (and) Col. Donn de Grand Pre..." That's a long list, and some of the names are obscure ones. Suffice it to say that there is a common thread of bigotry running through that list.
Also keep in mind that McKinney's connection to Chang is more than lip service. Chang, as chief aide to former PM Mahathir of Malaysia, runs a foundation purportedly devoted to the absolute pacifist position of making all war illegal. (Read here.) That foundation, far from actually campaigning to ban all war, focuses exclusively on falsely accusing Israel of crimes such as genocide. Cynthia McKinney has participated as a keynote speaker, presumably for pay, in at lest three of this foundations' international conferences (two in Kuala Lumpur and one in London) where she participated in this ritualistic hate in the name of peace.
Compared by her friends to Father Coughlin
While McKinney's supporters defend her by (falsely) claiming that she does not make anti-Semitic statements herself, the same defense cannot conceivably be made for those who interview her. In one of last year's "Ognir" interviews with McKinney, Ognir/Ryan introduced her with a lengthy discussion of "banking Jewry" having controlled the world for the past four centuries. In another, Ryan asked McKinney about Rahm Emanuel, saying "(h)e's got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties." Far from condemning this obviously bigoted remark, McKinney replied by saying "I think that what you're talking about is who controls the U.S. government". She went on to explain that she left the Democratic Party precisely because she believes it to be controlled by this conspiracy.
In last year's interviews, Ryan's questions to McKinney expounded elaborate, bizarre conspiracy theories concerning Jewish culpability for 9/11, the world financial crisis, capitalism, communism, and, absurdly, medical marijuana and gay marriage. McKinney failed to disagree with the interviewers' assertions once, sometimes going so far as to say that she knew what the interviewer meant by this drivel, thus giving her tacit support. On several occasions, she stated her explicit support. She also showed her own ties to reality to be a bit shaky, comparing herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks. (Read my original posts on this for more details including transcripts.)
Since I last wrote about her interviews with Ryan and fellow hate blogger Daryl Bradford Smith, McKinney has returned to give them additional interviews. In one conducted by Smith and Ryan on January 14, 2010, Smith introduced McKinney as the best thing to happen in U.S. politics since the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic radio preacher Father Coughlin. (Listen below at about 6:20.)
This comparison, which most people would consider insulting, is a high complement for Smith, who features portraits of both McKinney and Coughlin and recordings of Coughlin's infamous post-Kristallnacht broadcasts on his website. (Read here. Smith also features on his website the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and conspiracy theories about Jews causing the swine flu epidemic.) If one of McKinney's critics were to denounce her by comparing her to Coughlin, that person would be swamped with passionate denials and vicious denunciations impugning the comparison as somehow motivated by a conservative, "Zionist" or even Jewish bias. When the person actually interviewing McKinney makes that comparison, we hear the sound of silence.
from Daryl Bradford Smith's iamthewitness.com website:
McKinney says she's a fan of anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper, he dedicates a book to her
Cynthia McKinney has played the double-game of working with increasing brazenness with racists of the far-right, even as she says through her spokesmen that we shouldn't judge her by her friends. I wonder how they explain the fact that McKinney has declared herself, via Facebook, to be a fan of the anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper. Piper has worked for decades in the employ of Willis Carto, one of the United States' most infamous far-right racists.
Author Leonard Zeskind describes Carto as one of the two foremost leaders of the U.S. "white nationalist" movement in the latter half of the 20th Century, and Piper as Carto's "loyal assistant". (Read here and here. A Piper interview with Carto is available here. [Link goes directly to RAM file.]) Carto is the founder of a number of extreme right wing groups such as the Liberty Lobby (which "appealed to both anti-communists and arch-segregationists", read here) and the Holocaust-denial group Institute for Historical Review, among his countless other similarly oriented projects. Piper has worked for the newspaper founded and published by Carto, American Free Press, since that paper's founding, and has participated in a number of Carto's Holocaust-denial conferences. (Read here and here.) Piper has also been described as a "far-right emissary to the Islamic world", attempting to unite Islamists and the U.S. far-right around the common causes of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism . (Read here and here. My earlier article on Piper can be read here.)
