On one side are millions of left-leaning Britons – many of them young – whose economic prospects are worsening, whose anxieties about the climate crisis are rising, whose horror at Israel and the US’s wars is absolute, and whose alienation from the compromises of conventional Labour politics is deep. This is the large minority of the electorate attracted by Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to radicalise Labour between 2015 and 2019, and now increasingly drawn to Zack Polanski’s leftwing, populist reshaping of the Greens. For both leaders, the ultimate, hugely ambitious aim was or is to create a much more equal, environmentally sustainable country with a much more ethical foreign policy.
OK.
Yet fundamentally opposed to this project is another coalition of interests, including the rightwing media, the right of the Labour party, the Conservative party, corporate lobbyists, defenders of Israel and the Anglo-American “special relationship”, and supposedly realistic centrists from the opinion pages of the Financial Times to the deep-state recesses of Whitehall.
Otherwise known as “everyone else”.
Thus, Corbyn’s leadership was steadily undermined by claims that he was a dangerous extremist who threatened national security and economic prosperity and tolerated antisemitism, terrorism and Muslim sectarianism. A lifelong anti-racist, peace campaigner and assiduously inclusive constituency MP ended up being seen by too many voters as a promoter of division and prejudice.
Polanski is, in some ways, a very different leader: younger, less set in his ways and a better communicator. The Greens are less weighed down than the Labour left by negative perceptions. Yet it’s striking that only about eight months into his leadership,
And what if everyone else is actually correct here? Say, the economic proposals are populist nonsense and nothing more?
The fact that the Greens are attracting many ex-Corbynistas
As Caroline Lucas is so painfully finding out, the New Greens basically are the Corbies. They were ready for somewhere, Your Party so obviously failed and….
I just had to catch a glimpse of his domed head to realise that it was our Least Favourite Polytechnic Lecturer and this would be the usual stencilled guff. ( I really did have a lecturer who looked just like him. He was a card carrying CPGB member ).
Anyway to the point : New Green voters are indeed the Tankie Left looking for a home. They are joined by Islamists and have pushed aside the eco warriors. Labour have managed to machine gun themselves in the arse just as effectively as the Tories did. So while the old Tory right have defected to Reform, so have the Labour Left defected to the Greens.
Israel is the new South Africa or Chile: students always need something distant to hate. Anti Zionism morphs into anti Semitism , the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. Problem that we see though, is that these students are not growing out of their extremist views and carrying them with them into proper adulthood. Why that should be, is the real question that people should be asking.
Needs to be distant but familiar. SA, Israel and Pinochet’s Chile are/were considered outposts of the West and therefore evil. Islamists slaughtering Christians (and duskier Muslims) in Africa, 80,000 children starving to death in Yemen, Chinese concentration camps, 8 million people fleeing Socialist Venezuela etc etc – tumbleweed. They genuinely couldn’t give a shit.
Of course they couldn’t. They merely want a party to vote for that makes them feel virtuous while doing evil.
“Anti Zionism morphs into anti Semitism” And isn’t it interesting that Israel encouraged that trend by claiming – obviously falsely – that anyone who disparaged any actions by the government of Israel was necessarily anti-semitic.
You might say that mad Moslems don’t need any encouragement – I dare say that’s right. But stupid young lefties may be vulnerable to such obvious lies because they are (i) young and (ii) stupid.
and (iii) lefty.
“And isn’t it interesting that Israel encouraged that trend by claiming – obviously falsely – that anyone who disparaged any actions by the government of Israel was necessarily anti-semitic.”
The number of critics of Israeli governmental actions who are genuinely non anti-semitic is vanishingly small, if not actually zero. One only has to look at what other regional conflicts across the globe that critics of Israeli actions are also campaigning on. Do they seek to end the conflict in Darfur, Yemen, and the Ukraine as well? Do they march for those things? Do they seek to boycott Chinese goods over the treatment of the Uighurs, or even the Tibetans, to go back even further? If not, and the only regional conflict they wish to highlight is the Israel vs the Arabs one, and also falling on the side of the Arabs every time, then they are anti-semitic, whatever they might say to the contrary.
I have criticised some of Netanyahu’s actions while supporting the right of Irael to defend itself. I am not anti-semitic (as a child my best friend was Jewish and I had several other Jewish friends); I certainly complain about Darfur Yemen and the Ukraine and I try to avoid buying Chinese goods (often it is impossible to tell whether they contain chinese components).
IMHO Moshe Dayan was a rare (possibly unique) example of a left-winger who was also a decent guy.
The number is *not* actually zero, it is at least one.
Some of your best friends were Jewish?
Actually, I’ve never understood the ‘oh, some of your best friends are black, are they?!’ sneer, except as an example of the rhetorical brilliance which so often marks the progressives/communists.
I mean, if you’re accused of having an officially unapproved opinion* then why is it irrelevant that you have evidence to the contrary?
*I know, I know. As if that should ever be an offence.
@ Deveril
Why is it relevant?: because the suggestion was that if I disapproved of Netanyahu’s actions then I was anti-semitic.
“The number of critics of Israeli governmental actions who are genuinely non anti-semitic is vanishingly small, if not actually zero.”
Are you entirely bonkers? What an absurd fucking claim. Evidence?
The evidence of my own eyes and ears.
I don’t see weekly marches about any other global conflict, do you? If there are people who go on those marches who also want to campaign on other conflicts, there can’t be very many of them, nor can they be that bothered about other conflicts, because there are no marches for Darfur, Ukraine, etc etc.
The other thing is you never ever see anyone who is criticising Israel over the current Gaza issue criticise the Arabs, ever. In every case they always criticise Israel. FFS the blood wasn’t even dry after the 7th Oct and they were already blaming Israel for it, and celebrating what had happened.
