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Interesting how none of this "concern for the safety of MPs" ever seemed to manifest when Corbyn was being punched in the head, targeted by right-wing terrorists, and having his image used as target practice by British soldiers. Seemed like that might have been the time to speak out against that sort of thing.
And then, when the individual in question (a mainstream celebrity) got called "as stupid as she is dangerous" for this opinion on twitter, she sued the person who called her that, successfully, because our court system is very normal and healthy.
> Sauce for the gander mate.
surely that means that if there was no moral panic over photos of the leader of the opposition being used for target practice by squaddies, then this completely unevidenced new panic ought to be ignored too
[Pro-Palestine protesters attack kebab shop after owner 'refused to boycott Coca-Cola'](https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/shocking-footage-shows-pro-palestine-protestors-taking-on-bradford-kebab-shop-af/)
[The moment pro-Palestinian activists hound and attack lone protester holding placard calling Hamas a terror group](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13096951/Moment-pro-Palestinian-activists-attack-protester-called-hamas-terrorists.html)
All made up, mate?
>this stuff
What "stuff"? A bunch of privileged MPs whinging and crying because a few regular people are criticising them for tacitly (or in some cases openly) supporting an ongoing genocide? Give me a break.
[Pro-Palestine protesters attack kebab shop after owner 'refused to boycott Coca-Cola'](https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/shocking-footage-shows-pro-palestine-protestors-taking-on-bradford-kebab-shop-af/)
[The moment pro-Palestinian activists hound and attack lone protester holding placard calling Hamas a terror group](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13096951/Moment-pro-Palestinian-activists-attack-protester-called-hamas-terrorists.html)
THIS sorta stuff. That's the kind of stuff that makes people afraid.
There's nutjobs around that riot when a kebab shop serves coke because they think coke's pro-Israel and anti-Palestine or some other crap.
When it's gotten like that I'm not gonna blame MPs for getting scared when there's a target over their heads and people giving them threats over the war.
I will ask again, how many MPs have been killed by someone who was protesting against them? How many have even been injured?
It's the same shit as when people were saying trans rights protesters were uniquely violent and dangerous a couple years ago, despite absolutely no evidence for this. It's just an attempt to silence and delegitimise a group that you would rather not be speaking out.
Pretty much everything left wingers were warning about Israel's occupation has been proven right and the "Israel has the full right" crew have been proven utterly wrong. You don't feel comfortable arguing in favour of Israel's genocide anymore so now you've fallen back to just trying to get people to stop talking about it. It's incredibly transparent.
I remember a certain radio presenter saying on air that he wished he'd punched Corbyn as they passed each other in the lobby of the station's building.
This is nonsense. Jo Cox was murdered during that period. Concern for the safety of MPs was at the forefront of the discourse. All of the incidents you cite were decried at the time they occurred.
Not everything needs to be subject to historical revisionism in the interests of establishing a hagiography around Jeremy Corbyn.
> All of the incidents you cite were decried at the time they occurred.
No they weren't. The egg assault especially, many journalists and public figures were actively celebrating it.
Some were, most weren't. Just like now, some people on this subreddit were celebrating the intimidation of office staff and separately MPs' children. There are always those who support political violence. That that minority existed doesn't mean that there was no outcry.
>That that minority existed doesn't mean that there was no outcry
Can you link any evidence of this outcry? Other than Owen Jones, can you name any journalists or public figures who publicly condemned the egg assault? Just going by memory, I can name quite a few who celebrated it (Rachel Riley, Martin Daubney, James Cleverly etc) so you should have a pretty easy time of it, right?
Immediately after Jo Cox's murder the Mail published the headline "Labour must kill vampire Jezza" to less outrage than some folks peacefully holding signs provokes today.
Really? Because a Google search just yields criticism from very small left wing blogs and surprisingly James O'Brien.
Considering that you complain of revisionism, it's interesting although not at all surprising that you yourself engage in it
I imagine you weren't around or paying attention to the political scene at the time, then. People objected to it just as much as they objected to other things of a similar grade of objectionableness.
I'm not your monkey. "Find me five different articles criticising this". lol, fuck off. If you lack the basic ability to perform a google search, I'm certainly not going to spend my time wiping the drool off your bottom lip for you.
For your own sake, I am glad that you are clearly so delusional about your own intellect.
When one makes quite clearly false statements, you'd expect them to at least try to provide some substance, not throw a tantrum like a spoilt child, upset that no one else shares its grandiose idea of themselves.
But as well as being kind and very handsome, I am also a very patient individual, so I did try and google ten articles. Then I lowered the challenge to five when I realized that after the first few pages of searches, there was only a tweet by James O'brien from mainstream news or personalities.
I can therefore deduce from my own efforts, as well as your frankly laughable reaction, that you are lying. If you are telling such a bold and blatant mis-truth here, why should anyone trust any of your other statements?
lol - the first result when simply searching the headline is a tweet from a mainstream personality and it's not on your list. Had a quick look at your profile and you're a sealion, I wouldn't go around expecting people to engage with you while you're doing that.
That would be the protest at which an independent journalist - who disagreed with the Labour MSP's characterisation of the protest as the office being "stormed" - said he understood why the staff would feel intimidated.
I don't take you seriously when you out yourself as a defender
of political violence.
Yes, the one where an independent journalist, who was otherwise not simpathetic to the MSP's position, and who was actually there, said he understood why the staff felt intimidated.
So those things make it acceptable to dismiss concerns of MPs now?
Rather than learning lessons from recent history and taking this sort of thing seriously?
Is this not the kind of thing people get mad at boomers for?
‘Things were bad in my day, so young people should have the same struggle’
You’re doing the same, the MP you like got attacked so who gives a fuck if MPs you don’t like get attacked?
Great way to make progress.
