The antisemitism slur on Corbyn and his supporters is an attempt to kill the British Left

It's irrelevant that the link is to RT.  Nothing in the interview is about Russia or Putin and the point is the uncensored, independent words of Gabor Maté one of the great thinkers of our age.  

It's absurd to keep claiming that Labour has a major issue with antisemitism, and that any such issue is heavily concentrated among Corbyn's supporters-in Left and "center-left" parties, it's always the right wing of the party where those who don't care about bigotry live-when people like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, the legendary songwriter Leon Rosselson, the dozens of British Jewish public figures who signed the letter defending and supporting Corbyn that the Guardian refused to publish, and Gabor Maté, among many, many others-point out that this is delusional nonesense.

As even you would have to admit, it's essentially never antisemitic to point out that what the Israeli government does to Palestinians is an indefensible injustice-and not only indefensible, but unnecessary, since the survival of Israel as a country does not in the least depend on the siege of Gaza, the revived West Bank military occupation, the home demolitions, or the illegal settlements in the West Bank.

And I have no issue with critique of Corbyn.  What I do object to, and what I think everyone who wants the Labour Party to actually disagree with the Tories objects to(the anti-Corbynites in the PLP, none of whom are socialists or even "social democrats", don't want Labour to disagree with the Tories, and still being proausterity, pro-war and anti-taxing the rich, are incapable of caring about the working and kept-from-working-by-capitalism poor) is four years, four unrelenting years, of a hate and lie campaign against Labour's twice-elected leader, a campaign in which some still argue that one meaningless "no-confidence motion" against the leader by the PLP, a group which includes essentially the last 187 people in the whole of the UK who still want Labour to lower itself to the Third Way again, matters more than the landslide margins by which that leader won and re-won the leadership.

Had those campaigns not continued without let-up for the last four years, had those who have devoted virtually every waking moment to trying to bring Corbyn down and restore the totally discredited right wing to leadership of the party, had they even accepted that the leadership question was settled in 2017 and that there was no reason to invent the People's Vote crusade to force Corbyn to split the party and forever write off the North and Northeast of England by putting the pointless fight to reverse Brexit ahead of all other issues, the polls which, even in spite of the vendetta, have had Labour in the lead on many occasions prove that, if the PLP had accepted Corbyn as leader and got wholeheartedly behind him, rather than the right wing carrying on an endless campaign to force him out which could only guarantee that he'd be replaced by a leader nobody would accept as legitimate, Labour would have had a solid and consistent lead in the polls on a consistent basis since 2017 and the election of an actual Labour government-and it would ONLY be an actual Labour government if it offered a total break with the unnecessary abandonment of principle Kinnock and Blair imposed-would be a certainty.

Corbyn has done nothing to deserve four years of disloyalty and hatred.  Those in the PLP who have done what they've done have proved, repeatedly, that they don't care about the party and they don't care about the people Labour is SUPPOSED to care about-the working and kept-from-working poor, those on benefits, those looking for a party that will stand against war and injustice-which must both be opposed now since it's not possible to effectively work against injustice anymore and to still defend the idea of war-and, in general, everyone left out in the cold by the Tories.  Instead of that, the "moderates" in the PLP care more about what CEO's and CFO's want, have no compassion for the poor, still don't get it that the Iraq War was a pointless waste of resources and life which made nothing better in Iraq for anyone but American oil companies, and treat those who are struggling under Blairism-Thatcherism as though their situation is their own fault.

The New Statesman and The Guardian, in their vendetta against Corbyn, a vendetta in which they've never even been able to suggest anybody who'd do better as leader and in which they passionately oppose John McDonnell, the only person who actually might, have proven that they aren't in any real sense in disagreement with the Tories at all-if they were, they wouldn't keep sabotaging Labour's chances by continuing to attack the leader they've known all along would likely still be in place when the snap election is held.

They aren't operating in good faith.  They are vilifying a good person, and nothing ever justifies that.  And they haven't even pushed for the one thing that would make more difference than any other-Open Selection for all Labour candidates, including sitting MP, at every general election.  

Why should Labour MPs who act as saboteurs, and who haven't in most cases held any actual Labour values for decades if they ever did hold them, be guaranteed automatic re-selection as long as they simply happen to hold the seat?

