Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)

@2cents

You said that leftists can't understand labour anti-semitism properly. And i think that is correct, at least for me.

My introduction to politics at home was from my mother, a journalist who covers hindu-muslim relations. The hindu nationalist and fascist parties would talk about muslim birth rates, trickery, rapes, etc. Their cadre would kill or beat up or rape muslims during times of communal tension. The leaders would then talk about their actions being a justified response to muslim provocation. They used phrases like hindu nation.
The exclusively-muslim political party, which did not have any influence in mumbai earlier, came around 2010 and started harkening back to the times when they were kings, about the anti-muslim nature of the indian state, about the need to protect muslims by voting for muslim parties. Sometimes after a particularly poisonous speech there would be violence including some murders.

Looking at US politics, there was an added layer of abstraction. For every republican who openly spoke disparagingly about some minority, 10 others would say nothing. But they would campaign for policies that hurt blacks and poor people, particularly their right to vote. Going back in history, the right-wing was much more open about what they thought of civil rights, or even the notion of the humanity of black people. Corresponding with their words is a long history of violence - lynchings which were communal gatherings and denial of basic rights. This was all in the open.

I've read about anti-semitism a little bit in the context of tsarist russian pogroms, and then in the obvious context of 30s germany. In both cases very obviously the language and policies/actions were intertwined. In the case of the stalinist doctors' plot, you have a paraonoid monster who had previously ordered "polish filth" and other minorities to be dealth with, turning his attention to jews, thankfully quite close to his own death. More abstract is the recent invocation of soros, which has been used to win some votes and close down some university departments in hungary.

In all these cases you can tie prejudice and rhetoric and policy/action.

I don't see this mechanism with corbyn. He's run an election in 2017, and in the campaign he didn't mention jews or make an indirect reference to them or single out a particular jew (like soros). In terms of policy there was no program of political disenfranchisement (like in the us) or anything worse or the suggestion of any such thing.

Outside the campaign, there is one remark (regarding british irony), which is bad, but is qualified by the fact the he referred to both british zionists and non-zionists within that speech. And there is his foreign policy, where as i said above, is a continuation of his policy towards ireland and i'm guessing many other places. But regardles of those details, i still have no idea the mechanism by which a hypothetical corbyn government is going to enact anti-semitic policies or spread anti-semitic sentiment, because that is how i understand political prejudice works. He has been called, by serious outlets, "an existential threat to Jewish life in UK."

edit- missed the obvious case of trump, with the rapist mexicans and the wall and the kids in jail, and any number of similar things from anti-immigrant politicians.
 
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David Graeber as usual is spot on.

I am 58 years old, and for the first time in my life, I am frightened to be Jewish.

We live in a time when racism is being normalized, when Nazis parade in the streets in Europe and America; Jew baiters like Hungary's Orban are treated as respectable players on the international scene, “white nationalist” propagandist Steve Bannon can openly coordinate scare-mongering tactics with Boris Johnson in London at the same time as in Pittsburg, murderers deluded by white nationalist propaganda are literally mowing Jews down with automatic weapons. How is it, then, that our political class has come to a consensus that the greatest threat to Britain's Jewish community is a lifelong anti-racist accused of not being assiduous enough in disciplining party members who make offensive comments on the internet?

For almost all my Jewish friends, this is what is currently creating the greatest and most immediate sense of trepidation, even more than the actual Nazis: the apparently endless campaign by politicians like Margaret Hodge, Wes Streeting, and Tom Watson to weaponize antisemitism accusations against the current leadership of the Labour party. It is a campaign – which however it started, has been sustained primarily by people who are not themselves Jewish – so cynical and irresponsible that I genuinely believe it to be a form of antisemitism in itself. And it is a clear and present danger to Jewish people.To any of these politicians who may be reading this, I am begging you: if you really do care about Jews, please, stop this.

One might ask how this happened? Here I feel I must tell a somewhat brutal truth. Orginally this scandal has very little to do with antisemitism. It is in its origins a crisis of democratization in the Labour Party.

