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AIBU?

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Original poster

Diane Abbott

894 replies

Flowerly · 23/04/2023 12:02

To say that Diane Abbott is doing her best to help the Labour Party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Hideous antisemitism seemingly not gone away at all and add that to the horrendous misogyny in the Labour Party I wonder at this point why ANYONE would vote for them.

AIBU?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
33
Sorryyoufeelthatway · 23/04/2023 16:28

Sorry but Baddiel is a racist so please stop sucking his D over this.

RedToothBrush · 23/04/2023 16:29

tothelefttotheleft · 23/04/2023 14:49

What about his blacking up etc?

Show quote history

What about watching his own comments about that.

Mummyoflittledragon · 23/04/2023 16:30

MaryCrawford · 23/04/2023 13:13

Ireland is still under British Rule and the BBC usually-although not always- refer to Derry as Londonderry.

Colonialism is alive and well in the North of Ireland ( no such country as Northern Ireland)

I agree there’s no such country as Southern Ireland, it’s ROI. But Northern Ireland? I’m confused, eg. https://discovernorthernireland.com/

Discover Northern Ireland | Visit Northern Ireland | Tourism NI

Start planning your short break to Northern Ireland with the help of the official tourist board website. We've lots of resources online to help plan your visit to NI, including information on how to g..

https://discovernorthernireland.com/

QueenoftheNimbleFlyingCat · 23/04/2023 16:30

anotherside · 23/04/2023 13:16

@LondonMummer

But racism is literally about differences in physical appearance/genetics. Which is why when, say, France banned the hijab and burka etc in schools, many people claimed it was wrong to do so, but few labelled it as racist. But while a person can remove a hijab, or a Jewish person can remove a skullcap, a black/Asian person can try their absolute best to blend in and not stand out in their manners and dress choices but will STILL be subjected to radial abuse by a significant minority. While say an Irish person or a Jewish person or a gypsy will generally not stand out as much due to their facial appearance/skin colour. The general public would by and large usually by unable to say with any certainty which politician, footballer, or singer is Jewish. But they can identify the Asian or Black celebrities pretty easily. So there is actually a difference there, and something to the point Abbot was making, though I agree she made it clumsily.

These are my thoughts. I think Diane was ridiculous to even mention red hair to the persecution of Jews, Irish and travellers though.

nopuppiesallowed · 23/04/2023 16:32

I rather went off Diane Abbot when she railed against people sending their children to private schools - and then sent her own son to one ......
I'm another politically homeless person, but willing to give Rishi a chance.

MalagaNights · 23/04/2023 16:32

I think there's a difference between a comedian making a joke you may find offensive and a sitting MP dismissing racism.

The MP represnts a party and that party have to decide if that view represnts them.

It's good they've rejectde it. If she was standing again the people would choose whether to vote for her views.

The comedian - you chose whether you watch them or not.

People can say what they like, but you can get rejected from a party or alienate your audience.

I'm happy for their to be risque comedians who offend people; comedians help us draw the collective line of social acceptability.
But MPs need to be more careful and meausred as their words are taken more seriously. So dismissing racism is a massive mistake and vile..

LemonLymanDotCom · 23/04/2023 16:36

LlynTegid · 23/04/2023 12:32

Diane Abbott is not standing at the next election.

Really? As one of her constituents, this cheers me greatly!

Sorryyoufeelthatway · 23/04/2023 16:37

I dgaf if Baddiel apologised recently. He was a grown man in the 90s and it was blatantly racist then and he knew it. The 90s weren’t the 50s.

He can speak on racism now as he has made a career out of it last time I looked, he has a book published about it, made several tv shows and is going to milk it even more now.

All white minorities can all blend in. Black people cannot. No clue whatsoever what being “black” entails.

ThisIsNotAmerican · 23/04/2023 16:37

You immedaitely thought about the horror, in living memory of people in Europe being rounded up and exterminated in their millions because of hatred of their race. And the confusion we all felt of the horror that fellow 'civilsed' europeans could do this and went along with it.

I honestly believed when younger that the collective horror at what happened to Jews meant it would never happen again and that they's always now be protected.

But when there are even still holocaust survivors living, we seem to moved on and to be minimising and forgetting, a fellow european nation tred to exterminate a race only 80 years ago.

Iran wants to completely destroy Israel, while in pursuit of its own nuclear arsenal. There are other groups throughout the middle east who would eradicate Israel if they had the power. These things are far from over. Israel is up against it every day in so many different ways.

DojaPhat · 23/04/2023 16:38

@MalagaNights Exactly! MPs dismissing racism is a massive mistake and vile which is exactly why Boris Johnson was rightly reprimanded for referring to Black people as picaninies and having watermelon smiles, and also the book he wrote replete with racist tropes of jews rightly saw him condemned by many in his party and the public... oh wait a minute Hmm

Wiccan · 23/04/2023 16:38

I'll never forget the fuck up she did with the estimated cost for police recruits I don't know how she survived that one .

