the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

Pretty sure that if you want to retain control of the Labour Party then indulging and promoting anti-Semites is proving to be one of the worst ways to go about it.

The last three years have brought a lot of new blood into Labour. While a lot of the membership gain is from older people, enough of them are young - and crucially, Labour won in every category of working people in 2017.

What I wonder about things like this is if this will provide the galvanising push for the young left to press forward. Up til now they have been in a supporting role, but how long will they stay happy for this to be the case? They are the people angriest about this, to whom the cranks are the biggest liability. There is no obvious successor to Corbyn yet but i wonder if there people in the wings who could step forward and keep going in the same direction, minus all the awful old shit like this that the party seems incapable of dealing with.

i fuckin hope so

ash sarkar 4 pm obv

An assumption seems to be being made there that it's only older people in the Labour Party who have issues with anti-Semitism.

the problem with the labour party's unreconstructed machineries -- rules, codes, practices -- has been trundling down the pike for years to be honest, as something it's always "the wrong time" to confront and transform

not to mention the fact that the mechanism for transforming them isn't really in anyone's direct gift: corbyn can't make a proclamation, everything has to go through conference etc, you can't dispense with the tradition of voting slates by airily rejecting slate-activity (bcz you'll immediately be overridden by yr opponent's slate), taking all this on openly as part of yr project is exactly what gets politicians dismissed as impractical idealists (everyone anywhere urging pragmatism as a value is basically rubberstamping this kind of stuff)

this is part and parcel of the decomposition of the entire existing british political structure, obviously -- and i think whoever confronted it even slightly was going to (a) have a fight and (b) have to wade through a fkn stinking mess by no means wholly of their making

(this is an oblique way of saying that i'm not at all sure any of this WAS avoidable: certainly something *like* this would have erupted at some point, bcz so much garbage is so embedded in so much of the machinery (in and far beyond labour)

they are going to have face up to the fact that if that kind of speak is acceptable behind closed doors, they have serious problems that need addressing. It's like the type of dog whistle the far right would use, it's completely bad and just adds more bigotry to the internecine clusterfuck.

An assumption seems to be being made there that it's only older people in the Labour Party who have issues with anti-Semitism.

I feel pretty comfortable in saying that the majority of the worst twitter trolls and defenders of this shit tend to be older. Conspiratorial rhetoric crosses political divides and again, more often older people who are most susceptible. Occupy/anti capitalism rhetoric gave it a shot in the arm but it’s much much less common among younger activists (which is not the same as saying anti Semitic doesn’t exist among that group). Willing to be proved wrong on this, if you have any evidence against.

Given that this is inextricably bound up in attitudes to the state of Israel, young people tend to have more negative opinions on Israel, not only is that my experience but I'm sure there's polls to prove it - don't have time now, got to go to work.

i'm not sure the exact momentum-CPLD stitch-up sbush is referring to, but a fairly hardcore bust-up on the left (over tactics and strategy and who was in charge of them) was dodged a while back as some urgent challenge or other loomed (i want to say the leadership challenge?)

at which momentum while large was new and didn't yet carry the internal heft it now has: and it wasn't yet clear that those in the party and the PLP who favoured expelling momentum en masse weren't going to win the day

^^^so this is what was "in it" for momentum at that point

xp also my experience but doesn’t seem to come with quite so many references to the “lobby” or “Jewish plots”!

another layer not really being addressed -- obviously it doesn't remotely apply to willsman -- is the basic fact of trolling and false-flag accounts being set up online by opponents (and by ch4nner-type nihilists)

i was just going to post "it's good to remember that political parties are for shit" but mark's version is more eloquent and nuanced

on an unrelated note i had the pleasure of hearing Dan Hodges on the radio this morning. he once found an accommodating home in the Labour party.

23 deaths in police custody last year, at least a third not white. still never been a successful prosecution of a police officer for one

xp also my experience but doesn’t seem to come with quite so many references to the “lobby” or “Jewish plots”!

Well, I don't know about that. One thing I have noticed is the idea that Jews aren't really the victims of discrimination, they're doing pretty well for themselves, so how exactly are they suffering from racism? I had this exact conversation with a black woman I work with. Also they control stuff.

When I lived in London I can recall quite a bit of antisemitic speak in some workplaces, and often from other ethnic minorities. It wasn't the first time I'd heard this kind of thing, but up to then it had been quite rare, coming from a Town with a population 0 of Jewish people.

