Labour’s antisemitism crisis: false lessons for the left
JVL Introduction
In this review of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis, Rob Ferguson takes issue with David Renton who, he says, simply lays the primary blame for the antisemitism crisis at the door of the left.
This review addresses the core failures of Renton’s argument:
- There is no serious recognition of the political motivations nor of the context of the attacks on Corbyn and the left.
- It obscures the core of the political and ideological attack against the left: the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel.
- Its framework for conceptualising antisemitism is fundamentally flawed, failing to understand modern antisemitism as a reactionary ideology, rooted in the systemic crises of capitalism.
We commend this long analysis to our readers. It complements well an earlier critique we published by Paul Field.
_________
17 Jan 2022: We have posted a longish response by Rob Ferguson to some of the points made about his article. It appears as the final comment below. Comments are now closed, but this debate may be taken up as appropriate on other threads in due course.
This article was originally published by International Socialism on Thu 16 Dec 2021. Read the original here.
Labour’s antisemitism crisis: false lessons for the left
A review of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How to Learn From It, David Renton (Routledge, 2021), £19.99
Under the rather haughty title Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How to Learn From It, David Renton lays the primary blame for the antisemitism crisis at the door of the left. Renton’s central theme is that the left failed to acknowledge how antisemitism had penetrated Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, then downplayed or denied the problem, allowing factional concerns to take precedence over principle. He contends the campaign against the left would have dissipated if there had not been repeated “instances of behaviour that was antisemitic or within touching distance of being so”.1 Renton’s conclusion is that, had the Labour left confronted antisemitism in the party and “listened more attentively” to Jewish opinion, the crisis may have been mitigated or avoided.2
There are vital lessons to be drawn from Labour’s antisemitism crisis. How was it that Corbyn and the Labour left foundered on this issue? How should the left address antisemitism and its contemporary manifestations? How do we understand the influence of Zionism, and how should the anti-Zionist case be made?
The answers will not be found in this book. Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis fails as an analysis and draws fundamentally mistaken conclusions. Despite this, Renton’s arguments do require a considered response for two reasons. First, the left’s defeat must be explained, and the Labour left has often tended to provide only partial answers. Second, Renton’s arguments have wider traction on the left and within academia.3 For instance, Renton criticises those who defended Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and others whose expulsions were also supported by a significant layer of Corbyn’s support.4
Rather than a detailed refutation of specific charges that have been well rehearsed elsewhere, this review seeks to address the core premises of Renton’s argument.5 Three central faultlines run through Renton’s analysis. First, there is no serious recognition of the political motivations that impelled the attacks on Corbyn and the left, nor their context. Second, Renton obscures the core of the political and ideological attack against the left: the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel. Third, Renton relies on a framework for conceptualising antisemitism that is fundamentally flawed and departs from an understanding of modern antisemitism as a reactionary ideology, rooted in the systemic crises of capitalism.
The “new antisemitism” and the attack on Corbyn
The attacks on Corbyn were both a reaction to his victory in the 2015 Labour leadership election and part of a wider ideological offensive that had begun in the early 2000s. The narrative of the “new antisemitism” had its origins in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war but spread on a far wider scale in the context of the “War on Terror”, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Second Intifada in Palestine. Antisemitism, it was argued, acted as common ground for a “red-green” alliance of Islamists and the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist left, bound in common hostility to liberal democracy.6 From 2001, the pro-Israel camp began to lobby for an inter-governmental “definition” of antisemitism that would give quasi-legal status to its conflation with opposition to Israel.7 Terror attacks on Jews and Jewish targets in Europe, particularly France, gave these efforts a further opening. Israel’s tribunes were particularly concerned at the international mobilisations against Israeli military attacks on Gaza and the rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Thus, the terrain for the assault on Corbyn’s leadership had been laid before 2015 with the development of the “new antisemitism” narrative. In 2015, for the first time in its history, the British Labour Party, one of the oldest pillars of social democracy, elected a leader identified with mass anti-war and anti-imperialist movements. He was also an avowed opponent of the neoliberal consensus. This context is important because it is here that Renton’s analysis falls at the first hurdle. Renton repeatedly insists that the central issue at stake in the crisis was the perceived hurt to Jews. From this flows the inexorable logic that, if only Labour responded immediately to the fears of the “Jewish community” and taken action, the crisis may have been avoided.
Of course, there were examples of outright antisemitism and conspiracism and of slippage into anti-Jewish stereotypes. However, the attacks’ core objectives were to delegitimise opposition to Zionism and Israel, defend Britain’s role as an imperialist power allied with the United States, and undermine the radical left as a whole. Renton ignores the context and misrepresents the attacks on Labour. He also fails to address the central role played by the Labour right, the media and the Tories. In their absence, the attacks by the Zionists would not have left the starting blocks.
This brings us to the second faultline in the analysis. Early on, Renton asserts his purpose is “to refocus away from what often seemed most important during the controversy within Labour”: “whether one group of people were correct when they argued that antisemitism and anti-Zionism overlapped or another group of people were right when they argued that antisemitism and anti-Zionism were usually distinct”.8 Yet, it was precisely this conflation that drove the charges of antisemitism against the left. Accusations of antisemitism had to be exaggerated beyond recognition and laced with distortion, abuse and slander.9 Antisemitism had to be presented as endemic and rooted in the left’s anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist politics. Thus, any attempt to genuinely address instances of antisemitism would not do. This was why the report into Labour Party antisemitism by Shami Chakrabarti was traduced and sabotaged; it was not the report’s deficiencies in addressing antisemitism that was the problem, but its inadequacy as a tool for hammering Corbyn and the left.10
It was also the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel that made the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism a key battlefield for the right and a test for the left.11 At the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting that adopted the IHRA definition, Corbyn attempted to move a 500-word statement that included a sentence that would protect pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist positions on Israel: “Nor should it be regarded as antisemitic to describe Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict”.12 This was met with a torrent of abuse by the pro-Zionist camp and the Labour right, who made clear that no such allowance for free expression would be tolerated. However, it was Corbyn’s allies on the NEC who blocked the statement. Jon Lansman, chair of Momentum, who is repeatedly praised by Renton, strongly advocated against Corbyn’s addition, and Corbyn ultimately withdrew it.
The fact is that the case for the left was never argued politically in the public arena by Corbyn and his leadership team. There were denials of endemic antisemitism and an insistence that issues were being addressed, but the false conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism was not confronted. On this Renton is silent, and his prescriptions for avoiding and escaping the crisis defy political realities.
