The Beatification of John McCain

John Sidney McCain III (PHOTO: John Hume Kennerly/GETTY IMAGES)

The eulogies for the recently deceased John McCain, a US Senator for Arizona, have been plentiful, and so far as the American mainstream media is concerned, they have verged on the hagiographic. He has been variously described as a “patriot”, a “war hero” and a “defender of freedom”. Most perplexingly, McCain was lauded as a “warrior for peace”. But while praise for McCain has been dutifully administered in reverential terms by both liberal and conservative figures, the truth is that there is widespread dissent about McCain’s legacy as a man, as a military officer, as well as a politician. Perhaps, most worrisome is the construction of McCain’s legacy as one of the resolutely principled maverick and insatiable peace seeker. On the contrary, McCain operated at the highest echelons of the American Establishment, a closeted world of vested interests comprising a network geared towards the enrichment of the American elite. He was a captive of the defence industry and an unceasingly aggressive spokesperson for the post-Cold War era militarism that has compromised the United States and brought it down low in the eyes of the global community of nations.

So why the almost uncritical eulogising of a controversial life beset by allegations of incompetence, corruption and disloyalty?

Perhaps it is the tradition of the people of the United States to venerate their warriors. From the highest serving general to the lowest level footsoldier, Americans have a penchant for what might be termed ‘soldier worship’. There is also a tendency for disparate groups of people to pull together behind someone when confronted by an idea or by a person to whom they feel repugnance. It is certainly the case that the transition from life to death brings out the sentimental in people whether such death is sudden or prolonged. And, of course, as with most cultures, Americans are cautious about speaking ill of the dead.

Each of these has doubtlessly played a part in the positive reviews of the life of John McCain since his passing. John Sidney McCain III was born into a family of naval servicemen, two of who reached the rank of admiral. He served as a naval aviator during the Vietnam War and later retired as a captain. McCain also engaged in a well-publicised, long-running feud with Donald Trump who as a polarising figure has succeeded in arraigning different strands of his countrymen against his presidency. His demise, caused by the effects of a malignant brain tumour, was a cruel one. Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of cancer.

But there is much to question about McCain.

McCain joined the US Navy following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Each man had reached the pinnacle of service and became the first father and son pair to achieve the rank of four-star admiral. When he retired in 1981, McCain had been the recipient of a Silver Star and Purple Heart. He had also received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his “exceptional courage, superb airmanship, and total devotion to duty” during a bombing raid over Hanoi in 1967, and had been awarded the Legion of Merit with Combat “V” award “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States while interned as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam from October 1967 to March 1973.”

But the competence of the future senator as an aviator has been consistently questioned. For instance, in 1960 while on a training exercise, he crashed his plane into Corpus Christi Bay, in the process shearing the skin off its wings. The following year, while serving with an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean theatre, he flew through electrical wires in southern Spain causing a power failure in the surrounding area. And in 1965, while en route to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy football game, he crashed a T-2 trainer jet in Virginia.

These incidents, caused by a carefree attitude described as “cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits”, led to rebukes by the naval authorities. They also explain a great deal about the allegations surrounding his responsibility for two more serious incidents.

Sarcastically dubbed ‘Ace McCain’ by his commanders, McCain’s career as an aviator was, nonetheless, allowed to continue. Although the official inquiry into the catastrophic fire onboard the USS Forrestal in July 1967 was officially blamed on the accidental firing of a rocket caused by an electrical power surge during preparations for a strike against a target in North Vietnam, the claim that the disaster, which killed 134 sailors while injuring another 161, was caused by McCain ‘wet-starting’ his jet has refused to die. ‘Wet-starting’ refers to where pilots flood the combustion chamber of their craft with extra fuel before ignition in order to create either a loud bang or a plume of flame.

McCain is claimed by some to have done this and that the ensuing concatenation of maladies are traceable to his reckless act.  That he avoided the consequences of his actions is said to be due to the seniority and influence of his high-ranking father who some, including Admiral Thomas Moorer, a former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, allege was at the time cooperating with the cover-up pertaining to the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty by the armed forces of the state of Israel, which had occurred the previous month. Three months later, McCain was shot down while conducting a bombing sortie over North Vietnam.

No official blame has ever been attached to McCain for his shooting down. But as his aircraft was lost behind enemy lines, its remains were not subjected to the same sort of forensic analysis as had occurred after the earlier mishaps while in control of the cockpit. In all three incidents, McCain’s skill and judgement had been called into question.

Aviators like McCain had been trained to stay at altitudes of 4,000 to 10,000 feet in environments where there were heavy deployments of surface-to-air missile launchers. They had equipment which warned the pilot that they were being tracked and also when a missile locked on them. These missiles were relatively easy to out-manoeuvre up to a point. This changed when there were multiple launches of between 6 and 12 missiles. McCain claimed in his autobiography that 22 missiles were fired at his squadron that day and that one blew off his right wing. He had been flying at an altitude of 3,000 feet above Hanoi.

It is McCain’s conduct as a prisoner of war which has brought him the most public scrutiny. Officially, he is a hero for withstanding torture: beatings, the withholding of medical treatment and a lengthy spell in solitary confinement, although he wilted and made at least one propaganda broadcast for North Vietnamese radio in which he pronounced himself guilty of “crimes against the Vietnamese country and people.”

The United States military Code of Conduct prohibits prisoners of war from accepting parole or other favours from the enemy, although during the Vietnam War, latitude was generally given to those who were seriously ill or injured.

McCain, who sustained two broken arms and a broken leg when ejecting from his plane, has been accused by some fellow veterans who were held at the same camps as he, as one who sold out his fellow prisoners and other servicemen by cooperating with his captors in order to be the beneficiary of a cushy captivity. His detractors accuse him of making broadcasts designed to infringe upon the morale of his fellow servicemen and of giving up military secrets such as that related to his flight, rescue ships and the order of attacks.

