Author Archives: Searchlight Team

Under new management: Trump takes over Republican Party apparatus

By Leonard Zeskind

Donald Trump has effectively won the Republican Party nomination and is all over TV, the newspapers and the web. He fumes against immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country”and, when critics point out the similarity between his language choices and Hitler’s, he simply repeats himself.

He has been transforming the party into a personal instrument since before 6 January 2020, but the pace has picked up since he officially became the 2024 Republican candidate. He has set up close ally Michael Whatley and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chairs of the Republican Party. They have fired 60 senior staff of the Republican National Committee (RNC). A fundraising pact is also directing substantial segments of party funds raised to paying the millions of dollars in legal fees that Trump is incurring.

To date, he has been convicted in two civil cases: one brought against him in New York for civil fraud and inflating the value of his real estate when procuring loan; the other, for defamation through his incessant attacks on E Jean Carroll. He still faces four criminal cases.

Most Republicans are ignoring the bad news about their candidate. A recent poll found the number of people who believe Trump had committed crimes has dropped since the start of the year. Among Democrats, it is down by 7%, but 85% still think he is guilty. Among independents, the number has dropped by 9% to 57%. This compares with only 21% of Republicans believing him guilty. A YouGov poll found “most Republicans don’t know” about his convictions.

Trump used the primaries to purge the party of other views. In early March, an editorial piece in The New York Times said: “Republicans in Congress have already shown their willingness to set aside their own priorities as lawmakers at Mr. Trump’s direction.”

There is a small opposition within the party: one group, Republican Voters Against Trump, plans to spend $50 million dollars trying to convince voters not to vote for him. Lisa Murkowski, an independent-minded Republican Senator from Alaska, has announced she will not vote for Trump. Former Republican Congresswomen Liz Cheney from Wyoming, once a stalwart of the Republican Party, asked the US Supreme Court to nullify Trump’s request for immunity in the 6 January charges against him. Her father, Dick Cheney, was Vice-President to George W Bush in 2001–2009. She has taken to the stump, drawing large crowds to rally Republican opposition. The current Trump-led party, she says, has “abandoned the Constitution”. Nikki Haley, a Reagan-Republican who ran against Trump in the primaries, is yet to endorse him.

This shift towards Trump is not universal, but it does signal that Reagan-type conservatives have been largely replaced by even more vicious America First nationalists. This change is powered by the Make America Great Again movement, which is likely to outlive Trump and the current generation of high-profile acolytes.

While Trump popularised the MAGA slogan as part of his campaign to win in 2016, the movement itself is rooted in the Tea Party phenomenon, which has developed its own institutions and followers, and has its own trajectory.

After Trump’s changes at the RNC, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: “MAGA is now in control of the Republican Party!!” She has promoted anti-Semitic, racist conspiracy theories, including the notion that white people are undergoing a genocide.

America First nationalists look for fault in US global ambitions, but they are not anti-imperialist. They believe America’s weakness can be found in its immigrants and in “enemy” theories, such as “critical race theory”. They oppose reproductive rights and voting rights – in some cases, even women’s voting rights.

Demonstrating the MAGA movement’s reach, the Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 during the Nixon era as a Cold War outfit, has become a MAGA pillar. More recently, the America First Legal operation was founded in 2021 by Trump aide Stephen Millar. Its credentials include preventing a deal for oppressed Black farmers under the premise of fighting “anti-white bias”. Together, these institutions provide insight into the direction of Trumpist politics to come.

Leonard Zeskind is the founder of the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights, www.IREHR.org

This article was first published in the Spring 2024 issue of Searchlight

Cable Street: A new musical – Review by David Rosenberg

Cable Street : A new musical returns for it’s second run @Southwark Playhouse 6 Sept-10 Oct 2024 here

The Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End on 4 October 1936 was undoubtedly the most iconic confrontation with fascism in 1930s Britain, although people in Stockton, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol and Bermondsey will point to other serious clashes in that decade that should be commemorated and celebrated.

