Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[Carl the Llama]

10 minutes ago, MattP said:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/25/jeremy-corbyn-accused-having-ostrich-strategy-anti-semitism/amp/

 

When people at party events can openly talk about expelling Jewish groups you know it has a serious problem. 

 

I don't think Labour can rid themselves of this anymore, looks like it's embedded in the party now.

I think it's a difficult subject but smear pieces like that do little to help, reading through it's clear they were so eager to get the article out there that they haven't even proofread it and they seem to have a fixation on Cryer's comment about the 30's given that it shows up 3 times in the article.

 

Clearly there's an anti-Semitic vein running through the party but you need to be careful how you address it, you can't just expel every person who criticises Israel and label them an anti-Semite (you can't deny that their hands certainly aren't clean when it comes to Palestinians and the Gaza strip), the implications that would have on freedom of speech in this country are pretty unsavoury.

[Guest MattP]

1 minute ago, Carl the Llama said:

I think it's a difficult subject but smear pieces like that do little to help, reading through it's clear they were so eager to get the article out there that they haven't even proofread it and they seem to have a fixation on Cryer's comment about the 30's given that it shows up 3 times in the article.

Which part of it is a smear?

[Carl the Llama]

1 minute ago, MattP said:

Which part of it is a smear?

The way it's set up to make the reader think that antisemitism and Labour membership go hand in hand.  

 

The fact is there's no easy way to solve the problem, there is no foolproof way to weed out the racists.  If somebody's caught saying something like "we should kill all the Jews" then expelling them becomes an easy decision to make and any failure to do so should absolutely be scorned but it's rarely as black and white as that.

[Finnegan]

17 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

I think it's a difficult subject but smear pieces like that do little to help, reading through it's clear they were so eager to get the article out there that they haven't even proofread it and they seem to have a fixation on Cryer's comment about the 30's given that it shows up 3 times in the article.

 

Clearly there's an anti-Semitic vein running through the party but you need to be careful how you address it, you can't just expel every person who criticises Israel and label them an anti-Semite (you can't deny that their hands certainly aren't clean when it comes to Palestinians and the Gaza strip), the implications that would have on freedom of speech in this country are pretty unsavoury.

 

There's a cracking book by Jon Ronson (who is Jewish) called Them in which he explores various extremists from Omar Bakri to David Icke via the KKK and Bilderberg fanatics. The running theme throughout most is that they all tend to end up doing an El Empty and blaming zionists. 

 

What is interesting though is that his investigations also get him (again, just a Jewish investigative journalist) labelled a dangerous extremist by the Anti Defamation League, whose job it essentially is to very publicly call absolutely everyone with any criticism of Israel or Judaism (whether justified or not) as anti semetic and look to take action. 

 

It drew comparisons to scientology and its aggressive assault on any detractors. 

 

There definitely is a lot of cause to criticise Israel and its treatment of Palestine and there definitely is a habit of calling anyone an antisemite who does so. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that some of those accusations aren't true and there more than likely are people in the labour party who hold offensive, prejudice views about the Jewish populace. 

 

Where it becomes a smear campaign is focusing on it and using it to attack the entire Labour Party with silly claims like "it goes so deep they'll never be rid of it" etc.

 

Matt would have you believe everyone in the labour part is an anti zionist lunatic just like everyone at Celtic football club is a paedophile and fvck knows what else. I mean the reality is always more boring than that, there's a fringe group of idiots who do need addressing but likewise others are having their comments blown out of proportion to make a story. 

 

You could almost certainly do an expose of right wing political parties and find people with antisemitic conspiratorial views, I guarantee it's rife in the lunatic fringe of UKIP and the further right working class conservative membership. Because, to bring it back to Ronson, what his book illustrates most brilliantly is how so many of these nutcase conspiracy types with supposedly completely opposite views (from an Al Qaeda cleric to a grand wizard of the KKK) believe the world is being run by a secret group of Jews who may or may not be lizards. 

