August 2018 Politics Thread

This might be incredibly ignorant/insensitive…but is it necessarily antisemitic to make comparisons between Israeli policy and Nazism, on its own? I mean, it’s an incredibly crass link to make…but I would’ve thought it fell under the same umbrella as all Israeli criticism should…that being the complex understanding of what constitutes anti Semitic intent.

To make Nazi references above that just seems like…a value judgement, which is pretty woolly, in my opinion.

Yeah he only does two things - opposing Brexit and succession planning. That’s it.

Poll time!

A centre party (even the Lib Dems, if you want) would be most damaging for:

  • Labour
  • Tories
  • Both/neither

0 voters

I’m Vince Cable, I’m here to oppose Brexit and plan my succession…and I’m all out of opposing Brexit

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:joy:

i could imagine a few tory voters who feel guilty about where their party has gone feeling okay about voting for a gina miller type, as their bank accounts shall remain unmolested by an anti-brexit, pro-capitalist, socially permissive party in the middle.

I’m of the opinion that you can’t fully understand or explain where Israel comes from, and why it does the things it does, without at least touching upon Nazi Germany. Many of its colonial policies are explicitly based upon ethnic cleansing/ghettoi-ising so that those things never happen to the Jewish people again.

Of course those comparisons have to be made very sensitively. But to ban them outright, pretend they don’t exist is even more dangerous.

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I would have thought apartheid South Africa was the best comparison for Israel at the moment?

Probably not, for some of the reasons @anon82218317 gave for Nazi Germany.

Don’t think there is anything sensible to be gained with comparing the situation to anything that’s been, being or will be

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Why does anyone need to compare the actions of the Israeli government to anything? It’s a weird fixation.

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Not by making erroneous comparisons we don’t.

a hi-tech fighter jet, perfect for all those aerial dogfights we have with [checks notes] the peasant militias of the middle east

“Fairly” apt? Well good for you.

This is a topic of acute sensitivity - think if we’re going down the road of wanting to enshrine some kind of right to compare one set of state-led actions to another (which both have their own unique a) provenance and b) consequences) then the bar needs to be set a bit higher than thinking something is “fairly” comparable.

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Literally don’t know how you can read this and some of the other pieces and not think “Wait something isn’t quite adding up here…”

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I think some people were suggesting squeezed economic conditions and widely reported mishandling might actually push people towards the right.

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So is this just a way for government to subsidise industry to convince them to stay in the UK, or have they realised that the F-35 is a shit plane for twats

I mean, it’s critically important the UK retains its world-leading capabilities in the combat air sector after Brexit, as we’ll be flying raids on European supermarkets in our Sopwith Camels to survive

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it’s both i guess. f35 was always a shiny bit of tat but it got money flowing around the global economy. bae are already effectively subsidised. so rigged isn’t it. i guess the government are planning to make human misery our main post-brexit export. if they haven’t already.

No, I agree that Nazi comparisons are difficult to justify. I was more thinking about how the IHRA definition of antisemitism uses this as an example…which would mean, in the eyes of this definition, comparisons with Nazism would always be antisemitic, regardless of whether they based upon fact

And fighting those dastardly MiGs!

Kind of sceptical that this will go anywhere tbh - can’t see such a major project getting the budget, especially when the MoD have already just paid a shitload for a bunch of F-35s (that I’m guessing they can’t return). Also, there’s the fact Tories are generally useless at big projects (or work in general), even when they want them, e.g. universal credit

They’ll definitely find new ways to convert tax money into misery, though

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