UK General Election 2019

[Pannonian]

Johnson goes on LBC with a sympathetic host (Nick Ferrari), but encounters a tricky caller, so he rambles a bit whilst gesturing to change the subject. Do you want him as PM?

Oh hang on, James O'Brien has debunked that. Here's another one: Eddie Mair taking Boris Johnson to task over his deceitfulness and his willingness to see journalists assaulted.

[Furunculus]

**looks at the list of things i do and don't want done by the next government**

**looks at the tories led by boz and labour led by magic grandpa, to see which things they will and won't do if they form the next government**

**conclude that i have no earthly use for labour, and am reasonably happy voting for the tories**

it really is this simple.

[Pannonian]

**looks at the list of things i do and don't want done by the next government**

**looks at the tories led by boz and labour led by magic grandpa, to see which things they will and won't do if they form the next government**

**conclude that i have no earthly use for labour, and am reasonably happy voting for the tories**

it really is this simple.

And thus because you loathe Labour and Corbyn, you think that Johnson should be excused from scrutiny?

[Furunculus]

you're making stuff up:

1. i've told you twice now: the public are welcome to judge him on his (in)actions.
they are allegedly adults of legally sound mind - and thus people we trust to use good judgement in the exercise of the franchise.

2. i don't loath anyone: we've been over the subject already of my emotional detachment.
they simply fail to advance my interests - and as such are irrelevant as a vehicle for my ambitions.

[Furunculus]

That begs the question, if you are using these tight definitions to exonerate Johnson, of whether you extend these standards to Corbyn too. Do you?

Yes i do, and i don't have any evidence that corbyn is racist.

Q: Do i have an awful lot of fun in hoisting the left on the petard of its nebulous and expanionist definition of racism?
A: Yeah, sure. Loads! It's great fun.

Q: Does he evidence what I consider to be a bigoted attitude to israel? Evidenced by him falling on the wrong side of every ME argument?
A: I believe so, yes.

My natural sympathy lies on the side of the representative democracy that is in relative terms a beacon of hope in the region, and takes time and trouble to include its arabs citizens in its society.
His natural sympathy appears to lie with the grievance mongers who prefer to run oppressive societies while tolerating the indoctrination of children into hateful ideology as a deliberate gateway into terrorist aggression.
Yes, there are plenty of examples in opposite on both sides - where opprobrium and applause should be given respectively - but we stand on fundamentally different sides of the argument.

So, not "racist", no.
But unpleasantly and wrongly bigoted (in my opinion), yes.

[Idaho]

My natural sympathy lies on the side of the representative democracy that is in relative terms a beacon of hope in the region, and takes time and trouble to include its arabs citizens in its society.

Wow. Just wow.

There is so much wrong with this that's it's essentially utter fantasy. I suppose if you're going to be wrong, then it's easier to be fanatically wrong.

[Furunculus]

I suppose it might be too much to expect an explanation for this breathless outrage?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Wow. Just wow.

There is so much wrong with this that's it's essentially utter fantasy. I suppose if you're going to be wrong, then it's easier to be fanatically wrong.

It's a sad fact that Israel is the most democratic country in the region, Lebenon comes a relatively distant second.

[Montmorency]

It's cathartic to read this, but I could never. Bonus for PVC: it's the same guy who wrote the churl post.

Prima facia it seems significant (hardly surprising that folks closer to the reactionary end are somewhat more likely to be nativists etc.), but that stuff is really ordinal level data, not even interval Likert-style scaling. I don't think the Z-score really works there, as there really is no "mean" per se.

Admittedly, it's taking the Labour score as normal. I would have done more typical to compare to the aggregate total. But given the stability of responses between the survey and its previous iteration it's fair to say that there is a difference on that survey item between Labour (and LibDem) and Conservative as variables. This is not analytically tantamount to saying there is a difference between Labour voters and Conservative voters in "anti-Semitism."

I wish they'd put in 5-point Likert questions, then you could get a better significance approximation using interval level stats.

The study I keep referring to Likert-scaled self-reported political orientation against responses to similar questions on attitudes toward Jews and Israel (plus religious dimensions of respondents). Seriously, check it out already!

I don't think that Jews are functionally like a race. Ethiopian Jews are black for example. To make all Jews the same is again easier to homogenise them and treat a group as all the same.

I know that Semite has become a lazy term for being a Jew. I view it as extremely unhelpful - and assists those who wish to have anything anti-Israel as somehow anti-Jew. I think that the two should be clearly separated. Perhaps in 19th century Germany it make sense, but things have changed.

Wanting to have / accrue money is quite a way from being greedy, usurious swindling kikes. Again, this enables confirmation bias to link questions that could be taken as neutral to be a negative since more is being read into the interpretation.

You wish that everyone would see things in the same light you do. That's your prerogative, but you have to engage with immemorial social reality too (especially if you want to change it). Some people think "nigga" and "ghey" are not insults and should be tolerated as general appellations - most disagree, and would react accordingly. BTW, Ethiopian Jews experience overwhelming discrimination from 'mainline' Jews, and often violent persecution by the Israeli state.

I personally am anti-Zionist but I've nothing really against Jews or Semites as cohorts.

I would say at this point "Zionist" is a descriptively-unhelpful word. They're there. The Jews are in the Levant. If you have a problem with Jewish supremacists, Jewish fascists, Jewish theocrats, etc. name them directly. Unless used with more precision than most muster, "Zionist" easily bleeds over to encompass pretty much anyone either living in Israel or outside who believes that Jews should not be expelled from that territory. Hopefully people who want to peacefully continue living in Israel are not your opponents. So, best to retire the term from colloquial discourse to avert confusion.

