Thread by @shaunjlawson

Last I checked, Richard Burton has been dead for 37 years. But this is actually a really interesting clip in all manner of ways.

1. How many people instantly condemning Burgon have even watched it? Hardly any, I bet.

2. What are the UK going to achieve by condemning China? Nowt

https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1466377341630922753

3. Is our foreign policy full of horrific double standards from top to bottom? Yes. We do deals in blood with other evil regimes.

4. Is anti-Chinese racism growing in the UK? Yes.

5. Is the average Chinese person's carbon footprint much less than the average Briton's? Yes.

6. Is the US the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons against a people? Yes.

7. Has the US also committed genocide? Yes it has, on several occasions.

8. Is there any point to "why won't you condemn China? Why won't you condemn China?" Not really, no.

HOWEVER...

9. It's not like Burgon uses the same reasoning to not condemn Saudi Arabia or not condemn Israel. He does so all the time. That makes his failure to do so here weird.

10. Is this good politics? No. It's embarrassingly bad politics. It's student union-level politics.

When Corbyn was repeatedly asked by Stephen Nolan to condemn the IRA, and he wouldn't, that was the most awful politics. Because it did his and his party's chances of winning an election enormous harm.

Burgon hasn't helped Labour or the left with these comments. He's harmed both

Of course genocide is going on in Xinjiang, right now. Against the very Muslims whose treatment the left is always rightly livid about whenever it's Israel or Saudi Arabia doing it.

The right are selectively blind, but so is the left. It's bizarre.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is pretty stupid and horribly cynical at the best of times.

But way, way too many on the left take the attitude of "the enemy of the US is my friend". Before demanding of our own government things they never demand of their 'friends'.

Over the years, this has gone to such extremes that it's led to:

- Denying Saddam Hussein had committed genocide against the Kurds
- All but cheerleading Putin
- Saying about Ahmadinejad's rants against the West "he's got a point"
- Mass apologia for Assad
- Romanticising Chavez

- Blaming the US and CIA for literally anything that's wrong in South America
- Denying anything is wrong in 'socialist paradise' Venezuela
- And now, this. Refusal to call a spade a spade. Refusal to call genocide by China what it is. Genocide.

When I see the UK and most of the West STILL refusing to recognise the Armenian Genocide over 100 years later, it makes me sick. It's disgusting, monstrous, indefensible.

I think the same about this. It's genocide, Richard. And you help no-one by refusing to say so.

I'm not in the business of providing an apologia for one of the most monstrous regimes on the planet.

And nor should any 'progressive' anywhere.