And while they allow that McCain refused an offer of early repatriation unless all prisoners were released, some allege that he was given special treatment with two other ‘defectors’ for cooperating. In fact, they argue that McCain’s refusal was an easy one given that he knew that his future prospects in the military and any public office would have been ruined. Many veterans claimed that those who were granted early release in three sets of releases in 1968 were collaborators who they dubbed ‘the slipperies’, ‘the slimies’ and ‘the sleazies’, and that McCain had acknowledged this.

To be sure, several of McCain’s co-prisoners have spoken on his behalf over the years. His one-time cellmate, Colonel George Day, who recommended him for a post-war medal, said that McCain had forced his interrogators to “drug him and torture him to get any cooperation” and had suffered "tortuous abuse”. Men like George Day and Orson Swindle confirm that torture was regularly administered and that they were forced to talk, although they attempted to mislead their captors by telling untruths. In McCain’s case, he claims his response to questions asking him about future bombing runs was simply to give those that had already taken place. He also claims to have given the names of the offensive line up of the Green Bay Packers football team as members of his squadron.

Render Crayton, McCain’s co-prisoner for one year (1971-1972) at the camp referred to as the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, has often spoken up on behalf of McCain and claims that McCain “gave hell to his captors”. An example of this was deciding one morning to loudly sing the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. The penalty for this insubordination was to be removed from a “big room” to “smaller cell rooms”.

This does not impress those veterans against McCain who assert that no one witnessed the series of tortures he claimed to have endured. Indeed, in an interview conducted in 2008 with the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, the chief guard of his prison, Nguyen Tien Tran, said that McCain was not tortured. In his autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, McCain admitted that he felt guilty throughout his captivity because he knew that he was being treated more leniently than his fellow POWs owing to the fact that he was the son of the commander-in-chief of all US forces in the Pacific region, including Vietnam. His captors referred to him as the ‘Crown Prince’.

They also point to the tremendous lengths McCain went towards blocking the release of classified documents during the 1991-1993 Senate Committee hearings on Prisoners of War and those Missing in Action as evidence of his having a personal interest in suppressing information which would discredit him. Through McCain’s efforts, documents such as related to all the Pentagon debriefings of returned prisoners were classified by legislation. A ‘Truth Bill’, which had been twice introduced to ensure transparency over missing men was bitterly opposed by McCain who then sponsored a new bill which sought to create a bureaucratic maze ensuring that only a few non-descript documents could be released. It was passed into law.

His rationale that the sealing of these files was for reasons of privacy and preventing the reviving of painful memories were not accepted by those who point to the fact that debriefings from returning Korean War prisoners of war are available to the public, and, as was the case with Korea, could have provided useful leads in so far as the fate of those who were missing in action in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Those who opposed McCain were often subjected to vitriolic abuse by a man who developed a renowned temper. He referred to individuals and groups campaigning for information on MIAs as “hoaxers”, “charlatans” and “conspiracy theorists”. They retorted by dubbing him the ‘Manchurian Candidate’. In fact many of them along with the veterans against McCain often refer to his conduct while in captivity as having been nothing less than treachery.

Claims that McCain was on a list of 33 American prisoners of war earmarked to be executed for treason cannot be corroborated. But possible retribution against him by hardline military officers was rendered impossible by the US Defense Department whose officials had adopted a general policy of “honour-and-forgive” for returning prisoners of war. One specific element of this policy was not to prosecute any prisoners of war for making pro-North Vietnamese propaganda statements while in captivity. And to back this up, a move in 1973 by an Air Force colonel charging seven enlisted men of collaborating with the enemy while they were held as prisoners of war by North Vietnam was dismissed by the secretaries of the Army and Navy for lack of evidence and the mitigating circumstances of the “long hardship” they endured while in captivity.

While McCain is perceived by his detractors as having escaped punishment for his ‘disloyalty’ while in uniform, some point to his treatment of his first wife as evidence of his capacity for betrayal. A beautiful divorcee who he had married in 1965, Carol McCain had remained loyal to her husband during the period of his captivity. However, in 1969, she was badly injured in a motor accident and had to undergo numerous operations. She lost several inches in height and gained weight. McCain confessed that he returned home to a wife who appeared to be a different woman. He admitted to philandering and eventually divorced her to marry a woman who was 18 years younger than him.

His critics make the case that McCain lost interest in spouse who was no longer the ‘trophy wife’ he had married and replaced her with an extremely attractive woman whose family were very wealthy and well-connected in the state of Arizona, where he would begin his political career. His critics cite this as evidence of McCain’s ruthless and calculating streak, which was guided neither by virtue nor by principle.

As a politician, McCain has been lauded as having been guided by a code of “honour, courage, integrity and duty.” His maverick reputation is seen as evidence of his ability to eschew the narrow confines of partisan politics. But his tenure as a senator was beset by allegations of corrupt practices, of being a pork-barrel politico in the thrall of the military industry and Israel lobby, and of being a warmonger who supported America’s recent wars, which has led to the destruction of whole countries and of countless innocent casualties.

As a new senator in the early 1990s, McCain was involved in a corruption scandal after he and four senators from the Democratic Party were accused of trying to intimidate regulators on behalf of a campaign donor who was eventually imprisoned for corrupt management practices. He escaped with a reprimand for having “exercised poor judgement”, but with the accompanying judgement that his actions “were not improper”.

