{"id":2013,"date":"2017-06-20T07:54:59","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T07:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/new\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2017-07-13T11:23:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T11:23:09","slug":"the-new-racists-david-miller-hilary-aked-kevin-macdonald-by-samuel-westrop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/20\/the-new-racists-david-miller-hilary-aked-kevin-macdonald-by-samuel-westrop\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Racists: David Miller, Hilary Aked, Kevin MacDonald  by Samuel Westrop"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<ul class=\"content_preface_bullets\">\n<li>It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world&#8217;s ills.\n<ul>\n<li>\n<hr id=\"system-readmore\" class=\"mceItemReadMore\" \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister &#8220;international network&#8221; of Israeli settlers and American &#8220;Islamophobes.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;A liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the &#8216;other&#8217;.&#8221; \u2014 Nick Cohen, journalist.<\/li>\n<li>Hilary Aked describes moderate Muslims as &#8220;native informants.&#8221; She also believes that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the &#8220;Islamophobia industry.&#8221; She has frequently written for a Qatari-funded media group that is accused by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group.<\/li>\n<li>Electronic Intifada is a prominent pro-Hamas publication, whose founder, Ali Abunimah, describes Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as &#8220;collaborators.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>To fund his obsession with the &#8220;propaganda&#8221; ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller received \u00a3400,000 from the Council, as well as grants from groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p>From his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bath.ac.uk\/sps\/staff\/david-miller\/\">office<\/a> at the University of Bath, David Miller, an academic and writer, researches organizations and activists that he believes, in his words, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinwatch.org\/index.php\/about\/about-spinwatch\">work<\/a> to &#8220;distort public debate and undermine democracy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The results of this research, done with the help of his students and assembled into detailed profiles of the shadowy figures behind this lobbying, are published across a number of websites run by Miller, including <a href=\"http:\/\/powerbase.info\/index.php\/Main_Page\">PowerBase<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinwatch.org\/\">SpinWatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A visitor to these websites will quickly note one particular constant: a vast number of Miller&#8217;s profiles focus on <a href=\"http:\/\/powerbase.info\/index.php?title=Special:Search&amp;limit=500&amp;offset=0&amp;redirs=1&amp;profile=default&amp;search=Jewish\">Jews<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/powerbase.info\/index.php\/Shiraz_Maher\">Muslims<\/a> who are working to fight extremism and terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>Counter-terrorism groups, &#8220;neocons&#8221; and various political organizations are all <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinwatch.org\/index.php\/blog\/item\/529-realite-eu-front-group-for-the-washington-based-israel-project\">accused<\/a> of belonging to a &#8220;covert propaganda operation&#8221; for various Jewish organizations. Even Tony Blair, Miller <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinwatch.org\/index.php\/issues\/war-and-foreign-policy\/item\/5797-the-brothers-who-funded-blair-israeli-settlements-and-islamophobia\">argues<\/a>, is in league with a sinister &#8220;international network&#8221; of Israeli settlers and American &#8220;Islamophobes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As one blogger <a href=\"http:\/\/hurryupharry.org\/2009\/12\/02\/24600\/\">notes<\/a>, any of Miller&#8217;s &#8220;fellow academics&#8221; who do not present strong convictions against Israel, are &#8220;smeared&#8230; as neocons.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Shiraz Maher, a counter-terrorism expert, has <a href=\"http:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/node\/3696\">written<\/a>: &#8220;Despite the &#8216;close to ten thousand&#8217; entries on SpinProfiles [another Miller project] you will find nothing on [Islamist pressure] groups. &#8230; The problem is with SpinProfile&#8217;s apparent obsession with &#8216;Jewish power&#8217; or, if you will, &#8216;the Jewish lobby&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At a recent conference organized by Miller, American academic Deepa Kumar <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AnisaMussi\/status\/608914762173399040\">denounced<\/a> Muslims working to combat extremism and terrorism within their communities as &#8220;native informants.&#8221; And as the journalist Nick Cohen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/oct\/04\/how-brave-muslims-are-being-silenced\">observed<\/a>: &#8220;For the religious [Islamic] right and the political and academic left, a liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the &#8216;other&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Another David Miller site, Neocon Europe (now defunct), <a href=\"http:\/\/standpointmag.com\/node\/3222\">published<\/a> the works of Kevin MacDonald, a <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.adl.org\/learn\/ext_us\/kevin_macdonald\/ideology.asp\">prominent<\/a> white supremacist who claims that Jews <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.adl.org\/learn\/ext_us\/kevin_macdonald\/ideology.html\">control<\/a> the media and politicians to &#8220;transform the country to serve their interests.