They are really trying to destroy one of the most anti-racist people in politics. This just proves that there is simply no compromising with the liberals, they will try to destroy the left no matter what.
The Dems would be doing the same to Bernie if he wasn't Jewish. This will be a huge problem for the next big left-wing candidate, he/she will be accused of antisemitism.
would be doing the same to Bernie if he wasn’t Jewish.
It didn't stop them, they still tried it.
They tried to smear him as associating with "anti-semites" like Ilhan Omar and insisted he denounce them.
They went all in on Ilhan Omar, repeatedly.
Weird how anyone who expresses support for Palestine and Palestinians gets slandered as fascist.
Last time Labour had a decent leader was Harold Wilson. The army planned two coups against him. It's a fucking miracle how close Corbyn came to winning given the press barons and internal party sabotage.
Was Blair fucking things up for Corbyn behind the scenes like Obama did here?
Not really, no. He's not too involved with party politics anymore. Still makes shitty comments from time to time about "combating populism", but mostly he just runs his foundation for peace and stability in the Middle East (really)
foundation for peace and stability in the Middle East
ministry of peace lol
Not after the first time he tried led to increased support for Corbyn, no.
I'm not that in touch with UK politics
I meant when he was elected and largely blew the whole fucking thing by trying to play Greece to America's Rome
He set a precedent that allowed Corbyn's labour to smeared as both dangerous revolutionaries and as establishment liberals.
doing the same to Bernie if he wasn’t Jewish
Sanders isn't a quarter as good on Palestine as Corbyn and even Corbyn is a compromise.
What is absolutely terrifying is how quickly antisemitism has become criticism of Israel.
We have, with every passing generation, the horror of the Nazi death camps sinking further back into collective memory. Survivors are dying of old age and in spite of the very laudible and best efforts of many, it's becoming more than just history but aincient history.
We are going to have people watching Israel's actions then seeing those who criticise the use of white phosperus for instance smeared as antisemites. Some of then will have a decent understanding of what's going on. Most won't. Most will come to the entirely wrong conclusion about Israel and Jews as a whole.
Israel exists because of the US. Eventually the interests of the US and Israel will divert significantly enough for that support to dry up. Then you're gonna get some far right US candidate on the rise, drumming up popular support. They're going to have a ready made outsider group who are precieved to have some sort of 'special' status etc. You're gonna have people dogwhistling again about the Jews and how they don't belong and asking why they don't leave seeing as Israel is their home.
It's going to happen again basically and incidents like this are slowly but surely building the foundations for it.
he/she will be accused of antisemitism.
And it will work.
Be prepared for it. This worked devastatingly against Corbs, it's so painful to watch a genuinely good man treated this way.
counterpoint: they smeared ilhan omar as anti-Semitic and she did have not even half of the backlash Corbyn did. now if this has to do with America literally not giving a shit or what, it doesn't seem to resonate the same way it did to Corbyn. but they'll try anyways. if we get to that point. lol
No way this shit works in America the same way it does in the UK. In the UK Jews are majority tory voters, in the US Jews are much more left wing.
Really? I asked my first ever jewish American friend what her political leanings were and she looked at me like I was an idiot and said "duh, I'm jewish, republican."
Wtf lmfao, the vast majority of Jews are democrats, and that falls out by age. Maybe some orthodox jews are more Republican leaning, but that's not universally true at all. It's like 80/20.
Yeah I believe you. She may have been from a more rich/suburban/zionist place than most. The "democrats are extremist anti zionist" kind of zionism.
Yeah even most Jews that support Israel still vote democrat. The Republican party is far too Christian for most Jews.
There IS an element of vocal opposition to Israeli supremacy within the democrats. Obama has said that they "cannot permanently occupy and settle on Palestinian land." So I get it, if I were a single-issue zionist candidate, I'd be wary of this kind of "dangerous language" from the democrats. They're also not quite as rhetorically loyal to AIPAC as republicans are. So I assumed most zionists thought this way.