Cable Street, though, has a special claim, and not only because of the scale of the event with upward of 100,000 people on the streets, bloody clashes and scores of arrests. In October 1936, half of the entire national membership of Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) was concentrated in four east London branches that formed a horseshoe around the enclave of Aldgate/Whitechapel, where 60,000 Jews – a third of all London’s Jews – eked out a living in one square mile.

They were already facing growing anti-Semitic harassment and violence from Mosley’s Blackshirts. Then the government gave the go-ahead for a potential invasion of their streets by thousands of uniformed jackbooted fascists. A petition to the Home Secretary with nearly 100,000 signatures calling for Mosley’s march to be banned was ignored: thousands of police were mobilised to facilitate the fascists’ free speech and free movement.

By summer 1934, Mosley could boast 500 BUF branches around the UK and a cross-class membership of 40,000. His increasingly obsessive anti Semitism had struck a chord among rich and poor. But by 1936 the BUF had narrowed its sights strategically to a few key inner cities, where they sought to build a working-class power base.

In clipped upper-class tones, Mosley proclaimed in 1935: “We are now the patriotic party of the working class.” (Fun fact: on the day that Paul Nuttall, a former history lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, became UKIP’s leader in 2016, he told a press conference: “We are now the patriotic party of the working people.”)

Scepticism averted

The Battle of Cable Street has been marked in several ways, most permanently by the stunning mural that covers the side of the former St George’s Town Hall in Cable Street. Since 1986 – the 50th anniversary – the event has been celebrated with marches, rallies and local festivals, initially every 10 years, then from 2011 every five years.

I was very sceptical when I heard that a musical about Cable Street was being produced. I feared that the raw anger, the stark brutality and terror would be sanitised and softened into something comforting and light on the ear – and that the courage of those organising a political struggle of resistance would be collapsed into a “feelgood” reminder of how community spirit triumphs over evil.

I could not have been more mistaken. This was dynamic and gritty theatre. Actors played countless roles that changed instantly with slick changes of scene. Tim Gilvin’s well-crafted songs with powerful lyrics were conveyed with real conviction in diverse styles, old and modern. In the intimate space of Southwark Playhouse the action takes place at floor level, almost within touching distance of the audience, recreating an atmosphere of crisis felt so viscerally in the mid-1930s.

The precariousness of people’s economic lives was ever present. Alex Kanefsky’s script deftly demonstrated how easily the desperation felt by those suffering hardship could open their ears to the messages of populist right-wing demagogues who made promises they knew they could not fulfil. Those drawn into this new movement, as hopeful footsoldiers of a New Britain, sank deeper into a politics of hate.

At the heart of the drama is the dynamic between the East End’s two biggest minority groups that the BUF tried to manipulate. Mosley sought to win impoverished Irish Catholics against equally poor Jews, while a growing anti-fascist movement, in which the Communist Party played a leading role, worked to unite the two communities against the fascists. On 4 October 1936, many Irish people helped Jews to build barricades to repel the fascists.

The musical shows the somewhat uneasy coexistence of the two communities. The reality in the 1930s East End was that it was demarcated into distinct areas. Two thirds of Cable Street itself, to the west, was almost entirely Jewish, while to the east it was almost entirely Irish. The two rarely mixed. It was true, though, that some Irish people worked for small Jewish businesses.

In the play, Mairead, a young Irish woman attracted to communist ideas, works in a Jewish bakery. She becomes romantically involved with an unemployed Jewish boxer, Sammy Scheinberg. Mairaid’s more right-wing and prejudiced mother does not welcome her daughter’s politics. And Sammy’s growing political awareness brings him into conflict with his father’s more cautious approach, handed down from aloof middle-class Jewish community leaders far from the East End.

Two clever devices deftly filled in some of the period’s political detail. A group of street-corner newspaper sellers appear several times, articulating different stances on the latest political developments by opinion formers.

