There’s an old idiom about putting foxes in charge of the hen-house: trusting someone who should not be trusted to oversee a situation. You wouldn’t appoint a bank robber to guard a bank, for instance.
And you certainly wouldn’t appoint someone with a history of supporting extremism as a go-to “expert” on extremism for media and government.
Who would doubt, after all, that a Marxist political party, founded by an alliance of Maoists and Trotskyists, is extreme-left? If said party not only supported but raised funds for a declared terrorist organisation, how extremist is that?
Byron Clark was not just a member of such a party, but its candidate in the Christchurch mayoral election of 2007. He also promoted its campaign of support and fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the second-largest group (after Fatah) under the PLO umbrella. The PFLP is notorious for its campaign of hijackings, bombings and murders. Its Secretary-General, Ahmad Sa’adat, is serving a 30 year prison sentence for organising the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze’evi.
According to a slogan promoted by Clark’s Workers Party, none of that was terrorism, though: “‘Resistance is not Terrorism”. “One of the important points of the Solidarity Campaign is to support the right of Palestinians to all forms of resistance including armed resistance.”
In 2010, the party announced it was donating $1000 to the PFLP, raised mostly through the sale of PFLP t-shirts. The party’s magazine Spark (including the November 2011 issue Clark was a co-ordinating editor of) and the associated website “Fightback” regularly featured ads selling these t-shrts, with the banner “Resistance is not terrorism”.
Well, terrorists have a habit of saying that, don’t they?
Clark spoke at party conferences alongside speakers promoting the PFLP and posted articles on Fightback fundraising for the PFLP, including in 2009 as follows: “Due to popular demand the Workers Party will be holding another screening of the documentary ‘Lelia Khaled: Hijacker’ about the “poster girl of Palestinian liberation.” ‘Resistance is not Terrorism’ T-shirts will be available for $30 with all profits being donated to the PFLP.”
Plain Sight
In case you’re wondering, Lelia Khaled is a PFLP terrorist notorious as the first woman to hijack an aeroplane, who tried to blow up a plane full of passengers with a grenade (which, miraculously, failed to explode).
Does that all sound like textbook extremism to you? Oh, it was just so much youthful enthusiasm, Clark insists.
“As a young man I believed, incorrectly, that the group had put down their weapons and joined the peaceful political process, like the ANC in South Africa or Sinn Fein in Ireland. As far as I’m aware, not only did the Palestinian group never actually receive any money but also the New Zealand state never attempted to challenge the fundraiser, making the whole exercise futile. This hasn’t stopped members of New Zealand’s far-Right, who found an advertisement for the fundraiser in the group’s magazine The Spark (specifically, in the first episode that I edited), claiming I give money to terrorists.”
Byron Clark — Fear
But, it’s alleged, there’s very good reason to suspect that Clark is not exactly being entirely forthcoming.
A Workers Party pamphlet, which appears to date from somewhere between mid 2010-2011 (three years after Clark stood as a mayoral candidate) and lists Clark as a contact, features a long history of the PFLP as a preamble to petitions for financial support for the terrorist group. The pamphlet not only details the PFLP’s penchant for violence but contrasts it approvingly with Fatah, whom it accuses of having “tired of armed struggle” and “seek[ing] a diplomatic solution” (as opposed to terrorist violence). The pamphlet defends violent terrorism and declares that “it is the duty of socialists around the world to support that struggle.”
It seems incredible that Clark, an organiser of this group at the time, and someone whose name is on the pamphlet, would have thought that the PFLP had denounced violence. The PFLP has never renounced violence. If we are to believe Clark we would have to believe he never read any of the literature the Party put out, and that he had put his name on. Or that he never read the slogan on the T-shirt he and his comrades were selling, or seen the images on the T-shirt of armed militants.
Or, in fact, that he never read his own post on the Fightback website from 2009 when he said “All profits raised by the campaign go directly to the PFLP to help fund all aspects of their struggle against the Zionist state of Israel both politically and militarily.” [emphasis added]
His claim that the PFLP never received funds from the Workers Party is questionable also. Was the Party lying when they announced, in 2010, that it was donating $1,000 to the PFLP, raised mostly through the sale of PFLP t-shirts? According to a former comrade (who wished to remain anonymous) a payment was sent to the group and a second one was forthcoming until the Christchurch Earthquake struck, and the individual in charge of the money disappeared with it.
And then we have this in his book:
“This hasn’t stopped members of New Zealand’s far-Right, who found an advertisement for the fundraiser in the group’s magazine The Spark (specifically, in the first episode that I edited), claiming I give money to terrorists.”
As is his standard modus operandi, Clark simply brands anyone who questions or opposes him as “far-right”, and trusts (with good reason) that his supporters and media cheerleaders will simply take that as proof in itself.
Clark’s passage in his book, while on the face of it offering some self-reflection, does nothing to dispel my concerns or persuade me that he holds himself accountable for supporting a terrorist group in the past. To the contrary, in fact. His extremely flimsy excuses do not hold up to a modicum of scrutiny and seem to take us all for a fool. But who can blame him? It seems to have worked pretty well so far.
Plain Sight
Meanwhile, the media are constantly platforming as an “expert” someone who appears to have some very dark skeletons in his closet.
At the very least, he has championed, if not allegedly materially supported, a proscribed terrorist organisation.
And let’s not be under any delusions about the true nature of the PFLP. Call it “terrorism” or call it “resistance”, it still boils down to the same thing: murdering the innocent in pursuit of an ideological goal. Whether they’re honest enough to call themselves terrorists or they hide behind the “freedom fighter” banner, every murderous zealot who attacks civilians claims that they’re justified. Brenton Tarrant and Anders Breivik no less than the killers of the PFLP.
Anyone who supported and fund-raised for Tarrant, or called for his release from prison (as Clark’s Workers Party did for Sa’adat) would quite rightly be branded an extremist. A dangerous extremist.
But they absolutely would not be championed by the media as an expert on extremism.