Labour & Anti-Semitism.

[Wilf]

guardian reporting the campaign group are leaning against resigning the whip in solidarity (14:47 on the link):

Jeremy Corbyn to fight suspension from Labour after EHRC antisemitism report comments – as it happened

Former party leader has whip removed over comments following publication of Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry

www.theguardian.com

Can't work out whether that's a good idea or not, though mainly I don't care, which is a measure of where we are at.

Also:

Constituency Labour Parties have been warned by the party’s general secretary not to “question the competence” of the Equality and Human Rights Commission or reject its report, reports Labour List, the Labour-supporting website funded by unions and others.

Labour List’s editor, Sienna Rodgers, writes that David Evans – who was appointed as the party’s general secretary under Keir Starmer’s leadership – wrote to local party chairs and secretaries.
Evans wrote:

We accept the Commission’s report in full and we will implement all of the recommendations in full. But, we must go further. We need to change the Labour Party’s culture, and that must start straight away.
He also gave instructions to constituency Labour parties that their social media accounts must not be used to comment on the investigation or the report.
Rodgers also has this on the Labour media strategy put in place ahead of today’s EHRC report.

 

[Brainaddict]

I don’t understand how it helps him, just makes the party look ridiculous and makes loads of people leave? Idk.

But the Labour right never wanted those people in the party in the first place. They made that clear even as they were joining, accusing them of being interlopers, entryists, sabatoeurs, etc etc. I think they want to be shot of them. The party won before with only a small membership and it can do it again.

 

[maomao]

But the Labour right never wanted those people in the party in the first place. They made that clear even as they were joining, accusing them of being interlopers, entryists, sabatoeurs, etc etc. I think they want to be shot of them. The party won before with only a small membership and it can do it again.

Yes, look how badly the Tories have been fucked by having a membership with opinions. That's the last thing Labour wants.

 

[sleaterkinney]

What is it and what were the circumstances? Your post said he was referring to "Zionists", i.e. Zionists in general - is that true?

Some Zionists rather than all Zionists - is that it?

 

[two sheds]

Well if you answer the question and give the quote we can see whether what you said was right.

 

[Shechemite]

The idea that AS was absent from Labour before 2015 and between 2015 & 2020 was confined exclusively to one particular section of the party is
a) quite nonsensical
b) motivated by factional politics and not at all by a desire to combat anti-semitism

which isn’t what the EHRC have said, or what Jews have said.

but you carry on fella

 

[Wilf]

Just trying to think, in say the postwar period, is this the first suspension (or expulsion/resignation) of a major party ex-leader? Trying to remember whether any of the freaks who led the tory party after major jumped ship to the Brexit party. Don't think so. Even back in the sdp period, Labour only lost ex-Cabinet ministers (Owen for example), never a leader.

 

[sleaterkinney]

Well if you answer the question and give the quote we can see whether what you said was right.

I'll amend my post:

I don’t know. What did you make of him saying some Zionists didn’t get the English sense of humour?. I think he has a blind spot on this.

 

[Lord Camomile]

But the Labour right never wanted those people in the party in the first place. They made that clear even as they were joining, accusing them of being interlopers, entryists, sabatoeurs, etc etc. I think they want to be shot of them. The party won before with only a small membership and it can do it again.

Exactly, the Labour right want these people to leave more than they themselves want to leave! Losing those members will be good news to the current lot.

 

[ska invita]

id expect Corbyn to win his case against this...?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'll amend my post:

you're not covering yourself in glory here, are you?


He said [referring to a speech by a Palestinian ambassador about Palestinian history]:

This was dutifully recorded by the, thankfully silent, Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion, and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he had said. They clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony either. Manuel does understand English irony, and uses it very effectively. So I think they needed two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with

It appears to be a bit of a crap thing to say on the face of it, but the context, Corbyn later said, was that he had:

defended the Palestinian ambassador in the face of what I thought were deliberate misrepresentations by people for whom English was a first language, when it isn’t for the ambassador

And he also said that he had used the term Zionism:

in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people ... I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by antisemites as code for Jews.”

Worse than Hitler.

 

[Brainaddict]

Thing is, if all you care about is winning then the Blair strategy is a very tempting route to power. You go centrist/right enough to get some right wing papers on your side, then rather than having a proper base that believes in particular things (or a commited membership) you draw together an electoral alliance of leftists who can't bear to vote for the other lot + centrists who believe in your managerial strategy + soft right wingers who see you as more competent (not hard with Johnson as PM). It worked for Blair. The only flaw in the plan is the centre has been shot to fuck in most of the world in recent years. But the centrist politicians have been in denial about that and still don't recognise it as having happened. So I think Starmer thinks he is onto a safe strategy (rinse and repeat Blairism) when in fact it is quite a risky strategy because the world has changed. Anyway, getting off track here.

 

[tommers]

I like that the final straw was him saying that his political opponents used something for political gain.

