Three Questions for the UK Collective

See also the heavily censored discussion at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/387175.html?c=all.

See also here.

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This post was, as predicted, hidden on UK, in direct contradiction of freethepeeps' claim that it would not be.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/387339.html

This is starting to look like nessie at SF-IMC, ain't it.

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2007-12-08 15:40
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
and now, the whole story (185863) by: gehrig
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/387175.html?c=all

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2007-12-08 00:28
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
quoted (185851) by: gehrig
No Brainer's right. From a hidden post in this thread:

Here's Nimmo's Holocaust denial being called out: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-April/0424-8x.html

And here's Nimmo's Holocaust denial being waved away by, what do you know, freethepeeps: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-April/0424-1d.html: "And I repeat, that is your interpretation - it is smear by innuendo, it is circumstantial evidence. If Indymedia is going to be used as a platform for the hounding of posters whose politics are unliked by the Hasbarah crowd, then they should back up their claims so that readers can make up their own mind. I am pretty sure that if you were being hounded by a concerted campaign of unsubstantiated attacks in the comments section, you would not appreciate it, and would expect the mods to do something about it."

Unsubstantiated my ass.

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12-07 23:25
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
And, inevitably (185846) by: gehrig
Along comes the Atzmon sock puppets.

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2007-12-07 21:10
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
actually, quite a persuasive case is being made (185831) by: gehrig
Just not the case you think you're making, ftp.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/387175.html?c=all

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pretty revolting (185821) by: gehrig
There's very clearly a different standard of evidence he uses when it comes to antisemitism, and it involves an appalling level of blindness.

Here's Nimmo's Holocaust denial being called out: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-April/0424-8x.html

And here's Nimmo's Holocaust denial being waved away by, what do you know, freethepeeps: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-April/0424-1d.html: "And I repeat, that is your interpretation - it is smear by innuendo, it is
circumstantial evidence. If Indymedia is going to be used as a platform for the hounding of posters whose politics are unliked by the Hasbarah crowd, then they should back up their claims so that readers can make up their own mind. I am pretty sure that if you were being hounded by a concerted campaign of unsubstantiated attacks in the comments section, you would not appreciate it, and would expect the mods to do something about it."

Nimmo calls the gas chambers of Auschwitz "discredited," but according to ftp, that's not proof of Holocaust denial; Nimmo's not a proven Holocaust denier, it's just "the interpretation" of "the Hasbarah crowd" that doesn't "like him" and are producing "a concerted campaign of unsubstantiated attacks."

Unsubstantiated my ass. An appalling moral collapse by ftp.

Actually, I hadn't seen that interchange when it happened in April, although it turns out that I'm mentioned in it anyway. Go figure. I guess I'm the evil genius behind the big conspiracy, or something.

So there are two narratives here.

Let's call the first one the Latuff narrative, because Latuff does his best to promulgate it: any time a critic of Israel is called an antisemite, he's not (unless he's on the right). The cry "antisemitism" is always false in such cases, and is in fact the product of an international PR drive of right-wing Zionists. No one could possibly be upset by antisemitism in the contest of the Israel/Palestine conflict unless they are right-wing Thought Police. You can see Latuff clearly spell out this narrative here: https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385592.html?c=all. (You can also see a Jewish poster get deeply -- and justly -- offended, and then get slapped down for being offended by a cartoon plainly intended to make room for antisemitism in leftist discourse.)

The other narrative is this: IMC-UK is having consistent difficulty with posts that cross the line from criticizing Israel into actual antisemitism, and its reputation is suffering for it. The problem is that one of the editors cannot, for whatever reason, see antisemitism that is plain to many, many other readers, and instantly responds to any criticism of antisemitism on UK-IMC by trying to spin narrative one (see above). When Kurt Nimmo's Holocaust denial was pointed out to him in April, ftp said, "what Holocaust denial?" and then tried to spin narrative one. When the destructiveness of the Latuff cartoon was pointed out to him, ftp said, "what destructiveness?" and then tried to spin narrative one. When Gilad Atzmon's well-known, well-documented antisemitism was pointed out to him, ftp said, "what antisemitism?" and then tried to spin narrative one. In this process, the editor has inflicted considerable harm on the moral standing of his collective, and it's clear from the mailing list that people are being driven away from UK-IMC *because* of its swerve into "antisemitism not unwelcome, if it's coded properly."

