Some thoughts on the anti-Semitism furore

In a context in which anti-Corbynite MPs recently joined in a demonstration against Corbyn's supposed softeness on anti-Semitism, shoulder to shoulder with members of the DUP, it seems in order to suggest that their motivation might be something other than a principled commitment to anti-racism. Protesting against hatred for a particular enthno-religious group alongside Ulster loyalists is rather like protesting against unusual clothing arm-in-arm with Lady Gaga.



And indeed, be in no doubt: the point of the furore over anti-Semitism and Labour is to weaken Corbyn, to sew doubt in his supporters, and to damage Labour's prospects in the coming local elections, providing the context for another leadership bid by this year's Owen Smith equivalent. The right in the Party have been in stasis since the unexpectedly good results in the last General Election. There is no way, however, that they will sit by and let Corbyn fight another General Election (a Corbyn government is, for many of the Old Believers from the Blair years, a worse prospect than a Tory government). This is their chance to stop that, and they have pounced.

Whatever else we say about Labour and anti-Semitism it is vital that we understand that this is what is going on, and that we support the leadership. On top of that, four points:

1. Anti-Semitism around the left is real

Defending Corbyn is not the same thing as being defensive. Some on the left have been unhelpful in denying that anti-Semitism around the left is a thing. Whereas anyone who looks honestly at the trajectory of anti-capitalist protest (and, to an extent, of Palestine solidarity politics) since the 2007/8 financial crisis will know differently. A crisis of capitalism focused in the financial sector, happening at a time when left ideas and organisations were weak, provided the opportunity for every vile caricature of Jewish people, every obsession with the Rothschilds and the Illuminati to work its way out of the woodwork. That mural is a case in point. So are the weirdoes with home made signs featuring the Star of David, one sees on the fringes of demonstrations. To the extent that these people have found their way into the Labour Party (and inevitably some have), they should be expelled. It is no use denying any of this.

Far from being a sign that the left has gone too far, however, the persistence of what August Bebel called 'the socialism of fools', shows that we need a stronger, more disciplined, left with better political education, capable of offering an account of the world persuasive enough to draw people away from the simplicities of bigotry. The Corbyn movement provides the best opportunity for that in this country for a generation. Anyone who is genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism ought not to try to undermine that movement.

2. Anti-Semitism within the Labour leadership is not a thing

This shouldn't need saying. Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong campaigner against racism of all kinds is not an anti-Semite. Nor is John McDonnell. Nor is Christine Shawcroft (who is something far less politically exciting: an overworked official trying to deal with a mountain of complaints, many of them spurious. We would do well to reflect on the story of the boy who cried wolf). The injustice of good people, who have dedicated their lives to the cause of a more equal and just world, being cynically accused of racism (or at least of turning a blind eye to racism) is palpable. They deserve our absolute support and solidarity.

3. The politics of cultural and religious belonging is complicated

A problem in left of centre politics at the moment is the lack of sophistication in understanding the politics of cultural and religious belonging. This criticism applies equally to Corbyn's attackers and to many of his defenders. Ethno-religious groups are not politically uniform: differences of theology and tradition run through them and intersect with divisions along lines of class, gender, and sexuality. Speaking about the group I'm most familiar with: a certain type of conservative Catholic will accuse people of 'anti-Catholicism' in the context, say, of debates about legal abortion or same-sex marriage. These accusations are spurious and are made for political effect. This does not mean for one moment that anti-Catholic bigotry is not a real thing. It's just that this isn't it: and, crucially, plenty of Catholics (myself included) will argue against the conservatives, and will do so on grounds internal to Catholicism itself.

The danger is that people unfamiliar with the texture of ethno-religious groups treat them as undifferentiated unity. They see a subgroup taking offense at something and assume that the offense is warranted, proportionate, and directed at the right people. Thus the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a conservative organisation politically opposed to Corbyn over the Middle East is not the voice of all Jews in Britain. It does not speak from a political vacuum. The voices of Jews who support Corbyn cannot be allowed to be silenced.