Monster.

 

[Shechemite]

the very fact he was close to Jewish Voice for Labour underlines he was not anti-Semitic. What his Zionist critics didn’t like is that he talked to the wrong kind of Jews: ie anti-Zionists

beautiful

 

[two sheds]

beautiful

why's that?

 

[TopCat]

I have the quote, I'm asking how I misrepresented him.

So put up the actual quote, then what you wrote and spot the difference.

 

[ska invita]

if true...

 

[brogdale]

if true...

Gonna get even more messy, innit?

 

[campanula]

Have been reading bedtime book to grand-daughter this week. 'My Friend, the Suffragette' - a political primer appropriate for a 9 year old...and oddly illuminating (for me) at this moment of furious anger and sinking helplessness. With intense factionalism within the suffrage movement and the potent divisions which have always excluded the working class voice, it is helpful to recall how we (always) struggle outside of the established party system. Through mutual aid, grassroots, direct activism, disobedience and subversion. We are not getting any sort of justice under a LP...and I would honestly welcome efforts and energies not being further wasted on vacuous opportunists who are seemingly content to rake their salaries and expenses and do fuck-all for their constituents.

'My friend, the Suffragette' is awfully tedious, but grand-daughter nods off before I have read more than 3 letters (it is an epistolary novel).

 

[Wilf]

if true...

Comes to something when a party fucks up a stitch up.

Meanwhile, the government is allowing thousands of deaths to unroll.

 

[Pickman's model]

Comes to something when a party fucks up a stitch up.

Meanwhile, the government is allowing thousands of deaths to unroll.

Not to mention the Tory party's great animus against Muslims

 

[ska invita]

if true...

well, he was the director of prosecutions

 

[Pickman's model]

Have been reading bedtime book to grand-daughter this week. 'My Friend, the Suffragette' - a political primer appropriate for a 9 year old...and oddly illuminating (for me) at this moment of furious anger and sinking helplessness. With intense factionalism within the suffrage movement and the potent divisions which have always excluded the working class voice, it is helpful to recall how we (always) struggle outside of the established party system. Through mutual aid, grassroots, direct activism, disobedience and subversion. We are not getting any sort of justice under a LP...and I would honestly welcome efforts and energies not being further wasted on vacuous opportunists who are seemingly content to rake their salaries and expenses and do fuck-all for their constituents.

'My friend, the Suffragette' is awfully tedious, but grand-daughter nods off before I have read more than 3 letters (it is an epistolary novel).

throughout my entire adult life the left has farted on about regaining control of the labour party

and then when they do they give us some sort of pinkish version of 'red' jim callaghan

 

[two sheds]

... which to the media is raving communism and therefore unelectable

 

[SpookyFrank]

Lucky there's nothing much going on in the country that might require a functional opposition holding the government to account instead of engaging in an endless, absurd factional struggle isn't it?

 

[sleaterkinney]

It appears to be a bit of a crap thing to say on the face of it, but the context, Corbyn later said, was that

If you want to give him the benefit of the doubt that's fine, I think with this and the mural the best case scenario is that he's blind to it.

 

[Pickman's model]

... which to the media is raving communism and therefore unelectable

It's impossible to imagine sir keir starmer standing on this manifesto October 1974 Labour Party Manifesto -

 

[Plumdaff]

Starmer told reporters: “If - after all the pain, all the grief, and all the evidence in this report - there are still those who think there’s no problem with antisemitism in the Labour party, that it’s all exaggerated, or a factional attack, then, frankly, you are part of the problem too.

No-one's said that (bar some fuckwits on Twitter) have they? That word 'all' is going to make some lawyers on both sides a fuck lot of money isn't it?

A profoundly sad, dispiriting day. I'm not sure Labour will ever form a UK government again. The left defeated. The country desperately needing a united opposition with some radical ideas. The serious fight against antisemitism inevitably gets caught up in the worst of bad faith self-serving bullshit. Worried what will result of that, in the long run.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If you want to give him the benefit of the doubt that's fine, I think with this and the mural the best case scenario is that he's blind to it.

Do you reject his explanation? If so, why?

In the stuff I quoted, he himself says that he is now more careful about when he uses the word 'zionist' because of the way it is now used as code by antisemites. How is that 'blind'????

You've been fundamentally dishonest here. Not good.

 

[Shechemite]

If a (successful) movement against racism is what ‘defeated the left’, it doesn’t say much of the Left

No-one's said that (bar some fuckwits on Twitter) have they? That word 'all' is going to make some lawyers on both sides a fuck lot of money isn't it?

A profoundly sad, dispiriting day. I'm not sure Labour will ever form a UK government again. The left defeated. The country desperately needing a united opposition with some radical ideas. The serious fight against antisemitism inevitably gets caught up in the worst of bad faith self-serving bullshit. Worried what will result of that, in the long run.