Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said the party would investigate how it gave a platform at a conference fringe event to a speaker who said people should be allowed to question whether the Holocaust happened.
This, apparently, is antisemitism (which, to be fair, is rife among the left). However:
The remarks by the Israeli-American author Miko Peled have renewed alarm about antisemitism in the Labour party.
Riiight, so it isn’t antisemitism, then, is it? What is this chap all about then?
Speaking at an event on free speech and Israel, Peled is reported to have said: “This is about free speech, the freedom to criticise and to discuss every issue, whether it’s the Holocaust: yes or no, Palestine, the liberation, the whole spectrum. There should be no limits on the discussion.”
Milo Peled is correct and Tom Watson is an authoritarian fuckwit – which applies to pretty much the whole of the Labour party.
If you read into Mr. Peled, he’s a very nasty supporter of Hamas fundraisers and terrorists and associates with antisemitic conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers.
The excellent Elder of Ziyon blog has an article on him.
Maybe so. However, he is right on this.
The other point is that calling for a ‘debate’ on the Holocaust is a classic tactic of Holocaust deniers. Whilst I agree with free debate, Holocaust deniers are not genuinely interested in free debate. They want their views to be treated seriously. They’re more interested in their views being given legitimacy and airtime. They want to put the advocation of genocide denial on the same moral standing as the affirmation that genocide was committed. No serious scholar of the Holocaust denies that the Holocaust happened, so presenting themselves as alternative bringers of truth is a subtle but potent form of ‘Jews control the world’ type racism from the Nazi era than anything approaching a serious debate on the facts.
I don’t believe in closing down debate so it should go ahead (just as pro-paedophilia activists can debate whether age of consent laws should be abolished) but I’m just pointing out that we shouldn’t take this promotion of ‘debate’ on the Holocaust at face value.
I’m not. I’m taking his comments on freedom of speech at face value.
Oone of the things that concerns me about this Corbynite lot is how willing they are to just change any rules or processes to suiit them. We’ve now seen it with changes to the way the Labour NEC is constituted, to the rules electing the greate leader, and to rules on speaking and debates at conferences being rigged at will.
The concern is, what if they got into power and suddenly decided that Governments should have 25 year terms of office?
Who could possibly object?
No one — they probably wouldn’t let it be put to vote before passing it.
Of course they wouldn’t. After all, it would be in our best interests…
Just like all the other political perties, then ….