Antisemitic daubing - who has the right to protest about it?

Every group, nation, or minority experiences struggles over what ideas dominate. However you see yourself - in terms of your group your nation, your minority, perhaps you've seen this process going on: people claiming, for example, that there is a 'right' way for your group to think, behave or act. Or that there is a 'mainstream' way and other ways are not legitimate. 

Part of what's gone on with Jews and the Labour Party, I believe, has running through it tensions about precisely this matter: who speaks for Jews? Who represents Jews? 

As it happens, the UK's 284,000 Jews make up a hugely diverse population whether that's seen in terms of lifestyle, employment, beliefs, religious practice, manifestations of culture or indeed along any lines of culture you would like to think of. One view of this is to acknowledge it and celebrate it. Another is to treat it as if this variety doesn't really exist. Another view is that the variety is awkward and that things should be done to get some kind of unity or homogeneity to it all. 

Here's how I think this applies to what's been going on recently, in particular on twitter where the vigil held in protest against the daubing in Hampstead in North London has provoked some bitter exchanges: 

(the paras that follow were originally tweets) 


If one’s view is that Corbyn is an antisemite and a Corbyn government would have been an existential threat to Jews, I speculate as to why a greater enemy than me isn’t the Jewish Lab candidates. All I do is sit on my tukkhes and tweet.

I’m beginning to wonder if something else is happening: some kind of unspoken struggle for hearts and minds over who has the right to speak. (We used to call it ‘hegemony’ in the ‘discourse’).

Antisemitic daubing is an attempt to intimidate Jews of all backgrounds and affiliations. North London is a place where this variation in Jewish culture and religion is very marked. Antisemitic daubing doesn’t threaten one kind of Jew more than another. Any Jew or group of Jews could/can show their resistance to that intimidation in whatever way they want.

One show of resistance by some Jews doesn’t exclude another group of Jews from showing their resistance in whatever way they want. Only if a group is seeking ‘hegemony’ (authority, domination) over others does it become an issue.

The discourse around me as being self-hating [there's been a lot of it going on on twitter!] is an attempt to delegitimise my type of Jew (however that’s perceived).There are many secular and radical traditions that are easily hidden, forgotten or sat on in this debate.

It’s no more relevant whether this is a ‘minority’ or ‘not mainstream’ than it is to say Philip Roth is not as mainstream as Alan Dershowitz. Cultural politics is not only about numbers. It’s also about attitudes and sharing thoughts and feelings.

The Tiger who Came to Tea - don't try to make a nuanced point about it.

This is a warning for anyone trying to say something nuanced about literature (or probably any of the arts) in the mainstream media outside of the arts pages. 

On BBC One's 'Imagine' I was asked to speculate about 'The Tiger who Came to Tea' - a book that I love and admire enormously. I tried to make the point that when we writers, artists create unreal or surreal images we don't know exactly what these represent. 

This is hardly a new or controversial point. Shakespeare nearly makes the point several times. This is a central point of Freud and many writers, psychologists since. So if you come to me and tell me - as some have - that a little poem I wrote - as I thought about the death of my mother, uses the image of a van going off because somewhere in my mind I have the image of vans or trains taking Jews away during World War Two, I'm not going to 'deny' this. I can say, 'I don't remember having that image when I wrote the poem', but this is not ultimately the 'truth'. The impact of history on our minds is not fully known to us. (I wrote a Ph.D about this, now published as 'The Author'!)

So, I suggested that when Judith Kerr created the tiger, I floated the possibility that this quite genial creature is in its own way just a bit threatening also. A tiger is a tiger is a tiger. Tigers, when they appear in children's books or as soft toys are indeed cuddly and giant-cat-like. But tigers are also at some level in our mind predators. So, I suggested that perhaps Judith had put into her image of the tiger some of her perhaps-repressed or hidden fears of the door knocking and someone dangerous being there. 

According to Freud and others we 'sublimate' our fears or we 'displace' them, we make them 'safe'. We are so successful at this, that we don't even know that we've done it. That's the argument.

Since I tried to make this point, the news media have had a glorious time, saying that I said that the tiger = the Gestapo. I didn't say that. I tried to make a more nuanced point. O foolish Rosen. 

(For people who don't know Judith's life: when she was 7, her family fled Berlin because the Nazis had just come to power, and Judith's father was under immediate threat of arrest for being both Jewish and 'subversive' (he was a left-wing theatre critic).)

It's being repeated all over the news media at the moment because the wonderful animation company Lupus, who made the animation of 'Bear Hunt' - have made an animation for this Christmas of 'The Tiger who Came to Tea'.

So if you see anywhere that Rosen said that the Tiger = the Gestapo', I didn't. 

The Enraged Centre finds its voice

It's the moment of the enraged centre, still furious with that tens of thousands of Labour Party members who elected Corbyn (twice), still furious that a Corbyn-led Labour Party increased the Labour vote to 12 million in 2017 and now in full throat certainty that they know why Corbyn 'lost the election'. 

He 'lost the north', he 'lost the working class', they say, which presumably, the assured centre would have won. Would it have, though? The assured centre was much more Remain than Corbyn - or so they kept saying - so presumably they would have alienated even more of the working class north, wouldn't they? 

Then again, the enraged centre keep pointing out that Corbyn is too 'north London', without noticing that more often than not, they are too. And after all, Tony Blair, won elections (apparently) because he was very smart, modern, and...er...north London. (Yes, I know he came originally from 'the North' but his pitch as an adult, was in part that he was Oxford educated and was in the smart north London set who had planned the whole New Labour project from a north London cafe. (I exaggerate, but you know what I mean.) 

The 'lost the working class' line of argument has to pretend that the 10 million who voted Labour this time either doesn't exist (as in 'don't mention the 10 million'), or that the whole 10 million came from Islington. As far as I know there aren't 10 million people living in Islington. And it's also necessary to pretend that no one living in north London is a worker, that none of the people living in north London works in offices, factories (they still exist), as shop-workers, in fleets of vans, trucks, there are no transport workers, no health service workers...you get the drift. Just keep up the pretence that a Corbyn-led Labour Party got all 10 million votes from 'students' and 'Trots'. 