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

The New Statesman and The Guardian, in their vendetta against Corbyn, a vendetta in which they've never even been able to suggest anybody who'd do better as leader and in which they passionately oppose John McDonnell, the only person who actually might, have proven that they aren't in any real sense in disagreement with the Tories at all-if they were, they wouldn't keep sabotaging Labour's chances by continuing to attack the leader they've known all along would likely still be in place when the snap election is held.

They aren't operating in good faith.  They are vilifying a good person, and nothing ever justifies that.  And they haven't even pushed for the one thing that would make more difference than any other-Open Selection for all Labour candidates, including sitting MP, at every general election.  

Why should Labour MPs who act as saboteurs, and who haven't in most cases held any actual Labour values for decades if they ever did hold them, be guaranteed automatic re-selection as long as they simply happen to hold the seat?

This reminded me of something I read a few years ago, by Jon Schwarz, now of The Intercept, but a mere blogger back in 2007, when he formulated his Iron Law of Institutions.

Jon Schwarz wrote:

The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.

Thanks for that.  This is a classic example of the Iron Law in play.

A new song-he says it may be one of the last he will write, being in his mid 80s-by Leon Rosselson, which eloquently rejects the "anti-Zionism=Antisemitism" canard:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym0Ef_a3O4w&feature=youtu.be

nicky wrote:

H7I have listened carefully to the Mate interview. 

He disputes that Corbyn is an anti-Semite simply because he opposes Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. I certainly don’t take issue with that.

The broader issue for Labour is that many of Corbyn’s supporters have been attacking Jews personally and as a people  for reasons unrelated to Palestine and that Corbyn, and, more especially some of his inner circle, have looked the other way or even covered it up.

This crucial distinction is at the heart of Labour’s anti-Semitism question. It is irresponsible to claim falsely that the whistleblowers and other complainers favour the oppression of Palestinians.

It simply isn't the case that "MANY of Corbyn's supporters have been attacking Jews personally and as a people  for reasons unrelated to Palestine and that Corbyn, and, more especially some of his inner circle, have looked the other way or even covered it up".  In some cases, a TINY number of people who were identified as "Corbyn supporters" by the anti-Corbyn media got into verbal confrontations with Corbyn opponents who simply happened to be Jewish-it's not clear that all or any of those "Corbyn supporters" had anything to do with Corbyn at all, or were anything at all but provocateurs paid to make Corbyn and his supporters look bad-and when actual Corbyn supporters have confronted people who happened to be Jewish, it was never over those people BEING Jewish, it was because those people, as individuals, were colluding with the rest of the Labour Right to try and force Corbyn out and then make sure only moderates(i.e. Tories-with-red-ties) would be on the ballot to replace him.  

The fightback was about the right-wing agenda-not the identity of those WITH the right-wing agenda.

The only reason anyone has said anything negative about Margaret Hodge, for example, is that she has spent the last four years doing all she could to force Corbyn out and to make sure he was replaced by a right-winger.  That's why she staged the bogus "no-confidence" vote, that's why she ambushed Corbyn with her false accusations in public view in the House of Commons, and that's why she made 180 false accusations of antisemitism against Corbyn supportes.  Hodge would have received the exact same response if she'd been Anglican or Druid or a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  

Same with Luciana Berger.  No Corbyn supporter was antisemitic towards her, and no Labour member or supporter of any stripe was antisemitic towards her-the Metropolitan Police, a famously not-at-all-Corbynite organization, determined that every hate message she received in her emails-all of which were from 2012, years before Corbyn became leader-were from far right groups, as is to be expected, since in the UK almost all the antisemites are far-right and neofascist types.

Even if we assume that every accusation of antisemitism made by a Corbyn opponent was valid-as I pointed out, only 20 out of the 200 accusations of antisemitism made by the sectarian Blairite MP Margaret Hodge were found to be true, and Hodge's 200 accusations made up almost about 30% of the total accusations of antisemitism made towards Labour members and supporters of any stripe at all-there were only about 685 accusations made altogether-in a party in which about 600,000 people are members and tens of thousands more are "supporters".    That's more than there should be-and Corbyn has been vigourously addressing any and all such allegations, as a committed lifetime opponent of antisemitism automatically would.