OBVIOUSLY It should go without saying that beyond some mild rhetoric, neither party have ever intended to challenge warcrimes in Palestine. Bernie was the slightly less mild rhetorical candidate on this, and Jezza was a step further.
Yeah, Israeli Americans are much more republican leaning, but again, it's probably no more than 50/50.
Bernie's early political teachings are that of old school labour Zionism (people forget that Israel had a socialist economic system until 1985 that was probably most similar to that of market socialist yugoslavia), but there still is a ton of Zionism imbedded in that ideology, it's why he's so in love with worker co-ops, and doesn't support BDS due to support for a 2 state solution.
This also said, most Jews even if they support the end of palestinian occupation, do not support BDS for their call for a 1 state solution because they just think it would mean decades of civil war.
I come from a long line of New York Jews who all diligently vote Democrat at the top of the ticket and then spend two hours explaining why Mayor Bloomberg was the best mayor the city ever had.
Um, 75-80 percent of Jews vote dems. That's the highest after African Americans.
he/she will be accused of antisemitism.
If they'd just shut up about Israel for a fucking minute they'd make it much harder for their accusers. Why argue about something you can't do shit about. Some things need to be done in silence and when in power.
Its harder for them to get away with it here because most of our Jews lean lib/left, which is flipped in the UK. Still definitely possible but less so.
That was his major mistake. If they're gonna call it a stalinist purge you might has well do it. The next wave of democratic left leaders won't make excuses for the libs.
The next wave of democratic left leaders won’t make excuses for the libs.
They've been saying that for the past century. Pretty sure that's long enough to figure out electoralism and Bougeoise compromise ain't cutting it chief. Time to join in organizing for the big R.
The media is your enemy and should be treated as such. They are an arm of Liberalism, and Liberals are your enemy!
Early 20th Century Socialists knew "how to read capitalist newspapers ; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read". Unfortunately, 2020 Leftists believe everything in the liberal press at face value because they are fucking libs.
Depends who owns the media. There's fantastic independent press and so many journalists are doing very important work. Also Don't Hate The Media Become The Media.
Should have done an actual purge, that would have been amazing:stalin-shining:
Wait hold the fuck up are you saying the media are biased against the left?? Surely no?
The Greens have got some pretty cool ideas, tbf. They're probably better than Keith's Labour
Brits are as fully brainwormed as Americans, maybe even moreso
Britain's the husk of a fallen empire, its top industry is finance. It's like a landlord who inherited the property of a successful corporate raider, but only knows to live off the proceeds (and fortunately his big American brother is a gun-wielding psycho). You can understand Germany subjecting Greece to austerity - xenophobic imperialism 101. But Britain's been subjecting its own people to austerity. Brits used to be the footsoldiers of empire, a dirty business, but one with glory and spoils. Now they're back to being the surplus population that's just getting in the way of its finance-managing betters.
On the flip side there's been a huge resurgence in socialism in the younger generation and Corbyn was a worthy figurehead. At the same time our attachments to him are only sentimental, and anybody worth their salt has just witnessed first hand a demonstration of the devastating might of the capitalist establishment. You learn more from defeat and all that.
This is a point I try to tell to my self as much as I do others. The scale of capitalism is beyond imagination, any action will only see it rise to greater heights to match any effort. Direct actions are unsustainable over long periods.
Yeah. The British left is actually in a worse off position than before and even in a worse position than Americans which is astounding
i really don't know how you can combat a media that just straight up lies and distorts reality.
the manufacturing of consent on this issue has been very thorough
Everyone on that godforsaken island thinks left=antisemitism now it seems. I know some trot who studies there, the org she is part of had to go through some kind of "ethics investigation" at her university because they wrote something like "maybe murdering palestinians is bad", which was apparently antisemitic. Hadn't they passed it they'd literally be banned from the uni, but thankfully they haven't gone that insane yet.
This is why, if the left every gets power, you ruthlessly use it to purge right wing voices. I do mean ruthlessly. Corbyn needed a pitbull by his side to tear apart the right of the party. Fuck.