Even the self proclaimed moralists always have a ‘but’. Of course we condemn the events of the 7th Oct, but……..they can’t even bring themselves to not chuck some Jew hate in there, even when there isn’t an ounce of reason to do so.
I am a critic of Netanyahu bombing civilians in Lebanon and also of Palestinians who support Hamas (and vehemently of Hamas).
Is Israel bombing civilians, or are civilians getting caught up in Israel bombing Hezbollocks? The distinction is important, otherwise you’re going to be a busy man criticising every modern western power.
Mossad has been pretty successful at targeted bombings to take out the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and IRGC but in South Lebanon Israel has been hitting whole villages instead of guilty individuals.
According to whom? Is this the same source that gave us the Gaza genocide? Are there cuddly toys in the rubble?
Honestly I don’t know how this rocket launcher got into my back yard.
The reason it’s so popular to be critical of Israel (on all levels) is that might get a result. It’s hard to think of other disputes across the world where protests, boycotts or even terrorism will have any influence. It’s because Israel is a democratic country that is at least marginally concerned about others’ opinions it gets picked on. Few attack the Palestinians in Gaza because what difference would it make if you did? Apart from being put on their assassination list. How are you going to protest Darfur, Yemen or the Ukraine? Putin’s going to let you march round the Kremlin waving banners?
Most of it’s performative. A bunch of protestors & critics looking for something to protest or criticise.
Not zero, but certainly small. No doubt there’s people who refer to the Israeli leader as Naziyahoo and deny the history of the Jews in Israel who are not anti-semites, but I sincerely doubt it.
“deny the history of the Jews in Israel”
Can you explain what you mean by that?
They mean that the Jews of Israel have been in that area, and the surrounding areas, for 4,000 years and are not ‘Europeans’ as is often claimed.
In fact, a most of the Jews in Israel are the descendants of the Jews living in neighboring states that were forced out of those states (because the Arabs started killing them) shortly after the formation of Israel under the justification that no one liked them and they had their own country now.
Well, the ancestors of the British lived on the Steppes of Ukraine and Russia 5,000 years ago: does that mean that we own that territory now? Stupid bloody argument.
The point being made is that a lot of anti-Israel types deny that the Jews have any genetic link to the region which is the thing you asked for an example of, so stop complaining when someone gives you one. Tucker Carson calling for Jews to have genetic testing for example. Often coupled with the myth that European Jews are largely descended from Khazar converts. And accompanied by “we aren’t antisemites, how can we be when the real Semites are the Palestinians and Jews are just white Europeans?”
If you do care for the genetics then it turns out Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews are very closely related to the Roman era Jewish inhabitants of the region while Ashkenazi Jews also descend from those populations but picked up some additional ancestry from Italy (rather than more Russian or Polish DNA as you might expect, but they entered Europe via Rome).
You don’t have to agree with the idea that a Jewish state in Israel is validated by the genetic origins of the Jews. But people denying the ancestry of modern Jews in order to argue they have no right to live in Israel are definitely being antisemitic.
The people who set up Israel, the Ashkenazis, are reported to be about 50% Italian, 50% “Middle Eastern” – which I assume means from the Southern Levant i.e. what’s now Israel/Palestine. The Khazar theory was a guess made decades ago but hasn’t survived genetic scrutiny. It’s plain wrong.
But if where your ancestors lived 2000 or 3000 years ago is all-important then the Southern Levant “ought” to belong to Palestinians, as some of the early Israeli leaders admitted. I don’t argue that because such arguments end up being silly – hence my comparison with our rightfully owning the Pontic Steppes. It’s just daft. Where do you stop? Should the Bantu be expelled from huge chunks of Africa and the land handed “back” to the descendants of the people who preceded them there? Should the US be handed over to the Red Indians? Iran handed over to whoever lived there before the Aryans turned up?
Are the British still living there? Because the Jews that formed Israel were.
Like, the creation of Israel specifically where it is was not a bunch of European diplomats tossing darts at a map to pick a location.
Ummm… yeahnope… The “British” ancestors, the Angles and the Saxons, both came from “Denmark”.
The Scots have even older ancestry, given they have *retained* the tartan weaving style inherited from whoever lived in the “Danish” area before the Angles during the late stone age/early bronze age through all those centuries.
The Invasions from the Steppes were the Goths and later the Slavic tribes filling the Void the Goths left when they decided to come down like a hammer on the Romanised areas of the Mediterranean.
Incidentally… This is ded funny, because if you “claim” that far back…
Because the current nations able to claim the Ukie/Russian steppes on such a preposterous notion wouldn’t be the Brits…
It’d be the Spanish and Portuguese, given they have the most “solid” claim to Gothic ancestry.
A bit closer to home ( within 1500 years ) it’d be the Swedish who could solidly claim, given that the swedish Rus vikingr actually are the basis for Ukie/Russia, with Kieva ( Kiev nowadays ) as their capital.
And even *they* had to work around the Baltic tribes, who refused to budge and bit back, and are still here to this day…
The Brits aren’t even *near* any claim on that area.
Nah, see above. You’re fixated on more recent invasions. The Big One was much earlier.
“The Invasions from the Steppes were the Goths and later the Slavic tribes filling” No, you’ve misunderstood.
Homeland (Urheimat): The widely accepted Kurgan hypothesis suggests the origin was the Pontic-Caspian steppe, north of the Black and Caspian Seas, where early Indo-Europeans (linked to the Yamnaya culture) lived as nomads.
Impact on Europe: Around 4,500 years ago, mass migrations of steppe herders brought Indo-European languages and, in some cases, quickly replaced existing Neolithic farmer populations (such as in Britain and Ireland).