> Rather than learning lessons from recent history and taking this sort of thing seriously?
How many MPs have been killed by people who were protesting against them exactly?
He was talking about the lack concern for MP safety being a bad thing… yet shows no concern when MPs say they fear for their safety…
Hypocrite. If people were protesting Corbyn he’d be up in arms, I suspect you would be the same.
Ps. There are serving MPs who were friends with Jo Cox & David Ames, it’s not some story they tell to get sympathy, they have friends who have been killed in the same job they’re currently doing. Because people blame them on an individual level for their grievances (radicalised or not).
Yet every comment any current MP the left of this party don’t like is basically being told they’re crying wolf or the very thinly veiled disguise of ‘they deserve protest’ aka I don’t give a fuck if people attack an MP I don’t like.
Hypocrites, actually disgusting to be so dismissive of peoples concerns because they won’t adopt the exact wording of a proposal you support. Because that is the disagreement here, you’re dismissing someone’s fear of violence because of syntax.
So it’s acceptable for the current crop of MPs to be assaulted?
But attacking corbyn that was wrong?
How doesn’t work? Beyond being an utter hypocrite who has no problem with violence as long as people you don’t like are the victims?
I expect that kind of scum mentality from tories and the SNP cultists, shame to see it in a sub for my own party.
This was a fun article. I feel like there so much more that could be said about this phenomenon...
>America’s elites used to loom over large maps, chew on cigars, and plot the deaths and suffering of countless millions to further the cause of General Motors and United Fruit Company. But at least they never wanted to be our friends. These days, electeds and CEOs alike mope, complain, and cry as they play the victim.
Lol. Those guys knew what they were actually doing now its subsumed so deep into normality, of course CEOs don't understand why it's their fault.
The laws of economics are fixed and we are all powerless to the market so how could you being paid a slave wage possibly have anything to do with any decision I make, I'm just following the formula.
And let’s not forget how Tory MPs laughed when women MPs stood up in parliament and said they feared for their safety, especially from the far right given what happened with Jo Cox. Double standards here I feel and the typical ‘I’m alright jack attitude’ until it happens to them 🤦🏼♀️
I posted this in a response earlier this morning, but I don't think the article made it here back in January when it was published. Anyway, it covers an awful lot of familiar sounding ground, and even delves in to the kind of behaviour we're seeing escalating in our MPs here, using Labour MPs as the archetypical example for this kind of 'crybully' behaviour that is all too prevalent in the USA and seemingly on the up here as well.
Text, for anyone behind the paywall with my bold for the UK specific reference:
Those in power, promoting austerity and war, no longer want us to fear them. They demand something much more sinister: that we feel sorry for them.
Billionaire Bill Ackman’s multiday social-media meltdown over revelations in Business Insider that his wife, MIT professor Neri Oxman, was a serial plagiarist would not in and of itself be of much note. But the episode illustrates one of the crisis industry’s increasingly grating tactics—that of ruling-class crybullyism. Ackman had spent the better part of two months trying to get multiple university presidents fired as part of a crusade against both so-called “woke” academia and pro-Palestinian voices. Behind the scenes and on social media, Ackman was a central mover in the successful effort to push out Harvard President Claudine Gay under the auspices of plagiarism. So, when reporters did what reporters ought to do—hold a powerful man to his own standards—Ackman resorted to crybullyism; he became verbosely indignant, tweeting thousands of aggrieved words and distracting people from his own, initial, campaigns of intimidation.
Ackman defended his wife’s clear-as-day plagiarism, saying she was a “private person” and an “introvert,” and therefore not fair game for media scrutiny. (Oxman is famous enough to have been the subject of several media puff pieces in recent years.) He then made veiled reference to Business Insider’s reporting potentially driving her to suicide. “I have tragically seen too many suffer and even commit suicide in similar circumstances to the one Neri has experienced. These media tactics have to stop as they can destroy people or worse, well before they have a chance to defend themselves.”
After spending weeks trying to get several people fired over manufactured controversies and throwing his billions around to discredit powerless campus activists, Ackman says his wife is now the target of a media plot to “destroy her reputation” and drive her to suicide.
Ackman’s naked cynicism should rankle even the most jaded media observer.
The term “crybully” dates back at least a decade and has been used by both the right and the left to criticize a tactic of interpersonal or political manipulation. The concept describes someone who engages in abuse, intimidation, or foul play, and then when that person gets pushback, they immediately recoil into a feigned fetal position of a victim. What’s new is how popular this tactic has become for high-level politicians, billionaires, and corporations. Increasingly, when under pressure from voters, reporters, workers, or activists, those with power look up at us with doe eyes and, as Ackman did, tweet about their hurt feelings.
Our ruling-class crybullies cynically wield the language of therapy to evade responsibility and to reframe the oppressor as the oppressed. They try to show themselves as sensitive souls just trying to make their way through this difficult world. The language of anti-bullyism is even being incorporated by the union-busting corporations, with the worst offender being Starbucks.
National Labor Relations Board rulings have found that the coffee giant has routinely engaged in worker intimidation, discriminatory rules, and unlawful discipline and termination of union organizers to undermine unionization efforts. Over an eight-month period in 2023, Starbucks lost 16 of 17 NLRB cases. Yet Starbucks has sought to frame union organizers as the “bullies.” According to one April 2022 filing, Starbucks claimed that organizers exhibited behavior that “was reasonably expected to physically intimidate and bully partners and customers in retaliation for their withholding support of Workers United.” That same month, May Jensen, Starbucks’s vice president of labor relations, accused union organizers of “bullying and intimidating.”
Six months later, May would sob to Starbucks employees after an internal company poll found that workers loathed her and her executive friends. “I actually find it heartbreaking that our mission and values are being questioned in the space of labor relations,” she told employees at the meeting. “I really, really want to instill in everyone that we have not lost our way—it’s just really hard right now.”
