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

Sweet Square said:
Intersting polling of Labour members


















:devil:



https://twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/979833764594450433
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Not really surprised by any of it, particularly the figure that only 8% of Corbyn supporters are bothered by antisemitism. When the reaction was to organise to go shout down Jews who were protesting antisemitism, it does kind of reflect a group that's either in denial of the problem, or is genuinely ignorant of the problem, or doesn't care about the problem.

Of course the other conclusion is that it's one big conspiracy deemed to control the Labour party and undermine Jeremy Corbyn. Not that there's anything wrong or even slightly antisemitic about a theory that accuses the Jews of conspiring to control for their own gain. No Sir.
 
Oscie said:
Not really surprised by any of it, particularly the figure that only 8% of Corbyn supporters are bothered by antisemitism. When the reaction was to organise to go shout down Jews who were protesting antisemitism, it does kind of reflect a group that's either in denial of the problem, or is genuinely ignorant of the problem, or doesn't care about the problem.

Of course the other conclusion is that it's one big conspiracy deemed to control the Labour party and undermine Jeremy Corbyn. Not that there's anything wrong or even slightly antisemitic about a theory that accuses the Jews of conspiring to control for their own gain. No Sir.
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So 44% of Labour party members either don't think antisemitism is a problem or they don't know if it is?

That's quite fecking horrendous in itself, isn't it?
 
Oscie said:
So 44% of Labour party members either don't think antisemitism is a problem or they don't know if it is?

That's quite fecking horrendous in itself, isn't it?
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Take it you mean 34%?
 
Oscie said:
So 44% of Labour party members either don't think antisemitism is a problem or they don't know if it is?

That's quite fecking horrendous in itself, isn't it?
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Would help if you could add to 100... It's 34, not 44%.
 
rotherham_red said:
Would help if you could add to 100... It's 34, not 44%.
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To be honest - I think we're all capable of these mistakes.

I disagree with a lot of what Oscie's saying in this thread but I'm not sure his momentary mathematical slip is our best potential criticism of him.
 
Britain is crying out for our version of Bernie Sanders right now. A fairly moderate economic populist who has strong socially liberal views, but doesn’t want to do much beyond make the world a fairer place to live in, and is willing to compromise to find solutions.

Instead we get Corbyn who is the guy that Bernie’s enemies tried to pretend he was. He seems to have the right kind of views on the economy, but also brings lots of crazy shit about nukes and NATO, is carrying tons of baggage regarding his views and prior statements on all sorts of highly controversial shit, and who I have little or no faith wouldn’t try and do something wildly impractical and stupid purely on ideological grounds.

How the actual feck did our politics fall so far? There isn’t a single person left in Labour who feels right to lead the country. On the right the only giant left is Ken Clarke and he’s not only too old but also not even taken seriously by his party anymore.
 
Kentonio said:
Britain is crying out for our version of Bernie Sanders right now. A fairly moderate economic populist who has strong socially liberal views, but doesn’t want to do much beyond make the world a fairer place to live in, and is willing to compromise to find solutions.

Instead we get Corbyn who is the guy that Bernie’s enemies tried to pretend he was. He seems to have the right kind of views on the economy, but also brings lots of crazy shit about nukes and NATO, is carrying tons of baggage regarding his views and prior statements on all sorts of highly controversial shit, and who I have little or no faith wouldn’t try and do something wildly impractical and stupid purely on ideological grounds.

How the actual feck did our politics fall so far? There isn’t a single person left in Labour who feels right to lead the country. On the right the only giant left is Ken Clarke and he’s not only too old but also not even taken seriously by his party anymore.
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Bernie is as far to the left of the US mainstream as Corbyn in UK. And this is a moderate old Bernie - if you go to his older stuff from the 80s, its clear he was exactly where Corbyn is now (he went to Nicaragua to join a Sandanista rally while they were being invaded by Reagan's Contras). It still shows up a bit in his debates/public appearances, when he starts talking about Pinochet and Mossadegh.
I was very impressed that after Corbyn's response to the Manchester attack, he got the votes he did. Unexpected.
 