4. Corbyn will never be able to give enough to satisfy his critics

Ian Austin, Stella Creasy and John Mann do not want a slightly more muted, or somewhat more woke Corbyn. They want no Corbyn. They want the Labour Party to be led by somebody else. Concessions to them - Shawcroft's resignation, committees, enquiries - none of this will satisfy them. So, whilst absolutely fighting anti-Semitism, those concessions ought not to be made. This battle, and that's what it is, is not about anti-Semitism (indeed, I'm tempted to say that using British Jews as pawns in intra-Labour wrangles is itself anti-Semitic) it is about the direction of the Labour Party. Only a resolutely socialist direction will secure proper action against all racism and against the capitalism that fuels it.

Incidentally, if we're now being merciless towards MPs who fail to notice racism, I do think that Stella Creasy might want to ask herself whether she is in a position to cast the first stone.

Jackie Walker suspended

Jackie Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party for saying that 'she had not found a definition of antisemitism [she] could work with' and, seemingly also for calling for the inclusion of other genocides in Holocaust Memorial Day celebrations (something that has already happened). Many people within the labour movement are applauding the suspension, including figures from its left-wing. In fact, a spokesperson for Momentum is reported as saying that the organisation is looking to exclude Walker - as a Momentum member myself, I am keen to know how this has been decided, who these spokespeople are, and to whom they are accountable. If nothing else, this sorry episode serves as a reminder that Momentum stands in urgent need of democratisation.

I do not support Walker's suspension. This will no doubt prove controversial, and that is entirely understandable. People are rightly worried about anti-Semitism on the left and in wider society, and do not want to be seen to be sitting lightly to this growing and grotesque racism. This case however stands at the complex intersection of two racisms and the internal politics of the Labour Party and deserves careful thought.

Jackie Walker, a lifelong and courageous campaigner against racism who has written a moving and very personal account of one woman - her mother's - experience of the Windrush migration, is herself of Jewish heritage. She has a consistent history of taking a stand against the far right and their targeting of Jews and other minorities. She is in no way an anti-Semite. In the current pressure cooker environment of the Labour Party that truth, which should be obvious, requires stating firmly. Does that make her comments wise? Not in my opinion, although I'll say something about context in a moment. Nor, however, were those comments anti-Semitic. To say something else that should be obvious, Walker's claim that she had not found a good definition of anti-Semitism is not an assertion that there is no such thing as anti-Semitism. And a context in which the charge of anti-Semitism is quite cynically and disgraceful being used as a weapon in the internal politics of the Labour Party, definitions matter. Nor does tactlessness or ignorance regarding Shoah commemorations constitute anti-Semitism. Jackie Walker is not a professional politician; mistakes made in a tense and hostile situation deserve to be treated with sympathy.

It matters, you see, who is speaking; the power relations which frame a context of speaking cannot be ignored. Jackie Walker is a black woman who has been subject to vicious invasions of privacy, press intrusion, and hostility in recent months. She is not a powerful person; she is an activist trying to work through the relationship between two racisms, each of which is not an abstract matter for her, but rather a threat to be both feared and fought. She was speaking to a hostile audience. This last point might not be obvious, indeed the suggestion that something called the 'Jewish Labour Movement' is a hostile audience might sound problematic in itself. Now, the Jewish Labour Movement is not, as its name might suggest, an organisation for all Jews within the labour movement. It is an affiliate of the World Labour Zionist Movement and an enthusiastic supporter of the state of Israel. Anti-Zionist Jews are effectively excluded from the organisation, which has a particular political agenda, and one to which Walker is opposed. Good socialists disagree about the issue of Israel, and I don't want to rehearse that particular debate now. But Walker was not amongst political friends, and was facing hostile questioning of a type she lacks the professional training to face.

The accusation of anti-Semitism is being mobilised by the right as a way of attacking Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supports him. A dangerous and cynical tactic, this undermines the fight against anti-Semitism. The left should think very carefully before helping in this; we should at least make ourselves more sensitive to the possibility of alternative perspectives.

Anti-Semitism, Labour, and the cynicism of the Right.

There are certain phrases that immediately make me get my coat and leave the party: “Oh look, there’s Richard Littlejohn in the corner!” “Let me tell you about our holiday at a nudist camp.” “You’re Jewish? Cool. I’m a lifelong philosemite, you know."

So wrote Hadley Freeman a couple of years back, in a piece whose relevance to the present blogpost will become clear in due course. All the talk at the moment is not, however, of philosemitism, but of its apparent opposite.

