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".
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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As the May 2nd local elections approach many of us will have the uncomfortable experience of Tory canvassers knocking on our doors to pretend to be our friends.
In this article I'm going to provide 12 questions you can use to blast them off their feet.
1. How much have your party cut the local government budget since 2010?
They will try to bluster and blunder their way around this question because they know the answer is not good for them at all. The Institute for government say that they've cut support for communities and local government by 67% since 2010.
These ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason your Council Tax bill is going up, while your local services are worse than they've ever been before.
2. Do you think that there is a link between rising violent crime and the 20,000+ police jobs you Tories have scrapped?
There is obviously a link between the Tories slashing 20,000+ police jobs and the soaring rates of violent crime, but the Tories will try to deny it because to admit it would be extremely damaging.
So instead of admitting the truth they assume that the general public are so thick that we'd actually reject our own common sense understanding of cause and effect, and mindlessly believe the Tory fairy story that slashing the police force back to 1970s levels of per capita policing has had absolutely no effect whatever on rates of serious crime!
3. In 2010 you lot said you'd eliminate the deficit by 2015 but you failed, what is your projection now?
When the Lib-Dems enabled the Tories back into power in 2010 they endlessly promised that their hard-right austerity project would eliminate the budget deficit by 2015. They obviously missed that target by miles because it's mid-2018 and the deficit is still there.
Again the Tory canvasser at your doorstep is likely to try to bluff and bluster their way out of answering the question, because they either don't know, or they know that the answer is awful. Maybe allow them bluster away for a while before you burst their bubble by informing them that the latest projection is 2031, and asking them if they think it's acceptable to take 21 years to achieve what they promised to do in less than 5.
4. Are you aware that the Tory party has a problem with bigotry?
The Tory canvasser on your doorstep will almost certainly try to deflect onto Labour and the charges of anti-Semitism, but you can nip this kind of evasion in the bud by pointing out that YouGov surveys have found that rates of anti-Semitism are way higher in the Tory party than in the Labour Party, and asking why they're so keen to deflect away from the problem of anti-Semitism in their own ranks by criticising a party that has lower levels of anti-Semitism than their own.
Then you can ask them subsidiary questions about things like Theresa May's vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that has been used to dehumanise and discriminate against the Windrush Generation, Jacob Rees-Mogg promoting the German far-right on Twitter, the fact the Tories put up an extreme-right white-supremacist as a local election candidate in Watford, or the fact that they simply wait for the public fuss to die down and then let their racists and bigots slide back into the party later on.
5. Why did your party defeat Amendment 58?
The Tory probably won't even know what you're talking about because the mainstream media barely touched this incredibly important parliamentary vote, so you'll have to explain it to them.
When the Tories put their EU Withdrawal Bill before parliament in January 2018 the opposition parties all supported a Labour Party amendment to stop the government from using Brexit as a Trojan horse to scrap our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.
The Tories (including CUK squatter hero Anna Soubry) and their sectarian DUP mates voted the amendment down, presumably because they wanted to reserve the right to trash our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.
This absolute Tory refusal to build parliamentary consensus on Brexit in order to run the whole thing as a closed Tory shop is the main reason that Brexit has turned into such a humiliating deadline-missing farce under Theresa May's rule.
6. Which was the first local council to go insolvent?
The answer is that Tory run Northamptonshire was the first council to declare de facto insolvency in February 2018. This is incredible because the Tories have loaded all of their worst local government funding cuts onto non-Tory councils in northern England for the last nine years.
So despite having a massive artificial financial advantage over Labour run councils that have suffered much deeper austerity cuts, the Tories in Northamptonshire did such a woeful job that they were the first to break under the pressure.
7. How much are you Tories going to slash from the budget of my local school?
Since 2010 the Tories have implemented an unprecedented 8% per pupil funding cut to the schools budget, and they've also transferred ownership of literally thousands of schools to private profiteers who use bloated executive salaries and financial trickery to siphon as much cash as possible out of the education system into their own pockets.
Use this school cuts calculator to find out how much they're planning to slash from the budget of your local school (or the school your kids/grandchildren attend), make a note of it, then ask the question.