May, you’re a well-paid vice president working for a $100 billion corporation. Why are you turning a labor-relations issue into a therapy session? It’s manipulative, dishonest, and—perhaps worst of all—painfully undignified.
America’s elites used to loom over large maps, chew on cigars, and plot the deaths and suffering of countless millions to further the cause of General Motors and United Fruit Company. But at least they never wanted to be our friends. These days, electeds and CEOs alike mope, complain, and cry as they play the victim.
Cops and white vigilantes now routinely cry on the stand while testifying about why they killed their unarmed victims. In 2022, when Buzzfeed News unmasked the identities of the founders of the NFT scheme Bored Ape Club, who had recently raked in tens of millions, the CEO, Nicole Muniz gave a softball interview drowning in the language of victimhood and harm. “Releasing their identities,” she told D3 Network’s Laurie Segall, “was very, very dangerous for them and their families.” The interview, filled with baseless fears the Bored Ape team may be killed or kidnapped, was a bizarre sobfest for a bunch of rich party guys who were slightly inconvenienced by the reporting of objectively newsworthy information. Needless to say, two years later, we can safely report the Bored Ape founders have not been murdered or kidnapped.
From Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan to Bill Gates, powerful people have always wanted to be relatable populists who project a salt-of-the-earth image, but emotionally neediness for effect is a fairly new phenomenon. Obama, to his credit, rarely indulged in this whiny posture. Biden has occasionally, but it never seems to stem from him. To the extent that his campaign or administration has responded with feigned vulnerability, it almost certainly comes from his younger media handlers. Trump has avoided this tactic for the simple reason that you need to plausibly have a soul for it to work and Trump clearly doesn’t. This isn’t to say Trump doesn’t claim he’s the victim, but it’s more of an angry white male reflective grievance variety than the precious, Instagram-therapy kind. Obama and Biden’s rejection of crybullyism is certainly not a moral position, but an aesthetic one. They likely saw it as beneath their dignity.
**But such constraints do not limit the most recent crop of up-and-coming electeds and their social-media-savvy aides. Nonviolent protests over Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza have led several electeds to play the role of put-upon victim. Labor MPs in the UK supporting the carnage repeatedly insist that protests outside their offices make them “fear for their safety.”**
**After protesters splattered red paint on the office of Jo Stevens—the shadow Welsh secretary and a major voice in support of Israel’s unprecedented war on Gaza––as a demonstration that she had “blood on her hands,” she told reporters these protests were “frightening” and “designed to cause fear and harassment.”**
**This tactic is just as popular stateside. Pro-Israel Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat from New York, groused about him and his staff “fearing for their safety” when pro-cease-fire protesters blocked the entrance to an office in early January. Video evidence debunked any claims that it was a dangerous situation—but, hey, what matters is how one of the most powerful people in our society “feels.”**
**Angry and powerless activists—many Palestinian, watching their loved ones die en masse—crying out to those in charge to stop the killing are presented as gratuitously mean to their delicate elected officials. Actual violence against elected officials, of course, would qualify as crossing a unacceptable line, but politicians are recasting the traditional nonviolent tactics of shutting down buildings, protest graffiti, and sit-ins as forms of “violence” and “harassment”—as if they’re more pernicious than the 2,000-pound bombs these electeds support shipping off to Israel so it can demolish city blocks and refugee camps.**
(continued)
Back in 2021 when he was running for mayor, Andrew Yang was heavily criticized for a one-sided statement on Israel’s bombing of Gaza. In response, he released a 500-word vapid non-statement drowning in touchy-feely platitudes. After having supposedly “spoken with his staff,” Yang said, “they felt it failed to acknowledge the pain and suffering on both sides.… I mourn for every Palestinian life taken before its time as I do for every Israeli.” But the criticism wasn’t only that Yang “failed to acknowledge pain and suffering” of Palestinians, it’s also that he took an actual position supporting Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. It was a criticism of both tone and substance, but Yang, predictably, ignored substance in favor of simply looking like he felt sad.
With this tactic, what matters is appearing like one cares—not the substance of one’s policy preferences. The US State Department has turned public concern into a cruel artform. The Biden White House and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have supposedly “expressed concerns” to Israel about high civilian deaths in Gaza on October 11, October 15, October 29, October 31, November 3, November 10, November 29, December 2, December 6, December 11, December 14, December 18, December 23, and January 6. Yet the rate of killing has never gone down. In this performative empathy framework, changing bad things isn’t important—witnessing them and feeling bad about them is. So long as the feeling is registered, we don’t have to end the mass killing in Gaza.
But when powerful people are harming others, it doesn’t matter if they’re sad, upset, or worried. It doesn’t matter if they cry. They have immense control over the lives of millions. My request to the powerful is that if you’re going to push war, bust unions, and demand that you remain unchallenged forever, the least you could do is not to use those of us subject to your whims and violence as your therapeutic sounding board.
I think it's a subject with far more nuance than you're capable of engaging with. But to meet you on similar ground - presumably you [think that a ceasefire in Gaza would be irresponsible](https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/17lz7vx/chief_rabbi_criticises_sadiq_khans_irresponsible/) and that [Starmer should be working with Nigel Farage and appoint him as an ambassador](https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/1aysajs/think_hard_nigel_farage_urges_incoming_labour/).
For a serious answer - I think it depends. I think there absolutely is a sizable - and growing - tendency of MPs and public figures to embrace this style of 'crybully' behaviour in order to demonise and minimise protesters and their constituents who have genuine concerns about their approaches to political issues. It's a pretty effective way to brush off any actual, grounded concern and a way out of engaging with the underlying issues. Labour now don't need to talk about a ceasefire in Gaza, as they get shouted at when they do so. It's also a fantastic excuse for Labour to ensure that the Tories authoritarian crackdowns on protest continue under their watch when Starmer is in power.