The final blow against the left was dealt by the report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into antisemitism in the Labour Party.13 Renton’s approach to the EHRC inquiry is mired in a legalistic formalism that obscures the role of what has become a highly political (and discredited) state institution.14 As the left-wing Jewish historian David Rosenberg astutely observes, the EHRC, bound within its legalistic framework, had to prove something more than “the occasional use of offensive, provocative, hateful words across a range of incidents over years.” Instead, “It had to prove unlawful prejudicial conduct that necessarily had an adverse effect on Jews throughout the party”.15
At the core of the EHRC judgement lay the conflation of Jewish ethnicity with Zionism, made explicit in the two cases of “unlawful conduct” cited in the report.16 Without this politicised conflation, the entire EHRC edifice falls. Thus, any mining of “positives” in the report is beside the point. The political reality is that once the EHRC announced its investigation in May 2019, the result was a foregone conclusion.17 Renton, however, refuses “to assume the worst of the EHRC”.18 The entire political trajectory of Labour’s antisemitism crisis, from the onset of the campaign against Corbyn to its grim finale, is obscured by Renton throughout the book.
Antisemitism as reactionary ideology
The third and fundamental faultline of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis is the framework Renton draws on for conceptualising antisemitism as ideology. Renton references an influential article by Ben Gidley, Brendan McGeever, and David Feldman, three academics associated with the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism who have authored a body of important work.19 Feldman and McGeever are signatories to the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, drafted as an alternative to the IHRA definition.20 In “Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood”, Gidley, McGeever and Feldman seek to provide an explanation of antisemitism on the left that avoids the reductive conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. They are critical of the Labour Party’s use of punitive sanctions and expulsions, instead arguing for an emphasis on education (as does Renton). They reject notions of antisemitism as an incurable “virus”, asserting that it is best understood as “a deep reservoir of stereotypes and narratives, which is replenished over time and from which people can draw with ease”.21
The problem with this type of formulation is that antisemitism becomes detached from its roots as an ideology of reaction. Shulamit Volkov advanced the notion of antisemitism as a “cultural code” in the 1970s.22 Criticisms made of Volkov’s theory as “undeveloped and thin”, and inadequate as a conception of ideology, apply equally to the formulation favoured by Renton.23
Antisemitism is not a politically neutral “reservoir” of cultural prejudices tapped by unwitting subjects. It does not “free float” as a “virus” or as a trope in a “reservoir”. The conclusion from Gidley, McGeever and Feldman has the sense of an arbitrary formulation “read back” from a desired political outcome rather than a developed analysis. At its core is a view of antisemitism consisting of stereotypes and narratives that the left, as much as the right, can “draw upon with ease”. This is given explicit expression by the non-Zionist, Jewish academic Brian Klug, who also cites Gidley, McGeever and Feldman:
Antisemitism has always had a natural home on both the left and the right. Roughly: in the right-wing version, the Jew is the racial enemy of the nation; in the left-wing version, the Jew is the class enemy of the proletariat. Either way, the Jew is cast as the enemy.24
The notion of antisemitism finding a “natural home” on both the left and right echoes a prevalent theme in the liberal mainstream and on the conservative right—that socialist critiques of capitalism, anti-colonialism, and even the notion of a society “for the many, not the few” (also criticised by Renton), form a seedbed for antisemitic ideas.25
It is difficult to discern a significant difference between antisemitism as a “reservoir of stereotypes and narratives” and a mutating virus that infects both right and left, manifesting itself as biological racism or anti-Zionism. Despite their different starting points, Gidley, McGeever and Feldman seem to land on much the same terrain as arch-conservative Zionist Jonathan Sacks. The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism creeps back in under the covers.26
None of this is to argue that antisemitism, or any form of racism or prejudice, cannot penetrate into the left. It can and it does. Like all forms of prejudice, it poses a serious threat that must be challenged. However, we need clarity on how reactionary ideas and prejudices can find purchase on the left in the first instance.
Modern antisemitism has material and historical roots in the systemic crises of the capitalist system. Its origins lie in the reactionary backlash against the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the European revolutionary wave of 1848-9. As an ideology, it emerged in its fully developed “racial” form in the period of crisis that followed the Great Depression of the mid-1870s, an era that was marked by the rise of nation-states, colonial rivalry and the growth of working-class, socialist and radical movements.
Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, serves to undermine international working-class solidarity. It is not only a matter of “scapegoating”; antisemitic ideology provides an alternative, reactionary, pseudo-explanation of systemic crisis, seeking to locate society’s woes in a malign “Jewish” power. It is an ideology that offers a means of making sense of events that appear beyond explanation. I have written elsewhere:
Antisemitism…speaks to the despair and rage at the ruin brought by incomprehensible, blind forces. It is an ideology that explains nothing and explains everything.27
This draws attention to a fundamental point. Antisemitism reflects a break from socialist politics. It makes no more sense to speak of “left-wing antisemitism” than to speak of “left-wing racism”. Antisemitism, racism, Islamophobia, sexism, homophobia and transphobia have gained purchase and influence on the left in both the past and present—there is no automatic immunity to the prejudices of society. However, this does not make such prejudices “left wing”; rather, they are all forms of reactionary ideology. Thus, socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics are not part of the problem: they are the necessary antidote. Yet, it is precisely this antidote that was the principal target of the onslaught in Labour. Renton’s “lessons” thus only serve to disarm the left.
Lessons for the left
Renton’s Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis is a developed rationale for political retreat and accommodation. Renton does declare his support for the Palestinian cause, criticises the failure of Labour’s critics to direct fire against the Conservative Party, and takes issue with the IHRA definition and the EHRC inquiry report; there is much finessing of argument, page after page. However, when it comes to mounting a defence of the left, he is absent under fire.
Renton gives unwarranted credence to the claims of endemic antisemitism and plays down the scale of false accusations and outright slander.28 This itself is a symptom. A witch hunt, by its nature, targets individuals. However, the witch hunt is not about the individual; it is an attack on the movement. How a witch hunt is resisted and fought is important—but fight it we must. In this respect Renton’s entire book is an evasion: an evasion symptomatic of wider sections of the Labour left, including those held up by Renton as examples to follow.
Ken Livingstone was not attacked for his poor framing of history. He expressed a reductive approach to Zionism and to the role of Zionists in the 1930s, but he is not an antisemite.29 The failure to defend him laid the ground for escalating attacks and further retreat. The same holds for Chris Williamson, Marc Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, David Miller and others. A witch hunt cannot be stopped by abandoning the accused. There may be important political differences that are subject to legitimate contention and hostages to fortune that should be challenged. Nevertheless, none of this is a reason to throw the target of an attack to the lions.
Since publication of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis, the attacks on the left have been in plain sight. The party machine has rolled out mass expulsions of members, including many well known and principled left-wing activists with decades of activism in the movement. Any semblance of democratic discussion about the IHRA definition, the EHRC report, and the suspension of Corbyn and others has been ruled as “not competent business” by Labour’s general secretary.
