There's nothing in there to either charge her with, or exculpate her of anti-semitism.
I didn't say that. I said there's nothing in what you quoted to say one way or another.
It seems to be a property of liberal societies, that they throw up people consumed by hatred of the community that produced them. I daresay it happens under other social models, but it seems particularly prevalent where people are relatively privileged and politically and socially free.What he said was that it would be difficult for the Israeli Government's Propaganda Department to portray her as an anti-semite. I'd imagine it would be pretty hard for them to do that convincingly, maybe you should apply for the job
Older generation
I take it this launch of rhetorical chaff means you can't contest my logic?
What is? How is it? Is the holocaust back to being a sacred cow then? Anyone who suffered from it, somehow a de facto saint?
Older generation
Sorry GS, but quite apart from anything else, and irrespective of merit or demerit, it is the worldview of old lefties that is disappearing into the pages of history.
As for 'thinking for themselves'. Sorry GS, again, the world has moved on. It is 'self loathing' liberalism that is the establishment, the unquestioned orthodoxy of the day. And it's almost cute the way the left, from centre to extremity, are brought together (as they so seldom otherwise are) by the continued need to see themselves as the outsiders, the daring and the freethinking; despite being in fact the worn out old dogmatists of the day.
For heaven's sake; the education system, the arts, the media, the civil service and local government - all arms of the establishment parrot a wishy washy left wing cant; but hey, this is 'thinking for oneself'.
Not to worry though, all the evidence is that the people are growing weary of this patrician caste. We may yet live to see the liberal mandarins following the old socialists into the wilderness, robbed of the ability to forcibly impose their marginal views on all and sundry, and thus doomed to irrelevancy. But hey at least by then they'll truly be outsiders again.
Anyway, back to the point; I disagree with you. When the charge is made of self-loathing, part of what people are getting at is a point of view that is so distorted it cannot objectively view the good in one's own culture. In particularly extreme examples it can lead to the inability to delineate between, say, liberal democracy and it's malcontents, and the most shitty regimes in human history and those who bravely opposed them. It's that very failure to differentiate based on any rational criteria, that points to a pathology at work.
In living memory, in this country, this has led to some of the most privileged people in human history deploring the free society they gained so much from, while at the same time disdaining people people campaigning against the horrors of the communism that they lived under.
You can deploy Freud all you like, but it doesn't disguise moral bankruptcy and some of the oldest and ugliest aspects of human nature.
I take it this launch of rhetorical chaff means you can't contest my logic?
What is? How is it? Is the holocaust back to being a sacred cow then? Anyone who suffered from it, somehow a de facto saint?
Ironic given how often the jews are equated to the nazis these days, in and around discussion of this topic.
To repeat; There is nothing so far presented that would allow one to comment on this woman's motives. However to rule out anti-semitism based on emotional appeal to her past suffering, is irrationalist bullshit of the first order.
Noone charged you with it.
How are they 'dogmatic about the market'? We have anything but a free market. I humbly suggest that it's only from the a rather obscure left perspective that the accomodation with reality that is a mixed market could be seen as market dogmatism.
TU at GCHQ I don't know much about, but sounds like the TUs doing their best to support the soviet bloc again. Fighting against the spread of the Murdoch press? I'd concentrate on the BBC first, as a coercively funded mouthpiece for minority political views, versus the Murdoch products which give people (alas) what they want. Support for Solidarity was a minority pursuit. Anti Apartheid, fair enough, I'll give you that 1 out of the 4; though were it a country where white people were excluded by blacks (or anyone else), I doubt there'd have been the same enthusiasm. The focus on SA with the relative silence over the communist world was telling of concerns other than the moral one.
Israel is the focus of wholly disproportionate attention and double standards. Anti semitism has been a recurring theme in the firment of leftist thought; this is it's latest incarnation. Not all opponents on israel are anti semites of course. But as with the BNP, the hardcore are rabid anti semites, surrounded by a lot of easily led dummies.
She may well be. But the radical and disproportionate nature of her form of protest speaks to me of a fanaticism that suggests other traditions before it suggests liberalism.
Surely the worst joke of the year. (So far :laff
As opposed to the glittering successes of state run industry?
Labour have moved back in that direction; they used monetarism to pump prime the finance industry as the private wealth generator to underpin a vast statist programme.
Call it offensive if you like, but given the recently exposures of how in bed with KGB the labour party and union pooh bahs were, giving offence is somewhat secondary to being correct.
No they didn't, they opposed the USSR.
I'm afraid the unions had long since sold the pass to leninist nutjobs. you reap what you sew.
Mmmm. I'll defer to your experience as I'm a little young to talk with authority here. Certainly solidarity have not been feted since, never mind fetished as south africa is, despite poland's journey to modernity and south africa's back into the dark ages. the whole commemoration of 1989 has been decidely muted this year; darwin got more attention ffs. my recollection such as it is was things were ever this way; highly ambivalent towards those opposing socialist tyranny.
by the same token Mandela was a communist leader. the fact one is unacceptable and the other acceptable to our town hall commissars makes my point for me.
absolute nonsense. Mandela was surrounded by scandal which was ignored. He was no more a politician than walesa, and his statesmanlike reputation proceeds entirely from a priori devotion to him; the same mentality that has led to barack obama receiving the nobel prize for peace having done sweet FA yet.
I don't know, and you don't either. Age is no barrier to political mentalism. Witness the coffin dodging quakers who liked to present themselves to saddam as human shields for his military facilities.
Which answer would you factually dispute :hmmm
That isn't true El B.