And PVC, most American Jews categorize themselves as "white" if you ask them to, whereas Israeli Jews - not living in a White society - have not needed to assimilate themselves to this frame (i.e. the question is invalid). But it is a complicated subject and you should take care with your assumptions.

And thus because you loathe Labour and Corbyn, you think that Johnson should be excused from scrutiny?

Pan, the fitness of Boris Johnson is not a relevant question to people who want the Tories in power because, obviously, in a parliamentary system it is a package deal. Boris Johnson could be a cognitive vegetable, and since the aim is to seat 300-odd Conservatives and not to seat Boris Johnson, that would be tolerable. This is separate from leadership as part of electoral strategy, as in how good or bad a leader is either in gaining power or wielding it. This is also separate from whether one should support a party in the first place; naturally I think Conservative backers make a bad, and badly-motivated, decision and that a Conservative government would be objectively bad for the UK. In summary:

1. Which party or platform to support?
2. Once I support them, how to maximize their fitness?

If your argument is that Johnson's personal unfitness should drive them away from the Conservative Party entirely, I think it is a bad argument. In political reality we cannot afford to be purity ponies. Voting as a political expression is fundamentally results-oriented in a world of constraint, and should not be conceived of as a personal expression of primarily symbolic importance.

So don't argue against Johnson, Pan. Argue against 300-odd Conservative MPs. One shouldn't like the Conservatives even if Johnson were a Great Man!

Q: Do i have an awful lot of fun in hoisting the left on the petard of its nebulous and expanionist definition of racism?
A: Yeah, sure. Loads! It's great fun.

Q: Does he evidence what I consider to be a bigoted attitude to israel? Evidenced by him falling on the wrong side of every ME argument?
A: I believe so, yes.

My natural sympathy lies on the side of the representative democracy that is in relative terms a beacon of hope in the region, and takes time and trouble to include its arabs citizens in its society.
His natural sympathy appears to lie with the grievance mongers who prefer to run oppressive societies while tolerating the indoctrination of children into hateful ideology as a deliberate gateway into terrorist aggression.
Yes, there are plenty of examples in opposite on both sides - where opprobrium and applause should be given respectively - but we stand on fundamentally different sides of the argument.

I'm residually biased against Palestinians, but I can see this is a distinctly prejudiced view on the conflict. "Beacon of hope," inclusive of Arabs vs. oppressive, hateful, terrorist. For whom are the petards? Hmmm.

Ep-steen, also, Ross-child or perhaps Roth's-child. Anglicisation is the name of the game here, as it has been from the 19th Century onwards.

And yet the name was pronounced exactly as I would expect a British person to pronounce i: [ain], with normal prosody. Maybe my expectation is spurious, but I would demand some data on the incidence of pronunciations of this name in the UK (and other '-ein' names, which do in fact vary in English pronunciation). Now, this particular individual's name and pronunciation was commonly represented on the news, so everyone should have been on the same page with Jeffrey. But you denounced Corbyn with such self-assurance I expected him to bray [epʃtein], the Russian pronunciation. This is what riffing on an "ethnic" name looks like, from someone who indulges regularly. There's no similar marked intonation or contrived pronunciation with Corbyn. I'll tell you what would make a stronger case: history. Footage or testimony of Corbyn pronouncing the name differently for a different person/context. If Corbyn had a history of saying the same name an Anglicized way (wrt people who also used that pronunciation) but diverted himself when calling out a notorious predator, then it would be plausible as a provocation.

To the extent that I hadn't even linked the name Epstein to Jewishness or Yiddish before Corbyn miss-pronounced it.

It's a pretty well-known Jewish name and he was referring to a guy everyone knew was Jewish.

In any case, I didn't say it was "genocidal intent", I said it was a form of "othering" which recalls the Blood Libel. I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.

You wrote: "No, it's the racism of old men in back rooms talking about how to "solve" the "problem", how to "free" themselves from the pernicious "influence"." That's an unmistakable reference to the historical "Jewish problem." Comparing Corbyn to someone deliberating on the dissolution of a "problem" pertaining to Jewish influence is an accusation of genocidal intent against him. Stop protesting when I accurately describe what you say. Or choose your words more carefully, Persian.

Though I wonder - what sort of facial hair do the old men in the back room have? Is it like Corbyn's, or coarser?

We are not discussing Hobson's status as a generally terrible human being, which he was, we are discussing Corbyn's support for his work and the link to the Rothschild Conspiracy..

It is a book on imperialism written by a racist who made a passing reference to financiers being predominantly Jewish. It is not a book about Jewish conspiracies. This is the whole extent of anti-Semitism in the book, marring an otherwise-worthwhile section.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If the special interest of the investor is liable to clash with the public interest and to induce a wrecking policy, still more dangerous is the special interest of the financier, the general dealer in investments. In large measure the rank and the of the investors are, both for business and for politics, the cat’s-paws of the great financial houses, who use stocks and shares not so much as investments to yield them interest, but as material for speculation in the money market. In handling large masses of stocks and shares, in floating companies, in manipulating fluctuations of values, the magnates of the Bourse find their gain. These great businesses – banking, broking, bill discounting, loan floating, company promoting – form the central ganglion of international capitalism. United by the strongest bonds of organisation, always in closest and quickest touch with one another, situated in the very heart of the business capital of every State, controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, chiefly by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to control the policy of nations. No great quick direction of capital is possible save by their consent and through their agency. Does any one seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European State, or a great State loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?

