Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

Gary Younge totally otm

Jewish community centres and synagogues in the UK employ security guards because of the dangers posed to Jewish people by the far right, and for no other reason.

Boris Johnson has welcomed antisemites to Parliament, allowed conspiracist anti-Soros bullshit to be repeated by members of his own cabinet, has been guilty of racism against Muslims and black people both in rhetoric and in support for hostile environment policies, has repeatedly engaged in homophobia and misogyny, and there is also the matter of some horrible, abusive behaviour on his part being well-known by a huge number of UK journalists who are unable to report on it because of the way it would affect blameless third parties, but it’s a proper bombshell. And no, I don’t mean the Camberwell tape.

One of the more pernicious legacies of the Blair years was the state's homogenizing of 'faith communities', all of them, & enabling a handful of retrograde figures to 'speak' for all in that community. It strengthened hands of patriarchs & chauvinists, sorry to say. Here we are.

— Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) November 26, 2019

^ this is OTM

Yep. I'd go one further and posit that we've seen this happen before the economical crisis in most of Western Europe, when hedonist liberalism was at a high. They enabled these retrograde figures to keep their votes.

imo the U.K. has always been deeply antisemitic, in the same way that it’s deeply racist towards more or less everyone else, and I can fully understand why a lot of well-intentioned people who have been banging that drum for decades are choosing to use this as an opportunity to make the case for reform of institutions, including Labour.

However, it’s difficult to underestimate how few people on the right would have cared about that fifteen or so years ago. You tended to have a position somewhere between ambivalence and hostility - both to British Jews and, to some extent, Israel, imo. It’s not purely islamophobia driving it, though I think that’s a huge part. The fallout from Iraq made defending Israel and rejecting left-wing ‘anti-imperialist ‘ politics much more of a cultural touchstone for large and small C conservatives. In the current climate, British Jews aren’t just perceived on the right as ‘the opposite of British Muslims’, they stand in as a proxy for all the allies (Israel. the US, NATO, Ulster Unionists, the military, the security services, business, etc) Corbyn’s supposed to be hostile to.

ok that's super interesting

Important election news from St Leonard's

https://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/news/politics/liberal-democrat-poster-damaged-in-st-leonards-1-9154206

"Police said they received a report of criminal damage"

lol, these plods are obv short of some midsomer murders to solve

Welby enters the fray:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/26/justin-welby-chief-rabbi-labour-antisemitism

Kantar poll I saw is Tories on +11

Organized religion in siding with the conservative powers that be and against the proletariat shocker

It is in church people like Welby's interest to have a tory govt cos further rampant child poverty and despair is all good for dying god bothering institutions like his.

There's a long way to go still but I'm already dreading the explosion of recriminations and told-you-so's that's going to happen if the Tories win a majority.

that will mostly be from quiet tory voters probably

NEW: There have been a massive 2.8m applications to #RegisterToVote since the election was called.

That's over a million more than the comparable pre-deadline period during the last election, which saw 1.7m applications

— Electoral Reform Society (@electoralreform) November 25, 2019

There have been two strands of anecdotal 'data'. One is from activists on twitter saying they've had very productive conversations on the doorstep and the other is from a journalist accompanying Lab activists as they go around talking to voters. Jonathan Freedland was one I read last week and Aditya is the other one today

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/26/on-the-doorstep-labour-faces-the-question-who-do-you-speak-for

They show a different picture and cover the angle that is dear to their journalism. So you JF had some antisemitism with a 'but don't count them out', which is pricing in how journalists have been terrible at any kind of analysis. Aditya's piece is covering the angle that is more in line with what I see, that Labour lost a lot of the working class vote during New Labour and while Corbyn has arrested the slide it hasn't been that good at reversing it. That's really a problem with social democracy as a thing in itself and at the core of why the Tories are, despite everything, ending up as the biggest party as they haven't set fire to their own constituencies in the way Labour have (social care and WASPI are minor things at the moment, and Brexit hasn't happened yet).

Antisemitism is and remains a serious issue in Europe, and we need better education on this. I can safely say many of the tropes I’ve learned about that are common in antisemitic discourse are something I never would have learned about growing up. Nor, even in Ireland, do you even learn about high profile Irish Jewish people. I know the curriculum will now teach you about different religions but it certainly didn’t when I was growing up. There’s a house down the road from me that my family has lived near for ~twenty years and I’ve passed a million times that had a mezuzah outside it.

We learn about JFK who was, what, fourth gen Irish, but do we learn about Isaac Herzog, the fluent Irish speaker who supported independence? Do we learn about his son, who went on to become a president of Israel? We do not.

European history incorporates Jewish history, and all over Europe racist parties are scrambling to erase and desecrate this. This is what matters, and it is hugely irresponsible for people to make out that they care about antisemitism when they are defending Orbán and PiS. Yes, Corbyn has done some hugely stupid and hurtful things in the name of supporting Palestine and I’m not convinced he truly understands the hurt he has caused.

It truly sticks in the throat, though, to see Telegraph journalists and Times journalists, who spend their time laundering far right talking points for mainstream consumption, act as though they care about this. Or the people who were harassing a young British Afghan PPC yesterday on account of her using the slang term “gassed” in the same sentence as “Israeli”.

It’s dangerous, because say they do defeat Corbyn. What does that leave everyone after that? You invite the fascists in, they may not be so easy to remove, and that’s a danger to every minority in the country.

tl;dr I’m not here & also hugely depressing list
Anonym zu http://brockley.blogspot.com/2019/11/dont-let-tories-use-jews-as-political.html

There's a long way to go still but I'm already dreading the explosion of recriminations and told-you-so's that's going to happen if the Tories win a majority.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 26 November 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Two weeks of noise and a shit Xmas is minor compared to five years of Boris and Patel and Raab killing people tbh.

