The nonsense of Smeeth’s ‘name & shame’ demand

So, Labour MP Ruth Smeeth is all over BBC News again promoting an anti-Semitism slur against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters – this time claiming that Jeremy Corbyn should be ‘naming and shaming’ the ‘worst perpetrators’ of online abuse.

The demand comes after an anonymous account claiming to be that of a Corbyn supporter apparently (I haven’t seen it) directed hideous abuse at Ms Smeeth online.

I’ll just let you digest that sentence for a second.

I’m sure, like me, it didn’t take you very long to twig that there is no logic whatever in demanding that Jeremy Corbyn ‘name and shame’ an anonymous abuser. He’s the leader of the Labour party, not a policeman with expertise in cracking anonymous identities – and indeed, abuse and threats online are – of course – a police matter.

Jeremy Corbyn’s available actions are:

1. Make publicly clear that you condemn any abuse
2. That’s it, really

But – of course – that doesn’t prevent Ms Smeeth making the absolutely irrational demand with a straight face, nor does it prevent BBC News repeating the slur as if there’s any sense or credibility to it.

Ms Smeeth’s ulterior motives – as a right-wing ‘chickencoup’ member and defender of Israel’s awful human rights record (she was director of public affairs at BICOM before becoming an MP) – in attacking socialist Labour leader and advocate of rights for Palestinians Jeremy Corbyn are not hard to divine.

But that doesn’t excuse her for spouting such nonsense – ‘crying wolf’ in a way that Jewish Labour members have condemned as very dangerous to Jewish people – or the BBC for uncritically parroting it.

So, I’ve posed the following question to both of them:

I won’t hold my breath for an answer.