{"id":3462,"date":"2019-02-16T21:24:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T19:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=3462"},"modified":"2020-03-20T01:55:20","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T23:55:20","slug":"anti-semitism-vigilantes-are-feeding-the-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2019-02-16\/anti-semitism-vigilantes-are-feeding-the-far-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-semitism vigilantes are feeding the far-right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Has anyone else noticed how almost anything you say nowadays \u2013 if it\u2019s leftwing \u2013 can suddenly be cited as proof of your anti-semitism?<\/p>\n<p>That is, if you haven\u2019t already been denounced as a Kremlin stooge.<\/p>\n<p>Oppose the regular neoconservative regime-change operations, such as the latest one targeting Venezuela, and point to the long record of war crimes committed by one of its current architects, Elliott Abrams, and that apparently is probable evidence that you\u2019re an anti-semite.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">One wonders why <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IlhanMN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@IlhanMN<\/a> seems to harbor such particular contempt for Elliott\u00b9 Abrams\u00b2.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b9 from the Hebrew &quot;Elijah,&quot; meaning &quot;My God is Yahweh&quot;<br \/>\u00b2 the father of the Jewish people<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/michaeljknowles\/status\/1095784113456345089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 13, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Note, as Ilhan Omar recently did, that AIPAC, the well-financed and single-minded Israel lobby group, has so much <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/democrats-and-anti-semitism-11550015148\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">influence in the US Congress<\/a> that few representatives dare to publicly oppose it and you\u2019ll come under relentless pressure to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IlhanMN\/status\/1095046561254567937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1095046561254567937&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fus-news%2F.premium-despite-apology-for-aipac-tweet-ilhan-omar-uses-controversy-for-fundraising-1.6937472\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">apologise<\/a> for expressing an anti-semitic view.<\/p>\n<p>Never mind that the Senate just passed an AIPAC-driven law that blatantly violates Americans\u2019 First Amendment rights by <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2019\/01\/05\/u-s-senates-first-bill-in-midst-of-shutdown-is-a-bipartisan-defense-of-the-israeli-government-from-boycotts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">limiting their free speech \u2013 specifically to protect Israel<\/a> from those who propose a boycott in support of Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n<p>Want to criticise the bankers, who created a giant Ponzi scheme to enrich themselves and nearly destroyed the global economy \u2013 and are now being allowed to do it all over again? Or advocate for socialism and argue that there is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/politics\/uk\/2018\/03\/combat-left-anti-semitism-corbynism-must-change-way-it-sees-world\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">class war being waged<\/a> against us by a \u201cglobal elite\u201d, or the 1 per cent? Yes, you\u2019re definitely anti-semitic.<\/p>\n<p>If you believe Jeremy Corbyn should be allowed to lead Labour into the next general election, as he was elected to do by party members, and that it should be possible to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2019\/feb\/10\/labour-investigates-liverpool-branch-over-bullying-of-luciana-berger-wavertree\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">deselect Blairite MPs<\/a> who wish to foil such an outcome and want to allow Theresa May to continue driving Britain over the cliff-edge, you are patently an anti-semite.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, it hardly needs stating that if you <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/08\/opinion\/sunday\/israel-progressive-anti-semitism.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">criticise Israel<\/a>, point out that it\u2019s been running the longest occupation in modern history or cite any of the documented evidence that it practises apartheid against Palestinians, you must be irredeemably anti-semitic.<\/p>\n<p>After all, as Guardian commentator Jonathan Freedland keeps <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2016\/apr\/29\/left-jews-labour-antisemitism-jewish-identity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reminding<\/a> us, his and many other Jews&#8217; identities are so deeply invested in Israel that, when we criticise Israel, we attack them. Ergo, we hate Jews.<\/p>\n<h3>Political language degraded<\/h3>\n<p>What\u2019s most obvious about this new supposed outbreak of bigotry among wide sections of western public opinion is that for the first time in history anti-semitism apparently has little or nothing to do with Jews \u2013 except in the minds of those making the accusation.<\/p>\n<p>It is barely fanciful nowadays to imagine a time soon \u2013 after Israel and Saudi Arabia go public with their new love affair and their continual plotting against Iran \u2013 when it will be judged anti-semitic to criticise Riyadh for chopping off heads or the oil industry for setting the planet on fire.<\/p>\n<p>This degrading of political language to the point of absurdity isn\u2019t accidental. While those claiming to worry about anti-semitism are busy defaming every leftwing argument made against the current neoliberal order, real anti-semitism \u2013 the rightwing kind that actually targets and sometimes kills Jews \u2013 mostly gets a free pass.