Diane Abbott

[Flowerly]

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?

@AdamRyan She really should have never bothered even responding at all to that article. The author of the article has set his sights on the lucrative business of poc contrarianism, he was managing just fine dancing on that slippery pole. Diane need not have risen to it and now in doing so laid the groundwork for her own downfall and for various degenerates to come out of the woodwork specifically because they've been salivating for a day like this.

Some of it might have been the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jewish terrorist groups post-war of Arabs that had lived in peace for centuries in their lands. The massacre of Deir Yassin in 1947 where 107 Arabs were ruthlessly murdered to create terror and accelerate the dispersal. Irgun one of the groups that committed that atrocity had within in its ranks Menahem Begin who was to go on to be Israel's 6th PM. It was equal to any of the crimes that Russia is committing in Ukraine but never gets a mention and it was Europeans who killed Europeans Jews lest we forget. But Palestinians don't count. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre

I don’t deny that at all, and being Jewish is a race as well as a faith, but what I’m saying is that I’m only a few generations removed and no one, including myself would see me as Jewish. However a black or Asian person will be seen as black or Asian in the street.

So none of this horror show is of her doing then? Well...it's a view.

This makes no sense. Not you, their logic. The USA supported the Irish as did Corbyn.

These threads invariably become a shitshow of antisemitism and antisemitic apologetics. I don't know how Jewish people in the UK cope with the casual dismissal of their very real experiences. I know quite a few left wing people who would be horrified at the idea that they're racist but who are also happy to say that they think that Jewish people need to stop banging on about the Holocaust, for example, or that Jewish people control various prestigious industries. They also invariably want Jewish people to justify the actions of Israel, regardless of their nationality or political affiliation.

David Baddiel has it exactly right. Jewish people are 'too white-passing' to experience racism, and yet too other not to be targeted with some frankly bizarre presumptions and prejudices. They can never win.

I have always suspected she has some sort of early onset dementia or perhaps something else. She speaks very strangely and I don’t understand why she still wants to be in post with all her various gaffes. Nothing to do with her colour, it’s her ability to undertake effectively a Shadow Minster role up until recently whilst not being able to stop what comes out of her mouth.

After her comments I think she should be removed.

@malapast

There undoubtedly have been numerous atrocities committed against Palestinians by Jewish terrorists and by the Jewish state. I have no particular skin in the game for the Jewish state. This particular iteration is loathsome.

But Palestinians are not routinely considered to be suspect by the hard left because of the behaviour of extremists among them. Whereas many Jews have the experience of being made to feel by people on the left that they have to "pick a side" (ie, denounce the state of Israel) or be considered complicit. As if English Jews have any responsibility for the behaviour of the state of Israel. It's a very strange phenomenon that the left singles out Jews for this.

@Flowerly I can see how you arrived at the conclusion that I meant none of this is her doing by my comment which said she should have never bothered responding i.e. to write her letter in response to that article, thereby paving the way for her own downfall. Fabulous comprehension, second to none.

That's your experience though. DH (and many others) is seen as Jewish and cannot hide it in the street and has been victim of racism, that's why DA's comments were ignorant and ill informed

@MagicClawHasNoChildren Thank you for 'seeing' our experiences

I married a man who had Jewish ancestry and carry a Jewish name as a result. I have never experienced anything regarding the name though some of it was removed a few generations ago. I find the history intriguing as my children have that ancestry.

The antisemitism on here is shocking. Minimising their experiences, and centuries of persecution. Just dreadful.

The author of the article she responded to has written this:

What Diane Abbott gets wrong about racism - New Statesman

Diane Abbott is suffering from that modern social-media induced affliction of seeing everything through the prism of the USA and thinking if something didn't happen in the USA then it didn't happen at all. It's depressing enough seeing this level of self-absorbed ignorance in the over-amplified voices of young American Twitter activists but to see it spread into actual UK politicians just shows how many of them are losing the plot. You'd think the last couple of elections would have taught Labour that they are not standing for office in Portland or Seattle but in Oldham and Doncaster. The country has gone to shit under the Tories, the SNP are fucked; this is not the time for Labour to be making a cheap play for a constituency it doesn't even have.

