Brighton and Hove council leader Warren Morgan should quit, according to a political campaigner who was singled out by him for criticism.
Tony Greenstein, 63, said that he had been made the subject of a McCarthyite smear by Councillor Morgan.
Mr Greenstein said: “Warren Morgan should resign as leader of Brighton and Hove City Council for his lie that I support or ‘associate’ with holocaust denial.
“There is no truth whatsoever in Warren Morgan’s statement that ‘we have the prominent activist and suspended Labour Party member Tony Greenstein here, who indeed was present at the (Free Speech on Israel) fringe meeting where it was suggested that holocaust denial should be allowed. His expulsion, in my view, is long overdue.’
“This is a good example of how Labour’s false anti-semitism allegations have been manufactured over the past two years.
“No one at the Free Speech on Israel meeting last Monday (25 September) even mentioned holocaust denial, let alone suggested that it should be discussed. I would be completely opposed to such a discussion.
“In my 40-plus years involvement in the Palestine solidarity movement I have never known of such a discussion.
“At the packed Free Speech on Israel meeting where I spoke on Monday, nearly half of the 150-plus people in attendance were Jewish. Perhaps they too ‘associated’ with holocaust denial?
“It is not illegal to support holocaust denial in Britain, unlike in Germany and Austria. Many people, eg, Noam Chomsky support this because of the question of free speech.
“The most famous holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg, went so far as to say that we can even learn things from holocaust deniers. When you suppress something then people suspect that someone is trying to suppress the truth.
“Last year Warren Morgan alleged that there was spitting at the Labour Party AGM in Brighton. It was totally untrue but it achieved its purpose – the suspension of Brighton and Hove Labour Party and the annulment of the elections.
“Warren Morgan is completely unfit to be Labour leader in Brighton and Hove. He has no regard for the truth.
“Even if someone had mentioned holocaust denial at the meeting in question, why does that make me guilty?
“This is an excellent example of the McCarthyist technique of guilt by association.
“Socialists and democrats fought hard against the techniques of Joe McCarthy, who was himself an anti-semite.
“I have been an active anti-racist and anti-fascist throughout my life. I have been arrested and beaten up for opposing the fascists.
“I co-founded Brighton and Hove Anti-fascist Committee and was secretary of the Brighton and Hove Anti-Nazi League.
“I have myself been at the receiving end of this vile literature.
“This is not about Holocaust denial but defending the Israeli state. How else do you defend barbaric practices such as gaoling and shackling Palestinian children as young as 12 or the demolition of Palestinian villages in order to build Jewish towns and settlements other than by accusing Zionism’s opponents of anti-semitism?
“Israel today is a racist and repressive state which is attacking even Israeli human rights organisations such as B’Tselem.”
Tony Greenstein is not a campaigner, he is nothing but a constant source of hate speech ( I remember very well what he posted about me). In every other country he would be in prison for his hate speeches, and Labour is indeed in a poor state, if the cannot decide to kick this man out. Brighton and Hove News, do you really need to give hate speech a forum?
What are his hate speeches then? Tell us what he said.
Erm….yes he is a campaigner. Who are you to say he isn’t? What have you done in the fight against racism Michael?
Just what is Councillor Inkpin-Leissner talking about?
I, like many others, have spent my whole adult life fighting all forms of racism and discrimination. Anti-fascism has been at the core of my activity and resulted in me working with groups from the tories to Trotskyists.One of the most personal traumatic experiences I have ever had was visiting Sachsenhausen concentration camp which left indelible memories that give meaning to my politics more than 40 years later.
Peddling lies about anti-semitism as Warren Morgan has done damages the fight against the real fascists and anti-Semites so clearly present in Europe and the USA.
What worries me most is the possibility that Warren Morgan actually DOES understand that Zionism is political and that attacking its extremists and defending its victims is not attacking judaism or its practioners – Jews. Is not anti-semitism.