So the enraged centre have a problem. They've got to find someone 'from the North' who is sufficiently centrist but presumably not over-infected by Remainer-ism and yet sufficiently popular with all those members of the Party who thought that a programme of supporting public services, better wages and a foreign policy that would avoid war was worth backing, but have now stopped thinking those things.  

Boris Johnson, Katie Hopkins - raving antisemitism

On October 29, 2018 the Jewish Chronicle ran a story which included this:


"Right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins has been condemned for blaming the "Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration" into Europe for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in which 11 died.


Robert Bowers, the suspected shooter, is purported to have kept a social media account that sent antisemitic messages in the hours before the attack.


Two days after the mass shooting stunned the Jewish communty, Ms Hopkins tweeted she was “watching the pin-the-blame on the donkey".


“Look to the Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration across the Med," she wrote."
----------------------------------------
Note from me:


Please look at the photo below. In the last few hours and days, various people have drawn attention to the fact that Katie Hopkins is making announcements about how enthusiastic she is that Boris Johnson has been elected. The photo seems to suggest something else: Boris Johnson is in no way bothered that he might appear in public with someone who has Katie Hopkins' views. Her views on Muslims are well known. Given the furore about antisemitism in the Labour Party, might the media not have drawn our attention to the fact that Boris Johnson has been friendly with someone who thinks that the massacre of 11 Jews was the Chief Rabbi's fault?


[I don't like explaining the logic of the minds of people like Katie Hopkins, but it's possible that she singled out the Chief Rabbi because he had visited a refugee camp in Europe. She was, then, supporting what is known as 'Replacement Theory' - that 'the Jews' are replacing white people in Europe or America with people of colour.]

Boris Johnson's voice.

Popular performing arts in theatre, stand-up comedy, spoken word and the like, mostly rely on a particular kind of 'vocal effort' and range. I know the differences between me chatting at home, talking on the phone, talking on the radio and performing to a thousand children in a theatre. Everyone who does any or all of these knows this too. Some of us study or teach it. Some of us pick it up as we go along, observing how others do it and imitating them.

Politicians find themselves in similar situations: speaking in public, on TV and radio and in the House of Commons. Some find the very performative side to speech-making a bit artificial and fear that as they 'put on' the speechifying voice that they sound false, so they try to find more 'authentic' ways of doing it.


I've watched several interviews with people who said that they had liked what they had seen of Boris Johnson. These haven't been public school educated people part of his milieu of toffs. I wonder is there some aspect of this that people watching TV, enjoying these popular performing arts techniques that they see in comedians, see something enjoyable in the way that Johnson performs. Did he find a way in the debating societies of Eton and Oxford the popular performative style that overlaps with the purely theatrical one?

Does this mean that politicians of the left should also work on developing this art? Or should they judge it as false and find another way of speaking in public, whether that's on TV, radio, public meetings or the House of Commons? Nicola Sturgeon for example has a style that is fluent, clear and assured that doesn't go in for any of the Johnson way of doing things. What other styles of speaking can be powerful without going down the Johnson route?

My advice to the media on how to handle the Labour leadership election

1. You choose the next leader of the Labour Party, so make sure that you set the agenda for who will or won't succeed. This means that you must do the interpretation of the election results. On no account leave it to rank and file Labour people to work things out and express them on air or in your papers, and don't leave it to Labour-supporting research groups. They're biased. You're not. 

2. You must start to favour one or two of the candidates. You can do this by interviewing these more often and in a particular kind of way,  challenging but essentially friendly. With the people you don't favour,   you must be challenging but remember to interrupt them more, show some contempt on your face or voice and keep saying 'But this failed last time' as if 'what failed last time' is a certainty. 

3. Make sure to bring into the studios or into your papers many, many people who have never had any interest whatsoever in voting or supporting Labour. Give them plenty of time to talk about what Labour should do. Encourage them to keep repeating that word 'should' or similar words like 'needs to', 'has to', 'must'. This helps drive the idea that the media choose the leader not the members. 

4.  You must keep going with vox pops. Keep on going to windswept, wet places and repeating the phrase, 'If Labour are to win, they must win here.' Then interview someone and give them time to say that every single thing about the cut in their standard of living over the last ten years was caused by the EU and immigrants.  On no account create a situation in which any of these ideas might be challenged. You have become at this moment the channel by which these ideas circulate unchallenged. If anyone points this out to you, get really furious and say that it's an attack on free speech. 

Ask the Labour leadership candidate several times, 'But what are you going to say to that person we just heard say that it's the fault of the EU and immigrants?'  The candidate will probably struggle because there is no immediate answer. This set of ideas has been cooking for decades, with false notions  (and lies) to do with what migrants actually do in the UK, the work they do, the tax they pay and so on. Remember again, it's never your job to challenge this, always repeat it under the guise that you are 'voicing people's concerns'. Always make it Labour's 'problem' and not the Tories' problem for having allowed, encouraged and fed these views. 

5. Leave your viewers and listeners with the impression that the whole Labour project is over, anyway.  There are now only two or three versions of Toryism left on the table. 

My 10-point Guide to Labour Leadership Candidates

1. The Economy: if you're asked about why 'Labour crashed the economy' - concede everything. Apologise profusely. Say, 'Yes we did.' Smile weakly. Agree if the interviewer makes out 'there was no money left.' Agree that it was 'necessary' to 'get things right' and 'tough decisions had to be made' and perhaps 'we were in the wrong place to put them right at the time.' 

Don't ever point out that in fact it wasn't the 'economy' (in the sense  of the government's finances) that had 'crashed'. It was the bankers' who wouldn't or couldn't lend money any more. Never point out that the UK is a currency-issuing economy. Never point out that the government has been issuing billions of what they call 'quantitative easing' which has the net effect of making the super-rich richer by increasing the value of their assets.

