The establishment just used antisemitism smears against Chris Kennedy and the Greens fell for it

Chris Kennedy, the Green Party’s candidate for the Makerfield by-election, has stood down for “family reasons”. However, it appears the real reason is that he shared social media posts suggesting the Golder’s Green arson attack against four Jewish ambulances might have been an Israeli false flag.

Neoliberals were excited by the news, saying this is the opportunity for the Greens to sit out the by-election and hand the seat to Labour. See how easy that was? They just had to do a bit of whining and they got rid of a key rival. Reform would never crumble like this. The Labour right are manipulating our politics to ensure they win by default and the usual “leftist” suspects are helping them (I’ll get to that later).

Even if the Greens stand another candidate in Makerfield, they have weakened their credibility. They should have turned this against their opponents and said we make no apologies for standing up against the genocidal rogue state. They could have highlighted how the kneejerk reaction of the establishment is to defend Israel — and the Greens are the only party prepared to stand up to it. Isn’t “bold politics” supposed to be Zack Polanski’s thing?

The sad thing is Chris Kennedy seemed like a perfectly good candidate for the Greens — a registered nurse and children’s safeguarding specialist who would campaign on lower bills, affordable housing, and a greener and fairer economy — someone who was genuinely in touch with ordinary people. Obviously, this makes Kennedy illegitimate in the eyes of the establishment so they dug up his social media posts (as far I’m aware, they were all reposts rather than his own words).

One of the posts was reportedly a video captioned: “total bullshit to keep the false flag flying.” Another post was the following comment:

“How does someone manage to burn 3 ambulances, get the entire country in uproar, make the government put 264 more police units into the community, make the King become a patron of a charity, and increase the terror threat level in the UK, only to be put on bail?”

All of the reposts have now been deleted, but they reportedly suggested the Golders Green arson attack was an Israeli false flag. It appears Kennedy was pressured into standing down so the Green Party could save face. My question is why? Are the Greens not an anti-Zionist party now? If they are, why are they treating Israel with kid gloves? Kennedy deserved better than to be thrown under a bus by his own party.

Reform members are accused of awful social media posts all the time and the party just shrugs it off. Ironically, Reform’s candidate Robert Kenyon is accused of far worse than Kennedy and he is still standing in Makerfield. His social media posts reportedly include sexual and sexist language, homophobia and violent language, and the questioning of events like Southport.

Just remember it’s fine to question events like Southport, just don’t dare question Golder’s Green. You see the problem here? You see how the crumbling of the left only strengthens the right? We are supposed to understand this. We are supposed to do solidarity — so why is the right better with solidarity than the left?

As I wrote back in March, there are many good reasons to suspect Golders Green might have had Israeli involvement, not least the fact that Israel has a history of false flags, there have been a series of dubious “antisemitic incidents” across Europe, and Israel had spent weeks telling us they were coming.

Perhaps the biggest indication of Israeli involvement was that Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia — an obviously fake Iranian terror group — claimed responsibility for the attack. All you need to know about HAYI is that it appeared from nowhere, its error-filled literature refers to Palestine as “the Land of Israel”, and its logo is AI-generated and spelt incorrectly.

Israel immediately politicised the Golders Green arson attack and an Israeli publication — The Jerusalem Post — was reporting on the matter within an hour. Since then, we have faced demands for online censorship and a crackdown on protests, all to benefit Israel. These are good reasons to be suspicious, but apparently, it’s unacceptable to accuse the genocidal rogue state that has a history of false flags. Why? Is it insensitive to Israel’s supporters?

I utterly reject the premise that criticising Israel delegitimises you as a political actor, even if your criticism turns out to be wrong (and we don’t know that Kennedy was wrong!) The idea that you cannot participate in our political process, that you cannot stand for parliament, because you made an accusation against a genocidal rogue state is ludicrous.

Plenty of people accused Iran of the Golders Green arson attack without credible evidence. Were any accused of Islamophobia? Were they punished by their political party or fired from their job or disowned by their allies? Did they get in trouble in any way? Of course not!

So why are we accepting the old smear tactic they used during the Corbyn era? Why are we still allowing Israel’s supporters to gatekeep for us? And why are so-called leftists like Owen Jones doing some of that gatekeeping? Where is the solidarity?

Owen Jones made a couple of social media posts regarding the matter. Now I’m not one for mud slinging or social media tiffs, but I feel this must be addressed because we need to stop the division in its tracks. Jones made the following post that appeared to be a reference to Kennedy and he faced a strong backlash:

The Greens' membership has exploded in size in a very short space of time.

But they desperately need to prioritise sorting out their vetting.

The other thing is that we need to deal with conspiracist thinking on the left.

It's not socialism and leads to very dark places.

Let’s look at Jones’ second line “they desperately need to prioritise sorting out their vetting”. These are strong words that suggest the Green candidate was completely unacceptable, but unacceptable to who? Israel’s supporters? The establishment? The Labour Party? Is Jones suggesting people like Kennedy shouldn’t even be allowed to be Green members? Good luck trying to build a mass movement with that attitude!

Now let’s look at the third line: “we need to deal with conspiracist thinking on the left”. In other words, we need to delegitimise those who think the genocidal rogue state and our own government sometimes plot to do bad things. Is that not playing into the hands of the censors? Is it not legitimising their authoritarian crackdowns?

Now let’s look at the fourth line: “It’s not socialism and it leads to very dark places”. So this would be gatekeeping. Owen Jones gets to decide who is and is not a socialist. This is the very opposite of solidarity.

Jones’ follow up post was no better.

Yes, you should and must question authority!

Yes there are cover-ups and conspiracies!

The problem is a default conspiracist outlook.

e.g. thinking an attack on ambulances must be a false flag, without any evidence

This is one hell of straw man. There is no “default conspiracist outlook”. A hypotheses was put forward based on strong logic and balance of probability. Yes, that hypothesis could be turn out to be wrong. So what? People are allowed to discuss events and put forward their ideas and discuss their findings. I don’t remotely accept the idea that we should walk on eggshells around a country that lies to further its own agenda.

In a time when almost every conspiracy theory seems to come true, it’s frankly embarrassing to be using words like “conspiracist”. To follow up by essentially arguing that not everything is a conspiracy is weak. We were talking about a specific incident, one in which multiple hypotheses were put forward. Some assumed the Golders Green attack was the work of antisemitic leftists, some assumed it was Islamic extremists, some assumed it was Iranian operatives, and some assumed an Israeli connection.

Every single one of those hypotheses was valid, but only one of them is not allowed to be put forward — the one against Israel — because it is antisemitic to accuse Israel, even when there is a good chance Israel was guilty.

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