Meanwhile in the Labour Party...

[crazy canuck]

Yes, really.  I don't think you realize you are digging yourself into a hole here.

Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people.

let's not forget the core of the issue was less about any anti semitic words or actions in themselves and more that the whole process for reporting and dealing with these allegations was a complete mess.

I mean, you really don't get it, do you?

Dont care about in this context means, could not care less whether someone is Jewish or not and could not care less what is happening with the state of Israel.  the UK has other things to worry about and really why should anyone care whether someone else is Jewish. 

At least if I am reading Tyr right.

This is a theme you see with people in the US concerning black people.  "I'm not racist!  I don't see color!"

I dont think it is the same thing. 

[Eddie Teach]

I think you need more than protestations of innocence to prove guilt.

[Valmy]

Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people. It's just not an issue in the 21st century.

Why not? Why do they not care about Jewish people?

Seems harsh.

[Sheilbh]

Massively disagree that labour is an antisemitic party.
That this whole anti semitism mess is even happening should be proof of that.
Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people. It's just not an issue in the 21st century.
Israel /Palestine isn't even a particularly core issue to most. There's other closer to home things to worry about.

But that doesn't necessarily matter.

There's a part of the left that is obsessional about Israel/Palestine and a lot of them end up basically taking view that are anti-semitic. I think there's a reasonable chance Corbyn is in this group. The Community Support Trust and the Jewish press were reporting their deep concerns at stuff Corbyn was saying and events he was attending etc when he was just a backbencher, and the "Foreign Minister of the Left".

That group can make life really unpleasant for, say, Jewish Labour Party members. The issue is those complaints weren't taken seriously, the investigations into them were politicised and that basically meant the effect for Jewish people was one of discrimination.

I think the ECHR drew a comparison with the number of mechanisms for investigating complaints around sexual harassment and the way rules were introduced in that to avoid politicisation and make it almost quasi-judicial.

To use that comparison if you were saying the left as a whole isn't misogynist and doesn't sexually harass women, but there is a group who do that's probably a fair point (for almost any group in society). So the next stage is what happens if women raise those issues/complain about it. Is there a complaints mechanism? Are those complaints taken seriously? Are they interfered with for political purposes by the leadership? Because even if it's only a minority that are being misogynist and harassing women, if there's no way for women to fairly complain about that and take action then their experience is going to be of a misogynist party/instution.

That point is what institutional racism/misogyny/anti-semitism means in the UK context since the MacPherson report on the Met.

Edit: And similarly, which is Starmer's point, the experience of women making complaints in that example and the leadership or their outrunners saying it's all a smear, it's a factional fight, it's the media hyping things. We know what that is - it's the way Trump deals with allegations of sexual harassment. That whole line of it's a smear/factional fight etc is part of the problem. In this case it's just gaslighting the Jewish community.

[Maladict]

Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people. It's just not an issue in the 21st century.

Why not? Why do they not care about Jewish people?

Seems harsh.

I don't think that's what Tyr means. It's not the "Donald Trump doesn't care about black people" type of not caring.
I think he means he has no strong feelings either way and it's not a topic that comes up much, if at all.
That's how I'm reading it, but I might be mistaken.

[Josquius]

Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people. It's just not an issue in the 21st century.

Why not? Why do they not care about Jewish people?

Seems harsh.

I don't think that's what Tyr means. It's not the "Donald Trump doesn't care about black people" type of not caring.
I think he means he has no strong feelings either way and it's not a topic that comes up much, if at all.
That's how I'm reading it, but I might be mistaken.

Yes.
Basically anti semitism just isn't seen as much of an issue either way by most people. It isn't a common thing to see the right coming up with these days so nobody gets particularly worked up about defending against it, and obviously hating a specific ethnic/religious group is dumb and not in line with standard left wing thinking. Jews in the UK tend to be super integrated and secular (round here being one of the few exceptions) so not many people really think about it.
Which of course will have contributed to a blindness to those who do get really wrapped up in Israel/Palestine matters and make stupid connections.

[Sheilbh]

I slightly disagree - or I'd re-phrase that.

