What leave voters voted for?

[jon1959]

I have generally objected to the USA and UK bombing third world countries at the drop of a hat, and the three countries you mention are all very different cases. Maybe you're referring to Israel defending itself from time to time though - it's not clear .

Either way it's a bit nuts to compare any of that with centuries of persecution and the hollocaust against Jews.
It's also a bit dubious to split hairs over the term " anti semitism" when none of the things you mention are related to the racial group of those being bombed.

You can't defend socialist or other anti semitism ,( as the world understands the term), by diverting from it in this way. It's strange that socialists will try to accuse everyone who disagrees with them on anything of racism, but defend this particular very real form of racism.
As I said earlier , it's a very evil philosophy.

Getting tedious again and risks this thread turning into another Groundhog Day. But, anyway....

What do you understand anti-semitism to mean if you think you can claim that 'socialists' defend it? Maybe leave out your warped idea of what socialism is about (collectivism, equality of opportunity, fighting discrimination and exploitation.... you know, what normal people with no mental illness understand by the term) and focus on anti-semitism.

If you mean hatred of and/or discrimination against Jewish people as Jews then you are talking your usual crap.

If you mean opposition to the political ideology of Zionism and criticism not just of the policies of the Israeli state but also the central state ideology (explicitly since the Jewish State bill was passed in July 2018) combined with publicly discussing the terrorist mass murders and ethnic cleansing from the 1948 Nakba - expulsion of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs - onwards, then you are right - a lot of socialists of all kinds defend that view.

Some of the people charged and expelled from the Labour Party were anti-semites or at least made clear anti-semitic comments usually on social media - often repeating age-old racist tropes. Many were anti-Zionists. Many of those are Jewish themselves (like Tony Greenstein) and from families that went through the Holocaust (like Cyril Chilson) - in a few cases the anti-Zionist critics denounced by Margaret Hodge (90% of the names on her lists turned out not to be Labour Party members) and others as anti-semites are Auchwitz survivors (Hajo Meyer for one). Hundreds of people accused in the anti-semitism witchhunt have finally been cleared (again a high proportion are themselves Jewish) but not before they were dragged through the mud.

In my opinion the independent and academic analysis of anti-semitism in the Labour Party shows that it exists and has to be stamped out - and it has not just emerged with Corbyn. Labour (according to the research I have read) is no more at fault here than any other party and racist/anti-semitic attitudes amongst its members are lower than most (certainly than the Tories) and dropping. However, to use the buzz-word, it has been weaponised to achieve the joint objectives of attacking Corbyn and silencing critics of Israel (especially in the DBS movement). Both objectives have been successful.

Corbyn has not handled it well - he cannot always hand-wring and try to avoid conflict, and John McDonnell has been far to keen to appease the LFI and right wing media. It doesn't close the crisis down, it just encourages those who are cynically using it for their own purposes. It also makes it much harder to confront real anti-semitism (not the 'new' anti-semitism of the IHRA definition plus 11 garbled examples that the Israeli government has been pushing for years).

I have little sympathy for some like Ken Livingston but I do for Jackie Walker (mostly), Thomas Suarez and many others who now find themselves libelled and abused because they are anti-Zionists and critics of the Israeli state. In a week when there have been more anti-semitic murders in Germany, and a rising count of incidents from grafitti to verbal abuse to desecration of cemetries,

[RonnieBird]

Getting tedious again and risks this thread turning into another Groundhog Day. But, anyway....

What do you understand anti-semitism to mean if you think you can claim that 'socialists' defend it? Maybe leave out your warped idea of what socialism is about (collectivism, equality of opportunity, fighting discrimination and exploitation.... you know, what normal people with no mental illness understand by the term) and focus on anti-semitism.

If you mean hatred of and/or discrimination against Jewish people as Jews then you are talking your usual crap.

If you mean opposition to the political ideology of Zionism and criticism not just of the policies of the Israeli state but also the central state ideology (explicitly since the Jewish State bill was passed in July 2018) combined with publicly discussing the terrorist mass murders and ethnic cleansing from the 1948 Nakba - expulsion of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs - onwards, then you are right - a lot of socialists of all kinds defend that view.

Some of the people charged and expelled from the Labour Party were anti-semites or at least made clear anti-semitic comments usually on social media - often repeating age-old racist tropes. Many were anti-Zionists. Many of those are Jewish themselves (like Tony Greenstein) and from families that went through the Holocaust (like Cyril Chilson) - in a few cases the anti-Zionist critics denounced by Margaret Hodge (90% of the names on her lists turned out not to be Labour Party members) and others as anti-semites are Auchwitz survivors (Hajo Meyer for one). Hundreds of people accused in the anti-semitism witchhunt have finally been cleared (again a high proportion are themselves Jewish) but not before they were dragged through the mud.