There's a clear pattern that, when it comes one certain kind of bigotry, the consistent response of one UK-IMC editor is "well, you still haven't *proved* the sky is blue."

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2007-12-07 16:31
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
whatever else is clear (185809) by: gehrig
It's clear that ftp's narrative -- that Atzmon is plainly not an antisemite, and that it's really only Tony Greenstein and gehrig who think otherwise -- has collapsed utterly.

The situation now is this. Atzmon's pieces are under very serious challenge, both within and outside the UK Kollektive, with substantial voices being raised calling the works racist. The UK Kollektive is -- we're told -- hard at work trying to sort through the policy. Yet during the process interim (a process interim which has stretched over a month now), posts which have been seriously and repeatedly challenged for their antisemitism are allowed to fester on the newswire.

Would other forms of racism be treated the same way? Are accusations of anti-Muslim bigotry, for example, presumed true a priori while accusations of antisemitism are presumed false a priori?

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2007-12-06 21:01
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
How stupid do you think UK Indymedia readers are, peeps? (185760) by: gehrig
"By the way, Greenstein circulated three of Eisen's papers, including the one that gehrig refers to, to the whole Guardian readership. And gehrig is posting links to a David Duke article."

My god, how stupid do you think UK Indymedia readers are, peeps?

If Tony Greenstein had said that he had only "slight differences" with the Eisen article, you might have a fraction of a case for your rather desperate analogy. And if I said I had only "slight differences" with the David Duke article.

But you know, and the readers know, goddamned well what the real story is: Atzmon distributed a Holocaust denial piece to his list and, when called on it, couldn't bring himself to express anything more than "slight differences."

You claimed that Gilad Atzmon's progressive not-an-antisemite credentials were established by his stories being posted on sites like "thepeoplesvoice.org."

I then showed that same "progressive" site posts David Duke's fulminations about the Jew. And I documented it by posting a link.

Now, in your flailing desperation, you want to sell the idea that I'm some kind of a David Duke supporter.

Oh, but wait, the reader can't see what I posted in context. Why? Because it's a hidden post is why, because UK Indymedia has been hiding posts on the Atzmon issue left and right like a manic squirrel packing seeds for winter just to keep the Atzmon story to the one narrative you insist must be the REAL one: that this is just Tony Greenstein slagging off Atzmon, and nothing more significant than that.

When you see the whole story, though, the narrative looks a lot more like, why is a UK Indymedia editor who is, in all likelihood, not an antisemite himself working so hard (and so unilaterally) to ensure that antisemitic posts -- properly coded -- are not removed from this otherwise anti-racist site?

And can he really come up with no better response when challenged on this grotesquery than to cry "help, help, McCarthyism"?

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2007-12-06 18:52
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
Atzmon + Holocaust denial (185751) by: gehrig
Let's try it again without the last paragraph.

Atzmon isn't a Holocaust denier in the usual sense. However:

"In particular Gilad Atzmon has distributed Eisen’s ‘Holocaust Wars’, which is a full-blooded exposition of holocaust denial material and a tribute to notorious neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel. Atzmon says he has only ‘slight differences‘ with Eisen’s article."

http://www.exetersocialists.org.uk/SWP&Gilad%20Atzmon.htm

So Atzmon isn't necessarily a Holocaust denier; he just distributes Holocaust denial material on his list and then can only muster 'slight differences' with it -- praising with faint damns, in other words.
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2007-12-06 16:06
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
to be fair (185739) by: gehrig
Atzmon isn't a Holocaust denier in the usual sense. However:

<i>In particular Gilad Atzmon has distributed Eisen’s ‘Holocaust Wars’, which is a full-blooded exposition of holocaust denial material and a tribute to notorious neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel. Atzmon says he has only ‘slight differences ‘ with Eisen’s article.</i>

http://www.exetersocialists.org.uk/SWP&Gilad%20Atzmon.htm

So Atzmon isn't necessarily a Holocaust denier; he just distributes Holocaust denial material on his list and then can only muster 'slight differences' with it -- praising with faint damns, in other words.

By now, though, the odds of ftp climbing down on the Atzmon issue are pretty slim. He is sure that he's striking a blow against International Zionism. Instead, he is tainting UK IMC with the ravings of an antisemitic whackdoodle and smearing those this offends.

