Look at the state of this tweet from Countdown co-host Rachel Riley:
“You (I) have absolutely no good faith whatsoever”
This is a dog-whistle @OwenJones84.
The #JC4PM brigade will hear “political smear by Jew.”
You’re fully aware of this.
And no, I don’t support right-wing extremists, but I have been labelled one because of this. pic.twitter.com/RCqoS0mLmS
— Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) January 27, 2019
She seems to think re-tweeting an image denigrating Owen Jones as “The queen of bellends” is an appropriate way to behave after accusing him of anti-Semitism during Holocaust Memorial Day.
Mr Jones had been attacked by a Twitter account calling itself Peterrogers. He (Mr Jones) had been attacking the pathetic Brexit-related Liberal Democrat attempt to troll Jeremy Corbyn by claiming his backbone had been found in odd places and this person jumped in to attack him for failing to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day:
No where near as shit as your lack of post regarding the Holocust Memorial Day today? Is it because you are scared you will upset the pathetic bunch of antisemites who also enjoy your writing ? @RachelRileyRR @Sara_Rose_G @JVoiceLabour
— Peterrogers (@Peterrogers2011) January 27, 2019
(Note that Peterrogers had tagged in Ms Riley, in search of help from her and her supporters.) Trouble is, Owen Jones had put up several posts and links commemorating HMD. Here are a few:
Incredibly powerful from Lord Dubs, a refugee who survived the horrors of Nazism, who reminds us that the hatred which led to the Holocaust lives on and must be defeated #HMD2019 #HolocaustMemorialDay https://t.co/0qtDdRuYPw
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
Horrific: 1 in 20 people deny the Holocaust happened, 1 in 12 think its scale was exaggerated, and almost two thirds can't say how many Jews were killed, or grossly underestimate the figure. https://t.co/cLJpT0q6gy
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
A few years ago, I went to Berlin with one of my closest friends and stood by a train track which took dozens of his relatives to be murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. #NeverForget #HolocaustMemorialDay https://t.co/sHRW8f3Dla
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
Fascism isn't to be debated, it's to be defeated. This is the inspiring story of the 43 Group, a British anti-fascist group set up by Jewish ex-servicemen who fought fascism. Let's follow their courageous example ✊🏻 pic.twitter.com/MmfOvSdTTQ #HMD2019 #HolocaustMemorialDay
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
(We should remember that Mr Jones has fallen foul of genuine fascists recently. One wonders how those people would have greeted Ms Riley – and fears that it would be with open arms.)
So it is understandable that Mr Jones responded to Peterrogers with proof that he had, indeed, posted about HMD. But the troll (let’s call him what he is) simply complained that the post he saw wasn’t strong enough (it was about fighting fascism, for crying out loud), as you can see:
Very Jesuitical post. You must have agonsied over that in order not to upset your base. How about something straight and condemning antisemitism rather than praising people fighting facist? @RachelRileyRR
@Sara_Rose_G
@JVoiceLabour— Peterrogers (@Peterrogers2011) January 27, 2019
So Mr Jones did the obvious and pointed him to other posts. This is very generous as all he had to do was direct that person to his timeline and suggest he see them for himself. By now, other people were commenting on the thread – such as Keith Simmonds, who made the following suggestion:
https://twitter.com/KeithSimmonds7/status/1089530155771576320
Peterrogers seems to think Mr Simmonds is a sockpuppet for Mr Jones, to judge from his follow-up:
https://twitter.com/Peterrogers2011/status/1089535085144100866
This is shockingly poor behaviour. Mr Jones had posted several tweets condemning anti-Semitism; Peterrogers had simply ignored them. And of course Mr Jones is known to have campaigned strongly against anti-Semitism.
It is embarrassingly pathetic https://t.co/TDLfPwYkJD
And indeed I’ve done article after article, speech after speech, TV appearance after TV appearance condemning the horror of anti Semitism. But this person has nothing but bad faith.
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
Bad faith is what it is: an “intent to deceive”, a “refusal to confront facts”.
By now, Ms Riley had stepped in. Having been tagged in from the start by Peterrogers, she posted:
The real victim of the Holocaust @OwenJones84 🙄 You pretend this isn’t happening in your own party, the place where British Jews see the most direct danger with their fostering of Jew-hating rhetoric. Today of all days, sod off. https://t.co/abFDYsTtus
— Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) January 27, 2019
What a despicable pack of lies and nonsense. Where does Owen Jones suggest he is a victim of the Holocaust? Nowhere. Nor does he pretend that anti-Semitism (referred to as “this” by Ms Riley) does not exist in the Labour Party; we will see that he posted links to some of his previous writings about it. Labour does not foster “Jew-hating rhetoric” either. Ms Riley provided absolutely no evidence to support her claims because they are not true.
As for British Jews seeing Labour as a “direct danger” – that is because people like Ms Riley, who have a political agenda, tell them to see it that way. If they were confronted with the facts, they might feel very differently about it.
She followed it with a smear:
Hey @OwenJones84, you know when you said that antisemitism should be driven from the left without compromise…then you came out in support of @AaronBastani who tries to discredit anyone who does so.
Just wondering, which is it?
Asking for a friend. (✡️)🌹 pic.twitter.com/y5ji2kdmPR— Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) December 31, 2018
Mr Bastani himself responded to that one:
Wheres the ‘anti semitism’ there? In literally any of those tweets.
