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The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread


Demitri_C

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4 minutes ago, Chindie said:

If Watson going does spark a wave of resignations, there really is nothing like the Labour Party for foot shooting.

resignations or not, the second part ofyour sentence is true anyway

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I see Corbyn's letter to Watson includes the comment "I hope the horseradish plants I gave you thrive".

I gather horseradish is good at spreading, pushing aside the plants that were there before.  Is it some kind of message, a symbolic gesture cloaked in the innocent-sounding language of gardening,  a cruel taunt about how the gentle, cuddly, self-effacing moderates have been thrust aside by the wild-eyed cadres of the Leninist insurgency?  I think we are owed an explanation.

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Where does this sense of anti-semitism within labour actually come from?

Is it simply that Corbyn has expressed pro-Palestinian views in the past and then people are putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 5 on all other potentially related matters? 
 

If I had to pick a side in the Israel / Palestine saga I’d side with Palestine to be honest, Israel are and have been the aggressors in that theatre since it arose, of course there are issues on both sides but it’s not Palestine who continue to forcefully extend their borders.

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Corbyn and McDonnell currently having a "rally" in the Invisible Wind Factory in Liverpool

Make of that whatever jokes you wish

*the definition of Rally may be; talking at some invited people who will clap and cheer on cue

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3 hours ago, peterms said:

I see Corbyn's letter to Watson includes the comment "I hope the horseradish plants I gave you thrive".

I gather horseradish is good at spreading, pushing aside the plants that were there before.  Is it some kind of message, a symbolic gesture cloaked in the innocent-sounding language of gardening,  a cruel taunt about how the gentle, cuddly, self-effacing moderates have been thrust aside by the wild-eyed cadres of the Leninist insurgency?  I think we are owed an explanation.

 

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4 hours ago, peterms said:

I see Corbyn's letter to Watson includes the comment "I hope the horseradish plants I gave you thrive".

I gather horseradish is good at spreading, pushing aside the plants that were there before.  Is it some kind of message, a symbolic gesture cloaked in the innocent-sounding language of gardening,  a cruel taunt about how the gentle, cuddly, self-effacing moderates have been thrust aside by the wild-eyed cadres of the Leninist insurgency?  I think we are owed an explanation.

From experience I can add that it's incredibly hard to remove once it's set its roots, and when it is dished out, even a little more of it than expected can cause pain, tears and a sense of regret and "I'm not doing that again".

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54 minutes ago, Chindie said:

It's origins are from a couple of avenues.

The 'traditional' avenue is the view that Jewish people were often business owners who chased profit above all else to the detriment of the worker and therefore were/are considered the antithesis of the workers cause (despite the fact that the basis of the workers cause movement is from Jewish thinkers). Plus all the usual centuries old anti-Semitic nonsense. And finally the element of Jewish demographics being generally not left leaning voters (I believe it's under 20% of Jewish voters that align to the left) probably plays a part.

The newer avenue is Israel, and is in some ways more complicated. Israel is a religious state with questionable actions towards a much weaker state, to say the least, including what amounts to war crimes in many eyes, an occupying force, strong connections to the US, etc etc. Israel is a state that kinda defines what the left doesn't like - aggression against a weaker party, religion, imperialistic tendencies, inequality, etc etc.

The complexity grows from there though. Because Israel is a Jewish state a couple of issues arise. The first is that idiots can't draw a distinction between Israel and Jewish people, and therefore hold all Jewish people as somehow responsible for Israel, and therefore the opposition to Israel becomes a generalised antagonism to Jewish people. This is a stupid as holding all Brits responsible for Downing Street's actions. And also dumb because there are obviously Jewish people who dislike Israel as much as anyone else.

Then there's the somewhat underhand nature of Israel and anti-Semitism. Israel has co-opted the term and attempted to shift what it means to include any criticism of Israel as actually being anti-Jewish. This is a nasty, nasty practice which attempts to discredit criticism of a state as racist, effectively making criticism a potential hand grenade. This has become a bit of a campaign with lobbying groups trying to spread it through governments, and even just Israeli politicians denouncing foreign actors of any sort as anti-Semitic because they dare question anything about Israel's activities.

Then there's an often unspoken issue. For a lot of Jewish people, Israel is an intrinsic part of being Jewish. The idea of the homeland, the safe refuge in the world, etc etc, is a fundamental part of being Jewish for them. And this an attack on Israel is an attack on a fundamental element of Judaism, and questioning anything about Israel is to question 'Jewishness' inherently.

