Any thoughts on tonight's Panorama ( Labour Party and antisemitism)?

[BoogleMcGroogle]

I understood there to be a problem with antisemitism in the Labour party, but it really bright home to me just how institutionalised and acceptable this has been allowed to become.

It's pretty clear Corbyn doesn't care enough about antisemitism to take any meaningful action or check how his behaviour and views might have contributed to this situation.

And the statements put out by the Labour Party HQ pretty much dismissing everything as anti-Corbyn conspiracy, while wheeling out some gormless and confused shadow junior minister, were unforgivable.

I'm pretty sympathetic to the ideals of the Labour movement, but couldn't in all good conscience lend my vote to a party with a leadership that's let this happen.

I guess it's only going to get worse when a general election looms and a large number of moderate Labour MP's are deselected.

The comments from Jewish posters on here are so upsetting. This is exactly how SIL feels and it's heartbreaking. This country gave her father refuge and he gave back forty years as a doctor. The idea that my little nieces might grow up feeling like outsiders in their own home country is horrible.

Labour is clearly now a home for people with anti-semitic views. I won't for them whilst Jeremy Corbyn, or any of his ilk, are in charge. As far as I am concerned he has destroyed the labour party.

I’m a Tory. Still allowed to express my disgust and loathing of labour and I hereby do so.
What motivates Corbyn and his ilk is hate. Most of all, actually, they hate the affluent English middle class from whence they all spring.
Twisted bunch of little fuck ups.

I'm not Jewish so can't ever really relate to being subject to anti semitism or racism etc. However, what is going on in the Labour Party sends shivers down my spine, as from history this is how Hitler started in the earliest days. The constant denial by what was a fine political party is just terrible and just shouting biased reporting is wasted...I think most decent people know that there is hard rotten streak currently in Labour which hates Jews.

It is a total tragedy as there is no time in recent history which requires the country have a strong opposition, but even on that they are totally failing. Now trying to pretend they are remain when Corbyn himself has been a life long anti EU believer. Just emphasises to me they cannot be honest, although that increasingly seems to be a trait that few politicians are able to display.

Labour has a Compliance Unit to ensure all members toe the line , has a troika of unelected advisors behind Corbyn (I've always thought Seamus Milne looked like he'd happily shoot your children in front of you to maintain idealogical purity ) and needs an external enemy to maintain a sense of threat and solidarity .

We dont need Boris to beat Corbyn , Corbyn will do it all by himself..I cant believe how Labour has let the appalling tory party slide by undamaged.

Popped over from the other side. Can't thank you lot enough for telling it like it is.
The Labour Party is in a terrible state but the glorious leader can't be criticised.

I didn’t know how bad it was until I watched this. I didn’t know Corbyn had actually said Israel in its current state shouldn’t exist.

It struck me that the level of righteous hate being directed at Jewish Labour members is very similar to the abuse being dished out to gender critical feminists. And of course it’s the same far left momentum supporters giving it out.

Yes - it's why I left.

My CLP was over run by woke 20 something blokes telling long standing female party members how we were doing feminism "wrong"

Pertinent to the thread, the same "influx" had a generally anti-Semitic ethos and "dared" to be challenged on it.

The list of reasons why I left the party are depressingly long....

Boogle it’s so upsetting. Like your SILs family, mine were given a home in the UK and worked hard and felt proud to be British. All my family are teachers and engineers who contribute all they can to this country. But it’s not feeling safe any more. I worry for my DC and DGC and for other minorities here. My late GPs and DPs would never say the word Jewish or Jew out loud because they were so conditioned to keep quiet and not attract attention. It was so good that when my DC were growing up they didn’t have to keep their ethnicity secret. But now it’s gone back to how it was for my parents.

I get rung up every year by a current student at my old college in a fund-raising telethon. This year it was a young man who said he was on the Left, so we were talking about politics. He said he wasn't in the Labour Club but had joined the Greens. It was only when I'd made clear that I wasn't a fan of Corbyn and thought the anti-semitism on campus was a v worrying trend that he said that was the reason he hadn't joined the Labour Club but hadn't wanted to 'get into all that' earlier. Belatedly, the penny dropped and it dawned on me that he had a vaguely Jewish surname.

