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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


You'll be able to show where I said I was OK with someone being racist then?

Feel free to expand that to where anyone said anything about being okay with racism, cause I don't think anyone in thread has said anything of the sort.

He won't, no. So there's no point asking. Let's move on from replying to him and expecting a response.

Since I've not said anything about the actual topic of the thread yet, pretending that Hitler was a Zionist is patently ridiculous. A politician so obviously out of touch with reality really has to go, even if what he said hadn't been on a subject so likely to (rightly) piss people off.

To go back to the OP, and as a response to anyone who think the British MP getting flak for ranting about deporting Israelis to America was not being anti semitic when she said that, just anti Israel...I have a question for you..

Do you believe she would be in favour of deporting ALL Israeli citizens, including non-Jewish and Muslim citzens ? Or just Jewish Israelis?

What makes me angry about this is that Livingstone apparently thinks his idiotic views are so important that he will continually restate them for three days, doing immense damage to his party directly before the local elections.

What a completely narcicisstic tosser.

He fully deserves to be expelled because what he said was stupid and offensive, and he insisted on saying it (and repeating it several times on television FFS) right before a crucially important election.

As a big supporter of Corbyn who is hoping he'll do well in the elections, I am furious that he would callously do so much damage to his chances and the chances of the labour councillers to feed his own ego and need to be heard. What a complete gobshite.

Oh, good god, more dodgy Labour MPs. This time Diane Abbott (taken from the Guido Fawkes blog):

Diane said anti-Semitism “isn’t a problem in the Labour Party, no more than in other mainstream parties”. She defended Naz Shah, saying her Facebook posts were “made before she was an MP“. When challenged that the posts were still anti-Semitic, Diane denied this was an “issue“, saying that “other people think this but don’t put it on Facebook“.

Though, again, she has form with racism...

Well, that's another stupid comment. Tribalism has no place when these sorts of statements are made.

I always figured racism is an excuse for a lazy mind.

Your bias breaks down as you meet people from that "type" on an individual basis and you notice there is variation within a group.

Ken knows his statements are a hot / bad / inflammatory path to go. Not sure if he is into self-destructive behavior or is a bit too desperate for attention (mainly bad).

 Da Boss wrote:
What makes me angry about this is that Livingstone apparently thinks his idiotic views are so important that he will continually restate them for three days, doing immense damage to his party directly before the local elections.

What a completely narcicisstic tosser.

He fully deserves to be expelled because what he said was stupid and offensive, and he insisted on saying it (and repeating it several times on television FFS) right before a crucially important election.

As a big supporter of Corbyn who is hoping he'll do well in the elections, I am furious that he would callously do so much damage to his chances and the chances of the labour councillers to feed his own ego and need to be heard. What a complete gobshite.

The problem IS with Corbyn himself. Livingstone is divisive and a liability and harks back to a really mediocre time in Labours history. Jeremy wanted Livingstone back in and look what its gotten him. There was literally nothing to be gained by having Ken Livingstone back in the fold, nothing.

Time and again, with Camerons government ripe for plucking Labour feth themselves. Theres talk of a civil war within the Tory ranks over Europe but the other side of the house look more prone to buckling.

That Labour do well locally is the only thing keeping Corbyn in power. If they slip up there Corbyns days are numbered and there will be blood.

So Livingstone, whilst digging his hole, has decided to abandon the JCB and instead use dynamite to make his hole even deeper. He's fighting the suspension!

"How can the truth be an offence - if I had lied that would be offensive."

The conservatives are at their weakest and instead of giving them a pummeling, Labour have a racist fueled meltdown...

 zedmeister wrote:
So Livingstone, whilst digging his whole deeper, has decided to abandon the JCB and use dynamite to make his whole even deeper. He's fighting the suspension!

"How can the truth be an offence - if I had lied that would be offensive."

The man is a bona fide bell end.

jeez......

Well, it is true that some Zionists talked to Hitler. But what's the point in bringing that up in defense of Shah's stupid post? It's just idiotic.

And yes, please stop digging and go away Ken. Christ.