Edited 26 September 2017 by Finnegan

[breadandcheese]

4 hours ago, katieakita said:

Would be interesting to know if the die hard Tories on here agreed with anything coming out of the Labour conference and vice versa when the Tory show kicks off next week if those to the left find anything to agree with

I agree with some of the major problems identified by Corbyn, just think he always arrives at the wrong solutions, which would end up causing more harm than good.

[Strokes]

8 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

There's a cracking book by Jon Ronson (who is Jewish) called Them in which he explores various extremists from Omar Bakri to David Icke via the KKK and Bilderberg fanatics. The running theme throughout most is that they all tend to end up doing an El Empty and blaming zionists. 

 

What is interesting though is that his investigations also get him (again, just a Jewish investigative journalist) labelled a dangerous extremist by the Anti Defamation League, whose job it essentially is to very publicly call absolutely everyone with any criticism of Israel or Judaism (whether justified or not) as anti semetic and look to take action. 

 

It drew comparisons to scientology and its aggressive assault on any detractors. 

 

There definitely is a lot of cause to criticise Israel and its treatment of Palestine and there definitely is a habit of calling anyone an antisemite who does so. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that some of those accusations aren't true and there more than likely are people in the labour party who hold offensive, prejudice views about the Jewish populace. 

 

Where it becomes a smear campaign is focusing on it and using it to attack the entire Labour Party with silly claims like "it goes so deep they'll never be rid of it" etc.

 

Matt would have you believe everyone in the labour part is an anti zionist lunatic just like everyone at Celtic football club is a paedophile and fvck knows what else. I mean the reality is always more boring than that, there's a fringe group of idiots who do need addressing but likewise others are having their comments blown out of proportion to make a story. 

 

You could almost certainly do an expose of right wing political parties and find people with antisemitic conspiratorial views, I guarantee it's rife in the lunatic fringe of UKIP and the further right working class conservative membership. Because, to bring it back to Ronson, what his book illustrates most brilliantly is how so many of these nutcase conspiracy types with supposedly completely opposite views (from an Al Qaeda cleric to a grand wizard of the KKK) believe the world is being run by a secret group of Jews who may or may not be lizards. 

If it was rife in UKIP it would have been exposed by now, let's not assume problems without evidence. I accept not everyone in the Labour Party is an anti Semite but they have a huge problem. 

[Guest MattP]

4 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

The way it's set up to make the reader think that antisemitism and Labour membership go hand in hand.  

 

The fact is there's no easy way to solve the problem, there is no foolproof way to weed out the racists.  If somebody's caught saying something like "we should kill all the Jews" then expelling them becomes an easy decision to make and any failure to do so should absolutely be scorned but it's rarely as black and white as that.

There is nothing in that article that isn't fact, that's not a smear.

 

I'll give you a way to start solving the problem, start treating anti-semitism the same way you would treat any other form or racism and expel the people engaged in it, you would be surprised how quickly something like that can work. Let's be quite frank, if a Labour member did say "we should kill all the Jews" we wouldn't be certain they would be expelled at this current point.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

Matt would have you believe everyone in the labour part is an anti zionist lunatic just like everyone at Celtic football club is a paedophile and fvck knows what else. I mean the reality is always more boring than that, there's a fringe group of idiots who do need addressing but likewise others are having their comments blown out of proportion to make a story. 

 

You could almost certainly do an expose of right wing political parties and find people with antisemitic conspiratorial views, I guarantee it's rife in the lunatic fringe of UKIP and the further right working class conservative membership. Because, to bring it back to Ronson, what his book illustrates most brilliantly is how so many of these nutcase conspiracy types with supposedly completely opposite views (from an Al Qaeda cleric to a grand wizard of the KKK) believe the world is being run by a secret group of Jews who may or may not be lizards. 

