Keir Starmer at it again..

[prawnking]

Do you think sexism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia have been 'weaponised politically in this country', or just anti-semitism?

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Do you think sexism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia have been 'weaponised politically in this country', or just anti-semitism?

So you disagree?

Interesting, given as that was exactly what the Forde report found:

But Mr Forde's report says factionalism was "endemic" within Labour and the issue of anti-Semitism was weaponised by both sides, not just the party's right.
"The evidence clearly demonstrated that a vociferous faction in the party sees any issues regarding anti-Semitism as exaggerated by the right to embarrass the left," it says.
"It was of course also true that some opponents of Jeremy Corbyn saw the issue of anti-Semitism as a means of attacking him.
"Thus, rather than confront the paramount need to deal with the profoundly serious issue of anti-Semitism in the party, both factions treated it as a factional weapon."

 

[prawnking]

Do you think sexism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia have been 'weaponised politically in this country', or just anti-semitism?

Can you answer the question?

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Unless you disagree with my statement I don't understand why you feel the need to question it?

 

[prawnking]

So you disagree?

Interesting, given as that was exactly what the Forde report found:

But Mr Forde's report says factionalism was "endemic" within Labour and the issue of anti-Semitism was weaponised by both sides, not just the party's right.
"The evidence clearly demonstrated that a vociferous faction in the party sees any issues regarding anti-Semitism as exaggerated by the right to embarrass the left," it says.
"It was of course also true that some opponents of Jeremy Corbyn saw the issue of anti-Semitism as a means of attacking him.
"Thus, rather than confront the paramount need to deal with the profoundly serious issue of anti-Semitism in the party, both factions treated it as a factional weapon."

Not so fast, you weren't talking about factionalism in your original comment, or 'both sides' using it as a weapon, it was clear what you were getting at...

 

[prawnking]

I don't understand

And this is the problem.

You don't understand why Loach is thought of as having expressed anti-semitic views, you don't understand why many Jews viewed Labour as a toxic and hostile place for them, and you don't understand it when people point out that anti-semitism is treated and spoken about differently by many on the Left when compared to other minority concerns and causes and discriminations that they'll gladly support unwaveringly

 

[prawnking]

The question is, and has been since the start of this discussion is on what grounds are they removing Driscoll?

Him interviewing Loach about his films, the last 3 of which were filmed in the North East is surely not a strong enough reason to drop an elected Mayor?

Or do you think it is?

I'll do you the courtesy of answering your questions.

It's heavy-handed for sure, but in a time where Starmer will feel he has to continue to assure the EHRC and the Jewish community that he's taking anti-semitism seriously and not allowing everything to be downplayed constantly, I can see why he acted, especially as Driscoll was so defiant about it.

Again, to bring in the views of those affected:

"Mike Katz, the national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, which had described Driscoll’s appearance alongside Loach as “hugely upsetting” for the Jewish community, criticised the director’s “denialism”."

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

To clarify, I think the right wing press, the "right wing" of the Labour Party, and now Starmer (someone who sat with Corbyn and called him a friend) have to differing extents politicised and exaggerated AS to serve themselves, yes, absolutely.

And the way Starmer is dealing with Driscoll at the moment is another example of that, he wants Driscoll out and he's using AS as the vehicle.

 

[prawnking]

To clarify, I think the right wing press, the right wing of the Labour Party, and now Starmer (someone who sat with Corbyn and called him a friend) have to differing extents politicised and exaggerated AS to serve themselves, yes, absolutely.

And the way Starmer is dealing with Driscoll at the moment is another example of that, he wants Driscoll out and he's using AS as the vehicle.

So why introduce the idea of 'both sides' in your wannabe 'gotcha!' post above then if you don't believe it?

Downplaying anti-semitism again and not reading the room again.

Do you regularly tell people who claim to suffer sexism or racism that they're exaggerating?

 

[Johnny75]

To clarify, I think the right wing press, the "right wing" of the Labour Party, and now Starmer (someone who sat with Corbyn and called him a friend) have to differing extents politicised and exaggerated AS to serve themselves, yes, absolutely.

