Labour's antisemitism problem

Simon Wren-Lewis says that, faced with the prospect of a Johnson-led government, Jeremy Corbyn is the lesser of two evils and should therefore be supported. I tend to agree, but with two caveats.

One is that we cannot dismiss Labour’s problem with antisemitism. True, nothing Corbyn has ever said is as overtly obnoxious as Johnson’s talk of “picaninnies” or that Irishmen are all called Murphy. The evidence for his antisemitism consists in a deafness to anti-semitic tropes; a failure to call it out when he should; and a closeness to the sort of moralizing conspiracy theory that can spill over into antisemitism.

Mild as they are compared to Johnson’s racism, however, these are genuine failures. For obvious reasons, Jews are rightly awake to tail risk – the tiny chance of genuine hostility. If even one Jew is made to feel sincerely uncomfortable by the possibility that a Labour government even might be antisemitic, that is abominable. And it is an indictment of Corbyn.

My second caveat is that I don’t think Simon, or many leftists, are drawing the right inference from a wholly correct observation – that the media is horribly biased.

True, Labour’s antisemitism is being overplayed and Tory Islamophobia understated. True, some of those accusing Labour of antisemitism are gross hypocrites who were happy to acquiesce in subtle antisemitic slurs on Ed Miliband. True, there is no equivalence between the gibberings of a few twats in Labour and the overt and systematic racism of the Tories’ “hostile environment” policy.

True, true, true,

And irrelevant. Labour faces the same problem as football team when the referee is bent. Its mild infractions are penalized whilst its opponents can get away with serious fouls.

But what should a team do in such circumstances? Complaining would energize its supporters. But the ref will deny his bias and book players for dissent. Complaints won’t win the game.

Instead, what the team must do is to be cleaner than clean. Its only hope is to not make any risky tackles which give the ref an excuse to award penalties. As my old dad said, “never give a cunt a chance to be a cunt.”

And this is what Labour has failed to do. In failing to ruthlessly expel anyone even whiffing of the possibility of antisemitism, it has given its enemies something to exploit: the need for Labour to win an election trumps anybody’s right to be a member of it. This might be a moral failure, but it is certainly a horrible tactical blunder.

All of which raises the question. Is Simon right to say the only choice is between Johnson and Corbyn? But could we do better? Could we have a radical Labour party without Corbyn and his public school Stalinist entourage?

Many decent leftists are cleaving to Corbyn in the fear that throwing out the fetid bathwater of antisemitism would also mean abandoning the (so far half-formed but nevertheless inspiring) prospect of a genuine alternative to actually-existing capitalism and retreating back to managerialist defences of inequality. I honestly don’t know how justified this fear is, although it is troubling that too few of Corbyn’s critics are striving to allay it. And whilst this fear exists, Simon is right: Corbyn is the lesser of two evils.

Comments

[Frank Little]

Is it really that long ago that the Tories were seen as the most anti-Semitic group in British politics, and were not above the use of innuendo in their general election campaigns where Jewish candidates were standing?

[ltr]

What the British media is about is only trying to destroy a traditional labor party and to destroy Jeremy Corbyn who would lead such a party:

https://www.ft.com/content/f4fe3512-aa16-11e9-984c-fac8325aaa04

July 21, 2019

Anti-Semitism in Labour disfigures British politics
Jeremy Corbyn has allowed a vile strain of racism to infect his party

[Jim]

"This is horrid lying, lying meant to degrade women."

Funny, a good female friend of mine uses that word all the time to describe people she dislikes intensely. I suppose she's one of those self-hating women who must be told what they can and can't say by the 'proper' women, and their beta male hangers on of course.

[redpesto]

If the ref is bent, and the team tries to be cleaner than clean, then all that happens is that the ref gives a penalty for a blatant dive. The only solution is to score more goals.

[Danny]

This post - and many of the comments on it so far - seriously underestimates the scale of the problem. For both the present and former Chief Rabbi to be making political statements condemning the Corbyn-run Labour Party (not to mention the letter signed by umpteen Rabbis Pete Willsman condemned as written in bad faith) suggests a systematic break between the Labour Party and the Jewish community it used to respect.

The examples I've seen - eg those in http://fathomjournal.org/fathom-report-institutionally-antisemitic-contemporary-left-antisemitism-and-the-crisis-in-the-british-labour-party/ - and the fact that the independent EHRC have launched a full investigation following what must have been an inadequate response to preliminary questions, make me doubt whether (for Jews at least) Corbyn really is the lesser of two evils

[JA]

Corbyn has been hopelessly weak in letting his party become mired in arguments about how antisemitic it either is, or isn't. Sure, people have different reasons for criticising the party, but let's not forget that many of them are Jews who previously had a lifelong commitment to Labour and no problem with it prior to 2015. Surely the way forward is for Labour to demonstrate that the party is not antisemitic by ensuring that the Jews who left it now believe the problem has been effectively tackled and are rejoining. In other words, your dad's comment is the wisest one.