Daniel Allington is the Academic Fraud Behind the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s ‘Research’ into Anti-Semitism
The Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism, was set up in 2014 in the
middle of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s blitzkrieg against the
defenceless Palestinians of Gaza. It was formed with the intention of depicting those opposed to the Israeli attack as 'anti-Semites'. All criticism of Israel according to the CAA is ‘anti-Semitism’.
Its first action was against Tricycle Theatre in London, which refused money from the Israeli Embassy to help fund the Jewish Film Festival. This was
only the beginning of the CAA’s poisonous work in seeking to paint Palestine
solidarity and anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic.
Its victims are usually Jewish because Jewish anti-Zionists give the lie to the Zionist claim that they represent all Jews. One of its first victims was veteran
Jewish MP, Gerald Kaufman, who was himself a Zionist, for comparing Israel’s
actions in Gaza to that of the Nazis.
When Kaufman made reference to the influence of what he called ‘Jewish
money’ on the Conservative Party’s pro-Zionist policies, the CAA ran a
relentless campaign of hate against him. The Conservative Friends of Israel describes itself as a Jewish group and they are quite open about their use of their financial resources to pursue Israel's agenda.
The term ‘Jewish money’ is regularly used within the Jewish community. It simply means money belonging to Jews. I counted over 600 instances of its use in the Jewish Chronicle alone by searching their archives!
There are no less than 32 posts on Gerald Kaufman on the CAA site and the most disgusting one, when Kaufman, Father of
the House of Commons, died betrays the vicious, spiteful animus that lies
behind the CAA’s operation.
The CAA's Obituary was that ‘Sir Gerald Kaufman MP’s words have left a rotting stain on our institutions’. We should not be at all surprised by the language of this vile organisation. It is of a piece with the Israeli government which, after murdering Palestinians, then refuses to hand over their bodies to their families.
However the attention that the CAA pays to ‘anti-Semitism’
on the Left is not reciprocated when it comes to the Right of the political
spectrum. Not once has it called out the viciously racist and anti-Semitic
content of Boris Johnson’s 2004 novel ’72 Virgins’ that depicts Jews as
controlling the media and fixing elections.
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Similarly when Jacob Rees-Mogg attacked
two fellow Jewish Tories, Sir Oliver Letwin and the then Speaker John Bercow,
as “Illuminati who are taking the powers
to themselves.” the CAA said nothing.
As Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History at
UCL wrote:
‘With
his nod to “Illuminati” – pointed at Letwin and Bercow – Rees-Mogg is knowingly
trafficking in the portrayal of Jews as underhanded and sinister. … while
studiously avoiding the word “Jew”, he has exhumed, embellished, and
rebroadcast one of the most poisonous antisemitic canards in all of history.
Even Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's Zionist echo chamber, condemned Mogg for his attack on George Soros, a favourite victim of the
far-Right, saying
that‘Jacob
“Illuminati” Rees-Mogg has form in this area.’ .
You might expect the CAA to vigorously condemn Mogg, who also retweeted the comments of Alice Wiedel, leader of the neo-Nazi German Party AfD but all you will find is a neutral article Jacob Rees Mogg defends sharing German far-right leader’s speech on Twitter which reports what he said without any of the normal vitriol and condemnation reserved for the Left.
The CAA even played down criticism of the neo-Nazi AfD saying
that the ‘AfD has a long history of
problematic language and policies’. No doubt if the year was 1933 the CAA
would have been describing the Nazi Party's 'problematic language' about Jews. Note they don't describe them as 'anti-Semitic' because the AfD are the most pro-Israel party in the Bundestag.
Why is there no mention of Rees-Mogg’s ‘Illuminati’ comments
by the CAA? Because Mogg is as ardently
pro-Israel as the AfD. When it comes
to anti-Semitic figures or parties on the far-Right then the CAA goes easy on
them as long as they are pro-Israel.
There is little doubt that the CAA is funded by the
Israeli state, whether directly or indirectly via people like Sir Trevor Chinn.
