Typical of the genre, Darren Murtagh claims the #Labour Party has expelled him because he "shared an article from the Guardian saying how Israel funds groups associated with Tommy Robinson". He says the party is driving out "left thinking people", not tackling #antisemitism. /1
Cue messages of solidarity from Darren Murtagh's friends and comrades, many of whom report being forced out of the party themselves because they supported Palestinians, criticised Israel or were too socialist and too antiracist for the Labour leadership's liking. /2
But wait a moment. That Guardian piece doesn't mention Israel at all, not even indirectly, though Darren Murtagh has shared an article about Robinson's funding that did - from the neo-Nazi 'Right of the Right' website, which has since been rebranded as 'Christians for Truth'. /3
The CFT article's focus is Jews not Israel. It accuses Tommy Robinson of being "more than willing to take their thirty pieces of silver in exchange for pretending that the Jews aren’t behind the intentional destruction of England and Europe using Muslims as a weapon." /4
That's pretty much the theme for the whole website. CFT don't bother to hide their antisemitism under layers of euphemism. They are neo-Nazis and proud of it. That's obvious from the propaganda Darren Murtagh shared. But he and many of his friends see nothing wrong with it. /5
I don't know what evidence was included in Darren Murtagh's Labour Party antisemitism disciplinary case, but the investigating officer won't have struggled to find examples of anti-Jewish racism on his Facebook timeline. These screenshots are just the tip of the iceberg. /6
Murtagh's posts are typical of material promoted by a significant minority of Labour members these last few years. We can't generalise from one case, but as we saw earlier his stance attracted many supportive comments, whilst others apparently saw nothing. We have 43 mutuals. /7
How do we know people backing Murtagh's antisemitism are Labour members? Not all of them are, but I recognise many names because I or others have reported them and had their membership status confirmed. Some I've actually met at party and union events. They all hate the EHRC. /8
Even where the culprits are not in the party, however, their antisemitic discourse is often treated as normal and goes unchallenged by those who are. I'm therefore disinclined to accept claims that "the scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons".
Congratulations to the Socialist Workers Party on recruiting Malcolm Adlington. Malc has rejoined the SWP after the Labour Party suspended him for regularly posting antisemitic, in some cases explicitly neo-Nazi, material. But the SWP don't seem to mind. "Welcome home", comrade!
As several SWP activists joined the thread to express their joy at Malcolm Adlington's return to the fold, I asked why they were so keen given the Labour Party had suspended him for antisemitism. Surely, the SWP were supposed to be antiracist? The exchange didn't go well.
Adlington defended sharing an article about Tommy Robinson on the grounds that it denounced him. Yes, it did: from a neo-Nazi perspective that Robinson was taking "30 pieces of silver" for "pretending that the Jews aren't behind the intentional destruction of England and Europe".
Whilst some people who promote antisemitism falsely claim to be members of the Labour Party, there are others who pretend not to be. I'm now wary of taking resignation announcements at face value as they may be intended to lessen the likelihood of AS misconduct being reported.
Lesley Perrin, a Holocaust denier who was a Torbay CLP officer, said she'd given up her membership in Feb '19 after Labour HQ notified her of an investigation, yet the leaked #LabourReport shows she only received a 'reminder of conduct' at that time and hadn't actually resigned.
When I blogged about Perrin's Nazi-grade antisemitism in March that year, I therefore did so believing she had already left the party.
Thread: One of the candidates excluded from the Labour NEC ballot has posted a statement defending himself. Keith Hussein (South Shields CLP) says that claims he promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories are "completely baseless" and "vicious personal character assassination". /1
Concerns about alleged #antisemitism in Keith Hussein's Facebook posts were first raised publicly by Stephane Savary, vice-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, whose blog questioned whether the comrade was fit to join Labour's governing body. /2
Hussein says: "An innocent discussion on economics is somehow re-spun to make the accusation that I was spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories regarding George Soros. I didn’t even know Soros was Jewish at that time." He assures us that he doesn't believe in such theories. /3
Whilst some of the Board of Deputies' #TenPledges to end the #antisemitism crisis are problematic and arguably contradictory, the ferocity of the response from many on the Labour left is unwarranted and reflects discriminatory attitudes towards Jewish community advocacy. /1
The BoD is being accused of arrogance and interference in the Labour Party's internal affairs as if the central issue highlighted by the pledges - antisemitism and our leadership's failure to tackle it - had absolutely nothing to do with the communities it represents. /2
From all the fuss, we might imagine the #TenPledges to be an initiative without precedent, but challenging political parties and election candidates to sign up to commitments of this type is a campaigning tactic used by many community bodies and campaign groups. /3
Thread: 1/ I was a member of the same Facebook group (Labour Party Compliance: Suspensions Expulsions Rejections Co-Op) as Maria Carroll for a while, though I had no role in running it.
2/ The LPC group started amid the mass suspensions of the 2016 leadership contest when many members were disenfranchised without explanation. You had to submit data protection requests to find out what you were accused of and it created an atmosphere of confusion and paranoia.
3/ The group's initial emphasis was on advising suspended members about their rights, which is a laudable aim in the labour movement. Many of the exclusions were unrelated to antisemitism but that became the dominant theme and some extremely unsavoury types joined the group.
Just been accosted by Labour Party Marxists' Anne McShane outside a pub. She wanted to know if I was proud of myself. #LabourConference2019#Lab19
She accused me of assisting a witchhunt against the Labour left, which will be due to my calling out antisemitism, something I'd always regarded as a duty for socialists. I replied that I was ashamed I'd ever been involved in a group that was now facilitating antisemitism.
And that she should be ashamed too. LPM is a front for the CPGB, a group that didn't used to obsess about anti-Zionism but has done that these last few years, spawning Labour Against the Witchhunt and presenting all concerns about antisemitism as some sort of Zionist conspiracy.