Jonathan Freedland on Labour and antisemitism.

For most progressive-minded, remain-leaning folk, is it even a dilemma? I’m not sure. To them the logic must seem simple and straightforward: they want to eject a cruel and useless government and stop Brexit, and that means denying Boris Johnson a majority and replacing him with Jeremy Corbyn, who will end austerity and hold a second referendum. Job done.

But it’s not that simple for him, much as he would like it to be.

The thought of it prompts in me, and the overwhelming majority of the community I grew up in, a fear that we have not known before.

I’m referring to Britain’s Jews who, for the first time in their history, have concluded that someone hostile to them is on the brink of taking democratic power. Yes, of course, not every single British Jew holds that view. But the most recent poll found that 87% regard Corbyn as an antisemite, meaning an anti-Jewish racist.

He lists some cringe-making examples of Corbyn’s antisemitism. (That sounds as if a “but” is imminent. It’s not. The examples make me cringe; no buts.) Labour has dismally failed to do enough about it.

We’re meant to cheer that Chris Williamson has been barred from standing again as an MP. But Jews remember that, even when Williamson’s penchant for egregious Jew-baiting was well known, Corbyn was still praising him. Just a few months ago, in fact, Corbyn called him “a very good, very effective Labour MP. He’s a very strong anti-racist campaigner. He is not antisemitic in any way.”

…

Plenty advise Jews to shelve their angst in return for a government that will stop Brexit (Jews are overwhelmingly pro-remain). In effect, Jews and their would-be allies are being told that some racism is, if not quite acceptable, then a price worth paying. That seems to have been the bargain struck with those Labour “moderates” who were once so admirably vocal in their denunciation of the leadership on this issue and who are now – minus Tom Watson – knocking on doors to put Corbyn in No 10: you’ve got your second referendum, now shut up about the Jews. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, to be part of a small community that can be so quickly cast aside for the supposed greater good.

I’m guessing it’s quite like being part of a large community that can be so quickly cast aside for the supposed greater good, by which I mean women. The smallness v largeness should make a difference, because surely they make a massive difference to the level of vulnerability, and yet…it doesn’t seem to be working that way.

But that’s a side note…except that it’s also a confirmation of “wtf lefty comrades, what are you doing??”

Many, Jews included, ask themselves how bad would it really be. What’s the worst that could happen? Of course this isn’t the 1930s and, despite the Sunday Telegraph’s front page, most Jews would not leave the country. But that the question is even in the air, that someone who sees Jews as not quite “us” – “they don’t understand English irony” – is deemed eligible to be prime minister, makes our presence here feel conditional and shaky. And, whether Corbyn makes it to Downing Street or not, to realise that the historic party of social justice in this country finds a little bit of racism acceptable for the sake of the larger cause, and that many millions of voters agree – well, that realisation contains its own heartbreak. It means that what we thought about this country wasn’t quite true.

I understand that to many, all this will sound overwrought. I’m afraid that Jewish history has made us that way, prone to imagining the worst. We look at our usually sparse family trees and we can pick out the pessimists, those who panicked and got out. It was they who left their mark on us. You see, the optimists, those who assumed things would work out for the best, they never made it out in time.

I have nothing optimistic to add.

Some dastardly fiend stabbed the Alabama Trump Baby balloon.

A towering Baby Trump protest balloon was knifed and deflated by someone unhappy with its appearance during Donald Trump’s Saturday trip to Alabama, organisers said.

The incident occurred during the president’s visit to watch a University of Alabama football game. The balloon, which is more than 6.1 metres (20 feet) tall, was set up in a nearby park.

Jim Girvan, the organiser of a group that “adopts” out Baby Trump balloons for protests, said a man charged the balloon with a knife and cut a 2.4-metre (8-foot) gash in the back. Girvan said the unidentified man was taken into custody.

Good! Throw the book at him!

Robert Kennedy, a volunteer “baby sitter” who brought the balloon to Tuscaloosa, said the balloon immediately began to sag after it was cut.