I think you are right that most people don't care about the Jewish community as in they don't think about them really. It's not a major thing.

But I think people do care about anti-semitism. I remember reading from numerous Labour campaigners in 2019 that anti-semitism was coming up on the doorstep in areas with almost no Jewish community at all. So it was clear that people noticed there was a controversy in Labour about anti-semitism, they noticed the Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbi coming out with their comments (which is unprecedented) and I think that mattered. I don't think it's like there's some deep feeling there but I think there is a sense - and it's possibly a legacy of the war - that if Jews are up in arms about someone they're probably a wrong'un. People may not have had deeply developed thoughts on anti-semitism or Corbyn, but they noticed that lots of Jewish groups had problems with Corbyn and that was enough to be a red flag.

I'd also add that I don't think we can say hating a specific ethnic/religious group is not in line with standard left wing thinking when in the 1890s you already have the discourse in the German SPD that anti-semitism the "socialism of fools". I think if you've had almost 150 years of a political tradition having an identified issue with a form of racism you can't say that's alien. That's how long there's been anti-semitism on the left which has been identified as a problem. I think that's why it's actually really important that parties and leaders on the left make sure that they keep firewalls up, they gatekeep etc so that tendence that exists on the left doesn't get a foothold in the mainstream establishment parties.

An example of this was I saw a number of people in the Green Party yesterday talking about the fact that they may get a lot of ex Labour members who have left because Corbyn's been suspended. They were rightly pointing out they need to very carefully vet those applications to make sure they keep the bit of the left that really, really cares about Jews out of their party.

[Josquius]

I was thinking more before this became a talking point there.

Of course this all blew up into a big thing out of nowhere in the run up to the last election. The media endlessly going on about it told lots of normal people it was a serious issue and Labour was a firmly anti semitic party. The party's spectacular failures to handle it and let it build from a small thing into an election loser needs part of the blame of course, but then the anti-semitism complaints aren't the only thing they made a mess of there.

When this was all unfolding the main emotions I saw from the left were bafflement and anger. It was something so far outside of their area of concern that to them it could only be a completely manufactured media stitch up.  Before all this happened Israel had been dropping down the list of talking points for a decade.

The lesson I'd take from this is less one of Labour being especially racist and more a lesson in how Labour needs to drastically improve its complaints handling and learn how to manage the media properly.

[Sheilbh]

But it didn't come out of nowhere. The Community Security Trust and the Jewish press covered Corbyn when he was a backbencher - eg this article from 2012 (following the arrest of a Palestinian preacher who has used the blood libel - literally "we [Muslims] have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children's blood. Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread." and was scheduled to do an event with Corbyn):
https://cst.org.uk/news/blog/2012/05/01/lessons-from-nick-griffin-and-jeremy-corbyn

The Jewish Chronicle and other bits of the Jewish press were reporting about anti-semitism in the Labour Party rising and not being dealt with throughout 2015-17 and in that time there were increasingly vocal complaints from the Jewish Labour Movement, Jewish councillors and Jewish activists. It didn't come out of nowhere after 2017 - it came from that and the key starting point for me was the mural and it was the media discovering that (Corbyn's comments about the mural were covered at the time by the Jewish press). I always thought Corbyn's record would make him unelectable but I expected it to be IRA-sympathising not anti-semitism. But this often happens - there is an issue/perception with a politician that sort of goes into the mainstream media long after some people started covering it.

I get what you're saying about how people on the left perceived it but look at it from the other side. If you're a Jewish Labour you know that Corbyn's got a record of dubious events/comments etc, you face racism, you complain about it and it's not handled properly - you know this is happening to others in your community, you know that the Jewish press is reporting incidents from across the country about this. That bigotry that you're dealing with then gets national attention and your "allies" on the left think it's a smear campaign, a manufactured Tory media stitch-up. It must be really upsetting.

And I don't think the failure in the complaints handling was some inevitability - the ECHR actually says this failure only seemed to happen with complaints about anti-semitism, there were very detailed procedures that were followed for complaints about sexual harassment or other forms of racism. Personally I think the reason it failed and the leader's office was interfering was because the people who were being complained against were allies of the leader and, probably, that if he wasn't leader Corbyn would be receiving complaints like this.

