Dear Harry’s Place,
As a racist, I find it infuriating when my lifelong and bone-deep hatred of Peruvians gets overlooked, and instead I find myself branded an anti-semite. For me, shoulder-barging a daft Peruvian into a haystack would be a sweet triumph and a just punishment for one so reeking of beans. So overburdened is my heart with disgust towards those carrot-skinned South American cornholers that for the life of me I can’t find an inch of room in it to hate anyone else, be they Belgians, Cambodians, the Spanish, Jews, Kenyans, or even the Dutch.
And yet I find myself accused by certain writers on Harry’s Place of being anti-semitic. [HP Notes: We have made no such accusation] This is a serious charge, to which was attached the lesser accusation of my being, well, serially psychotic.
I found myself roundly chastised for my “latest public display of psychosis”: an article I wrote in the “online freakshow” which is the Comment is Free section of the Guardian. This article (about certain Syrian opposition spokespeople) so infuriated Harry’s Place author ‘Alan A’ that he was unable, in his righteous anger, even to finish his sentences – saying of the article that it “is in my view the lowest point that Comment Is Free.”
To respond in kind, I think that Alan A’s blogpost is about the worst thing in the history of.
Now, I’m certainly not about to defend myself against the charge of being psychotic. Paint me as mad as a goose in tinfoil shoes for all I care. But don’t start saying things like this:
“if he is not furiously debasing himself over some online porn, I bet he is busy googling Harry’s Place to see how it links in to the shadowy Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Zionist Occupation
Government.”
Again, I’m not about to dispute the furiousness of my self-abuse, which at times is so fierce that it leaves my poor genitals a mashed and bloody pulp, while around me lies a confusion of broken crockery, torn curtains and uncertain fluids. But my urgent googling to find links between Harry’s Place, “the shadowy Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Zionist OccupationGovernment” – where does this accusation come from? Why am I being caricatured as constructing a paranoid anti-Jewish conspiracy?
This unpleasant fantasy is certainly not drawn from my own writings on the Bilderberg group. Over the years I’ve written a fair few words about the Bilderberg conference on the decadent pages of the Guardian website, having covered the event since 2009. But far from styling it a Zionist conspiracy, I have said quite the opposite: I’ve urged readers to Google “Prince Bernhard IG Farben”. Why? Because Prince Bernhard was the first chairman of the Bilderberg group, and was – in his time – a member of the SS. He also worked for everyone’s least favourite gas manufacturer, IG Farben. The same company that ran a factory called IG Auschwitz.
I’ve written things like the following (published earlier this year):
This is what I love about Bilderberg. Having conversations that can swerve from the Brookings Institute, to Hegelian dialectics, to Daniel asking me: “Do you know the Olympic torch relay was invented by the Nazis?” This sparks a quick five minute chat about Goebbels, propaganda and Edward Bernays. Once we’re on the Nazis it’s a short hop and a skip back to Bilderberg.
Me: “So, you know Prince Bernhard worked for IG Farben?”
Daniel: “NW-7, their intelligence unit. And you know about Allen Dulles and the Nazi money?”
Me: “Oh my God – Harriman, and the Bush family. It’s incredible.”
In other words, I’ve not woven some lunatic Zionist fantasy around Bilderberg, I’ve taken great pains to show that several main players in the murky history of the Bilderberg group are Nazis and Nazi sympathisers. I’ve written this, explicitly, in the Guardian – yet I get smeared with the exact opposite charge. What’s a guy to do? How loudly do I have to shout: “IT’S THE NAZIS, STUPID!”
Forget Jews, forget Peruvians. Let’s talk about the relationship between the CIA, Wall Street and the Third Reich. Let’s talk about the Dulles family. Let’s talk about Project Paperclip. Look these things up, and get with the programme.
I may be a lunatic to have spent time and energy researching Bilderberg – on the other hand, the current chairman of Bilderberg is Henri de La Croix de Castries, the head of AXA. And AXA came 4th on the New Scientist’s recent list of the 147 most connected companies in the world. This is the sort of nutty thing I busily google (when I’m not tugging wildly at my wretched penis, of course).
And then there’s the other business of the remark I made “on the radio show of a far Right conspiracist nutjob”. First, to my mind, it is wrong to describe the paleoconservative host of the show in question, Alex Jones, as “far Right” (all he ever shouts about is his hatred of fascists and ‘Nazi eugenicists’ – just listen to his show for ten minutes, you’ll realise this). At the very least: I, personally, don’t think it’s a “far Right” radio show, otherwise I would have declined the offer to be interviewed on it. I’m not interested in talking to racists about anything. Except Peru, of course. But listen, I’m not writing to you in defence of Alex Jones or his radio show. I’m writing, primarily, about this nasty little comment by ‘Alan A’:
“Yes, of course is isn’t serious Holocaust denial. It is an off colour joke about Holocaust denial. Made on a far Right conspiracist radio show.”
So, my remark “isn’t serious Holocaust denial”. It’s Holocaust denial-lite. I’m more a hobbyist Holocaust denier, is that the idea? But for the love of Yahweh, look at what I actually said. See the companion blogpost by ‘Joseph W’ for details.