Piper, along with David Duke and a rogue's gallery of others, participated in Holocaust denial conferences hosted by far-right Russian Nationalists (read here), and, infamously, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who invited Piper to the Tehran Holocaust denial conference as his personal guest (read here). It would be fair to say of him that Piper has made the production of books, columns and radio programs fabulizing Jewish conspiracies to control the world his life's work. He has, among other things, accused Jews of assassinating U.S. presidents, secretly controlling the government, financial system and media, and, literally, practicing human sacrifice and cannibalism.
McKinney supporters might be interested to learn that Piper's employer Willis Carto worked in George Wallace's segregationist presidential campaign as a leader of Youth for Wallace and subsequently set up an organization which morphed into the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Both Carto and Piper have for many years worked with former-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and continue to do so. (For a recent example, read here.) Carto was a key backer both of Duke's 1988 run for U.S. president (read here) and Duke's 2004 "New Orleans Protocol" outlining a political strategy for U.S. "European Nationalists" (i.e. white supremicists). (Read here.) The ADL says that Carto is "one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists of the past 50 years... he has been associated with nearly every significant far-right movement in the country, from neo-Nazism to militias, segregationism to Holocaust denial." (Read here. For Searchlight Magazine's take on Carto, read here. Examples of Carto's racist letters to Verne Kaub, a Liberty Lobby board member and author, are available here and here.)
Not only has McKinney now declared her support for Carto's assistant, Michael Collins Piper, Piper has reportedly declared his support for Cynthia McKinney by dedicating his bookThe Judas Goats: The Enemy Withinto her as follows. (Read here.)
To the Honorable Cynthia McKinney
Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia
. . .For daring to speak out and raise questions about what really happened on 9-11 and about the dangerous U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world — a policy that has made America many enemies around the globe — Cynthia McKinney was driven from the U.S. Congress in 2002. Judas Goat — a former Republican, no less — was recruited to run against Miss McKinney in the Democratic Party primary.GOP organizers moved into the Democratic Party to assist the Judas Goat. Tons of Zionist money poured into Georgia to help Miss McKinney’s challenger. In the end, Miss McKinney was defeated.But two years later Cynthia McKinney made a comeback and she sits in the U.S. Congress today — a voice for sane policies and one who still does not hesitate to speak the truth. And as this is written, they are moving against her once again. Her voice is one for all good people. Dear God: Let there be more like Cynthia McKinney!
Piper's Judas Goats book alleges that the Jews control the world via dual Zionist and Trostkyite conspiracies, both under the control of the Rothschild family. Piper describes it as supplement to a book called Synagogue of Satan by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, which Piper calls "an overwhelming detailed history of how Jewish power and influence -- particularly through the venue [sic] of the Rothschild banking dynasty -- how that influence came to rule supreme". (He's nothing if not consistent.) He talks about the book at length in an interview with far-right radio hate preacher Texe Marrs, audio of which is embedded below.
(Listen here at 6:30.)
Michael Collins Piper also has at least one connection to the previously discussed anti-Semitic blogger Noel "Ognir" Ryan. The below-embedded video, which I found on Ryan's website TheInformationUnderground.com (here), features audio from a recent Piper radio program. In that program, the administrator Ryan's internet forum and radio programs (under the name "LordLindsey" -- he goes by "Lindsey" here), tells Piper how pleased he was with Ognir's McKinney interview. (At about 3:20 of the video below.) The reason? McKinney alleged in that interview (at great length) that (in Lindsey's words) "Zionist Jews control more than 99% of the United States Congress". (You can listen here, at first link, to that McKinney interview.) [NOTE: Among the ever-growing list of incredibly offensive material available on the TheInformationUnderground.com, is a video which attempts to glorify Holocaust Museum murderer Jim von Brunn. View here.]
Considering that Michael Collins Piper does little else but promote the grossest bigotry, I would be very interested to hear from McKinney what it is about him that she supports. Maybe there's some aspect of his work that's escaped public notice that McKinney would like to draw attention to with her praise of him. I would also be interested in hearing the reactions of progressives to McKinney's support for this advocate of the racist far-right.
"I am in Turkey with Israel Shamir!!!"
