Angela Raynor

[Toodles McGinty]

Also, given that I actually agreed that Socialism and Communism, while related, are not the same thing, your idea that I am "reinforcing the misconception of equivalence between Socialism and Communism" makes even less sense.

As I said, and substantiated with a video clip, the person who recently and memorably did just that, i.e. "reinforce the misconception of equivalence between Socialism and Communism", was Socialist Labour Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell.

I still don't think you quite get the context.

The situation was that McDonell had just accused his opposing number of selling off assets to the Chinese. Osborne's 'new found comrades'. It was a stunt, political theatre. Well judged or not is another thing.

And the Communist, in this instance, is Osborne.

So how does that reinforce the equivalence between Socialism and Communism? How does McDonnell reinforce anything by mocking Osborne as a Communist? Or calling him 'comrade'?

I suppose if you post a clip deliberately out of context, some might be stupid enough to fall for it, but I'd reckon most would have at least considered it odd that McDonnell would start throwing Little Red Books around the place. Just as I doubt people would think he'd become a fascist if he produced a copy of 'Mein Kampf'. Or become a mechanic if he'd brandished a Haynes 1979 Ford Escort manual.

Unless of course, they really can't understand the difference between Socialism and Communism. In which case I'm wasting my time on the ignorant. As I said, I'm not dumb enough to think all Tories are fascists, goose stepping all over the place. How on earth does anyone think the left wing equivalent must be true?

[Desert Region]

I still don't think you quite get the context.

The situation was that McDonell had just accused his opposing number of selling off assets to the Chinese. Osborne's 'new found comrades'. It was a stunt, political theatre. Well judged or not is another thing.

And the Communist, in this instance, is Osborne.

So how does that reinforce the equivalence between Socialism and Communism? How does McDonnell reinforce anything by mocking Osborne as a Communist? Or calling him 'comrade'?

I suppose if you post a clip deliberately out of context, some might be stupid enough to fall for it, but I'd reckon most would have at least considered it odd that McDonnell would start throwing Little Red Books around the place. Just as I doubt people would think he'd become a fascist if he produced a copy of 'Mein Kampf'. Or become a mechanic if he'd brandished a Haynes 1979 Ford Escort manual.

Unless of course, they really can't understand the difference between Socialism and Communism. In which case I'm wasting my time on the ignorant. As I said, I'm not dumb enough to think all Tories are fascists, goose stepping all over the place. How on earth does anyone think the left wing equivalent must be true?

You continue to believe I am ignorant of what McDonnell was trying to do - but I wasn't and I'm not.

I still don't think you quite get the context.

I am though pleased to see that you've dropped your notion that I was posting the clip "as though McDonnell carries around a copy of Mao's book and regularly quoted from it." I said nothing about that, as you now seem to realise.

The situation was that McDonell had just accused his opposing number of selling off assets to the Chinese. Osborne's 'new found comrades'. It was a stunt, political theatre. Well judged or not is another thing.

No.

"Well judged or not" is not "another thing". In terms of "reinforcing the misconception of equivalence between Socialism and Communism" it is the thing.

I quoted this:

I think, as a ridiculously large amount of people seem to do, you see some kind of equivalence between Socialism and Communism.

My replies have repeatedly agreed and acknowledged that Socialism and Communism, while related, are different.

I suppose if you post a clip deliberately out of context...

Yes, you do keep on supposing about that. While I keep on demonstrating that that's something I didn't do.

Unless of course, they really can't understand the difference between Socialism and Communism. In which case I'm wasting my time on the ignorant.

You expect the electorate to understand the difference between two related political ideologies? Many people aren't as interested in politics as you or me are.

So how does that reinforce the equivalence between Socialism and Communism? How does McDonnell reinforce anything by mocking Osborne as a Communist? Or calling him 'comrade'?

I could continue trying to explain to you (the self-evident point) of how the then Socialist Labour Shadow Chancellor bringing a copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book out of his pocket at the despatch box and then reading from it reinforced "the misconception of equivalence between Socialism and Communism" - a misconception that you yourself observed that "a ridiculously large amount of people seem to do."

