An Conservative party employee used a fake name and email to comment on an article on this blog about anti-semitism in Poland. The Tory party was not mentioned.
An employee of the Conservative party has used a fake name and email address to comment on a Left Foot Forward guest post about anti-semitism in Poland.
The Guest blog post, published last Wednesday, examined the case of a Polish politician, Marek Jurek, calling for the Polish Government to take legal action against London-based Polish Film Director, Aro Korol, for his planned film – “Hitler’s Daughter” – which exposes anti-Semitism in Poland. The article made no mention of either the British Conservative party or the European Conservatives and Reformists.
The commenter, who uses the name “Gordon” wrote:
“So Jurek is a FORMER member of Law and Justice. And Law and Justice sit with the Tories in the European Parliament. So what?
“That’s as tenuous as expecting the Polish Socialists to be embarrassed bcause George Galloway, a former member of the British Labour Party, made an outrageous statement in the House of Commons.
“Is that the sound of barrels being scraped?”
The IP address is registered to host97.conservative-party.org.uk. Although http://www.conservative-party.org.uk is a different URL to the Conservative party’s main website (http://www.conservatives.com) and shows only a Daniel Hannan video and a picture of a pile of cash, an IPBlock query reveals that the IP address is registered to Anne Nunan, Director of IT at Conservative Central Office, 25 Victoria St and Vince Cooper of the same address.
Left Foot Forward contacted the Conservative Party to ask if they would ask their staff member, and other staff, to desist from attacking challenges to anti-semitism in this way.
A Conservative spokesman declined to do so while describing the comments as “innocuous” and “odd.” He outlined that CCHQ did not have “a team of people commenting on websites such as yours” and reiterated that the Conservative party opposed all forms of anti-semitism.
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46 Responses to “Conservative party paranoia on Poland”
Clay Harris
RT @leftfootfwd: Conservative party paranoia on Poland http://bit.ly/1qgEnZ
FYI
I’m not a conservative employee and I left the vast majority of comments on that story. I analyse Polish politics on a regular basis. I complained that your article was factually inaccurate in several places. This is in contradiction of your mission statement. For all you know I might agree with your political sympathies. I was complaining about your standards, not your politics. Describing Jurek as a “politician” is still misleading. He isn’t an MP and his wannabe political party isn’t in parliament. From your wording, readers will assume otherwise. The other individual mentioned in comment section correspondence, Anna Sobecka, is also not an MP. You still need to correct that, if you are referring to her in your ‘UPDATE’ section. Both individuals are former politicians. They have no ties to Poland’s centrist government of the Civic Platform party, which is leading in the polls at around 50% compared to the Law and Justice party’s circa 25%.
But “outing” of people who post on your website is a massive breach of trust and I question whether it is a breach of weblog
ethics. Your disclaimer indicates that you are not going to “out” individuals. If you think something unethical is going on, you should report it to the parliamentary ombudsman rather than outing people you think may have a conflict of interest in a vigilante manner. This will improve the public’s trust in your website.
Still, the central issue here is that Radio Maryja is just one of very many media outlets in Poland. It is far less influential, for example, than the left-leaning Agora empire, which includes Gazeta Wyborcza, of Adam Michnik fame. To claim that “Hitler’s Daughter” ‘exposes’ anti-Semitism in Poland is pretentious if not untrue and smacks of advertorial. Michnik himself, to take one of a multitude of examples, writes about this subject of anti-Semitism in his country. Radio Maryja is not a new media outlet, and it has been known about and laughed at by Polish liberals (and many centre-leaning conservatives) for over a decade. In fact, one of the reasons why Civic Platform won a record landslide victory two whole years ago is because the public were protesting against the (now defunct) League of Polish Families and its support in Radio Maryja. This documentary is behind the curve. It should have been made 3 or 4 years ago, when League of Polish Families (never at more than 12%) were brought in to coalition government by Law and Justice. The Polish electorate comprehensive booted them out at the first opportunity.
As I said before, anti-Semitism is best combated fairly and accurately. Scaremongering, exaggeration and prejudice only weakens your argument.
Shamik Das
RT @leftfootfwd: Conservative party paranoia on Poland:- http://bit.ly/1qgEnZ
Gordon's dad
A minion at Tory HQ left a rather boring comment on your blog during his or her tea break.
And that’s a story?
Simon
Good God what a scandal