Maybe Mother was right...
Jul. 12th, 2019 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustMy mother, a long-time constituent of Jeremy Corbyn, repeatedly complained that he was antisemitic. But her evidence for this always had us replying "No, Skip, he's pro-Palestinian. It's not the same thing..." She wasn't convinced.
Last night we watched the Panorama report on antisemitism in the Labour Party, and I begin to wonder if the Skipper was right all along. At what point does supporting the rights of Palestinians, and being critical of Israel (with which I have no problem) move through supporting specific Palestinian organisations in their struggle against Israel (about which I am wary) and become a general hostility to Israel, expressed as am unfriendly attitude to Jews in general (ouch!)? Panorama made a convincing case that influential sections of the Labour Party (at least) had gone a step too far (at least) along this spectrum.
It would have been just as easy - it would have been considerably easier - to make the case that the Conservative Party is inherently anti-Islamic: the Panorama report did not, even in passing, mention this. Even so, we apply a higher standard to the Labour Party.
Likewise, the Party disputes the conclusions of the report, and a number of denials were included in the programme: if they weren't entirely convincing, does that show weakness in the denials, or bias at the BBC? Or both, of course, that's always possible. Certainly, you can brush off one or two whistleblowers as "disgruntled former staff members", but it gets harder as the disputes team, including two successive heads of the department, are leaving en masse, several of them signed off by their doctors for stress and anxiety. Something is clearly wrong there, and while the Panorama diagnosis may or may not be correct, Non-Disclosure Agreements are not the way to solve it.
Tomorrow Jeremy Corbyn will be in Durham, speaking at the Miners' Gala. So will Shami Chakrabarti, who ran the Party's internal enqury into antisemitism. I don't know what to anticipate from this...
Last night we watched the Panorama report on antisemitism in the Labour Party, and I begin to wonder if the Skipper was right all along. At what point does supporting the rights of Palestinians, and being critical of Israel (with which I have no problem) move through supporting specific Palestinian organisations in their struggle against Israel (about which I am wary) and become a general hostility to Israel, expressed as am unfriendly attitude to Jews in general (ouch!)? Panorama made a convincing case that influential sections of the Labour Party (at least) had gone a step too far (at least) along this spectrum.
It would have been just as easy - it would have been considerably easier - to make the case that the Conservative Party is inherently anti-Islamic: the Panorama report did not, even in passing, mention this. Even so, we apply a higher standard to the Labour Party.
Likewise, the Party disputes the conclusions of the report, and a number of denials were included in the programme: if they weren't entirely convincing, does that show weakness in the denials, or bias at the BBC? Or both, of course, that's always possible. Certainly, you can brush off one or two whistleblowers as "disgruntled former staff members", but it gets harder as the disputes team, including two successive heads of the department, are leaving en masse, several of them signed off by their doctors for stress and anxiety. Something is clearly wrong there, and while the Panorama diagnosis may or may not be correct, Non-Disclosure Agreements are not the way to solve it.
Tomorrow Jeremy Corbyn will be in Durham, speaking at the Miners' Gala. So will Shami Chakrabarti, who ran the Party's internal enqury into antisemitism. I don't know what to anticipate from this...
no subject
Date: 2019-07-12 04:43 pm (UTC)Labour= anti semites
Tories= islamophobes and racists
Lib Dems= transphobes
Where is a good old fashioned left socialist girl supposed to go?
no subject
Date: 2019-07-12 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-12 05:20 pm (UTC)I’m despairing because I’m lost, not knowing who to believe or how to find the truth, and I think that’s the project of so many now, to make us despair and give up.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-12 07:27 pm (UTC)Something does seem to be badly wrong, but I don't think it's one simple thing.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-12 06:42 pm (UTC)I have no information on the Panorama report, but from the outside it has looked this way to me for at least the last few years. I've found it scary.
(I am not sure it is necessarily the case, however, that pro-Palestinian activism has led otherwise non-racist people into anti-Semitism through criticism of Israel; certainly in this country I see a lot of plain old unreconstructed anti-Semitism that has simply found new language in which to express itself. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories may now center themselves around the State of Israel, but I do not believe that anti-Semitism would fade in the absence of the modern country: those conspiracies existed long before 1948. They just shift a little shape. And people say, I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm just anti-Zionist, but when the words Zionist and Jew collapse into one another, as they have in Corbyn's rhetoric, as happens all the time on the American left, there's no fig leaf or dogwhistle, it's just loud and clear and dangerous.)
Even so, we apply a higher standard to the Labour Party.
This is also a problem here: the left gets called out on an issue, the right gets a free pass on same. A literal Nazi child-abusing Republican? Whatever, it's Tuesday. And the Overton window keeps sliding.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-15 09:46 am (UTC)I am not sure it is necessarily the case, however, that pro-Palestinian activism has led otherwise non-racist people into anti-Semitism through criticism of Israel...
No, I didn't mean to suggest that, though I see how it could read that way. More that it's a progression that allows deniability to antisemitic behaviour - I've been following your posts on the display of the star of David with alarm.
And you are right, of course, that much of what we are seeing is classic anti-Semitism: the mural which Corbyn defended, apparently without really looking at it, shocked me by how old-fashioned it looks. Wouldn't someone wanting to depict the villains of the most recent banking crisis paint young men in sharp suits? No, apparently it's srill all about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Even so, we apply a higher standard to the Labour Party.
Well, yes, it's a problem. But it's not a mistake, we are right to ask better of our friends and (usually) allies.
I hope your jaw is improving: it sounds much like what I did a few summers ago, when I dislocated my jaw by yawning. It was quite astonishingly painful, and alarmimg, until I finally, several weeks on, got a diagnosis (from my dentist, as it happens).
no subject
Date: 2019-07-15 08:17 pm (UTC)Thank you for replying. I didn't want to be inappropriate, since it's not my government, but it is something relevant to me.
More that it's a progression that allows deniability to antisemitic behaviour.
That I absolutely agree with.
the mural which Corbyn defended, apparently without really looking at it, shocked me by how old-fashioned it looks.
Yes. There's some new iconography—lizard people, for example, though the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still in there too—but so much of it is so old, and so recognizable, and so many people want not to see it.
But it's not a mistake, we are right to ask better of our friends and (usually) allies.
I don't think it's a mistake to expect better of people who are supposed to be allies, and I don't want to imply that criticism of one party must be matched with criticism of the other because that's just bothsidesism, which only ever benefits the side with greater power. I just wish we also expected better of enemies. I don't think it's appropriate for Nazis to be Tuesday as usual. And it really does feel as though that no longer occasions the same outrage; there are never repercussions, while the left wing can go down in flames.
I hope your jaw is improving: it sounds much like what I did a few summers ago, when I dislocated my jaw by yawning. It was quite astonishingly painful, and alarmimg, until I finally, several weeks on, got a diagnosis (from my dentist, as it happens).
Thank you. (And I hope your jaw healed after the dentist figured out what its deal was!) I have been stunned by how many people have stories of yawning or opening their mouths and having their jaws just prefer not to. It had never happened to me before.
Do you mind if I ask what did happen at the Miners' Gala?
no subject
Date: 2019-07-16 09:06 pm (UTC)It was pretty much healed by the time I saw him: it happened while we were on holiday, so there was quite a delay. And all he was able to do was to tell me to treat it gently (which I had worked out for myself) and offer me painkillers. It is now completely healed, though I will never again yawn as widely as I once did!
Do you mind if I ask what did happen at the Miners' Gala?
I don't mind at all! This, too, has taken me longer to write than I intended. Short version: it rained. Long version: see next post!