Hmm. Brendan Cox’s tweet is in a response to the Guardian’s tweet “Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman tells us there is as much reason to protest outside the American embassy, as the Russian, over Syria attacks.”.
I went and read the original text that GuardianHeather is quoting from and you know what? The tweet seems to be made up bullshit. Below is the fullest version I can find of the actual comments (it may not be fully complete btw, it was quite tricky to get this much)
“The focus on Russian atrocities or Syrian army atrocities – which is absolutely correct– I think sometimes diverts attention from other atrocities that are taking place. “
<I added the bold, I’ll get back to that later>
“Independent assessments are that there have been very large scale civilian casualties as a result of the US-led coalition bombing. There are several cases of large numbers of civilian deaths in single attacks. And there hasn’t been as so much attention on those atrocities or those casualties. And both the United States and British Governments have been reluctant to accept any independent assessment of what’s taken place as a result of those campaigns.
Emily Thornberry said yesterday the priority should be holding talks inside the Russian embassy rather than demonstrations outside. Obviously, people are entitled and at complete liberty to demonstrate outside not only the Russian embassy, but all the other embassies of those intervening powers … People are free to protest outside the intervening powers’ embassies and there are a number of them – not just the US and Russia.
There are multiple foreign interventions in the Syrian civil war and we’ve emphasised that there needs to be an end to that and those powers need to be part of a negotiated settlement, which is the only way to stop the conflict.”
There’s no suggestion that there is as much reason to protest against the other states, as many have claimed. And he’s obviously not calling for people to protest against us or the US- he’s saying the opposite, the way forward isn’t messing around calling for protests. There’s no suggestion of moral equivalence there, he’s clear that the focus should be on Russia and Syria, he’s calling for more scrutiny of us not less of them. Saying that we should hold ourselves to account is hardly controversial.
My bold- because the first line “The focus on Russian atrocities or Syrian army atrocities – which is absolutely correct- I think sometimes diverts attention from other atrocities that are taking place.” is being routinely quoted in isolation and with the bold section removed, including on the Conservative party website. That changes the tone massively. I don’t think many people would think it’s OK to manipulate quotes like this.
tbh I thought the worst part of it was “atrocities”, ironically that’s not really been picked up on- I’m not sure if it’s just a bad choice of words or if he’s genuinely meaning that the allied bombing campaign is intentionally cruel. Accidental/careless casualties are obviously bad, but they’re not atrocities, by definition.
It suffers from the same wishy washy language and deviations that a lot of Labour and Corbyn stuff does- lots of things that are too easy to take out of context or manipulate- but since the comments are being edited anyway, and people seem to be making up bits of it, I’m not sure how much difference that makes…
So the question is… Is Mr Cox reacting to GuardianHeather’s “interpretation” or to the actual comments?