Every great political act involving a new flow of capital, or a large fluctuation in the values of existing investments, must receive the sanction and the practical aid of this little group of financial kings. These men, holding their realised wealth and their business capital, as they must, chiefly in stocks and bonds, have a double stake, first as investors, but secondly and chiefly as financial dealers. As investors, their political influence does not differ essentially from that of the smaller investors, except that they usually possess a practical control of the businesses in which they invest. As speculators or financial dealers they constitute, however, the gravest single factor in the economics of Imperialism.

To create new public debts, to float new companies, and to cause constant considerable fluctuations of values are three conditions of their profitable business. Each condition carries them into politics, and throws them on the side of Imperialism.

The public financial arrangements for the Philippine war put several millions of dollars into the pockets of Mr. Pierpont Morgan and his friends; the China-Japan war, which saddled the Celestial Empire for the first time with a public debt, and the indemnity which she will pay to her European invaders in connection with the recent conflict, bring grist to the financial mills in Europe; every railway or mining concession wrung from some reluctant foreign potentate means profitable business in raising capital and floating companies. A policy which rouses fears of aggression in Asiatic states, and which fans the rivalry of commercial nations in Europe, evokes vast expenditure on armaments, and ever-accumulating public debts, while the doubts and risks accruing from this policy promote that constant oscillation of values of securities which is so profitable to the skilled financier. There is not a war, a revolution, an anarchist assassination, or any other public shock, which is not gainful to these men; they are harpies who suck their gains from every new forced expenditure and every sudden disturbance of public credit. To the financiers “in the know” the Jameson raid was a most advantageous coup, as may be ascertained by a comparison of the “holdings” of these men before and after that event; the terrible sufferings of England and South Africa in the war, which is a sequel of the raid, is a source of immense profit to the big financiers who have best held out against the uncalculated waste, and have recouped themselves by profitable war contracts and by “freezing out” the smaller interests in the Transvaal. These men are the only certain gainers from the war, and most of their gains are made out of the public losses of their adopted country or the private losses of their fellow-countrymen.

The policy of these men, it is true, does not necessarily make for war; where war would bring about too great and too permanent a damage to the substantial fabric of industry, which is the ultimate and essential basis of speculation, their influence is cast for peace, as in the dangerous quarrel between Great Britain and the United States regarding Venezuela. But every increase of public expenditure, every oscillation of public credit short of this collapse, every risky enterprise in which public resources can be made the pledge of private speculations, is profitable to the big money-lender and speculator.

The wealth of these houses, the scale of their operations, and their cosmopolitan organisation make them the prime determinants of imperial policy. They have the largest definite stake in the business of Imperialism, and the amplest means of forcing their will upon the policy of nations.

In view of the part which the non-economic factors of patriotism, adventure, military enterprise, political ambition, and philanthropy play in imperial expansion, it may appear that to impute to financiers so much power is to take a too narrowly economic view of history. And it is true that the motor-power of Imperialism is not chiefly financial: finance is rather the governor of the imperial engine, directing the energy and determining its work: it does not constitute the fuel of the engine, nor does it directly generate the power. Finance manipulates the patriotic forces which politicians, soldiers, philanthropists, and traders generate; the enthusiasm for expansion which issues from these sources, though strong and genuine, is irregular and blind; the financial interest has those qualities of concentration and clear-sighted calculation which are needed to set Imperialism to work. An ambitious statesman, a frontier soldier, an overzealous missionary, a pushing trader, may suggest or even initiate a step of imperial expansion, may assist in educating patriotic public opinion to the urgent need of some fresh advance, but the final determination rests with the financial power. The direct influence exercised by great financial houses in “high politics” is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the Press, which, in every “civilised” country, is becoming more and more their obedient instrument. While the specifically financial newspaper imposes “facts” and “opinions” on the business classes, the general body of the Press comes more and more under the conscious or unconscious domination of financiers. The case of the South African Press, whose agents and correspondents fanned the martial flames in this country, was one of open ownership on the part of South African financiers, and this policy of owning newspapers for the sake of manufacturing public opinion is common in the great European cities. In Berlin, Vienna, and Paris many of the influential newspapers are held by financial houses, which use them, not primarily to make direct profits out of them, but in order to put into the public mind beliefs and sentiments which will influence public policy and thus affect the money market. In Great Britain this policy has not gone so far, but the alliance with finance grows closer every year, either by financiers purchasing a controlling share of newspapers, or by newspaper proprietors being tempted into finance. Apart from the financial Press, and financial ownership of the general Press, the City notoriously exercises a subtle and abiding influence upon leading London newspapers, and through them upon the body of the provincial Press, while the entire dependence of the Press for its business profits upon its advertising columns involves a peculiar reluctance to oppose the organised financial classes with whom rests the control of so much advertising business. Add to this the natural sympathy with a sensational policy which a cheap Press always manifests, and it becomes evident that the Press is strongly biassed towards Imperialism, and lends itself with great facility to the suggestion of financial or political Imperialists who desire to work up patriotism for some new piece of expansion.

Such is the array of distinctively economic forces making for Imperialism, a large loose group of trades and professions seeking profitable business and lucrative employment from the expansion of military and civil services, from the expenditure on military operations, the opening up of new tracts of territory and trade with the same, and the provision of new capital which these operations require, all these finding their central guiding and directing force in the power of the general financier.

