25 April 2015

Tower Hamlets: how a dictatorship flourished in the East End

In London’s East End, where so many battles against real fascism were fought in the 20th century, “anti-racism” has become little more than a swindle. Far from being just or noble, it was a pretext to bribe journalists, pay off accomplices and frighten poor immigrants into supporting a crooked demagogue, who despised his “own” people so much he would not even grant them the right to participate in an honest election.

The formal reasons judge Richard Mawrey gave for disqualifying Lutfur Rahman from office last week are bad enough.

The now ex-mayor of Tower Hamlets used fake “ghost” voters to win elections and public funds to buy votes. He offered grants to groups “that hadn’t even applied for them”. He took money that was meant to be going to the Alzheimer’s Society and poor wards that needed all the help they could get. He ran a “ruthless and dishonest” campaign to convince the electorate that John Biggs, his Labour rival for mayor, was a racist. [853 comments]

[TOP RATED COMMENT 410 votes] Well said.

And The Guardian was in the vanguard of his supporters, echoing the shrieks of 'racist' at anyone who dared to voice concern about this ghastly man and his acolytes.

Shame on them all.

[2ND 366] Surely identity politics over class issues could never come back to bite us? Oh wait it's a fucking trainwreck of an ideology, based on post-modern garbage, and sold to us by people in this very paper.

Thanks for one person at least not being afraid to tackle an issue without getting tarred with the 'whitesplaining' or other silencing tactics.

[3RD 297] In The Guardian of 30th May 2014 there was an article saying he was completely innocent.

[4TH 288] Spot on as always Nick.

Its odd isn't it that despite the Guardian's wall to wall coverage of Nigel Farage over the last year the same paper has been almost silent about this story. Wonder why that is?

[5TH 272] I'm not talking about 'corruption', I'm talking about being allowed to talk about it, or wages, and not be told to shut up because of skin colour or gender, or some twaddle about the Patriarchy, a complete fairy story made by second rate Academics, peddled by fools in this paper, and about as much use to the people as a baseball bat to fix a broken watch.

[6TH 258] And his campaign was run by the Islamist Islamic forum For Europe, led by Azad Ali who's also a Vice Chairman of Unite Against Fascism, which opposes 'islamophobes'.

The media has largely downplayed the entryist Islamism central to Rahman's rise to power. [Guardian Cif] Read more