Duffield under investigation

Julie Bindel is not impressed in the Spectator:

Rosie Duffield’s opponents are intent on destroying her
https://archive.is/791Qp

As for being arrested by Nazis the fact is Rosie Duffield MP, and any women like her would have been arrested long before Izzard because the Nazis targeted left wing leaders, feminists and trade unionists earlier and in larger numbers than those notable only for being gay or cross dressing. Most SPD [Labour's sister party in Germany] delegates to Reichstag [equivalent to MPs] ended up in concentration camps unless they fled abroad, and the party was banned.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/political-prisoners

Izzard would be way more likely to be targeted for his political beliefs than his clothing.

Pretty clear from history that everyone on Mumsnet feminist boards or in a left leaning feminist group would have been targeted by the Nazis. The Nazis only permitted groups under the control of the Reich's Women's Leader (Reichsfrauenführerin) which made sure women stopped thinking for themselves and obeyed Nazi doctrine.

Nazi policies criminalized women’s movements. They banned and condemned through propaganda and speeches the KPD (Marxist) and SPD (socialist) feminist groups first. Many of their members were arrested or assassinated, such as Libertas Schulze Boysen, Mildred Harnack-Fish, Hilde Meisel or 20-year-old Sophie Scholl. Others, like Helen Stocker, an advocate of women’s reproductive rights, Dora Schaul, a writer, or Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg, who had appealed to the Bavarian Interior Minister for expulsion of Hitler, on grounds sedition, were forced to live in exile. Their property was confiscated by Hitler.

Then under a programme called Gleichgeschaltet (coordination), National Socialism gained control over the moderate women’s groups and then dismantled them. The majority of women associations, such as the BDF (Bund Deutscher Frauenverein), chose among themselves to disappear or disband. Nazi groups infiltrated the BDF’s subsidiaries. By May 1934, the BDF lost its power and influence. The only way to save the organization from becoming a puppet of the Nazi Regime was to voluntarily dissolve the organization. The BDF was established in 1894 and disbanded in 1933. The BDF’s extinction symbolized the “anti-climatic end” that Nazis brought upon the organized feminist movement in Germany in the mid 1930’s.

Only one women’s association persisted under the regime, Die Frau, or Woman, until 1944. It was placed under the guardianship of the Reich Minister of People’s Education and of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Some old liberal feminists worked with international organizations, especially pacifistic groups, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) when World War II began. Others decided to wait until the Nazis fell, expecting, like most feminists in the Weimar Republic, that Hitler’s rule would be a short, ineffectual phase. Socialist and Communist feminists assumed a revolution would occur against Hitler, leading most to wait in silence or being jailed and killed. Though the Nazi regime failed as a government, it succeeded for generations in silencing German women and, therefore, putting a hole into the feminist movement for decades.
https://www.rgics.org/wp-content/uploads/Feminism-under-Fascism.pdf

Some of this seems a little familiar women's groups gradually being subverted, silenced while those who speak openly are crushed.

My interest is in Rosie being under investigation for 6 months.

My first assumption, as a casual observer, is that this has happened BECAUSE she is Rosie, rather than because the content of a tweet she likes is so heinous.

Ergo, the discussion should centre on why she, as an elected representative, is being treated more severely that other colleagues would.

Attention-seeking Izzard and his self promoting opinions bore me. I assume this is true of others. Given Labour is likely to form the next Government it would be more interesting to discuss why the party keep seeking to self destruct. But somehow on this forum we are never allowed to do this.

Yes. Rosie is under investigation for liking a tweet made by Graham Lineham in response to a claim made by Izzard.

The discussion about Izzard's tweet, the one involved in the investigation, is relevant to the thread topic. This is part of 'how this came about'.

FFS. The thread title is "Duffield under investigation".

If people want a discussion about the oppression of transvestites in Nazi Germany, or whether Izard's interpretation is correct, start your own thread. For whatever reason even on MN we have to centre the men.

Women in politics can have a hard time. Like many working women they are often juggling children and their job, made more difficult by the crazy hours and the need to be in both the constituency and Westminster. And lets not forget that women, particularly women of colour, whether Dianne Abbott or Priti Patel, seem to attract more abuse than their male counterparts.