The day had been going mostly smoothly, Kennedy said. Some people yelled “Trump 2020” as they passed while others posed for selfies with the balloon. But then Kennedy said a man sidled up on the back of the balloon and attacked it with a knife. He ran away but was caught by police officers, Kennedy said.

In memoriam:

How difficult can it be?

It took a marathon school board meeting. It followed months of divisive debate, including two student walkouts. It came after the student newspaper opted for change for similar reasons.

“It” is another high school dropping its longtime “Redskins” mascot, with this one in Idaho proving a particularly contentious exercise.

Hm. Maybe we could shorten these exercises with a new plan: all teams named “Redskins” will alternate between that and “Whiteskins” every week until people get the point.

As reported by the Washington Post, Teton High School (Driggs, Idaho), which sits just outside Yellowstone Park and the Wyoming border, announced Tuesday evening it would retire its “Redskins” mascot at an undetermined date in the near future. The decision followed a formal school board vote in which four of five board members voted to discontinue the Redskins moniker, which has been in use at the school since 1929.

So it actually took the people of Driggs, Idaho 90 years to figure out that calling the high school football team a racist epithet is not a particularly useful or benign thing to do. Humans are so disappointing.

The story is from July; I hope football season isn’t being too painful for the bereft fans of the old name.

Lara Adams-Miller shared some anti-suffrage images yesterday. It’s always unnerving to see how very venomous they were.

“Shut up, terf” and “punch a terf” rhetoric is nearly indistinguishable from anti-suffrage rhetoric.

Those go way beyond just shut up – they urge torture.

Suffer, bitch!

More:

A man’s foot on her breasts, a hundred-twelve*-pound concrete block on her abdomen and crotch, while she is choked and drowned by a great vat of soup. Clear enough?

*correction

Originally an item for the Miscellany Room from Screechy Monkey. 

So, Slate has a really, really shitty sex advice column called How To Do It. It presents a real dilemma for me: from Slate’s point of view, a click is a click, so they can’t tell that I sometimes read it just for the train wreck value as opposed to actually thinking the authors give good advice.

(Why is it shitty? Well, aside from the issue I’m about to complain about, I’m reminded of something Dan Savage once said when asked if he had any advice for young people who want to be sex advice columnists. After noting that he wasn’t interesting in encouraging competition, he said the one mistake that he noticed in most of the college newspaper sex columns was that the authors are constantly making it all about their own sex lives. Everything is about them and their personal sexual history and their kinks etc. and not about helping out readers. Anyway, “How to Do It” is a textbook example of that — the male co-author really wants you to know that he’s had a lot of dick in his life.)

But here’s why I brought it up.

In a column Dated October 10, 2019, a reader wants to know if it’s ok for her to just flat-out ask potential dates their penis size. The author responds by commiserating with her about how men will lie about it, but otherwise just offers advice on how to go about filtering for size, and ends with a you go, girl!:

I want to also encourage you to continue to openly fish for big dick via your profiles. Why not ask guys if they’ve got what you want? If it’s off-putting, great. You’re filtering out the dick not up to your standards from the jump. Saves everyone time. I believe there’s nothing wrong with coming across as slutty or overexperienced, and anybody cool and/or hung will respect you as a woman who knows what she wants. Be proud of that.

Ok, fine, whatever — if something is important to you, sure, put it in your profile and ask about it. Fine. I basically agree with that, whether it’s size or hair color or religion or whatever.

Less than a month later, a reader says that although he’s open to dating trans women, he’s not interested in ones with a penis, and is it ok to ask.

I’m sure you can see where this is likely going. To be fair, the two columnists don’t flat-out call the writer a bigot, and oh-so-graciously acknowledge that it’s ok to have a preference when it comes to type of genitals…. BUUUUUTTTT… maybe she doesn’t need you to touch “her” penis? Shouldn’t you give people a try? Maybe you should grow as a person, and get to KNOW people as human beings instead of being so obsessed with genitals. “[I]nquiring about the contents of prospective sex partners’ underwear will turn a lot of people off. He’d be doing it to filter certain people out, but I think he’d more often be filtering himself out for asking the question in the first place” Etc.

