Labour party problems.

datalol-jack said:
Is this a Zionism or a Labour thread? I'm getting confused between the two that are open atm.

Anyway, I'm more concerned by Labour's media strategy, or rather the lack of it: Jezza is fleeing from reporters, Ken hid in a toilet for some reason, unguided Dianne Abbot missile. Who's their PR guy/girl? This is disastrously bad, especially with the locals and London election imminent.
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I think the first part highlights the problem, the two are currently very closely intertwined.

Unfortunately, I can't see labour sorting out their party machinery when they have a membership determined to behave like a dodgy student socialist group than the official opposition.
 
Dolph said:
One attempt to educate before I just categorise you instead.

Ken Livingstone muddies history to support claims on Hitler and Zionism

http://gu.com/p/4tnva?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
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Well the article twists and turns all over the place trying to do everything it can attack Livingstone, but the best it can manage is to argue that yes, what Livingstone said was true, but it shouldn't matter that it's true. It calls it a "twisted kernel of truth at the heart of Livingstone's statement'. Well no, despite wasting paragraph after paragraph on rhetoric, it can't actually refute his statement and the best (worst?) it can do is add a whole load of its own context just so it can blame Livingstone for the things it claims he meant but didn't say.

I mean, this is The Guardian. The last opinion piece of theirs that I read was on the Free Keisha affair where the author argued that it didn't matter whether or not there was evidence, the judge should have ruled in Keisha's favour because she was upset. This approach is hardly new to the Guardian.


Dolph said:
And there is the I'm not racist but equivalent. Zionism is part of the Jewish identity to such an extent that they are very hard to separate, and most attempts to do so are a diversionary tactic to pretend the view just expressed is not antisemitic.
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Rubbish. There are tonnes of Zionists who are not Jews. There are tonnes of Jews who are not Zionists. It is racist to assert as you do that because someone is of a particular ethnicity they are part of some political movement. Your post reminds me of an interview I watched with Milo Yiannopoulos recently where he recounts the story of a Black student telling him that he had been threatened by Black Lives Matter supporters for daring to be a Conservative.

Let's repeat after me: racial or ethnic membership does not determine what you believe or don't. That is the worst kind of racism.

At any second now, I fear you're going to dismiss the Jewish people who are not Zionists as "self-hating jews" which is the usual way of trying to ignore the inconvenient problem with your argument. But as far as I'm concerned, the "Self-Hating Jews" can go share a room with the "No True Scotsman" because they're more closely related to each other than to reality. As to all the Zionists who aren't Jewish, I expect you to just continue trying to ignore those altogether.
 
Dolph said:
I think the first part highlights the problem, the two are currently very closely intertwined.

Unfortunately, I can't see labour sorting out their party machinery when they have a membership determined to behave like a dodgy student socialist group than the official opposition.
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I can't believe this is attracting so much debate. He said something factual.

Is there something wrong with the Labour Party? The only thing I can see so far js a bunch of backstabbing MPs who undermine a democratically elected leader who attracted the largest surge in memberships for the party ever.

People are becoming fed up with the establishment and I would like to fancy that something will be afoot soon to tackle it.

Maybe Dolph if they were allowed to be the official opposition? And not heckled and jeered at by the Bullyingdon club sat opposite. There is a contempt for democracy within Westminster and amongst the socialist elite.
 
Really, Dolph is following the Zionist playbook to the letter in this thread.

Step #1: Equate Jewish with Zionist.
Step #2: Attack / Imply / Describe criticism as anti-Semitic.

However, despite the pillorying in the press (well, certain papers well known for having axes to grind), everyone I actually know in person and the majority of people I encounter online, recognize the above as a well-known and favoured tactic of dismissing one's opponents. Even the critics of Ken Livingstone or Labour are mostly deploring them for their incapability of handling a PR debacle rather than actually thinking they're Nazis or something.

I find it hard to imagine that Dolph has a subscription to the Guardian of all papers, but hey - when it's convenient let's suddenly pretend they're an objective news source and that their opinion pieces don't have a long history of ****ing on logic for the sake of agenda.
 
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h4rm0ny said:
Well the article twists and turns all over the place trying to do everything it can attack Livingstone, but the best it can manage is to argue that yes, what Livingstone said was true, but it shouldn't matter that it's true. It calls it a "twisted kernel of truth at the heart of Livingstone's statement'. Well no, despite wasting paragraph after paragraph on rhetoric, it can't actually refute his statement and the best (worst?) it can do is add a whole load of its own context just so it can blame Livingstone for the things it claims he meant but didn't say..
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Spot on. Its amazing how many people will still believe he said something anti-Semitic, supports Hitler and was in fact a member of the Nazi Party too in 1933 along with his grandfather who was last seen applying to work at a little known camp in Auschwitz:rolleyes:. It is impossible for some people to think for themselves or even just google something.

There are none so blind...
 
Dolph said:
Fundamentally, the problems in the Labour Party represent a split between those who strive for ideological purity (Corbyn, livingstone, momentum et al) and those who want to actually get elected and make some changes.

The hard left authoritarianism that corbyn represents has never been popular in the UK, every time labour have headed down that path it ends in disaster. The problem is corbyn and his supporters don't care about that.