Rosie comes across as a palatable politician. She thinks for herself and forms her own opinions. She is not afraid to voice these opinions even if they will not help her career. This appeals to many voters, especially if, as in her case, these opinions are in line with the majority view.

The Labour party seem to be trying to use process to destroy her career. We should be discussing how this has come about, who are the key agents (Sakar? Izzard, local activists? Starmer or members of his inner circle?) We should be offering support to Rosie and discussing how we can do something to help.

Please, all of you discussing the holocaust, go elsewhere. There may be important underlying issues around the original tweet, the retweet and the like, but the big issue for this thread is the Labour Party machine and process seemingly bullying a good woman.

Arcane discussion of other topics will simply prevent people from reading.

Eddie Izzard for me is rapidly joining the Keir Starmer Club, whereby, every time he opens his mouth, I like him a little less.

Holocaust Memorial Day's website says that lesbians and trans people were not targeted in the same way they gay men were.

https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/gay-people/

It does say that

On 6 May 1933, the Nazis violently looted and closed The Institute for Sexual Science, burning its extensive collection on the streets. Unknown numbers of German gay men, lesbians and trans people fled abroad, and others entered into marriages in order to appear to conform to Nazi ideological norms

So Izzard may well have felt threatened by the Nazi's actions against the Institute for Sexual Science (which seems to have researched a lot about transsexualism), but he was unlikely to have been sent to concentration camps to be gassed, forced into hard labour, starved, castrated or medically experimented on as happened to 10-15000 gay men, not would he have been arrested and detained in brutal conditions as 50,000 gay men were.

I'm sure Eddie thinks he is being helpful. As usual, Eddie is helping Eddie, but of course that's Eddie's job, so fair play to him.

Oh no. I didn’t mean you were beside the point.

I meant that janette’s insistence of corralling us into discussing the historical
evidence is purely distraction and, therefore, beside the point.

You are obviously right to challenge the evidence-light historical claims that janette is determined to state as fact. But our activist friends are determined to force us to focus on the not really relevant to the original point stuff.

There is simply no sensible defence to Izzard’s appropriation of the holocaust to position himself as a victim. Which is why his supporters are so utterly determined to talk about how the nazis viewed and treated trans people (conveniently ignoring that 21st century trans didn’t exist as a concept in the early 20th century).

The potential to evade persecution doesn't negate the existence of the persecution, no. But it does make you less vulnerable than those without the possibility to evade persecution.

So Eddie Izzard could have simply chosen to present as a gender non conforming man in Nazi Germany, making him a hell of a lot safer than Jews who could not simply claim to identify as something other than Jewish. Just like little Afghan girls can't identify as something other than girls in order to be allowed to go to school, and little Somalian girls can't identify as something other than girls in order to avoid having their genitals mutilated with a rusty razor blade.

It's also worth examining how many women succeed in comedy compared to men, whether due to sexist assumptions about women not being funny or more fundamental reasons such as trawling round the country doing stand-up most nights being incompatible with, say, being the mother of a young child. If Eddie Izzard actually were a woman, there's a fairly high likelihood that no one would have fucking heard of him.

The fact that Izzard could have pretended to be a gender conforming cisgender man also doesn't change that. As noted, gay people had the option to stay in the closet. Many of them did so. Many did not. Many tried but were outed. The potential to evade persecution doesn't negate the existence of the persecution in the first place

Yes, I agree with this

It's not "beside the point".

I'm not actually responding to that part of it, I'm challenging the claim that Janette is making that they've slipped in there, while omitting relevant factors.

Linehan didn’t use sarcasm to deny any such thing. He used it to challenge Izzard’s claim that he specifically would have been persecuted (in order to claim his own victimhood).

Whether there is historical evidence of whatever is entirely beside the point.

Instead Linehan used sarcasm to deny that trans people were persecuted under the nazis.

Find us some evidence of a non Jewish, heterosexual cross dresser being persecuted under the Nazis.

The Labour party will destroy people like Duffield. It’s pretty ruthless

It’s in thrall to the lobby groups

If they get in we’re in for a hell of a time.

Absolutely.

It is so depressing.

“But we can all see the tactics.”

yes. We can. However, from experience highlighting the tactics can lead to abusive, personal attacks and name calling from some. That is also a tactic to note. Those too are usually denied though. But those who resort to it know. Sometimes a name change follows.