That's how Cynthia McKinney giddily headlined her article on her meeting with Israel Shamir in Ankara last year (read here). She writes (here):
I can hardly believe this moment!! Israel Shamir has written about me and lifted my spirits when I was most down. Even from faraway Israel, he understood my plight and dared give voice to the truth. They say that sometimes distance gives clarity--and certainly in Israel's case, in observing my serial targeting, he saw what many inside the United States could not see. Despite his writings, I never met him until this moment, just a few minutes ago!! We are speaking together this afternoon in Ankara, Turkey. He has already sent his message out on his list and so I include it here for you. I will send my message to you later. I will bring these contacts from around the world that I have made on behalf of peace, home to the United States so that we can more easily achieve our objectives for justice and peace and dignity in the area of policy where we and the world need it the most. We are a part of something much bigger than us individually, and our moment is now.
I guess they hit it off. For those who don't know of Shamir, he's a shady character who got his start working as journalist for a prominent Russian, far-right, ultra-nationalist newspaper under the pen name "Robert David" . (His legal name has, at various times, been Jöran Jermas or Adam Ermash.) He spent some time living in Israel under the assumed name "Israel Shamir". After this, he Portrayed himself in the West as an Israeli and a leftist, and has focused largely on producing anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda. He has meanwhile continued to maintain an ideological double identity, publishing in Eastern European languages and Russian from an overtly far-right perspective. Although he is ethnically Russian and a naturalized citizen of Sweden, he touts the fact that he lived in Israel under his assumed name (read here and here and here and here), and is frequently cited as an "Israeli journalist" when used as source. This identity is useful to writers who either want to put an acceptable face on what they know to be anti-Israel disinformation, or are credulous enough to believe in the fairy tales he promotes. I wrote about one such instance, Alison Weir's reliance on Shamir's promotion of literal truth of the blood libel, here and here. Weir cited him as an "Israeli journalist" working to uncover what she and Shamir describe as Israel's campaign of murdering people to steal their organs. Both Weir and McKinney still work with Shamir and cite him as an authority in spite of his having been denounced as an anti-Semite by Hussein Ibish and Ali Abunimah (read here), and as an impostor and charlatan by countless others.
To cite one out of countless examples of Israel Shamir's extremism, he counts among his close ideological allies the infamous Horst Mahler, whom Shamir calls "(a) friend of Palestine and anti-zionist, an anti-imperialist freedom fighter". Read here. Mahler, formerly a leader of the far left Red Army Fraction, has been for many years a leader Germany's racist far right, largely motivated by extreme anti-Semitism (as evidenced here). In 2003, Mahler founded a Holocaust denial organization he called Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten. (Read their press release here. Co-signers of the organization's charter included Ernst Zündel, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, and Frederick Töben.) In subsequent years, Mahler has been convicted several times of crimes connected to his activism connected to denial of Nazi war crimes. In a 2007 interview with the German edition of Vanity Fair, an English translation of which "Shamir" makes available on his website (read here), Mahler said of Jews that they "are the embodiment of a god, who according to our understanding is Satan, and they play a tragic role in the corruption and negation of the life of all the other Peoples". (In that interview, Mahler greeted his interviewer by saying "Heil Hitler!”, and went on to praise Hitler, defend his own father's Nazism, and equate it with leftist opposition to "American imperialism".)
Horst Mahler and "Israel Shamir" in 2008
Mahler (second from left) with sign reading "There was no Holocaust"
"Israel Shamir" has found a very willing subject for his disinformation in Cynthia McKinney. With the instincts of a gifted con artist he found the sweet spot where her prejudices intersect with his agenda. Via McKinney, Shamir promotes the idea that Europe's neo-Nazis and Russia's ultra-nationalists are funded by Jews as part of a global war on Islam, and that this purported covert war is intrinsic to Israel's existence. This is a bit of misdirection that someone with Shamir's connections to Russian ultra-nationalists -- connections he has been careful to conceal -- might find very useful.
Shamir's writing style can be a bit diffuse, but while following his train of thought might be tricky, you can be certain as to its destination. Here's a portion of the text of his Ankara speech as posted by McKinney on her Facebook page:
The problem is the Jewish state. Not only does it besiege Gaza and destroy a football stadium in el Bireh. These are local problems, painful but local. The Jewish state (It is not a Jewish state. It is a Zionist state. S1000+) focuses Jewish power all over the world into action. Without a Jewish state, this power would disperse; it would remain local, it would remain chaotic, probably it would be subdued by the forces of assimilation. Israel focuses these chaotic forces and concentrates them into action.