It is therefore distasteful—to say the least—that Renton reserves some of his most bitter ire for those on the anti-Zionist, Jewish left who opposed the witch hunt, including Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). JVL fought a principled and unrelenting defence of the left, and its leadership helped articulate the case against the IHRA definition.30 It highlighted the implications of the attack on Corbyn for the wider left and for freedom of expression in universities. Renton’s passages about JVL are among the most disgraceful and disingenuous parts of the book. At the time of writing, 11 JVL officers have effectively been accused of antisemitism. This is slander against lifelong opponents, and victims, of antisemitism. Furthermore, this is just the sharp end of a wider, targeted assault against left-wing, anti-Zionist Jewish voices, who are even more likely to be subject to false charges of antisemitism than non-Jewish Labour members.31 A consequence of conflating Jewish identity with Zionism is that Jews are no longer defended as Jews—acceptance is conditional.32 There are past precedents for this antipathy to the radical internationalist Jewish tradition in the workers’ movement and the Labour Party; nonetheless, one would struggle to find the levels of hostility now pervading Labour.
Renton does criticise pro-Zionist Jewish organisations for their failure to pay attention towards antisemitism on the right. However, these criticisms of the right are cast as a form of even-handed “whataboutery”, and an equivalence is drawn between the left’s supposed downplaying of antisemitism inside Labour and Corbyn’s critics’ downplaying of antisemitism outside the party. This ignores the direct relationship between the free pass given to the right and the weaponising of antisemitism against the left. The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism provides a weapon against the left and anti-imperialist and anti-racist movements, while offering a shield to the antisemitic right, who proclaim support for Israel and opposition to BDS. More fundamentally, the narrative of the “new antisemitism” and the rise of the far right are both, in their own ways, responses to systemic crisis; they are both attempts to defend the system against challenge from below. Therefore, it is no coincidence that they share common targets.
The attack on Corbyn and the Labour left inevitably extended into wider society. Students at the London School of Economics were slandered as antisemites by both Tory and Labour leaders for protesting against the Israeli ambassador in November 2021; academics face the sack for their criticism of Zionism; school students face discipline and sanctions for expressing support for the Palestinians.33
Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis never seriously addresses the motives behind the unrelenting determination to destroy the Corbyn project. The systematic attempt to delegitimise anti-Zionism, free expression and criticism of Israel across academia and in the public space is barely touched on. These silences serve to obscure a shifting of blame onto the left’s shoulders. Nonetheless, these criticisms of Renton’s book still leaves us with an important question. How do we explain the Labour left’s defeat in facing this crisis?
The charges of antisemitism served to polarise the battle between the left and right in Labour into a zero sum game, and the crisis acted as a proxy for the wider battle over political leadership. The outcome was thus never determined by the integrity of the argument but by where the political weight of the party lay. Corbyn was faced with a stark choice: confront the parliamentary party, the party machine and majority of local councillors, which were backed by the media and the institutions of state, or seek ways of evading confrontation. The problem for the left was the inherent dominance of the right in Labour’s structures, and the Labour right were never going to allow Corbyn an escape route.
Labour’s antisemitism crisis exposed the Achilles’ heel of the Labour left. Despite an important distinction, both the Labour right and the Labour left share a common project: getting a Labour government elected. The entire party is structured around elections and parliament. The political weight of the party rests with the MPs, not the membership, and the dominant role of the Parliamentary Labour Party is underpinned by a trade union leadership, whose interests Labour represents in parliament. The trade union leaders may seek to exert pressure on the Parliamentary Labour Party and sometimes even back left-wing challengers in order to do so, but party unity is a line in the sand. Neither the trade union leaders, nor the centre, nor the soft left, nor the Socialist Campaign Group were going to countenance a split in Labour over the antisemitism crisis. In this, the right understood their own strength and pursued it relentlessly.
Many on the labour left played a highly principled role in resisting the witch hunt inside the party, opposing the IHRA definition on the campuses and defending free expression on Palestine and Israel. However, the succession of retreats exposed political weaknesses and opened up traps. The basic premise of the Labour left was that the Labour Party could be subjected to democratic direction by the membership and thus bring a radical, socialist government to power. This was the prospect that inspired the Corbyn wave. Rightly it commanded the support of the entire left, including those who warned that those aspirations could not be fulfilled by voting in a left-led government. In the event, it did not even come to that. Corbyn’s leadership, even with mass support of members, could not overcome the realities of Labourism and the historic and structural dominance of the right. However, here the Labour left finds itself in difficulty—to explain the left’s defeat in such terms runs counter to the entire logic of the Labour left project. It is not an explanation open to those who wish to hold onto that project under such slogans as “Don’t Leave, Organise!” and “Stay and Fight!”. The result is that other explanations begin to fill the vacuum.
In this context, explanations that rely on the power of a “Zionist Lobby” have become more prevalent. Given the prominent role of the leaders of pro-Zionist Jewish community organisations, the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Labour Movement in the attacks on Corbyn, this is understandable on one level. However, it is mistaken. The problem is how do we then account for the influence of this “lobby”, let alone its success? It is impossible to explain in terms of the numbers of Jews in the party or the population. Financial donations? Donations from Zionist proponents are far outweighed by non-Jewish donors. “Infiltration” of supporters of a foreign state? Apart from the implicit conspiracism, this begs the question of how such a group can exert such control.
The truth is that the Labour Party has always been a pro-Zionist party.34 This is not due to the malign influence of a foreign power or its supporters, but because defending the interests of the British state is hard-wired into Labourism. Labour has supported every imperialist war and colonial enterprise since the First World War, and it has been a pillar of the Atlantic alliance. Although individual Labour politicians are not above financial gain, this cannot explain support for Israel or the attack on the left. The problem for Corbyn and the left was not a “Zionist lobby”, but the Labour Party itself, and behind that, the media, the British state and its ruling class. Of course, the fact that the charge of antisemitism has become a political weapon gives pro-Zionist Jews and their organisations a central role, which they use to maximum advantage, brooking no concessions. Yet, their ability to exercise such influence rests on the vital strategic importance of Israel to the British state, whose interests in turn the Labour Party exists to manage and defend.35
Mistaken approaches to this question can often reflect a deeper misunderstanding of Zionism as a political ideology. The tradition in which this journal stands has always insisted that the state of Israel must be understood as a racist, settler-colonial state.36 However, outside Israel’s borders, the legitimacy of a Jewish state is still widely viewed through the prism of historic antisemitism, with Israel presented as a refuge of last resort for Jews. Corbyn himself is a supporter of a two-state solution, as are most of the wider left and the majority of trade union members.
It may be contradictory to be anti-racist, march in defence of refugees, oppose Tory asylum laws and to support Israel, but it is a contradiction we face in real life. Zionism emerged as a response to antisemitism and was transformed from a minority current to hegemonic dominance among Jews as a result of the rise of fascism and the Holocaust. It is true that Zionism can only be realised in the form of a racist ideology; however, this does not dispense with the contradiction of Zionism as a movement. This was the problem (though not the only one) with Livingstone’s formulation of Zionists’ historic role during the Nazi era.37 In part, it was this perception of Israel’s historical legitimacy that the pro-Zionist camp exploited so successfully, among British Jews in particular.
