{"id":4008,"date":"2020-02-12T13:01:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T11:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2020-03-20T01:41:12","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T23:41:12","slug":"antisemitism-threat-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2020-02-12\/antisemitism-threat-labour\/","title":{"rendered":"Antisemitism threats will keep destroying Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there is one issue that denotes the terminal decline of Labour as a force for change \u2013 desperately needed social, economic and environmental change \u2013 it is not Brexit. It is the constant furore over an “antisemitism crisis” supposedly plaguing the party for the past five years.<\/p>\n

The imminent departure of Jeremy Corbyn as leader will not end the damage that has been done to Labour by such claims. Soon Brexit will become a messy fait accompli. But the shadow of Labour’s so-called “antisemitism problem” will loom over it darkly for the foreseeable future, making sure that Corbyn’s successor dare not incur the same steep price for pursuing a radical political programme. The fear of being smeared as an antisemite will lead, as it was meant to do, to political and economic timidity from whoever takes on the mantle of leader.<\/p>\n

In fact, as we shall examine in detail in a moment, the candidates for the Labour leadership are demonstrating just how cowed they already are. But first let’s recap on how we got to the current situation.<\/p>\n

Led into a trap<\/h3>\n

Personifying the political paranoia that now grips Labour is the party’s one-time wunderkind, Owen Jones \u2013 possibly the only early champion of Corbyn in the corporate media. He used his Guardian column to fight back against the first wave of slurs \u2013 that Corbyn was unpatriotic, unstatesmanlike, a former Soviet spy, and so on.<\/p>\n

But then, as the smears failed to inflict significant damage on Corbyn, a second line of attack was pursued. It claimed that Corbyn\u2019s lifelong and very prominent activism as an anti-racist was in fact a cover story. Depending on who was spinning the narrative, Corbyn was either a secret Jew hater or a man who endlessly indulged antisemitism within his inner circle and in the wider party. Jones\u2019 colleagues at the Guardian joined the rest of the corporate media mob in baying for Corbyn\u2019s blood. Long wedded to a rigid form of identity politics, Jones was soon publicly wavering in his support for Corbyn. Then, as an election neared in 2017, he abandoned him entirely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the corporate media, the election result did not follow their shared predictions. Far from presiding over an unprecedented electoral disaster, Corbyn came within a hair\u2019s breadth of overturning the Tory parliamentary majority. He also increased the party’s share of the vote by the largest margin<\/a> of any post-war Labour leader. Jones changed his tune once again, promising<\/a> to be more wary of the group-think of his corporate media colleagues. Of course, his new-found resolution soon crumbled.<\/p>\n

Like a mouse chasing the scent of cheese, Jones headed into the trap set for him. He refused to accuse Corbyn himself of antisemitism, unlike many of his colleagues. Instead he gave his blessing each time a Labour activist was targeted as an antisemite \u2013 oftentimes, over their support for Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

Forced onto the back foot<\/h3>\n

As the media attacks on Labour for supposedly welcoming antisemites into the party’s ranks intensified (flying in the face of all the evidence<\/a>), Jones acquiesced \u2013 either actively or through his silence \u2013 in the resulting wave of suspensions and expulsions, even of Jewish members<\/a> who were hounded out for being too critical of Israel.\u00a0Jones’ hands may have looked personally clean but he acted as lookout for those, like Labour MP Jess Phillips, who were determined to carry out their promise to “knife<\/a> Corbyn in the front”.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Undoubtedly, the polarised debate about Brexit \u2013 and the increasingly unhinged atmosphere it produced \u2013 was the main reason Corbyn crashed in December\u2019s election. But the confected “antisemitism row” played a very significant supporting role. The disastrous consequences of that row are still very much being felt, as Labour prepares to find a new leader.<\/p>\n

The issue of antisemitism was probably not much of a priority for most voters, especially when the examples cited so often seemed to be about a state, Israel, rather than Jews. Nonetheless, the smears against Corbyn gradually\u00a0undermined him, even among supporters.<\/p>\n

As has been noted here and elsewhere, the antisemitism furore served chiefly as a shadow war that obscured much deeper, internal ideological divisions. Polarisation over whether Labour was convulsed by antisemitism concealed the real struggle, which was over where the party should head next and who should lead it there.<\/p>\n

The party’s Blairite faction \u2013 supporters of the former centrist leader Tony Blair \u2013 knew that they could not win a straight fight on ideological issues against Corbyn and the hundreds of thousands of members who supported him. The Blairites’ middle-of-the-road, status-quo-embracing triangulation now found little favour with voters. But the Blairites could discredit and weaken Corbyn by highlighting an “antisemitism crisis” he had supposedly provoked in Labour by promoting Palestinian rights and refusing to cheerlead Israel, as the Blairites had always done. Identity politics, the Blairites quickly concluded, was the ground that they could weaponise against him.<\/p>\n

As a result, Corbyn was forced endlessly on to the back foot, unable to advance popular leftwing policies because the antisemitism smears sucked all oxygen out of the room. Think of Corbyn\u2019s interview with\u00a0Andrew Neil\u00a0shortly before the December election. Not only did Corbyn not get a chance to explain the party’s progressive platform to floating voters, but much worse he was forced into abandoning the very personal traits \u2013 openness, honesty, modesty \u2013 that had made him unexpectedly popular in the 2017 election. Accusations of antisemitism \u2013 like those of being a wife-beater \u2013 are impossible to face down in TV soundbites. Corbyn was left looking evasive, shifty and out of touch.<\/p>\n