Kentonio said:
Britain is crying out for our version of Bernie Sanders right now. A fairly moderate economic populist who has strong socially liberal views, but doesn’t want to do much beyond make the world a fairer place to live in, and is willing to compromise to find solutions.

Instead we get Corbyn who is the guy that Bernie’s enemies tried to pretend he was. He seems to have the right kind of views on the economy, but also brings lots of crazy shit about nukes and NATO, is carrying tons of baggage regarding his views and prior statements on all sorts of highly controversial shit, and who I have little or no faith wouldn’t try and do something wildly impractical and stupid purely on ideological grounds.

How the actual feck did our politics fall so far? There isn’t a single person left in Labour who feels right to lead the country. On the right the only giant left is Ken Clarke and he’s not only too old but also not even taken seriously by his party anymore.
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Neoliberalism. The policies put forward by people like Ken Clarke has caused the political climate we see today.
 
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berbatrick said:
Bernie is as far to the left of the US mainstream as Corbyn in UK. And this is a moderate old Bernie - if you go to his older stuff from the 80s, its clear he was exactly where Corbyn is now (he went to Nicaragua to join a Sandanista rally while they were being invaded by Reagan's Contras). It still shows up a bit in his debates/public appearances, when he starts talking about Pinochet and Mossadegh.
I was very impressed that after Corbyn's response to the Manchester attack, he got the votes he did. Unexpected.
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His economic policies aren’t that left at all though, he’s basically advocating for FDR style policies.
 
40% of Corbyn voters is...quite a lot of people. Particularly when there's a perfectly fine cop-out answer to pick.
 
Ubik said:
40% of Corbyn voters is...quite a lot of people. Particularly when there's a perfectly fine cop-out answer to pick.
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And the 46% of Owen Smith voters who think it is a genuine and serious problem requiring urgent action presumably are the moral heart of the party and not at all politically motivated. It's really dumb anyway, this kind of polling serves no purpose other than to generate headlines, as evidenced by the fact that the Times, upon commissioning it, insisted on misleadingly presenting the numbers. They might as well have just made them up because there was never any legitimate journalistic intent of "I wonder what Labour members think" behind it.

And yes, I agree there is a semi-cop out answer, and if I had been polled I might well have picked that one, but at the same time, from my own experience of Labour meetings etc, I'm not sure I do agree that anti-semitism is a 'serious problem' within the Labour Party. They are equivocating the meaning of 'serious problem' (by dropping the clarifying phrase 'within the Labour Party')

e.g. "Is sexual assault a serious problem within the Labour party?" No I don't believe it is, but that doesn't mean that when it happens it isn't a serious issue.
 
Untied said:
And the 46% of Owen Smith voters who think it is a genuine and serious problem requiring urgent action presumably are the moral heart of the party and not at all politically motivated. It's really dumb anyway, this kind of polling serves no purpose other than to generate headlines, as evidenced by the fact that the Times, upon commissioning it, insisted on misleadingly presenting the numbers. They might as well have just made them up because there was never any legitimate journalistic intent of "I wonder what Labour members think" behind it.

And yes, I agree there is a semi-cop out answer, and if I had been polled I might well have picked that one, but at the same time, from my own experience of Labour meetings etc, I'm not sure I do agree that anti-semitism is a 'serious problem' within the Labour Party. They are equivocating the meaning of 'serious problem' (by dropping the clarifying phrase 'within the Labour Party')

e.g. "Is sexual assault a serious problem within the Labour party?" No I don't believe it is, but that doesn't mean that when it happens it isn't a serious issue.
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I'd have more sympathy for this view if Shawcroft wasn't still sitting on the NEC for factional reasons.

Though I'd agree it's pretty frivolous and trollish polling, I'd be more interested to see stuff about Labour members on Brexit.
 
Been slightly detached from the whole thing, but this whole antisemitism affair strikes me as quite the storm in a teacup.
 
Ah, I see that Shawcroft has now quit the NEC, good stuff.
 
