Labour and Antisemitism (Part II)

[JewryMember]

Link to original thread

[grinkle]

Thanks, JewryMember!

And thanks to Ricardian for a whole series of fantastic and enlightening posts on the previous thread.

[JewryMember]

Grinkle, your posts have been most illuminating.

[kesstrel]

This is interesting:

"For some who hail from the same ideological background as Corbyn and Livingstone, racism is a subset and consequence of capitalism and imperialism. In this worldview, most Jewish people are caricatured as friends of capital and all Israelis are agents of imperialism. It is therefore doctrinally difficult – perhaps impossible – for this section of the left to see Jews as victims."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/01/corbyn-anitsemitic-leader-slur-labour-anti-jewish-prejudice

Presumably this would imply they believe there would be no racism in the perfect socialist society. Because they see racism as a result of a socialisation that is designed to promote the interests of capitalism and imperialism, rather than an unhappy tendency inherent in human group psychology, against which it is necessary to constantly struggle. So Israeli Jews would fall into the same category as ' Uncle Toms' (whom they also have historically tended to be happy to condemn), for supposedly being on the same side as "imperialism". So maybe for some on the hard left, it's less a 'hierarchy of victimhood' than a perception of whether or not a particular group is sufficiently on the right side in "the struggle" for the overthrow of capitalism.

[claig]

As far as I understand the victimhood hierarchy, one argument is that the place in the hierarchy rests on the usefuleness of that group in overthrowing the system (capitalism) by means of disruption, as opposed to a more intrinsic value based on injustice or suffering. So the victimhood hierarchy is one tool and aid for the revolution to overthrow capitalism.

[TheTravellingLemon]

Ahh! I typed out a whole post and the thread was closed. This was the main gist.

I looked up that report I mentioned. The inquiry took place in 2005 and the report published in 2006. It had an entire section on antisemitism on the left and even a paragraph on Ken. It also spoke about the behaviour of PPCs, although social media wasn't really a thing back then. As I said, this is not new.

The thing about conspiracy theories is that we have to be careful not to imply that the antisemitism is made up for that purpose (I'm not suggesting you are). There have been people fighting for years to highlight this problem. It would be a shame to have their voices lost in a sea of 'it was manufactured to oust JC'.

[kesstrel]

Thanks, Claig. The thing is, I've seen the Victimhood Hierarchy mentioned quite a lot, but never in that context - more with the idea that it's either arbitrary, or it is simply based on the idea that some are more "deserving" than others. So this is new to me, and I suspect would be to a lot of people.

[claig]

kesstrel, I agree, it is new to me too. I never thought of it like that and still wonder if it could possibly be true, but it does explain a lot of things viewing it as not based on value or injustice and suffering but as furtherance of revolution against the system.

It partially explains why quite a few leftwingers tried to cover up and conceal the reality of what happened to the women in Cologne over the New Year and minimised it. Even leftwing Jess Phillips said something like it was just like a normal Saturday night out in Birmingham, which is offensive and ridiculous.

[JewryMember]

There have been people fighting for years to highlight this problem. It would be a shame to have their voices lost in a sea of 'it was manufactured to oust JC'.

Exactly this.


[JewryMember]

The VVI is clearly not about historical suffering, otherwise Jews and Native Indians would feature at the top. It is always, as you point out, a picture of power and disruption.

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

Interesting to see the hierarchy of victimhood being discussed, and even more interesting that it's being allowed to stand; I once had a post deleted for saying the same thing

Perhaps the debate really has moved on now that the extremists' mask has slipped so badly ...

[DarlingCherieLiebling]

Thanks for starting a new thread. The last few comments on Thread 1 are very powerful.

The Hierarchy of Victimhood, the ideological camaraderie between the left-wing, socialist segments and conservative Islam, and this comment really make you think:

"The political spectrum really is a circle and the far left and right really do merge into one another exceptionally well. Quite scary. The amount of naked racism and tendency to glorifying dictators is terrifyingly similar on both the far-left and far-right."

Looking forward to learning more.

[JewryMember]

Me too. Thank you, everybody.

[Hygellig]

Link to the report mentioned by TheTravellingLemon is here.

[ChillieJeanie]

According to Guido Fawkes three Labour councillors have been suspended today.

