Conspiracy Anti-Vaxers against Covid-19 lockdowns blend with far-right fascists – Irish and British Examples
No to Racism Defend Our Public Health Workers – Minorities, Migrants, Homeless, Asylum Seekers, LGBTQ+Solidarity for Real Change
12 September 2020 | 1 PM
Assemble: GPO | O’Connell Street Dublin United Against Racism is organizing this rally in partnership with others and co-hosted by all organisations supporting it. For support and endorsements please email: info@united-against-racism.net…
https://www.facebook.com/events/653860718566358?active_tab=about
Congratulations to United Against Racism for calling this event. It needs to be supported by other organizations across the left, and mass membership organizations like trade unions.
Mass action is badly needed to confront and crush the racist far-right.
In Dublin, across Ireland and internationally the racist far right are using anti-mask, anti-vaccine and other fears to promote themselves and their racist agenda. In Dublin they mobilised up to 2000 at the Custom House on 22 August. In London, with the aid of Dolores Cahill (pictured above) from the Irish Freedom Party they put several thousand in Trafalgar Square.
In Berlin they mobilized up-to 30,000 and in the US they have been holding armed demonstrations. In Dublin they also rally regularly at the GPO on Saturdays. This is very dangerous; they must be exposed and opposed. At the heart of these mobilizations are individuals and organisations whose core agenda is to attack people of colour, migrants, minorities, asylum seekers, Muslims etc. but at present they are focusing on other prejudices, bigotries and COVID-19 fears and doing so in the name of an utterly perverted version of Irish nationalism that is an insult to Connolly and Pearse and all they stood for. They mounted a vile homophobic campaign against Green Party government minister Roderic O’Gorman.
DON’T ENDANGER OUR FRONT LINE WORKERS
ANTI-MASK IS ANTI – WORKER!
We can trust our healthcare workers who have risked their lives and are telling us first hand to wear a mask and follow the basic health advice. We can mind our health and criticize the government at the same time without the lies and conspiracy theories of the far-right.It is urgent that their lies are exposed and their influence is countered.The far-right have zero policies or interest in protecting civil liberties, defending workers, ending the housing crisis, improving the health system or uniting people. These are the same people that campaign against asylum seekers and refugees. They simply want to divide us and scapegoat vulnerable sections of our society which lets the government off the hook.We therefore call on all progressive organisations and individuals – trade unions and trade unionists, migrants rights organisations , anti-racists, LGBTQ+ activists, feminist activists, progressive political parties, environmental activists, housing activists – everyone who wants to defend public health and see a more just and equal country – to unite and oppose the far-right and their growth in IrelandWe in United Against Racism like to organise this rally in partnership with others and co-hosted by all organisations supporting it. For support and endorsements please email info@united-against-racism.netWe are planning to call for an organisers Zoom meeting next week 8 September 2020, 6.30PMJoin us for a peaceful, socially distant rally to give your support to our front line heroes in hospital; shops etc who are being put in danger by those who think COVID-19 is a conspiracy – not a disease.’This is will be a socially distances rally. Please wear a mask to protect yourself and others around you. Thank You!
Irish far-right racists are actively linking up with British co-thinkers.
Phil Hearse reports on the meaning of a far-right conspiracy rally in Trafalgar Square, London.
Dateline London SATURDAY August 29 RALLY
PROPOSED RIGHT-WING TV CHANNEL SHOWS UK CULTURE WARS WELL UNDERWAY
[In the picture above, David Icke speaks. Piers Corbyn is at his right shoulder]
It is tempting to think that Saturday’s Trafalgar Square rally by conspiracy theorists, anti-vax campaigners and a sprinkling of fascist groups – to protest Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions – was a weird happening somehow outside of politics. It wasn’t. Conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, anti-abortionists and climate change deniers, are spreading a blend of reactionary ideological tropes that fit in perfectly the fa-right thinking.
Key organiser was Piers Corbyn, brother of Jeremy. In the 1970s he was a member of the International Marxists Group and a leading figure in the London squatters’ movement. He made millions from his weather prediction business, which one-sidedly (at least) posited that the weather was mainly determined by sunspots. Today, like others speaking at the rally, he is a climate-science denier, attacks ‘globalists led by George Soros’ of wanting to control people’s thoughts through 5G mobile technology and eventually microchip implants in the brains of everyone. The worldwide rightist attack on George Soros, taken up even by Hungarian premier Victor Orban, is dead in the centre of a decades-old fascist and right-wing anti-Semitic myth – Jewish capitalists promoting Communism
Alongside Corbyn was long-time conspiracy theorist David Icke, another theorist of a ‘globalist elite led by George Soros’. Icke holds that this elite (aka the ‘illuminati’) have controlled the world for thousands of years. At one time he said the elite were really lizards, but that seems to bed on the back burner. His illuminati lizards theory reflected dog-whistle anti-Semitism, as in his ideas about ‘global conspiracy Rothschild Zionism’.
Icke has close links with leading US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who attacks ‘the George Soros financed Communist campaign to overthrow the United States’, represented by Black Lives Matter and Anti-Fascist Action. During his 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump appeared on Jones’ online TV channel Info Wars, and praised Jones’ work. Jones in turn claims his ideas are often taken up by the White House. He has been banned on Facebook and Twitter.
The ability of conspiracy cranks to mobilise a few thousand against (very inadequate) coronavirus precautions is disturbing, but not really a surprise. You can be sure that present at the rally were large numbers of people who voted for UKIP and the Brexit Party in the last European elections, and voted for Farage and Johnson in the 2019 general election – probably a mixture of middle class and working-class racist reactionaries. These are Daily Mail readers who want to put that papers’ political positions into action.
Now there are plans to give these people a major new voice via a current affairs TV channel based on the model of US Fox News. Rupert Murdoch is one competitor to run the channel, and Ofcom has already given a license to a rival group to broadest under the name GB News. Tories and other reactionaries have long complained that the BBC is ‘biased’ against the Conservative Party and – in extreme versions – is run by ‘Marxists’. The very opposite is true. Cowed by threats to abolish the license fee that funds Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC has retreated into ever-more craven conformism. Today ITV news is much more independent, especially Channel 4 News, and according to a recent survey ITV News is seen as the most politically neutral. The Conservative Party wants to smash up the existing balance of TV News, by breaking up the BBC or make it a commercially-run channel, and privatising Chanel 4 (a step towards curbing its news output).
Britain’s culture wars are well under way. The Left has to fight them and not pretend that the issues involved – particularly issues of racism and migrant rights – can be evaded by fighting mainly on economic issues and defense of the NHS.
Readers can learn more about the Trafalgar Square Demonstration and the strange political journey of Piers Corbyn (Jeremy Corbyn’s brother) here :
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
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