Needless to say, Labour right hands are sore with all the rubbing they've been doing. Diane, caving in to that useless urge of the left to paint a target on its back, offered Starmer and his eager-to-please minions the pretext for her suspension and it was taken up with alacrity. This has led to two days worth of - mostly white men - driving themselves into a frenzy, publicly and with unseemly enthusiasm lecturing actual victims of racism on what racism is and isn't, and making it obvious there's something unsaid about their dislike of Britain's first black woman MP. A tawdry spectacle indeed that demonstrates, as it has before, that Labour's antisemitism wars were never really about racism and rooting it out. Factional advantage is all that matters to these people, which is why the Forde report is never acknowledged in public, and anti-Muslim and anti-black prejudice gets a free pass. It's the right wingers who do it, and we cant well have their people on the hook.
There isn't much else to say. There is a hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party, not all racisms are judged equally bad or treated with the same severity, and some - such as that peddled against traveller communities - are fair game for party leaflets. It depends less on who you are than on what your politics is. A life long anti-racist campaigner like Diane Abbott given the heave ho over a stupid letter verus someone like Wolverhampton MP Pat McFadden, wheeled out this morning on BBC Breakfast to put the boot in, and his past campaign against a legal traveller camping site in his patch. Or the hideous John Mann, the Tories' antisemitism "Tsar", who was interviewed by the plod while nominally a Labour MP after putting out a booklet linking the GRT community to anti-social behaviour. No action was ever taken against them, and they are allowed by the media to preen their anti-racist feathers knowing they will never be held accountable for their racist campaigning.
And, I'm sorry to say, none of this is going to change. Despite recent slippage in the polls, Labour is odds-on to form the next government. And when the party does, its hierarchy of racism will find new purposes. Rather than a disciplinary tool for keeping the undesirable left in line, its use will switch to defining new scapegoats as Starmerism hits its authoritarian stride. Every top down project needs malcontents to blame when the politics aren't peachy.
When all is said and done, I don't think Diane will lose the whip permanently. Despite the wishes and best efforts of the factional zealots Starmer has promoted, she is not viewed as a threat to the project in the same way Jeremy Corbyn was and continues to present. And there is a view among some layers of the Labour right that a bit of magnanimity from the Labour leader would go a way in shoring up the party's left flank in the face of the modest Tory poll revival.
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18 comments:
The racialisation of Labour politics and much of UK politics has been a disaster. There is a clear philosophy embedded in Labour at the moment which goes as follows:
An individual's primary defining characteristic is their race.
As a member of that race the individual is responsible for all that has been done by any member of that race.
History and politics is about conflict between races.
Those races who have done badly have done so because of the races that have done well.
Those races that have done badly are entitled to take punitive action against the races that have done well, both as a group and individually.
This not only suits race activists it also suits the professional privately-educated class that dominates left politics. It replaces their class privilege with a race privilege that they share with the working class, and in effect justifies poor outcomes for white working class as being down to their inability to use their white privilege.
Anti-semitism on the left isn't down to a few individuals, it is hard-baked into the over-riding political philosophy.
Mason, Lansman, and Jones all put their boots in. Three of an Establishment kind if you ask me.
@Dipper almost got it right. Here's what it should read:
An individual's primary defining characteristic is their set of interests - people are grouped according to the set of interests they share (even though in reality interests are more of a set of Venn diagrams overlapping to lesser and greater extents)
As a member of that interest group (IG) the individual is responsible for all that has been done by any member of that IG - so long as that IG continues to exercise its power to exploit and abuse other IGs.
History and politics is about conflict between interest groups (whether defined as class, caste or power group)
Those interest groups who have done badly have done so because others have exploited them to do well (turning society into a zero sum game)
Those IGs that have done badly will continue to do badly unless they stand up for their interests, both as a group and individually.
Those IGs doing well demonise and marginalise any IG they see either as a threat, or as a convenient way to deflect rage as a consequence of relentless exploitation.
