Sunday 8 December 2019

Tory Party, Johnson, Antisemitism: Sunday morning tweets.



Some of this morning's tweets about the Tories, Boris Johnson and antisemitism are below:

(Before anyone accuses me of 'whataboutery' or 'deflection' I'll point out that these are ways of trying to neutralise a legitimate call for consistency across the field. Commentators who say they are combatting 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' and who are not combatting antisemitism in the Tory Party, are in fact just combatting the Labour Party. We know that that is a specific agenda of at least some of the commentators e.g. Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle who announced in 2006 that he was in a 'battle to save Western Civilisation' and the 'enemy' was 'the left in all its forms'.)


Here are my tweets:

Think of the zillions of hours spent ‘proving’ that the anti-racist Corbyn is antisemitic, while in plain sight, there was Johnson’s years of editing the self-identifying raving antisemite ‘Taki’. Just google the name and eg ‘Jews’ or ‘Holocaust’. Media attention? Hello? Hello?

The interview you haven’t seen: “Mr Johnson, for years, you edited the columns of the raving antisemite ‘Taki’, and what’s more you socialised with him. Do you apologise to Jewish people for this? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you?”

I wonder why it’s never been News that Johnson as editor of the Spectator edited ‘Taki’, a raving antisemite eg “ The younger generation of Jews who control it [ie Hollywood] think that there's more money to be made by dumbing down.”

At any time since Johnson became leader, the Jewish Chronicle and the chorus of ‘Corbyn’s an antisemite’ singers (Peston, Freedland, Hodges, Mann etc) , could have shouted about Johnson as editor of antisemite ‘Taki’ at the Spectator: the columns, the parties, the jollies. Why didn’t they?

I think I know why Johnson gets a free pass for the time he edited ‘Taki’ at the Spectator: it’s because upper class antisemitism is ‘funny’. I went to Oxford. I know. Free pass for upper class antisemitism please!

People accuse Corbyn of having been silent. Why then no accusation of Johnson being ‘silent’ about Rees-Mogg and his ‘illuminati’ and Soros jibes, Rees-Mogg retweeting an Alternativ für Deutschland tweet (AfD is an organisation that includes neo-Nazis); Dominic Cummings’ talk of ‘the likes of Goldman Sachs’ and Goldman Sachs having ‘fingers in every pie’ in the EU for their own benefit; comments from: Suella Braverman, Crispin Blunt, Priti Patel, Toby Young, a new round of suspended Tory candidates, and of course himself editing the raving antisemite ‘Taki’.

(I've passed these on to the 'Antisemitism Tsar', Lord John Mann, many many times. He messaged me to say that he doesn't deal with individual cases. He does. And frequently. But not these.)