Ludicrous racism charges

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Some great stuff on Radio London today.

One caller ludidly dismantling the logic of the witch-hunters.... saying Ken was only pointing to the dangers of disclaiming responsibility for yr actions... and that she, as a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, had been told by her mother about how journalists lying about Jews had been crucial in paving the way towards the genocide... AND that the current journalistic discourse surrounding refugees is disturbingly similar to that surrounding Jews in Germany in the 30s.... AND that it is shameful of FINEGOLD for exploiting the Holocaust to make a name for himself....

Another saying a hack is a hack is a hack.. that the idea that Finegold was really shaken and had to have his nose wiped after Ken's 'jibe' is plainly laughable... Finegold is a hack, and a hack's job is to stir people up to get a reaction out of them... which he did... so come on, far from being offended, Finegold, with his hack heart of stone, must have been DELIGHTED by Ken's 'outburst'....
 

luka

Well-known member
if you read the transcript it features finegold going
'great, i've got that on tape, thanks ken'
or something along those lines
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Quite. That's obvious. So given that he wasn't offended what is all this about then?

Aahh, the big Other might not like it... I see...

(Notice btw that the ES now talks about 'perceived anti-semitism' - perceived by whom?

well, the big O of course...
 
B

be.jazz

Guest
The French parallel at the moment is Dieudonné, a black comedian. A year or so ago he did this really weird (and, IMO, unoffensive but also unfunny) sketch on live TV, aimed at Djamel, a very popular young comedian of North African descent. It involved a weird mixture of (neo-)Nazism, anti-Israelism and maybe some other things. Since then, he's been embroiled in court cases and controversy, but since he's both a big black guy who doesn't give a fuck and an opportunist, he's been playing with the situation and inviting more "outrage."

Just a couple of days ago at a press conference he cited an Israeli writer who called the Shoah "memorial pornography." I still haven't been able to get more context than that, since articles so far about it have been "Dieudonné said this" and then several paragraphs about the outraged parties. I don't even know what "memorial pornography" means. He did also claim that an French Jewish organisation the Prime Minister recently attended a dinner for was scheming and plotting against the Republic, an unfortunate thing to say, I think.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Well, seems like Ken is to be investigated by some ombudsman. Let's hope they shop at the same whitewash store as Lord Hutton.

Not that there is anything to cover up in Ken's case. Unlike in Toneeeeeee's....
 

kooky

Banned
it was the Jews that highlighted the racist reference to the Jews. I've got it now K Punk - I can see where you're coming from. You're so cool.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Keep on reading the Daily Mail and having your views programmed by their witch-hunting stupidity, Kooky.

As for anyone with intelligence, I'm sure you'll all join in me in applauding the stance Ken took against journalistic hyenadom today.
 

henrymiller

Well-known member
no dice, i'm intelligent and ken is still a dick. you're right that finegold and the mail are exploiting this and that they're being hypocritical and all that stuff. BUT even without turning the holocaust into a one-off event ect ect, saying that 'working as a cub reporter on a right-wing paper currently owned by the daily mail (northcliffe also once owned the mirror, so retrospectively... the mirror is fascist!!) is like being a concentration camp guard is dickish. this is all out of proportion and OBVIOUSLY the clarke enabling act is more significant.

but ken is a member of labour. and labour is campaigning on an anti-asylum ticket. and locking up people without trial (indeed on the say-so of mi5 and charles clarke, not even a judge, let alone a jury). so he can dismount from his high anti-fascist horse.
 

kooky

Banned
I wasn't accusing Ken of anti semitism, I was accusing you of anti semitism K Punk. I was talking about your defence of the campbell adverts.
 

mms

sometimes
kooky said:
I wasn't accusing Ken of anti semitism, I was accusing you of anti semitism K Punk. I was talking about your defence of the campbell adverts.

i don't think he's defended them just said they aren't anti semetic. Which is plausable in the same way that 1 plus one does not make three, even if one has good pr.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
kooky said:
I wasn't accusing Ken of anti semitism, I was accusing you of anti semitism K Punk. I was talking about your defence of the campbell adverts.

Right, well, if you write in smug one-liners, you can hardly complain if people are confused about what are you saying.

Perhaps now you could offer a reason for your claim, fascinating though it is to hear about your interior states.

In any case, what I was saying about the Daily Mail agenda applies equally in the case of those adverts too, since that 'story' was cooked up by the Standard as well.

All I can do is reiterate what I've said above: if people really think that a few posters (which MIGHT at a stretch be regarded as CONCEIVABLY giving offence to some members of an ethnic group) are the most pressing concerns when it comes to racism in this country, I really do give up. If you can't see that it is a smokescreen put up to distract attention from a climate in which the most appalling things can be promised and promised ('health screening for all immigrants outside EU' etc), from, that is to say, the most openly racist (pre)election campaign in a quarter of a century, then please, carry on being outraged.
 

Jesse D Serrins

Well-known member
henrymiller said:
no dice, i'm intelligent and ken is still a dick.