Yeah this was a result of not consolidating power when he had the chance
Six or seven MPs got shoved out and started their own Labour For Capitalists party, didn't they?
I suspect he did try to consolidate power to some degree. But a big chunk of Labour is still Tony Blair's Party. And the media in the UK is so comically pro-Tory that it hardly matters what Labour leadership does internally. You'll just get "The ex-Labour ministers who claim Jeromy Corbyn eats babies" headlines for three months and everyone will hate them by election day, regardless.
That was Change UK (abbreviated to CUK lol) who are basically the same as the LibDems. They first ran for European elections and fell flat on their face, winning no seats and 3% of the total vote. The MPs that left Labour all lost their seats in the following GE. Also IIRC thdy left the party between the European elections and the GE, notable one is Chuka Umunna who ended up joining the LibDems. Also change.org threatened to sue them so great idea overall.
I completely agree but I think we would have been doomed due to the media regardless. We probably could've formed a government in 2017 but the consent manufacturing in this country is so out of control that we're fucked for now
Meanwhile the Blairite wing literally sabotaging the party by exaggerating and ignoring anti-Semitism in the party is going to be not only completely ignored and unpunished, but actively rewarded.
As much as the ruling powers love Israel, I think this is much more about purging the Left/Corbyn than Israel. They want to bring Labour back to heel.
And the excuse just happens to outright label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
It literally is just Israel extending its influence appendages to join forces with the Blairites in common cause to eradicate the left wing of Labour. Just like the Democrats the Blairites are quite happy to cripple their own party and rest easy as permanent minority controlled opposition.
But if you suggest Israel has influence in British politics you'll get smeared just like the others.
In directly related news go watch The Lobby if you haven't already, its available for free on Youtube
This is a cleaner link to that report.
Remove google from your links to help comrades maintain their anonymity.
https://novaramedia.com/2020/04/12/its-going-to-be-a-long-night-how-members-of-labours-senior-management-campaigned-to-lose/
Novara has a good breakdown of the report here
It's really "fun" how the Labour party's membership criteria disallow "mild critique of Israel" but allow "legitimate war crimes"
Mild critique of Israel bad, allowing M15 agents to rape leftist activists and have kids with them by deception good
Starmer forced the Labour party to abstain from a vote forbidding a bill whereby cops and MI5 can commit crimes and blame environmental/leftist activists, which also allows deep cover agents to have families with activists to enforce their cover, it's some fucked up shit.
I read a little of the report, and it was ridiculous per my expectations. Labour leadership had the unique task of fighting a crisis that didn't exist, a challenge that is impossible to win. If they stated the obvious and denied there was a crisis, this was only included as further evidence of anti-semitism (as it is in the report). If they decided to pursue the issue, they yielded no results and detractors called it incompetence. Labour leadership had no chance of winning from the beginning.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) first asked the EHRC to investigate the Conservative Party in May 2019. It received no reply and made a second request in November 2019 and again received no reply. In March 2020, the MCB submitted a dossier including 300 supposed cases of prejudiced or discriminatory language against Muslims within the Conservative Party. On 12 May, the EHRC announced that it would not be investigating the Conservative Party for racism, pending its monitoring of the party's own internal review.[37][38]
The idea of an "Equality and Human Rights Commission" on TERF island is inherently funny.
Damn I hope Scotland gains independence and the
BritishEnglish Labor party is destroyed.I'm torn between wanting to cut up my membership card and knowing i should fight from within. if this cryptotory scum becomes pm it'll be ten more years of blair
Entryism never, ever works, comrade. Chop that shit up and never look back.
Gotta disagree there. The only good things in this godforsaken country came from Attlee and Wilson. The only real chance to oppose British neoliberalism has to be through Labour, unfortunately.
That's absolutely true. I know a lot of people who focus exclusively on electoralism. I'm happy to use it pragmatically for harm reduction and shifting the Overton Window.
