It's possibly worth clearing this up to avoid confusion.
If someone lies, we call them a liar.
It doesn't make any difference how tall they are, for instance, or what colour hair they’ve got, or whether they like mustard or not. A liar is someone who lies.
If someone lies, we call them a liar.
It doesn't make any difference how tall they are, for instance, or what colour hair they’ve got, or whether they like mustard or not. A liar is someone who lies.
If the someone-who-lies has other identities - French, male, vegetarian - it doesn’t mean they’re lying *because* they have those identities. Those other identities are irrelevant: all that’s relevant is that they’re liars.
They’re not ‘French liars’ or ‘male liars’ or ‘vegetarian liars’. They’re just liars.
So when Nick Robinson (Jewish by birth) lies about what Chris Williamson said, for instance, that doesn’t make Robinson a ‘Jewish liar’: that makes him a liar, who is also, irrelevantly to this issue, Jewish.
He is not lying *because* he’s Jewish: he’s lying because he’s a liar (who is also, irrelevantly to this issue, Jewish).
Jewish people can lie, just like anyone else can. But they’re not lying *because* they’re Jewish, anymore than when I lie it’s *because* I’m of Catholic heritage.
A liar is a liar. They may have any number of other ‘nested identities’, but all of those are irrelevant to the issue of lying. If I call out Nick Robinson for lying, I am calling him out *because he is a liar*, not because he is a Jew.
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