Martin Hirst's "Comrade's" Ties to Muslim Militants

Auckland University of Technology journalism lecturer Martin Hirst, hasn’t apologised for calling me a “neo-nazi”, but he has altered the offending text. It now reads;

Well, I’ve been outed! Some right-wing dribblejaws* has me lined up in his beady little eyes…

Unfortunately he then goes on to say this;

Mr Loudon has attempted to slander me by claiming friends of my friends have links with the Islamic Brotherhood. So he cannot claim to be the only injured party here.

His attacks on me are offensive and defamatory and designed to intimidate.

Dr Hirst’s journalistic skills have let him down again.

The organisation I referred to was the Egyptian based, crypto Marxist, Muslim Brotherhood.

According to website Intelligence Resource Program

Although officially banned by the Egyptian government since 1954, the Muslim Brothers captured 17 seats in the Egyptian Parliament running as independents; they also hold important offices in professional organizations in Egypt.

Today, a very complex financial network connects the operations of over seventy branches of the Muslim Brothers worldwide.

During the Muslim Brothers’ seventy-plus years of existence, there have been cycles of growth, followed by divisions into factions, including clandestine financial networks, and violent jihad groups, such as al-Jihad and al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya in Egypt, HAMAS in Palestine and mujahideen groups in Afghanistan.

Dr Hirst openly acknowledges that he is a supporter of the radical Marxist grouping, the .

The IST’s links with the Muslim Brotherhood are well known and documented.

I quote from British Trotskyist Blog Lenin’s Tomb, reporting on a 2006 conference in Cairo attended by John Rees, George Galloway, assorted Muslim militants and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

These conferences are annual events and have been attended for several years by leaders of Dr Hirst’s IST.

Note that John Rees is head of the British , which leads the IST. George Galloway is a RESPECT MP in the British Parliament. RESPECT is led by the SWP and several radical British Muslims.

Galloway was brought to NZ recently by Dr Hirst’s friends in the local IST affiliate, to warn us against the dangers of Islamophobia.

The Cairo Conference: a wonderful vibrant and hectic event… Four years ago both John Rees and George Galloway were invited to speak in conferences in Cairo at the same time. They managed to pull the two together (from London!) and the birth of the Cairo Conference – a meeting of activists from the secular and Muslim worlds – took place.

The speakers list was A List, leaders of Islamic movements, trade unions, and political groups, MPs from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt – oh and Britain. And international antiwar activists from UK, Denmark, Korea and Canada.

After an all-too-large helping of Islamic radicalism, the interesting speakers for this blog were, unsurprisingly John Rees and George Galloway.

John Rees issued a call for unity. “We are here because we are all here. The Muslims, the Nasserites, the socialists and the communists and other nationalists and those who fit into none of those categories. This unity allows this conference to happen.” He went down a storm.

Galloway was in excellent form. Not pandering to some opf the more 2 deminsional rhetoric of the local speakers. He welcomed he election of Hamas but pointed out
“You can’t have a free Palestine without Hamas, but you can’t have a free Palestine with only Hamas”.

He noted that there are non-corrupt people in the PLO and Fateh, and called for uniting with those and getting a broad and radical front against Israel.

Hamas’ Information Minister was uncompromising in his attitude to Israel, stating repeatedly they will not recognise the occupying forces of the state of Israel.

The Iraqi delegation was notable by its absence, unable to obtain documentation from the Egyptian authorities to enter the country. We were handed a letter from the Wahaj El Iraq (Patriotic Forces Rejecting the Occupation) Command: “We received with great pleasure & gratitude your invitation to attend your respectable conference, but we were surprised by a lot of security complications and requirements in order to get the visa… Which represent a kind of disapproval (in a diplomatic way).”

The Cairo conference is now being run in conjunction with the Cairo Social Forum… We’ve discussed everything from peasant politics and problems to ‘Arab Communities Abroad’. ‘Art, Power and Resistance’, ‘The Myths of Zionism’ and ‘Different Governments, Same Torture’ were all on the agenda.

The Myths of Zionism meeting introduced by John Rose was fantastic, with Muslim Brotherhood members discussing with Jewish people the meaning and intent of Zionism

The movement here is growing in strength, number and confidence. Socialists are now selling papers in public after being underground for many years (the second edition of Socialist Worker’s sister paper had amazing sales), many present had been imprisoned and some tortured for doing what happens in the UK as a matter of course.

