Jeremy Corbyn's time is up
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cantsin
Well-Known Member
think it's interesting that Lansman / Mom leadership have now come out in support of 'open selection' ( mandatory reselection ) , just as it 's becomes v clear the ammount of motions being put before CLP's in support pre Conference ( as with our CLP ) , and likely mood at conf ( after previous noisees about ' trigger ballot ++ ' .
Add to that everyone ignoring Lanso / voting #JC9 anyway, it's clear folk aren't going to be lead blindly by Mom leadership .
( Our Mom group was split on NEC, some voted for PW , others didn't - 100 % for open selection, natch) .
Add to that everyone ignoring Lanso / voting #JC9 anyway, it's clear folk aren't going to be lead blindly by Mom leadership .
( Our Mom group was split on NEC, some voted for PW , others didn't - 100 % for open selection, natch) .
TopCat
Putin fanboy
The nashing of Tom Watson's teeth is keeping me awake.
Willsman still a liability.
Last week, when the poll closed, Willsman told HuffPost UK that his final message to members was: “Defend JC against all the appalling and unjust attacks and smears.”
Interesting comments from Lansman. Willsman made those comments before the ballot opened and they backed him anyway until the story broke. Important lesson for Momentum but they've made it harder to rein in some of the members.
But Momentum’s original backing for Willsman as one of its ‘#JC9’ slate of candidates appears to have ensured a surge of support at the start of the NEC election, when many party members vote.
Critics claimed that his notoriety had also helped boost his name recognition, as some left-wingers rallied behind him in what they believed were unfair attacks on Jeremy Corbyn over the issue.
Momentum founder Jon Lansman - who came third in the NEC election - revealed on Sunday at a Jewish Labour Movement conference that he had himself voted for Willsman right at the beginning of the election.
“I was very unhappy with what Peter Willsman did on the NEC on that occasion and on a number of previous occasions in the way he spoke.
“However it had become a sufficiently frequent occurrence for most members of the NEC to almost put it out of our minds. Lots of people in this room voted down the lines of slates at the point we voted, as I did too, I confess.
“But we then took a decision to remove him from from the slate because of the understandable public concern after that tape.”
Critics claimed that his notoriety had also helped boost his name recognition, as some left-wingers rallied behind him in what they believed were unfair attacks on Jeremy Corbyn over the issue.
Momentum founder Jon Lansman - who came third in the NEC election - revealed on Sunday at a Jewish Labour Movement conference that he had himself voted for Willsman right at the beginning of the election.
“I was very unhappy with what Peter Willsman did on the NEC on that occasion and on a number of previous occasions in the way he spoke.
“However it had become a sufficiently frequent occurrence for most members of the NEC to almost put it out of our minds. Lots of people in this room voted down the lines of slates at the point we voted, as I did too, I confess.
“But we then took a decision to remove him from from the slate because of the understandable public concern after that tape.”
"They can falsify social media very easily. And some of these people in the Jewish community"
So he's basically saying Jews are dishonest. Am I reading that right?
So he's basically saying Jews are dishonest. Am I reading that right?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Well I don't know, because you've taken it out of context and snipped the second sentence in half. What's the source of this?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Ok ta. Doesn't look great does it?
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. I'm back and forth on this. On one hand one shoudln't generalise about any group of people, particularly in context of bad behaviour. On the other hand the people that are flagging this up include some utterly shitty people who are against leftwing politics.
I have no idea whether something, other than the obvious, is genuinely antisemitic or not. He could have been speaking casually, perhaps even ignorantly. That doesn't mean he is a racist. Of course people should aspire to be clearer with their words, but using terms like 'they' is just common parlance. It doesn't mean that he's a racist.
No one has ever sat down and explained to me what is or isn't racist. That never happened at school, for example. I say this because people, if they are anything like me (some are, i'm sure!) have to make sense of this as best they can and I think they are not best served by a heavy handed approach. This is, certainly IME, a learning process.