When I applied for disclosure on their sources of funding the CAA resisted to the end.
To date
there are no less than 813 posts on CAA's website attacking Jeremy Corbyn. One of their officers, Jo Glasman, boasted
in a video that they had ‘slaughtered’ him. The
CAA was one of two Zionist groups, the other being the Jewish Labour Movement,
which made
a complaint to the Equality and Human Rights Commission about anti-Semitism
in the Labour Party.
In order to maintain the pretence that it opposes all forms
of anti-Semitism the CAA devotes a tiny part of its resources to tackling fringe fascists. One such was the mentally ill Holocaust denier Alison
Chabloz who posted some appallingly anti-Semitic videos mocking the half
million Hungarian Jews exterminated in the last months of the war.
Chabloz has just been jailed for 18 weeks for her holocaust denial comments. This is entirely wrong. Holocaust Denial is not illegal in Britain and it should not be. Making denial of a historical event illegal inevitably prompts people to say 'what are they hiding'.
In those countries like Austria and Germany which have made holocaust denial illegal they have substantial neo-Nazi parties, the Freedom Party and the AfD, in their legislatures.
Those who jail Holocaust deniers today will gaol left wing
‘subversives’ tomorrow. It is one thing for the left to no platform the fascist
right. It is entirely another thing to call on the State to do so.
It is noticeable that the CAA has refrained from criticism of pro-Zionist neo-Nazis and anti-Semites such as the BNP, English Defence
League, Tommy Robinson and his supporters and Britain First. You will look in
vain for anything on the mainstream far-Right on their site. The reason is that the far-Right in Britain works with far-Right Zionists such as
Jonathan Hoffman, the former Zionist Federation Vice-Chair.
The CAA has
been at the forefront of attacking academic freedom. Because she
wrote an article ‘Defining Anti-Semitism’ in 2011 describing how the
holocaust intimidates people into self-censoring their views on
Israel. the CAA targeted Bristol
University lecturer Professor Rachel Gould.
This McCarthyist organisation demanded that Rachel publicly retract her article and write explaining why she had retracted her essay. If she declined to do so then they demanded that she be dismissed “and her dismissal should be made public so as to clearly signal the University of Bristol’s values”.
Academic freedom is a term that the CAA is completely
unfamiliar with. It has used the IHRA
Definition of Anti-Semitism, which it
insists on renaming The International Definition of Anti-Semitism, as a weapon
to wield against anyone who dissents from their views on Zionism and Israel.
Even the IHRA’s principal drafter, American academic Kenneth Stern was moved to
say, in testimony
to the US Congress, that the CAA’s attack on Rebecca Gould was ‘chilling and
McCarthy-like’.
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This blog however is not about the CAA so much as the intellectual
charlatan and academic fraud, Dr Daniel Allington of King’s College, who uses
his academic qualifications in a completely bankrupt
discipline ‘Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence’ to give legitimacy and
cover to the CAA.
Daniel Allington’s academic research has about as much merit as the
academic research of Himmler’s favourite academic, Professor of Race
Studies, Hans F. K. Günther.
You can guage the quality of Allington’s ‘research’ from his ‘new
first of-its-kind study’ Left wing radicalism linked to sympathy for
violent extremism. As I explained to a prison
officer, when I was remanded for just such ‘violent extremism’ 3 weeks ago, the
term ‘extremism’ is a relative term without any
objective value. It depends entirely on your vantage point. Is not a Prime Minister who decides to spend £16 billion on more nuclear
weapons but can't afford free school meals for children whilst attacking the right to protest in the Police & Crime Bill an extremist? 'Extremist' depends on where you stand and Daniel Allington stands on the racist far-Right.
I pointed out that 100 years ago, the
Suffragettes were also termed extremist but today they are venerated by the Establishment. Indeed all those who fought for the limited
democracy we now have were termed ‘extremists’ in their day. But whilst my prison officer understood my
arguments, not least about how the Prevent programme was not about ‘extremism’
but attacking left-wing and Muslim critics, the Jewish Chronicle’s reporter,
‘liar’ Lee Harpin was incapable of so doing in an article ‘Arrested anti-Zionist compares himself to the Suffragettes’.
