by David Hirsh
We don’t know
if people just don’t care about antisemitism; or if they don’t know; or they
don’t want to know; or they don’t understand
How did we
get into this situation? Last week we were faced with a choice. Theresa May
offered a strong and stable Brexit and the electorate just laughed at her. They
didn’t want it implemented; that was last year’s cry of resentment. This year’s
was Jeremy Corbyn.
And why is he
the only alternative? If you don’t know by now that Mr Corbyn embraces certain
kinds of antisemitic and totalitarian politics, then you don’t want to know.
I thought
that Mr Corbyn’s work for the Iranian propaganda TV station alone disqualified
him from leadership; or the fact that he had once said that Hamas and Hezbollah
were dedicated to peace and justice; or that he supported a boycott of Israel
but nowhere else on the planet.
But we need
to stop being surprised. I was shocked when my academic colleagues voted to
boycott Israel; and again when they failed to understand why that was so wrong;
and again when we were pushed out of the discussion in the University and
College Union; and when the Employment Tribunal listened to our evidence about
antisemitism for three weeks and then told us it all amounted to a dirty trick
to silence criticism of Israel; and again when Mr Corbyn was elected leader;
and then a second time; and when Shami Chakrabarti whitewashed the Labour Party
inquiry into antisemitism; and then when Mr Corbyn came within a sniff of No
10.
It turned out
that there were only four constituencies where Labour was punished for its
leader’s antisemitism; all four are home to significant Jewish populations.
Those four Labour gains from the Tories might have made a difference.
Antisemitism did not seem to be an issue anywhere else.
We don’t know
if people just don’t care about antisemitism; or if they don’t know; or they
don’t want to know; or they don’t understand; or they think it’s all a Zionist
and Tory smear; or if they just think Mr Corbyn wants to help Palestinians; or
if they judge him to be an antisemite but vote for him anyway, because there
are other issues in the mix, too.
But Mr Corbyn
is also a cypher, a blank populist canvas on to which everybody paints their
own fantasy.
Lots of Ukip
supporters in the old Labour heartlands voted for him. London Remainers voted
for him. People who hate the cash squeeze on the NHS voted for him. People who
don’t want to help pay for their children to go to university voted for him.
People who work hard but can’t afford somewhere to live voted for him.
People who
blame British foreign policy for terrorism and people who imagine that if we
were nicer, the terrorists would leave us alone voted for Mr Corbyn. People who
admire Hamas, the IRA, Hezbollah, Chavez, Castro and Putin voted for him.
People who blame bankers, the Rothchilds and the “Davosocracy” voted for him.
People who like his refusal to step into line voted for him. People who hate
him but like Labour voted for him. People who hate Labour but like him voted
for him.
We’re going
to be in an impossible position in the next election. I don’t know how we’re
going to get out of it but I know how we got into it. We were unable to stop
antisemitic politics being normalised on the left and we were unable to stop it
from moving into the mainstream. And liberal Tories were unable to stop the
politics of resentment and xenophobia from mainstreaming, too.
Tories need
to understand that denouncing Labour voters as Nazis is not a strategy; they
have to understand how their own populism endangers British democracy. As
Michael Heseltine said, if they press ahead with Brexit now, they will give us
Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. They need to offer an alternative to Mr
Corbyn, not a mirror image. Promising to tear down European co-operation and
institutions and to license the rise of xenophobic nationalism will not pull
middle-England away from the small marginal swing to Labour that would give us
a Corbyn government.
And we on the
left have to start winning our basic arguments. We have to force Corbyn to
account for his past if he is to carry on into future; we have to keep our
courage and not go silent; we must not be seduced into acquiescence by a sniff
of power. We will not stop educating people to recognise and oppose
antisemitism; we will not stop calling it out when we see it.
Antisemitism
is not one little eccentricity; it is an indicator of a profound political
malaise. It cannot be ignored.
David Hirsh
is a sociology lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London and author of
‘Contemporary Left Antisemitism’
