J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
In that case what was her not anti-Semitic motivation for falsely claiming that Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade and that non-Jews are excluded from Holocaust memorial day?
Jeremy Corbyn's time is up
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In that case what was her not anti-Semitic motivation for falsely claiming that Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade and that non-Jews are excluded from Holocaust memorial day?
there's only one of us 'outraged' here. It isn't me.
I agree anti-semitism isn't a problem unique to Labour, but there are a couple of strands of anti-semitic thought which have found their way into parts of the far left (and now with the rise of Corbyn, Labour) - mostly through conspiracy and pro-palestine stuff - which are pretty much unique to the far left, and are real. That there are racists in the ranks of the tories and ukip is irrelevant - we're supposed to hold our allies to higher standards than our enemies aren't we?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
On C4 News she claimed that the slavery comment came about in the context of her relating the particualr experience of her own mixed-race (Caribbean) family background. Has anyone seen the actual quote, or is it lost in the mists of leftist time?
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Here's Norman Finkelstein on Ken's suspension a while back:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/ja...-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scandal
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
The full quote is here The Left's Jewish Problem
The context of the quote doesn't make it any better, does it?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I quoted it a mere page ago
not a trot
Well-Known Member
Well at least Corbyn was right about a 2017 election. Bloody obvious the Tories are gearing up for a May or June election now.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Not particularly, no. I'd imagine her only defenxe would be along the lines of Livingstone's "factually correct" one(s)?
The point she made on C4 News about the exclusivity of HMD relates, I think, to her concerns about pre-Nazi, imperialist genocides that appear not to be explicitly acknowledged by the HMDT. Their website does reference the Armenian "atrocity" but, thereafter, with the exception of the Holocaust, appears to use 11-12-1946 as their start-point.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Apologies; I've not been following properly this week.I quoted it a mere page ago
free spirit
more tea vicar?
to be historically accurate it would probably have needed to have the qualifying words 'some of' before 'the major financiers' and 'in the early' before 'slave trade', but it was a quick facebook post that she probably didn't expect more than half a dozen people would read so she was probably a bit sloppier in her wording than if she'd been writing a newspaper article.
But there is an entirely different context to it when the person making the statement is doing it to point out that her ancestors* were involved on both sides of that earlier holocaust. It's different to the Nazi's blaming 'the Jews' for all the wrongs in the world, because unless she's particularly suicidal, she's presumably not seeking to move on from discussing the historical interelationship between the 2 sides of her family background to then saying that the jews therefore are not to be trusted and must be exterminated as a race.
From reading quite a fer of her articles / posts, her main point all the way through this seems to have been to question why the holocaust of the African slave trade isn't remembered and treated in the same way as the Nazi holocaust. That was the point she was attempting to make at the recent meeting before being met by a chorus of (mainly white) people wrongly telling her that it is part of HMD (it potentially could be covered by it as it's founding declaration mentions 'other holocausts' in one place, but other than that sentence the entire declaration is related to the Nazi holocaust).
She's also raised concerns that the focus on anti-semitism in the labour party has been to the exclusion of debate on wider BME inclusion and involvement in the party.
She clearly felt that she was in a position to be able to raise those points by relating it to the Jewish holocaust commemorations and the fact that there was also Jewish involvement in the African slave trade because her joint Black / Jewish identities should have insulated her from accusations of anti-semitism. On that point she's definitely been proved wrong.
Anyway, this white man hasn't seen anything to make him think that her intentions were anything other than honorable with anything she's written or said, so I'm not going to whitemansplain her actions any further. I think some others* should be having a long hard look at themselves and why they felt they should be in a position to leap to judgement against her on this and whitemansplain to her what the boundaries of discussion should be.
*not aimed at anyone on this thread, just a more general observation on the ethnic make up of many of those publicly criticising her.
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Raheem
Well-Known Member
Possibly, but I think "bloody obvious" is a stretch. They're very likely to be in open internal warfare by then, and it's extremely unlikely that they will have any sort of Brexit plan, which wouldn't make for a great electoral pitch. It's not just about whether they would win, but about the potential damage an election campaign could inflict on them.
On the other hand, if they calculate that they need an increased majority to get this Great Repeal Bill through, maybe they don't have a choice.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
So tell me, not a trot, how is this election going to happen?
toblerone3
Grrrrr
Hasn't Theresa May just said that there will be no general election before 2020.
Raheem
Well-Known Member
I don't know if she's just said it, but she definitely said it a while ago. She also said that there'd be no vote in parliament, and now she's proposing one.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
She said it back in June, but I don't know that she's recently said it.
It's not like she can just call an election though.
If I understand rightly, she needs 2/3s commons vote or a successful no-confidence motion in her own government, which might seem a bit strange.
Or she needs to repeal the Fixed-Term Parliament Act entirely ...
It's not like she can just call an election though.
If I understand rightly, she needs 2/3s commons vote or a successful no-confidence motion in her own government, which might seem a bit strange.