In my opinion the independent and academic analysis of anti-semitism in the Labour Party shows that it exists and has to be stamped out - and it has not just emerged with Corbyn. Labour (according to the research I have read) is no more at fault here than any other party and racist/anti-semitic attitudes amongst its members are lower than most (certainly than the Tories) and dropping. However, to use the buzz-word, it has been weaponised to achieve the joint objectives of attacking Corbyn and silencing critics of Israel (especially in the DBS movement). Both objectives have been successful.

Corbyn has not handled it well - he cannot always hand-wring and try to avoid conflict, and John McDonnell has been far to keen to appease the LFI and right wing media. It doesn't close the crisis down, it just encourages those who are cynically using it for their own purposes. It also makes it much harder to confront real anti-semitism (not the 'new' anti-semitism of the IHRA definition plus 11 garbled examples that the Israeli government has been pushing for years).

I have little sympathy for some like Ken Livingston but I do for Jackie Walker (mostly), Thomas Suarez and many others who now find themselves libelled and abused because they are anti-Zionists and critics of the Israeli state. In a week when there have been more anti-semitic murders in Germany, and a rising count of incidents from grafitti to verbal abuse to desecration of cemetries,

My understanding of both anti semitism is quite precise, as would yours be if you'd read stuff on the subject.

Socialism as we know it today is defined in the multifarious books of Karl Marx, particularly "Das Kapital" and the "Communist Manifesto". I suggest that you read them and then it will no longer be a matter of debate or opinion to you. Unlike a lot of people here , you'd probably be capable of doing this, so I recommend it.

Given that he invented modern socialism , it's no big surprise that Mark himself was as mad as a badger, and he wrote so many books that I doubt whether he had time to do anything else. Anyhoo...one which pertains here particularly is an entertaining little number called ,
"On the Jewish Question".......
You really should read it, but here's a little snippet,
"Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.[...] The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. [...] In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism."

[jon1959]

My understanding of both anti semitism is quite precise, as would yours be if you'd read stuff on the subject.

Socialism as we know it today is defined in the multifarious books of Karl Marx, particularly "Das Kapital" and the "Communist Manifesto". I suggest that you read them and then it will no longer be a matter of debate or opinion to you. Unlike a lot of people here , you'd probably be capable of doing this, so I recommend it.

Given that he invented modern socialism , it's no big surprise that Mark himself was as mad as a badger, and he wrote so many books that I doubt whether he had time to do anything else. Anyhoo...one which pertains here particularly is an entertaining little number called ,
"On the Jewish Question".......
You really should read it, but here's a little snippet,
"Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.[...] The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. [...] In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism."

Thanks for the reading advice. I have read The Communist Manifesto (many times) and On The Jewish Question too. I have to confess that I only managed to get through Volume 1 of Capital, and that was 40 years ago. I somehow doubt that your reading on these subjects is as wide or deep as you imply. You certainly manage to throw book titles and ideas around as if you had only just stumbled on them on Wikipedia, and managed to misunderstand (willfully or not) most of it.

Your claim that Marx 'invented modern socialism' (I assume in your mind there is something very distinctive about 'modern' socialism) is clearly nonsense. He was a major contributor to the socialist and emerging communist movements, but not the inventor. Even if you choose to ignore the British legacy from the Peasants Revolt (though not many peasants involved) - 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?' - through the English Civil War (Freeborn John Lilburne and the Levellers), into the eighteenth century and Jacobin support for the American and French revolutions, you still come up against a tapestry of emerging socialist ideas and organisations in Britain and across Europe that predate Marx by decades at least.

You are right to say that the language of On The Jewish Question has been used by many critics to label Marx as an anti-semite. Many other commentators have refuted the claim. It was written in the early 1840s as a polemic against a pamphlet by Bruno Bauer, and was arguing for the political emancipation of Jewish people in Prussia. Marx was disputing the idea put forward by Bauer that Jews would first have to ditch their religion before achieving equality! The language is clearly of its time and would not be acceptable now - but I don't think it is evidence of anti-semitism or that it was proof that Marx was a 'self hating' or 'the wrong type of' Jew to use the current labels thrown about by political Zionists.

I was just having a look at some of the comments on Marx's use of language and saw this reference to the former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from his book The Politics Of Hope: 'he regards application of the term "antisemitism" to Marx as an anachronism because when Marx wrote "On the Jewish Question", virtually all major philosophers had expressed similar views, and the word "antisemitism" had not yet been coined, let alone developed a racial component, and little awareness existed of the depths of European prejudice against Jews. Marx thus simply expressed the commonplace thinking of his era'

This is the same Jonathan Sacks (Zionist pro-Tory) who denounced Corbyn as an existential threat to the British Jewish community of the back of his comment in a Westminster event with a Palestinian ambassador that a couple of Zionist hecklers 'lacked a sense of British irony' even though they had probably been born in the UK. According to Sacks this was more shocking and threatening than Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech. He is not a natural defender of Marx or socialism - but even he understood the period and the context.