Mdlbuildr wrote:
[
We can do that except when Israel tries to defend itself it is either called excessive force or apartheid.

It isn't defence when you're fighting the resistance to the occupation you are inflicting upon a population. Israeli military operations are often called excessive force because they often employ excessive force. Their treatment of Palestinians is likened to apartheid because having Palestinians live under separate legal systems in separate areas under Israeli military control does in fact resemble the policies of apartheid.

Mdlbuildr wrote:
Why is it Israel's responsibility to help them at all, which they do anyway btw?

Israel is occupying Palestinian territories and colonising them. Old-school colonisation where you drive away natives and move in people of your preferred ethnicity. They literally call them settlements. Palestinians are only employed at Israeli factories because they're a desperate source of cheap labour and because other economic activity has been denied to them through the blockade and destruction of agriculture. You don't help anyone through conquering them and then putting the occupied population to work.

 zedmeister wrote:
Oh, good god, more dodgy Labour MPs. This time Diane Abbott (taken from the Guido Fawkes blog):

Diane said anti-Semitism “isn’t a problem in the Labour Party, no more than in other mainstream parties”. She defended Naz Shah, saying her Facebook posts were “made before she was an MP“. When challenged that the posts were still anti-Semitic, Diane denied this was an “issue“, saying that “other people think this but don’t put it on Facebook“.

Though, again, she has form with racism...

Ahhh, good old Diane Abbot. I remember her.

“White people love to play divide and rule. We should not play their game”

“Britain invented racism”.

I guess the Romans weren't racist after all. Labeling all non Romans barbarians? That was just a term of endearment, honest.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I guess the Romans weren't racist after. Labeling all non Romans barbarians? That was just a term of endearment, honest.

Well to be fair, their criteria for 'barbarian' didn't have much to do with anything we would identify as "race." It was a lot dumber.

Honestly the entire Barbarian thing the Romans and Greeks had going had little to do with anything other than "not like us." The old Greek word Barbaros was simply a word meaning not Greek, and had little to do with anything other than identifying someone as not being a citizen of a Greek city state. By the time the Hellenic period hits, the word gets expanded to mean anyone who isn't from one of the "great" Civilizations (Greece, Persia, Egypt) and at this point it starts gathering a negative connotation effectively meaning "backwards" and "unreasonable." The Romans pretty much adopted that form, but they added in a whole bunch of stuff to it;

Worship some god we've never heard of? Barbarian.
Wear pants instead of a toga? Barbarian.
Don't build kick ass statues? Barbarian.
Don't have weekly orgies? Barbarian.

Christians then come along in the late Empire and adopt the word as well and for a little while they actually use it a bit nicer than the old Romans, meaning essentially "haven't found Jesus yet." It's sometime in the Middle Ages that the word actually starts to take on a racist tone, as Christian Europeans start using the word for anyone whose culture isn't remotely like theirs. Even then, the word was more ethnocentric than racist

Now it is just a character class in role playing games.

 Ahtman wrote:
Now it is just a character class in role playing games.

And one which now wears neither pants nor a toga.

https://opendemocracy.net/uk/adam-ramsay/multiple-truths-of-labour-antisemitism-story

Very interesting points on the whole thing, touching on a lot that's been mentioned here... especially 'mild racism'!

Ken Livingstone is STILL TALKING and STILL HASN'T APOLOGISED.

Holy crap. Like I've said, I'm a huge Corbyn supporter but even I'm questioning his judgement in being friends with this tosser.

There are people desperate to spin this out for all its worth and Livingstone is just fuelling it. I don't agree with what he said, but he's not a 'Nazi apologist'. The MPs making public confrontations with him are doing as much damage as Livingstone. Suddenly we have accusations that Anti-Semitism is rife in the party and there needs to be a full inquiry (meaning witch hunt) The Tories must be loving this as I've heard barely anything about the NHS strike and other issues for 2-3 days now. Labour seem intent on attacking themselves very publicly and in a prolonged manner over things that are ultimately inconsequential, this issue is clearly being whipped up and inflated into a scandal by some, all while letting Cameron's government not be called to account for their policies which are eroding our education, health and social systems and pushing these stories off the front page. Well done all involved.