In August 2006, McCain was captured in a photograph going onboard a luxury yacht rented by the Italian con-man Raffaello Follieri in Montenegro. It was here that McCain met the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska for a second time, after an initial meeting in Davos. Both meetings had been arranged by Rick Davis, who like Paul Manafort has been a long-time conduit between American big shots and the Russian ultra-rich. Nathaniel Rothschild, who has large business interests in Montenegro, a country that granted him citizenship in 2013, also met with McCain.

Events unfolded to reveal that McCain had been part of an elaborate scheme which enabled Western financiers to buy up Montenegro and bribe influential members of the country’s elite who would be pliable to the idea of prising Montenegro away from Serbia. The long-term goal was for Montenegro to declare its independence and pave the way for its accession to membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an objective that came to fruition in 2017.

McCain’s scheming in regard to Montenegro highlights his connections to the wealthy interests who control Western politicians, both of who work hand-in-hand in advancing Western geopolitical interests. The co-opting of Montenegro into the Western financial sphere and its membership of (NATO) were manoeuvres calculated to injure Russia’s commercial and military interests.

First of all, the oil and gas explorations subsequently embarked upon in the outlying Adriatic Sea is designed to create a market which aims to undercut or totally nullify Russian ambitions to supply oil and gas to countries in the region via a South Stream pipeline project. Secondly, transforming its military status from one of neutrality to being part of the Atlantic Alliance is in keeping with NATO’s post-Cold War eastward expansion, a policy which is designed to intimidate Russia, and which is in defiance of the agreement reached at the end of the Cold War between the leaders of the West and the former Soviet Union, that Germany reunification was predicated on the condition that NATO would not expand eastwards.

John McCain, by words and deeds, demonstrated his support for the anti-Russian sentiment that has permeated corridors of power in the United States since the coming to power of Vladimir Putin, a nationalist who brought to an end the mass plunder of Russia’s resources by Western interests during the government led by Boris Yeltsin. Indeed, no politician better embodied the twin doctrines that encapsulate the militarism pursued by the United States in the aftermath of the US-Soviet Cold War than McCain. These are philosophies espoused by Paul Wolfowitz and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The former provided that American policy was to ensure that after the fall of the Soviet Union, no other power should be permitted to rise and compete with the United States for global influence, while the latter was fixated on militarily intimidating Russia while seeking its dismemberment and relegation to a region designed to serve the energy needs of the West.

His dismissal of Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country” and his forthright comment that Montenegro’s accession to NATO was “vital for regional stability and the joint effort of the Western allies to resist a resurgent Russia”, provided clear evidence of his position.

McCain’s anti-Russian posture ensured an enduring animus between himself and Vladimir Putin. Although McCain claimed that the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 was “a mistake” initiated by Mikheil Saakashvili, then president of Georgia, Putin accused the United States of fomenting the conflict in order to strengthen McCain’s bid for the White House. “The suspicion arises”, Putin claimed, “that someone in the United States especially created this conflict to make the situation tenser and create a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.”

While Putin’s allegations were pooh-poohed by the White House as “patently false” and by the state department as “ludicrous”, events in Ukraine in 2014 clearly demonstrated McCain’s involvement in the American-sponsored overthrow of the elected government led by Viktor Yanukovytch. This was made possible by utilising the street muscle of ultranationalist groups such as Pravy Sektor. McCain was repeatedly photographed with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far right Svoboda Party which has been accused of being neo-Nazi in ideology while being vocally Russophobic and anti-Jewish.

McCain, who wielded a great deal of power as a long-term senator, allegedly chaired an important CIA meeting in Cairo that was pivotal in fomenting the so-called Arab Spring. And just as he met with political extremists in Kiev prior to the US-backed coup, in 2011 he was seen walking the streets of Benghazi where he was photographed meeting anti-Gaddafi rebels who embraced the Islamist creed of al-Qaeda, the alleged perpetrators of the September 11th attacks on the United States. He called the rebels “heroic” and lobbied for US military intervention weeks before NATO began its bombardment and training of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Force (LIFG). And given his vocal support for overthrowing the government of Gaddafi and his ‘fact-finding’ tour, he was also likely to have been influential in paving the way for President Barack Obama’s decision to authorise the use of predator drones. McCain would later be pictured with Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal giving an award to Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the now disbanded LIFG.

The Libyan intervention, enabled by the United Nations resolution based on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine, of course ended in human disaster. Gaddafi was toppled, but a nation which was once Africa’s most prosperous country soon degenerated into a failed state composed of warring militias, Islamist strongholds that have imposed rule by Sharia, and the establishment of slave markets composed of human chattel of Black African origin. The removal of Gaddafi which McCain cheered on has led to a deterioration of security beyond Libya as Islamist terror groups situated in the Maghreb (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and further down in the Lake Chad Basin (Boko Haram) have been strengthened because of the availability of large quantities of arms and munitions previously owned by the fallen Libyan army.

McCain’s dallying with extremists also extended to illegally entering into Syrian territory in 2013 and meeting with anti-government rebels who he described as “brave fighters who are risking their lives for freedom”, but who most neutral observers would classify as terrorists.

McCain’s support respectively for the Iraq War which overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Western-backed insurgencies in Libya and Syria, NATO expansion and confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia clearly mark him out as a supporter of American militarism, a geopolitical policy that has caused tremendous harm to American prestige among the community of nations, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, caused large-scale human displacement and a refugee crisis, and which has persistently kept NATO and Russia at loggerheads. It makes a mockery of Congressman John Lewis’s attempt to eulogise him as a “warrior for peace”. Indeed, it was no surprise that the arms giant Lockheed Martin, which has profited from the wars supported by McCain, issued a tribute after his death.

That he sympathised with the neoconservative ideology and was beholden to the objectives of the Israel lobby is beyond doubt. His support for American interventions in the Arab world targeting secular governments perceived as not towing the line with Israel was apparent in his role in fomenting insurgencies in Libya and Syria, the latter in regard to which he unceasingly promoted a more direct form of US involvement.

