sadmanbarty

Well-known member
we’re all human. our emotional reactions to events don’t always align with our intellectual or moral understanding of them. we’re complicated, hypocritical, inconsistent, illogical, etc. there’s often a disconnect between what we believe and what we feel.

so this thread is based on three premises:

1) there’s undoubtably something very grim about corbyn’s stance towards the jews


2) our emotional reaction (dissenensians and the left more broadly) doesn’t reflect the severity of it.

3) our outrage would be far stronger had the issue centred around gay people, muslims, black people, etc. our relative degree of comfort with the situation has something to do with the fact the victims are jews. a mural portraying lots of hook-nosed men enslaving humanity and controlling the world is in the same moral ballpark as one depicting a golliwog holding a watermelon and licking his lips.

i don’t want this thread to be yet another debate about whether the accusations about corbyn are scandalous or not. rather i want this to be a candid, emotionally honest analysis of the psychology of the left with regards to anti-semitism. this doesn’t just pertain to pro-corbyn partisans, but to the jo maughams of this world who are comfortable voting for- or endorsing to some degree- corbyn's labour.

it’d be great if people on this thread could admit to things that aren’t sound morally or intellectually, but unfortunately are the way they feel in their gut. shine a light on feelings we have that we’re ashamed of. reveal the id untempered by the super ego and in doing so expose the cognitive dissonance of much of the left with regards to anti-semitism.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i live in a labour safe seat, so haven't really had to address this moral quandary. I voted lib dem in 2017, in the eu parliamentary elections and will do this time round.

but what if i lived in a competitive labour vs tory seat? i think i would put aside the anti-semitism and vote labour and thus to some degree be complicit in championing a very malign ideology.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
people don't really see the jews as a victimised minority. they see them as holding disproportionate levels of political and economic power. so that's a big part of it i think.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah, I'm the same re. safe seat. Idk if I could vote for him though but that's about other issues. Would depend on the specific MP I think.

I have been thinking a bit about this the last few days and I think the reason this stuff hasn't stuck is that people don't really *believe* JC is some kind of racist. For 1) He has been involved in any number of anti-racism campaigns throughout his life, and the left of the party is the home of that sort of thing and 2) with the examples given in that thread, are they examples of racism OR are they examples of siding with the underdog (the Palestinians) against an brutal enemy? Pretty sure that's what they are in Corbyn's head. A lot of left antisemitism is so mixed in with critiquing Israel. It's hard to know where the social justice campaigning stops and where the racism begins. As I said in the other thread antisemitism is often a naive critique of power.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Another element is actually how WELL they've integrated. Alan sugar and david baddiel are just normal white fellas really. whereas the muslim woman who won the british bake-off still has something exotic about her. she's different.

again, it plays into a feeling that the jews have transcended minority status and by extension persecution. they're us. muslims on the other hand are still them.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
people don't really see the jews as a victimised minority. they see them as holding disproportionate levels of political and economic power. so that's a big part of it i think.

Was just thinking how signifiers of race and racism like skin colour and affluence/poverty factor into this. Is it easier to be anti-racist for someone who fits the stereotype of a suffering minority?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I am half-Jewish by descent, completely irreligious by choice - belief is more complicated, but definitely not anything close to Judaism

besides not practicing the religion, I feel absolutely no cultural connection to Judaism, or what you might call a "Jewish life"

I often find the actions of the Israeli government appalling, and I'm happy to hear any case made for the finest of distinctions between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism

having said all that, if I was British, or Corbyn was an American politician, I would never vote for him in 1000 years. I would crawl across a burning desert to avoid voting for him.

I wouldn't vote for the alternative in this case - probably in any case, since it would be Tory, but especially in this case - but I couldn't vote for him either

fuck him, is how I feel about it, and fuck his party if they suffer him to be their leader

whatever good he has is, for me, trumped (no pun) by this, totally
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
then again, I'm not in the spot of having to make that decision, and yall are, and I don't judge anyone whose shoes I don't have to walk in

but if he was running against Trump I'd abstain - we don't have the option of sometimes relevant 3rd parties here, of course
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
I am half-Jewish by descent, completely irreligious by choice - belief is more complicated, but definitely not anything close to Judaism

besides not practicing the religion, I feel absolutely no cultural connection to Judaism, or what you might call a "Jewish life"

I often find the actions of the Israeli government appalling, and I'm happy to hear any case made for the finest of distinctions between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism

having said all that, if I was British, or Corbyn was an American politician, I would never vote for him in 1000 years. I would crawl across a burning desert to avoid voting for him.

I wouldn't vote for the alternative in this case - probably in any case, since it would be Tory, but especially in this case - but I couldn't vote for him either

fuck him, is how I feel about it, and fuck his party if they suffer him to be their leader

whatever good he has is, for me, trumped (no pun) by this, totally

i'd wager that if a black/muslim/gay poster wrote a similar thing in an equivalent set of circumstances it'd give dissensians much more pause for thought. it's something specifically about the jews that allows for this.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
For me it's the Syrian stuff and the stance Lab have consistently taken over the last few years. Different topic I know.
Ironically enough when Johnson was at the Foreign Office, they did some quite good stuff for the Syrian opposition. Fuck all to do with him I'm sure but, ironic.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i think there's also a feeling that the holocaust is no longer a pertinent grievance. that it's irrelevant to todays world (which is of course reflected in narratives suggesting it's being weaponised by pro-israel groups).
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it's no mystery

1) Ashkenazi Jews at least pass for white

2) Jews are thought to be disproportionately wealthy and powerful

3) Jews are a fractionally small (partially due to the Holocaust, ofc) minority compared to others

4) the awfulness of the Israeli govt makes Jews everywhere less sympathetic to non-Jews

5) backlash to Holocaust remembrance

etc
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it is a gut thing at some point

like I said, I don't present, identify, or act as a Jew in any way, usually don't agree with Israeli govt, and have much sympathy for the Palestinians

at my core I'm still happy there's a place on Earth run by Jews. I wish the circumstances of that place were different, but that wish is superseded by my comfort at its existence.

Western European Jewry thought it was assimilated. didn't help at all in the Holocaust. and no government did a goddamn thing to help Jews.

individuals did - that's why Righteous Among the Nations exists - but existence can't depend on the noblesse oblige of individuals

it's not a new lesson - there's a 1000+ year history of pogroms, expulsions, blood libels, etc, to draw on

you could say it seems unthinkable now, but it certainly doesn't to me. not likely, but possible enough for me to be happy there's a country run by Jews, even if I dislike it in practice.
 

version

Well-known member
I don't mind Corbyn and can't stand the Tories and the relentless attacks from the establishment pushed me to the point a lot of Trump supporters seemed to end up at of struggling to believe anything negative the press had to say about him. Obviously with both Trump and Corbyn it isn't coming out of thin air, some of the criticisms are legitimate, but once you see through the ones that aren't it becomes increasingly difficult to take any of them seriously.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
before anyone says it, I know that over 20% - iirc - of Israeli citizens are Arab Muslims or Christians, yet another thorny issue in the question of Israel

I'm not defending all of its policies or workings, just telling you my feelings
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
so when I see a dude like Corbyn who goes vastly beyond a principled anti-Zionism to embrace things that are clearly bigotry, that's a dealbreaker

if I didn't have Jewish family members, and the cultural memory of the Holocaust etc, would I feel the same way? no idea
 

version

Well-known member
The conflation of criticism of Israeli government policy with antisemitism is a tough one to navigate, you get people using it as a smokescreen for their antisemitism but it's also used to deflect legitimate criticism.
 
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