Airstrip One
by Emmanuel Goldstein
Antiwar.com

March 21, 2000

How They Oppress Us
The War Party’s slow denial of our freedom

THE PICTURE THAT STILL FOOLS THE WORLD

If you have not read Justin Raimondo’s column on Wednesday covered the sinister, yet unsurprising verdict in the Living Marxism libel trial then I will give you a quick run down. Living Marxism (renamed LM) was taken to task by ITN (the "Independent" Television News company) for exposing their shoddy journalism when they manufactured a death camp scene for the sake of easy headlines. For their pains they are facing bills of up to $1 million, the result being another bankrupted critic of the war party. The libel trial is of more than British domestic significance, as it is now becoming clear that any attack on the motives of our rulers is now to be met with the full force of the law.

FOR THOSE WHO MISSED IT

The case was, remember, the refugee camp that was filmed to look like a concentration camp – with the picture and attached lurid headlines going around the world. The fact that the whole episode was caught on video camera and expert testimony pointed to the fact that these were unpleasant refugee camps (with rather better conditions than the Kosovan Serbs can expect) rather than death camps were ruled inadmissible by the corrupt Judge, Justice Morland. The truth, it seems, is no longer an absolute defence when you attack the establishment. After all if the jury had actually been presented with the facts in this case they would very likely have come to the wrong conclusion – that although all refugees suffer in war, the Serbs were not a uniquely evil race that deserved to be bombed.

ITN – THE LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME

Many British people thought that the ostensible reason for the libel trial – the protection of ITN’s reputation – was rather humorous. ITN is not, shall we say, respected. The main thing that ITN is remembered for is the ridiculously trite (more trite than the rest of the news) "and finally" piece which covers such matters of grave concern as postmen who double up as cabaret singers. ITN is known as tabloid television. It may not be gratuitously violent, but it is focussed on the easy to analyse human interest stories that our most downmarket tabloid newspapers reject for their lack of consequence. In short, if I had ITN’s reputation for lightweight journalism I’d want to lose it, not protect it.

LM – WHY THE LEFT HATE THEM

Which brings us to the other protagonist, LM. LM was founded as Living Marxism and was for a time the organ of the rather odd Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP was a rather odd left wing group throughout the 1980s. They took a, well, unorthodox view of what was involved in being either revolutionary or communist. Although they were pro-immigration and pro-abortion (pro-choice hardly describes their stance) they were also believers in the sort of social and economic freedom that the left do not always espouse. Their best line was the instruction to their followers to vote or Thatcher to bring forward the revolution. So hated were they by the student Marxists of the 1970s and 1980s (who make up today’s Labour administration) that the rumour was always that they were a CIA front. Well that is definitely not the case now, is it?

THE USES OF LIBEL

Libel has been a favourite tool of the British establishment to blunt unwelcome criticism. One prominent example has been the use of libel laws to silence all speculation on the British role in the slaughter of Chetnik prisoners of war. As part of the aftermath of the Second World War, the communist government of Yugoslavia wanted domestic opponents delivered to them. Britain had 20,000 Chetnik prisoners, which they delivered to certain death at the hands of the Yugoslav partisans. One of the commanding officers in charge of this handover was Harold Macmillan, a Conservative MP who would later become Prime Minister. These are the facts. The controversy lies over whether or not the British were aware of the Yugoslav intentions or were stupid. The official story is that they were stupid, the consequences otherwise would be that the British had been accessory to the murder of 20,000 prisoners of war. The story was not uncontested. Count Nicolai Tolstoy is an Englishman whose name, ancestry and title are Russian. He claimed that the officers were well aware of the fate of their charges, and accepted this as the price of appeasing Uncle Joe Stalin. Whatever the real facts of the case (I have not studied the case – and so am not sure) this deserved to be debated and not suppressed. But would it be a surprise if it had not been debated and the case had been suppressed in a record libel win of $2 million, bankrupting the unrepentant count? Thought not.

THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS

The internationalist left is in such a powerful position because of a long march through the institutions that was started in the 1960s. As the song goes "I tried to change the system from within and was sentenced to twenty years of boredom". But the simple fact is that the rule of law is quickly becoming an illusion rather than a reality, the law is now a weapon for the governing classes and their prejudices. The judiciary is no longer a branch of the reactionary right as it was thirty years ago, but an outpost of the most reactionary left. The ITN case was one of the less extreme versions of this, Justice Morland basically denying evidence to the defendants so that the whole story would not reach the jury, with ITN’s big money and the jury’s racial prejudice against Serbs doing the rest. A far more extreme case was the Pinochet case. Here Pinochet was denied a fair hearing because the judiciary was packed with internationalists and left wingers. The most blatant example was that of Lord Hoffman one of the judges who ruled that Spain had the right to overturn Chile’s internal settlement with regard to Senator Pinochet. He was involved with Amnesty International, an organisation whose concern for the due process of law does not extend to elderly Latin Americans; and whose much touted espousal of non-violent prisoners of conscious extended to some particularly nasty second generation Spanish revolutionaries. Lord Hoffman’s involvement with Amnesty (he was in charge of their "educational" arm, as if that had any separate life from their lobbying arm) and his wife’s employment by Amnesty International’s head office should have ruled him out of any case involving Amnesty International as a plaintiff. Not in New Labour’s Britain, where the new ruling class is so narrow and tightly bound up that conflicts of interest are just impractical, part of the despised code of honour of the ancient regime. When Hoffman’s duplicity was exposed , the verdict instead of being overturned (it was a 3-2 verdict to overturn a lower court, a split verdict would have reverted to the lower court’s verdict) was upheld to justify the honour of the House of Lords. And what about the dishonourable Lord Hoffman? Well he still sits on judgment in Britain’s highest court, secure in the knowledge that his connections protect him.

THE PRIVILEGES OF POWER

The New Class enjoy their power and the access that this can bring them. One of the sickest aspects is the continued abuse of the systems of children’s homes – state run orphanages – that Labour politicians indulge in. In Scotland there appear to be strong links between the access that the mass murderer Thomas Hamilton had to weapons and the pedophile activities of one of Scotland’s most senior Labour politicians. The case also involves George Robertson (although he is not accused of deviant sexual tastes) who knew Thomas Hamilton and got him his gun licenses, now he’s Secretary General of NATO – do you feel safe? The report on the murder has been covered up for one hundred years. In Wales there has been a massive inquiry into the abuse of children throughout the children’s homes, that involved a senior Labour politician and a senior Conservative backer. The names will not be released, and police action will not be taken. In Tony Blair’s own back yard of the London Borough of Islington there has been massive sexual abuse through politically linked Pedophiles, as there has been in another London Borough of Lambeth. In yet another London borough, Hackney, where Tony Blair started his political career, a child abuser who was a friend of both Mr. Blair and his ally Peter Mandelson, Mark Trotter, was given a job in Children’s Homes, and complaints about his behaviour were constantly ignored. An investigation was almost blocked by Blair’s insistence that Hackney council should not allow an investigation, and those Labour members who voted for an investigation were thrown out of the party. All three authorities were run by Labour from 1971 until the 1990s. That a minority of Labour politicians used their power to involve themselves in child abuse was not due to the fundamental immorality of Labour, although the subsequent cover ups by among others Tony Blair was. The fact was that Labour attracted a large amount of homosexuals to the party, Labour was in uncontested control of many inner city areas and so of their children’s homes and the anti-family bias of the social work profession was at it’s most pronounced, taking many children away from their families into the abusive environment of children’s homes. If the Catholic church has a (smaller but more public) problem with Child Care with it’s screening, doctrinal strength and centralised control; there is no real hope for a collection of government agencies. Nonetheless the fact remains that many in Government at the moment are directly tainted with this and almost all the rest have covered these criminals up. This shows, perhaps, quite how tight knit the new class is in Britain, and quite how impartial Justice Morland could have expected to be.

THE ILLUSION OF FREE SPEECH

The point is that free speech is a relative concept. If you annoy the powers that be sufficiently they will put you out of business. As has been shown by the LM libel case you have free speech, you are free to flatter the authorities and repeat their lies. But with the scandalous denial of evidence and the general use of official secrecy to cover up the tracks of the authorities most serious crimes there is little check on them. This is why sources such as antiwar.com are so important (if I was American I’d start saying that is why you must support us financially, but being a Limey I’ll leave that to Justin Raimondo). It is also a reminder of just how hard our task will be. And if any lefties are still reading, I’d like to remind them that the repressive structures will not always favour their side (as it didn’t on the matter of the Chetniks). The warfare state will not stop when it has overcome the right. The left have no reason to be smug. They’re next.

Purchase "Judgment," the film that proves that ITN manufactured their "death camp" report

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