Only by unthinking obedience to our leaders can we remain free?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Moments of crisis tend to expose unthinking mantras that have held up conventional wisdom for decades with the assurance of Doric columns on a bank; but which only look solid because they are unexamined.

The recent article – ‘Andy Burnham is right: Social cohesion is key to national security’– on Labour List by Sara Khan and Matthew Godwin (not Goodwin – a different character altogether) is a collection of such mantras. In previous times these may have locked together like an impervious Lego wall of unexamined presumptions, but now stand exposed as flimsy stage furniture for a play that has exceeded its run.

They start with a quote from Burnham. “I see strength at home and our strength in the world as indivisible”. This sounds similar to, but is a long way from, Clive Lewis MP’s argument that national security will be undermined if the transfer of spending from improving people’s lives onto war preparation impoverishes people and neglects social and physical infrastructure that is already crumbling. A modern version of a line an old Labour Party member in Bermondsey came out with at the start of the Thatcher Prime Ministership; “a few more years of this government, and we’ll all be living in tents surrounded by cruise missiles”.

Instead, they pose the sense that 61% of people in the UK have that “the social contract is broken” not on the feelings people get when they smash their suspension or bike wheels on pot holes, have to wait for 8 hours in A&E (and have to get a cab there because it will be quicker than an ambulance) struggle to cope in a heat wave, have to pay through the nose for heating because their house is badly insulated, see their rivers filling with toxic waste while the water companies falsify tests and bank their dividends: none of that. For them its the result primarily of ideological interventions by “our international adversaries – particularly Russia and Iran” who are seeking “the destabilisation of Western democracies” and to “disable the Western Alliance”.

They go on to outline a series of far right propositions that now have mass support, with 40% of people thinking of “Tommy Robinson’s” marches as “patriotic”, 33 per cent supporting calls for “remigration”, 31 per cent supporting the view that non-white people will never be as English/Scottish/Welsh as white people and 29 percent believing in the ‘Great Replacement’ theory. At no point do they join the obvious dots that these views reflect those we are being bombarded with from the world’s leading bully pulpit – the Presidency of the United States. They mention a meeting between “Tommy Robinson” and Elon Musk’s Nazi father without noting that “Robinson” is being funded by Musk; who is also promoting Rupert Lowe and Restore; who split from Reform because Farage was wary of linking up with him. Nor do they make any mention of the overlap between the US and UK Right and Far Right, seen recently in the ARC conference in London (an “anti elite” event that cost its participants £1500 for a ticket) denouncing everything from the reality of climate change to any notion of equality, nor the wholesale capitulation to them by the Conservative Party, nor the ongoing flow of funding, ideas and media, with US shock jock radio and Fox News the model for loss making but potent platforms like GB News, nor US tech bro platforms prioritising far Right content. This supplements the deep penetration of US influence at every level of the British state, particularly its military and Intelligence services. To misquote LBJs observation about J Edgar Hoover, in the case of British society, the USA is both in the tent and pissing in.

And this poses a big question about “Western Democracy” (with or without capital letters). Do the authors consider the United States to be democratic? They talk of the need to emphasise the differences between “Western Democracies” and “authoritarians”. Leaving aside Peter Theil and Alex Karp’s opposition to “democracy” (for the masses) as antithetical to “freedom” for the billionaires who run the show, and Marco Rubio’s racialised notion of “European civilisation” battling against the developing world, that should be kept in its place – and the people who live there, who should be kept out – that’s in the context of the Trump government unleashing ICE on communities across the country, levels of gerrymandering and voter suppression that are verging on the surreal, attempts to define social democratic opposition as “far Left Terrorism” by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. So, supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America, like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and broadcasters like Amy Goodman, along with “anti-fascists” in general are now defined as “terrorists” by the administration. And that’s just domestically. Internationally they have sanctioned the International Criminal Court and its judges – international rule of law anyone? They have funded and backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon, backed and funded Far Right candidates across Latin America, put Cuba under siege in a way that is causing terrible suffering, launched a globally destabilising war on Iran which includes attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals, energy and water treatment plants that can only be described as war crimes, have bombed Nigeria and are lining up an intervention in Mali. And that’s leaving aside its trade wars and attempts to assert “Global Energy Dominance” by doubling down on the fossil fuels that are making the planet less and less habitable the more we burn them Its no wonder that a majority of people in a majority of countries across the world see the United States as the most destabilising country in the world. That includes majorities in the UK and…the United States.

