The BBC has spent a great deal of time and effort in trying to create, as in invent, an awareness of the danger of the Far Right on the march again. It happily ignores the real and genuine and ever increasing threat from Islamism to the West and now the BBC bundles in those who vote for Brexit or Trump alongside the Far Right as it warns us of the threat from the new ‘populism’ that it tells us is so abhorrent.
The BBC of course does not consider those who seek to smash Capitalism and have put Corbyn in place as ‘populist’, nor those who riot, or ‘Occupy’, or use strikes as political weapons, or use bombs and bullets to force their views upon the UK. None of those are a problem for the BBC. In fact the BBC readily supports them, the terrorists, the economic wreckers, the rioters.
No, it is those who used their democratic vote to put in place someone who represents their views, views so long suppressed, demonised and mocked by the BBC, that are the threat.
It took one line on the Today programme to give the lie to the BBC’s, to Corbyn’s, to the Left’s narrative about where the real danger lies. Today had a guest speaker on who had survived the Nazis….
Zuzana Ruzickova survived three concentration camps during the Second World War, including Auschwitz, and went on to become one of the world’s leading harpsichordists. The BBC’s arts correspondent Rebecca Jones has been to Ms Rusickova’s home in Prague to meet her.
Zuzana Ruzzickova said that after having survived the Nazis it was unbelievable that she should then find herself in the grip of another such regime when the Communists took over in Czechoslovakia…a regime, like the Nazis…
‘So cruel, so stupid, so anti-semitic’
So familiar today.
The Nazis were, as we know, Socialists. Socialism has killed millions upon millions of people and has imposed misery and fear upon countless millions more.
It’s a funny thing but just as the BBC doesn’t recognise that history nor does Corbyn who just recently made exactly the same warnings about the Right, linking UKIP and Trump to the Far Right, as the BBC does…what perfect bed-fellows, the fellow travellers of the BBC and the mad mullah of Marxism….Corbyn makes no mention of the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia that imprisoned a nation for over four decades as he talks of the suffering of the Czechs….
It is fitting we are in Prague to discuss the challenges ahead for democracy in Europe.
This is a city which has been at the heart of the history of our continent and the convulsions of the past century – of war, revolution and the struggle for democracy and social justice.
We are in a city that also suffered the scourge of Nazi occupation and the horror of its genocidal crimes.
Today I will also be visiting the Terezin memorial which commemorates the victims of Nazi political and racial persecution in the Czech Republic, a permanent testimony to the threat posed by far right politics, anti-semitism and racist scapegoating.
On behalf of the British Labour party I will be paying tribute and remembering those who died, whose suffering is a reminder of the scars left by the far right, not just on this country or this continent, but on the whole world.
Today, we live in a different time with different pressures and opportunities.
But it is clear, across Europe and beyond there has been an alarming acceleration in the rise of the populist right.
Whether it be UKIP in Britain, Donald Trump in the United States, Jobbik in Hungary or Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.
As we head towards 2017 many people are worried about the direction that Europe is taking. Well now is time for us to turn the tide. To put the interests of working people front and centre stage and to fight for our values, of social justice, solidarity, equality and internationalism.
If we do that together, and break with the failed politics of the past, I am confident we can overcome the challenge from the populist right.
Could have been written by any journo at the BBC no?
Let’s have the truth from a Czech……
The years of totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia, from 1948 to 1989, were dark and dismal days, indeed. After the 1948 coup, Communist ideology permeated citizens’ lives and dominated all aspects of society. Czechoslovakia’s political decisions were dictated by the Soviet Union, and the country continued to rely on the Soviet Union even during the 1980s. Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc and a member of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon.
Those who did not comply with socialism were not only interrogated, intimidated and put under surveillance but also subject to house searches, during which the Secret Police invaded citizens’ privacy while searching for illegal literature.
During the beginning of the brutal and nightmarish 1950s, Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin directed the Czechoslovak Communists to carry out purges, and the nation held the largest show trials in Eastern Europe. Over a six-year period, from 1949 to 1954, the victims included military leaders, Catholics, Jews, democratic politicians, those with wartime connections with the West as well as high-ranking Communists. Almost 180 people were executed. There was no such thing as a fair trial as judges cooperated with the country’s leadership. The defendants, branded guilty before the trial began, even had to rehearse their testimonies in advance, as if it all were some cruel play performed on a stage instead of in a courtroom. (During the 1960s, some of the victims were rehabilitated.)