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?

@Coffeeandbourbons

"What history lesson?"

++++

Well for a start her comment that "at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships." Is factually incorrect.

At the height of slavery there were indeed very many "white seeming people " from Europe being taken from their homes by African slave traders and taken to Africa in manacles on slave ships.

Her lack of historical knowledge is shocking and only made worse by the fact she studied History at Cambridge.

I still do not understand fully why the Left hates Jewish people so much but it is truly a shameful state of affairs

That seems to be a very sweeping statement about people.

There are a lot of people with left leaning views. People who know what has happened to Jewish people in the past, who know the history and who know how they are targeted now and the precautions that need to be taken.

But Abbott claimed that Jewish people did not suffer racism. They suffered prejudice in the same way that red-headed people do.

The Left of the Corbyn era has worked itself up that its on the side of right, the workers, the people in need and has the very racist view of the Jewish trope of the greedy acquisitive moneyed Jew.....it is very very wrong and needs calling out....

Lets face it the next election is Labours for the taking at the moment, but they may just lose it if they continue like this as a really racist and misogynist party. And they need to work to regain the women's vote too....

To be a Jew you can be genetically Jewish and or Jewish by religion. I could be born Jewish via my inherited genetics (which shows on dna testing eg Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi

Can I ask what you mean by genetically Jewish. I understand that the mitochondrial DNA with a specific variant shows that you have a female in your family history who was an Ashkenazi Jew

What does it mean to be genetically Jewish? | Family | The Guardian

There are going to be people who have that in their DNA and who don't think they are genetically Jewish as this could have been from a very long time ago.

Parties reflect society, much like the police do.

Racism in all its forms, exists across all parties, the Tories never had their investigation into Islamophobia did they?

Starmer has removed the whip, Abbott will be investigated and will likely never be a Labour MP again and thats correct.

I'm surprised you felt at home in the Labour party of the 90s, your politics is obviously a whole lot more left wing than your many anti Labour pro Tory posts would imply.

My mother had white blond hair and sapphire blue eyes. All my siblings have blue eyes. I have green eyes.

You've probably walked past lots and met lots who are Jewish, you just probably didn't realise it. Not all Jews look alike. Full. Stop. And conversations about characteristics, looks, eye, hair and skin colour rapidly descend into casual antisemitism.

And your casual comment, referenced up thread about why no one calls out the ethnicity / religion of rapists in Sweden that's not racist. ?

You're quoting me out of context

I was responding to someone saying that there are black jewish people too - and I simply pointing out that whilst that it is true even in Israel it's pretty rare to be black and jewish

And also I never said that all jewish people 'look alike' - only need to look at my jewish in-laws to see that

Appreciate you pointing this out. Unfortunately, noticing/taking a comment out of its original context and responding to it is very much a problem in threads such as these.

Quite. The next election will sadly be the dirtiest in British political history, and we all will be the losers.

she simply said unless the prejudice is aimed at a race (aka not Jewish people - according to Jewish authorities!) then it isn’t ‘racism’. I see no issue with that, and nobody has made a convincing argument otherwise.

No she didn’t just say that. Some Jewish people consider themselves a race, some don’t. Whether they are or not is a complicated issue because it is both a religion and something akin to an ethnicity.

Whether you consider antisemitism racism, or something slightly different but equally bad with equally serious consequences, is to some extent a semantic issue. Jews were killed during the holocaust because of their bloodline whether they practiced the Jewish religion or not. They were certainly treated as a race.

The point is Diane Abbott dismissed what Jews have experienced as being similar to what redheads have experienced. To justify this she wrote:

“In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.”

This is staggeringly shocking considering Jews were killed in their millions, marked with a star, forbidden from entering certain areas, driven from almost every country across Europe, and expelled from England a thousand years ago. Today the jewish community have to have security at synagogues, and their graves are being desecrated. Many Jews cannot hide being born Jewish, they have Jewish surnames, visibly attend synagogues. They are considered Jewish by birth whether they practice or not. Many Jewish people do share genetic characteristics even though some do not.

Whichever way you look at it antisemitism is the same as racism and not just like “prejudice experienced by redheads” because they were never made to “sit at the back of the bus”.

