Young minds

David T has a post up at Harry's Place, describing the influence of the SWP in the University teachers' trade union. There have been repeated attempts there to start some kind of boycott of Israel, and the SWP has been behind them:

But it is imperative that we shift the debate, to focus on the utterly malign influence of members and supporters of the racist and totalitarian Socialist Workers' Party, and of other marginal extremist political parties, on British academia. The likes of Tom Hickey, Phil Marfleet, Tom Hickey, John Rose and the rest of them, are not quirky eccentrics or idealists whose hearts are basically in the right place. They're nasty, vicious, demagogues whose political values are utterly opposed to everything that liberal progressives stand for. They should evoke in us, precisely the same response that we felt when we learnt of Frank Ellis's published views: disgust.

Smash the SWP.

Meanwhile, Oliver Kamm has written about the man behind the school teachers' union's proposed ban on army visits to schools:

McGarr is a maths teacher from Tower Hamlets and a former council candidate in Millwall for the Respect party. He is not being entirely open in disclaiming a wish to undermine our armed forces. In fact, he's lying. This is what he wrote in Socialist Worker, 23 March 2003, just before the military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein..

In the quoted piece, McGarr suggests it would be best if British (and American) troops suffered "reverses" or were defeated.

So in the same week a member of the SWP in the university teachers' union suggests punitive arrangement aimed at Israeli academics, and a member of the SWP tells the teachers' union to ban the armed forces from schools.

SWP entryism seems to be having significant success in these unions, and these fanatical extremists are thereby in a position to influence young minds to the full. This is a bad thing.

It's worth noting that it is left-wing writers doing the exposing. (It would be better if some on the right displayed an less relaxed approach to their own racist and hateful fringes).

In Canada, Ezra Levant has been waging an impressive and unusual campaign against the Human Rights Commissions there. It's unusual because he is winning. His main tactic, outside his immediate legal struggle, is what he terms "denormalization". He explains it as follows:

By "denormalizing", I mean bringing the public's perception of these commissions in line with the awful facts about them. Denormalizing the commissions means demonstrating how they disrespect Canadian values, showing how they have become a sword, attacking human rights, rather than a shield protecting them.

That's what David T and Oliver Kamm are doing with the SWP. It's the right policy.