Claiming an organisation has something embedded in it doesn't mean you believe anyone connected to it holds the same views, we found out the Metropolitan Police force was institiutionally racist, it didn't mean every copper in it was racist, the same applies here. They have a problem in the same way as that and people who have studied this far more than me have came to the same conclusion ( https://antisemitism.uk/new-caa-research-shows-antisemitism-amongst-officials-in-labour-is-eight-times-worse-than-any-other-party/ )

 

If you have evidence of this happening in the Conservative party by all means bring it forward, they have their fringe events at conference, if it's happening I'm sure it won't be hard to find it. If not then I'd be careful about the accusations you throw around as they might be suiting your own prejudices more, the worst we can find on a Tory over the last few years is an MP using the term "nigger in the woodshed" - if there is "rife" (as you claim) in the lunatic fringes of the working class Tory membership then show us.

 

Back on the subject the list is just becoming too long for this to be an accident now, it's indefensible, Livingstone (still a member), Naz Shah (still an MP) Unite still hired Vicki Kirby, even Jackie Walker is strolling around the conference again like nothing has happened, of course not every Labour member is an anti-semite, no one would suggest that, but the party and it's officials clearly are either totally incompetent on clamping down on it, or they just don't care - and with the amount of cases it certainly looks like the latter.

[Strokes]

http://www.cityam.com/272711/report-finds-labour-responsible-three-fifths-online-anti

3/5ths of online anti Semitic abuse  comes from labour supporters or members.

[Guest MattP]

7 minutes ago, Strokes said:

If it was rife in UKIP it would have been exposed by now, let's not assume problems without evidence. I accept not everyone in the Labour Party is an anti Semite but they have a huge problem. 

Important to also say whilst all these lunatics were being exposed in UKIP in the run up to the 2015 election they were expelled, the opposite of what happens when bigots in Labour are exposed.

[Finnegan]

6 minutes ago, MattP said:

Let's be quite frank, if a Labour member did say "we should kill all the Jews" we wouldn't be certain they would be expelled at this current point.

 

[Strokes]

2 minutes ago, MattP said:

Important to also say whilst all these lunatics were being exposed in UKIP in the run up to the 2015 election they were expelled, the opposite of what happens when bigots in Labour are exposed.

Exposed and condemned from all areas. It seems to be ok to discriminate against certain religions but not others then?

[Guest MattP]

2 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

If you are that certain you probably haven't been paying attention, they've even had MP's over the last couple of years posting on Facebook that Israeli should be expelled to America. I don't think you've quite grasped the severity of the problem or are just wilfully turning a blind eye.

 

Amazingly her vote went up after it as well, although she is the MP in Bradford which appears to enjoy their politicians being anti-semites given they have elected her, George Galloway and David Ward in the last decade. But still, bizarre to see the electorate rewarding this sort of stuff, in an supposed anti-racist and liberal country people would usually be punished at the ballot box for such things.

 

To Shah's credit though she did actually manage to say at the hustings Jews had a right to exist in the Middle East ( naturally she was heckled as a "Jew, Jew, Jew after saying this ( https://order-order.com/2017/06/02/mp-heckled-jew-jew-jew-for-saying-israel-has-right-to-exist/ ), so I'll give her some credit for that.

[Finnegan]

5 minutes ago, Strokes said:

Exposed and condemned from all areas. It seems to be ok to discriminate against certain religions but not others then?

 

This is a bit ironic really given Islam has become the pantomime villain of the western world while almost all criticism of Judaism / Israel is shut down tres rapido. 

 

 

[Guest Foxin_mad]

It isn't though that's the problem. It the other way around in fact.

 

You can not criticise Islam and Radical Imams who hate our values often with good cause, without the threat of being called a racist. Yet members of the Labour front bench are consistently racist towards white people and Labour have a huge problem with anti Semitism in the party, especially in the horrible momentum group.

 

The party is a vile disgrace. I have never seen such a despicable bunch of lunatics holding a conference, they are verging on being complete nut jobs.