I think this is really more to the point. I read some article by some ex-high level US Army dude (intelligence, maybe? really sorry for my lack of specifics, it was a while ago) and the dude was making an argument for aligning with Saddam against the US and rampant capitalism. Um, sorry, but there's no way I'm gonna play that hand.
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
a few things:

a) when the story broke there was nothing as far as i I recall on what Ken actually
said on the front page of the ES. You had to look for the transcript on page three or
four. Many will just read the headline (in "war type")+main piece and leave it at that.
As I was reading the piece I was looking for the "what did he actually say" all the way through.

b) Giles Coren summed it up in The Times in Saturday

Leaving aside the fact that the guy was Jewish, which is irrelevant to the case (because the last thing Jews need is
people suggesting they should be talked to differently from other people), all Mr Livingstone did was use a random
hyperbolic comparison to define a specific evil. As we all do, every day.

We do it when we describe traffic as “murderous”, or a computer breakdown as a “nightmare” or a three-year-old
boy as a “little devil”. We don’t mean he has horns and a tail and spends his days immolating sinners in brimstone,
anymore than a parking attendant needs a small moustache and a swastika for us to call him “a little Hitler”. It is
hyperbole. It is a rhetorical device.

That the Editor of the Evening Standard should use the power of the media to exploit Jewish sensitivities in an
attempt to kill off a man with whose politics she disagrees makes her, if you will pardon the obvious hyperbole,
a worthy inheritor of the tradition of Josef Goebbels.

c) The ES last night had some daft research going on showing how Ken might lose the election in London
if Ken stays in charge. I doubt it - not because I know the complete demographics of London, but just
because Londoners in general is quite a cynical lot and hopefully able to see through the ES's smear
campaign ( not the first time - remember that "falling down the stairs" story the ES ran
with for ages on Ken http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/06/30/story692483628.asp)

d) there was some online vote (not that you can trust them anyway) in the Guardian yesterday (probably
still there). 75% or so of the responders voted for Ken to NOT apologise.

e) I don't have the language skills or the time for an article on it - but there's a massive trend now
(think the siamese twins Clarke/Blunkett, art, Gay, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, abortion "issues") where you can't say
_anything_ or being slightly controversial without being accused of being offensive to someone.

Big-Ron's comments were racist, Ken's were not. The whole story is a non-issue. It's all about abuse
of power. Last time it was Campbell/Blair slinging mud against the BBC, this time it's the ES (AP)
using square meters of coverage on "Ken's nazi-jibe".

ES also has Andrew Gilligan on their payroll
(possibly as a freelance, the journalist who went live on the Beeb with the "sex-upped" claims on WMOD)
- I have been looking for a piece by him on this whole mess in the ES (or elsewhere).
That could be an interesting read.
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
I spotted (over somone's shoulder, natch - I don't pay for the damn rag) that Ken was now saying that he'd have said the same thing if the reporter had been gay... so naturally cue Peter Tatchell jumping on the PC bandwagon to claim that Ken has offended all Jews, gays and the disabled*. I mean, when does this stop? Big Ron obviously was wrong in his Desailly remark, but he apologised unreservedly, and quit his job immediately. Good. But that should have been the end of it - but in some quarters he was condemned as a persistent racist because he knew what the word 'nigger' meant! (So, one has to ask, how do those doing the condemning know that it was wrong...) Now, when that sort of argument (and the nonsense surrounding Livingstone) is the level of debate on race and racism in this country we have reached a very sorry place.

*Of course, it would be just cynical to suggest that Tatchell has left two of the major ethnic groups murdered by the Nazis - Romanys and East European Slavs - because they're not trendy enough as causes...
 

henrymiller

Well-known member
god, this will have to be the last thing i post, since it's been two weeks here of me saying 'comparing people with concentration camp guards is out of line'.
if people don't want to think that, fine: well done ken to standing up to the mail... and sucking up to the express. i'm glad we all have such high standards for our politicians. good thread.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Ness has said it all --- great post. Nothing could be clearer now than that PC, the 'politics of difference', respect for the Other etc. are the values the master class uses to maintain its dominance.

I'm also with everything the Rambler says --- there's a contemporary pathology of pious offended outrage of which Tatchell is the grim, pinched face.

The irony of all this is that, if Ken's original comments to that despicable hack were hyperbolic, it certainly isn't hyperbolic now to describe the Standard's character assasination as a witch hunt, a vicious campaign of defamation which makes no appeal to facts and which depends upon lies, innuendo and flagrant exaggeration far in excess of any of which Livingstone was guilty.

Does that remind anyone of any other historical period, I wonder?
 
O

Omaar

Guest
Ward Churchill

Has anyone been following the Warch Churchill story thats been playing in the US? The parallels just struck me as I read this thread. Holocaust, Bad faith, Prison Guard excuse, Media outrage ...

quote from Ward churchill's essay:

" [911 'victims'] .... formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it. "

It was that 'little eichmann" reference that the media picked up on.

Nazi, 9/11 victim comparison causes outrage

("Adolf Eichmann was the Nazi who organized plans to exterminate European Jews.")

Original Essay Transcript

9/11 is America's Holocaust, the moment of Absolute Evil, and if you say anything about it, like - well they had it coming, you're shot down.

The other interesting issue that comes out here is the question of Ward's ethnicity - the question of whether or not he is 1/16 Native American.

such as this

btw is it ok to call people nazi prison guards if you are jewish?

Just found this article on Ward Churchill And Dancehall ?! sounds interesting so had better post it, though I haven't read it yet.
 
Top