Written after the 8 June General Election 2017
There are three central claims made in this book. The first is that a specific form of left wing antisemitism has been moving into the mainstream. The second is that this antisemitism is carried by people and movements which consider themselves to be wholly hostile to antisemitism. The third is that this antisemitism is insulated by a layer of discourse that casts suspicion against anybody who experiences it, analyses it or opposes it; it casts them out of the community of the oppressed and of the progressive. In this way the Jewish community as a whole, when it raises the issue of this type of antisemitism, is cast out of the community of the oppressed and of the progressive.
Unhappily, the result of the General Election of June 2017 does nothing to falsify these three hypotheses.
hile the Labour Party, led by the Corbyn faction, did not win, it did do well enough to damage the Tory Government seriously and to put itself into a position where it appears possible that Jeremy Corbyn could be elected as Prime Minister.
The most common critique of Jeremy Corbyn had been that he was unelectable. With his Stalinist political biography, his commitment to the politics of Israel-demonization, his decades-long association with antisemitic politics and terrorist movements, and his softness toward any movement which positioned itself as anti-imperialist, many people believed that the electorate would never vote for him and that he would lead Labour to disaster. That was the calculation made by Theresa May, and it was not correct.
May made what seemed to be a perfectly logical political assessment. To understand the background to her decision to call an election for 8 June, it is useful to go back to the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union the previous June. The mainstream of the Tory Party had, since the 1970s, clearly understood that membership of the European Union coincided with a Tory notion of British national interest; it was good for trade, for stability, for peace and for business. David Cameron had felt forced by pressure from the populist right to promise the EU referendum, but he was confident of winning it. Yet, within hours of losing the referendum, the Tory Party found its way to an apparently brilliant and audacious strategy of transforming the whole narrative of British patriotism.
Even the majority of Tory erstwhile ‘remainers’ were immediately on board with the new Brexit Britishness. They said that ‘the people’ had spoken and that any second thoughts would inflame the kind of extremist opinion which already claimed that democracy was merely a sham and that the political class just did what it wanted in any case.
With immense speed, it became backward-looking and undemocratic – rather absurd in fact – to be in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. The term ‘remoaner’ was mobilized to ridicule those who were so un-English as to be bad losers. ‘Enemy of the People’ was screamed at judges or politicians who were thought not to be on board with the new thinking. Anybody who worried about the economic damage that Brexit would do was treated as if they were ‘talking down’ Britain. Those who expressed concern about the mainstreaming of racism and xenophobia were told that they were elitists who did not care about the suffering of the ‘white working class’. If anyone worried that the EU might follow its own interests in negotiations to the detriment of the United Kingdom, this observation was adduced as evidence that Britain was right to leave such a petty and vindictive organisation. The left of the Tory Party resolved to implement Brexit in a way which minimized its damage while the right gloried in its vindication. Some Tories were beside themselves with satisfaction, hoping that, with the help of Corbyn, they had out-manoeuvred the Labour Party for a generation.
Theresa May asked the electorate for a resounding personal mandate to implement Brexit. But there turned out to be a profound incoherence at the heart of her platform. She promised ‘strong and stable’ government. She said ‘Brexit is Brexit’ and she proposed to carry out the ‘will of the people’ in a rational way which would minimise harm.
But the electorate laughed at her. Those who wanted ‘strong and stable’ had not wanted Brexit, and those who wanted Brexit had not wanted ‘strong and stable’.
Brexit had been a cypher for a populist politics of resentment. It was a codeword, but a plastic one, meaning all things to all people. Some had voted Brexit because they thought the EU was socialist and it prevented Britain from following a free market agenda; others had voted Brexit because they thought the EU was ‘neoliberal’ and it stopped Britain from following a socialist agenda. Some voted Brexit because they felt out of control and they imagined it would help them regain it. Some did so because they did not like foreigners living in Britain; some felt a special resentment towards the Poles, Latvians and Romanians who were working hard, educating their children and making lives for themselves in difficult circumstances. Some voted Brexit because they believed that the EU took all our money, but they did not understand that the burgeoning Brexit bureaucracy, the new ministries, experts, lawyers and negotiators would be much more expensive and wasteful than the fabled Brussels bureaucracy.
The electorate was not focused on the messy business of implementing Brexit; that was last year’s cry of resentment. This year’s conduit for the politics of resentment was Jeremy Corbyn. May promised to transform the cypher of Brexit into a concrete programme but by doing this, she stripped it of its cypher-magic, its rebelliousness and its excitement; the electorate turned away.