The tension between opposition to antisemitism and racism and support for a Jewish state is one socialists have to address in the concrete and in practice. Building the Palestine solidarity movement and a wider understanding of the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians is central in undermining Israel’s legitimacy. There is also, however, another important weapon in our armoury: our ability to engage with Jews and non-Jews who, despite identification with the Jewish state, recognise the real threat of antisemitism and racism from the rising forces of the far right. This is most apparent in the US, where mobilisations against Donald Trump, fascists and white supremacists have opened up fractures within the Jewish community, particularly among young US Jews.38
This brings us back to the question of antisemitism. The conditions of crisis, militarism and racism from which the antisemite crawls have returned with a vengeance. Presidents and prime ministers evoke the threat from “globalists” and “special interests” intent on undermining the nation and the family. The antisemitic conspiracy theories of the “Great Replacement” and “white genocide” permeate the “manifestos” of the fascist killers at Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Poway in the US, Halle in Germany, Christchurch in New Zealand, and Utoya in Noway.
We should not be complacent. There has been a tendency to react to the witch hunt by downplaying the significance of antisemitism today. Claims are made that antisemitism is not a threat comparable to anti-black racism and Islamophobia, that Jews can no longer be seen as victims of institutional racism, and that Jews are privileged socially and economically. There is only space to make some concise points about these ideas here. First, antisemitism weaponises every form of racism and reactionary prejudice. It is an ideology that casts the Jew as the hidden hand behind every threat to the nation and social order: socialism and revolution; Islamist “takeovers” of “our” cities; migrant “invasions”; Black Lives Matter; “Antifa”; “gender ideology”, feminism and campaigns for LGBT+ rights. It is an ideology that justifies authoritarian measures by governments and mobilises force and violence by the far-right.
Second, antisemitism has never been contingent on the real social position of Jews. The assimilated Jewish communities of Berlin, Vienna and Budapest were not on the whole impoverished. The first antisemitic quotas introduced in Hungary, Vienna and Italy targeted the professions and university entrants. Indeed, antisemitism does not even require the presence of Jews to acquire ideological force; the Jewish population of Germany in 1933 was less than 0.75 percent.
A tendency to relativise antisemitism and detach different forms of racism from their common roots in capitalism can even extend to how the Holocaust is framed. Zionists often elevate the Holocaust to a special status to deflect criticism of Israel, but it is important that we do not define a socialist view of the Holocaust negatively in response to the pro-Zionist camp. Examples of other genocides and of the slave trade are sometimes mistakenly counterposed to the “Final Solution”. Moreover, some have characterised the prominence given to Holocaust memorialisation as a Holocaust “industry” or as a manifestation of “white privilege”.39
The Holocaust had both a unique and a universal character. As a modern genocide, it was rooted in the legacy of biological racism, slavery and colonialism. It was also rooted in imperialist war and rivalry. Nonetheless, the Holocaust was a unique manifestation of capitalism’s barbarism. The Holocaust was not driven by profit, economic gain, colonisation or the suppression of a national minority. It was driven by a racial ideology, and the ferocity and scale of “the Final Solution” reflected this ideological character. The issue is not to counterpose the Holocaust to other historic or contemporary atrocities, but rather locate all these horrors as rooted in the capitalist system, in which the Holocaust was, in so many ways, the ultimate horror.
In the course of the witch hunt, some on the left did make, or evade, judgements in reaction to weaponised charges of antisemitism. Problems can then arise when the left’s opponents seize on a real example. One important instance was the historic case of a mural by Kalen Ockerman (know by his pseudonym, “Mear One”), in East London. The antisemitic character of the mural, invoking Jewish bankers and masonic symbolism, was identified in 2012 and the pro-Palestinian mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, demanded its removal. Corbyn made a fleeting response at the time to a post written by Ockerman, which claimed his street art was being “buffed” without any reference as to why it was being removed. Corbyn’s comment referred to the destruction of a Diego Rivera mural by Nelson Rockefeller. This passing response was then cynically resurrected to attack Corbyn six years later. Corbyn apologised for failing to interrogate the mural.
However, some on the left attempted to equivocate, or re-interpret the imagery, rather than taking opposition to antisemitism as their starting point. This mistook a defence of Mear One for a defence of Corbyn. In fact, Ockerman had peddled conspiracy theories about the Jewish Rothschild banking dynasty and was a follower of antisemitic conspiracist David Icke. In a post linked to an Icke videocast on “Rothschild Zionism”, Ockerman urges followers, “Give Mr Icke a chance to blow your mind”.40 Ockerman dismissed local “older white Jewish folk” who took issue with his portrayal of “their beloved Rothschild and Warburg as the demons they are”.41
The meaning of antisemitism has been degraded and hollowed out by the attacks on the left and by the narrative of the “new antisemitism”. This has dangerous consequences. It sows divisions between the victims of racism, and it provides cover for the far right and the fascist to claim that the left and Muslims are the real antisemites. It has made it more difficult to challenge antisemitism when it does raise its head in the movement. If support for the cause of Palestinian freedom is “antisemitic”, and if slander and misrepresentation become legitimate discourse, and antisemitism becomes weaponised, then real examples of antisemitism can be dismissed.
The importance of drawing lessons from the last six years is to buttress a defence of the left against the witch hunt, to defend Palestine solidarity, to reinforce the anti-Zionist case and to oppose the false conflations of the “new antisemitism” narrative. Above all we need to recover the real meaning of antisemitism as a reactionary ideology. In all these respects David Renton steers in the opposite direction.
Rob Ferguson is a long-standing anti-racist activist who has been actively involved in the campaign to protect free expression on Palestine and in defence of the left. He is the author of Antisemitism: The Far Right, Zionism and the Left (Bookmarks, 2018).
Notes
3 See Gidley, McGeever and Feldman, 2020; Klug, 2020; Jones, 2020, pp210-256; and Brown, 2019. Also see two positive reviews of Renton from Corbyn supporters: Phipps, 2021, and Saville, 2021.
4 See Segalov, 2016 and 2019; Harpin, 2017; and Press Association, 2019. Corbyn supporters who backed expulsions included former chair of Momentum Jon Lansman, Young Labour chair Jess Barnard, and Novara Media commentators Aaron Bastani, Ash Sarkar and Rivkah Brown. Left-wing National Executive Committee members also sanctioned suspensions and expulsions.
5 See Paul Field’s review of Renton—Field, 2021. For a wide range of responses to charges against individuals and against the Labour left see the Jewish Voice for Labour website. For responses to Livingstone’s suspension, see Rosenhead, 2017; Rose, 2016; and Rosenberg, 2017.
6 See Ferguson, 2018, pp12-16.
7 This initiative has often been attributed to quite modest (and unsuccessful) efforts to refer to the racist treatment of Palestinians by Israel in the final declaration of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 and a furore over the NGO Forum Declaration. In fact, the key drivers were the Second Intifada, and the attacks of 9/11 which took place three days after the Durban Conference ended.
9 Philo, Berry and others, 2019.
10 Chakrabarti, 2016. For an account of the sabotaged press launch, see Rosenberg, 2018.
11 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, 2016.
12 See Zeffman, 2018. For an earlier argument over a code of conduct, see Klug, 2018.
13 Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2020.