Let me hasten to emphasize: this is not because bigoted attitudes towards Jews do not exist in the Labour Party. Far from. But Antisemitism can be found on almost every level of British society. As a transplanted New Yorker, I'm often startled by what can pass in casual conversation (from “of course he's cheap, he's Jewish” to “Hitler should have killed them all.”). Surveys show that antisemitic attitudes are more common among supporters of the ruling Conservative party than Labour supporters. But the latter are in no sense immune.

What makes Labour unique however is that for four years now, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies have been spearheading an effort to democratize the internal workings of the party. It has inspired hundreds of thousands of new members to join, and turned once rubber-stamp branches into lively forums for public debate. Momentum, a mass action group, has been created to try to turn the party back into a mass movement, which it has not really been since the 1930s. All this has been anathema to a large number of MPs on the party's right, who, having been placed in their positions under Tony Blair as effective MPs-for-life, are by now so out of step with their Constituency Labour Parties that they would almost certainly lose their seats if anything like an American-style primary system were put in place. And many Corbyn supporters have been campaigning for exactly that.

Still, a politician can't very well say they're against democratization. So over the past four years, they've tried throwing practically everything else they can think to throw at Corbyn and his supporters. Tolerance of antisemitism was the first to really stick. The reason is that any process of democratization, opening the floor to everyone, will necessarily mean a lot of angry people with no training are going to be placed in front of microphones. (This is the reason why few parallel scandals come out of the Tory side, despite the wider prevalence of antisemitism—not to mention other forms of racism and class hostility — no one without media training gets anywhere near a microphone. When the Tories briefly flirted with the idea of creating their own Momentum-style youth group, the project had to be quickly abandoned because participants began to call for the poor to be exterminated.) In a society as rife with anti-Jewish attitudes as Britain, opening the floor to everyone means some are, inevitably, going to say outrageous things. As I can well attest, this can be startling and appalling, but if one is actually interested in purging antisemitic views from society, one is also aware it’s not ultimately a bad thing. It's only by bringing forms of unrecognized racism out in the open that they can be challenged and minds changed. There is evidence that in the first two years under Corbyn (2015-2017), this is exactly what was starting to happen: the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes among Labour supporters were sharply declining.

Still, superficially, this democratizing process does result, initially, in more antisemitic comments being made in public, which is precisely what made Corbyn and his followers vulnerable. By all indications, the right wing of the party made a conscious choice to turn this process for their own advantage. In a way it was a political masterstroke. If one accuses one's opponents of promulgating antisemitism, almost any reply they make can itself be treated as antisemitic. It’s no surprise that some Jews, both right-leaning elements in the Jewish community, and Labour supporters, who began looking nervously over their shoulders, have allowed themselves to be drawn into what can only be described now as a tragic spiral. The process is designed to feed on itself. Still, it’s important to note that most of the protagonists were not Jewish and many if not most had never before taken any particular interest in Jewish issues. By all appearances, it was pure, cynical, political calculation. But it worked.

The problem is that exploiting Jewish issues in ways guaranteed to create rancor, panic, and resentment is itself a form of antisemitism. (This is true whether or not the architects are fully aware of what they're doing.) It creates terror in the Jewish community. It deprives us of our strongest allies. If one were actively trying to create ill-feeling towards Jewish people on the left, then surely purges, sensationalized denunciations in the media, wild exaggerations, and the endless twisting around of words (a skilled propagandist can after all prove anything – if I wanted to cherry-pick quotes, I'm sure I could demonstrate that Margaret Thatcher was a Communist or the Pope is anti-Catholic), would be the best way to go about it.

One could argue that none of this matters too much, since, as far as dangers to the Jewish community is concerned, internal left politics will always be a bit of a sideshow. In a sense this is true. There is no conceivable scenario in which admirers of the ideas of Rosa Luxemberg or Leon Trotsky are going to start shooting up synagogues, or Momentum (an organization three of whose four co-founders were Jewish) is going to make anyone wear yellow stars. That's what Nazis do. And Nazis are on the rise. But in another way, this makes the damage even more pernicious. As the racist right gains power and legitimacy across Europe, the very last thing we need is to leave the public with the impression the Jewish community are a bunch of hypersensitive alarmists who start screaming about Auschwitz the moment they disagree with the exact wording of policy statement. It's crazy to cry wolf while real wolves are baying at the door. It's even crazier when those you're crying wolf about are the very people most likely to defend you against them. Because anyone who knows Jewish history also knows this is how it begins. And history from Cable Street to Charlottesville teaches us when the brownshirts do hit the streets, police tend to prove useless or worse, and it's precisely the “hard left” that is willing to stand by us. If that day comes, I know that Jewish left intellectuals such as myself are likely to be first on their list, but I also know that Corbyn and his supporters will be the first to place their bodies on the line to defend me. Will Tom Watson, the current purger-in-chief of purported antisemites in the Labour party, be there with them? Why do I doubt this?