ShadesOfTomato said:
Why? I'd argue Corbyn is anything but anti Semitic and there is no basis for the current consideration of the Labour Party for being some hub of anti Semitic feeling.
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Unless you're Jewish that's not really for you to decide, is it? I'm not black therefore whilst I can determine whether I think an individual incident is evidence of racism, I can't really say there's no basis for considering there's racism on a wider scale simply because as a white guy I wouldn't experience it. People wouldn't be racist around me, or at least I might not be as in tune to recognising when they are because whilst I'm anti-racist, I'm not particularly sensitive to it. In the same way a straight person can't really determine there's no widespread evidence of homophobia in an organisation on the basis that she hasn't experienced much/any of it.

Plus:

1. Corbyn came to the defence of Sheikh Raed Salah, who revived the medieval anti-Semitic ‘blood libel’ slur that Jews cook with children’s blood. Salah was arrested by British police in 2011 when he was due to speak at an event in the House of Commons – alongside Corbyn. In 2012 Corbyn called Salah ‘a very honoured citizen’.

2. Labour Students at Oxford University Labour Club mocked the Jewish victims of the Paris kosher supermarket attack, called Auschwitz a ‘cash cow’, and used the Neo-Nazi slur ‘Zio’, according to extensive testimony from Jewish students. After months of obfuscation, including an NEC decision to not publish a party report that concluded there had been ‘some incidents’ of anti-Semitic behaviour, Labour’s NEC decided not to discipline the key perpetrators.

3. A Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, was sent a 1,000 word death threat from a Corbyn-supporter calling her a ‘yid c–t’. The threat followed Smeeth’s decision to walk out of a meeting outlining Labour’s response to anti-semitism because she was accused of working ‘hand in hand with the right-wing media to attack Jeremy’. Smeeth then received 20,000 abusive messages and has since questioned whether Labour is still ‘a safe space for British Jews’.

4. A Labour council candidate in Peterborough, Alan Bull, shared anti-Semitic material online including that the Holocaust was a ‘hoax’. The Labour party was made aware of the posts in 2017, but only suspended the candidate when contacted by the Jewish Chronicle in March 2018.

5. Jeremy Corbyn was an active member of an ‘anti-Semitic’ Facebook group, ‘Palestine Live’. The group included Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs. He said he did not see the offensive posts and left in 2015.

6. A former Labour parliamentary candidate in Witham, John Clarke, shared a Neo-Nazi meme saying the Rothschild family has used money lending and Israel to ‘take over the world’. He said the meme ‘contained a great deal of truth’ and was later suspended.

7. Jeremy Corbyn had a ten-year association with a group which denied the Holocaust. Mr Corbyn was a ‘stalwart’ supporter of Deir Yassin Remembered, attending events in 2013, with the group’s founder, Paul Eisen, a self-professed Holocaust denier.

8. Jackie Walker, formerly vice-chair of Momentum, said Jews were the ‘chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade’, criticised security for Jewish schools, and said Holocaust Memorial Day was not ‘inclusive’ enough. After the comments were made and widely condemned, Corbyn shared a platform and campaigned alongside Walker.

9. Jeremy Corbyn hosted an Islamic cleric in Parliament in 2009, who in 2006 wrote that ‘Europe has made political correctness, the cult of the Holocaust and Jew-worshipping its alternative religion’.

10. Nasreen Khan, a Labour council candidate subsequently barred from standing, asked: ‘What have the Jews done good in this world?’. She said schools were ‘brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler’ and said ‘Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims’.


+ 30 more

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/labours-pockets-of-anti-semitism-the-evidence/
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My interpretation of these lists are that they're all a bit Guilt by Association.

I worked with a bloke who at one time I despised because he was a member of the National Front, he's since changed his views and I quite like him for it.
I've a mate who did time for drug dealing.
A list of facebook friends I don't know their politics or their views.

and on and on, I'm not my brother's keeper but I'm still part of the small circles I associate with.