Or she needs to repeal the Fixed-Term Parliament Act entirely ...
toblerone3
Grrrrr
She said it again this morning.
May says a pre-2020 general election would create 'instability'
Theresa May has given a full interview to the Sunday Times.
In it, she announced the “great repeal” bill that I’ve already mentioned. (See8.42am.) But here are some of the other lines from Tim Shipman’s interview.
- May was more explicit than she has been before about ruling out a general election before 2020. She said:
May has ruled out a “snap” election before, and argued that there is “no need” for an election before 2020. But if May is now saying an early election would introduce “instability”, then it would be harder for her to justify changing her mind on why there might be a need for a pre-2020 poll.
Raheem
Well-Known Member
Which wouldn't be difficult.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Would it not?
It's not obvious to me that votes would split on clear party lines on that in present circumstances.
Or are you assuming some other scenario?
Raheem
Well-Known Member
I'm assuming that the PM will not indicate that she intends to call a general election unless her MPs are behind her. Assuming they are, they'll vote to make it happen, and the Lords wouldn't be able to interfere to prevent a general election.
I don't think she will call an election in the foreseeable, though.
Lord Camomile
Yipchaa!
Finally got a response, if not an answer...
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
What warning signs do you see?
bimble
floofy
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
That's the nuance to her comments. Could she have put it better, probably, is she anti-semitic and was she making the point to incite anti-semitic sentiment, no.
I never said everyone criticising her was white, but the vast majority of the offended people in the meeting she made the latest comments at seemed to be from the video, and the vast majority of people on twitter calling for her to be sacked, and from a quick trawl I think the same applies to most of the media commentators.
John Mann is a particularly vocal example;
That's a white non Jewish man accusing a black half Jewish woman of inciting an anti-semitic racist backlash and holocaust denial.
Here's something else she said at the recent meeting prior to the holocaust comments.
Pretty bad IMO that the next thing that happens is that one of the highest profile BME activist to attempt to address the issue is then hounded out of the party and Momentum. That seems a very odd form of anti-racist action.
John Mann is the PLP's self-appointed Anti-Semitism-finder General. A pathetic, talent-free man who has found his niche as a useful idiot for the PLP's right wing.
bemused
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure it doesn't benefit her waiting until 2020, Labour will be eating themselves for the next few years and having a thin majority should keep many of her MPs in line.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Since HMD's inception there's been a less than mannerly debate about who "owns" it. Zionists tend to push for Jewish ownership because it feeds their narrative of Israeli exceptionalism. More rational, less politically-motivated parties tend in the other direction, talking about all genocides, so that they're kept in public memory, so perhaps won't recur. I'm with the latter. Exceptionalism and the sense of entitlement it bestows upon some of the state of Israel's people, is a very scary thing.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
For someone who spends a lot of her time calling herself Jewish, the use of the phrase 'what debt do we owe the Jews?' is very curious.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Why is anyone still bothering to defend Walker? Whether she is anti-Semitic or not (and I don't think she is), she is definitely fucking stupid. Only a brain dead moron would go on national TV and repeat statements that were not true. And yet, she did just that. She is an imbecile, and should not be in any kind of charge of a chair, let alone a political movement.
Sirena
Don't monkey with the buzzsaw
The other person in the conversation may previously have referred to the jewish debt...
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
She probably thinks they're true.
The poor judgement she showed was saying anything beyond, at the very most, exact citations of some unarguably respected academic authority on the early slave trade to support her case.
In the present context of a viciously unprincipled smear campaign based on accusations of anti-semitism even something precisely sourced on utterly solid scholarship is probably an unreasonably risky thing to come out with, because it's going to get misquoted and used as ammunition no matter how well it stands up.
Sloppy stuff like her statements in those quotes, or Ken's Hitler/Zionism stuff or whatever is just idiocy. Sure, a fair-minded person might look at the sources and say 'yeah ok I see what you mean and you sort of have a point but ... '
The Labour party is not dealing with fair-minded people here, it's dealing with a viciously unprincipled smear campaign and has been long enough that you'd hope they'd started taking that fact seriously even if they aspire to a more civilised kind of politics.
Part of the technique of running a smear campaign is getting people to say stuff like this by provoking them through sheer nastiness, as Finkelstein implies in that quote re Ken's nonsense I linked above.
Giving ammunition like this to your enemies as a free gift while riding a personal hobby-horse, no matter how worthy, is sheer self-indulgence.
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bimble
floofy
Not sure what you mean. What debt ? I'd guess most likely the other person might have said something about Arab involvement in the slave trade but it hardly matters does it. As others have said she mostly just comes across as an idiot, with that 'we are victims and perpetrators to some extent through choice' bollocks, and that comment about how chakrabati has been questioned about her peerage "because she didn't do what the Zionists wanted".
She'll be back in a couple of weeks probably but it does seem odd that someone so bad at expressing themselves is in such a prominent position.
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