It is very sad to see that Gerry Gable, editor of the antifascist magazine Searchlight, has written an ill-informed and incoherent attack on the newly formed campaign Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine, which was founded last night at a meeting of more than 150 people in London. Gerry’s article makes three points, and none of them has the slightest credibility. The first is that the Russian television station RT gives a platform to fascists. This is irrelevant. We are not sponsored by or funded by RT in any way. Nor does he give any evidence that we are. The second is that RT journalists have links to shadowy groups such as the Lyndon LaRouche cult, and that someone in Donetsk also has such links, and that the Ukrainian socialist group Borotba who addressed our launch meeting support the struggle in Donetsk. This implication that we are connected to a universally despised cult is a transparent attempt at guilt by association. But the association is nil and Gerry gives no evidence of any. All attentive readers will reject this as a baseless smear. Gerry’s third ‘point’ is a mere republication of comments by an unnamed source who is, we are told, “one of the most experienced investigators of what really goes on in Moscow and Kiev.” We wonder who this person is? His investigative skills are in question because his information amounts to no more than republication of a recent attack on the socialist Borotba Union of Ukraine by the six-strong Kiev group that publish ‘autonomia.net’. Their libel against Borotba has been comprehensively answered: borotba.org/statement_of_the_union_borotba_over_recent_smear_campaign_against_anti-fascists_in_ukraine.html. Finally, we have to report that Gerry never approached us for our comments, never asked us if the allegations were true, never sought our opinions. He could have contacted me, or Lindsey German of Stop the War, or Andrew Murray of the Communist Party, and put these allegations to us. He did not. Instead he swallowed them whole, and then accused us of being ‘enemies of the anti-fascist struggle’ and ‘political crooks’. No one can take any pleasure in concluding that Gerry Gable’s investigative methods are deeply flawed, his approach biased, and his treatment of sources credulous in the extreme. Antifascists should reject this as an outrageous smear campaign against Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 21:03:31 +0000
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