This book shows that Jeremy Corbyn has, for his whole career, embraced or tolerated certain kinds of antisemitic and totalitarian politics. It also demonstrates that these positions are broadly acceptable within the milieu around him, a milieu that was once confined to the fringes of the far left but which now stands on the threshold of number 10 Downing Street.
There were those who believed that Corbyn’s work for the Iranian propaganda TV station alone disqualified him from leadership. For others, it was the fact that he had quite deliberately claimed that Hamas and Hezbollah were dedicated to peace and justice and to the good of the Palestinian people, or that he supported a boycott of Israel but of nowhere else on the planet. Any one of a hundred things that he has done were thought to make him unsuitable to lead the Labour Party, let alone to be Prime Minister.
But we need to stop being surprised. I was shocked when my academic colleagues voted to boycott Israel; and again when they failed to understand how this was dangerous in terms of antisemitism; and again when anti-boycott activists were pushed out of the discussion in the University and College Union; and when the Employment Tribunal listened to the evidence about antisemitism for three weeks and then responded that it all amounted to a dirty trick to silence criticism of Israel; and again when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader; and then a second time; and when Shami Chakrabarti whitewashed the Labour Party inquiry into antisemitism; and then when Corbyn came within a sniff of number 10. I keep entreating myself to stop being surprised.
There are many people for whom belonging in the Labour Party is important. For some, it constitutes a key aspect of their identity; it constitutes a kind of family; it is important in their own understanding of who they are, and also of who they are not. For others, councillors, MPs and party workers, as well as layers of people who work in trade unions and in the voluntary sector, Labour Party success is a requirement for professional advancement, or at least for their social status. Many people opposed Corbyn because they thought he would lose – and they thought he would take them down with him. Now, when it looks like he might be a winner, much of this opposition has melted away. Parliamentary opponents have been queuing up to declare their loyalty and in some cases, to make abject apologies. They used to say that Corbyn was a loser because he embraced anti-democratic politics; now that he is a winner, they seem much less concerned about his anti-democratic politics.
It turned out that there were only four constituencies where Labour may have been punished for its attitude to antisemitism and all four are home to significant Jewish populations. Although they are exactly the kinds of constituencies that Labour won from the Tories in this election, and while the vote was very close in all four, the swing to Labour was lower than in comparable London constituencies. Antisemitism did not seem to be an issue anywhere else. As I watched the TV coverage through the night of the election, flicking from channel to channel, I did not see antisemitism being mentioned at all.
Activists who have been analysing and opposing left antisemitism throughout its twenty-first century renaissance feel exasperated and afraid, as does much of the Jewish community. How could the electorate still not know, or care?
Some respond that the millions who are excited about Corbyn’s radical and socialist agenda simply do not know about the dark side of his politics. It is said that that the little Stalinist bloc around Corbyn will be made insignificant by the influx of fresh and young activists, infused with anger, energy and hope; it is said that the antisemitism and common cause with totalitarian movements will be swept away by this new movement.
So if it is true that Corbyn voters do not know, and it is not the case that they do not want to know, what follows?
How do voters know about things? They know via layers of journalists, activists, intellectuals, researchers and people in public life. Increasingly, these layers are much more organic and diffuse than they used to be, consisting of gradations of smaller opinion-formers all over social media. If the voters do not know about the issue of Corbyn and antisemitism, then it is because each of these layers have not communicated their alarm and their knowledge to those who rely on them for information and for understanding. Of course if Corbyn had a career-long association with anti-black racists or with misogynist movements, first he would never have become leader of the Labour Party; second, everybody would know about it. That is, assuming that the racist or misogynist movements were not regarded as ‘anti-imperialist’.
But contemporary antisemitism comes packaged with its own self-inoculation. Many people at every opinion-forming level have learnt to mis-recognize talk about left wing antisemitism as smears and as lies. They don’t repeat the knowledge and they don’t believe what they hear.
Instead of the fresh and energetic influx extinguishing the old antisemitic core, the worry is that the cadres of antizionist activists within the existing movement will socialize the new young people into the exiting culture, that activists will quickly be educated to understand that the issues of Israel and antisemitism are important signifiers of the boundaries of the community of the good, and that tolerance of antisemitism will play the role of an initiation rite for the new society.
It is difficult to tell how many people are attracted to the movement in spite of the antisemitism and totalitarian thinking and how many are attracted because of it. There is a need for empirical quantitative research on this question.
Corbyn, no less than Brexit, is also a cypher, a blank populist canvas onto which everybody is free to paint their own fantasy.