It is truly disgusting what has happened to the Labour Party. I'm not at all surprised that he didn't feel welcome. They had to have an enquiry at Oxford and the chair of the NUS had to apologise for remarks about 'zios'. Luciana Berger wasn't allowed to join the BAME group when she was at university.

And it isn't all related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. A family member worked at County Hall under Livingstone. I campaigned for Ken in both elections, and I didn't believe him when he told me about the anti-semitism there. They used to put on an accent like Fagin in Oliver when they held meetings about the budget. Just banter, of course.

I'm going to join the JLM, though I'm neither Jewish, nor Labour at the moment.

I recall posters here saying it was perfectly right to deny L Berger the right to join the BAME group. It’s everywhere on the left, now.

It's very depressing. One of my closest friends at school was Jewish. We've lost touch over the years but I now wonder about how she's feeling. We (our friendship group) didn't really understand and used to think it odd that she didn't want anyone to know her background. Now I'm beginning to understand.

Labour is both racist and misogynistic. I find the militancy and aggression that seems to have taken root scary.

On a related note, is there a reason why anti-Jewish racism is not just called that, racism, rather than always being referred to as anti-Semitism? I hope I'm not offending anyone, totally not my intention, it's just I wonder if not saying racism sort of helps some people minimalise it?

I think this thread highlights the amount of Labour activists there are on this site considering the leak from huffpo

The usual suspects who turn up to try and what about are no where to be seen. That should highlight why MN went into melt down during the last GE and why brexit was an apparent surprise despite everyone being from a working class background.

If huffpo didn't expose the online activists stance, MN would be full of maxed out threads of anti tory shite.

It's comical that some have not come out and held up their principals

I don’t recognise the Labour Party since the hard left took over. There are those who have been there for years such as Margaret Hodges who continue to fight from within. There are others who carry on simply because they cannot abandon a party to whom they have devoted themselves. I certainly can’t vote for this Labour Party no matter what they promise. On the other hand I will never vote for a Johnson government. Last time I voted Liberal in sheer desperation. There is now no doubt that politics has taken on a darkness that was not apparent in the past.

I don't believe corbyn will do anything at all.
His Momentum comrades are driving out the only decent MPs left as it's all about the ideology to them.
This is a man who has spent his entire political life sharing platforms with dubious fellow travellers. He's not going to break the habits of a lifetime for No.10.
Poor Louise Ellmann trying to discuss real life issues with a CLP who just want to talk about Israel....

Roisin Conarty was on The Last Leg last night and I think her assessment of Corbyn was spot on. She said he's like someone who's been a heckler for 30 years and finally the comedy club hands him the mike and says 'There you are - get on and do 20 (minutes) if it's so bloody easy' (paraphrasing).

It's so telling that now, rather than focus on what the programme said about how Jewish people have been treated and are feeling, and going all out to try to make amends, instead the party has turned on Tom Watson, the only person who imo gave the correct response.

At this rate the Labour Party has a long slow road to recover, even once JC goes.
I wouldn't vote tory either so LibDems is the only way for me for the foreseeable.

It's so telling that now, rather than focus on what the programme said about how Jewish people have been treated and are feeling, and going all out to try to make amends, instead the party has turned on Tom Watson, the only person who imo gave the correct response.

It's DARVO and a clear indicator of how truly fucked up the much of the party are.

'When wrong-doers are confronted with their acts (which may be criminal), they show a pattern that can be abbreviated as DARVO This stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.

The person thus denies having committed the offence, attacks the accuser and reverses the roles, painting themself as the victim and their actual victim as the actual guilty party.

Two common types of denial are 'It didn't happen' and (if it cannot be denied) then 'It wasn't harmful'.

