Gary Lineker - he really had to go and a warning t against virtue signalling

[mids2019]

Maybe Gary Lineker's departure acts as a warning for this not acquainted with history to go around randomly reposting pro Palestinian links though I suspect he is not the only one. In a way it is a sad demise to a career but an absolutely necessary one and a timely warning that a proportion of P Palestinian supporters are anti semites.

for to say I didn't like the Gaurdian 's take that the BBC were looking to sack Gary anyway and he just have them an excuse.

Some of us were in disagreement with him on a number of fronts.

But he also upset thousands by posting something with the rat trope.

The IDF doesn’t represent all Israeli people any more than Hamas represents all Palestinians.

Both do have supporters within the local population, however.

Again, people can speak out against the appalling actions of the Israeli state in Gaza without antisemitic dog whistling. Lineker reposted a rat emoji, a clear reference to Jews. As a public figure, he should have known much better, especially as he spouted off a while back about how the UK was becoming like the Third Reich in relation to immigration. If he knows enough about Nazi Germany to say that, he ought to also know enough about it to know what the rat symbol means.

I'm part Jewish, OH is Jewish by background (although he is secular/non religious and I'm a Quaker) but we are not pro Israel, there are a good many of us who do not support this war, and never have supported Zionist policies, but still don't feel okay about people like us being depicted as rats by a highly paid public figure at the BBC who has a great deal of social media influence. I have no issue with people speaking up about the deplorable genocide in Gaza - good for them, just leave off the antisemitism. It's not hard. Unless you're Lineker, it seems.

Gary Lineker is a convenient distraction from the real elephant in the room — Hasbara at its finest. Even Nick Ferrari on LBC has just now compared the deliberate starvation of a people in the name of war to tactics lifted straight from the Nazis’ demonic playbook. No civilised country knowingly does that period.

Worth listening to The Rest is Entertainment podcast on this subject.

Indeed. I think the World Community Kitchen-an excellent charity-has now withdrawn from Gaza.

What’s worse, this strategy even plays into Hamas’s own narrative they’ve long framed the outcome as either victory or martyrdom. If Gaza is reduced to rubble and Israel becomes a pariah on the world stage, Hamas may well claim that as a posthumous win. Meanwhile, the blowback dead and traumatized Israeli civilians, and deepening paranoia and distrust hardly creates a safe or stable environment, especially for any Arabs living within Israel’s borders. Pro rata the death and injuries of the IDF would be equivalent to half of the US soliders killed in the Vietnam War.

If you have agreed with your employer that your use of social media and political utterances will be curbed, you cannot break that agreement without consequences. He’s highly paid and needed to think before he acted. He didn’t and pays the price.

There are many comments from people on this forum suggesting that GL is of low intelligence. Perhaps these are from MNs who have degrees? Lineker didn’t go to university as he was 100% focussed on becoming one of the best footballers in the world. He succeeded. He then put all his efforts into a totally different skill, becoming a leading TV sports presenter. He succeeded. I’d hazard a guess that GL is highly intelligent.

That may be so @Sammie666 but it's a bloody stupid thing he's done.

Unless he is genuinely anti Semitic and posted the link deliberately? I find it hard to think that of him, but maybe it's so.. Since he's so intelligent as you insist then he must have known what he was doing right?

I suppose intelligent people can still make foolish mistakes on occasion, but he hasn't got the excuse of youth and inexperience. An ignominous end to his stellar career what a shame.

You might be but the main point of this topic is not whether we personally agree or disagree with what he has said.

He’s probably had an offer from Al Jazeera tv or an American channel and wanted to go.

Sorry, what?

Please reread what the PP wrote - I responded directly to that.

Except they failed to mention the anti Semitic post that he re-posted so they only told half the story.

I don’t think it matters how intelligent your are If you do something through ignorance all the brains in the world aren’t going to make you know what you don’t know. I think unlikely he intended to be antisemitic. He’s apologised and lost his job. What’s the problem with that?

High intelligence/IQ - in the strictest definition - is mostly correlated with broad knowledge.

On that basis, I would hazard a guess that GL is not ‘highly intelligent’.

What we can agree on, perhaps, is that he lacks certain elements of a high EQ.

It’s really easy to think people who don’t know things you do are stupid. It’s not a conclusion anyone with much intelligence would draw though as it isn’t logical at all.

We are in agreement there.

However, I also believe it unwise to act as if you are knowledgeable on a particular subject, when you are patently anything but.

That brings us neatly back to Lineker.

Speaking of circles, I shall leave this particular 1-2, there.

Really? I’m sure they did-I must listen again.

Are you only allowed to have and express an opinion on a genocide if you are highly intelligent?

No, any idiot can express an opinion about whether something is a war or a genocide, or anything else really.

I think the idea is gaining two separate threads, one is GL is thick so he shouldn’t speak about things he doesn’t understand, and the other is GL isn’t thick so he MUST have known all about the history and how rats have a deeper meaning and are antisemitic.

its all nonsense really. All that’s happened is a man posted something that had undesirable content on it, he apologised and left/lost his job as a result, but he was finishing soon anyway and most people agree with him that the behaviour of Israeli. Gaza is awful and that saying nothing is turning a blind eye to evil.

When Boris Johnson said women wearing Burqas look like letter boxes he became so popular he didn't lose his job - he got the top job. And attacks on Muslim women escalated and no one batted an eyelid.
While I think Lineker was in the wrong in this instance it highlights once again who is in charge in the UK.

Please explain.

Yes, I'm also curious... what do you mean by this?