anti-Semitism – In Mundo per oculos meos

John Mann and his attempts to continue the anti-Semitism smear campaign, this time against left wing independent media

The post will be in two parts. This first part is about John Mann and his announcement that he intends to target left wing independent media due to alleged anti-Semitism. The second part will be about the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), their history and their continued attempt to smear left wing activists and media as anti-Semitic.

John Mann

John Mann was Labour MP for Bassetlaw from the general election of 2001 until 28th October 2019. He announced he would not stand in the next general election on the 7th September 2019 after Theresa May nominated him for a ‘life peerage’ and entry into the House of Lords in her resignation honours list. He announced that he would become the government’s ‘anti-Semitism tsar’ and although he is no longer affiliated with any political party he remains a member of the Labour party. He was awarded the epithet Baron but in my opinion he has done nothing to earn any respectable title so I will not honour him by calling him by such.

Why the former PM would nominate him is anybody’s guess but after reading what he is planning to do I can only surmise that it was intended for him to be an instrument in the downfall of independent media, in particular left wing independent media. He has named his first target as the Canary. He has declared that the Canary is anti-Semitic which would be laughable if it were not a serious defamation. The Canary is owned by Canary Media Ltd which is owned entirely by its leadership team. One member of this team is Kerry-anne Mendoza, who is Editor-in-Chief of the Canary. Kerry co-founded the Canary along with her wife Nancy, who is also a member of the leadership team of Canary Media and Director of Communications and Membership at the Canary. Nancy is a Sephardi Jew, who originate from Sepharad, Spain or Portugal, which makes Mann’s claims that the Canary is anti-Semitic rather ridiculous as well as defamatory and libellous.

What is even more laughable is the fact that John Mann himself was interviewed by the police in 2016 with regard to his publication of a leaflet which targeted a group of people that the nazis themselves targeted and tried to eliminate … I am referring to the Roma Gypsy or traveller population. Mann had written a booklet called ‘The Bassetlaw anti-social behaviour handbook’, part of this handbook specifically targeted Roma Gypsies/travellers by listing them among various types of ‘social evils’. A family of Gypsies had complained to the police about the handbook and the police investigated it as a ‘hate incident’. According to the police they offered advice to Mann about not naming a specific group of people but to rather talk about ‘unauthorised encampments’. They took no further action.

A young Gypsy activist was so upset about the handbook that he wrote a long and impassioned letter about it, and the bullying he and his family received on a regular basis due to their ethnicity, to Jeremy Corbyn. The family stated that Corbyn responded to them in a very kind manner and passed the matter to the Chief Whip, who is responsible for party discipline. The Whip decided that no action would be taken against Mann and told the family to report the matter to the police, which they did. Now, I have no idea about how anybody else feels about the Whip’s lack of action, but on finding out about it I was incensed. The Whip not only let the family down but in my opinion he/she let the Labour party down. There were two Chief Whips in 2016, Rosie Winterton, MP for Doncaster Central, who was sacked by Corbyn and replaced by Nick Brown MP for Newcastle East, it is not made clear who the Whip was that took no action.

This young activist also sent a copy of the link to the handbook to the Travellers Times magazine who published an article on it. In response to the article Mann wrote an email to the family and to the Travellers Times. The tone of the email was not one of apology or reconciliation and contained facts that were not true or accurate. The activist stated in his letter to Corbyn that he did not feel ‘confident enough to contact John Mann Mp’ directly as he felt that John Mann Mp ‘was attempting to bully me’ by talking about his family to a third party. John Mann was , and remains to this day, completely unrepentant about the distress and upset his handbook caused the young activist, his family and the Roma Gypsy/traveller community as a whole. In my eyes this makes him absolutely no loss to the Labour party who are and always have been anti-racist. It also makes John Mann a huge hypocrite in my opinion. What gives him the right to accuse an independent news site such as the Canary with anti-Semitism when he himself is guilty of racism. Of course this last bit is my opinion and I am not speaking for anybody else, but the rest all comes from articles published by independent media.

Oh and on a last note it may interest Mann to know that the Canary remains completely independent of any advertisers, funders, companies, political organisations, or political parties. In April 2019, The Canary became one of the first UK media outlets to be awarded a green trust mark for news credibility and transparency from monitoring and rating site Newsguard. You can read their in-depth report on the Canary.

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Gn asherjew and Fake Anti-Semitism Claims on Facebook

Gnasherjew, LAAS, Sussex Friends of Israel and their latest tool – “Labour Anti-Semitism Map

Why? (The colonisation of Palestine by Israel and the constant screams of ‘anti-semitism’)

Rachel Riley, Endemol Shine UK and that T-Shirt

Anti-Semitism from one of Labour’s Loudest Anti-Semitism Accusers

A Legacy Squandered

How Did Labour Come To This?