The play of these forces does not openly appear. They are essentially parasites upon patriotism, and they adapt themselves to its protecting colours. In the mouths of their representatives are noble phrase, expressive of their desire to extend the area of civilisation, to establish good government, promote Christianity, extirpate slavery, and elevate the lower races. Some of the business men who hold such language may entertain a genuine, though usually a vague, desire to accomplish these ends, but they are primarily engaged in business, and they are not unaware of the utility of the more unselfish forces in furthering their ends. Their true attitude of mind is expressed by Mr. Rhodes in his famous description of “Her Majesty’s Flag” as “the greatest commercial asset in the world.” [20]

It is therefore not, as you would have it, "Imperialism: A Study on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which was published a year after Hobson's book, by the way). If it were a book like Mein Kampf, whose sole purpose is racial polemic, a warmer foreword would be questionable. It is not Mein Kampf. It is a serious work by an anti-Semite, not a narrative of blood libel. If someone writes a favorable foreword to works of Voltaire, Frege, Hume, and indeed most of all those dead white people, what is the significance? Not even a foreword to a biography or intellectual history, but to the original work. It is good to discuss how the racial ideologies of influential thinkers sprout through their output and its historical and philosophical significance. But it would take a hardcore radical to oblige that every mention of these names be placed against a full-throated examination of their sins. Notes on the State of Virginia, by "the lying rapist and genocidal moron Thomas Jefferson."

It's not one thing Monty, it's a litany of sins - were it only one, two, even three examples I might be persuaded it was bad judgement

Several weak examples does not transmute into strong examples.

there's always another one

Isn't it just those recycled ones in perpetuity? It would be helpful to identify a way in which a Corbyn government would act against Jews. Surely there must be some policy to undermine them? A restriction of their religious spaces? Bureaucratic targeting of their neighborhoods? Increased weight of police scrutiny?

My mistake, he's referring to the Boer War. I confused the original work with later commentary.

You remain confused. As Wiki points out, it was Hobson's earlier work that explicitly set out to name a "Jewish factor" about the 2nd Boer War. This book does not.

Further, a new edition was printed, with new introduction, in 1938.

And what were the changes to this edition, if any? Innuendo is for humor, not clear communication.

It remains that the modern commentator on a book (still regularly taught in universities, like so many other archaic works) that contains a few pages of anti-Semitism cannot so easily be tainted by association. If you believed that you would have to believe that Corbyn is also anti-black, for there is much more material in the book racist toward blacks than toward Jews. What explains your silence on Corbyn's putative anti-blackness or anti-Asianness? If you believe this foreword is evidence for Corbyn's antisemitism, then you must believe that almost any author is racist or anti-Semitic who writes a foreword, preface, or introduction to any book by a white racist without explicitly condemning their racism. There is no coherent case to be made for one and not the other, unless it is a motivated case. I wouldn't criticize you the way you do Corbyn for writing a foreword to Churchill's autobiography where you decline to rage against him as a self-serving aristocrat supremacist. Oh hey, look at that, Boris Johnson did write a whole book about Winston Churchill. Serious question - did he take the (ample) opportunity of a whole book to criticize his role model's racism and other sins?


The Labour Party has done a bad job with internal governance and in its persistent dismissiveness toward criticism. Clearly this is a source of distress to many people. I think there is a case to be made that the Momentum/Corbyn siege mentality leads to toleration of anti-Semitism from perceived comrades (e.g. Palestinians via Hamas) in the name of solidarity, even if overall internal anti-Semitism may not exceed the British baseline. You can't make it the way you've gone about, and so it's hard to believe you care any more about anti-Semitism than you evidently do about any other form of racism.

[Furunculus]

naturally I think Conservative backers make a bad, and badly-motivated, decision and that a Conservative government would be objectively bad for the UK.MPs.

One shouldn't like the Conservatives even if Johnson were a Great Man!

If it's any consolation:

Naturally I don't think Labour backers are bad, or badly-motivated, just that they are deeply misguided and the damage they would inflict means a Labour/Magic-Grandpa/Momentum government would be objectively bad for the UK.

One shouldn't support Labour as long as Momentum are calling the shots!

[Idaho]

I suppose it might be too much to expect an explanation for this breathless outrage?

I can't imagine changing your mind, so how would an explanation help? Go and read something about the occupation and the lives of Israeli Arabs that wasn't written by eager Zionists. Take the time to actually investigate.

Beacon of light?! The country that has thousands in prison without trial? The country that routinely arrests, imprisons and beats children. The country that was so alarmed by democratic forces in neighbouring states that it has actively moved to destabilise democratic movements. Israel repeatedly targeted Palestinian political leadership - assasinations, splitting any unity between the West Bank and Gaza... Oh Jesus Christ the list goes on and on and on.

But it doesn't matter to you because to you these Arabs aren't full humans. They are at best and undesirable inconvenience, at worst they need to be cleansed from holy Zion.

[Idaho]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews...ju-jewish-mps/

Look at this beauty. Someone hacks an account and leaves a random short anti-Semitic post, and the sun has it down as Corbyn attacking Israel.

It's Putin style propaganda. It doesn't need to be subtle. It can be completely crude, baseless and clearly manipulation - but the converted will rally round it. It's just noise.

[Furunculus]

But it doesn't matter to you because to you these Arabs aren't full humans. They are at best and undesirable inconvenience, at worst they need to be cleansed from holy Zion.