It is also confirmed by his long-term attitude of belligerence towards Iran, which he consistently denounced during his presidential campaign in 2008. While on the hustings, he notoriously broke out in song by substituting the lyrics of the Beach Boys hit Barbara Ann with “Bomb Iran”. His statements tended to indicate that he would have been in favour of attacking Iran at the behest of Israel and its US-based lobby groups, an action that was strongly resisted by Barack Obama. McCain, not surprisingly was dismissive of the Obama administration’s deal with Iran over its nuclear strategy, which he derisively referred to as a “feckless” approach to foreign policy.

McCain was despite his maverick label an establishment man adept at manoeuvring between the public spotlight and the shadowy, largely unseen world of what many now understand to be the ‘Deep State’. He was almost certainly a key player in the machinations of America’s ‘double government’ and its formulation of national security policy which, as Professor Michael Glennon pointed out in a lengthy research paper, has essentially remained unchanged from successive administrations starting with George W. Bush, through to the one headed by Barack Obama, and now that of Donald Trump.

Far from the mainstream narrative that he was a beloved figure, McCain has gone to his grave leaving a great number disgruntled for various reasons. For many veterans, he will forever be ‘Johnny Songbird’ of ‘Hanoi Hilton’ infamy; like his father, a man of the establishment who covered up many unflattering secrets of the state including that pertaining to the sinking of the USS Liberty which he never sought to redress.

To his former Vietnamese foes he remains the celebrity captive, the admiral’s son immortalised as an ‘air pirate’ depicted in a statute bent on his knees next to the lake from where he was retrieved after parachuting from his downed aircraft.

To white nationalists he is a ‘race traitor’ who supported successive amnesties for illegal immigrants and to the anti-war segment of the political left, he does not deserve praise for participating in a colonial war of aggression against the Vietnamese people, while the isolationist segment of the political right decried his persistent support for foreign wars of intervention.

John McCain was not a straightforward hero. Nor was he an exceptional politician. The unbridled facts of his life and career in the military and as a public figure embody much of what is dysfunctional about the American republic. To succumb to the blatant myth-making and obfuscation of his life represents a failure of the nation to properly reflect and critically examine itself.

That cannot bode well for the future.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2018)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Aretha

Aretha Franklin

From the moment that she came to public attention Aretha Franklin appeared to be an anointed figure, elevated to a pantheon of greats that include Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Billie Holliday and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Songs such as Respect, Natural Woman and I Say A Little Prayer testify to the power of her artistry.

Like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke -the key progenitors in transforming Gospel music into Soul music- she succeeded in working out an innovative hybrid of Black American music styles. But unlike Charles and Cooke, she was able to return to her gospel roots and receive popular and critical acclaim in 1972 by creating the seminal Amazing Grace, the highest selling album of her life, and the greatest selling live gospel album of all time.

She showed great versatility by recording songs for a cross-over audience such as her remake of Ben E. King’s Spanish Harlem and for the Disco-Funk era offered the classic Jump to It in 1982.

An indicator of her significance in popular music was the fact that like Elvis Presley, she became one of the few artists to be known by first name alone. As a celebrity stories of her marriages, weight battles as well as her loss of innocence at an early age under the parental regime of her father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin became the staple of news magazine gossip and book revelations.

It is true to say that she reflected the era that she lived in. Her afros spoke to the ‘Black Pride’ movement and her songs about freedom and respect attested to her commitment to the Women's Liberation and Civil Rights movements. She helped finance several civil rights programmes and participated in fundraisers. Of her willingness to post bail for Angela Davis, the black, feminist radical in 1970, Franklin said the following:

Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism but because she’s a black woman and she wants freedom for black people.

The wealth of connections provided by her father meant that she had known the Reverend Martin Luther King since she was a young girl and he presented her with an award in Detroit only shortly before his assassination in 1968.

As a singer, Franklin was seemingly always on a pedestal and remained there until her death. Needless to say that she was the quintessential soul and gospel singer. She was, is and will be the standard by which serious singers will be appraised and defined.

Aretha Franklin was born on March 25th 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee and died on August 16th 2018 in Detroit, Michigan.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2018)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The 'Martyrdom' of Tommy Robinson

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, alternately known as ‘Tommy Robinson’

The jailing a couple of months ago of the nationalist activist Tommy Robinson on a charge of contempt of court and his recent release on bail pending a re-trial has evoked much emotion among both his supporters and his detractors. While the former revere him as a staunch defender of British values, the latter consider him a rabblerousing bigot feeding off anti-Muslim sentiment. My view is that the frequent assertions made by his supporters that Robinson is a martyr in the cause of freedom of speech is a misguided one. He is riding on the coattails of genuine grievances felt by segments of the British population, but has contributed little of substance to the causes he claims to promote. He is a provocateur and a publicity hound whose ultimate loyalty on closer examination, ironically, arguably does not lie with England.

Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is not a thinker and cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be considered to be an investigative reporter. Instead, what Robinson quite clearly is, is a provocateur and a rabble-rouser who is merely feeding into the celebrity cult of modern media.

It is important to note that Robinson has never been responsible for unearthing a single case of ‘Muslim gang grooming’ subsequent to the uncovering of the scandal in Rotherham by two women who worked for the relevant social services department.

After burying their heads in the sand, and even actively attempting to suppress the initial revelations, the authorities are doing something about it by putting suspects on trial and securing convictions.

Yet, in the guise of an activist and ‘investigative reporter’, Robinson showed up at a trial and began filming within the precincts of the court. What did he hope to achieve by doing this? Nothing it would appear - except to jeopardise the trial.