Don't make a big deal out of 'inequality'. Instead, cite the misleading statistics on the inequality of pay. These ignore the inequality of wealth which factors in 'assets' e.g. property. 

Never mention trade unions. It has been shown that a unionised workforce is able to squeeze a little bit more wages out of the system, alongside better work safety, guaranteed breaks, improvements of working conditions. Never ever mention this. Let interviewers talk about 'union barons' and smile weakly. 

Never mention 'nationalisation'. Give that up. All of it. Right away. If power firms, railway companies, water companies, the postal service or any other part of the economy is doing a rubbish job and ripping off people, on no account suggest that nationalisation might be a possible solution. Keep talking about 'responsible business' or some cack about 'a new kind of capitalist'. 

The amount of national debt in proportion to the GDP is worrying some economists. You can mention this but if anyone says that you talking about this is 'damaging confidence', clam up and smile weakly.  The amount of private debt created by the Tories in order to make up for weak demand is getting to a point where some in the financial community are getting a teensy bit worried that the old domino effect could strike again: a bank in some part of the world system might shut its doors and then another and another and we're back in 2008. The fact that this is finance capitalism being finance capitalism must never be mentioned by you. You must keep up the pretence that this is some kind of present difficulty in what is really a perfect system. Talk about 'regulation' and 'responsible banking' as if that could or would solve anything. 

If the whole financial system collapses, blame Russia, China, Iran and Jeremy Corbyn. 

2. Foreign policy. You are just allowed to say that perhaps the Iraq War was not ideal (don't mention the millions of deaths, rise and rise of terrorist groups)  but there are no other wars that you can say were wrong. You should talk as if 'Britain' (never say 'UK') has to 'help sort out' anything going on anywhere so long as the US thinks it's right to do so. Clearly, Iran needs to be 'sorted out' next,  so say so. Never question the right of 'Britain' to do so. When the media machine gets going explaining why some country (any country) is the greatest threat the world has ever known, agree with this. Smile weakly. Point out that this is 'patriotic'. Talk about something called 'Britain's standing in the world' as if you're talking about Queen Victoria being crowned Empress of India.  Talking of Queens, always say the Queen is wonderful. And so is the Royal Family. Nick Boris Johnson's phrase 'beyond reproach'. Mention that your mother loves Prince William.

3. The Election defeat. Make absolutely clear that there was only one cause for this: Corbyn. Never admit that any move over Brexit that he put forward came as a result of something your group pushed him into. On no account let anyone make comparisons of the popular vote: Brown (less than Corbyn), Miliband (less than Corbyn). Never make the point that the Labour Party hasn't actually disappeared and that 10 million people voted for a Corbyn-led Labour Party this time and 12 million last time. 

Keep saying the manifesto was a mistake. Don't go into details. Begin sentences with, 'I just think that...' 

43 out of the 59 constituencies that went from Labour to Tory were in Leave seats. On no account mention this. Don't mention the fact that probably, once Johnson came back with a deal, the game was up for Labour. 

What you have to keep saying is 'we're listening to people's concerns'. Be very clear that this isn't anything to do with poverty caused deliberately by the Tories. That's much too confrontational. 'Listening to people's concerns' means you visiting somewhere for the TV and  letting people on camera or on the radio ramble on at you for hours about how they aren't racist but the trouble is that immigrants have cut their wages, getting council houses, putting pressure on the national health and talking loudly on buses. On no account point out that poverty, housing shortage and an under-funded NHS were created by the Tory government through austerity as a deliberate part of cutting the role of the state and them (not immigrants) trying to create a cheaper labour force. You must never ever say this. 

4. Antisemitism. You will be asked about 'antisemitism in the Labour Party'. This is good. You will not be asked about 'antisemitism in society', or 'antisemitism in the Tory Party', so you must not mention these either. There is only 'antisemitism in the Labour Party'. Concede everything. On no account question whether any report or account was in any way exaggerated, distorted. You must not mention the fact that when Johnson was elected as leader of the Tory Party, every journalist in every newspaper knew that he had been editor of the Spectator and had edited 'Taki' who regularly poured out antisemitic jibes in his column for Johnson or on his own blog or other publications. Don't mention that not a single one of these journalists mentioned this. Don't say that  you are in any way concerned by Rees-Mogg and his antisemitic jibes about 'illuminati' and Soros, his retweeting of a tweet from the Alternativ für Deutschland or that he has hung out with far right groups. Don't on any account mention the links between the Tory MEPs and far-right groups in Europe. Don't mention that Boris and Orban (antisemite) appear to get along very nicely. On no account dig up anything on the way that Dominic Cummings talks about Goldman Sachs - it's almost identical to the way antisemites used to talk about Rothschild. Just keep saying sorry for 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' as if it's the first, last and only presence of antisemitism in the UK today. Always refer to 'the Jewish community' as if it is one monolithic entity all thinking and living in more or less the same way, even though it's a teeny bit antisemitic to say so. It's the kind of antisemitism that no one notices so it doesn't matter. 

5. Israel.  Remember Ed Miliband - he suggested that one way to get the 'Peace Process' going again was for the UK to recognise a Palestinian state before negations. He was immediately vilified, Maureen Lipman left the Labour Party and, apparently, thousands of Jews followed her. Miliband was, according to the Jewish Chronicle 'toxic'. On no account repeat Ed's proposal. Talk about the 'peace process' as if it's a real thing. You can frown in a caring sort of a way about the West Bank and Gaza but on no account propose anything concrete or useful. Accept that all problems in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are caused by Palestinians. 

6. Brexit. You're stuffed. There will either be a very hard Brexit or a very very hard no-deal Brexit. Remember, no one understands trade deals, nor do you. Keep saying phrases like 'the very best for Britain'. It doesn't mean anything because something can be, say, the very best for bankers and it's absolutely no good for working people. The advantage of keeping going on about 'Britain' is that it feeds into people's sense of entitlement and special status as Brits in the world. 