You're making assumptions about what I believe that simply cannot be evidenced or substantiated.
And making your case with religious zeal and symbolism that suggests that is isn't me that is irrationally invested in the success/failure of one side or the other.

Either way, we have evidenced the rebuttal of the question of whether I hold Coryn to the same standard as Boris when it comes to claims of 'racism' - as asked by Pannonian.

[Idaho]

You're making assumptions about what I believe that simply cannot be evidenced or substantiated.
And making your case with religious zeal and symbolism that suggests that is isn't me that is irrationally invested in the success/failure of one side or the other.

Either way, we have evidenced the rebuttal of the question of whether I hold Coryn to the same standard as Boris when it comes to claims of 'racism' - as asked by Pannonian.

Yep, brush it off, don't investigate, move on. As expected.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

And yet the name was pronounced exactly as I would expect a British person to pronounce i: [ain], with normal prosody.

Here's the clip, he says it twice, the first time it's partially covered by the applause:



Not how I would have said it, and my spoken English is so close to RP a linguist once described me as having the "most boring" accent she had ever heard.

Also - you - arguing with Englishman about how English people pronounce things.

Maybe my expectation is spurious, but I would demand some data on the incidence of pronunciations of this name in the UK (and other '-ein' names, which do in fact vary in English pronunciation).

It's not the final syllable - which should be "een" in English but might sometimes be "ine", it's the guttural way he pronounces the "st".

Now, this particular individual's name and pronunciation was commonly represented on the news, so everyone should have been on the same page with Jeffrey. But you denounced Corbyn with such self-assurance I expected him to bray [epʃtein], the Russian pronunciation. This is what riffing on an "ethnic" name looks like, from someone who indulges regularly. There's no similar marked intonation or contrived pronunciation with Corbyn. I'll tell you what would make a stronger case: history. Footage or testimony of Corbyn pronouncing the name differently for a different person/context. If Corbyn had a history of saying the same name an Anglicized way (wrt people who also used that pronunciation) but diverted himself when calling out a notorious predator, then it would be plausible as a provocation.

Watch the clip again.

It's a pretty well-known Jewish name and he was referring to a guy everyone knew was Jewish.

You really over-estimate the extent to which people in the UK are aware of "Jewishness" and how it's signified. When my cousin married a Jewish man most of the family didn't realise he was Jewish until the engagement (no church wedding), also some of his relatives arrived in kilts.

You wrote: "No, it's the racism of old men in back rooms talking about how to "solve" the "problem", how to "free" themselves from the pernicious "influence"." That's an unmistakable reference to the historical "Jewish problem." Comparing Corbyn to someone deliberating on the dissolution of a "problem" pertaining to Jewish influence is an accusation of genocidal intent against him. Stop protesting when I accurately describe what you say. Or choose your words more carefully, Persian.

Though I wonder - what sort of facial hair do the old men in the back room have? Is it like Corbyn's, or coarser?

Bit of a stretch from backroom mutterings to actual genocidal intent, but OK, fine, if you want to read me like that. I thought Corbyn was genocidal, though, I'd just say so.

It is a book on imperialism written by a racist who made a passing reference to financiers being predominantly Jewish. It is not a book about Jewish conspiracies. This is the whole extent of anti-Semitism in the book, marring an otherwise-worthwhile section.

Silly me - I thought you were going to link to the text. Oh well: https://archive.org/details/imperial...goog/page/n274

Now - Hobson's views on Jews, whom he does not name, take up most of the latter half of a chapter titled "The Parasites of Imperialism" and whilst he does not say "Jew" he refers to a "peculiar race" (p. 64) and also to the Boer War - where he attacked Jews specifically at length in another work. Later in the same chapter he refers to the same "financiers" control of the press (p. 67), and asserts that their influence is felt also in "Berlin, Vienna and Paris" (ibid).

The entire argument is built on these "financiers" being a close inter-connected group, the entire argument is antisemitic.

It is therefore not, as you would have it, "Imperialism: A Study on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which was published a year after Hobson's book, by the way). If it were a book like Mein Kampf, whose sole purpose is racial polemic, a warmer foreword would be questionable. It is not Mein Kampf. It is a serious work by an anti-Semite, not a narrative of blood libel. If someone writes a favorable foreword to works of Voltaire, Frege, Hume, and indeed most of all those dead white people, what is the significance? Not even a foreword to a biography or intellectual history, but to the original work. It is good to discuss how the racial ideologies of influential thinkers sprout through their output and its historical and philosophical significance. But it would take a hardcore radical to oblige that every mention of these names be placed against a full-throated examination of their sins. Notes on the State of Virginia, by "the lying rapist and genocidal moron Thomas Jefferson."

Hobson has an entire section devoted to parasitic Jewish financiers - which Corbyn (by implication) thinks is "basically right".

Even assuming you believe the tents of the book - and that's a big if because the argument is that the primary impetus of Imperialism is economic - you still need to confront the fact that Hobson believed the financial system was controlled by a small number of banking houses, specifically Jewish ones, who benefited even when their own country suffered. I invite those interested to read the work, from page 50 onward. It's decidedly dense and boring, but soldier on and see what I mean.

Several weak examples does not transmute into strong examples.

The examples are not all that weak.

Isn't it just those recycled ones in perpetuity? It would be helpful to identify a way in which a Corbyn government would act against Jews. Surely there must be some policy to undermine them? A restriction of their religious spaces? Bureaucratic targeting of their neighborhoods? Increased weight of police scrutiny?

