Today Owen Jones has criticised Michael Fallon for using the term ‘stabbed in the back’ to describe what he thinks Ed Miliband would do to Britain over Trident. The Guardian columnist has gone so far as to say that the phrase is ‘anti-Semitic’.
Michael Fallon’s “stabbed in the back” metaphor is deeply sinister. It is a classic anti-Semitic trope
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) April 9, 2015
However, Mr S understands that Jones may not have always been so averse to the term. In 2011, Jones gave a Bookmarks Bookshop talk about his book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class as part of the annual Trades Union Congress. Writing for the Enlightenment Blues blog, Tom Rollins (a journalist who has written for the New Statesman) claimed that during this talk Jones quoted someone who had used the phrase ‘stabbed in the back’ and even went as far as to say that the wording was ‘eloquent’.
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