Anti-Semitism is a problem. It is a problem in British society, shot through as it is with racism and religious intolerance. It is therefore no surprise that it is present to some extent in institutions that exist within that society, including the Labour Party. To be sure, it is unlikely that the Corbyn-led party could muster the levels of suspiciously anti-Jewish looking goings on achieved by the British Right. After all, it is no small thing to have one of one's most prominent youth organisations singing Nazi songs, or a tabloid ally running scare stories about Jewish areas of London. But then, few of us can aspire to the levels of the Conservative Party.

Aidan Burley - Google him

Nor am I convinced that the disturbing anti-Semitic strand running through some of the odder bits of the Left has any real hold within the Labour Party. This is not least because the Party has actually been fairly good at dealing with genuine cases of anti-Semitism. Luton councillor Aysegul Gurbuz, who praised Hitler, was rightly suspended. Gerry Downing, a veteran member of revolutionary socialism's batshit tendency, spoke about Labour's 'Jewish problem': as a consequence Labour no longer has a Downing problem, and I will be shedding no tears as a consequence. Similarly, dear reader, I can't get worked up about the plight of Ken Livingstone. For all that he has done over the years, and for all that I don't think he is an anti-Semite, he has at the very least a case of foot-in-mouth disease. Some time for quiet reflection will do him good.

If anything the Party machine has been over-zealous. This is not just through the troubling growth of a culture in which criticism of Israel is equated with anti-Semitism: witness the case of Jewish activist Tony Greenstein. The altogether eyebrow-lifting brief suspension of Jackie Walker, a long-time anti-racist of Jewish heritage, makes the machine look less guilty of the too strict application of decent principles as of a politically-motivated witch-hunt.

This suspicion grows once the case of Rhea Wolfson is considered. Chosen to replace Livingstone on the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance slate for Labour's NEC, Wolfson is a young Jewish woman, and an active synagogue-goer. Party rules mean that she needs the nomination of her CLP to make the ballot. She takes up the story on her Facebook page:

Over the past few weeks, I have been delighted to receive support for my candidacy for Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) from a broad spectrum of opinion within the party, including nominations from dozens of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs). It is clear that many members want to see me elected to the NEC.However, I am now concerned that a faction of the party are trying to take that option away from the membership. To appear on the ballot I needed to secure, amongst other things, the nomination of my home CLP.

Last night Eastwood CLP, where my family home is, met to nominate candidates for the NEC. It was proposed that, given I am currently a member of the CLP, there would be a straight vote for or against my nomination. I made my case and answered questions from the room. I was then asked to leave the room while they discussed my nomination further. Once I had left, the ex-leader of Scottish Labour, Jim Murphy, appealed to the CLP to not nominate me. He argued that it would not be appropriate to nominate me due to my endorsement by Momentum, which he claimed has a problem with anti-Semitism. The constituency has a large Jewish population. The CLP then voted to not endorse me, before re-inviting me back into the room.

Needless to say, this is hugely disappointing. It is disappointing because I am the only Jewish candidate in this election, because the wide range of organisations endorsing me includes the Jewish Labour Movement, and because I have a long record of challenging anti-Semitism and have in fact faced it on a daily basis since my candidacy was announced. But above all, it is disappointing because I know there are many members who want to vote for me, who could now have lost that opportunity. I am considering my options going forward.

Quite apart from the unwarranted slur on Momentum, there is more than a hint here of the suggestion that Rhea is the wrong sort of Jew for Murphy. Put in those terms the scrutiny to which she, along with other Jewish Labour activists, has been subjected cannot itself be absolved of participating in a certain kind of anti-Semitism. It would be noteworthy enough were it an isolated case, but it isn't. It is partnered by a peculiar trend amongst the liberal commentariat. At the absurd end of the spectrum here lie Julie Burchill's various interventions on behalf of her bizarre understanding of Judaism, culminating in her sending poison pen-letters to a synagogue. Burchill is joined in her cause by a supporting cast of acolytes from the creepier regions of the internet, to whose various social media accounts and webpages I can't bring myself to link. Meanwhile Nick Cohen is an altogether more serious, and therefore more dangerous, arbiter of acceptable Jewishness. Sam Kriss' take-down, here, is compulsory reading.

This strange current deserves more critical attention to be directed towards it. In the meanwhile, Rhea's candidacy can be supported here.