The sad truth is that all IGs tend to do this, so political systems need to have self-balancing mechanisms to prevent exploitation and demonisation. This self-evident necessity is resisted by IGs on both wings and the extent of the resistance is one way of determining how extreme an IG has become.
There you are @Dipper, corrected for you. You're welcome.
Dipper,
I'm struggling to see the connection of your last sentence to the rest of your spiel. Even if one accepts your analysis of Labour's views on race and race politics, how on earth does it follow that anti-Semitism is 'hard-baked into the over-riding political philosophy' of the left?
Dipper,
You misunderstand what is meant by white privilege. What it emphatically doesn't mean is white working class people will have good outcomes because they are white. Our outcomes are still hit by class privilege.
What it does mean is that we will not have our race used against us automatically as a reason for a poor outcome.
Maybe once upon a time Abbott was a serious race relations campaigner, but like a lot of activism it eventually becomes a profession, a commercial enterprise that needs to be protected. Abbot's business model rests on a specific and sometimes debatable narrative of oppression, the piece she was responding to challenges that particular narrative by taking a more nuanced analysis of what the evidence actually says, it was just instinct that led her to defend her interests.
@ Zoltan I have no idea what you are on about.
@ David Parry Jews as a group have above average outcomes in the west in terms of jobs, status, and income. Therefore according to Critical Race Theory they are guilty of exploiting races with bad outcomes. That simply is how this stuff works.
@ Harrison. 'You misunderstand what is meant by white privilege ... What it does mean is that we will not have our race used against us automatically as a reason for a poor outcome.'
In my own family my boys have been denied application to internships because of their race. As internships are the principle way of gaining graduate employment this is clearly leaving them worse off.
The Telford child abuse enquiry concluded that fear of racism was one factor in the inadequate response to child sexual exploitation allegations.
It is clear that white people do have bad outcomes which are related to their race.
Abbot's letter is pretty obviously indefensible in terms of what it actually says, but there is a grain of truth in that people who appear 'white' aren't subject to racism in precisely the same ways as people who don't appear 'white'. But equally people who are 'black' or otherwise 'non-white' but were born in Britain aren't subject to racism in the same ways that immigrants (including 'white' immigrants, EG: Albanians) are. Antisemitism is a particular form of racism that (like Islamophobia) is rooted in a culture that precedes modern concepts of 'race'. Racism is multi-faceted, but essentially it's purpose is to ideologically justify injustice, IE: I/we can do this to other people because they aren't REALLY people, not in the same way that we are. In every case, it's bollocks.
'Race' is an idea that has served to justify so much evil over the last few centuries: conquest, slavery, genocide....
Again, what Abbot wrote is obviously complete nonsense. But, that said, I'd guess that if it were to come right down to it, she'd be a much more reliable opponent of antisemitism than Keir Starmer would, because Abbot has some kind of principles, whereas Starmer is a complete weathervane that points wherever the wind happens to be blowing. So, in practice, I think if the government was trying to bring in antisemitic laws, I think Abbot would vote against that, and I don't think Starmer necessarily would.
@ JN "people who appear 'white' aren't subject to racism in precisely the same ways as people who don't appear 'white'"
Well this is circular isn't it? If I define racism as discrimination that happens because of differences in skin colour then it is trivially correct that racism cannot happen between people of the same skin colour. But so-what? If I defined iso-racism as discrimination that takes place between people of the same skin colour then clearly black people could not suffer iso-racism at the hands of white people. but so what?
The left have a simplistic view of the world and its faults. When confronted with evidence that reality is different, more complex, then the left simply changes the language to mean the only reality that can be described is the one that fits with their views, because there are no words to describe things that do not accord to their view.
Hence the removal of the words 'woman', 'she', 'her' from adult human females, leaving them with no words to describe their realities.
@JN
Do you know that Keir Starmer's wife is Jewish?
Dipper,
'Jews as a group have above average outcomes in the west in terms of jobs, status, and income.'
Your evidence for this is ...? This, dare I say it, kind of smacks of anti-Semitism to me. It evokes stereotypes about Jews being disproportionately wealthy.