And so the British, Irish, Dutch, Germans, Scandis, French … “really” own those Steppes.
Pretty sure there are Jews who loathe and despise Netanyahu and his Israel-first views.
Hence the “self-hating jews” tag applicable to a fair few in Israel and a hell of a lot more in the US (and a few other countries).
The thing is – what is there to criticism the government of Israel for? They do not do anything all the other western nations have done – and they take far more pains to do it with as little collateral damage than any other western nation has.
No one criticizes Russia for littering the landscape with shitty clusterbombs – but let Israel cleanly take out a Palestinian military facility lodged within a residential neighborhood with nothing more than broken windows and its all ‘those horrible
JewsI mean Israelis!’The same or worse actions are taken by others – no comment. The one consistent factor is they’re Jews. So its understandable that people might start thinking that ‘Israel’ means ‘Jews’.
“New Green voters are indeed the Tankie Left looking for a home. They are joined by Islamists and have pushed aside the eco warriors.”
The history of the Australian Greens is instructive here. It started out as an pure environmental party. Still loons, but at least they had a point. It’s now been completely taken over by social justice warriors and Islamists. I used to describe it as the tree huggers vs the commies. The commies have won. They expelled a co founder last year over some bullshit. I think he got that reversed, why he bothered I have no fucking idea.
Look up Mehreen Faruqi, the current deputy leader sometime. Very pro Palestinian and anti Israel.
Thanks Ltw.
Glad someone shares my view of the Aussie Greens.
Boganboy,
I wasn’t a fan of the tree hugger greens, of course. But I didn’t know how good we had it. I never thought I’d say I want Bob Brown back!
Nah, they were always communists.
It’s just that over the last few years, the communism has broken cover where previously the fuckers tried to deny it.
Yes, I’m all for Polanski and his chums. The more they talk, the better things get for the rest of us, because there’s no more hiding behind a facade of ‘We’re all just middle class nice people who want to recycle our waste and drive a Prius’. Now we are seeing them for what they are. They’ve broken cover and are exposed as the authoritarian bully boys they really are, and now with added theocracy to boot.
To be consistant they should also be screaming and campaigning against Irish independence, Finnish independence, Greek independence, Korean independence, Indian independence…..
I can see why the Corbyn Left wanted to take over the Greens; they use the eco stuff to justify taxes and smashing capitalism (some of them might even be thick enough to believe it). And the Greens were very into all the rainbow sex stuff, which is another way the modern Left tries to break society.
But what I don’t understand is, why did the Islamists join them? Their views don’t link at all.
The usual answer is that it’s a cynical electoral ploy, but I don’t think that works. They could set up their own Islamist party, and would get elected in various city centre seats (and the keffiyeh-wearing student Left would probably have voted for them anyway). And they’d have had much more influence in a coalition or Left government as their own, focused, party.
Maybe I’m splitting hairs here but I don’t think they’re Islamists in the traditional sense. Hardcore Islamists disagree with democracy and elections (no such thing as human “laws” if all law was made and revealed by God etc) and even protest against what they see as their less devout Muslim neighbours going to vote. It’s more about communal politics with a Muslim religious and cultural identity. Hence a sense of affiliation with Gaza, calls for making it a criminal offence to insult the prophet, but they’re not going hard on chopping hands off thieves or stoning the rainbow people. They’re not even necessarily very religiously devout. They do want extra funding for their areas and “cultural organisations” etc, which is easier to obtain if you transcend your community in some way – hence some kind of tie-up makes sense so they win more than hyper-locally. Also they want an end to all those nasty racist immigration policies that make it hard to bring their extended families over because they’re not earning enough money. You need to be a serious player on the national level to achieve that.
Throwing their lot in with the radical Left is the best fit. Anti-America, anti-Israel, borders are bad, tax the rich and hand it out to the poor, aren’t community organisations brilliant (esp the ones we and our mates control), etc. The Left is quite happy to play along with sectarianism and their ability to accept a postmodern global perspective on everything means they can be quite tolerant of intolerance in their midst provided it’s the voice of The Oppressed. Always punch up, never punch down.
So a white Christian saying something deemed rainbowphobic is speaking from a position of privilege – punch up. A Muslim immigrant expressing the same views or stronger? Well there’s billions of people with such views in the world, it’s important to acknowledge their perspective without agreeing, don’t punch down. (Even be prepared to make excuses like the real homophobia originated in Christian Europe and was spread by western imperialism, Muslims or Africans used to be a tolerant lot before we came along.)
Tbh this is an area I can see blowing up big time at some point in future Green conferences but maybe not yet. Probably helps the current moral crisis is transphobia not homophobia, as Muslim views on trans tend to be milder than on gays. In some communities transitioning to being a woman is seen as a “cure” for being a gay man for example, the Iranian clerics are surprisingly big on that one.
And the battle looming on the horizon is polyphobia. Society is geared around outdated Christian ideas of monogamy and discriminates against polygamous or ethically non-monogamous people. Tim Newman late of this parish collected a lot of the early campaign material. Why does a baby get only two parents on a birth certificate? Why is bigamy illegal? Why are throuples not treated more generously by the benefits system? Think about how it hurts a foreign spouse’s migration prospects when her marriage is not recognised simply because her husband is already married to another wife! And how racist this all is when not all cultures follow Christian norms!