14 Shabi, 2020; Siddique, 2020.
15 www.facebook.com/david.rosenberg.923
16 Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2020, p107.
19 Gidley, McGeever and Feldman, 2020.
20 https://jerusalemdeclaration.org
21 Gidley, McGeever and Feldman, 2020.
23 Eley, 2008. For a critique of Gidley, McGeever and Feldman, see Kuper, 2020.
26 ”https://rabbisacks.org/rabbi-sacks-on-antisemitism-and-anti-zionism
28 Field undertakes an admirably thorough demolition of Renton’s distortion of the data. See Field, 2021.
29 Renton follows Gidley, McGeever and Feldman, 2020, arguing that whether or not an individual is an antisemite is not the issue; rather, the focus should be on antisemitism as a “a reservoir of readily available images and ideas that subsist in our political culture.” However, in the context of a political witch hunt, whether or not an individual is an antisemite is of prime importance.
30 They did so more substantively than any of Renton’s legalistic unpicking. See Stern-Weiner, 2019; Jewish Voice for Labour, 2021a.
31 Jewish Voice for Labour, 2021b. Renton himself acknowledges the disproportionate targeting of anti-Zionist Jews—Renton, 2021, p128.
32 The IHRA definition likewise undermines the meaning of antisemitism as hatred of Jews as Jews, which conflicts with its conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israeli apartheid.
33 Abdeen, 2021; Hall, 2021; Ullah, 2021.
35 See Chris Harman’s criticism of an article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that preceded their book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy—Harman, 2006. There are elaborations to be made on Harman’s argument in explaining Israel’s rising importance to Western imperialism and its own degree of autonomy, but there is insufficient space for them here. Unlike Field’s own review of Renton’s book, I would argue Harman’s criticism of Mearsheimer and Walt’s article applies equally to their later book—see Mearsheimer and Walt, 2007, and Field, 2021.
36 Cliff, 1967; Rose, 1986; Ferguson, 2021.
37 Rosenhead, 2017; Rose, 2016.
38 Waxman, 2016. One of the first acts of the new Israeli administration under Naftali Bennett was to close the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which was responsible for leading the campaign against BDS. This was not out of any progressive motive but out of fear that the orientation on Trump, evangelicals and the racist right was driving a wedge between Israel and US Jews. See Lis, 2021, and Shaffir, 2021.
39 There is not space for a full discussion of Holocaust memorialisation here, but for problems with this approach, see Simons, 2000, and Callinicos, 2000.
41 For a thorough account of the attack on Corbyn over Mear One, see Pitt, 2018.
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David Renton’s next book could well be titled “Hands and Knees – My Crawl Back to the Right”.
Labours “antisemitism crisis” took place exclusively on the pages of the right wing press and in the fevered imaginings of the B.O.D. Those who gave it any credence will be looking out for a sound, red, jolly gentleman this Christmas.
David Renton is either deliberately engaged in yet another attempt to promote the opinion that there ever was an ‘antiSemitism problem’ in the Labour Party or he doesn’t understand that there isn’t a single ‘Jewish Community’.
There are Jews who are Zionists, Jews who are not Zionists and Jews who couldn’t care one way or the other.
Jews who are avowedly Zionist, because it is their mission to bring about a 100% Zionist State in Palestine by excluding Palestinians who do not accept Zionist colonisation and occupation, deliberately manufactured a crisis. They knew that Jeremy Corbyn, being a genuine Socialist, could do no other than reject the racism of Zionism and therefore support Palestinian human rights. To have such a person as the leader of the Labour Party and a possible British PM was anathema to Zionists. Therefore using lies, spin and the assistance of the largely Zionist media, they set out to destroy him politically. One of the consequences is we now have a PM who is a lying, cheating, dangerous bullying clown.
Certain members of the left are however guilty – those who thought it wise to pander to the demands of the Zionists and who failed to forthrightly expose and condemn the their tactics. They ended up stupidly accepting the trap of the IHRA definition, thereby delivering Socialists up to the court of Zionist, Keir Starmer.
In the above piece Rob Ferguson says the following:
‘Ken Livingstone was not attacked for his poor framing of history. He expressed a reductive approach to Zionism and to the role of Zionists in the 1930s, but he is not an antisemite. The failure to defend him laid the ground for escalating attacks and further retreat. The same holds for Chris Williamson, Marc Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, David Miller and others. A witch hunt cannot be stopped by abandoning the accused.’
The reality is that had Jeremy – or a spokesperson for the LP under his leadership – defended Ken Livingstone, he would have been condemned and vilified for defending the indefensible. The outcry against Ken was fraudulent and confected, and anyone defending him would have received the same treatment.
In other words, there was no way that Jeremy COULD have defended him and, as such, it’s completely erroneous to assert that HAD Ken been defended, that it would have deterred the saboteurs from continuing with their A/S black op smear campaign. Of course it wouldn’t have!
I recently did a search on the Guardian’s website re >ken livingstone hitler< and forty articles came up in the results. I was initially trying to determine how many Guardian articles there were in which either someone was quoted as saying that Ken said (in his now infamous interview with Vanessa Feltz) that Hitler was a Zionist, OR, in which a Guardian journalist or columnist said that Ken did.
One of the articles was a piece by Gaby Hinsliff from May 2018 in which she said the following in the first paragraph (Yes!, she mentions it pretty much at the outset):
Ken Livingstone is not enormously sorry. That much seems evident from his resignation statement, a classic of the “If anyone was offended by my perfectly reasonable behaviour, then … ” genre. Even now he can’t seem to grasp why repeatedly insisting that Hitler was a Zionist was so damaging to his party and to his own reputation. What a waste of a once formidable political talent…..
Yes, she throws in some praise of him as a Blind to her falsehood, whilst lamenting his lot! And she doesn't just claim that Ken said it on ONE occasion – ie in the interview with Vanessa Feltz – but that he REPEATEDLY said it. And needless to say – as with all but one or two of the forty articles – it didn't have a Comments section, and for the obvious reason!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/22/ken-livingstone-labour-hitler-antisemitism
And there were TWO articles at the time he was suspended. Here are the clips in question:
Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism and a longtime Labour member, said: “If anyone has gone mad, it is Ken Livingstone. His comments get more offensive and unworthy every time he is interviewed.
“Claiming Hitler was a Zionist is not only a huge historical perversion, but it directly equates Nazism and Zionism….."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/jeremy-corbyn-denies-labour-crisis-over-antisemitism
And this by Rajeev Syal (a Guardian journalist):
Livingstone was suspended for arguing that Hitler had once been a Zionist – something he defended as “historical fact”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/10/ken-livingstone-gives-up-place-labour-nec
The number of distortions and misrepresentations and outright falsehoods of what Ken said in the forty articles was just phenomenal. And THAT's just the Guardian!!
