Warrington Wolves • Re: Coronavirus

Bernie Sanders does all that, and sure he gets a few 'anti semite' labels thrown at him from Fox news and various Republican figures, but the wider Jewish community in the US and within the Democrat party doesn't think he is a problem. Whereas with Corbyn many of the complaints came from the Jewish community within the Labour party and its supporters, which is a signal of a problem not a stitch up.

I don't think Corbyn himself dislikes people for being Jewish, but he turns a blind eye to it in his party. One of the central tenets of the hard left is 'solidarity' but in the Labour hard left this translates in to solidarity with political allies even when they do things which are wrong. There's a crank element of the left that is into the same online conspiracies about Rothschilds, Zionists, control of the media and banking system that the alt right are in to. These are historic racist tropes which were used by Nazis so the Jewish community is sensitive to them especially when they are being accepted and propagated by people standing for public office. A lot of the cases of antisemitism in the party involved Labour prospective candidates particularly at council elections. Most of the time these were people involved with the Stop the War or Friends of Palestine movements and they are understandably angry at human rights abuses carried out by the IDF and this makes them buy in to theories of a global cover up of Western countries supporting Israel because they are under the thumb of the Jewish media/financiers which is why they indulge in the antisemitic tropes. Corbyn has been marching with these groups for decades so his instinct is to show solidarity to them which is why he hasn't really been bothered to tackle the issues. A lot of Jewish people on the left are concerned about Netanyahu and the policies of the Israeli state but when they have family history of the Holocaust they are going to be upset and afraid at this attitude being allowed to spread within the Labour movement.

I think the reason why Corbyn and his cabal don't take it that seriously is because they take the view that when the IDF are carrying out atrocities against children in Gaza, peoples priorities are wrong if they get worked up about someone's history of spreading antisemitic tropes on facebook. But that is the same argument that the EDL / right wing Islamophobes use when they say "but terrorism/child grooming gangs" etc. The Corbynites would see that as racist but not when its a trope about Israel controlling the world.

I know there was always a media agenda against Corbyn - they said he was a Czech spy, moaned about him not singing the national anthem or bowing deeply enough at the Cenotaph - its par for the course from the right wing media against a Labour leader. But when long standing Labour party members and supporters were raising concerns about antisemitism for about 3 years he should have recognised that something was seriously wrong and this wasn't just something fabricated by the right wing media to throw mud at him and he should have got to grips with it.

Starmer, because he doesn't have the factional background and comes from a background as a barrister and public prosecutor, will take measures to sort things out, and there will be a lot of announcements from people in the crank left that Starmer is in the pay of Israel and they are going to tear up their membership card, they will leave, Labour's membership numbers will plummet, but that will remove the problem.

Statistics: Posted by sally cinnamon — Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:40 pm

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