7 Dec 2008

Far right speaker at alternative economics conference


I was sent an email pretty much out of the blue advertising next weekends global vision 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 a green 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!'


I think it is dangerous for those in the green movement and the left to network with people like McConnachie.

Likewise while I am critical of social credit/monetary reform, it is not an economic panacea, nonetheless it is not absolute rubbish either.

The pretty mainstream or even neo-liberal commentator Samuel Brittan has defended the idea of 'printing money' as a way out of crisis. I think there is some limited scope for doing so, obviously take it too far and the currency crashes, the IMF march in and chaos results. Equally if banks simply produced cash out of nothing, they would not be in crisis at present...they could just manufacture some more money.

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.

Social credit founder Major Douglas was an out and out anti-semite...nasty stuff and I regularly get attacked for pointing this out.


the paper, by Derek Wall, currently Principal Speaker of the Green Party, entitled “Social Credit: The Ecosocialism of Fools,” was a collection of untruths juxtaposed with emotive non-sequiturs. The gist of the paper was that Douglas and all social crediters were anti-Semitic. Therefore greens and all respectable academics should drop the subject if they did not want to blight their careers by being labeled ‘anti-Semitic’. With great difficulty I persuaded Mary Mellor to continue with the book, promising that I would research the allegations fully. The quality of the Wall paper was such that I felt certain it would never appear in a respectable journal. I was wrong. For whatever reasons, the editorial board of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism published the paper, under the same title, in September 2003 (Vol. 14, No. 3, pages 99-122).


If you can get to a copy of CNS you can judge whether my paper is a pile of shit or not....or shorn of references, there is a edited version here.

In it I note:


The British League of Rights established Bloomfield Books, which has promoted Douglas’s books along with Holocaust revisionist titles, the Protocols, a massive range of populist conspiracy texts and even Mein Kampf. The League of Rights also encourages supporters to subscribe to Spotlight. The Bromsgrove Group, an alliance of varied monetary reformers, as well as right wingers such as Don Martin from the League of Rights and Alistair McConnachie. James Gibb Stuart acts as convener. His book The Lemming Folk is a conspiracist’s bible, which promotes once again the populist message that the “money power” links capitalism and communism with its plan for world domination. The book, which has been promoted by the far right British National Party, also praises apartheid,

“it means separate development — not racism, or repression, or institutionalized violence, or the eternal social and economic subjugation of one race by another. It was adopted in South Africa some thirty years ago because a white minority saw it then as the only means by which they could preserve their culture and their identity.”

During the 1970s Stuart supported Rhodesia’s white government who he saw as a target for the conspiracy because of their financial independence. His associate Alistair McConnachie, suspended from the UK Independence Party, an anti-European Union group, after writing to the Scotsman newspaper to question the Holocaust, edits Prosperity, a social credit/monetary reform newsletter widely promoted in the green movement. McConnachie, who was a member of the Douglas Secretariat during the 1990s, and remains active in monetary reform circles, is reported to have stated, “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 existed.”

16 comments:

ModernityBlog said...

good post, a very worthwhile topic

Socred said...

"Social credit founder Major Douglas was an out and out anti-semite...nasty stuff and I regularly get attacked for pointing this out."

Really? What "nasty stuff" did Douglas say about semites?

Stuart Jeffery said...

Just because one proponent of an economic idea is a bad egg doesn't make the idea wrong. I think it is a bizarre argument to use.

Also, how can you (as a leftie) be happy that private banks get to create 97% of the money supply? Monetary reform is not about 'printing money', it is about shifting the control of the creation of money away from banks and back to government.

Derek Wall said...

'Just because one proponent of an economic idea is a bad egg doesn't make the idea wrong. I think it is a bizarre argument to use.'

I think its important to flag up far rightists, monetary reformers should reject them...I have treated monetary reform to a chapter long discussion in my Babylon book...

greenback said...

Where you direct readers to where McConnachie has written his "build the fences higher and throw them out approach", this directs the reader to the writings not of McConnachie at-all, but something written by Peter Brimelow on behalf of some far-right outfit in the States. Where is the evidence this has anything at-all to do with McConnachie?
Also, the photo is not of McConnachies (I guess it is of Douglas).
All this said, his holocaust revisionism is obviously dodgy. I presume this can be corroborated unlike the other points you made which I have just highlighted.

Derek Wall said...

the photo is Douglas, I would have thought a quick scan would reveal Mcconnachie's approach to asylum seekers, etc.

Stuart Jeffery said...

Derek, I've re-read your chapter on monetary reform and it doesn't explain what you have got against it.

Red Green Nick said...

Its quite clear that the likes of Douglas and McConnachie are/were anti semites and it really is for Social Creditors to condemn these attitudes, if they want to be taken seriously.
I am dissapointed the pro Social - Credit Greens, at least to my knowledge have been silent on this issue.
As to Social Credit itself as a theory I must admit I'm quite receptive, I'd like to hear the economic arguments against it.