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) December 31, 2018
And so did my old buddy in the battle to save people with long-term illnesses and disabilities from the DWP’s chequebook euthanasia, Sue Marsh:
This is just bizarre. None of those tweets are antisemitism. I have absolutely no idea why you have to attack like this while *actual* fascists are on our streets. #YesYesIAmJewish
— Sue Marsh (@suey2y) December 31, 2018
Mr Jones himself came back with a list of links to his writings about anti-Semitism, and added a further point:
What's so astonishingly ironic about your attack, @RachelRileyRR, is that I've been repeatedly attacked for speaking out against anti-Semitism, including for being used by the "Israeli lobby". And no, that's not being a "victim" (I'm not), just setting the record straight. pic.twitter.com/33kPEvqise
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
His point was that he has been attacked over anti-Semitism – by individuals claiming to speak for Jews – no matter what he has done. He just can’t do right for doing wrong (any course of action leads to a negative outcome).
Not good enought for Ms Riley, who dug into Mr Jones’s background for her next attack:
Thing is @OwenJones84 I call BS. You’re full of it.
And the thing I “attack” is your virtue signalling hypocrisy, and your lack of self-reflection to AS apologism that any genuine anti-racist would surely do?
Record straight etchttps://t.co/8zCNJW4aYbhttps://t.co/S8kNcMzyYp https://t.co/mHOV6WngbI
— Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) January 27, 2019
The links seem to refer to claims that Mr Jones edited Wikipedia entries about Israel while he was at college, and that he defended Jeremy Corbyn against “guilt by association” claims of anti-Semitism.
By now, Ms Riley’s followers had cottoned on that another dogpile was in the offing, and had started bombarding Mr Jones with their usual torrent of abuse. I had a taste of it over the weekend and you can sample it here.
So it is unsurprising that Mr Jones gave her a taste of it, and put the record straight over her claims:
Oh, and if you're going to try and attack me over things I did when I was 19 years old, 15 years ago, you can at least get your facts straight.
I'll keep fighting anti-Semitism, including on the left, and stand with Jewish people against those who spread bigotry and hatred. pic.twitter.com/LByWKE3MCn
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
That was when Ms Riley posted that tweet at the top of this article – the one that resorts to low and vulgar abuse.
Oh: and the fact you defended a far right activist who taught his dog to raise its paw to statements like "Sieg Heil" and "Gas the Jews", but you relentlessly attack a socialist who passionately and repeatedly confronts anti-Semitism says all anyone ever needs to know about you pic.twitter.com/dDrQPRjtMJ
— Owen Jones 🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 27, 2019
You can read another perspective on this story on Zelo Street.
I’d like to address her claim, “This is a dog-whistle @OwenJones84. The #JC4PM brigade will hear “political smear by Jew.””
This is exactly the kind of gross generalisation and double-standard that witch-hunters like Ms Riley like to make. They complain that they are victimised for being Jews, but think nothing of claiming that all supporters of Jeremy Corbyn must be anti-Semites.
And the claim is wrong. I certainly don’t see Ms Riley’s actions as being “political smear by Jew”. Ms Riley needs to take responsibility for her own actions.
That’s one of the positive elements that came from my contact with her supporters over the weekend – that I was able to establish that the claim that Ms Riley was being challenged because she was Jewish was a lie. I’ve made a little image to sum up the issue:
Feel free to use it against witch-hunters like Ms Riley for whom the label is appropriate. I do fear it will be abused but that’s the problem when people start witch-hunting – accusing others of anti-Semitism under false pretences; it makes it easier for genuine anti-Semitism to become established. But these frauds need to be singled out somehow.
Extra: Another witch-hunter tactic is a form of psychological projection, in which they claim ownership of some form of discrimination that others say they are receiving. Yesterday the despicable @GnasherJew troll account claimed that @LabLeftVoice had demanded that Ms Riley undergo racial profiling to see if she “is really a Jew”:
Classy. https://t.co/dSIjuORwh9
— Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) January 27, 2019
In fact, @LabLeftVoice – an account run by a Jew – had finally had enough of Ms Riley’s friends like @GnasherJew denying her own Jewishness and had offered to undergo racial profiling herself in order to provide absolute proof of her own ethnicity.
She told This Site: “I said we’ll bring ours you bring yours.. Gnasher showcased it and put my post tiny and just said look LLV asking Riley and Oberman to be racially profiled.. bcos yet again.. they omitted I’m Jewish to their ‘fans’.
“They are the ones who constantly deny left Jews are Jewish and it’s sick. I’ve had enough of it.. I’m not sure what to call it apart from delegitimising.. dehumanising.. but it is also an antisemitic act to delegitimise Jews with different beliefs.”
https://twitter.com/LabLeftVoice/status/1089665506695630848
Those are the facts. Now visit my Twitter feed (@MidWalesMike) for the dogpile from Ms Riley’s friends.
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My name’s Peter Rogers and ironically I was purged from the labour party for made up anti semitism, a state of affairs I know you understand. This isn’t my twitter account
This ‘twitter’ / ‘tweet’ palaver appears to be getting completely out of hand. Paranoia appears to be increasingly gaining the advantage – as it frequently does when paranoids get together en-masse – and there seems to be no simple, effective remedy for that affliction: other than increased security of course! And all over that ‘word’ ‘antisemite’ and who is and who isn’t and what is and what isn’t and where is it and where isn’t it. If we could find a replacement word like, er, ‘person’ or ‘people’ then maybe, one day, we could return to something like reasoned, rational debate and ordinary people could join in without risking a metaphoric lynching. I don’t ‘tweet’ so I’m well out of it! And I’m saying nothing else!
Apart from the fact that she can add up, who is this woman Riley anyway?