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2007-12-05 23:58
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Hidden Article: Interview: Atzmon on Indymedia (387155) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
don't overstate the case (185710) by: gehrig
"That's the problem with being an anti Semite, you get pulled on it."

I have no reason to believe that ftp is an antisemite, just that he does not combat antisemitism the same way he would combat other prejudices. He has political reasons for this.

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2007-12-05 17:38
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Hidden Article: Why there must be no free speech for Nazis (387175) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
presuming (185684) by: gehrig
"(eg the personal emails sent to random IMC *volunteers*)"

Presuming that that wasn't Atzmon or one of his defenders. I don't think anyone will dispute that Atzmon uses no shortage of sockpuppets; I don't think forging mail is beyond him, and he certainly hates Tony enough to make him the subject of the forgery.

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2007-12-03 20:05
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Hidden Article: Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land (386933) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
Jordan jumps to another erroneous conclusion (185544) by: gehrig
Who was me, "director"?

Nope. Not me. Jordan blows it again.

You're really outdoing yourself in the "leaping to erroneous conclusions" sweepstakes today, aren't you, Jordan?

Although that's actually part of your usual delusion, that everyone on IMC who thinks you're a spamming, antisemitic idiot -- that is, people who start to recognize your posting style -- are really all just one guy.

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2007-12-03 17:59
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Hidden Article: Aaronovitch Apologises for Anti-Semitism Accusation & Pays £1,000 to FOBZU (386889) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
truly a riot (185533) by: gehrig
ftp: "So, tell that to the censor himself."

Yes, folks, ftp, the guy who obliterated the thread about Gilad Atzmon's antisemitism by hiding *forty* comments in a row (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/386759.html?c=all) because so many posters rightly refused to excuse away Atzmon's racism -- which ftp has decided, politically, not to notice, even though it means he has to wear not one but two pirate eye patches -- is complaining about censorship.

It's really very simple, folks. There is never, ever, ever any antisemitism on this board, even when there blatantly is, and if you say otherwise, well, ftp will hid your posts and regurgitate scrambled Atzmon at you while Mary Rizzo ("thecutter") coos appreciatively (and, sooner or later, Jordan Thornton comes through for another Adventures in Capitalization post).

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2007-12-03 17:42
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Hidden Article: Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land (386933) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
there goes Jordan again (185531) by: gehrig
Hey, Jordan Thornton of Regina, Saskatchewan ("Zionism, Irrelevant In A Generation" and "Time For Peace Is Now-Education Is The Key", and probably the original post too). Got a question for you.

Here's what someone said fairly recently, and I'm curious whether you agree.

"Israel is nothing but evilness for the sake of evilness. It is wickedness with no comparison."

Do you agree?

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2007-12-02 15:09
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
this thread (185453) by: gehrig
This thread looks *much* different when you look at the hidden comments.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/386759.html?c=all

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2007-12-02 02:32
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
and that's peeps for you, folks (185429) by: gehrig
Unable to score a victory, unable to negate the record of the imc-uk-features mailing list, he's going to simply claim victory unilaterally (what was Nixon's phrase? "Peace with honor"?) and then make those bad bad bosds posts just go away so as not to trouble your poor trouble-prone minds.

Then Gilad will take another antisemitic dump into this site in a few weeks, knowing how hard peeps has worked to keep UK Indymedia safe for antisemitism.

And the UK Kollektive will be, I'm sure, grateful to peeps for making it possible.

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12-02 00:30
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
pound the table a little harder, peeps (185423) by: gehrig
<em>SHOW US THE ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE ARTICLE THAT YOU SAY LEAVES INDYMEDIA UK WITH A "JEWISH PROBLEM" OR WITHDRAW THE CHARGE. </em>

Ask the members of your own Kollektive, peeps. They're the ones who would have banned Atzmon for good if you hadn't thrown your block. Do you think the UK-IMC board has been overrun by Zionist agents? Or do you think maybe they see something you don't? The same thing anti-Zionists Lenni Brenner and Tony Greenstein and Sue Blackwell see that you don't?

And I've been more than clear: the Jewish Problem that UK-IMC has is that IMC process requires unanimous consent, and you've thrown a block, thereby allowing an antisemitic article by a notoriously antisemitic writer to remain festering on your newswire.