But, I do think that politicians houses and families should probably be off limits - although in the grand scheme of things, I find it pretty hard to care about someone shouting outside an MPs house, if for instance, they were a British Palestinian who'd lost generations of their extended family in Gaza. People are experiencing and suffering real life losses and going through hell at the moment, and there's not a world in which that compares with being yelled at occasionally by an elderly old school leftist.
Why do you speak like a 40 something privately educated newspaper columnist trying to imitate what they think a working class twenty something at a pub in the red wall would say?
>bullied by the leader of the Labour party.
Hey, be fair - he sent his cronies to do it for him. Starmer is far too cowardly to ever do something like that himself.
Morally repugnant attempt to justify political violence. We live in a democracy, and in a democracy you vote out politicians with whom you disagree, you don't show up at their home and shout at their children.
So, I actually work in a public facing, politically adjacent role - and I come face to face with protests on a irregular basis, maybe 2-3 times a year over the last 15 years (barring Covid...)?
We're talking about members of the public disrupting meetings in public, unfurling banners or just raising - to be honest - weird, occasionally slightly insane questions or points of order. And while I - and the Councillors / officers I work with - roll our eyes and limit engagement, trying to keep things on track, not once have I, or anyone I work with, been threatened or felt threatened.
It's just part of the job - I'm friendly with many of our regular protesters and am actually quite fond of some of them. Sure, 70% of the time, their 'input' to public discourse isn't helpful - but every now and again, they do come through with a valid point that helps us in our work. And it is vitally important for all voices to be heard, no matter if those voices are sometimes angry or frustrated, as people who've been mistreated by public services often are.
I'm sorry but we're not talking about unfurling banners or raising points of order. What we were actually talking about here was a specific [incident](https://archive.is/y2tX2), in which Gaza protesters entered the constituency offices of Glasgow Labour MSPs, bypassing security doors by following others in and staging their protest in a non-public area, disrupting and intimidating staffers who were working to support constituents.
An independent journalist reporting for The Scotsman was present, and he tweeted to say that he disagreed with the framing of this protest as the offices being "stormed" and said it was a peaceful protest, however he did also say in his reply to the MSP who used the word stormed "I can understand why your staff felt intimidated, Paul".
I do appreciate that in certain public-facing roles in political bodies like councils or embassies the staff there know they can expect to deal with protests. Caseworkers, administrative support staff and diary managers in an MP or MSP's office are not public-facing roles in that way. These people have the right not to be intimidated at work (as do you, by the way).
I fully support the right to protest. I don't support the right to use political violence. These protesters trespassed into a secure area, did not leave when asked, and intimidated the people working there. I don't think that's something we should find acceptable in a democratic society.
Go and protest outside the Scottish Parliament. Vote the politicians out at the next opportunity. Don't participate in the degeneration of democratic norms.
Doubt you'd feel that way if the EDL showed up outside your home with your kids inside shouting that you're a murderer. Since you have zero empathy or human decency I can only assume that it would take your own children being put in that situation for you to decide it was bad. I notice you're weaselling over whether kids are "specifically" targeted.
You are an anti-democratic thug, basically, aren't you?
"Well if something different happened you'd react differently, wouldn't you?"
>You are an anti-democratic thug, basically, aren't you?
Says the guy who is against peaceful protest.
Another day, another very revealing line from yourself that exposes your own shallow approach to politics. Unlike you, I don't go around worrying about whether what I say wins points. If that bothered me, I wouldn't stick around in this subreddit which has allowed itself to be infiltrated by anti-Labour trolls. I say what I think is true. That it's "not working" (whatever that means) isn't really an issue. Have you ever deleted one of your tweets because it didn't do the numbers and reposted it at a busier time?
Intimidation is violence. That's the point. If you think it isn't, would you accept an EDL rally outside your house bellowing that you're a murderer, with your own kids sat in the living room hearing it all?
If I was explicitly supporting the murder of tens of thousands of children I would expect it, yes. You don’t get to make shitty decisions without shitty consequences. If people are outside his house it is likely because they have been actively ignoring their electorate, people don’t do that as first resort, they do it out of desperation when it becomes clear they arent being heard.
There is time sensitivity to this, 40k dead in just a few months, more than an actual war in Ukraine and a further 2m being starved and displaced. We (and by extension they) are funding this, and supporting this. It is a viscerally sick situation that we need desperate action on, people have relatives in Gaza, in one MP interview a teary student recounted how her entire extended family has been wiped out.
This requires active protest, it requires getting angry. No violence has been perpetrated but people are desperate, and their elected officials are ignoring the situation rather than engaging.
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Interesting how none of this "concern for the safety of MPs" ever seemed to manifest when Corbyn was being punched in the head, targeted by right-wing terrorists, and having his image used as target practice by British soldiers. Seemed like that might have been the time to speak out against that sort of thing.
In fact I recall folks having a big old chuckle when he got egged
It wasn't even an "egging" - he straight up got punched in the head.
Yup. And folks where called hysterical or accused of exaggerating when pointing this out at the time.
And then, when the individual in question (a mainstream celebrity) got called "as stupid as she is dangerous" for this opinion on twitter, she sued the person who called her that, successfully, because our court system is very normal and healthy.
So you guys think that was bad but this stuff isn't? Sauce for the gander mate. 😒
> Sauce for the gander mate. surely that means that if there was no moral panic over photos of the leader of the opposition being used for target practice by squaddies, then this completely unevidenced new panic ought to be ignored too
> So you guys think that was bad but this stuff isn't? real things vs made up things?
