UK General Election 2019

[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.