7. Education. Don't disagree with the academy and free schools programme. Don't make a fuss about unaccountable academy management siphoning off millions. On no account oppose grammar schools. These offer the illusion that they are good for the poor because a tiny percentage of poor people go to them. Never describe the schools that are not grammar schools as  'Sec Mods'. Keep calling them High Schools and do the 'progressive' bit by saying that there are teachers in High Schools who are doing a fantastic job. This has the advantage of being both patronising and unnecessary and completely misses the point that the people you will call the 'disadvantaged' are disadvantaged by grammar schools.

8 Social mobility. This is going to be one of your big ones. Keep going on about social mobility. On no account mention the fact that there are 3 key motors that prevent social mobility: inherited wealth, private education and inherited wealth. To mention these is class war. Don't do it.  In fact, social mobility also accepts the idea that there must be and will always have to be the very poor, not quite so poor, the fairly poor, the not poor, the quite well off, the very well off and the eyewatering obscenely super-rich. All we can hope for, you point out, is that a few people might move up from one of these layers to another. On no account mention that someone must move down for someone else to move up - assuming the numbers stay the same. In other words, social mobility means society immobility. No change. Keep going on about social mobility as if it's a really progressive alternative radical idea. Mention the fact that your grandfather was poor, you are not and it's all down to 'social mobility'. Never mention the role of the expansion of the economy over the last 100 years as a factor. 

9. Immigration.  The best plan here is to agree with everything that the Tories do. They will probably fill the airwaves with anti-immigrant rhetoric mixed with how wonderful certain individual migrants have been. Just copy this. They will say that they're going to follow the Australian system, so you should either agree or find another country - Canada or New Zealand (somewhere with a largely white government and English-speaking) - and say that we could follow what they do. The election has shown that not challenging anti-immigrant rhetoric leads many people to think that immigrants have caused their poverty which then in turn leads them to vote for the very people who have made them poor.  You must not make this point.  

10. Housing. The last Labour Governments could have created a fantastic legacy of social housing. Gordon Brown muttered as much himself as he was leaving office. You could try to say one or two things about social housing but it generally reeks of 'old socialism', so avoid it.  In order to sound modern and forward looking, you need to say things like 'we're looking into exciting forms of shared partnerships' or 'we're talking with business about how to get more affordable homes on to the market'. The great thing about the word 'affordable' is that it sounds like anyone and everyone can 'afford' the housing that's 'affordable'. They can't. It's complete nonsense but you must go on using the word anyway.

PS That's all for now. Come back to me for more in a few days time. 

Labour lose: first thoughts

43 of the 59 constituencies that Labour lost were constituencies that voted to leave in the Referendum. 

This doesn't explain everything. I suggest it explains something.

This 'something' will be back to why people in those constituencies (not in all places) voted to leave in the referendum.

If those reasons are to do with what people call 'immigration' - (maybe I'd call it 'race') then what we might have seen is sufficient numbers giving up on their 'class allegiance' and looking to people (the Tories) who think that they represent their '"race" allegiance'.

If this is the case, then we are seeing something classic. When people are encouraged to think that the solution to their poverty, lack of public services is a consequence of 'them', the 'other', the 'immigrant', they switch their political allegiance to a party that has been responsible for their poverty and lack of public services.

(Please note, there are a lot 'ifs' in the above. In other words, I'm putting this up as an argument for discussion, not a set of facts, or a definitive truth. Please take it in that way.)

Using a phrase can do political work: memes and antisemitism.

Some years ago, Richard Dawkins invented the word 'meme'. It's now come to mean something in the digital world but originally it was a way of describing how a word of phrase became so popular that it appeared to have a life of its own or that it so seemed to encapsulate a thing or a concept or a process that it then became the go-to word of phrase for many if not most people speaking that language. You could argue 'make love not war' was a bit like that or 'themos flask' (as we used to call them) or 'the few' referring to the RAF pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.

I don't believe that language does things without human agency whether that's from the person producing it or receiving it. There is no such thing as language doing its thing without humans doing it with or through language. Language is in fact language-in-use. It's only by virtue of the academic study of language that people have treated language as if it can 'do' things on its own.

One meme - or catch-phrase or cliche that has emerged in the last few years is 'antisemitism in the Labour Party'. As a phrase it sounds logical and contained. But pause a moment and think, why should something like antisemitism be restricted to one section of the population? Who decided that the spread or extent of antisemitism should be sliced off from other areas in society? In fact, it's that slicing off that is ideological. A choice was made to attach 'in the Labour Party' to the word 'antisemitism'. This becomes clear to us if you attach alternative phrases and ask why they didn't become memes. 'Antisemitism in politics' or 'Antisemitism in political parties', or 'Antisemitism in public life'.

If, of course antisemitism was restricted to 'in the Labour Party' we might say, 'fair enough'. But if we were to find antisemitism in other parts of political life, party political life, or indeed in the other main political party, then the phrase 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' starts to sound like a trick, a means by which we don't or can't consider antisemitism in public life, or in the Tory Party.

On the public life front, one of the most absurd things of recent months is to see or hear broadcast journalists pointing microphones at Labour people and demanding answers on antisemitism as if they (the journalists) have spent lives caring about antisemitism or indeed as if they weren't in any way utterers of antisemitic tropes, sneers, jibes etc. themselves. Really? Is that possible?

But when it comes to 'antisemitism in the Labour party' preventing us from seeing antisemitism elsewhere in the political party most equivalent to Labour (ie the Tories), the phrase 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' becomes the most like a means of preventing us from seeing what's going on.

The fact that Boris Johnson edited a raving antisemite - 'Taki' - for years (when Johnson was editor of the Spectator') is invisible. The jibes of Rees-Mogg, along with his closeness to far-right organisations, is again, out of sight. There's a lack of scrutiny of Dominic Cummings singling out of 'Goldman Sachs' for his phrase 'the likes of Goldman Sachs' and his Hitlerian descriptions of Goldman Sachs and their apparent corrupt power over the EU. The casual antisemitism of Suella Braverman, Crispin Blunt and Priti Patel have slipped past with no dwelling on their effect.