Tbh this only matters for a small minority of British Muslims and even globally monogamy is the norm for them, but you get the picture of why the Muslim-Rainbow alliance might just work out. At least so long as it’s understood that gay sex won’t be criminalised again etc – and for now these Muslim groups are on the yuman rites gravy train so those terms are acceptable. (Again, proper Islamists view “human rights” as a man-made fiction contrary to Shariah. Which is why I say this looks like Muslim communitarianism not genuine Islamism.) I imagine the big blow-up will be on something still “in play” and needs a periodic refresh due to changing social mores, eg educational materials for schools. Even a row on that might be smoothed over by accepting “local autonomy” or whatever.
As an aside – in 2005 the Lib Dems went quite hard at recruiting Muslim candidates as they felt the Iraq War backlash was going to give them a chance to capture some surprising inner city seats. Even, possibly accidentally, nobbled some known Islamists to try and get them to stand for MP, proper Shariah4UK types. Suspect they just didn’t know the community well enough to navigate it. All came to zilch. Whereas some radical Leftists like Galloway were experts at local dynamics, knew which figures to get onside and which were so fringe you could ignore them.
The Lib Dems have always been soggy even while not being loony. But they’re far too middle-class to have much crossover appeal in impoverished Muslim wards and there is that liberal strand in their thinking that isn’t going to accept a blasphemy ban just because it “protects the oppressed”, or tolerate any pushback against gay rights. Thinking about why that alliance failed to work out is pretty instructive for understanding why the tie-up with the Radical Left is so natural. Yes it’s not a perfect ideological fit, though there are plenty of Muslim Marxists and even Marxist Islamists around the world who think Karl got the opiate of the people stuff wrong. Politically it makes a lot of sense. Understand each other’s language, prioritise similar issues and can afford to park their differences for now.
The TLDR is that a lot of politically active Muslims grasped that the post-takeover Green Party was more like a larger and more electorally viable version of Galloway’s Respect than it resembled the old environmentalist party. But still small enough to steer in their desired direction, unlike Labour.
Ah, so first the radical left move in on the Greens (which is understandable), and they then attract the political Muslims. Difficult to tell if that’s what actually happened, because the change was over a very short time, but if so then that makes sense, thank you.
The Greens have had a radical left side of them for a long time (and by radical I mean far more so than the likes of Lucas, who would defo be considered leftie herself) and their longtime anti-war stance also gave them a small Muslim constituency. So neither faction have come from nowhere, but the numbers have tilted a lot in a short space of time. They also work together so it doesn’t have to be one group then the other!
Because what we’re offering then is no home of their own, crap jobs, no decent pay, huge taxes to pay for us oldies…
I appreciate that this is not helpful and won’t win anyone back to our side, but my take on Gen Z lefties is that they are a bunch of malignantly stupid cunts. Any sympathy I might have had for their shoddy economic prospects has been wiped out by my contempt for their ignorance, malice and self-pity.
They bleat about ‘boomers’ but support the import of unlimited toothless peasants from the world’s biggest shitholes. Why do they think wages have stagnated and house prices risen over 20 years of open borders? They moan about a lack of opportunity but support the Net Zero madness which is crippling the economy and making life more expensive. They crow about peace but support genocidal religious fascists. And their allegedly principled support for Corbyn and/or the Greens is simply a desire to pillage the dwindling number of people working for a living.
From comments I see on social media, they are wedded to a zero sum game concept of wealth and have no desire to build their own. Of course they are also too thick to realise Britain is no longer even a vaguely wealthy nation. If they did fleece ‘the rich’ as they desire, the receipts would be spaffed within the year.
100%
And they would only have one shot at doing the fleecing, because the money will rapidly flee the country.
Even if the money doesn’t flee the country, they only have one shot at fleecing because once you’ve done the fleecing there’s nothing left to fleece.
“but my take on Gen Z lefties is that they are a bunch of malignantly stupid cunts”
“Gen Z” is superfluous. Anyone who is a convinced lefty after 1989 is evil and/or ignorant
The evil of communism was pretty obvious by about 1930 if you actually cared to look. 1989 made it really obvious though.
True of some but not all. My kids are Gen Z ers and they’re all pretty fucking right wing, as are many (but admittedly not all) of their mates.
.
“my take on Gen Z lefties is that they are a bunch of malignantly stupid cunts”
More broadly, I believe that the upper end of the middle class in the UK are overwhelmingly stupid cunts now. They’re all fully sold on status: go to uni, go and live in London, be into eco stuff, TRAVEL, irrelevant politics. They’re all earning fuck all and pissing their lives away. They are the Eloi from The Time Machine.
The Deanos, the Morlocks of our society, are making good. Our Eloi sneer at them for their taste, for living in ghastly places like Swindon or Worcester, but they’re making money, getting mortgages, forming families. They bother themselves with work, family, friends and leisure.
100%. I live in a place full of cretinous upper-middle-class Boomer women. Feminist hippy ex-teachers wearing “effnic” clothing, poncing about with yoga mats. They never grew up. Listen to them and they can speak, but they’re Tim Nice But Dim. Absolutely thick as pigshit. Recently appearing at an XR demo near you.
And then there are the younger, scowling Progressive Women, furiously typing on their phones whilst not looking where they’re going. Batshit.
I went to the Isle of Man for a week recently. Played on the steam trains and electric tram. Fucking great; like late ’60s England but with working gas boilers, decent buses and proper supermarkets. Glorious countryside; decent vernacular buildings; looks well-governed. Fancy it apart from the climate and alarmingly high number of Scousers.
Do you get out to places like Wiltshire? You meet the odd tool like that in Swindon or Devizes, but not many.
I do, and will have another look at Devizes. There’s also the Imberbus coming up.
That goes from Warminster and I really don’t know that part of Wiltshire well. Mostly the A4 and above.
The main downside of Devizes is not particularly good roads and no trains. But it has a lot of the everyday things.
