noemon wrote:You have not presented any evidence on your claim that Labour are accusing their opponents with unsubstantiated hearsay against unnamed individuals.
I don't think anybody could have missed the vilification of Brexiteers, whether it's the claim that they have unleashed shocking bigotry and hate in society, or being directly called racists, nazis, not fit to vote, etc.
JohnRawls wrote:@Kaiserschmarrn @noemon Any political party have a share of crazies and usually it's a matter of either keeping them quite, normalizing their behaviour or expelling them. For labour expelling them is not an option because many labour supporters are of the opinion that Israel shouldn't exist for example. I don't think that is very antisemitic but it is borderline honestly. The same people might do other stupid thing like shout "Jews are pigs" or something akin to that not to mention that you must absolutely make sure that it doesn't translate in to decision making/hiring/policy. Otherwise you are going to get in to hot water. The problem is that they do not recognize that what might be okay for some labour to do is not really okay for the rest of the people in the country. Look at our local labour supporters, they have overstepped the antiisrael position in to antijewish position on many occasions. So the situation is honestly not a surprise and it's labours fault honestly. They can learn a thing or two from the republicans on this.
Once you start looking and digging, especially at a lower level, you'll find people saying all kinds of stuff that would be unacceptable for national politicians. Sometimes this actually is prejudice and hate, but more often than not it's just people not weighing their words carefully. It can be just ignorance too. Recently, a union member used the words "rootless" and "cosmopolitan" in a sentence and people came down on him hard for his supposed anti-semitism, when it was pretty clear that he was unaware of the connotations. The left has made this kind of hyper-sensitivity and hyper-vigilance acceptable and has used it liberally as a weapon. They are now aghast and angry that it's used against them too.
One important rule is that once organisations that are supposed to represent a minority community and members of that community come out against you and, as has happened with the Labour party, make statements about how terrible the situation is for them within the party and that they were traumatised and harmed, etc. you are in dangerous territory. It's the same principle that underlies hate crime reporting in that the only thing that matters is the perception of the victims.
Personally, I certainly wish we didn't live in an environment where those with the thinnest skins and the most uncharitable interpretations were given as much of a say and platform, but in this case I get at least some entertainment from the reaction of those who thought they were immune to these attacks.