Far right speaker at alternative economics conference
I was sent an email pretty much out of the blue advertising next weekends global vision 2000 conference on the economic meltdown and a sustainable future for humanity,
I had a click to find a number of interesting names.
In particular I noticed Alistair McConnachie. McConnachie has two faces, one is as an alternative economist, he heads the Bromsgrove group that promotes monetary reform and is highly active as a monetary reformer. These people argue that money is created essentially out of thin air by bankers, instead it could be created by the community.
Money could be printed to boost the economy and fund ecological reforms.
He has another face as a member of the far right. He is critical of a multi-cultural society, he opposes increased immigration, he believes in reducing the number of asylum seekers in Britain using the subtle term ‘crimmigrants’ to describe ‘illegal immigrants’. You can read his build the fences higher and throw them out approach here.
He was too right wing for many members of UKIP and after writing a letter on the holocaust, his membership was suspended. The Guardian claim he stated to one member of UKIP: ” I don’t accept that gas chambers were used to execute Jews for the simple fact there is no direct physical evidence to show that such gas chambers ever existed… there are no photographs or film of execution gas chambers… Alleged eyewitness accounts are revealed as false or highly exaggerated.”
I wrote back to the person who had emailed me the link to the economics conference suggesting that I did not wish to go to a conference with such a figure speaking and had a pretty shocking reply:
I myself have some doubts concerning at least some aspects of the holocaust myth. I think all free inquiry research should be encouraged on this and other matters, so long as no intention to lay new foundations of hatred, nor bait up Jews, nor find all and only Jews guilty for the sins of Zionism and debt-created money system, etc ….
I have seen a pretty damning interview with Alistair in the ITP’s newspaper Voice of St George…one far right site summarizes in the following terms:
The latest issue, #32, of The Voice of St George newspaper is out now - and it’s a cracking read!
There’s articles on Blair’s Britain, NWO ‘freedom of religion’, ususry and debt, movement meetings, the media — and a cracking in-depth interview with UKIP’s ex-Scotland organiser Alistair McConnachie on immigration, the holocaust, the ‘war on Terror’, green issues and much more!’
An American Monetary Reform websites makes some ambitious claims for McConnachie:
`I have an extensive chapter on monetary reform in my book Babylon and Beyond.
Monetary reformers do need to reject racism though or they will rightly continue to be challenged for linking up with the outside anti-semitic right.’
Wouldn’t this conference be a good place to get that message across and argue for your version of monetary reform? You should go and speak since you’ve been invited. They are clearly open and looking for answers. The left should get in there instead of abandoning them to the right.
Comment by Kirk — 7 December, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
Isn’t it funny how monetary reform - which must have some interesting ideas I would be keen to find out more about - is linked with the right wing?
The Greenshirts - or Social Credit Party - were an interwar movement with ideas on monetary reform but a penchant for paramilitary uniform. I had read they actually ran the state government in Alberta, Canada, but Wikipedia reveals that wasn’t quite the case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_Party_of_Great_Britain_and_Northern_Ireland
This may well be old hat for some, but it’s all new stuff for me.
Comment by Strategist — 7 December, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
well Strategist there is shift from monetary economics to banking conspiracies to anti-semitism with some of these people…not everybody concerned with this stuff is a racist but some are and the rest need to be more critical of the dangers of networking with the far right.
Comment by Derek Wall — 7 December, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
Howdy, Derek.
“there is shift from monetary economics to banking conspiracies to anti-semitism with some of these people”
Well indeed there seems to be, but it’s hardly an inevitable path!
I’m entirely supportive of you boycotting the Bromsgrove group if this is the kind of people they are. No problems with that. (BTW, what an amazing political hotbed Bromsgrove turns out to be… I’m sure Mark Anthony France’s Bromsgrove Respect posse would be out there to give you back up, should you decide to turn up!)