Such scenarios might seem an impossible fantasy, but so, not so long ago, was a President Trump.

All I can do is plead to anyone involved in promulgating this campaign, in politics and media: please, stop. My safety is not your political chess piece. If you actually want to help, you could work with the party leadership, instead of using it as yet another way to seize power that you’ve repeatedly failed to win by legitimate, electoral means: If you’re not capable of actual constructive behaviour, then at the very least, stop making things worse. Because what you are doing in the name of “protecting” me is driving us all to disaster. And for the first time in my life, I am genuinely afraid.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/first-time-my-life-im-frightened-be-jewish/
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berbatrick said:
@2cents

You said that leftists can't understand labour anti-semitism properly.
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:confused: Did I? I think the post you're referring to is one where I argued that Corbyn doesn't understand it. If Corbyn = The Left for you, then I can can see how you'd come to this conclusion, although I'd see that as an extremely narrow lens through which to view the left, one which would exclude many of those who I believe have offered the most compelling critiques of Corbyn. But perhaps I'm a bit out of touch with contemporary leftist sectarianism.

berbatrick said:
I don't see this mechanism with corbyn. He's run an election in 2017, and in the campaign he didn't mention jews or make an indirect reference to them or single out a particular jew (like soros). In terms of policy there was no program of political disenfranchisement (like in the us) or anything worse or the suggestion of any such thing.

Outside the campaign, there is one remark (regarding british irony), which is bad, but is qualified by the fact the he referred to both british zionists and non-zionists within that speech. And there is his foreign policy, where as i said above, is a continuation of his policy towards ireland and i'm guessing many other places. But regardles of those details, i still have no idea the mechanism by which a hypothetical corbyn government is going to enact anti-semitic policies or spread anti-semitic sentiment, because that is how i understand political prejudice works.
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If the “British irony” incident is the only problematic example you can think of, then I suspect we’re way too far apart on this topic for this response to make any difference. For example in the post I think you’re referring to above, I mentioned two other episodes which I find equally troublesome. And there are a host of others. And that is only referring to Corbyn himself, never mind the wider institutional problem within the Labour Party. It’s actually exhausting going through each individual case over and over, so I'll try to be as brief as possible here by referring just to those two other examples and their wider significance.

One was the reflexive defence of Raed Salah, an example both of the general solidarity and legitimacy often offered by Corbyn to (sometimes violent) Islamist antisemitic organizations and individuals, and his tendency to double-down in the face of legitimate criticism. Islamist antisemitism constitutes a direct threat to Jewish lives globally (the gravest such threat IMO), so any such legitimatization accompanied by such obfuscation may help facilitate the spread of antisemitic sentiment and contribute to an atmosphere in which Jews become targets from Buenos Aires, to Paris, to Mumbai. Yet the reality of Islamist antisemitism tends to get completely brushed aside/unaccounted for/explained away within those leftist circles which identify with Corbyn (the article posted above by @Sweet Square being a good example - in this case only far-right antisemitism warrants a mention).

The second example I gave was the “Hands of Israel” comment, which is an example of the conspiracism by which Corbyn conceptualizes Israel and Zionism, and their status in the broader critique of imperialism as he understands it. You mentioned Soros-conspiracism above, so I find it hard to understand how you fail to see (correct me if I’m wrong) that in this example Corbyn is reflexively employing the Israeli bogeyman in precisely the same manner that the conspiratorial right employ the Soros bogeyman. Without getting into the implications of the fact that these comments were made on Press TV of all places, this is an approach to understanding Israel which reflects antisemitic tropes and thus contributes to the mystification of Israel’s role in its region, which in turn lends itself to antisemitic conspiracism. At this extremity of the conspiratorial left, with its false flags and Rothschilds, the lines with far-right conspiracism are very much blurred and over-lap in some ways, and it is at this point that you get the likes of David Duke and Nick Griffin nodding their heads along in agreement.