To say that Jews don’t face disparagement or discrimination despite having money or influence is kind of ridiculous. It’s like saying Islamophobia is not a problem because there are rich Saudis.

ch4nner-type nihilists also some part of the rise of Corbyn - more significant by noise than volume, but I imagine there's some nervousness in Momentum about whether they stick around when the memes end.

citation needed

There is no obvious successor to Corbyn yet but i wonder if there people in the wings who could step forward and keep going in the same direction, minus all the awful old shit like this that the party seems incapable of dealing with.

― gyac, Tuesday, 31 July 2018 09:49 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Careful - I can hear xyzzzz starting up his chainsaw

well if they're actually sticking around for the politics then by definition they're not nihilists, whether or not they arrived from 4chan -- but what i mean are the online types who enjoy stirring up forums and riling up hiveminds just for the fun of watching others fight, without any investment in the politics (or whatever the topic is)

this can turn party political -- to some extent it did with gamergate -- and can and has been adapted and/or captured by various flavours of political activism, but there's a persistent element buzzing around way beyond this wihout loyalty beyond their own immediate fun

I dunno mark, I think it certainly started that way but at this stage I think 4chan types have mostly traded in their nihilism for straight adherence to the alt-right, because the left threatens their lulz.

Antisemitism is baked into European society by centuries of prejudice and is ime very poorly explained/educated about, if at all. I have heard people repeating things unthinkingly that they would never have recognised as antisemitic tropes and I’ve got some blindness on this as well - when the mural story happened earlier this year i recognised the imagery for what it was but I wouldn’t have done so even a few years ago. So when people aren’t even taught the basics and how to recognise some of the oldest tropes, you’re starting from a hard place anyway.

There’s also the fact that generally society is racist and the ongoing backlash against literally any recognition of even some blatantly racist tropes/policies/utterances is muddying the waters.

I don’t generally read Novara but this covered some of the arguments quite well.
http://novaramedia.com/2018/07/29/how-labours-dreadful-antisemitism-debate-has-to-change/

Agree with Daniel, I haven’t seen that/I don’t think that nihilists are not common travellers in this movement (and I would be surprised if they were, considering the themes of the messaging...)

i wonder if there people in the wings who could step forward and keep going in the same direction, minus all the awful old shit like this that the party seems incapable of dealing with

The problem is that the longer this goes on the more it will be used to undermine the whole direction - that's unlikely given other factors but there is a sliver of possibility.

One of the reasons this is so exasperating is that for every anti-semitic old lefty twat on the ballot there's a good, principled, non-dick of a left-wing candidate that didn't didn't make it. It undermines the whole project.

as a 2016 entryist, I don't really make any connection with these 4chan numpts and the rise of Corbyn, but I don't go very deep into internet arsehole studies tbf!

Tbh, I strongly suspect the wing of the party making the most noise about this wouldn’t see a substantial difference between the older/crank-ier eighties throwbacks like Jackie Walker and the savvier, younger leftists coming through - when it comes to the danger their pose to Britain’s international standing or, at least to some extent, their relationship to antisemitism.

A huge part of why this has been such an issue, imo, is that the ‘anti-imperialist’, campus-organising, pro-BDS, etc youth wing are, as things stand, seen as the future of the party and that’s much scarier for them than Jackie Walker not being kicked out quickly enough, or w/e.

this is what i wrote!
the basic fact of trolling and false-flag accounts being set up online by opponents (and by ch4nner-type nihilists)

it's possible that *all* the nihilists -- as opposed to *many* of the nihilists of a *particular* generation -- have gone earnestly alt-right fulltime, and that e.g. every single channer tankie account is therefore a false flag: i actually doubt this, i think some are entirely "serious"* abt their stalinism as well as their lulz, and that some are just dicking around on their own time w/o allegiance, but very nearly all of the problem is it's very hard if not impossible to tell by ordinary online means

(and it's the last bit that's a new and highly problematic issue)

shorter me: every time there is an internal faction fight on-line (in whatever context), there are ppl fanning the flames of that fight who are not internal to the fight, driven by a variety of flavours of malice

nihilist is a centrist slur

Yeah that seems like a good and thoughtful piece, a drop of common sense that will pass unheeded into a sea of absolute fucking idiocy

(bcz i am insane i used to spend a lot of time reading the socialist unity comments threads long long before the current pass)

poll: y/n most ppl have never heard of 4chan, gamergate or any of the subdivisions of the labour party

but very nearly all of the problem is it's very hard if not impossible to tell by ordinary online means

I remember the case of Barry Stanton - the man whose photo was used was actually a labour voter and was very upset at what the account was used for. I don’t necessarily disagree but for some it goes way beyond Corbyn - even when he has condemned trolling etc people have carried on doing so. I think for a lot of people the fact of being part of a group provides cover for doing things they’d never do alone. There is also the fact that Corbyn has been fighting back since his election and people have latched onto the whole siege mentality. When you have had the party literally going through twitter accounts to block people from voting for Corbyn, it’s going to be difficult to break through that mentality as well.