It’s just a shame if some interesting ideas get lost because of this unfortunate association with anti-semitism. I mean, you really don’t have to be an anti-semite to think bankers are a load of wankers, or shall we say “deserve to have their behaviour and role in society more closely scrutinised”.
I’ve just read the Wikipedia entry on social credit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit) and can’t say I grasped the theory on a first read (can’t say I got to first base on it really), but this quote stood out for me:
“In early years of the movement, Labour Party leadership resisted pressure from Trade unionists to implement Social Credit, as hierarchical views of Fabian socialism, state-socialism, economic growth and full employment, were incompatible with the National Dividend and abolishment of wage slavery suggested by Douglas. In an effort to discredit the Social Credit movement, one leading Fabian is said to have declared that he didn’t care whether Douglas was technically correct or not – they simply did not like his policy!”
Comment by Strategist — 7 December, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
I followed the link to the conference, where a picture of Lindsey German and John Rees flashed up on the screen!
I assume its an Islamist conference, one of the speakers is from ‘HT Britain’, is that Hizbut’ Tahir? I’m not hostile to working with Islamists against oppression but their own ideology is clearly flawed
Comment by Danny — 7 December, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
I think they had Lindsey and John at a previous conference where Alistair Mcconnachie was not speaking.
Comment by Derek Wall — 7 December, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
I have to say, this has a most definite ‘look and feel’ of a Hizb ut Tahrir production.
Hizb ut Tahrir - a bit like the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Moonies - has had a number of other ventures, over the past few years, with innocuous sounding names, to which ‘big names’ were invited to speak. Dialogue with Islam is one of theirs - although they deny it. New Civilisation - “Capitalism, Democracy, Islam - is another Hizb front.
They’re also big ones for punning. New Civilisation - get it? Likewise, “Global Vision”: the vision in question being
They’re not talking about a move towards democratic socialism, comrades.
The giveaway is that they have a Hizb speaker on all their platforms. This conference is no exception. You might think that unremarkable, and perhaps it is. But ask yourself this question. Can you think of any mainstream organisation that would consistently put a member of this marginal fascist party on its platform? Who else, but Hizb, would say, “you know what this conference really lacks - somebody who can talk with authority about the Caliphate”?
The purpose of these events is precisely to defeat Hizb’s marginalisation. By putting Hizb on a platform with mainstream figures, they hope to establish themselves as a mainstream organisation. This is what they do with endorsements like these:
It is also notable that the speakers include Daud Pidcock. Daud Pidcock has spoken at previous “Global Vision 2000″ events. He is the former leader of the Islamic Party of Britain, which seeks to establish an Islamic Republic in this country. His party favours the execution of homosexuals. His co-founder of the Islamic Party of Britain is Dr Mohammed “Dancing Cows” Naseem, who is both the major declared funder of RESPECT and a member of its National Council.
I’ll leave you to have fun with the other speakers at Global Vision 2000 events, although let’s pause for Bandung2 research activist, Dr Syed Mustafa Ali. Who or what is Bandung2? Apparently it is:
Good to know that.
Fascists aside, who else do you think has been duped into participating in this Hizb forum? Well, lookee here:
Derek, you say:
I don’t find that reply shocking at all: in the sense of being surprising, at least. In these times, fascists - particularly if they organise under the banner of an ‘Islamic think tank’ - quite often get a pass. Liberty co-organised a conference with the Muslim Brotherhood front group, the British Muslim Initiative. The Socialist Workers Party entered into an electoral alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, cheerlead for Hamas and Hezbollah, and toured a Jewish anti-semite, Gilad Atzmon, around the country. Therefore, of course, they were speakers at a previous Global Vision 2000 event.
I hope very much that this is an epiphany for you, and others on the Left who consider themselves anti-racists.
Nelsonian blindness won’t do any more.
Comment by David T — 8 December, 2008 @ 12:19 am
“I’m not hostile to working with Islamists against oppression but their own ideology is clearly flawed” -
And Danny, in a late entry, wins Understatement Of The Year.
