Wilhelm Speklin no longer a member of the Socialist Fight Group 12/11/20
302/12/2020 by socialistfight
We have published this long piece because it is not about one individual who has completely bought into the conspiracy theories about the origin and seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic but because such conspiracy theories are becoming increasingly popular even in some former leftist circles.
The Australian group, the Workers League, have adopted some explicitly Strasserite red-brown conspiracy stuff endorsed by Speklin.
Speklin quotes Dan Bongino, the far rightist Fox News conspiracy theorist. In October 2020, Bongino published his third book, Follow the Money: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal. The blurb tells all, “Follow the Money exposes the labyrinth of connections between D.C.’s slimiest swamp creatures—Democrat operatives, lying informants, desperate and destructive FBI agents, Obama power brokers, CIA renegade John Brennan, George Soros, and more—who conspired to attack Trump by manufacturing one bogus scandal after another.” The US SWP also endorse this.
In Britain conspiracy nut cases like Piers Corbyn and David Icke have held rallies in Trafalgar Square, which Speklin supported, against mask-wearing and social distancing, asserting against all scientific evidence that the pandemic is less harmful than ’flu.
The far right and outright fascists are capitalising on political disorientation on this level and Socialist Fight had no option but to break with him as soon as incontrovertible evidence emerged of his collaboration with these elements. ▲
As a consequence of several posts on Facebook and elsewhere Socialist Fight regrets that we are obliged to sever our political relations with our Netherlands comrade, Wilhelm Speklin. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in February this year he has become persuaded by conspiracy theories; it is all a ‘Plandemic’, that there is no need for lockdowns, for masks, for socialist distancing or for a vaccine to combat Covid-19. And he has proved impervious to all arguments against.
On 10 November, 2020 Gerry Downing received the following email from him, Subject: WS: COVID & the ‘Left’ – WL
“It is not that the lockdown left (self-proclaimed “socialists”), following the lead of the overpaid Union officialdom, are scientifically illiterate per se – though they currently demonstrate this in spades. The lockdown left have strongly advocated for lockdowns – and by extension, for a police state, for the elimination of civil and democratic rights for working people, for the abolition of freedom of movement, i.e., for capitalism and imperialism – due to the fact that the question of the lockdowns most immediately defines one’s class position. That is to say, those who oppose the lockdowns stand with the working and oppressed masses, while those who defend the lockdowns stand with big capital. This remains the case irrespective of the claimed or self-identifying political viewpoints of those on either side of the lockdown barricade.”
‘The Lockdown Left‘
This is a recent comment on Facebook by Wilhelm Speklin:
“Exactly, as in the case of the Plandemic, which class is attempting to impose these clearly undemocratic unscientific dictates for which purpose?” Formerly he has toyed and endorsed conspiracy notions like the pandemic was man-made, that Bill Gates had made it, that it was all a conspiracy to prepare for a police states, that ordinary ‘flu was far more dangerous and killed far more people so we should oppose the ‘lock-down left).
Wilhelm Speklin made the following comment of support for Donald Trump, ostensibly agreeing with Michael Blakey’s comment here below a post from the Workers League (Australia) shared in the Socialist Fight (Netherlands) Facebook group:
“the split of which I spoke of at least 4 years ago now stands at the point of total schism. Very hard to support Trump … he is as bad as every criticism of him, but the Democrats are as if not more vile whilst covered in a merkin (an artificial covering of hair for the pubic area- SFG) of left anti-racism whilst being as dangerous to the working class. In fact, more so as they preserve a tad of leftyness as opposed to Trumps outright bonapartist and rapidly becoming fascistic positions.”
And Wilhelm Speklin replied,
“Michael Blakey that’s a Leninist law etched in marble, no support to any bourgeois party, however there is nothing wrong with the recognition DT is somewhat of an ally taken he opposes much of the plandemic.”
This was in reply to a posting from the Workers League (Australia) which has a very Trotskyist orthodox-seeming programme but has a red-brown Strasserite position on Covid-19 which Wilhelm and Michael Blakey support.