They won't know the answer so expect more bluff, bluster and misdirection tactics from them. Let them bluster away as much as they like, then tell them the figure and ask them whether they think it's acceptable that they're making children pay the cost of the 2007-08 bankers' crisis.
8. Are you proud of what you've done to our wages?
Ask the Tory canvasser if they're aware that since 2010 British workers have suffered the longest sustained collapse in the value of their wages since records began, and ask them if they're proud of having imposed this record breaking level of wage repression.
9. Why has housing become so unaffordable since 2010?
Ask the Tory canvasser whether they are aware that UK housing is more unaffordable than it's ever been before.
Then ask them whether they think that home ownership souring out of the reach of millions of ordinary people has anything to do with their wage repression policies, and the fact that between 2010 and 2017 the Tories oversaw the lowest levels of house building since the early 1920s.
10. How many more children are growing up in poverty since you lot came to power in 2010?
The answer is 400,000.
11. Why do you expect me to pay compensation for the consequences of your horrible policies?
The Tory government have announced a compensation scheme for the Windrush Brits who have been denied housing, employment, social security, pensions, and NHS treatment, and been made to live in fear of imprisonment and deportation as a result of Theresa May's brutal and unlawful "Hostile Environment" legislation.
What she hasn't been clear about is that the Windrush scandal came about because of her own vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation in 2014.
So what she's actually saying by promising compensation is that she's going to completely evade responsibility for her own actions by not resigning, then compound matters by using public money to pay off the victims of her own malicious legislation.
See if you can get the Tory canvasser to admit that it's wrong for Theresa May to make the general public to pay the cost of her own horrible mistake, while she suffers no negative consequences at all.
12. Which political party has imposed the biggest armed forces cuts since the end of the Cold War?
The answer is the Tory party who have dramatically slashed the size of the armed forces since 2010.
They've reduced the army by over 20,000, the RAF by 8,500, and the navy by 5,500.
General advice
Don't be afraid to print this article off and leave it by your front door so you can use it as a guide (I absolutely don't give a damn about copyright issues). These Tory canvassers will be speaking from a script, so it's totally fair for you to refer to notes too.
Feel free to compile other questions you can stump them with too. If there's some local issue or controversy you can hit them with use that, or take a scroll through this list of 50 disgraceful Tory controversies to find other issues that you're particularly concerned with and make note of them.
Remember that the information in this article doesn't specifically have to be presented in the form of questions, it can also be used to rebut several of the set talking points the Tory canvasser will try to raise.
Also remember that the longer you can keep the Tory canvasser engaged in discussion, the less time they'll have to try to convince other less well-informed people into voting Tory through their bombardment of lies and deceptions. It's actually much better for you to keep them occupied by asking them questions like these and watching their absurd displays of mental gymnastics, than just angrily telling them to get off your doorstep.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
People who follow Scottish politics may remember John McTernan as the unbelievably inept political strategist who managed to lose 40 of Labour's 41 Scottish seats in Westminster at the 2015 general election.
After masterminding the most catastrophic electoral collapse in British political history one would have thought that McTernan would be treated as the political joke that he is.
However the man with such boundless incompetence that he actually managed to kill the Labour Party in their Scottish heartlands is still routinely given mainstream media platforms and treated as if he's some kind of wise and knowledgeable political oracle, rather than the nonsense-spewing clown-like political figure that he actually is.
For some reason the normally reputable (but always right-leaning) Financial Times has given McTernan a platform to push his cartoonish political nonsense in a column entitled "Labour’s mistake is to believe there are no enemies to the left".
McTernan starts out with a number of obvious lies about Labour anti-Semitism claiming that anti-Semitism in the Labour ranks is "a recent phenomenon", which "coincides with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader".
The evidence is absolutely clear that support for anti-Semitic views have fallen dramatically since Jeremy Corbyn became party leader. This is almost certainly due to the massive influx of genuinely left-wing people into the party, many of them from the younger demographics who generally have way more socially liberal and progressive views than the older generations.
