Jean Ziegler is a progressive who opposes injustice. How do I know? The Guardian told me.

According to the Guardian’s Thomas Blaser, ‘We let them starve‘, Oct. 5, Jean Ziegler, a Swiss author and politician, and former UN Special Rapporteur for Food, is a “prolific writer” who has boldly “taken on the cause of the developing world…and against injustice.”

The Guardian author helpfully adds the following to assist readers in understanding Ziegler’s politics:

“His combative and at times polemical style has earned him much admiration, but also vilification…particularly from Switzerland‘s liberal-conservatives, closely related to big business, and of course the major Swiss banks, for denouncing their hiding away of stolen funds such as those of former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, [and those from] Jewish people who perished in the holocaust.

He is also a vocal critic of global capitalism’s effects on the developing world, especially Africa.

So, Ziegler, as framed by the Guardian, seems like a decent enough fellow, and a genuine humanitarian.

  • He’s opposed to ‘big business’ and greedy bankers. 
  • He’s against injustice and exploitation.
  • He’s an advocate for the poor and downtrodden.
  • He fights those who continue to exploit Holocaust victims.

Well, unfortunately, the Guardian left out quite a bit of information on the European ‘human rights activist’. 

Jean Ziegler actually has a record of cozying up to dictators who violate human rights, and has shamefully abused and exploited Holocaust memory.

He has praised Robert Mugabe, once claiming that the Zimbabwean dictator has “history and morality with him.” 

In 1986, Ziegler was an adviser to Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, found guilty of genocide in 2006, and helped draft his one-party constitution.

Ziegler has also defended Fidel Castro, and once expressed “total support for the Cuban Revolution”.

Ziegler co-founded, co-managed, and eventually won the Muammar Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.

The prize, established in 1989, has been awarded to such tireless anti-racists as Fidel Castro, notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Bin Muhammad —who claimed that Jews control the world – and the late French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

In 1996, Ziegler wrote a letter of support for Garaudy, who was convicted in a French court for denying Hitler’s genocide, defending his Holocaust-denying tract for its “rigor” and the author’s “unwavering honesty.”

Here’s an informative video by UN Watch, on Ziegler’s extremism, from 2008.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p4lWkkjiuw&feature=player_embedded]

The certainly don’t make ‘progressives’ like they used to.

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