Corbyn was also fine with accepting every part of the IHRA guidelines other than the "examples" which were added for the sole purpose of restricting what people could say about the Israeli government, and it was that perfectly legitimate refusal to suppress legitimate and honorable critique of the oppression of a people which started the "Corbyn doesn't care about antisemitism" canard.   

Why should we assume that, in a situation where Corbyn's opponents within the party are trying to both expel almost all of his supporters for a vice-hatred of Jews-essentially none of them possess, and anathemize Corbyn himself for a flaw-indifference to antisemitis-he has never at any point been guilty of-why should these "accusations" against Corbyn's supporters be taken at face value?  Most of those making the allegations-and there are probably far more such accusations being made by gentile Blairites than by people who are Jewish-are not acting out of sincere concern-they want Corbyn out for committing truth about the Israel/Palestine situation, and those who are sitting Labour MPs who are making them want him out of the leadership make sure that they don't have to start actually listening to the constituency parties that keep them elected OR have to actually ask those constituency parties to renominate them at the next election after they've spent the last four years sabotaging the leaders the constituency parties have begged them to stop sabotaging.

And I'll ask you again why SHOULD Corbyn have had to make it impossible for Labour members and supporters to address the injustices Zionism has visited upon Palestinians just to prove that he's opposed to bigotry against Jews?  Why should what people might say about the Israeli government or about Zionism as a movement and as a now permanently right-wing and bigoted ideology be connected, in any way at all, with the question of whether or not the people making those comments should be considered to be bigots?  Israel is not "The Jews".  Zionism is not "The Jews".  The Siege of Gaza, the West Bank Occupation, the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the ethnic cleansing project in East Jerusalem are not "The Jews".  Anyone who claims otherwise is...well...using "antisemitic tropes".  And believe me, if you stay in that discussion long enough, you end up learning the tropes.

And nobody was a true "whistleblower" on the antisemitism issue.  It turned out, as I mentioned above, that every former Labour staffer who had signed a non-disclosure agreement about what they'd done in their jobs had signed those NDA's because Iain MacNicol, the anti-Corbyn reactionary who served as Labour general secretary until recently, had been the one having them sign those agreements.  Corbyn and his allies never asked anyone to sign an NDA and it is likely they didn't even KNOW that the NDA's existed.  And it goes without saying that Corbyn and Co. won't punish anyone for violating an NDA that Corbyn had nothing to do with and would never have asked anyone to sign.

There is simply nothing there.

Getting into an argument with someone who happens to be Jewish over who should lead the Labour Party is not antisemitic.   The fact that someone who happens to be Jewish is working in an aggressive effort to thwart the will of the majority of the party as expressed in the leadership votes does not mean that that identity exempts that person from critique or response.

And if you've not noticed, virtually every link I've posted in this thread of someone denouncing the antisemitism slur campaign against Corbyn was of someone who identifies as Jewish saying that the slur is nonsense.  

There's simply nothing there, nicky. 

If you don't like the guy, fine.

But he's not guilty of this offense and neither are his supporters.

And no accusation that's been made justifies what Tom Watson wants...a policy of autoexpulsion of anybody who is ACCUSED of antisemitism.  There is one reason that Watson wants that policy and one reason alone-he wants to use it to purge the party membership rolls of Corbyn supporters altogether.  

Once that policy was adopted, there would instantly be the fabrication of thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of clearly bogus false accusations, with the fabrication of spurious "evidence" to support them.

Why even consider putting the mechanism for a scenario like that in place?

And if it's not about silencing debate on Israel/Palestine and providing cover for the continuing oppression Netanyahu is inflicting on ordinary Palestinians,, why insist on theadoption of the IHRA "examples" at all?  

nicky wrote:

kropotkin1951 replies:

nicky wrote:

 

Ken, your latest post is a link to RT. 

Do you think that Putin’s tame network is more reliable that the Guardian, the New Statesman, Labourlist or the other publications you have deprecate whenever they breathe a word of criticism of  Corbyn?

yup

good to knowwhere you’re coming from Prince

I'm coming from my own mind and from nowhere else.  And it's exceedingly uninformed of you to imply that I'm a tool of Putin when I've made many passionately anti-Putin posts on this very board.  A link is not anathema simply because it's from RT-there was nothing in the discussion that had anything to do with Russia OR which had anything to do with Russian interests.  It was simply a link.  

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/jeremy-corbyn-is-the-most-smea...