Meanwhile there are numbers of councillors and candidates for the Tory Party who have said unacceptable things (according to the IHRA code) who've been 'suspended' but we are still waiting to see if their misdemeanours will be forgiven without a shout from the media.

To my mind this is how 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' is being used. It's a means by which the media can exclude oversight of Tory antisemitism. All they have to do is just make sure that the media keep repeating the phrase as true, self-explanatory, and a thing of its own, and there is no need to look at the Tory stuff. Job done.

Tory Party, Johnson, Antisemitism: Sunday morning tweets.

Some of this morning's tweets about the Tories, Boris Johnson and antisemitism are below:

(Before anyone accuses me of 'whataboutery' or 'deflection' I'll point out that these are ways of trying to neutralise a legitimate call for consistency across the field. Commentators who say they are combatting 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' and who are not combatting antisemitism in the Tory Party, are in fact just combatting the Labour Party. We know that that is a specific agenda of at least some of the commentators e.g. Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle who announced in 2006 that he was in a 'battle to save Western Civilisation' and the 'enemy' was 'the left in all its forms'.)


Here are my tweets:

Think of the zillions of hours spent ‘proving’ that the anti-racist Corbyn is antisemitic, while in plain sight, there was Johnson’s years of editing the self-identifying raving antisemite ‘Taki’. Just google the name and eg ‘Jews’ or ‘Holocaust’. Media attention? Hello? Hello?

The interview you haven’t seen: “Mr Johnson, for years, you edited the columns of the raving antisemite ‘Taki’, and what’s more you socialised with him. Do you apologise to Jewish people for this? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you?”

I wonder why it’s never been News that Johnson as editor of the Spectator edited ‘Taki’, a raving antisemite eg “ The younger generation of Jews who control it [ie Hollywood] think that there's more money to be made by dumbing down.”

At any time since Johnson became leader, the Jewish Chronicle and the chorus of ‘Corbyn’s an antisemite’ singers (Peston, Freedland, Hodges, Mann etc) , could have shouted about Johnson as editor of antisemite ‘Taki’ at the Spectator: the columns, the parties, the jollies. Why didn’t they?

I think I know why Johnson gets a free pass for the time he edited ‘Taki’ at the Spectator: it’s because upper class antisemitism is ‘funny’. I went to Oxford. I know. Free pass for upper class antisemitism please!

People accuse Corbyn of having been silent. Why then no accusation of Johnson being ‘silent’ about Rees-Mogg and his ‘illuminati’ and Soros jibes, Rees-Mogg retweeting an Alternativ für Deutschland tweet (AfD is an organisation that includes neo-Nazis); Dominic Cummings’ talk of ‘the likes of Goldman Sachs’ and Goldman Sachs having ‘fingers in every pie’ in the EU for their own benefit; comments from: Suella Braverman, Crispin Blunt, Priti Patel, Toby Young, a new round of suspended Tory candidates, and of course himself editing the raving antisemite ‘Taki’.

(I've passed these on to the 'Antisemitism Tsar', Lord John Mann, many many times. He messaged me to say that he doesn't deal with individual cases. He does. And frequently. But not these.)

I remember Boris Johnson marching with us

I remember you Boris Johnson marching with us when we marched to Plashet Grove Jewish Cemetery
I remember you Boris Johnson when you marched with us when we marched in Welling
I remember you there when we tried to stop the BNP from holding a meeting in our school
I remember you at the great concert against the Nazis in Victoria Park.
I remember you on a platform to defend mutliculturalism after Cameron's attack
I remember you working in your spare time to produce a leaflet on Holocaust Denial that we distributed all over the country
I remember you in Whitechapel with us when the EDL said they were going to march down the Whitechapel Road but they didn't and we stopped them.
I remember you there with us.


Actually I don't.

Twittering convo with Lee Harpin and Dan Hodges

People might be interested in an interchange that took place on twitter this afternoon between the Daily Mail columnist Dan Hodges and me.

Some background:

1. The conversation came just as I was having another with the Jewish Chronicle journalist Lee Harpin who has been found to have written many untruths in relation to what one of the Liverpool branches of the Labour party has been doing, in particular in relation to Audrey White. The press watchdog has delivered a judgement which is remarkable in how condemnatory it is.

2. Dan Hodges has used the phrase of Jewish leftwing supporters of Corbyn that they (we) are 'useful Jewish idiots'. I and others have asked him to withdraw this and have described the phrase as antisemitic. This has zero effect on Dan, who acts in public with a very large following as if he is a self-appointed prosecutor, judge and jury on Labour.

3. Lee is also interesting in that he accused me of being a 'cheerleader for Soros' - an obscure but significant insult as it's taken from the new Right's phrasebook.

4. Put these together and we have two high priests of the anti-Corbyn movement both using antisemitic phrases.

Anyway, below is a twitter conversation with Hodges. (Apols if I've left out links but it's rather hard to put these together after they've flown by!)

It begins with my comments to Lee Harpin:

Michael:

I condemn all antisemitism, left, right, centre. I condemn double standards on this matter, judging left antisemitism to be more important than right antisemitism, and judging left antisemitism to be more important than Islamophobia and persecution of people of colour

I also condemn the fact that you should have used an antisemitic phrase of abuse, taken out of the alt right copy book against a Jew (me). You have been shown in public to have betrayed the basic tenets of journalism.

NOTE: AT this point someone asked me if I was making Lee 'squirm'

Michael:
There's nothing I can say that can make Lee squirm like the public and official dressing-down that Lee has received from the Press watchdog. It's is the greatest shame that can be heaped on a journalist in this country.

Hodges
Wouldn't your time be more usefully spent attacking the New Statesman Michael...

Michael:
I just did but as I'm a 'useful Jewish idiot' (a great Hodges' bon mot, there) it's amazing that I managed, really.
Free pass for Mr Hodges, please!
He fights antisemitism with antisemitism.
Free pass for Mr Hodges!