Michael is not a Socialist Fight supporter. Of course, Socialist Fight did not call for a vote for either the Republicans or the Democrats but stood on the traditional Trotskyist position of calling for a labor movement party separate from both imperialist parties in the US. This in contrast to our position on the British Labour party, which remains a bourgeois-workers party and therefore merits our support and vote where no other revolutionary or credible centrist candidate is standing, despite the reactionary Blairite leadership of Kier Starmer.
The Workers League’s position
This is the WL’s position on to international lockdown movement.
“The anti-lockdown movement is gathering steam internationally, and Australia needs to emulate the hundreds of thousands who have mobilised recently in Germany, the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. It is possible that with an amalgamated movement which is prepared to mobilise again and again, government lockdowns could be rolled back. For this to come to pass, however, all wings of the anti-lockdown movement need to form a united front for common action. Currently the anti-lockdown movement is comprised of several detachments. Without pigeon-holing any individual, there is a moderate wing which favours lobbying parliamentarians, a President Trump supporting wing which includes QAnon followers, a wing concerned about forced vaccinations and the potential effects of 5G telecommunications infrastructure, and a wing rightly concerned about civil liberties and privacy.
“Revolutionaries are faced with the dual task of uniting all wings of the anti-lockdown movement, while simultaneously seeking to win the most pro-working class elements over to the side of socialism – despite prevalent suspicion as to its historical and current forms. Marxists must also be alert to the possibility of exploiting the differences amongst the ruling class, with some parts pushing for a one or two year lockdown, and others pushing to re-open the economy. While lockdowns may be partially lifted without systemic change, the “Great Reset” with its attendant political repression will not be defeated without the building of a workers’ party fighting for a workers’ government.” (our emphasis)
This is unbelievable, stomach-churning stuff. We have no hesitation in dubbing these statements red-brown fascism. The proposal to form a popular front with outright fascists which also consists of; “a moderate wing which favours lobbying parliamentarians, a President Trump supporting wing which includes QAnon followers, a wing concerned about forced vaccinations and the potential effects of 5G telecommunications infrastructure, and a wing rightly concerned about civil liberties and privacy”is shocking beyond belief. Only a fool would not know that the “President Trump supporting wing” contains not only QAnon followers but outright self-declared fascists like the Proud Boys and others whom Donald Trump has requested to “stand down, stand by”– in other words prepare for the fascist coup.
Stalinist Third Period
This goes much further than the Stalinist Third Period between 1928 and 1934 when they designated all other political parties as social-fascists, declared the main enemy was the ‘social-fascist’ German Social Democrats and the Nazis were only another form of fascism with whom it was possible to ally in certain circumstances. Under thus ultra-leftist cover they advocate a Popular Front with fascism itself against the working class and oppressed, combining Third Period ultraleftism with popular frontist rightism to sow the maximum possible confusion in the working class.
Thus, the path to power of Hitler was smoothed by Stalin who went on to assure the victory of Franco in 1939 by popular frontism against the Spanish revolution. Of course, the Workers League does not have the authority in the workers’ movement that Stalin had but the whole anti-lockdown movement globally promoted here is a dagger at the throat of the international working class.
To advocate state oppression like this against the poor and oppressed is the worst feature of that Workers League posting, where they strongly support Donald Trump and the main enemy is “Black Lives Matter (BLM), Antifa & the lockdown left”. Of course, we have strong political differences with these but give them unconditional but critical support against the capitalist state. Also, we understand why many voted for Biden to stop Trump, whilst strongly disagreeing with this tactic. This outright reactionary support for Donald Trump and his fascist followers is clear in these extracts from their statement here:
US Elections: Left-Wing or Right-Wing Coup? – WL 27 Oct. 2020
“The 2020 US Presidential Elections could well be the catalyst for more political violence, & some say a civil war. On the surface, it appears that both the “left” & the “right” are accusing each other of instigating mayhem. Yet if this year has demonstrated anything, it is that the so-called “left”, via Black Lives Matter (BLM), Antifa & the lockdown left (parties & groups which claim to be socialist while giving full backing to capitalist state enforcement of inhumane “Covid” lockdowns) are overwhelmingly the initiators & the perpetrators of verbal &/or physical violence against those who may have a different opinion to their own.
“Unfortunately, it does appear as though BLM/Antifa/lockdown left are being prepped to unleash mass rioting, looting and chaos should US President Donald Trump and the Republicans win the election on November 3.”
