Is Owen Jones overacting or Correct?

  • Waylander [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    He's right that it's a shitty tweet which does the British left no favours. The sad fact is that in the UK the left is much more heavily scrutinised than the right, and while to an extent there's nothing that can be done to stop media bias, giving them fodder like this -- even if you're well-intentioned -- is really dumb and tonedeaf at best, and outright marginalising the Holocaust at worst.

    (Also friendly reminder that along with 6 million Jews, the Holocaust also killed millions of Soviet civilians and POWs, hundreds of thousands of Romani, hundreds of thousands of disabled people, and a bunch of other groups based on ethnicity, sexuality, religion or politics. And if being reminded of those details makes you feel worse about the original tweet than when you thought it was 'just' about the Holocaust as it affected Jews, perhaps take a second to reflect on that.)

    • akio [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Thank you for your perspective. I see a lot of parallels with the language and political climate we currently have with that of pre nazi Germany. The (former) Conservative party work and pension secretary Ian Duncan Smith even used the term work will set them free when he was criticised for his policies which were seen to greatly hurt the poor and disabled. Non white people are being used as scape goats for the mishandling of the covid 19 crisis and are being set up to be blamed for the government opening up the economy too soon. Also just to point this out some of the governments key advisers are proud and open eugenicists.

      I don't know why but your last paragraph seems to be accusing me of being pro Holocaust. I want to clarify that I am definitely against mass murder of any group of people including Jewish people. (I know such a brave statement) I also prefer it if we did not repeat history.

      • Waylander [he/him,they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        The last paragraph wasn't aimed at you in particular - I'm more trying to make the point that some users on here (after the recent antisemitism debacle where Labour staffers deliberately sat on reports of antisemitism and then leaked the backlog to the press to oust a leader they didn't like) won't take Holocaust comparisons as seriously as they should. It's a sad truth that despite being such a horrific event, it's often joked about/not treated so seriously. People downplaying the original tweet that Owen Jones called out aren't necessarily doing that, but a few of them could use a reminder of the scale of the atrocities.

        Also, probably most people on this forum would have been persecuted/killed under the Nazis so there's that. They really didn't like Communists.

        • akio [none/use name]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 years ago

          Thank you for being patient with me. Once again I do appreciate your perspective on this. Have a good weekend :)