The election of the Muslim Brotherhood MPs last year has opened up space for organising and activity. The Cairo Conference is a place where dissenting voices from Egypt and around the world gather to organise and debate. We are seeing a new era in the resistance in Egypt.


5th Cairo conference March 2007


IST and SWP’s John Rees at 2007 conference


SWP’s Alex Callanicos at 2007 conference

But surely Dr Hirst, holding the responsible position he does would be at pains to distance himself from such radical views?

In January 2006 Australia’s B’nai Brith Anti Defamation Commission published a report by Monash University academic Dr Philip Mendes

“Special Report 31 discusses the phenomenon of an anti-Zionism beyond rational debate. While this is a universal trend, our Report’s author Dr Philip Mendes examines exponents of this viewpoint from the Australian Left.”

According to Dr Mendes;

In late 2004, two Queensland journalists, Martin Hirst and Robert Schutze, penned an attack on the conservative foreign editor of the Australian newspaper, Greg Sheridan.

The purpose of the attack was to discredit Sheridan’s views on the Iraq war, and the associated war on terror. In the middle of this hyperbolic critique, the authors offered the following:

– Israel was guilty of “war crimes by assassinating Palestinian religious and political leaders”
– “Sheridan parrots the absurdity that Israel is the only democracy in the region”
– “Where is the democracy in Israel? On the one hand, Iraq was a dictatorship with limited electoral participation under Saddam Hussein. Compare this with Israel which has a limited parliamentary system under the effective dictatorship of Ariel Sharon. People are regularly beaten, tortured and killed to maintain the Zionist regime.

In reading the article quoted, I picked out this gem from Hirst and Schutze;

Despite Sheridan’s protestations that the ‘war on terror’ is not a war against Islam or a clash of civilizations , his columns in recent years have repeatedly cast the world withina frame of good and evil.

On one level, this reflects the pervasiveness of a post-Cold War terrorism news frame in contemporary mainstream media reporting.

In its moral simplicity, this interpretive prism is reminiscent of the old Cold War news frame, which dramatized superpower rivalries and pitted East against West, or capitalism againstcommunism.

With the ‘reds’ somehow purged from under the bed, bomb-wielding Islamic fundamentalists have emerged as the new scourge of the modern world

Further clues to Dr hirst’s views come from Australian writer Darlene Taylor’s review of Andrew Bolt’s “Still Not Sorry” at Online Opinion Australia’s eJournal of Social and Political Debate

At a forum at the Woodford Folk Festival last December, Dr Martin Hirst revealed himself to be a strident critic of the Iraq War.

Not content to simply oppose the conflict, Hirst declared himself to be on the side of the insurgents. I was reminded of the gruff revolutionary, who managed to upset a few of the pacifists present, when perusing Andrew Bolt’s still not sorry. After all, the book contains many references to Hirst’s ideological comrades such as John Pilger.

Still Not Sorry is a collection of some of Bolt’s Herald Sun articles from the past seven years or so. The volume is arranged thematically, with topics including the environment, Islam, the “stolen generation”, the grants industry and the unweaned arts community possessing sections of their own.

The premise that this nation is usually united, bar the divide “elites” have constructed between themselves and ordinary people, dominates the book, as does the notion that these “elites” (actors and activists and so on) haven’t learned a thing from “failures” like the Republican referendum and the electoral successes of John Howard.

A radical like Hirst epitomises this reality with his declaration that it’d be sad if our service personnel died in Iraq but … well, it wasn’t hard to deduce the rest. How does anyone think they’re going to win over the general public voicing such opinions?

On the comments section on my recent profile of Dr Hirst, he stated;

I’m also disappointed that Mr Louden failed to uncover my alleged anti-semitism. And no, I’m not an anti-semite, but I am an anti-imperialist and therefore against the state of Israel – I am an anti-Zionist. Zionism is the political expression of Israeli expansionism and military power in the middle east.

Oh and before you go off chasing more rabbits down burrows, I do not support terrorism, particularly state terrorism.

Clearly Dr Hirst’s views are similar to those of the IST.

In my opinion those views are extreme to say the least.

Dr Hirst has openly stated that he believes in the overthrow of the state by force if necessary.

He has openly called into question the virtue of journalistic objectivity.

Dr Hirst’s comrades in the IST are openly aligned with some of the most militant and violent extremists on the planet.