This action is against Islam. Not only against Islam, but Dar ul Islam (the Islamic world) is a prime target. In the US , the Jewish Neocons led their country into a crusade against Iraq and Afghanistan ; now they are spearheading the push against Iran.
They have formed a powerful front against President Obama and have turned him into a laughing stock after he uttered a few words of wisdom about Palestine .
In Europe , if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia , Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church , or of Russian nationalism. I wrote about this recently, as I had discovered that the most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists.
Even if a Palestinian state were to be established and recognised, it wouldn’t stop Israeli attempts to undermine its neighbours, to bomb Iran , to sow the seeds of discord from Russia to France , from Turkey to India . Israel 's too powerful intelligence services would keep meddling. Neither would it neutralise the armed forces of Israel , and you know as well as anybody that the generals do not give up their toys, their privileges or their influence easily. The Israeli military machine is so powerful that it would seek to exercise its might.
Consider that the source for this incoherent conspiracy theory has been associated with precisely the far-right Russian nationalist movement most ardently connected to both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic violence in Russia. I tend to believe that McKinney (like the rest of Shamir's audience in Ankara) is oblivious to this fact and is taking him at face value to be an Israeli leftist. But that sort of gullibility is no excuse for the promotion of this sort of deranged and hateful conspiracy theory. Regardless of whom McKinney believes Shamir to be, the intent of this string of lies is clearly stated: to drive further wedges between Muslims and Jews, to oppose a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel and to deny Israel's right to exist. In promoting these views, McKinney, like Shamir, should be regarded as an anti-peace activist.
"Guilt by association": a catch-all defense for supporting the indefensible
Cynthia McKinney and her supporters may call any condemnation of her work with Matthias Chang, Michelle Renouf, David Pidcock, Mahathir Tun, Michael Collins Piper, Jöran "Israel Shamir" Jermas, Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan guilt by association, but by doing so, they help legitimize racism, anti-Semitism and far-right extremism, as does McKinney herself. While guilt by association might be a legitimate defense to merely talking with, attending the same meetings as, or even belonging to the same organizations as bigots, it is quite another matter to support them politically, tout their writings, promote their views, or actually work in their employ. By doing this, and by doing this with increasing frequency, McKinney has made precisely her association with bigotry the centerpiece of her message.
More importantly "guilt by association" refers to a legal standard for criminal acts: people cannot be held legally responsible for the acts of others unless they criminally participate in those acts as well. The standard by which we judge the character of political figures should be much higher than that. McKinney's supporters, in defending her work with racists and extremists, say "only hold her to the standard by which we judge criminal acts". A political figure whose followers hold to such a low standard must be doing something wrong. Besides, as I have shown above and in my earlier articles, this defense ignores what is now painfully obvious. McKinney is not just associating with people who do and say bad things, she is actively supporting those malicious acts and participating in them herself.
Other McKinney supporters defend her differently, claiming that she is well-intentioned, but is recklessly making ill-advised alliances. As the number of these alliances grows, and the connections grow deeper, this defense becomes less and less plausible. The fact that Cynthia McKinney has made common cause with bigots of the far-right with at least some knowledge of who they are indicates that her actions are based on a malice she shares with them. Cynthia McKinney has done nothing to distance herself from the overtly bigoted views espoused by so many of those she works with, even when they espouse these views to her in public forums. On the contrary, she has gone out of her way to agree with many of these views, and even to publish them on websites maintained by her or by the Green Party on her behalf. While in the past she mostly avoided using the word "Jew" in favor of "Zionist", with her publication of Shamir's speech, even this thin veil of propriety has disappeared. If McKinney had sincerely wished to distance herself from these views, she would have denounced her friends' bigotry long ago; instead, she has repeatedly gone out of her way to support it.
The idea that her guilt is merely "by association" is laughable. Her guilt is sometimes that of a silent, grinning supporter of her friends' racist rants, and at other times that of an active promoter of those views herself. Sometimes she has couched her feelings about Jews in language vague enough to hypocritically disavow ill intent, but no one with any pretense of opposing bigotry should be deceived. Nor should they tolerate the fact that she claims to support peace for Israel and Palestine while campaigning against a peace settlement. Those who have supported McKinney or have been drawn to any part of her message owe it to themselves to speak out against this.
