Labour & Anti-Semitism.

[SpookyFrank]

Self-hating jews now is it?

Still, good that you found an unbiased source.

 

[Shechemite]

Self-hating jews now is it?

Still, good that you found an unbiased source.

Oh do fuck off

 

[happie chappie]

Hold on a second. We don't have to get into whataboutery here. The situation in Palestine is fucking terrible and has been going on for decades so is going to have built up a lot of personal history and support - and quite apart from the "Jewish lobby" bullshit it _is_ geopolitically significant outside of that.

What’s the problem with “whataboutery” (or, to give it it’s more accurate name pointing out hypocrisy and double standards)?

Or are you saying we should never compare the actions of (in this case nation states) and at least be able to question the motives of some people who readily point out the sins of one state and remain resolutely silent about the sins of another.

 

[Duncan2]

Not much seems to get done about the fucking terrible situation in Palestine.

 

[belboid]

Self-hating jews now is it?

Still, good that you found an unbiased source.

The full speech puts the phrase in a rather different context to that implied. Nice implication from the JC that Bird is lying about being Jewish, too.

"JVL is calling for disciplinary hearings to be paused until a due process has been established based on principles of natural justice. What I call Jew process."

Do no harm

It's a pretty shit joke, which was published nine months ago, so the JC has been pretty shoddy at claiming it's a brilliant expose (though I suppose the Williamson link gives them a way in to use it now.)

 

[happie chappie]

Not much seems to get done about the fucking terrible situation in Palestine.

Not much seems to get done about the fucking worse situation in Yemen either

 

[Shechemite]

The full speech puts the phrase in a rather different context to that implied. Nice implication from the JC that Bird is lying about being Jewish, too.

"JVL is calling for disciplinary hearings to be paused until a due process has been established based on principles of natural justice. What I call Jew process."

Do no harm

It's a pretty shit joke, which was published nine months ago, so the JC has been pretty shoddy at claiming it's a brilliant expose (though I suppose the Williamson link gives them a way in to use it now.)

And I guess the fact that the MP and the room full of activists laughing along and er not reporting it is proof positive of the seriousness with whcih they take AS

 

[danny la rouge]

Not much seems to get done about the fucking terrible situation in Palestine.

Who is it that makes that remark during a talk that’s recorded? Something along the lines of “I was booked to give this talk some years ago, and when asked for a title I was confident in giving it as ‘the Situation in Palestine’, safe in the knowledge that there’d certainly be a situation in Palestine to talk about by the time the conference came around”.

The point is, there is indeed a problem so long as states see territorial belonging in ethnic terms.

 

[belboid]

And I guess the fact that the MP and the room full of activists laughing along and er not reporting it is proof positive of the seriousness with whcih they take AS

Why would they? Equating 'jew process' with 'natural justice' isn't anti-semitic.

 

[Shechemite]

Why would they? Equating 'jew process' with 'natural justice' isn't anti-semitic.

Yes it is

 

[Pickman's model]

That, for me, is the swinger: there are upwards of a million people in Chinese 're-education' camps in Xingjiang province alone, while the rest of the population in that benighted province are required to own smartphones with an embedded app that notes every single search, text, message and call they make and transmits than information to the Chinese government.

The cynical might wonder whether the would-be saviours of the oppressed could hold forth for hours on Xingjiang in the way they do on Palestine, or if they get quite so excited about Chinese consumer electronics in their homes as they do about Israeli Oranges in Tesco.

The cynical might further wonder if the true driver of obsessive support for Palestinians is rather more about the identity of the oppressor than it is about the condition of the oppressed....

I'll give holding forth on xinjiang for hours a go

BTW it's not just zionist oranges you have to look out for but avacados too, at least in Sainsbury's

 

[likesfish]

Israel you can piss off.
The Chinese government doesn't give a fuck.
South Africa not being allowed to play cricket annoyed them.
not sure there are anything activists can do to annoy China persuade people to buy Korean smartphones? instead

 

[TopCat]

My local mp in Morden now equates anti capitalism with anti semitism.

 

[TopCat]

 

[teqniq]

My local mp in Morden now equates anti capitalism with anti semitism.

Your local mp needs to have a word with themselves.

 

[danny la rouge]

My local mp in Morden now equates anti capitalism with anti semitism.

If the second post is what your first is referring to, that’s not what she’s saying (in that tweet). For what it’s worth, I agree with her that “There is a broad issue on the Left of not seeing the Jewish community as ‘oppressed’” and “The linking of Jews, or Zionists, with wealth and power, is all too common on the Left.”

I don’t click through to twitter, but I see that’s the first of a series of tweets. So long as she doesn’t say anything silly in the rest of her thread, I think she’s saying the opposite of what you think. She’s saying (correctly) that some anticapitalists have erroneously equated Jews and power. This is an observation as old as August Bebel and possibly older.

 

[TopCat]

If the second post is what your first is referring to, that’s not what she’s saying (in that tweet). For what it’s worth, I agree with her that “There is a broad issue on the Left of not seeing the Jewish community as ‘oppressed’” and “The linking of Jews, or Zionists, with wealth and power, is all too common on the Left.”

I don’t click through to twitter, but I see that’s the first of a series of tweets. So long as she doesn’t say anything silly in the rest of her thread, I think she’s saying the opposite of what you think. She’s saying (correctly) that some anticapitalists have erroneously equated Jews and power. This is an observation as old as August Bebel and possibly older.

