Why are some Labour voters in denial about JCs endorsement of party wide anti-Semitism

[Rainbowhairdontcare]

I'm in a tactical vote group on FB. There was a fairly civilised discussion about JC when I said as a Jew I can't vote for him, nor any of the members of the small community where we live.

Then I got told off for buying the "fear mongering biased media".

I've read and heard what he's said. As a Jew I can clearly see it as anti-Semitism. It baffles me that people are still in denial about it.

It is possible to be anti-Semitic without being an actual Nazi you know?

So what do the current high profile Jews want to see? Equality and the same place in a modern secular state that every other religion has, or a state that says certain groups who hold religious thoughts are never allowed to be questioned? Where's the centre ground here? I expect most ordinary Jews just want to go about their business like the rest of us.

Who are the goyim?

What Jews would like to see is an impartial and efficient disputes body in the Labour Party which deals with anti-Semitism cases efficiently and well.

It would also like to see the party led by someone who hasn’t spent his entire life hanging out with terrorists, anti-semites and holocaust deniers, and continues to defend these choices.

I don’t think it’s a very high bar tbh, but Corbyn and co can’t clear it. And that’s the anti-semitism alone, and before we get all the other vile regimes across the world that Corbyn has defended. This is a man who - in his own words, in an introduction to a book (not a ‘dodgy website’ that you or @ArseDarkly will dispute) - that he would defend the Republic of North Korea over evil capitalist South Korea.

What is most ridiculous about the accusations of ‘smear’ campaign against Corbyn, is that all smearing him involves doing is quoting his own actual words and actions. It’s exactly like Trump and his cries of ‘fake news’...

Oh and @fastaway, I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said. Most people don’t really understand anti-semitism or care that much about Jews.

But the British people have traditionally always voted for moderation on both left and right, so I can’t help hoping still that they won’t elect a band of Stalinists for other reasons (worries about defence, taxation, competence etc). The worry in this case is that the alternative doesn’t look particularly palatable either and the Lib Dems (who I will reluctantly vote for myself this time) continue not to inspire - and would probs do a pact with Labour if push came to shove.

@fastway and @joanne - I'm really sorry that you feel that most people don't care enough about anti-semitism in the Labour party to change the way they vote. In solidarity with our many Jewish friends we certainly won't be voting Labour in this election. I'm very sad about the current state of the Labour party - I would have almost certainly voted for them under a different leader.

I'm really curious to know what anyone who alleges that it's all one big smear by the Daily Mail/MSM has to say about why the Jewish mps Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman left the party. I'm also interested to know their views on the current batch of Labour party candidates. i know that several were recently deselected for making anti-Semitic remarks, however others are still being allowed to stand including Zarah Sultana who said she would celebrate the death of Blair and Netanyahu, and Ali Milani who used the tag #jew as a insult on social media. I find this quite shocking.

Gideon Bull, another Labour candidate has quit today after his anti-Semitism was uncovered. Apparently it was pure misfortune that he happened to refer to a Jewish councillor as a 'Shylock' because he wasn't aware Shylock was Jewish! I mean FFS are they actively seeking anti-Semites as candidates or something?

Couldn't agree more op. It's beyond me why anyone would want to vote for that scumbag. I'm pro Palestine too.

“ A senior Labour politician changed the lyrics of the Beatles song “Hey Jude” to “Hey Jews” while his MP colleague repeatedly used the word “poof” during a late-night bus journey last year, BuzzFeed News can reveal.

Dan Carden, who is a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn and serves in his shadow cabinet as the shadow international development secretary, sang the adapted version of the song while on a raucous coach trip back from Cheltenham festival. At the time he was a junior shadow minister.”

www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/labour-dan-carden-hey-jews-hey-jude

WTF. It’s just not normal, is it?

It seems he has denied it now.

Odd that in the article it says ‘Carden’s spokesperson did not deny any of the specifics of the night in question when approached by BuzzFeed News’

Yes - it’s not as if being Shylock being jewish is only a peripheral part of the merchant of Venice. What next? no idea Hamlet was a prince? Did Hansel and gretel get lost?

Oh come on. We're less than a month away from a general election, and some third-rate journalist from a sixth-rate news website comes up with an accusation that he says happened in March 2018. This is when people start to get fed up.

And "Shylock" is widely used as a way of saying that someone can't be trusted. We didn't all grow up in homes studying Shakespeare daily and visiting theatres. I didn't know it was a Jewish character of a play, I thought it was a play on Sherlock. Thank you for the information and I will avoid that term myself in future. No doubt we ought to become aware of terms such as these - in much the same way that we all ought not to be making old-fashioned jokes of a certain format containing references to people of a certain Celtic race. We can do that, and spread the necessary information, without becoming over-excited. If someone is genuinely anti-semitic then throw the law at them, they are dangerous, but someone using widely known metaphors merely needs educating.

Wow I've seen some shocking attempts to excuse the anti-Semitism rife within labour but that really takes the biscuit. If a candidate referring to a Jewish colleague as Shylock isn't anti-Semitic then what is. But thanks for so aptly demonstrating the attitude that has turned me away from labour after 20+ years.

