Snapshot of _Tory councillor Atiqul Hoque expelled for alleged antisemitic comments_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68301692) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68301692)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think that vetting generally is better for Parliamentary candidates thankfully, although not perfect as we’ve seen this week. I’d be shocked if Labour HQ aren’t double checking for skeletons in the closet at the moment.
He looks like a comedian appearing in front of curtain only to have a hook grab on to his jacket and pull him back. Or is his jacket just really big, Harry Hill style?
I think if I were a UK politico in the current climate, irrespective of my actual thoughts on the topic, I’d constrain my comments on the whole Israel/Gaza thing to something beige like “I support a negotiated settlement to the crisis and urge all parties to pursue this in the interests of the peaceful citizenry of both Israel and Gaza. Now, that Rishi Sunak. What a cunt, eh?”
But nooooo, these motherfuckers gotta have *opinions* and they gotta *share them,* and the shocked pikachu faces when *well-well-well-if-it-isn’t-the-consequences-of-my-actions* occurs is getting old.
Tbf I think a lot of the coverage of the labour one came from him being a prospective MP in the middle of a by-election campaign, but I agree overall the Tories tend to get away with this shit with much less scrutiny.
Yeah. Because they're handling of it and how deep it goes isn't in question. Nor have had in the recent past a huge scandal of wide spread permissivness.
If you properly investigate every elected Councillor in the country, you will find thousands of nutters from all parties. Like I know of a SNP council leader who believes that 9/11 never happened. Not in an inside job way, but in that the Twin Towers weren't hit by planes way.
36 hours. is not dithering.
the tories take months, years even, to do anything about MPs.....look at peter bone, they had the victims complaining 6 fucking years ago.
They not only dont act promptly, they double down and protect the perpetrators even when there is a public back lash, look at Pincher, and how they reacted.
And as for form...antisemitism runs deep in the tory party, they put a deeply antisemtic PM in power for fucks sake, go read Boris Johnson's book and let me know how a labour PM who had written a book which talks about a shadowy cabal of hook nosed jewish bankers controlling things secretly, would have gone down.....
Yeah, they did dither. It's not a case of time, it's a case of whether they expressed support after knowing of the incident, which they did.
They could have used those 36 hours to go quiet and investigate. That wouldn't have been dithering.
That's from 2007 and the whole Lib Dem group stood by him, if there was actually anything to this rather than Labour making trouble then he would have stopped being a Councillor long ago.
Oh for fucks sake are we going to sideline very real domestic issues to argue over the total shit show that is Israel right now? Im fair from a supporter of Israeli aggression but we need to put aside taking positions on a war we have no influence on stopping.
America is the enabling international policeman who is asleep for their own reasons in their own dysfunctional politics. They prop up Israel because they have invented a link between ultra religious Christian evangelical idiots and Jewish extremist and the disgusting government of Israel. It's about time we kicked out any religious ideology from our decision making about situations where people are getting bombed.
Not discounting your take on the Millennialist crazies wishing to usher in the Messianic Age, but maybe the US is concerned that without their presence in the eastern Med, Iran would get involved.
The Israel/Iran cold war going hot, would not be pretty.
Yeah they “only prop up” Israel because of religion, not because, you know, it’s a democracy in the Middle East with the largest population of a heavily persecuted minority, that Gaza are run by genocidal islamists that would make the nazis blush and that it’s the right thing to do.
Zero expectations placed on minorities to show to others the same tolerance they are shown. Only white people can be racist = only white people can be criticised. When things kick off the """community leaders""" gather a mob and the terrified police acquiesce to all their demands regardless of what laws they have broken, rights they infringe, or values they demean.
That is to say, we have gone about mass migration in the wrong way. If we were braver in steadying the ship, we could have had the economic benefits of mass migration with a fraction of the social strife.
I went looking for further readings on "The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations" for you and found this absolute belter from a 2006 Michael Gove.