[Ricardian]

three Labour councillors have been suspended today.

I was out delivering election material for my local council candidate. This was just the cherry on top: why am I out on the streets, when they're at home tweeting shit racist memes to each other? Labour's reliance on Muslim "community leaders" and their corrupt postal votes (numbers of postal votes hit 40% in mostly Muslim wards, although how many of the people actually know they have a postal vote is something of a mystery) is going mean these are the first three, nothing like.

I bet fucking Ken and his useless anti-Semitic mates weren't out working for a Labour local council. When was the las time Livingstone actually did something positive for the party?

[Lycaenidae]

is going mean these are the first three, nothing like.

is going to mean these aren't the first three, nothing like.

[forkhandles4candles]

Grinkle, referring to an earlier claim of yours on the first thread about Sir Richard Evans turning in his grave, were he dead, to hear me cite his influence, his Facepost book actually goes in a quite different direction. I can't link to it....only one small quote: 'There is nothing antisemitism or racist about claiming that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis'

Is he on the Revisionists list now - despite his stirling work against Irving?

[Ricardian]

What's stirling work? Resurfacing the M9?

[grinkle]

On the contrary, forkhandles, he was a serious historian, who as you correctly point out, was opposed to Irving.

RJ Evans on facebook? At the age of 68? Really? And you can't link to it?

This is all sounding really quite unlikely.

[forkhandles4candles]

whoops, sterling, of course. My bad, as they say.

[grinkle]

Depressing to see that 3 more Labour councillors have been suspended.

Though these seem to be largely old comments, presumably dredged up by the press, and only one, in my view, meriting suspension. Salim Mulla, a former mayor of Blackburn, who tweeted that Israel was to blame for the Sandy Hook school shooting, call for Israel to be 're-located' to the US - using the same graphic shared by Shah, and an Israeli conspiracy was funding ISIS, clearly deserves the suspension.

But councillor Ilyas Aziz, who posted on Facebook: 'Jews and Muslims lived together in the Middle East, in peace pre 1948. Perhaps it would have been wiser to create Israel in America it's big enough. They could relocate even now'.' and in another post dating back to 2014, linking to an article about Nazi Germany, said: 'A reminder of the treatment and suffering of Jews in Nazi Germany. Are there are any similarities to how Israel is treating Palestinians.' - to me, this is not anti-Semitic, it's very close to what Shah put, but the other side of a (admittedly very fine) line. He seems to be suggesting Israelis voluntarily moving rather than being (forcibly) relocated, and avoids her hideous turn of phrase 'Problem solved'.

As for the last one, Burnley councillor Shah Hussein - who tweeted at an Israeli footballer that 'your country doing the same thing that hitler did to ur race'. - he definitely shouldn't be suspended, IMO, though Godwin might want to have some strong words with him about breaking his Law. Which is really the main lesson that ought to be taken away about all these Hitler references. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law Plus a quick lesson in politeness and tact wouldn't go amiss. But we can't suspend everyone who mistakenly compares anything (including Israel and Jews) to Nazis or Hitler - we'd break the internet. And it's not necessary. People who say things which are hyperbole deserves ridicule, yes, but not banning.

Again, a bit of me wonders if the Labour hierarchy are now going over the top specifically so that they can get the free speech crowd frothing at the mouth, on their side.

[grinkle]

Sorry, my source was www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3569102/Ken-Livingstone-s-guru-claims-Hitler-Zionist-Trotskyite-radical-spent-three-years-prison-caught-drugs.html

It's not the best source, but the Guardian is a bit sketchy and there's no point putting a link with a paywall.

[Lycaenidae]

RJ Evans on facebook? At the age of 68?

Let us not be ageist. But is being unable to tell the difference between "antisemitism", a noun, and "antisemitic", an adjective, the mark of a former Regius Professor of History?

[grinkle]

forkhandles - can't wait to see proof of your previous assertion.

[Ricardian]

Actually, grinkles, I suspect they're going for the wit and wisdom of three stupid councillors of no account so that they can whip up a cry of "but it's racist, you're only suspending Muslim councillors" and respond by saying "yes, that's bad, we'll stop doing it".

The real lesson you get from this is just how shallow the talent pool is that Labour recruit from in biradiri wards. These are not the sharpest tools in the box, and the whole process is entirely corrupt.