This pro-Trump reactionary nonsense repeats the stuff now churned out by the US SWP’s The Militant under Jack Barnes:
Violent course of antifa, Black Lives Matter threat to working class
“All summer, groups of antifa have carried out provocative nightly actions in Portland, including attacking police, setting fires and breaking windows. These actions are dangerous for working people looking for ways to resist bosses’ efforts to push the capitalist crisis onto our shoulders. They deal blows to fights by unionists, against cop brutality and for Black rights.
As they glorify violence, the embittered middle-class forces of antifa rail against “the elite,” elevate small group action above political struggle and remain deeply alienated from the working class.They have much in common with fascist groups they claim to oppose. Others have travelled this road previously, like Italian Socialist Party leader Benito Mussolini who went on to lead fascist forces to power in 1922.
“… The liberals are becoming more hysterical as each day passes, determined to use all means necessary to deny Trump a second term. Their course threatens the political rights working people have conquered in centuries of struggle.”
Socialist will immediately recognise these ‘law and order’ tirades as the property of the defenders of the capitalist establishment from right social democrats to Tories and Democrats. But right now it is Donald Trump’s appeal to the far right and fascists, the true ‘law and order’ people.
Trump sacked defence secretary Mark Esper on 9 November and replaced him with Christopher C Miller, the director of the National Counter-terrorism Center. Esper had opposed the use of troops against demonstrators, which angered Trump. He is replacing many other leaders in the Pentagon with far rightist, including Anthony Tata, who dubbed Barak Obama a “terrorist” and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, examines the possibility “that Trump wants a Pentagon chief who can order the military to take steps that might help keep him in power because of an election result that he claims is fraudulent.”
Speklin also once posted information criticising the lockdown response from Dan Bongino, an extreme right wing Fox News commentator and the person who called on Trump to declare Antifa a terrorist organisation. Almost everything the Workers League piece says could have been lifted right out of the Fox News fever swamp. It reads exactly like something Steve Bannon would write. Speklin has already demonstrated sympathy for conspiratorial rather than material factors and is certainly a direct contradiction of the history and principles of the Marxist left.
It is incompatible with membership of Socialist Fight to propagate these views and Wilhelm Speklin is therefore expelled from the group and we absolutely repudiate any responsibility for his deranged postings. He has changed the title of the Facebook Socialist Fight (Netherlands) to Workers League (Netherlands) to remove all doubt of his reactionary orientation to them. ▲
Socialist Fight 
Well, here in France there has been a serious discussion about Covid since the beginning.
It is indisputable that the government, relying on a phantasmal health committee, as it is all over the world, is promoting the medicines of the big pharmaceutical laboratories, the so-called BigPharma, and has tried by all means, even the ban on prescribing Cloroquine to silence the oposition.
This open pro-BigPharma policy has been countered by a group of some of the most eminent scientists and professors in France and the world (such as Professor Raoult, leading viriologist, who has become the bête noire of the government and the mainstream press). Others professors as Perrone, Toubiana, Toussaint all chefs of Hospital and eminents scientifics has been attaqued and threatened even life threatening for somones for their open contradiction with the official discours.
All the government’s efforts were directed towards the distribution of Remdesivir, a molecule from the Gilead laboratory, sold at a staggering price of thousands of euros, injectable in two times and totally ineffective.
But the government bought it for more than a billion euros and distributes it free of charge to French hospitals despite the fact that it causes known kidney problems. At the same time they camapigned against the very cheap Cloroquine+ Azytromicin, some tens of euros cost who has prouved its effectivness in Marseille and other hospitals that stubornly uses it against the wholescale press campaign against.
The Health Minister has banned the prescription of cloroquine combined with an antibiotic, a proven protocol in the early stages of the disease, and launched a massive press campaign against it. This extraordinary measure has never been taken in France and I believe in the whole world.
Once Remdesivir was ruled out because all the studies showed it not to work and dangerous, the government set about predicting a “second wave”, promoting “vaccination”, even going so far as to buy the doses and offer them free of charge to a population that did not want to be guinea pigs. More than 60% refuse to be vaccinated.
In fact, it is not a vaccine but a genetic therapy with not experience to back it.
There is therefore a major political issue behind this pandemic.