It is this drive for a New American Century that underpins the rise of the Far Right in every country where the US has influence. In a country like Britain, where the US Embassy is a positively Viceregal building, this leads to “mainstream” parties bending the knee and repeating the lines they are fed from across the Atlantic to keep in line and out of the firing range. Hence Starmer’s “Island of Strangers” speech. That struck a bum note for most of us here, but its audience was in the White House. Its effect, along with the performative cruelty of immigration control measures modelled on the US, was to help legitimise “extremist views” so they are now indeed “polluting the mainstream”.

That is where “the root of hate” is.

For the authors, all this seems to have come from nowhere. There is no active agency involved. By omission, the US still stands as the core of the “Western democracies” that they want to defend – not what it actually is. For good measure, we should note that only a minority of people in the US think that their country is a democracy in Harvard’s surveys of opinion; because it is not run in the interests of the majority. The sense of broken social contract, particularly among young people, comes from “deep economic insecurity, eroding trust in democratic institutions, and growing social fragmentation”.

To put that another way, fail to improve people’s lives and that erosion will continue, handing people over on a plate to the far Right. Such a failure is baked in to the plans to increase war expenditure to a level that will suck the life out of any meaningful attempt to invest in improvements in anything else. In that situation, the house will indeed be divided against itself. Demands are arising for social justice, for proper levels of investment; something Andy Burnham is acknowledging with the real, albeit small, gestures in that direction in his first week, like the £2 bus fare cap. However, paying for that not by taxing the wealthy and reducing inequality but by seeking to squeeze money back from international climate finance is a wrong road and a short one. Similarly, more agency at local level in Burnham’s devolution agenda, while welcome, can only go so far without the investment needed to solve the problems that people identify. Once a renewed squeeze for arms spending kicks in, the pressure will be felt in all those unrealised aspirations. Can’t help but be. In that context, it becomes imperative for the ruling class to deflect any resistance downwards away from them and ruthlessly drive divisions among the majority, so the mainstreaming of racism isn’t something to be avoided for them, but a necessary tactic.

Khan and Godwin are, possibly despite their intentions, playing a soft part in this drift. In drawing a veil over the actual role of the United States, a veil with “Western Democracies” written on it, pointing to “international adversaries” (of the United States) as the culprits – and, inevitably, lazily and mendaciously smearing the movement against war and genocide in West Asia as “coopted” by “Islamic extremists” – they fail to deal with real contradictions that tear holes in their worn out world view; and become complicit in the suppression of democratic dissent that, again following US models, has banned Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, gagged defendants, suppressed the rights of juries and threatened barristers with jail for reminding them that they have them.

Their solutions to “heal the wounds that divide us” do not involve any reassessment of the UK’s auxiliary role for the US; which at the moment is taking the form of aiding and abetting bombing runs into Iran from RAF Fairford that are primarily hitting civilian infrastructure. A big majority opposes this complicity. We are being ignored.

Instead they argue for a “Total Defence” strategy that requires ideological conformity at home as part of military credibility abroad. That in turn requires an even stricter policing of dissent on traditional and social media. The paradox of their argument is that they are right that far Right arguments have for the most part been capitulated to and promoted not tackled, but because they don’t identify where these arguments come from, nor in whose interests they are being put, they end up (start out) aligned with the very forces that are pushing them; and the “anti extremist” agenda, in being directed against US targets, boils down to policing internal dissent from the Left “like we did in the Cold War”. So much easier for the UK’s traditional alliances if no news from Gaza is allowed to filter through unmediated by “reliable sources”.

So, we end up with a “democratic” society in which deviation from standing to attention and saluting the right shibboleths – which will increasingly be the Right shibboleths – will be treated as treason and terror. Be prepared.

Approving Rosebank and Jackdaw will not “keep the North Sea Working”

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

There is a lot of media hype that Andy Burnham will approve the Rosebank oilfield and the Jackdaw gas field in his first week as PM, even though the government has been very clear up to now that doing so won’t take a penny off bills nor help energy security, as most of the production would be for export.

They would also do virtually nothing to defend jobs. The most optimistic projections of jobs creation from Adura – the lash up of Shell and Equinor set to run the projects – is for 3,500 jobs “at peak production”, so short term construction jobs, and 880 long term jobs to keep them going. This is a much larger projection than that of the BBC in 2023, which had 1600 in construction and 450 long term; but taking it as good coin, it is a miniscule proportion of the jobs lost (at a rate of 725 a month) since 1979.