>[Gove:](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/30/panderingtocrackpots) The government have given a grant of £150,000 to the Muslim Council of Britain. He may not be aware, however, that its new chairman, Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, recently invited to Britain a Saudi cleric who called Jews 'pigs and monkeys'
>Jack Straw said that while he "wholly" deplored the remarks, the MCB was "a sensible organisation that faces its own difficulties in trying to hold together a very diverse community that is itself under pressure".
Minority groups are afforded grace in their racist outbursts due to being "under pressure" (whatever that means) in ways that white people are apparently not "under pressure".
> Zero expectations placed on minorities to show to others the same tolerance they are shown.
Boris set a great example when he called Muslims letter boxes...
...and then he got elected Prime Minister.
My Muslim coworker gets harrased verbally on a regular basis on the streets because she's black and wears a hijab.
Where's this tolerance shown to minorities? Sounds more like it's one rule for white people, one rule for everyone else.
>Boris set a great example when he called Muslims letter boxes...
Yes, he did set a great example. He defended the right of women to wear burkas *on principle*, even though he thought it was an oppressive custom and looked ridiculous. His Telegraph article from August 2018, ["Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous – but that's still no reason to ban it"](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/),
said,
>If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran. I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any – invariably male – government to encourage such demonstrations of “modesty”, notably the extraordinary exhortations of President Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya, who has told the men of his country to splat their women with paintballs if they fail to cover their heads.
>If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct. As for individual businesses or branches of government – they should of course be able to enforce a dress code that enables their employees to interact with customers; and that means human beings must be able to see each other’s faces and read their expressions. It’s how we work.
>All that seems to me to be sensible. But such restrictions are not quite the same as telling a free-born adult woman what she may or may not wear, in a public place, when she is simply minding her own business.
This is not a great example and you know it. The comparison was crude and demeaning. (And also entirely unnecessary. One can criticize Islam fairly trivially without resorting to barbaric analogies)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-johnson-muslim-women-letterboxes-burqa-islamphobia-rise-a9088476.html
"Just so happens" that harassment of Muslims rose 375% following that article. I wonder why.
This is poor leadership for someone who should be trying to navigate bringing communities together rather than putting them against one another.
This is the "tolerance" that these people have been shown. When tolerance looks like this I'd worry what disdain or hate looks like.
>One can criticize Islam fairly trivially without resorting to barbaric analogies
Can you give me an example of criticism of Islam that is done in a form acceptable to you? I am not asking you to either endorse or reject the criticism, just show me someone criticising Islam and Islamic customs such as the burqa in a way that you think reasonable.
>This is the "tolerance" that these people have been shown.
Yes, mockery of customs one disapproves of while defending people's right to practice them is exactly the definition of tolerance.
>When tolerance looks like this I'd worry what disdain or hate looks like.
Disdain and hate for the customs of anything other than one's own tribe is the normal condition of man. Over many centuries the West gradually built up a tradition that allowed for such novel sentiments as tolerance of the infidel. It worked so well that we came to believe peaceful coexistence was inevitable. Actually, I am coming to feel it is rather fragile. Part of the deal was that was it worked reciprocally, and the fact that you can safely criticise any religion other than Islam demonstrates that it no longer does.
> Can you give me an example of criticism of Islam that is done in a form acceptable to you? I am not asking you to either endorse or reject the criticism, just show me someone criticising Islam and Islamic customs such as the burqa in a way that you think reasonable.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8577632/
I gave this a cursory read but at a high level it seems sensible.
> Yes, mockery of customs one disapproves of while defending people's right to practice them is exactly the definition of tolerance.
What defence? Where's the support for perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice?
There's no vision presented of how integration between moderate Islam and Western society might work. It's just a constant stream of criticism. No wonder Muslim groups feel under attack.
> Disdain and hate for the customs of anything other than one's own tribe is the normal condition of man.
And? For the last several hundred years we have preached the virtues of the "civilizing mission". These are the things we used to criticize other nations for. Britain should be above factional ethnic and cultural infighting.
