Guardian opinion columnist Jason Wilson is a funny leftist to read.
Not quite as funny as Paul Syvret, the in-house, old fashioned socialist at the Courier Mail, because unlike Paul, Jason is not completely bat-shit crazy insane.
But Jason still provokes a chuckle.
In his latest article Jason attacks the Australian Conservatives for having a meme on their website implying that George Soros is funding the Yes case for gay marriage.
Of course at the end of his piece, after accusing everyone of anti-Semitism for criticising a billionaire activist that even Bibi Netanyahu hates, Jason is forced to admit:
“Soros’s Open Society foundation is one of many organisations who have, in the past, funded some of the groups leading the fight for marriage equality.”
So in other words Soros has indeed done exactly what the Australian Conservatives Facebook page accused him of, but they should shut up because Jason said so.
See what I mean about him being funny?
Even funnier is his coverage of the Charlottesville protests about the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Jason, while Australian by passport currently lives in Portland in the U.S, so he was able to travel across the continent to join the fun.
No prizes for guessing which side he was on.
According to Jason:
“The counter-protesters I saw from my perch at the south-east corner of the park used entirely passive methods to try to block the passage of the far-right groups.”
According to both right-wing attendees and other more impartial observers, those “passive methods” included bear mace, soft drink bottles filled with concrete, baseball bats, bricks and water balloons filled with urine and human faeces.
I’d hate to see what Jason would consider “active” methods.
According to his articles about the event, Jason attended the protest with one Cornel West, a fairly famous eccentric black activist and Princeton academic. Prof West is well-known for being so nuts that Bill O’Reilly of Fox News fame would let him come on his show and just rant for ten minutes, no rebuttal required.
Cornel was in attendance as both the guest and one of the “initiators” of the “Refuse Fascism” group.
One attendee who marched into the park with “Refuse Fascism” can be seen here using what Jason described as “passive methods” on a prone elderly man with a walking stick. It emerged later that the victim in this case almost certainly wasn’t even a part of the right-wing rally but was simply a curious bystander.
So who is this Refuse Fascism group Jason went to the protest alongside?
They’re an organisation formed after the election of President Trump to oppose what they call the merger of the “Capitalist fascist” President and the “Christian Fascist” Mike Pence.
Yup I know, I bet they’d be lots of fun at parties.
Ultimately, when you scratch the surface you discover that Refuse Fascism is a front group of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party [USA], Yeah, the same Mao that killed 60 million people, they like the cut of his jib. Both the founder Bob Avakian and the most prominent spokespeople such as Sunsara Taylor and Carl Dix are RCP members.
After the Presidential election RF spent $120,000 USD on advertisements in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, The Chicago Reader and other outlets calling for recruits to help topple the “Fascism” of Donald Trump.
How did a relatively small Marxist group get that kind of money? Well it turns out that they had a windfall donation from an outfit describing itself as the “Alliance for Global Justice”. The AFGJ was originally created in 1998 by the “Nicaragua network”, a group formed to organise far-left extremists in the U.S in the cause of the Marxist Sandinista regime. According to NGO Monitor the AFGJ has openly advocated support for convicted terrorists and helps channel funds from wealthy donors to a wide variety of extremist groups, from outright Communists to radical anti-Israel outfits.
And who is one of their major funders? The Tides Foundation. Who for the most part funds the Tides foundation? George Soros.
So its entirely possible that Jason Wilson, the man writing in the Guardian scoffing at people who suggest George Soros is funding leftist groups, was holding a sign in part funded by George Soros, while participating in a protest by violent radical leftist groups.
Now see what I mean about him being funny?
Even funnier, the main source quoted in his article about Soros and the conspiracy theories that swirl around the man was one Alexander Reid Ross, Portland State University lecturer and apparent neighbour of Jason Wilson.
So who is Alexander Reid Ross? In his own words in an interview posted on Anarchist site “Anti-fascist News” and reposted on Anarchist site “It’s going down”, he’s a former editor of the journal for radical environmentalist group Earth First, a group known for arson, sabotage and also for one of their members accidentally blowing herself up with her own car bomb.
In the same interview Ross states his support for the violent extremist Antifa group, which was recently declared a terrorist organisation in the state of New Jersey. In his words Antifa is:
“One of the best models for channelling the popular reflexes and spontaneous movements towards confronting fascism in organized and focused ways”.
This support for violence against “Fascists” becomes slightly more concerning when you read his writings for Anarcho-Communist website LibCom, and realise that he considers Donald Trump a Fascist and everyone who voted for him to be a Fascist enabler. He has also written for self-described Anarchist PR agency ‘Anarchist Agency‘ as well as the Anarchist “Anarres project” on similar themes.
Wilson mentions that Ross has written a book about Fascism; he fails to mention that it’s published by AK Press, an Anarchist publisher founded by the Scottish-Lebanese Anarchist Ramsey Kanaan. AK Press also publishes works by Anarchist Noam Chomsky, Anarchist Howard Zinn and far-left hero/Cop-Killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The main theme of the book seems to be that Fascism is everywhere, even in people who don’t consider themselves Fascist, even in the Anarchist movement itself [Gasp!], and that this secret Fascism needs to be hunted down and rooted out.
You know, I’m beginning to see a pattern here. If a bloke writes for Anarchist organisations, edits Anarchist journals, publishes Anarchism related books through Anarchist publishers and supports violent Anarchist extremist groups then maybe, just maybe he could be an Anarchist.
We should probably ask Jason, after all he has appeared as a guest on left-wing radio station 3CR in Melbourne as the guest of Victorian Anarchist organisers and Antifa promoters Andy Fleming and Cam Smith, so I’m sure he can recognise a violent left-wing extremist when he see one.
Jason must hold Anarchist Alexander in high esteem since he quotes him in articles over, and over, and over again. He even used Mr. Ross as his main quoted source in an article attacking former ALP opposition leader Mark Latham for allowing himself to be associated with the “extremists” at Rebel Media. The article suggested a boycott to run Mr. Latham out of public life, for allowing himself to be linked with people whose views the ever-so-moderate and impartial observers Alexander and Jason consider beyond the pale.
Yes, seriously.
One of these days we’ll have to ask old Jason the question: If associating with extremists is enough to justify getting someone sacked and chased out of polite society, why hasn’t that happened to you?