And the way Starmer is dealing with Driscoll at the moment is another example of that, he wants Driscoll out and he's using AS as the vehicle.

Nowt so blind as those that choose not to see.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Nowt so blind as those that choose not to see.

How true.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

So why introduce the idea of 'both sides' in your wannabe 'gotcha!' post above then if you don't believe it?

Downplaying anti-semitism again and not reading the room again.

Do you regularly tell people who claim to suffer sexism or racism that they're exaggerating?

You know not everything is black and white?

Surely you take each case of discrimination on its own merits before drawing a conclusion?

 

[prawnking]

You know not everything is black and white?

OK, I'm out

 

[pr0sl0]

Do you think sexism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia have been 'weaponised politically in this country', or just anti-semitism?

I mean, I'll bite - 100% yes.

Labour's anti-semitism problem is real and exists, but the thing that drives people like me absolutely round the bend googoo bananas about it is that it was (and still is, this thread reflects it) treated completely differently to other forms of racism that are ubiquitous and systemic throughout British politics.

It's perfectly possible for there to both be anti-semitism within Labour and for figures on the party's right, the media, and opposition parties to hypocritically use it as a battering rod while protecting their own records. They know how close they got to an upset in 2017 by not taking a populist left tack from Labour seriously, and they played the game well in turning Corbyn's strengths on anti-racism into his biggest weakness. (And that's just more broadly part of being good at party politics, too, something Corbyn was never any good at.) The EHRC was stuffed full of Tory appointees to be used as a tool of culture war (see now how it's being used to undermine trans rights, another convenient target for the Tories), the Jewish Chronicle has long been a pro-Tory newspaper even before Corbyn but went off the deep end regularly leading up to 2019, and the British media is stuffed full of liberals whose formative years were the fall of the USSR and the splintering of the left into various weird and bizarre factions (the left is inherently dangerous, unserious, and wrong, so must be stopped at all costs), etc, etc.

For what it's worth, if we're going to be arguing primarily from what Jewish people think, my own Jewish friends - they're from North London, and of course the whole "North London leftie granola-eating sandal-wearing etc etc" canard is a classic anti-semitic trope trotted out regularly across UK media and politics with little to no pushback, because it's used to attack leftwards - found it all just as befuddling. Considering they actually have Corbyn as their MP, and have seen him working for Jewish communities in his constituency and across the UK for decades, it all just meant that the idea that he was anti-semitic was laughable. Jewish-American friends also found it absurd, but then the context over in the US is different in that the Jewish community here tends to be more conservative as a whole anyway, and (rightly) viewing anti-Zionism as distinct from anti-semitism is still a mainstream view both within the Jewish community over there and more broadly, while over here it's rapidly become taboo.

It's not some grand conspiracy, of course. This whole ecosystem of people and organisations outside politics that patrols the edge of what's allowed and what isn't constantly fluctuates in its members and its precise positions, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. But when you have most of the mainstream media and political parties absolutely convinced that the left is more dangerous than the right, you suddenly get 24/7 blaring concern for anti-semitism where there's rarely ever been the same kind of concern for other kinds of racism. If you actually look at these things individually, though, you start feeling like a conspiracy theorist, hanging red string up across corkboard. So much of the evidence base is circumstantial, tenuous, made up of things that might be isolated incidents, might be structural - the whole sums to something, but there were Jewish people who were genuinely terrified that Corbyn was going to open concentration camps. Jeremy Corbyn! I know it's hard to remember this but the reason why he won the leadership race in 2015 in the first place is precisely because he represented a rejection of the racism of New Labour. For all his many faults it's still impressive that a lifelong pacifist who was completely unwilling to bend the institutions of the Labour party towards reshaping it in line with his positions out of a desire to actually provide the "big tent" Labour always claims to be has ended up being seen by much of the population as a raving Stalinist obsessed with purging his opponents and cracking down on British Jews. The wholesale destruction of his character and his political positions by an establishment, from the centre-left to centre-right, which sees itself as the immune system for this country and his Labour party as a virus. They kept saying he was going to lose and be completely discredited, so they did everything they could to make it happen, and that self-fulfilling, circular logic is now treated as common sense, even though for a good couple of years those same positions were polling not far off where Starmer is now.

