The sorry state of British politics (Anti-semitism and racism edition)

Politics & Elections
1

I feel there ought to be a thread on this, but it’s so unremittingly grim that I’m not surprised there isn’t.

Let’s start with Labour: A few weeks ago, a scandal emerges about promising new MP Naz Shah, who has overcome various difficulties in life including a forced underaged marriage in Pakistan before beating the openly anti-semitic incumbent MP (George Galloway, zoomer fans!) in the 2015 election. It turns out that Shah had (in 2014) shared an anti-semitic meme on Twitter - a map of Israel superimposed on the US, presented as the solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Her comment was “Problem solved!”.

Shah, confronted with this, did the decent thing - she acknowledged it was anti-semitic instead of trying to bullshit her way out by saying she was only being critical of Israel, she apologised in Parliament and she stood down from her position as PPS (first step towards being a Minister). Various leading Jewish group said that while they condemned her initial tweet, they accepted her apology as sincere and they hoped to work with her to use this as an opportunity to reach out and educate people from her (poor, Muslim) background about how all the crap they’ve grown up hearing about the Jews this and the Jews that is so much bullshit. It seems that everyone is being a grown up and that - amazingly - something good might actually come of a Member of Parliament being openly anti-semitic.

But then… Oh gods. First, Corbyn (Leader of the Labour Party) says he won’t suspend her. Then she’s suspended “by mutual agreement”. Then it turns out someone in Corbyn’s office edited her apology to remove various instances of the words “anti-semitism” or “anti-semitic”. And then Ken Livingstone (former London Mayor and old leftie) starts defending Shah (after she’d admitted her error and apologised, mark you) and somehow drags Labour into a 6-day debate on whether Hitler supported Zionism.

Yes, you read that right.

This culminates in Labour MP John Mann (head of the All-Parliamentary Party Group on anti-semitism) berating Livingstone live on TV and calling him an apologist for Nazism. Followed by Ken hiding from reporters in a disabled toilet while they shout questions about Hitler at him.

By the way, this is all happening in the context of upcoming elections for both London Mayor (of which more later) and local government across the country.

In the course of this 6 day angst fest, it becomes apparent that there are an awful lot of people in Labour who can’t distinguish between “criticism of Israel isn’t necessarily anti-semitic” on the one hand and “if you use the words Israel, Zionist or Zio when explaining why Jews control the media then you can’t possibly be anti-semitic” on the other. It also becomes apparent that there is a small but distressingly non-zero number of anti-semites - or, if you want to make a generous distinction, people who have said at least one anti-semitic thing - among Labour local councillors.

Looking at the discrepancy between when these offensive remarks were made and when they are coming to light, it’s pretty clear that the timing of these revelations co-inciding so well with the elections is no, um, coincidence. Various angry Labour people start talking about a conspiracy. Which is a) not so fucking clever when you’re dealing with accusations of anti-semitism and b) missing the point that there couldn’t be a conspiracy if the party did a better job of keeping the bigots and conspira-loons out in the first place.

All of this both triggered and exacerbated by Jeremy Corbyn who while not in any way antisemitic himself has a long and inglorious history of overlooking it amongst those he calls his allies and minimising it (“I condemn it as I condemn all forms of bigotry”) when confronted on this. He is also a thoroughly inept leader (see Shah’s non-suspension/suspension above) and fails throughout the week this drags on for to impose himself on the situation in any way. It’s not all bad news - tehre is clearly a core of Labour members/MPs who are horrified by these revelations and committed to fighting it. But that doesn’t seem to be coming from the top.
So the Tories are looking pretty good right now, right? Alas no. As I said, it’s currently (today in fact) the London Mayoral elections. Zac Goldsmith is the Tory candidate; Sadiq Khan (a Muslim) the Labour one.

Goldsmith’s campaign has been relentlessly, unashamedly, racist. Khan has been smeared as a “dangerous”, with heavy hints that he will allow extremism to flourish. More than that, the campaign has indulged in some extremely clumsy racial profiling, writing to people it thought were Sikhs or Gujuratis to express their concern that Khan’s would (for some reason) be bad news for their community:

The sole aim of the campaign has been to paint the Muslim candidate as shifty, dangerous and a threat to people’s way of life. Taking it beyond London, David Cameron has been only too happy to repeat these smears in the House of Commons. One Minister has seriously claimed that Khan would be security risk. It is gutter politics of the lowest order.

All in all this is probably the most depressing time to be politically aware in UK politics I can remember. But it’s election day today so I am going to vote Khan because there’s some shit that just shouldn’t fly in campaigns. Whether I can bring myself to vote Labour in the council elections is another matter.

Other Brit-dopers - what’s your take?

2

You are right it was a debate. With views on all sides.

Much of it focused on how you chose to interpret the Haavara Areement:

I saw the debate as a reasonably honest thrashing out. You read that right.

3

This episode epitomizes why I oppose Syrian Muslim refugees here. America doesn’t need antiSemitism mainstreamed like in Europe because of mass Muslim immigration.

Tories should use this and raise solidarity against Islamists in the next election. And maybe Labour needs a new Blair.