That looks like this (even using Adura’s, possibly inflated, figures).

As you can see, the long term jobs are barely visible. Comparing the new Rosebank and Jackdaw jobs with the projected jobs decline up to the early 2030s shows a similar picture.

Assuming that government policy changes and these fields are approved. It is quite evident that the long term jobs in Rosebank and Jackdaw are a drop in the bucket and no amount of additional licences and tie ins will make any qualitative difference to the scale and speed of the job losses; as there are no other substantial fields left, and the remaining North Sea reserves cannot be “economically” extracted.

From a jobs point of view its a distraction from the main issue, because, without a plan for a transition to offshore renewables work, 60,000 workers will still lose their jobs within the decade whether they open or not. We need unity between all the North Sea unions and the climate movement to campaign for such a plan; which is the campaign we should have had all along.

For a whole society resistance to militarisation

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Suitably amended Imperial War Museum Poster (see balloon) on a tube station somewhere in London.

Alternative, or additional, graffiti could include speech or thinks bubbles from either character saying things like;

Say No to WW3!

The enemy is at home, and above us

A rifle is a weapon with a worker at both ends

We are currently getting an onslaught of military recruitment ads and what might be called “cultural interventions” designed to normalise the militarisation of society. I have recently seen buses painted camouflage colours and patterns with army recruitment ads along the sides, and lots of posters on the tube montaging soldiers bodies onto footballers feet to cash in on the World Cup. This is a well financed attempt to make our everyday environment scream militarist presumptions. Anything we can do to add a little challenge will make people think.

We can’t buy space, but we do have felt tip pens.

World Cup – on joy, suffering and DV

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Having not watched the match, I knew that England had beaten Norway in the World Cup when I was woken at one in the morning by the sound of two short sharp fireworks and someone playing a few bars from “Hey Jude” loudly enough to be heard across the neighbourhood, presumably on the assumption that everyone who hadn’t watched the match would nevertheless want to know the result, but considerate enough to keep it brief. Earlier, S had reported a scream from half the houses in the street when the equaliser went in.

On the market earlier in the day, stall holders were selling England Football shirts, on what might have been the last day there may have been a demand for them. As it is, they have until Wednesday. Argentina. No history there…

There’s a lot more mixes of flags hanging out of windows now, England and Egypt, England and Brazil among immediate neighbours.

Fans I’ve seen in team shirts vary from those who wear them lightly, and those for whom it seems to be an outward embodiment of a bitter soul. One with a ’66 replica top yesterday with a harassed expression taking two kids for a walk using leads that they were way too old for. Another guy in standard white, wearing it almost as an act of self punishment from the expression on his face. He didn’t look as though he was enjoying life at all, and brought to mind Nick Hornby’s remark that football is essentially about suffering and how we cope with it.

Not well in some cases, with the match more of a detonator than a relief for the sort of men who just need a trigger. Research from Lancaster university from 2013 indicates that incidents of domestic violence increase by 38% when the England men’s team lose, and by 26% when they win or draw, and 11% the following day regardless of the result. Most people will enjoy the win with a warm glow and endure the loss with a fatalistic shrug (and perhaps a verse or two of “we’re shit and we know we are”) and get on with life: but in over 300 reported cases that the police were sure were linked to the football during the European Cup in 2024, they didn’t. And has its generally reckoned that only one in four domestic violence cases are reported, the real figure could be over 1,200.

As Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women’s Aid, who are running an awareness campaign to try to inhibit the behaviour and embolden survivors of it to report it, throughout this World Cup put it, “For women and children who are victims of domestic abuse, the ‘kick-off’ takes on a different meaning.”

This isn’t peculiar to England. According to UNESCO and UN Women, “Across the globe, the number of reports of domestic violence made to the police rises with depressing predictability during major sporting events, such as the World Cup,”

Awareness campaigns of this sort should be run by governments through the media platforms screening the events, in a format that undermines the springs of the behaviour and seeks to defuse the time bombs that are ticking inside far too many men.

Boxed in by Tanks?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

John Healey taking out his service revolver to apply the coup de grace to Keir Starmer has been followed by immediate manoeuvres by the militarists to box in his successor.