Corbyn talks endlessly about inclusivity, he cares about Palestine and Israel, why wouldn't he have associations with some people who don't share all his views?
 
oates said:
My interpretation of these lists are that they're all a bit Guilt by Association.

I worked with a bloke who at one time I despised because he was a member of the National Front, he's since changed his views and I quite like him for it.
I've a mate who did time for drug dealing.
A list of facebook friends I don't know their politics or their views.

and on and on, I'm not my brother's keeper but I'm still part of the small circles I associate with.

Corbyn talks endlessly about inclusivity, he cares about Palestine and Israel, why wouldn't he have associations with some people who don't share all his views?
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These aren’t mates. These are organisations or people to whom Corbyn lent his name, his efforts or his public reputation. He is accountable for that, and as a leader, he is also accountable for how his organisation behaves. If he wants to kill the antisemitism vibe that surrounds labour, he can quickly and ruthlessly do so.
 
Today's news is the Sunday Times have gone to press with their work.

A report published in the Sunday Times claims to have uncovered more than 2,000 such messages, including misogynistic and violent posts.

Among the messages was praise for Adolf Hitler and threats to kill Prime Minister Theresa May, the paper said.

A Labour spokesman said the groups are not connected to the party in any way.

The report is the result of a two-month investigation by the Sunday Times into the 20 biggest pro-Corbyn Facebook groups.
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Hands up who thinks we couldn't find two thousand inarguably bigoted posts on the top twenty Tory Facebook groups?

The left's problem with anti-antisemitism is real (and not remotely new). The hyperbole is nonsense and rather distasteful.
 
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nickm said:
These aren’t mates. These are organisations or people to whom Corbyn lent his name, his efforts or his public reputation. He is accountable for that, and as a leader, he is also accountable for how his organisation behaves. If he wants to kill the antisemitism vibe that surrounds labour, he can quickly and ruthlessly do so.
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Well that's the thing, in that I don't see any context to this other then he'd meet or talk with these organisations as a politician. I don't know about you but I was talking about so called 'friends' but all of us can increase that exponentially when we talk about associates. My political views are to the left and yet as a businessman I'm a member of the CBI and so many other members have diametrically opposed views to me and we might often clash but how do you hope to occasionally change an opinion if not to be a part of something.

I've interests in Greenpeace, Stop The War Coalition, Momentum and the Labour Party and I probably talk to many people who have different views to me, some of them even maybe racists or tree huggers, F knows.

I think the context is all and that is being missed.

Edit. FWIW I'm on a Man Utd Supporters site and I'm a gooner, what stick might I get from some other Arsenal Fans? I don't give a stuff.
 
Corbyn wasn't ever a front bench minister/shadow minister. He wasn't involved in these things because he had political weight as part as an overall concerted effort to help his country/party - he did so because he supports them. He wasn't negotiating with the IRA on behalf of the British government, he was meeting them because he supports their general aims, if not necessarily violence. Same with Hamas, same with Hezbollah. Normally there'd be no issue with that as people like Corbyn don't ordinarily become leader nor do they expect to.

When they do cavorting with groups with scant, half-hearted or non-existent condemnation can't be excused by trying to retrospective pretend they were some kind of official negotiating envoy working on behalf of the government to secure peace. He met these people, attended those rallies, ignored the bad shit they did because he supported their overall aims.

He's never been central to the Northern Ireland peace process for example, people only pretend he is now retrospectively as all those meetings with leading IRA figures look bad now. He was a backbench, hard-left MP supporting a cause that many a backbench, hard-left MP supported. And fair play to him for it but it'd have more integrity if everyone didn't pretend somehow he was doing anything else. With that Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other group he chose to associate with. Entitled to do so, not entitled to years later pretend he was some kind of official peace envoy/negotiator/ambassador, because he absolutely wasn't.
 
Oscie said:
Corbyn wasn't ever a front bench minister/shadow minister. He wasn't involved in these things because he had political weight as part as an overall concerted effort to help his country/party - he did so because he supports them. He wasn't negotiating with the IRA on behalf of the British government, he was meeting them because he supports their general aims, if not necessarily violence. Same with Hamas, same with Hezbollah. Normally there'd be no issue with that as people like Corbyn don't ordinarily become leader nor do they expect to.