The question is whether the parliamentary labour party can pull off a coup before the corbyn gets the rules changed to lock labour into this position or not.
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In what way is Corbyn 'hard left'?
 
h4rm0ny said:
Rubbish. There are tonnes of Zionists who are not Jews. There are tonnes of Jews who are not Zionists. It is racist to assert as you do that because someone is of a particular ethnicity they are part of some political movement. Your post reminds me of an interview I watched with Milo Yiannopoulos recently where he recounts the story of a Black student telling him that he had been threatened by Black Lives Matter supporters for daring to be a Conservative.

Let's repeat after me: racial or ethnic membership does not determine what you believe or don't. That is the worst kind of racism.

At any second now, I fear you're going to dismiss the Jewish people who are not Zionists as "self-hating jews" which is the usual way of trying to ignore the inconvenient problem with your argument. But as far as I'm concerned, the "Self-Hating Jews" can go share a room with the "No True Scotsman" because they're more closely related to each other than to reality. As to all the Zionists who aren't Jewish, I expect you to just continue trying to ignore those altogether.
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Depending on source, the rate varies between 75 and 85% of jews are also Zionists, and see the two as part of a package.

It's kind of like when people claim they are anti islamist, not anti islamic, a salve to pretend, either to yourselves or others, that the position is acceptable.

I'm not going to debate this any more, you can't reason people out of an irrational position.
 
Dolph said:
Criticism of Israeli policies or practices, not antisemitic.

Criticism of Israel's right to exist, or holding them to different standards to other countries usually is however.

Talking about 'our friends in hamas and hezbolla' is probably a bad road too.
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Agree with that. I am not against Israel's right to exist and never have been. It's their treatment of Palestinians that disgusts me as does UK and US hypocrisy in looking the other way or meek words of condemnation when it happens.
 
Dolph said:
Depending on source, the rate varies between 75 and 85% of jews are also Zionists, and see the two as part of a package.
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Not in the UK where I am - that has to be a US or Israeli poll. And quite frankly, if even your own figures say that one in four Jewish people is not a Zionist then I am entirely right to say that Jewish is not the same as Zionist and you are entirely wrong to object to me doing so. I mean there are around 15 million Jews in the world and you're okay with discounting one quarter of them as irrelevant because it suits your argument to cast criticism of Zionism as anti-Semitic?

But more significantly, I would suggest that to achieve those figures a very broad definition of "Zionist" had been taken. When someone criticizes the state of Israel for killing a couple of thousand Palestinians or blockading them from having concrete to prevent them re-building, I don't think your 75% "Zionists" are going to be in favour of such things. They're probably "Zionist" in so far as not wanting Israel as a State to be eliminated so criticism of such policies is hardly criticism of Jewish people.

Again, the racist attitude is to try and present Jewish and Zionist as synonymous.

Dolph said:
It's kind of like when people claim they are anti islamist, not anti islamic, a salve to pretend, either to yourselves or others, that the position is acceptable.
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On the contrary, I know for a fact that the above does happen as I myself dislike Islam the religion but have muslim friends and haven't acted with prejudice against muslims. Just as I know plenty of atheists who consider the whole idea of religion a disease yet are perfectly civil and tolerant of the religious people they are friends with. I can criticize Islam for the things I see as wrong with it without being a bigot. As can many others here, I'm sure.

Dolph said:
I'm not going to debate this any more, you can't reason people out of an irrational position.
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Whether or not you debate is your choice of course, but don't pretend that I do not support my position logically.
 
Dolph said:
How can a regular columnist for the morning star be anything else?
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Is that your argument in response to the question, then? Corbyn must be "Hard Left" because he writes a column in the Morning Star? Can you tell us, other than where his writings have appeared, what makes him hard left?
 
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I think this is getting out of the park now.

  • Was there an idea floated about in the Third Reich to forcefully move the Jewish population of Europe, possibly removing them from the continent altogether? Yes.
  • What really happened? People were herded into concentration camps, Jew, Eastern European, funny looking, politically opposed, whatever; and when the situation became logistically untenable they were slaughtered.
  • Was it Zionist in origin, or originated by powerful Zionist forces in the Nazi party? No.
  • Was Adolf a Zionist 'before he went mad'? No.
  • Was Ken mincing words about something he clearly has little idea about with the good intention of protecting an MP/tribal ally out of misplaced loyalty? Yes.
  • Is Ken a died-in-the-wool racist/anti-semite? I don't know him personally, or outside professional capacity as an erstwhile mayor of London. But on the basis of evidence as it stands, it would be pretty hard to convict him of anything other than ignorant bigotry, at most.

Both implicated figures have been suspended, and there's now an independent review. For me that draws the line under it.

Corbyn, on the other hand, hard left, soft left or old socialist-out-of-his-depth left, should start making his case firmly in the media, or it will be made for him. It's as simple as that.
 
Its payback time for then loony lefties cry racist to everyone who does not go with their views.

Labour have always been the racist party of choice
 
OldCoals said:
Yet its last leader was Jewish.
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Ah but was he a True Scotstman Jewish Person?

EDIT: Annnnndddd... eatcustard proves my point before I've even finished posting. So the argument is that the anti-Semites will leave him alone because he eats bacon sandwiches? THAT is the basis that Nazis and bigots operate on...? The challenge was that Labour is the party of racists. The valid counterpoint to this was to point out that they had a Jewish leader. You're now contesting that counterpoint on the grounds that bigots go away if you eat bacon? If only we had found this out in the 1930s in Germany! The Nazis would have left the Jews alone for sure.
 
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