An Conservative party employee used a fake name and email to comment on an article on this blog about anti-semitism in Poland. The Tory party was not mentioned.
An employee of the Conservative party has used a fake name and email address to comment on a Left Foot Forward guest post about anti-semitism in Poland.
The Guest blog post, published last Wednesday, examined the case of a Polish politician, Marek Jurek, calling for the Polish Government to take legal action against London-based Polish Film Director, Aro Korol, for his planned film – “Hitler’s Daughter” – which exposes anti-Semitism in Poland. The article made no mention of either the British Conservative party or the European Conservatives and Reformists.
The commenter, who uses the name “Gordon” wrote:
“So Jurek is a FORMER member of Law and Justice. And Law and Justice sit with the Tories in the European Parliament. So what?
“That’s as tenuous as expecting the Polish Socialists to be embarrassed bcause George Galloway, a former member of the British Labour Party, made an outrageous statement in the House of Commons.
“Is that the sound of barrels being scraped?”
The IP address is registered to host97.conservative-party.org.uk. Although http://www.conservative-party.org.uk is a different URL to the Conservative party’s main website (http://www.conservatives.com) and shows only a Daniel Hannan video and a picture of a pile of cash, an IPBlock query reveals that the IP address is registered to Anne Nunan, Director of IT at Conservative Central Office, 25 Victoria St and Vince Cooper of the same address.
Left Foot Forward contacted the Conservative Party to ask if they would ask their staff member, and other staff, to desist from attacking challenges to anti-semitism in this way.
A Conservative spokesman declined to do so while describing the comments as “innocuous” and “odd.” He outlined that CCHQ did not have “a team of people commenting on websites such as yours” and reiterated that the Conservative party opposed all forms of anti-semitism.
46 Responses to “Conservative party paranoia on Poland”
Sunder Katwala
The Parallax Brief.
I have posted specifically on the point that those who have been arguing about Kaminski can not seriously be in disagreement about the established facts, and that there is more common ground than there appears. A number of media commentators have said this is a very fair summary of the controversy.
It is not seriously disputed (by his supporters) that Kaminski was a past member of a far right party in his youth; that his opposition to the Jewadbne apology included calls for an apology from the Jewish side; and it is also indisputable that he has given inaccurate and false accounts of his own history, including after his election as ECR leader this year. Scrutiny of these issues is to be expected by a free press and in politics.
But it is also accepted (by most of his critics) that he now speaks out against anti-semitism; that he supports Israel; and that he is a member of a democratic right-wing rather than fringe right party in Law and Justice.
There is little common ground with those on the right who say “all scrutiny is a Labour-smear campaign” – and that is itself a slur on many of the independent journalistic and civic society voices involved. Having chosen him as leader, the Conservatives wish to defend him, and can make these arguments in his favour, but they do not prove the main criticisms of Kaminski false or show that they are “smears”.
So the Chief Rabbi’s recent (somewhat qualified) defence, which noted that he sees a man who is against anti-semitism today and supports Israel, while noting again his past teenage associations with an extreme and neo-fascist party, disagreed again over his Jewadbne position and the language, and noted the complexity of his political formation. The Chief Rabbi’s most recent statements were consistent with both what Kaminski’s critics and his supporters say. It may then be a matter of political judgement and debate as to whether he is a good leader of a right-of-centre pan-European group.
The Parallax Brief
At the risk of being banned for quoting Ronald Reagan on a progressive blog, I’d like to say to Sunder K and BS Detector, “Well, there you go again.”
It’s amazing the level of disagreement.
What I will say, though, BS Detector, is that a Polish Catholic nationalist group vulnerable to takeover by Nazis, respectable before the Nazi putsch or not, is likely to have be fairly right wing, wouldn’t you say?
On the rest, the Parallax Brief has no view, because he has tried to learn the facts, but the facts are different depending on the source. Not the interpretations, the facts.
Bullshit Detector
Here’s an interesting fact for you, Parallax: Gazeta Wyborcza, the left-leaning Polish newspaper wrote about NOP in 1989 and gave the party a clean bill of health. Why would the paper, no friend of Kaminski, have done this if the NOP had been fascist or far right at the time?
willstraw
I’ve removed a comment from BS Detector accusing someone else of being “full of shit”.
BS – You may disagree with other commenters but please be civil on Left Foot Forward or go elsewhere.
Bullshit Detector
Oh come on – that’s a pretty thin pretext for censorship, Will. Why not restore my comment, minus the word ‘shit’ to which you took such grave exception? That way, Sunder can respond the rather important point I raised.
Otherwise you might risk being mistaken for a disingenuous, partisan smear merchant whose blog is little more than a doomed attempt to save your father’s government from its inevitable and fast approaching fate: oblivion.