(You alone know what is right?)
Weekly Worker is sometimes very bizarre indeed. Most of us become more calm and reflective when we sit down in a quiet corner to write. Some Weekly Worker writers who in person are mild and sane-seeming turn into crazies when they rev up to go into print.
Thus Jack Conrad's seven-part series on the AWL, late last year. And WW's second polemic-writer, Ian Donovan?
In the last Weekly Worker he wrote this about the editorial on George Galloway in Solidarity 3/29:
"One gets the distinct impression that Matgamna, for all his proclaimed credentials as a democrat, would like to take his logic an elementary step further, and demand George Galloway be hanged for treason in the manner of that previous hob-nobber with (real) Nazi would-be rulers of the world, William Joyce (aka Lord Haw-Haw) in 1946". (WW 479, 8 May 2003).
And if we say this shows Ian Donovan to be a nut? He may well accuse us of wanting to put him in a concentration camp. Unlikely? The following exchange took place when Donovan seemed to defend paedophilia and Gerry Byrne responded.
Donovan: "Comrade Byrne [and others think] my views are 'odious'. This merely underlines that what they really reject is my proposal of a... humane solution - they prefer an inhumane solution... I wonder which other minority she also considers it legitimate to characterise as 'scum'? The disabled? Those suffering from other kinds of mental illness? Or who?...
"This [paedophile] minority, however large it is, can be treated humanely - as I advocate. Or it can be treated inhumanely...
"There is a logic of describing such people as 'scum'... it is 'the imposition of a death penalty against all offenders
hundreds of thousands of people, or on an international scale... possibly many millions. What more can I say? Rwanda anyone, or how about Belsen or Auschwitz?" (WW 466, 6 February 2003).
Byrne: "In what way does [my comment] justify linking my name to Rwanda, Auschwitz and Belsen?" (Socialist Alliance email discussion list).
Donovan: "Because you refuse, even now, to criticise those who advocate treating those with this particular psycho-sexual affliction as 'scum'
a perspective that leads straight to Rwanda and Belsen, as far as I am concerned. Communist Greetings, Ian Donovan". (Same list).
Other Donovanisms:
"The AWL is now on a wrecking mission in the SA - its conception of left unity is that anyone who dares to disagree with it should be 'strangled'." (Socialist Alliance email discussion list, 11 February 2003).
"It is quite obvious that the AWL doesn't really like Arabs very much, and does not regard them as having much in the way of national rights... The AWL is militant in its solidarity with its favourite regional superpower... But when an Arab people, with a strong if not completely settled national ethos, is invaded by imperialism outright, they have no right to resist because 'their' regime is not 'democratic' enough for them to deserve any national rights.
"If this double standard is not motivated by a chauvinist disdain for Arabs, then I do not know what is". (WW 475, 10 April 2003).
With Ian Donovan, the current of unfiltered emotion runs along whatever channels it finds easiest, without restraint or sense. The result again and again is lunacy.
There are probably one or two sane people still in the CPGB. Why do they let the nutters set the tone and much of the content of the Weekly Worker and, on the Internet, of their organisation?