'Therefore according to Critical Race Theory they are guilty of exploiting races with bad outcomes. That simply is how this stuff works.'
No, it isn't. That's a strawman of your creation.
@ David Parry
''Jews as a group have above average outcomes in the west in terms of jobs, status, and income.''
This is a fair challenge particularly as the population of Haredi jews is growing rapidly and they choose poverty.
The ONS states "Employees who identified as Jewish had the highest median hourly earnings of all religious groups in England and Wales in both 2012 and 2018 (£15.17 and £19.22 respectively) (Figure 9). "
But there are lots of ways of being Jewish. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk of a 'Jewish Community'. And given the proportion who are Haredi Jews the notion of an 'average' income doesn't really mean anything.
But that is pretty much the critical point about the whole debate; that to talk about someone's race as though that is a meaningful descriptor of their lives and that all people of that race have experiences that are sufficiently similar to put them in a convenient group doesn't really survive any meaningful analysis.
@Dipper on the other hand, getting your message is all too easy. I was amused by the idea of racism not being about skin colour. We could argue all day about whether "race" is a valid concept among humans, and if so, how is it defined, but I suggest most people would say that one signifier was skin colour. In which case, discriminating according to race - i.e. racism - must to a significant extent be dependent on skin colour. Not entirely, because people vary naturally within 'races', and some races although clearly different in other ways, have similar skin tones.
The sensitive topic of whether Jews are a race is a tricky one to explore. Given there are black Jews, white Jews and brown Jews, I would suggest that skin tone doesn't really come in to it. I would also say that being Jewish is more a cultural attribute than a biological one, but I expect a lot of kick-back.
I would happily argue, as someone with some Irish ancestry, that Irish is not a race, but a nationality and culture. Genetically I doubt there is much difference between Irish, Welsh, Scots and English.
GTR is more nuanced because clearly there are race elements, but equally there has n been a lot of mixing and there are those who have taken up the life style but have no genetic connection at all.
All this points to the fact that discrimination is largely cultural rather than biological. We just use skin colour as an easy way to other someone. We will also use accent, clothing, behaviour, beliefs, politics, language, hairstyle, taste in music, relative wealth, facial features, body shape - anything. Humans categorise and group people into "like us" / "not like us" , "enemy / friend", "dangerous / safe", and many other binaries. Its just something we can't help. The problem is when we embed it into our society and use it to create different sets of rights, entitlements, expectations, opportunities, and treatments, based on arbitrary divisions. That's when it starts to turn dangerous.
AFAIK n-one has removed the words "woman" "she" & "her" from English. If one wishes in discussion to distinguish between cis and trans women, then those are suitable descriptions. No-one seems to know what they mean by "biological" sex btw. Some people would like not to use binary pronouns for themselves and ask to be referred to as - for example -" they/them/their ". I think it's polite to do so.
English has all sorts of words which can be used to distinguish quite fine distinctions.
On the contrary. The left have a view of the world that takes into account and describes the reality and complexities of the world and its ways.
It is the opponents of the left who have no handle on reality and complexity. And that is sufficient to explain their idiotic ways and appalling consequent economic and social outcomes.
@ Zoltan I think we are agreeing?
@ Jenny the words remain but the meanings have gone. There is no pronoun that relates specifically and unequivocally to an adult human female. and 'cis woman'? Seriously? Who decided that adult human females would be a subset of some greater group that included males in dresses? Why cannot Adult human females have their own group with their own words?
@ Jenny
The primary determination of biological sex is a fairly easy one, human males have the SRY gene and human females don't. It's entirely binary, you can't have it a little or a lot. It's immutable, it's not a social construct, it's a product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary biology and evolution will outlast any modish though. It's single biggest problem is that it is an immutable biological fact and therefore resistant to any notion that it can be influenced by performativity or subjective desire.
Kamo
Some people with 46XX DSD (a.k.a. 'XX male syndrome') lack the SRY gene.
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