"Err £300,000 no no umm £500 and something err 70 quid . Eleventy six "?!

CampsieGlamper · 23/04/2023 16:39

DonnaBanana · 23/04/2023 12:10

She said all Black people experience racism as a lifelong construct and white skinned people generally do not. She did not say that white skinned people never have experienced racism, just not universally and for “all their lives.” She may have been clumsy but do you really think Diane Abbott, a Black woman interested in civil rights, would be racist in the way people are painting her to be?

If she uses a capital b for black people and a lower case w for white people when these words are not at the start of a sentence, she is being racist.

malapast · 23/04/2023 16:41

ThisIsNotAmerican · 23/04/2023 16:37

You immedaitely thought about the horror, in living memory of people in Europe being rounded up and exterminated in their millions because of hatred of their race. And the confusion we all felt of the horror that fellow 'civilsed' europeans could do this and went along with it.

I honestly believed when younger that the collective horror at what happened to Jews meant it would never happen again and that they's always now be protected.

But when there are even still holocaust survivors living, we seem to moved on and to be minimising and forgetting, a fellow european nation tred to exterminate a race only 80 years ago.

Iran wants to completely destroy Israel, while in pursuit of its own nuclear arsenal. There are other groups throughout the middle east who would eradicate Israel if they had the power. These things are far from over. Israel is up against it every day in so many different ways.

There is a group of ultra-orthodox Jews that reject Zionism and support Iran and Palestine which seems pretty weird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta

Neturei Karta - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta

AdamRyan · 23/04/2023 16:42

SleepDreamThinkHuge · 23/04/2023 15:32

What annoys me is some people are using the Abbott incident to score points. It is rich from Conservatives trying to attack Labour to be a party of racists when they have people like Johnson who was racist to many groups of people but still got elected as PM. Racism unfortunately exists in all parties. The same people online are also the same people when other groups of people e.g. Muslims face Islamophobic attacks say things like "Islam is not a race" or that "it is made up and it is rational to fear and hate Islam." We also do see continuing suffering particularly to black women with quotes like "aggressive" "playing the race card" "slavery was a long time ago why are you bringing it up" "don't race bait" etc...

All forms of discrimination/racism etc should be called out I am glad she was suspended. But some people do have agendas e.g. making it a right vs left issue or this vs that when it should be called out for what it is.

100% agree

PrettyMaybug · 23/04/2023 16:42

I cannot post what I think of her without getting my post reported/deleted, and getting myself banned. So I shall refrain from saying what I truly think.

Suffice to say I loathe every single fibre of Diane Abbott. Wish she would fall off the planet. And take Corbyn with her. The very far left will still defend her though. Unfathomable how anyone can defend her.

DojaPhat · 23/04/2023 16:42

Sorryyoufeelthatway · 23/04/2023 16:28

Sorry but Baddiel is a racist so please stop sucking his D over this.

In his recent documentary some of the guests he bought on to share woes of the trials and tribulations of antisemitism are also TV actors who've done blackface, Sarah can't remember her last name and that other one from friends. It hasn't done any harm to their careers. If the shoe was on the other foot, however...

danceyourselfdizzy1 · 23/04/2023 16:43

@SleepDreamThinkHuge Well you must have been asleep over the last year because there has been a HUGE backlash against Baddiel for his past racism (including many threads on MN about it). And sadly Baddiel's racism has been 'weaponised' and whatabouted in order to downplay very real and shocking discrimination and hatred toward British Jews. Sadly the valid points he made on his documentary were totally disregarded by much of the left because of this. So to suggest he's been forgiven is disingenuous. Granted he was not the ideal spokesperson to put those points across, but like PP said, he's not an elected politician and he has made many public apologies. Incidentally, do you forgive Diane Abbot?

Florenz · 23/04/2023 16:44

Labour come across as a lot more deeply racist than the Tories do. There's a deep vein of anti-semitism that runs right through Labour. They need to cut it right out, scorched earth policy, not just get rid of the most prominent examples.

I honestly don't think the racism in the Tories runs as deeply. If you can advance the interests of the Tory party, you're in, it doesn't matter what race, gender or sexual orientation you are.

Alexandra2001 · 23/04/2023 16:44

Wiccan · 23/04/2023 16:38

I'll never forget the fuck up she did with the estimated cost for police recruits I don't know how she survived that one .

"Err £300,000 no no umm £500 and something err 70 quid . Eleventy six "?!

Err Hammond (the actually Chancellor) getting the cost of HS2 wrong by a factor of 1000,
Priti Patel and her one million thousand and twenty hundred ten million gaff.... at Tory Party Conference, Patel found guilty of bullying, giving away state secrets to Israel... survived them all, strangely outrage on this.

But of course Abbott (a back bencher) has been suspended and will probably, like Corbyn, be thrown out of the Labour party and rightly so BUT there is a process and Starmer has to follow that.