4

I think that particular question might be better treated in a separate GD thread.

To what extent do you think this scandal will affect Labour’s (already poor) election chances? Will it rebound on Khan - who had a good record for building relationships with London’s Jewish community?

5

It won’t affect Khan.

London isn’t naive about the plight of the Palestinians.

6

What’s the plight of the Palestinians got to do with anti-semitism, and why would people who weren’t naive about it be unconcerned about bigotry against Jews?

7

Jeremy Corbyn not anti-semitic? Apart from the support for and friendship with anti-Israeli terrorists, presumably.

8

Are you under the impression that Ken Livingston is Syrian?

9

Yes, that’s the point. He himself has never expressed any anti-Jewish sentiment. But he contorts himself into knots over his failure to notice and/or condemn it in people he considers allies. A fine distinction to be sure but with so many examples of direct anti-semitism to draw on in recent weeks I think it’s one worth making in pursuit of my “he’s not evil, just weak and foolish” thesis.

10

It won’t have a huge effect, the amount of people who actually believe Labour has a problem with antisemitism are very much in the minority and the noise is being made by Labour’s political opponents seeking to make political capital and those in the small, but vocal pro-Israel lobby who would like to dictate discussion on the issue.

Of course it isn’t good for Labour either, whilst the behaviour of Labour politicians was not antisemitic is was hardly statesman-like either. It also fuels the perception that Corbynite Labour are overly-pre-occupied with issues which are not that important to the British public. Of course what will really prevent the current Labour party from gaining power will be those areas where their views are completely out-of-step with general public opinion: migration and defence.

Whatever London’s Jewish community feel about the issue, they’re simply not politically significant enough to have any effect on an election-race in which Khan was cruising.

11

Referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as “anti-Israeli” terrorists may make some sense, but it’s not particularly accurate.

Hamas and Hezbollah generally refuse to even use words like “Israel” and “Israelis” and usually refer to them simply as “Jews” or “the Jews”.

The same is generally true of most Palestinians and the other Arabs in the region.

Similarly, it’s pretty common to hear Israelis and Israeli sympathizers referring to “the Israelis vs. the Arabs” rather than “the Israelis vs. the Palestinians”.

12

Calls for ethnic cleansing aren’t anti-Semitic?

That is an exceptionally stupid statement and only makes sense if one completely ignores the history of anti-Semitism.

To her credit, Ms. Shah herself never made such a foolish claim.

13

I don’t agree with the idea Israel should be “wiped from the map” - trying to reverse history is a fool’s game. However it does of course exist by virtue of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians - a process that is still continuing today, albeit on a smaller scale. Calling for a (total) reversal of that situation, whilst totally impractical and unhelpful is not inherently antisemitic.

14

But there were lots of Jews in that area in the decades and even centuries before Israel was formed. It’s not accurate to say that it was formed “by virtue of ethnic cleansing”, which is not to say that there was/remains no elements of ethnic cleansing with regards to the Palestinians, just that this was a small part of a much larger story.

15

Also, the reason there were so few Jews at certain earlier periods was that the Jews themselves were ethnically cleansed from the area. Not sure how the SOL for ethnic cleansing is determined to run out just far back enough to include one but not the other.

16

Ethnic cleansing and Israel is probably a hijack and off topic, so I apologize for adding onto it.

17

I’m honestly struggling to follow your logic, how does the existence of a fairly small Jewish minority invalidate the well-documented ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948 and afterwards?

18

Further stirring the pot, footage has emerged of Khan referring to moderate Muslims as “Uncle Toms” in a 2009 interview on Iran’s international news network.

19

I’ll continue by PM to avoid the hijack.

20

WTF does any of that have to do with Syrian refugees? And in case you missed it, the Tories have already been running on a campaign of “Muslims are all evil”. Not sure what else you want from them. And it’s not working other than to make the Tories look like the bigoted scum they are, because most Londoners know Muslims personally and have discovered that they’re not the West-hating, bomb-throwing, baby-eating monsters some make them out to be.

Labour members and supporters are friends with terrorists. Conservative members and supporters just sell the terrorists weapons.

Overall it’s been a very depressing campaign. The unbelievably racist and fearmongering campaign headed by Zac Goldsmtih, Boris Johnson and David Cameron ensured that any thoughts I had of taking Goldsmith seriously as a Mayoral candidate were utterly eradicated. Khan’s campaign was better but I remain unconvinced that Khan is Mayoral material; he’s come across as petty, parochial and smarmy at several points, and I haven’t seen anything to suggest I can trust him.

Some of the other options are worse, of course: the BNP and UKIP are utterly unappealing for a variety of reasons, Britain First are basically a group of angry men who like to shout at Muslims led by an angry man whose main qualification is experience of shouting at Muslims, and I wouldn’t piss on George Galloway if he were on fire, the odious git that he is.

So that leave the Lib Dems, Greens, a few assorted fringe parties and one independent who claims to be a Polish prince. Anyone have any views on the Women’s Equality Party? I hear Sandi Toksvig is a supporter…