Prof. Tony Martin Dis-Invited to UK!
DI | 06.11.2003 03:04
Mayor's "Uncle Tom" Lee Jasper Does Dirty Work -- UK Black Community Protest --Ask Other Invitees Not to Attend
The British Black community is outraged over the dis-invitation of the renowned Marcus Garvey scholar Dr. Tony Martin to a Black History Month event scheduled for October 25th in London.
The British Black community is outraged over the dis-invitation of the renowned Marcus Garvey scholar Dr. Tony Martin to a Black History Month event scheduled for October 25th in London.
The event, an annual opportunity to hear lectures from the world's top Black scholars, is arranged through the mayor's office which funds and promotes the event through Lee Jasper. When London Mayor Ken Livingstone was informed of Dr. Martin's uncompromising analysis of the Black/Jewish relationship (see Martin's book, The Jewish Onslaught), Jasper was ordered to "dis-invite" Martin--an order which Jasper promptly and dutifully carried out. Community leaders, outraged by Jasper's unreserved submission, appealed to other invitees to refuse their invitations unless Martin's invitation is restored.
Below is an exchange of correspondence between Lee Jasper and Dr. Tony Martin
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Dr. Martin's Response to Cancellation
To: Lee Jasper (Jasper's bio), Mayor's Office, London
From: Tony Martin (Dr. Martin's Bio), Professor of Africana Studies, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA (See a Jamaica Observer profile of Dr. Martin)
Re: Your cancellation of invitation to Mayor's First Voice Conference
Da: 15 October 2003
You called yesterday and expressed upset because a Jewish newspaper said that I spoke at a conference organized by David Irving and another organized by the Institute for Historical Review. You also said something not entirely coherent about what you called "holocaust denial." About an hour afterwards you emailed me abruptly revoking Rosemary Emodi's five months, old invitation to me to address the First Voice Conference, on the basis of the concerns transmitted to you by your Jewish sources. I thought that you were just another overwrought Jew who sees "antisemites" everywhere, an annoying though partly explicable phenomenon. Now, however, I discover that you are that most singular of phenomena, to wit a black talking head for Jewish ventriloquism. I addressed the first abovementioned conference on the Jewish role in the African slave trade, a topic that overwrought Jews consider ipso facto antisemitic. I addressed the other on the tactics of organized Jewry against persons like myself who they disagree with.
Organized Jewry, speaking through you, has defined the organizers of both these conferences as antisemitic and, as affirmed in your email, they have defined me as antisemitic for accepting their invitations. This kind of reasoning would also make me a talking head for overwrought Jews for my willingness to speak at your conference.
I hope that someday you will become as diligent in the knowledge of your own history as you now appear to be in mindlessly parroting the misconceptions of others. Then maybe you will interrogate your handlers on the following questions, among many others
the anti-Black sentiments found in some Jewish publications -- e.g. The Jewish Press (Brooklyn, New York), whose Professor Howard Adelson called Africana Studies a "fraudulent" enterprise.
Jewish Professor Michael Levin who went to court in New York to affirm his right to teach students that Black people are inferior. (Perhaps he'll make an exception for you.)
The "holocaust denial" of Jewish historians who have made careers out of minimizing estimates of African deaths during the slave trade.
The Babylonian Talmud's invention of the Hamitic Myth, whereby God supposedly cursed Black people with dark skin, bulging eyes and huge genitals and relegated them to be the slaves of others for eternity. Millions of your African forebears lost their lives in the slave trade on the strength of this pretext for enslaving them. They must be turning in their graves now to behold your antics.
You can find documentation for all this in my book, The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront.
Your thoughtless transmission of allegations of antisemitism is both libelous and incongruous. I wonder what usefulness someone so out of sympathy with his own community can be as a representative of that community to the mayor's office.
Dr. Tony Martin
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Lee Jasper's Dis-Invitation
Dear Professor Martin,
Thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. Having confirmed with you that you attended and spoke at David Irving's 'Real History Conference' in 2001 and the Institute for Historical Review's annual conference in 2002 and that both of these conferences included speakers known for their anti-Semitic and racist activities including Holocaust denial, the Mayor's Office has decided to withdraw its invitation to you to address the First Voice conference on Saturday 25 October.
The appearance of a close association between yourself and extreme right wing academics and organisations at these conferences has left the Mayor's Office with no alternative but to withdraw its invitation.
It is with some regret that I write this email, because of your obvious expertise in relation to the life and works of Marcus Garvey.
Yours sincerely
Lee Jasper
Email Lee Jasper at
Lee.Jasper@london.gov.uk
[Lee Jasper is a member of the Mayor's Advisory cabinet, responsible for advising the Mayor on race relations and policing in London. He is also responsible for the development, enactment and promotion of equalities policies for the GLA and its functional bodies. He is the Deputy Representative of the UK on the European Council's European National Anti Racist Network. He sits as Chair on many committees and organisations, including the National Black Alliance, National Black Caucus, Operation Black Vote. He is also a member of the Black Jewish Forum.]