As a self-appointed standard bearer for English or white nationalist identitarians, Robinson ought to have thought about upholding centuries-long practised legal procedures relating to trials. His claim to have been “exposing Muslim rapists” was devoid of any logic given that the relevant defendants were part of a series of linked trials, and that their names would be revealed after the completion of the trials. Besides, it appears that the principle of innocent until proven guilty did not occur to Robinson. Instead he risked having the trial collapse with all the attendant ramifications of costs and of enabling the likely guilty to have got off on a technicality. He was not thinking about the time and effort put in by police, forensic experts, and other professionals involved in collecting the evidence and the hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax-payers money spent on this.

Robinson was already under a suspended prison sentence and yet he went to the courthouse knowing the inevitable outcome of his juvenile adventure. Before his arrest, he was bragging that the police were begging him not to show up. He could not wait until the end of the trial when reporting restrictions would be lifted.

There is nothing sinister about imposing reporting restrictions especially as the group of suspects at whose trial Robinson sought to intrude were being tried in multiple proceedings. Once the series of trials end and restrictions are formally removed, those convicted will have mug shots posted and the full glare of the press will be brought on them.

The narrative of his supporters that Robinson is being persecuted by the ‘evil multi-cult state’; that he was arrested for no good reason at all, does not stand the test of scrutiny. Instead, Robinson’s activities can readily be ascertained to have been a vehicle for incitement and the furtherance of his personality cult. What he is doing is designed to boost his earning capacity while being egged on by his gullible cheerleaders.

An interesting and revealing aspect of Robinson the activist and whose interests he serves beyond the street level ‘defence’ of English culture is the source of his funding. The Middle East Forum (MEF), a hardline pro-Israeli think-tank admitted last month that it had helped fund Robinson’s legal expenses as well as the protests which had taken place in support of him while in jail.

The statement issued by the MEF said that it helped Robinson “in his moment of danger” in “three main ways”. These were: using “monies to fund his legal defence”; “bringing foreign pressure on the UK government to ensure Mr. Robinson’s safety and eventual release”; and “organising and funding” a rally held on June 9th.

The fact that groups associated with the Israel lobby fund parties and individuals associated with the cause of white nationalism should come as no surprise. The pioneering ‘Alt-Right’ news outlet Breitbart, while founded in the United States, had been conceived in Israel when its founder, the late Andrew Breitbart, was touring Israel on a media junket in the summer of 2007. And while it has resorted to what is perceived as anti-Semitic stances, it is avowedly anti-Muslim. This, it appears, is the underlying attribute sought by pro-Israeli groups and the Israeli government itself in lending covert support to the far-right and the alt-right.

The presence of Israeli flags at rallies of Pegida, the German nationalist movement which is anti-Muslim and anti-immigration, has not gone unnoticed. It is a phenomenon repeated at similar rallies at off-shoot groups in other countries such as Britain and Australia where Israeli flags are flown alongside banners identifying with neo-Nazism and neo-Fascism.

The history of Zionism is replete with collaborations with both Nazism and Fascism. The Transfer Agreement between the Nazi regime and German Zionists in the 1930s is one example, and a proposed alliance between Avraham Stern’s Lehi group and the Nazis another. Furthermore, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the author of Zionist Revisionism as well as the founder of the Haganah, the precursor of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), made an alliance between his Betar youth movement and the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini when Betar established a naval training academy at Civitavecchia, a naval base north of Rome. Jabotinsky, to whom Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel’s present prime minister served as secretary, is the ideological progenitor of the ruling Likud party.

The tactic of supporting and giving succour to today’s nationalist parties may be rationalised as a meeting of minds between those who believe as Zionism does in the creation of ethno-states. The idea is to support those European nationalists and white identitarian activists who foment anti-Muslim sentiment so long as they remain silent on the traditional focus on ‘Jewish power’ with its perceived manifestations in terms of media ownership and banking. This is the deal allegedly offered to Nick Griffin by shadowy “American” sources, whose condition for financial support for the British National Party (BNP), which he then led, was to focus all its energies on Islam as the enemy.

Stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment has been an avowed goal of Israel for many decades now. The rationale behind this strategy has been for Israel to reframe its conflict with Palestinians and the wider Arab world from one that is between a colonising power and a people with genuine grievances about being dispossessed of their land, to that of a conflict between two antithetical philosophies with Israel purportedly reflecting the values of the West, that is, of ‘democracy’ and ‘tolerance’, and the majority Muslim Arabs reflecting ‘tyranny’ and ‘intolerance.’

Robinson has gone on at least one tour of Israel during which he posed, machine gun in hand, on top of IDF tanks in the occupied Golan Heights where he proclaimed himself a “Zionist” (as he has done on several occasions), even though one result of Political Zionism was the ethnic cleansing of Arab Christians from their homes in Palestine and the marginalisation of Christian communities in Israel.

While being interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox TV, Robinson, playing the role of the victim to the hilt made the claim that state persecution had induced symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome and that he had been “reluctant” to disclose this so as not to “insult” members of the military who “have witnessed war”. Robinson, of course, would never acknowledge that these soldiers have come back from a succession of illegal wars fought in Muslim lands such as Iraq at the prompting of many of those who constitute the Israel lobby. But the connection with soldiers, albeit ‘reluctantly’ made, is revealing. Robinson thinks of himself as a soldier of sorts and wishes for others to see him that way.

It has to be said that the drift towards identity politics has made the politics of white identity something of inevitability. And the anger and disgust over the discovery of the authorities ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude towards grooming gangs targeting young white girls is understandable. However, to embrace a woman-beating, convicted fraudster as a beacon of nationalism as well as a defender of moral and cultural values is one of the most peculiar developments in this dumbed-down age of vacuous celebrityhood.