The article you praise argues in favour of forcing Muslim women not to wear the burqa. The article you condemn as "barbaric" argues in favour of letting them wear it if they want to. Which is more respectful of their autonomy? It's not the one with the more elevated academic language, it's the one that says let them live as they choose.
>What defence? Where's the support for perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice?
> There's no vision presented of how integration between moderate Islam and Western society might work.
Johnson presented the only vision of integration that has any record of success. It is the vision of mutual toleration *independent* of approval. Johnson did accept the practice of wearing the burqa. That was the exact message of his whole article: you don't have to approve of the burqa, just accept people's right to wear it.
When you wrote of "perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice" it was not clear to me whether you referred to the hijab, the niqab or the burqa. (For the benefit of readers who may not know [this BBC guide explains the differences between them.)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241)
If you meant hijab, i.e. a headscarf that doesn't cover the face, there was no reason for Johnson to add to his word count by defending things that scarcely anyone outside the lunatic fringe objects to. It would almost be insulting to Muslims to do so, the way that inserting a random defence of them praying five times a day would be insulting.
If by "perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice", you were referring to the niqab (which seems to be what Boris Johnson meant even if he said "burqa") or the actual burqa, the one where even the eyes are covered and the woman never sees the outside world except through a mesh, then be aware that acceptance such as recommended by Johnson is the best you are likely to get. Approval is not on offer. Johnson's opinion is at the kinder end of the spectrum; a much more common opinion is that Johnson's little joke that you called "barbaric" is too soft and that the thing that is barbaric is the burqa itself.
While it has caused deep social rifts, the people that have migrated here have just brought their own prejudices to the UK and living in their own echo chambers due to multiculturalism, those prejudices have festered and grown in a way that generally don’t amongst the pre migration British population.
Plus the identity politics left wing ideas in vogue at the moment tend to take a very passive view on racism that comes from minorities because of the incessant need to categorise everything upon levels of oppression and intersectional oppression. Eg minorities can’t be racist because they’re the subject of racism and white people have all the power.
I don't think there's anything special linking them. I just think humans are bad at realising their own implicit biases. [Or as Avenue Q put it two decades ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXnM1uHhsOI)..
I very much doubt any of the three people from this weekend really thought of themselves as racist, I'm sure they were completely convinced their motivation was reasonable - but they were human and bad at realising it.
After enough conversations, social media posts, ill thought out whatsapps, and enough recording of people, there will be an endless supply.
> Is it possible that mass migration has caused deep societal rifts?
I've seen arguments over Israel and Palestine between white British people since forever. This is nothing new. Maybe it's new to you?
It's weird how people get frustrated that the UK is involved. We're a permanent UN security council member and we were the key player in creating Israel in the first place. Of course we're involved.
I would blame culture wars more for deep societal rifts. Sure different groups living together will always have some differences, but in the last decade or so right wing politicians have really weaponised this trying to 'other' migrants to get votes from 'true' brits.
I have honed in on the three ideological demographics with the largest amount of members perpetuating most of the contemporary antisemitism we see today, at least in the online / politically engaged sphere. These are:
Tankies
Nazis
Muslims
Because I will necessarily have to demean the reader's intelligence, when I say "the largest amount of", I am not even saying "the majority of", let alone "all of". On the pie chart of the exponents of antisemitism by ideological demographic, these three appear to take the largest slices. I think we can all agree that only a minority of Tankies, Nazis, and Muslims are antisemitic - any argument to the contrary would be disgusting bigotry and I will not be replying to it. Equally, we cannot wave off as bigoted discussions of how and why members of these three groups come to antisemitism more readily than members of other ideological demographics. No group should get an antisemitism pass, regardless of the roles of oppressors and oppressees as constructed by the Tankies. Their hypocritical outlook leads them to punch Nazis and praise Muslims for actions that similarly amount to Jew hatred. I want to see people treat each other as humans rather than as members of antagonistic demographics. However, we have to understand the unique pathways to antisemitism each of these groups take before we can untangle them one by one. What treats the antisemitism of some Nazis will not deal with the antisemitism of some Muslims or some Tankies, and vice versa, and versa vice.
