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24 — village july 2009
supporting creationists
and claiming that
“dinosaurs coexisted with humans”, caused
controversy when he gave a speech in the Eu-
ropean Parliament praising Spanish dictator
General Franco, “Thanks to the Spanish right,
the Spanish army, its leaders, and thanks to
General Francisco Franco in particular, the
Communist attack on Catholic Spain was
thwarted.”
Giertych published a booklet in , Civi-
lizations at War in Europe, in which he wrote
of the “biological separateness” of Jews and
claimed that Jews “form the ghettos them-
selves”. His booklet was condemned by Polish
MEPs who said that there was no place for “an-
ti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia” in Eu-
rope.
Libertas previously cut links with the
LPR after another former leader, Mirosław
Orzechowski, was charged with drinking
and driving.
His replacement, Wojciech Wierzejski, is
now the lead candidate on the KW Libertas
list for Kraków.
[]
Wierzejski is known for his
homophobic remarks. He said that if German
gay activists, attending a rally in Poland were
hit with a stick, they won’t come again”.
There are at least two other candidates on
the KW Libertas lists who are known for con-
troversial statements.
The first is Anna Sobecka, who broadcasts
on ultra-Catholic Radio Maryja which is said
to be openly anti-semitic and has been criti-
cized by the Pope.
[]
Father Tadeusz Rydzyk,
head of Radio Maryja reportedly accused Jews
of greed and has been described as a “sort of a
Goebbels with a collar” by the founder of the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Sobecka once claimed that Krystian Le-Krystian Le-
gierski, a mixed-race Polish Green activist
and businessman, was “a person who is not
even partially of Polish nationality”, leading
to a complaint to the Polish parliament from
Legierski.
The second is Ryszard Bender, the Polish
politician and historian who said that Ausch-
witz was a labour camp rather than a death
camp. Bender, a member of the Polish Sen-
ate, previously claimed that Auschwitz
was not a death camp, but a work camp:
“Auschwitz was not a death camp, it was a la-
bour camp… Actually, labor was not always
hard and not always were [inmates] annihi-
lated”, he told right-wing Catholic Radio Mar-
jya”.
Bender is the lead candidate on the KW
Libertas list for Olsztyn. And both Bender and
Sobecka appear on the KW Libertas lists, offi-
cially as ‘non-party candidate[s]’.
Meanwhile in Italy, Libertas has formed an
alliance with L’Autonomia, a group of parties
that have combined with Libertas to “run to-
gether” for the European elections.
One of these parties is La Destra (The
Right), led by Teodoro Buontempo who left
Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), suc-
cessor party to Movimento Sociale Italiano,
to join La Destra in .
Buontempo was head of the Rome feder-
ation of Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), a
neo-fascist party set up in by supporters
of Mussolini and the Italian Social Republic,
the Nazi puppet-state set up in northern Italy
during WWII.
In , a gang of Nazi skinheads
marched through the northern Italian city of
Vicenza shouting racist slogans and waving
banners with swastika-like emblems. Main-
stream political leaders expressed outrage,
but not Teodoro Buontempo, , a self-pro-
claimed fascist elected to Parliament in March
on the ticket of the National Alliance, the suc-
cessor to the party founded by followers of Be-
nito Mussolini. In an interview with the Turin
daily La Stampa, Buontempo said, “I would
send them into the midst of society to pro-
claim their values.”
The links between Libertas and far-right,
ultra-Catholic conservative nationalists in
Poland and Italy has caused a split in the
small Spanish party, los Ciudadanos (the Cit-
izens) which describes itself as “centre-left”,
“non-nationalist” and in favour of “a secular
state”.
Despite this, the party leadership decided
to enter into an electoral ‘coalition’ with Lib-
With standup comedy, musical
satire and original short films.
Every Month @ The Button
Factory, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Visit www.leviathan.ie for
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“Intelligent and energetic
entertainment...never shy of big
questions or cheap jokes” The
Irish Times
Fiery public conversations about the state of the
nation and much more hosted by David McWilliams.
“dinosaurs
coexisted with
humans”
XSIL
25
Village and the EU
Village doesn’t really have a simple stance on
the European Union or the European project.