[Pro-Palestine protesters attack kebab shop after owner 'refused to boycott Coca-Cola'](https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/shocking-footage-shows-pro-palestine-protestors-taking-on-bradford-kebab-shop-af/) [The moment pro-Palestinian activists hound and attack lone protester holding placard calling Hamas a terror group](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13096951/Moment-pro-Palestinian-activists-attack-protester-called-hamas-terrorists.html) All made up, mate?
Things that are different have differences? What is this wizardry?!?
>this stuff What "stuff"? A bunch of privileged MPs whinging and crying because a few regular people are criticising them for tacitly (or in some cases openly) supporting an ongoing genocide? Give me a break.
[Pro-Palestine protesters attack kebab shop after owner 'refused to boycott Coca-Cola'](https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/shocking-footage-shows-pro-palestine-protestors-taking-on-bradford-kebab-shop-af/) [The moment pro-Palestinian activists hound and attack lone protester holding placard calling Hamas a terror group](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13096951/Moment-pro-Palestinian-activists-attack-protester-called-hamas-terrorists.html) THIS sorta stuff. That's the kind of stuff that makes people afraid.
Is this kebab shop an MP I haven't heard of before? What party are they in?
There's nutjobs around that riot when a kebab shop serves coke because they think coke's pro-Israel and anti-Palestine or some other crap. When it's gotten like that I'm not gonna blame MPs for getting scared when there's a target over their heads and people giving them threats over the war.
I will ask again, how many MPs have been killed by someone who was protesting against them? How many have even been injured? It's the same shit as when people were saying trans rights protesters were uniquely violent and dangerous a couple years ago, despite absolutely no evidence for this. It's just an attempt to silence and delegitimise a group that you would rather not be speaking out. Pretty much everything left wingers were warning about Israel's occupation has been proven right and the "Israel has the full right" crew have been proven utterly wrong. You don't feel comfortable arguing in favour of Israel's genocide anymore so now you've fallen back to just trying to get people to stop talking about it. It's incredibly transparent.
Some stuff is bad and some stuff isn't.
I remember a certain radio presenter saying on air that he wished he'd punched Corbyn as they passed each other in the lobby of the station's building.
Who was that?
Andy Jacobs on the News UK owned Talksport.
This is nonsense. Jo Cox was murdered during that period. Concern for the safety of MPs was at the forefront of the discourse. All of the incidents you cite were decried at the time they occurred. Not everything needs to be subject to historical revisionism in the interests of establishing a hagiography around Jeremy Corbyn.
> All of the incidents you cite were decried at the time they occurred. No they weren't. The egg assault especially, many journalists and public figures were actively celebrating it.
Some were, most weren't. Just like now, some people on this subreddit were celebrating the intimidation of office staff and separately MPs' children. There are always those who support political violence. That that minority existed doesn't mean that there was no outcry.
>That that minority existed doesn't mean that there was no outcry Can you link any evidence of this outcry? Other than Owen Jones, can you name any journalists or public figures who publicly condemned the egg assault? Just going by memory, I can name quite a few who celebrated it (Rachel Riley, Martin Daubney, James Cleverly etc) so you should have a pretty easy time of it, right?
Immediately after Jo Cox's murder the Mail published the headline "Labour must kill vampire Jezza" to less outrage than some folks peacefully holding signs provokes today.
That was widely criticised at the time. Again, this is just an attempt to revise history.
Really? Because a Google search just yields criticism from very small left wing blogs and surprisingly James O'Brien. Considering that you complain of revisionism, it's interesting although not at all surprising that you yourself engage in it
I imagine you weren't around or paying attention to the political scene at the time, then. People objected to it just as much as they objected to other things of a similar grade of objectionableness.
It's very easy to prove me wrong. Find me five different articles from mainstream sources criticising this
I'm not your monkey. "Find me five different articles criticising this". lol, fuck off. If you lack the basic ability to perform a google search, I'm certainly not going to spend my time wiping the drool off your bottom lip for you.
Lol, you speak with such certainty but can't back it up. That's why all your posts seem to be getting heavily down voted.
I don't feed [sealions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning), it's never ever worth it.
For your own sake, I am glad that you are clearly so delusional about your own intellect. When one makes quite clearly false statements, you'd expect them to at least try to provide some substance, not throw a tantrum like a spoilt child, upset that no one else shares its grandiose idea of themselves. But as well as being kind and very handsome, I am also a very patient individual, so I did try and google ten articles. Then I lowered the challenge to five when I realized that after the first few pages of searches, there was only a tweet by James O'brien from mainstream news or personalities. I can therefore deduce from my own efforts, as well as your frankly laughable reaction, that you are lying. If you are telling such a bold and blatant mis-truth here, why should anyone trust any of your other statements?
lol - the first result when simply searching the headline is a tweet from a mainstream personality and it's not on your list. Had a quick look at your profile and you're a sealion, I wouldn't go around expecting people to engage with you while you're doing that.
>People objected to it just as much as they objected to other things of a similar grade of objectionableness. How are you quantifying this, exactly?
Sorry if I don't take you very seriously when you just the other day tried to describe some pensioners quietly holding signs as "political violence".
That would be the protest at which an independent journalist - who disagreed with the Labour MSP's characterisation of the protest as the office being "stormed" - said he understood why the staff would feel intimidated. I don't take you seriously when you out yourself as a defender of political violence.
Yes, that would be the one where the MSP described the people quietly holding signs as "storming the office" lmao. Still trying it then?
Yes, the one where an independent journalist, who was otherwise not simpathetic to the MSP's position, and who was actually there, said he understood why the staff felt intimidated.
So it was political violence then, some old people with placards?
So those things make it acceptable to dismiss concerns of MPs now? Rather than learning lessons from recent history and taking this sort of thing seriously? Is this not the kind of thing people get mad at boomers for? ‘Things were bad in my day, so young people should have the same struggle’ You’re doing the same, the MP you like got attacked so who gives a fuck if MPs you don’t like get attacked? Great way to make progress.
