THREAD.
Billy Bragg responded to my circulating a dodgy deleted Tweet of his (see quote Tweet.) Here in turn is my response to him.
Billy Bragg responded to my circulating a dodgy deleted Tweet of his (see quote Tweet.) Here in turn is my response to him.
I have seen the context. And it still amazes me that any politically and historically literate and articulate person could phrase such a question the way you did. (And dog-whistle questions are always rhetorical, so that qualification is irrelevant).
They might write, rhetorically, "Isn’t it wrong to accuse Jewish citizens..?,etc", & that would indeed read more as you claim. Perhaps you have joined Donald Trump in being unable to distinguish positives from negatives. If only you were someone who uses words professionally, eh?
Even in the heat of the Twitter moment, that is a gobsmacking slip. HOWEVER. Your original interlocutor, @gregallon, believes you HAVE been misinterpreted, & he was there; it's only fair to include his take on it. (See also his replies to the quoted Tweet.)
In light of Greg’s reply, I will delete the original tweet so it cannot circulate on its own, and instead screen-grab it here, so people can see what happened in the context of this thread, your response, and Greg’s intervention. 
Because context matters. So let's have some:
I might have been willing to believe/excuse the innocent slip of a typing finger or a brain freeze (that, after all, can happen to any of us, and we'd all like the benefit of the doubt) but for the fact you have plenty of form here.
I might have been willing to believe/excuse the innocent slip of a typing finger or a brain freeze (that, after all, can happen to any of us, and we'd all like the benefit of the doubt) but for the fact you have plenty of form here.
Here you are, piously leftsplaining anti-Semitism to the majority of Jews and telling us you know so much better than we about how Corbyn is really our friend and defender. So this hasn't come out of nowhere, has it?
We're not judging Corbyn on "one badly judged Facebook post", nor you on one cack-handed Tweet. It's your track records over time that count. His is long and disgraceful. You're newer to the game of showing pompous contempt towards most Jews, but you're making up ground.
And now here you are, defending Labour's nobbling of the IHRA definition to change doubting the loyalty of Jews from being explicitly anti-Semitic (and thus sanctionable, as expressing any other racist view would be) to merely "wrong", thus meriting a reprimand or wrist-slap.
This very strongly suggests you do *not* think it is racist to question the loyalty of Jewish citizens to their country. Otherwise there is no way in the world you make such a defence, however phrased. That means you are enabling racism against Jews.
There's also the matter of the nobbled definition bringing in the question of intent, which as the CRE noted is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a thing is racist; thus setting a different bar for racism against Jews than any other minority. There's a word for that.
That word, if you're wondering, is discrimination. That is what you are advocating when you defend this ruse. There is one reason, & one reason alone, why Labour will not adopt the IHRA definition *in full*: it's that it fully intends to violate it. You know this. You support it.
One of the oldest, crudest political tricks in the book is: if the rules say your conduct is wrong, don't change your conduct, change the rules. That's what you're endorsing. We can all see what you're doing, and what it says about you. Not just you, true; everyone who's at it.
It's just that you're the famous left-wing man-of-the-people bard, so when you do it, you get more attention and cop more flak. As you rightly should. You stand accused of exactly what you've done: acting as an enabler for what 90+% of Jews know to be discrimination against us.
(The same goes for Jarvis Cocker, who once brilliantly skewered the lofty contempt privilege has for others' experience and knowledge, and now publicly demonstrates it himself. You both should know better. And you have, for you own reasons, chosen not to. That speaks ill of you.)
Faced with a clear consensus among so large a majority of *any other minority group* as to what is prejudice against it, you and your comrades would not dream of lecturing them about how wrong they are. You eagerly, self-righteously do it to Jews. Again, there's a word for that.
What’s the difference between someone who holds racist views and someone (e.g. you, Corbyn) striving to license those who do? It affects only the condition of your conscience, which is your concern, not ours; the outcome is indistinguishable for those of us on the receiving end.
Funny how these innocent mistakes by the politically literate Left *always* concern Jews, no? Your Tweet. Ken Loach echoing the rhetoric of Der Stürmer. The Morning Star publishing an anti-Semitic editorial. None of you ever accidentally call for privatisation of the NHS, do you?
In summary: you have not caused me “concern”. I already had a good idea of your position: you seek to abet the Labour Party's licensing of forms of racism against Jews. You simply confirmed it; then, it seems, panicked when you realised you had let slip the facade of deniability.
