Mick Hartley

Nick Cohen reviews Dave Rich's The Left's Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism:

Consider the following: Labour has had to suspend 18 members, including one MP and a former mayor of London, because of their allegedly racist displays. Everywhere, “Zionist” and “Zio” are used to define Jews, and non-Jews who question left orthodoxy, as “the other”: barely human monsters, who must be cast from the bounds of leftish society. The leader of the Labour party has defended supporters of every variety of ancient prejudice: the Palestinian activist who revived the medieval libel that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make bread; the Anglican vicar who promoted the views of modern neo-Nazis that the Jewish conspiracy was now so malign and supernaturally powerful it was responsible for 9/11. After reviving old prejudices, Labour members adopt new ones just for fun. Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade, they say as they repeat a fantasy promoted by the US race-huckster Louis Farrakhan. Jews collaborated with Hitler, they continue as they repeat the fantasies of 20th-century Marxist‑Leninists…..

I suppose it is possible to agitate for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish country without being a racist. Rich shows in the 1970s there was at least an awareness of the danger of slipping into reactionary politics. The far left tried to ban Jews speaking at universities and supported violence, but it very rarely talked in Hitlerian tones of a vast Jewish conspiracy.

Anti-fascism died when Islamist utopianism annihilated socialist utopianism. At a pro-Palestinian rally in the 20th century, you would hear dreams of a future where the Arab and Jewish working classes would unite in a common homeland. By contrast, at a pro-Palestinian rally led by Corbyn in 2002, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood handed out newspapers instructing marchers that man was on Earth to serve God, and Muslims and non-Muslims could not be treated equally in an Islamic state. All of a sudden, and without anything resembling a debate, the loudest voices in the British and world left were on the side of men whose prejudices, not only against Jews, but against women, homosexuals, secular societies, and human rights, combined the worst theology of the seventh century with the worst ideology of the 20th.