As far as Jordan Thornton's charges, yes, he really does believe that I'm a government agent of some kind, and he really does believe I could identify him not by his distinctive posting style, featuring among other things his Peculiar Capitalization and standard bucket of nyms, but by reading the IP addresses of UK Indymedia posters. Actually, if Jordan came clean for just one week, and signed every post he makes here with his own name, like I have been doing for the five years I've been part of the Indymedia movement, you'd be amazed at how big of a proportion of the anti-Israel stuff on the newswire comes straight from Saskatchewan.

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2007-12-01 21:35
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
try here (185412) by: gehrig
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-November/1103-6l.html

A bunch of Zionists, perhaps?

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2007-12-01 19:58
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
unsurprising (185401) by: gehrig
Nothing would make ftp happier than to have readers believe that the opposition to Atzmon's antisemitism comes from only Greenstein, me, Lenni Brenner, and myself. He would dearly love to be able to wrap it in that wrapper. That way, he can feel that he's striking a blow against Zionism -- even though Greenstein and Brenner are leading anti-Zionists.

So let's take the case of Sue Blackwell, who led the (unsuccessful) AUT campaign to boycott Israeli academics. What does she have to say about Atzmon? Well, whatever it was, it caused Atzmon to threaten to sue her for libel. Go to her site at sue.be to see why she puts Atzmon's name in the same list as David Irving, Paul Eisen, and "Israel Shamir." Are you going to tell us that Blackwell is a closet Zionist, ftp? Or could the "they're only Zionists" smoke screen Atzmon throws up when criticised is really just a smoke screen after all, and maybe you'll finally learn to peek around the edges?

There's a difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Blackwell is an anti-Zionist who is not an antisemite, and who thinks antisemitism harms rather than helps the Palestinians. Atzmon is an antisemite who's learned that if he codes himself as "anti-Zionist" then at least a few folks out there won't balk when he starts going on about how bad Jewishness is, and how he doesn't hate Jews, just Jewishness.

The reality is that opposition to Atzmon's antisemitism comes from all quarters except for Atmzon's tiny band of "anti-Zionist" antisemites and the Klan. And defenders of Atzmon's antisemitism come from a tiny (and diminishing) clump of those who say, like Michael Neumann, that maybe a little antisemitism isn't such a bad thing if its done to help the Palestinians.

Which is, apparently, why ftp doesn't have any problem with UK Indymedia posts with titles like "Jewish Tribal Politics." So what if that's an inherently antisemitic formulation? It's not like UK Indymedia has a Jewish Problem, does it?

Oh, yeah, that's right, it does: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378213.html?c=on

But let's be clear. It was freethepeeps who threw in a BLOCK to prevent other IMC collective members, many of them calling for the removal of Atzmon's antisemitic post. So I don't blame the whole UK Kollektive, because they were in effect held hostage by ftp's crusade to keep UK IMC safe for antisemites like Atzmon.

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2007-12-01 16:54
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
and by the way (185387) by: gehrig
jackslucid is 180 degrees wrong about what microbiology is saying about the genetic ties of Jews to the mideast:

<em>A study by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona showed five years ago that the men in many Jewish communities around the world bore Y chromosomes that were Middle Eastern in origin. This finding is widely accepted by geneticists, but there is less consensus about the women's origins.</em>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/science/14gene.html

I'm assuming that jackslucid was trying to run some variation of that favorite of white supremacists everywhere, the "Khazar" gambit.

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2007-12-01 16:40
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
open your eyes, peeps (185385) by: gehrig
Read your own email list at imc-uk-features and stop pretending it's just me who thinks Gilad Atzmon is a raving antisemite.

But you've made the *political* decision that you're going to ignore antisemitism, that somehow ignoring antisemitism is doing the Palestinians a favor.

For example, you now know that in the other Atzmon thread there's someone nattering about "Jewish Tribal Politics" -- and this does not strike you as an antisemitic generalization. Why? Because you think you're doing the Palestinians a favor by ignoring antisemitism, that's why. Guess what -- you're not.

And that's why it's left to manic spammers like the nutbar Jordan Thornton (the guy you can always spot by the way he capitalizes "Extremists", as he did in the comment right below yours) to defend you.