Screen shot from Cynthia McKinney's Facebook page.
(NOTE: I've revised this article to include a paragraph about Horst Mahler's connection to "Israel Shamir" and two additional photographs. Thanks to Karl Pfeifer for much of that information. Pfeifer's 2005 article on "Shamir" and Mahler can be read here. Thanks as well to Gene of Harry's Place for his kind words and his link to this article -- read here.)
I recently wrote about former U.S. Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney having been interviewed on a radio program largely devoted to hate speech against Jews. (Read here.) That interview, conducted by someone calling himself "Ognir", included an allegation that Rahm Emanuel, who was described as being of "Jew nationality and Jew loyalties", actually controlled President Obama on behalf of an international "Zionist" conspiracy. During the interview, "Zionists" were also blamed for promoting illegal drugs, medical marijuana and homosexual marriage in order to weaken American society and make it more malleable to their evil designs. McKinney cheerfully allowed her host to make these claims without disagreeing, responding only with her allegations that "Zionist" spies had infiltrated her campaign for congress (comparing herself to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King in the process) and agreeing with the host, at great length, that "Zionists" control the president and congress. McKinney enjoyed this hourlong interview so much, she returned for a second one.
To get further insight into the character of that program, read the post I wrote about it. It includes extensive quotes. That program is done by a group associated with a website called InfoUnderground. You can see for yourself who they are by reading their forum here. The member with the "Deathflag" website -- the one sometimes featuring a death's head banner, sometimes a mushroom cloud -- posted some hate-filled comments on this blog, all the while protesting that he's an "anti-racist". After a forum member named "Shiksa Rage" posted that she "bet dollars to doughnuts that this guy is one of the Self Chosen masquerading under a WASPish name", InfoUnderground conducted an investigation into whether my name been changed to hide a Jewish identity. That's here. One of them went so far as to search a website called avotaynu.com and found 20 Jewish names related to "Holland". Who knew? Based on that, I was found out as a "Zionist agent". Read here. I thought it was the Star of David hood ornament on my Aston Martin that gave me away.
Now McKinney has done several more interviews on another racist radio show with far-right links -- this time with a better-known, and much more widely read, internet hate monger called Daryl Bradford Smith. You can read an archived version of his website's homepage here: Zionism Research - The French Connection - Fighting Criminal Zionism. (Has McKinney read it? How did she find these people?) This webpage, on which recordings of the programs featuring McKinney can be found, features a banner headline endorsing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It reads:
The Protocols are sometimes criticized as containing nothing that had not been said previously by philosophers or statesmen; but even if that were true, it would detract little from their interest. For their importance does not lie in the aim, world domination, nor in the theory by which it is attained, exploitation of man's baser instincts, but in the extraordinary astuteness with which the practical application of the plan has been suited to existing conditions.
Smith's homepage links to other pages on his website devoted to the works of infamous bigots such as Charles Coughlin, Denis Fahey, Nesta Webster, and Douglas Reed. The page devoted to Fahey deals with what Smith calls the "Judeo-Bolshevist plot against Christianity". (Read here.) In fact, the vast majority of the authors published by Smith on his website come from the extreme far-right of the political spectrum, and promote, as did the Nazis, the view that communism was a Jewish conspiracy. However, Smith's website also promotes the Stalinist Doctors' Plot myth. It seems that Smith is happy to cross ideological lines and promote myths of czarist, fascist or Stalinist origin, so long as they support his anti-Jewish agenda. Now he's interviewed Cynthia McKinney and added her socialism of fools to the mix.
The mp3 of a June 16 interview posted on Smith's website starts with McKinney waiting on the line as Smith gives a disjointed, grammar-defying introduction to a hate-fest.
"How (is it that) organizations affiliated with a single group of people -- this is important stuff -- we have to define terms. The people we'll be discussing tonight, have, in my view and in the view of research, been involved in activities that are against the republic of the United States and, in many instances, of the world at large. Now they -- many of them -- come from the Jewish community -- not all of them. And many of them are declared Jews -- not all of them. The conspiracy itself -- at the top -- is predominantly a Zionist political ideology. It is important to make these distinction because all Jews are not involved in this . . . The people that are doing this are powerful enough to silence the world's press . . ."