At the same time, the Tories literally put the criminalisation of GRT communities in their 2019 manifesto and none of those same people noticed. The disconnect between what was actually happening in Labour and what people were being told was happening is insane. No wonder they're no longer as concerned now that someone "safe" like Starmer is in charge. Spend any time looking into what has actually changed in the party - what's happened with the complaints process, what's happened with candidate selection, what's happened with policy - and it becomes pretty clear that fuck all has actually changed in terms of "tackling" anti-semitism. It was being addressed cack-handedly before and it still is. But hey, at least now the grown-ups are back in charge. People who voted through actually discriminatory legislation when in power under Blair and Brown or Cameron or May or Johnson or Truss or Sunak - they're serious people who get treated seriously because they play the game the way that it's meant to be played.

 

[prawnking]

OK, think I'll leave you all to your Roger Waters albums and stick to the football from now on...

 

[pr0sl0]

OK, think I'll leave you all to your Roger Waters albums and stick to the football from now on...

I know I'm just being annoying now but, like, you know the Roger Waters thing is a classic example of how these anti-semitism accusations get thrown around far too easily, and the focus is on the appearance of tackling anti-semitism instead of actually tackling it?

People have been hearing that his current tour is anti-semitic because of some photos from Berlin going viral, except:

a) The Star of David on the floating pig is alongside symbols from other major world religions and is clearly a comment on organised religion (plus it isn't even on the pig on this current tour, the photo that went viral is from 2013)
b) Anne Frank is included in a list of martyrs, of victims of fascism, not as some kind of "taunt" (whatever that means)
c) Dressing up as a Nazi and "shooting" the crowd is a longstanding part of the stage show for that sequence from The Wall, one of the most explicitly anti-fascist albums out there, and it couldn't be clearer he's playing an evil character

All this stuff, out of context, has gone viral, being shared as examples of him "provoking" the audience with deliberately anti-semitic gestures. It's ludicrous, but it takes 10x as long to explain why, and most people only ever see or hear the fragment that "Roger Waters is being anti-semitic on his current tour and lots of respectable people are calling for venues to cancel his shows" and that's all they know about it. The US government's official position now is that Roger Waters is anti-semitic, based on something that originated with a misleading tweet. That's the kind of public statement that sticks in the mind.

But of course where it then gets even more convoluted is the stuff where he has said things that are anti-semitic - the lazy way he throws around tropes like "puppet master" or "the Jewish lobby". Areas where his anti-Zionism does bleed into anti-semitism. Not to mention other cranky views on issues like Ukraine. I mean, the guy is exactly the kind of crank he seems to be on a lot of issues.

So what does all this do for actually pushing back against anti-semitism, though? Because that's what I keep always coming back to. Nothing about how the Corbyn years was handled did anything to actually substantively address it, after all. Kicking the left out of Labour doesn't actually do anything for the cause because anti-semitism was never just a Labour left/Corbyn thing - what's actually happening if Roger Waters gets his tour dates cancelled because of things he didn't do, rather than things he did? This has enormous implications for freedom of speech, how societies can organise and respond to hate speech, etc.

I just don't see how there's anything healthy that comes out of how any of this handled, it just seems to serve some people as a very convenient excuse to get one over people they politically dislike with anti-semitism as the justification. That can never end well.

 

[pavlosmacwolf]

Do you think sexism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia have been 'weaponised politically in this country', or just anti-semitism?

All of them are manner from heaven for keyboard warriors with no open minded opinions for the real world

 

[pavlosmacwolf]

OK, think I'll leave you all to your Roger Waters albums and stick to the football from now on...

Thats your big, poignant final argument?

 

[Templeton Peck]

OK, think I'll leave you all to your Roger Waters albums and stick to the football from now on...

Please don't tell me you think Waters is anti-semitic?? Fuck me sideways.

 

[Templeton Peck]

And yet Jewish Voice for Labour have no problem with Loach at all. But which Jews do I believe??!