For me, no trains is a plus, because it means no trainloads of Diversity. Wells similar.
Hospitals? Fuckit. I’ve basically given up on the NHS and can’t afford private. When my number’s up, it’s up.
I might join you on the Imberbus.
Good. I hope more do. Let’s have a laugh, and for those too triggered by Salisbury Plain there’s always the pub afterwards. I’ll organise it nearer the time.
Not been to Imber in thirty years (and back then, was too busy with fire’n’manoeuvre to pay attention to the village much…). Would be interested in tagging along, if there’s space.
Oh, there’ll be space all right.
I know a few good pubs around the Marlborough/Avebury way. Or there’s the Wadworth brewery
Gotta get there. The bus fleet departs from and returns to Warminster Station. Any recommendations? It’s also an early start so I’ll probably be stopping over in the area.
Warminster I don’t know at all. I don’t think I’ve ever been there. Same county, but other end of it and not many reasons to visit.
Are you planning to go by train? The quick route is via Westbury. Warminster is a short train from there, so you could pick either one. But there’s a couple of other indirect routes that give you more options for staying like Salisbury and Bradford-on-Avon.
Personally I’ll be taking a train via Bath or Chippenham, so happy with Warminster or Bath for drinks.
(maybe we should get a Whatsapp group for this).
Lol Norman
Sounds like you live on the South Coast.
It is swarming with them.
Nope. I’m in North London. Natch.
Broadly accurate and rather depressing…you moved me to order another pint in Spoons…
Whilst I agree with you on the modern lefties, I think we might be blaming the wrong bunch.
If there is anything in this ‘named generation’ malarkey, I suspect we’re going to have to redraw the boundaries and put anyone who remembers the Blair years in with the Millennials.
They’re a continuation of the Millennials’ aggressive self-righteousness, and their belief that they demonstrate their social status by loudly supporting the ‘correct’ views (much as getting the right model of car did in 1970s corporate suburbia), and putting down anyone who infringes the latest approved language (which is basically Nancy Mitord’s “U and non-U” language, designed to show who is superior, and changes as soon as the proles think they’ve got a handle on it).
The real Zs, the ones who only remember the Brown / Cameron / Sunak enshittification, and whose schooling and adolescence were distrupted by lockdown, I think are going to turn out to be better.
I enjoyed the melt down on the left after Trevor Phillips took Polanski apart over the definition of hate crimes. Hoist and petard being very much front and centre.
https://x.com/brexitblog_info/status/2050878714737570119?s=20
Corbyn at least is a sincere misguided idiot Dr. Evil. Polanski is a dyed in the wool grifter. No way he believes the shit he comes out with, it’s intended to attract that kind of idiot and ride to Westminster on their resentments. Scammer.
Is he some sort of construct? The whole rise of Polanski is very odd. I don’t like to dive into conspiracy theories etc but it does make one wonder.
Greta clearly was.
It would need an implausibly brilliant arm of the state to invent Hypnotitz. So I think we can rule out an arm of the state. In which case, an arm of what? The Lizard People?
I know. He arrived in a UFO.
Which was actually a cleverly -disguised ‘B Ark’ on his home planet
I think he’s sincere, but someone cleared a path for him. Actually I did think that about Starmer but he’s so categorically useless I think he’s just the last unprincipled dolt left standing after the Corbyn years gutted Labour.
Starmer got to the top by brown nosing Blair. It is no accident that the upper echelons of Labour are inhabuted by Cherie’s colleagues.
Starmer is the Metropolitan upper-middle-class lefty’s idea of a Decent Chap. One Of Us.
Yup. And since, as you say, the upper-middle-class lefties are all thick as pigshit, and Starmer is one of them, he’s similarly rather dim and useless.
DPP in a government that isn’t interested in upholding law & order, and protecting its citizens and their property, was about his level.
Starmer’s not even good enough for that snarky line about Stephen Fry, that he’s “a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like”.
It probably shows more about me than the two figures (can’t bring myself to call them people) I’m talking about, but I find Dave and Keir strangely similar. Not real human beings but a sort of hastily constructed thing from a box of bits with no instructions.
A homosexual Jew hoping to ride on the backs (!) of bloodthirsty Muslims is definitely a bit faulty as is a pathological liar who has sociopathic symptoms and is devoid of morals. The fact that he’s “friends” with Mandelson and Alli means he too is a homosexual.How these things became leaders of political parties is beyond me…
Recently read Katja Hoyer’s book “Beyond the Wall” about east Germany. What was interesting to me was the type of people that survived exile in the Soviet Union where they also had to deal with the purges of the late 30s and then the mental gymnastics to still stay onside during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and then through the great patriotic war. Only the very cynical but oddly fanatical got through that and then were sent into the Soviet occupation zone of Germany after the Nazis collapsed. What is the psychology and moral make up of a man who stayed on the shadow front bench during the Corbyn years to emerge wielding the knife once the electorate had said no to Corbyn for the last time? I guess it’s similar to the cabal that got elected under foot and emerged to lead after Kinnock. Cynical at the very least, but something a bit chilling about them? Outside help? Blair & cronies? Is there a strand in the deep state that needs a certain type of person to be running HM Opposition? (I’m not talking about Jews/zionist before anyone asks)
People Like Us. Starmer could just as easily have been Grieve. ANOTHER fucking lawyer.
People Don’t Like Us. The unpopulist party..
All that while playing the game, gaming the play, penetrating the inner circles of the party and he didn’t have a clue of what to do when he finally got there. Fourteen years in opposition and not a thought given to what was required for the country, only the list of things they wanted from back in the fifth form.
