Kaczynski killed

Polish president and co-founder - with his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski - of the "traditionalist Catholic" right-wing Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc party Lech Kaczynski, was killed this morning at 6.56 GMT when the Tupolev aircraft he was flying in crashed into trees near Smolensk in Russia. At the time of writing the crash is said to have claimed 96 lives, many of them PiS figures, though Russian reports have put the death toll at 130.

Lech Kaczynski, 18th of June 1949 - 10th of April 2010.

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with GNU Free Documentation licence.

Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, as regular readers of this 'ere blog will know, is one of the groups with which the British Conservative Party in Europe has allied itself under David Cameron's leadership by becoming part of the European Conservatives and Reformists (which also includes the SS-glorifying Latvian LNNK party) - the cause of much controversy due to the Polish group's rather dubious history which has seen them accused of homophobia and antisemitism. Whilst mayor of Warsaw, Lech banned a gay rights march and then allowed a "Parade of Normality" - a fact that led former Minister for Europe Denis MacShane to accuse the Tories of having links "with gay-bashing homophobes." Jaroslaw, meanwhile, has claimed that homosexuality "will cause the downfall of civilisation" and another PiS member said that President Obama's election would spell "the end of the civilisation of the white man."

Gordon Brown, who has been busy in his native Scotland trying to talk people into voting for him, took a break from the campaign trail to express his condolences. "I think the whole world will be saddened and in sorrow as a result of the tragic death in a plane crash or President Kaczynski," he said. David Cameron said that Kaczynski "...always stood up for his beliefs..."

The whole world, except those who don't share Kaczynski and his loathesome party's revolting homophobic and racist beliefs, may well be saddened but please forgive those of us who are unable to regret the loss of such an unpleasant and dangerous man.

Friend of Israel = Friend of Jews?

Members of the European Parliament Michal Kaminski, of Poland's Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, and Nick Griffin of the UK's British National Party have both faced accusations of anti-semitism in recent weeks. We can take some comfort in the fact that both have strenuously tried to refute such claims - it was, after all, within living memory that professing openly anti-semitic philosophies during an election campaign would guarantee plenty of votes and very little, if any, protest. Thankfully, in these times, even suspected fascists don't wish to be labelled Jew-haters because they perceive quite correctly that gaining such a tag amounts to political suicide in most countries. So Mr. Kaminski tries to deny he's an anti-semite (and the debate rages on) and Mr. Griffin tries to claim that although he was a Holocaust denier, he has moderated his views (come on - who does he think he's kidding?) and that he now thinks Jews are quite nice people, actually. Didn't he laugh matily when the rabbi's son spoke on Question Time, and how long before he turns up in Golders Green munching a lox bagel for the cameras?

Michal Kaminsky visited Israel with British Conservative friends. Does this mean he cannot be an anti-semite?

Both men have taken a similar approach - how can we be anti-semites, they ask us, when we are both supporters of Israel? Jewish Chronicle writer Miriam Shaviv points out, Mr. Kaminski has even visited our fair nation as a special guest of the Conservative Friends of Israel and he's even been to Israel itself with his Tory chums. The odious Mr. Griffin, meanwhile, claims that his equally unpleasant party are the only British political group to have "supported Israel's right to deal with Hamas terrorists." Surely we can't be both friends of Israel and enemies of the Jews, can we? they seem to be saying.

All around Britain and Europe, people both Jewish and otherwise listen and think, "Hmm. That's a point. Maybe they're really not anti-semites. I'm not a racist, but I am a bit worried about immigration - perhaps I should consider voting for these people?"

Here in Britain, it seems that most people can sniff out a fascist's lie from miles away. According to the 12 Marcheshvan JC, the vast majority of British people realise that the BNP are dangerous - a mere 9% of those polled expressed positive feelings about the party. 54% (64% in London) believe that Jews would have reason to be fearful if the BNP came into power. That is, thankfully, more than half. If we scale figures up to the same size as the entire UK electorate (approximately 40 million people) that's 1,600,000 more who believe the BNP is anti-semitic than do not - enough to make a lot of difference. But it does mean that 18,400,000 (46%) either think that the BNP is not anti-semitic or are unsure. That's a worrying amount.