I’m just amazed by the lack of recognition of the double standard.

An authoritarian state boss abusing his power who isn’t Trump:

A British Indian author and journalist has been stripped of his Indian citizenship after he wrote an article criticising the regime of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Aatish Taseer, who was born in the UK but raised in India and spent a further decade living there from the age of 25, was stripped of his overseas citizenship of India (OCI) status on Thursday.

Taseer, who has written multiple books on India, described the government’s move as “highly suspicious and systematic”. He added: “They are making an example of me and sending a warning message to other journalists.”

Wouldn’t Trump love to do that.

The decision followed the publication of his cover piece for Time magazine in May, just before the Indian elections, titled India’s divider in chief, which was highly critical of Modi’s actions while in power.

“Within India, the Modi government has completely altered the media climate, everyone critical has been muffled or silenced,” said Taseer. “And now my case shows that even those who think they are protected because they write abroad or for a foreign publisher, they are not going to be safe either.”

He may never be able to go back to India. His mother and grandmother are there, and he says he may never see them again.

The reason given by the home ministry for its action was that Taseer had “concealed the fact that his late father was of Pakistani origin” and was therefore ineligible for OCI status.

But Taseer denied this, saying his connection to Pakistan had never been hidden and had simply made him an “easy target”. He was not given official written notice that he had been stripped of his OCI status and instead found out via a public tweet from the ministry on Thursday.

Again: very Trump.

In September Taseer received a letter saying the government was taking action against him for allegedly defrauding the home ministry and his OCI status was under review.

It followed an alleged smear campaign against him in India led by Sambit Patra, the spokesperson for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party, and which was then picked up by Modi himself after the publication of the Time magazine article, where Taseer was repeatedly described as having an anti-India agenda due to his “Pakistani political family” background.

Are Modi and Trump twins?

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Taseer’s fate showed that Modi’s governing party was intolerant of criticism and freedom of the press. Under Modi, in power since 2014, India has fallen to 140th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

Pen America, which defends freedom of expression, said: “Harassing critical writers and journalists not just in India but globally is a disturbing new low for Modi’s government that’s already put Indian democracy on its heels.”

Fake News anyone?

To the surprise of no one we learn that Mick Mulvaney too is implicated in the Ukraine extortion.

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney approved a White House meeting for the Ukrainian president – if Ukraine announced investigations tied to Joe Biden, a political rival of Donald Trump, according to testimony unveiled on Friday by the congressional committees pursuing an impeachment inquiry.

Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, “blurted out” that Mulvaney had approved the meeting if the Ukrainians announced an investigation of Burisma, a gas company that formerly employed Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, said Fiona Hill, a national security council member who was deposed by the committees last month.

Hill’s account was corroborated by simultaneously released testimony by another firsthand witness to the conversation, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.

Look, if Mulvaney were the kind of guy who wouldn’t do terrible things just because Donald Trump told him to, Donald Trump would never have made him acting chief of staff.

Hill described for investigators a 10 July meeting attended by herself, Sondland, nationals security adviser John Bolton, Ukrainian officials and others.

Hill testified:

“Then Ambassador Sondland blurted out: ‘Well, we have an agreement with the chief of staff for a meeting if these investigations in the energy sector start.’ …And Ambassador Bolton immediately stiffened and ended the meeting.”

Awkward.

And speaking of special rules for women – a conversation among some feminists on Twitter brought up the familiar issue of Why is it always women who have to wear the torture shoes or tight lacing or tiny dress in freezing cold?

Jennifer Lawrence has criticized “sexist” media coverage of her fashion choices in a new Facebook post.