So in general, I don’t accept that an abstract, sharp distinction of “benign” (to quote another Corbyn-supporting Cafe member in this thread) leftist antisemitism as opposed to the supposedly uniquely mechanical/functional antisemitism of the right is a reliable or relevant way to categorize what we’re trying to understand here. The various forms of antisemitism don’t exist in vacuums, they feed on/inform/legitimize each other and all contribute to a general sense of Jewish otherness/mystification and ultimately vilification which puts Jewish lives in danger.

There is more to be said about Corbyn’s understanding of Zionism and how it produces ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews to be employed as he deems fit. But right now that is a problem common across the board on this debate (including unfortunately within the Jewish community itself).
 
Sweet Square said:
David Graeber as usual is spot on.
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There is so much wrong with that article that trying to even challenge it would give it undeserving credence. Lets just say it reads like the ramblings of a leftist apologist.

I'm just astounded at how anti-semitic rhetoric is routinely disregarded as "crying wolf", but the same people would be rightly apoplectic if slurs against the black community were on the rise within any group. Could you imagine the furore if this were said regarding the "N" word:

"For almost all my black friends the weaponisation of the "N" word by the likes of *insert centrist Tory name* against Johnson is causing them greater anxiety than Naziism"
"One could argue that none of this matters too much, since, as far as dangers to the black community is concerned, internal right politics will always be a bit of a sideshow.There is no conceivable scenario in which Thatcherites are going to start shooting up African churches, or making black people use segregated public transport"
"The very last thing we need regarding use of the "N" word is to leave the public with the impression the black community are a bunch of hypersensitive alarmists"
"It's crazy to cry wolf against the casual use of the "N" word, while real wolves in the form of KKK members are baying at the door"
"Opening the floor to everyone, will necessarily mean a lot of angry people with no training are going to be placed in front of microphones. The reason Labour members aren't routinely caught saying the "N" word is no one without media training gets anywhere near a microphone"
"How is it, then, that our political class has come to a consensus that the greatest threat to Britain's black community is a lifelong anti-racist in Johnson accused of not being assiduous enough in disciplining party members who make "N" word comments on the internet?"
"If one is actually interested in purging racist views from society, one is also aware that opening the floor to people who routinely use the "N" word is not ultimately a bad thing. It's only by bringing forms of unrecognized racism out in the open that they can be challenged and minds changed."
 
esmufc07 said:
If they’re Jews on the ground then it’s OK.
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The fact that you are using this imagery in the way that you do and don't actually give a shit about the visible suffering is a great look there pal. Sickening.
 
berbatrick said:
i cant find the posts so i'm guessing either you deleted them or i was mixing up the corbyn responses from you, sun-tzu, and colin.
there's a post on this very page where you say corbyn would be happy with dead jews. how do you expect people to take you seriously?
besides, there's still the standing question of this missing anti-semitism - the labour membership, which, after all, surged when corbyn joined the party, is markedly less anti-semitic than the tory membership, even as the labour leader has been fostering it.
and finally, if you applied to yourself a tenth of the standards you apply to him, you'd never speak about any -ism again.
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Yep, Elvis is by his own standards a bigot and if he's a part of any political party then that party has a racism and homophobia problem. Hopefully it's not Labour!
 
Shamwow said:
The fact that you are using this imagery in the way that you do and don't actually give a shit about the visible suffering is a great look there pal. Sickening.
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Sweet Square was using that imagery as if it represents the British Army as a whole.
 
Shamwow said:
That's likely because he seems to support it based on his earlier post in this thread.
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I do not support racism. Those posts Eboue dragged up are from as far back as 2008 when I was clearly a bit of an idiot, and I’m surprised and saddened that I ever used such language.
 
esmufc07 said:
I do not support racism. Those posts Eboue dragged up are from as far back as 2008 when I was clearly a bit of an idiot, and I’m surprised and saddened that I ever used such language.
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Why are you going by the oldest and not the newest. This is some spin.
 
esmufc07 said:
Sweet Square was using that imagery as if it represents the British Army as a whole.
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Yeah and you completely shat on the actual suffering happening there to make a sick joke about anti-semitism. Clearly you haven't changed that much since 2008 (or whenever your most recent bigotted post was).
 
