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“socdem” has been permanently associated with Bernie in my brain, and seeing what Social Democrats have been historically gives me major whiplash
Bernie "Bomb Yugoslavia" Sanders fits right in the lower part.
I don’t even know what to say about that
Bernie would be forced to do all that if he were President though, or he'd be removed. His senate voting record isn't particularly clean either.
Socdems gonna socdem. They'll always betray the working class whenever they have to make a choice between classes.
This sounds about right although I'll add that the only people who become president, etc, are those whose views already align with the ruling class. He wouldn't so much need forcing, because he'll see a lot of the bad decisions as 'necessary, reasonable compromises'.
Corbyn was a little similar. (Although he was much better on foreign affairs in general than Bernie,) He accepted Starmer's argument about a second Brexit vote and lost the 'red wall' trying to win over the centrist remainer swing voters. (Although it's now clear that Starmer didn't believe in this and was simply setting Corbyn up to fail.)
The same kind of logic is relevant today, highlighted by a controversy over a film that was due to be played at the Glastonbury music festival. The film, apparently, looks at how anti-Semitism was weaponised against Corbyn. (I've not seen it, so I'm only commenting on the commentary.) Glastonbury cancelled the showing after loads of bad press, some from a guy called Paul Mason, a possible spook who pretends to be on 'the left'.
Anyway, the interesting thing is that the saga has shown that the British left may really be full of anti-Semites. For two days while this has been kicking off, the 'British left' has been saying that Corbyn's downfall was orchestrated by the 'Israel lobby'.
jfc, Corbyn's support for Palestine clearly ruffled some pro-Israel feathers but the idea that Israel or the 'Board of Deputies' were the sole force behind the attacks on Corbyn is, well, anti-Semitic. Even if the people saying it are saying 'Israel/Zionists'.
There were loads of people out to get Corbyn and his supporters. The fact that one of the Jewish groups that didn't want him in power is getting almost all the blame for keeping him out of power is … not a great look (regardless of whether the film makes this claim since commentators have made it in defence of the film).
Is it beyond the realm of possibility that pro-Israel voices simply aligned with those of the British/US/European bourgeoisie? Or is the 'British left' just filled with feds and actual anti-Semites? FWIW most of this 'left' are liberals of one form or another. And there probably aren't many anti-Semites who support(ed) Corbyn; he just had a lot of support from people who weren't the most politically literate but liked his message. And that lack of political literacy (and class consciousness) has led to some terrible takes.
To bring it back to the comment I'm replying to… it's the same thing again but in reverse: when a politician refuses to be forced to do the bidding of the bourgeoisie, they won't be allowed near power. (But it's not 'Jews' who will prevent the ascent to power even if some Jews vocally oppose the candidate.)
(I'm curious as to what others think of my assessment. I don't pay much attention to British electoral politics, but this is currently playing out on Twitter, and some MSM, etc, and I can't say all this elsewhere. I'd be particularly interested if anyone thinks any of what I've said is accidentally antisemitic—it wasn't my intention, and I'll delete/amend if so.)
jfc, Corbyn’s support for Palestine clearly ruffled some pro-Israel feathers but the idea that Israel or the ‘Board of Deputies’ were the sole force behind the attacks on Corbyn is, well, anti-Semitic. Even if the people saying it are saying ‘Israel/Zionists’.
That's false, not least of all because most British Zionists are white.
Would you expand on that? I'm not sure what you mean.
A Zionist is someone who supports the existing ethnostate of Israel, right? The majority of people in Britain who hold that stance are white (though many of the like .5% who are Jewish in the UK are also Zionists). Further more, while Zionism is obviously connected to the institutions of Israel, which are populated by Jewish people, British Zionism mainly does not derive from Israel itself but from the British FCDO and military and its corporate mouthpieces -- all of which are principally white and more-primarily executors of white supremacy than of Zionism (and promote Zionism for the purpose of its white-supremacist, imperialist project).
The accusation of it mainly being Zionists doing the sabotage may or may not be true -- I don't know -- but the saboteurs in that scenario are going to be overwhelmingly white people because Zionism in the UK is overwhelmingly a white institution populated by white promoters and adherents, so calling the accusation antisemitic is absurd.
Thanks for clarifying. I see where you're coming from.
That is a common definition of Zionist but I don't think it's the only one. That's not overly relevant here, though, because I am using the term broadly in the same sense as you.
To clarify my initial point, I saw 'leftists' on Twitter saying that the (Zionist) British Board of Deputies or Israel itself was responsible for (a) Corbyn's failure and (b) the censorship of the film at Glastonbury. I contend that this is anti-Semitic because it singles out Jews as being behind a conspiracy.
While the BoD and other Zionist Jews may have contributed to the attacks against all things Corbyn, these were merely voices in a chorus and the real chorusmaster was the bourgeois class. As you point out, there are non-Jewish British Zionists who also played a role in fighting Corbyn.
I reached the conclusion that the British left is antisemitic to the extent that it argues the former rather than the latter. It wouldn't necessarily be antisemitic (although it would still be problematic) to lay the blame with the non-Jewish British Zionists that you mention, unless it were implied that these activists were controlled by Israel (meaning Jews) – unfortunately, I did see tweets making that claim or something very close to it.
The accusation of it mainly being Zionists doing the sabotage may or may not be true – I don’t know – but the saboteurs in that scenario are going to be overwhelmingly white people because Zionism in the UK is overwhelmingly a white institution populated by white promoters and adherents, so calling the accusation antisemitic is absurd.
The antisemitic bit is claiming that all this was orchestrated by the Board of Deputies/Israel. And if that's true, it doesn't matter whether the BoD/Israel are Zionist. It is not absurd to say that blaming only Jews for something that loads of people/religions/groups/tendencies were involved in is antisemitic. It's more or less the definition of antisemitism. And people on the British 'left' were making that argument on Twitter.
If the British working class had class consciousness and a decent political education, it would not allow itself to be caught in this kind of antisemitism and would go to lengths to make sure that it's analysis of e.g. Corbyn were rigorous and not antisemitic.
Yeah, there are cranks who say stupid things, but it's common knowledge at this point that the Corbyn campaign was undone by various levels of sabotage by fellow Labour members and even people within the campaign who went to extensive lengths to misappropriate campaign funds to undermine Corbyn while using baroque levels of targeted advertising against Corbyn and his advisers and even the journalists they follow to cover the tracks of those misappropriations. There were surely Jewish individuals and Jewish organizations involved, and Israel itself was probably involved since Britain is an important ally to it, but Corbyn was mainly undone by white British Zionist opposition.
Part of the issue is that western governments -- the US famously has this issue with AIPAC -- seem to wish to bait antisemitism by allowing Israel to use publicly-visible levers of power usually reserved for domestic corporations and "special interest groups" to control politicians. People see the success of AIPAC and they say "Look! Israel controls so much of US politics that concerns it!" They do not stop for a moment and wonder which other foreign countries are allowed to have a PAC in the US that can so freely buy off politicians. Israel has a lot of money thanks to the endless money funneled to it, but they certainly aren't the richest country in the world. In absolute terms, the richest country is the PRC (due to size, population, etc), and yet we see no American-Chinese Public Affairs Committee PAC, this of course being due to the fact that it is not permitted to have one. Israel is allowed to have one because it is chiefly a western puppet, and so it is quite safe to allow it to use these levers of power to ultimately give money back to its masters to secure their own common interests!