Seems like all that happens in British politics is it shifting right. The last few years have been an absolute shitshow.
Nah I think we just need a ghoul.
The Tories were successfully shifted from central right to far far right in the last decade, not from within, but by Farage and UKIP and the BNP.
Far right influence threatened to steal votes from the Tories, so they shifted to be far right themselves and managed to stay in power.
There's no reason a similar thing can't happen with Labour. I'm not sure exactly what a left wing version of Farage would look like, but I think we need one.
The Tories were successfully shifted from central right to far far right in the last decade, not from within, but by Farage and UKIP and the BNP.
I don't think that's really true at all. Tory ideology hasn't really changed that much over the last couple of decades except for the EU and accepting defeat on a few token social issues. The shift towards Euroscepticism was largely driven by events - Black Wednesday and the Maastricht Treaty caused outrage on the right and led directly to the creation of UKIP and the ERG, then there was the wave of immigration from Poland, then the endless wrangling over the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty, the euro debt crisis, and then finally Cameron's decision to try and ride the surging anti-EU sentiment by promising a referendum.
I know it's easy to pick out terrible things they're doing and argue they've got worse, but they've always been doing terrible things. Twenty years ago they were still fighting to keep Section 28 and some of their MPs would openly attend mask-off neo-Nazi meetings that used the pre-1994 South African flag as a centrepiece.
There’s no reason a similar thing can’t happen with Labour. I’m not sure exactly what a left wing version of Farage would look like, but I think we need one.
The Greens have been doing a pretty decent job, but the problem is it's extremely easy for the other parties (even the Tories) to pretend that they care about the environment and human rights and stuff. Leaving the EU was a very clear-cut, straightforward policy goal, so it was impossible for any governing party to somehow pretend they were already doing it.
Yeah and the left needs to engage in a decade long effort to build out alternative media.
because it's for the interests of capital. of course it'll work for them because they are sailing with the wind not against it.
I still want to participate because I know there's hope. the CLPs do a lot of good, hell, there's a guy in mine that hands out the Communist Manifesto to newcomers.
I’m reducing my membership donations to the minimum and am only staying on to vote for SCG/Momentum candidates of which my local MP and various Councillors are. Also NEC candidate elections are currently ongoing so if you do decide to quit make sure to vote in those first for some Socialists. Electoralism is pretty shit for the most part but grassroots Labour is still pretty socialist (especially after Corbyn boosted membership) which makes it a good place to meet like minded people to organise with which is the real aim.
No. Please shut up. Americans with no concept of having a real left party to do battle in in their country need to stay out of it.
This is perfectly timed to alienate the left before the NEC vote which is extremely important to control of the party. They want the left to quit right now. There isn't any appetite among the important names to start a new party so it ain't fucking happening. Fighting within is literally the only path currently. Unless you intend to go join Red Fightback you should stay exactly where you are.
Not to dox myself here, but the "American" claim doesn't apply in this circumstance. I've abandoned electoral politics entirely on my part. You do you, but I'm not having any more part in it.
Electoral politics are still valid and valuable within the UK. There is absolutely zero possibility of a non-electoral victory in an unarmed nation where socdem is the furthest left viable position. We need to elevate class consciousness to achieve that and a victory within the labour party to give company shares to workers spearheading workplace democracy and a massive boost in the material interests of workers sparking that consciousness is that path to do it.
With that aside. There is an argument for an insurrectionary-lite movement of the north after Scotland leaves, but those are only likely to feed back into the electoral politics and we need control of a party when that ship starts to sale.
I will respectfully disagree here, the forces of capital will never allow it, especially as all of the UK media is owned by the reactionary class and US/UK intelligence. They will sooner see everyone dead before they allow anyone to the left of Blair run the nation again. I'm gona focus on direct action and dual power. You do you.
You're mistaking Lenin's words on electoral politics not being a pathway to socialism for electoral politics not being a pathway that empowers the non-electoral movement.