Whether the extreme right and the conspiratists take the place, it is still only the bankruptcy of the left that has given in completely to pro-BigPharma policy and the slander of governments against the scientists who challenge it.
I put to you a letter from one of the professors who challenge mass vaccination for a disease that requires a different therapeutic approach.
Letter from Doctor Christian Perronne
(Christian Perronne is a doctor and professor of French university hospital practitioners, specializing in the field of tropical pathologies and emerging infectious diseases, and former president of the Communicable Diseases Specialized Commission of the High Council of Public Health.)
Dear friends,
France, which has been living a nightmare for months, is waking up.
In many cities of our beautiful country, the people are on the march to regain their freedom, to demand the return of democracy.
As a doctor, a specialist in infectious diseases, and having been president of numerous public health bodies or councils, including on vaccines, I am aware every day of the uncertainties generating fear and growing disarray among our fellow citizens. I take the risk of being described once again as a “conspiracy theorist” or, better still, a “reassuranceist” >>, terms used to designate those who criticize or challenge the “single thought” process.
I end up being proud of these designations, as my words expressing the truth have never changed since the beginning of the epidemic. I therefore consider that it is my responsibility to express myself once again today on the whole medical aspect of Covid-19 and in particular on the subject of vaccination, now the central and almost unique element of the State’s health policy.
Many French people have been hypnotized by the politics of fear. Since September 2020, a second terrible wave of the epidemic had been announced, worse than the first.
The Minister of Health, Dr. Olivier Véran, the President of the Scientific Council of the Elysée, Pr. Jean François Delfraissy, the Director General of Health, Pr. Jérôme Salomon, the Pasteur Institute announced catastrophic figures with an exponential increase in the number of deaths. The hospitals were to be saturated and overwhelmed.
Even the President of the Republic, during a recent televised speech announcing the lock-down, predicted no less than 400,000 deaths, adding to the 200,000 deaths estimated shortly before by Prof. Arnaud Fontanet de Pasteur. These unrealistic figures had only one goal, to maintain the fear, to make us remain confined, ‘wisely’ masked. Yet the widespread use of masks in the general population has no scientifically proven benefit in curbing the SARS-COV-2 epidemic.
The use of masks should be targeted at patients, their entourage (especially people at risk) and carriers who come into contact with them.
However, the epidemic is regressing and has not led to an apocalypse. The dynamics of the curve had for weeks shown the profile of a seasonal epidemic rebound that can be observed with certain viruses once the epidemic wave is over.
This reflects the adaptation of the virus to humans and is also a reflection of the collective immunity that is growing in the population and protecting us naturally.
The virus strains currently circulating have lost their virulence. The authorities will not be able to say that this is thanks to the lock-down because the downward trend had begun even before it was introduced. The decline of the epidemic had even begun, in some towns, before the curfew was introduced.
Unfortunately, there are still deaths among the very elderly, the very obese, or people suffering from severe diabetes, severe high blood pressure, cardio-respiratory or kidney diseases that are already disabling.
These people at risk are perfectly identified. Health measures should therefore be targeted to protect them, detect them and treat them as early as possible from the onset of symptoms with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, whose efficacy and safety are widely confirmed, if given early.
Many deaths could have been prevented. However, general practitioners and geriatricians have been discouraged from treating.
In this context, to continue persecuting our children behind unnecessary masks remains incomprehensible.
All these measures are being taken to make the French demand a vaccine. But what is the point of a generalized vaccine for a disease whose mortality rate is close to 0.05%? None. This mass vaccination is useless. Moreover, the risks of vaccination may outweigh the benefits.
What is most worrying is that many countries, including France, say they are ready to vaccinate in the coming weeks, even though the development and evaluation of these products has been done in haste and no results on the effectiveness or dangerousness of these vaccines have been published to date.
We have only been entitled to press releases from industrial manufacturers, allowing their shares to soar on the stock market.
The worst thing is that the first “vaccines” that have been proposed to us are not vaccines, but gene therapy products.
We are going to inject nucleic acids that will cause our own cells to produce elements of the virus.
The consequences of this injection are completely unknown, as it is a first in humans. What if the cells of some “vaccinated” people produce too many viral elements, leading to uncontrollable reactions in our bodies?