For Diane to even say this in an initial draft is horrific and indicates there is antisemitism behind her views. Which as well as disgusting, is also very sad.

IIRC wasn't the far left narrative of DA's youth - sure you were treated badly in the holocaust but we gave you a nice new homeland where you'd be safe forever - and what do you do but start oppressing palestinians and behaving as badly as the nazis - you're hypocrites and don't deserve any sympathy

It's a long time ago and maybe that narrative has changed

TBH, by the same rate, I wouldn't be surprised if many felt somewhat unsettled if medical professionals who shared this woman's view of the world approached them.

The events you mention will never make the MSM because they don't fit the current agenda of those who pull the strings today

Sorry but Diane Abbot has absolute form for this and there was nothing clumsy about her letter, she knew exactly what she was doing. She was an architect of the smear narrative now pushed by Corbyn's loyal and bullyish army, who like nothing more than to shout down Jews on social media with 'its a smear' (aka 'Jews are lying')
https://twitter.com/Daniel_Sugarman/status/1650128816793157633

No, I don't. What I do think (& this is what makes her a major liability to Labour IMO) is that a politician of her experience should be more than capable of making a statement which isn't capable of misinterpretation in this way or, if they are not, then not make a statement in the first place.

If Abbott stands down at the next General Election, it can only be to Labour's advantage. She may be a fine constituency MP for all I know, but generally speaking, the woman is useless and a godsend to the Tory Party.

She framed her point by referencing racism in relation to black people ( pre civil rights US, place on bus, Atlantic slave trade) and then extrapolated from that position that other groups weren’t so badly affected ( in comparison to the black community), however that completely ignores how racism plays out on other groups for example the Holocaust on a different continent which was about the Jews and Roma.

Or the fact that travellers are so far outside of society that we haven’t even started to acknowledge their history. When did you see the same drip feed of outrage on the Guardian about travellers as you see from a person of colour’s perspective?

So, I think she frames her idea of racism in terms of a black experience and gauges others’ experiences alongside that. Which is really minimising others reality, in my view. How can you exclude the Holocaust?

A really shocking thing for her to do. Very sad.

I also think that she ought to understand that while Jews, travellers Iris

Sorry, problem with phone, I'll continue.
Irish and other minority groups have been historically treated very badly in the USA. They might not have had to sit at the back of the bus but we're subjected to other forms of abuse and inequality.
Hope she read about the young, Jewish autistic boy in Las Vegas who has had a swastika carved on his back by others. I suspect she hasn't.

@loislovesstewie

oh that is awful. That poor child. Never heard of this on internet or anywhere which is shocking

Yes but was it racism?

I almost feel like banging my head on something at this stage.

I have to 🙄 at the ‘Irish descent’ poster who just phoned in LBC to express her horror at DA saying Irish people don’t suffer racism like black people do. I mean, really? Are we going to pretend people of Irish descent - not even Irish, just ‘Irish descent’ - can compare their everyday experiences to those of Diane Abbott or black people in general?

Of course they can compare them, and of course they will be different, but one doesn't negate the other.

I was working with a lady of Irish descent - not even Irish, mind you - and a younger colleague spent a whole morning pestering this woman asking if she had any relatives in the IRA, did she eat potatoes with every meal, and what did she think about Gerry Adams. How is that not racism? It may be different to Diane Abbott's experience but who is to say that it is inherently better or worse?

@Coffeeandbourbons

well, certainly Irish travellers experience it on a scale far beyond anything acceptable by any other group

Irish descent certainly experienced it during the 80s bombings

They certainly experience the casual racism of comments about the famine, etc

But do you think you can accurately evaluate someone’s experience of racism from your own perspective? Isn’t that reductive?

There are times when I read something written by a POC about their experience of racism and think that incident, when isolated could be viewed from many perspectives, but when seen in the context the person lives in and their lives experience of racism, I can see that it is part of the picture of how racism plays out in society.

Isnt the same true for other groups? There cannot be just one manifestation of racism else it wouldn’t be shared across class, background, geographical distinctions within one community.