Is Owen Jones overacting or Correct?
isnt this the guy who capitulated multiple times to the “anti semitic labour party” accusations?
i dont know about this instance, probably an overreaction but her tweet wasn’t exactly an a+ tweet? the argument is “dont compare a right wing government to hitler, they’re not as bad” isn’t exactly a hill to die on.
Yes, he was worse than the actual Labour leadership on grovelling and apologising for the party and helping give that cancerous story room to spread.
I am really worried that there will be some very nasty unintended consequences because of this for Jewish people. Do you have any suggestions for what we can do to help Jewish people out if something like that happens?
Me too. For all the stick I get for my bluntness or admitting that the swirl of absurd accusation in the culture at the moment has even started to numb me to claims of antisemitism, I’m profoundly concerned for Jewish family and comrades, most of whom wouldn’t ever consider the Israeli government or any of cynical or zealot groups that claim to represent British jews as allies.
I think the only answer is the same as it’s always been - action & direct solidarity; support left wing and non-reactionary Jewish groups, build multi-faith and multi-racial networks, march against fascists in the streets and fight them together when it comes to that.
And if it gets really fucking bad try and help them escape persecution. A Jewish comrade I worked with on some projects was asked disapprovingly by his parents why he was helping try and start a network of religious refuges to stop attempted deportations mostly of people from Syria. He told his parents that it was because that’s what good people did for the Jews in the past. They apparently didn’t quite accept that answer so he said he told them that it was also because if it ever got really bad for Jewish people in this country then they could use it too. Better to be prepared and that answer they understood.
Overreacting.
He’d be (an admittedly lib) comrade if he’d stick to writing books and activism instead of keep trying to maintain his media status with people who hate him by woke scolding and punching left.
I definitely would not write Owen Jones off completely. Kerry-ann Mendoza should have probably refrained from using that kind of language though as it is very easy to misinterpret what she meant.
I haven’t entirely but this shit’s exhausting and while his ability to signal boost socialist ideas is good it comes at the cost of him also boosting stuff like this which makes everything harder.
When I checked Twitter this morning Owen Jones was the top trending subject. Kerrie-Ann Mendoza didn’t even make the top twenty. The vast majority never would have even seen it & decided they have to make it into a political stand, further toxifying the conversations around actual antisemitism, if he hadn’t been so eager throw another leftist under the bus and run in the opposite direction towards his reactionary media peers.
He’s right that it’s a shitty tweet which does the British left no favours. The sad fact is that in the UK the left is much more heavily scrutinised than the right, and while to an extent there’s nothing that can be done to stop media bias, giving them fodder like this – even if you’re well-intentioned – is really dumb and tonedeaf at best, and outright marginalising the Holocaust at worst.
(Also friendly reminder that along with 6 million Jews, the Holocaust also killed millions of Soviet civilians and POWs, hundreds of thousands of Romani, hundreds of thousands of disabled people, and a bunch of other groups based on ethnicity, sexuality, religion or politics. And if being reminded of those details makes you feel worse about the original tweet than when you thought it was ‘just’ about the Holocaust as it affected Jews, perhaps take a second to reflect on that.)
Thank you for your perspective. I see a lot of parallels with the language and political climate we currently have with that of pre nazi Germany. The (former) Conservative party work and pension secretary Ian Duncan Smith even used the term work will set them free when he was criticised for his policies which were seen to greatly hurt the poor and disabled. Non white people are being used as scape goats for the mishandling of the covid 19 crisis and are being set up to be blamed for the government opening up the economy too soon. Also just to point this out some of the governments key advisers are proud and open eugenicists.
I don’t know why but your last paragraph seems to be accusing me of being pro Holocaust. I want to clarify that I am definitely against mass murder of any group of people including Jewish people. (I know such a brave statement) I also prefer it if we did not repeat history.
The last paragraph wasn’t aimed at you in particular - I’m more trying to make the point that some users on here (after the recent antisemitism debacle where Labour staffers deliberately sat on reports of antisemitism and then leaked the backlog to the press to oust a leader they didn’t like) won’t take Holocaust comparisons as seriously as they should. It’s a sad truth that despite being such a horrific event, it’s often joked about/not treated so seriously. People downplaying the original tweet that Owen Jones called out aren’t necessarily doing that, but a few of them could use a reminder of the scale of the atrocities.
Also, probably most people on this forum would have been persecuted/killed under the Nazis so there’s that. They really didn’t like Communists.