HODGES SAID SOMETHING HERE - NOT SURE WHAT!

Michael:
...by calling them 'useful Jewish idiots'. I'm Jewish, Dan. You're not.

Hodges:
"I'm Jewish, Dan. You're not". Correct. And?

Michael:
I wondered if you might have difficulty with that one. It's because the phrase 'useful Jewish idiots' is hurtful to Jews and not to you. It's how slurs work, Dan. They are directed down the racialised hierarchy, Dan.

Hodges:
Ah. But not charities set up by Holocaust Deniers. Or wreaths laid to honour people who murder Jews. Or murals depicting Jews as hooked-nosed bankers getting rich off the backs of the poor. None of that is part of your racialised hierarchy Michael...

Michael:
It's not 'my racialised hierarchy' Dan. It's our racialised hierarchy.. You're on it, having positioned yourself above me with your slur 'useful Jewish idiots'. You're on it, and have never once acknowledged how or why you've positioned yourself on it.

Hodges:
Fine. Our racialised hierarchy. I'm still waiting patiently for you to explain why Holocaust denial, murals of hooked-nose Jews and wreaths for people who murder Jews aren't a part of it. [Although I think we both know the answer don't we Michael]

Michael:
You've just done it again, Dan. I don't want to hear that horrible phrase about noses. I don't acknowledge it as a description. Repeating it is insulting. There are screeds and screeds of debate about each of these incidents and Corbyn has replied to them.

[NOTE: At this point Dan said I was 'deflecting' and not answering his questions. Can't find the tweet for the moment.]

Michael :
I am not answerable to you on these matters. Again, from your position in the hierarchy, you behave as if you can summon me to give evidence in your court. Not so. You're still stuck on the higher step. I don't answer to your snap of the fingers.

Michael:
When we can have a level playing field in which we can compare the relative gravity of the words/actions of Corbyn, Johnson, the Labour Party and the Tory Party, and we don't have participants like you levering themselves up the hierarchy with antisemitic taunts, we can talk.

Michael:
The very idea that you with your 'useful jewish idiots' epithet think you can summon me and demand that I comment on those incidents that you choose to select, is laughable. You're mired in your own racialised assumptions about yourself and me.

SOMEONE INTERJECTS:

I REPLY:

Michael: 

Dan is trying to understand how this phrase 'useful jewish idiots' was a way of positioning himself higher up than me on the racialised hierarchy. He's just said that it's my racialised hierarchy. I've just pointed out to him, it's ours.

Michael to Dan:
I told you very carefully the terms in which a discussion with anybody (not necessarily an antisemite who pretends he isn't, as you do) might take place. You chose to ignore it. Of course you did. You're higher up the hierarchy and were looking beyond me.

Michael :
You're still doing it. Having done the antisemitic insult, having done the summons, having demanded to be replied to from a higher place in the racialised hierarchy, you're now telling me about my incapacities.

Michael:
You don't even recognise how you did it. That's how entitlement works. You give an example and demand that others (me, in this case) respond as if you have rights over me.

Apologise Now

'Apologise Corbyn!' 

'I did already.' 

'Apologise again!' 

'I apologise!' 

'Now apologise for taking so long to apologise!'

To Slur with Love by Danny Finkelstein

The key issue of the politics around  'antisemitism in the Labour Party' is whether all incidents in public political life are - or are not -  being judged by the same standards. 

The idea bandied about by political philosophers is that the law and politics treats people equally. Once a principle has been founded, then that principle is supposed to be applied fairly. The same standards are supposed to be used to judge a pauper or a prince (ahem ahem). 

We are entitled to ask, are the same standards being used to judge 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' as with all other examples of antisemitism in other political parties? We are entitled to ask, are the same standards being used to judge 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' as with all other examples of racism in other political parties?

That's what it comes down to: are the same standards being applied? 

I can answer this. I don't think they are. I think that the antisemitism, Islamophobia, discrimination and persecution that has gone on around the Tory Party are not being judged by the same standards.

One example: most people in the media judge Corbyn's actions in 'the mural case' to have been antisemitic. As that's the public judgement, let's go with that for the moment: public piece of art, Corbyn approved of it.

Now let's do the same with the recent unveiling of the statue for Nancy Astor. Astor was an, anti-Catholic antisemite: public piece of art, most politicians approved of it.

In case A, Corbyn is an antisemite. In case B, the politicians are given a free pass. 

A much greyer area is around so-called slurs. These are the use of stereotypes and 'tropes' that often have long histories. Some people use these deliberately, some unconsciously. If we were in less contentious times, we would all be helping each other with these. Anyone, like me, who has read oodles of English Literature or grown up in the 50s, has been surrounded with these since birth! I can remember my dad coming back from a meeting at the teacher training college he taught at, and told us how someone started talking  about a 'nasty little Jew'. We said, 'What did you say?' and he said, 'I said, "Are there any other kinds of little Jew you know?"' 

He was quick like that.

So: slurs. Let's have a bit of slur-equality. For example, Lord Finkelstein, amiable son of Holocaust survivors who has migrated from the SDP to the Tory Party, is very keen to point out on twitter that I am 'atypical' (ie not typical) in my political views in comparison to other Jews. He did this in between expressing great affection (love, almost) for my work. 

Break that down: if I'm not 'atypical' there must be a 'typical'. Really? Is there really a 'typical Jewish view of politics'? Really? 

Just imagine if I put that out on social media, that there's a 'typical Jewish view of politics'! Or Corbyn? Can you imagine the shitstorm? 

This is a perfect example of the 'not by the same standards' rule doing the rounds at the moment. 

One person's slur is another person's observation. 

There are no Jewish Labour candidates. Er...actually there are. Vote for Margaret Hodge!