All of that is true, but none of this could have happened without Livingstone being a complete idiot.

The Labour Party had a man with Jewish ancestry as leader up til recently and has plenty of Jewish members. I don't doubt an organisation as big as that has some antisemites in it (any organisation big enough will have some) but to imply that the party as a whole is a hotbed of antisemitism is dishonest as hell.

So why in the name of god is Ken giving them ammunition? What a complete fool.

 Da Boss wrote:
All of that is true, but none of this could have happened without Livingstone being a complete idiot.

The Labour Party had a man with Jewish ancestry as leader up til recently and has plenty of Jewish members. I don't doubt an organisation as big as that has some antisemites in it (any organisation big enough will have some) but to imply that the party as a whole is a hotbed of antisemitism is dishonest as hell.

So why in the name of god is Ken giving them ammunition? What a complete fool.

I actually knew a member of the youth section of the Labour party, She left after two years. Couldn't bear it. Said it was the most poisonous environment she'd ever been in. You were expected to think purely along the party line or get out, there was no political ideology that couldn't be abandoned to win votes, and the patronage system reduced it to a level of bitter infighting and backstabbing from the word go.

Whatever one might think of the Tories, they're reasonably tolerant in some regards. There are so many upper class or senior members who 'will be damned if they'll let some bloody upstart' tell them what to think, yet you'll notice it doesn't hold them back career-wise. It means they're far more likely to reach for knives when they feel the time has come, but also tend to be a damn sight more ruthless and successful about it when they do. That lets them maintain, I think, a more cohesive front when necessary. They know when they think time has come to remove a leader and just do it, but otherwise, feel secure enough to just get on with things.

With Labour, you just get this continual drip-feed of passive aggressiveness, minor leaks, and inability to form a cohesive movement or opposition anymore. Nobody will reach for their knives for fear of retarding their future careers, so you just get this low-level obstructiveness and attempts to sabotage and drop others you don't like in the cacky without getting caught. There's no political ideology left to tie them all together, and none of them feel strong enough to take a stand on anything. It's why the joke candidate turned into the leader I reckon, he was the only who had something to say that didn't sound just like the other three.

The Labour Party these days, is just sadly run entirely by self-interest, as opposed to any kind of overarching purpose other than 'get our snouts in the trough'. As a result, Ken is doing what he feels is best for Ken (because naturally, that coincides in his mind with what is best for the Party, as it does with all of them).And everyone else is encouraging him because it suits their personal goals (to ditch Corbyn).

I've no doubt that the activists at Labour could be pretty obnoxious, but didn't Tory youth activists bully one of their own to the point of suicide recently? And Tory infighting over the referendum?

I agree though - Blair killed ideology in Labour for cynical manipulation and "spin".

I see Corbyn as trying to get back to actually talking about what he believes in and what the labour movement should be "for", but unfortunately his party is absolutely infested with Blairite losers with no attachment to any ideology except career driven cynicism, as you say.

Ken Livingstone was never on my radar up to now but if he is a representation of Labour's hard left then my optimism about the Corbyn project has taken a huge dent. (Diane Abbot is also an arsehole).

 Da Boss wrote:
I've no doubt that the activists at Labour could be pretty obnoxious, but didn't Tory youth activists bully one of their own to the point of suicide recently? And Tory infighting over the referendum?

Oh, I don't doubt that they have their own issues. I was merely speculating though, that the very existence of infighting over the referendum is a sign of the variety of Tory opinion on certain things. It's two sides taking two opposite stances on an issue, whilst remaining a part of the same party, and a greater cohesive whole. Whatever happens, once the referendum is done, that'll be it for the most part bar some grumbling, they'll move on.

Labour though:-

I agree though - Blair killed ideology in Labour for cynical manipulation and "spin".