 

I mean the people who buy this shit are in need of serious help! he is a tweed wearing socialist from Islington FFS!

 

Edited 26 September 2017 by Foxin_mad

[Guest MattP]

4 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

This is a bit ironic really given Islam has become the pantomime villain of the western world while almost all criticism of Judaism / Israel is shut down tres rapido.

But it's not shut down is it, you are free to criticise Israel all you want, I'd encourage that debate, nothing we are talking about in Labour is doing that though is, calling Hitler a Zionist isn't criticising Israel, sharing Facebook memes of big nose Jews isn't criticising Israel, calling for Jewish groups to be expelled from a political party etc can't be passed off as criticism of Israel. It's become cliche now without any serious evidence of thought going into it.

 

I'm not anti-semetic I'm criticising Israel is the new "I'm not racist but....." of those of on the left.

[Finnegan]

3 minutes ago, MattP said:

If you are that certain you probably haven't been paying attention, they've even had MP's over the last couple of years posting on Facebook that Israeli should be expelled to America. I don't think you've quite grasped the severity of the problem or are just wilfully turning a blind eye.

 

Amazingly her vote went up after it as well, although she is the MP in Bradford which appears to enjoy their politicians being anti-semites given they have elected her, George Galloway and David Ward in the last decade. But still, bizarre to see the electorate rewarding this sort of stuff, in an supposed anti-racist and liberal country people would usually be punished at the ballot box for such things.

 

To Shah's credit though she did actually manage to say at the hustings Jews had a right to exist in the Middle East ( naturally she was heckled as a "Jew, Jew, Jew after saying this ( https://order-order.com/2017/06/02/mp-heckled-jew-jew-jew-for-saying-israel-has-right-to-exist/ ), so I'll give her some credit for that.

 

And if you can't appreciate there's a world of difference between questioning the legitimacy of Israel - one of the most divisive issues of the twentieth and twenty first centuries - and saying "we should kill all the Jews" then what's the point of even having the discussion? 

 

This is my point, Matt, the vast majority of what you post is well researched and well reasoned but then you wander in to the polarised and absurd. 

 

Like I said, the truth is always more boring than the story. 

[Finnegan]

3 minutes ago, Foxin_mad said:

It isn't though that's the problem. It the other way around in fact.

 

You can not criticise Islam and Radical Imams who hate our values often with good cause, without the threat of being called a racist. Yet members of the Labour front bench are consistently racist towards white people and Labour have a huge problem with anti Semitism in the party, especially in the horrible momentum group.

 

The party is a vile disgrace.

 

Do I really need to go and dig up the ten thousand tabloid front pages about burkas, immigrants from Muslim countries, impending sharia law and whatever the **** else? 

[Guest MattP]

Just now, Finnegan said:

And if you can't appreciate there's a world of difference between questioning the legitimacy of Israel - one of the most divisive issues of the twentieth and twenty first centuries - and saying "we should kill all the Jews" then what's the point of even having the discussion? 

 

This is my point, Matt, the vast majority of what you post is well researched and well reasoned but then you wander in to the polarised and absurd. 

 

Like I said, the truth is always more boring than the story. 

Questioning the legitimacy of Israel is absolutely fine, may I ask who has said they have a problem with this? I've just re-read the last few posts and I can't see anyone who has a problem with that, of the Labour fringe events want to discuss that no one has an issue with it as far as I can see, they will however have an issue with Jews being expelled from the party being cheered.

 

Speaking of the truth any evidence of this rife Tory racism at fringe events?

[Strokes]

5 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

This is a bit ironic really given Islam has become the pantomime villain of the western world while almost all criticism of Judaism / Israel is shut down tres rapido. 

 

 

You think politicians in this country are free to talk about and criticise Islam without being held accountable? 

[Guest Foxin_mad]

1 minute ago, Finnegan said:

 

Do I really need to go and dig up the ten thousand tabloid front pages about burkas, immigrants from Muslim countries, impending sharia law and whatever the **** else? 

