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Comment by mandmandam | Hacker News Reader

You could write a book about how egregiously stupid that is.

And on such an important topic! It's horrifying that grown adults take this bullshit at face value.

Like - we know for a fact, thanks to many leaks, that scientists believed lableak was possible and even likely, that they were pressured from "on high" to say otherwise.

We know for a fact that scientists and others who talked about the lableak theory - at all - had their posts delete, suppressed, "fact-checked", restricted, and were even banned or shadow-banned.

So for that to be said with a straight face - it's vomitous. It's about as daft as calling Corbyn an anti-semite, or calling protestors who want a Gaza ceasefire 'violent extremists' and 'Hamas supporters'. Media's gonna media, I guess.

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Yeah it's just guilt by association, and a lazy way of avoiding the arguments.

Are there Sinophobes that support the lab leak theory? Yes.

Are there Hamas supporters that attend Gaza ceasefire demonstrations? Yes.

Doesn't mean that you can just write off the entire arguments of each group.

The "racism" thing is always brought up in any criticism of the Chinese government, but nobody really believes it, especially because of how many Chinese-Americans take the stance against China.

> we know for a fact, thanks to many leaks, that scientists believed lableak was possible and even likely, that they were pressured from "on high" to say otherwise

Do we know that for a fact?

You can read authenticated Slack channel transcripts where they say exactly that, so yes. The room was even called #project-wuhan_engineering

[[citation needed]] :p

You can just search for it, you know.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/secret-messages-behind-lab-l...

>or calling protestor who want a Gaza ceasefire 'violent extremists'

You're doing an egregious sanitization of what a lot of participants of the Palestine protests defend, establishing a Caliphate for one.[0]

There are valid reasons to call Corbyn an anti-Semite. I will list them below, they are far too many.[1]

None of these examples are comparable to the pressure to label the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy.

[0]https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/anti-israel-protest-in-essen-si...

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/21/do-not-forg...

Some of the evidence that supports calling Corbyn an anti semite are:

- Corbyn wrote the foreword for a book that claims Jews control banks and the press[2].

- Corbyn expressed support for a self-described Holocaust denier and others accused of anti-Semitism[2].

- Corbyn laid a wreath at the graves of Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972[2].

- Corbyn failed to suspend or expel members of his party who engaged in anti-Semitic conduct, such as calling Jewish people "child killers", "Tory Jews" and "Zio scum"[3].

- Corbyn rejected the internationally accepted definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance[4].

- Corbyn was formally investigated by the UK's anti-racism watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which found that Labour had unlawfully discriminated against, harassed and victimized Jewish people[5].

- Corbyn refused to apologize for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party in a BBC interview, and claimed that the issue had been "dramatically overstated for political reasons" by his opponents[6].

- Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party over his reaction to the anti-Semitism report, but later reinstated after he said he regretted his comments[7].

- Corbyn lost the support and trust of many Jewish voters and organizations, who feared that he would pose a threat to their safety and security if he became prime minister[8].

[2] Jeremy Corbyn | Politics | The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/jeremy-corbyn/2023/feb/....

[3] Mike Katz on Twitter: "It's beyond time @guardian stopped giving Corbyn .... https://twitter.com/mikekatz/status/1628175186947080196.

[4] Politics | The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics.

[5] Jeremy Corbyn and Labour's anti-Semitism row explained - BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-43893791.

[6] Document lists 9 instances of anti-Semitism by Corbyn among thousands .... https://www.timesofisrael.com/document-lists-9-instances-of-....

[7] Labour suspends Jeremy Corbyn over reaction to anti-Semitism report - BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54730425.

[8] Labour suspends Jeremy Corbyn over reaction to anti-Semitism report - BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54730425.

[9] Jeremy Corbyn's Anti-Semitism Crisis | The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/jeremy-cor....

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2022/01/20/the-bbc-finally-admit...

> As The Canary extensively reported during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, figures from the Conservative Party, the Labour right, and the establishment media orchestrated a transparently politically-motivated smear campaign against him. Their weapon of choice was employing a litany of bogus accusations of antisemitism to paint the lifelong anti-racism campaigner as some kind of bigot.

> The purpose of the campaign was straightforward – they sought to derail his chances of becoming prime minister and distract attention from his (widely popular) policy proposals. Their motive was equally straightforward – they rightly feared the threat that a Corbyn-led government would pose to the status quo and their own political and economic interests. Now, one of the major players in this campaign has admitted that its whole underlying premise was false all along.

It was an utterly ridiculous smear campaign.

Corbyn was popular, would have disrupted the status quo, said true things, and helped poor people; so he was smeared as an anti-semite and IRA supporter, lol. It's terribly ignorant, and dangerous, to be taken in by such incredibly obvious hit-jobs.

That opinion piece doesn't address any of the points I've made.

I judge Corbyn's antisemitism based on his own actions, of which I listed many, not what journalists say positively or negatively of it.

> - Corbyn rejected the internationally accepted definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance[4].

> [4] Politics | The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics.

Sorry, is your citation for this point the Guardian's entire politics section? Four years ago that would have been pretty accurate, admittedly, but today, this is an absolutely non-serious thing to post.

In any case, it wasn't just Corbyn who opposed incorporating the IHRA definition into disciplinary rules, it was, amongst others, the guy who wrote it:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/antise...

> Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Well yeah. I would hope that a foreign nation that we (the US) so consistently arm, fund, and diplomatically support would be held to higher standards than one we don't.

Is there a quote from Corbyn himself somewhere in this?

I've read through these, along with Wikipedia's sources on Corbyn, and it seems like the answer is no.

I found this https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1724334900344455425

> You could write a book about how egregiously stupid that is. And on such an important topic! It's horrifying that grown adults take this bullshit at face value.

Sorry but I'm not inclined to keep reading after this.

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