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2007-12-01 03:31
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
What's antisemitic about the Atzmon post? (185362) by: gehrig
Ask your own collective -- they were going to hide it until you threw yourself across it so tearfully and shouted "block!"

Three cheers for peeps, helping keep UK Indymedia safe for antisemitism -- as long as its coded properly, that is.

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2007-11-30 22:00
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
how typical for peeps (185348) by: gehrig
Condemn atzmon's antisemitism, and you get smeared, smeared, smeared in exchange.

Hey, peeps -- http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378213.html?c=on#c185250

"Jewish Tribal Politics"

No problems with that? Earns the FTP Seal of Not Dodgyness?

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2007-11-30 16:54
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Hidden Article: Labours Zionist friends have landed the party in trouble again. (386759) (Newswire) [ edit | All comments for this article ]
the Jewish problem (185318) by: gehrig
As long as this now-notorious post -- http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378213.html?c=on -- remains unhidden, it's simply not possible to say that UK Indymedia does not have at least some form of a "Jewish problem."

In the early days of Indymedia, I think that post would have been flushed right away. But UK Indymedia has been locked into this strange feedback loop, where (a) any criticism of antisemitic postings is automatically reinterpreted as A Great Big Zionist Censorship scheme, and then (b) UK editors demonstrate they're Speaking Truth To Power by allowing ever more antisemitic posts to remain up, just to show 'em, thereby (c) encouraging ever crazier posters to come here and feel politicially justified to make coarser and coarser antisemitic comments, while driving out those readers who are actually repelled by antisemitism rather than naively engaged in trying to give it political cover. After enough years of this feedback loop, plainly antisemitic posts like Atzmon's look almost normal here, as long as the antisemitism has been given the proper "political" coding.

How naive, or twisted, do you have to be to see a post with "Jewish Tribal Politics" in its title, and presume that the "Politics" trumps the antisemitism of "Jewish Tribal anything," thereby rendering the post Indymedia-worthy?

@%&lt;

gehrig

You have trolled IMC UK all month. You haven't given any "straight non-dissembling answers" and now you're protraying yourself as some of authority figure, for whom everyone must drop everything when he demands. You want me to ignore your trolling, and smearing and lies, and your disrespect for the decision making process of the United Kollektives and its editorial guidelines, and to drop everything to answer to you.

Well, I think you're going to have to wait until you've done some explaining of your own.

You've been attacking Indymedia UK for a while now:

About a year ago, on IndyMedia Watch, where you were posting as someone who was more like an opponent of Indymedia, than an IMCista, you had this to say about Indymedia UK in the course of one thread:

""it's the sort of blasphemy that one is not allowed to utter on UK Indymedia"

"See, this is where the UK Indymedia blindness kicks in."

" In UK Indymedia, antisemitic rhetoric is presumed true as long as it comes in the right guises."

"After all, just because it's the ravings of an antisemite, well, still, the burden of disproving it should be on the Jews, right? Just like Petras' article.

At least that's how UK Indymedia apparently sees it."

" And one of the consequences of UK Indymedia's defense of antisemitism is that it has completely destroyed its moral ground when it comes to the issue of antisemitism."

http://indymediawatch.blogspot.com/2006/12/uk-indymedia-stinks.html

All that happened because Indymedia UK took 6 days to reach a decision, before it took down an article. So, it is obvious that you've had issues with IMC UK for some time.

This is something that people need to bear in mind when looking at your attempt to suddenly present yourself as some kind of International Tribunal on Anti-Semitism - that you are hostile to the kollektive that you now think you have a right to demand things of.

On November 30th, in comment 185318, you wrote:
"As long as this now-notorious post -- http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378213.html?c=on -- remains unhidden, it's simply not possible to say that UK Indymedia does not have at least some form of a "Jewish problem."

I then invited you to "Remind us where the anti-semitism in the article that you complain of is, please? After all you're assering that it breaches a guideline."

in the exchange that followed, you failed to point to the anti-semitism in the article that you declared left Indymedia UK with a "Jewish problem"

Having ignored the question, put several times, on December 1st in comment number 185401, you said:

" It's not like UK Indymedia has a Jewish Problem, does it?