The Oscar-winning actor, currently on a press tour for thriller Red Sparrow, responded to comments suggesting that the sleeveless Versace outfit worn during a photocall in London implied that she was being mistreated alongside her coat-wearing male co-stars.

“Wow. I don’t really know where to get started on this ‘Jennifer Lawrence wearing a revealing dress in the cold’ controversy,” she wrote. “This is not only utterly ridiculous, I am extremely offended. That Versace dress was fabulous, you think I’m going to cover that gorgeous dress up with a coat and a scarf? I was outside for five minutes. I would have stood in the snow for that dress because I love fashion and that was my choice.”

An article in Jezebel had the headline, Please Give Jennifer Lawrence a Dang Coat, showing the actor’s co-stars, Joel Edgerton and Jeremy Irons among them, wearing large coats and scarves.

John Phillips/Getty Images

Oh hey, you know what, there’s something else to notice about that photograph. See the tidy symmetry? Two men, then Jennifer Lawrence, then two more men. Oh hey guess what this is yet another movie with a man, a man, a man, a man, and a woman. Any hope it passes the Bechdel test?

But to her point. It’s her choice, she says – but is it, really? On a superficial level maybe it is, maybe nobody told her to wear a glam dress and glam shoes, but realistically, could she have shown up for a photocall dressed exactly the way the men are? Could the men have shown up dressed the way she is?

Come on. There are conventions about these things, and they’re not all that relaxed. Lawrence can dress the way the men are on her own time, but not when she’s doing glam duty on the job. The men cannot dress the way Lawrence is unless they decide to “transition.” It’s not a mere coincidence that the way the men are dressed leaves them able to run if they need to while Lawrence is quite literally hobbled by what she’s wearing. No doubt she does love fashion, but that doesn’t mean we can’t question the norms of what both sexes are allowed or pressured to wear.

cazz pointed out this Harvard Business Review article.

Susan Fiske and her colleagues have shown that people seem to universally use two dimensions to judge others: competence and warmth. We decided to test for both of those in addition to confidence. As a proxy for the likelihood of being promoted, we also tested for influence, on the theory that people who are seen as influential are more likely to be promoted to leadership roles.

We conducted a study analyzing the judgments that colleagues made regarding the competence and warmth of 236 engineers working in project teams at a multinational software development company. As part of their performance evaluation, the engineers were evaluated online by their supervisor, peers, and collaborators on competence and warmth.

A total of 810 raters provided this confidential evaluation. A year later, we collected a second wave of data on the same 236 engineers about their apparent confidence at work and their influence in the organization. This time, a total of 1,236 raters provided information.

Our study, which has been accepted for presentation at the Academy of Management’s conference in August, shows that men are seen as confident if they are seen as competent, but women are seen as confident only if they come across as both competent and warm. Women must be seen as warm in order to capitalize on their competence and be seen as confident and influential at work; competent men are seen as confident and influential whether they are warm or not.

Sigh. Of course they are, of course they must. It doesn’t surprise, but it does depress. It doesn’t depress any less – quite the contrary – when we remember we all do it.

Personal experience and empirical research suggest that it’s not enough for women to be merely as gregarious, easygoing, sociable, and helpful as men. To get credit for being warm — and to have their other strengths recognized — they might need to be even more so.

I still remember my first performance evaluation as an assistant lecturer: I was told to be more “nurturing.” I had gone to just as many social events as the men had, had been just as gregarious with my students. But women simply are expected to show more warmth. Studies show, for example, that women’s performance reviews contain nearly twice as much language about being warm, empathetic, helpful, and dedicated to others.

Yeah. Remember Bettelheim’s calumny about the “refrigerator mother”?

Well, I guess women at work don’t need to see.

Wearing glasses at work has become an emotive topic in Japan following reports that some firms have told female employees to remove them.

Several local news outlets said some companies had “banned” eyewear for female employees for various reasons.

Among them, some retail chains reportedly said glasses-wearing shop assistants gave a “cold impression”.

If they’re women. Only if they’re women.

