The useful idiocy of Zack Polanski
Polanski has done everything he possibly could to disassociate himself from his own previous Zionism, but it is not enough. It never would be. Because Zionism isn’t the problem.
Useful idiot. The phrase could not be more apt.
Zack Polanski has proved to be very useful to the extremists who have infiltrated the Greens. They can use his Judaism to deflect from allegations of antisemitism. They can use his identity as a gay man to hide a more conservative agenda. They can use his dopey, smiley, happy charm to deflect from their nasty extremism.
Idiot because while he was pushing their antizionist agenda – even though it has hurt his own family members – did he really think they wouldn’t turn on him?
The phrase ‘useful idiot’ or ‘useful innocent’ originated in Cold War politics and symbolises someone who is idealistic and manipulated by a political cause without realising it. Extremists often need to hide their full malign agenda, so they push the naïve foot soldier into spreading their message while they stay in the background, ready to reap the rewards.
KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov expounded in a famous 1984 interview on how the USSR manipulated useful idiots to destabilise Western institutions before destroying those they had finished with. “Your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders: they are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilise a nation,” he said. “When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much.
“Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power – obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.”
Zack Polanski might think he is winning. Thanks to him, the Greens have doubled their membership, won a number of councils, and are poised to gain real political influence if the next election is tight.
He is lauded as a hero. On Wednesday night, as he arrived to help out Green Party members canvassing in a Hove by-election, he arrived in a blacked-out white SUV surrounded by lackeys. He probably felt he was on top. In control.
But, quite rapidly, it appears that any power he thought he might have had is being wrested from him.
Part of this is of his own making. The revelation that he did not pay council tax while living on a narrow boat, queries over whether he ever qualified as a hypnotherapist, derision over the time he tried to hypnotise a Sun journalist into growing her boobs and – most importantly – the fact he criticised police officers trying to stop the Golders Green stabber have all chipped away at his popularity.
To push back, he’s doubled and tripled down on his AsAJew status. He can barely utter a sentence without spitting out ‘the genocide’. He has constantly demanded that the UK should end arms sales to Israel and investigate the country for war crimes. He has backed sporting and cultural boycotts of Israeli football teams and supported the monitoring of UK-Israeli dual nationals who served in the IDF, saying they could be responsible for war crimes.
He didn’t even speak out against the Green party’s ‘Zionism is racism’ motion, even though it would mean labelling his own family – most of whom are Zionists and a few of whom made Aliyah – racists.
But still it isn’t enough for those who are really in control. Et tu, Mothin Ali? Because, yes, it is Zack’s trusty deputy who is on manoeuvres. Who could have guessed?
According to an article in the Spectator, Mothin is backing a new, powerful Greens affiliate called the Global Majority Greens (GMG), which has accused Polanski and other senior Greens in a new report of creating a “hierarchy of racism” with allegations of antisemitism taken more seriously than other complaints.
The report, which will be presented at the Green Party AGM later this month, accuses Zack of only “performing anti-racism” and condemns a “serious governance problem inseparable from institutional racism”. The problem is that too many Muslim members have been suspended for antisemitism. Apparently, that is racist because it “demonises migrants and Muslims”.
And even though Zack has really done everything he possibly could to disassociate himself from his own previous Zionism, it is not enough. It never would be. Because Zionism isn’t the problem.
It was inevitable that the Red/Green/Islamist alliance that now makes up the Greens would eventually break up. Their agendas are too separate, even if they can agree on hating Israel and the need for revolution. This glue won’t hold forever, as Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party found when the far left fell out with conservative Islamists on the issue of trans rights.
Perhaps the Greens lasted just a little bit longer because they are an older, more established party; but the cracks are emerging.
So the battle for the Greens is on. Now we will see whether the party’s newfound popularity is genuinely the Zack effect (and I don’t doubt that some of it is) and how much it is sheer entryism from the hard left and Islamists.
I imagine that Zack will fight this, but he is already bloodied by the growing body of scandals surrounding him. How much longer can he last?
You do have to wonder how he really thought that a Jewish man with a history of Zionism could survive as leader of a party obsessed with Israel. Idiot.
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