  • Rachel Reeves, evidently on borrowed time, announces that increased war spending will be set before Andy Burnham takes over.
  • Wes Streeting, one of the three possibly Chancellors to replace her, signals his support;
  • while Al Carns lurks in the shrubbery hinting at a leadership run if there’s any hint that there are better uses for our resources.

This matters because if the commitment to meeting 5% of GDP on war spending is met, the financial commitment will be so huge (£70 billion extra per annum) that it will suck the life out of anything positive a Burnham government might do to improve people’s lives.

Without that, Labour will lose the next election; so, this pressure should be resisted and Burnham should stand up to Trump in the way that Pedro Sanchez has.

This is a letter to Labour List, which they may, or may not, publish. Facebook blocks my blogs, I guess because Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like what I say. So, to bite back if you think its worth passing on, please do

Bye bye bonehead. John Healey’s resignation.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

John Healey’s resignation from the government because it is not moving fast enough to increase war spending is indicative of the political difficulties involved in taking a hammer to all other government departments to break off lumps of finance to pay for it.

The requirement is so steep that the political price paid in running down our schools and hospitals, leaving potholes unfilled, wages frozen as inflation rips and the climate transition postponed until its too late, will be too much for any government to survive doing it: even if polling majorities in the abstract support the objective.

And the pretext for fulfilling Trump’s demand for 5% of GDP, that Russia, which has spent four years slogging its way through parts of Ukraine where it actually enjoys some popular support, and spends less than a third of the amount that European NATO does on its armed forces, has half as many soldiers and combat aircraft and a third as many tanks and artillery pieces is in any position to “attack NATO” is so absurd that they have to keep repeating it as an unquestioned mantra to believe in it themselves. 

Whoever leads the Party next should take a leaf out of Pedro Sanchez’s book, politely tell the US where it gets off in its new Cold War, keep war spending low, accelerate the energy transition, including welcoming inward investment from China, and take on xenophobia.

Richard III at the “Tommy Robinson” march

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

In 1990 there was a production of Richard III at the National Theatre, later also made into a film, which reset it in the 1930s, with Ian McKellen playing Richard as a chain smoking brylcreemed Fascist. This has some power because of the fascistic sympathies of so many of the British ruling class at the time, from Lord Northcliffe to Oswald Moseley and, indeed, the Duke of Windsor. The cast had enormous fun insinuating excruciating Windsor vowels (that rhyme house with mice) onto the deadly playfulness of Shakespeare’s rollicking, knockabout verse.

At the Play’s climax, just before the Battle of Bosworth, McKellen drew out – and if I recall it right – slightly changed a line that could easily be overlooked, making it an overt pivot. Straight after Henry Tudor’s oration to his troops, which could have been a press release written for the start of any war by the Foreign Office today – all about doing God’s work in overthrowing a bloody tyrant* and getting the grateful thanks of generations to come – Richard’s speech strikes a different tone.

Rather than What shall I say more than I have inferr’d? Mckellen says “What to say?” and pauses with a feeling of intense spiritual emptiness, while he tries to think of something…anything…that will motivate his troops.

Then he launches into a barrage of poisonous xenophobia for want of anything positive to offer.

Remember whom you are to cope withal;
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways
A scum of Bretons, and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o’er-cloyed country vomits forth
To desperate ventures and assured destruction.

These people are below you; “base lackey peasants”, “vagabonds, rascals and runaways” and foreigners too coming over here from “their o’er cloyed country” to make trouble in a place that would otherwise be just tickety boo.

You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;
You having lands, and blest with beauteous wives,
They would restrain the one, distain the other.

There you were without any problems, least of all any problems from me, doing alright and then this lot turn up wanting what you’ve got. And they’re after your women too.

Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again;
Lash hence these overweening rags of France,
These famish’d beggars, weary of their lives;
Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,
For want of means, poor rats, had hang’d themselves:

These are desperate people without any wealth or hope: “famished beggars”. Lets do the decent thing and send them back where they came from.

If we be conquer’d, let men conquer us,
And not these bastard Bretons; whom our fathers
Have in their own land beaten, bobb’d, and thump’d,
And in record, left them the heirs of shame.

We’re not going to have to live with people who we used to conquer and knock about. We’re better than them. We must live up to our forefathers proud Imperial record – and definitely not feel in any way that there is anything wrong with beating, bobbing and thumping other people in “their own land”. You “can’t do defence on the goal line” after all.

Shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives?
Ravish our daughters?

