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Wednesday, 14 February 2024

Guido Fawked - Racist Mask Slips

When someone tells you who they are, as the saying goes, believe them the first time. The adage is certainly true of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, who have just done a racism so egregious that it has now been pulled. It is shocking but not surprising.

Look who sits in judgment on others ...

After all, that first time came back in the mists of time when Staines was a student in Hull, and a member of the Federation of Conservative Students. As the Guardian reported at the time, “A leader of the Federation of Conservative Students wrote to an organiser of the British National Party proposing joint ‘direct action’ to disrupt the meetings of leftwing students”.

For some reason, The Great Guido is most sensitive about this part of his Curriculum Vitae, and the episode never stays on his Wikipedia entry for long. But back to the Guardian: “The author of the letter is Mr Paul Delarie-Staines, the chairman of the federation’s 50-strong branch at the Humberside College of Higher Education. Mr Delarie-Staines, who is in his first year of a degree course in business information studies, wrote on May 22 to Mr Ian Walker, a BNP organiser in Hull”. So what did Staines tell the BNP?

I share a lot of your objectives.' These included a return to leadership and statesmanship, the abolition of the welfare state, and ‘the elimination of Communism in Britain - the mass media, the trade unions, and the schoolroom”. Paranoid like Joe McCarthy. And then there is the racism.

While Ed Miliband was Labour leader, the Fawkes blog published two virulently anti-Semitic attacks on him. Both posts are still live as I type. He also sympathised with disgraced former MP Aidan Burley after the latter decided not to contest his seat in 2015 over a Nazi-themed stag party.

More recently, the Fawkes blog started calling anti-Semite on people who demonstrably were not, with the odd sly deletion when rumbled. Playing both sides of the racism field just like their pals in our free and fearless press. The Great Guido was caught siding with actual Nazis against a Jewish Labour MP. And also got caught using the Nazi-era “Cultural Marxism” trope.

... and look where he's at

Which brings us to the incident which caused a panicked Labour leadership to suspend PPC Graham Jones, after the Fawkes blog told that herepeatedly referred to ‘f**king Israel’ and even ranted to Azhar Ali at the now infamous Lancashire meeting that Britons who volunteer to fight for the Israeli Defence Forces ‘should be locked up’ … He claimed - falsely - that it was illegal for Brits to fight for Israel”. Why is that “false”, O Great Guido?

Many British Jews with dual citizenship have gone to Israel to fight … The claim that it is unlawful is an unfounded smear”. But Jones didn’t say anything about dual nationals. This is a logic leap of the kind previously favoured by Staines’ pals at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance. Anyone who is not a dual national is breaking the law if they go off to fight for a foreign power.

So where’s the anti-Semitism there? Jones says “effing Israel”. Exasperation yes, anti-Semitism no. But Keir Starmer and his pals panicked. And rather too many in and around the right-wing press took the Fawkes rabble on trust. They may have chosen poorly, after Staines let the racism mask slip.

The thing that nobody says yet we all know, is that the Labour Party have chosen to seek unsophisticated Muslim community support for numerical reasons at the expense of sophisticated Jewish support” he claimed. And then deleted the effort, but not until after several observers had taken screen shots. That’s straight-up Islamophobia. And straight-up anti-Semitism.

Staines and his rabble are driving this pile-on against Labour. And that now deleted Tweet is where he’s at. He told you the first time that he was not only a straight-up racist, but also that he was prepared to play both sides of the racism field. Shame on the right-wing press for going along with him. And shame on Keir Starmer and the Labour leadership for not standing their ground.

And shame on anyone who believed the Fawkes rabble because they wanted to believe it, rather than it being factually correct. Same old, same old.


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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's the real face of toryism.

Always was, always will be.

Gulliver said...

The latest utterances from LFI (Luke the Nuke presumably) has indicated that AS and Anti-Zionism are now effectively the same thing and that anyone criticizing Israel is by definition an antisemite because they are also anti-Zionists.

Hence the problem for Starmer w.r.t. to the suspension of one of Ed Balls very dear friends ("He's not a Corbynite, he's not 'hard left' so he can't be an antisemite"), it will very soon be impossible for anyone in the party to utter anything vaguely sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians or even tangentially critical of Israel or Israeli policy towards Palestine because to do so makes you automatically antisemitic, irrespective of which "wing" of the party you think you're on, and whether or not you're a mate of Ed Balls.

It would be tragic were it not so funny.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...


The Israeli government, since its inception, has used decent people's knowledge of and sympathy for the historical injustices and barabarism visited on Jewish people over the centuries to leverage acceptance by institutions and organisations of a flawed and illogical definition of what constitutes anti-Semitism.

Their success in achieving this is worth as much as or more than any battlefield victory. Not only has it shut down debate and stifled any criticism of the bloody, expansionist, racist and now genocidal actions of successive Israeli governments, but, as we are now seeing close to home, it enables this foreign state, because of the gutless acquiescence of Western political 'leaders', to create an intellectual self-censorship which effectively blocks the democratic election of any potential critics of its current and future actions.

(PS Did someone say 'Sovereignty'?)

The BBB condenser. said...

The Israeli government cynically uses Holocaust and Pogrom guilt for its own evil purposes. This is very bad.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...


'Barab(b)arism'? That would be 'a tendency towards murder in pursuit of revolutionary action' according to some theologians' ideas of why the Golgotha Ultras' homeboy was up before the Beak that Easter.

'Barbarism' was what I meant.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...


Sorry about the big words and the nuance, BBBBC. Here's the correction post simplified for you :

Big word looks like barbarism but isn't. Looks like Barabbas too.
(You won't understand the rest so ask your carer).
BBB meant 'barbarism'.


You must have loved 'Get Brexit Done'!

Mark Hayhurst said...

I can't believe Bertie once complained that I was too verbose and then wrote that drivel.

The BBB condenser. said...

I'm sorry I didn't notice 'barbarism' has only two b letters, not three, but I know what I mean, I think, despite that, and anyway, more as it occurs to me later, or maybe tomorrow perhaps.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...


Good effort, BBBC. Your second sentence, with its commas and sub-clauses and hesitations, effectively conveys the tentativeness and confusions of someone more used to expressing herself in the language of AI.
Keep At It (nice 3 word monosyllabic slogan to inspire you).

Btw did your carer explain the Golgotha reference to you?

Mark, 'obtuse' is what I regularly call you, not 'verbose' And I would never call anyone 'too verbose' as it would be a pleonasm, as a man with an 'Oxbridge mind' really ought to know.
You probably say 'over-simplistic' too, don't you?

The BBB condenser. said...

Apologies for new usually unused word and repeat of three words slogan(s) but I was also busy trying to confuse Mark and other non intellectuals, people not like what I am when I post my stuff.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...


No need *trying* to confuse Mark, mate, his literal-mindedness, obtuseness and lack of any sign of a sense of humour all ensure that he'll confuse himself, with no outside assistance required.

Something to do with having an 'Oxbridge mind' I suppose.