<\/p>\n<p>Real Jew-haters and Nazi sympathisers get the space to tell us how much they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/israel-news\/israeli-nation-state-law-backed-by-white-nationalist-richard-spencer-1.6295314\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">love Israel<\/a>. Some of them, such as Hungary\u2019s leader, Viktor Orban, can even rely on a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/israel-news\/.premium-the-netanyahu-orban-bromance-that-is-shaking-up-europe-and-d-c-1.6290691\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">warm handshake<\/a> from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n<p>If the left try to point out what is going on, or suggest that the charge of anti-semitism is being \u201cweaponised\u201d to silence us, we are accused of promoting a conspiracy theory and one that \u2013 yes \u2013 has echoes of \u201canti-semitic tropes\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The message of the anti-semitism witch-hunters to the left is simple: Shut up or be smeared over and over again.<\/p>\n<h3>Obsessed with Jews<\/h3>\n<p>It is worth pausing to note that there are plenty of neocons who are not Jewish promoting these endless \u201chumanitarian interventions\u201d that destroy other countries. There are also lots of lobbyists in Washington fighting for ugly causes who have nothing to do with Jewish communities or with Israel.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of bankers helping to gamble away the economy who are not Jewish. In fact, a large majority of them aren\u2019t. Most capitalists \u2013 the people socialists tend to dislike \u2013 aren\u2019t Jews either.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the Blairite MPs trying to stop a Corbyn-led Labour party coming to power aren\u2019t Jews, even if Luciana Berger thinks that anti-semitism is the only possible explanation for her constituency party wanting to be rid of her, rather than her threats to help set up a rival party.<\/p>\n<p>True, Israel has mostly Jews living in it (though many Jews do not live there). But it is not Jews who are being berated by critics of Israel, it is a fully fledged, and highly militarised, state with its own political interests to advance that may not, let&#8217;s be frank, entirely mesh with those of other states or with the wider cause of human rights.<\/p>\n<p>Almost all criticism of Israel targets its army command, which is oppressing another people; or its government, which refuses to engage in peace talks and to stop building illegal settlements; or its secret services, which carry out rogue operations on foreign shores and try to promote destabilising wars.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, it is those who fearmonger about a \u201cleftwing\u201d or \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2018-05-21\/frankie-boyle-your-new-show-betrayed-gaza\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new anti-semitism<\/a>\u201d \u2013 presumably to distinguish it from the actual harmful variety \u2013 who are the ones obsessed with Jews.<\/p>\n<p>It is they, not us, who premise their arguments on an assumption that the wars they condone are promoted only by Jews, that the Israel lobby represents all Jews, and that the capitalist class are Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>Conversely it is they, not us, who imply that only the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-politics-43624231\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrong kind of Jews<\/a>\u201d are anti-Zionists, or that the only disloyal Labour MPs are Jewish ones, or that Jews are incapable of opposing regime change operations that advance US control over global oil resources.<\/p>\n<h3>Weaponising anti-semitism<\/h3>\n<p>In fact, these anti-semitism \u201cwatchdogs\u201d no longer even bother to conceal the fact that their accusations of anti-semitism are intended as smears rather than as serious assessments of a rising tide of bigotry.<\/p>\n<p>Tony Greenstein, an anti-Zionist Jew expelled by Labour party bureaucrats after a concerted campaign to character-assassinate him as an anti-semite, took one of his accusers to court, the grossly misnamed \u201ccharity\u201d the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, in a libel action.<\/p>\n<p>The CAA had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejc.com\/news\/uk-news\/veteran-anti-zionist-tony-greenstein-sues-caa-for-calling-him-a-notorious-antisemite-1.478098\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">claimed<\/a> that Greenstein was a \u201cnotorious anti-semite\u201d. \u201cNotorious\u201d, let us remember, means \u201cfamous or well-known\u201d. So it should have proved a doddle for a well-funded charity that deals in little else but tackling anti-semitism to support its claim.<\/p>\n<p>Strangely, however, when given a chance to produce the evidence before the UK High Court, the CAA <a href=\"https:\/\/azvsas.blogspot.com\/2019\/02\/tony-greenstein-v-campaign-against-anti.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">declined to do so<\/a>. In fact, rather than use the standard defence against libel, claiming their remarks were a \u201cstatement of fact\u201d \u2013 or what used to be termed \u201cjustification\u201d \u2013 the CAA resorted to the much weaker defence of \u201chonest opinion\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally in libel cases against media outlets, reporters have had to show they had a factual basis for their reporting, while opinion-writers could duck out under claims of \u201cfair comment\u201d, which allowed for muckraking and provocative viewpoints.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Honest opinion&#8221; allows you to state falsehoods, and puts responsibility on your victim to prove the near-impossible: that you did so maliciously. \u00a0In short, you can defame as long as you can claim you did so in good faith.<\/p>\n<p>What the CAA has indicated is that when it describes someone as an anti-semite, it does not need to base its accusation on evidence (such as a clear statement of prejudice against Jews) but rather root it in hearsay or its own hunches. In other words, the CAA is consciously playing fast and loose with the definition at the heart of its mandate. It is hollowing out the meaning of anti-semitism to politicise it.