The other device – a present-day tour guide who describes the events of yesteryear – made me feel personally honoured. Since 2007, I have led tours of London’s radical history. One walk, Anti-Fascist Footprints, tells the story of the East End’s explosive encounter with 1930s fascism. On the tours I insist that the story did not end with Cable Street. On 4 October 1936, the anti-fascist victory across the ethnic/religious divide was then cemented through common struggles in housing in the following years. This was what achieved concrete gains for those working class communities, not the false promises of the fascists. This musical includes that crucial part of the story.

The show sold out its four-week run even before the first preview. No doubt many in the audience had relatives who had taken part in the 1930s struggles that demonstrated unity, solidarity and courageous defiance.

But the theme cannot help but strike a chord today in the dismal vacuum of mainstream politics: as people struggle to stay afloat economically in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, this once again provides ample opportunities for right wing populist movements.

David Rosenberg is the author of Battle for the East End and Rebel Footprints, and was convenor of the Cable Street 80 commemorations in 2016. For details of his walks, see www.eastendwalks.com

This article was first published in the Spring 2024 issue of Searchlight

Time for UKIP’s ‘Afghan veteran’ Chairman to set the record straight?

Fresh embarrassment for UKIP as their chairman, Ben Walker, is discovered not to have been a Petty Officer, as has been reported. Searchlight understands that ‘Barnacle’ Ben’s Royal Navy discharge paperwork shows him as having left the service not as a PO, but at the (lower) rank of LSA. Oops! Blushes all round.

For those all at sea with Navy ranks, PO is the equivalent of the Marines, Army and RAF rank of Sergeant. The rank of LSA was (it has since been replaced) Leading Stores Accountant. Don’t worry about the ‘SA’ part for the moment. Focus on the ‘L’. A Leading Seaman in any role is the equivalent of Corporal.

Still, it’s something, we suppose. He fought his way up to LSA from Stores Accountant 2nd and then 1st Class. So two promotions (equivalent of Private to Corporal) in six years or so. Gliding so smoothly through the ranks, he might have made it to Admiral – though he’d have been an Ancient Mariner indeed by the time he did.

Now, to be fair, we have yet to see any evidence that Walker has publicly described himself as a PO. But other people have made the inflated claim on his behalf. It was first spotted in September 2017 in ‘Team UKIP United’ press releases, where he was described as “Former Royal Navy Petty Officer Ben Walker”.

Team UKIP United was a ‘slate’ of four UKIP members in the Autumn 2017 internal party elections. All were originally wannabes for the role of Leader, but three – David Coburn, Marion Mason and Walker – dropped out and endorsed Home Affairs spokesperson Jane Collins through to election day.

Though he was the slate’s putative UKIP Chairman, Walker was very much the junior man in TUU. Collins and Coburn (the other half of the leader-deputy ticket) were both Members of the European Parliament. So, it is possible that the two officer grade candidates ran the whole show, while the other-ranks Walker was kept in the dark about matters like press releases, and didn’t know how he was being described. In the end, it probably didn’t matter very much. Like many another before it, the slate ended covered in guano, picking up a little over 4% of the vote.

But just a week or so after the election, on 6 October 2017, Barnacle Ben was quoted extensively by RT UK (often referred to as ‘Russia Today’) about his thoughts on the Royal Navy, which he compared unfavourably to “the fishing and rowing boats during our retreat from Dunkirk.” The Putin mouthpiece described Walker as “a petty officer who served in Afghanistan”.

This seems, to us, to be pushing the envelope too far in two fronts. As we have seen, Walker was not a petty officer. He was also not in Afghanistan. While he was aboard (counting potatoes or whatever) his ship, the destroyer HMS Southampton, it was deployed in the Gulf screening the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. This certainly counts as being part of the Afghanistan Campaign – and probably entitles him to the Campaign Medal – but IN Afghanistan kind of implies being face-to-face with the Taliban, and he wasn’t that.

He can’t even claim to have been IN Afghan territorial waters. Afghanistan is landlocked.

Now, again there is no way of knowing what Walker actually said to the RT reporter that he spoke to. It may have been “I was a Royal Navy Leading Seaman and served in the Afghanistan Campaign” and the reporter for some reason ‘bigged it up’. It would certainly be better than to admit that the man you are selling to the public as a “Naval expert” was about as high-ranking as Klinger in MASH.