Having thus clarified that he and McKinney will discuss an powerful, international Jewish conspiracy in which not all Jews are culpable, Smith gives the bill of particulars of the crimes of this imaginary conspiracy (i.e. the "crimes against the republic ... and the world"): the Lavon Affair, the U.S.S. Liberty attack, 9/11, and the campaign against McKinney's reelection to congress.
With that, Smith asks McKinney's impressions of the wonderful hospitality she encountered in Gaza. McKinney replies that "has to make a correction". By this she doesn't refer to her host's conspiracy theories connecting Jews to 9/11 or any of the rest of it. She just let's him know that she never actually made it to Gaza.
Smith goes on to compare Israel's accidental attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 to the interception of a boat on which McKinney attempted to travel from Cyprus to Gaza as part of a propaganda campaign against Israel's blockade. McKinney alleges that the Israelis and the international news media lied about what happened. She goes on to agree with Smith's comparison of her attempted Gaza voyage to the Liberty incident, claiming that the Liberty attack was deliberate and that Israel lied about it.
"The Israelis will lie to cover up an action they carry out which they deem to be in their national interest. It's nothing new . . . The case of the U.S.S. Liberty -- the Israelis were murdering people in Egypt. So they were afraid there were going to be some witnesses to the murder . . . The leaders of Israel have, for the most part, been war criminals."
Smith replies by blaming this on an attitude of Israeli superiority based on a belief that they are "God's chosen people", a biblical phrase which clearly refers not to Israelis, but to Jews in general. (Note: this English translation of a biblical phrase clearly does not refer to a political doctrine of superiority, but to a religious belief connecting Jews to God. I have literally never heard this phrase used in support of Zionism, only against it.)
At this point in his exchange with McKinney, Smith unloads a string of conspiracy theories which may set the record for the most attempts to blame Jews for 9/11 in the least amount of time. McKinney's response is instructive.
Smith: "Mr. (Ron) Lauder -- he donated lots of money for the founding of the Mossad University in Herzliya -- a very important spy center. He was also very important in getting the head of the Port Authority, Lewis Eisenberg, to make the sale to Mr. Lowy and Mr. Silverstein. What about the collusion between these groups? But it doesn't stop there. It goes on to a companies that are watching our airports in Boston and Newark, named ICTS Company International (and) owned by former Mossad active spies -- by the children of the founder of Mossad -- a woman . . . It goes on to Daniel Lewin, Jules Carl (?), and Jerome Hauer, Indigo Systems, and Goldman Sachs making money on it. In other words, we can go down the list of one thing after another. Mohamed Atta -- his apartment in Florida -- both sides had Israelis living in it. The moving company with bombs inside its vans. How about the three Israelis who go back to Israel -- the dancing Israelis -- that they were there to document the event. How did they know that there would be an event to document? And go on and on and on -- and we find people like Dov Zakeheim, a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi, and Ari Fleischer, and Faith Wurmser (Douglas Feith and David Wurmser?). All of these people are actually a fifth column that has invaded our control structure of our government. And they are involved in strong-arming Congress, and they are in complete control of the Executive Branch. Now, how do we get this kind of crime gang from unclenching from their control?"
McKinney: "Well... people have to stand up! One of the things you said -- I do have to say -- I heard an extraordinary (speech) given by Lord Levy, who is, I believe, in the U.K. House of Lords. And the language that he used was absolutely incredible! Basically he said that only 3% of the Israeli people voted for peace and . . . he called Israel an indefensible state . . . Being in the United States, we don't hear that kind of talk at all. It was a Jewish member of the House of Lords who was saying this."
This follows McKinney's pattern of allowing her interviewers make extremist, bigoted comments for her. She then offers her tacit agreement, saying nothing to correct the record. Instead, she launches into an attack on Israel and finds a Jewish ally for her attack. As the comments to this blog have proven, this is good enough for her supporters to defend her from charges of anti-Semitism, and to argue that she does not claim that Israel was behind 9/11. As should be clear by the above exchange, she gives precisely those views her support with her response to Smith's outrageous charges. If she disagreed with him, she would have said so. Anyone with knowledge of the facts and an ounce of decency would have responded by telling Smith exactly what he is.
