The second controversy in just over two years over comments by Diane Abbott (pictured) apparently downplaying anti-Semitism underlined how much confusion there is on the subject. Even the veteran black Labour MP’s most trenchant critics were constrained by their limited view of anti-Semitism as just a form of hate. They typically failed to see the problem runs much deeper than that.
As I have argued several times on this site it is best to see anti-Semitism as a perception of Jews as an embodiment of evil. It sees Jews as personifying a malevolent spirit.
That is what traditional anti-Semitism, as existed before Israel was founded, and contemporary anti-Zionism have in common. For the traditional anti-Semite the Jews personifying the supposed evils of capitalism and modernity. Contemporary anti-Zionists sees Israel as embodying the alleged malevolent spirit of settler colonialism and western civilisation.
From this perspective it should be clear than anti-Semitism is more than just hatred. Nor can it be reduced to scapegoating. Anti-Semites typically genuinely believe that Jews, or the Jewish state, embody evil. Such views are clearly poisonous, and should be forcefully challenged, but it does not mean that they are not sincerely held.
To understand how this relates to the Abbott affair it is necessary to recount the events of the past week and what happened two years ago. From there the limitations not only of Abbott but those of her critics should be apparent.
Last week Abbott appeared on an episode of the BBC Radio 4 Reflections programme where she looked back at her long political career. Among the topics discussed was the April 2023 scandal where she played down the significance of anti-Semitism. Her comment that she had “no regrets” about her earlier remarks got her suspended as a Labour MP for a second time. The first was in response to her remarks in 2023.
This time around Abbott made the seemingly innocuous point that there are different types of racism. In particular she said that black people can be instantly visually recognised whereas that is not true of, for example, Jews or Travellers. “You can spot that person of colour from 100 yards away. That is different”.
As it happens Abbott was contradicting herself here. On the one hand, she insisted that racism is about skin colour. On the other hand, she accepted there are other forms of racism.
She has been rightly criticised by some for the crassness of her comments. There are many circumstances where Jews can be visually recognised. Abbott should be more aware of that than most since her constituency includes Stamford Hill, home to the largest haredi (ultra-orthodox) community in Europe. Members of this community are easily recognisable by the way they dress.
Of course it is true that racism takes different forms but they cannot be reduced to skin colour. It is necessary to dig deeper to understand their character.
Before going on to explore these contrasting characteristics it is worth recounting Abbott’s original comments on the subject back in April 2023. She wrote a letter to the Observer newspaper in response to an article by Tomiwa Owolade. He was in turn writing about a comprehensive survey which argued that Travellers and Jews were the two groups most likely to suffer racist abuse in Britain.
The worse aspect of Abbott’s letter was its complete ignorance of the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust. She wrote that:
“It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.”
As a result of these comments she apologised and was suspended for the first time as a Labour MP. She claimed that an early draft of the letter had been sent to the newspaper by mistake.
This time around she was careful to avoid any implicit Holocaust denial. She just made the seemingly uncontentious point that racism can take different forms – even if her reference to skin colour was superficial.
What she failed to do though was to capture the key differences between anti-black racism and anti-Semitism. They are of course both despicable but that does not mean they are identical in form.
In broad terms anti-black racism emphasises the supposed inferiority of blacks while anti-Semitism is an expression of the alleged evil of the Jews. These are of course over-simplifications. For instance, other groups too have been regarded as inferior. Indeed anti-Semites have tended to see Jews both as racially inferior at the same time as being a powerful Satanic force.
The important point to establish here is that what characterises different forms of racism is not just the identity of the victims – whether Jews, black or another group – but the form racial thinking takes. It should not be reduced to identifying which group is the object of the animosity.
Anti-Semites typically view the Jews as a collective – including in relation to the state of Israel – as the epitome of evil. It takes the old idea of the Jews as Satanic, which dates back to the Middle Ages, and incorporates it into the framework of modern racial thinking. Jews are somehow seen as a race apart because they allegedly personify this malign spirit.
This idea of the Jews as demonic then fits into the contemporary ideology of identity politics. Jews have become all too often regarded as at the top of a hierarchy of ‘white privilege’ and Israel is then easily seen as an expression of white supremacy. Jews are then viewed as propagating their evil from the pinnacle of society downwards.
This outlook explains why contemporary anti-Semites are intent on denouncing Israel rather than criticising it. Such people insist that Israel should be condemned for allegedly perpetrating the vilest possible crimes including child murder, genocide and Nazi-like behaviour. Unfortunately it is not possible to argue rationally with those who insist that Jews behave in this way. The key task is to challenge the attempts of the hard core bigots to make their repugnant views more widely accepted.
The key factor differentiating anti-Semitism from anti-black racism is not skin colour but the quality of evil it ascribes to Jews.
Further reading:
How Israel turned into the fount of all evil.
PHOTO: "Official portrait of Ms Diane Abbott crop 2" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0.