Take off the tinfoil hat

Sometimes I wish the world was run by a secretive elite. If it was, it would be a lot more interesting than it in fact is. There is a certain romance in believing one is facing down Bond-villains, nestled away in shadowy bunkers, in which they feed disloyal acolytes to crocodiles. This romance is lacking in Michael Gove. In fact not a single one of the British ruling class lives up to the standards of proper archetypical evil. They don't have lairs, they have villas in Tuscany. And not one of them has ever bitten the head off a live chicken. Although at a push Prince Philip has done this to a swan. We are, alas, doomed to mediocre malice in our rulers.

Nor, it has to be said, are this crowd especially secretive. Take the Conservative Party. They stood for election saying that they were going to impose massive cuts and attack trade unions. And having won the election they are proceeding to do just that. They may be bastards, but they are not sneaky bastards by any stretch of the imagination.

Perhaps it is a desire for a bit of excitement that drives 25% per cent of Corbyn supporters to believe that, contrary to fact, the world is run by a secretive elite. Like crazed lefty adrenaline junkies that these comrades of mine clearly are not content with nationalising the railways; they hope that they have to fight the CIA-Zionist-Lizards to do so. I'll come back to the 'Zionist' bit of that, since there's a darker side to all this conspiracy theory stuff.

'Conspiracy theory' - that's right. A striking feature of the 21st century left, which no doubt reflects a wider trend in our society, is the prevalence of so much conspiracy theoretic murk. I challenge you to go to more than a couple of demos without encountering some excitable character in a Guy Fawkes mask talking about the New World Order. If you're lucky, they might hand you a typewritten leaflet all about it. More mainstream, but in perpetual danger of slippage into conspiracy-talk, is the idea that there is an all-pervasive thing called 'the establishment' - the category, popularised by Owen Jones, has all but replaced the older, more nuanced, language of class and the state on much of the broad left. Put 'the establishment' together with an emotive topic like paedophilia, as recent news stories have done, and the crowd go wild - the number of supposed 'revelations' on this topic I've seen shared on left-wing social media is genuinely disturbing. Meanwhile the near-paranoid sense that everything is done with an ulterior motive has led numerous people to know better to support Julian Assange's attempt to avoid rape charges, on the basis that 'they' are out to get him. Indeed, the popularity of Wikileaks on the left -- the project in fact has its origins in the libertarian right -- is largely owing to the desire to know what they are hiding from us.

The striking reality of capitalist society, on contrary, is that everything is done in the open. I'm not denying, of course, the sordid reality of secret police forces and backroom deals. But the basic business of exploitation, the key structural features of the kind of society we inhabit: it's all out there in the open for everyone to see. The world is run for profit and proudly wears that fact on its sleeves, even as CEOs and Prime Ministers alike speak aloud about the need to reduce labour costs. In as much as this world is sustained by illusions, they are remarkably egalitarian illusions. The CEO and the bond trader, just as much as the shop worker and the pensioner, invest markets, currencies, and other creatures of our making, with an agency independent of the humanity that fashioned them. If you like, the system itself produces the illusions. The only secret is that there is nobody pulling the strings: we are not dealing with puppets, but with automata. The upside to this sorry state of affairs is that we are capable of distancing ourselves from it and stating the truth of the matter. As I just did.

That last paragraph is a standard old-fashioned leftist response to conspiracy theory. Why does it no longer convince a good number of people on the left? Partly, I think because, contemporary capitalist societies move at such a dizzying pace that peoples' experience of their lives is utterly disorientated and piecemeal -- the idea that 'They' are behind it all can be oddly comforting in such circumstances: there is an ultimate order and purpose, even if it is hostile. The Lizards are a Calvinist God for an unbelieving age.

Then there's the spectacular own-goal that was postmodernism. More than a generation of left-wingers have been schooled, with varying degrees of success, in the idea that reason, evidence, and the normal criteria by which we, as responsible agents, choose between competing accounts of the world are nothing more than veils worn by power. They are certainly not guides to objective truth, not least because there is no such thing as objective truth. The case for this view, which on the face of it renders any attempt at emancipatory theory and practice self-defeating, has been helped along by the fact that a certain kind of rearguard academic reaction certainly does appeal to Reason to bolster its own dubious interests. The name 'Richard Dawkins' suffices here to gesture in the direction of what I mean.

