"Mr Ainsworth attended meetings of the revolutionary International Marxist Group in his 30s"It is interesting how so many members of Marxist/Trotskyite organisations in their youth are members (or former members) of this Labour government. According to research that I have seen: Alan Milburn was a one-time Trotskyist, John Reid was a member of the Communist Party, Stephen Byers (as well as Alistair Darling) was a Trotskyist. Looking at recent Labour leaders: Tony Blair was a member of CND (an organisation that many believe was partly funded by the Soviet Union), Gordon Brown was a student leftist with some beliefs now airbrushed from such as his Wikipedia entry whilst the probable next Labour leader, Peter Mandelson, was a member of the Young Communist League. It is odd how all these "ex"-communists deny any affiliation with these organisations once they have a foot on the gravy train and a snout in the trough. I wonder how many "ex" communists are also embedded within local government, the police, the BBC etc. Have the Marxists and Trotskyists taken by stealth what they could not take by force?
Another angle to this is that if a politician or opinion former is discovered to have been a supporter of a "far right" party during their youth then they are forever tarred with the brush of "racist" or "fascist" and yet those who dallied with the equally vile politics of the extreme left during their formative years are allowed to pretend this dalliance is of no concern. Either mistakes made in one's youth are unforgivable or they are not, but let us at least be consistent. In my mind allying ones self with racists and fascists is wrong, but no worse than allying oneself with the murderous creed that killed more people than fascism, kept on killing them after the Second World War and enslaved & killed many millions after the war had ended. The Marxist creed was responsible for around 20 million deaths in Stalin's Russia, 40 million in Mao's China, and millions more in Cambodia and elsewhere that Marxists decided they could improve their countries by imposing the will of the collective good.
I wonder if the latitude given by the BBC to the "ex"-Communists of the Labour party has any connection with the number of people of a similar background within the BBC; now that would be interesting to find out.
Great points Not a Sheep.
ReplyDeleteI've been ferreting out all those deeply dubious characters in the Socialist group (with Labour) at the European Parliament & huge numbers of them are also ex-Communists.
As you say, why doesn't the BBC launch a hue-and-cry against all these former supporters of murderous left-wing tyranny?
They enthusiastically picked out (and then picked on) one or two right-of-centre European politicians from Poland and Lithuania with teenage connections to far-right groups (and, of course, current connections to the Conservative Party) without any difficulty.
Double standards, doubtless (as you also say) due to the fact that the BBC has plenty of ex-(and not so ex-)Marxists on its staff.
Keep on ferreting!
The reason that the BBC don't raise even an eyebrow at this is because they are all communists themselves. I sit on the train to Watford every morning and the BBC personnel are easy to spot - they are the one's reading the Guardian. Seriously though, the BBC now only recruits through the Guardian.
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