That's not to say whether Willsman is or isn't a racist. I had never heard of the guy before and I do not feel comfortable passing judgement on someone I had never heard of - not unless it was abundantly clear. Some of the things people say are obviously racist. If he'd shouted "gas the jews" then, of course, it woudl be different.
None of this is helped by the omnipresent social media panopticon. This distorts everything; twitter reduces context to a few sentences while everything everyone says is marked recorded and filed away for later use, and presented without context. The Times' headline today calls this guy a racist. Is he? On the evidence I've seen, and to the best of my understanding, I would say no; while his words are problematic, I woudl like to hear his side of the story before labelling him that. If he is, then fuck him. BUt the Times does not speak for me.
I don't know any Jewish people. I have never spoken to any Jewish people about these issues. I am not comfortable looking at his statement and calling him an antisemite. I need more to go on. If that makes me a bad person or deserving of opprobrium then fuck it. This is the best I can do.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I do know Jewish people. Most of them, understandably, worry more about the far right than the soft left. None of them support the Israeli state or give a shit about the moral pronouncements of those who do, be they rabbis or anyone else.
The problem with that outburst isn't that it's racist, but that he's proved himself to be blind - either through a conscious factional choice, or through moronic shit-eyed denial - to a real problem that as a member of the disputes committee he should be deeply familiar with.
And just from a factional POV he's a total liability, a loudmouth fool with no idea when to shut the fuck up.
And just from a factional POV he's a total liability, a loudmouth fool with no idea when to shut the fuck up.
Its all an absolute mess, this week another disabled person killed themselves, his benefit cut again, he left a note saying 'please help me', where where these NEC protesters then?, next month a crucial green paper comes out on social care, where are the left responses to that? i am sick of these telescopic philanthropists who obsess about it and nothing else , Israel/Palestine is an issue, and the key to more peace in the M.E, but do these people think most people in the U.K consider it the most salient, I don't.
two posts ago you were complaining it's a non-issue.
Not completely, no. It's not really possible to talk about or campaign about one of those things without coming up against the other. As the last six months of debate within the labour party, the news at 10 and front pages of the national press should have amply demonstrated, if it wasn't already fairly obvious.
The tail is wagging the dog.
Ive heard nothing from Momentum on social care. Novara rarely if at all talk about it.
Just a fucking hipster parade, meanwhile people are dying.
19force8
For the avoidance of faith
It reminds me of something Norman Finkelstein said about Livingstone's "Hitler obsession." About how different factional politics were in the 70's and how comparisons between Zionists and Nazis were viewed as a means of driving support for Israel out of the left. Not sure if this is how it was as I wasn't that involved at the time, although I did know Willsman a little around that time (same union) although I can't remember much about him.
I can't imagine what over 30 years as a leftist in the party of Kinnock, Blair, Brown and Mandelson would do to you, although "moronic shit-eyed denial" must be pretty close.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
they can be, but they can feed off each other in an unholy vortex, and one can lead to the other.
you're unlikely to find many raging Anti-Semites who couldn't give a shit about the Israel-Palestine issue, and if you attend a couple of pro-Palestine meetings/demo's you'll hear things said which are, at the very least, off-colour.
the very cynical might point out that there are a good number of large scale displacements of people extant in the world today - Rohinja in Burma/Bangladesh, Aborigines in Australia, Armenians in Turkey, Germans from Czechoslovakia - and the only one that really penetrates the political psyche of places a long way from those displacements is the one that involves Jews. cynical perhaps, and probably a little unfair because we can see it on our TV screens, whereas the others are more hidden from us, but i do rather wonder if in 70 years the Rohinja will have been long forgotten because their oppressors fall into the 'who?' basket...