Allington wrote that
‘The
more strongly someone agrees with the ideas of revolutionary left-wing groups,
the more likely they are to sympathise with violent extremism.’
Of course
revolutionary socialists and Marxists are likely to be branded ‘extremists’ by the
supporters of capitalism! You don't need to do research to know that but Allington's purpose is the criminalisation of anti-capitalists.
The
Problem for the CAA was that historically the Right is more
Anti-Semitic than the Left - Allington Fixed It by Changing the Questions!
The CAA has faced a problem throughout its history. Despite the fact that its targets, anti-Zionists, are almost
exclusively on the Left, anti-Semites are almost exclusively on the Right. What
the CAA needed was an academic who was willing to prostitute himself and his
academic institution by producing bogus ‘research’ that would enable the CAA to conclude that anti-Semitism was primarily a problem of the Left.
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This has been the goal of Israel
apologists such as David Hirsh, a junk academic from Goldsmith College,
someone who wrote of his own trade union the UCU that ‘I
have never been in a more hostile and antisemitic space than my union.’ Hirsh collaborated with Allington in
perpetrating the CAA's academic fraud.
Since 2014 the CAA has produced a worthless ‘anti-Semitism barometer’ telling us how anti-Semitism is increasing in Britain. Despite everything they found that anti-Semitism was more common on the right than the left. As their 2017 Anti-Semitism Barometer concluded:
‘Supporters of
left-wing political parties and ‘remainers’ are
less likely to be antisemitic than those on the right or supporters of the
‘leave’ camp’.
What then CAA needed to do was invent a set of questions that would 'prove' that it is the Left who are the anti-Semites not the Right.
Step forward Daniel Allington who was
prepared to use his academic credentials in a dishonest
attempt to portray the far-Right as benevolent to Jews.
From 2015 to 2018 the CAA used Yougov to ask a series of
statements that were allegedly anti-Semitic in order to show the level of
anti-Semitism in the community. They
were:
1.
“British Jewish people chase money more than
other British people.”
2.
“Having a connection to Israel makes Jewish
people less loyal to Britain than other British people.”
3.
“Jewish people consider themselves to be
better than other British people.”
4.
“Compared to other groups, Jewish people have
too much power in the media.”
5.
“Jewish people talk about the Holocaust just
to further their political agenda.” or in 2015 “Jews talk about the Holocaust
too much in order to get sympathy.”
6.
“Jewish people can be trusted just as much as
other British people in business.” or in 2015 “In business, Jews are not as
honest as most people.”
7.
“I am just as open to having Jewish friends as
I am to having friends from other sections of British society” or in 2015 “I
would be unhappy if a family member married a Jew.”
In fact it is arguable that a majority of these
statements are not anti-Semitic since there is a factual basis to them. But despite that, even if some people
believe generalisations about Jews such as these it doesn’t mean they are
hostile to Jews, which is the classic way of understanding anti-Semitism.
Commenting on the 2015 Anti-Semitism Barometer Anshel
Pfeffer wrote in Ha'aretz that:
take
for example the statement that “Jews think they are better than other people.”
Of course it’s not the thing that one should normally be caught saying in
public - but is it anti-Semitic? For a start, many Jews do subscribe to the
Jewish notion of “the chosen people,” and for that matter it’s not only Jews;
members of many if not most nations, religions and ethnicities believe they are
better than the others. That’s natural and normal national pride. Even if this
view runs counter to liberal orthodoxy, believing that Jews think of themselves
that way can certainly be a fair and honest assessment.
The
same can be said of another of the survey’s statements: “Jews talk about the
Holocaust too much in order to get sympathy.” That’s a rather nasty accusation
but the fact is too many Jews, both political leaders in public appearances and
ordinary Jews on social media, are often too quick to bring up the Holocaust in
order to make a point. The sad truth is that many Jews have cheapened the
memory of the Holocaust by using it in an inappropriate fashion. Holding that
opinion doesn’t necessarily make you an anti-Semite.