Shamwow said:
Yeah and you completely shat on the actual suffering happening there to make a sick joke about anti-semitism. Clearly you haven't changed that much since 2008 (or whenever your most recent bigotted post was).
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It wasn’t a joke. Corbyn is happy to refer to groups who’s sole aim is to massacre Jews as his friends.
 
Isn’t the whole IRA sympathiser thing just something concocted to slur him and he was actually working for peace in Northern Ireland?

I’m not sure if this relates to what’s being discussed but although I’ve never been his biggest fan I do think he has been unfairly and almost relentlessly tarred by the media.
 
esmufc07 said:
It wasn’t a joke. Corbyn is happy to refer to groups who’s sole aim is to massacre Jews as his friends.
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This is some Boris Johnson level lying. We can all see what you posted and aren't stupid.
 
esmufc07 said:
I do not support racism. Those posts Eboue dragged up are from as far back as 2008 when I was clearly a bit of an idiot, and I’m surprised and saddened that I ever used such language.
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Wow you actually said those things, I thought it was some sort of joke. Bellend.
 
Broke: Using racist slurs for a laugh. hehe racism.
Woke: Using racist slurs ironically to imply bigotry in others. hehe racism, you racists!
 
NinjaFletch said:
Although, admittedly, becoming more difficult thanks to the increasing mission creep of the poppy.
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Was in the barbers this morning and well this happened

Customer - What is Remembrance Day about ?

Barber - It's celebration about freedom, its our freedom day.
 
Solius said:
Isn’t the whole IRA sympathiser thing just something concocted to slur him and he was actually working for peace in Northern Ireland?

I’m not sure if this relates to what’s being discussed but although I’ve never been his biggest fan I do think he has been unfairly and almost relentlessly tarred by the media.
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I'm firmly in the "anti-Corbyn" band but I think to give him credit he fights for groups that he sees as the downtrodden. Unfortunately in doing so he often finds himself on the same side as terrorists who may be oppressed, but ultimately who employ repellant tactics against their oppression. He employs his belief system dogmatically irrespective of whether his "friends" are extremists such as the IRA, Hezbollah, Hamas etc on the one side or far less extreme non-violent groups (e.g. black rights movement, LGBT movement) on the other.

I think his problem is a lack of basic intelligence. Rather than look at situations in a balanced and critical manner to come to a well reasoned point of view; he unequivocally and categorically sides with the party he sees as subjugated. It will always be the subjugator business owner against the subjugated worker; the subjugator US against the subjugated Middle East; the subjugator Israel against the subjugated Palestinians. Politics is far more nuanced than this though.

This is why he won't effectively tackle anti-semitism within Labour, but would tackle other forms of racism with an iron fist. He fundamentally sees Jews as a subjugator and Muslims as the subjugated.
 
esmufc07 said:
I do not support racism. Those posts Eboue dragged up are from as far back as 2008 when I was clearly a bit of an idiot, and I’m surprised and saddened that I ever used such language.
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Judging by the state of some of your replies in this thread, I imagine you're going to be surprised and saddened by how much of an idiot you've been again in another 10 years or so. It's almost as if you're still a bit of an idiot, only a little too much to actually realise it.
 
MrPooni said:
Judging by the state of some of your replies in this thread, I imagine you're going to be surprised and saddened by how much of an idiot you've been again in another 10 years or so. It's almost as if you're still a bit of an idiot, only a little too much to actually realise it.
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Perhaps.
 
esmufc07 said:
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This has already been discussed to death here but it seems to come up everytime someone tries to paint Corbyn as some despicable Jew-hating reincarnation of Hitler.

As with everything context is key - this wasn’t Corbyn waving the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah and patting them on the back for their respective ideologies, but rather a call for them to come to the table and discuss a roadmap to peace. Because frankly the alternative would be to double down on the status quo and see more lives taken by the ensuing violence in the Middle East. The same applies to him pleading to reach out to the IRA for peace talks, an initiative dignified by history as being the right call too.