And as for the idea that anti-Semitism in Labour is a "recent phenomenon", how is it possible to explain how Labour's chief spin-doctor Alistair Campbell produced vile anti-Semitic attack posters in 2008? How is it possible to explain Campbell telling the journalists who uncovered the scandal to "fuck off and cover something important you twats"? And how is it possible to explain away the fact that the Blairite party leadership decided to take absolutely no action whatever to discipline him for either the anti-Semitic posters, or the abusive and 100% unapologetic reaction to the scandal?
After rambling on pretentiously for paragraph after paragraph McTernan eventually comes out with surely one of the most delusional and self-awareness deficient sentences ever to have featured in the Financial Times.
"Rhetoric about the 1 per cent and economic inequality has the same underlying theme [as anti-Semitic tropes] — a small group of very rich people who cleverly manipulate others to defend their interests. So anti-capitalism masks and normalises anti-Semitism"
This extraordinary effort to conflate legitimate criticisms of issues like capitalism and inequality with anti-Jewish bigotry is extraordinary on so many levels.
According to McTernan's warped worldview anyone who points out that just 8 men own the same wealth as half the world is being anti-Semitic!
Anyone who attempts to critique the excesses of the reckless over-financialised speculation frenzy that late stage capitalism has degenerated into is being anti-Semitic!
Anyone who points out that Tory austerity dogma has resulted in a vast transfer of wealth from the poor and ordinary to the mega-rich elitist class is being anti-Semitic!
Anyone who raises concerns about how mega-rich individuals and corporations routinely buy political influence and use their wealth to cynically manipulate others is being anti-Semitic!
The agenda here is obvious. It's an attempt to defend capitalism from any form of criticism by cynically equating the language of dissent against the hard-right economic status quo with unacceptable racist bigotry.
McTernan is hoping to construct a right-wing mindset where anyone who ever complains about the excesses of capitalism or the problem of rising inequality can be instantly dismissed as a racist bigot so as to permanently evade discussion of any of the actual issues they're trying to raise.
It's an attempt to create a right-wing version of political correctness whereby any attempt to ever question the capitalist system can be instantly shouted down and ignored as if it's nothing more than vile and unacceptable bigotry.
But the grotesque cynicism isn't even the worst thing about it. The worst thing is the vile self-righteousness that manifests as an absolute lack of self-awareness.
Even though he'd already proven himself to be an anti-Semitism denialist by whitewashing Labour's issues before 2015 when Blairites like him were running the show, McTernan imagines himself to be some kind of righteous white knight figure who is right, and just, and proper in his opposition to anti-Semitism. But his attempt to use anti-Semitism as a smokescreen to defend corporations and the mega-rich from any kind of systemic critique relies on an obvious anti-Semitic trope in itself.
In order to define any criticism of the greed, wealth-hoarding, manipulation, corruption, and influence-buying that goes on in late-stage capitalism as anti-Semitism, it's necessary to identify all of these issues as being inherently Jewish traits.
McTernan's line of thinking is that 1. Jews are greedy 2. the political left criticise greed: Therefore the political left are anti-Semites.
McTernan's hopeless effort to conflate criticism of the hard-right economic status quo with anti-Semitism is further demolished if we consider the fact that Jewish intellectuals from across the political spectrum have a long history of critiquing capitalism and inequality. Karl Marx was Jewish. Rosa Luxemburg was Jewish. Helen Suzman was Jewish. Hyman Minsky was Jewish. Robert Skidelsky is Jewish. Noam Chomsky is Jewish.
Are we expected to believe that all of these Jewish activists, academics and intellectuals are raving anti-Semites because they have critiqued capitalism and inequality?
Are we expected to believe that all left-wing Jewish people are 'self-hating Jews' simply because this obnoxious (non-Jewish) failure of a political strategist crudely conflates criticism of capitalism with anti-Semitism?
The problem with vile and conniving opportunists like McTernan is that they've realised accusations of anti-Semitism can be weaponised to discredit and silence their political opponents, but they're so base and crude that they end up actually spreading vile anti-Semitic tropes like 'greedy Jews' and 'self-hating Jews' around in their efforts to weaponise the issue for their own partisan purposes.