Comment by Jonny Mac — 8 December, 2008 @ 9:11 am
#4… Strategist… The Bromsgrove Group… how weird. If Derek or anyone else gets an invite to there next meeting then of course the Bromsgrove Respect posse will mobilise it’s militia to ensure nothing untowards occurs.
#5 David T.. I doubt whether the link between the Bromsgrove Group and Gobal Vision 2000 will become a ‘Epithany’ to most of us, least of all muslims amongst us who are familar with the work of Global Vision 2000.
After the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Centre Gobal Vison said..
“Post 9/11 events have shown the global financial usury capitalist and socio-economic system to be in a deep crisis. The
new emergent global movement seeks to envision and implement another decentralised world where people and planet
come before profit.”
Most of us couldn’t argue with that statement but one aspect make some of us feel uncomfortable, the use of the term ‘usury’ which for a very long time has been linked by racists, the far right and anti-semites to’the Jews’ and their percieved historic role linked to ‘usury’
My instinct tells me that rather than engaging to much effort in either ‘boycotting’ or ‘attending’ such events…we should try and popularise eminently practical solutions to aspects of the Global Economic Crisis.. Like George Galloways proposals for a ‘Peoples Woolies’.
David T. says “Dr Mohammed “Dancing Cows” Naseem, who is both the major declared funder of RESPECT and a member of its National Council.”… this is not true.
Those of us who actually want to go about the business of building a democratic and socialist future should seek dialogue with everyone and anyone. I have met Mr Naseem and he seems like a nice elderly gentleman…. I have met loads of other nice elderly gentleman and who often hold ideas different to me…often wierd, disturbing or racist… usually I show ‘respect’ and seek to challenge those ideas I disagree with and seek agreement where possible.
John Rees and the SWP have made many errors in recent years… however, attempting to have a dialogue with radical islamic groups or organisations was not an error.
With the Bank of England interest rate falling to 2 per cent… and with everyone pressing for this rate to be passed on… with Obama promising the complete replacement of the USA’s infrastructure via massive public works programmes we are heading in new direction economically.
Making the transition to a socialised, decentralised, sustainable economy democratically controlled by communities via direct participatory democracy were money is used as an accountancy tool and there is no ‘interest’ involved…. this transition is feasable in our lifetime. We should talk to all those coming closer to this vision of an economic future.
Comment by mark anthony france — 8 December, 2008 @ 9:35 am
David T. says “Dr Mohammed “Dancing Cows” Naseem, who is both the major declared funder of RESPECT and a member of its National Council.”… this is not true.
What isn’t true? Dr Mohammed Naseem is the major declared donor to RESPECT. Just look here:
http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regdpoliticalparties.cfm?ec=%7Bts%20%272008%2D12%2D08%2009%3A46%3A28%27%7D
Dr Naseem was the Respect parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Perry Barr:
http://www.respectcoalition.org/elect/cand.php
You’re right though - Dr Naseem has stepped down from Respect’s National Council
http://www.respectrenewal.org/content/view/395/
He was on it until October though, wasn’t he?
http://www.respectrenewal.org/content/view/44/11/
So, let’s get this straight. Your own National Council - the body YOU sit on - included a man who believes that the 7/7 Terrorists’ videoed martyrdom confession was some sort of trick, and founded a party which seeks to create an Islamic State in which gay men will be executed…
… and your response is
he seems like a nice elderly gentleman…. I have met loads of other nice elderly gentleman and who often hold ideas different to me…often wierd, disturbing or racist… usually I show ‘respect’ and seek to challenge those ideas I disagree with and seek agreement where possible.
Challenge them?
This guy founded RESPECT, funded it, and is one of the major players in it, nationally and certainly in the Birmingham party!!