<\/p>\n<p>The CAA&#8217;s legal manoeuvres confirm that the charge of anti-semitism has indeed been weaponised to silence political dissidents\u00a0&#8211; just as critics, myself included, have long been claiming.<\/p>\n<h3>Right kind of Jew<\/h3>\n<p>Of course, the CAA is far from alone in pursuing this strategy. It is precisely the reason all those anti-semitism claims are being thrown around recklessly to silence anyone who wishes to disrupt the status quo \u2013 the constant warmongering, the neoliberal rape of the planet, and the entrenchment of a carbon-based economy that threatens imminent collapse of a climate conducive to most life.<\/p>\n<p>Lots of rightwingers would like to use the anti-semitism smear to win political arguments in the more unruly, less predictable political environment we currently inhabit. But sadly for them, it only sounds credible when status-quo-loving centrist and rightwing Jews use it. Which is why we hear them using it so much.<\/p>\n<p>It was why TV gameshow assistant Rachel Riley was taken seriously rather than ridiculed as she suggested to her hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers that <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RachelRileyRR\/status\/1073854279507681281\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Owen Jones<\/a>, a diehard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2017-02-15\/why-is-owen-jones-helping-to-subvert-corbyn\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">soft Zionist<\/a>\u00a0and fairweather Corbyn supporter, and Noam Chomsky (or <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rachelrileyrr\/status\/1081984876138676225?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chomski<\/a>, as Riley misspelt his name), a\u00a0dissident Jewish intellectual, were anti-semites.<\/p>\n<p>Both were characterised by her as &#8220;far left&#8221;, which is now treated as synonymous with &#8220;anti-semitic&#8221; in the rightwingers&#8217; playbook.<\/p>\n<p>Astoundingly, Riley was liberally spraying around the anti-semitism smear even as she made a series of anti-semitic statements during a TV interview that unusually failed to register on the radar of the usually vigilant anti-semitism &#8220;watchdogs&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>She <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheBirmingham6\/status\/1083075604893839360\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">observed<\/a> that she didn&#8217;t look like a &#8220;typical Jew&#8221; (no hooked nose, Rachel?) and argued that her previous use of the expression &#8220;Bloody Jews again&#8221; wasn&#8217;t anti-semitic. She also implied that criticism of Israel shouldn&#8217;t be allowed because it was offensive to Jews (thereby conflating Jewish people with Israel, as well as denying anti-Zionist Jews a voice).<\/p>\n<p>But then again, Rachel Riley can&#8217;t be anti-semitic because she, unlike Tony Greenstein, is the &#8220;right kind of Jew&#8221;. She&#8217;s on the right.<\/p>\n<h3>The danger of an own goal<\/h3>\n<p>There is a glaring danger in this abuse of the anti-semitism allegation, even if the CAA and Israel apologists like Riley refuse to see to it. And it is not just that their deceptions, their distortions of an important word&#8217;s meaning, cheapen and weaken its power when it&#8217;s needed most.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not just that anti-semitism as a term of denunciation will be limp by the time those nasty European and American white supremacists remember that their love of Israel and their hatred of Jews can work hand-in-hand, as it did for earlier anti-semites like Britain&#8217;s Lord Balfour, by exiling local Jews to far-off Israel, where they will be welcomed by a state committed to a demographic war with the native Palestinian population.<\/p>\n<p>No, the biggest problem is that the constant misuse and abuse of the anti-semitism charge serves to reinforce popular rightwing anti-semitism, the kind of anti-semitism that actually endangers real-live Jews rather than simply antagonising an ethnic supremacist state that claims to represent Jews.<\/p>\n<p>If the anti-semitism &#8220;watchdogs&#8221; keep misusing anti-semitism \u2013 misrepresenting the left by employing language that assumes all neocons are Jews, all lobbyists, all bankers, all capitalists \u2013 they will feed the current revival of real, rightwing anti-semitism.<\/p>\n<p>When they behave as if disloyal Labour MPs are all Jews, when they encourage the perception that it is Jews, rather than Labour rightwingers, who are the ones rigging the political system on the left to their advantage, they risk pushing those dabbling with leftwing politics into the arms of the far-right.<\/p>\n<p>Their actions, inadvertently or not, will feed the idea that Jews control the economy, Jews control politics, Jews have all the money, Jews wage wars, Jews always get their way.<\/p>\n<p>The reality, of course, is that it is the powerful, a class of the super-rich, who control the world to their own advantage \u2013 and the great majority of them are not Jewish. But the anti-semitism vigilantes aren&#8217;t concerned about nuance, about detail. They&#8217;re too busy keeping the left down to notice that the far-right is rearing up behind them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Has anyone else noticed how almost anything you say nowadays \u2013 if it\u2019s leftwing \u2013 can suddenly be cited as proof of your anti-semitism? That is, if you haven\u2019t already been denounced as a Kremlin stooge. Oppose the regular neoconservative regime-change operations, such as the latest one targeting Venezuela, and point to the long record [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-3462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-israel-lobby","8":"tag-left-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4187,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions\/4187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}