There is zero appetite for a revolution, zero possibility of a non-electoral movement. The quickest pathway to creating these things lies in an electoral policy that changes our workplaces. We need to de-atomise the population and inspire collective mindsets of an us vs them worker vs capital mindset again. The best way to do this is to give workers shares forcing workplace democracy to popup everywhere and driving an extremely fast boost in the political education of the population. The people will quickly learn that they're labour vs capital in their workplaces through this and class consciousness will rocket. Unions will rocket and non-electoral activities will take off. That's when the non-electoral track becomes viable.
Electoral politics are not an end, they are a means. We can't achieve socialism with them but we can achieve the conditions required to advance the non-electoral push. Unlike the conditions America finds itself in we actually do have the ability to win victories via the party and have demonstrated this. A single term won't give us socialism but it'll advance everything else we do.
I find it highly doubtful that they'll be enough votes for the left to take over the NEC
They haven't even sent me my ballot yet. Perhaps this is an insidious plot to rig it, then again probably just shitty technology and messy bureaucracy.
There are a number of things within the party that the left is actually very strong at taking. The Youth position is decided by electoral college made up of 50% unions and 50% youth members, the older membership can't vote in it. The same for the new disabled position but for disabled membership instead of youth obviously.
Getting anyone into a position that is for open-selection is exceptionally valuable even if they're not a leftist, open selection will prevent libs getting into seats as MPs and then never ever being possible to replace. The existence of Labour MPs everyone popularly hates who sit there for decades is a product of not having open selection, we can get rid of half the terfs if we have it by selecting a different rep for their seat.
We don't need hard leftists to do things that are going to benefit us in the long term. People like Laura Pidcock are extremely valuable even though she disagrees with everything else we want because she does want open selection.
Ask yourself what the Blairites would want you to do, and do the opposite. Starmer is clearly trying to get the left to purge ourselves out of the party. We shouldn't give him what he wants.
Yep. Starmer and co wouldn't be trying so hard to purge the left if they didn't perceive the left as a real threat.
How the Democrats and Labour operate are very functionally different, though. A purge in the Democratic party isn't going to look the same as a purge in Labour. I doubt Keith wants to lose the actual votes of the left in a GE, he just doesn't want them to have any say in the party. "Vote Red No Matter Who" essentially.
I considered it when the report about internal sabotage got leaked as well. What convinced me was one sniveling comment on Twitter by some Blairite saying they hoped we all left. It reminded me that we can actually take control of the party again. These are terrible setbacks, but this just shows how much progress we've made in the last five years. Save for something monumental and unforseen, Labour is still the only chance Britain has of socialism, so I'll play the electoralism game.
Thanks for the link. I know a Corbynite government wouldn't have solved all our problems, but the five years of opposition we got from him moved socialism back into the political limelight. Even if harm reduction and shifting the Overton Window is the most electoralism can do, I think it's worth somewhat supporting for that, but I can absolutely see why you'd think differently.
Always remember that liberals have unlimited weapons against electoral politicians who get too radical. When Democrats were holding those "What do we do with Bernie" meetings, they weren't about "oh no what could we do?" They were about "Which of our methods should we use this time?" Claims of antisemitism aren't in any way special, they will dig something up, and if not they will manufacture something.
Warren attended these meetings, as reported by the press. So did Pete.
Beto notably did not attend. The meetings were basically the point where the dems replaced him with buttigieg
Stoping Bernie isn't as pressing of a concern as stopping Corbyn. The labour party actually could've passed Corbyns agenda, with Bernie as president the democrats would've just blocked everything.
What? There would've been plenty of labour MP's abstaining from voting for Corbyn's agenda.
There are no US parties. They are just brand management non-profit organizations.
I hope they purge AOC because it make actually push her left and totally backfire because she's so popular
They won't purge shit, unless maybe if they manage to spin it as the left's fault for losing to Trump, if they lose. They know it would backfire, they're not that dumb.
Dems would rather push themselves further right and start chanting the 14 words rather than admitting that they're capable of being wrong.
