James O'Brien gets a dose of his own antisemitism smear poison
The Zionist antisemitism smear merchants are going after James O'Brien now, a man who once considered himself conductor of their diabolical orchestra
For several years antisemitism smears were the weapon of choice for conservatives and liberal-capitalists alike, back when they had the mutual objective of tearing down Jeremy Corbyn and wrecking the resurgence of democratic socialism under his leadership of the Labour Party.
The establishment order tried every smear and dirty tactic they could dream up to diminish him and the democratic socialist revival he was leading (Czech spy, IRA supporter, economic extremist, unelectable, not bowing properly at the cenotaph, terrorism supporter, Russian stooge, absurd comparisons with Enoch Powell, Brexit-enabler, crudely photoshopped pictures, hounding him outside his private residence …) but the one thing they found that really seemed to stick was accusing him of Jew-hate because of his long-standing solidarity with the Palestinian victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing; apartheid rule; and military occupation.
James O’Brien appointed himself as conductor of this cacophony of antisemitism smears, gleefully chuntering away with that obnoxiously smug voice of his about Corbyn’s alleged Jew-hate, and issuing absurdly hyperbolic statements about how Labour was "the party of Holocaust denial" and that voting for Corbyn’s Labour would mean that he "could never look a Jew in the eye again".
One of the things that made O’Brien’s performative Corbyn outrage so infuriating is that he is not a stupid man - in fact he’s proven himself well capable of making good, well-evidenced points in the past - but that he chose to go along with the establishment agenda against democratic socialism, because he knew it was in his career interests to do so.
O’Brien eventually got what he wanted when Corbyn lost the 2019 general election, and resigned. But the price O’Brien and the rest of the antisemitism smear-merchants were willing to pay to wrest control of the Labour Party back for the Labour right, was to give Boris Johnson free rein to implement a ruinous, diamond hard version of the Brexit that they opposed so vehemently when Corbyn had tried to soften it, and preserve as many of our rights and freedoms as possible, given the referendum result.
This price they were willing to pay was enabling the very same Boris Johnson who once wrote a novel that accused Jews of controlling world finance and the media, and who made a pilgrimage to a statue of one of Britain’s most notorious Nazi-supporting antisemites during the 2019 election campaign, both infinitely more antisemetic things that anything Corbyn ever actually did.
The absolute lack of media coverage of Boris Johnson’s antisemitic behaviour served as proof that it was all a total sham, and that they never really had a shred of actual concern about Jew-hate, or for Jewish victims of antisemitism. It was purely just a tool for getting what they wanted.
The antisemitism smears did their job, and the media furore around Labour antisemitism was dropped immediately after Corbyn’s downfall, despite Starmer initiating the biggest mass purge of Jewish Labour members in the party’s history, and the Labour Leaks revealing that Labour right-wingers had deliberately and cynically slowed down alleged antisemitism disciplinary cases in order to make life more difficult for the Corbyn leadership.
The establishment order had the duplicitous and amoral haircut in a suit they wanted in charge of the Labour Party, so the Labour antisemitism smear operation was quickly run down and forgotten about.
The antisemitism smear tactics didn’t go away though, because antisemitism smearing is one of the main propaganda tactics utilised by supporters of Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza, and Israel’s continued violent settler colonial land-theft in the West Bank.
The establishment’s haircut in a suit has actually leaned into this kind of antisemitism smearing, repeatedly speaking out against genocide-critics and human rights defenders, whilst steadfastly ignoring all kinds of Israeli atrocities. The Silent Knight has even enacted draconian new crackdowns on Brits’ long-standing rights to free speech and non-violent protest, in order to criminalise opposition to Israeli genocide.
Just a few weeks ago O’Brien claimed that "the idea that somebody would be silenced for being critical of Israel during a phone-in is palpably absurd" over LBC’s silencing of Sangita Myseka.
Perhaps James O’Brien thought he was personally untouchable due to his service to the antisemitism smear industry, because yesterday he broadcast statistics to demonstrate shocking Israeli public support for genocide and war crimes, saying that the Israeli public display "support not just for ethnic cleansing, but also for genocide, on levels that many of us would find terrifying". Then he read out a message from a listener that claimed that a Jewish Shabbat school in the UK had been teaching that Jewish lives are more valuable than non-Jewish (goyim) lives, and that "Arabs are cockroaches to be crushed".
The backlash was immediate, with the Jewish Board of Deputies publicly slamming O’Brien, and calling for his show to be cancelled from the airwaves.
He’s faced a torrent of criticism from other genocide-enthusiasts too, including hyperbolic accusations of "blood libel" for merely highlighting the genocidal depravity that’s so commonplace in Israeli society, and reading out a message from someone else.
It’s hard not to feel some schadenfreude at a self-appointed antisemitism witch-hunter getting a dose of his own poison, but the issue isn’t any better because
the antisemitism smearers have now turned on one of their most willing and wilful collaborators.
Britain’s depraved professional media class seemed entirely unbothered when it was the likes of anti-Zionist Jews; Kneecap; peaceful protesters; and anti-genocide OAPs facing antisemitism smears; legal threats; and arrest, but maybe they’ll wake up a bit now that it’s one of their own golden boys in the firing line?
This does seem unlikely though, given the UK media hack pack’s long track record of cowardice and complicity.
If the genocide-enthusiasts’ efforts to cancel O’Brien succeed, despite his crawling apology, and despite the deletion of the clips of the segment from LBC social media platforms, are the rest of the hack pack actually going to think along the lines of "if they can even take down a centrist darling like JOB, they can definitely do me out of my job too"?
Oh, I think the message is clear: no-one, however lauded they are, is to step out of line when it comes to reporting on Israel’s crimes in Palestine.
The success of the antisemitism campaigns against those who support the Palestinians always surprised me. I wondered how anyone could go along with the obviously false conflation of racism and anticolonialism: nobody ever got away with smearing Anti Apartheid activists as bigots hating Afrikaaners.
It now seems obvious that the campaign against Corbyn not only had nothing to do with anti-semitism but that it was a defence of the cardinal principle of class society that some pedigreed groups are inherently and invariably superior to others. Jewish Supremacy is defended as a token of the supremacies of "whites","Brahmins", aristocrats, perhaps even males or particular sexual orientations.
Corbyn and the burgeoning mass movement that he represented for a while- Bliss was it that Dawn to be alive- (of which AAV was a not insignificant voice) was the enemy of elitism wherever it was found, hence the fanatical zeal with which the most antisemitic elements in society, the neo-nazis for example, joined in the denunciations of those who stood up for the persecuted Palestinians against the sadistic bullying of the Supremacists in Israel. Most of those who today pretend that their defence of Israel's genocide is motivated by a fear that Palestine's partisans are antisemites laying the basis of Krystalnachts to come are really fearful that the defence of Gaza's naked civilian population will grow into a world wide campaign for the brotherhood of man, an end to exploitation and the unrestrained exercise of power over vulnerability.
The tiniest minority in modern public opinion is that which brazenly justifies what cannot be justified. Almost everyone who has the tiniest understanding of what is happening is still comprised of those who have learned one lesson in life which is that they have little power to defend themselves and their families if those few who do have power single them out for reprisal, for all of us are Gazans in the end, liable to be bombed, sought out and erased by drones, detained and tortured because we are individuals living in buildings without tenants associations, working in jobs without being members of Unions, voting for candidates imposed on parties owned by our enemies. People dare not think the truth because there is no refuge for the identified dissident.