I see. So now its not what people say but the agenda other people think they have that's the problem.

I read the article she was replying to and could see her issue with it. It was minimising racism, particularly racism against black people.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/15/racism-in-britain-is-not-a-black-and-white-issue-it-is-far-more-complicated

Because the corollary of one third of ethnic minority people reporting that they have experienced racist assault is that two thirds of ethnic minority people have not.
But the Evidence for Equality National Survey report complicates some of the underlying assumptions that many ostensibly progressive people espouse on racial inequality in Britain. One is a narrow idea of what constitutes racism.Anyone who is white is privileged, we are told, and racism only affects people of colour. The problem with this view is that there are certain minorities who are seen as white and yet experience prejudice. In fact, the two groups most likely to say they have experienced racist abuse, according to the survey, are Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities and Jewish people. [actually incorrect as the graph shows "other black" as second highest behind travellers]
But the problem with this point of view is that the report has already been used to advance the claim that Britain is still plagued by racism – and the very same people who make this claim also emphasise only one kind of racial inequality, one that puts black and Asian people at the very bottom of society, and “white” people at the top.

I think we are in a bad state when a black woman can't write a response to an article like this without a public roasting

He has a beautiful house - here he argues with fellow Jew Miriam Margolyes about the thorny issue of Israel.

I think some of it is to do with this loathing of the US and other "western imperialists" and the perspective on the left that anyone who is an enemy of America must be a friend (see also Russia).

Bingo. This is the ideology Diane Abbot blindly adheres to. Will never forget the way she refused to give actual Syrian victims of Assad a voice during a StWC panel discussion.....on Syria.

Yeah, but she is then minimising racism against other groups by saying it isn't racism. One being wrong doesn't make the other right.

It was a ridiculously stupid decision to write that letter and if she really did send in the wrong version, it was ridiculously stupidly careless.

I don't actually think she's got dementia, but I'd be interested to know what happens if an MP does lack capacity. A senior MP was sectioned sometime ago and there was quite a lot of speculation about what the mechanism would be to relieve him of his duties if he came back not in a fit state. He actually died without ever returning, I believe, so the question never arose. This is in the public domain but not really widely spoken about.

Really? Are you sure about this. What are these physical characteristics?

And at the same time, do you realise that saying that many Jews do not appear physically Jewish is antisemitic?
Why? Because it buys into the idea that Jews conform to certain physical stereotypes when really, people are thinking of the antisemitic tropes perpetuated by the Nazis.

Human’s cruelty to humankind seems to be an eternal grinding machine. All forms of racism and prejudice are repellent. There shouldn’t be a hierarchy - therein lies the ‘divide and rule’ pitfall which weakens the unity of the resistance to prejudice and racism.

These are all things that happen regularly Gypsy and Travellers. You can add that G and T have had their entire way of life criminalised and at constant risk of imprisonment, fines and having their homes taken from them.

They did. In England in 1554 a statute enabled anyone calling themselves “Aegyptians” to be summarily killed. You could be hanged simply for being Romani. If you killed a Romani, there were no repercussions. Romania actually enslaved Roma people from 1300-1800. Moreover Roma people were ‘hunted’ like prey for sport in Medieval Romania. Roma and Sinti are Europe’s largest minority, treated as less than human for hundreds of years. Is it any wonder some Romani never wanted to assimilate with the ‘Gorja’ (non-Roma)?

YES.

Have said it before and will say it again, antisemitism is rampant on here and @MNHQ do absolutely nothing about it.

I think possibly the most worrying thing about this is that the woman read History St Cambridge!

(At Cambridge, should say.)