The book only surfaced this year.

Here's him on "Zionists: https://archive.org/details/imperial...goog/page/n274

The nastiest one so far.

You remain confused. As Wiki points out, it was Hobson's earlier work that explicitly set out to name a "Jewish factor" about the 2nd Boer War. This book does not.

I refer you to page 65, Hobson takes up the issues of the Transvaal (Boer War) and says just before that, "There is not a war, a revolution, an anarchist assassination, or any other public shock, which is not gainful to these men."

Now, we've already established that "these men" are of the "peculiar race" so this is basically Rothschild conspiracy 101 now.

Either you have not read the chapter or you assumed I had not.

And what were the changes to this edition, if any? Innuendo is for humor, not clear communication.

None, so far as I am aware, it got a new introduction - yay.

It remains that the modern commentator on a book (still regularly taught in universities, like so many other archaic works) that contains a few pages of anti-Semitism cannot so easily be tainted by association. If you believed that you would have to believe that Corbyn is also anti-black, for there is much more material in the book racist toward blacks than toward Jews. What explains your silence on Corbyn's putative anti-blackness or anti-Asianness? If you believe this foreword is evidence for Corbyn's antisemitism, then you must believe that almost any author is racist or anti-Semitic who writes a foreword, preface, or introduction to any book by a white racist without explicitly condemning their racism. There is no coherent case to be made for one and not the other, unless it is a motivated case. I wouldn't criticize you the way you do Corbyn for writing a foreword to Churchill's autobiography where you decline to rage against him as a self-serving aristocrat supremacist. Oh hey, look at that, Boris Johnson did write a whole book about Winston Churchill. Serious question - did he take the (ample) opportunity of a whole book to criticize his role model's racism and other sins?

We've covered Boris Johnson's prejudices - I've also covered Churchill's in the past - I once seriously compared him to Hitler, I further made the point that many pro-Zionists in the UK at that time were so because they wanted to see the Jews leave Britain and go somewhere else. That's Ken Livingstone's preference, by the sounds of it - and according to Ken it was Hitler's preference before he "went crazy."

When I was doing my Undergrad and studying Cicero I was given some excellent advice by one of the professors, "You don't have to like the people you study."

Churchill was racist, he was more racist than average for people of his era - he was especially racist against Indians and quite happy top see them starve, he would have gassed the Kurds if he could have worked out how. However, he was a committed democrat which meant he guarded Britain and Europe against Fascism until more enlightened men than him could come to power peacefully.

That is, more or less, what I would write in the forward - although I'd be a little more polite.

Is Corbyn racist against non-whites? Difficult question - quite possibly given that he seems to insist on seeing them all as the perpetual victims of whites.

The Labour Party has done a bad job with internal governance and in its persistent dismissiveness toward criticism. Clearly this is a source of distress to many people. I think there is a case to be made that the Momentum/Corbyn siege mentality leads to toleration of anti-Semitism from perceived comrades (e.g. Palestinians via Hamas) in the name of solidarity, even if overall internal anti-Semitism may not exceed the British baseline. You can't make it the way you've gone about, and so it's hard to believe you care any more about anti-Semitism than you evidently do about any other form of racism.

So you accept Corbyn tolerates antisemitism from "fellow travellers" today? How do you explain his penchant for the same prior to becoming leader?

Rank stupidity?

That's a valid answer, to be fair, but it equally disqualifies him from high office.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I can't imagine changing your mind, so how would an explanation help? Go and read something about the occupation and the lives of Israeli Arabs that wasn't written by eager Zionists. Take the time to actually investigate.

Beacon of light?! The country that has thousands in prison without trial? The country that routinely arrests, imprisons and beats children. The country that was so alarmed by democratic forces in neighbouring states that it has actively moved to destabilise democratic movements. Israel repeatedly targeted Palestinian political leadership - assasinations, splitting any unity between the West Bank and Gaza... Oh Jesus Christ the list goes on and on and on.

But it doesn't matter to you because to you these Arabs aren't full humans. They are at best and undesirable inconvenience, at worst they need to be cleansed from holy Zion.

You forgot helping to precipitate the Civil War in Lebanon and then destroying all it's infrastructure afterwards which, among other things, has helped to discredit the moderate Christian majority, making the country less Christian and therefore somewhere Europeans are less likely to identify with.

Israel is not a good neighbour.

[Pannonian]

Will Johnson be interviewed by Neil like the other leaders? If he does not, would it affect anyone's opinions here?

[Furunculus]

Yes, i do think it will reflect badly on him, and he should do it - not least because his opponents went on the show on the understanding that they would all face such a grilling.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...Israel is not a good neighbour.

It can be a pretty rough ally too. The Jerusalem Post listed 15 Americans killed by Palestinians in an article in 2017. Of course, the IDF killed 34 Americans in one day during the '67 conflict...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It can be a pretty rough ally too. The Jerusalem Post listed 15 Americans killed by Palestinians in an article in 2017. Of course, the IDF killed 34 Americans in one day during the '67 conflict...

Yes...

Israel makes you guys look reliable.

*Cough* don'tbelateforworldwarthreewe'verunoutofships *Cough*

[Gilrandir]

When my cousin married a Jewish man most of the family didn't realise he was Jewish until the engagement (no church wedding), also some of his relatives arrived in kilts.

Jews in kilts? Then his last name must be McRabinovitz.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Yes...

