Keir Starmer
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Isn't Alexei Sayle Jewish?
edit: born Jewish but raised secular
Was my fave comic as a kid
edit: born Jewish but raised secular
Was my fave comic as a kid
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subvert47
I don't fight, I run away
yes, but not the right kind
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
So is Gilad Atzmon.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
The point being that you can be Jewish and be an antisemite (to a quite insanely violent degree, in Atzmon's case).
Not saying Sayle himself is a self-hating Jew, obviously. But Dan's point is clearly correct: it's fallacious for non-Jewish Corbynites to say "These Jews are right because they are Jewish" while ignoring the vast majority of Jews who disagree.
Exactly. The stat I remember is 80 or 85% who thought him anti-Semitic.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well without wishing to say one side is right and one side is wrong, the asymmetry in the numbers is startling, as Dan points out.
john eden
male pale and stale
Well the numbers game is interesting certainly. The vast majority of people in this country think the cops are great, for example. And the royal family.
And there was a clear majority support for Trump and Brexit.
So many of us find ourselves in minority positions from time to time but that doesn’t necessarily make those positions objectively wrong.
The Jewish socialist / anarchist / communist movement was relatively large until I’d say the 1980s or so. Part of the shift rightwards in the UK was because of support for Israel (which again in very large amongst British Jewry - numbers again) and partly this was because of the gradual increase in economic prosperity amongst many Jews in this period who became increasingly middle class as far as I can tell.
So there was a time where Alexei Sayle and Michael Rosen were an entirely normal feature of British life. But now they are seen as outliers and get lots of shit from both Jewish and non-Jewish people on social media.
Obviously I don’t support everything they have ever said and this is especially complicated when it comes to the shitstorm of Corbyn and everything which he has supposedly done or has been done by his supporters. I have no idea what Sayle had said about this recently for example.
But I do find it alarming that internationalist Socialist Jews in this country who express broad support for the mild social democracy of Jeremy Corbyn and solidarity with the Palestinian people are marginalised and effectively accused of being anti-semites. Or “the wrong kind of Jew” as the saying goes.
And there was a clear majority support for Trump and Brexit.
So many of us find ourselves in minority positions from time to time but that doesn’t necessarily make those positions objectively wrong.
The Jewish socialist / anarchist / communist movement was relatively large until I’d say the 1980s or so. Part of the shift rightwards in the UK was because of support for Israel (which again in very large amongst British Jewry - numbers again) and partly this was because of the gradual increase in economic prosperity amongst many Jews in this period who became increasingly middle class as far as I can tell.
So there was a time where Alexei Sayle and Michael Rosen were an entirely normal feature of British life. But now they are seen as outliers and get lots of shit from both Jewish and non-Jewish people on social media.
Obviously I don’t support everything they have ever said and this is especially complicated when it comes to the shitstorm of Corbyn and everything which he has supposedly done or has been done by his supporters. I have no idea what Sayle had said about this recently for example.
But I do find it alarming that internationalist Socialist Jews in this country who express broad support for the mild social democracy of Jeremy Corbyn and solidarity with the Palestinian people are marginalised and effectively accused of being anti-semites. Or “the wrong kind of Jew” as the saying goes.
john eden
male pale and stale
I don’t think bringing up Atzmon or Nazi-enablers like publisher Adam Parfrey or the businessman whose name I forget who helped out with Blood & Honour’s shop is especially helpful as they are clearly one-off careerist dirtbags if the type you get in any religion or ethnicity. I’m sure there are serial killers who happened to be Jewish too
They are not part of a social movement they are simply weirdo chancers who revel in their anti-social profile.
But you can fit Sayle and Rosen in the tradition of organisations like the Arbeiter Fraynd, 43 Group, Searchlight, Jewdas etc (each of which has its own positions on things like Israel, the Labour Party etc, to be clear).
They are not part of a social movement they are simply weirdo chancers who revel in their anti-social profile.
But you can fit Sayle and Rosen in the tradition of organisations like the Arbeiter Fraynd, 43 Group, Searchlight, Jewdas etc (each of which has its own positions on things like Israel, the Labour Party etc, to be clear).
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
What, the Donald Trump who lost the popular vote to Hilary Clinton by nearly three million votes? That Trump?
And Brexit won by a narrow margin out of people who voted, which was by no means the whole country. A margin that fairly rapidly disappeared, according to nearly every opinion poll conducted since then.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yes, Atzmon is one individual. But Neturei Karta actually is a social movement, albeit not a huge one.
The point was only to show that "so-and-so can't be an anti-Semite, they're Jewish!" is a fallacious argument.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This is a tricky discussion because "support for Israel" is a very vague phrase. As I understand it, most British Jews are Zionists in the soft sense that they support Israel's right to exist, but there's a big difference between that and unconditionally supporting everything the Israeli government does, or cheering on the illegal land grabs and massacres of Palestinian civilians.
And as recently as the 2010 general election, Jewish voters were slightly more likely to vote Labour, and slightly less likely to vote Conservative, than the general population.
Anyway, this all belongs in the anti-Semitism thread as it doesn't have much to do with Sir KeithKevinKuthbert.
john eden
male pale and stale
I knew you’d pick at the Brexit and Trump stuff. It’s like catnip for liberals.
I am glad we agree that throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries the broad trend amongst Jewish voters in the UK has been increasingly right wing.
I am unclear whether you think that this somehow automatically delegitimises people who have not followed that path but perhaps that is a job for another day.
I am glad we agree that throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries the broad trend amongst Jewish voters in the UK has been increasingly right wing.
I am unclear whether you think that this somehow automatically delegitimises people who have not followed that path but perhaps that is a job for another day.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
lol, those liberals, eh? What are they like?!?!
Fact is there was never anything like majority support for Trump, so I don't know why you said something so obviously incorrect. You might as well say the earth is flat and then congratulate yourself for "triggering globetards".
Two points worth mentioning here:
First, this is getting dangerously close to Ken Livingstone, "Of course Jews vote Tory, they're all rich and mean" territory.
Second, surely you of all people appreciate that there's more to being left-wing or right-wing than which of two main parliamentary parties one votes for every few years? And that it's possible to be politically progressive without thinking the sun shines out of Jeremy Corbyn's arse? I'm not trying to "delegitimise" Jews who support Corbyn. It would be great if more Jews in a country like the UK, which has some sort of relationship with Israel, were outspoken about opposing the state's violence and supporting Palestinian rights. Campaigning against British arms sales to Israel would certainly be a start.
But it's fucked up to make supporting a man who once described Hamas as his friends a condition for not assuming, by default, that British Jews are evil Zionist Tory scumbags who all live in mansions in North London and laugh when they hear about kids in Gaza getting killed by airstrikes.