EllaDisenchanted · 23/04/2023 16:44

@Abhannmor I'm not sure what your point is? are you continuing to insinuate that the outrage against Diane Abbott's comments/removal of the whip is due to a mysterious zionist lobby? Why is anything to do with zionism/pro-palestinian being brought in to a discussion about Diane Abbott minimising racism against Jews (and Irish and Traveller people)?

You've ignored my point that we do experience violence and hate on a level that goes far beyond prejudice, and Diane's comments complete dismiss our lived experience of anti-semitism.

onirgellep · 23/04/2023 16:45

Wiccan · 23/04/2023 16:38

I'll never forget the fuck up she did with the estimated cost for police recruits I don't know how she survived that one .

"Err £300,000 no no umm £500 and something err 70 quid . Eleventy six "?!

DA was physically unwell when she made that mistake - she explained at the time that she was struggling with poorly controlled DM

Quite possibly it would have been a good time to retire

SpeedSnap · 23/04/2023 16:46

Thepeopleversuswork · 23/04/2023 15:51

I'd have thought it fairly obvious that she either doesn't care about the experiences of other races, that she lacks the intellect to find out, or that she just plain resents someone suggesting that black people aren't the only ones to suffer - and possibly all three

I think it's more complex than that. Diane Abbott is far from stupid. But she (along with Corbyn and all that Momentum lot) have spent decades living in an intellectual bubble which fixates on hierarchies of injustice and in whose ideology Jewishness is bound up with a hatred of Israel and a perception that Jews are complicit in the "western imperialism" which they rail against the whole time, purely because of Israel.

There is very much a view in these circles that some sorts of racism are more acceptable than others and Jews are often treated by these people as being in a class of their own because they are so obsessed with the Israel/Palestine situation and Jews are (wrongly) positioned as complicit in this. David Baddiel has talked a lot about the way British Jews are often required to state their position on Israel when talking to people on the left as if they required to "cleanse" themselves of any alliance with or support for Israel in order to be classed as an oppressed group of people.

Its childish and a triumph of ideology over common sense, but I don't think its explicit, intentional antisemitism (not that this excuses it), its unconscious antisemitism founded out of an obsession with "the west" (meaning, largely, the US, the UK and Israel) as the font of all world evil.

Why are left British people so obsessed with Palistine in particular? Not that there is anything wrong with helping people suffering high inflation abroad.

You would think their family, ward, constituency, country and content would be a higher priority.

MalagaNights · 23/04/2023 16:47

QueenoftheNimbleFlyingCat · 23/04/2023 16:30

These are my thoughts. I think Diane was ridiculous to even mention red hair to the persecution of Jews, Irish and travellers though.

Show quote history

What absolutely ignorant, blinding stupid, dangerous idiocy these posts are.

I wonder why the silly Jews didn't think of this and just take off their skull caps and blend in?? Why didn't Ann Frank just pretend she was a Christian Dutch girl?? I wonder if they didn't think of this? or if they did why it didn't work?

I wonder how secular Jewish Italians who went into hiding were still found, caught and sent to extremination camps?

If you want to be 'prejudiced' against a group you work out to identify them and if you want to exterminate them you make sure they can't hide.

I am gobsmacked at how far we've come in forgetting this and so quickly.

The Jews are a race. They have been targeted for centuries, wherever they are people know who they are.

I'm sickened by Diane Abbot and by people on this thread.

This type of ignorant racism on MN would not be tolerated against any other group.

Alexandra2001 · 23/04/2023 16:49

Florenz · 23/04/2023 16:44

Labour come across as a lot more deeply racist than the Tories do. There's a deep vein of anti-semitism that runs right through Labour. They need to cut it right out, scorched earth policy, not just get rid of the most prominent examples.

I honestly don't think the racism in the Tories runs as deeply. If you can advance the interests of the Tory party, you're in, it doesn't matter what race, gender or sexual orientation you are.

Really? in two words... Boris Johnson.

Then there is the total failure to have an inquiry into Islamophobia, promised when 5 Tory leadership challengers ALL promised to hold one but never did.

Of the 66 minority ethnic Members, 41 (62%) are Labour and 23 are Conservatives (35%)
There are two Liberal Democrat MPs from a minority ethnic background. More than half (37) of the 66 minority ethnic MPs are women, the majority in the Labour party

So Labour are deeply engrained racists but have almost double the number of ethnic members.... right!

AdamRyan · 23/04/2023 16:50

I think there's a difference between a comedian making a joke you may find offensive and a sitting MP dismissing racism.
She absolutely was not dismissing racism.
She was saying that the prejudice certain classes of white people face is not the same as the systematic oppression black people face.

She was very stupid to lump jewish people in with white people.

However I still think she's entitled to point out that black people have been systematically oppressed in a unique way, and have no term to describe that experience.