Its editorial stance is driven by the mission
statement on the contents page. While it is
clear that the EU is a major force on the is-
sues this statement considers crucial, it is an
ambivalent one. Clearly the EU has been the
predominant force for equality between in-
dividuals, particularly between the sexes, in
Ireland; and for social rights. It has also gen-
erated most of the progressive environmen-
tal legislation in Ireland. Without the EU it
is probable that Ireland would be even less
socially progressive and less environmen-
tal than it is. However, the EU’s emphasis on
free markets is an unpleasantly homegenising
force and militates in favour of survival of the
financially fittest and against the sort of local
emphasis that tends to promote a healthy en-
vironment. Despite subsidiarity and the com-
plexity of the EU ‘legislative’ process it also
tends necessarily to the centralisation of de-
cision-making and to a reduction in the value
of an individual’s vote. When taken against
a background of centralisation such as enve-
lopes Ireland, however, the EU’s regime of re-
gional power and subsidiarity can actually be
more democratic. It is also the case that for
most of the last sixty years Europe and the Eu-
ropean Union have been a progressive force
in geo-politics, a useful corrective to non-de-
mocracies and a counterbalance to the con-
sumerist, anti-egalitarian hyper-power that
has been the USA.
In short we are ambivalent about the Euro-
pean Union. It pulls this way and that.
Village and Declan Ganley/Libertas
Nevertheless Village has taken a strong stance
against Declan Ganley’s Libertas. This is be-
cause we consider it to be the most conserv-
ative force in Irish politics and because we
believe its leader to be untruthful, its fund-
ing unaccounted and its associations sinis-
ter. For those who care about democracy it
is unacceptable that what appears to be the
best-funded electoral campaign in the histo-
ry of the state (occupying a high percentage of
bus-sides and web-banners for example) can-
not explain whence it derives its funding. Our
toothless ethics in politics legislation is clearly
not up to dealing with a force like Libertas.
Declan Ganley’s credibility
In the last two editions of the magazine, Kevin
Barrington and I have drawn attention to Mr
Ganley’s repeated dishonesty and dubious as-
sociations including with the American mili-
tary; and in the current issue Mark Murray
iterates some of the fringe right forces in Eu-
ropean politics with which Mr Ganley is hap-
py to ally. Libertas also takes objectionable
stances on social rights and immigration; and
seems to be somewhat anti-secular
Mr Ganley is not Village’s type of politician
and Libertas is not its type of party.
This is why we were happy to publish the
brave assertion by Minister for Europe Mr Dick
Roche (not normally Village’s sort of politician
either) that Mr Ganley was a liar. Its inexplica-
ble, extravagant resourcing is why we offered
a reward for information on the funding of Lib-
ertas.
Ganley v Ormond Quay Publishing (OQP)
Mr Ganley sued the publisher of Village, OQP,
in the High Court, threatening to take our Feb-
ruary issue off the shelves, but then agreed an
adjournment of the case while Village agreed
to interview him about the serious allegations
we had made about him. In the end we took
Mr Ganley’s suggestion of his biographer,
Bruce Arnold, as interviewer. Mr Arnold said
he had interviewed Mr Ganley but the copy
he supplied to this magazine did not suggest
he had conducted an interview for us, or that
he had asked Mr Ganley about the improper
way he interposed a clause in a contract for
the supply of mobile phones in Iraq; nor most
importantly about the lies Mr Ganley claimed
he wanted to show were not lies. Mr Arnold
discredited himself as a journalist in supply-
ing hagiographic copy and in failing to ask the
questions he had been contracted to ask. But
Mr Ganley, in accepting Mr Arnold’s answer-
free copy as meeting his terms for an inter-
view to correct the record, merely enhanced
the suspicion that he is an evasive man of du-
bious character and honesty.
In short, Village printed an article in Fe-
buary questioning Mr Ganley’s honesty. He
failed to execute a libel case against us. His
honesty rests impugned. No other figure in
public life labours under such a reputation-
al burden. If you cannot bring home a libel
case when you are accused of being a liar you
have no credibility.
Dick Roche, as quoted in our February edi-
tion, said: Mr Ganley is “a liar, a self-mythol-
ogiser and a snakeoil salesman”. We are happy
to adopt Mr Roche’s assertion as our own.
m i r i a m c o t t o n
Rossport
