Posted on 05/09/2014 12:32:14 AM PDT by Olog-hai
London’s former mayor Ken Livingstone has once again hit headlines for peddling anti-Semitic stereotypes, after he claimed that Jews tend to vote for the right-wing Conservative party because they are wealthy. […]
“If we were talking 50 years ago, the Roman Catholic community, the Irish community in Britain, the Jewish community was solidly Labour. Still the Irish Catholic community is pretty still solidly Labour because it is not terribly rich,” he said, but continued: “As the Jewish community got richer, it moved over to voting for Mrs. Thatcher as they did in Finchley.” […]
Livingstone, who earned the nickname “Red Ken” for his identification with the hard-left faction within Labour, has a long and inglorious record of anti-Semitism. In 2009, he famously embraced radical Islamist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who actively encourages suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and has referred to Jews as “the sons of apes and pigs.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
When I was a kid growing up, the leftists were very Pro-Israel, and pro-Jewish. We learned about the holocaust, read Anne Frank’s diary. And we vowed never to let it happen again. Several of my classmates planned to spend a summer working on an Israeli kibbutz.
Now what is the situation? The mark of a leftist - even a Jewish leftist - is to oppose Israel and support the Palestinians. It has become chic to be anti-Semitic in leftist circles.
What did all this happen?
Why did all this happen?
It happened at least 60+ years ago when Stalin decided the usefulness of Jews had expired and the time had come to complete Hitler's unfinished work.
If only this was true, especially in the US and Canada.
All the anti-Semitism on the left traces back to Karl Marx, who was extremely anti-Semitic.
And Karl Marx was Jewish. Go figure!
Marx had to attack the old established religion(s) in order to establish his own.
Simple: The Left saw that the number of Arab & Muslim voters would outstrip the number of Jewish voters. As an added bonus, they noticed that many Jews would STILL donate to Leftist causes even as their tone got ever more anti-Semitic. So, in effect, they got the best of both worlds: more votes and no decrease in funding.
I loathe Red Ken but what exactly did he say that was wrong? That Jews did well in England and moved out of poverty? And once they had interests, they voted for Thatcher? He also said the dopey Irish Catholics are still voting Labor. No one got annoyed about that.
Sadly, any London Jew that I know (only about two or three) still vote Labor.
It’s the “money hungry Jews” stereotype.
He may have been an ethnic Jew, but he was a stone-cold atheist.
Why are rich people more likely to vote Conservative in England? It is not simply a matter of economic or social stratum. After all, every government in England is socialistic, the Conservatives just a bit less so, and they have other concerns than class warfare.
But people who are upper income usually have something going for them. They are more likely to have a work ethic, self-control, law-abiding habits, better manners, better taste, &c. They are also smarter. Of course such people would be more likely to vote for a sensible party, if they can find one.
As for the Jews, most immigrated at a time when socialism was all the rage. They carried it in their luggage when they came to America, and being intellectual by bent, spread it around. But slowly, some of the more imaginative of them began catching on, and indeed, became libertarian or conservative. If you go through the pantheon of 20th Century conservative heroes in the US (and England as well), many of the best are of Jewish background: Friedman, Mises, Frank Meyer, Krauthammer, and many, many others. In fact, they are among the best. Here in the US, the Jewish electorate has been slow to shift over to the right, but it is happening, particularly for Jews who move away from New York, and start reading things other than the NY Times.
Israel itself was strongly socialist (or even communistic) at the beginning, with nutty Utopian schemes like the kibbutzim. Gradually, they also have been getting a dose of realism. At least most of them have abandoned craven pacifism, although there is (believe it or not) still a large “peace movement” in Israel, which to an outsider like me looks like nothing more than an organized, politicized suicide-pact.
I am not saying that braininess automatically makes one conservative. But I will say that a tiny bit of common-sense wisdom tends to steer one to the right, and people with a bit of ordinary sense and imagination, who will break from the herd because of independent-mindedness, are also more likely to do well economically.
An exception are the “windfall wealthy.” I observe that people who inherit big, or win the lottery, or are movie stars for a few seasons (or sports figures), or stumble into riches quickly through luck in some chancy scheme or another, are less likely to be conservative.
It’s very easy to say “Someone else needs to help these poor people”.
I just don’t see it in this remark. I’m sure that’s the subtext, he’s not a subtle man.
His parents converted to Lutheran before he was born and he was baptized as a child. His father was secular. I doubt Marx considered himself Jewish at all.
I’m not happy with his stereotyping Irish people. He did that as blatantly as he stereotyped Jews.
The fact that a man like that got to be mayor of London is an indicator of how far things have fallen there. Of course, now NYC has someone like de Blasio.
Well, I think it’s foolish they even have a mayor of London. I’ve asked friends who live there why the heck they wanted an extra layer of bureaucracy over their fair city and they just look astonished that I ask the question. Shrug.
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