His supporters, who include a significant group of fascist-saluting thugs, cannot see beyond their hatred of all Muslims and immigrants to see who is pulling the strings, and that Robinson is using his activism to generate a healthy income for himself. They cannot work out that he cannot serve two masters, and that when it comes to the crunch, he is not serving Albion, but rather the overarching goals of Zion.

To them Robinson is a ‘hero’, a ‘martyr’ and a ‘soldier of truth’. And with regard to the last, he has the ‘battle scars’: a self-disclosed and uncorroborated diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Play the world’s smallest violin.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2018)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Project Balkanisation: Oded Yinon and an Enduring Plank of Israeli Foreign Policy

Poster displaying the emblem of Irgun, the Jewish terror group of Mandate-era Palestine

Oded Yinon, whose 1982 paper for Kivunim (Directions) entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, is often used as a reference point for evidence of an Israeli aim to balkanise the surrounding Arab and Muslim world into ethnic and sectarian mini-states, was recently interviewed. He discussed the notoriety of the document which came to a wider audience a few years later after it was translated into English by Israel Shahak. But while Yinon down plays the specific application of his paper to actual geopolitical events, the ideas posited in his article have arguably formed an enduring central policy plank of the Zionist state; balkanisation having been a necessary condition first in creating the modern state of Israel, and thereafter as a means of ensuring its survival and maintaining its military dominance in the Middle East.

The theme of balkanisation has always formed an essential part of the rationale of Political Zionism. The refusal by Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Theodor Herzl’s offer of £150 million (sterling) as a down payment towards the Ottoman national debt in exchange for a charter enabling Zionist settlement in Palestine meant that the early leaders of Zionism would in due course redirect their efforts in seeking a means of creating a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

A necessary precondition of this would be the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, and a step towards favourably positioning Zionist aspirations in the event of the liquidation of that empire came with the agreement struck during the First World War between the Zionist movement and the British government. The Balfour Declaration and the implementation of the Sykes-Picot accord created the basis through which the goal of securing a future Jewish state within the territory designated as a British Mandate could be focused.

After the establishment of Israel in 1948, a national policy of weakening Arab and Muslim states, balkanising them, or keeping them under a neo-colonial state of affairs has persisted. The prevailing logic was and always has been that any stable, nationalist government in the Arab world poses an existential threat to Israel. For instance, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was vehemently against President Charles de Gaulle’s decision to grant Algeria independence.

Setting communities against each other with the aim of weakening ‘national spirit’ and balkanisation was at the heart of the policy of Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan when it came to Lebanon, Israel’s northern neighbour. As Moshe Sharett, an early Israeli prime minister recorded in his diaries, both men were keen to exploit the differences between the country’s Muslim and Maronite Christian population. They also desired the creation of a Christian state. In a letter written to Sharett in February 1954, Ben-Gurion stated the following:

Perhaps … now is the time to bring about the creation of a Christian state in our neighbourhood. Without our initiative and our vigorous aid this will not be done. It seems to me that this is the central duty, or at least one of the central duties, of our foreign policy … We must act in all possible ways to bring about radical change in Lebanon … The goal will not be reached without a restriction of Lebanon’s borders.

Ben-Gurion had wanted Israel’s northern border to extend to the River Litani. This was made clear through the plans submitted to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 by the representatives of the Zionist movement. The water resources provided by the Litani, the River Jordan, and the Golan Heights were considered to be essential prerequisites for the sustenance of the inhabitants of a future Jewish state.

For his part, Dayan, who served as army chief of staff during the 1950s, envisaged that Israel could groom a Christian military officer who would declare a Christian state in the southern part of Lebanon, out of which the region south of the River Litani would be ceded to Israel. This is evidenced by an entry into Sharett’s diary dated May 16th, 1955:

According to Dayan the only thing that is necessary is to find an officer, be he just a major. We should either conquer his heart or buy him with money, to make him agree to declare himself the saviour of the Maronite population. Then, the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel. The territory from the Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel.

Dayan’s hope for a surrogate militia would come to pass in the 1970s with the creation of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), which did the bidding of Israel in its battles with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and other sources of resistance to Israeli power. In 1979, the leader of the SLA, Major Saad Haddad, a renegade officer of the Lebanese Army and a true life incarnation of what Sharett referred to as the “puppet” desired by Dayan, would even proclaim an area controlled by his group as ‘Independent Free Lebanon’.

While the SLA is now defunct, the leaders of Israel continue to covet parts of south Lebanon. It remains an important factor behind Israel’s goal of destroying Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia which forced the withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) from south Lebanon in 2000, and which repelled the IDF’s incursion into south Lebanon in 2006.

It is important to note that the intellectual, if not moral, justification for the policy of balkanisation has come from many position papers produced by Israel-friendly (many would argue Israel-First) neoconservative think-tanks and other right-wing organisations, which have supported the idea of breaking up the Arab Muslim lands of the Middle East and North Africa. These include those disseminated by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Rand Corporation. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, a document prepared in 1996 by the Israeli-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, and presented to Binyamin Netanyahu during his first tenure as prime minister, called for Israel to “contain, destabilise, and roll back” a number of states including Syria and Iraq.

Allied to the intellectual justification is the use of military force to practically effect such balkanisation. This has come through using the United States, over which the the Israel lobby has continually had a decisive influence, as either the main protagonist in military actions such as the invasion of Iraq, or as the overseer of covert operations geared towards destabilisation as has been the case in the Syrian conflict.

In January 1998, members of PNAC wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to remove “Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.” This forceful plea was followed by the passage in Congress in October that year of the Iraq Liberation Act which made it official US policy to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It was always understood that the termination of the rule of Saddam’s Baathist Party would run the risk of fracturing the Iraq state into three component parts as Yinon’s paper suggested: A Sunni, a Shia and a Kurdish mini-state.

