We knew old Tory mouthpieces like the Spectator, Mail and Telegraph, the likes of Rod Liddle and massive media conglomerates like Sky News would make much political capital out of this specific issue, spreading fear amongst the electorate about Jeremy Corbyn's various meetings with people who's melanin content seems 'suspisciously un-British', but I personally did not believe that certain individuals on the Left would be so happy to make it this easy for them, to help their enemies change the focus of public debate away from Corbyn's valid and valuable criticism's of austerity, towards incessant accusations of anti-Semitism and his apparent sympathy for openly terrorist organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah.
The BBC must have been rubbing their hands with glee when such a clearly unhinged 'spokesman' for 'Socialism' as Gerry Ruddy, agreed to answer charges of anti-Semitism on national TV. The Conservative party have a get out of jail free card to play at any point they fear Corbyn's humane message may be gaining traction, and a large number of opportunistic, self-promoters to draw upon who are willing to say any old bollocks to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Educational standards being what they are in the UK, it should come as no surprise to find a few glaring examples of idiocy among any gathering of a considerable size.
It's no coincidence these 'revelations' come hot on the heels of a number of recent polls, showing a surge in Labour's popularity after numerous favourable media appearances by Corbyn and Mcdonnell. Almost a year in, the suggestible morons who voted for them are waking up to the horrors they helped unleash, as the Conservative party's mask of concern for the state of the Nation begins to slip, and they start to concentrate on the important business of ripping each other to shreds over the UK's membership of the EU. It's unsurprising that the source of these attacks is, among others, tweed suited attack dog of the Conservative Party & wider Right Wing; Paul Staines.
It may be good for Labour to get these accusations out of the way early, though I doubt this will dissuade sections of the establishment from making use of them incessantly, for eternity, but in my view as somebody who has studied anti-Semitism in many forms and engaged with many of it's most rabid proponents, it's actually hindering a genuine and honest undertaking to recognize the mentality which gives rise to it and other forms of racism, while ignoring the problematic fact that it's been a staple of British 'intellectual' life, particularly amongst conservatives, since long before George Orwell wrote about the problem in 1945.
Another source of recent attempts to tarnish popular Left Wing resistance to Conservative austerity, is columnist for the Spectator, author, and Blairite opinion monger Nick Cohen, the poor man's Christopher Hitchens. Cohen's favourite personal axe to grind comes down on anyone identifying themselves politically, as to his Left. Granted he has been rightly attacking the anti-Semitic tendency intermittently for decades, but only in so far as it can be used as evidence to justify his personal position, whether on the invasion of Iraq or in opposition to Leftist students, organizations, critics of Israel, politics and politicians, in short anyone who he, as a pro-Israel; anti-Left centrist, disagrees with.
I actually agree with much of what Nick writes and has written in the past, although I think he's perhaps slightly more morally biased and conformist than he is nuanced. I'm not sure he's ever written a bad word about Israel, or the extreme Nationalist and religious elements within Israel's settler movement, who currently hold the ear of the Nations Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The absence of a Hitchensesque, nuanced criticism of everything currently existing there, has contributed to a polarization between two fairly superficial, emotionally charged sides the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine dialectic, both ignoring the validity of the other sides claims and reinforcing the belief that this ongoing conflict is un-resolvable until one side or the other has been annihilated.
Neither side really seeks truth in the historical records, or analytical, balanced journalism, as much as they seek confirmation in the emotionally charged propaganda and validatory opinions of either side.
Furthermore, in his 'Panglossian' defense of Liberal Democracies you will not hear Mr Cohen criticize the various forms of structural violence inherent to their existence, while he decries various symptoms he defines as anti-Americanism, anti-Semitic, "pro-Fascist Left". Consider the death of numerous disability benefits claimants forced into work assessment programs, or wrongly found fit to work then sanctioned for being unable to attend interviews; the dramatic increase in homelessness since many of the safety nets put in place under New Labour were removed; the encouragement of competition between workers, competition in schools and the National health service, competition between owners, bosses, political factions and countries.
Doesn’t a boss hope for their own benefit to see their competitors die? And don’t all businessmen reciprocally hope to be the only ones to enjoy the advantages that their occupations bring? In order to obtain employment, doesn’t the unemployed worker hope that, for some reason or another, someone who does have a job will be thrown out of his workplace? Those enacting these extremist reforms don't have to walk over the homeless people their policies create, they've never had to live on or below the breadline, nor do they have to live in a resource rich, infrastructure poor country, ravaged by warfare, corruption, industrial pollution and the rape of multinational corporations.
