John Rees (Stop the War Coalition) & George Galloway Work For Iran

John Rees with a Shia cleric who believes in killing gays, persecuting Christians & Sunnis, forcing women to wear Islamic clothes and imprisoning political dissidents - all the things Rees wouldn't allow a white person or 'capitalist' to do. When a white British politician posts a fairly innocuous, but 'sexist'/'racist', Twitter message, Rees foams at the mouth and demands his scalp.

The UK's Leftist-Islamist coalition (or alliance) has, at at least in part, fallen apart recently.

The well-known and notorious George Galloway is facing some stick from Sunni Muslims in the Bradford branch of the UK's Respect party. (Bradford is a city in the north of England with a very large Sunni-Muslim population of a Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage.)

Galloway is getting it in the teeth primarily for his support of the Allawite (Shia) leader Bashar Assad during the the on-running Sunni-Shia civil war in Syria (as well as for his parallel support for Shia Iran).

Five Sunni councilors left Galloway's Bradford Respect party last week. However, the remaining members of Respect, including Galloway, claimed they were effectively sacked. Nonetheless, the sacking email is reported to have been sent after the Sunni Muslims had already resigned.

(These internal disputes within Respect began the moment the party was formed by various renegades of the Trotskyist/'progressive' Socialist Workers Party. That's what ideological purity, mixed with cynicism and opportunism, will necessarily lead to.)

The official reason for the Bradford Respect rupture - although this reason will at least be a part of the story - is that certain 'un-named figures' (i.e., George Galloway), have, in the words of Bradford's Islamist councillors, 'no interest in transparency, accountability and equity'.

George Galloway is also an important leader of the UK's Stop the War Coalition (StWC). One other leader - and a founder - of the StWC, its 'national officer', is John Rees; who's also of Counterfire and the very recent Trotskyist front group – The People's Assembly. Rees also effectively works for the Iranian state and does its propaganda business via Press TV and the Islam Channel. (Here's a CST link on John Rees's work for the Islam Channel and here he is on Press TV.)

Let that sink in for a moment. John Rees will be receiving thousands of pounds (minimum) a month from the Iranian state. Rees, as a leader of The People's Assembly, also once said that he'd support Iran in a war with Britain.

A lovely Western Leftist propagandist image about the Shia-Sunni civil war which blames the Unite States - surprise, surprise! - for it all.  It completely overlooks the fact that the Sunni-Shia civil war began around one thousand two hundred years before the United States even existed. Still, nice try. Western Leftist blame America and Israel for everything that goes wrong in Muslim and Arab world. Muslims, as the literal children of Leftists, cannot be blamed because they too, like the British working class, have 'false consciousness'.

Now I wonder what John Rees thinks of the hanging of sixteen revolutionary Sunni fighters by the Iranian state last week. That had nothing - directly - to do with the Syrian conflict. It's all do to with Iran's other borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan. (There is no Iranian border with Syria.) Come to think of it, what does John Rees think of the Iranian state killing gays, persecuting Christian and Sunni minorities and oppressing women? Actually, he doesn't think that any of this is wrong. Why? Because Iranians have brown skin and they're also – or the state is - anti-West and officially anti-capitalist. That's all it takes for Trotskyists/progressives like John Rees to reverse their previous deeply-held political standards. Change the oppressor's skin colour from white to brown (or to black) and the oppressor simply ceases to be an oppressor. That's how simple Trotskyist, or John Rees's, logic is.

Now set John Rees views on Iran within the context of the Trotskyists - now called 'progressives' – in Britain who believe that black and brown people can simply never be racist; or even be held responsible for criminal activity or political violence. This, apparently, is true by (Marxist) definition. Why? Because brown and black never have 'political power'.  This means that they are always 'oppressed' and always victims. Thus, like a mathematical equation, they simply cannot do either political or criminal wrong – just like children really. This is the stipulation/diktat behind the hypocrisy and (positive) racism of the Left. It is a thoroughly normative pronouncement, or even a moral law, on racism which comes after some pretty mindless theoretical (Marxist) mumbo-jumbo.

Similarly with Iran – it too can never do wrong. It can do no wrong because it is a state of mainly brown people. That is, it's not white, not Western and not capitalist. (However, it is, at least in part, capitalist; but brown capitalism is better than white or Israeli capitalism.)

The Trotskyists - such as the ex-SWP Lindsey German - who set up and run (not every supporter/member is a Trotskyist) the Stop the War Coalition weren't against military intervention in Syria because they are against war. They are certainly not pacifists. (They  strongly believe in 'revolutionary violence'.) They were against military intervention for two main reasons:

1) British Trotskyists are strong supporters of Iran. Iran is a strong supporter of Assad's regime in Syria.(Here John Rees saying 'Don't Attack Iran!''.)

2) 'Western capitalist states' would have carried out the military intervention in Syria. Therefore it would automatically have been wrong because, by Marxist logic, it would have been exclusively driven by the 'inevitable laws of capitalist accumulation and imperialism'

In other words, the Stop the War Coalition isn't against war at all. It's only against 'Western' or 'capitalist' wars. Mass murder and oppression carried out by brown or black people, or when carried out by Leftist regimes, does not even register in the Trotskyist or Progressive mind.

*) Some examples of John Rees's work for Iran via Press TV:
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfstKkafSdk (John Rees with Tariq Ramadan.) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkZJrYReDzE#t=94 (John Rees talking about Syria.)

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/04/28/300736/uk-okays-drone-strikes-void-of-debate/  (Rees talking about 'drone attacks'.)