Quoting a university poster from many years ago written by the Jewish (student) society. Which is not quite what this is about but close enough.
In recent weeks it has become the trend to accuse those who criticise Israel’s policies in Gaza, as antisemitic. It is possible of course – the dumber out there are genuinely antisemitic. But there’s a whole other bunch of reasons :-
They’re anti-zionist and anything that Israel does can be condemned.
They’re anti-certain kinds of government policies and Israel uses those policies.
Always accusing critics of Israel of antisemitism is essentially saying that Israel cannot be criticised no matter what they do. Is that right?
Sure Israel has to defend itself from Hamas terrorist attacks, but it has to be done right without breaking international law. And even if you think Israel’s response is “reasonable”, you can’t reasonable silence criticisms of Israel by using the antisemitism label – it’s dishonest.
Ultimately what Israel wants is to be in a privileged position where none dare criticise them because any criticism will be seen as antisemitic. It’s equivalent to the British claiming that anti criticism of the British Empire is just anti-British.
I’ve missed most of this story – how someone gunned down the CEO of UnitedHealth. That’s because I’ve had my own healthcare issues ironically enough. And was taken care of by the NHS.
I’ve even missed most of the social media response which was apparently less than totally sympathetic.
Killing someone is wrong; even if you see it as some form of justice. Justice involves a trial with members of the community involved in the decision of guilt or innocence. Without that it becomes just personal revenge.
But what if the community won’t prosecute and judge someone’s crimes? The US health insurance business has plenty of incidents that victims could easily perceive as a crime – for example health care bankruptcies.
It just becomes a little harder to condemn someone seeking revenge if there is no real chance of getting justice.
It’ll be interesting to see the trial of the alleged killer – it could well result in Jury Nullification where the jury finds the defendant not guilty because whilst they have broken the law, the jury feels it was justified.
Last week as the residents of Southport were holding a vigil in memory of the three little girls who were killed and of those kids who are still in hospital, Southport was invaded by racist thugs who tried attacking the vigil and also tried attacking the mosque.
There was no indication that the murderer was a muslim; the instigators just assumed that.
There was no indication that the murdered was an asylum seeker; the instigators just assumed that.
The false name of the murdered was invented to make it sound muslim; it’s rumoured that it actually translates as “My Apartment”. The instigators didn’t care about that.
The Instigators
It’s all very well blaming the “useful idiots” who were rioting in Southport last night – and they certainly deserve to be locked up. But who instigated their visit?
There are plenty of possible candidates who posted vile assumptions about the murderer on 𝕏 clearly trying to sway the narrative in the direction of inciting hatred for immigrants and asylum seekers. I won’t name them here except to say they are easily recognisable as frothing at the mouth loons of the far-right.
Yes, far-right.
They may attempt to deny it, and the “useful idiots” at the riot may well claim they’re ordinary British working-class (they’re not), but the instigators are definitely far-right.
The EDL
Some of the reports name the EDL as being behind the riots yet some will instantly point out that the EDL no longer exists as an organisation.
Well, perhaps.
But the easiest way to keep an organisation from being banned is to “disband” it; an organisation doesn’t need a public face, a web site, or a corporate identity. Particularly if it is intent on pursuing illegal activities – such as rioting.
Russian Involvement?
This is pure speculation, but it is interesting to see that Europe (and the USA) has a problem with far-right thugs justwhen it would be helpful to distract us from what the Russians are doing to Ukraine. And we know that the Russians like interfering in the West.
If any of those instigators are taking money from the Russians (and to be fair, I don’t know that they are), then they’re not just guilty of incitement to riot, but also guilty of treason.
But there is alleged links between the “News” channel that first published the disinformation on the murderer : here, here, and probably other places too.
Conclusion
Unless we want thugs fueled up on cheap lager touring the country rioting in random places, we need to take action. And not just locking up the thugs – whilst their actions are inexcusable, they are still just “useful idiots”.
No, we need to go after those who incited the violence by spreading disinformation … and no, an apology isn’t enough. They should be charged with “incitement to riot” and for certain of those in parliament, also “mafeasance in office”.
And we need a far more in depth investigation of just what the Russian intelligence services are up to in our country.
Just recently (and possibly triggered by the £45 million pound share of the Crown Estate income that the monarchy is getting), there has been a lot of republican jumping up and down about how the king owns the sea (i.e. off-shore wind farms pay rent to the Crown Estate).
I get it. Although I’m not an active republican, I do think selecting the head of state by being the first-born into the right family is a bloody daft way of picking one. I just think there are more important matters to sort out first. Just remember, if we elect a head of state we could wind up with a lettuce.
Well, I say first-born child of the monarch, but in reality parliament decides who gets the crown even if it is the first-born by default. It has been that way since parliament demoted the first Charlie with an ax.
Ever since that time, control over the Crown Estate has effectively been under parliament’s control. That control became explicit when George III explicitly passed control over the Crown Estate to parliament in return for no longer being responsible for the expenses of government.
That last bit is significant – the third Charlie has two fortunes – his private fortune and the Crown Estate. Why two? Because the Crown Estate is supposed to serve a special purpose – it is supposed to be used to pay for government.
And it does. The overwhelming majority of the Crown Estate income goes into the Treasury; Charlie gets 15% supposedly to pay his expenses as head of state. Now this may well be too much (especially as it has risen to £45 million), but some is perfectly reasonable. If we were to pick a random person to be the monarch (perhaps not a bad idea), paying them something out of the Crown Estate would be only sensible.
An attack on the Crown Estate is not an attack on the monarchy; if we abolish the monarchy, the crown estate will still exist. It might go through a name change and it might not be quite so generous to the head of state, but it exists independently of the monarchy.
A combination of Tory incompetence, mismanagement, the austerity fetish, and probably outright corruption has allowed us the electorate to drive a knife into the heart of the Tory beast. But the job is not over yet; the beast still lives if wounded.
The Tories may well thrust the knife in themselves with a variety of different groups moving the party to the right with the impression that the country is moving in the direction of ReformUK. Ignoring their traditional supporters.
But in case sanity returns by the time of the next election, we should be planning on finishing off the Tory beast. That doesn’t mean the right shouldn’t have a party – there is still a bunch who would vote for a centre-right party.
But the current Tory party itself is guilty of such atrocious mis-management that it deserves to die.
We need to demand electoral reform – getting rid of a government so miserable in performance and fractured in nature shouldn’t require tactical voting. People should be free to vote with their conscience and belief and to find the result reflects their vote in proportion to everyone else.
It is worth pointing out that the 2019 election result gave the Tories an 80 seat majority on 44% of the popular vote whereas the combination of Labour, Greens, and Liberals got 46% of the popular vote. How is giving the right-wing the government when a left-wing ‘coalition’ had a majority of the popular vote supposed to be fair?
And that was quite possibly the poorest result for the left of centre parties in recent times.
If we do not get electoral reform, we need to push tactical voting twice as hard – and drag old old stories of just how bad the Tories in government really were.
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