But you know, even as we try our hardest to be fair to Walker, we do have a nagging worry. No, we’ve seen no evidence that Walker has actively claimed to have been a petty officer or to have been in Afghanistan. But we’ve equally seen no evidence that he has ever tried to correct any of the references to him that he knows as well as we do to be utter… er… barnacles.

Perhaps it’s time for him to at least set the record straight.

CPAC at 50: white nationalism • deportations • war on ‘wokeness’

By Devin Burghart

Previously billed as “the most influential gathering of conservatives in the world,” this year’s 50th-anniversary gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was a diminished version of the pre-Trump glory days. Corporate conservativism has been replaced with MAGA conspiracy-mongering and acceptance of white nationalism.

CPAC 2024, dubbed “Where Globalism Goes to Die”, cloaked a transnational MAGA message: the dangers of socialism, immigrants, trans people, election theft and “wokeness”. Collectively, CPAC speakers painted a picture of Biden’s America as a godless, deviant, dangerous, fentanyl-drenched hellscape.

The conference was mired in controversy even before the doors opened in suburban Washington, DC, on 19 February. The longtime chair of the organisation faces a sexual assault lawsuit and it is emerging board members and donors.

Instead of corporate sponsors of years past, this year the sponsors included long-ostracised far-right groups such as the John Birch Society. At the same time, CPAC’s core drifted off to the concert-like atmosphere of MAGA-friendly Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest.

The CPAC vibe was encapsulated in a line by white nationalist-friendly TV host Jack Posobiec: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan 6, but we will endeavour to get rid of it.” The event reflected the priorities of Trump and the MAGA movement.

White nationalism

CPAC has long been contested terrain for white nationalist mainstreamers. White nationalists such as Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes garnered attention by getting kicked out of CPAC, using it to establish their movement bona fides.

CPAC 2024 was different. This year, there was an unchallenged white nationalist presence of leaders such as Jared Taylor of American Renaissance and Ryan Sanchez, a former member of the violent Rise Above Movement.

Militarised politics

As the governor of Texas defied the US Supreme Court over immigration policy, and the far-right “Take our Border Back” convoy was drawing national attention, anti-immigrant politics took centre stage at CPAC 2024.

The highlight of the proceedings was an address from Trump himself. The ex-president repeatedly demonised immigrants: “They’re destroying our country.” He vowed to carry out the largest deportation in American history: “They’re killing our people. They’re killing our country. We have no choice.”

Former Senior Advisor to Trump, Stephen Miller, foreshadowed Trump’s speech earlier in the conference with the outlines of a militarised anti-immigration plan with proclamations that included “Seal the border. Deport all the illegals … establish large-scale staging grounds for removal flights … depute the National Guard … deploy the military to the southern border”.

Anti-wokeness

Just behind anti-immigrant messaging in prominence at CPAC 2024 was anti-trans bigotry labelled as an attack on the so-called “woke” agenda.

Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project warned of a “transgender leviathan”. According to Schilling, “this is about control and, ultimately, it’s about the destruction of gender and biological sex”. He called them “perverted”. Other speakers demanded the arrests of “woke” doctors.

Anti-abortion politics remained at CPAC this year. In a session entitled “Babies-R-Us”, Concerned Women for America leader Penny Nance told the crowd: “One of the most amazing moments in my entire life…was standing on the steps of the Supreme Court and hearing the words that there is no Constitutional right to abortion.”

Transnational nationalism

While national influence waned, CPAC spent much of the Trump era expanding internationally. Since 2017, CPAC has expanded to Australia, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Hungary and Brazil.

Nigel Farage and Santiago Abascal of Spanish nationalist party Vox (right and second right); the UK’s catastrophic former Prime Minister Liz Truss was spotted just behind them (credit: Vox España)

CPAC 2024 speakers reflected these transnational advancements. CPAC veteran and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage declared the international efforts “quite extraordinary”, noting that he had met officials from Hungary, Poland, Romania, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, France and Germany at CPAC. He closed with a call for “strong leaders”.