 

I never said there were not instances of tabloids being shit, its what they do, what you said is anything to do with anti-Semitism is shut down, when its not. Any anti Islam sentiment is mostly stamped out quite quickly, this has been rife in labour for years. Political parties with extreme views like Britain first are not given the time of day, yet these far left loonies are taking over the asylum and no one is challenging or questioning them abhorrent beliefs.

[Finnegan]

4 minutes ago, MattP said:

Speaking of the truth any evidence of this rife Tory racism at fringe events?

 

I didn't say there was rife racism at tory events, I said you could probably do an expose of right wing party membership and equally find people with ridiculously offensive views. 

 

Because the point is that there are people with ridiculously offensive views everywhere, in every party, in all walks of life. 

 

But the story is always going to be about Labour and antisemitism just the same as it's always going to be about UKIP and racism/nationalism. 

 

The focus is clearly going to be more on the left than the right when it comes to antisemitism because the left tends to lean towards Palestine and the right tends to lean towards Israel, it's one of these oddly entrenched sides that people feel obligated to take. That and you're more likely to find Labour MPs pandering to inner city Muslim communities by making populist statements regards Israel/Judaism. 

 

Again, I'm not claiming there isn't an issue with (real) antisemitism in the labour party, I'm just saying that the vast, enormous majority of Labour members, supporters and politicians likely couldn't actually give much of a shit one way or another about Judaism and Israel and that the story gets sensationalised because it sells. 

 

Something you're always happy to jump on. Any anti Labour story and you come in here like "ah, they're completely damned this time, there's no way back from this, labour are ****ed now, this is the final nail in their coffin, rah rah!" Then whatever story it is largely blows off, doesn't really do much to their polling, the world moves on and a few weeks later you find something else to buy the sensational view about. 

 

Not just you, either, Buce and ozleicester and whoever else tend to do the opposite. It's what makes discussing politics on here so dull these days. I've never known this place as entrenched and polarised as now. Or maybe it's just that I'm a lot less passionate as I used to be. 

[Bellend Sebastian]

Are we bothered about the antisemitism itself or just laughing about the apparent issue with it in the Labour Party?

 

I find it very hard to keep up

[Voll Blau]

1 hour ago, Foxin_mad said:

 

I never said there were not instances of tabloids being shit, its what they do, what you said is anything to do with anti-Semitism is shut down, when its not. Any anti Islam sentiment is mostly stamped out quite quickly, this has been rife in labour for years. Political parties with extreme views like Britain first are not given the time of day, yet these far left loonies are taking over the asylum and no one is challenging or questioning them abhorrent beliefs.

Yeah, except almost the entirety of the nation's popular press.

[Finnegan]

5 minutes ago, Foxin_mad said:

 

I never said there were not instances of tabloids being shit, its what they do, what you said is anything to do with anti-Semitism is shut down, when its not. Any anti Islam sentiment is mostly stamped out quite quickly, this has been rife in labour for years. Political parties with extreme views like Britain first are not given the time of day, yet these far left loonies are taking over the asylum and no one is challenging or questioning them abhorrent beliefs.

 

Probably because Britain First are a disgusting, ultra nationalist, far right white supremacist group formed out of the ashes of the genuinely racist side of the BNP after the vaguely more reasonable hardline anti immigration lot swapped to UKIP. 

 

They shouldn't be given the time of day in the slightest. 

 

There isn't a left wing group with the mirror of their policies that has a high profile in the UK. An anti Israel contingent in the labour Party who are ultimately severely outnumbered and whose politics don't really impact the day to day policy of the party isn't exactly the same level, is it? 

[Strokes]

Just now, Bellend Sebastian said:

Are we bothered about the antisemitism itself or just laughing about the apparent issue with it in the Labour Party?

 

I find it very hard to keep up

I don't know, are you bothered about the antisemitism?