&#8221; In a list entitled, &#8220;characteristics of Jewish intellectual movements,&#8221; MacDonald has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/libertycentral\/2010\/jul\/13\/spinwatch-right-reply-david-miller\">claimed<\/a> that Jews &#8220;form a cohesive, mutually reinforcing core&#8221; that has &#8220;access to prestigious and mainstream media sources, partly as a result of Jewish influence on the media.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Other conspiracy theories promoted on Miller&#8217;s websites include those of Miller&#8217;s colleague, Idrees Ahmed, who <a href=\"http:\/\/hurryupharry.org\/2009\/12\/01\/professor-david-miller-and-neocon-europe-%E2%80%93-part-1\/\">claims<\/a> that the Darfur crisis has been prolonged by a powerful Jewish lobby.<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, David Miller <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091121161115\/http:\/www.joelkovel.org\/archives.html\">provided<\/a> accommodation for Joel Kovel, an anti-Jewish American academic who has <a href=\"http:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/node\/3696\">written<\/a> that, &#8220;The Holocaust has been repressed from history and converted into moral capital to cover and justify whatever the Jewish people would do in the way of domination themselves, whether this be the pell-mell immersion in American bourgeois life or the policies of Israel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>David Miller and his network also work with Muslim Brotherhood operatives. In 2009, Miller <a href=\"http:\/\/hurryupharry.org\/2009\/12\/02\/24600\/\">secured<\/a> taxpayer funding to run a project examining British Islam in collaboration with Osama Saeed, a Muslim Brotherhood activist. Saeed was previously the spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain, the main organization for the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. In 2005, Saeed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2005\/nov\/01\/religion.world\">called<\/a> for the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate; and in 2006, Saeed <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20071012124025\/http:\/www.osamasaeed.org\/osama\/2006\/11\/imam_anwar_arre.html\">expressed<\/a> praise for the late Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki.<\/p>\n<p>Miller&#8217;s prot\u00e9g\u00e9s include Hilary Aked, a blogger with a strong interest in British Jewish groups. Aked apparently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/mirrorracisms\/hilary-aked\/undeniable-overlap-right-wing-zionism-and-islamophobia\">believes<\/a> that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the &#8220;Islamophobia industry,&#8221; and that there is a distinct &#8220;overlap between Islamophobia and Zionism.&#8221; She also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/mirrorracisms\/hilary-aked\/undeniable-overlap-right-wing-zionism-and-islamophobia\">describes<\/a> moderate Muslims as &#8220;native informants.&#8221;<\/p>\n<table class=\"mceItemTable\" style=\"margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"max-width: 600px; border: 1px solid black;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/pics\/large\/1284.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"397\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 82%; margin: 4px 6px;\">Deepa Kumar (left) and Hilary Aked (right) condemn moderate Muslims as &#8220;native informants.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Aked <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/blogs\/hilary-aked\">is published<\/a> at the online publication, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ngo-monitor.org\/article\/electronic_intifada\">Electronic Intifada<\/a>, where she <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/blogs\/hilary-aked\/bbc-finally-admits-bias-over-pro-israel-commentator\">writes<\/a> about &#8220;pro-Israel&#8221; infiltration of the media, and <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/blogs\/hilary-aked\/critics-banned-islamophobes-welcomed-we-believe-israel-uk-conference\">that<\/a> pro-Israel conferences are part of a secretive &#8220;transnational Islamophobia industry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Electronic Intifada is a prominent <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/content\/punishing-hamas-punishing-palestinian-people\/5876\">pro-Hamas<\/a> publication, whose founder, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ngo-monitor.org\/article\/electronic_intifada_and_ali_abunimah_factsheet\">Ali Abunimah<\/a>, has <a href=\"http:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/content\/why-israel-wont-survive\/7999\">described<\/a> Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as &#8220;collaborators,&#8221; and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AliAbunimah\/status\/28726521563\">claims<\/a> that, &#8220;supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Aked has also frequently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alaraby.co.uk\/english\/author\/2015\/4\/2\/Hilary-Aked\">written<\/a> for <i>Al Araby Al Jadeed<\/i>, a Qatari-funded media group that is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailynewsegypt.com\/2015\/01\/28\/new-qatari-funded-channel-sparks-media-controversy\/\">accused<\/a> by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group. <i>Al Araby<\/i>&#8216;s editor-in-chief, Wael Qandil, is described by the Arab newspaper <i>Al Arabiya<\/i> as a prominent <a href=\"http:\/\/english.alarabiya.net\/en\/media\/2013\/11\/29\/Qatar-backed-pro-Brotherhood-paper-to-launch-in-London.html\">supporter<\/a> of the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n<p>To fund his obsession with the &#8220;propaganda&#8221; ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller <a href=\"http:\/\/dmiller.info\/research-projects\">received<\/a> \u00a3400,000 ($614,000 USD) from the Council.