Instead, after doing one of those "quick Googles" I'm providing these links and quotes from Guardian articles from the time...


John McDonnell under fire for quoting Mao Zedong in Commons

However, critics were quick to point out that it may not have been wise to quote from a communist leader who has been blamed for the famine that cost up to 45 million lives in China during the Great Leap Forward.

Some Labour MPs sat stony-faced on the frontbench during the episode. One shadow cabinet minister said afterwards that the main gripe among his colleagues was that the stunt had been a distraction at a time when McDonnell should have been concentrating on attacking the Tories about spending cuts.

Angela Eagle, the shadow business secretary, said she thought the joke had “probably backfired a bit”, while the former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie told the BBC: “There are all sorts of stunts and things that can happen in the banter in the House of Commons.

“I’m not sure on this occasion it will achieve quite what John was hoping it to achieve,” he said.

Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary, said he was not sure why McDonnell had referred to Mao as a joke.

“The last politicians that I quoted, who have inspired me, are Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Keir Hardie – they’re the ones I tend to quote. But that’s my choice. I haven’t quoted a communist before and I have no intention of doing so in the future,” he said.

It emerged later that the video of the speech uploaded to the shadow chancellor’s YouTube page had been edited to remove the Mao reference.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...george-osborne


John McDonnell’s Mao moment is a dirty trick on his own party

The shadow chancellor may as well have unfurled the red flag, climbed up to the strangers’ gallery and waved the Little Red Book about while declaring a people’s soviet

The looks on the faces of the government front bench say it all. They literally cannot believe what they are seeing. David Cameron is bursting with mirth and happiness – this is beyond anything a Conservative prime minster can dream of. For there on the Table (this item of House of Commons furniture that divides the government and opposition front bench teams should apparently be capitalised) sits The Little Red Book of Chairman Mao. The book that pampered western student revolutionaries touted in the 1960s while cadres of the Cultural Revolution in China carried it as they bullied and punished intellectuals. It sits there on the green baize, bloodily, gorily, insanely and absurdly red, after shadow chancellor John McDonnell produced it, quoted from it and then flung it in George Osborne’s direction, attempting to make a satirical point about Osborne’s cosying up to China, affecting to offer him advice on how he might learn from his new friends – yet apparently not seeing the potential danger of a shadow chancellor seen as “far left” producing the Bible of the far, far, far, far left.

Cameron’s incredulous hilarity is understandable. For almost a century, since the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Conservative party and Conservative press have at times thrown accusations of Marxism revolutionary aims and Communist sympathies at the Labour party – a party that has for most of its history been in reality a moderate, cautious, broad church of reformists and centrists and sensible trade unions. To make the Marxist slur even start to stick, forgeries and exaggerations were needed. In 1924 the infamous forged Zinoviev Letter published by the Daily Mail purported to prove links between the Bolshevik regime and the British Labour movement.

But in 2015 there’s no need for any dirty tricks from the right. In this picture McDonnell has just played a dirty trick on his own party. He’s brought one of the defining icons of revolutionary Marxist politics into the House of Commons, brandished it and quoted it, leaving it to glare in all its redness on the parliamentary Table. He may as well have unfurled the red flag, climbed up to the strangers’ gallery and waved it about while declaring a people’s soviet. Perhaps that is his next astute political move.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ok-dirty-trick


And from John Crace...

McDonnell's great leap forward puts Osborne one step ahead

He could have riffed on George Osborne’s weak spots. It’s not as if he wasn’t spoiled for choice. He could have pointed out the autumn statement was predicated on the Office for Budget Responsibility finding £25bn of extra tax revenues down the back of the sofa in the four months since the last budget: money that could just as easily disappear back into the sofa in the next four months. He could have observed that the chancellor had just made affordable housing only slightly less unaffordable. He could have wondered why the Tory bar was now so low that George had got the biggest cheer for doing nothing by not cutting police funding.

