Another Tory antisemite to be widely ignored

One of the weirdest things about the politically motivated antisemitism witch hunt is the fact that so many of the self-appointed witch hunters are brazen antisemites themselves.

From accusations that left-wing and peace activist Jews are "self-hating Jews" (an ancient anti-Semitic trope) or "kapos", to the really obvious antisemitism of speaking about 'the Jewish Community' as if it's some kind of right-wing pro-Israeli, socialism-hating hive mind, rather than hundreds of thousands of individual people with incredibly diverse political views, and outright attacks on the Orthodox Jewish people, it turns out that a lot of antisemitism witch hunters are repeatedly proving themselves to be more antisemitic than a lot of the people they're accusing.

Sol Wielkopolski is the Tory councillor for Newbarns and Parkside in Barrow, and he's stumbled stupidly into the antisemitism debate with an egregious display of antisemitism.

He's found a video featuring Jeremy Corbyn explaining that millionaire Tories and their mega-rich backers won't suffer the terrible consequences of rising food prices in a No Deal Brexit scenario (see below) and disingenuously reinterpreted it as "inciting hatred of the wealthy".

Boris Johnson and his millionaire friends won't be affected by rising food prices in a No Deal Brexit. pic.twitter.com/lYDSn5c1XR

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 3, 2019

If he'd stopped there it would have been bad enough, given that it's just a fact of life that the wealthy are more financially insulated from the dire consequences of economic hard times than the poor and ordinary, but he decided to go a step further by linking this ludicrous accusation that Corbyn "incited hatred of the wealthy" into the antisemitism witch hunt, by claiming it's "consistent with his hatred of Jews".

Anyone who knows anything about Corbyn knows that the accusation that he hates Jews is a ludicrous smear.

Why would a man who "hates Jews" ever have campaigned to save a Jewish cemetery in Islington in the 1980s, or called on the government to accept Jewish refugees from Yemen in the 2000s, or signed dozens of parliamentary motions standing with Jews and condemning antisemitism, or organised resistance to the National Front when they tried to hold a neo-Nazi march in the Jewish neighbourhood of Wood Green in the 1970s.

But then Wielkopolski's effort to link Corbyn's justified criticism of the mega-rich Brextremists with supposed antisemitism is antisemitic itself because it invokes the age-old antisemitic trope of wealthy Jews controlling the world.

According to this utterly ridiculous argument, if anyone ever criticises the mega-rich beneficiaries of the capitalist system, they're supposedly being antisemitic because the mega-rich beneficiaries of capitalism are 'nasty Jews'.

The only person being antisemitic is Wielkopolski, but he's too damned stupid to even understand that he's invoked an antisemitic trope for no other reason than to smear a political rival.

The Tory party won't investigate or suspend him for invoking antisemitic tropes.

Why would they?

They sided with every extreme-right and neo-Nazi party in the European Parliament last year to stand in solidarity with Victor Orbán's antisemitic regime in Hungary last year and got a free pass on it, so why would they give a damn about one of their councillors lazily spreading antisemitic tropes?

And the mainstream media certainly won't give a damn, because "what if the antisemitism witch hunters are more antisemitic than the people they're accusing of antisemitism?" runs entirely contrary to the mainstream media groupthink that antisemitism is the Achilles Heel that will finally bring down Jeremy Corbyn, reverse Labour's return to democratic socialism, and restore the neoliberal orthodoxy that mainstream media journalists have benefited so handsomely from over the years.

Admittedly Wielkopolski is hardly a senior figure within the Tory party, and he's obviously too damned stupid to even realise that he's plucked an antisemitic trope out of nowhere to use it as a political smear, but he'll get away with it because that's just how things work.

If the antisemitism isn't useful for the primary purpose of attacking Corbyn and socialism, then it's widely considered to be irrelevant.

Which just goes to show how debased the whole thing has become.

Any genuine anti-racist should condemn racism because it's racism, not selectively call it out only when it's conducive to a partisan political agenda, like undermining Labour's return to its founding democratic socialist principles.

And the fact that witch hunters like Wielkopolski are invoking antisemitic tropes themselves in order to smear others as antisemites, with absolutely no fear of repercussions, is downright Kafkaeaque.

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