Diane Abbott suspended from the Labour Party

20togo said:
Is she making excuses now? Said it was just a draft copy that got sent. Politics is riddled with incompetence and fools. Everywhere you look.
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Diane Abbott was a walking disaster when in the Shadow Cabinet. She's not anywhere near power or any semblance of it these days.

To say Jews, Irish and gypsies don't face as much racism is just stupid and needlessly divisive.
 
Saying Jews don't face racism is possibly the most stupid allegation ever made by a politician, which is going a bit. Labour know there's no place in a sitting government for people making that kind of remark. She also has plenty of form for stupidity. Still, they love her in Hackney so I'm sure she will be back soon.
 
tommytwojags said:
Saying Jews don't face racism is possibly the most stupid allegation ever made by a politician, which is going a bit. Labour know there's no place in a sitting government for people making that kind of remark. She also has plenty of form for stupidity. Still, they love her in Hackney so I'm sure she will be back soon.
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David Baddiel did a really good polemical piece on current racism against Jews that is still on the i-player. Worth catching up with if you haven't seen it.
 
20togo said:
Yep, and the fact that even if it was only a draft copy, she still had those thoughts to write it.
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I suppose she's trying to make a point that black minorities are more obviously prejudiced against than other minorities with paler tones, but it's stupid to make the point.

Any racism should not be acceptable or subject to grades of abuse.
 
Wizaard said:
I suppose she's trying to make a point that black minorities are more obviously prejudiced against than other minorities with paler tones, but it's stupid to make the point.

Any racism should not be acceptable or subject to grades of abuse.
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Indeed, it just makes it pretty clear she's a racist herself. But i suspect most people knew that anyway. Anyway, I'm out now.
 
Typical of the revisionist activist viewpoint that the only slave trade was the abhorrent transatlantic traffic. Which then focuses on the ‘whiteness’ of racism. She chooses to forget the Barbary trade which took 1m Europeans into slavery or the Eastern trade which took millions of sub-Saharan Africans into the Middle East. Barbarically the males taken that way were also castrated so they couldn’t breed a second generation into those communities.

I’m still waiting for the Raggy’s lot to apologise for what they did here for over 400 years to Britons.
 
One of those not only this is obviously offensive, it's sheer stupidity makes it even more offensive kind of things.

Beyond Abbott being terrible here, it's quite funny that it unintentionally has proven how little British people care about racism and prejudice towards Gypsy/Roma/Travellers who she also said this about, but most headlines and comments are ignoring.
 
There's a school of thought that black people cannot be racist


And the view of White Supremacy is very odd

www.whitesupremacyculture.info

CHARACTERISTICS

Sometime in the late 1990s, I arrived home after a particularly frustrating consultation with an organization I was working with at the time. In a flurry of exasperation, I sat down at my computer...
www.whitesupremacyculture.info

And this is what is being fed into lots and lots of public discourse and opinion makers.

I think what DA has done is essentially believe this type of narrative to be true - and whilst there might be something to be said of it in the US due to the relatively recent slavery issues and continuing impact of that - it really doesn't work in most of the rest of the world and certainly not in the UK.
 
I think that's exactly what it is. She's acting like she's a black woman living in America. It's currently a debated point in the US, even though it's wrong there too.

Everywhere else in the world It's moronic.
 
Foolweary said:
I think that's exactly what it is. She's acting like she's a black woman living in America. It's currently a debated point in the US, even though it's wrong there too.

Everywhere else in the world It's moronic.
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The thing is, the black citizens of today's America have benefited from slavery just as much (if not more) as your average white American. They all live in a very decadent society. I'm from the Dr Martin Luther King school of thought which is judging individuals by their character rather than colour of their skin.
 
There is a small, nay tiny, defence for dear Diane. As a black woman she will see racism via policing, education and employment opportunity. Even then the Travellers have it just as bad as did the Irish though not as bad now for the Irish. She was talking of racism as she perceived it from a black point of view. She also shows a rather blind eye to history. It's a pity she made such an ass of herself given all she has achieved which is a lot, she was a trailblazer. It's all over for her and I won't gloat about it.
 