Tory MP Liz Truss, the UK’s shortest-lived prime minister, adopted the US rhetoric to blame the “deep state” for sabotaging her time as Prime Minister. She stressed to the half-empty CPAC room that conservatives needed to regain power to “save the West”.

Santiago Abascal, a founder of the Spanish nationalist party Vox, echoed others with an attack on socialism and universities: “‘They have declared war on common sense, truth, language and biology.” He concluded with a call to join forces: “We have a great battle ahead of us to make the West great again.”

This year’s CPAC also spotlighted growing ties to far rightists in Central and South America . Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, fixated on hidden forces working to undermine the United States, with a nod to international conspiracy theories about the deep state and worldwide cabals. Also at CPAC this year: Javier Milei, President of Argentina; and Eduardo Bolsonaro, Member of the Brazil Chamber of Deputies (and son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—who, like Trump, is facing scrutiny over an attempt to overthrow Brazil’s 2022 election).

Devin Burghart is President and Executive Director of the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights, www.IREHR.org

This article was first published in the Spring 2024 issue of Searchlight

Fascists openly praise Hitler in Budapest

By Martin Smith

Fascists gather in Budapest to mark so-called ‘Day of honour’

Each February hundreds of fascists, and neo-nazis from across Europe gather in Budapest in Hungary to commemorate the attempted breakout of German Nazi and Hungarian Arrow Cross troops from the Soviet Army’s siege of the Hungarian capital in 1945 (see below).

The nazis call this march the “Day of honour”. Their publicity called this year’s protest “Eruption: A celebration of Nazism.”

Around 600 assorted nazis attended: they included international groups from Bulgaria, France, Germany and Poland, as well as members of the notorious international neo-nazi group, Blood and Honour.

The march was awash with thugs carrying Nazi flags and wearing fascist insignia. The wearing of fascist insignia is a breach of Hungarian law, however, the police failed to arrest a single nazi.

Speakers at the protest openly praised Hitler and used anti-Semitism to whip up the crowd. One masked Hungarian speaker said: “Today, we remember our forefathers who fought to ensure Hungary was Jew free.” On a previous “Day of honour” protest, Matthias Deyda, from the German far right group Die Rechte told the crowd: “We have the same enemies today, like we did 75 years ago, the enemy isn’t named Muller or Mayer. No, our enemy is named Rothschild, Goldman, and Sachs.”

The “Day of honour” commemoration protest was followed by an overnight march (37 miles long) when several thousand people followed the route of the 1945 attempted Nazi breakout. Worryingly, this night march attracted significant numbers from outside the hard-core nazi ranks.

A European Parliamentary question (21/2/2024) noted: “The organisers of the demonstration, Homecoming Homeland Knowledge and Tourist Association (HHKTA) asked participants to wear black uniforms to ensure ‘a dignified appearance’ but, to respect the law, are banned from wearing masks, military uniforms, or symbols such as the Nazi swastika, and no Communist hammer and sickles.”

The HHKTA is a front for Légió Hungária (LH), a Hungarian far-right group. LH was founded in 2018, receiving international publicity when its supporters vandalised a Jewish community centre in Budapest after a protest commemorating the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

The group’s leader, Bela Incze, has been a key figure in the Hungarian far right since 2010. He was leader of the Hungarian section of Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement (HVIM), a paramilitary organisation, several members of which have been found guilty of carrying out acts of terrorism. In 2015, he worked as a parliamentary assistant to a member of the far-right Jobbik party, but his contract was terminated because of an assault he allegedly carried out against a police officer.

It was also revealed by the European Parliament that HHKTA had received national grants worth 70 million Hungarian forints.

This raises serious questions about Hungarian public funds being used to support nazi demonstrations. Coupled with the fact that Viktor Orbán’s right-wing populist Fidesz government refuses to ban this annual protest, this is further evidence that the Hungarian state is prepared to support the extreme right for its own ends.