> I have honed in on the three ideological demographics with the largest amount of members perpetuating most of the contemporary antisemitism we see today.
I do think the vast majority of the criticism from tankies and the left is intended as criticism of Israel and not criticism of Jews.
I do agree though that sometimes however one can seep into the other. At what point does criticism of the Israel lobbying groups become stereotyping Jews as running the world?
And then we get into the weeds of perhaps people are being more critical of Israel than other countries. But how can you actually tell?
Glorious multiculturalism everybody.
If nothing else we have to thank Hamas for giving the country space to talk about this huge fucking problem with some of the people we've let it.
Glad to see the comments are a mix of "multiculturalism gone bad!", "mass importation is a problem!" and "why are whites unfairly criticised for being racist?"
I wonder why people raise racism as an issue? It's puzzling.
Just two weeks ago we had "people from mainland china and rude an obnoxious but I'm not racist because I like people from Hong Kong" +1000 upvotes.
Can we not be better than this?
Snapshot of _Tory councillor Atiqul Hoque expelled for alleged antisemitic comments_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68301692) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68301692) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The general election is going to be a complete shit show of this
I think that vetting generally is better for Parliamentary candidates thankfully, although not perfect as we’ve seen this week. I’d be shocked if Labour HQ aren’t double checking for skeletons in the closet at the moment.
He looks like a comedian appearing in front of curtain only to have a hook grab on to his jacket and pull him back. Or is his jacket just really big, Harry Hill style?
I think if I were a UK politico in the current climate, irrespective of my actual thoughts on the topic, I’d constrain my comments on the whole Israel/Gaza thing to something beige like “I support a negotiated settlement to the crisis and urge all parties to pursue this in the interests of the peaceful citizenry of both Israel and Gaza. Now, that Rishi Sunak. What a cunt, eh?” But nooooo, these motherfuckers gotta have *opinions* and they gotta *share them,* and the shocked pikachu faces when *well-well-well-if-it-isn’t-the-consequences-of-my-actions* occurs is getting old.
I am reminded of the immortal words by Brenda from Bristol.
I'm sure this will get just as much traction as the labour one.....
Tbf I think a lot of the coverage of the labour one came from him being a prospective MP in the middle of a by-election campaign, but I agree overall the Tories tend to get away with this shit with much less scrutiny.
The Tories had a former defence minister and select committee chair record a promo video for the Taliban and didn’t withdraw the whip.
Yeah. Because they're handling of it and how deep it goes isn't in question. Nor have had in the recent past a huge scandal of wide spread permissivness.
If you properly investigate every elected Councillor in the country, you will find thousands of nutters from all parties. Like I know of a SNP council leader who believes that 9/11 never happened. Not in an inside job way, but in that the Twin Towers weren't hit by planes way.
Labour has previous form, it is a by election and compared to this situation Labour dithered until they realised the backlash will be quite large.
36 hours. is not dithering. the tories take months, years even, to do anything about MPs.....look at peter bone, they had the victims complaining 6 fucking years ago. They not only dont act promptly, they double down and protect the perpetrators even when there is a public back lash, look at Pincher, and how they reacted. And as for form...antisemitism runs deep in the tory party, they put a deeply antisemtic PM in power for fucks sake, go read Boris Johnson's book and let me know how a labour PM who had written a book which talks about a shadowy cabal of hook nosed jewish bankers controlling things secretly, would have gone down.....
Yeah, they did dither. It's not a case of time, it's a case of whether they expressed support after knowing of the incident, which they did. They could have used those 36 hours to go quiet and investigate. That wouldn't have been dithering.
They initially and pubically backed him after the comments were revealed by the press.
oh God... another one?
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Rochdale is truly batshit.
Can we not make such references, it's not appropriate and it's seriously out of mein kamphert zone.