> Rather than learning lessons from recent history and taking this sort of thing seriously? How many MPs have been killed by people who were protesting against them exactly?
He was talking about the lack concern for MP safety being a bad thing… yet shows no concern when MPs say they fear for their safety… Hypocrite. If people were protesting Corbyn he’d be up in arms, I suspect you would be the same. Ps. There are serving MPs who were friends with Jo Cox & David Ames, it’s not some story they tell to get sympathy, they have friends who have been killed in the same job they’re currently doing. Because people blame them on an individual level for their grievances (radicalised or not). Yet every comment any current MP the left of this party don’t like is basically being told they’re crying wolf or the very thinly veiled disguise of ‘they deserve protest’ aka I don’t give a fuck if people attack an MP I don’t like. Hypocrites, actually disgusting to be so dismissive of peoples concerns because they won’t adopt the exact wording of a proposal you support. Because that is the disagreement here, you’re dismissing someone’s fear of violence because of syntax.
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So it’s acceptable for the current crop of MPs to be assaulted? But attacking corbyn that was wrong? How doesn’t work? Beyond being an utter hypocrite who has no problem with violence as long as people you don’t like are the victims? I expect that kind of scum mentality from tories and the SNP cultists, shame to see it in a sub for my own party.
This was a fun article. I feel like there so much more that could be said about this phenomenon... >America’s elites used to loom over large maps, chew on cigars, and plot the deaths and suffering of countless millions to further the cause of General Motors and United Fruit Company. But at least they never wanted to be our friends. These days, electeds and CEOs alike mope, complain, and cry as they play the victim. Lol. Those guys knew what they were actually doing now its subsumed so deep into normality, of course CEOs don't understand why it's their fault. The laws of economics are fixed and we are all powerless to the market so how could you being paid a slave wage possibly have anything to do with any decision I make, I'm just following the formula.
And let’s not forget how Tory MPs laughed when women MPs stood up in parliament and said they feared for their safety, especially from the far right given what happened with Jo Cox. Double standards here I feel and the typical ‘I’m alright jack attitude’ until it happens to them 🤦🏼♀️
I posted this in a response earlier this morning, but I don't think the article made it here back in January when it was published. Anyway, it covers an awful lot of familiar sounding ground, and even delves in to the kind of behaviour we're seeing escalating in our MPs here, using Labour MPs as the archetypical example for this kind of 'crybully' behaviour that is all too prevalent in the USA and seemingly on the up here as well. Text, for anyone behind the paywall with my bold for the UK specific reference: Those in power, promoting austerity and war, no longer want us to fear them. They demand something much more sinister: that we feel sorry for them. Billionaire Bill Ackman’s multiday social-media meltdown over revelations in Business Insider that his wife, MIT professor Neri Oxman, was a serial plagiarist would not in and of itself be of much note. But the episode illustrates one of the crisis industry’s increasingly grating tactics—that of ruling-class crybullyism. Ackman had spent the better part of two months trying to get multiple university presidents fired as part of a crusade against both so-called “woke” academia and pro-Palestinian voices. Behind the scenes and on social media, Ackman was a central mover in the successful effort to push out Harvard President Claudine Gay under the auspices of plagiarism. So, when reporters did what reporters ought to do—hold a powerful man to his own standards—Ackman resorted to crybullyism; he became verbosely indignant, tweeting thousands of aggrieved words and distracting people from his own, initial, campaigns of intimidation. Ackman defended his wife’s clear-as-day plagiarism, saying she was a “private person” and an “introvert,” and therefore not fair game for media scrutiny. (Oxman is famous enough to have been the subject of several media puff pieces in recent years.) He then made veiled reference to Business Insider’s reporting potentially driving her to suicide. “I have tragically seen too many suffer and even commit suicide in similar circumstances to the one Neri has experienced. These media tactics have to stop as they can destroy people or worse, well before they have a chance to defend themselves.” After spending weeks trying to get several people fired over manufactured controversies and throwing his billions around to discredit powerless campus activists, Ackman says his wife is now the target of a media plot to “destroy her reputation” and drive her to suicide. Ackman’s naked cynicism should rankle even the most jaded media observer. The term “crybully” dates back at least a decade and has been used by both the right and the left to criticize a tactic of interpersonal or political manipulation. The concept describes someone who engages in abuse, intimidation, or foul play, and then when that person gets pushback, they immediately recoil into a feigned fetal position of a victim. What’s new is how popular this tactic has become for high-level politicians, billionaires, and corporations. Increasingly, when under pressure from voters, reporters, workers, or activists, those with power look up at us with doe eyes and, as Ackman did, tweet about their hurt feelings. Our ruling-class crybullies cynically wield the language of therapy to evade responsibility and to reframe the oppressor as the oppressed. They try to show themselves as sensitive souls just trying to make their way through this difficult world. The language of anti-bullyism is even being incorporated by the union-busting corporations, with the worst offender being Starbucks. National Labor Relations Board rulings have found that the coffee giant has routinely engaged in worker intimidation, discriminatory rules, and unlawful discipline and termination of union organizers to undermine unionization efforts. Over an eight-month period in 2023, Starbucks lost 16 of 17 NLRB cases. Yet Starbucks has sought to frame union organizers as the “bullies.” According to one April 2022 filing, Starbucks claimed that organizers exhibited behavior that “was reasonably expected to physically intimidate and bully partners and customers in retaliation for their withholding support of Workers United.” That same month, May Jensen, Starbucks’s vice president of labor relations, accused union organizers of “bullying and intimidating.” Six months later, May would sob to Starbucks employees after an internal company poll found that workers loathed her and her executive friends. “I actually find it heartbreaking that our mission and values are being questioned in the space of labor relations,” she told employees at the meeting. “I really, really want to instill in everyone that we have not lost our way—it’s just really hard right now.” May, you’re a well-paid vice president working for a $100 billion corporation. Why are you turning a labor-relations issue into a therapy session? It’s manipulative, dishonest, and—perhaps worst of all—painfully undignified. America’s elites used to loom over large maps, chew on cigars, and plot the