I’m going to make a wild guess that it’s not actually a “cold” impression the chains are worrying about, but something more like a “clever” impression. Glasses remind us of reading – so obviously that’s a total turnoff and a waste when it’s a woman. Nobody wants to see clever women. Ew.

The discussion has echoes of a recent workplace controversy in Japan over high heels.

Actor and writer Yumi Ishikawa launched a petition calling for Japan to end dress codes after being made to wear high heels while working at a funeral parlour.

The movement attracted a stream of support and a strong social media following.

Women should look slightly dim and slightly hobbled.

God, it’s almost funny. You know those fundraising ads that political candidates run? Saying donate to my campaign and get a chance to have a beer with the candidate? I’ve seen a lot of them from Warren. Trump must think they’re a cool idea, because he has lots of them too…but in his case it’s a fraud, because nobody ever wins. He cheats even at that. How hard would it be to meet with a fan? Not very, but he doesn’t do it, he just takes their money.

A heavily-promoted contest to win breakfast with President Trump in New York City on September 26 was a fraud. The purported winner of the contest, Joanna Kamis, did not have breakfast with Trump. Instead, she was invited to a breakfast at a New York City restaurant that Trump did not attend. Kamis was later permitted to take a photo with Trump.

The promise of breakfast with Trump was used in hundreds of Facebook ads to entice supporters to donate money. The ads were clear that donors would be entered into a contest to share a meal with Trump. “This is your LAST CHANCE to meet me this quarter, and I really want to discuss our Campaign Strategy for the rest of the year with you over breakfast,” Trump said in a Facebook ad in September.

There were also 20 million mailings, but no breakfast.

The revelation of the fraudulent contest comes two days after Popular Information released the results of an investigation of 15 contests the Trump campaign has held to win meals with Trump. While other campaigns enthusiastically promote photos of candidates dining with low-dollar donors, Popular Information could not find evidence that anyone actually won a meal with Trump.

If there were evidence, would they be sitting on it? Hardly. If the evidence can’t be found that’s because it’s not there.

Richard Painter, a former associate counsel in the Bush White House, told Newsweek that the failure to deliver on the promised meals with Trump could be criminal. “You’re raising campaign cash, you’re lying to people. If you obtain money from people through false pretenses that’s a violation of federal mail fraud and wire fraud statutes,” Painter said.

There’s even a law saying they have to disclose the winners, and they’re even breaking that law. It’s like a compulsion with this guy.

Under numerous state laws, the Trump campaign is required to provide the winner of each contest upon request. That’s why the Trump campaign’s official rules of each contest state it will do so if you send a self-addressed stamped envelope.

REQUESTING RULES, NAME OF WINNER, OR DESCRIPTION OF PRIZE: To receive a written copy of the Promotion rules, the name of the Promotion winner, or a description of the Prize, please send your request and a self-addressed and stamped return envelope to Trump Make America Great Again Committee, 138 Conant Street, 2nd Floor, Beverly, MA 01915.

(Some contests list a different address.)

But a New York Times reporter, Katie Rogers, revealed on Tuesday that she had sent “several letters” via this process but did not receive a response. The Trump campaign’s failure to respond likely violates state law.

Is needing to watch Fox News an alibi?

Giuliani is running the State Department, apparently.

A State Department official told lawmakers that Rudy Giuliani’s attacks were part of a “campaign of lies” against the former Ukraine ambassador, according to a transcript released Thursday.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer’s actions contributed to his decision not to speak out internally about Giuliani in the run up to the July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian President. Kent, who oversees US policy on Ukraine, told lawmakers that he did not the speak to anyone at State to express his concerns about Giuliani because he had previously been told to “keep my head down” after Giuliani attacked him by name.

Kent is a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State while Giuliani is just some guy (and a very crooked sleazy bad sort of guy at that), but it’s Giuliani shutting Kent up about State Department business. Are there any grownups on the premises?