One of the curious features of the run-in to election day has been the strange invisibility of Labour's Jewish candidates. Obviously, there have been strenuous efforts to give the impression that the Labour Party as a whole has persecuted its Jewish MPs and Jewish members so that there are none left. Or: OK there are a few left but the only ones still hanging in there are, as Melanie Phillips described them as "bad, treacherous, disloyal, ignorant, malevolent and often psychologically damaged Jews". (Excuse me, Melanie! 'Treacherous Jews'? 'Malevolent Jews'? 'Disloyal Jews?' Hmmm sounds like a bit of classic Jew-baiting to me from the good Melanie.)

So, to talk of Labour hollowing out its Jewish membership and candidates gives a kind of whiff of what the Nazis tried to do: create 'Jewish-free' areas and ultimately a 'Jewish-free' Europe. Labour = Nazi. Gettit? 

This can be amplified by suggesting that hardly any Jews will vote Labour. Or indeed, thanks to the Chief Rabbi, we must think that Jews (or anyone who likes or supports Jews) should not vote Labour. Why this act of communalist politics wasn't greeted with horror by the commentariat is a mystery. Or not. I may be wrong, but even in the face of repeated, persistent and deliberate Islamophobia in the Tory Party, the bodies that represent Muslims don't seem to have said, 'Don't vote Tory!'. Wasn't Peston, Freedland, Cohen just a teeny bit uncomfortable that a religious leader was so politically partisan? It was certainly a concern of Howard Cooper, a Reform Rabbi in Finchley, North London when Rabbi Romain had issued a few weeks earlier, the same kind of politico-religious warning as the Chief Rabbi had. Cooper was concerned that further down the road this kind of intervention by a religious leader can invite hostility.  Oh well, no matter. I guess the gloves are off now. If any Muslim, Methodist, Buddhist, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Catholic leader says, 'Don't vote for X', we should think that'd be OK. No one will say, 'How dare that religious person tell their congregation how to vote!' Hmmm. Interfaith wars, anyone? 

We shall see.

Of course, the Chief Rabbi didn't say, 'Vote Tory!' Good man. But then he didn't need to. With a first past the post election system, it's a two-horse race. Don't vote Labour = victory to the Tories. He knows that. The media know that. We know that. But, hey, let's kid ourselves and pretend that his intervention was merely a warning about rising antisemitism, where he sees it. As I've said before, this kind of conjuring asks of us to believe that it really isn't necessary for the Chief Rabbi or the Antisemitism Tsar or the commentariat to 'notice' the persistent antisemitic sneers of Rees-Mogg, the jibes of Patel, Toby Young, Crispin Blunt and the more sinister frothing of Dominic Cummings. 

But something else: the Chief Rabbi chose not to mention Islamophobia, Windrush or the 'hostile environment' or indeed how austerity has impacted disproportionately hard on people of colour and recent migrants. These are the policies of the Conservatives. So, in saying, 'Don't vote Labour' (which in effect means - let the Tories in) and in not mentioning Islamophobia, the hostile environment and the persistent discrimination against people of colour and migrants all caused by the Tories, the Chief Rabbi was in effect passing on the appalling message: 'Hey fellow-Jews,  discrimination against Muslims, people of colour and migrants doesn't matter as much as antisemitism.' 

Of course, he didn't say that. Of course he wouldn't. However, if he had wanted to eliminate even half a sniff of such a thing, he could easily have given a speech in which he made all his warnings about antisemitism in the Labour Party - which is what he believes - alongside condemnation of Islamophobia, racism against people of colour and xenophobia. That way, he would have eliminated any suggestion that he was doing something dangerous: suggesting that one kind of racism matters more than another. 

This is all based on the fact that we are in a two-horse race and that there are of course Jews in the Labour Party, there are Jewish voters and there are of course of course of course (!), Jewish Labour candidates.

How interesting that the media have been so silent about this. There's Margaret Hodge who only a few months ago was often on TV and radio railing against Corbyn and the antisemites. She frequently made the point that she was on the verge of leaving the Labour Party. I made bad jokes about it. But she has chosen to stay, even as Ellman and Berger have left. 

Repeat: it's a two-horse race. I don't know, but let's take it at face-value, Margaret Hodge has weighed things up and decided that of the two, Labour is better than Tory. The very opposite of what the Chief Rabbi said. The very opposite of what, according to the oft-cited survey says, 87% of Jews say. 

Isn't this news? That the high-profile Margaret Hodge hasn't gone with what they claim is the flow? 

Clearly not. What Margaret Hodge has done is what we call in the biz, 'counter-factual'. It doesn't 'fit the narrative'. So, one moment, Margaret Hodge can be front page news and the next - when she's counter-factual - she isn't. Amazing, isn't it? And the media assume we don't notice. 

But for those of us supporting Labour it means something a bit different. It means that we support Margaret Hodge. For Labour-supporting people under the lash of Margaret's tongue - and of course that includes Corbyn himself - this might seem a bitter pill to swallow. To which, I say, so be it. We are down to the moment of the binary choice - whatever we think of that. Whatever we say and do, should be ruthlessly narrowed down to asking of ourselves, - just as, I suspect the Chief Rabbi did, - 'who does this help?' Or 'Does this thing I am saying, undermine Labour? In which case the racist class-warrior Tories will be helped.'

This is how 'unity in action' works. It's not to ask of us to agree with everything that everybody in the Labour Party says or does. (I'm not even in the Labour Party!). It's to accept that this is the political moment we are in. 

I back Margaret Hodge! Vote for Margaret! 

The Silence of the Manns: Lord John Mann and his selective commenting on antisemitism

Lord John Mann is a public servant, hired by the government to be what the Times called the 'Antisemitism Tsar'. Wags have commented that for the press to call this job a 'Tsar' is at the very least mildly offensive to most Ashkenazi Jews in the UK whose presence in the UK mostly derives from persecution by...the Tsars. It would have been kinda nice if Lord John Mann had perhaps acknowledged this gaffe. He didn't.