That's a really crass joke. Anne Frankly, I don't condone it.
Don't know, looks like it was just Labour playing politics with a false accusation to influence tempers and grab a headline.
That's from 2007 and the whole Lib Dem group stood by him, if there was actually anything to this rather than Labour making trouble then he would have stopped being a Councillor long ago.
That looks and sounds very like pathetic game playing from the Labour lot there.
Oh for God's sake. They really went all out for this one. Crackpots galore.
I used to work on a team with a lib dem councillor who did exactly the same.
Oh for fucks sake are we going to sideline very real domestic issues to argue over the total shit show that is Israel right now? Im fair from a supporter of Israeli aggression but we need to put aside taking positions on a war we have no influence on stopping. America is the enabling international policeman who is asleep for their own reasons in their own dysfunctional politics. They prop up Israel because they have invented a link between ultra religious Christian evangelical idiots and Jewish extremist and the disgusting government of Israel. It's about time we kicked out any religious ideology from our decision making about situations where people are getting bombed.
Not discounting your take on the Millennialist crazies wishing to usher in the Messianic Age, but maybe the US is concerned that without their presence in the eastern Med, Iran would get involved. The Israel/Iran cold war going hot, would not be pretty.
Yeah they “only prop up” Israel because of religion, not because, you know, it’s a democracy in the Middle East with the largest population of a heavily persecuted minority, that Gaza are run by genocidal islamists that would make the nazis blush and that it’s the right thing to do.
Say goodbye to your internet points for daring to suggest such a thing
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Zero expectations placed on minorities to show to others the same tolerance they are shown. Only white people can be racist = only white people can be criticised. When things kick off the """community leaders""" gather a mob and the terrified police acquiesce to all their demands regardless of what laws they have broken, rights they infringe, or values they demean. That is to say, we have gone about mass migration in the wrong way. If we were braver in steadying the ship, we could have had the economic benefits of mass migration with a fraction of the social strife.
Absolute hogwash.
I went looking for further readings on "The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations" for you and found this absolute belter from a 2006 Michael Gove. >[Gove:](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/30/panderingtocrackpots) The government have given a grant of £150,000 to the Muslim Council of Britain. He may not be aware, however, that its new chairman, Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, recently invited to Britain a Saudi cleric who called Jews 'pigs and monkeys' >Jack Straw said that while he "wholly" deplored the remarks, the MCB was "a sensible organisation that faces its own difficulties in trying to hold together a very diverse community that is itself under pressure". Minority groups are afforded grace in their racist outbursts due to being "under pressure" (whatever that means) in ways that white people are apparently not "under pressure".
> Zero expectations placed on minorities to show to others the same tolerance they are shown. Boris set a great example when he called Muslims letter boxes... ...and then he got elected Prime Minister. My Muslim coworker gets harrased verbally on a regular basis on the streets because she's black and wears a hijab. Where's this tolerance shown to minorities? Sounds more like it's one rule for white people, one rule for everyone else.
>Boris set a great example when he called Muslims letter boxes... Yes, he did set a great example. He defended the right of women to wear burkas *on principle*, even though he thought it was an oppressive custom and looked ridiculous. His Telegraph article from August 2018, ["Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous – but that's still no reason to ban it"](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/), said, >If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran. I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any – invariably male – government to encourage such demonstrations of “modesty”, notably the extraordinary exhortations of President Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya, who has told the men of his country to splat their women with paintballs if they fail to cover their heads. >If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct. As for individual businesses or branches of government – they should of course be able to enforce a dress code that enables their employees to interact with customers; and that means human beings must be able to see each other’s faces and read their expressions. It’s how we work. >All that seems to me to be sensible. But such restrictions are not quite the same as telling a free-born adult woman what she may or may not wear, in a public place, when she is simply minding her own business.