And don’t forget. They want what you’ve got and they want your women, because ravishing (raping) them is our job.

Needless to say, he went on to lose; the offer of a Kingdom for a horse notwithstanding.

Listen to the speeches at the “Tommy Robinson” rally on May 16th and all these themes are there; often articulated by people ventriloquising them off the peg from a ruling class with nothing positive to offer, but centuries of practice in the emotional manipulation of xenophobic fears. The saving grace of Richard III, like all of Shakespeare’s Machiavells, is that he has a wicked sense of humour (and constantly breaks the fourth wall, so we’re in on the joke in a way that makes us all complicit). “Robinson”, that strutting little grifter in the pocket of Elon Musk, does not have the wit for that.

*Henry (VII) of course, went on to be quite the tyrant himself, and a much more thought out and systematic one than most.

Abusive verbal attack on Green canvassers

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This is quite a disturbing post, put up by a guy who is evidently proud of it. It records a 2 minute discussion in the street during the local elections between three Green Party canvassers and an irate local resident; which starts off with him being quite calm and reasonable but ends up with him shouting abuse at them. They remain calm and polite throughout. He was filming the encounter from the start – presumably with a view to putting it about on social media afterwards, as he did.

His tone first starts to rise when he starts to argue that the motion put to the Green Party conference in March that Zionism is racism indicated “you don’t like Jews actually” because “95% …98%” of the Jewish community identify with Zionism. This is wrong on two counts.

1 Those figures are inaccurate. According to this article from the Jewish Chronicle from February 2024, in UK 63% identify as Zionist. And in the US thats 58%. And support for Israel is declining among Jewish people, just as it is more widely; because of what Israel is doing. That 63% in the UK is down from 72% in 2010. This is particularly the case among younger people. 8% in the UK considered themselves to be “anti Zionist” and 15% “non Zionist”. This active opposition is divided between religious currents that see a return to Israel before the coming of the Messiah as heresy, and internationalist Jews who see the adoption of communalist nationalism as a betrayal of the best humanist Jewish traditions. We should note that this survey was carried out by JPR, as the Chronicle puts it “before the current Hamas war,” and “found that support for the ideology of Zionism is slipping in UK Jewry as a whole” even then. So, what we have is not a community united around the Zionist project, but one that is deeply and traumatically fractured by its consequences. Some of that trauma is expressed by the increased vehemence of its supporters as more and more people are shocked by what they see.

2 The core of the argument is, however, whether Zionism can be described in any other way than racist. Liberal Zionists like Jonathan Freedland are without doubt appalled by the behaviour of people like Ben Gvir, partly because its bad PR, but also because it cuts against what they genuinely think Israel can represent. In his arguments around the IHRA definition, Freedland put the point that it is not antisemitic to criticise the state of Israel, but it would be to criticise a state of Israel. The distinction being that to criticise what a state does is legitimate, but not what it is. His problem is that it is impossible to envisage any state of Israel based on the core Zionist principle that the state is, and has to be, fundamentally a Jewish state, that did not treat the Palestinian population that also lives there as a threat; even if just demographically, and did not discriminate against them as second class citizens at best, subject, occupy, ethnically cleanse and expel and, in extremis, bomb them at worst. Its a bit like arguing that you can criticise Apartheid South Africa as it was, but not the principle of Apartheid South Africa. The problem for people like Freedland is that were Israel to treat the Palestinian population that lives under its rule with equality, it would cease to be Israel as a Zionist project and to maintain Israel as it is requires increasing levels of repression. Faced with challenges, “facts on the ground” have to be stamped down harder and harder. And as the power of the United States wanes, the viability of survival as a pro US military frontier state declines with it. The demonstrative violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon prioritise tactical victories over strategic viability and are a demonstration of weakness because they have to do this and keep playing double or quits until they can’t do it anymore. Rowing back from that course before that point is reached would be preferable for all concerned.

The final part of this film is quite surreal. Three very polite, slightly hurt and unhappy looking Green canvassers walking politely away from a man who is yelling at them to “F*** off!” and calling them “Nazis” in full confidence that they are nothing of the sort. Actual Nazis would have attacked him brutally and, I have no doubt, the Green Party people would have defended him from them. Embrace communalist nationalism and alliances get turned on their heads. The paradox of this is expressed by two young Jewish guys I was sitting beside on the tube when J and I were on our way to the Nakba demonstration last weekend. They were quiet outer suburban professionals, having a conversation about how people here had “had enough” and were looking to buy houses in Israel and how prices were now low (which indicates that more people want to sell/leave than move in; because Tel Aviv is actually a lot less safe than London and always will be). As we went along they were sharing info from their mobiles from family who were on the Tommy Robinson march, which they were joining themselves. And that’s where you end up. Finding common cause with people who want to “Unite the Kingdom” by deporting our neighbours.