Well they told themselves that they weren’t the evil incompetent Tories, that they just needed to be Labour (that’s the difference a labour government makes ) and the thinking people didn’t challenge them on that. Sheer fucking hubris.
If the country wasn’t as fucked as it is it would be “bleakly hilarious” as someone put it on twitter…
Well they told themselves that they weren’t the evil incompetent Tories, that they just needed to be Labour (that’s the difference a labour government makes – puke) and the thinking people didn’t challenge them on that. Sheer fucking hubris.
If the country wasn’t as fucked as it is it would be “bleakly hilarious” as someone put it on twitter…
The image I’ve got from recent politics is something akin to The Rebels fighting their way into the Imperial Palace, and as they fight their way in, nobody has noticed quite a few of the government troops have their backs to them, and once they’ve mowed everybody down and burst into the Cabinet Office and shot El Presidente they find the Daleks advancing from the other direction.
What a silly cunt. Has he ever produced a single working spermatozoan?
He might want to read Annabel Fenwick-Elliott’s excellent reasons for moving to the USA. It’s a very good article.
How convenient that green happens to be the Islamist colour.
On one side are millions of left-leaning Britons – many of them young – whose economic prospects are worsening, whose anxieties about the climate crisis are rising, whose horror at Israel and the US’s wars is absolute, and whose alienation from the compromises of conventional Labour politics is deep. This is the large minority of the electorate attracted by Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to radicalise Labour between 2015 and 2019, and now increasingly drawn to Zack Polanski’s leftwing, populist reshaping of the Greens. For both leaders, the ultimate, hugely ambitious aim was or is to create a much more equal, environmentally sustainable country with a much more ethical foreign policy.
Still a minority of the electorate, and quite a small one at that. A group of people that managed to famously lose to Boris Johnson in the then biggest landslide Labour defeat for more than 80 years.
The ultimate aim seems to be the complete destruction of the country – with very little actual equality in the offing. Ask White working class voters if they feel ‘equal’ to various types of ethnic minority being prioritised by the Greens and Corbynites? Ask Christians or indeed Jews if they feel ‘equally’ treated by a party that shamelessly genuflects to militant Islam?
How is the complete destruction of the country’s industrial base and the importation of thousands of supplicants and mendicants creating a ‘more environmentally sustainable country’ – Remind me??
What precisely is ethical about a party that celebrates Hamas, Hizbollah and the Ayatollah? Did ‘ethical’ get redefined in the OED?
Thus, Corbyn’s leadership was steadily undermined by claims that he was a dangerous extremist who threatened national security and economic prosperity and tolerated antisemitism, terrorism and Muslim sectarianism. A lifelong anti-racist, peace campaigner and assiduously inclusive constituency MP ended up being seen by too many voters as a promoter of division and prejudice.
His budgets would have bankrupted the country within a year. He has opposed British foreign policy and colluded with evil, whether Communism or Islamic extremism for decades as well. Professional ‘anti-racists’ are without doubt responsible for the growth of racism in the UK, primarily of course against Whites. Racism against ethnic minorities, as the Sewell report proved is vanishingly rare. To be described as one pretty much guarantees the person is a racist – of scarcely paralleled viciousness.
The fact that the Greens are attracting many ex-Corbynistas – from thousands of former Labour voters and members to quite well-known figures such as the activist Michael Chessum, the economist James Meadway and Labour’s ex-general secretary Jennie Formby – could, theoretically, make avoiding a repeat of Corbynism’s demise easier. Such veterans gained a painful understanding of the forces that any British leftwing party is up against – and how, and how not, to combat them.
Well a lot of people feel that complete economic destruction and their own self-immolation aren’t particularly desirable outcomes. One doesn’t need to be manipulated to feel that a leftwing party, as the excellent Marius points out is in of itself genuinely evil? And as the saying goes ‘ All that is required for evil to triumph…’
“Such veterans gained a painful understanding of the forces that any British leftwing party is up against”
Aka reality. (In all of its economic and human behavioural glory)
“Our cult is better than your cult.”
As Caroline Lucas is so painfully finding out, the New Greens basically are the Corbies.
My heart bleeds. No, honestly, it really does. Couldn’t happen to a nicer woman. [Alarm goes off.] Bloody hell, what was I dreaming?
They are not, you might notice, horrified by China’s treatment of its subject populations. Or the North Koreans. Or the Iranian massacres. Or Palestinians.
If Hypnotits isn’t either a) an intelligence asset designed to flush out all the completely bonkers anti-semitic leftists, or b) in the pay of Nigel Farage, he’s doing a very good job of making it look like either or both are true. In fact if he didn’t exist Reform would have had to invent him. The Greens are making Reform look like sensible centrist Dads. And driving floating voters ever rightwards. Yes the Greens will win some inner city seats where all the Islamics and lefty nutters hang out (who would never have voted Reform in a million years anyway) but in the rest of the country the fear of them will drive the electorate rightwards. All Nigel needs to do now is keep quiet and let Zack do his work for him.
From this article, it sounds to me like Labour is a cult of personality vis-a-vis Corbyn, while duh Greens are a cult of personality for Polanski. Farage doen’t fit in. There’s nothing charismatic about his personality. Off putting even.
Will the next general election be issues vs personalities?
Gamecock can translate: destroy middle class prosperity.
Got it. This article is an anybody-but-reform campaign ad.
Farage doesn’t do charismatic but his personality – the guy who you can to in your local (but not the “pub bore”) is *not* off-putting to a large minority of the British electorate. Do you imagine you would get an honest answer from Ed Miliband if you asked him a question? Even I, who do not support Farage, would expect an honest answer (unless, maybe even if, there was a journalist listening to distort things) from him.
[Starmer, well, would I be able to understand his answer?]