Have a read before saying more

 

[danny la rouge]

Have a read before saying more

A read of what?

Like I’ve said, I don’t click through to twitter.

 

[TopCat]

Well that's you then

 

[danny la rouge]

Well that's you then

Does she say anything that doesn’t fit with my reading of the tweet you’ve posted? Because my reading of that is that I agree.

 

[TopCat]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...gQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2dQlpomtJyl3urRa_DfLPz&cf=1

 

[danny la rouge]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://labourlist.org/2019/03/siobhain-mcdonagh-links-anti-capitalism-to-antisemitism-in-labour/?amp&ved=2ahUKEwiK8ISu1-rgAhX-RBUIHZ_pA9EQFjAUegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2dQlpomtJyl3urRa_DfLPz&cf=1

I think whoever wrote that headline is similarly getting backwards what she’s saying. There’s nothing in her reported speech that contradicts what I read as the meaning of the tweet you’ve posted.

 

[Signal 11]

If the second post is what your first is referring to, that’s not what she’s saying (in that tweet).

She's quoted as agreeing to it on the radio as a leading question after having apparently stopped a little short of it in her own words.

“In other words, to be anti-capitalist you have to be antisemitic?”
"Yes.”

 

[danny la rouge]

She's quoted as agreeing to it on the radio as a leading question after having apparently stopped a little short of it in her own words.

In the context, she’s agreeing that that is the interpretation that some on the left have. She is quoted as going on to say “Not everybody, but there is a certain… there’s a certain strand of it”.

 

[Treacle Toes]

''Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh said there was a link between antisemitism and the anti-capitalist beliefs of ‘hard left’ Labour members during a Radio 4 interview this morning.

Asked by John Humphrys whether she believed the Labour Party was taking antisemitism “properly seriously”, McDonagh replied: “I’m not sure that some people in the Labour Party can.

“Because it’s very much part of their politics, of hard left politics, to be against capitalists and to see Jewish people as the financiers of capital. Ergo you are anti-Jewish people.

Humphrys followed up: “In other words, to be anti-capitalist you have to be antisemitic?”

“Yes,” the Labour MP said. “Not everybody, but there is a certain… there’s a certain strand of it. These people are not Labour, have never been Labour, but we now find them in our party.”

She does actually say 'not everybody' but I don't know if that is what will be remembered from this. The only memorable concepts from this are anti-capitalism and antisemitism.

I think she needed to be more clear about 'the strand' she is referring to and give examples like she did on twitter, shame she could only dig up a 5 year old article about Livingstone to do that though.

 

[Pickman's model]

She's quoted as agreeing to it on the radio as a leading question after having apparently stopped a little short of it in her own words.

leading questions have never stopped mps answering them with blather and windbaggery when they want to

 

[danny la rouge]

I haven’t heard the radio interview, but it looks like the Express are leaping on the wrong interpretation too. For different reasons. In the reports of the interview, her reported speech looks less-than-eloquent. But there is nothing there that contradicts my reading of the twitter post that was initially provided.

I’m going to have to get on a computer and look at feckin twitter now, to see the rest of her thread. So thanks for that. I’m supposed to have sworn off twitter, you bunch of gits. :shakes fist:

 

[mojo pixy]

Israel is, supposedly, a part of the western liberal democracies, not dictatorships like Syria, China or Chechnya. So it is supposed to live up to 'higher standards.'

Supposed to, by whom? Allies of Turkey, say, or India? Thailand? I don't know how we pick our democratic allies but it sure isn't based on their human rights record or unwillingness to oppress internal and external populations. The Higher Standards we 'democracies' are supposed to live up to are not that high, really (plus we all get to say ''the people voted for this'' which is the real power of democracy in the hands of bastards)

EtA, I'd have mentioned the UK too, but Ireland and empire are all history now

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Does she say anything that doesn’t fit with my reading of the tweet you’ve posted? Because my reading of that is that I agree.

I'll save you the job - the answer is 'NO'.

For the ten millionth time......just because you don't like the politics of the messenger and just because you think the messenger has other motives for making the point they make it does not follow that their point is wrong.

 

[danny la rouge]

OK, on laptop now. Which means I can see the twitter thread, and C&P her thread.

Here it is:

"There is a broad issue on the Left of not seeing the Jewish community as ‘oppressed’ in the same way we see most, if not all, minority groups. The linking of Jews, or Zionists, with wealth and power, is all too common on the Left. See:" [Here S McD links to old Telegraph article]

"A strand of anti-capitalists see Jews as being inextricably linked to the power of global capital. Sadly it is a trope that is deeply embedded in sections of the Far-Left."

"It has manifested itself in anti-Semitic murals defended by our Leader and in myths pedalled by a prominent Far-Left activist about Jews being the “chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade”."

"Couple the idea of Jewish wealth with the propensity many anti-capitalists have to fall into lazy critiques of power – charging a shadowy “elite” for all of society’s ills – you end up with a hard-Left politics that is fundamentally bigoted"

"I will be clear: it is wrong to equate Jews with capitalism or with undue power and influence but this trope is just as common on the Far-Left as the Far-Right. It is a trope that is sown through the politics of those now running the Labour Party."


OK, so that is essentially the critique I thought it was. And, save for a couple of phrases that could lead in wrong directions, I agree with it. And anyone who thinks she's saying what TopCat initially reported has got it backwards.


(And can I please make a plea that people c&p tweets instead of embedding them? Not all of us have twitter, and tweets can be deleted anyway).