This is how antisemitism thrives

A real anti-racist wouldn't ignore the reason for Corbyn's loss of the Labour whip

It can be difficult to keep track of all the revelations surrounding Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism.

There was the time he went to a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich terror attack; visiting the graves of members of the terrorist group which killed eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team*.

There was the time he said that British ‘Zionists’ don’t “understand English irony”, at a conference which featured a speaker who believes Israel was behind 9/11, and another who called for a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day.

He once referred to a cleric who promoted the blood libel as an “honoured citizen” and invited him to Parliament.

In 2012 he complained about the removal of a blatantly antisemitic mural.

He wrote the foreword to a book containing obviously antisemitic tropes.

I could go on, and on, and on. The problem was sufficiently serious that three Jewish newspapers published the same front page in 2018, warning of the existential threat posed to Jewish life in the UK from a Corbyn government. It cannot be emphasised enough: British Jews were genuinely scared of Corbyn and the Labour Party.

In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) served the Labour Party with an unlawful act notice, after its investigation into antisemitism found the Party responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination.

Responding to the issuance of the notice, Jeremy Corbyn, by this point the former leader of the party, said that the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons, a statement which led to Keir Starmer withdrawing the whip from him.

This week, the EHRC announced that due to the progress made on tackling antisemitism, the Labour Party is no longer in special measures. In a speech welcoming this development, Starmer confirmed that Corbyn will not stand as a Labour MP at the next General Election, and invited anyone who disagrees with the changes to the party to leave.

Given all of the above, all of the antisemitism we’ve seen and heard and read about these last few years, it seems utterly bizarre that the Guardian has chosen to present this as some sort of “purge of the left”.

Neal Lawson writes an article about Starmer’s barring of Corbyn without mentioning antisemitism even once. An astonishing editorial paints Corbyn as too slow and defensive when confronted with the issue of antisemitism, and commends his “formidable record fighting against racism”. Owen Jones presents it as one more step in eradicating the left, and offers up this extraordinary rhetorical pivot:

On Wednesday, Starmer made a speech to mark the Equality and Human Rights Commission taking the party out of special measures over antisemitism and used the opportunity to say that Labour was no longer a party of dogma or a party of protest. “If you don’t like the changes we’ve made,” he said, “the door is open, and you can leave.”

Who exactly is he asking to leave? Is this, for example, addressed to those who believe in nationalisation of utilities, higher taxes for the rich, scrapping tuition fees, supporting trade unions, and who advocate for Labour as a broad church? This was exactly the political platform Starmer offered members when he stood for leader.

“Who exactly is he asking to leave?”, Jones asks. Gee, Owen, I don’t know. Starmer, at a speech welcoming that the party is no longer in special measures over antisemitism, talking about how the party has changed its ways on antisemitism, and inviting those who don’t agree with the changes on antisemitism to leave; the obvious conclusion is that he’s trying to boot out members in favour of nationalisation of industries, right?

That pair of paragraphs is achingly disingenuous, but it’s also so typical of the treatment of antisemitism amongst a large chunk of Labour and the left these last few years. If he answered his own question honestly, Jones would not have been able to write his piece about the beleaguered left; he would have had to seriously think about the huge failures on antisemitism within his own political bailiwick, and we have seen no such introspection from him at any point.

Neal Lawson, Owen Jones, that Guardian editorial; not one of them really engages with why Jeremy Corbyn will not be a Labour candidate. Lawson and Jones ignore it entirely, the editorial even praises Corbyn’s anti-racism.

The key point here is that this is how antisemitism became so pervasive in Labour. It wasn’t just because of people who are actively, deliberately antisemitic, though obviously it was because of them too. It was because too many left-wing journalists and thinkers, too many Labour members and online activists decided to look away. They made excuses, ignored things they didn’t like, refused to believe what was right in front of them because it was uncomfortable. This is how antisemitism thrives.

This dynamic is still happening. A couple of days ago, the Brixton branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) posted a pamphlet online calling for Zionists to be sacked, calling them a “brainwashed, racist minority”, and urging the public to not speak to anyone who believes in Israel’s right to exist. Nobody on the left made any comment on this, of course, because the people involved with PSC are on the left; Jeremy Corbyn is, naturally, a patron.

In recent years, antisemitism has been demonstrated to be a real problem on the political left again and again and again. If you spend a day madly tweeting about Starmer barring Corbyn from candidacy without once mentioning antisemitism as the reason why, it becomes very apparent that you are not at all bothered by anti-Jewish racism; to you it is something to sidestep rather than confront.

It’s all very well going around calling yourself an anti-racist, but if you go silent or move into damage limitation mode the moment racism pops up on your side of the fence, you’re no fearless campaigner against bigotry. Spending your time minimising or deflecting antisemitism makes you a big part of the problem; an enabler of all the awful things which have happened these last few years. To make use of a quote Corbyn has tweeted in his time, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

The left is still ignoring antisemitism or covering for it; it has learnt nothing these last few years. But it has at least given the rest of us a good look at how hollow the claims of “anti-racism” are. You want to oppose racism? Start by looking closer to home.

*Note: I have corrected the second paragraph, which initially read:

There was the time he went to a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich terror attack; visiting the grave of terrorists who killed eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team.