Pfeffer accused
the CAA of an ‘eagerness to see the
anti-Semitism in Britain, which inarguably exists, as much more widespread than
it really is’. There are no prizes for guessing
why this might be so.
About
the ‘finding’ that 56% of British Jews agree that “the recent rise in
anti-Semitism in Britain has some echoes of the 1930s.” Pfeffer wrote that
‘If
the majority of British Jews and the authors of the CAA report actually believe
that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism
in their home country seriously.’
He
went on to say that
‘To compare today’s Britain, for all its faults, with the Jews’ situation in 1930s exhibits a disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria.’ .
The 2019 Antisemitism Barometer was the first to show that ‘anti-Semitic views were most widespread on the far-left.'
How
you might ask was this achieved? Was there really such a shift in anti-Semitism
that the Left not the Right were now the most anti-Semitic? The answer is no. Under the guidance
of two dishonest academics - Allington and Hirsh - the CAA added a new
set of 6 questions, all of which were to do with Israel not anti-Semitism. They
were:
1. Israel and its supporters are a bad influence
on our democracy.”
2.
“Israel can get away with anything
because its supporters control the media.”
3.
“Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”
4.
“I am comfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel.”
5. “Israel makes a positive contribution to the
world.”
6. “Israel is right to defend itself against
those who want to destroy it.”
The bogus and fraudulent nature of these questions should be immediately obvious even to the most stupid but apparently not to Allington and Hirsh. They have nothing at all to do with Jews but with a racist state that calls itself ‘Jewish’. The CAA had to concede that Question 5
‘Although…
not antisemitic in itself, analysis showed that it was in fact a very good
predictor of a respondent’s responses to other statements and therefore a good
indicator of anti-Zionist antisemitic attitudes in general.’
Question
number 4 is particularly egregious. I have to confess that I have never found
myself comfortable spending time with supporters of Apartheid in South Africa
or indeed racists generally. Did this
make me an anti-White racist as the supporters of Apartheid used to claim? I am equally unhappy spending time with
defenders of General Pinochet in Chile.
Does that make me anti-Chilean?
Question
No. 6, that if you don’t accept Israel’s ‘right to defend itself against those
who want to destroy it’ makes you anti-Semitic.
But that assumes that Israel is engaged in defence rather than being the most aggressive state in the Middle East.
I refuse to accept that Allington and Hirsh don't understand this. It is obvious that a question about Israel's 'right to defend itself' assumes that Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes is about self-defence. Both these academics are unfit to teach students.
In
2018 the CAA employed Daniel Allington to help restructure the Antisemitism Barometer . In 2018 the survey still
demonstrated that anti-Semitism was more prevalent on the right than left. The
question was what to do about this unhelpful conclusion. Allington therefore decided to add these 6 new
questions with the sole intention of skewing the results. This makes Allington
an academic fraud and a cheat. His ‘research’ is valueless and he is what would
have been called in the past a scoundrel.
On the basis of Allington's 'research' the CAA was able to conclude that:
‘Among the very left-wing, 42% believe that
Israel’s supporters are damaging British democracy, and 60% believe
that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews,
which directly evokes one of the examples of antisemitism in the International
Definition of Antisemitism.’
Dr
Allington has as much right to occupy an academic post at King’s College of
London University as Jack the Ripper would have had to hold down a job in the
medical profession. I intend to write to King’s College pointing out that they
employ an academic fraud who is no better than a plagiarist. What they do about this charlatan is their business.
So when
you read a CAA post that has the strap line that 'Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism
Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has
surpassed that of the far-right' you know that this is a consequence of pure
chicanery and academic fraud. It has no basis in reality.
Tony
Greenstein
David Hirsh – the ‘Left’ Zionist who praised Richard Littlejohn
One of Allington’s
academic collaborators is David Hirsh, sociology lecturer at Goldsmiths College and self-proclaimed ‘left’ Zionist. Hirsh has form when it comes
to praising racists such as Richard Littlejohn, the Daily Mail
columnist.