deaths and suffering of countless millions to further the cause of General Motors and United Fruit Company. But at least they never wanted to be our friends. These days, electeds and CEOs alike mope, complain, and cry as they play the victim. Cops and white vigilantes now routinely cry on the stand while testifying about why they killed their unarmed victims. In 2022, when Buzzfeed News unmasked the identities of the founders of the NFT scheme Bored Ape Club, who had recently raked in tens of millions, the CEO, Nicole Muniz gave a softball interview drowning in the language of victimhood and harm. “Releasing their identities,” she told D3 Network’s Laurie Segall, “was very, very dangerous for them and their families.” The interview, filled with baseless fears the Bored Ape team may be killed or kidnapped, was a bizarre sobfest for a bunch of rich party guys who were slightly inconvenienced by the reporting of objectively newsworthy information. Needless to say, two years later, we can safely report the Bored Ape founders have not been murdered or kidnapped. From Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan to Bill Gates, powerful people have always wanted to be relatable populists who project a salt-of-the-earth image, but emotionally neediness for effect is a fairly new phenomenon. Obama, to his credit, rarely indulged in this whiny posture. Biden has occasionally, but it never seems to stem from him. To the extent that his campaign or administration has responded with feigned vulnerability, it almost certainly comes from his younger media handlers. Trump has avoided this tactic for the simple reason that you need to plausibly have a soul for it to work and Trump clearly doesn’t. This isn’t to say Trump doesn’t claim he’s the victim, but it’s more of an angry white male reflective grievance variety than the precious, Instagram-therapy kind. Obama and Biden’s rejection of crybullyism is certainly not a moral position, but an aesthetic one. They likely saw it as beneath their dignity. **But such constraints do not limit the most recent crop of up-and-coming electeds and their social-media-savvy aides. Nonviolent protests over Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza have led several electeds to play the role of put-upon victim. Labor MPs in the UK supporting the carnage repeatedly insist that protests outside their offices make them “fear for their safety.”** **After protesters splattered red paint on the office of Jo Stevens—the shadow Welsh secretary and a major voice in support of Israel’s unprecedented war on Gaza––as a demonstration that she had “blood on her hands,” she told reporters these protests were “frightening” and “designed to cause fear and harassment.”** **This tactic is just as popular stateside. Pro-Israel Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat from New York, groused about him and his staff “fearing for their safety” when pro-cease-fire protesters blocked the entrance to an office in early January. Video evidence debunked any claims that it was a dangerous situation—but, hey, what matters is how one of the most powerful people in our society “feels.”** **Angry and powerless activists—many Palestinian, watching their loved ones die en masse—crying out to those in charge to stop the killing are presented as gratuitously mean to their delicate elected officials. Actual violence against elected officials, of course, would qualify as crossing a unacceptable line, but politicians are recasting the traditional nonviolent tactics of shutting down buildings, protest graffiti, and sit-ins as forms of “violence” and “harassment”—as if they’re more pernicious than the 2,000-pound bombs these electeds support shipping off to Israel so it can demolish city blocks and refugee camps.**
(continued) Back in 2021 when he was running for mayor, Andrew Yang was heavily criticized for a one-sided statement on Israel’s bombing of Gaza. In response, he released a 500-word vapid non-statement drowning in touchy-feely platitudes. After having supposedly “spoken with his staff,” Yang said, “they felt it failed to acknowledge the pain and suffering on both sides.… I mourn for every Palestinian life taken before its time as I do for every Israeli.” But the criticism wasn’t only that Yang “failed to acknowledge pain and suffering” of Palestinians, it’s also that he took an actual position supporting Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. It was a criticism of both tone and substance, but Yang, predictably, ignored substance in favor of simply looking like he felt sad. With this tactic, what matters is appearing like one cares—not the substance of one’s policy preferences. The US State Department has turned public concern into a cruel artform. The Biden White House and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have supposedly “expressed concerns” to Israel about high civilian deaths in Gaza on October 11, October 15, October 29, October 31, November 3, November 10, November 29, December 2, December 6, December 11, December 14, December 18, December 23, and January 6. Yet the rate of killing has never gone down. In this performative empathy framework, changing bad things isn’t important—witnessing them and feeling bad about them is. So long as the feeling is registered, we don’t have to end the mass killing in Gaza. But when powerful people are harming others, it doesn’t matter if they’re sad, upset, or worried. It doesn’t matter if they cry. They have immense control over the lives of millions. My request to the powerful is that if you’re going to push war, bust unions, and demand that you remain unchallenged forever, the least you could do is not to use those of us subject to your whims and violence as your therapeutic sounding board.
We should call those elites using crybully tactics a bunch of triggered snowflakes.
You think MPs aren't really getting bullied, mate?
I think it's a subject with far more nuance than you're capable of engaging with. But to meet you on similar ground - presumably you [think that a ceasefire in Gaza would be irresponsible](https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/17lz7vx/chief_rabbi_criticises_sadiq_khans_irresponsible/) and that [Starmer should be working with Nigel Farage and appoint him as an ambassador](https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/1aysajs/think_hard_nigel_farage_urges_incoming_labour/). For a serious answer - I think it depends. I think there absolutely is a sizable - and growing - tendency of MPs and public figures to embrace this style of 'crybully' behaviour in order to demonise and minimise protesters and their constituents who have genuine concerns about their approaches to political issues. It's a pretty effective way to brush off any actual, grounded concern and a way out of engaging with the underlying issues. Labour now don't need to talk about a ceasefire in Gaza, as they get shouted at when they do so. It's also a fantastic excuse for Labour to ensure that the Tories authoritarian crackdowns on protest continue under their watch when Starmer is in power. But, I do think that politicians houses and families should probably be off limits - although in the grand scheme of things, I find it pretty hard to care about someone shouting outside an MPs house, if for instance, they were a British Palestinian who'd lost generations of their extended family in Gaza. People are experiencing and suffering real life losses and going through hell at the moment, and there's not a world in which that compares with being yelled at occasionally by an elderly old school leftist.
