Ah, cancel culture. That bane of the existence of national newspaper columnists, and of culturally phenomenal novelists, and of the most cited academic in the world, whose decision to sign up to this is taken firmly to task here. To some of us, cancel culture is as old as fake news, on which, with the part in square brackets tellingly omitted, this appeared in The Guardian on 9th December 2016:
Fake news is of very real concern. There have been seven recessions in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Five of them have been under Conservative Governments. That party has also presided over all four separate periods of Quarter on Quarter fall in growth during the 2010s. By contrast, there was no recession on the day of the 2010 General Election. And now, the Conservatives have more than doubled the National Debt. The Major Government also doubled the National Debt. Yet the Conservatives’ undeserved reputation for economic competence endures. They are subjected to absolutely no scrutiny by the fake news detractors of their opponents.
Other examples of fake news include the official versions of events in relation to Orgreave, Westland, and Hillsborough. All manner of claims made by, or in support of, the Clintons. The alleged murder of 100,000 military age males in Kosovo. The existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and their capacity for deployment within 45 minutes. Saddam Hussein’s feeding of people into a giant paper shredder, and his attempt to obtain uranium from Niger. An imminent genocide in Benghazi, Gaddafi’s feeding of Viagra to his soldiers in order to encourage mass rape, and his intention to flee to Venezuela. An Iranian nuclear weapons programme. [And Assad’s gassing of Ghouta, as if that were an undisputed fact.] In every case, that was fake news. Or, in plain English, lies.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice that upheld family and community values by seeking to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice that recognised that in the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belonged to the working class, which has never been less than two fifths Tory, while in the struggle for international peace, the leading role belonged to the working class and to the youth, so that unity had to be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for social solidarity as an expression of personal responsibility, for personal responsibility as protected by social solidarity, for international solidarity as an expression of national sovereignty, and for national sovereignty as protected by international solidarity? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for equality and diversity as economic equality and class diversity, as regional equality and regional diversity, as the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and as equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for One Nation, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation, with Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with no use of military force except in self-defence? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice that recognised that in building One Nation, the leading role belonged to the people and places whose votes have decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex, so that women’s spaces had to be defended, while issues as men’s health, fathers’ rights, and boys’ educational underachievement, had to be rescued from those whose economic and other policies, including their warmongering foreign policies, had caused the problems in the first place? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the BAME Britain that was now young, increasingly mixed-race, often in its second or subsequent generation to have been born in Britain, connected to every inhabited territory on the planet, found in every town, and well on the way to being found in every village? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the sufficiency of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of anti-Semitism as “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”, whereas the IHRA Definition was a denial of BAME, migrant and refugee experience redolent of the Windrush scandal and of the fire at Grenfell Tower? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and for that development as fully compatible with the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
And have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for an approach to climate change that protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, that encouraged economic development around the world, that maintained the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children, that held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and that refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Noam Chomsky will of course have opportunities to make amends. For example, just as everyone who supported the County Durham Teaching Assistants ought to support their staunch supporter, George Galloway, in his campaign to take the seat of their vicious tormentor, the Leader of Durham County Council, so Chris Williamson and everyone who, like George, supported Chris ought also to do so. Those include Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Max Blumenthal, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Lowkey, Mike Leigh, Ken Livingstone, Francesca Martinez, John Pilger, Alexei Sayle, Moshé Machover, Ken Loach, Norman Finkelstein, Leon Rosselson, Asa Winstanley, Kevin Higgins, Ian Hodson, Tosh McDonald, and Steve Ashley.
George must know that there is not going to be a Holyrood electoral pact of all anti-separatist parties around him. He ought to be advocating what some of us have been advocating for months, a vote for whoever was best placed to defeat the SNP in each constituency, and a vote for the Workers Party of Britain’s list in each region.
But pro-Brexit, anti-separatist Socialism of the class politics rather than the identity politics kind, while it was normal in Scotland when George was first elected there in 1987, and while it was just about still mainstream in Scotland when he was last elected there in 2001, is decidedly niche there now, even allowing for Proportional Representation. Of course George knows that.
Whereas in 2017, it took all of 749 votes to win a seat on Durham County Council for the ward of Chester-le-Street West Central, and 854 for the Leader to top the poll. Turnout was 1,870. George would get that just by being on the ballot paper at all. He is George Galloway.