<\/p>\n<p>Miller&#8217;s projects have also received funding from a number of Islamist groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group, Hamas, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinwatch.org\/index.php\/about\/funding\">including<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a32000 from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/4953\/interpal-mainstream-support\">Interpal<\/a>, a British charity closely linked to Hamas. Interpal&#8217;s leaders regularly attend Hamas rallies and ceremonies in the Gaza strip. Interpal trustee Essam Yusuf even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wn8QrVQMncU\">participated<\/a> in a song that praised Hamas&#8217;s terrorist activities and its &#8220;martyrs.&#8221; Another Interpal trustee, Ibrahim Hewitt, has <a href=\"http:\/\/standforpeace.org.uk\/journalists-and-un-officials-bestow-legitimacy-to-pro-terror-charity-interpal\/\">written<\/a> of a &#8220;so-called Holocaust,&#8221; and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mustaqim.co.uk\/occupiedpalestine\/pg3.htm\">claims<\/a>: &#8220;The Jews cannot be entrusted with the sanctity and security of this Holy Land.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>\u00a310,000 from Friends of Al Aqsa, an organization founded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/3964\/legitimizing-israel-destruction\">Ismail Patel<\/a>, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bCLNX9xyd6c#t=69\">told<\/a> a crowd in 2009 that, &#8220;Hamas is no terrorist organization. The reason they hate Hamas is because they refuse to be subjugated, occupied by the Israeli state, and we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Friends of Al Aqsa has published writings of prominent anti-Semites, including the Palestinian journalist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/3514\/terror-finance\">Khalid Amayreh<\/a>, whose <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091221193645\/http:\/www.aqsa.org.uk\/HOME\/tabid\/36\/ctl\/Details\/mid\/427\/ItemID\/1699\/language\/en-US\/Default.aspx\">submission<\/a> claimed that Jews control America, and that the Iraq war &#8220;was conceived in and planned by Israel through the mostly Jewish neocons in Washington.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A total of \u00a315,000 from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/4566\/islamist-hsbc-banking\">Cordoba Foundation<\/a>, a lobbying group led by senior Muslim Brotherhood official, Anas Al-Tikriti. Prime Minister David Cameron has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/uknews\/terrorism-in-the-uk\/10470307\/Terror-link-group-met-in-parliament.html\">described<\/a> the Cordoba Foundation as a &#8220;political front for the Muslim Brotherhood.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>\u00a35000 from Middle East Monitor, a Muslim Brotherhood online publication. Its editor, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/3964\/legitimizing-israel-destruction\">Daud Abdullah<\/a>, was a signatory to the Istanbul Declaration, a document that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2009\/mar\/25\/islam-terrorism\">called<\/a> for attacks on British troops and Jewish communities.In 2011, Middle East Monitor brought the Hamas activist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/3467\/jeremy-corbyn-mousa-abu-maria\">Raed Saleh<\/a> to speak in Britain. Saleh has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejc.com\/comment-and-debate\/comment\/66585\/blood-libel-not-bad-enough-uk-court\">claimed<\/a> (falsely) that 4000 Jews skipped work at the World Trade Center on 9\/11 and that those who killed the &#8220;Martyr, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden&#8221; had &#8220;sold their consciences to Satan.&#8221; David Miller is, in fact, a vocal supporter of Raed Saleh, and <a href=\"http:\/\/hurryupharry.org\/2011\/10\/27\/raed-salah-kick-this-racist-scum-out-now\/\">spoke<\/a> in defence of Saleh at a court deportation hearing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world&#8217;s ills. Jewish money is supposedly the nexus between &#8220;Islamophobia,&#8221; Western colonialism, terrorism and violent foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>That such views find a platform in academia &#8212; and any funding by governments &#8212; is, and probably should be, seriously troubling.<\/p>\n<p>Anti-Jewish tropes have been the foundation of conspiracy theories for centuries. The ideas of Miller, MacDonald and Aked are not new, but they remain racist, xenophobic and false.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world&#8217;s ills. Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister &#8220;international network&#8221; of Israeli settlers and American &#8220;Islamophobes.&#8221; &#8220;A liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4620,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/4620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}