Thank you for the most thought provoking analysis I have read on this issue. There are a couple of aspects which I don’t understand. If we place anti Semitism as rooted in capitalism how do we describe the hatred for and attacks on Jews in Europe from medieval times onward? Any general understanding of the word antisemitism would take these into account. Also I am not sure about the unique horror of the Holocaust on the basis of there being no economic motive. Slavery was perhaps uniquely horrific because there was. So I think there might be a place for counterposing other racism and genocides against the Holocaust.
This review is complemented by Tony Greenstein’s. That David Renton’s effort was accepted by a publisher such as Routledge confirms how embedded the false left antisemitism narrative has become, such that the Labour right now act with no pretence at all that it was ever real.
See:
https://labourbriefing.org/blog/2021/10/28/book-review-labours-anti-semitism-crisis-what-the-left-got-wrong-and-how-to-learn-from-it-david-renton-routledge-oxford-2022-nbsp
This is an overlong article which makes difficult reading on something which I think is relatively straightforward. Not sure therefore that it helps much.
Also, I’ve forgotten what Ken Livingstone actually said: it would be useful for Allan Howard not to presume that we all have every fact on our fingertips but assist the reader by actually stating what exactly he did say…..
“Corbyn was faced with a stark choice: confront the parliamentary party, the party machine and majority of local councilors, which were backed by the media and the institutions of state, or seek ways of evading confrontation.”
It seems that we have a mainly left-wing membership but the right controls everything and Starmer is actively replacing left-wing candidates for elections. Surely the Labour Socialist Campaign Group would have far more support, in active campaigners, than the Gang of 4 did when forming the SDP. If they don’t break now they will be picked off over time – Corbyn already has been.
In reply to Alan Howard “Jeremy could not defend Ken Livingston”. Jeremy could easily have defended Ken! He just needed to refer to the Haavara Treaty signed in 1933 between the Nazi Party and the Zionist Federation of Germany. Jewish author and lecturer, Edwin Black, has published more than one book on the Haavara Treaty. A coin was produced to commemorate this Treaty, a star of David on one side and Swastika on the other. Black produces copious documentation and is not the only Jewish author to write on Haavara. Another author (whose name escapes me) alleges that the Zionists initiated contact with the Nazis stating that they believed Zionist philosophy to be similar to that of the Nazis.
I have to point out that I did not originate any of these statements and can not be accused of antisemitism any more than was Ken Livingston!!
Renton repeats the lie that antisemitism “acted as common ground for a “red-green” alliance of Islamists and the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist left, bound in common hostility to liberal democracy.”
________________________________________________________
In fact, it is Western governments which have allied themselves repeatedly with Islamic fundamentalists – from Afghanistan (against the Soviets), to Syria (against the Assad regime), to Libya, Yemen, and now, even in Sudan, with the American-Saudi-UAE-Israeli restoration of the military/Islamist-led regime against the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people.
The fundamental driver in all this has been the massive support for fundamentalist groups across the Middle East by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which regard them as their best guarantee against the emergence of democratic/semi-democratic states in the region. Bribed by vast flows of money from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the US/West have also thrown their lot behind the fundamentalists.
The case of Saudi Arabia and the US is well explored in Adam Curtis’ Bitter Lake (a rare excursion by the BBC into the realm of truth regarding the Middle East): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film) – still available on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/bitter-lake
Mark Curtis’ book Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam deals specifically with the British case: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/britain-s-collusion-with-radical-islam-interview-with-mark-curtis/
Monash, it would take ALL of about sixty seconds to do a search on the web and find what Ken said….. AND read it!
Jay, in the first place, WHERE would and could Jeremy have defended Ken (and referred to The Haavara Agreement etc)? In the year or two after the interview with Vanessa Feltz – ie after he was suspended – Ken went on various programmes so as to explain that what he said was an historical fact, but he just got condemned and vilified again each and every time he did so by the MSM et al. And you can be 150% certain that within a matter of several hours of the episode hitting the TV news (as it initially did, with the footage of John Mann verbally attacking Ken), every single journalist and columnist and editor of the MSM and the Jewish newspapers who were denouncing him – along with the BoD and JLM and CAA et al – KNEW that he was alluding to The Haavara Agreement – ie those that weren’t already aware of it, that is, which was almost certainly the vast majority of them, as very few people had ever heard of it.
It took ME all of about two minutes to do a search re >hitler supported zionism< (which brought up dozens of results), click on the first one in the list of results (which was the wikipedia entry for the agreement) AND read the first couple of paragraphs, which basically tells you everything you need to know about it. THAT was probably the very first thing the 'journalists' in the press who wrote the articles about the episode DID, as any 'journalist' on the planet WOULD.
My point is of course that they ALL had an agenda, and they weren't going to let FACTS get in the way!
Great article and a brilliant response to David Renton’s (deliberate?) misunderstanding of how the charge of antisemitism was used against Corbyn by the Right. It’s worth pointing out that before the Right settled on antisemitism they tried anti-feminism (not enough Woman in high enough positions in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet). It’s great in exploring the weakness of the Left when it came to challenging what was happening and the way our hesitancy/stupidity was used to dice and nullify us.
Where I’d disagree with Rob is in his characterisation of the Labour Left. There are so many divergencies and tendencies it’s never possible to see it in such homogenous terms. The debate within Momentum in Camden for example was split 50/50 between those who wanted to defend Livingstone – and shared Rob’s understanding – and those who thought Livingstone was being wilful or foolish, and wished (to some extent) that he would just shut the fuck up! I think this latter group were wrong – and subsequent expulsions made it obvious – but there were both difficulties in building a campaign/defence of Livingstone and a lot of political animus based on his attacks on the Left (RMT in particular) while he’d been Mayor. The issues, in the moment, became confused and overlapped.
And this is often what happens on the Left inside the Labour Party. The leadership – Corbyn, and more particularly McDonnell, hoped to build bridges towards the centre of the PLP and side-lined the defence of Livingstone (Walker and Wadsworth, latterly). This was an error. But I understand its basis. As it became apparent that a compromise (to the Right) would never satisfy it was already too late. The narrative that Renton accepts had already taken root and the idea that Corbyn was (somehow) above criticism – his kindness, manners, and even his allotment – was being sullied. Most importantly – and this is direct from the Right playbook – the most appealing aspect of Corbyn – his long-standing internationalism (very rare in Labour) was being used against him …. Starmer’s manic attacks on the Left since he became leader show how fearful the Right remain of us being in the Party and offering an alternative. That alternative will never be as vanguardist as I’d like but it’s an important counterpoint to what’s occurring. Rob would see this as a waste of energies – a fool’s errand – but it doesn’t preclude other actions or initiatives; whether this is supporting workers in struggle, Extinction Rebellion, or Manchester United (without the Glazers, obviously) x
In the Real World – and definitely by the time we were three years or so into Jeremy’s tenure as leader – there is no way on this planet that the Tories and the LibDems and the vast majority of the PLP and other parties would have attended Parliament – the Hse of Commons – whenever Jeremy was present. I mean if you REALLY believed that he was an existential threat to the UKs Jews, you would boycott Parliament every time he was there. Of COURSE you WOULD have! But they DIDN’T! And PMs Question Times continued as normal, and Theresa May wanted to consult with him about Brexit (in April 2019) etc, etc:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47807622
And the reason they DID….. well we ALL know the answer to THAT one (left-wingers, that is)! And all those MPs who pretended it was real just hoped that not too many people would notice the ‘discrepancy’.