The defeat of that Leader would be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Kashmir, to Crimea, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia. Armed with an impeccably local running mate in order to stop the target from slipping through, George is just the man to do this. We would need only to get him registered to vote in County Durham, and preferably in Chester-le-Street, in time to be a candidate on Super Thursday, 6th May 2021.
Eric Joyce once described George as having stepped beyond what was “reasonable and acceptable for Labour MPs”. Any Labour electoral opponent of George’s, including the present Leader of Durham County Council, has therefore been endorsed by Eric Joyce, and may look forward to being described as such. They would dance in the streets of the annexed Jordan Valley at George’s election, and not least at his election against this opponent.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice that upheld family and community values by seeking to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice that recognised that in the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belonged to the working class, which has never been less than two fifths Tory, while in the struggle for international peace, the leading role belonged to the working class and to the youth, so that unity had to be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for social solidarity as an expression of personal responsibility, for personal responsibility as protected by social solidarity, for international solidarity as an expression of national sovereignty, and for national sovereignty as protected by international solidarity? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for equality and diversity as economic equality and class diversity, as regional equality and regional diversity, as the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and as equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for One Nation, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation, with Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with no use of military force except in self-defence? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice that recognised that in building One Nation, the leading role belonged to the people and places whose votes have decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex, so that women’s spaces had to be defended, while issues as men’s health, fathers’ rights, and boys’ educational underachievement, had to be rescued from those whose economic and other policies, including their warmongering foreign policies, had caused the problems in the first place? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the BAME Britain that was now young, increasingly mixed-race, often in its second or subsequent generation to have been born in Britain, connected to every inhabited territory on the planet, found in every town, and well on the way to being found in every village? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the sufficiency of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of anti-Semitism as “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”, whereas the IHRA Definition was a denial of BAME, migrant and refugee experience redolent of the Windrush scandal and of the fire at Grenfell Tower? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and for that development as fully compatible with the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
And have you ever heard, or have you ever tried to be, a voice for an approach to climate change that protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, that encouraged economic development around the world, that maintained the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children, that held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and that refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich? Then do not talk to me about cancel culture.
Noam Chomsky will of course have opportunities to make amends. For example, just as everyone who supported the County Durham Teaching Assistants ought to support their staunch supporter, George Galloway, in his campaign to take the seat of their vicious tormentor, the Leader of Durham County Council, so Chris Williamson and everyone who, like George, supported Chris ought also to do so. Those include Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Max Blumenthal, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Lowkey, Mike Leigh, Ken Livingstone, Francesca Martinez, John Pilger, Alexei Sayle, Moshé Machover, Ken Loach, Norman Finkelstein, Leon Rosselson, Asa Winstanley, Kevin Higgins, Ian Hodson, Tosh McDonald, and Steve Ashley.
George must know that there is not going to be a Holyrood electoral pact of all anti-separatist parties around him. He ought to be advocating what some of us have been advocating for months, a vote for whoever was best placed to defeat the SNP in each constituency, and a vote for the Workers Party of Britain’s list in each region.
But pro-Brexit, anti-separatist Socialism of the class politics rather than the identity politics kind, while it was normal in Scotland when George was first elected there in 1987, and while it was just about still mainstream in Scotland when he was last elected there in 2001, is decidedly niche there now, even allowing for Proportional Representation. Of course George knows that.
Whereas in 2017, it took all of 749 votes to win a seat on Durham County Council for the ward of Chester-le-Street West Central, and 854 for the Leader to top the poll. Turnout was 1,870. George would get that just by being on the ballot paper at all. He is George Galloway.
The defeat of that Leader would be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Kashmir, to Crimea, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia. Armed with an impeccably local running mate in order to stop the target from slipping through, George is just the man to do this. We would need only to get him registered to vote in County Durham, and preferably in Chester-le-Street, in time to be a candidate on Super Thursday, 6th May 2021.
Eric Joyce once described George as having stepped beyond what was “reasonable and acceptable for Labour MPs”. Any Labour electoral opponent of George’s, including the present Leader of Durham County Council, has therefore been endorsed by Eric Joyce, and may look forward to being described as such. They would dance in the streets of the annexed Jordan Valley at George’s election, and not least at his election against this opponent.
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