Well, somebody at the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has been busy.
An open letter to Tony Benn, one of the co-signatories of George Galloway’s infamous petition to secure the release of Tariq Aziz, contains some interesting research into the politics some of the other signatories on Galloway’s list.
Put simply, Galloway’s petition is a map of the extent of the “red-brown” coalition. Now we know exactly which self-declared socialists and progressives are prepared to join forces with unapologetic Baathists, active fascists, and proud racists:
“Sauveur who used to be a follower of Jean Thiriart, the Belgian who collaborated with the Nazis and then went on to become the chief ideologist of the neo-fascist “Young Europe” organisation? … Gilles Munier, who launched the petition, a man who cut his political teeth as a writer for The European Nation, published by the “Young Europe” organisation…Mondher Sfar! Now there’s a well-known name! The petition modestly describes him as a “writer”? And what has he written? Well, there’s the “Judeo-Nazi Manifesto of Ariel Sharon”. Have you read it? It’s a latter-day version of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a make-believe “manifesto” of Ariel Sharon which “exposes” the supposed Nazi nature of Zionist ideology. And then there’s Sfar’s contributions to the “Review of Revisionist History”, a Holocaust-denial publication launched by a French neo-fascist in 1990. Mondher Sfar is a Holocaust denier…Jean-Claude Valla, for example, coyly is described by the petition as a “journalist”. Sure enough, for the past thirty years he’s been a journalist and editor – for various publications of the French far Right: Lettre de Magazine-Hebdo, Elements and Minute. He “came out” as a Holocaust denier as long ago as 1991: “Speaking personally, I became certain a long time ago that the historical revisionists were correct.”…Claude Karnoouh (“researcher with the National Centre for Scientific Research”), as another example. He describes himself as “a radical anti-Zionist”. He’s written for publications of the French far Right, Krisis and Elements. Back in 1981, when Faurisson stood trial in Paris for Holocaust-denial, Karnoouh was a witness for the defence: “In fact, I do not believe that the gas chambers existed. A certain number of the truths of official history have ended up being revised. Only in totalitarian states is a historical truth eternal.”
And there’s more. Read it all.
Let’s face it. If you end up signing a petition in support of a leading Baathist, your ideological compass is probably a little bit wonky. At the end of this period of political meiosis and recombination, I wonder how many left wing signatories on this petition will find themselves not simply arm in arm with prominent figures on the far right, but actually “crossing over”.