Then of course there was the decline of Marxism. In part this has to be attributed to the welcome collapse of the vile regimes that claimed it as their creed. But it's not just that: after all, there is a proud tradition of anti-Stalinist Marxism. Partly it's down to postmodernism. But whatever the full reason, one searches in vain on the left for a coherent, rigorously argued, account of the world which explains events and injustices not simply in terms of individual agency, but in terms of a social whole that - far from being shadowy - is amenable to critical scrutiny. Instead we have individual campaigns, united by nothing other than anger, often couched in moralistic terms (the moralism of the contemporary left; that's a whole other blogpost...) It's a volatile brew of raw emotion, indignation and confusion. Rich pickings for conspiracy theory.

This wouldn't matter so much were conspiracy theories not utterly disempowering. If They really are pulling the strings; what can we do? If we are being kept in the dark by networks of baffling complexity, what response is there other than fear? Perhaps the best we can do is search Google, looking for clues, trying to find out about Them. It's an atomised, self-enclosed, self-reinforcing way of 'finding out' about the world, which slides easily into genuine paranoia. Contrast this with the Marxian insistence that we learn about the world through collective engagement with it, seeking to change it and reflecting together on our efforts.

Then there's the anti-Semitism. The Rothschilds, the Zionists, Goldman-Sachs: the cast list in some of the accounts is tediously familiar fare. Living, as we still do, in the aftermath of a capitalist crisis focused in the financial sector, and blamed somewhat simplistically and moralistically on 'the bankers', the ground is fertile for the anti-Jewish tropes that run deep through the Western cultural unconscious to surface. And not nearly enough is being done to stop that.

Anti-Semitism is anti-Palestine

Look, I'm an anti-Zionist. I oppose the State of Israel, as I oppose in general the idea of a state being set apart exclusively for one ethno-religious group as racist. I support a secular one-state solution, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the peaceful co-existence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Palestine. I am, I take it, in no danger of confusing anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

But, to say that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism is not to deny the reality of anti-Semitism. And the sad fact is that some anti-Semites have attached themselves, like the racist parasites they are, to the pro-Palestine movement here and elsewhere. Sometimes the language of anti-Zionism gets appropriated, as with this delightful character, going on about "The Zionists, the Illuminati and Mr Rothschild himself, and the illegitimate child of Adolf Hitler!":




Other manifestations of anti-Semitism I've witnessed include:

• Placards featuring stars of David, sometimes in association with swastikas.
• Holocaust references.
• Use of the phrase 'the Jews', when referring to the State of Israel, as in 'the Jews forced the Palestinians out of their homes'. Often this co-exists with classical anti-Semitic tropes such as bloodthirstiness or acquisitiveness.
• A particular insistence that Jewish people condemn the actions of Israel more exacting than any similar insistence directed at the population in general.

These are all in and of themselves unacceptable, and deserve outright condemnation as racism. People saying and doing these kind of things should not be welcome on pro-Palestine demonstrations, and we should have the courage to confront them in the same way we would any other kind of racist. And that involves everything usually implied by the slogan 'no platform'.

Because not only are these things vile in their own right. They actively work against the Palestinian cause, providing a propaganda coup for Israel's explicit supporters as well as for those whose less honest and direct positions are effectively pro-Israeli (I have one well-known ultra-left sect in mind; I shall not give them publicity). It divides our movement and plays straight into the hands of those who would have us believe that diversity will always give rise to hostility.

Stop it, again

Right, here's the thing. The Russian government is really quite shit. To be specific, it is a homophobic shower of authoritarians serving a particularly brutal and oligarchic imposition of neoliberalism combined with an expansionist imperialism. This is Not Good.

It is not the kind of thing socialists should support. Really.

Said government is up to its neck in support for separatists in Ukraine, who almost certainly shot down an airliner causing massive loss of innocent life.

All of this is true. It is not some kind of imperialist lie. And, really, the combination of residual Stalinism and conspiracy theory wingnuttery on elements of the British Left that makes people claim otherwise both impedes our ability to understand the world properly and makes all of us look bonkers.

Stop it. Now.

(If you want more productive politics from the region, please do look at Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity).
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And here's another thing. Yes, obviously, Palestinians have a right to armed struggle. Tonnes of people have said that. But David Ward:

(a) is a Liberal Democrat MP. Enough said.
(b) has said clearly anti-Semitic things in the past. This provides the context to some of the reaction to him today.

Palestine needs friends. But it really doesn't need every friend that offers themself. Beware the thought that my enemy's enemy is my friend. Sometimes my enemy's enemy is simply a muppet