Billy Bragg. Again

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

Billy Bragg saw some Holocaust memorials today; the type known as a Stolperstein, which literally translates as stumbling block. They are made by hand, and each one is to a specific person or household; it bears their name and is placed to mark the last place they were known to been voluntarily, before they were taken.

They are heartbreaking things, but some feel their placement in pavements is disrespectful to the people whose lives they seek to memorialise. So they are banned in some German towns and cities. That's not an argument I've ever had an opinion on, because it's not my place.

However, I never saw this coming. This is how Billy Bragg has reacted to seeing them today. He's used them in an argument about flipping trans activism. How low can you go?

Billy Bragg, tweet 1: Yeah, like white supremacists can argue that they’re not anti-Black, they’re just pro-white. And guess what? They also complain that, for taking that view, they’ve been subject to a smear campaign for years.

Other Person: Desperate argument but oh kaaaay.

Billy Bragg, tweet 2: I’m in Hamburg atm In the pavements are small brass plaques bearing the names of Jews who lived in the building opposite the plaque who were murdered by the Nazis. That began with people deciding they could define someone by their biology alone.

Followed to a wikipedia link about the purpose of a Stolperstein

Billy Bragg being repugnant

If he just listened....
Oh, wait.

not a fan of cancellation, but Bragg’s is surely overdue.
not as if anyone will miss his anti-talent

No. LGBA don’t have a ‘membership’. They have supporters. Are you saying that the only people that can support people who are LGB also have to be LGB?

He just doesn't see women as humans who have their own needs and desires. His type of misogynyis very common on the left - very performative (why are you calling me a misogynist, I campaigned for abortion and against women getting the shit beaten out them by their partner, what more do you want), but when it comes down to it, women as an actual class are irrelevant and men will always come first.

What an aggressively pseudo superior prick.

He's 65 this year, which is a bit young for senility. He's always been thick and self-righteous, which is a dangerous combination. I genuinely don't think he has any critical faculties to apply here. He's been given the facts over and over again and just ignores them. I don't think he can grasp it. He was told that LGB rights were now LGBT rights some time not long after Stonewall added the T, he swallowed that whole, and he's never bothered to wonder what any of it means. I just did an Advanced Search of his Twitter account. He opened it in 2009 and the first tweet I found using the word 'trans' relating to gender identity was in December 2019. (The only other one was in trans-national.) So he's been tweeting about this for less than three years. From a quick skim, the responses to his first tweet on the subject were much the same as he's getting now. Nothing learned.

Are you saying that the only people that can support people who are LGB also have to be LGB?

I don't recall this coming up on the tribunal as stated, but isn't it one of those Twitter factoids? Someone had determined (somehow) that some high percentage of LGB Alliance's Twitter followers were probably not LGB, based on who else they followed? (Evidence like "they don't follow Pink News"?)

For comparison, I'd be interested to see Stonewall's followers profiled.

Given the actual demographics, it's not terribly unlikely that a majority of either's followers will not be LGB. And then Stonewall has the added "TQ" thing to water it down further, plus the fact it's an establishment brand that all proper DEI HR types need to follow. So I wouldn't be surprised if it scores far worse on "actual LGB people".

This made me laugh.

And Jonathon Ross responding to BB's tweet with "What a prick". Sums it up for me.

Yes. And well no.

The Labour Party used to have a fine tradition of Jewish support. E.g Google Manny Shinwell for example. And then Google Luciana Berger.

Er no. That's pretty offensive really to anyone suffering from senility or having to cope with a loved one affected by senility.

Bragg has been a performative, virtue seeking, narrow minded lefty all his life.

Fucking hell. The narcissism of this man to tell Jewish people to read up on the holocaust.

It's quite extraordinary. But if he can tell women they're wrong about not wanting men in their spaces he can tell Jewish people they're wrong about the Holocaust. He must feel very pleased with himself about being so much better informed about these subjects than the people who are expert in them.

@RoyalCorgi disgusting isn't it?

He's firmly in the "educate yourself" category now.

What a cunt.

(SINGS) 'I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I'm... a stupid man now'
Billy - you have plummeted in my view, used to love him and had tickets to see him pre-covid. Someone else can take my place.

I heard a wonderful story of an American missionary seeing a Palestinian man praying inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and asking, “So how long have your family been Christians?”

The answer came: ”oh, about two thousand years…”

(SINGS) 'I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I'm... a stupid man now'

m.youtube.com/watch?v=NuiJdbFESO4

I'll just leave this here

Tel Aviv holds a Pride Week each June and proudly hold the largest LGBT parade in Asia. In comparison, 2019, the Palestinian Authority announced that LGBT groups were forbidden to meet in the West Bank on the grounds that they are "harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society". But we know which side leftie tw*ts like Bragg support - without taking a time out from burnishing their LGBTQIAAASHITE++++ credentials.

So I’m technically Jewish. My mother’s, mother’s mother was Jewish but they stopped practicing and married outside the community.
I’ve never thought of myself as Jewish. Never been to any kind of Jewish ceremony like a wedding. I know nothing of being Jewish.

This tweet has left me confused. Am I Jewish through biology? I don’t feel Jewish? I don’t identify as Jewish. Am I more Jewish than I am a woman?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
He got some flack for changing the lyrics to his ditty 'Sexuality' and this seems to have flipped him into the mind set of if trans are oppressed and I support trans, then I am oppressed.
People like him don't need any excuse to try linking their "suffering" to Jewish people. If they can't blame them then they try saying their suffering is worse than the entire history of antisemitism. It must take some mental gymnastics to think 'my friend Bert was called sir today even though she was wearing a miniskirt and had her beard groomed exquisitely' is exactly the same as what Primo Levi went through in Auschwitz.

He got some flack for changing the lyrics to his ditty 'Sexuality' and this seems to have flipped him into the mind set of if trans are oppressed and I support trans, then I am oppressed.

Nope, he's been an idiot on this issue for many years. He slavishly adopts whatever view is fashionable amongst the Corbynite/Militant/Momentum lot.

Didn't he change the lyrics to "if you stick aroun', I'm sure we can find the right pronoun'? So he's under the impression that people need his help to pick their new preferred pronouns?

Er, no, Billy.

He thinks he's an expert on everything, doesn't he?

What a twat.
He actually thinks he's making some sort of logical argument. 🤦

I'm embarrassed for him.

I would regard that as being lineage rather than biology. Ok sang rather than sol, but it is not as if they do a biology test. They check registers, I presume.

Soli, not sol.

He may be referring to the Nazis book burning with one of their initial targets being Hirschfeld (a jew) and the institute of sexology and trans(sexuals). There was a vibrant LGBT scene in 1920s Germany until the Nazis came along....and were thoroughly evil.

Certain evangelicals send missions to all kinds of Chriatian groups, including Catholics. It's a feature of their understanding of Christianity, not because tehy don't realize that the people aren't from Christian churches.

But there is a real tendency for the left to forget about middle eastern Cjristians and their persecution, because it doesn't fir in with their sense of Christianity being tied up with colonialist opression. For similar reasons they are often flummoxed when presented with Christian indiginous populations.