He could certainly have made capital from Osborne screwing up working tax credits so badly in his previous budget that he had been forced to come back to the Commons for a resit. He could have even gone into profit by noting that the chancellor had made himself look a halfwit by falling into his own welfare cap elephant trap. But the shadow chancellor doesn’t do capital or profit. He does dialectics. Apocalypse Mao.

Replying to a budget speech that you haven’t seen is one of the more thankless tasks, and the faces on the Labour benches were looking increasingly grim as John McDonnell bumbled, fumbled and stumbled his way through his first effort. But John didn’t care, because John knew he had his own very special rabbit up his sleeve. His eyes sparkled as the moment when he would unite his party and sweep the Tories away came nearer. “Timing, John, timing,” he told himself, his hand foraged inside his jacket pocket. Out of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book.

“We learn to do economic work from all who know how, no matter who they are,” he said beatifically. “We must esteem them as teachers, learning from them respectfully and conscientiously, but we must not pretend to know what we do not know.” Having made his point, he threw the Little Red Book across the dispatch box towards the chancellor.

John could already hear the Labour MPs behind him rise to their feet, cheering, as the Tories raised their white handkerchiefs in surrender while voluntarily asking to be sent to the pig farms for re-education. Let three hundred and thirty flowers bloom. The long march was over and his time had come. They think it’s all over ... It is Mao.

It only gradually dawned on John that it was the government benches who were doing all the shouting and laughing. Behind him, only the sound of one door slamming. The blood drained from the faces of dozens of Labour MPs, who had been looking to the chancellor’s statement for a glimmer of light after weeks of being wrongfooted on security. Some upped and left. Shots rang out from the Commons chamber. Better to self-purge than to be purged.

John was bewildered. When he’d tried out that gag the night before at the secretariat of his local politburo, everyone had fallen about laughing. “The Commons will love it,” Chairman Jez Cor-Bao had said. “No one will imagine for a minute that this will merely confirm many people’s view that the Labour party has been taken over by a load of old commies who admire a man now remembered mainly in the west for killing 45 million of his own people during the great leap forward. Why not go the whole hog and quote from Marx and Lenin, too?”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...pending-review

[greenmachine]

I dont think any unmarried trollope that was egged at 16 is in a position to adopt the moral high ground.

[Toodles McGinty]

...
John was bewildered. When he’d tried out that gag the night before at the secretariat of his local politburo, everyone had fallen about laughing. “The Commons will love it,” Chairman Jez Cor-Bao had said. “No one will imagine for a minute that this will merely confirm many people’s view that the Labour party has been taken over by a load of old commies who admire a man now remembered mainly in the west for killing 45 million of his own people during the great leap forward. Why not go the whole hog and quote from Marx and Lenin, too?”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...pending-review

That's it. A gag. A piece of political theatre, as I said.

As I also said, well judged or not. Obviously not, as the pundits weren't too happy.

The fact remains he was directing his 'Communism' jibe at Osborne. In the context of Osborne suddenly getting chummy with the Chinese.

If people took a direct swipe at Osborne to mean 'look everyone, I'm a Commie', that's on them. It's blatantly obvious to me what is going on.

So if Socialism and Communism are related, we can agree then that Right wing politics, or Conservatism and Fascism are related. As illustrated below.

When someone refers to the 'far left', they shouldn't be too offended that they are referred to as a fascist, or Nazi, surely? After all, if someone's brain can't distinguish between one side of the political spectrum, they surely can't suddenly distinguish the other. One big red block to the left, but 50 shades of blue on the right doesn't really work, does it? Even to those most ignorant of politics.

As long as we're on the same page.

[Desert Region]

I dont think any unmarried trollope that was egged at 16 is in a position to adopt the moral high ground.

Vile comment!

[Toodles McGinty]

I dont think any unmarried trollope that was egged at 16 is in a position to adopt the moral high ground.

Lovely. A lesson in the very worst snobbery. A narrow minded bigot.

You're quite despicable.

But console yourself you're in the majority.

Yes, unmarried 'trollopes'. What should they do? Know their place? Have the filthy b@$t@rds ripped from their common wombs?