Anti-fascist Ilaria Salis jailed

Shoes on the Danube Bank (left), Ilaria Salis (middle bottom) and fascist graffiti depicting her on a gibbet (top right)

The far-right celebration is opposed by anti-fascists such as Italian Ilaria Salis, currently held in a Hungarian jail. Fascist graffiti depicts her on a gibbet and calls for her death

The so-called “Day of honour” march on 10 February 2024 was opposed by over 300 anti-fascists who assembled close to the fascists and used drums, whistles and sirens to drown out the rally. The fascists responded by attacking the protestors and passers-by, two suffered minor injuries.

One of the main slogans on the counter protest was, “freedom for every anti-fascist” – it was a call to support a jailed Italian anti-fascist, Ilaria Salis.

The Hungarian police claim that a group of up to 15 members of Antifa had carried out attacks on two people believed to have attended the “Day of honour” march in February 2023. One German anti-fascist has been jailed by the Hungarian courts for three years after pleading guilty to the charges. A second defendant, Gabriele Marchesi, who had been detained in Italy under house arrest, was freed in Milan last month after an Italian appeals court rejected Hungary’s request to hand him over.

Ilaria Salis, a 39-year-old teacher, was arrested in Budapest in the aftermath of the demonstration and accused of being involved in the attack. She has been charged with three accounts of assault and belonging to an extreme left-wing organisation and has been in prison ever since. If found guilty, she could face up to 24 years in prison. There was an international outcry when she was led into court, handcuffed and her legs in chains, to attend her hearing in February 2024. The inference was clear to all, the Hungarian judiciary was presenting her as a danger to the public.

In a public statement Ilaria’s father, Roberto, stated: “My daughter has been detained by the Hungarian authorities for 13 months. She is innocent and completely rejects these charges. My daughter is being held in inhumane conditions and we are calling on the Hungarian government to put Ilaria under house arrest until her trial.”

Her lawyers have released a document that outlines the harsh conditions she faces. Her cell is infested with cockroaches, rats, and bugs. She has not been allowed to wash for days on end and there has been a lack of medical care. The human rights Hungarian Helsinki Committee said her case has “brought the state of Hungarian prisons to international attention” and noted that it was against European Union (EU) law and legal standards to regularly use restraints on defendants in court.

Roberto Salis’s call to allow his daughter to be put under house arrest, and in the event of being found guilty to serve her sentence in Italy, should be supported by all anti-fascists.

Some far-right groups on the social media site Telegram, are calling on their supporters to attack her. In Budapest. murals have gone up depicting her being lynched.

If that were not bad enough, the Hungarian government is using the Ilaria case as a bargaining chip with the Italian government. Ironically, it wants Giorgia Meloni, the fascist Italian Prime Minister, to oppose the EU’s attempts to further politically isolate Hungary.

Second, far-right Hungarian government officials and their supporters in the media are turning the case into a political show trial, one in which European anti-fascism is in the dock. The nazis are being normalised and portrayed as defenders of free speech, whereas anti-fascists are being labelled as the terrorists and extremists.

Ilaria’s fight for justice is every anti fascist’s fight.

For more information about the Free Ilaria Salis campaign go to: https://www.comitatoilariasalis.it/events

Slaughter of Jewish citizens in Budapest by Nazi collaborators

The “Day of honour” marchers celebrate the attempted Nazi break out of the “Siege of Budapest” in the last months of the Second World War.

The 50-day siege saw Soviet and Romanian troops encircle the city on 29 December 1944. Hitler was unable to resupply his forces trapped in Budapest and ordered the Nazis to fight to the last man.

Despite Hitler’s orders, over 28,000 German and Hungarian troops attempted a mass break out from the city on the night of 11 February. Only 600–700 German and Hungarian soldiers reached the main German lines.

When the city was liberated by the Soviet Army, it was discovered that, before they fled the city, the Nazi collaborators, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, had murdered over 15,000 Jewish people.

This is the “Day of honour” those nazis that march in Budapest every year wish to celebrate.

This article was first published in the Spring 2024 issue of Searchlight magazine