Is Dr Hirst the right man to guide, train and presumably pass or fail New Zealand’s future journalists?

What do you think?

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26 thoughts on “Martin Hirst's "Comrade's" Ties to Muslim Militants

  1. This article about Hirst is not “slur and innuendo”. It accurately sums up his ideological outlook. On a personal level Hirst is really quite charming. On a political level he is, like his Trotkyist comrades, detached from reality.
    Notice how he is quoted as saying “I do not support terrorism, particularly state terrorism”? If he genuinely does not support terrorism then why does he single out “state terrorism”? It would have been sufficient to state “I do not support terrorism”. Period.
    It is really a shame that young minds are being shaped by him.

  2. Mah is THE consummate bully Exo, and so are you in your own way. Just remember that I’ve never “whimpered” or called out – “Trev…..please help me !” Well, I did draw the line at some fetid “anonymous” talking filth about my mother. But that was a plea for common decency.

    In adulthood I always have and always will snap at people so short of humanity that they imperiously tap away at their keyboards in the relative security of NY, “requiring” other people in their own countries to submit to the very things they declaim as “evil”. And abusing them in their “default”.

    For example, Mah denouncing the South African nation which resisted and ultimately threw off the neo-nazi apartheid regime, thus supporting the latter. Surely he’s morally bound to wear the yolk himself before he’s entitled to shit on those who wore it for decades, and saw their people mutilated and snuffed out, murdered by the Vlakplaas and numerous other death squads.

    What would he have done had he suffered it ? Christ, like a little girl he whimpers and whines because I send him up ! Mah insults the intelligence of every person who reads this blog by rationalising and embracing those nazis responsible as “simply conservative”. Bugger off you cruel, inhuman, “chosen” little zionist man.

    One rule for Mah and his, a different rule for the rest of the world. Just like the hate filled, viciously anti-poor, anti-gay, anti-every bloody thing, bible-bashing Republicana caught with their pants down – who “love” Bush’s rape of the Iraqi people by the way.

    Finally, it’s not my fault that I might just possibly have a sharper turn of phrase in the written word than a bunch of sad old armchair generals…..

  3. Oh so sorry ….I forgot EXOCET that you are an ACT person! We do have odd people who live in Aotearoa and I accept that … this country is democratic.

    HELLO?!? EXOCET

    Huhana

  4. No Huhana I do not live in the USA, sorry to disappoint you.

    I live in NZ.

    I don’t answer a question? or admit to anything?

    I’m not really interested in ‘debating’ anything with people who call me ‘facist’ ‘homophobic’ or ‘threatening’. I’ve had threatening language pointed at me on this very site (but that OK isn’t it?, after all I’m a ‘facist’).

    I’m certainly not interested in ‘debating’ with the likes of Steve. In any case he would not be particularly interested in any arguments that I would care to make.He certianly does not argue in an honest way.

    Steve’s main pleasure seems to be bullying MAH, cheerleading for various far-left wing regimes and in promoting his IDF vs Palestinian scorebored.

    EXOCET

  5. So EXOCET where do you live? ….(U.S.A.?)

    Like Mah you never answer a question? Or admit to anything. You have been threatening.

    And Mah??
    “Leftist lies end here right now. I am not racist, but you certainly ARE when you certainly love to target anyone who supports the Jewish state of Israel. Shut it with your lies. You’re just like the typical Leftist. Can’t handle any other views other than your own.” HELLO? again I say …I am proud of my Jewish heritage but I cannot go along with Zionist policies, which are an abrogation of the humane values that are inherent in Judaism. I am not a leftist “type” Mah and I am not “typical” of anything you don’t even know me. So don’t judge me.

    Huhana

  6. Please Steve, you along with Hirst going back to the subject sound like a “commentary” from the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. Really, you along with Hirst really do parrot a “commentary” from the Revolutionary Communist Party USA on how anyone who differs from your opinion must be a “fascist”, and a “oppressor”.

  7. Mandela was right and if you Mah say that the South African apartheid regime was merely “conservative” you are a gross, unforgiveable, unmitigated racist and fascist. A Holocaust nazi !

    That is not abuse, it is plain fact and the proof falls from your own shrieking mouth !

    IDF:10 Palestinians:1 !

    Cool statue of Mandela they’ve erected in London !

  8. Here’s two anti-U.S. quotes by Nelson Mandela when Mandela made a speech defending the Baathist regime of Iraq. Gee, no wonder your so-called hero Steve had a bullseye on his back by the old South African regime:

    “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings.”