Israeli politicians including serving prime ministers have at times openly petitioned US presidents to destroy Arab and Muslim countries perceived as threatening Israel’s security. For instance, in January 2003, when the invasion of Iraq was brewing, Ariel Sharon called on President George W. Bush to also “disarm Iran, Libya and Syria”. Also, Binyamin Netanyahu has since the 1990s been actively calling on the Americans to intervene in Iran, another state with a heterogenous mixture of cultures and religious sects, which is viewed as inherently vulnerable to efforts geared towards destabilisation and dismemberment.

Iran formed a central part of the ‘Bernard Lewis Project’, a proposal contrived by the neoconservative academic in 1979, which argued the efficacy behind the West pursuing a policy aimed at dividing the countries of the Middle East along ethnic and religious lines. By encouraging groups such as the Kurds, Lebanese Maronites, Azerbaijani Turks and others to seek autonomous rule, Lewis envisaged an ‘Arc of Crisis’ which would spill over into the Soviet Union. Lewis’s project encompassed the breaking up of Turkey and Arab states such as Iraq and Syria since the creation of a Greater Kurdistan would necessitate this.

The usefulness of Lewis’s worldview to the cause of Israel was explicitly acknowledged by Binyamin Netanyahu who, in eulogising Lewis when he died in May 2018, said that “we will be forever grateful for his robust defence of Israel.” Lewis, whose influence in the corridors of Washington has remained strong over the decades, supported the White House and Pentagon planners of the invasion of Iraq, a conflict which Netanyahu admitted in 2008 “benefited” Israel.

Oded Yinon unsurprisingly singles Lewis out for praise in his interview.

Lewis’s influence on US foreign policy was apparent in the doctrine of the ‘New Middle East’ unveiled by the then serving Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in July 2006. The aim of securing change through the fomenting of violence and disorder hinted at the ‘Arc of Crisis’ rationale posited in 1979, with the neutralising of the ‘Shia Crescent’, consisting of Iran, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah being the centre of focus. The ultimate objective of balkanisation was alluded to in a map prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters, a retired US Army officer which was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006. It depicted a redrawn Middle East map which included a Kurdish state, the creation of which is a present priority for the state of Israel.

To the perpetual Israeli goals of weakening and destabilising Arab and Muslim states must be added the objective of acquiring more land for the state through territorial conquest, a notable example of which was the annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights in 1981 after it had been taken by the Israeli Defence Force during the war of 1967. The conflict of 1967 was a war of conquest prosecuted by right-wing ‘hawks’ who had seized control of prime minister Levi Eshkol’s cabinet with the aim of completing the task of acquiring land which had not been taken from the Arabs during the War of 1948. One of the most important aspects of this reach for ‘Greater Israel’, in which Israel conquered territory that tripled its size, was the desire to capture Jerusalem.

The war of 1948, while often posited in Zionist historiography as a defensive war, had been waged to seize as much land as could be taken in excess of what had been provided under the vitiated United Nations Partition Plan. An important part of that campaign was Plan Dalet, which sought to expel Arabs from key areas so as to ensure a Jewish majority in all territories which would be controlled by the nascent Jewish state.

That Israel at its inception was a belligerent power intent on extending its borders and its sphere of influence cannot be denied. Just ten days after the declaration of Israel’s independence, Ben-Gurion said the following at a meeting of the general staff of Haganah, the precursor of the IDF:

We must immediately destroy Ramie and Lod. … We must organise Eliyahu’s brigade to direct it against Jenin in preparation for the Jordan Valley … Maklef needs to receive reinforcements and his role is the conquest of southern Lebanon, with the aid of bombing Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. … Yigal Allon must attack in Syria from the east and from the north. … We must establish a Christian state whose southern border will be the Litani (River). We will forge an alliance with it. When we break the strength of the (Arab) Legion and bomb Amman we will eliminate Trans-Jordan too, and then Syria falls. And if Egypt still dares to fight, we will bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.

While Yinon claims in the interview that Israel does not require more territory, which he links solely to the capacity it has of protecting its existing borders, this is contradicted by the creeping colonisation of the West Bank, considered in Zionist belief to be that part of the ‘Land of Israel’ known as Judea and Samaria. Arab settlements continue to be constricted into small, increasingly non-contiguous entities that many have referred to as akin to apartheid-era ‘Bantustans’. The stringent blockade of Gaza and the intermittent war and military strikes on the territory appear designed to make living conditions so unbearable and hopeless as to convince Gazans to pack their bags and migrate. And if acquiring neighbouring land is not explicitly mentioned, the quest to create additional territory by stealth through the creation of security ‘buffer zones’ on its borders with Syria and Lebanon is real enough.

But just how much more of the ‘Promised Land’ Israel would wish to acquire is an issue not openly discussed in contemporary times. Yinon smirked at the tendency of articles on his paper to reference a map of the Zionist ‘Land of Israel’ in its maximalist borders extending from the Nile Delta to the Euphrates River. Indeed, the claim that Israel continues to seek these borders is one which Zionists point to as a ‘conspiracy theory’.

Belief in Israel’s maximalist borders, which have a biblical origin, was taken up by many in the modern Zionist movement. It was explicitly referred to in the emblem of the Irgun terror group. However, since the creation of Israel, most hardline Zionists have been content to publically refer to securing what they term the sovereign right of the Jewish people to what was the western part of the British Mandate of Palestine, with the Palestinian Arabs entitled to the land east of the River Jordan, that is, the modern state of Jordan. However, until Israel formally declares where it considers its final borders to be, fears that it wishes to acquire more land will legitimately persist.