Edit: Also - presenting this without any comment - the editor of the pro-Corbyn alternative media site the Canary on Radio 4 this morning: "a tiny group of obscenely powerful people"  is behind the "witchhunt" against Corbyn.

[Razgovory]

Yes, really.  I don't think you realize you are digging yourself into a hole here.

Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people.

let's not forget the core of the issue was less about any anti semitic words or actions in themselves and more that the whole process for reporting and dealing with these allegations was a complete mess.

I mean, you really don't get it, do you?

Dont care about in this context means, could not care less whether someone is Jewish or not and could not care less what is happening with the state of Israel.  the UK has other things to worry about and really why should anyone care whether someone else is Jewish. 

At least if I am reading Tyr right.

This is a theme you see with people in the US concerning black people.  "I'm not racist!  I don't see color!"

I dont think it is the same thing.

Please tell me how it is different.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I get where Tyr is coming from and understand sort of the political desire to not want to address or feel like you have to address it. To me it bears a lot of similarities to the Ilhan Omar stuff where she has said a number of things in her advocacy for ending Israeli occupation of Palestine, that have crossed over into anti-semitism. To be really generous to her, I'll simply note that in the U.S. we have a small number of left wing people who look at Israel as the modern day South Africa and really want to raise the issue of the U.S. putting political pressure on Israel to end settlements and occupation of Palestine. I do not have an issue per se with the existence of this movement, albeit I disagree with them on a number of key points. But take that baseline acceptable political position, and the unfortunate reality is a lot of people who hold these views, oddly seem to be "fellow travelers" with people who have outright anti-semitic views. Moreover, sometimes these people themselves repeat things said by those fellow travelers that are clearly anti-semitic. I think some of the people involve are actually anti-semitic. I have tried to give Ilhan Omar benefit of the doubt that she doesn't actually hate Jews, but the circle of people she is exposed to contains people who say anti-semitic things enough that she doesn't feel it is politically bad to just repeat them.

When you're a congresswoman that is problematic.

But I will say that when Omar made her first controversial comments, the infamous "It's all about the Benjamins baby" tweet, the Democratic House Leadership formally condemned her remarks the next day. Ilhan herself then apologized, and said she was educating herself on things that could be considered anti-Semitic tropes, and said she was unequivocally opposed to bigotry of all forms which specifically includes anti-Semitism.

I remember a lot of people on the left kinda having this opinion of "it's annoying we have to address this, it's a minor violation, the GOP is far worse, this is being into more than it is by Fox News etc etc", and I get it. But the reality is she was propagating a common anti-semitic trope, and it needed to be addressed. I think the fact it was forcefully addressed by leadership and she formally apologized within a day, was important.

She later made additional comments about how she did not think a person in congress should feel allegiance to foreign countries due to lobbying groups that advocate their interest. This caused a second round of uproar that was more divisive for the party because her comments were more textually neutral. While some senior Democrats condemned her statements, some senior Democrats (including Sanders) defended her this time around. Pelosi ended up passing a kind of fluff resolution condemning bigotry in the House in response. So to me it's still a bit up in the air Omar could be anti-Semitic, she could just be not very critically evaluating the sort of things she repeats from fellow travelers, but her most egregious stepping out of line I think was handled appropriately by the party and by her.