Oh, yeah, that's right, it does: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378213.html?c=on

But let's be clear. It was freethepeeps who threw in a BLOCK to prevent other IMC collective members, many of them calling for the removal of Atzmon's antisemitic post. So I don't blame the whole UK Kollektive, because they were in effect held hostage by ftp's crusade to keep UK IMC safe for antisemites like Atzmon. "

And yet, you have still to date not backed up your claim that Indymedia UK has a Jewish problem because of this article.

IF there is clear anti-semitism ie a hatred of Jews displayed in that post, then it seems to me that you, as a self appointed expert on anti-semitsm in Indymedia can help out here by pointing to it. Furthermore, you also went through our lists, and helped to show that no-one, other than Greenstein and his crew had managed to point to the alleged anti-semitism in the article.

So, I'm inviting you to do so now. So, we can sort it out for once and all, and that you can demonstrate that you have good cause for using Indymedia UK's newswire to declare that Indymedia UK has "some sort of a Jewish problem".

I am also going to point you to the Editorial guidelines for Indymedia UK again, (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/editorial.html) and I would like you to acknowledge that you have read them, understand them, and will abide by them.

Once we've got these 2 things cleared up, I will be in a position to judge whether I have any duty to start talking about my personal beliefs when you demand that I do so.

Let me remind you that I am capable of being extremely stubborn - and I have no intention in backing down from this. I want you to back up your own claims about Indymedia having a "Jewish problem" as long as that article stays up , because it will help move the issue about that article on. I also want you to agree that you will respect the editorial guidelines, and not continue to use our newswire as a soapbox to attack individuals and the Kollektive.

If you do neither of these things,then no way am I answering any question from you.

And in your own words, I require a "straightforward, non-dissembling answer "

I'm an American, though I understand about the fact that words and spellings can be different between the American and British versions of English, i.e. tow peoples divided by a common language.

However, do they actually spell collective with a K? Because in the US, such usage is often a sign that those using a k in place of a c are sending the not so discrete message that they are cozy with the Klan, as in Klu Klux Klan. If you're not fami;iar with the KKK, they dislike Jews and Palestinians equally, as well as African Americans, Catholics, etc.

Anyone know if the IMC UK _actually_ uses a K to decribe itself as a "Kollective"? Because that is just odd and unseemly if it does not.

Such a long diatribe, and no evidence whatsoever to back up your trolling.

 "As long as this now-notorious post -- http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378213.html?c=on -- remains unhidden, it's simply not possible to say that UK Indymedia does not have at least some form of a "Jewish problem."

"And I've been more than clear: the Jewish Problem that UK-IMC has is that IMC process requires unanimous consent, and you've thrown a block, thereby allowing an antisemitic article by a notoriously antisemitic writer to remain festering on your newswire. "

Basically, you still haven't backed up your claim that the article is anti-semitic. Which after all this time, suggests to me that you can't.

Perhaps you'd like to state that you were wrong to say it was? So, we can move on to the bit that you're itching to get to.

If you can't point to the anti-semitism in the article, and none of the 5 (out of how many exactly?) members of the kollektive you keep harping on about can point out where it is, then  it doesn't appear to breach any guidelines, and should remain up. Thats my position. It seems like the correct position to adopt in the circumstances.

You also seem to have missed the editorial guidelines. Have you read, understood and agreed to abide by them?

Believe me on this one - I won't be telling you what I believe about anything until you've sorted this out.

ftp

"Why haven't I gone into detail about why Atzmon's antisemitic rhetoric is antisemitic? Because, peeps, you've given every indication that such an effort would be a complete waste of my time, and that you'd simply wave it away as more "trolling,"

 This isn't a private exchange, is it? You've written an Open Letter to IMC UK and its hosted on UC IMC as well.

 I may well not agree with you, but as you seem intent on proving I'm the problem, you should realise that it will give fodder to the 5 members of the kollektive who favour banning Atzmon - at least 3 of whom have given no indication whatsoever of their reasoning.

You will also recall that I stood aside from my block, so you can hardly blame me for the article not being hidden, can you?

ftp

Now, if it were me, and I had discovered that I was defending Holocaust deniers using their own lies, I'd be very concerned about the damage to my reputation, and the last thing I'd do is stonewall.