So it's a mess. You've got old, old prejudices in play, plus a new element that has various clashing interests and thoughts. There is absolutely anti-Semitism in the Labour party, it's a symptom of society that infects all elements of it so it'll be found even where it really shouldn't be. Is it the crisis many make it out to be? No. It's mostly a critical view on Israel that causes issues due to stupidity and a lack of nuance, coupled to an Israeli interest is muddying waters and a somewhat understandable sensitivity in a number of Jewish people to criticism of Israel.

So it's a storm in a tea cup then and we should just ignore the crap about Labour having an actual problem with anti-semitism?

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2 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

So it's a storm in a tea cup then and we should just ignore the crap about Labour having an actual problem with anti-semitism?

I don't think you can call racism in any form a storm in a teacup - it's a serious issue in any sphere. And it's been clear that Labour has in some ways fumbled threading the needle with how to deal with anti-Semitism.

But, the coverage of it would have you believe Labour is full of people one step from Hitler. It isn't.

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1 minute ago, Chindie said:

I don't think you can call racism in any form a storm in a teacup - it's a serious issue in any sphere. And it's been clear that Labour has in some ways fumbled threading the needle with how to deal with anti-Semitism.

But, the coverage of it would have you believe Labour is full of people one step from Hitler. It isn't.

Oh I don't know about that, historically yeah for sure.

Nowadays, I don't know, open to interpretation a lot of the time in my opinion.

Last week we had a guy visit our office from our sister site down south, he couldn't tell our front desk/security guy who he was here to see and there was no record of him visiting, he was an asian lad and within minutes of not being allowed up the stairs reverted to calling our front desk guy a racist pig........all because he was doing his job properly........

 

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3 hours ago, Chindie said:

Is it the crisis many make it out to be? No

An excellent post with one exception - the quoted bit. Yes the tabloid rags etc.overplay it for political gain and so on. But there is, to my reading a "crisis" of anti-semitism in and surrounding Labour. Significant numbers of Labour Supporters/Voters/Members and even the odd MP and senior figure within wider labour indulge in blatant offensive anti-semitism, hounding of Jewish MPs and members,, whitewashing it, denying it, failing to deal with it. It's a stain.

It's not all, or most, or a majority - it's a minority, but one of sufficient scale that the problem is serious, persistent and to an extent institutional.

As an aside, we saw earlier this week that a tory (Johnson was it?) compared Corbyn to Stalin who was responsible for genocidal mass murder of Kulaks and this was roundly condemned as highly offensive and all the rest by Labour people (and others), some/many of whom seem to have no problem themselves comparing Israel or Israelis to the Nazis. The absolute tools. 

 

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We'll never agree on this. My view is that there is anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but it's extent is vastly overplayed and amplified by partisan figures, and isn't a crisis to anyone other than those that want it to be.

They're shouldn't be anti-Semitism anywhere in society, least of all the Labour party, but unfortunately there is and has been for decades. It's remarkable that at the time the party is lead by a more openly critical of Israel figure, who is also despised by a lot of the party's most recently dominant faction, that the party suddenly is a threat to Jewish people, with a leader who is an anti-Semite.

I would even listen to arguments that the party has more trouble with anti-Semitism today than it did before - if that was the case I'd guess that in part will come from Corbyn's less pro-Israel stance encouraging some idiots to pipe up, and also probably a reaction to a nastier Israeli regime and a reaction to 'the crisis'. That doesn't mean the party condones anti-Semitism, or is institutionally so, any more than the ignored Tory Islamophobia makes them institutionally Muslim haters.

When you've got the ridiculous state of the front page of a Jewish paper telling the country Corbyn is an anti-Semite, despite him having stood up for Jewish causes more than many Jewish MPs (the Hodge cemetery incident, for instance), that every critic of disliked leadership reels it off as fast as they can in their parting blows (even when they have a history of facing anti-Jewish attacks for years pre the leadership, sadly), it smacks of a manufactured crisis. Like many of these things, there's a speck of truth there, and that speck is too much, but the hysteria and fanning of the flames is cynicism in its most grim form.

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7 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Where does this sense of anti-semitism within labour actually come from?

Is it simply that Corbyn has expressed pro-Palestinian views in the past and then people are putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 5 on all other potentially related matters? 
 