Many Brexit supporters in the old Labour heartlands abandoned their flirtation with the UK Independence Party and came back to Labour. But many London ‘remainers’ also voted Labour. People who opposed the notorious Tory policy of subjecting disabled social security claimants to ‘Work Capability Assessments’ voted for Corbyn. People who felt that the National Health Service was being starved of money voted for Corbyn. People who could not or who did not want to help pay for their children to go to university voted for Corbyn. People who worked hard but still could not afford decent housing voted for him. People who blamed British foreign policy for terrorism and people who imagined that if we were nicer, the terrorists would leave us alone; people who admired Hamas, the IRA, Hezbollah, Chavez, Castro and Putin voted for Corbyn as did people who blamed bankers, the Rothchilds and the ‘Davosocracy’ for all our problems. People who liked Corbyns refusal to step into line voted for him. People who hated Corbyn but liked Labour voted for him. People who hated Labour but liked Corbyn voted for him.
In this election the choice was between the immediate implementation of Brexit by a Tory government committed to the politics of austerity on the one hand, and the Jeremy Corbyn cypher on the other. The electorate was split – as though reluctant to commit to either.
It is difficult to see how the next election, which might come soon, can be anything other than a straight choice between two variants of populist, angry, hollow and resentful politics.
In this context, of course, it is quite legitimate to prefer Labour populism to Tory populism while at the same time recognising with great clarity that Labour has an antisemitism problem. But it is rare that people are prepared to embrace this position openly.
Many people are more attracted to rationalizations and to accommodations which permit them fully to take their place in the movement. This is a moment in which nobody wants to be left behind. The excitement which so many people are experiencing at the prospect of the vindication of oppositionist or socialist politics should not be under-estimated; neither should the rapidity or the ferocity of the response against those who are thought of as being disloyal to the movement in its moment of possibility. The other significant danger is the potential fury of the populism of the far right when it is confronted by the prospect of the Corbyn faction taking governmental power in Britain.
Some say that Corbyn’s antisemitism is only a kind of abstract antisemitism; that he would not want to enact laws or policies against Jews; that only a practical and immediate threat is genuine antisemitism. Others say that Corbyn has changed, that he no longer speaks at the annual Al Quds demonstration in London, with its Hezbollah flags and its antisemitic rhetoric; he now supports a two-state solution; he would no longer dare to jump to the defence of antisemites as he did when he was an unimportant back bencher.
It is difficult to know exactly what the consequences would be of having a Prime Minister who has for so long been connected to antisemitic ways of thinking and antisemitic movements. The threat is amorphous. One might assume that there will be no laws or policies against Jews from the antiracists who believe that they abhor the very idea of antisemitism.
Britain’s voice in international institutions may become stridently anti-Israel. The denouncing of most Jews as pro-apartheid or as defenders of racism and neoliberalism might increase as it is legitimized by the known politics of the Prime Minister himself. If Jewish children in schools are picked out for denunciation as Zionists and Islamophobes, where will they go for help? The bullies will say they’re only repeating what the Prime Minister himself thinks; the teachers will check their union policy and may have trouble making the Jewish kids feel safe. Jewish parents may be pushed back into Jewish schools; the funding for ‘elitist’, ‘Zionist’ and ‘religious’ Jewish schools may be brought into question by the left. British citizens with Israeli citizenship may find themselves under threat for having served in the Israeli army.
But the measure of the real threat is more than the sum of these various practical threats. The real threat is the mainstreaming and the normalization of antisemitic politics in ways which are as yet difficult precisely to predict. Britain may be approaching a period of significant and dangerous insecurity and turmoil.
Democracy itself is under assault from a number of different directions; the distinct and opposing critiques of democracy have more in common with each other than their apparently distinct proponents are aware of. The far left, the radical intellectuals, the antisemites, the xenophobic and Islamophobic right, the radical Islamists, the Trumpists and the Brexiters share a number of perspectives. They have a tendency to embrace discourses in which contempt for democratic states and cultures, for (neo-)liberals, for the liberty and equality of human beings are key elements. Profound suspicion of international co-operation and institutions is on the rise. Scepticism extends to the rule of law, science and knowledge, international trade, the very idea of the market. It is now common to encounter those who believe that these elements are mere facades which hide the old power structures in order to subordinate the many to the few.
It is not yet clear how antisemitism might play out in the coming years. But the emotional appeal of the populist movements requires enemies: enemies which are to be found at the centre of dangerous, global and powerful conspiracies.
Antisemitism has never been just an isolated eccentricity. It has always also been an indicator of a profound political sickness. To tolerate this as a symptom and to miss the fatal disease which causes it may prove to be an error.