When I said “show me the bones”, I was clearly SATIRISING the absurd and unsupportable position of a Holocaust denier. Saying “show me the bones” would (obviously) be an offensively stupid argument to advance against the appalling reality of the Holocaust. ‘Alan A’ says that I am making a joke “about Holocaust denial”, but let’s be fair, it’s a joke at the expense of a Holocaust denier. The implication of my satire is not that I find Holocaust denial trivial. It’s that I find Holocaust deniers absurd. There is a world of difference here.
This is an important issue: can I not make a joke about something I find serious? That’s pretty much all I do in my professional life. It’s called satire. However clumsily I do it, it’s what pays my mortgage.
Moments earlier, in that radio exchange, I declare that my abuse of children is “just a hobby”. For that fleeting moment, I am adopting the position of a callous paedophile. Does that make me one? No. The contents of my coal cellar make me one. (In case you’re wondering, that was a joke. I don’t have a coal cellar. I have a fuck dungeon). That was another joke. It’s a loft.
The deep irony of all this is that the context of the conversation with the host of the show, as you can see from the transcript of the exchange, is that people can get smeared as racist, or a child abuser, or a Holocaust denier. And then subsequently, by having my words twisted about, I get smeared as a holocaust denier (albeit not a “serious” one). I’d be laughing if it weren’t so disgusting.
Am I not able to ridicule holocaust deniers (for whom I feel nothing but absolute abhorrence) without being branded one myself? And let’s be clear, that’s what the words “isn’t serious Holocaust denial” mean. They’re calling me a Holocaust denier. This charge, and I’m not joking now, strays from mere misrepresentation into darker waters.
If it helps, the word you’re looking for, ‘Alan A’, is “sorry”.
Love to you all,
Charlie
Alan A adds:
Is Charlie Skelton engaged in a complex sub-Chris Morris/Brass Eye spoof, in which he gives every impression of being a frothing at the mouth conspiracy nut, and then carries on to see how long it will take before The Guardian calls his bluff?
Is all of this, all of his past output for The Guardian simply a meta-satire on The Guardian’s own slip into conspiracism and fringe politics? Are both we and The Guardian guilty of taking Charlie Skelton’s shtick at face value?
Or are there darker motivations at work?
It is a fair question to ask. After all, when you start to deal in conspiracy, cover-up, and the world of ‘things are not as they seem’, it is natural to ask such questions. Delving deeper: who benefits from the promotion of misinformation and paranoia?
Alternatively, am I just taking the piss here? Yes, actually, I am.
Neither I nor Joseph W have accused Charlie Skelton of being an antisemite. We’re accusing him of being a nut. More to the point, we’re accusing The Guardian of publishing the sort of fringe babblings which used to be confined to far Right websites like Alex Jones’ Prison Planet, and his associated show.
It would be a mistake to think that a believer in one conspiracy theory believes in them all. In fact, conspiracy theorists are fiercely competitive and will often angrily reject alternative forms of conspiracism. “No no no!” a conspiracy nut will say “There’s no truth in the lie that the Council of Foreign Relations were behind the Kennedy assassination – that’s just a cover story put out to mask the hidden hand of the Bavarian Illuminati”.
Here is a case in point. Henry Makow has a set of eccentric conspiracist beliefs which are nicely summarised below:
Makow, who claims to be of Jewish ancestry, has argued that the notorious Russian Czarist anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was real and not a hoax. In another article, he argues, “Jews think Israel was created as a refuge from anti Semitism.[sic] In fact, the Jewish holocaust was engineered to induce Jews to build Israel, intended as the capital of the New World Order.”[12] Makow also supported Ernst Zundel, the Holocaust Denier arrested in Canada and deported back to Germany, “Zundel’s only crime is to question the Zionist version of the holocaust. What are the Zionists so afraid of? Why do they wield so much power?”. In an article entitled “How Jews Are Brainwashed and Manipulated,” Makow wrote, “I am not an expert on anti-Semitism but I suspect other accusations have some basis. They reflect the fact that the Jewish Illuminati, specifically the international bankers and their many non-Jewish allies are imposing their control over the world, using the United Nations as a front,” and that “Jews play a disproportionate role in advancing the Illuminati agenda. Many think they are creating a secular humanist utopia where ‘anti- Semitism’ cannot exist. Others just want to get ahead. The Illuminati hides behind them, and disarms opposition by calling it ‘anti-Semitism.'”
You’ll note that all of this bollocks appears on Alex Jones’ Prison Planet website.
So, Charlie: can you see why the Alex Jones show might not have been the best place to make off-colour jokes about the Holocaust?
In summary, I couldn’t give a toss about your wacky theories about SS princes, the Bilderberg Group, and George Soros. I’m not accusing you of being a Nazi. I’m accusing you of being a loony, which you are, and of The Guardian of having become the platform for fringe politics and paranoiacs, which it sadly now has become.
Unless, that is, that you are engaged in an elaborate spoof on the decline of Comment is Free under the editorship of Becky Gardiner, soon to be unmasked in a Channel 4/Zeppotron special presented by Charlie Brooker.
In which case, carry on.