Nor does Mr Cohen seem any longer to want to write about the Iraq War, apparently deserting the Women, ethnic minorities or Christians, he so passionately argued we needed to 'save' through intervention, who arguably suffer there now far more than they did. This is a cause he passionately supported, writing about it's opponents in terms like: "how did the left come to defend fascist regimes". Maybe he knows if there are any Christians left in 'the best of all possible' Iraq's?
That Mr Cohen's writings about anti-Semitism are limited by the position of comfortable alienation that confines his attention to whatever he encounters at trendy dinner parties, on a screen, hears about in print or more accurately wants to hear about [2], is not a personal flaw of his exclusively but part of a wider process affecting more or less everybody in his position.
These various liberal media outlets and their teams of salaried writers, needing to turn a profit while in competition with various free and self produced forms of expression and analysis, are forced by the prevalence of competition to pander to popularity and safe markets or go out of business. The trend of 24hr rolling News is toward superficiality, with the need to cover everything 'Journalists' are not doing journalism, they are merely offering safe opinions which echo the perceived sensibilities and tastes of the potential audiences beneath them, on subjects we are already aware of. In their comfortable separateness from all they write about they can only formulate retrospective explanations and justifications for what has already happened, they can only colour and interpret events everybody is already aware of.
The internet is rendering such hierarchically alienated explanations of events irrelevant, through numerous expositions of lived experience, which sadly in a class ridden society such as the UK include a great deal of paranoia and speculation about powerful and wealthy hidden forces pulling the strings of finance, government and the media.
Of course these individuals and media outlets are right to be worried about anti-Semitism, but misrepresenting the reality of it's existence as confined to one political party or ideology to advance their own political ends, is fueling the cynicism which leads to such ideologies accepting anti-Semitism as a means of explaining their failures, shortcomings or persecution. One might even go so far as to say that the current mainstream discourse, though not unwarranted, by it's limited scope and the elitist, metropolitan political and socio-economic sphere that it comes from, actually serves to reinforce such, already widespread, paranoid fantasies as: "Jews have too much power in the media".
[1]
Ignoring the rational causes of this irrational conspiracy theory, using the mainstream media to attack and suppress anyone who's theories conflate Israeli policy with the ambiguous term Zionism, or who are critical of Zionist history in regards to Palestine, may have unintended negative consequences, in the same way that David Irving's books never suffered from negative publicity or official censorship.
In the way the current media discourse treats the problem as inherent to, or exclusive to "The Left", I wonder whether they actually are worried about anti-Semitism at all, or are merely feigning interest in the subject while it's easy for them to look up 'twitter leftists' and catch an example or two they can attribute to the critics of austerity & associate with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.
The most recent research I can find on the subject [1] implies that there are merely marginal differences between Labour and the Conservatives, unsurprisingly Paul Staines isn't bothered that the Libertarian and Xenophobic Right Wing party UKIP attracted more anti-Semitic voters than the rest. The fact more Conservative voters than Labour answered in agreement with anti-Semitic statements, implies this problem is more common to the political "Right" as we would expect, but where is the media outcry about this? Where is the balance in the media discourse which itself seems to be promoting an anti-Jeremy Corbyn agenda?
Furthermore where is labour journalism in the mainstream media discourse? Why don't we hear about international industrial relations, ongoing disputes over working conditions? Where are the pro-working class voices talking about working class issues? Only by providing the evidence of who is running these tax avoiding multi-national corporations, and what countries they use to avoid taxation; that exploitation is a matter of class and not nationality or ethnic heritage, will you be able to dispel the myth of 'Zionist' over-representation at the highest levels of Capitalism. Only when the actual reasons for national dis-unity, social antagonisms, ever expanding financial inequality and the dominance of capital are sought, will the causes of anti-Semitism be excavated, enabling us to transcend this paranoid and ignorant state.
Until such insightful and worthwhile journalism exists in the MSM discourse, the void will be filled by various online peddlers of the oldest lies in the Western Hemisphere, and people will be drawn to them by their opposition to a worthless, 'co-opted' liberal intelligentsia that treats the lower classes with scorn.
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[1] Survey report.pdf by Campaign Against anti-Semitism
[2] Anything negative about Jeremy Corbyn, leftist students, trotskyists or whatever Islamic group or pro-Palestine faction has offended the sensibilities of the chattering classes this week.
