Too white to matter? Anti-Semitism and the Left
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As I read last month that swastikas had been carved into the Berlin Holocaust Memorial and trees planted to memorialise slaughtered children had been chopped down, I felt my gut churn. It was a visceral reaction much like I had learning of George Floyd’s brutal, senseless murder. How could this have happened?
In the age of anti-racism, the Black Lives Matter movement has dominated global consciousness. Going beyond racial equality and freedom from oppression, BLM championed the need to eradicate white supremacy, overthrow institutions and any statue that resembled a white man, or plaque that shared a name with colonialists of the empire. Those who hadn’t previously partaken in activism were kicked into action by the daunting and catchy quip “silence is violence”. Surely, then, racism must be on the decline? In a world where roads shall no longer go by the name “Black Boy Lane”, how can racism find a space to exist? Yet whilst debate persists over controversial street names, swastikas appear in Berlin, at the Holocaust Memorial close to the site of Hitler’s bunker. A fixation on skin colour is leaving some victims undefended.
Whilst anti-Semitic incidents are highest among the religiously motivated in the US, an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism is also being seen in the UK. A recent HJS report identified a 173 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents over the last five years in schools across the country. But where are the throngs of protestors against the climbing intolerance? Why is it that, in the age of anti-racism, the longest-standing victim group in the world has the smallest support base?
The writer and comedian David Baddiel is right: the title of his book is “Jews Don’t Count”. Why not? Because they are not the right kind of victim: too white, and perceived to be too rich and too powerful. Contemporary anti-Semitism is drawing on centuries-old bigotry, its hardy spores impenetrable to “progressive” elements.
The present woke agenda dictates that “white people” are blessed with “white privilege” and therefore cannot suffer racism. The extreme Left dictates that not only do white people enjoy wealth and power, but they are also intent on dominating minorities of colour since they are embedded in institutions. By such a rationale, the Jewish community is the epitome of the stereotypical oppressor. Yet here is the Jewish community, branded by the far-Left as white oppressors, suffering the highest levels of discrimination of any religious minority group in the US.
Far-Left anti-capitalist thinking has always lent itself to anti-Semitism, whilst blinding its proponents from being able to see Jewish victimhood. Ruth Fischer, a leading figure in the German Communist Party in the early 1920s, said: “Whoever fights against Jewish capital … is already a class-fighter, even if he does not know it … Strike down the Jewish capitalists, hang them from the lamp posts!”
The former UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was famously accused of anti-Semitism. He furiously denied the charge on the basis that such an attitude to any minority would be impossible for a lifelong anti-racist like him. However, the UK Equalities Commission found that under his leadership, Jewish members of Labour had been the victims of unlawful discrimination.
In a contrite letter to Jewish community leaders, Corbyn acknowledged that there existed within his party elements of Marxist dogma about Jews as ultimate purveyors of commerce, which more enlightened European Leftists once dismissed as “the socialism of fools”.
Still, none of this appears to have dissuaded the anti-imperialist in Corbyn from continuing to align himself with the likes of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. In his time Corbyn has also laid wreaths at the graves of some of Black September organisers of the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which 11 Israeli athletes were slaughtered. (Corbyn says he wasn’t aware of who they were.) He also declined to blame Russia for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury in 2018, despite being given access to the latest government intelligence on the case in his role as Leader of the Opposition. The former Labour leader is a past master of turning a blind eye to inconvenient facts.
Currently, Jews aren’t considered as part of the BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) categorisation within the UK. In 2021, a BBC panel debated whether or not Jews should count as an ethnic minority group, with 4 out of 5 panellists being non-Jewish. The lack of representation from the Jewish community on an issue that directly affects them caused a backlash. Whilst sections of the Left debate whether or not Jews may or may not self-identify as an ethnic group, the far-Right has no doubt about their “unclean blood” — the kind of racially prejudiced thinking that led both to the persecution of the Jews under the Spanish Inquisition and the eugenics of Nazi Germany.
In an age of anti-racism, with its thirst for equality and justice, now may be the perfect time for sections of the political Left to do some deep soul searching and ask itself: “Are we blind to Jewish victimhood?” Most certainly it is never the time for the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to pause in the face of Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, minimising the horrors of the Holocaust on German soil. The rise in anti-Semitism requires the Left to make itself an ally of the world’s longest suffering victims of racism and stop acting according to outdated (and racist) Marxist dogma. Like justice, anti-racism should also be colour blind.
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