All these tactics are designed for one thing. To silence the discussion at hand.

It’s just gaslighting.

We can look at the text but we are still being told that it says something entirely different that fits the activists’ agenda.

It’s absolutely infuriating. I have been subjected to ‘you might want to think that but…’ repeatedly by our activist friend this morning. But we can all see the tactics.

Did everyone see this twist in particular?

“But that is simply not what the tweet does. What the tweet does is claim - falsely - that someone like Izzard would not have faced persecution under the nazis. It's really that simple.”

No.

Graham’s tweet was specifically about Izzard and only about Izzard.

That you have chosen to twist it the way you have, and others who are extreme activists have, is what posters are pointing out. However, do keep posting. Because the more you post, the more others see just how poorly the Labour Party is treating Rosie Duffield.

It really is the height of enough, that a woman with the integrity of Rosie Duffield, is being investigated for anti-Semitism, because she liked a tweet by someone else, about another person entirely who was trying to appropriate suffering under Nazism to garner sympathy.

I mean, do they really think people are buying it??? Anyone?

Labours downfall is that they simply refuse to grasp that not everybody is as thick as they think.

Well Eddie still has all his bits and the only thing he does on Girl Mode days is put on a fetching twin-set and some heels.

He himself just said he's a Trans Superstar and I for one believe him.

It is very transphobic indeed to deny Eddie is trans. I am not angry @PlanetJanette , I'm just disappointed.

So Izzard’s way of ridding the Labour Party of antisemitism as declared back in 2018 is to leverage the Holocaust for Izzard’s own political gain.

The hypocrisy really is quite clear, isn’t it?

https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/21/labour-antisemitism-losing-war-eddie-izzard-jeremy-corbyn

I suggest it is because distraction, hyperbolic exaggeration and leveraging a horrific event in history for one’s own purposes, but it will be great to be proved wrong and to have a cohesive argument presented that doesn’t use these tactics. It might give us an insight into what is happening in the Labour Party.

@Helleofabore yes. And all while trying to gaslight us into believing that Linehan’s tweet actually says and does what the poster wants it to say and do.

While completely ignoring that they have projected their own agenda all over a third party ‘liking’ the tweet and are also trying to gaslight us into believing this is proof that she’s a dreadful anti-Semite and should be strung up.

No amount of this makes the tactics any less transparent and unpleasant.

Woah, this thread has headed off in a weird direction, as seems routine when anyone dares take a close look at the Labour Party, its policies or inner workings.

For those Janets out there, it is worth listening rather than denying.

To win an election you have to capture the middle ground. Ordinary people. People who worry that their niece can't find anywhere to live, that there won't be sufficient support as their parents age, or their own job or financial security.

Most people, I believe, don't really think about LGBTQ+++. They are accepting of gay or lesbian neighbours, colleagues and friends and didn't really see it as an issue. They were aware that prejudice exists but would be inclined to take a dim view of those who have problems accepting different sexualities. Being British they don't particularly like anyone's sexuality shoved in their faces, but could be tourists snogging voraciously on the tube as it is about OTT Pride displays. They are inclined to "be kind" to people struggling with gender identity but are alarmed at some of the consequences, mainly around sport, prisons/hotels/hospitals and the influence teachers, youth workers, peers and influencers can have on suggestible children and teens.

My concern is that ordinary people don't engage in party politics, leaving both major parties (and most of the minor ones) vulnerable to the influence of activists and nutters. We see it now. Labour are obscure about their policies, and were a poor opposition because all too often they failed to suggest clear and palatable alternatives to Government proposals. The Tories seem to think they could win, largely on the basis that in the end people might decide they are better than the alternative. (The Tories' problems are almost the mirror image of Labour's. Rishi is distrusted because he is more centrist than most of the right wing members who select the leader. Keir too, except his internal opposition is to the left.)

We don't want a government, of whatever party whose basis for election is that they were the least worst option.

If Rosie is barred from standing, Labour will have taken another step in the race towards the bottom in the race to lose the next election.

We don't need people to justify actions against Rosie. We don't need people to tell us how to vote. We don't need to be told that the Tories are worse.

We need politicians to live in the real world and to listen.