Two things happened last Sunday that should lead anyone who considers themselves anti-racist to rethink what that term means. The Green party passed a motion making “Zionism is racism” its official policy and Jews were barred from a supposedly anti-racist march in London.
The Green party is the only western political party – apart from the Scottish Greens – that has condemned Zionism as racism. In other words, in the name of anti-racism, its policy is that Israel, the only Jewish state, should no longer exist. A two-state solution was explicitly rejected. Such a stance is not applied to any other country in the world. Even the leftist La France insoumise (France Unbowed), whose leader has repeated the old libel about Jews being responsible for the death of Jesus, has not gone as far as Britain’s Green parties.
On the same day Jews were barred from a professed anti-racist march to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street in East London. Chants on the march reportedly included “Zionists are not welcome here” and “Zionism is fascism” as well as similar slogans.
Once again, in the name of anti-racism, Jews and their supporters were singled out for bigotry. Groups that both support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism, including Our Fight and Stop the Hate, had to march separately rather than join the main protest. A press release from the Cable Street 90 Organising Committee absurdly condemned them as “far right” and linked them to “Islamophobia”. I was proud to be on this second, genuinely anti-racist, march.
The Cable Street exclusion was particularly ironic. Back in 1936 the area was largely Jewish. On the day of the original battle many thousands of Jews, along with non-Jewish allies, stopped the British Union of Fascists marching through their area. Ninety years later Jews – apart from a small minority who passed a purity test by declaring themselves anti-Zionist – were barred by the leftist organisers. Anyone even suspected of having sympathies with Israel was condemned as far right and shunned. In the name of anti-fascism Jews were excluded from an event supposedly commemorating their resistance to an attack.
While the 1930s fascists wore black shirts many contemporary leftists don keffiyehs. But despite the differences in attire they apparently share an intense aversion to Jews.
Thankfully some contemporary commentators have rightly condemned the bigotry of today’s supposed anti-racists but few if any have attempted to account for it. They have justly accused the self-proclaimed anti-fascists of propagating hatred, ignorance and sickening bigotry. But such denunciations are insufficient. It is necessary to explain how those who consider themselves anti-racist – no doubt genuinely in their own minds – can in practice act as racists.
The question is particularly pressing because last weekend’s events were unfortunately not an aberration. Those demonising the world’s only Jewish state and calling for its destruction all too often see themselves as anti-racist.
The answer lies in what has happened to the left in recent decades. Historically it aimed to transcend social divisions such as those between different ethnic and religious groups. At least its best sections recognised that racism was a poisonous force that had to be fought. The goal was to unify the public through emphasising the common class interests of the mass of the population regardless of social background.
In practice there were undoubtedly flaws with the traditional leftist stance but what exists now is far worse. What passes for the left has given up on transcending social divisions. With the end of class politics in the late 20th century it embraced identity politics.
The contemporary left sees society as inexorably divided between oppressors and oppressed with whites cast as the former. For this generation of radicals a key task is “decolonisation”, by which they mean purging society of the supposed malign influence of the oppressive West.
In this crass worldview it is all too easy to cast Jews as “hyper-white”. Jews, because of their supposedly privileged position, are cast as playing a key role in oppressing the mass of the population.
From such a jaundiced perspective Jews cannot be the victims of racism, at least not from the left, because they are privileged. That is why Jews are all too often left out of any accounts of racism. For example, the original publicity by Unite, one of Britain’s largest trade unions, for the Cable Street 90th anniversary march left out any mention of Jews or anti-Semitism. It later claimed the erasure of Jews was an oversight. That is remarkable considering that Jews played a central part in the original events.
Meanwhile, Israel is cast by the left as the epitome of racism. That is what is meant bythose who obsessively condemn it as an apartheid, settler-colonial and genocidal state. As I have argued previously on this site these labels bear no relationship to reality. Instead they reflect the worldview of the left that has come to see Jews, and now the Jewish state, as embodying the world’s evils.
The left’s turn to anti-Semitism, including in its anti-Zionist form, is a reflection of its historic defeat. It has given up on its goals of overcoming social divisions and transforming society for the better. Instead, in the name of anti-racism, it obsessively condemns those it wrongly regards as privileged. Jews in particular are the target for this ire. It is hard to think of anything more grotesque.
PHOTO: By James Heartfield.
Further reading
How Israel was turned into the fount of all evil
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