The perception I have of Corbyn is he's had a long history of incidents more serious than this and for which he has been much more resistant to unequivocally correcting with a mea culpa. I think there's some shared personality traits between Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in that both are radicals who get really stubborn when they feel they are being required to "politick" in a way they think is stupid. A big example for Bernie was how people kept pushing him to specifically speak to black American issues in 2016, Bernie didn't like that. I think Bernie is genuinely very progressive on racial issues, but he deeply believes his leftist economic reforms are the first, second and third best ways to address racial inequality. He deeply hates using time in speeches or public appearances speaking about things that he thinks just "placate" people, when he really wants to focus on his core issues. I think this refusal to sort of go through the typical Democratic politician hoops in the primary with the black community hurt him badly. I think it's telling he did much better at that stuff in 2020--he realized to challenge for the nomination he had to do some of these things. My perception of Corbyn is that he is even less willing than Bernie to make those sort of compromises, so in that there is some possibility maybe Corbyn isn't anti-semitic, this stubbornness makes it impossible for him to clearly enunciate it. At the end of the day though, some of Corbyn's dips into anti-semitism would make him broadly disqualifying as a political candidate in America (particularly because of how powerful our Jewish community is in the Democratic party, and for Republicans support of Israel is becoming so sacrosanct), and he might actually just be an anti-semite. It's also possible he's someone who has said and done a number of stupid things on the issue and he's just too stubborn to clean it up.

[Maladict]

But take that baseline acceptable political position, and the unfortunate reality is a lot of people who hold these views, oddly seem to be "fellow travelers" with people who have outright anti-semitic views.

Moreover, sometimes these people themselves repeat things said by those fellow travelers that are clearly anti-semitic. I think some of the people involve are actually anti-semitic. I have tried to give Ilhan Omar benefit of the doubt that she doesn't actually hate Jews, but the circle of people she is exposed to contains people who say anti-semitic things enough that she doesn't feel it is politically bad to just repeat them.

When you're a congresswoman that is problematic.

I would say the first part is unfortunate but unavoidable and should not reflect badly on that person. But this person, especially if holding public office, should make it very clear they do not wish to associate in any way with these fellow travelers.

[Sheilbh]

I also think there are different ways of responding to this - and I think Ilhan Omar might fall into that category, I don't know.

There's a really good UK example in Naz Shah who before she became an MP posted some things that were anti-semitic. These came out after her election - she was suspended and condemned by Corbyn (crucially she was not very close to or an ally of Corbyn). She apologised properly and educated herself, including training with Jewish groups, to realise how what she had said was anti-semitic even if she isn't. And she's now an MP with a very good relationship with her local Jewish community who campaigns against Islamophobia and anti-semitism.

One of the really heartening things about this whole disgrace is that the Jewish and Muslim communities have supported each other. So the leading anti-Islamophobia charity in the UK has backed statements by the Board of Deputies etc about anti-semitism in politics, and vice versa.

[crazy canuck]

Yes, really.  I don't think you realize you are digging yourself into a hole here.

Most people on the left in my experience don't care about Jewish people.

let's not forget the core of the issue was less about any anti semitic words or actions in themselves and more that the whole process for reporting and dealing with these allegations was a complete mess.

I mean, you really don't get it, do you?

Dont care about in this context means, could not care less whether someone is Jewish or not and could not care less what is happening with the state of Israel.  the UK has other things to worry about and really why should anyone care whether someone else is Jewish. 

At least if I am reading Tyr right.

This is a theme you see with people in the US concerning black people.  "I'm not racist!  I don't see color!"

I dont think it is the same thing.

Please tell me how it is different.

He is not claiming he does not see them, he is claiming he does not care.

[fromtia]

So, coming at this in good faith is there some evidence somewhere of Corbyn and McDonell singing "throw the Jew Down the Well" or perhaps some hacked emails discussing zionist conspiracies or any of that kind of stuff. I've no doubt that there is, there's a huge amount of discussion being generated on lefty anti semitism in Labour ,so there must be and the fact that the damning evidence isn't at my fingertips is more of a testament to me not following the story closely enough.Comrade Corbyn keeps denying that he's an anti semite. That's largely irrelevant though because you can wave your hands like this....

There's a part of the left that is obsessional about Israel/Palestine and a lot of them end up basically taking view that are anti-semitic. I think there's a reasonable chance Corbyn is in this group.

and he's an anti semite.

He may very well be , anecdotally I've come across British people who say really bizarre anti semitic things casually that are absolutely jarring after living in the US for 24 years where anti semitism is a super fringe goose stepper past time.

I haven't read the report , only seen snippets posted here and there, but presumably if I take the time to dig into it, I'll find it pretty damning? Again, I'm just trying to make sense of this.