Some comments on the UCU list's David Duke link

I have just changed the title of this post, after a chat with Ms Flesh is Grass, because I think that it is important to be clear that Janna Delich is not the issue here. Delich may either be a racist and conspiracy theorist, or very ignorant. Either way, she's not that important. What is more important is that, supported/goaded by Mike Cushman, an experienced socialist trade unionist (who also makes a big deal of his Jewishness), she, or a UCU activist acting "in solidarity" her, attempted (successsfully - for the moment at least) to shut down Harry's Place, simply for exposing her.

A couple of other points worth stressing. The sane anti-Zionist left - and even some Indecent leftists I might think of as irredeemable - have come out in solidarity with Harry's Place. For example, Andy Newman, to his great credit, asked Phil (AVPS) to repost his statement of solidarity on the widely read Socialist Unity. Some of these anti-Zionists have expressed solidarity with a large pinch of salt - that they are doing so despite HP being "imperialist", a member of the "B52 left", etc. That's fair enough; HP - and especially its comment posters - are open to criticism on plenty of topics.

But some of the pinches of salt are pretty big. The Exile talks about HP's "smear machine", which I am evidently part of. Dave The Void's support is similarly qualified, e.g. by mentioning an anti-Jenna witchhunt and pointing out the undeniability of a Zionist lobby and . Richard Seymour ("Lenin") does not even go this far. His attitude is basically: fuck the Zionists, they've had it coming.

The SWP and its supporters made a big deal of Engage and its supporters using anti-racist law to "muzzle" pro-boycott voices in UCU; now they are using, or supporting the use of, libel laws actually (though thankfully not literalyl) muzzle anti-boycotters. And Britain's libel laws are among the worst examples of Britain's antiquated "bourgeois" (or, actually, semi-feudal) legal system.