John Rees and the SWP have made many errors in recent years… however, attempting to have a dialogue with radical islamic groups or organisations was not an error.
You didn’t have a “dialoge” mate.
Islamist groups like this have used you as cover.
You’re their alibi.
So that whem people point out that they’re millenialist fascists and genocidal racists, they’re able to say:
“No we’re not! We’re part of an exciting new dialogue within progressive politics”.
You give cover to fascists. That’s the only thing that RESPECT has achieved.
Comment by David T — 8 December, 2008 @ 9:54 am
It would be nice if David T could flag up Alistair on his various sites if he has not done so.
Comment by Derek Wall — 8 December, 2008 @ 10:06 am
I’m undecided on the merits of social credit as a policy, but many of its suporters are absolute poison from Major Douglas to the present day. Bad people can have good ideas though!
#11 - I think you are on dangerous territory here, whatever you think on the Israel/Palestine question (I’m certainly not in agreement with David T here)linking today’s problems in the area with the holocaust, which certainly did happen isn’t helpful and undermines those challenging Israeli policy, labelling them at best as cranks and at worst as out and out anti-semites. I understand this isn’t what you are saying, but its always dangerous territory. We should not belittle the terrible events of the Shoah, but need also to recognise other holocausts that have blighted history, the Roma and Sinti Porajmos is a case in point.
Comment by Green Socialist — 8 December, 2008 @ 10:29 am
#12
I deleted the comment #11 that you are responding to.
I may be inconsistent with my comments policy, but out and out holocaust denial was too much for me at this time of the morning.
Comment by Andy Newman — 8 December, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Thanks Andy, I would have probably done the same!
Comment by Green Socialist — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:03 am
It would be nice if David T could flag up Alistair on his various sites if he has not done so.
Um… I’m not sure what this means.
I think you are on dangerous territory here, whatever you think on the Israel/Palestine question (I’m certainly not in agreement with David T here)linking today’s problems in the area with the holocaust, which certainly did happen isn’t helpful and undermines those challenging Israeli policy, labelling them at best as cranks and at worst as out and out anti-semites.
Yeah, but haven’t you noticed that at least SOME of the people who are “challenging Israeli policy”, as you put it, are also cranks and anti-semites.
It is to be expected, isn’t it? Which is why you need to guard against it.
There are just some subjects like this. If you’re arguing about Islamism, for example, you have to be very very alert to the fact that SOME of the people who will be attracted to your arguments will be racists and anti-Muslim bigots.
We have to be very alert to this. I do my best. But you guys are all over the place. I mean, you have actually formed electoral and campaigning alliances with people who publish and circulate openly antisemitic material, and justify it on religious grounds.
The Greens even had one of these guys as a candidate, and he remained in place until we pointed it out. But you should be alert to this yourself.
As far as RESPECT and the SWP concerned, it is only when these guys racism becomes absolutely impossible to explain away, that you quietly back away from them - as you did with Gilad Atzmon.
I understand this isn’t what you are saying, but its always dangerous territory. We should not belittle the terrible events of the Shoah, but need also to recognise other holocausts that have blighted history, the Roma and Sinti Porajmos is a case in point.
Er….
Who exactly is NOT recognising “other holocausts that have blighted history”
Why are you raising this argument? What has it to do with anything you, or anybody else has said.
This is a dog whistle, isn’t it?
What you’d like to say is “Stop going on about neo-Nazi and Islamist antisemites, won’t you!!!”
But you can’t, so instead you say
“Let us remember the Sinti”
Comment by David T — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:26 am
David, I was responding to a post that has been deleted, that was close to holocaust denial.
I don’t disagree with what you have written and I certainly don’t think we should
Stop going on about neo-Nazi and Islamist antisemites, I was pointing out it is a mistake to do so.
Andy quite rightly removed the article I was responding to.
Comment by Green Socialist — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:34 am
I’m glad that Derek is aware of the nature of Social Credit and Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879–1952 - I too checked again on Wikipedia, though I thought most of us knew about it aleady).