Conclusion
Criticism of the problems and excesses of late stage capitalism is not anti-Semitism.
John McTernan is cynically using the anti-Semitism issue to smear anyone who dares question what he considers to be the natural order of things.
However in order to weaponise anti-Semitism in this manner he's produced a vile article that stumbles through anti-Semitism denialism, invocation of the vile anti-Semitic 'greedy Jew' trope, to the implication that Jews who dare to ever critique capitalism or inequality must be 'self -hating Jews' who are engaging in anti-Semitism simply by raising their concerns about the state of the world.
Just like almost everything McTernan says, it's entirely useless in actually understanding the world around us, but it does serve to highlight the grotesque self-awareness deficient worldview that him and people like him occupy.
Is it any wonder Labour annihilated their own political heartlands in Scotland after their party became so dysfunctional that utterly repugnant hard-right ideologues like this ended up running the show?
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
On March 1st 2019 the independent media site Evolve Politics exposed an absolutely despicable Tory Facebook hate chamber full of bigotry, racism, anti-Muslim hate, and the kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that would have sent the mainstream media into paroxysms of condemnation had they been found in a Labour group run by Labour Party councillors.
One of the most disturbing comments was posted by a woman called Dorinda Bailey where she agreed with someone calling for all mosques to be bombed, but criticised them for using a swear word in their comment!
When Ash Sarkar asked the Tory chairman Brandon Lewis about this despicable mosque-bombing comment he responded with a simple one sentence reply; "she is not a member of our Party".
The problem of course is that there's loads of evidence out there that Dorinda Bailey is an active member of the Tory party, or at least was one until very recently.
Here's a picture of her out on the campaign trail with the Tories during the 2018 local elections.
And here's evidence that she was actually one of the Tory party candidates in the Bradwell ward of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which means she was definitely a Tory party member within the last year, which makes Brandon Lewis's "not a member" comment extremely evasive and deceptive at the very least.
If Dorinda Bailey has been thrown out of the Tory party within the last year, Brandon Lewis clearly has an obligation to explain why.
Did the Tory party know about her bigoted tendencies. If so, why were two other Tory party councillors running the Facebook Tory hate-chamber with her?
Don't they have rules in place for preventing party members from co-operating with people who have been thrown out of the party?
But there's also the possibility that Brandon Lewis was outright lying that she's not a member since he provided absolutely no evidence to support his "not a member" claim.
It's pretty obvious that any political party that is serious about combating bigotry and racism in their ranks should be transparent about how they deal with proven bigots who stood as their official party candidates in elections less than a year previously.
It's pretty obvious that Brandon Lewis and the Tories have an obligation to explain why someone who was until very recently a party member (at the absolute best) was behaving in this despicable manner on a pro-Tory Facebook page run by other Tory Party members, and provide documentary evidence to back up Brandon Lewis's assertion that she's not a member of the party, and an explanation of why.
Will the mainstream media pick up on this and work to hold Brandon Lewis and the Tories accountable?
Will they pick up on the fact that Brandon Lewis has used the exact same "not a member" line to distance the party from a bigoted Tory party member who organised an extreme-right protest involving a hate group called the North East Infidels?
Will they pick up on the fact that stating "not a member" is absolutely insufficient when Tory party activists have been caught spreading bigotry and hatred in a pro-Tory Facebook propaganda page. At the very least the disciplinary processes used to remove them from the party should be detailed, and an apology should be made for the bigoted behaviour.
The likely answer is no. They won't pick up on this issue because it contradicts the whole narrative they're trying to construct, that it's the Labour left (who were actually amongst the tiny minority of just 18 anti-racist MPs to oppose Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" legislation in 2014) who are the nasty racists.
But just imagine if this was the other way around and it had been a Labour Party candidate at the 2018 local elections who had agreed with a proposal to 'bomb all synagogues' using a picture of them grinning alongside a famous Labour Party figure as their profile picture as they made their despicable comments.