The first gene therapies will be with RNA, but there are projects with DNA. Normally, in our cells, the message goes from DNA to RNA, but the reverse is possible in certain circumstances, especially since our human cells have contained so-called “endogenous” retroviruses >> integrated into the DNA of our chromosomes since the dawn of time.
These “domesticated” retroviruses that inhabit us are usually harmless (unlike HIV, the AIDS retrovirus for example), but they can produce an enzyme, reverse transcriptase, capable of transcribing backwards from RNA to DNA. So, RNA that is foreign to our bodies and administered by injection could code for DNA, which is just as foreign, and can then be integrated into our chromosomes.
There is therefore a real risk that our genes could be permanently transformed. There is also the possibility, by modifying the nucleic acids of our eggs or sperm, of transmitting these genetic modifications to our children.
The people who promote these gene therapies, falsely called “vaccines”, are sorcerer’s apprentices and take the French, and more generally the citizens of the world, for guinea pigs.
We don’t want to become, like tomatoes or maize, transgenic GMOs (genetically modified organisms). A medical manager of one of the pharmaceutical manufacturers said a few days ago that he was hoping for an individual protection effect, but that we shouldn’t expect too much impact on the transmission of the virus, and therefore on the dynamics of the epidemic.
This is a disguised admission that this is not a vaccine. The last straw. I am all the more horrified because I have always been in favor of vaccines and for years I have presided over bodies developing vaccine policy.
Today, we have to stop this extremely worrying plan. Louis Pasteur must be turning over in his grave.
Science, medical ethics and above all common sense must regain the upper hand.
Christian PERRONNE
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The crude manipulation of the government and the pharmacy trusts of the Covid 19 crisis is contested from the right and the far right by delusional conspiracy theories on one side and on the other hand, by a mixture of justified reactions of mistrust, directed against the government and the capitalist trusts.
The “socialism” of imbeciles, anti-Semitic, like Roehm-style “socialism” exists also, they are mixed up, but the bottom line is indeed an anti-capitalist sentiment.
This anti-capitalist feeling, which is a reflection of the real causes of the malaise of youth and workers, and which cause is the right-wing policy of social democracy and the fundamental sectarianism and the absurd dogmatism of far-left sects, benefits the right to a lesser extent and more especially the extreme right.
But its very nature is against the obvious effects of capitalism, against the big trusts more occupied with making profits from public health. They , in addition, benefit from aids and the corruption of the press and of governments. This is clearly seen by the masses of workers and youth, even by layers of honest petit-bourgeois people and make them a public ready to hear genuinely left-wing propaganda that emphasizes what the masses see more and more clearly. The need to unite the fight against the trust and its governments at their service. The left is obliged to lead, to try to lead at least this fight in a fight against the capitalism system as a whole.
The current era, characterized by a primitive consciousness of the masses through their own struggles, can take all forms. Both their struggles and their consciousness. It is therefore not uncommon for it to get lost in old theories and forms “rediscovered” and put forward by this same primitive consciousness of workers and youth. We have spontaneous fight being fought all over the world and far more “fighting spirited” than the boring marches of the Unions and left parties.
It is also possible that the right and the extreme right will benefit from it, but the sociological composition of current societies and the crisis of capitalism mean that the passage through the “right-extreme-right” step should be a rapid passage because these options do not, cannot, solve the problems that the masses face.
This is no longer the situation before World War II, especially in imperialist countries of the second or third order. The petty bourgeois owner has almost disappeared and those who remain bear the brunt of the consequences of the crisis. The salaried petty bourgeoisie, an important social layer, vacillates between the blows of the crisis and their ambition to become or at least live as bourgeois.
The “solutions” of the Brexit style, which some preach in France, are dead ends which even become clear for those who advance them when they face the realities of power and allow the exacerbation of inter imperialist contradictions.
Almost inevitably, the socialist exit which inevitably involves the reconstruction of parties and unions that are strong and loyal to the workers, becomes obvious. The masses and the young people will come “naturally” to this conclusion when they fight for their real demands and not behind the petty bourgeoisie, environmentalist or “semi-anarchist”.
This can take place through intermediate stages in which elections can play, as in other countries, a very important role. The awareness that the crisis of humanity is, ultimately, the crisis of the parties of the workers and of their political consciousness is the only conclusion that an analysis, even a summary of reality, can give.
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