Boris Johnson's Daily Mail column and an offensive term about Keir Starmer

[LlynTegid]

Mr Johnson refers to him as Keir Schnorrer. The word schnorrer is a Yiddish word/insult for beggar or scrounger. Mrs Starmer is Jewish.

If any of you meet any Conservative candidates or there are any who do online questions, let them know about this slur and ask whether they think this man is fit to remain in the Conservative party.

I have complained to IPSO.

Oh look the old 'he's got Jewish friends so he's not antisemitic' defence rearing it's ugly head again.

The 'he's got Jewish friends so it's not antisemitic' argument you made earlier was debunked long ago.

Massively different from being a Prime Minister and publicly and financially declaring his support for the Jewish community and especially Israel.

No it's not

That doesn't mean he can't make an antisemitic comment. Intentional or not.

Well so can anyone. However this was an intentional piece. So if he being anti Semitic it would be intentional.
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What the heck has intent got to do with whether his comment is antisemitic or not?

@Invent Yes, it's pejorative literally defined. But it's not used as an insult full stop and is used to mock jokingly (but by Jews only). My great-grandmother spoke perfect Yiddish and used it liberally, usually if we were taking food without asking. It's just not a word non-Jews are generally aware of but Johnson is, and knew exactly what he was doing.

What he hasn't done is take word and make it and make it an insult to all Jews.
I agree with this, but the context he used it was toward a man with a Jewish family. Acts of antisemitism don't just apply if they're directed toward all Jews. However, in this case it was directed to one person but also upset a lot of Jewish people in the process. He fucked up and who knows if he is actually antisemitic or not, but his words and intention on this occasion were.

This defence of a man notorious for making gaffs as well as wildly racist comments is bizarre.

Using the fact that his family is Jewish as part of an attack line (see the rest of the headline for confirmation) is antisemitism.

Again, no evidence for your repeated assertion.

The article seems to be about taking UK back into the EU -classic DM and classic Bozo trying to relieve past 'glory'. "With less than four weeks to go, Starmer is determined to bore his way to victory" "You could see it in the TV debate where he offered his fabled imitation of a blinking human bollard" There's probably many more tedious such insults but there's a paywall.

Point being that he's as usual banging on about how boring Starmer is (compared to his own wonderful self that was so unjustly hounded out of government etc etc).

Again, no evidence for your repeated assertion.

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It's not required because this isn't an academic debate.

I honestly can't figure why anyone expects members of the Jewish community to sit down and perform a rigorous analysis on Boris Johnson to try and make a determination on what his intent is, instead of expecting him to apologise because he's unable to understand how what he's written might be offensive to the Jewish community.

Why would anyone here expect the community to waste its time on an ex PM that decides to use obscure Yiddish words to insult others when it's already being attacked from all directions?

Using the fact that his family is Jewish as part of an attack line (see the rest of the headline for confirmation) is antisemitism.

Why? He's not attacking his wife or her Jewishness. Yiddish is a great vernacular language. Using a Czech or Slovenian insult for Trump wouldn't be seen as xenophobic.

It's disgusting but Boris Johnson has shown he's a racist many times before.

There are lots of people out there who think that his family being Jewish is a bad thing.

That would depend on whether the word used has xenophobic undertones.

Pretty sure if Olaf Scholz's wife was British and someone called him a a chav it wouldn't go down too well

It's not reference in the copy much if at all- can we be sure it isn't a sub-editor's embellishment? Guess it would have to be a bold sub to do it though.

Ball-chewing gimp is another odd one - gimps don't really chew the ball do they? They dociley go along with it.

Subs don’t make things up.

Suggesting that Johnson didn't write the words that appear in the article with his name on because they are offensive and antisemitic would be ignoring his long history of similar articles.

Why are you looking for reasons to assume Boris didn't write this himself when he has so much form for writing exactly this kind of offensive racist drivel?

I'm not - rather it's that thing about fairness and attention to detail - I used to be a sub myself. And subs usually do make up headlines - albeit culled from the copy itself, but not always. They can also give a writer enough rope to hang themselves by allowing something that looks dodgy to go through, without stopping it.

I didn't suggest Boris didn't write this himself, just the headline.

The headline came from the text.