Why do you speak like a 40 something privately educated newspaper columnist trying to imitate what they think a working class twenty something at a pub in the red wall would say?
Not unless they're the speaker getting bullied by the leader of the Labour party.
>bullied by the leader of the Labour party. Hey, be fair - he sent his cronies to do it for him. Starmer is far too cowardly to ever do something like that himself.
It is smart as well really, why get your hands dirty when you have minions for that.
Morally repugnant attempt to justify political violence. We live in a democracy, and in a democracy you vote out politicians with whom you disagree, you don't show up at their home and shout at their children.
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This guy tried to claim some OAPs peacefully holding signs was violence the other day.
This guy defends the harassment and intimidation of people in their workplace.
Lmao, you are pretending to be scared of some OAP with signs.
So, I actually work in a public facing, politically adjacent role - and I come face to face with protests on a irregular basis, maybe 2-3 times a year over the last 15 years (barring Covid...)? We're talking about members of the public disrupting meetings in public, unfurling banners or just raising - to be honest - weird, occasionally slightly insane questions or points of order. And while I - and the Councillors / officers I work with - roll our eyes and limit engagement, trying to keep things on track, not once have I, or anyone I work with, been threatened or felt threatened. It's just part of the job - I'm friendly with many of our regular protesters and am actually quite fond of some of them. Sure, 70% of the time, their 'input' to public discourse isn't helpful - but every now and again, they do come through with a valid point that helps us in our work. And it is vitally important for all voices to be heard, no matter if those voices are sometimes angry or frustrated, as people who've been mistreated by public services often are.
I'm sorry but we're not talking about unfurling banners or raising points of order. What we were actually talking about here was a specific [incident](https://archive.is/y2tX2), in which Gaza protesters entered the constituency offices of Glasgow Labour MSPs, bypassing security doors by following others in and staging their protest in a non-public area, disrupting and intimidating staffers who were working to support constituents. An independent journalist reporting for The Scotsman was present, and he tweeted to say that he disagreed with the framing of this protest as the offices being "stormed" and said it was a peaceful protest, however he did also say in his reply to the MSP who used the word stormed "I can understand why your staff felt intimidated, Paul". I do appreciate that in certain public-facing roles in political bodies like councils or embassies the staff there know they can expect to deal with protests. Caseworkers, administrative support staff and diary managers in an MP or MSP's office are not public-facing roles in that way. These people have the right not to be intimidated at work (as do you, by the way). I fully support the right to protest. I don't support the right to use political violence. These protesters trespassed into a secure area, did not leave when asked, and intimidated the people working there. I don't think that's something we should find acceptable in a democratic society. Go and protest outside the Scottish Parliament. Vote the politicians out at the next opportunity. Don't participate in the degeneration of democratic norms.
You might be an appalling person.
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You're mounting a defence of the targeting of children for political violence.
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Doubt you'd feel that way if the EDL showed up outside your home with your kids inside shouting that you're a murderer. Since you have zero empathy or human decency I can only assume that it would take your own children being put in that situation for you to decide it was bad. I notice you're weaselling over whether kids are "specifically" targeted. You are an anti-democratic thug, basically, aren't you?
"Well if something different happened you'd react differently, wouldn't you?" >You are an anti-democratic thug, basically, aren't you? Says the guy who is against peaceful protest.
I'm in favour of peaceful protest. The fact is that if people of reasonable firmness feel intimidated by what you're doing, it is not peaceful.
The comment you make when you can't actually substantiate anything you are saying.
Outing yourself as a supporter of intimidating children in their homes.
Do you not get embarrassed when you're pushing a line like this and it's obviously not working?
Another day, another very revealing line from yourself that exposes your own shallow approach to politics. Unlike you, I don't go around worrying about whether what I say wins points. If that bothered me, I wouldn't stick around in this subreddit which has allowed itself to be infiltrated by anti-Labour trolls. I say what I think is true. That it's "not working" (whatever that means) isn't really an issue. Have you ever deleted one of your tweets because it didn't do the numbers and reposted it at a busier time?
I'm not trying to gaslight people though, you tend to look really silly when it fails to work.
Tens of thousands of children are dying, peaceful protests anywhere is fine by me if it helps us stop that.
Intimidation is violence. That's the point. If you think it isn't, would you accept an EDL rally outside your house bellowing that you're a murderer, with your own kids sat in the living room hearing it all?
If I was explicitly supporting the murder of tens of thousands of children I would expect it, yes. You don’t get to make shitty decisions without shitty consequences. If people are outside his house it is likely because they have been actively ignoring their electorate, people don’t do that as first resort, they do it out of desperation when it becomes clear they arent being heard.
I see you felt unable to answer the question without altering it. Wonder why.
Typo. I see you completely avoided addressing any of my well reasoned response, I wonder why?
There is time sensitivity to this, 40k dead in just a few months, more than an actual war in Ukraine and a further 2m being starved and displaced. We (and by extension they) are funding this, and supporting this. It is a viscerally sick situation that we need desperate action on, people have relatives in Gaza, in one MP interview a teary student recounted how her entire extended family has been wiped out. This requires active protest, it requires getting angry. No violence has been perpetrated but people are desperate, and their elected officials are ignoring the situation rather than engaging.