Because there is a troll out there on Indymedia UK and socialistunity.com pretending to be someone who attended the Nottingham meeting, Indymedia UK decided they needed to post an official version of the story of what happened there and the context in which the Atzmon decision was made.

Draft story.

The story is quite clearly written from the pro-Atzmon perspective, and barely touches on the central point of the whole controversy, the antisemitism of Atzmon’s writings. Instead it’s all the same “there was a crypto-zionist campaign” stuff, in which view a perfectly innocent set of postings by and about Atzmon were cruelly attacked by a vicious conspiracy trying to silence him for being such a brave spokesman for etc. etc. etc. In other words, at the end of the exercise, apparently some Indymedia UK editors remain blissfully unaware what the whole exercise was even about. There are a few hints that perhaps there was something disquieting about Atzmon’s posts, but as a whole it’s so out of balance it was in essence a defense of Atzmon rather than a story about Indymedia, or especially an even-handed report on the state of the consensus.

Controversy exploded on the features list. Some said that the story was biased; others said that posting a feature was just “pouring salt in the wound” and the best thing to do is ignore it all; others expressed regret that Atzmon had ever been published in the first place. Some of these emails are pretty heated. There is also in these mails a general sense that a great deal of time and energy had been wasted over nothing productive, and that the net result of publishing Atzmon was substiantially damaging to Indymedia UK.

Then came the most comic single moment of the whole affair: Gilad Atzmon, knowing that he had been by group consensus shunted off into a special little penalty area built just for him, did what charlatans do: he declared victory and stomped off, declaring that upon consideration he no longer wanted to be posted on Indymedia. Apparently, once Indymedia stopped celebrating Atzmon as a sage political sage and stuck him into the “disputed” bin, they no longer deserved his transcendently wise words.

The grapes, said the fox, were probably sour anyway. (Although I think the moral here is really about an animal Aesop neglected: weasel is as weasel does.)

In short, Gilad Atzmon decided to punish Tony Greenstein by giving him exactly the thing Greenstein had wanted all along: an Atzmon-free Indymedia. And Atzmon has rewarded those Indymedia UK editors who fought tooth-and-nail for his right to publish on Indymedia by kicking them in the teeth.

Genius.

I think Atzmon was no longer willing to have his posts hosted somewhere they wouldn’t be fawned over uncritically, and as long as his posts were being fought over so publicly it was obvious that his favorite narrative — that this was just Tony Greenstein’s vendetta and nothing more — could not hold water. There are enough places, such as Mary Rizzo’s blog, where he doesn’t have to worry about anyone actually disagreeing with his oracular wisdom that its foolish for him to post in a place where what he writes will actually be subjected to independent inquiry rather than empty, goggle-eyed adulation.

[edit:] Indymedia UK has decided not to post an article summarizing the issue. It’s well and truly over, and anti-racism has won.

How it looks.

Looks good that way. Should have happened months ago.

And now the denouement.

Indymedia UK has decided to create a third category of posts, disputed posts.

A disputed post is one over which the collective is clearly deadlocked, with at least one editor recommending hiding and at least one editor against hiding. Going to the post instead presents a page with the following disclaimer: “Disputed Article — The UK Indymedia collective does not have consensus on the status of this article; one or more admins would like it hidden, while one or more would like it displayed normally.”

Then follows a link from which you can see — but cannot comment on — the disputed post.

How it looks.

Under the circumstances, I think that this is a good second-best solution, in that it indicates that the Indymedia UK collective has marked the anti-Semitic post out for a special sort of quarantine, rather than simply treating it as if it were as valid as any other post. If Indymedia UK continues to do the same for Atzmon’s writings, it’s not an unbearably bad outcome.

The best solution of course would be for the Indymedia movement — and the Palestinian Solidarity movement in general — to rid itself from anti-Semites of the Atzmon style altogether. But this proved impossible for such a short meeting.

Indymedia UK is to be thanked for dealing with a thankless topic, and for recognizing that their internal deadlock should not force the collective to leave a racially offensive post up unremarked upon.

Indymedia is holding their all-UK meeting this weekend, and for now I’m going to end this blog. However, let me close with a comment from the Socialist Unity blog that sums it up rather well:

After 20-30 years of hard work we have finally realised that when a woman cries rape then she means it. 20-30 years that when a person of Caribean or Asian descent says that they didn’t get a job or was attacked on the street, we believe him. When a man says he can’t get a job working with children because he is gay, we believe him. When a Muslim man tells us of excrement put through his letter box because he is a Muslim, we believe him.