And although a majority of the general public had probably heard of Jeremy Corbyn prior to him being elected leader, outside of the Left the vast majority of them probably knew very little about him – ie that he was a life-long anti-racist and anti-war etc – and the PTB realised and knew that THAT was the case and, as such, knew that they could ‘transform’ him into an anti-semite in the minds of millions of people. And an extremist and a Marxist and a friend of terrorists and ‘our’ enemies etc, etc, etc.
I just happened to come across the following a couple of days ago, which says it ALL, in effect:
THE SUN SAYS If Boris Johnson wins today, a bright future begins… but if Jeremy Corbyn gets in, the lights will go out for good
SUN readers must help save Brexit, and Britain, from the horror of a Corbyn-led Marxist Government.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10533081/election-boris-bright-future-corbyn-lights-out/
When you ACTUALLY had journalists, so-called, and columnists telling readers (millions collectively) that Naz Shah wanted to move Israel to the US, OR, that she wanted all Israeli Jews moved or ‘transported’ to Israel….. well, if THAT doesn’t show everyone just how mendacious and malevolent they are, and convince people (who criticise Jeremy), how getting the truth out there was ALWAYS a non-runner, then I really don’t know what WILL!
Rob Ferguson’s review is a powerful and well written response to David Renton’s sad retreat.
I do wonder, though, why he has to distance himself from, and criticise, Ken Livingstone on this issue. Ken was essentially correct in his references to the transfer agreement – and his treatment, and the accusations against him, were obscene. He was probably the greatest ant-racist the party produced. For him to be labelled an antisemite is a tragedy – ditto, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and so many more.
Like so many of the victims of this witch-hunt, Ken was thrown under a bus by sections of the left, and we have all had to pay the price.
And there is in Rob’s review a suggestion that this was somehow an inevitable consequence of “Labourism’. It wasn’t. Yes, the pressure on the left was enormous. But these allegations – part of the Establishment Tendency’s class war on on Corbyn and the left – could have been challenged. The left’s betrayal was not pre-ordained.
That said, Rob Ferguson’s review is a necessary and welcome response
This otherwise trenchant crique of Renton’s hatchet job on the left has one major flaw: it doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the part played by Israel’s appalling human rights abuses in inspiring the humanitarian left’s f ervent criticisms of Israel and Zionism. The reason the Israel lobby has contrived to crush the Corbyn project with such force and persistance is because they rightly perceive the left to be the group most outraged by Israel’s actions and most determined to condemn them in the court of world opinion. Of course those who defend Israel right or wrong recognise that the antisemitism of the right is more profound and pernicious than anything that exists on the left, but the right’s objection to Jews is fundamentally racist in nature, and unlike the left’s objection to the practices of Israel it has no convincing moral basis. The fact that racist ideologues like Tommy Robinson or Trump or Hungary’s Orban are strong supporters of Israel is neither contradictory nor accidental. Rather than addressing Israel’s moral failings they admire it as model of the sort of purist race-based state they would like to create in their own region. And of course true antisemites are more than happy to see Jews absorbed into a Jewish homeland rather than continuing to exist within a nominally Christian state.
A simple test of whether Israel’s human rights abuses are chiefly responsible for the left’s criticisms and not antisemitism would be if Israel started treating Palestinians as equals with equal rights, including the right to return. Should this happen I suspect that the left’s criticisms would turn in other directions, and the accusations that the Labour left are more antisemitic than anyone else would largely lose their force. Unfortunately the recalcitrance of the government of Israel on this issue makes it unlikely that any such test will be carried out in the near future, if ever.
The problem with Ken Livingstone’s reference to the Haavara agreement is that for many Jews the Holocaust is a subject so painful that the idea of Jews negotiating with the Nazis is literally unbearable. Similarly many Jews are so sensitive to the need for a Jewish homeland that any criticisms of Israel’s actions feels like a denial of their right to be safe from a second Holocaust. If we want to persuade the Jewish community to support radical changes to Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians we have to respect those sensitivities and opt for a different approach. Having recently had some unpleasant exchanges on Twitter, I am aware that a major element in the Israeli mindset is anti-Arab prejudice – those who support Israel right or wrong simply cannot accept that Jews and Arabs can live together in peace and amity. This is the attitude that has to change if there is ever to be peace in the region. Arguing about the Holocaust is as counter productive as arguing about religion.
There is much of value in Rob Ferguson’s response to Renton. I have just one or two reservations. I share Graham Bash’s view about the failure of too many on the left to defend Livingstone and other early purge victims. We will never know how different things might have been if the weaponisation of antisemitism had been called out from the very first. Corbyn and his team failed to recognise the ruthlessness of the enemy, within and outside the party, and therefore fatally opted for appeasement rather than confrontation. We in JVL tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade them to take a different course.
We also responded in full to the hostile critics who alleged antisemitism at every turn. https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/statement/rebuttals/. I’m surprised that Rob suggests the Mear One mural is self-evidently antisemitic. The imagery it contains is loaded with references which people cannot be expected to recognise, nor is it reasonable to expect knowledge about the originator’s background which might influence viewers’ judgement.
Altogether though, I welcome Rob’s contribution.
The following piece in the Daily Mail published on April 28th, 2016, (the day Ken Livingstone was suspended) consists of two articles and several ‘side pieces’. The primary article is headlined ‘Labour in crisis over ‘anti-semitic’ scandal: MPs demand Corbyn gets his ‘head out of the sand’ after Red Ken is SUSPENDED for claiming Hitler backed moving the Jews to Israel….’ with six sub-headlines, one of which says that ‘Shah [Naz Shah] triggered the storm with Facebook post on re-locating Israel to the US’, and the article begins by saying the following:
Jeremy Corbyn tonight denied Labour was facing an anti-Semitism crisis despite being forced to suspend his old friend Ken Livingstone for claiming Hitler was a ‘Zionist’. Mr Livingstone made the incendiary comments…..
Then further on in the article it says:
Ken Livingstone gave an interview to BBC Radio London in defence of Ms Shah. He made the explosive claim that Hitler was a ‘Zionist’ when he ran for election in 1932.
And further on in the article it says the following:
Rabbi Danny Rich, senior rabbi of Liberal Judaism, said: ‘If anyone has gone mad, it is Ken Livingstone.
‘His comments get more offensive and unworthy every time he is interviewed.
Claiming Hitler was a Zionist is not only a huge historical perversion, but it directly equates Nazism and Zionism.
‘It suggests they share objectives and values; it is guilt by association.
‘It is hard to think of a more offensive linkage.
‘Suspending him from the Labour Party is not the end of the matter. Livingstone is a symptom, not the cause.’