A litte background
In case you haven't been following McKinney's career of late, she's become a professional anti-Zionist, travelling the world to attend several conferences sponsored by the foundation led by Malaysia's former Prime Minister Mahathir. Mahathir has been spreading some money around to burnish his claims to be a leader of an international anti-Zionist movement: sponsoring several conferences and funding anti-Israel groups. He has also made a point of very publicly linking himself to Ahmadinejad and the Iranian dictatorship. Considering that Mahathir, his chief advisor Matthias Chang and Cynthia McKinney (like Ahmadinejad) all promote anti-Zionism as a form of anti-globalization, maybe I should refer to their ideology as the anti-globalization of fools.
Speaking of Ahmadinejad and Iran, on the night that much of the world were glued to news channels watching the power of the Iranian people risking their lives to voice their outrage at having their votes stolen, viewers of Iran's English-language propaganda channel, Press TV, were treated to several hours of Cynthia McKinney hosting a talk show on racism and the failure of democracy in Obama's America. (Read here . Video of program here.) The timing of that pathetic spectacle does not seem at all coincidental.
McKinney broadcasting on Press TV the night of Iran's elections
Also in June, McKinney announced her founding a political party seemingly modeled after one founded in the U.K. by George Galloway. (Read here or here.) Galloway's was called "Respect"; McKinney's is called "Dignity". Galloway and McKinney have much in common. Galloway, like McKinney, went from serving as a legislator with a major party, to a career devoted to endless self-promotion on the political fringes. Like Galloway before her, McKinney seeks to bring together an anti-Israel coalition of the far-left and Muslim communities. Like Galloway, she appears ready to do business with those who oppose democratic values in their own countries while decrying Israel and the U.S. as undemocratic.
Armed with mailing lists most fringe politicians would envy, McKinney is hoping to draw supporters for her party from the anti-Zionist far-left and far-right and to build a sort of coalition of extremes. Remember that she raised a lot of money for her failed congressional bid in 2006, largely based on anti-Israel fundraising. That built up her mailing list considerably. She presumably has the mailing lists from the several "9/11 truth" groups she' s led. Having been the 2008 Green Party presidential candidate, she must have their mailing list as well. For that reason alone, however absurd her statements and her affiliations are, she is still worth watching. She seems intent on maintaining her position as the United States' most vocal opponent of Israel. As odd and apparently self-destructive as her decision to work with the far-right appears, it may be part of a deliberate strategy to attract attention. She may be banking on the idea that there's no such thing as bad anti-Israel publicity.
As for Daryl Bradford Smith, he has had extensive connections with the Holocaust-denial publication American Free Press, although he appears to have burned his bridges with them by claiming that they too are somehow part of the international "Zionist" conspiracy. (Read here.) In response, some of his former friends have claimed that he is a "Zionist agent", a crypto-Jew or even a"Talmudist". (Read here and here and here and here and here and here.) Like many in the U.S. neo-fascist far-right, Smith spends as much time fighting fellow fascists as he does Jews and other supposed enemies.
My previous posts about McKinney's affiliations with the far-right are available here. Harry's Place covered this story here, the anti-conspiracy theory website Screw Loose Change here, JTA covered it here, Little Green Footballs here and History News Network reposted my one of my posts on McKinney here.
And while I'm on the subject of McKinney's supporters on the extreme right, there's this odd fellow.
The following links go straight to mp3's of McKinney's interviews posted on Smith's website. The first of these interviews, done on June 16, is available here. The second, done June 17, is here. The third, done on June 24, is here. A fourth, done on June 25, is here. I intend to continue digesting these interviews in the upcoming days in order to to continue to put McKinney's ties to the far-right on the record. Stay tuned.
As always, if anyone wishes to correct any factual errors in this or any other post, feel free to post a comment. Also feel free to offer your opinions. I am debating whether to allow the sort of hostile invective previous posts about McKinney have elicited from her supporters, including gross obscenities, bigotry, misogyny, and threats of and allusions to acts of violence. While it's useful to see exactly who is supporting McKinney, I hate to expose readers to that sort of material. McKinney supporters: when commenting, remember that readers are judging your views by how you choose to express yourself.