But, when a Jew screams antisemitism, in typical Stalinist fashhion, we tell him that it can’t be true because there has been no antisemitism for the past 60 years, and so he has to be making it up; in fact, not only do we tell him that they are making it up, but that they are making it up to hide the truth, and that they are making it up for no other reason than as a means to oppress and silence everyone in the world so as to protect “their” obnoxious little Jew-state.

After all, this is what some people here are saying, when can you ever trust a Jew?

So, I guess, when all is said and done, what I am saying is, no, [discussion participant], you fuck off!

A long post about Gilad Atzmon’s praise of Holocaust denier Paul Eisen was hidden on Indymedia UK:

Source.

This is from Tony Greenstein, an ardent anti-Zionist, with something like twenty years history working for pro-Palestinian causes. The post was hidden — and this is nothing like a surprise, and it was hidden by the same Indymedia UK editor who so convinced that the anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon is the victim of “Zionist censorship,” which is also nothing like a surprise. As has been noted elsewhere, Atzmon dismisses his critics as “Zionists” even when, as in the case of Greenstein, he couldn’t be further from the truth.

The editor in question provides the following excuse for hiding the post: “Repeated : content that is reposted or text that was originally a comment posted as a report/ inaccurate”

Source.

The “repeated” claim apparently is based on the assumption that the hidden post is the same as this one. A quick check of the two shows just how duplicitous the editor in question is being.

One can also gauge the truthfulness of the “repeated” claim by comparing the following unhidden posts: A, B, C. As the serial number in the URL proves, these three identical posts were all posted before Tony’s, yet they remain unhidden. Why? Because the editor in question didn’t abuse his authority on them the way he did on Tony’s post.

The editor’s clear-headed, rational, unemotional response?

“I won’t be apologising for anything – I do despise you, you are despicable…… “

Independent journalism at its finest.

Greenstein’s argument is simple: that Atzmon has become an open Holocaust denier. I believe, however, that Greenstein has overstated the case. As I’ve said before, Atzmon does dimly echo the standard arguments of Holocaust denial, but not with sufficient strength or ardour to justify the very serious charge that he has become a Holocaust denier himself. On the other hand, Atzmon has certainly shown that he’s as willing to exploit Holocaust denial as he is other forms of anti-Semitism in his drive to demonise the Jews — careful to spread the ideas, but careful to maintain a certain minimum level of deniability when it comes to anti-Semitism, in hopes that observers won’t look too closely.

Thus he sends around Paul Eisen’s Holocaust denying essay, and repeatedly says that he is glad to have done so, but is unwilling to actually address the details of Eisen’s essay. He knows that to address Holocaust denial on the facts is to lose, and so he prefers to dance about the facts instead, billowing out his nebulous clouds about “historiographic narratives.”

Fortunately, the editor in question isn’t able to completely silence the issue of Atzmon’s Holocaust denial; Greenstein’s post also appears — and is well-commented upon — on the blog Socialist Unity (a blog, incidentally, that — because it actually opposes anti-Semitism — Atzmon derides as “Socialist Jewnity”).

Greenstein, incidentally, apparently believes that Atzmon may also be posting under the name “knuckles.” There’s certainly a similarity of tone, but that is because they are both singing from the same Holocaust denial hymnal, not because they are the same person. I believe however that reading enough of their respective posts would convince the reader that, while Gilad is duplicitous, mendacious, and tricky, “knuckles” is duplicitous, mendacious, and vapid.

Here is an interesting defence Atzmon gives to the charge that he’s an anti-Semite. It turns out, magically, that there is actually no such thing as an antisemite. Apparently it was abolished one night and no one noticed.

Source.

Atzmon has been accused of antisemitism, but responds by questioning the concept itself: “Because antisemite is an empty signifier, no one actually can be an antisemite and this includes me of course. In short you are either a racist, which I am not, or have an ideological disagreement with zionism, which I have.”

After a certain point, one can only shake one’s head at the naïveté of Atzmon’s defenders, so easily dazzled by such simple, simple rhetorical gimmickry. Atzmon waves his wand, and presto! he can no longer be an anti-Semite, because there is no such creature.