 Yes, yes. If I was you I'd back up the claim that the article was antisemitic, so that other members of the kollektive could use the evidence  to argue for hiding the article. But you haven't done that. And I don't see why I should just do what you want when you've refused to agree to abide by IMC UKs editorial guidelines, or to back up the claim that I've continually asked you to back up since November 30th.

And I think you'd be hard pushed to prove your claim that  "few days ago you pushed the dispute into even darker territory by embracing the arguments of Holocaust denial in order to justify a Holocaust denier" - because if you could read text you'd understand that I quoted more of the same email exchange that you started quoting and didn't complete. You'd be hard pressed  to find any views I had on Nimmo that the kollektive didn't know about in APRIL.

If any member of the UC IMC collective has stayed awake long enough to read all of this, I dare them to count the unsubstantiated smears in the comments above, and to think where gehrig gets the right to try and subvert another IMCs decision making process from? Is it something that UC IMC approves of? 

Hmm, the last I recall no one has invoked UC IMC involvement in any of this, except you.

UC IMC has a diverse range of opinions on many topics. I only speak for myself here, but I tend to think we wouldn't waste much time dealing with anyone who attempts to artfully skate around racist topics. If someone doesn't care enough to make certain that it's easy to distinguish their own words from racist discourse, that's generally good enough for us. It simply gets hidden. We've seen far too much trolling in that direction to give it much in the way of slack. In fact, some of the most obnxious trolls we've dealt take exactly that approach, all the better they think to justify their whining about being hidden. Sorry, move along, please.

One thing I'm certain we won't be doing is imposing stalinist ideological standards on a member of our collective. So you're barking up the wrong tree by asking "Is it something that UC IMC approves of?"

I also don't think someone who engages in dialogue with another IMC is "subvert[ing] another IMCs decision making process..." I haven't the time or interest to catch up with this discussion. But I do find it odd that the odd man out in that discussion at his or her own IMC comes here and attempts to engage in exactly the sort of behavior that he asserts someone else has done, whether there is any truth to that assertion or not. It's clearly hypocritical to do so. There are few sins in my book more damning than hypocrisy. But that's just me...

I'm sorry I've missed much of the developments on this debate but since I started it, and we are having to organise a picket of Atzmon's talk in Brighton next week I can only apologise.

Let me start this reply by citing what happened today. I visited a woman, who is a trustee of refugee charity we set up to provide asylum seekers with money in the absence of any state benefits. She is not only a dedicated anti-racist, but an anti-Zionist Jew, an anarchist and a good comrade. What she asked is happening to Indymedia. Why do they host Atzmon and his anti-Semitic ravings? I didn't have a reply. Up till recently I and most people thought Indymedia was a grassroots site for those involved in various struggles. If you search for my contributions you'll see that I have posted on all sorts of things, not least the Police attack on the Lebanon demo 2 years ago when they attacked us as 'anti-Semitic'.

Yet here we are with the absurd situation of FTP not understanding that talk of the 'discredited gas chambers' at Auschwitz is clear and unambiguous holocaust denial stuff. There is no doubt. Read Rudolph Vrba's 'I Escaped From Auschwitz'. Vrba was one of 5 Jewish escapees from Auschwitz. He reached Slovakia and dictated what became known as the Auschwitz Protocols. He also became a professor in Canada and died recently. The Zionists in Hungary suppressed the Protocols, a guy called Rudolph Kastner in particular. Vrba was bitterly critical of their behaviour, he was no Zionist, but according to FTP and his mate Nimmo he was imagining in his stay at Auschwitz the fact that his cousin and thousands of others went into a building where they were pulled out as corpses to be lifted into the crematoria. This is obscene. The attack on the idea that Jews (& Soviet prisoners, gays, gypsies etc.) were gassed is a core part of holocaust denial. Irving argued this in the Penguin trial and ended up admitting that gas chambers were indeed used in the Action Reinhard camps (Trebliinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Maidenek). There was nothing discredited about them, they were the culmination of Nazi modernity (killing through firing squads was becoming too traumatic even for the SS).

And Atzmon didn't merely say he had 'slight differences' with Paul Eisen. He told me, that it was a 'great text'. The e-mail in question, Sunday 5th June, is reprinted below:

Greenstein: I understand that you have been distributing Paul Eisen's most recent The Holocaust Wars which denies, in the course of defending Ernest Zundel, that there ever was a holocaust or extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis.

Mr Greenstine, True I circulated Paul Eisen's paper. I do believe that argumentative texts must be circulated as widely as possible. I am sure that in case you have a counter argument to suggest Paul will be delighted to address it. By the way, my take on the subject is slightly different than Paul's one and yet, i found Paul very attentive to my criticism. Furthermore, Let me assure you that if I ever see a great text written by yourself I ll be the first to circulate it. This is my way, that is what i believe in.

No rationale person can seriously argue that Atzmon is not anti-Semitic. Just read his 'onantisemitism' article on his own site: http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/onanti.html . I quote:

'we must begin to take the accusation that the Jews (later changed to Zionists as Atzmon admits) are trying to control the world very seriously. It is beyond doubt that Zionists, the most radical, racist and nationalistic Jews around, have already managed to turn America into an Israeli mission force.... American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the elder of Zion' are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.' and later on 'I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all: the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew.'

So Atzmon doesn't know whether or not the Protocls were forged. But they are true anyway. Hitler's take on it was slighly different in Mein Kampf. He said that the fact that they were true proved they weren't a forgery. A slight difference you'll admit.

The idea of Jews as christ-killers, the suggestion that the Nazi holocaust came about because of the 'unpopularity' of the Jews (totally untrue, the Nazis worked very hard to make the Germans anti-Semitic), the talk of Jews as 'gatekeepers' of the Palestinian struggle and all the rest of the obnoxious stuff he pours out, proves to me that he is irredemably anti-Semitic.

And whilst we are at it, Atzmon is unable to defend himself politically, hence he resorts to the allegation that I was once convicted of property offences to immunise himself (he uses a postbox on Indymedia called 'knuckles' (an appropriate name in the circumstances).

Why does this matter? Well in Brighton we certainly undersand. The establishment locally and the police did their best to label supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of the bombing of Lebanon as anti-Semitic. They completely failed. The Independent Police Complaints Commission, as I've posted on Indymedia (if ftp hasn't hidden that as well!) upheld our complaints - in itself unusual. But here comes Atzmon and his defender ftp trying to prove that the police and the Zionists were right all along and that we are anti-Semitic.

I have been criticised for criticising Hamas. Let's make just a few points. I support the right of the Palestinians to vote for who they want. The siege of Gaza should be condemned unreservedly. But I have the right, as a socialist, to criticise any grouping I disagree with, whatever their politics and whoever supports them. And if a Palestinian fascist group develops should I not criticise them? Methinks that is an inverse, liberal form of racism. In fact Hamas owe their existence to the fact that Shin Bet, the Israeli secret police, gave them help and encouragement in the earily 1980's as a counterweight to secular Palestinian groups. It was the Israelis who wanted to confessionalise Palestinian politics. For various reasons, including Oslo and the corruption of Fateh they have succeeded. I don't accept that Hamas is a national liberation movement. how can it be? It represents Islamic currents. many Palestinians are Christian or of no religion. People used to support the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa but had deep criticisms of the ANC. Was that wrong? No of course not. Being the political representative of an oppressed group doesn't make one immune from criticism.

I have stood back from this debate, as it's not my personality that is at stake but a principle. Does a network like Indymedia want itself to be polluted by racists and racism? If not then it has to devise a mechanism whereby apologists for racism and anti-semitism can't block and stifle those who do want to remain true to their principles. The sad fact is that ftp, who I do not know, has got lost along the way and ended up defending a small group of holocaust deniers and their supporters (& Atzmon is definitely a supporter of holocaust deniers, e.g. the infamous Israel Shamir, which is where this all started). And now we have talk of the gas chambers being 'discredited'. I just hope that the network meeting in February will sort out this stuff.

Oh and incidentally re a previous posting. It is true that Germany has the fastest growing Jewish community in Europe (& quite possibly the world). It has enraged the Zionists who believe that Jews should not live other than in Israel. For over 10 years they have lobbied the German government to bar Jews from immigrating to Israel, at one stage sending their Foreign Secretary, David Levy, over personally to twist arms. He failed. And you know what? The growth of a new Jewish community in Germany is something I welcome very much because it is the final nail in the coffin of Hitler, who above all wanted a deJewified Germany. Just as the existence of a Jewish racial state in Israel is unfortunately a symbol of the triumph of European anti-Semitism.

Tony Greenstein