Socred said...

I have yet to see any demonstration that Douglas was an "anti-semite". Clearly this term has lost all meaning.

As a Social Crediter, I clearly addressed the issue on the article at Wikipedia.

The attacks against Douglas are merely a form of ad-hominem designed to be a red herring in order to detract from Douglas's theories.

If Douglas was an "anti-semite" then clearly Marx was one as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question

ModernityBlog said...

well, not sure about that Douglas fella but Alistair McConnachie views on the Holocaust certainly are a bit "strange", that is unless you think Holocaust denial/revisionism is not antisemitic

"He wrote to one critic, executive member Christopher Skeate, saying: " 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.""

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/feb/27/uk.race

Socred said...

"well, not sure about that Douglas fella but Alistair McConnachie views on the Holocaust certainly are a bit "strange", that is unless you think Holocaust denial/revisionism is not antisemitic"

Are you familiar with the "strawman fallacy"?

What does Alistair McConnachie's opinions of the holocaust have to do with the price of tea in China?

I've asked Derek several times now to demonstrate anything in Douglas's writings that could be deemed "anti-semitic". Marx wrote a book on the "Jewish Question", yet I don't see any "lefties" claiming that Marx was an anti-semite.

If you read the wikipedia article on Social Credit, the charge of "antisemitism" is addressed head on. Douglas's thoughts on Judaism were not unique to that time period. Was Winston Churchill and "anti-semite" as well?

These are attempts to throw mud and hope something sticks. Douglas doesn't even talk about Jews until his fourth book entitled Social Credit, and even then it's one paragraph.

In Economic Democracy he talks about the philosophy of "Prussianism" and at a later date even names a Prussian banking family by name, which happens to have the last surname as myself. Who cares????

Is it alright to criticize "Prussianism", but not Judaism? Is Judaism above all critique?

Derek Wall said...

Douglas was a loathsome and extreme anti-semite, the point is a posting about a far right speaker at a conference this saturday.

From his praise of the protocols to his obssessive anti-semitic conspiracy theorising he was an extreme racist and as such is praised by a wide variety of neo-nazi groups and extreme nationalists to this day.

Many thinkers were tainted with anti-semitism but to take one example I don't see followers of Henry George actively supporting racism today, if they did I would condemn them too.

Equally Marxists and Conservatives don't advocate Holocaust revisionism, Mosley was inspired by Keynesianism, this does not mean Keynes was a racist or Keynesians today are fascists.

Social creditors should condemn anti-semitism.

ModernityBlog said...

"What does Alistair McConnachie's opinions of the holocaust have to do with the price of tea in China?"

IF you are denying that he has antisemitic views, then it is very pertinent to that point

that's all, I make NO comment on social credit, clear enough ? I have NO views on social credit, etc

BUT if someone expresses holocaust denial/revisionism then it is often taken to infer an underlying antisemitic sentiment from that person, and Alistair McConnachie has done that.

Socred said...

"Douglas was a loathsome and extreme anti-semite, the point is a posting about a far right speaker at a conference this saturday."

What I find "loathsome" is baseless accusastions. Again, I ask, what did Douglas say that could be deemed "anti-semitic"?

Praise of the Protocols? What "praise of the protocols"? I certainly have never seen Douglas "praise the protocols", unless your definition of praise is different than mine.

The rest of your "argument" is a straw man. I don't really care about what others who think they have adopted Douglas's ideas think about semites (BTW, all Jews are not semites, and all semites are not Jews - thought I'd clear that up for you). In fact, there were Jews who were followers of Douglas.

As far as Alistair McConnachie is concerned, I really don't care about his views. He's not Douglas, and I'd be willing to bet he doesn't even understand Douglas.

And if you want to talk about the followers of Marx, how many did they kill? How many people did the communist Jew, Lazar Kaganovich, kill?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich

You want to talk about nasty, and hateful people who take on a political cause, look no further than Karl Marx and his followers.

Social Credit formed government in the same province in which I live for over 35 years, and nobody was sent to re-eduction camps, or killed because of their beliefs.

What is truly nasty and vile is the followers of Karl Marx, and their hateful deeds.

Charles Pierce said...

I was interested to find Another Green World. 20 years ago I had a book published on different economic concepts to point the way to a sustainable world economy. Someone who liked the book contacted me this year to suggest that I update and re-publish it as a blog. She set up the blog, and the book is now complete on the blog in a series of postings. There are now also additional pieces on global warming and other subjects. Here is the link:

http://www.economicsforaroundearth.com

With all good wishes,
Charles Pierce

Anonymous said...

I was interested to find Another Green World. 20 years ago I had a book published on different economic concepts to point the way to a sustainable world economy. Someone who liked the book contacted me this year to suggest that I update and re-publish it as a blog. She set up the blog, and the book is now complete on the blog in a series of postings. There are now also additional pieces on global warming and other subjects. Here is the link:

http://www.economicsforaroundearth.com

With all good wishes,
Charles Pierce

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