Cloo
Banana for scale
See, I don't feel in the least bit of threat from Labour, indeed I can't imagine any existential threat to Jews from any source currently existing in this country. Though I appreciate that I am a Jew who doesn't really see Israel as part of my identity; I haven't been there much and I have no close family there, though I have met some of them. But for a lot of other Jews it is part of their identity even if it's not their nationality and they feel attacks on, or even lack of support for it, as an attack on Jews and Jewishness. I think that isn't really justified, but I think that is the reason they feel threatened to some extent; they are scared of the thought of a British government that doesn't support Israel, which would feel alienating for them. Many of my parents generation, and some younger, remember, have grown up with the message of 'Keep your bags packed, you never know when you might be unwelcome, but thank God Israel is there for you'. I have no worries about 'needing Israel' but many hold on to that.
I saw an interesting point on Twitter the other day asking people to stop identifying Israel/Israelis with their government constantly, as it does seem people do that perhaps more than for other countries. We see a lot of 'Israel this', 'Israel that', which kind of implies Israel can't change, as long as it exists it will be 'this or that', but if we talked about its government we would at least suggest we are separating the government from the will and feelings of all Israelis (and by association, Jews), and open to a possibility of change (unlikely as it may seem). It was certainly true that my one experience of antisemitism, which was on these boards, came from someone assuming that I was a Zionist who supported settlements in Palestine on the grounds of 'I wasn't being anti semitic, I just thought you had relatives in Israel'
I saw an interesting point on Twitter the other day asking people to stop identifying Israel/Israelis with their government constantly, as it does seem people do that perhaps more than for other countries. We see a lot of 'Israel this', 'Israel that', which kind of implies Israel can't change, as long as it exists it will be 'this or that', but if we talked about its government we would at least suggest we are separating the government from the will and feelings of all Israelis (and by association, Jews), and open to a possibility of change (unlikely as it may seem). It was certainly true that my one experience of antisemitism, which was on these boards, came from someone assuming that I was a Zionist who supported settlements in Palestine on the grounds of 'I wasn't being anti semitic, I just thought you had relatives in Israel'
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Imagine if we held other people personally responsible for the crimes of their governments. Who would there even be that you could still have a polite conversation with? Maybe Finnish people, but that would be about it.
Is Labour's position still 'pause and fix' WRT universal credit?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
More to do with the fact that it has been ongoing for seventy years, and has been the single most important cause of destabilisation in probably the most strategically important part of the world during that time.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Until they (Labour) get to implement a new system, which isn't shit, yes.
Treacle Toes
Time
Was that on here Cloo ? I ask because I have a memory of someone going at you and accusing your relatives of being 'settlers' ...I thought it was on FB tbh.It was certainly true that my one experience of antisemitism, which was on these boards, came from someone assuming that I was a Zionist who supported settlements in Palestine on the grounds of 'I wasn't being anti semitic, I just thought you had relatives in Israel'
Combustible
Well-Known Member
There are a lot more reasons why a cause rightly or wrongly gets more attention than others. You could also say that apartheid got disproportionate attention compared to other injustices in the world at the time, but outside the far right most wouldn't have accepted that this was because of racism against white South Africans.
19force8
For the avoidance of faith
It also depends on whether you favour a two state outcome or a one state outcome. If the former you don't need to envision any change in Israel, whereas the latter kind of forces you to envision/hope for/foresee a radically different Israel, no?I saw an interesting point on Twitter the other day asking people to stop identifying Israel/Israelis with their government constantly, as it does seem people do that perhaps more than for other countries. We see a lot of 'Israel this', 'Israel that', which kind of implies Israel can't change, as long as it exists it will be 'this or that', but if we talked about its government we would at least suggest we are separating the government from the will and feelings of all Israelis (and by association, Jews), and open to a possibility of change (unlikely as it may seem). It was certainly true that my one experience of antisemitism, which was on these boards, came from someone assuming that I was a Zionist who supported settlements in Palestine on the grounds of 'I wasn't being anti semitic, I just thought you had relatives in Israel'
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