Southbank chief in fresh row over ‘anti-Semitic’ conspiracy theory
The chairman of the Southbank Centre is facing fresh calls to resign after sharing an allegedly “anti-Semitic conspiracy theory” on social media.
Misan Harriman used Instagram to repost a claim that Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, who are Jewish, were “selling off the Albanian coastline to Jewish billionaires and [an] Israeli military project”.
Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are building high-end luxury resorts in the country, with major investment from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The post shared by Mr Harriman was from a social media account called geopolitics._.7889 which has posted anti-Semitic, pro-Russia, pro-China and pro-Iran content.
A Telegraph reader commented below the article:If anyone white spoke like this man the police would turn up in numbers. The Government would be outraged and charges would be fast tracked through court so an example was made as to what happens to anyone inciting racial hatred in this Country! Obviously because this man is black it’s not a crime! The two tier system isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a FACT!
Meanwhile the Guardian supports Mr Harriman because he's Nigerian.
1Recently an unpleasant man saw actress Helen Mirren in the street and called her a Zionist bitch. She's a Catholic from my home town and not Jewish but the English papers ran it on their front pages for days - and that included the left wing Metro. Mere abuse cannot be defamatory under English common law but had she been Jewish the man might have been arrested and put in goal.
Cancel culture is yet another baleful thing America has given the world, like war in Ukraine, illegal wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, murders, piracy, the 1960s social revolution and woke, but at least Americans have free speech and don't get arrested for opinions.
Google's AI Gemini links to the Telegraph article and says:
- Conspiracy Theories: The page has promoted well-known anti-Semitic tropes, such as claiming that Jewish billionaires dictate international land grabs or are involved in foreign policy control. [1]
- Global Intrigue Narratives: Content from the account frequently targets specific geopolitical entities, having previously posted material equating Israel with Nazi Germany and spreading unverified claims that the CIA operates globally to manipulate Islamist terror groups and orchestrate attacks
Americans invented cancel culture? In Macaulay's review of Moore's Life of Byron, I find
ReplyDelete"We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect, very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more."
Well argued, sir! A passage the first sentence of which I often quote. I fell in love with Macaulay when I was 12 and still am even though he was a Whig dog.
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