Even posters
to the Engage blog (long
since deleted) which Hirsh runs, took exception to Hirsh’s praise for Littlejohn,
who wrote about the Rwandan genocide
‘Does anyone really give a monkey's about
what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe
then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them.’.
Hirsh wrote:
I'm just about to publicize Littlejohn's TV documentary
about antisemitism and link to an interview with him and I'm wondering how to
do it. Maybe this is the end of my credibility, as someone on the left, as a
sociologist, as a human being? Maybe this one act signifies my final defeat?
...
Perhaps the fact that Richard Littlejohn is campaigning against antisemitism tells us more about how much of the left has moved than about how I, David Hirsh, have moved.
In response to
critics Hirsh asked:
What has happened to antiracist politics when even Richard
Littlejohn is to the left of all those that I mention? I never said he was
good, I said he was a clearer opponent of anti-Jewish racism than a whole layer
of "antiracists".
Another way of
formulating the question is to ask ‘What
is it that makes even the worst racists oppose ‘anti-Semitism’? Someone who was not an academic fraud or Zionist
would question what this ‘anti-Semitism’ actually consists of such that racists
oppose it. But Hirsh is first and foremost a Zionist not an academic.
Littlejohn was described
by the BNP’s Nick Griffin as his ‘favourite
journalist’[See here
for an excellent demolition job by Johann Hari on Littlejohn].
That Littlejohn’s
support for Israel and Zionism is of a piece with his racism against Black,
Muslim and Traveller peoples is demonstrated by his reference in the
Sun to Palestinians as “the pikeys of the Middle East”. ‘Pikey’ is normally
used about Gypsies, another Littlejohn hate.
But what was Hirsh’s take on all of this?
‘I didn't know the Rwanda quote which is disgusting -
but I well remember that he was xenophobic, homophobic, unpleasant.” A good reason, you
might think, not to praise him but when you are defending Israel you cannot
afford to be choosey about your friends. Hirsh asked:
How come this right wing sleaze is now suddenly more of an
anti-racist than you are? At least than Livingstone is, than the SWP is, than
Alexei Sayle is, than UCU is than UNISON is, than T&G?’ ... I never said he
was good, I said he was a clearer opponent of anti-Jewish racism than a whole
layer of "antiracists".
The obvious answer
is that Littlejohn is not an opponent of anti-Jewish racism. He is a supporter of
Zionism. But since Littlejohn, like many on the far Right, sees Israel as a ‘White’
and civilised state, then he too has to be welcomed into the fold.
In response to the
suggestion that his post be taken down, Hirsh and his supporters leapt into
action. Amongst the comments were the
following:
‘What do you want, for
Engage to be a minority site dismissed as some obscure ramblings of an
extreme-left fringe? ‘
Obnoxious as he is as far as I am aware nobody has ever
accused Littlejohn of being an anti-Semite (in fact Jews must be one of the few
minorities he is keen on).
Given the pressing need to publicise that anti-Semitism is
a problem and that this programme might well reach a wider audience than the
few thousand political obsessives we normally address ourselves to, I am not
sure David had that luxury.
Diasporist asked the
following question. (July 06, 2007)
If you were a Gypsy and you were told that someone was
making a programme about anti-Gypsy racism, the only trouble was that they
often say and write nasty things about Jews and Gays. How would you feel about
Hirsh is not
unacquainted with the far-Right, including the Zionist far-Right. In 2016 he took part in a Campaign4Truth debate
with the Zionist far-Right. Participants included Brian John Thomas, Tommy
Robinson’s organiser
in Israel, Melanie
Phillips and David
Collier (who described Palestinians in the third person ‘it’).
Campaign4Truth is
run by Tommy Robinson and Pegida supporters Ambrosine Shitrit and Sharon Klaff.
See EXCLUSIVE
– Focus on Zionism's Fascist Wing - Katie Hopkins Shows the Depth of Racism
Amongst British Jewry
See also Disengaging
from Littlejohn Jews sans frontieres
Tony Greenstein
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