“the creation of Israel specifically where it is was” was a consequence of Herzl being persuaded that the Jews of Eastern Europe would not support an Israel that was not in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
To be fair:
a) there were still Jews there despite the diasporas over the preceding 19 centuries
b) it was relatively less populated at the time than any place else the Jews might have thought about gathering
c) the governing polity was much farther away and weaker than any place else.
Because of the Jews that were still living in Jerusalem.
“still living” misses one point: “still” isn’t quite right.There was a spell of several hundred years when Jews were explicitly banned from living in Jerusalem and that ban was policed. They were allowed to return by the Arabs who had defeated the Byzantines. I assume that was immediately after the Arab victory and before Islam was invented but that presumably depends on when Islam was invented. (You’d have to be pretty naive to accept the Koran’s version.)
Most of the people in Palestine of that period were also descended from the Jews of the time of Jesus, it’s just that they had converted to Christianity – and in due course many would convert to Islam. In terms of ancestry the Palestinians are more Jewish than the Ashkenazis. Are they also more Jewish than the Jewish immigrants from, say, Egypt or Iraq? Dunno. Don’t know whether anyone knows. And if “we” did know, so what? Nobody seems remotely bothered that sundry African and Slav immigrants are designated “Jews” when it suits the authorities. What a bloody morass.
The Jews are an ethno-religious group like the Druze, Yazidi, Samaritans, and a few others in the region. They’re all a mix of culture, religion, ancestry. The traditional Jewish definition of “who is a Jew?” only required descent through the mother and accepted, but did not encourage, conversion. The Beta Israel from Ethiopia have little ancestry from Jews of the Roman era, but it doesn’t stop them being Jews. Similarly the Bene Israel from India.
People seem to be able to get their head around ethnic groups having a cultural continuity even if their genetics change – Hungarians these days are basically indistinguishable from their European neighbours, and have little in common with their Ugric “ancestors” from Siberia. But they still have a very distinct culture and language. Nobody seems to think this makes them “not proper Hungarians”. I don’t think even the BNP cranks complained about folk with distant Flemish or Huguenot ancestry being described as “British”. So why does the ancestry of the Jews provoke so many weird insinuations?
The desire of the Jewish diaspora to return to their “homeland” was never premised on “100% genetically pure ancestry on both sides for 2000 years”. But there was a continuous cultural transmission and evolution of their traditions, so talking about “Jewish people” is more than a DNA test.
The people who bang on about modern Israeli Jews not being “real Jews” for genetic reasons are mostly doing so for antisemitic reasons. That was never the standard in Judaism of who counts as a Jew and nor is it how they judge the validity of other nations or peoples. It just so happens that many such cases are also utterly ignorant of the fact that Ashkenazi are a minority of Israel Jews (you’d think it wasn’t necessary to have seen many pictures of Israelis to realise this) and that extensive genetic investigation of Ashkenazi ancestry has already revealed they have a strong genetic connection not just a cultural heritage. The more genetically distant groups like Beta Israel and Bene Israel are comparatively small in number. Pointing out that people like Tucker Carlson have got their facts wrong isn’t a vindication of their genetic obsession. It’s just to make clear they’re incorrect, disingenuous arses.
Fwiw there are Israeli politicians including Netanyahu who frequently quote genetic results to “prove” the Palestinians are not indigenous. And while it’s true that Gazans have a different makeup due to the Egyptian influence, and in the West Bank there are significant differences between the Muslim and Christian populations, the truth is the Palestinian population as a whole has a long genetic link to the region too. DNA shouldn’t be the deciding factor in who gets to live there, and misinterpreting the results (presumably deliberately, either the man himself or his speechwriters, I don’t care to distinguish which) to suggest families should be kicked out is also an arse move. That kind of crap is not doing Israel any favours either.
There’s almost no point discussing history with people who don’t understand how long history lasts and how things change during it. Consider “The traditional Jewish definition of “who is a Jew?” only required descent through the mother”
Yet the genetics of the Ashkenazi is that their male descent is Middle Eastern and the female is Italian. On your argument that means they are not Jews. But in modern parlance they are indubitably Jews.
The use of “traditional” is stretching the meaning to be found in my dictionary – the Old Testament Hebrews traced descent through the male line.
@john77
Like it or not, matrilinear descent is a Jewish tradition. At least for mainstream (essentially rabbinic) Jews for about the last 2 millenia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality_in_Judaism
You’re right that this was a switch from patrilinear descent, but something doesn’t have to be the oldest tradition to be *a* tradition. Something that’s been around millenia has earned the t-word in my book. Karaite Jews do not follow rabbinic Judaism so have stuck out even longer with the patrilinear thing – fascinating people, not many of them around sadly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_Judaism
Some other far-flung Jewish communities also stuck to the patrlinear line, like Kaifeng Jews and the Beta Israel in Ethiopia, at least until converting to rabbinic Judaism as part of the legal process of aliyah to modern Israel. An unfortunate loss of Jewish history and diversity which the overly powerful Chief Rabbinate deserves blame for. Several parties want to break the Rabbinate’s monopoly by officially recognising alternative Jewish denominations but the Knesset arithmetic is always going to be tough. (The main argument is less about the geographically distinctive Jewish traditions and more about allowing Conservative, Reform and Liberal congregations to play a role in national life – which would be useful for some American and European olim, and handy for giving secular Israelis a less religious or even Jewish humanistic marriage venue, but they have little presence in Israel and the Chief Rabbinate detests them.)
@dearieme
“On your argument that means they are not Jews. But in modern parlance they are indubitably Jews.”
