Yesterday, I discussed how powerful narratives are. But the thing about narratives is: we all use them to make meaning of our lives and the world.
Very many on the left have a (mostly, factual) narrative about recent years too. This thread tries to put myself in their shoes.
That's something I should've done far, far, far more of. It's just that Twitter really doesn't allow it.
Please keep that in mind if you complain about the length of the thread. Detail requires length, nuance, subtlety even; and cannot be explained in 280 characters.
The context here isn't just of a literally, intellectually and philosophically bankrupt Labour Party in 2015. It's of a political system which had been failing many millions for decades on end... and had simply abandoned them altogether.
So here's a complicated position (or set of positions?) for you. My own ones.
1. The narrative about antisemitism in Labour was a disgrace, a nonsense, and 99.7% false (and provably so).
2. This narrative was what terrified British Jews. Those who did that should be ashamed.
3. The narrative was, however, essentially impossible to challenge, for reasons I explained in January of last year. In such a scenario, anything Labour said or did would be twisted and lied about by people acting in horrifically bad faith.
4. The narrative was so successful, so powerful and so all-enveloping that it unquestionably played a part in Labour's defeat. Not just because of so many British Jews voting against Labour - but non-Jews who, quite naturally, were horrified.
In that repulsive article, Taki doesn't only defend Golden Dawn. He refers to Polly Toynbee and Maureen Dowd as 'leftie old hags' - for telling the truth about neo-Nazis trying to take over Greece.
If someone referred to South Africa as an 'apartheid state' in the 1970s and 1980s, would they have been 'racist' against white people?
Were all those who campaigned against apartheid and for Mandela 'racists' against white people?
Just wondering.🤔
Remember too: Mandela was a terrorist. HOW DARE PEOPLE SUPPORT HIM THEY SHOULD'VE BEEN ASHAMED.
Or something. 😐
- You are criticising South Africa disproportionately if you don't criticise every other country just as strongly YOU ARE A RACIST AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE
My latest. This is the first of a three-part series about antisemitism and the left. Part 2 will look at the EHRC report; part 3 at Corbyn's suspension.
But the first part, as you'll see, is a lot more personal. It's about my own trauma. Deep trauma.
The trauma of what happens when you grow up in a family horribly impacted by what the Nazis did. Even third generation survivors, like myself, can be horrendously affected. It's something that should be discussed far, far more.
I'm laughing at many of the responses to *that* thread. I did say I was a small and bitter man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Predictably, many of the comments just repeat a bunch of myths. Which I'll run through now.
1. "Biden's only just scraped it!" Wrong.
The only reason they're still counting now is because so so many voted by mail. In normal circumstances - almost everyone voting in-person - we'd have known the result by Wednesday morning.
Biden's electoral college outcome is going to be 306-232. That is NOT 'only just scraping it'. Nor is the highest number of votes for any Presidential candidate in history (the previous record was in 2008); nor is a popular vote margin which will keep rising and hit 5m and above.