Irrespective of whether you like Corbyn or not, to label the man an anti-Semite is disingenuous slander at best. We’re forgetting he was one of the most vocal critics of South Africa’s apartheid policies during a time Thatcher was shamelessly calling Mandela a terrorist and David Cameron was accepting all expenses paid trips at the behest of the Praetorian government.

And that leads me to another point - much of these accusations have stemmed from the very party who’s own leader has unapologetically called Muslim women letter boxes and speaks of ‘watermelon smiles’ to describe Africans, propagated by a right wing media infamous for its shameless dog whistling. And that’s without mentioning Boris’ ties with Steve Bannon or their shameless support of the Saudi regime, the country responsible for conceiving the most heinous extremism serving as the ideological backbone to factions such as ISIS. You’re lying to yourself if you believe the Tories are on the offensive here on the back of a bonafide belief in tackling bigotry.

It’s of course your prerogative to dislike Corbyn’s policies, but trying to desperately label him a bigot while pretending to be silenced outraged at the Tories’ overt bigotry is shamelessly dishonest.
 
Solius said:
Isn’t the whole IRA sympathiser thing just something concocted to slur him and he was actually working for peace in Northern Ireland?

I’m not sure if this relates to what’s being discussed but although I’ve never been his biggest fan I do think he has been unfairly and almost relentlessly tarred by the media.
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Correct.
And believe it or not the same applies to his rhetoric regarding Hamas and Hezbollah.
 
Solius said:
Isn’t the whole IRA sympathiser thing just something concocted to slur him and he was actually working for peace in Northern Ireland?

I’m not sure if this relates to what’s being discussed but although I’ve never been his biggest fan I do think he has been unfairly and almost relentlessly tarred by the media.
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Yep. You can't encourage people to come the table for peace talks without some level of conciliatory language or discourse.
 
Kaos said:
This has already been discussed to death here but it seems to come up everytime someone tries to paint Corbyn as some despicable Jew-hating reincarnation of Hitler.

As with everything context is key - this wasn’t Corbyn waving the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah and patting them on the back for their respective ideologies, but rather a call for them to come to the table and discuss a roadmap to peace. Because frankly the alternative would be to double down on the status quo and see more lives taken by the ensuing violence in the Middle East. The same applies to him pleading to reach out to the IRA for peace talks, an initiative dignified by history as being the right call too.

Irrespective of whether you like Corbyn or not, to label the man an anti-Semite is disingenuous slander at best. We’re forgetting he was one of the most vocal critics of South Africa’s apartheid policies during a time Thatcher was shamelessly calling Mandela a terrorist and David Cameron was accepting all expenses paid trips at the behest of the Praetorian government.

And that leads me to another point - much of these accusations have stemmed from the very party who’s own leader has unapologetically called Muslim women letter boxes and speaks of ‘watermelon smiles’ to describe Africans, propagated by a right wing media infamous for its shameless dog whistling. And that’s without mentioning Boris’ ties with Steve Bannon or their shameless support of the Saudi regime, the country responsible for conceiving the most heinous extremism serving as the ideological backbone to factions such as ISIS. You’re lying to yourself if you believe the Tories are on the offensive here on the back of a bonafide belief in tackling bigotry.

It’s of course your prerogative to dislike Corbyn’s policies, but trying to desperately label him a bigot while pretending to be silenced outraged at the Tories’ overt bigotry is shamelessly dishonest.
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He actively referred to them as 'friends' though - I'd argue that's a step beyond merely trying to bring them to the table. You may want to give him the benefit of the doubt and argue it was just poor word choice or diplomacy on his part - and it wouldn't be an argument I'm entirely against - but I understand why Jewish people are incredibly uneasy about being forgiving to him, or ascribing his actions to those of someone who's just made an honest or silly mistake when the context of other anti-Semitic accusations is included as well. If a right-wing politician had referred to a terrorist group rife with anti-Semitism a 'friend', I sincerely doubt a lot of us would be willing to jump to their defence - and with good reason, because excuses like diplomacy would quite understandably look incredibly stupid.