Do you honestly think the media would allow Jeremy Corbyn to get away with evasively claiming "not a member of our party" with no apology, and no details whatever of the disciplinary procedures used to remove that person from the party?
Of course they wouldn't. It'd be spun out into a days-long re-examination of the Labour anti-Semitism issue and used as personal ammunition against Jeremy Corbyn (and whoever was pictured alongside the racist bigot too).
This disparity in mainstream media coverage that's actually just as concerning as the rampant bigotry and racism in the Tory ranks, and Brandon Lewis's outright evasiveness in not apologising for it.
If they're working as hard as they can to portray one side as having a bigotry problem, whilst deliberately turning a blind eye to the much worse bigotry problem on the other side (and the other side's deceptive, evasive, and unapologetic responses to it) then they're not reporting the news, they're manufacturing it.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
February 18th 2019 was a truly extraordinary day in British politics. Not only did a bunch of self-serving Labour right-wingers split away from the Labour Party in a lest desperate effort to keep Tory austerity dogma alive, the British mainstream media twice demonstrated their screaming hypocrisy when it comes to bigotry.
Just hours after citing racism as one of her reasons for quitting the Labour Party, the right-wing pro-privatisation MP Angela Smith uttered an extraordinary racial slur on live TV, accusing British Asians of having a "funny tinge".
Even more extraordinary than this display of casual racism on live TV was the reaction of the mainstream media and Westminster establishment stooges on the panel. They just sat there in silence leaving the left-wing British Asian Ash Sarkar as the only one to immediately express disbelief at what had been said.
Interestingly the pseudo-political party that Angela Smith has joined (actually registered as a private company to evade declaring who is bankrolling them) has absolutely no disciplinary procedures in place to deal with racist comments from their MPs, so she was just allowed to get away with claiming that she wasn't serious and it only happened because she was "very tired".
Imagine if a left-winger or Corbyn-supporter had uttered a racial slur then tried to defend it on the grounds that they were just "very tired", do you honestly think the mainstream media would be fastidiously trying to bury the story?
Then on a different political panel show the right-wing anti-Corbyn polemicist Tom Bower (him of the extraordinary Corbyn is a 'dangerous hero' because he likes baked beans nonsense in the Daily Mail) used a vile anti-Semitic trope to bully and abuse a left-wing Jewish journalist called Michael Segalov.
Unbelievably the rest of the panel just sat there in silence as if racially bullying people is perfectly fine as long as the target is left-wing, leaving Segalov to defend himself against the abuse. No condemnation of the abuse, no solidarity with the victim, nothing!
The fact that this silent reaction to bigoted abuse happened twice on the same day illustrates the fact that this wilful blindness to bigotry from within the establishment ranks is an endemic problem.
It's quite extraordinary that people who would have howled themselves hoarse about the scandal if some leftist had used anti-Semetic bigotry to bully a Jewish person right in front of them on live TV, will just sit there in absolute silence when it's members of their in-group spouting the most absurdly bigoted things, actually leaving the targets of this bigoted abuse to defend themselves.
Let's make no mistake about it here. Bigotry is wrong whether it manifests on the left, the centre, or the right. Anyone proven to be a bigot needs to be lobbed out of whichever political party they belong to, no exceptions for the fact that you prefer one party or another.
Anyone who only opposes bigotry when it involves their political opponents, yet sits there and says absolutely nothing when it's coming from their political allies is an outrageous hypocrite, who is clearly only using the subject of bigotry to score cheap political points.
Whether you think Jeremy Corbyn has done enough to oppose anti-Semitism in Labour is one thing, but you'd be outright lying if you said he'd done nothing. At least he's trying, unlike those who just sit there and say nothing at all while their fellow establishment insiders spew casual racism and the most hateful anti-Semitic abuse.
Sitting there in silence as if nothing of importance has happened while your ideological brethren spew outright bigotry is bad enough in its own right because silence in the face of bigotry is complicity, but from people who are so keen to weaponise accusations of bigotry against their political foes, well it's just absolutely vile isn't it?
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
On the 18th of February 2019 an outrageous anti-Semitic slur was broadcast on British television, yet virtually nobody raised the slightest exception to it.