She’s as thick as a plank. She also was a key figure in the previous Labour administrations where they were found to be antisemetic.
So no surprise she has revealed her prejudiced attitude.
Even worse is her pathetic attempt to back away from her own written words by claiming they were a draft. How ridiculous.
I understand she may have some health issues. If that’s true then I sympathise. But I struggle to understand or excuse her words whether she is suffering from health issues or not.
 
rockontommy said:
The thing is, the black citizens of today's America have benefited from slavery just as much (if not more) as your average white American. They all live in a very decadent society. I'm from the Dr Martin Luther King school of thought which is judging individuals by their character rather than colour of their skin.
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I doubt Martin Luther King would quite agree with your assessment
 
Shandypants said:
I doubt Martin Luther King would quite agree with your assessment
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Your average American (black or white) enjoys a substantial upgrade in their quality of life - wealth, status, health, opportunity - when put side-by-side with the average African. The same can't be said when comparing the US with Europe. Why? Because we have all benefitted from the proceeds of slavery. The Doctor isn't arguing for Africa to be recompensed for the human resource which they were stripped of, he's arguing for a greater share of the spoils.
 
rockontommy said:
The thing is, the black citizens of today's America have benefited from slavery just as much (if not more) as your average white American. They all live in a very decadent society. I'm from the Dr Martin Luther King school of thought which is judging individuals by their character rather than colour of their skin.
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Bit of a stretch to claim that the descendants of slaves are directly benefiting from an abhorrent, inhumane practice abolished some 150 years ago, and claim it as a positive.

That`s `every cloud` pushed to the max, eh?

Sorry, don`t understand your second sentence, but agree with your last one...

Edit to add: on the question of Diane Abbot, her clumsy attempts to `ring fence` racism as a preserve of the black community is ill-judged and she is indeed a liability to her party...
 
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spudgun said:
Bit of a stretch to claim that the descendants of slaves are directly benefiting from an abhorrent, inhumane practice abolished some 150 years ago, and claim it as a positive.

That`s `every cloud` pushed to the max, eh?

Sorry, don`t understand your second sentence, but agree with your last one...

Edit to add: on the question of Diane Abbot, her clumsy attempts to `ring fence` racism as a preserve of the black community is ill-judged and she is indeed a liability to her party...
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Why a stretch? It's demonstrably true. Have we not benefitted from the sacrifices of our forefathers? Gruesome - yes, difficult to acknowledge in some cases - yes, but it is what it is. As an individual, Dianne Abbott has benefitted from the slave trade more than most. Earning British money which is dripping in blood, not just of slaves, but centuries of warmongering and empire-building. It's about being grownup and accepting inconvenient truths.

Also, I don't particularly think it's stopped, just finessed over time where we offset our slavery to other countries willing to do it and pay them for their goods. Everything from the trainers on my feet right now, the phone I'm typing on, to my Primarni undercrackers have been made by a modern slave 👍🏻
 
rockontommy said:
Why a stretch? It's demonstrably true. Have we not benefitted from the sacrifices of our forefathers? Gruesome - yes, difficult to acknowledge in some cases - yes, but it is what it is. As an individual, Dianne Abbott has benefitted from the slave trade more than most. Earning British money which is dripping in blood, not just of slaves, but centuries of warmongering and empire-building. It's about being grownup and accepting inconvenient truths.

Also, I don't particularly think it's stopped, just finessed over time where we offset our slavery to other countries willing to do it and pay them for their goods. Everything from the trainers on my feet right now, the phone I'm typing on, to my Primarni undercrackers have been made by a modern slave 👍🏻
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Well I’m looking round my living room and struggling to see just which piece of furniture or gadget I can point at and say “Yep. I definitely only own that because of the slave trade and slavery in the US and Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries”.

Now if I was living in a stately home built a couple of hundred years ago from the profits of the slave trade or a plantation somewhere in the West Indies, then I’d agree with you that I was benefiting from the proceeds of slavery. But otherwise your argument just seems to be an attempt to say “we can’t criticise slavery because we’re all beneficiaries of it and that would therefore make us hypocrites”. We’re not all beneficiaries. A few already wealthy families were.

I agree with your comments about modern day slavery but again that doesn’t mean we can’t criticise the UK’s historic involvement in the slave trade. Any more than acknowledging that other nations and races have practiced slavery means we can’t criticise the UK’s past conduct.
 
