Benefit of the doubt – Daily Gallery image

14
21

Last night Giovanni Tiso and Russel Brown launched a twitter attack on myself insinuating I was an anti-Semite for an anti-capitalism Christmas image posted in the daily gallery section by the Daily Blog reposter.

Here was the text of the image…

Screen Shot 2013-12-22 at 7.22.43 AM

…they claimed the image of the Santa to the left of that text was a Jewish caricature, I’m on holiday and asked if they could link through to something that highlighted their concerns as I hadn’t seen the post, they did and the image was removed.

I was surprised with the venom of their twitter attacks as the meme was an anti-capitalism Christmas satire, and certainly wasn’t an anti-Semitism statement. What was most amusing was the total lack of a benefit of the doubt and just the defamatory assertion by Tiso and Brown that I and this blog are supposedly anti-Semitic. When Tiso was called racist for his attack on two Maori broadcasters by Donna Awatere Huata, I gave Tiso the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t a double standards racist and when Russell Brown managed to con Maori TV into taking his shit circle jerk TV show, I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it would be more than an aging hipster interviewing his small circle of chums to pat each other on the back for their own sense of magnificence.

I won’t be providing that benefit of doubt from now on, I relish the weekly opportunity to review Brown’s new show on Maori TV and question how and why Maori TV should be propping up a middle class white fog horn like Brown for his unique brand of pretentious wank, and Tiso’s sanctimonious whining has worn through any patience I once had with him.

Insinuating people are anti-Semites is a tactic trick of the IDF, despite Tiso and Browns assertions, I am not an anti-Semite and this blog isn’t anti-Semitic, the image selected by the TDB reposter was an anti-Capitalism piece of satire. It was removed to stop any offense being taken and to end any opportunity by Tiso and Brown to denigrate this blog any more than they usually do.

The right look for converts, the left look endlessly for traitors.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

 

14 COMMENTS

  1. Good call, Bomber. The claims from Brown and Tiso say more about their prejudices than they do about you or TDB.

  2. Message to Brown,Tiso if you Bomber or this blog was what they describe I would not read on a daily basis like I do I point blank refuse to go on Kiwiblog or Whale Oil because they are both progandanists for the Nats and in the case of Slater is just a dangerous piece of work with no credibility keep doing what you are doing missing Citizen A already

  3. Fuck the benefit of the doubt. It’s time to go balls to the wall against this sort of bitchy in-crowd sniping from those aged boomers incapable of making room for alternative POVs. Only b-grade or worse thinkers ever feel threatened by something new or different.

    Tiso is one of those tossers who imagines that if he can seem absolutely non-discriminatory on everything he will have reached some sort of perfection in the eyes of his adoring if moronic audience. The problem is that he tries to achieve this by attacking every position taken by anyone else and so ultimately comes across as a non-person with no real opinions on anything other than what he claims to dislike, which appears to be everything.

    No wonder he’s been exiled to Aotearoa! Even in the northern hemisphere ersatz leftist circle which spawned this brand of non-ideas, that point of view is considered antiquated.

    So sad – what is Tiso gonna do; alternating between criticising opposition to the banking culture for being anti-semitic and espousing the brand of outmoded 80’s feminist theory that ultimately dis-empowers women by claiming they are all victims of a rape culture, leaves him nowhere to go. The consumer culture warriors will consider him a worthless leftie on principal.
    Of course being a male will leave him out in the cold with the women, either because they distrust all men or, they discovered long ago that didactic men such as Tiso, who toe the line that rigidly, are ultimately boring little gender appeasers too busy trying not to be a bloke to ever be spontaneous or original.

    As for Russell Brown , another 80’s throwback, he has always struck me as a typical 3rd rate rock journo, that is a frustrated groupie.
    If only ‘Rusty’ had been born with a vagina, life would have been so much easier. He coulda bonked Robert Plant well John Bonham at least (he’s the right age to have been a tweenie in ’72 when Zepplin did western springs).

    And 10 years after he coulda mouthed the correct bourgeois boomer platitudes to cop the necessary permission to go down on Joe Strummer.