    “What I am condemning is that one power, with a president [George W. Bush] who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”

    And yet there also seems to be no major thanks on the part of Mandela for America being the same country of promoting the African National Congress to power or any other Western nation. Yea, those are some people who really know what’s “best” for South Africa’s future.

  9. The officially secret, tacitly sanctioned death squads such as the Vlakplaas were a reflection of the “simply Conservative” South African government of the day ?

    Another example of subjective redefinition which defames the conservative cause.

  10. Steve would no doubt deny that the current government of South africa is racist in any form…but then he has probably never been excluded from a job on the basis of the so called ‘affirmative action’ policies which have resulted in so many coloured and white persons losing their jobs for inexperienced black people.

  11. “And where do you get off subjectively defining opposition to zionist excesses as “racism” ? Tony Blair has expressed it, if only in a muted way. All sorts of people have. World wide a significant body of Jewish opinion has. Now that’s a no-brainer – Jewish people “racist” against Jewish people.

    And then you as good as lament the demise of the undoubtedly neo-nazi white regime in South Africa. You have no right, absolutely none, shrewishly pontificating from your keyboard in NY or wherever, to require black and coloured South Africans to suffer the cruelty and inhumanity of decades.”

    Steve, this is nothing more than propaganda bull. The South African government wasn’t neo-Nazi, it was simply Conservative. Your so-called heroes in the African National Congress support dictatorships like Syria, Iran, Cuba, Libya, etc. Now quite frankly, it certainly seems from this point of view, South Africa under the old regime would have been better off than to catering to Jew-hating terrorists like Hamas, or supporting the Zimbabwean government of Robert Mugabe.

  12. When the fuck have I been ‘racist, homophobic and threatening often’?

    It just never stops with the unsubstantiated smears doesn’t it?.

    Still, a typical far-left tactic so one should not be suprised at its appearance, nor expect the accuser to front up.

    EXOCET

  13. Mah, many of the things you say (not all, I grant you) aren’t “views” – they’re “screams”; completely over the top and quite without rationality, balance, or philosophical morality.

    And where do you get off subjectively defining opposition to zionist excesses as “racism” ? Tony Blair has expressed it, if only in a muted way. All sorts of people have. World wide a significant body of Jewish opinion has. Now that’s a no-brainer – Jewish people “racist” against Jewish people.

    And then you as good as lament the demise of the undoubtedly neo-nazi white regime in South Africa. You have no right, absolutely none, shrewishly pontificating from your keyboard in NY or wherever, to require black and coloured South Africans to suffer the cruelty and inhumanity of decades.

    That’s my point about you having the finest and cruellest ideas about what other people in their countries should have to suffer, just to suit your rather twisted world view.

    That’s why I see you as no better than the Dukes and the Irvings and any gross totalitarian dictator you care to name.

    You are no less cruel in your precepts. So don’t imperiously tell me and others “…..your Leftist lies end here right now”…..”Shut it with your lies”.

    You’re not some deity Mah, you’re fanatical. The safety of the world depends on responsible people not submitting to those like you and always, always opposing those like you. You’re brimming over with hatred – a fine formula for humanity ?!

  14. “Reid of America and EXOCET (and Mah) have been racist, homophobic and threatening often but are never deleted. (and I think they all live in the good old US of A! not here.)”

    Huhana, your Leftist lies end here right now. I am not racist, but you certainly ARE when you certainly love to target anyone who supports the Jewish state of Israel. Shut it with your lies. You’re just like the typical Leftist. Can’t handle any other views other than your own.

  15. Kia ora Trev

    So you are a real person?!? I hope so.

    Reid of America and EXOCET (and Mah) have been racist, homophobic and threatening often but are never deleted. (and I think they all live in the good old US of A! not here.)

    Mike Moore should be in ACT like the rest of his mates.

    Ka kite ano

    Huhana

  16. Thank you Trevor. In a spirit of fairness I shall have a second look at what I post in future.

  17. ABUSE, MANNERS, AND DELETIONS

    It’s striking how the mad right wing – yes, I do allow of a sane right wing – so frequently resort to terms evocative of the basest of human functions, albeit necessary ones.

    Mr Anonymous “Bungwipe” above for example. Is it because they’re shitheads perhaps ?

