As the Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle report today, a 30-foot swastika has been daubed on the company buildings of Brexit Party candidate Lance Forman, the son of a Holocaust survivor.
According to the i, Mr. Forman said "If this is to do with me standing for the Brexit Party, people live in a topsy-turvy world", adding "London Brexit Party candidates are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Hindi, Baha’i - no party is as diverse. The one thing we all passionately have in common is our belief in democracy."
Appalling - and why aren’t the BBC reporting it?
ReplyDeleteWill they report Adam Boulton's appalling comment?
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/adamboultonSKY/status/1126145066639273984
This guy has been on a mission to destroy anyone with populist credentials by selective out-of-context quotation. Now he's desperately trying to deny the plain meaning of his tweet.
Appalling. Yes, I saw that too, he has deleted it but there are many screenshots of it in the comments below. He has tweeted a hollow apology.
DeleteIt's beyond appalling. Once I would have thought it unthinkable in modern Britain, but now...
ReplyDeleteHarry Cole, deputy editor of the Mail on Sunday tweeted this yesterday too:
Delete"Caught up with some friends over from DC and felt a terrible stab of shame when I asked how their trip had been and they said they got spat at on Edgware Road for wearing yarmulkes. What is going on in this city. How is this being tolerated?"
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1126122334593650688
Craig, if you look at the link I gave above you'll see Adam Boulton tweeted in response to that: "No excuse but it is a Middle Eastern quarter." !!!
DeleteHe's since removed the tweet claiming his words were "misunderstood".
Misunderstood how? That sort of comment can always be seen as a negative comment on the victims (Boulton doesn't seem to share our outrage or think there is anything wrong with visitors to this capital having to factor in the possiblity of such appalling behaviour - why?). An alternative reading is that he is simply confirming Trump's comments that there are no go areas in the big cities of Europe. Knowing how viscerally Boulton hates Trump (along with Brexit) that seems an unlikely reading.
So everyone is left puzzled as to how exactly Boulton thinks his words have been "misunderstood".
I have mixed feelings on Twitter, but it surely cannot be bettered at providing smart media folk the unique opportunity for exposure.
ReplyDeleteJoining Adam Boulton there is now David Baddiel.
Take a bow, David.
Interesting folk, Remainers.
Whoops...Danny, what were you thinking?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48212693
Perhaps he's going to claim he was "misunderstood" - The Boulton Defence.
It's not just a sacking...he is now like Carol Thatcher an official non person.
\\ The now deleted tweet, which has been circulated on social media, showed an image of a couple holding hands with a chimpanzee dressed in clothes with the caption: "Royal Baby leaves hospital".//
Deletel
\\ "Sorry my gag pic of the little fella in the posh outfit has whipped some up. Never occurred to me because, well, mind not diseased.
His tweet added that it was not about black people: "No mate. Gag pic.
Posh baby chimp. Alerted to circs. Appalled. Deleted. Apologised."
In a following tweet, he added: "Would have used same stupid pic for any other Royal birth or Boris Johnson kid or even one of my own. It's a funny image. (Though not of course in that context.) Enormous mistake, for sure. Grotesque.
"Anyway, here's to ya Archie, Sorry mate."//
Do you really think that Danny Baker is a white supremacist who thinks there shouldn't be any black people in the royal family ?
Of course not.
I guess he was a bit dozy saw a tweet, clicked retweet and moved on
The BBC Article doesn't make it clear if he was just retweeting or constructed the tweet himself.
I wouldn't sack people, just cos they are clumsy on social media,
... mainly cos its inverted racism cos when a black guy tweeted something that got misconstrued they wouldn't get sacked.
Race-Baiter Afua has tweeted the image
Deletehere
To me it's immediately obvious that itsi saying ''osh kid' , and the a second later you realise tgat the face underneath the wide brimmed hat and big overcoat is a monkey.
.. DB should have known to have employed staff to vet his tweets.
posh kid
DeleteWho is the bad guy ?
ReplyDeleteSomeone who sends a tasteless tweet
Or someone who powers the outrage bus, about such tweets
while they don't do anything about actual physical crime ?
This outrage bussing, witch-burning is a kind of thuggery to me.
Each thing has its own context and magnitude.
A bunch of guys in the deep south who drive to a black part of town to take pot shots ,
....that is violent racism.
Some guy who did that swastika graffiti is not the same.
Lord knows why he did it
but one guess is that it is attention seeking
..and that you get a bigger reaction in this case by doing a swastika.
Had his target been something else he would have used a different 'wind up'
eg if the guy was a car dealer, the grafitti would have said 'Fossil fuels are killing the planet'
or 'small dicks drive big cars' etc.
That’s a false equivalence Stew. Those acts you mention are all wrong. Different contexts and magnitude as you say. It’s often a fine line but daubing a swastika on a Jew’s business and tweeting an ape linked to a mixed race birth is straightforward racism and not acceptable.
DeletePeople are more willing to use the word "appalling" about a tweet or a bit of provactive vandalism
Deletethan an actual terrorist attack that killed a few people
.. or a series of systematic grooming gang abuses
This witch-burning behaviour is leveraged for political advantage
.. by claiming offense for small things
whilst letting big crimes by their own side go by
Some people are, most people aren’t. We post on this blog to highlight where we think the media and politicians get it wrong .
DeleteThere are of course a lot of things tangled up here. But I think one can distinguish between:
Delete1. Free speech principles (I don't think Danny Baker should be subject to legal sanction for his tweet).
2. Taking responsibility for the consequences of posting offensive material in a public arena. This will vary between people, depending on their role in society.
3. The BBC use the word "racism" to cover a whole range of phenomena from statistically-justifiable generalisations, to cultural traditions, to appearance mockery, to persecutory race-based political ideologies, to ethnic nationalism, to religious persecution and so on. We should differentiate between these different phenomena.
I saw Danny Baker on some godawful quiz programme a few days back and he said something very non-PC,but v crass and stupid - it was more in a Me-Too area of things. I couldn't believe he'd said it. I did wonder whether he had some form of dementia.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure I disagree with the BBC's decision in this case. This was public, he's employed by the publicly funded broadcaster that still has formal connections to the Crown, the offence it would cause was clear... if he couldn't see the potential for it to be construed as racist (in a genuine sense) then that calls into question his judgement. Put it another way - if you were a teacher or soldier or bank official or doctor who circulated this, you'd very likely get removed from your job. He can't expect to be treated differently.
That’s my view too. There is no way you can tweet a pic like that without understanding the likely consequences. It’s hard to believe he did it in complete innocence.
DeleteConsequences ?
ReplyDeleteIf you make a mistake, you should be able to apologise and move on
This witchburning
is just like a playground pile on