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rockontommy said:
Why a stretch? It's demonstrably true. Have we not benefitted from the sacrifices of our forefathers? Gruesome - yes, difficult to acknowledge in some cases - yes, but it is what it is. As an individual, Dianne Abbott has benefitted from the slave trade more than most. Earning British money which is dripping in blood, not just of slaves, but centuries of warmongering and empire-building. It's about being grownup and accepting inconvenient truths.

Also, I don't particularly think it's stopped, just finessed over time where we offset our slavery to other countries willing to do it and pay them for their goods. Everything from the trainers on my feet right now, the phone I'm typing on, to my Primarni undercrackers have been made by a modern slave 👍🏻
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Got Tate & Lyle sugar in your tea? The Tate family put millions into art galleries from ill gotten gains through the sugar trade.
 
Lost Seasider said:
Not the first time Abbot has got herself involved in a racism controversy: White people love playing 'divide & rule'
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She's a racist really isn't she.

Flip some the things she says round and imagine it the other way....

Her warped view of only black people were slaves, which is just wrong.

Any people's can be racist to another.

It shows you how far things have flipped when a black person can get away with saying some of the things she does, yet the other way round and they'd be destroyed.

Let's just have what we're meant to have.... equality.
 
JJpool said:
She's a racist really isn't she.

Flip some the things she says round and imagine it the other way....

Her warped view of only black people were slaves, which is just wrong.

Any people's can be racist to another.

It shows you how far things have flipped when a black person can get away with saying some of the things she does, yet the other way round and they'd be destroyed.

Let's just have what we're meant to have.... equality.
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Interesting article by Tom Harris: Abbott has given Starmer an opportunity to disavow Critical Race Theory

Essentially, she seems to believe in a hierarchy of prejudice, with black people at the top for "reasons", and thus immune from any charge of racism, and presumably those below them free to abuse those even lower in the hierarchy until you get to white people at the bottom.

It is, of course, total nonsense.
 
Some left leaning commentator on sky news today said she thought it was a very good sign as to how Abbott apologised immediately. She said she was against cancel culture and that Abbott would learn from her mistake.
I’m not sure this commentator would have been so gracious if it had been a Tory MP who had made the ridiculous comments. It’s hard to comprehend that Dianne Abbott should have to learn about racism against Jews and other minorities. Especially when the Labour Party has spent the last couple of years trying to repair the damage that her ex-lover, and Hesbollah sympathiser, Corbyn did. She’s part of the antisemitism problem that still persists. She should pack up and go of her own accord or have the whip permanently withdrawn.
 
Another reason not to vote Labour removed, they may actually have a chance of being elected! Diane Abbott is thicker than Barry Whites shite on Boxing Day.
 
I “think” I might have an inkling of her thought processes here, but they were so badly expressed and so obviously wrong that I cannot be sure.

I think she might have been trying to say that because black people look very different from the WASP majority, they are instantly subject to racism on appearance alone. Whereas other people such as Jews, Irish, and Romany are not easily distinguishable on skin colour alone, so overt racism may not follow so immediately but prejudice does soon after.

However, it is obviously wrong to express the judgement that there are different degrees of racism and prejudice, it’s all wrong and discriminatory. And to say that Jews have not suffered as much racism after knowing of the Holocaust is wholly perverse. And that’s not even bringing in examples of the terrible treatment of Ireland and its people by Brits for hundreds of years.

I think the issue is that Abbott is now coming up 70 years old later this year and like many pensioners her thinking has slowed and lost its flexibility and her ideas have become rigid. She has simply lost the self-awareness of what she says. When she realised, she apologised.

She may not be thick but she is making every appearance of it. And that’s not electable, given how it will be exploited by the press. However, I know little about things such as “Critical Race Theory” and how it influenced her thinking. If it is a dogmatic cult then it is stupid to embrace it.

For Starmer, it was an easy decision. She is one of the few unreformed Corbynistas left that he wants rid of and she has handed him her career on a plate. The whip has been suspended and will not be restored until after the internal inquiry has been completed and maybe not even then.

That Labour internal inquiry will take months, maybe a year. It should not need to take that long but it would be convenient for Starmer if the whip could not be restored before the next General Election (expected Spring 2024?). Then Abbott could not stand as the Labour candidate in any seat, let alone the one she holds. But that is bound to cause ructions in her local constituency party as well.

Well, we’ll see, maybe it will die down over the summer but Abbott should realise she is well over the hill now and should not stand again but retire instead. And leave her place to a black woman 30 years younger and with more energy and ambition.
 
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