The latter sentence, yes. The former sentence, no not at all. Perhaps I’m just not explaining my position very clearly but it’s not some super nuanced one. My argument cannot possibly imply that they are non-Jews. What I’m saying is that it’s weird and obnoxious for me or you or anyone else to think we get to decide who is or isn’t a “real” Jew, and the fact this is an obsession outsiders have about the Jews and not other peoples or nations reeks of antisemitism. I reckon it doesn’t help that European notions of nationhood don’t map very well to Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups, just like they don’t to tribal groups elsewhere in the world.
I mentioned the matrilinear thing because anyone even semi-informed about Judaism should have heard of it and that one fact is all you need to know to realise it’s malicious nonsense when people claim “Jews falsely claim to be genetically identical to the Jews 2000 years ago, DNA testing will reveal their lies and debunk that Israel is their homeland!” Of course it’s unsurprising if Jews also have non-Jewish ancestry. If anything it’s more surprising that Ashkenazi have as much Middle Eastern ancestry as they do, but that’s not what validates that they’re Jewish. Just means the arses who raise the issue are doubly wrong about it.
To get into the weeds of it more than is necessary, and at the risk of obscuring my central point again, does it even really matter that there was undoubtedly intermarriage even in the “wrong line”? Zera Yisrael (“seed of Israel”) are still ethnically Jewish even if not halachically. As I was careful to point out, conversion exists to “fix” that. The fact Ashkenazi Jews have maintained their distinct identity for a loooong old time without getting assimilated away is indicative that those entering their communities – or at least their descendants – were being accepted as Jews back then too, not just retrospectively through today’s eyes. Was that due to confusion during the switch from patrilinear to matrilinear, a meticulous conversion process, rabbinical oversight, or communities choosing to turn a blind eye? I can’t see that it matters except to a halachic scholar and I’m not one of them.
And if any sad bastard is fist-pumping with glee that “we nailed them, turns out they’re not HALACHICALLY Jewish!!” then I bear bad news. The bulk of Ashkenazi arrivals in recent decades were making aliyah from the ex Soviet bloc, and being almost entirely secularised they had to go through a strict conversion process on the insistence of the rabbinate. Any halachic lacunae for those olim have been rectified. Fascinating news story recently revealed Ehud Barack and his minister Haim Ramon tried to pressure rabbis to wave through an extra million dodgy Russian conversions. But rabbis like Pinchas Goldschmidt refused despite continual pressure. Although Netanyahu denounced Labor for the affair, I’m sure plenty on the Israeli Right regret that it was blocked given the demographic situation today. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-885856
I seem to remember being told by a Jew that the matrilineal decent only dates back to Cossak pograms. The Torah etc certainly only trace paternal lineages. Matrilineal was adopted due to male depopulation & births following rape.
For Judaism as a whole, a date as late as the Cossack pogroms is certainly wrong for matrilinear descent, which was mainstream in rabbinic Judaism well over a millennium before that. It’s in all their legal texts right back to the second century, and apparently well established even at that point. However, the area where the Cossacks roamed did have a lot of Karaite Jews – they had a major centre in Crimea, with a hinterland around Russia and Ukraine. In that community, patrilinear descent remains the norm today but there are very few of them left. What your friend said might be consistent with most of the surviving Karaites being absorbed into rabbinic Jewish communities.
Fwiw the fact written genealogies trace the male line doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the line being used to prove Jewish descent (especially if Abraham’s immediate family is also treated as Jewish). The male line might be more relevant for reasons of politics or prestige – patriarchal society doesn’t rule out matrilinear descent. In practice there are historical reasons to suppose Jews of that time did follow patrilinear descent, and it’s telling that early offshoot communities like the Samaritans, Karaites and Beta Israel stuck with that.
Reason I bring this up is that rabbinic Judaism justifies matrilinear descent based on close reading of the Torah. Particularly based on genders used in Deuteronomy 7:3–4, where “he (i.e. a non-Jewish father) will turn away your son (i.e. a child of your Jewish daughter’s intermarriage) from following Me”. The fact this is being warned about but the child is still referred to as “your son” (i.e. a legitimate grandson) indicates to rabbinic Jews that the child of a Jewish mother is halakhically Jewish despite the intermarriage. They don’t see that as contradicting the male line of descent being traced in genealogies. Rabbinic Jews may date the use of the maternal line to the giving of the Torah, and argue this is just another thing the Karaites and Samaritans got wrong. https://www.sefaria.org.il/Kiddushin.68b.3?lang=bi&with=Ritva&lang2=en
The Book of Joshua states that daughters might inherit where the deceased landowner had no sons, so matrilinear descent was acceptable as a second-best but patrilinear was preferred.
That’s still the principle used in halachic law. In fact that bias against women in inheritance (among other things) is one of the reasons secular Israelis say they’re so concerned about the rising demographic and political power of the Orthodox. https://familylawisrael.com/en/the-division-of-inheritance-according-to-torah-law/
But note this concerns inheritance law. It’s not about who qualifies as a Jew halachically. Rabbinic Jews may now use the matrilinear line for that purpose but it doesn’t stop them favouring males in inheritance. Nor do they see any contradiction between what the Torah says about inheritance and their belief that the rule on matrilinear descent is mandated by the Torah.
Our youth (and adults) need to be taught critical thinking skills.
While wetting the bed about the ‘climate crisis’ they would do well to consider 2 things:
Is the evidence clear or are we in speculation well within the error bars of the available data and models?
If man made CO2 were a critical factor, what effect does exporting the UKs 1% of man-made CO2 to developing nations have on global man made CO2?.
Exporting UK industry creates MORE CO2. First world producers are more efficient and environmentally friendly than third world producers. Plus Chinese energy comes largely from coal.