What worries me is the possibility that deliberate black propaganda is being peddled, by weaponising support for the Jews and opposing anti-semitism. That the Jews and support for Palestinians are being used in order to attack the Momentum takeover of the old Blairite remnants of the former Labour Party
Some evidence of Warren Morgan’s accusations would be nice. All I’ve heard is hearsay.
I have no idea who’s in the right here, but am I the only one who can detect the frustrated electricity between Warren and Tony?
Read Greensteins bile filled and anti Semitic blog. It’s all the evidence you need. When this “person” departs, on his grave stone will be his most common smear on people he doesn’t like… “Zio”.
Is this going to turn into an episode from ‘beyond the fringe’?
Why can’t people just grow up and stop inventing prejudices where (in most cases) none exist?
Some people dislike or distrust jews because they’re “different”.
Some people hate Germans because of a war that ended seven decades ago.
Some people hate the Irish because a tiny percentage of them resisted British rule by joining the IRA.
From their actions in recent decades, it’s clear that British politicians of all parties hate the English.
There are those who just hate, for any reason or none, and there are those who have unanswered questions about various events in history. That doesn’t mean they “hate” anyone or “deny” anything (though some do). In most cases, they just want to find the true facts to give them a better understanding of what really happened.
All this talk of “anti-” this or that and “denying” anything is just too infantile to go unchallenged. In war, people on all sides suffer terribly, but it’s over now, and has been for a long time. I wouldn’t deny that losses may have been greater percentage-wise for some groups over others, but what’s done is done, and it’s long past time to stop dwelling on the past and start, at long last, to move forward.
The early Catholic church committed terrible crimes against those who dared to oppose it in any way, but the past is the past.
It’s childish to attempt to live in the past, especially a past few of us experienced, like the evils of the black African slave trade, and the parallel trade in children snatched from the streets of Britain that nobody seems to talk about. It happened. It can’t be undone. It’s time to grow up, put the past behind us and move on.
The alternative is to remain in the school playground forever, endlessly squabbling over things that can’t be changed.
Free Palestine
Thank you everyone. Inkpin Leissner said absolutely nothing and the appropriately named Harry Potter said even less. I can only suggest he brushes up his skills next time when he talks to Muggles!
There is nothing between me and Mr Morgan, still less electricity. Morgan is on the far-Right of the Labour Party and I am on the far-left.
The issue is simple. It is an attempt to weaponise anti-Semitism in the fight against supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists and that means inventing fake anti-Semitism. The meeting I attended, which Morgan holds me reponsible for in Joe McCarthy fashion, was an anti-racist Free Speech on Israel event. It included a wholly Jewish speaking panel and no one advocated holocaust denial.
I detest holocaust denial and when I meet it on the Internet I challenge its proponents however I am opposed to banning it. In Austria and Germany where it is banned there are thriving neo-Nazi parties which in Germany’s case is the 3rd largest party in the Bundestag and in Austria nearly won the Presidential election.
Anti-semitism is to be fought but I notice Warren Morgan has nothing to say about Gypsies and Roma. They were also the victims of the holocaust in about the same proportion as European Jews. So were the Disabled. Morgan is only interested in Jews beause his real interest is in supporting Israel.
I was interested in what Steve Parry said because I too found my visit to Sachsenhausen, in the north of Berlin moving when I visited it about 15 years ago. It is a place that Pastor Niemoller was incarcerated in. Unlike Auschwitz, which has beem commercialised, Sachsenhausen which was the first of the concentration camps, was utterly chilling to visit – the place where they conducted live medical experiments, the gallows and the running track. Sachsenhausen was the testing bed for the development of the camp system in Nazi occupied Europe.
If Inkpin or Morgan were seriously interested in combatting racism then they would join me in opposing the apartheid regime in Israel. A regime which demolishes Bedouin villages in Israel’s Negev desert to build Jewish towns on top of them. It is a state that Europe’s far right parties including the German Alternative Party love. And they are right. What for fascists and racists is there not to like in Israel?