Israel makes you guys look reliable.

*Cough* don'tbelateforworldwarthreewe'verunoutofships *Cough*

Israel is a very predictable ally. And, based on the selflessness of their behavior, not all that far off from some of the "allies" I have made in Total War games.


And I think what you lot have done in drawing down the RN is crazy. What is left of the RN is neither strong enough to matter nor cheap enough to make sense.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Israel is a very predictable ally. And, based on the selflessness of their behavior, not all that far off from some of the "allies" I have made in Total War games.


And I think what you lot have done in drawing down the RN is crazy. What is left of the RN is neither strong enough to matter nor cheap enough to make sense.

The situation with the RN is the result of a number of complex circumstances. Firstly, you have the constant downward pressure on the armed forces what British politics has always exerted in peacetime - better to cut manpower than raise taxes. Secondly, you have the ongoing draw-down from the post-Cold war "peace dividend" which has continued even in the face of rising global tension. Thirdly, you have the "tonnage problem". From at least the 60's onwards RN ships have generally got bigger, heavier and generally more capable with a corresponding rise in cost that has meant a reduction in numbers.

Our new carriers are the largest in the world aside from American ships, but the Labour government cheaped out on then by trying to run harriers off them and hence they are not CATOBAR. Even so, the total tonnage of the two new ships is roughly double the tonnage of those they replace. Likewise, the Type 45 "Destroyer" is in reality a light cruiser given it's tonnage is roughly equivalent to the Leanders built in the 1930's and it is equipped to function as a taskforce flagship.

So, in really the UK has a "destroyer gap" in that we don't have any - the new Type 26 Frigate has the capabilities of a Destroyer but it may only reach 26 knots, too slow to be an escort ship, and in any case we are only building 8 to the Canuks 15. Even so, the RN has employed the policy of taking fewer, larger, ships in the hopes they can eventually build more smaller ones. This is the idea behind the Type 31 Frigate - Of which there were originally to be five but it looks like there will now be 8, which is three more frigates thean we have at present.

Overall, though, the UK remains in a state of post-Imperial decline, a rut we have been unable to get out of since 1946.

[Furunculus]

The royal navy's problem is the cold war - which forced a bankrupt Seapower culture that employed a Sea-Power strategy to move to a Land-Power strategy.

We never became a Landpower culture - as evidenced by our difficulties in joining in with the required self-absorption to be a successful EU member - but a combination european enthusiasm and osama bn laden in the New Labour years prevented us from abandoning the Land-Power strategy.

But that is changing, and you may well witness in the next 12 months a dramatic change at the next SDSR whereby:
1. The Army continues to shrink (115k SDR98 / 96k SDSR10 / 82K SDSR15 / 75k SDSR20).
2. And the Navy expands for the first time since the second world war.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The royal navy's problem is the cold war - which forced a bankrupt Seapower culture that employed a Sea-Power strategy to move to a Land-Power strategy.

We never became a Landpower culture - as evidenced by our difficulties in joining in with the required self-absorption to be a successful EU member - but a combination european enthusiasm and osama bn laden in the New Labour years prevented us from abandoning the Land-Power strategy.

But that is changing, and you may well witness in the next 12 months a dramatic change at the next SDSR whereby:
1. The Army continues to shrink (115k SDR98 / 96k SDSR10 / 82K SDSR15 / 75k SDSR20).
2. And the Navy expands for the first time since the second world war.

The British Army is already pitifully small, it comprises only 2 combat divisions (1st and 3rd) with the 6th Division really just being a paper formation to group all the army's SIGINT units together.

If the Navy is in danger of becoming a joke the army is a Greek tragedy. It's not just the reduction in combat troops, it's complete lack of real invard investment, such as the failure to procure new tanks so that the old Vickers works has been shut down. Essentially, the UK would need to start from scratch if it wanted to build new armour.

There's no point in re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. At a bear minimum the RN needs to grow its escort fleet by 50%. Ideally we'd start building a run of new light carriers to supplement the hulking monstrosities Gordon Brown saddled us with - but that's not going to happen.

Ask yourself what any of the services might feasibly be required to do - then ask if they can do that job and continue to defend the British Isles - in every instance you'll see the answer is simply "no".

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...-anti-semitic/

Over one third of Corbyn's supporters are antisemitic, as opposed to just over one fifth of Boris Johnson's.

[Furunculus]

The British Army is already pitifully small, it comprises only 2 combat divisions (1st and 3rd) with the 6th Division really just being a paper formation to group all the army's SIGINT units together.

If the Navy is in danger of becoming a joke the army is a Greek tragedy. It's not just the reduction in combat troops, it's complete lack of real invard investment, such as the failure to procure new tanks so that the old Vickers works has been shut down. Essentially, the UK would need to start from scratch if it wanted to build new armour.

There's no point in re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. At a bear minimum the RN needs to grow its escort fleet by 50%. Ideally we'd start building a run of new light carriers to supplement the hulking monstrosities Gordon Brown saddled us with - but that's not going to happen.