“I did not, in part because after Giuliani attacked me, as well as (then-US ambassador to Ukraine Marie) Yovanovitch and the entire embassy, in his late May interview, I was told to keep my head down and lower my profile in Ukraine,” Kent testified in October.

Because they wouldn’t want to do anything to annoy rando friend of Trump’s, now would they.

Via Louise Moody on Twitter: a woman writes to the Liberal Democrats:

I am gender critical – that means that whilst I believe transgender people should not face and discrimination or abuse for their transgender status, I do not believe people can change biological sex.

The reply is not very inclooosiv.

By the sounds of your email it appears that your values are not aligned with ours so we are probably not the right the party for you.

That’s not telling her she can’t join, which parties probably can’t do at the membership level, but it sure as hell is giving her reason not to. “If you don’t believe that people can change their biological sex your values are not aligned with ours” – so they’re the monster raving loony party now? A view on a material question of fact=non-alignment with all liberal democratic values?

People have lost their damn minds.

Oh no, an academic – at Goldsmiths no less! – pretended to be non-binary. Pretended! Would you believe it?!

A university academic has sparked outrage after claiming to be transgender and asking students to call her ‘Mx Tippy Rampage’ before admitting it was a satirical character for a book.

Dawn Mellor, who was ‘the preferred tutor for transgender and non-binary students’ at Goldsmiths University in south-east London, inhabited the ‘toxic and unpleasant’ character online for several years.

Mellor, who demanded the use of gender neutral pronouns, has now been blasted by the LGBTQ+ community for ‘treating transgender lives as a… performance piece.’

A performance piece – how could nonbinary identity possibly be seen as a performance piece?!

An LGBT+ officer at fellow London university Queen Mary blasted Mellor on Twitter.

Florence, of QMUL Labour Society, said: ‘A lecturer at Goldsmiths has been pretending to be non binary for four years for a f****** book she’s been writing… Dawn Mellor you should be ashamed.’

The university officer added: ‘Dawn Mellor has been going by “Tippy Rampage”, who has presented as non-binary with they/them pronouns for YEARS, and had become the preferred tutor choice for trans/nb students, and it’s all turned out to be writing material.’

Another said: ‘This is such a disgusting breach of trust and I’m offended and so hurt on behalf of the trans/nb community who must’ve trusted her.’

How could they not have trusted her? How could anyone? It’s absolutely forbidden to doubt anyone’s Idenniny, remember?

Age won’t save you, political office won’t save you, time at Auschwitz won’t save you.

An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor in Italy has been assigned police guards for protection after receiving hundreds of threats on social media.

Liliana Segre, who was sent to the notorious Auschwitz death camp at 13, has been subjected to a barrage of anti-Semitic messages in recent days.

Auschwitz was a work camp as well as a death camp. She necessarily must have been sent to the work camp, because if she hadn’t she wouldn’t be alive now. There was no waiting period: it was straight from the train to the Zyklon B room. Anne and Margot Frank were also in the work camp, where they died of typhus days before the Russians reached Auschwitz.

It comes after Ms Segre, an Italian life senator, called for parliament to establish a committee to combat hate.

The motion passed despite a lack of support by Italy’s right-wing parties.

Members of the nationalist League party, led by Matteo Salvini, the centre-right Forza Italia and the far-right Brothers of Italy all abstained from the vote in Milan last week.

The pro-hate alliance.

The motion called for the establishment of an extraordinary commission in Italy to combat all forms of racism, anti-Semitism, incitement to hatred and violence on ethnic and religious grounds.

Well naturally racists and anti-Semites and people who enjoy inciting hatred and violence aren’t going to like that.

Segre said she felt like a Martian after all the abstentions.

Since then, she has reported receiving as many as 200 hate messages a day.

Some of the threats have been so serious that the prefect of Milan, Renato Saccone, held a meeting on Wednesday with the committee for security and public order, where it was agreed that Ms Segre needed police protection.

May she live long and prosper.