Attacks can be violent and effectively abusive towards the accuser, with threats of legal action, attacks on credibility and so on.'

changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/coping/darvo.htm

Yes. The Party's official reaction to the programme says it all: smear the whistleblowers and then go to war on the BBC. Last night there was a statement from Jennie Formby saying that they had been unaware of the toll taken on the mental health of the whistleblowers. Really? When one of them had a breakdown and was only let off working out her notice on condition she signed an NDA?

I'm v sympathetic to anyone undergoing chemo, but JF can't avoid answering questions about a deleted email and the use of private email addresses indefinitely. The EHRC will want to interview her, too. She can speak through an intermediary.

Today the Mail has a story about the person they've appointed to foster good relations with the Jewish community. More like a slap in the face than a sincere attempt in reconciliation. She's on record as saying AS has been weaponised and took part in Chris Williamson's Democracy Roadshow. But she's a Corbyn loyalist, and that's all that matters.

It's like when Corbyn was criticised for ignoring he Jewish organisations in his constituency. So he celebrated Passover with...Jewdas. A rebel splinter-group who boo any mention of the Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbi. It's deliberate provocation.

As Ken Liviinstone said, 'the Jews don't vote for us anyway. They're too rich'. And then had to apologise to the Labour councillors in the NW who'd lost their seats because of his remarks about Hitler and Zionism.

It's going to be a long hot summer - we're already split over Brexit, then there's Momentum's attempt to ignite civil war in the CLPs with trigger ballots, now this. Anyone who thinks that a snap GE will result in a Lab win is seriously deluded.

I saw the programme and sadly it did not surprise me. I had relatives who died at the hands of the Nazis in WW2 and would be betraying their memory if I ever voted Labour as it stands now.

@Namechangingallthetime
In answer to your question about why antisemitism is defined separately from other forms of racism, a friend of mine put it better than I could:
"Finally watched the Panorama documentary about anti-Semitism and the British Labour Party. While I thought John Ware (whose interviewing style irritates me) did well in getting eight insiders to talk about some undoubtedly shabby experiences, the programme mostly felt like a missed opportunity. It never defined what anti-Semitism actually is, which was a critical oversight. Viewers were basically left to piece it together for themselves as simply being no more (and no less) than another form of racism originating, in this case, from a party that makes much of being anti-racist. But anti-Semitism isn’t just another form of racism, in the sense of members of X group treating members of Y group badly because of their perceived faults or social shortcomings. Anti-Semitism is an elaborate global view — a cosmology really — that Jews control the world in general, armaments, finance and communications in particular, and all governments especially. And because it’s so elaborate, it’s also insane, and its insanity obtains the most purchase among adherents of belief systems that also have fantasies of world domination. That’s the heart of it, and that needed to be highlighted. As I say it felt like a missed opportunity."

@MyBeloved

Totally agree with your friend, and I’d add that the programme didn’t really define the term Zionism either, despite mentioning it.

As someone who’s not Jewish, not involved in the LP, not particularly well informed in this I found the programme very confusing and not informative. More discussion / clarification of the key terms and the overlap of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel/pro-Palestine movements would have helped.

I started a thread on this, I don't know this one existed as I couldn't find a thread on it. I can't understand why noone seems interested?

After watching the panorama programme I went on twitter and was shocked.

I was shocked by the number of Twitter comments that simply dismissed the programme as 'Tory' or BBC propaganda and those saying 'they need to do a programme on islamophobia in the Tory party' - the Whataboutery that apparently makes it OK?

The tweets saying 'they're just a bunch of useless whingers who deserved to be sacked anyway'. And 'how much were they paid for going on the programme'?, one person claiming it was £30,000 each! In other words, the tweets were full of anti-semitism, I was utterly shocked.

And those minimising it by saying 'only eight'? That's nothing!

Thanks, My beloved. I'm still confused but I think what you're saying makes sense. I still can't help wondering if it would be taken more seriously by more people if it was mostly referred to as racism. I know people who generally consider themselves very liberal, tolerant, anti-racist, who sort of dismiss anti-semitism as not the same. I don't know if I'm making sense!

As for Twitter, I haven't looked myself but I'm not surprised. I agree with a PP that there's a similar attitude on this as there is on GC feminists.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism