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\nA deadly serious tweet at the weekend from Armando Iannucci, the comedy writer responsible for the hugely popular Westminster TV satire show The Thick of It, reveals something significant about the problem of resolving the so-called Labour anti-semitism \u201ccrisis\u201d. In response to a tweet by a follower discussing my recent blog post entitled \u201cThe plot to keep Corbyn out of power\u201d, Iannucci observed: \u201cFresh insight on the Labour antisemitism story. It\u2019s all a lie stoked up by Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It is very unlikely that Iannucci had actually read my post beyond the headline. If he did, it would suggest he has significant problems with basic comprehension. More likely he was simply demonstrating his own misunderstanding of what those of us who challenge the narrative of a Labour anti-semitism \u201ccrisis\u201d are actually saying.<\/p>\n
There is much nonsense written about how we all now live in our own echo chambers. That may still be largely true if your opinions fit neatly inside the so-called Overton window, which in the UK spans the short leap from Blairism to Conservatism. Stick within this narrow manufactured consensus of supposedly rational policy \u2013 neoliberal orthodoxy at home, and neoconservative warmongering abroad \u2013 and you will rarely be exposed in depth to any other ideas unless you consciously seek them out.<\/p>\n
But those of us whose politics are considered \u201cradical\u201d or \u201cdissident\u201d are confronted with the ideas of these consensus-enforcers almost every waking moment. There is no escape from the BBC, or the topical TV shows recycling the issues dominating the pages of the billionaire-owned press, or the policy agendas of a political class owned by the global corporations that now run our societies, or the conversations of friends and family shaped by these upholders of the status quo.<\/p>\n
Unlike those in the political centre who are reassured each day by the consensus telling them that they are sensible, responsible, sane people, those on the supposedly \u201cradical fringes” of politics must listen to a public discourse that characterises them as deluded and dangerous, as prey to wild conspiracy theories and populism, and now \u2013 after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has threatened to break one side of the Overton window’s frame by rejecting neoliberalism and endless foreign wars \u2013 as unconscionable anti-semites.<\/p>\n
Those in the centre may have spent a lifetime cocooned from real political debate but in recent years they have faced two massive disruptions to their peace of mind: the entry of a \u201cradical\u201d, in the form of Corbyn, into mainstream politics; and the partial democratisation of public debate with the growth of social media. Both developments have proved most unwelcome to the centrists.<\/p>\n
They are now horrified to hear other kinds or voices saying things that once would never have been allowed near a newspaper or microphone. When they are exposed to critical voices on new media platforms, they react by characterising<\/a> them as \u201coffensive\u201d, \u201cpopulism\u201d, \u201cfake news\u201d or \u201cdemonisation\u201d. Their instinct is to impugn their critics\u2019 credibility and motives rather than engage with their arguments, and to shut down or limit the platforms where these alternative opinions can be aired.<\/p>\n Although they have been brought superficially into contact with these ideas, like most people used to the comforts of privilege they can afford not to listen. They understand enough to know that we disagree with them, but they do not care to make sense of why. They hear our noise, they fear it even, but they do not stay quiet long enough to learn anything about what we have to say.<\/p>\n And for that reason we are shouting into the wind, our words carried far off where they can do no harm. When we fall silent, all we hear is a caricature of the arguments we have articulated clearly.<\/p>\n This could not be more evident than in the case of Chris Williamson, a political ally of Corbyn\u2019s who like so many others has found himself consumed by the evidence-free consensus that, when Corbyn was elected party leader four years ago, Labour became \u201cinstitutionally anti-semitic\u201d overnight.<\/p>\n Corbyn\u2019s commitment to tackling all<\/em> kinds of racism, of course, risks smashing the consensus on Israel, a country that has been indulged by European and US leaders for decades. Israel has long been firmly in the west\u2019s privileged fold \u2013 provided with diplomatic, financial and military assistance \u2013 even though, under Netanyahu, it no longer tries to conceal its ever more repressive policies towards the Palestinians.<\/p>\n Incredibly, Israel\u2019s easily documented policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid are not only still unpunished but it has become ever harder to talk about them. Month by month, more western states move towards outlawing<\/a> the world\u2019s first major solidarity movement with the Palestinians \u2013 an entirely non-violent one \u2013 which calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it concedes the same rights to Palestinians as it does to Jews in the region.<\/p>\n The consensual public narrative about Williamson is that he made an anti-semitic remark to Labour party members. All wings of the UK media, including supposedly liberal outlets like the Guardian, have reported<\/a> that Williamson was caught saying Labour had been \u201ctoo apologetic\u201d about anti-semitism. The fact that a video recording<\/a> of his statement is all over social media, showing that he didn\u2019t say anything of the sort, is of no significance to them. The centrists aren\u2019t interested in the evidence. They are determined to keep the privilege of their echo chamber.<\/p>\n The problem for the so-called \u201cradical\u201d is that the unwillingness of the centrists to listen is compounded by a deeper problem \u2013 that like Iannucci, they dare<\/em> not listen. The mischaracterisation of Williamson\u2019s statement can help us understand why.<\/p>\n What Williamson said was not that Labour had been \u201ctoo apologetic\u201d about anti-semitism, but that Labour had been \u201ctoo apologetic\u201d in the face of smears<\/em> that party members were anti-semitic. He wasn\u2019t minimising anti-semitism, he was defending the membership from a campaign of demonisation that portrays them as anti-semites \u2013 something you might think delicate centrists, so ready to take offence, might have understood.<\/p>\n But the centrists aren\u2019t listening to what Williamson actually said. They hear only what they need<\/em> him to have said for their worldview to continue making sense.<\/p>\n Here is what Iannucci, Billy Bragg, Owen Jones, Tom Watson and Margaret Hodge apparently believe Williamson said:<\/p>\n We in Labour are not interested in the fact that Jews experience racism from our party. We are determined to ignore the problem of anti-semitism they have identified. Instead of taking responsibility for our racism, we are going to blame Jews for the problem. When we say anti-semitism has been weaponised, what we mean is that Jews are plotting against our party. We are writing a new Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Seen like this, Williamson and most of the Labour membership are<\/em> anti-semites. But only someone trapped in their own echo chamber could really believe this is a view anyone in Labour has actually endorsed. Williamson and the members who support him aren\u2019t saying Jews are behind the smearing of Labour. They are saying the dominant forces of our society are.<\/p>\n And this is where the real chasm between the centrists and the radicals opens up. The issue of anti-semitism has become a shadow play for centrists, offering them a supposed moral high ground, as they try to hold the fort against the ideological barbarians at the gate.<\/p>\n There are two ways of understanding conflict in our societies.<\/p>\n The centrists have adopted as their own an understanding of the world cultivated for them by a lifetime of listening to, and trusting in, the state-corporate media. It presents conflict as a battle between personalities, individual and collective: between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt; between Republicans and Democrats; between Trump and Antifa; between Julian Assange and two Swedish women; between Apple Mac and Windows; between men from Mars and women from Venus; between social conservatives and the LGBT movement; between blacks and whites; between Brexiteers and Remainers; between Jews and anti-semites.<\/p>\n This understanding of the world \u2013 as a battle between personalities, and the ideas and values they embody \u2013 is the one we are encouraged to focus on by the political and media class. That is for three reasons. First, presenting politics as exclusively a battle between people and ideas keeps most of us divided and feuding rather in solidarity with each other. Second, it has been relatively easy to determine the winners of this kind of conflict when the narrative can be controlled through the state-corporate media. And third, the focus on personalities stops us thinking about a much more profound and meaningful way of viewing conflict \u2013 as a class-based, economic struggle.<\/p>\n This way of understanding conflict sees it as structural, as a battle between those with money and power and those without. On this view, society is structured by the powerful to maintain and expand their power. This theory of conflict regards the corporate media not as a neutral platform for debating ideas and values, but as a weapon, one designed to cultivate only those ideas and values that preserve the power of the existing elite. This is what Noam Chomsky and others have called \u201cbrainwashing under freedom<\/a>\u201d by the western media.<\/p>\n The structural nature of power should be obvious, if we hadn’t been so brainwashed to think otherwise by our media. To gain some perspective, consider a different historical time such as the feudal period. It would sound preposterous to offer an analysis that society then was shaped chiefly by whether the king and his barons were nice people or bad. There weren\u2019t dramatic, structural changes every time a new prince ascended to the throne. There was a great deal of continuity and consistency over many centuries because each king and his courtiers had the same economic motive to justify a system preserving their wealth and privilege. A king could tinker with the system in ways suited to his personality, but the ruthless, brutal core of the system had to be maintained. Any king who lacked these steely qualities would be toppled by someone who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The same applies today to the heads of major corporations. So long as it proves profitable, Exxon is not going to stop despoiling the planet to extract hydrocarbons, whoever is appointed CEO. Exxon could never appoint a “nice” CEO in the sense of someone prepared to forgo profit and shareholder value \u2013 not so long as the current neoliberal economic model dominates. Even were a ruthless CEO to have a Damascene conversion in the job, suddenly becoming a serious\u00a0 environmentalist, he or she would be removed before they could take any decisions that might jeopardise the corporation\u2019s profits.