When they do cavorting with groups with scant, half-hearted or non-existent condemnation can't be excused by trying to retrospective pretend they were some kind of official negotiating envoy working on behalf of the government to secure peace. He met these people, attended those rallies, ignored the bad shit they did because he supported their overall aims.

He's never been central to the Northern Ireland peace process for example, people only pretend he is now retrospectively as all those meetings with leading IRA figures look bad now. He was a backbench, hard-left MP supporting a cause that many a backbench, hard-left MP supported. And fair play to him for it but it'd have more integrity if everyone didn't pretend somehow he was doing anything else. With that Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other group he chose to associate with. Entitled to do so, not entitled to years later pretend he was some kind of official peace envoy/negotiator/ambassador, because he absolutely wasn't.
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You must obviously have proof of his intentions and the discussions and words that took place over all these years.

However Politics does seem to make for strange bedfellows as the saying always goes and I always assume there must be some proof of since the Government and several Ministries regularly hold discussions with achieving similar aims with such countries as Saudi Arabia while not at the same time supporting their aims of funding the groups that they do. Not to mention whatever other country the Government will be keen to do a trade deal with, desperate to in point of fact as trumpeted by them as being the main advantage of Brexit. I'm sure we don't even share all the same values as President Trump holds even with backbench Tory MPs.

I know this is the Current Events Forum and it is held to a higher standard than the General Forum but I'm calling it for what it is and that seems to me a very convenient slur to keep repeating when Theresa might at any time fall on her own sword and an General Election could be in the offing and that being the sum total of this B/S.
 
Drifter said:
Good riddance
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...and what the feck do you mean by that?!

Please tell me you're not (yet another) one who is here to try and downplay the blatant antisemitism issue.

There are already a couple of people in his thread waving the "I support Labour regardless and I can't be objective or face the glaring truth" flag of dishonour.
 
17 Van der Gouw said:
There are already a couple of people in his thread waving the "I support Labour regardless and I can't be objective or face the glaring truth" flag of dishonour.
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Literally anti semitism has gone down in the Labour Party since Corbyn became leader. That's not to say there's isn't a problem within the party(There is ) but it is objectively less anti semitic than in 2015.

https://evolvepolitics.com/yougov-p...amatically-since-jeremy-corbyn-became-leader/
 
Is what i said Anti Semetic. Don't be fooled why this donor is leaving . He can't influence the labour party like he used to so wants out.Could not care less about this anti-Semitism row .It's just a witch hunt against a politician who is not kissing Netanyahu backside and recognises the Palestinians
 
Drifter said:
Is what i said Anti Semetic. Don't be fooled why this donor is leaving . He can't influence the labour party like he used to so wants out.Could not care less about this anti-Semitism row .It's just a witch hunt against a politician who is not kissing Netanyahu backside and recognises the Palestinians
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No it isn't, you're brushing aside a glaring problem that even Corbyn admits has become pervasive within the party.
 
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Sweet Square said:
Literally anti semitism has gone down in the Labour Party since Corbyn became leader. That's not to say there's isn't a problem within the party(There is ) but it is objectively less anti semitic than in 2015.

https://evolvepolitics.com/yougov-p...amatically-since-jeremy-corbyn-became-leader/
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Yeah, it's why I used the term Labour and not Corbyn. It's a historical problem but it's still not uncommon. I'm not keen on how some of Corbyns supporters have reacted to it though. Claiming it's all a witch hunt, or that the problem has been superficially inflated.
 
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17 Van der Gouw said:
Yeah, it's why I used the term Labour and not Corbyn. It's a historical problem. I'm not keen on how Corbyns supporters have reacted to it though. Claiming it's all a witch hunt, or that the problem has been superficially inflated.
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But this isn't even the case - most labour members(There's isn't a Corbyn crowd in the Labour Party)think it's a problem, the degree of the problem is where members differ.
 
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