Corbyn supporters post vile racism and he says nothing, says Louise Mensch
Louise Mensch: "the rise of online antisemitism has shocked Britain out of its complacency"
Did Twitter break the Labour party?
I am not being facetious. There is a certain gallows humour in joking about the wave of online antisemitism from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn.
Twitter has given voice and focus to a loud, dedicated minority among Mr Corbyn’s wider support; those who dislike, hate or even loathe Jews.
Social media is a double-edged sword. It is through social media that Mr Corbyn’s links to the antisemite Paul Eisen were exposed. It was through Twitter that I discovered Jeremy Corbyn’s “friend”, the racist and homophobe Abou Jahjah, whom he had invited to Parliament. Abou Jahjah has said “every dead British soldier I consider a victory”. Twitter pointed me to CEC, the La Rouche antisemitic cultists whom Corbyn brought into Parliament to interview him just this spring. So it was, in that sense, useful.
But the more Mr Corbyn’s embrace of Eisen, Raed Salah, Hamas and Hizbollah was exposed, the better he did in the swollen selectorate that has swamped real Labour members two to one (600,000 now vs 200,000 at the start of the race). And instead of decrying his links to antisemites, the left broadly shrugged their shoulders — or rejoiced that Mr Corbyn had given them comfort.
The majority of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are not antisemites but hundreds, maybe even thousands, of them are. Antisemites form a significant minority of Corbynites and they are among the loudest online. Abuse and Jew-hatred is rife.
First you have the open loathers of Jews like Alison Chabloz, a performer at the Edinburgh Fringe who tweeted a quenelle then said that Jewish people brought pogroms on themselves. You have those who said Liz Kendall was “a servile zionist cow”. You have Fred Litten, who tweeted “Hitler was right and we were wrong”. You have the commenter on my blog reporting on Mr Corbyn’s meetings with antisemites who said that the Holocaust was fake but added, wistfully: “I wish there were six million less of them”.
Next, you have people who are antisemitic but do not know they are. Perhaps these are more worrying. “What, are you saying that all Jews, not just the business owning rich ones, hate Corbyn?’ one man asked me. “Nothing wrong with denying the Holocaust, history is written by the victors,” said another. “Zyklon B was used for delousing." Another, a Scottish nationalist who likes Mr Corbyn, replied to a tweet saying he had called for an inquiry into 'Jewish donors to the Conservative party' with 'About time!'. (In fact, Mr Corbyn had supported an inquiry into 'Zionist' donors to the Conservatives, but every name mentioned at the event when he endorsed this was Jewish.) The antisemites are drawn to Mr Corbyn like a moth to a flame. “The Nuremberg trials were for show,” said Matthew Lees. Susan John-Richards, a deselected Tory councillor in 2010, now supports him because of her antisemitism. “All Jews are intermarried anyway,” she says. “Jews and Zionists own the whole world.” She also believes in the blood libel and that “9/11 was an inside job”.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/143148/corbyn-supporters-post-vile-racism-and-he-says-nothing-says-louise-mensch
= new reply since forum marked as read