<\/p>\n That is why genuine radical leftists are much less interested in who becomes the figurehead of a corrupt and corrupting political system than they are in finding ways to challenge the system and thereby highlight how power operates in our society. The goal is fundamental change, now of a kind that is needed to save us as a species, rather than continuing image management.<\/p>\n Corbyn’s rise is so important because he threatens to lift the veil on the power structure, either because he is forced into a clash with it as he tries to implement his policies or because he is crushed by it before he can pursue those policies. Corbyn offers a unique opportunity to hold up a mirror to British society, stripping away the beautified mask to see the ugly skeleton-face below. He risks making the carefully concealed structure of power visible. And this is precisely why he is so dangerous to the status-quo-supporting centrists.<\/p>\n But still, aren’t Williamson and Labour members suggesting that “Jews” are the ones behind this, as Iannucci infers? When we speak of plots by the powerful, global corporations, the banks and capitalists, aren’t we really using coded language for “Jews”? And if we aren’t, how do we explain the fact that Jews are so certain that Labour is mired in “institutional anti-semitism”?<\/p>\n “Jews”, however, are not of one mind on this issue, except in the imagination of centrists pursuing the “Labour is institutionally anti-semitic” narrative. Certainly, there are lots of different views among British Jews about Labour. It’s just that only one strand of opinion is being given a platform by the political and media class \u2013 the one against Corbyn. That should hardly surprise us if, as I explained, the corporate media are not there to reflect different constituencies of opinion, but to enforce a consensus that serves the powerful.<\/p>\n The problem with Iannucci’s implicit argument that Jews should be left to decide whether Labour is anti-semitic \u2013 and that denying them that right is itself anti-semitic \u2013 is not only that it assumes Jews are of a single view. It makes two further dubious assumptions: that those who have been given a voice on the subject have actually experienced anti-semitism in Labour, and that they have no other identifiable motives for making such a claim. Neither assumption withstands scrutiny.<\/p>\n When the largely conservative leadership of the Board of Deputies is given centre-stage as spokesperson for British Jews on the issue of Labour and Corbyn, it can speak with no meaningful authority. Its previous leader, Jonathan Arkush, was not only an unabashed supporter of the Conservative Party, but openly welcomed<\/a> its governing alliance with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, extreme Protestant loyalists, as “positive news” for Jews. His successor, Marie van der Zyl, argues<\/a> that the Board exists \u201cto promote a sympathetic understanding of Israel\u201d \u2013 a position that necessarily drives her and the Board into a profound ideological clash with Corbyn and much of the Labour membership behind him.<\/p>\n Those Jews inside Labour vociferously promoting claims of a supposed anti-semitism “crisis” in Labour, chiefly the Jewish Labour Movement and a handful of Labour MPs,\u00a0 have been much less forthcoming with actual<\/em> examples. There is no doubt, as we are often reminded, that former Labour MP Luciana Berger received death threats<\/a>, but it is much less often noted that those threats did not come from Labour members, they came from the far right. Dossiers like the one submitted<\/a> by MP Margaret Hodge have shown to be cluttered with cases of alleged anti-semitism that have nothing to do with the Labour party. And MP Ruth Smeeth’s infamous claims of an anti-semitic remark against her by black anti-racism activist Marc Wadsworth crumbled<\/a> on closer inspection, as did her claim to have received<\/a> 25,000 anti-semitic comments in a matter of days.<\/p>\n The motives of the leadership of the Jewish Labour Movement need questioning too, as an Al-Jazeera undercover investigation revealed two years ago. It exposed the fact that the JLM was working closely with Shai Masot, an agent inside the Israeli embassy whose job was to help mobilise opposition to Corbyn. Again unsurprisingly given that the media serves the interests of power, Al-Jazeera’s investigation received negligible coverage and made almost no impression outside pro-Palestinian circles despite its shocking findings.<\/p>\nShouting into the wind<\/h3>\n
Not daring to listen<\/h3>\n
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\nTrapped in an echo chamber<\/h3>\n
Two views of social conflict<\/h3>\n
The brutal logic of power<\/h3>\n
No single Jewish view<\/h3>\n
Examples crumble on inspection<\/h3>\n