Anything but progress in life to the upper echelons of British politics, right?

Or just gas them?

After all, on the accepted political spectrum of the board, you're an utter Nazi.

[Desert Region]

Lovely. A lesson in the very worst snobbery. A narrow minded bigot.

You're quite despicable.

But console yourself you're in the majority.

Yes, unmarried 'trollopes'. What should they do? Know their place? Have the filthy b@$t@rds ripped from their common wombs?

Anything but progress in life to the upper echelons of British politics, right?

Or just gas them?

After all, on the accepted political spectrum of the board, you're an utter Nazi.

There seems to be a few posters on this site who hold views from another era. "Unmarried" as a criticism is nowadays utterly bizarre.

[Desert Region]

That's it. A gag. A piece of political theatre, as I said.

As I also said, well judged or not. Obviously not, as the pundits weren't too happy.

The fact remains he was directing his 'Communism' jibe at Osborne. In the context of Osborne suddenly getting chummy with the Chinese.

If people took a direct swipe at Osborne to mean 'look everyone, I'm a Commie', that's on them. It's blatantly obvious to me what is going on.

So if Socialism and Communism are related, we can agree then that Right wing politics, or Conservatism and Fascism are related. As illustrated below.

When someone refers to the 'far left', they shouldn't be too offended that they are referred to as a fascist, or Nazi, surely? After all, if someone's brain can't distinguish between one side of the political spectrum, they surely can't suddenly distinguish the other. One big red block to the left, but 50 shades of blue on the right doesn't really work, does it? Even to those most ignorant of politics.

As long as we're on the same page.

Alternatively, you could simply concede that I was correct!

[Toodles McGinty]

Alternatively, you could simply concede that I was correct!

I concede that people are stupid enough to not see an attempt at a gag when they see one. Pi$$ poor as it was.

[Desert Region]

I concede that people are stupid enough to not see an attempt at a gag when they see one. Pi$$ poor as it was.

There was a consensus -even among Guardian columnists- that the truly stupid one in that was Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. He self-described as a Socialist and previously as a Marxist and decided to quote in Parliament from Mao's Little Red Book.

A ridiculous, dumb decision.

The joke was on him and Labour, as even Guardian columnists conceded.

[greenmachine]

Vile comment!

So if your daughtetr had told you at 16 she was having a ******* you would think you had done a good job of bringing her up and had taught her how to behave. I doubt it.

[local]

Sorry to shock you but girls and boys at 16 have sex its quite common and was a million years ago when I was young.


I don't like the woman but I can't condemn her for what many of us were and are doing.

It is legal, quite natural and allegedly quite enjoyable

[greenmachine]

Lovely. A lesson in the very worst snobbery. A narrow minded bigot.

You're quite despicable.

But console yourself you're in the majority.

Yes, unmarried 'trollopes'. What should they do? Know their place? Have the filthy b@$t@rds ripped from their common wombs?

Anything but progress in life to the upper echelons of British politics, right?

Or just gas them?

After all, on the accepted political spectrum of the board, you're an utter Nazi.

I am not a Nazi but it has become so messy and considered normal to just spit out kids when not to long ago it brought shame on families. Tell me what is wrong with having children in a stable family environment.? Where kids know their grand parents, aunts and uncles, cousins , brothers and sisters.

[Desert Region]

So if your daughtetr had told you at 16 she was having a ******* you would think you had done a good job of bringing her up and had taught her how to behave. I doubt it.

Females having sex and becoming pregnant are facts of life! It happens! You'll often find there's a male involved, too, you know, doing the impregnating! Btw, does the male involved deserve any of your Mary Whitehouse style opprobrium?!

Do you consider her child to be 'illegitimate' and her to be an 'unfit' mother? Should unmarried women still be forced into a workhouse or a hostel or an asylum while their child is put into care or adopted?! What century does your mind reside in?

And for goodness sake, who nowadays still uses the word, "trollop"!

[local]

Not heard the Nazi charm offensive for a while.