    I’d guess that nowadays it is Barack Obummer or even our own Davey Cunliffe that gets Russell Brown all starry eyed.

    If you think that is too harsh, That’s because you haven’t thought through the obvious, that accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ are subjective, evidence-free ad hominems that are easy to cast & impossible to refute unless one grasps the irrationality of the aspersion.

    This is why claims of anti-semitism are the favourite tactic of the imperialists and zionists who choose to ignore the obvious anti-semitic sub-text of their own race based diatribes & calculated violence against the Jordan Valley’s indigenous population.

  4. I was curious to know what the so-called offending image was, so after a bit of an electronic “paper trail”, managed to find it…

    http://convincingreasons.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/the-tale-of-the-anti-semitic-santa/

    Ummmm… my first impression is that Ole Santa is one ugly bugger.

    Second impression is that he reminds me of a troll. Not quite the cyber variety – more the storybook version.

    But a caricature of Jewish people?!

    Nope, can’t see it.

    The same blogpost on “A communist at Large” presents another image, this time of a Nazi cartoon, caricaturing Jewish businesspeople.

    The blogger, James Robb, sez,

    One of the contributors to the Twitter discussion found this parallel example from an anti-Semitic newspaper in Germany at Christmas time 1929. The similarity of the message is striking: rich Jewish merchants sniggering, “Our people hung their Christ on the cross, and we do a great business on his birthday…

    I’ve compared “Jewish” Santa with the two “Jewish” businessmen – and to be honest, the only vague similarity in appearance is the mouth of the “Jewish” businessman on the left.

    Otherwise than that, all similarities end.

    So, that’s my ten cents plus 15% GST worth. Bad Santa reminds me of a mythical troll, not a Jewish person.

    So if ‘Bomber’s’ intentions were clearly honourable, and the provenance of the image of Bad Santa is lost in time (?) – I fail to see why he got the bollicking he did? And why some folk appeared only too willing to interpret this matter in the worst possible way.

    In the years I’ve read Bomber’s writings, never once have I detected even a molecule of anti-semitism from him.

    And considering Martyn is not one to hold back on his views, he’d not be able to hide such odious views for longer than, oh, say, a micro-second?

    By the way…

    This is now the second time I’ve encountered demands for a supposedly “anti-semitic” image to be removed. Either it’s a coincidence, or some folk are a tad overly sensitive and attempting to establish ‘ownership’ over certain themes.

    I’d like to think it’s a coincidence.

    • Ownership? You’re bloody welcome to it, mate.

      I’m not Jewish. I’m also famously insensitive. I do, however, know my history, and I can tell when someone’s sourced their graphics in a hurry without looking at them properly or thinking about what they actually portray.

      I don’t think Bomber or the Daily Blog are anti-Semitic. I just think you’re careless and lousy at apologies.

      If you want people to stop demanding you remove anti-Semitic images, it’s very simple. Just stop using anti-Semitic images.

    • Kia ora Frank,

      I don’t think anyone is accusing Bomber of antisemitism. If any people are, they’re wrong.

      But the image was a bad call. The elongated nose played on the hook nose stereotype, the bushy eyebrows and wispy beard spoke to the prohibition on razors from the Torah and the Eye of Providence is often associated with Zionist conspiracies. And then the reference to banks in the text makes it clear that the image is a caricature of Jewish people (the evil Jewish bankers controlling the financial system etc etc). To remove all doubt the image is popular on white supremacists sites.

      Anywho, Merry Christmas to you all.

  5. I’m with Grant on this one. The first thing that came to my mind was the caricature of Fagin from Oliver Twist.
    The archetypal Jewish nasty from the Victorian era.

  6. Perhaps context is everrything and in this situation Bomber has used an anti-semitic image in a manner that over-rides it’s history and gives new meaning?

    After all, if the Nazis could appropriate the swastika from Hindu theology, and use it for their own evil purposes, then might not anti-semitic imagery be “cleansed” in a similar way?

    Just as in modern times, the gay community has taken the term “Queer” away from homophobes and made it their own.

    Maybe we need to think more deeply about this sort of thing rather than jumping all over someone, as Brown and Tiso have done.

Comments are closed.