There’s also the fact that people in incredibly difficult circumstances see Corbyn as someone who can materially change things for them and so are protective in a way they would perhaps not be with others. Idk, the whole thing is a mess.

deems in the past this is a line i have generally taken as a defence of corbs's leadership approach: he is unflappable in the face of media and online monstering and quietly behaves as if a three-day outrage will blow over in three days -- and mostly they do! in general it is (or has been) a strength: the pull the tabs and broadsheets have is greatly diminished even from two years ago, and continuing to diminish, and his immediate foes internal and external have no better command of online than he does

but every politician who has a strength will one day be undone by that strength

poll: y/n most ppl have never heard of 4chan, gamergate or any of the subdivisions of the labour party

y, obv. but this stuff is in part the hidden foundations of political edifices that people do see, the online alt-right and it's connection to Trumpism being the most obvious

A fair point from mark - I'd day that some folk have a great love in their heart for yelling at women and jews, and some marry that (and some always have) with a great commitment to a socialist future. But at mark says, you can't actually tell them apart (so could we just chuck the lot of them?)

left threatens their lulz

Some of the left more than others, mind. Though yes it is very odd (and a little lulzy) to pin this to a movement with Jeremy Corbyn at the top rather than the Chapo boys.

there are anti-Semites and cranks and bigots in Labour's 500,000+ membership. they need to be booted out, and fast. but there are others who say they're Labour members falsely and who are adding to the problem - tweeting abuse. not everyone is who they claim to be online. pic.twitter.com/dhFvVmlfRg

— Michael Segalov (@MikeSegalov) July 31, 2018

As of today, Jeremy Corbyn's length of tenure as Leader of the Labour Party has surpassed that of Gordon Brown

— Mr Memory (@AmIRightSir) July 31, 2018

I think Corbyn comes by his anti-racist bona fides naturally and part of anti-racism is keeping your damn mouth shut and listening to the people who feel aggrieved, not to discount their concerns but to develop understanding, before responding.

I wrote before I read the Novara article - it's what I'd have liked to have said (though I would have to stop and think before agreeing with their disagreements with the IHRA)

xp so why didn’t he involve Jewish groups in the drafting of the code? They still could have disagreed and it would have shown a lot more humility and understanding. The moment I heard the JLM and others had been left out of the debate, it was obvious it was going to turn out badly and it deserved to.

fwiw, the JLM was consulted before the code was published but there is a dispute over whether the people spoken to had the power to act on behalf of the wider group and exactly what they agreed. Either way, it’s described as a “red line” issue for their leadership and they’ve threatened to sue the party if the IHRA guidelines are not approved without amendment. This isn’t an issue that could have been negotiated away, however badly Formby, etc may have handled it.

Which is ironic, considering the modification of the examples was done in part to make them watertight legally in the event of legal action from members who face expulsion or suspension.

What a broigus...

broigus - what an absolutely ace word, gonna start using that one!

Jeremy Newmark, who re-founded the JLM and is their chair / primary spokesman, has a long history with the exact issue Labour can’t square - whether calls to boycott Israel, or focus a greater attention on the occupation of Palestine than, say, Morocco’s position in Western Sahara, are inherently antisemitic. He sincerely believes they are and that the IHRA guidance backs this up.

He was involved in the legal action brought by the Academic Friends Of Israel against the University and College Union claiming that their support of a boycott of Israel amounted to harassment of Jewish professors. The case was dismissed, and Newmark specifically criticised by the judge for lying.

There is fundamentally no way to make everyone happy with this. The split in the party is intractable. Labour fudging it a bit by requiring evidence of intent before certain criticisms of Israel are determined to be antisemitic, while others are determined to be inherently antisemitic, is probably the best they could do but it’s never going to be signed off by everyone however they went about it.

Pretty much yeah. You can say there are some old cranks (and yer Trots) fucking up for the rest of the movement but the young ones will shout next time an Israeli kills Palestinians and more shit will be made of it. Still though between this and "Stockpiling/army in the streets post-no deal Brexit" this version of the silly season is off to a cracking start!

Careful - I can hear xyzzzz starting up his chainsaw

― imago, Tuesday, 31 July 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Its guillotine get it right - and with any luck it'll be coming for you and you only.

This seems like a far more important story, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45021520.