Similar can be said about McDonnell's IRA comments - he wasn't just trying to be diplomatic but was actively praising them and clearly demonstrated sympathies with them. Again, to try and claim otherwise strikes me as remarkably dishonest.
 
Solius said:
Isn’t the whole IRA sympathiser thing just something concocted to slur him and he was actually working for peace in Northern Ireland?

I’m not sure if this relates to what’s being discussed but although I’ve never been his biggest fan I do think he has been unfairly and almost relentlessly tarred by the media.
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McDonnell's previous comments on the IRA certainly go beyond that of someone wanting to facilitate a peace process - he'd demonstrated himself to have fairly clear sympathies towards them at one point.

It strikes me as remarkably silly to ascribe such remarks and Corbyn's comments concerning Hamas/Hezbollah to being either conciliatory goodwill statements or silly mistakes, even though I think the discussion surrounding them could do with being a lot more nuanced, and even though I'd confidently argue the Tories have some far worse associations and comments over the years.
 
Cheesy said:
He actively referred to them as 'friends' though - I'd argue that's a step beyond merely trying to bring them to the table. You may want to give him the benefit of the doubt and argue it was just poor word choice or diplomacy on his part - and it wouldn't be an argument I'm entirely against - but I understand why Jewish people are incredibly uneasy about being forgiving to him, or ascribing his actions to those of someone who's just made an honest or silly mistake when the context of other anti-Semitic accusations is included as well. If a right-wing politician had referred to a terrorist group rife with anti-Semitism a 'friend', I sincerely doubt a lot of us would be willing to jump to their defence - and with good reason, because excuses like diplomacy would quite understandably look incredibly stupid.

Similar can be said about McDonnell's IRA comments - he wasn't just trying to be diplomatic but was actively praising them and clearly demonstrated sympathies with them. Again, to try and claim otherwise strikes me as remarkably dishonest.
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I'd argue it was poor-worded diplomacy and can concede why it would provoke uneasy reservations amongst Jewish people. On the other hand in light of the context behind it, it does seem like excessive straw-clutching from those desperately trying to portray an anti-semitic narrative based on the use of the word 'friends'. Without resorting to whatabouttery, we also don't see anywhere near the same level of scrutiny afforded to prominent Tories with their unusual choice of words or frankly more open associations with unsavoury individuals and factions. Why is nothing being made of Johnson's ties to Steve Bannon, a notorious individual with indisputed ties to anti-semitic groups worldwide? Or Tory ministers accepting lavish gifts from Saudi royals, a country unapologetic on its views regarding his despicable views on women's rights and homosexuality. And how at ease are the Muslim community supposed to be when the prime minister simply pulls any inquiry into Islamophobia within Britain's current ruling party. Would Corbyn be afforded the same apathy if he decided to shelf any similar investigations into his party, or made colourful remarks about people of certain religions or races?

If the best Corbyn's critics can come up with is his choice of affectionate language to plead for factions, unsavoury or otherwise to come to the table with the intention to build a roadmap to peace, then its not a convincing one, not when you consider his background as a prominent campaigner against bigotry in his decades of being involved in international politics.
 
Honest John said:
Fine. By all means stop referring to them as enemies but don't stand on a platform and refer to them as 'our friends'
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The choice of words was arguably unfortunate and you can argue in poor taste, but does it constitute irrefutable evidence of him being a rabid anti-semite?
 
Johnson makes great play of frequently addressing EU representatives as 'our friends'.
 
Kaos said:
The choice of words was arguably unfortunate and you can argue in poor taste, but does it constitute irrefutable evidence of him being a rabid anti-semite?
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I haven't read Johnson's burka article in full but I understand that he was trying to make the case for muslim women to be free to wear it. Poorly chosen words or rabid islamophobe?
 
Honest John said:
I haven't read Johnson's burka article in full but I understand that he was trying to make the case for muslim women to be free to wear it. Poorly chosen words or rabid islamophobe?
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I don't believe Johnson is personally an Islamophobe, but I do think he's paying deliberate lip service to a demographic that are. I mean he could have easily made the point without resorting to the colourful name-calling. And what of the water-melon smiles? What was his underlying point with that one?
 
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