Ask yourself what any of the services might feasibly be required to do - then ask if they can do that job and continue to defend the British Isles - in every instance you'll see the answer is simply "no".

conversely, i'd argue the army has more men than it can afford to equip.
it has way to much light infantry that is not part of any combined arms formation capable of maneuver warfare:
they have no organic armoured mobility in their own right.
they have no combat support and combat service support to provide recon, artillary, engineering, logistics, signals.

additionally, we have too many heavy formations, which:
we don't need - because they are no use in the places we want to fight (far away, over large areas, with poor support)
we can't afford - we're never going to build another tank production line for just 200 tanks, we'll buy american or german.

the answer to the army's problem is strike in providing affordable medium weight wheeled brigades, in that:
they solve the post fulda gap problem - 64k troops in 160sq/km where today we only have 8k troops to cover 8000sq/km.
they are designed to self deploy 1000km, operate dispersed ti avoid attrition, and aggregate to provide decisive effect.

if we had one armoured brigade (instead of two) and three strike (instead of two), plus an airmobile brigade, we be no worse off in fighting effect and could do it with ten thousand less troops.

we could spend that manpower budget to uplift the royal navy:
who have exactly the right carriers - as endless design studies demonstrated.
but need more escorts - in a hi/lo T26/T31 configuration suitable for a sea-power strategy with affordable forward deployed assets.
and we need to rethink our amphibious forces of commandos and their vessels - to destroy and flip the a2ad bubble preventing insertion of carrier/strike follow on forces into the theater of operation.

[rory_20_uk]

I've thought there are two things the UK needs to do with the Armed Forces:

1) Accept we are a Tier 2 Force. Get tried and tested material rather than a miniscule amount of so new it'll break stuff and we can't really use it since we can't afford to replace it. Be that going with the USA or with others - such as Germany - to increase the volume to reduce costs.
2) Reorganise the whole lot into an integrated "Marines force". Just accept there are a few number of things we can do and many others we can't - such as using the Army in any way where there is a hostile force and realistically no ability to fight anywhere more than 20 miles inland without assistance. Almost every facet of the logistic chain is missing. Perhaps this might force Politicians to accept that the UK has no place in getting involved in overseas adventures.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

conversely, i'd argue the army has more men than it can afford to equip.
it has way to much light infantry that is not part of any combined arms formation capable of maneuver warfare:
they have no organic armoured mobility in their own right.
they have no combat support and combat service support to provide recon, artillary, engineering, logistics, signals.

additionally, we have too many heavy formations, which:
we don't need - because they are no use in the places we want to fight (far away, over large areas, with poor support)
we can't afford - we're never going to build another tank production line for just 200 tanks, we'll buy american or german.

the answer to the army's problem is strike in providing affordable medium weight wheeled brigades, in that:
they solve the post fulda gap problem - 64k troops in 160sq/km where today we only have 8k troops to cover 8000sq/km.
they are designed to self deploy 1000km, operate dispersed ti avoid attrition, and aggregate to provide decisive effect.

if we had one armoured brigade (instead of two) and three strike (instead of two), plus an airmobile brigade, we be no worse off in fighting effect and could do it with ten thousand less troops.

we could spend that manpower budget to uplift the royal navy:
who have exactly the right carriers - as endless design studies demonstrated.
but need more escorts - in a hi/lo T26/T31 configuration suitable for a sea-power strategy with affordable forward deployed assets.
and we need to rethink our amphibious forces of commandos and their vessels - to destroy and flip the a2ad bubble preventing insertion of carrier/strike follow on forces into the theater of operation.

The army needs another 10,000 men to fill the logistics gap - i.e. to support the troops we have. As things stand a lot of the logistics chain is provided by civilians - food, accommodation, medical etc. It's not sexy but it's what keeps frontline troops fit and capable. I'll never forget the eight hours I was stuck in a Guardhouse with a broken armoury alarm, and why? There was no REME detachment on base, that's why, because the MOD had sold the base to a private contractor based in Germany and was leasing it back.

As far as actually fighting goes - we can *maybe* deploy one division on a medium-term without American support, maybe. We certainly can't fight the Falklands War again.

The Armoured Corps has been drawn down to an unacceptable level and the Challenger II tank is undergoing yet another ultimately futile "life extension" program when it need to be replaced.

The Light Division is of no real value - it exists principally as a formation that lacks mechanisation (i.e. it's cheap). We should dispense with Light Infantry entirely, convert everyone to some form of mechanisation, whether that's Infantry fighting Vehicles or a lighter form of APC.

We will not be fighting another war like Afghanistan, unless we specifically go back to Afghanistan. We're much more likely to end up fighting something like a genuine mechanised war against, say, Iran, or we're going to fight China or Russia. We're already relatively close to neutralising intercontinental ballistic missiles and once that happens MAD will cease to apply.

At that point it's going to be rearm or die, and don't think there's no future where the US invades Canada or blockades Australia, because there might be.

Overall, we should be aiming to return military funding (which has been constantly falling) to what it was around 2005, and we should be looking to rearm to the sort of levels we were at at the start of the millennium. The idea we're a "second rate power" is just rhetoric used to cover the fact we're happier wasting money than spending it on something useful.

Same applies to not plugging the pension hole in the Royal Mail, or not rebuilding the railways.

[Furunculus]

Overall, we should be aiming to return military funding (which has been constantly falling) to what it was around 2005, and we should be looking to rearm to the sort of levels we were at at the start of the millennium. The idea we're a "second rate power" is just rhetoric used to cover the fact we're happier wasting money than spending it on something useful.

i'm with you, brutha!

unfortunately, while i'd be delighted to see defence spending return to 2.5% of gdp, while excluding the costs of:
1. the nuclear deterrent
2. pensions
3. [any] operational costs including UOR's

... i don't see the public or political parties lining up to offer me that.
so the army is only going to get smaller, not larger.