Hobson's Choice?

Labour Party "leader" draws criticism for lauding work containing ‘pure and unequivocal racism’  

   

 “Jewish groups hit out at Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday after it emerged that the Labour party leader had written a FOREWORD for a century-old book [JA Hobson's 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study] containing several anti-Semitic tropes. "                               Financial Times May 1^st                                                                     https://www.ft.com/content/ac5670ec-6c2f-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d    

               

Corbyn’s first sentence describes the book as  a “great tome”   “very powerful,” “brilliant”, as well as “correct and prescient”.

A Guardian columnist, Jonathanl Friedlander, noted that Hobson was not just an accomplished analyst of international politics – for the Manchester Guardian, as it happens – but an egregious anti-Jewish racist.                                                                                           https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/jeremy-corbyn-blind-antisemitism-hobson

• Now Jezza is renowned as an erudite,well read and thoughtful Marxist. 
• He would be well aware of Hobson’s work and its influence on Lenin, the German Sparticus movement,on Hitler’s writings on lebensraum in Mein Kamp:
•  and his view of the Jewish forces behind British and French Imperialism before and after the defeat of Germany in WW I.

CYCLOPS: No ED I am NOT saying that CORBYN is a Nazi 🙈                             

1. Just pointing out Hobson’s influence on early 20^th Century political thought .
2. His view that malign Jewish influence was a major driver of European Imperialism. 
3. One may think that Jezza is totally oblivious to Hobson's thesis even as he wrote a foreword to his seminal work.  
4.  That is quite plausible.   
5. Cyclops would find it hard to argue that it was NOT one of the lacunae in his intellectual journey.

• All this was certainly discussed in Cyclops’ Marxist study classes over 50 years ago
•  Since then there have been multiple Marxist, and other, academic texts debunking Hobson’s thesis that Jewish Capital drove the spread of European Imperialism. 
•  No doubt written by the same Jews who wrote the Protocols and its various codecils.

Corbyn praised this “great tome”even though it was/is widely criticised as anti-Semitic 

inter alia:

1.  It claims Imperialism was driven “by men of a singular and peculiar race who have behind them many centuries of financial experience”.  
2. Hobson was not referring to Tibetans.
3. This “very powerful,” “brilliant”, “correct and prescient” book goes on to argue that 

European countries would not engage in a war "if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it".

Despite the claim of some Apologists

• This analysis is not incidental to but a major thrust and central thesis of the ”Study”. 
• Hobson was well known as virulently anti Semitic the time of the original books publication.
• His thesis was  that imperialism was the policy of great European finance houses controlled by Jews,
• Who invested abroad due to insufficient home demand.  

 In a previous book, Hobson’s bigotry was expressed in more florid terms.

•   Writing that the war between Britain and the Boers in South Africa was the work of            
•  “A small group of international financiers,   
•  German in origin and 
•   Jewish in race"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Going on to say that                                                                                                   
•  The stock exchange, the press and  
• even the liquor trade was “in the hands  of  Jews”.                                     This book was,and is,on the reading list of most ,if not all, University Curriculum in Marxist thought.                                                                                                                   The anti semitic diatribe typically disparaged as an aberration by those course lecturers sympathetic to Hobson.

In an article in the Times yesterday, the Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein, asked:

1. "Did Mr. Corbyn not read the book before he praised it? 
2.  Did he read it but, as with the Mear One mural, not notice that it was anti-Semitic? 
3. Did he realise it but decide it didn't matter because there were other more important things about it?

ED: its Pesach, should there not be four questions?

A Labour spokesman : “Jeremy completely rejects the antisemitic elements of [Hobson’s] analysis.”

 Cyclops: Pointing this out at the time must have slipped his mind🙊

The spokesman added the book had been praised by other politicians but was                                         “clearly a text of its time and its era”

 Asked if Corbyn should apologise given the worries expressed by the Jewish Labour group and others,the spokesman said "some of the blame should be placed on the media".

ED:                                     YOU made that up 👀

CYCLOPS:                         NOPE   ✋

The spokesman conceded 

1. That there was “racially offensive language” in the book,
2.  Not only in relation to anti-Semitism,
3.  But added that it was a “book of its time”. 

The Labour Party said: 

1. "Similarly to other books of its era,               Hobson's work 
2. Contains outdated and offensive references and observations,              and 
3. Jeremy completely rejects the anti-Semitic elements of his analysis."

CYCLOPS seem to recall some recent controversies about some statues and memorial to 

• Cecil Rhodes,
• Robert E.Lee and 
• Winston Churchill .

1. Rhodes believed in the automatic superiority of the white race. A view “common in his time” .
2. Robert E Lee was a slave owner and racist .Also a”product of his time and place ”.
3. Churchill as colonial secretary in 1920s                                                                             a] unleashed Black and Tan thugs on Ireland’s Catholic civilians and                                            b] said of the Kurds and the Sudanese “ I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It] would spread a lively terror.”                                                                                                                                                                      Just like Hobson, all men of their place and time, I suppose.

Can anyone remember the positions taken by Corbyn and McDonald over these recent controversies about removing statues to these chaps?

Look them up!!

Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told the BBC

•  That he was not the first politician to have approved of Hobson [indeed!].
•  Mr. Corbyn was “not unlike other politicians who have quoted Hobson in particular speeches and
•  Indeed written pieces about them”,

OH DEAR OH DEAR- not so much “what about them” ism as “what about us” ism.

By the way

 In his foreword Corbyn wrote, 

• that NATO had been responsible  for a “military reoccupation” of Europe after the second world war 
• by contrast the Soviet Union had — despite its “huge” influence — allowed its allies to act in a more independent manner. 
• Cuba developed an independent foreign policy despite its reliance on Moscow, argued Mr. Corbyn.

A Labour spokesman said that the party’s policy was to support NATO membership

Well that’s OK then.  

Wonder why Labour lost over 100 council seats and six councils last night?

Nothing to do with the Leader I suppose?