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Labour and anti-semitism

999 replies

LeLaluifleur · 10/04/2016 09:15

Apologies for DF links but ignoring the lowbrow style 'journalism' for a minute, I am perturbed about these reports.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3531852/Labour-councillor-20-suspended-claims-called-Hitler-greatest-man-history-latest-anti-Semitic-scandal-hit-Corbyn-s-party.html#comments

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3532042/Ignorant-Godless-Hateful-Corbyn-s-contempt-Jews-disgrace-withering-attack-Labour-leader-donor-backed-party-400-000-2015-Election.html

I like Corbyn a little bit but judge his cavalier attitude to anti-semitism harshly.

Has anti-semitism become cool among labour supporters or something? What is being done about the anti-semitism coming from some labour politicians and how to deal with the Islamist flavour of anti-semitism as displayed by Labour councillor Aysegul Gurbuz (and others) for examples who posted statements such as this on twitter :

"Ed Miliband is Jewish. He will never become prime minister of Britain."
"Adolf Hitler was praised as the ‘greatest man in history".

Shock Sad

OP posts:
bobthebuddha · 29/04/2016 22:08

Blimey, Kestrel. I hope that gets read out at Ken Livingstone's hearing that will vindicate him & cancel his Labour suspension; the one where he's going to be waving his Lenni Brenner book around as proof that he's right and all the haters are wrong. The one that the poster upthread was saying was chapter and verse on the subject. Perhaps someone will take Mein Kampf along too as evidence that Hitler didn't unexpectedly "go mad" after 1932..

grinkle · 29/04/2016 22:14

On Any Questions tonight, one speaker poured scorn, to much laughter from the studio audience, on the idea that Hitler was entirely sane pre-1933, eg when he wrote Mein Kampf. I don't think KL will find that that claim flies very well in the court of public opinion.

grinkle · 29/04/2016 22:17

Trying to figure out what the hell is going on here, in this topsy-turvy world, I find myself plumbing the depths of increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. Livingstone is no fool. He's been round the political block a few times. He knew what he was doing - why did he do it? Was he really mad? Or senile?

Could it be that he and Jeremy knew that Labour were due to lose the local elections quite spectacularly, so decided to throw himself on his sword and create a diversion so everyone could blame it on anti-Semitism upsetting the applecart, rather than just Corbyn being a shit and unpopular leader??!

Bit out there, I grant you, as a theory, but we live in odd times!

TheTravellingLemon · 29/04/2016 22:22

Grinkle KL has been saying this shit for years. I remember his antisemitism being discussed openly at a Labour Party conference when Tony Blair was still prime minister. Antisemitism on the left is no secret. It's more interesting as to why it has suddenly got traction.

grinkle · 29/04/2016 22:26

Thanks, kesstrel - fantastic article - I shall be spreading it more widely.

grinkle · 29/04/2016 22:27

Lemon - true, but this seems spectacularly in your face, even for Ken?

TheTravellingLemon · 29/04/2016 22:46

True. He's always been a bit delusional though. Remember how he reacted after he lost the mayoral election to BJ? That was weird. I think he is just an incredibly arrogant man who thinks he speaks for the masses when he really, really doesn't.

bobthebuddha · 29/04/2016 23:06

I hadn't heard of the Livingstone Formulation before today, but it's an interesting read to say the least.

Briefer extract here as the first is a hefty read. We need a really snappy version of this...

forkhandles4candles · 30/04/2016 00:05

Bobthebuddha, have you read Brenner's book, weighed up the evidence? You seem very certain it must be totally wrong. Why? on what grounds?

And you asked upthread about my credentials. Obviously I am not going to out myself, but I am a Prof at a research intensive university who has published several books with major presses on German -Jewish culture and history. I fully expect you to say something scornful now.

forkhandles4candles · 30/04/2016 00:10

Sorry, Grinkle asked in what way I could call myself a historian.

grinkle · 30/04/2016 00:12

Thanks, a handy phrase to nail that very tiresome attempt to shut down all debate on anti-Semitism. I hope it becomes well-known - would save a lot of typing if we can just refer to it! Like virtue signalling - these concepts are great timesavers!

grinkle · 30/04/2016 00:15

forkhandles - really? Tell us more. I'm dubious, to say the least - I find it hard to believe that someone with your apparent lack of grasp of the evidence or of normal standards of historiography would work in any remotely decent university. Or is any kind of expert on history (beyond the armchair type). I know standards have fallen since I was at university (I'll out myself - I studied history at Oxford), but I don't think they've really fallen quite that far.

Who did you study under? Where did you do your undergraduate degree? Don't think that should out you too much, should it?

grinkle · 30/04/2016 00:18

Given my family background, I am also family with works on German-Jewish history and culture. Curious where someone with your apparent biases would fit into this picture. Something doesn't quite add up here.

grinkle · 30/04/2016 00:31

And a Professor, no less! Not just a common-or-garden lecturer or post-doc, but a fully-fledged Professor. Who nevertheless spends a surprisingly large amount of time trying to persuade random laymen/women on a parenting forum about the rightness of their views...

Hmmm.

grinkle · 30/04/2016 00:31

I'm starting to wonder if you're as much of a Professor as you are Jewish, in short.

Ricardian · 30/04/2016 00:31

Bobthebuddha, have you read Brenner's book

I haven't, although I am aware of it, and I would be astounded if you have read it. If you have, feel free to tell us why it is a work of such rare precision that it was self-published? Or is that just more evidence of the Jews controlling the media?

However, so we are all on the same page, here is the text Livingstone is going to rely on:

vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres/LBzad.pdf

I would be instantly sceptical of any book about the holocaust which cites almost all of its sources in English (ie, is effectively a tertiary source), which was taken apart at the time of its publication, by people who had a deep understanding of the literature.