In the interview, Yinon claims that his plan has never really been implemented by any Israeli government, save for the adoption of some of his ideas by Israeli military intelligence (AMAN) during the present Syrian conflict. An obvious manifestation of this has been the medical and logistical support given by Israel’s military to jihadist militias fighting the Syrian Arab Army near the Golan Heights.

It is clear that the largely jihadist insurgency in Syria which aimed to bring down the secular-nationalist government of Hafez al-Assad has been overseen by the United States as a means of aiding Israel’s geopolitical goals. The objective of American-sponsored balkanisation was clear from a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document which noted that a declaration of a Salafist principality in the eastern part of Syria would serve the interests of the internal and external opposition to the Assad government. With most of the jihadists defeated by the Syrian Arab Army in concert with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, this goal has been continued by American and Israeli support for Kurdish militias in that part of Syria.

The deliberate and calculated intervention in the affairs of the Arab world is something which Yinon is content to admit is unnecessary given the artificiality of the states which are the product of imperial draughtsmen. That was the criticism levelled at his paper by Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, who questioned the wisdom of working towards the dissolution of such countries if the initial analysis is that they will eventually fall apart.

Moshe Sharett warned against Ben-Gurion and Dayan’s plan to “transform” Lebanon because of what he correctly claimed would be “an adventurous speculation upon the well-being and existence of others”. The corpses of the victims of attempts in recent times to reshape the Middle East testify to that.

Yinon’s claim that an application of the spirit of his strategy has been limited only to the conflict in Syria is patently wrong. The neoconservative-inspired wars waged by the United States on behalf of the state of Israel in Iraq, Libya, as well as the ongoing plans to destroy the Shia Crescent by attacking Iran provide contrary evidence.

The ‘Yinon Plan’ after all merely encapsulates Israeli policy of the past, the present and the future.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2018)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Israel: A Lodestar State for the White Nationalist Movement

“I have great admiration for Israel’s nation-state Law. Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.” - Richard Spencer, poster boy for the ‘Alt-Right’ and White Nationalist Movement.

The aforementioned statement, sent out by Spencer as a tweet on July 21st, was made in response to the passage through the Israeli Knesset of the Basic Law on Israel as the Nation-State of the JewishPeople. It was his acknowledgement of Israel’s formal declaration of itself to be a racialist, ethno-state.

It is important to clarify what the primary objective of Political Zionism was from the outset: This was to found a Jewish state centered in Palestine to the exclusion of all other races and religions.

The founding of the State of Israel would entail ethnically cleansing the territory earmarked for colonisation, with the inhabitants being supplanted mainly by Jews from Eastern European lands. It was never intended to be a multi-racial state, but a ‘Jews only’ state, something which the founders of Zionism envisaged would be achieved by ‘transferring’ the indigenous Muslim and Christian Arab population to outlying Arab territories.

The term ‘transfer’ as used by Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion was Zionism’s euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Where Herzl envisaged this as been achievable through the offer of inducements: by alternately getting property owners to vacate their land by paying them off at higher than market prices, and by securing employment in “transit countries” for the “penniless population” (failing which they would be “discreetly and circumspectly” spirited “across the border”), Ben Gurion and the leaders of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, although supposedly representing the ‘Accomodationist’ wing of Political Zionism, knew like the Revisionist Zionist apostles of Vladimir Jabotinsky that this would only be achieved by force of arms.

This was largely accomplished through the implementation of ‘Plan Dalet’ during the war of 1948.

Israel’s Basic Law, which stipulates that only Jews have the right to self-determination in the country, merely formalises what was already at the heart of the philosophical and ideological foundations of Israel.

Its drift to a more obvious form of a racial-based state was predicted by a group of Jewish intellectuals including Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, who felt compelled to write an open letter to the New York Times in 1948. It was an action prompted by the formation of the Right-wing Herut Party by Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun terror group, in the same year. The establishment of Herut was, they believed, a development full of ominous portent that would lead Israel down the path which would legitimise “ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority.”

Herut was the precursor of the Likud Party, which first came to power in 1977, and which has ruled Israel for the majority of years since, usually at the head of a coalition of parties with extreme social, political and military agendas.

It is clear why Richard Spencer approves of the Basic Law. He and like-minded white nationalist ideologues envisage a ‘whites first’ form of governance in European countries as well as in the European-majority nations of North America, Australia and New Zealand.

It is not the first time that Spencer has spoken favourably about Israel serving as a beacon for the new order racial societies desired by the alt-right movement.

Speaking before an audience at the University of Florida in October last year, Spencer ruminated over those states from past to present which have influenced his thinking and concluded: “the most important and perhaps most revolutionary ethno-state, the one that I turn to for guidance, even though I might not always agree with its foreign policy decisions - the Jewish state of Israel.”

He is not the only one on the political Right to think this way. Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who has never failed to express his affinity and admiration for Israel, praised the Israeli move by referring to it as “fantastic” and an “example to us all”. Wilders elaborated:

Let’s define our own nation-state, our indigenous culture, our language and flag, define who and what we are and make it dominant by law.

And while Israel and its supporters rail against those who claim that Israel’s laws and values should not be construed as being similar to those of the now dismantled apartheid regime of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime architect of the system, said the following in response to an Israeli vote against apartheid at the United Nations in 1961:

Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude … they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.

And with laws which include prohibitions against the renting and selling of properties to Arabs and to African migrants, secret policies which sterilised Jewish Ethiopian women, and proposed legislation aimed at making DNA testing a mandatory requirement for an immigration system predicated on a Jews-only Law of Return, who can argue against the proposition of it being a racialist apartheid state?

© Adeyinka Makinde (2018)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His tweets can be read at @AdeyinkaMakinde