Those who read this blog regularly know that former Democratic Congressman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has made common cause with members of the extreme far-right who share her opposition to Israel. I have reported on Cynthia McKinney's connections to conspiracy mongers, bigots and fascists such as Matthias Chang and David Pidcock (read here and here). I also reported on her interview on an internet radio program devoted to promoting anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories (read here).
During that interview, McKinney got along swimmingly with her interviewer (who calls himself "Ognir") as he claimed in a bizarre, rambling manner that the president was somehow under the thumb of Rahm Emanuel. McKinney did not object when "Ognir" described Emanuel as having "Jew nationality and Jew loyalties". She didn't raise a peep as the host condemned a "Zionist" conspiracy for promoting gay marriage and medical marijuana to weaken the world's moral fiber. McKinney, in turn, talked in similarly paranoid (if less quirky) terms. She compared herself to Rosa Parks and declared herself a civil rights martyr. She also claimed that her campaign had been infiltrated by a "Zionist" spy whom she refused to name.
The meeting of the minds that was the first McKinney/"Ognir" interview lasted for more than an hour. Apparently, that didn't give McKinney a chance to fully explore these issues with Ognir, so she's done a second interview on the program, which is available on the hate speech website wakeupfromyourslumber.com (here).
This interview is of a piece with the first. Notably, for the first time, McKinney talks explicitly about her links to the far-right, recounting how her father worked with "members of the far-right and members of the far-left" to protest a meeting between Ariel Sharon and the governor of Georgia. (She seems to have an inflated view of her importance, somehow connecting Sharon's visit to Georgia with her failure to be reelected to Congress.)
She also briefly mentions her connection to former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. Mahathir seems to have taken a liking to McKinney, having sponsored her attendance at several of his foundation's conferences in Kuala Lumpur and London devoted to anti-Israel activism. I'm not certain what McKinney is doing for a living these days, but the speaking fees from these events must be helpful. By the way, domestic Malysian oppostion to aspects of Mahatir's corruption, authoritarianism and promotion of racial dischord are discussed in a very well-written article by Ian Baruma in a recent New Yorker. (Read here. Subscription required.)
In that article, Baruma describes the central role that anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda plays in Mahathir's politics, in spite of there being virtually no Jews in Malaysia and no connection to the Middle East conflict. Mahathir's anti-Israel rallies come across as a sort of ritual hate of the sort Orwell described in 1984. Mahathir and his close advisor Matthias Chang have made anti-Semitic conspiracy theories the focus of a pseudo-reform movement in reaction to the failure of Malaysia's currency and several of its banks in 1997's Asian finacial meltdown. Mahathir bailed out the banks owned by his family members and cronies and blamed the whole thing on George Soros and "Zionists".
When Anwar Ibrahim, the key opposition politician in Malaysia, began to get traction with a push for real reform and transparency, Mahathir had him thrown in jail on outrageous trumped up sodomy charges. Mahathir also smeared Anwar, of course, as an agent of the Jews. After Anwar's arrest, Mahathir called a cabinet meeting in order to justify the unjust. He presented a slide show consisting of current and former U.S. officials all of whom happened to be Jews.
Matthias Chang, Mahathir's long-time advisor, whose conspiracy theories regarding "money-lenders" McKinney touts (read here), is published in the U.S. by Willis Carto's neo-Nazi publishing house The Barnes Review/American Free Press. Mahathir and Chang have connections to the neo-fascist writer Michael Collins Piper, who, like McKinney, has participated in several of their conferences. (Read here.) Chang, in turn, provided a supportive statement to be read by Piper at a Barnes Review Holocaust denial conference. Chang's statement praised a list of American neo-fascists in the strongest terms.
Michael Collins Piper and Mahathir
Yvonne Ridley, Piper and Mahathir
Mahathir and his minions have enough of the characteristics of fascism to deserve that title: authoritarianism, anti-communism, anti-capitalism, cronyism, traditionalist religiosity, racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism, homophobia, nativism, idealistic propaganda shielding cynical opportunism, rhetoric concerning restoration of purity, opposition to imaginary traitorous conspiracies, etc. They also have opened extensive contacts both with Islamists and neo-fascists, specifically concerning the promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Cynthia McKinney really needs to explain how a purported leftist like herself can justify making common cause with the racist, neo-fascist far right.