    Now before you reach for Mother Mulcahy’s Smelling Salts about my “manners” Trev, you will of course recall the post some time ago from one of your several “anonymous” who pleaded for someone to “shoot some sperm sense into Steve…..”

    The same cordial person (?) then proceeded to claim that Steve’s mother was a bit of alright when he knew her some 20 years ago. He (it) then expressed horror at the chance that he might be Steve’s father. That horror reciprocated in my senses, naturally.

    But I didn’t see you deleting that one Trevvy. Are you a hypocrite Trevor ? Are you a Michael Joseph Savage Moore are you ?

    Notably he (it) backed off and was never heard from again in that persona at least, when I enquired whether it all meant he wanted coitus with me. Probably a mad, sad old closet queen getting her jollies via the “blogosphere”. The slightest suggestion of an offer and she’s back in the closet.

    Why didn’t you delete it Trev ? I’m sure you would have been mightily haughty if I’d said that about your mother, or Mah’s, or she that bore Reid of America. And I never have and wouldn’t anyway. It’s the pus in an abcess.

    Then there’s the bizo of insufficient oxygen at my birth, brain damage etc. You’ve deleted
    my venturing that Mah’s been clinically identified as mentally deficienct – OK – out of order – but why not everyone Trev ?

    None of it touches me of course – it actually proves my point. But you know, you’re a libertarian Trev, and not dishonest, and not all those things that touch mortals…..and so philosophically pure and moral.

    Well prove it. Come back to me and apologise for your failure to delete the filth re “sperm” and that grossness re my mother…..

    Actually my mother, who’s in Heaven now, I know she’s having the best of laughs. I’m gonna send her a Dell so she can contribute. You’ll be sorry then !

    She’s right alongside some dear old whanau of your own and they get on surprisingly well. Very lady like was my Mum but in the notional sense, heaps more balls than your “sperm” man or whatever it is.

    Whom you did not delete…..

    PS: Where’s your “profile” on Michael Joseph Savage Moore. That clapped out old prick of a former politician, all dressed up and nowhere to go…..maybe he’s gonna be the subject of Part 10.

  18. reid of america, have you actually read through these threads attacking Dr Hirst’s reputation?
    The slurs and innuendo far outweigh any facts. And what few facts there are are totally mixed up.
    Have a look a how Trevor has mixed up Hirst and Harrison more than once in the post “exposing” them. These mistakes, which probably defame both of them, are then picked up and repeated ad nauseum by commentators who obviously trust Trevor far more than they should to be “journalistic”.

    anonymous: you just repeat the “go back to russia” line as if it is some how original. It is so lame it is funny in a retro 1950s way. You obviously have not read the thread either. Yours is about the third or fourth statement of the bleeding obvious. Or are you the same anonymous as the other anonymouses anonymice? out there in bloglalaland

  19. Hmm, interesting, a New Zealand anti-Western/anti-U.S. radical cozying up with the likes of the Soviet organ-International Campaign Against Aggression on Iraq hosted with the allowance of the “pro-U.S.” Egyptian government. Interesting.

  20. There are too many such “lecturers” interfering with the political direction of students. Whilst they are forever clamouring for “diversity”, in respect of the political views of university staff, its a concept notable for its absence.

  21. This piece of bungwipe should be told to get his hat and coat and go to North Korea or Cuba where his views are welcomed.

    He has no business here indoctrinating impressionable young minds into socialist extremism.

  22. It seems Dr Hirst does not like having his affiliations with socialist groups being exposed.Just like most radicals he has chosen that the way to defend himself is by attack .Trevor I hope he has chosen the wrong person attack and that you continue to delve further into his past and present.This man should not be lecturing to students given his extreme views.Thanks for your great work on this man Trevor

  23. You mean you are not a neo-Nazi?

    Nah probably not. Nazis, for all their rediculous bigotries and love for fancy Hugo Boss uniforms were always dangerous. Louden is just an idiot.

    Perhaps for Mr. Louden the title of a small “n” nazi then, a sort of pompous bus conductor with obnoxious views.

  24. Dr. Hirst says “His attacks on me are offensive and defamatory and designed to intimidate.”

    Dr. Hirst,
    An attack designed to intimidate? No Dr. Hirst it’s not an attack to intimidate. It’s called journalism. It informs the public about people in high positions in society. Actually it’s no different than what you do except Trevor doesn’t get paid. He is doing it for more altruistic reasons than you are.

    Thanks for the investigative journalism Trevor.

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