On the Nakba Day demonstration, there were, among others, powerful and passionate Jewish speakers – you could have heard a pin drop for Stephen Kapos – and all the speakers called for unity against all forms of racism, stressing that “antisemitism has no place in our movement”. On the, much smaller, “Robinson” march Islamaphobia was common ground, with a big Christian Nationalist contingent who want to ban all other religions. When they come for the Mosques in the morning…People like our irate resident and the two young guys on the tube should think that through.

Banksy’s new statue

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The figure of “honour”, atop the rather mournful Guards Crimean War Memorial in the background, seems to be looking at the marching flag man and shrugging. “What can you do?”

On the edge of the Nakba Day Rally, walking away from it in the direction of the Tommy Robinson march, Banksy’s latest statue seen from the rear, and situated just outside the Atheneum on Lower Regent Street and Pall Mall, looked like it might have been an unlikely tribute to one of the mass trade union, Irish or Socialist leaders of the 1880s, whose demonstrations against unemployment and the Irish Coercion Acts in 1887 were met by volleys of empty champagne bottles flung from the upper windows of the Pall Mall “Gentlemen’s” clubs and a police assault in Trafalgar Square that led to 1 death and 400 injuries; with the army standing by with fixed bayonets. John Burn perhaps. The sort of statue you might see in a country in which the ruling class owns a revolutionary tradition. That of Danton on the Boulevard Saint Germain comes to mind.

However, even from the rear, there was something about the suit that was from a later period. And something about the mechanical toy style of marching that suggested the Right, not the Left.

Looking at it from the front makes all that clear. The huge flag, waving boldly and pointing ever onwards and upwards is blowing back across the marcher’s face, so that he can’t see where he is going. Blinded by belief. And he is stepping confidently forwards, off the edge of the plinth, at the foot of which all the kings horses and all the kings men would have a lot of trouble putting him back together again. The flag has no motif, so it can stand for any set of beliefs that blinds someone to facts and the reality of their situation. However, in the context of the dominant set of statues in London, almost all of which celebrate military figures from the days of Imperial pomp, and in the aftermath of the “put out the flags” movement, its obvious who his target is.

His own video of the erection of the statue underlines this.

As with all progressive statues in London, there will now be a struggle as reactionary forces in local government, like the Conservative Restoration in Westminster, seek to have it removed lest it lead people to think.

What a “hate march” looks like

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For anyone with any difficulty identifying a “hate march”, it looks like this report of this year’s Jerusalem Day demonstration from Deutche Welle.

A crowd chanting “Death to Arabs”, “may your villages burn”, “Gaza is a graveyard”, forcing the Palestinian population to board up their shops and stay inside for fear of the attacks they make on targets who cross their path. It happens every year on May 15th – an Israeli national holiday to mark the conquest of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six Day war in 1967.

This march is a naked celebration of racial supremacy; a model for what a fascist march through a diverse community might look like if it had overt state backing; and it punctuates and celebrates the ethnic cleansing which is displacing the Palestinian population in Jerusalem as well as the West Bank.

There’s a really strange dissonance from a young woman interviewed in the middle of the clip who says “Jerusalem is the heart of Israel. Its the place where you can recognise notes of peace and harmony and basically all the goodness and moral compass that Judaism is trying to show the whole world”. She really seems to believe that. Its hard to think that she’s looking at the same event that the rest of us can see with our own eyes; or what she has to ignore to interpret it like that.

An increasing number of Jewish people across the world are rejecting this kind of disavowell. Many, in the UK, will be on the Nakba Day march today to oppose this “racist system of oppression … ethnic cleansing, settler-colonialism, apartheid and genocide” and “against the far right in Britain who glorify Israel’s racism and brutality.” A support that will be in evidence today on the second “Unite the Kingdom” march called by Tommy Robinson, deliberately timed to clash, for those “who have had enough of migration and mass immigration”.

That, I fear, will be what a hate march looks like.

But, as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign puts it “Our unity and solidarity is stronger than their hatred and division.”