Lord John Mann has been given a serious and important job: to investigate and report on antisemitism. This is antisemitism everywhere and anywhere. Some might quibble on why create a post to deal with one form of racism? After all, the government who has hired him has serious questions to answer on what the Conservative supporter and former minister Sayeeda Warsi has described as persistent Islamophobia. We are still waiting for the party's enquiry into its Islamophobia, promised by Sajid Javid and Michael Gove. Not much alarm on that from the mass media. Free pass for Tory Islamophobia then.

Meanwhile, lawyers and public figures have pointed out that the Conservative Party's handling of British citizens from the Caribbean (the so-called Windrush scandal) is a form of racist discrimination and persecution. Reminder: we are not talking here about 'slurs' or contested interpretations of history. This is about the livelihoods and very existence of British citizens of colour, persecuted by their own government - still ongoing.

Leaving all this aside, (though we shouldn't!) we might imagine that Lord John Mann would indeed by pursuing his task with relentless non-partisanship, showing to us all that his target was antisemitism and not, say, antisemitism in the Labour Party or antisemitism on the Left.

Over several weeks, I tweeted at Lord John Mann, the accruing examples of antisemitic jibes and slurs emerging from high profile Conservatives. I mentioned to him the persistence of Jacob Rees-Mogg's comments, in addition to those of Suella Braverman, Crispin Blunt, Toby Young and Priti Patel. These have all been commented on by people other than me including by the British Board of Deputies. Even more serious to my mind has been the comments by Dominic Cummings - not a Tory Party member, but a hired adviser by the Prime Minister's office - who has talked of 'the likes of Goldman Sachs' and in a deposition to a House of Commons committee railed against Goldman Sachs having fingers in every pie in the EU for their own benefit in the 'cess pit' of corruption that is the EU. His singling out of Goldman Sachs (founded by a Jewish family) seems irrationally fervid. He also seems part of the trope which proposes a clean, national alternative to what is perceived as the international corruption of Goldman Sachs. If this isn't a classic Hitlerian trope, what is? (To spell it out, Hitler posed a national, Jew-free economy. This is the antisemitic dream - if you remove Jews from your sphere - or the world, the world would be a better place. At times this has been a form of left-wing antisemitism (e.g. in France prior to the Dreyfus case) but it is in the present era a plank of people like Orban in Hungary and there are strains of it running through the alt Right and Steve Bannon.)

The people who have cried the loudest about antisemitism in the Labour Party are people who know about this new Right agenda but are mostly strangely quiet about it. Now, as I am saying here, Cummings is clearly informed by it and, I would argue so is Rees-Mogg when he describes one of his Jewish colleagues as one of the 'illuminati' (secret cabal) and uses the Soros jibe to imply dirty stuff going on in the Remain camp. (Soros is Jewish and a frequent butt for eastern European antisemites.)

So what about Lord John Mann? Surely he would be mightily concerned about this. After all, neither Corbyn nor any of the other alleged left wing antisemites are in power. Whatever threat to Jews that the Antisemitism Tsar has imagined that Corbyn and the Left pose, it surely doesn't come anywhere near what can be wielded by those at the heart of the government - Rees-Mogg, Cummings, Patel and formerly, Braverman.

On October 10 this year, John Mann MP (as he was then) wrote to me on twitter via Direct Message. I treated it as a confidential message, even though Mann hadn't requested that. (I'll explain why I don't think it's confidential any more in a moment.) In this message he wrote:

"As indep advisor I will not be giving a running commentary on Corbyn, Williamson, Rees Mogg or anyone else."

Fair enough. Perhaps. I thought, maybe John was preparing a dossier on these public figures who I and others were telling him about. Then on Nov 15 on John's time line on twitter he did in fact comment on an individual case: that of a Tory candidate he deemed to be antisemitic. (That's why I've gone public on this.) So now we can ask if John was prepared to comment on n individual case like this, why the silence about Rees-Mogg et al?

I'll say that again, why the silence about Rees-Mogg et al?

What's going on?

I have also furnished Lord John Mann with lower profile cases e.g. on Lee Harpin (who appears to be the disgraced Jewish Chronicle 'journalist', who has just been found by the Press watchdog in a long judgement, to have written untruthful things about a Corbyn supporter).

Lee, rather oddly, suddenly accused me a few weeks ago of being a 'cheerleader for Soros'. This is more bizarre than offensive, and yet the phrase is straight out of the alt Right phrase book. Again, Soros is a kind of cipher for the antisemitic idea of the 'rich, international finagler standing in the way of 'economic nationalism''. What Lee - who is Jewish - thinks he is doing playing around with antisemitic tropes like this, is anyone's guess. I don't expect Lee to answer me about that. He has enough troubles on his hands having been so publicly disgraced by the Press watchdog. It's amazing that the Jewish Chronicle, a journal that aspires to respectability and high status, hasn't junked him - if indeed he is the 'journalist' - mentioned over and over again in the watchdog's ruling.

So Lord John Mann has plenty of information to be working on. He is indeed commenting on individual cases but is strangely silent about the ones I've mentioned here. We are in the middle of an election. On 'Newsnight' last night, they showed a woman coming to the door to a Labour canvasser and talking about 'antisemitism in the Labour Party' as if it was a ring-fenced problem for Labour and nowhere else (or indeed that the racisms of other parties was not a problem either). Needless to say, this was repeated by Emily Maitlis in the studio. This ring-fencing only has traction because public figures like Lord John Mann don't put out there the stuff that I'm writing about here. The phrase 'antisemitism in the Tory Party' doesn't even exist. The fact that Boris Johnson edited 'Taki', the ever-so-witty playboy, churning out haha upperclass antisemitic jokes, in the 'Spectator' some years ago, is never mentioned.

I suspect that in the end Lord John Mann will make some public comments about Rees-Mogg et al. Yes, I think he will. Butonly after the election. (I hope I'm wrong about this. If he reads this, perhaps it will move him to change his mind.) In the meantime, I'll say that I think he is part of the process that is ushering in the racist class warriors of a Johnson government.

We are paying Lord John Mann's salary.