There is one such demolition here, from 1984:

www.paulbogdanor.com/antisemitism/brenner/harap.pdf

written by Louis Harap, whose left-wing credentials are underlined by his trip to HUAC:

collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0683/ms0683.html

Brenner is not an academic, any more than (to cite someone whose work is similarly far outside any possible definition of academia) David Irving is, and the tour that Livingstone organised at the time was a disaster with only a handful of people attending and some stops cancelled owing to student unions, in those far off times, being less tolerant of obvious anti-Semites than they perhaps might be today.

It is the mark of the uncritical anti-didact, lacking the research skills to test sources for accuracy, to be taken in by charlatans. If Livingstone seriously thinks that a review process is going to go "oh my God! You've got a poorly referenced self-published crank book by a notorious charlatan: however could we have doubted you?" then he is even more deluded than he at first sight appears. This would be akin to someone claiming that they know things about how the pyramids are built because they've read books by von Daniken or, more pertinently, that they know things about the holocaust from their extensive collection of David Irving books.

grinkle · 30/04/2016 00:35
Grin Flowers
JewryMember · 30/04/2016 05:38

Forkhandles, stop bloody embarrassing yourself.

JewryMember · 30/04/2016 06:09

Bob, thank you for the Livingstone Formula. In similar debates as this I have been labelled 'supremacist' in my denunciation of antisemitism, and this article makes me feel finally as though I really am not going mad.

Woodhill · 30/04/2016 09:12

Interesting thought about Ken and election Grinkle you may be right.

Ricardian · 30/04/2016 09:44

"the uncritical anti-didact" should be an auto-didact, although in the context of someone so wilfully stupid as Ken auto-correct has a point. "I've read history books" is the last resort of the scoundrel: the old saw that there is no idea so stupid or unpleasant that you cannot find someone with a PhD from a respectable university to back it sets a far higher bar than being able to find a self-published book.

The Guardian has more, and points out that the book in question is a favourite of the Institute of Historical Research, who are straight-forward holocaust deniers. Anyone who has watched the slimy trail of holocaust denying scum over the years will know about the IHR, who deny the existence and fact of the extermination camps. Still, they back the people Ken backs, so he'd better get used to hanging out with holocaust deniers. And, after all, Corbyn gave money to Paul Eisen and then claimed not to know he was a holocaust denier, so the hard left's wilful blindness to vile anti-Semitism is hardly unique to Ken.

What a world we live in, when the Labour Party and your local BNP Hitler fans and holocaust deniers are referencing the same people. Labour are now going to set up a committee to discuss having rules against racists openly advancing their positions inside the Labour Party; as a member, I rather thought that we didn't permit racists anyway, but apparently we need to discuss this just in case we're OK with racism now.

Look on the bright side: at least Ken isn't citing the Protocols. Although it's probably only a matter of time. A man who can claim not to be anti-Semitic because he's slept with Jewish women is capable of anything.

AnotherEffingOrangeRevel · 30/04/2016 10:04

What do others think of the new government definition of anti-semitism?

Most of it seems completely reasonable and common sense to me (of course making unpleasant statements/generalisations about Jewish people as a group is anti-semitic - and stupid).

Other bits seem odd to me, like giving as an example of anti-semitism:
"Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

What if (& I'm not saying this is the case, but it must be theoretically possible) there WERE important parallels? And this example states that even comparisons are anti-semitic. Would we be allowed to compare the UK (or any other) government's policies to those of the Nazis, as a political movement, should this be relevant/useful?

Ricardian · 30/04/2016 10:23

Would we be allowed to compare the UK (or any other) government's policies to those of the Nazis, as a political movement, should this be relevant/useful?

The key point in that policy is "contemporary", as in "at the time the document is written". Which part of contemporary Israeli policy are you planning to equate to Nazi Germany?

Comparisons with the Nazis are very rarely useful at the best of times, but ludicrous in this case. I didn't realise that soi-disant socialists like Ken spent so much time reading books about the positive aspects of Nazi Germany, just in order to have such comparisons to hand.

TheTravellingLemon · 30/04/2016 10:37

Did anyone just listen to KL on lbc/sky news? ShockHmmConfused

prh47bridge · 30/04/2016 10:40

He knew what he was doing - why did he do it

He has always done it. All that has really changed is that he has been less successful at dealing with the fallout this time. This is the man who told a Jewish journalist, "Actually, you’re just like a concentration camp guard." When the reporter explained he was Jewish and was offended by the Nazi reference Livingstone did not apologise. Far from it. He carried on with the concentration camp stuff and refused to apologise.

Yes, it is possible to criticise the policies of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Unfortunately criticism of Israel is often cover for anti-Semitism. Other states get criticised for their policies towards minorities. Israel is the only state that has to defend its right to exist.

I'm with David Schneider who has tweeted the following guide:

  1. If you think "Israel", "Zionists" and "Jews" are interchangeable terms, you may well be anti-Semitic.

  2. If you think a Jewish conspiracy controls the media/international finance/politics/the BBC, you are anti-Semitic.

  3. If you use the term "Rothschild" to imply "Jews", you are definitely an anti-Semite. And congratulations on using the exact same wording as the Nazis and those who incited the Tsarist pogroms, etc.

  4. If your only defence is "The Jews aren't a race so I'm not racist" or "the Jews aren't the only Semites so I'm not an anti-Semite", then you're most likely an anti-Semite.

  5. If you think every Jew needs to condemn Israel in every tweet, comment, etc., you may be an anti-Semite (see point 1).

  6. Supporting the desire of Palestinians for legitimate self-determination, human rights and their own state, and condemning Israeli government policies does not make someone anti-Semitic. But see points 1-5.