The slur was the propaganda trope of the "self-hating Jew", which implies that there are 'good and proper Jews' who do as they're expected by wider society, and 'bad degenerate Jews' who defy social expectation of Jewish behaviour to such an extent that their actions can only be explained by the fact that they must be 'Jewish anti-Semites' who hate their own Jewishness.
To make matters worse this anti-Semitic slur wasn't just thrown out there as an anti-Semitic slur against left-wing Jews in general in the manner of Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid, it was specifically targeted at a Jewish individual (Michael Segalov - well worth a follow if you do Twitter) on national television, which conjured the spectacle of a non-Jewish person publicly bullying a Jewish person by smearing him as 'not a proper Jew'.
The unbelievable reaction of the rest of the Good Morning Britain panel was to just ignore the slur as if nothing happened and leave Segalov to defend himself (in much the same way Angela Smith's bizarre "funny tinge" racism has been glossed over by the mainstream media and political neoliberals as if it somehow didn't matter, or didn't even happen).
it's quite extraordinary to see Segalov left to defend himself against this anti-Semitic slur as the rest of the panel just completely let it slide. No condemnation of the abuse, no solidarity with the victim, nothing!
the absolute apathy and passivity of the rest of the panel in the face of such overt racism was actually even more shocking than the racism itself. Just watch it for yourself
The person making the "self-hating Jew" accusation was the right-wing polemicist Tom Bower who has been desperately hawking his lame hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn to anyone who will listen (the bizarre gibberish that Jeremy Corbyn is a depraved "dangerous hero" because he likes baked beans and no frills camping holidays in the British countryside!).
In fact Bower has had his anti-Corbyn polemic serialised in the notoriously anti-Semetic Daily Mail propaganda rag that glorified Hitler, propagandised for the British Union of Fascists, and demanded Britain turn away Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany.
So here we have a right-wing Corbyn critic publicly using an anti-Semitic trope to personally attack a Jewish person on live television, and virtually nobody in the mainstream media even batted an eyelid about it.
Just imagine if it had been a Corbyn ally publicly lambasting a Jewish person as 'the wrong kind of Jew' on national television. How do you think the mainstream media would have reacted to that?
Mass indifference, or wall-to-wall vitriolic condemnation?
So why does this extraordinary disparity exist when it comes to anti-Semitic abuse?
If literally anyone out of the 500,000+ members of the Labour Party says anything vaguely anti-Semitic and Jeremy Corbyn is held personally responsible by the Westminster establishment class and mainstream media hacks alike.
But a right-wing anti-Corbyn polemicist outright abuses a Jewish person on national television, and none of them even give the slightest shit!
The glaringly obvious conclusion is that anti-Semitism is just a disposable tool to people who are enveloped in the anti-Corbyn cult mentality.
If someone on the left says anything that can be interpreted as anti-Semitism then the defenders of the neoliberal orthodoxy will use the issue to attack Corbyn personally. But if someone who belongs to their anti-Corbyn in-group uses an anti-Semitic trope to bully and abuse a Jewish person on live TV, they immediately forget about the issue of anti-Jewish bigotry altogether.
And this disparity is vitally important because anyone who condemns anti-Semitism amongst their political foes, but ignores or condones it amongst their political allies is guilty of cheapening and debasing the fight against anti-Jewish bigotry.
This isn't just disgustingly hypocritical behaviour, it's also dangerous, because it risks creating the public perception that anti-Semitism isn't actually a real issue with appalling real life consequences, but just some kind of abstract political weapon to be used selectively in order to discredit people on the left.
Anyone who has actual legitimate concerns about anti-Jewish bigotry must surely be left wondering how on earth nobody on the panel thought to call out this display of bigoted anti-Jewish bullying in the moment, and with even bigger questions about how the mainstream media just ignored the fuck out of an extraordinary display of anti-Semitism on live TV simply because highlighting an anti-Corbyn polemicist spewing anti-Semitism would completely contradict the objectives of their underlying anti-Corbyn/protect the neoliberal status quo agenda.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
