Going Deep on the Zionism is Racism Motion with NoJusticeMTG

Ava Santina (0:00)

Am I tough enough? Strong and stable leadership. Total ruba.

Helena (0:03)

Hell yes, I'm tough enough. Shut the fridge.

Ava Santina (0:05)

Not another once. It's the PoliticsJOE Podcast. Love podcast, hate Jeffrey Danson.

Nice little golf clap, wasn't it? Helena, hello.

Helena (0:18)

Hi, it's lovely to be in this studio for the first time.

Ava Santina (0:20)

Oh, well, I mean, thanks for being here.

Helena (0:22)

It's an absolute pleasure.

Ava Santina (0:23)

Should I call you Helena, or should I call you NoJusticeMTG?

Helena (0:25)

I mean, people usually call me Helena when they're chatting, but you know NoJusticeMTG in the tag at the bottom of the video. Okay.

Ava Santina (0:32)

It was a bit of a mouthful if I keep calling you that.

Helena (0:34)

That's true. That's true. People on Twitter will call me NJ because my name is on Twitter, but in common parlance, Helena is usually the...

Ava Santina (0:40)

I get Ava Santiago all the time.

Helena (0:43)

Santa for bloody hell.

Ava Santina (0:44)

Which I think is close enough.

Helena (0:46)

It's quite nice.

Ava Santina (0:46)

And we're going to talk, I think, like to contextualize why we've invited you here today.

We're talking about Zionism's racism, the emotion that was passed at the Green Party Conference. You were in the room.

Helena (1:01)

I was indeed.

Ava Santina (1:02)

So you are the best person to talk to.

Helena (1:04)

True, absolutely. People kept saying, journalists are not welcome in the Green Party Conference plenaries. And I was like, no, it's just members are welcome. So I can be both a journalist and a member. And so I was there. There's a lot of kind of belly aching. I think it was Sabrina Miller from The Telegraph.

I look at all of the secrecy from the Green Party hiding their plenaries. I'm like, you just have to be a member. Spoiler alert, members club, only four members.

Ava Santina (1:28)

It's funny because that criticism doesn't apply when it's Labour Conference, because there are a number of rooms that you can't go into if you're not invited. It's not even as clear cut as member or non-member of the party. It's like sometimes you just can't go in a room because they don't want you in there.

Helena (1:44)

Exactly, 100 percent.

Ava Santina (1:45)

I've been at the behest of that before. It's really uncomfortable. Owen had it actually, didn't he, as well?

Yeah, I think he tried to go in to Labour to Win, and they just said, you're not coming in here. But in their defence, is Owen really in a space where he wants Labour to Win?

Helena (2:03)

I mean, whether he was a Labour member or not, he still probably would only be there for Intel on how to beat the Labour to Win people. They have nothing to gain from letting him in, right?

Ava Santina (2:11)

Yeah, yeah. But that didn't quite make any of the column cuts, I suppose. Right. So the biggest reason I wanted to invite you in was, I think that when this has been discussed, it's predominantly been discussed by people who don't quite understand Green Party procedure or maybe willfully misinterpret Green Party procedure.

There has been a lot of talk about this.

It's predominantly, I would say, anti the motion. And so I want to get a sort of a better understanding of why you think that motion passed and why it was important to place in the first place. So can you talk to me a little bit about, what is, tell me a little bit about what it means. What is Zionism's racism and what effects that can have now on Green Party procedure?

Helena (3:00)

Well, in terms of the actual procedure of the party, it means kind of not very much, I think is what's worth pointing out. So the way that Green Party motions work when they go to a conference, what they either do is update what's known as the Policies for a Sustainable Society, which are this big grand Green Party mission strategy document, or they add an extra line on to what's known as the Record of Policy Statements, which is just says that a policy that the party supports because the conference has voted on it at some point. And as the Zionism is racism motion was an emotion, all that did was update the record of policy statements. So it doesn't change actually any of the internal workings of the party. So for example, one of the big discussions in the wake of this, well, does that mean that every Zionist will now get classed as a racist in terms of party disciplinary procedures? No, that's not what this does because all it does is amend or add an extra line on to the bottom of the record of policy statements to say that the party supports what the policy suggests that it should be. So the preference towards a one state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict and in regards to Green Party policy in terms of foreign policy and how they would approach Israel-Palestine. That's more of what it would actually do in terms of how it affects the party, but it doesn't necessarily change anything internally and how the party works.