In Keir Starmer’s Anti-Racist Universe, Palestinians Don’t Count
JVL Introduction
Barnaby Raine pulls no punches in his deconstruction of Keir Starmer’s recent speech to Labour Friends of Israel.
Rivkah Brown who commissioned this article for Novara Media said the speech left her “furious, hopeless and speechless”. She was not alone in her reaction.
Raine goes behind Starmer’s nausea-inducing rhetoric of extolling Labour’s imperial past, embracing Israeli leaders as “Social democrats who made the desert flower,” in Harold Wilson’s fine words.
He finds behind it a “precise racism… the racism that mocks with its talk of equality amid the endurance of racist violence. In refugee camps and emaciated bantustans, Palestinians are punished so that Europe can feel better about its centuries of antisemitism…”
The underlying reality is entirely ignored so Labour can – once again – stand four-square behind Israel, a country that, says Starmer, “is the first to acknowledge that at times she falls short” of her goals of “complete equality of social and political rights to all”.
Absolutely, give or take a 54-year-old occupation, war crimes, impunity, apartheid, an embedded anti-Palestinian racism and so much more.
And all in the presence of an applauding Israeli ambassador utterly committed to the continuing expropriation of the Palestinians and the racial purity of the Jewish state.
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Thu 18 Nov 2021. Read the original here.
In Keir Starmer’s Anti-Racist Universe, Palestinians Don’t Count
Keir Starmer is a racist endeavour.
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How many more examples does everyone need to see that the labour party is a dead end ? Corbyns submissive response to his own disciplining by Sir Keir is representative of the middle class leftists, like noravirus media, who write think pieces about this stuff but, when push comes to shove will still promote labour.
Hassan, it’s more a belief in TINA – There Is No Alternative. I mean, if not Labour then what? Seriously, lets examine the alternatives:
1) The Green Party: Whilst we might agree with a lot of their ideals, the Green Party are not a socialist party. Besides, they’ve got no chance of winning any more than a handful of MPs under our ridiculous electoral system. They’ve been stuck on one MP for over a decade. If they’re lucky, they might get another 2-5 or so in the next decade or so. Maybe a dozen or so in the decade after that. European Green parties have never got beyond minor party status (though some have been in coalition governments, as minor parties) and there’s no reason I can see for assuming the UK Green party would be any different.
2) A new socialist party. Well this has been tried before – anybody remember Respect? And if tried again, it’d likely go the same way. Which is that, under our ridiculous electoral system, it’d win 1 seat, maybe a few if they were lucky, perhaps up to a dozen if they were incredibly lucky. And then they’d slide into irrelevance, losing all those seats in the process. The most they could do – if they were really, really “successful”, like the SDP were when they split off from Labour in the 80s – is to split the anti-Tory vote whilst winning those dozen or so seats, thereby cementing the Tories in power for a generation or so.
3) Retire from politics, don’t vote for anyone and become one of those people who mutter and moan about how crap the political establishment is and how they’re all as bad as each other. Whilst, perhaps, an inevitable end point, I imagine most of us would like to put this off as long as possible (some of us may have already gone through a similar phase back in Blair’s day).
Those are, pretty much, our only three alternatives. And none of them are attractive. Tell me I’m wrong. I’d like to be. But I don’t think I am.
What a disgraceful comment by Hassan. Just another attack on Corbyn and the Left in general who in the main are NOT middle class. I was a member of the Party for six decades until Corbyn was thrown under a bus. I spring from the Northern industrial working class .
And today hamas are designated a terror group by pritti patel. No mention of the 100 years of terror the Palestinians have endured or their right to defend themselves
The Race War is coming in the Age of Illusion & Double Speak.
I’ve been inspired by Barnaby Raine’s blazingly acute writing in Salvage, and I’m so glad to read this here. He’s got Starmer bang to rights , and the world order we live in with its ‘barbarians at the gates’. When even Channel 4 news is channeling ‘It’s all Putin’s fault’ as we literally watch Polish troops water-cannoning families and children in midwinter, and now backed up at the border by UK soldiers. Not to speak of our own walls of water with people drowning in them every week, and new draft laws proposing that ‘our’ border force can let migrants fall into the sea with impunity.
So glad that BR has got over his dismissive comments about crusty old antizionists – cf his article in Red Pepper not too long ago – because I know that many younger Jewish campaigners for Palestinian rights are reluctant to connect with us in JVL. This is a bridge we need to build.
‘War on the savages as an anti-racist crusade” – very well said. Orwellian anti racist racism. Not a good look when you see through it.
I recognise myself and my feelings in much of this discussion. Drop Labour? I certainly won’t vote for Starmer just as I never voted for Bliar. With a new leader who adopted socialist policies and genuinely tried to unite the party, not expel a great tranche of it, I would probably reconsider.
Re a new socialist party, it would only work if it got the support of one or more large trades union. Then it could move forward on a broader base than any previous effort. I’d certainly support it as I’m sure would many others.
Finally, Hassan’s comments about Jeremy Corbyn are grossly unfair. The Peace and Justice Project shows Starmer precisely what he should be doing and shows up his pathetic and shameful leadership of the Labour Party for what it is.
Calling them racists hasn’t worked, not when they can describe the Jewish State as a beacon of light, you have to accept the English Language has been murdered in cold blood
They have put time and resource to this crime against humanity, the response is pathetic
So what are you going to call them that cuts through
The strapline above is to my mind Jews, always with the oppressed never the oppressor
You cannot be part of the Jewish Community if you support the racist state of Israel
It supports my belief you cannot be a Christian and support those responsible for Food Banks and starving children, the cheap and nasty Tory party
@Stephen Flaherty – I see what you mean but, the pitfalls of the TINA (and ‘lesser of two evils’) approach, is that its getting us nowhere; labour are using things like “Tory scum” and “vote labour to get rid of the Tories” in place of actual policies that might benefit us.
As for the greens, from what I see theyre a middle class party and, in Brighton where theyve had/have seats, have been complicit with austerity measures (so not that different to some labour councils).
The last thing we need is more left factions, so its right to caution yet another socialist party, but at the same time, if we stay in labour for the sake of it and all the major unions just continue pouring our subs into the party, despite them not representing us, nothing will change.
@steve mitchell – your right, Corbyn had above average approval from the working class, and below average approval from the middle class, although did still have a wide appeal to a similar percentage of the middle-classes as Owen Jones, someone who features quite a bit on noravirus media.
I think shows like Red Star Radio do a better job of articulating the problems of the labour party and the petit bourgeois leftists who support it so would recommend giving it a listen.
See also the excellent Tysky Sour/Novara Media video with Barnaby Raine and Michael Walker at
https://javelinmedia.org/2021/11/19/starmers-racism-exposed/
Has Keir Starmer learned nothing from Boris Johnson and Donald Trump? On the photo above he stands framed by only two flags. And both flags looking desperately tired. Not waving but drooping.
Entirely the wrong message. I can’t believe any fake-us group would be impressed.
Wake up Keir, mate. Tell your laptop-carriers to watch the telly and YouTube, taking careful note of modern ways to do the flag-thing.
Ideally you have a wall of a dozen flags.
https://youtu.be/De8bABAR9-0?t=4
But in any case, all flags must be fresh-laundered, pressed, and identically rolled-up. You should stand dead centre with rolled flags at a slight slant away from you; making a frame in which you seem larger and more important. Plus leaving room for any dramatic hand gestures.
For cameras the pulpit/lectern becomes the bottom of the frame. Please scrap the plastic! It’s tacky and unmodern. Recycled oak-look veneer is good. At least pretend to be saving the planet.