Chief Rabbi, Mainstream Media and the smears against Jeremy Corbyn (Guest post by Peter Gregson) Chairperson of LAZIR)

Are they really this incompetent?

The Damage done by False AntiSemitism Claims and the Weaponisation of the Holocaust

Way Past Time to Hold China to Account

The Rise in Islamophobia

Anti-semitism campaign continues part two

Labour Is Now Officially The Puppet of the Israel Lobby

British Actor Spearheads Twitter Dogpiling on Twitter User

The Lies and Incompetence Continue

Smearmongers Attack Professor David Miller

You may be familiar with Gnasherjew, the group of ex-Labour Party members, who took it upon themselves to troll and harass left wing Labour party members and supporters on Twitter. They particularly targeted left wing Corbyn supporters, left wing Jews and those who dared criticise Israel on the social network platform. Everybody who dared criticise Israel was immediately labelled anti-Semitic by Gnasherjew who would start on a sustained programme of harassment and trolling, even going to the lengths of calling on the Labour party to expel these targeted Twitter users. Dorset Eye and The Canary both did articles on this harassment to bring people’s attention to what was going on. Twitter blocked the Canary’s article but the article on the Dorset Eye page was available to all.

Here is a quick bit of background information on Gnasherjew. Gnasherjew is the idea of notorious right wing, pro-Israel supporter John Arnott who pens a particularly poisonous blog called ‘Jew Knows’. Once people caught on to what he and his followers were up to there was a mass blocking of the members of Gnasherjew, and their followers, on Twitter so they found themselves with fewer targets to harass. They had a try at complaining to Twitter about being blocked by people they had had no interaction with, perhaps not realising that this is a democracy and people are entitled to block whoever they like. They then expanded their campaign to include Facebook.

Once on Facebook Arnott, or one of the other members of Gnasherjew, created a page ingeniously titled ‘Gnasherjew’ and started targeting people on Facebook. They have created a list of the top 50 ‘anti-Semitic’ Labour party members/supporters for everybody to see and post comments on. I found out about this because I was one of the targets. I had been targeted on Twitter but blocked them all and they somehow found me on Facebook and carried on. I reported the post to Facebook but they said it did not go against their standards, this was despite the fact that it was a cobbled together collage of things I supposedly posted on Twitter and Facebook which made me look racist and anti-Semitic … I am neither of these things and never have been. My only crime is I support Corbyn and I support Palestine against the Israeli occupation and illegal settlements.

The post was eventually taken down but only after a friend also reported it to Facebook. The list is comprised of Labour councillors, party members, party branch officials and even Ali Milani who is the Labour candidate fighting for Boris Johnson’s seat in the General Election. Go and take a look at their page, see if you are on there and make a complaint. The group of people that seem to have received the worst trolling are Jewish people who are pro-Corbyn, or criticise Israel. I would call the treatment they receive, at the hands of these reprobates who claim to be fighting anti-Semitism, at the very least anti-Semitic. If this was a group of pro-Palestine supporters doing this, then neither Facebook or Twitter would have a problem banning them from their platforms, but in this case it seems to be a case of one rule for them and another for everybody else. Whilst this bias continues, people like Arnott and the rest of Gnasherjew will think they have the right to continue posting libellous posts which could seriously damage reputations and maybe even cause people to lose jobs, friendships and more. The only way to stop this is for all of us who have been targeted by this group of people and others like them to stand up and say enough is enough. They do not have the right to spread lies and misinformation about us or anybody else. They go out of their way to make people’s lives miserable, on Twitter they use what is called ‘dog piling’ which means that they all attack a target at the same time. This is targeted harassment and they get away with it time after time because of who they are and who they support.

I am not a victim of Gnasherjew I am a person they chose to libel and spread misinformation about. They tried to get me expelled from the Labour Party. They tried to make me miserable and to make people dislike me. It did not work. But it will have worked on others. Do not let them make it work on you or your friends. Stand up to them and stand up to Twitter and Facebook and demand equal treatment for all. It is bad enough seeing the social media bias with regards to Israel and Palestine; and the mainstream media bias with regards to Tories and Labour. We have to make sure that the bias is not allowed to influence how some social media users are censured and others not.

I originally wrote this on August 1st 2019 and have since updated it due to the General Election. Thanks to Sally Eason and Labour Left Voice for the information about John Arnott.