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Prof. Tony Martin Responds to the Controversy:
Re sharing a platform with "a known Fascist and racist"
1) The Jews are very good at creating red herrings and defining people and situations to their liking.
2) Their action here has little to do with David Irving since they have been attacking me since at least 1993, eight years before I spoke at Irving's Real History Conference in Cincinnati. My Jewish Onslaught was written ten years ago in 1993 in response to their earlier campaign.
3) The real issue then and now was and is their objection to my using the Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews in a class. They seem to think that they are somehow exempt from acknowledging their role in our enslavement and paying us reparations. Theirs was in fact an important role and one that their own scholars have documented. Among the many responses to their untenable position was a big rally at Howard University in 1994 when Khalid Muhammad, Len Jeffries, Malik Zulu Shabazz, I and others spoke.
4) I am a historian and I speak for all kinds of forums, including even Uncle Tom forums on occasion, if I feel that somebody in the audience might benefit from my message. This does not necessarily make me an Uncle Tom or whatever the ideology of the convener happens to be. I have even spoken for Jews on occasion.
5) David Irving may be a Fascist -- I don't know. All I know is that the Jews have been calling me a racist, antisemite and everything but a child of God for years. My first instincts are not to take them seriously unless I can independently verify what they are saying. I did read an account of Irving's libel case where he is said to have written a poem saying that he did not want his daughter to marry a Rastafarian or something like that. On his website he had photos of a Caribbean sister who had worked for him for years. He argued from this that he was not racist. Not wanting his daughter to marry a Rastafarian pales into insignificance next to some of the racism of Jews that you will see documented in my The Jewish Onslaught. In particular I would draw your attention to some of the Jewish hate mail that I reprinted in the book's appendix.
6) They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and it seems to me that people like Lee Jasper are so unhinged from their own history and community that they fall easy prey to other people's agendas besides their own. Or in some cases it may be a deliberate opportunistic decision to get ahead. I don't know Lee well enough to say which category he falls into.
---------------------
Anyway brother thanks for the support and for giving me the opportunity to respond to these questions. I will cc this to others who I have been speaking with since these are important questions which others may have been asking.
All the best.
Tony
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Dr. Martin's Letter to London Mayor Ken Livingstone
Dear Mr. Mayor:
Re "Livingstone bars 'anti-Jewish' historian from conference"
I have only just received a copy of the above-captioned Jewish Chronicle article (October 17, 2003, page 1). The Jewish Chronicle has managed, even within the confines of a relatively short piece, to include a few factually incorrect statements. This makes me wonder what other errors of fact or interpretation may be contained in the correspondence between Mrs. Louise Ellman (Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside and vice-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Council against Anti-Semitism) and yourself. According to the Jewish Chronicle, this exchange of letters constituted the basis both for your "prompt and appropriate action" (your words, per the JC) and Mrs. Ellman's delight at "the mayor's quick move" (her words, per the article).
Could you please send me a copy of the correspondence? I don't suppose that it is confidential since the Jewish Chronicle has already quoted part of it.
Thank you.
Tony Martin
Below is an exchange of correspondence between Lee Jasper and Dr. Tony Martin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Martin's Response to Cancellation
To: Lee Jasper (Jasper's bio), Mayor's Office, London
From: Tony Martin (Dr. Martin's Bio), Professor of Africana Studies, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA (See a Jamaica Observer profile of Dr. Martin)
Re: Your cancellation of invitation to Mayor's First Voice Conference
Da: 15 October 2003
You called yesterday and expressed upset because a Jewish newspaper said that I spoke at a conference organized by David Irving and another organized by the Institute for Historical Review. You also said something not entirely coherent about what you called "holocaust denial." About an hour afterwards you emailed me abruptly revoking Rosemary Emodi's five months, old invitation to me to address the First Voice Conference, on the basis of the concerns transmitted to you by your Jewish sources. I thought that you were just another overwrought Jew who sees "antisemites" everywhere, an annoying though partly explicable phenomenon. Now, however, I discover that you are that most singular of phenomena, to wit a black talking head for Jewish ventriloquism. I addressed the first abovementioned conference on the Jewish role in the African slave trade, a topic that overwrought Jews consider ipso facto antisemitic. I addressed the other on the tactics of organized Jewry against persons like myself who they disagree with.
Organized Jewry, speaking through you, has defined the organizers of both these conferences as antisemitic and, as affirmed in your email, they have defined me as antisemitic for accepting their invitations. This kind of reasoning would also make me a talking head for overwrought Jews for my willingness to speak at your conference.
I hope that someday you will become as diligent in the knowledge of your own history as you now appear to be in mindlessly parroting the misconceptions of others. Then maybe you will interrogate your handlers on the following questions, among many others
the anti-Black sentiments found in some Jewish publications -- e.g. The Jewish Press (Brooklyn, New York), whose Professor Howard Adelson called Africana Studies a "fraudulent" enterprise.
