Who’s the most bigoted Guardian or ‘Comment is Free’ contributor?

The Guardian published a relatively humorous April Fool’s story yesterday titled ‘Guardian launches augmented reality specs to offer immersive liberal insight‘: 

Guardian Goggles

The story introduced the ‘new’ technology in the following manner:

“…this newspaper announces a groundbreaking development in the modern history of the media: a pair of web-connected “augmented reality” spectacles that will beam its journalism directly into the wearer’s visual field, enabling users to see the world through the Guardian’s eyes at all times.

As the wink and the nod by the Guardian contributor who penned the piece was evident, the otherwise painful evocation of such a dystopian scenario can, at this point in the ‘story’, be forgiven.

The satire continues:

“The motion-sensitive spectacles, known as Guardian Goggles, incorporate translucent screens in the lenses, overlaying the wearer’s view of their surroundings with a real-time stream of specially curated opinions from the paper’s reporters, critics and commentators.

Again, such a truly chilling prospect is at least clearly meant in jest.

However, in the subsequent passage their light-hearted parody becomes infused with the unmistakable reality of Guardian Left ideology.

“The spectacles also feature optional built-in anti-bigotry technology, which prevents exposure to non-Guardian opinions by blacking out columns by Melanie Phillips or Richard Littlejohn, among other writers, as soon as the user attempts to look at them.” [emphasis added]

It’s quite telling that, of all the examples of real racism they could have chosen to illustrate the ‘features’ of this faux technology, they chose Phillips – whose informed and serious commentary on the very real danger posed to the West by the violent and reactionary values of radical Islam clearly runs afoul of their political sensibilities.

However, instead of belaboring this particular point, we thought it would be edifying to include a short list of real bigots who they could have cited in that passage, and who also are either employed by the Guardian or have contributed to ‘Comment is Free’.  (Please consider participating in the poll at the end)

Here’s a list of a few of the antisemitic contributors they’ve published in recent years, and is in no particular order:

Deborah Orr,Guardian journalist: ‘Chosen people’ smear

orr

Though Orr’s logical failures in analyzing the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011 were breathtaking, the following passage from her Oct. 19, 2011, piece (later revised) is particularly worth noting, as it suggests that Jews are inherently racist:

there is something abject in [Hamas’s] eagerness to accept a transfer [of prisoners] that tacitly acknowledges what so many Zionists believe – that the lives of the chosen are of hugely greater consequence than those of their unfortunate neighbors.”

Steve Bell, Guardian cartoonist: Jewish conspiracy

bell

Whilst you can read these posts to read about Bell’s mockery of the very notion of antisemitic tropes, the following cartoon which he published at the Guardian during the November war in Gaza is most illustrative of the place where Arab Judeophobia bleeds into Guardian “liberal” commentary.

Steve Bell 16.12.2012

Raed Salah, ‘Comment is Free’ contributor: Blood libel and Jewish supremacy

salah

As we’ve noted, an extremist cleric named Raed Salah became a Guardian cause celeb during his 2011 legal battle with UK Immigration Authorities despite his record of promoting violence and racism – which included his recitation of a poem promoting the medieval antisemitic narrative that Jews use the blood of non-Jews to bake their “holy” bread.  

When Salah won his final deportation appeal – at a UK Immigration Tribunal which, nonetheless, concluded that Salah did in fact promote the blood libel – the Guardian awarded him an essay at ‘Comment is Free’.  

Salah’s used his polemical victory lap, published on Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day in 2012, to smear the UK Jewish community by suggesting that their support for Zionism was akin to endorsing an ideology of “supremacism”.

Here are the relevant passages in Salah’s commentary:

“Despite the Israeli policy of “transfer” – another term for ethnic cleansing – the Palestinians will not go away. The Israeli state can occupy our lands, demolish our homes, drill tunnels under the old city of Jerusalem – but we will not disappear. Instead, we now aspire to a directly elected leadership for Palestinians in Israel; one that would truly represent our interests. We seek only the legal rights guaranteed to us by international conventions and laws.

The Palestinian issue can only be resolved if Israel and its supporters in Britain abandon the dogmas of supremacy and truly adhere to the universal values of justice and fairness.” [emphasis added]

Ben White‘Comment is Free’ contributor: ‘Antisemitism is understandable’

white

White is a professional Israel hater who has expressed sympathy for Palestinian ‘martyrs’, and who once defended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from “charges” that he denied the Holocaust – and whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict were recently tacitly endorsed by Hamas.  He continues to publish at ‘Comment is Free’, despite having never once distanced himself from a 2002 essay he published on the extremist online site, CounterPunch.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece, titled: Is It ‘Possible’ to Understand the Rise in ‘Anti-Semitism’?,

I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are”. This after linking the rise of antisemitism with “the widespread bias and subservience to the Israeli cause in the Western media”.  There are, in fact, a number of reasons. One is the state of Israel, its ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians. [emphasis added]

Musa AbumarzuqComment is Free’ contributor: Official in the terror group, Hamas, which openly calls for the murder of Jews

hamas1

Abumarzuq was published twice at ‘Comment is Free’.  His most recent piece offered insights into his “concerns” about Israeli violation of human rights – “liberal sensibilities” which CiF editors evidently were able to reconcile with his leadership role in a group which endorses the antisemitic conspiracy theories and openly calls for the mass murder of Jews.

(Note: In addition to Abumarzuq, the list of Hamas members published at ‘Comment is Free’ includes Ismail Haniyeh, Osama Hamdan, and Azzam Tamimi.)

Please cast your ballot for the most antisemitic Guardian or ‘Comment is Free’ contributor.  When voting, feel free to choose another Guardian contributor which, for the sake of brevity, we didn’t include in the list. 

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