The fallout from Iraq made defending Israel and rejecting left-wing ‘anti-imperialist‘ politics much more of a cultural touchstone for large and small C conservatives.

OTM (& great post), but also just the increasing polarisation/partisan divide in politics, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? the left ideal of solidarity with Palestine goes back decades but the right's reaction to it seems more recent

see Northern Ireland, where such divisions are obviously quite entrenched, and where nationalist/republican communities have flown the Palestinian flag for years as a mark of solidarity with a fellow occupied territory (or, if you prefer, "occupied territory" in scare quotes), and as a reaction to that loyalist communities started flying the Israeli flag, even before Blair's adventures in Iraq

(see https://archive.allianceparty.org/israeli-flags-not-welcomed-by-jewish-community/ which is a press release from 2002 from NI's cross-community Alliance party, or https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10702890701801775 which looks like a v interesting paper with analysis of the identification on both sides if you have access to the full text)

xposts everyone otm, more excellent posts

There's a long way to go still but I'm already dreading the explosion of recriminations and told-you-so's that's going to happen if the Tories win a majority.
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 26 November 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Two weeks of noise and a shit Xmas is minor compared to five years of Boris and Patel and Raab killing people tbh.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 26 November 2019 10:33

true but not looking forward to the recriminations claiming Labour's defeat is because of not enough enthusiasm for austerity-induced deaths, no-deal-Brexit-shortage-induced deaths, and getting rid of all the foreigns (even if to their deaths), and calling for an urgent party reorientation with more full-throated expressions of joy for all the above

(possibly just as reality begins to bite even harder and the public may start to realise they are not good after all, but our glorious press might never allow that part)

It's interesting to note that when the Archbishop of Canterbury intervened in politics by blasting the impact of austerity and Brexit, this was the reaction of much of the press pic.twitter.com/3nVmu0HZiv

— 🚩 The Election Leftorium 🗳️ (@LeftoriumThe) November 26, 2019

A pivot to hard Brexit has been the best chance for the Tories and a lot of posts in this election thread have been already pricing in a defeat and the need for activists to stay strong and keep electing left leaders where we can keep the offer as good as it is and to not basically do a Dog Latin/LJ xp

But again, it's a minor issue in a five year Boris govt

i think you'll find that my posting has been overwhelmingly supportive of Labour and the controversial bits have been tactical Hail Marys, as distinct from DL's 'um are Labour bad' mithering, don't group us ffs

there are many terrible aspects to the whole anti-semitism debate (and don't get me wrong, the worst aspect of all is actual anti-semitism), but tone-deaf atheists wading in to share their brilliant insights is the fucking pits

^ i mean on social media rather than here btw

the coordinated LABOUR ARE RACIST narrative both reeks of tory desperation and depressingly appears to have taken hold. hopefully its effect won't last (until they resurrect it every couple of days until the election) - how to counteract the hard-right media machine?

It hasn't taken hold and I don't think it has anything to do with Tory desperation tbh.

I don't feel the defeatism described upthread. I'm not sure what I feel but there's no pessimism. Its all there to play for

Ladies and gentlemen, the Tory Manifesto in a single photograph. Not one, but two disabled spaces. #ConservativeManifesto #GE2019 pic.twitter.com/FiptILqoCM

— Matthew Moss (@MJMOSS) November 25, 2019

beautiful

One of the routes we sometimes take driving from Devon to London skits Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax's country seat, it seems to go on forever.

*skirts

... like his name (xp)

and to not basically do a Dog Latin/LJ xp

harsh on all involved imo

full body cringe:

I set trends dem man copy https://t.co/85mTHXaZDn

— Michael Gove (@michaelgove) November 26, 2019

oh... oh no

harsh on all involved imo

― Le Bateau Ivre, Tuesday, 26 November 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Ready to paste this mistaken bit of goodwill on Dec 13th.

there will be a lot of goodwill on here if there's a tory majority

tbf I won't blame much of it on Labour, there are titanic forces they're up against and I admire the project, but I may talk practicals here and there

anyway Rayner seems like a good next leader (and I'm not talking Jay this time lol)

all looking forward to andrew neil Vs corbyn tonight ? think I’m going to patch that and go canvass for paul sweeney in glasgow NE

Gove playing to the gallery in Toby Young fashion/getting annihilated by Stormzy fans on twitter might just encourage a few more hundred thousand Labour voters to register before midnight.

should change that to getting annihilated by everybody who isn't a racist tory on twitter

Very happy to announce a series of John Cage hologram concerts using pioneering technology designed by Red Bull Music Academy https://t.co/sKNMyPxu8H pic.twitter.com/vCR4bIFaCu

— Cafe OTO (@Cafeoto) November 26, 2019

Cage is one of the few people I think would enjoy being exploited as a hologram :)

sign me up tbh, if it saves me leaving the house i’m all for it

4k.33k

One supporter has sent us this photo of him dismantling the WiFi router to stop his idiotic 18 year old daughter from registering to vote. An absolutely fantastic effort 👏👏👏👏👏 #SRFC #UpTheGreyhounds #NeverStopNotGivingUp #DontRegisterToVote pic.twitter.com/hvdbsmPQAZ

— Streatham Rovers Football Club (@StreathamRovers) November 26, 2019

He's back!1!

I enjoy Tories bragging about how they've fucked with the vote, and I say this as a re-education camp fan