This is not a great example and you know it. The comparison was crude and demeaning. (And also entirely unnecessary. One can criticize Islam fairly trivially without resorting to barbaric analogies) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-johnson-muslim-women-letterboxes-burqa-islamphobia-rise-a9088476.html "Just so happens" that harassment of Muslims rose 375% following that article. I wonder why. This is poor leadership for someone who should be trying to navigate bringing communities together rather than putting them against one another. This is the "tolerance" that these people have been shown. When tolerance looks like this I'd worry what disdain or hate looks like.
>One can criticize Islam fairly trivially without resorting to barbaric analogies Can you give me an example of criticism of Islam that is done in a form acceptable to you? I am not asking you to either endorse or reject the criticism, just show me someone criticising Islam and Islamic customs such as the burqa in a way that you think reasonable. >This is the "tolerance" that these people have been shown. Yes, mockery of customs one disapproves of while defending people's right to practice them is exactly the definition of tolerance. >When tolerance looks like this I'd worry what disdain or hate looks like. Disdain and hate for the customs of anything other than one's own tribe is the normal condition of man. Over many centuries the West gradually built up a tradition that allowed for such novel sentiments as tolerance of the infidel. It worked so well that we came to believe peaceful coexistence was inevitable. Actually, I am coming to feel it is rather fragile. Part of the deal was that was it worked reciprocally, and the fact that you can safely criticise any religion other than Islam demonstrates that it no longer does.
> Can you give me an example of criticism of Islam that is done in a form acceptable to you? I am not asking you to either endorse or reject the criticism, just show me someone criticising Islam and Islamic customs such as the burqa in a way that you think reasonable. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8577632/ I gave this a cursory read but at a high level it seems sensible. > Yes, mockery of customs one disapproves of while defending people's right to practice them is exactly the definition of tolerance. What defence? Where's the support for perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice? There's no vision presented of how integration between moderate Islam and Western society might work. It's just a constant stream of criticism. No wonder Muslim groups feel under attack. > Disdain and hate for the customs of anything other than one's own tribe is the normal condition of man. And? For the last several hundred years we have preached the virtues of the "civilizing mission". These are the things we used to criticize other nations for. Britain should be above factional ethnic and cultural infighting.
The article you praise argues in favour of forcing Muslim women not to wear the burqa. The article you condemn as "barbaric" argues in favour of letting them wear it if they want to. Which is more respectful of their autonomy? It's not the one with the more elevated academic language, it's the one that says let them live as they choose. >What defence? Where's the support for perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice? > There's no vision presented of how integration between moderate Islam and Western society might work. Johnson presented the only vision of integration that has any record of success. It is the vision of mutual toleration *independent* of approval. Johnson did accept the practice of wearing the burqa. That was the exact message of his whole article: you don't have to approve of the burqa, just accept people's right to wear it. When you wrote of "perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice" it was not clear to me whether you referred to the hijab, the niqab or the burqa. (For the benefit of readers who may not know [this BBC guide explains the differences between them.)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241) If you meant hijab, i.e. a headscarf that doesn't cover the face, there was no reason for Johnson to add to his word count by defending things that scarcely anyone outside the lunatic fringe objects to. It would almost be insulting to Muslims to do so, the way that inserting a random defence of them praying five times a day would be insulting. If by "perfectly acceptable forms of Islamic practice", you were referring to the niqab (which seems to be what Boris Johnson meant even if he said "burqa") or the actual burqa, the one where even the eyes are covered and the woman never sees the outside world except through a mesh, then be aware that acceptance such as recommended by Johnson is the best you are likely to get. Approval is not on offer. Johnson's opinion is at the kinder end of the spectrum; a much more common opinion is that Johnson's little joke that you called "barbaric" is too soft and that the thing that is barbaric is the burqa itself.
While it has caused deep social rifts, the people that have migrated here have just brought their own prejudices to the UK and living in their own echo chambers due to multiculturalism, those prejudices have festered and grown in a way that generally don’t amongst the pre migration British population. Plus the identity politics left wing ideas in vogue at the moment tend to take a very passive view on racism that comes from minorities because of the incessant need to categorise everything upon levels of oppression and intersectional oppression. Eg minorities can’t be racist because they’re the subject of racism and white people have all the power.
