Monday 14 August 2017

Jess Phillips' bid to become literally the worst Labour Party troll


A little over a year ago Jess Phillips' Labour Party colleague Jo Cox was brutally stabbed and shot to death in the street by an extreme-right fanatic.

Another of Jess Phillips' Labour Party colleagues Luciana Berger has suffered a tide of outrageous anti-Semitic abuse and death threats for which three extreme-right fanatics have been jailed.

Another of Jess Phillips' Labour Party colleagues Diane Abbott suffered a massive surge of sexist and racist abuse from right-wingers during the General Election.

But who does Jess Phillips describe as "literally the worst" when it comes to sexism?

Left-wing men!

Not only is Phillips willing to overlook the actual killing of a Labour Party MP in order to spew her hatred towards a hefty chunk of Labour Party voters, she's also staggeringly hypocritical about it too.

Being abusive towards a diverse demographic like "left-wing men" is absolutely outrageous from a so-called equality champion. 


Sure some left-wing men have sexist attitudes (rendering them idiots because equality of opportunity no matter your sex, age, ethnicity or creed is one of the bedrocks of left-wing politics), but to generalise about all left-wing men as "literally the worst" in light of the absolute tide of sexist and bigoted abuse coming from the right is unbelievable stuff from someone who poses as an equality champion and a campaigner against political abuse.

Just imagine if someone used such incredibly tenuous reasoning to generalise that self-styled centrist women are "literally the worst" at politics. 


The likes of Jess Phillips would be spewing outrage in moments over such a crass generalisation wouldn't they?But they're apparently free to make crass generalisations of their own.

Phillips went on to generalise that when left-wing men "close their eyes at night and think of amazing people who have changed the world, it’s always some white dude that pops into their head".
Just imagine the outrage she would spew if anyone deigned to generalise about the sexist thoughts that all feminists have at night.

Justifiable outrage.

Phillips' so-called reasoning for launching yet another divisive and damaging attack on the Labour left is just as bad as her hypocrisy. She argued that sometimes men have objected to all-women shortlists and the like as justification for giving right-wing hacks at the Daily Telegraph yet another anti-Labour attack line by tarring all left-wing men as "literally the worst".


In her worldview it's as if working class communities objecting to the exclusion of several popular local candidates in order to parachute in a privately educated elitist candidate with absolutely no connection to the region whatever just because she's female (the Blairite special adviser Anna Turley being handed the Labour safe seat of Redcar for example) is somehow worse than right-wing fanatics sending anti-Semetic and racist abuse to female MPs, making death threats and rape threats, and even murdering female Labour Party politicians in the street!

The problem for Jess Phillips is that her rhetoric just doesn't stack up. She bases her claims that left-wing men are "literally the worst" on the fact that they sometimes object to all-female shortlists, but she must understand that the consequence of her constant trolling of her own party is to turn people away in droves.

Revulsion at the constant divisive backstabbing from Jess Phillips and her ilk will mean fewer female Labour MPs in parliament than there could have been without the deliberate wrecking tactics, and fewer female MPs overall as a consequence (because at 45% Labour have by far the best gender balance of any party with more than one MP).

Jess Phillips is so intent on continuing her strategy of internal party wrecking that she's demonstrably willing to sacrifice future female MPs at the next general election because she'd rather see future female Labour MPs lose to the Tories (just 21% of Tory MPs are women) than a left-wing man like Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister.


It's a wonder how on earth Jess Phillips ended up in the Labour Party at all if she's so filled with hatred and revulsion at left-wing men. Well it isn't really. Phillips must have known that Labour have the best gender balance of any party so it's impossible to avoid imagining that she decided that spending time with all the left-wing men she so clearly hates and despises was worth it because it was the best choice for her political career given that she'd be half as likely to make it as an MP in the male dominated Tory party.

Aside from driving people away from Labour with her divisive generalisations and constant attacks on the party leadership, Phillips is also doing something else. The kind of elitist identity-politics fixated feminism espoused by Phillips, Harriet Harman and Theresa May is exactly the kind of thing that drives people away from feminism too.

All three of these women supported more brutal Tory austerity measures (which impact poor and ordinary women a lot harder than poor and ordinary men). 


Theresa May has actively voted in favour of sexist austerity dogma time and again, and as temporary Labour leader Harriet Harman whipped her MPs into letting the savage Tory welfare bill pass by abstaining, which Jess Phillips dutifully went along with while over two dozen male Labour MPs (like Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan, Dennis Skinner and Richard Burgon) outright defied Harriet Harman's instructions to support sexist Tory austerity through political inaction, and voted against the bill.

The reason these women willingly trampled on millions of women from less privileged backgrounds by supporting the Tory policy of loading the financial burden of the bankers' crisis onto women's shoulders is that their elitist version of feminism is fixated on stuff like the percentage of women who are chairs of parliamentary select committees, the number of female FTSE100 directors, or the pay rates of millionaires at the BBC, not on helping women in the most need first.

Of course Phillips and her supporters will try to play sub-juvenile identity politics by saying that as a left-wing male I'm somehow proving her point by objecting to her divisive trolling and criticising her elitist version of feminism that allows her to trample on women from less privileged backgrounds while playing the victim herself. 


They'll pretend that pointing out that someone is talking hypocritical self-defeating crap is somehow worse than the tsunami of sexist and racist abuse Diane Abbott suffered during the 2017 General Election, or the constant stream of death threats and rape threats against women in politics from right-wingers, or the actual murder of a Labour Party MP by an extreme-right fanatic, but people who are motivated by hate (of genuine socialists, or men) tend to make extremely poor arguments.

The fact that Phillips and her ilk have already resorted to this tried and tested cry-bully tactic (sling abuse at a large cohort of people and then cry victim when any of them have the temerity to defend themselves or argue back) just goes to show what appalling trolls they are.

Now that the outrageously abusive troll Tom Blenkinsop has quit the party (deliberately salting his once safe Labour constituency on his way out so that it fell to the Tories) Jess Phillips has to be considered one of the prime contenders for absolute worst troll in the Parliamentary Labour Party, although she has stiff competition from men like Wes Streeting, Chris Leslie and Ian Austin.

It would be a victory of sorts for Jess Phillips' crap identity politics fixated version of feminism if she could snatch the title of "literally the worst troll in the Parliamentary Labour Party" off the men who have completely dominated the role over the years. 

By continually attacking her fellow Labour Party members, discrediting herself, discrediting the party and expending way more effort on attacking the party leadership instead of the Tories and their sexist austerity dogma, she's definitely putting up a heck of a fight to be recognised as Labour's worst troll.


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