The missing link between it and fascism is that some (not all) believers in this stand against the ‘Money Power’, and guess what group is said to hold that that power….
There is another complex of ideas which have been connected with social credit, which is pretty dubious, not far-right necessariy (although AK.Chesterton, author of the New Unhappy Lords the major post-war anti-semitic tract came from it, as did his anti-semitic brother, GK, brilliant writer though he was),*Distributionism*. This was social credit plus decentralisation, and localism(see: Belloc’s The Servile State, and various three acres and a cow Colbert stuff).
I wonder what Derek thinks of that?
NB: I have been blogging on the paralysing effects of localism and nationalist attempts to ‘break up’ Britain and their influence on the left and Red Pepper.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:34 am
Green Socialist - sorry for having misread your post.
I apologise.
Comment by David T — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:41 am
David,
No Problem, I can see that without reading what was removed why you said what you said.
Comment by Green Socialist — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:46 am
Thats v kind of you.
Comment by David T — 8 December, 2008 @ 11:52 am
#17 Andrew, people still seem to be focusing on the associations of social credit theory with other dubious or racist ideas, rather than whether or not there is anything in the social credit economic ideas themselves.
Now I can’t really participate in a debate on it, because I haven’t really grasped what the social credit idea is. So I need to decide whether to invest the time & effort in reading up about it, as I have with Henry George’s land value tax/resource rental ideas.
And so I’d be interested to know on what grounds Marxists or today’s other progressives dismiss it as unworthy of consideration, if that indeed is what they do.
Or maybe I just need to ask Santa for a copy of Derek’s “Babylon & Beyond”?
Comment by Strategist — 8 December, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
Just found an article by Derek Wall “Social Credit: the ecosocialism of fools” at http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/Social+Credit%2C+Ecosocialism+of+Fools%2C+Derek+Wall%2C+Capitalism+Nature+Socialism which partly answers my own question.
Comment by Strategist — 8 December, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
The article is more on the far right stuff but does have a bit of the economic analysis
yes I have clocked the distributists….one of the ideologies that feeds into third positionism, I do feel that Chesterton was not any where as suspect as social credit founder Major Douglas.
In fact I have been following far right ecologists since the National Front created greenwave in the late 1980s with the help of that van Helsing of the Green Party Larry O Hara…
Comment by Derek Wall — 8 December, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
There is a chap called Troy Southgate who is very into this sort of thing
Comment by David T — 8 December, 2008 @ 2:49 pm
David T: “I have to say, this has a most definite ‘look and feel’ of a Hizb ut Tahrir production.”
Well, what can you expect from an idiot who thinks the Islamic Forum Europe is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and that Osama Saeed is a fascist? You might ask - how can someone so hostile to Islamism know so little about it? Unless of course their hostility is based on ignorant bigotry.
There’s a speaker from HT on the platform, but that’s about the limits of their involvement.
Global Vision 2000 is basically run by one individual and it’s all a bit cranky. In 2006, for example, it backed a conference entitled “Was 9/11 an Inside Job?” (”Global Vision 2000 is pleased to promote and announce the unique opportunity to learn from and meet thought leaders of the 9/11 Truth movement from both sides of the Atlantic”)
The conference has a really bizarre line-up. In addition to HT, it includes Irfan al-Alawi, from Stephen Schwartz’s neocon Centre for Islamic Pluralism. Another speaker, Muhammad Rafeeq, is into Jewish conspiracy theories.
Personally I think the left should leave it well alone.
Comment by Anon — 8 December, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
I’m a little less dismissive of Social Credit as a theory than Derek Wall, but it certainly seems to attract the far right, as well as some perfectly decent individuals. Quoting Derek’s Bablyon and Beyond, Keynes (no socialist of course) found Social Credit an idea “So Simple it repels the mind.” Although not the panacea some advocates of the theory claim, I wouldn’t be opposed to it if I could be sure that it was shorn completely of its Anti-Semitic heritage (not sure it can be, but its up to its advocates to do so.)