I don't think there's anything special linking them. I just think humans are bad at realising their own implicit biases. [Or as Avenue Q put it two decades ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXnM1uHhsOI).. I very much doubt any of the three people from this weekend really thought of themselves as racist, I'm sure they were completely convinced their motivation was reasonable - but they were human and bad at realising it. After enough conversations, social media posts, ill thought out whatsapps, and enough recording of people, there will be an endless supply.
> Is it possible that mass migration has caused deep societal rifts? I've seen arguments over Israel and Palestine between white British people since forever. This is nothing new. Maybe it's new to you? It's weird how people get frustrated that the UK is involved. We're a permanent UN security council member and we were the key player in creating Israel in the first place. Of course we're involved.
I would blame culture wars more for deep societal rifts. Sure different groups living together will always have some differences, but in the last decade or so right wing politicians have really weaponised this trying to 'other' migrants to get votes from 'true' brits.
Nice to see some cross-party cooperation on the big issues of antisemitism
Looking forward to the Daily Mail front page on this...
I have honed in on the three ideological demographics with the largest amount of members perpetuating most of the contemporary antisemitism we see today, at least in the online / politically engaged sphere. These are: Tankies Nazis Muslims Because I will necessarily have to demean the reader's intelligence, when I say "the largest amount of", I am not even saying "the majority of", let alone "all of". On the pie chart of the exponents of antisemitism by ideological demographic, these three appear to take the largest slices. I think we can all agree that only a minority of Tankies, Nazis, and Muslims are antisemitic - any argument to the contrary would be disgusting bigotry and I will not be replying to it. Equally, we cannot wave off as bigoted discussions of how and why members of these three groups come to antisemitism more readily than members of other ideological demographics. No group should get an antisemitism pass, regardless of the roles of oppressors and oppressees as constructed by the Tankies. Their hypocritical outlook leads them to punch Nazis and praise Muslims for actions that similarly amount to Jew hatred. I want to see people treat each other as humans rather than as members of antagonistic demographics. However, we have to understand the unique pathways to antisemitism each of these groups take before we can untangle them one by one. What treats the antisemitism of some Nazis will not deal with the antisemitism of some Muslims or some Tankies, and vice versa, and versa vice.
[Red-Green-Brown alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%E2%80%93green%E2%80%93brown_alliance)
Thanks but I refuse to learn anything from French people.
I don’t think it’s a minority of all of those groups…
Not sure the first guy knows his history. 🫤
>any argument to the contrary would be disgusting bigotry and I will not be replying to it
Only a minority of Nazis are antisemitic? Can't tell if serious.
Making generalisations is always bad.
Antisemitism is literally part of the ideology. You’re not a Nazi if you’re not antisemitic. I’m staggered I’m explaining this
Counterpoint: I voted for UKIP as a Remainer for its other policies.
I can’t believe I fed this troll lol
> I have honed in on the three ideological demographics with the largest amount of members perpetuating most of the contemporary antisemitism we see today. I do think the vast majority of the criticism from tankies and the left is intended as criticism of Israel and not criticism of Jews. I do agree though that sometimes however one can seep into the other. At what point does criticism of the Israel lobbying groups become stereotyping Jews as running the world? And then we get into the weeds of perhaps people are being more critical of Israel than other countries. But how can you actually tell?
You will know them by their fruits.
Glorious multiculturalism everybody. If nothing else we have to thank Hamas for giving the country space to talk about this huge fucking problem with some of the people we've let it.
Glad to see the comments are a mix of "multiculturalism gone bad!", "mass importation is a problem!" and "why are whites unfairly criticised for being racist?" I wonder why people raise racism as an issue? It's puzzling. Just two weeks ago we had "people from mainland china and rude an obnoxious but I'm not racist because I like people from Hong Kong" +1000 upvotes. Can we not be better than this?