It’s rather odd that the one bit where Rich is quoted as saying ‘Claiming Hitler was a Zionist…’ etc doesn’t have a quotation mark??
Whatever the case, millions of people were duped and deceived and led to believe that Ken said Hitler was a Zionist! And repeated THREE times so as to make sure it stuck!!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3563223/Ken-Livingstone-claims-Hitler-supported-Zionism-supported-moving-Jews-Israel-went-mad-ended-killing-six-million-Jews.html
This is in response to Naomi and Graham: As you probably know, I have on many occasions defended Jeremy against charges of appeasing his enemies and not ‘fighting back’, and done so on the grounds that he would just be attacked and vilified for doing so and, as such, that he was in a no-win situation. And I have cited – as examples – what happened when the LP condemned the Panorama hatchet job, and what happened when Jeremy defended his record on dealing with anti-Semitism in the party the day the EHRC published its so-called report. But there is in fact further evidence in the Daily Mail article in my post above (in which I was of course focusing on the Big Lie that Ken said Hitler was a Zionist, and the repetition of that Big Lie).
The article actually starts by repeating what Jeremy said in response to the accusation that there is an anti-Semitism crisis in the party – ie Jeremy denying that there was – and he subsequently gets slammed for saying so, and part of a quote is even included in the headline. So here are the responses to him and his denial that there is a crisis:
Former minister Ian Austin told MailOnline: ‘Just seven days from polling day and instead of knocking on doors like the rest of us, Ken Livingstone is treating us to his weird views on Adolf Hitler and his offensive views on Jewish people.
‘The media are talking about nothing else, the party is having to suspend people on almost a daily basis and Jeremy thinks there’s no problem?’
Mr Austin continued: ‘It looks like a pretty big problem to everyone else. Labour’s reputation is being destroyed and instead of pretending there’s no problem Jeremy needs to act and he needs to act now.’
John Woodcock, a senior backbencher, told MailOnline: ‘Many thousands of Labour members will be bewildered by the hideous remarks of Ken Livingstone and are looking to Jeremy Corbyn to swipe the moment and tackle Labour’s anti-Semitism problem.
‘He must not bury his head in the sand in the face of this madness.’
And further on there’s a piece entitled: LABOUR LEADER FACES RISING DEMANDS TO ACT OVER ANTI-SEMITISM, and of course plenty more quotes by people pretending that Ken said something abhorrent and giving it the full Monty. And if Jeremy had tried to defend what Ken said and cited the Haavara Agreement, I have no doubt whatsoever that there would have been explosions of (faux) outrage from numerous quarters, and Jeremy attacked (via the MSM) in much the same vein as Ken was by John Mann.
Jeremy Corbyn`s destruction was engineered from Israel`s London Embassy. As soon as he mentioned Israel`s oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza, in the House of Commons, he was doomed. His character assassination was led by the BBC and Daily Mail. Under Keir Starmer the Parliamentary Labour Party has ceased to be Her Majesty’s Opposition. His support for Boris Johnson against the Tory rebels over COVID 19 Restrictions prove that the UK now has a One Party System of Government.
Rob Ferguson replies to some of the comments
I am struck by the positive responses here and elsewhere to my review article of Renton’s book. I am particularly grateful for the comments from Steven, Graham and Naomi. While acknowledging shared ground, I would like to address the differences.
Steven makes the point, rightly, that the Labour left is not homogeneous. Graham makes a similar point. I do however draw a strong distinction in my piece between those who held the line against the witch hunt, and those who equivocated, stayed silent or capitulated.
Yet this still leaves the question of the left defeat. It cannot be explained simply by an adverse “balance of forces”, that can be overcome by yet further battles in the future. This will only further weaken the left.
I have argued that the shared electoral project that binds left and right in the party is the Achilles heel of the Labour left project. This means that the PLP is always structurally dominant; the notion of holding the PLP accountable has always been a mirage, however many positions the left may win inside the structure or secure conference votes.
The PLP was shaken by Corbyn’s unpredicted leadership victory in 2015 and by the 2017 election results. However, it found its feet. The right was able to push confrontation inside the party knowing the left would always retreat from an existential party rupture.
Subjectively, Corbyn could have defied and confronted the right onslaught politically. However, this would have entailed a fundamental breach with the PLP the official party structures, and the majority of councillors. The big guns of the trade union movement, including the “lefts” such as UNITE would not have countenanced even the glimmers of such a prospect.
Faced with such a prospect, layer after layer, from centre to “soft left”, to the SCG, to the NEC lefts, Momentum et al, retreated and conceded to force majeure, falling domino-like. The concessions and retreats are symptoms, not the cause of the left’s weakness.
The antisemitism crisis was the right’s litmus test of whether the left would break with Labourism. Once the right sensed that they could test the left to destruction they did so relentlessly and without quarter.
True, defeat in one sense is not inevitable. However, it depends on what terrain you choose to fight. The internal machinations of the Labour Party will always remain the terrain of the right. To challenge the right successfully Corbyn would have had to appeal to mass movements outside parliament over the heads of the entire PLP and the Labour machine and to have courted a complete break from Labour’s MPs, even to the point of the PLP declaring UDI.
This is the point at which the argument that you can fight inside Labour while supporting struggles and movements outside parliament falls down. It becomes a choice. You can ride two horses – until they ride off in different directions; then you have to choose.
The right knew the bulk of the left would concede to dictat rather than risk expulsion. Even the most principled friends here, were left simply calling fringe-type meetings rather than systematically defy and mobilise against the edicts of the General Secretary inside the party structures. In practice, “stay and fight” became an oxymoron. The right were simply able to pick off ever more targets at will, thus disciplining the party as a whole. As the left conceded to party discipline, Starmer then proceeded to proscribe organisations that provided the left with platforms of opposition outside the party’s constitutional structure, even though these posed no real threat in themselves.
Steven is mistaken in maintaining that Starmer is fearful of the left remaining in the party and so offering an alternative. I’m sorry to be harsh but this is whistling in the dark. Starmer and the right know they can act with impunity, and there is nothing for the left but to “stay and sulk”. It is not the left that Starmer is afraid of but the power of business interests and the British state to derail Labour’s electoral prospects for a future Labour government.
Far from weakening Starmer, cleaving to membership of Labour only reinforces the claim that workers have no alternative but to hold their noses and look to another Labour government rather than their own struggles.
The defeat of the Corbyn project is not an isolated example. Left electoral parties have generally emerged in opposition to or as splits from the main social democratic parties. This points to the challenge Corbyn faced. However, like Corbyn, all such electoral projects, Syriza and Podemos being the most recent, have suffered the same fate.
This does not mean that socialists should never stand on an electoral platform. However, this can never be on the basis of putting Parliament first, with extra-parliamentary struggle as an add-on.
The force for a different society, “for the many, not the few”, lies outside in struggle outside parliament, in the mass struggles of workers and movements of the oppressed, fighting for their own cause and in their own interests, unconstrained by electoralism.
The antisemitism crisis was ultimately a test of whether the Labour left would break from Labourism. We should learn the lessons.