I see Corbyn as trying to get back to actually talking about what he believes in and what the labour movement should be "for", but unfortunately his party is absolutely infested with Blairite losers with no attachment to any ideology except career driven cynicism, as you say.

is more 'pro-Corbyn' and 'anti-Corbyn', but once Corbyn goes, it'll split down the same divide with whoever replaces him. There's actually no political ideology left to bind them together. They're all on 'my side' and against 'everybody else's side'. Political issues are irrelevant. If they think something will get them elected, they're 'pro' it, if they don't they're 'anti' it.

Ken Livingstone was never on my radar up to now but if he is a representation of Labour's hard left then my optimism about the Corbyn project has taken a huge dent. (Diane Abbot is also an arsehole).

Corbyn is a throwback to 70's with all it entails. The Hard Left has always been a hypocritical, self-righteous, cantankerous lot. Whilst they do actually have beliefs (unlike most of the rest of the Labour party), those beliefs are outdated today. They've gone wrong too many times in too many places.

I firmly believe that if Corbyn had shown an inch of political sensitivity and leadership, he could still have sailed the Labour party in the right direction. But, like the Hard Left always does, he either rules with the iron fist, or not at all. He either pushes all his policies, or none of them. And the only people willing to get on that train with him are the remaining resident nutters, one of which happens to be his ex-girlfriend. When that's the best support you can rally, you're not doing it right.

I'm sad about Corbyn. I wish he'd expressed a modicum of basic political awareness. I want the Tories out next Government. But how the hell can I hand the country over to the Labour party in it's current state?

I'm not at all convinced by the argument in your last bit there (because I think you are selling short the huge surge in membership bringing new ideas to the party under Corbyn's leadership) but I owe you a better response via PM still (sorry, hectic week and currently should really be writing wedding invitations rather than nattering about Corbyn, again!)

 Da Boss wrote:
Ken Livingstone is STILL TALKING and STILL HASN'T APOLOGISED.

Holy crap. Like I've said, I'm a huge Corbyn supporter but even I'm questioning his judgement in being friends with this tosser.

I am a huge Corbyn fan and Livingstone fan. I am very angry with Livingstone for such nonsense. I don't believe he is trying to upset or be racist, though he is, thus my disappointment.


I believe the left generally 1) hold their leaders to a higher standard, 2) expect more of them 3) hero worship their leaders more.

Livingstone is still a good bloke, though is completely wrong on this matter.

Ken's always been very self-obsessed. For years now, I've seen him on the telly, and he is literally all he ever talks about. How he'd have done a better job as Mayor. How he was responsible for x/y/z. How no-one gives him the credit he deserves. What he'd do if he was in someone's shoes. How he was always being held back by others. It's like watching a more mild/less offensive version of George Galloway.

It doesn't surprise me that even now, all he thinks about is himself.

 Ketara wrote:

Spoiler:

 Ketara wrote:
Oh, definitely. Ken did some good material stuff over the course of his political career, but he's always been tainted by the fact that he liked to snuggle up to dictators, a mild anti-semitism, a thoroughly self-righteous attitude, links to somewhat morally dubious organisations, and a hardcore desire to scrap with the right wing regardless of the consequences to anyone else.

Ken himself, much like Corbyn, was a throwback to the 70's, and he never got over the fact Johnson beat him as Mayor and got him relegated to the dustheap. He must have been thrilled when Corbyn tried to give him a comeback, but it seems it's gone up in smoke a bit. I doubt Corbyn will be able to use him again now, there's just too much dirt and bad history.

Ken's always been very self-obsessed. For years now, I've seen him on the telly, and he is literally all he ever talks about. How he'd have done a better job as Mayor. How he was responsible for x/y/z. How no-one gives him the credit he deserves. What he'd do if he was in someone's shoes. How he was always being held back by others. It's like watching a more mild/less offensive version of George Galloway.

It doesn't surprise me that even now, all he thinks about is himself.

Ken is back in the public eye. He will see an opportunity to carve support from activists within the hard left and make himself relevant again.

I wouldn't put it past him to stab Corbyn in the back and make a run for some sort of power.

He certainly seems to be relishing the spotlight, despite the reasons for it. I suppose there may be an element of "No publicity is bad publicity" behind it, but I find it hard to imagine anyone wanting him as leader after all this.