Jewish Professor Michael Levin who went to court in New York to affirm his right to teach students that Black people are inferior. (Perhaps he'll make an exception for you.)
The "holocaust denial" of Jewish historians who have made careers out of minimizing estimates of African deaths during the slave trade.
The Babylonian Talmud's invention of the Hamitic Myth, whereby God supposedly cursed Black people with dark skin, bulging eyes and huge genitals and relegated them to be the slaves of others for eternity. Millions of your African forebears lost their lives in the slave trade on the strength of this pretext for enslaving them. They must be turning in their graves now to behold your antics.
You can find documentation for all this in my book, The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront.
Your thoughtless transmission of allegations of antisemitism is both libelous and incongruous. I wonder what usefulness someone so out of sympathy with his own community can be as a representative of that community to the mayor's office.
Dr. Tony Martin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Jasper's Dis-Invitation
Dear Professor Martin,
Thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. Having confirmed with you that you attended and spoke at David Irving's 'Real History Conference' in 2001 and the Institute for Historical Review's annual conference in 2002 and that both of these conferences included speakers known for their anti-Semitic and racist activities including Holocaust denial, the Mayor's Office has decided to withdraw its invitation to you to address the First Voice conference on Saturday 25 October.
The appearance of a close association between yourself and extreme right wing academics and organisations at these conferences has left the Mayor's Office with no alternative but to withdraw its invitation.
It is with some regret that I write this email, because of your obvious expertise in relation to the life and works of Marcus Garvey.
Yours sincerely
Lee Jasper
Email Lee Jasper at
Lee.Jasper@london.gov.uk [Lee Jasper is a member of the Mayor's Advisory cabinet, responsible for advising the Mayor on race relations and policing in London. He is also responsible for the development, enactment and promotion of equalities policies for the GLA and its functional bodies. He is the Deputy Representative of the UK on the European Council's European National Anti Racist Network. He sits as Chair on many committees and organisations, including the National Black Alliance, National Black Caucus, Operation Black Vote. He is also a member of the Black Jewish Forum.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Tony Martin Responds to the Controversy:
Re sharing a platform with "a known Fascist and racist"
1) The Jews are very good at creating red herrings and defining people and situations to their liking.
2) Their action here has little to do with David Irving since they have been attacking me since at least 1993, eight years before I spoke at Irving's Real History Conference in Cincinnati. My Jewish Onslaught was written ten years ago in 1993 in response to their earlier campaign.
3) The real issue then and now was and is their objection to my using the Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews in a class. They seem to think that they are somehow exempt from acknowledging their role in our enslavement and paying us reparations. Theirs was in fact an important role and one that their own scholars have documented. Among the many responses to their untenable position was a big rally at Howard University in 1994 when Khalid Muhammad, Len Jeffries, Malik Zulu Shabazz, I and others spoke.
4) I am a historian and I speak for all kinds of forums, including even Uncle Tom forums on occasion, if I feel that somebody in the audience might benefit from my message. This does not necessarily make me an Uncle Tom or whatever the ideology of the convener happens to be. I have even spoken for Jews on occasion.
5) David Irving may be a Fascist -- I don't know. All I know is that the Jews have been calling me a racist, antisemite and everything but a child of God for years. My first instincts are not to take them seriously unless I can independently verify what they are saying. I did read an account of Irving's libel case where he is said to have written a poem saying that he did not want his daughter to marry a Rastafarian or something like that. On his website he had photos of a Caribbean sister who had worked for him for years. He argued from this that he was not racist. Not wanting his daughter to marry a Rastafarian pales into insignificance next to some of the racism of Jews that you will see documented in my The Jewish Onslaught. In particular I would draw your attention to some of the Jewish hate mail that I reprinted in the book's appendix.
6) They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and it seems to me that people like Lee Jasper are so unhinged from their own history and community that they fall easy prey to other people's agendas besides their own. Or in some cases it may be a deliberate opportunistic decision to get ahead. I don't know Lee well enough to say which category he falls into.
---------------------
Anyway brother thanks for the support and for giving me the opportunity to respond to these questions. I will cc this to others who I have been speaking with since these are important questions which others may have been asking.
All the best.
Tony
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Martin's Letter to London Mayor Ken Livingstone
Dear Mr. Mayor:
Re "Livingstone bars 'anti-Jewish' historian from conference"
I have only just received a copy of the above-captioned Jewish Chronicle article (October 17, 2003, page 1). The Jewish Chronicle has managed, even within the confines of a relatively short piece, to include a few factually incorrect statements. This makes me wonder what other errors of fact or interpretation may be contained in the correspondence between Mrs. Louise Ellman (Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside and vice-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Council against Anti-Semitism) and yourself. According to the Jewish Chronicle, this exchange of letters constituted the basis both for your "prompt and appropriate action" (your words, per the JC) and Mrs. Ellman's delight at "the mayor's quick move" (her words, per the article).
Could you please send me a copy of the correspondence? I don't suppose that it is confidential since the Jewish Chronicle has already quoted part of it.
Thank you.
Tony Martin
DI