And "Shylock" is widely used as a way of saying that someone can't be trusted. We didn't all grow up in homes studying Shakespeare daily and visiting theatres. I didn't know it was a Jewish character of a play, I thought it was a play on Sherlock. Pitiful

The Nazis used Shylock in their propaganda. They even aired a radio production of the Merchant of Venice in the aftermath of Kristallnacht to whip up hatred and perpetuate stereotypes. But no anti-Semitism to see here. What a fucking embarrassment that post is.

I challenge you to walk down an average back residential street in, say, Birmingham, Liverpool, or in some bog-standard English market towns, and ask every person you meet whether they have been to the theatre to watch the Merchant of Venice, or have read the Merchant of Venice. The one I read in school was tThe Tempest.

I'm sorry you find it pitiful. Mumsnet has often been called unbelievably middle class and blinkered with it. I spent my spare time in my teens looking after my kid brothers, not going out to theatres or even pop concerts.

If the Nazis used Merchant of Venice in their propaganda, does that mean that Shakespeare was an anti-semite - and that we should promptly destroy all his works?

I know that term - you'll note I'm not now repeating it - as a common phrase to describe a huckster and shyster. That prospective MP knew it as a slang term of that meaning. You don't own the English language. You don't control the English language. It has a lot of faded metaphors and slang within it. Some of it may not be entirely to the liking of modern sensitivities: it is a lot older than they are. When we know there is a conflict we can get rid.

With all due respect if you thought that one of the most famous Jewish characters in history, who has been used as an anti-Semitic trope for the past 500 years, was a character in Sherlock Holmes, then maybe you don't have as much understanding on the issue of as you seem to think. Perhaps you ought not be lecturing those who do have more awareness of it.

Re Shakespeare, there has been long standing debate on whether the character of Shylock made Shakespeare anti-Semitic. Some argue that it did, others argue that he humanised him as much as he could in the confines of an anti Jewish Elizabethan society. The anti-Semitism is usually discussed as part of studying the text.

But thanks for so aptly demonstrating the attitude that has turned me away from labour after 20+ years

If you can't accept that not everyone knows the ins and outs of every single Shakespearean play (or cares much, while children need their food providing), or every single term in the English language that could possibly be viewed as offensive by someone, then you are demonstrating the attitude that has turned and is turning British people away from politicians and political life, and demonstrating the gulf that exists between ordinary people trying to make ends meet here and the privileged elite with more money than sense.

I said that I was not an expert. I'm wondering what the reality is of all this sudden anti-semitic panic, when the people on the receiving end have actually been in public life for some time without demonstrating serious homicidal tendencies. Someone used the term Stalinist - ffs. Go and look up Stalin! However I do know what you evidently don't - that people do use the English language to communicate meaning daily in ways that were not originally intended. Words and phrases can be held and used in daily vocabulary without their full original referencing. If that's the full evidence of anti semitism then it doesn't seem too extreme.

If that's the full evidence of anti semitism then it doesn't seem too extreme.

Well there is plenty more evidence, this was just one of today's examples.

And I'm fully aware that language can evolve and be used without awareness of the original meaning. Do I believe a labour candidate, in a party engulfed in an investigation into anti-Semitism, just happened to refer to a Jewish person as a Shylock without understanding the origins of the name? Not a chance. The pathetic denial is nearly as insulting as the original offence.

I'll tell you again that I've never read the Merchant of Venice, nor many others of his plays. The 'humour' in them is fairly pitiful by modern standards, and most of us or more likely to spend £100 on a TV licence for a year than spend it on one theatre ticket on one night. TV does not often include such plays, or I don't remember them.

The pathetic denial of working class normality is insulting too. As was the term 'Stalinist' of the only party that has in the past even partially tried to represent our interests, in a country that has always tried very hard to pretend we don't even exist.

So what if you have never read the Merchant of Venice? There is an abundance of evidence of anti-Semitism from both Corbyn and within the wider labour party that has nothing to do with Shakespeare. And I don't understand why you think it's only the 'privileged elite' who have an issue with this. I'm about as far from privileged as it's possible to get.

I'm saying, that if the 'abundant' evidence consists of the kind of examples you're showing: a few thrown together issues with language - an overheard song from a year and a half ago? an obscure faded metaphor? - then maybe the problem is one of over-sensitivity and poor communication. Maybe we should be less willing to start witchhunts and more to discuss exactly where meaning lies.

Have you looked at any of the evidence? Sharing platforms with Holocaust deniers, writing forwards for anti-Semitic books, heaping praise on an individual who publicly perpetuated the blood libel, that kind of thing? And that's just Corbyn, off the top of my head.

These are the questions that concern me more. Holocaust denial is ridiculous, and I'd like to know why anyone would give that airtime. However I'm also aware of how much trouble and effort seems to be going into smearing Corbyn. They seem to have had to dig pretty deep into the past, and his pacifist attitudes are well known. He is right about needing communication: we wouldn't have got peace in Northern Ireland if communication channels hadn't been opened. I'm not sure what to make of that. It doesn't seem worse than the amount of money being made out of arms sales for direct use in war, which he doesn't have any connections with as far as I know. Meanwhile there is a lot of superficial communication issues being accumulated as 'evidence'.

are a lot. Oops.