So, back to the question in hand. Can an anti-semite support Israel? Are the two as mutually incompatible as they might at first seem? Let's have a look at the nation generally considered to have been Israel's greatest ally, the United States of America. Jewish Americans have long been afforded rights and freedoms kept from the Jewish populations in some other countries, but just as is the case almost everywhere else have also been used as a convenient scapegoat on many occasions - in the last century, Jews were popularly blamed for both the First World War and the Great Depression. In 1941, Charles Lindbergh - a man suspected of ideas both racist and sympathetic to the Nazis - stated his belief that a Jewish minority was pushing America into a war against its interests. There is no doubt that anti-semitism was rampant in the USA prior to the Second World War.

That war, of course, brought the Shoah. When the world discovered the full and almost unimaginable horror of what had taken place in Nazi-occupied Europe, there was widespread shock. Many people may not have liked Jews very much but nobody with even a trace of humanity ever wished for wholesale slaughter of innocent men, women and children. Anti-semitism and anti-semitic thought was widely considered utterly repugnant for the first time in history.

But deep-rooted beliefs and fears do not simply vanish overnight. People realised that anti-semitism needed to be held in check so that nothing like the Shoah would ever happen again, but they did not lose their own anti-semitic beliefs. Those beliefs have been a part of everyday life for so long that they are deeply ingrained in society, even within language, and it will take more than one or two generations until they are finally - if ever - eradicated.

The Zionists, who had long sought a homeland for Jews, found they suddenly had a huge increase in numbers of people supporting their aims (and let me point out here that not even for a second do I wish to claim that Zionists benefited from the Shoah - Jews lost more than will ever be regained and will continue to suffer the Shoah's legacy for as long as there are Jews). Millions of non-Jewish people agreed that Jews needed a homeland and that the establishment of such a place would ensure non-Jews never again have to endure the horror or not feel the guilt for what the Nazis did. So they supported Israel, even though many still held anti-semitic beliefs.

What a handy way to solve the Jewish problem! Imagine you're an anti-semite for a moment. You hate Jews, you hate their religion, you hate the ways that they live. You feel that they are to blame for many of your country's problems; after all, they control the banks, don't they - and whoever controls the money controls the nation. But if people know you hate the Jews, they're not going to think much of you; they might even agree with you in their hearts, but they won't admit it because nobody dares to these days and hey - nobody wants to be called a Nazi. You want to get rid of them, but you don't want them to be killed obviously. If only they'd all just disappear...wait a minute! How about if they all just moved somewhere else, some other country altogether? Not your problem anymore if that happened.

You can stop imagining you're an anti-semite now - I hope you didn't get too into the role and start doing anything embarrassing that might lead to some awkward questions from anybody around you. You could find yourself in as much trouble as I did when my bubbeh found out I'd pretended I was a German while playing The Great Escape with my schoolfriends 25 years ago.

Thank G-d that Israel does exist, and may it do so forever - even if the only reason you can think of for doing so is that it provides democracy with a foothold in the Middle East. But, if you will, please use your imagination again to picture a world in which the land promised by G-d to the Jewish Patriarch was not a thin strip of Mediterranean coastline wihout any oil and previously inhabited by a group of Arabs who had not exactly made their mark on the world stage over the last few centuries and imagine instead it was Florida, or East Anglia, or the Dordogne, or Schwarzwald, or some other sizable chunk of any Western nation. Do you think our governments would have been quite so keen on a Jewish homeland then? Many of these nations had expressed no particular support nor love towards Jews before the Second World War and as the old saying goes, a leopard cannot change its spots - at least, not that quickly. Could it be that the real reason Israel was allowed to exist was not because Western nations supported the Jewish need for a land of their own but because it presented an opportunity to get rid of Jews without resorting to the abhorrent methods of the past?

That's why it is entirely possible to be both a supporter of Israel and an anti-semite. Those who call themselves Friends of Israel are not necessarily friends to those Jews that choose to live in other nations.

Tory MEP Edward McMillan-Scott gets the boot

A row between Conservative MEPs, who are no doubt fighting over who gets what after joining the European Parliament two days ago much like school children fight over who gets the best desk in the classroom (and, amusingly, trying to sit as far away as possible from - the two most unpopular boys in the class - the British National Party's Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons), has resulted in the disciplining of Edward McMillan-Scott.

Edward McMillan-Scott has been disciplined after having the nerve to oppose Conservative party rule which would have forced him to make way for far-right PiS member Michal Kaminski. Good man - and that's not a thing we often have the opportunity to say when discussing a Tory.

As the Tories' longest-serving MEP Mr. McMillan-Scott represents Yorkshire and the Humber, as does ex-member of the openly neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement Mr. Brons. Conservative group leader Timothy Kirkhope had ordered Tory MEPs to make way for Polish Michal Kaminski in the vote for vice-president. However, he disobeyed his leader's command and stood against Kaminski which has led to the removal of his whip.

Michal Kaminski is Warsaw's MEP and a member of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość party, an organisation widely considered racist, homophobic, sexist and anti-semitic.

McMillan-Scott has been an MEP for a quarter of a century and was leader of the Conservatives in Europe in the past. It is widely considered that he will decline to stand in the next European elections, which may have given him more confidence to oppose party rule. He has expressed his concerns over the Conservatives' decision to make allies of those he terms "extreme rightwingers" - under the command of party leader David Cameron, the Tory MEPs - much to their own worry and dismay in some cases - have joined the European Conservatives and Reformists; an alliance which also lists Kaminski's controversial Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc party among its members and which has become notorious for its racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-semitic views and policies. That Mr. Cameron has chosen a party of that type over the more moderate, centre-left conservatives Angela Merkel of Germany and Nicholas Sarkozy of France makes his recent efforts to tranform the British Conservatives' image into that of a caring, sharing, non-racist, non-homophobic party look rather false.

"Despite what David Cameron has said there are already indications that some of the members have links with extremist groups and I feel very, very uncomfortable with that," says Mr. McMillan-Scott. He's not the only one - many people in Britain must surely be wondering about some of Mr. Cameron's chosen bedfellows, especially Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski who is on record claiming that "the affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization. We can't agree to it."

Kaczynski's identical twin brother Lech, who is now the Polish president, is also a member of the PiS. During his time as Mayor of Warsaw, he banned a gay rights parade but permitted a homophobic "parade of normality." Very odd people for modern, accepting, anti-discrimination Mr. Cameron to want to have anthing to do with, don't you think? You could almost end up suspecting that he's no different to the prejudiced Tories of old and all he has said in support of equal rights is no more than a cynical and deceitful ploy to attract more votes.

For all his undoubted and rapier-like wily skills as a politician and popularist David Cameron seems oddly unaware that, just like all of us, he will be judged by the company he keeps. Or is he a fascist in liberal clothing?

It looks as though Messrs. Cameron and Kirkhope may have shot themselves in the foot somewhat, however, because Mr. McMillan-Scott was voted in as an independent vice-president regardless, whereas Kaminski failed to win a post which leaves the Conservatives and Reformists as the only group without a vice-president. If he now chooses to leave them, the alliance will slide from being the fourth to the fifth largest group in the EU Parliament.

That Mr. McMillan-Scott has been successful while taking a stance opposed to the far-right and extremism is clear evidence that that type of politics does not enjoy the support that many proponents of similar ideology believe. This is very much the case in Britain as well as in Europe, where despite the success of Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons in the recent elections, the vast majority did not and will not vote for their party. If David Cameron is genuinely the figurehead of a newly inclusive and humane strain of Conservatism he will need to make a real effort to demonstrate the truth of what he says; because his actions are liable to create suspicion that he hasn't been straight with us and to give the impression that he's no more than an unpleasant racist, homophobic Tory of the type he's trying hard to convince us all is now extinct.

Let Mr. McMillan-Scott know of your support for his opposition to dangerous far-right extremists by e-mailing him: edward.mcmillan-scott@europarl.europa.eu