Troy Southgate is one of the most interesting (and repulsive) people on the far Right - he was involved with the eco primitivist “Green Anarchist” and then something called National Anarchism (what National Socialism is to Socialism!)I think he was also has a conviction for beating up an RCP member on Brighton Beach.
Agreed the left should leave this conference alone!
Comment by Green Socialist — 8 December, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
When posting here, David T adopts the attitude “hey you guys - I know you’re okay, but watch out for nasty people pretending to be socialists”. When playing to a Labour-Right/neocon audience on his own blog, he all but accuses everyone on the left of being a card-carrying ‘Islamofasicst’.
Comment by Musa — 8 December, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
Troy Southgate was not involved with Green Anarchist they mobilised against but the former Green Anarchist editor Richard Hunt who they kicked out worked with him in Alternative Green.
I think the simple quote is from Galbraith
Yep Keynes was a bigger fan of Major Douglas than he was of Marx and from socially constructed scarcity to national income, Douglas had some interesting ideas and yes money is a construct too…however he was also a loony anti-semite!
Comment by Derek Wall — 8 December, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
#8 Thanks, like most people I do generally prefer understatement to escalating insults and denunciations.
Perhaps I should have added we have to make a judgement on when/which Islamist conferences its acceptable to attend, and when a wide berth is required, as in this case.
Comment by Danny — 8 December, 2008 @ 5:08 pm
There’s nothing inherently antisemitic in the economic/financial theories of Social Credit. As far as I can tell, it’s a variation on underconsumptionism, with some strange (and probably flawed) algebra thrown in to ‘prove’ how the crisis of our time is caused by not enough money chasing too many goods.
But CH Douglas was an antisemite, as were/are many Social Crediters. Not all, it must be said - especially (for some reason) in Australia and New Zealand, where Social Credit in the 20s and early 30s got a reasonable hearing in those countries’ respective Labour parties (in the same way that Georgism had a solid foothold).
The problem with Social Credit organisations - including the Secretariat in Britain - is that even those among its ranks who aren’t antisemites can’t honestly come to terms with their movement’s grubby history, and come up with these tortured explanations about how Douglas was “anti-Judaic” (’Judaic’ being a synonym for centralisation) rather than antisemitic. The fact that most leading Social Crediters around the globe since WWII have been antisemites and racists seems to pass them by.
There may well be something to aspects of Douglas’s economic theories, but I suspect that orthodox Social Crediters (even the non-antisemitic ones) are not going to be able to sell the product until Douglas’s poisonous legacy is confronted and acknowledged.
Comment by Another Dave — 8 December, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Thanks for this Derek. We have a strong Social Credit tradition in NZ. Not everyone who subscribes to Douglasite ideas is anti-semitic - in fact most are not - but there is unfortunately a vein of anti-semitism in the tradition. It still sometimes emerges today, occasionally:
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2008/10/incomprehensible-or-anti-semitic.html
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-is-radio-live-spreading-anti.html
Comment by Maps — 8 December, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
“I myself have some doubts concerning at least some aspects of the holocaust myth. I think all free inquiry research should be encouraged on this and other matters, so long as no intention to lay new foundations of hatred, nor bait up Jews, nor find all and only Jews guilty for the sins of Zionism and debt-created money system, etc ….”
Did he then go on to say, “Excuse me, but I must now return to editing Indymedia UK”?
Comment by goodwin sands — 9 December, 2008 @ 5:41 am
Alistair McConnachie has been assisting the British National Party in Scotland for years. He has compiled various pieces of literature, from activism to political statistics. The BNP in Scotland owe a big thanks to Alistair. THANKS.
Comment by Joe Burns — 26 April, 2010 @ 2:56 am