If I had to pick a side in the Israel / Palestine saga I’d side with Palestine to be honest, Israel are and have been the aggressors in that theatre since it arose, of course there are issues on both sides but it’s not Palestine who continue to forcefully extend their borders.

I think you need to re-read some of your old history books mate. Israel has been attacked more times by their neighbours since 1950 than the other way around. The fact that they've probably pushed further than they should have in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War after getting attacked by a combined Libanese, Egyptian, Jordanese and in some cases Iraqi forces is hardly being the 'agressor'. Say that Britain got invaded by France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, would you claim that we were the attackers if we pushed them back?

The scope of some of the discussions to this day totally leaves the 50-80's out of the story. Israel would be obliterated if it wasn't for aid from USA, Britain, France and Germany. Most of their neighbours have it as a goal to wipe the country from the map, and since being formed as a state this isn't 'just' something they use as an excuse to attack Palestine.

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It’s that same difficult confusion.Jews and Israeli’s are just people and probably have an about average share of good guys and bad guys. I can’t think of a single ‘bad’ Jewish person that I personally know. But I could run in to an absolute rocket at any time. Just like with any other group.

However the successive governments of Israel have murderous thieving despicable people that appear to enjoy the power of keeping some slave state labour in close proximity whilst taking land, houses and futures.

They shouldn’t be judged by any unique standard due to history. They should be judged on basic decency. They fail, utterly.

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5 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Oh I don't know about that, historically yeah for sure.

Nowadays, I don't know, open to interpretation a lot of the time in my opinion.

Last week we had a guy visit our office from our sister site down south, he couldn't tell our front desk/security guy who he was here to see and there was no record of him visiting, he was an asian lad and within minutes of not being allowed up the stairs reverted to calling our front desk guy a racist pig........all because he was doing his job properly........

 

Don’t wish to go off topic but was that the desk guys story? There could be more to it...

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1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

I think you need to re-read some of your old history books mate. Israel has been attacked more times by their neighbours since 1950 than the other way around. The fact that they've probably pushed further than they should have in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War after getting attacked by a combined Libanese, Egyptian, Jordanese and in some cases Iraqi forces is hardly being the 'agressor'. Say that Britain got invaded by France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, would you claim that we were the attackers if we pushed them back?

The scope of some of the discussions to this day totally leaves the 50-80's out of the story. Israel would be obliterated if it wasn't for aid from USA, Britain, France and Germany. Most of their neighbours have it as a goal to wipe the country from the map, and since being formed as a state this isn't 'just' something they use as an excuse to attack Palestine.

All fair enough - to an extent; I can’t claim to be an expert on the subject admittedly, though I did read up on it recently on holiday a bit.

I agree that the 50’s - 80’s are largely left out of conversation nowadays but we should be focusing on the here and now instead of past mistakes that cannot be changed. And you have to look at the creation of Israel as the obvious starting point to it all, and the manner of that creation. 

Using your analogy - what if the UK was part of France and overnight it was just sectioned off and ordained as someone else’s land, then that land was extended systematically with military force backed by foreign powers with seemingly vested interests in establishing a foothold in the region.

Anyway, off topic but it’s one helluva complex situation out there whatever your opinion.

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1 hour ago, Chindie said:

We'll never agree on this. My view is that there is anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but it's extent is vastly overplayed and amplified by partisan figures, and isn't a crisis to anyone other than those that want it to be.

I don't think we're far apart. I agree with about 98% of what you say on this. I guess the only difference we have is that while I completely accept all sorts of partisan people do play it up, in some cases ridiculously so, for me personally there's a significant amount enough of it, compounded by an utter ineffectiveness in dealing totally firmly and unequivocally with it (I accept it's impossible, nigh on, to make a racist not be a racist, or to ever totally eliminate human idiocy/hate) that for a supposedly avowedly anti-racist, stand up for minorities party for it not to be a "crisis". So perhaps we differ on how we define "crisis". It's certainly hurting them. You've only got to look on twitter (yes, I know) to see, in the last day or so the sewer of it around a reinstate Chris Williamson  push that was going on, to see that many JC4PM and hard left types are just vile with it. They may not be all Labour members or voters, who can tell, but they're attaching themselves to Labour and trying to get the pillock re-instated into Labour. I know happily he hasn't been, but it's surrounding the harder left labour lot and they're not doing much more than the fig-leaf minimum to condemn and utterly distance themselves from it. There's a strong sniff of they don't actually condemn it at all, perhaps in some "greater cause", perhaps because they share it, beneath the veneer.

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