The Banality & Ubiquity of Evil

Former British diplomat Craig Murray reflects on those who smear anti-racists as anti-Semites:

"My world view changed forever, when, after 20 years in the Foreign Office, I saw colleagues I knew and liked go along with Britain's complicity in the most terrible tortures, as detailed stunningly in the recent Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee Report. They also went along with keeping the policy secret, deliberately disregarding all normal record taking procedures, to the extent that the Committee noted: 131. We note that we have not seen the minutes of these meetings either: this causes us great concern. Policy discussions on such an important issue should have been minuted. We support Mr Murray's own conclusion that were it not for his actions these matters may never have come to light.

"The people doing these things were not ordinarily bad people; they were just trying to keep their jobs, comforting themselves with the thought that they were only civil servants obeying orders. Many were also actuated by the nasty 'patriotism' that grips in time of war, as we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost nobody in the FCO stood up against the torture or against the illegal war - Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Carne Ross and I were the only ones to leave over it..

"I then had the still more mortifying experience of the Foreign Office seeking to punish my dissent by bringing a series of accusations of gross misconduct - some of them criminal - against me. The people bringing the accusations knew full well they were false. The people investigating them knew they were false from about day 2. But I was put through a hellish six months of trial by media before being acquitted on all the original counts (found guilty of revealing the charges, whose existence was an official secret!). The people who did this to me were people I knew.

"I had served as First Secretary in the British Embassy in Poland, and bumped up startlingly against the history of the Holocaust in that time, including through involvement with organising the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. What had struck me most forcibly was the sheer scale of the Holocaust operation, the tens of thousands of people who had been complicit in administering it. I could never understand how that could happen - until I saw ordinary, decent people in the FCO facilitate extraordinary rendition and torture. Then I understood, for the first time, the banality of evil or, perhaps more precisely, the ubiquity of evil. Of course, I am not comparing the scale of what happened to the Holocaust - but evil can operate on different scales.

"I believe I see it again today. I do not believe that the majority of journalists in the BBC, who pump out a continual stream of 'Corbyn is an anti-semite' propaganda, believe in their hearts that Corbyn is a racist at all. They are just doing their job, which is to help the BBC avert the prospect of a radical government in the UK threatening the massive wealth share of the global elite. They would argue that they are just reporting what others say; but it is of course the selection of what they report and how they report it which reflects their agenda.

"The truth, of which I am certain, is this. If there genuinely was the claimed existential threat to Jews in Britain, of the type which engulfed Europe's Jews in the 1930s, Jeremy Corbyn, Billy Bragg, Roger Waters, and I may humbly add myself, would be among the few who would die alongside them on the barricades, resisting. Yet these are today loudly called 'anti-semites' for supporting the right to oppose the oppression of the Palestinians. The journalists currently promoting those accusations, if it came to the crunch, would be polishing state propaganda, and the civil servants writing railway dockets. That is how it works. I have seen it. Close up." (craigmurray.org.uk, 30/7/18)

A Very British Coup in the Making

A backgrounder from Craig Murray's It's still the Iraq War, stupid:

"No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against [UK Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?

"The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair's lies will still be visible underneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labor party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published. For the Labor Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labor leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair's careful planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.

"Yes, they are that nuts.

"If the fault line for the Tories is Europe, for Labour it is the Middle East. Those opposing Corbyn are defined by their enthusiasm for bombing campaigns that kill Muslim children. And not only by the UK. Both of the first two to go, Hilary Benn and Heidi Alexander, are hardline supporters of Israel." (craigmurray.org.uk, 26/6/16)

Worth a read in its entirety.