Mann combines
Opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ with Virulent Racism against Gypsies, Black and
Muslim People
Loudmouth Mann confronts Ken Livingstone
I have covered John Mann before
when he lied about and harassed a 90 year
old Jewish Dr Glatt.
In July 2019 John Mann
was appointed by Theresa May as her advisor on ‘anti-Semitism’.
In September Mann was made ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ and elevated to the Lords by
Boris Johnson.
As ‘Anti-Semitism Czar’
Mann saw it as his duty to try and close down
media outlets which didn’t conform to his racist Apartheid agenda. Mann is not
a man to appreciate irony because if he did he would have known that before the
advent of Hitler, Czar Nicholas II was the world’s most infamous anti-Semite
who presided over the deaths of thousands of Jews.
Having failed to close down The Canary and Skawkbox,
Mann then set his sights on indoctrinating school children. Citing a report from the Henry Jackson Society, a byword in Islamaphobia, he said that he said that
"It is
not enough to teach about the Holocaust,"quoting the report and urged ministers to guarantee
funding for schools to teach about contemporary anti-Jewish hatred (i.e.
anti-Zionism).
You can get a flavour of the HJS's views on racism from its Associate
Director (2011-2018) Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe’. The theme of the book is summed up in its title:
Douglas
Murray, complained last year that London had “become a foreign country” because white Britons were a minority in 23
of 33 London boroughs.” Murray has also been pictured with Robert Spencer,
the far-right US anti-Islam campaigner banned last year from Britain by the
Home Office.
In
2012 the HJS's director William Shawcross said “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of
our future”.
The White Replacement
Theory leads inexorably to the idea that the White races are under threat
because the Jews have encouraged and helped stimulate Black and Muslim
immigration whilst keeping their own Jewish state racially pure.
Mann is fond of quoting from the HJS because the anti-Semitism he is
concerned about isn’t about hatred or hostility to Jews but about criticism of
Israel - the ‘new anti-Semitism’.
Mann is best described by the findings of the Employment
Tribunal in Fraser –v- University College Union. The case was brought by a Ronnie Fraser against his
own trade union, UCU. He alleged anti-Semitism. UCU’s offence was supporting a Boycott
of Israel. Their judgment (para. 148) stated:
Mr Mann … told us that the leaders of the
Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did
not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing
differently. He did not claim ever to have witnessed any Congress or other UCU
meeting. And when it came to antisemitism in the context of debate about the
Middle East, he announced, “It’s clear to
me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to
locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches.
Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not
to his liking.
As his parting shot on leaving the
Commons Mann launched an
attack on Jeremy Corbyn for having given the ‘green light’ to
anti-Semites.
He (Corbyn) has not just hijacked my political party – he has
hijacked its soul and its ethics. I will never forgive him for that.
When John Mann talks about ‘ethics’
it is like a mafia chief giving a lecture on crime prevention or Harold Shipman lecturing on
care for the elderly.
If Mann was seriously concerned
about anti-Semitism then one would assume that in his 18 year parliamentary
career that he was equally vociferous about all forms of racism. In fact no
other form of racism disturbed him. But that may be because there were no
freebies or parliamentary jaunts to be had.
Mann was one of the few Labour
supporters of Brexit in Parliament. Brexit, which was motivated by fear and
hostility to migrants and dreams of Empire past, was at one with Mann’s toxic
views.
Throughout his time in parliament, Mann was distinguished for
his pro-war record. He voted in support of the Iraq war in March 2003.
Not once did Mann speak out against New Labour’s Islamaphobia
and demonisation of refugees. When racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was ejected
from the Commons for lying about his opponent at the 2010 General Election, he
had no greater supporter than Mann.
The Guardian described Mann as Woolas’s best friend, best man
and political ally since the first day at Manchester University”. When Harriet Harman suspended Woolas from the
Labour Party after his ejection from Parliament, she faced “a
backbench revolt”
Among
those to have spoken out in support of Woolas was John Mann, a close friend of
his… (he) has been backing Woolas via telephone calls with a journalist at the
Guardian).
When Harman cast
Woolas adrift Mann said
that ‘A period of silence from Harriet Harman
would now be very welcome.’ Clearly Mann did not understand the
irony of him telling anyone to be quiet.
Mann was quoted as saying that Woolas’s ejection had
profound implications for British democracy...
Woolas is the first case of an MP being disbarred by the courts for malpractice
since 1911.
Woolas did not just lie when he alleged that his Lib Dem opponent
supported violent Muslim Jihadists, he deliberately sought a white working
class vote by portraying all Muslims as terrorists and violent jihadists. A decision
wastaken by his campaign team:
to 'make the white folk angry' by depicting an alleged
campaign by those who they described generically as Asians to 'take Phil out'
and then present Mr Watkins as in league with them.
When it came to the 2014 Immigration Act, which led directly to
the Windrush Scandal, Mann abstained. Being an Opposition member it was the
equivalent of supporting the government. It was the ‘anti-Semitic’ Corbyn who
was one of only 6 Labour MPs who voted against the Act.
This handbook
is designed to help you deal with problems you may face in your street or in
your community. There are lots of different types of anti-social behaviour…
Amongst these problems
were Travellers. Mann’s advice was
The police
have powers to remove any gypsies or travellers, and have powers to direct
people to leave the land…
In 2016 Mann was interviewed
by Police in connection with his pamphlet.Gypsies are protected
by the Equality Act 2010.
Ben Bennett, a 13 year
old Traveller, who made a complaint to the Police, described how Mann’s pamphlet
made him:
‘very upset’.
I can’t understand why John Mann MP would choose to talk solely about my
community in such a derogatory manner.’
Mann claims he is
motivated by the 6 million Jews who died in the holocaust but he has nothing to
say about how up to one
million Gypsies were exterminated in the Porajmos.
The Nazis considered criminal, asocial elements just like Mann.
It is no surprise that
Boris Johnson, who was notorious
for his racist and anti-Semitic
comments, made
Mann his ‘anti-Semitism Czar’, elevating him to the Lords.
Mann made
his intentions known from the start. He was going to
concentrate on the Left press. Someone who was genuinely concerned with racism
would have focused on the Daily Mail or Sun. Mann’s targets were the alternative
media - The Canary and Skwawkbox.
In
an article Corbynite sites feature far-right tropesby ‘liar’ Lee Harpin,
whose inaccuracies cost
the Jewish Chronicle a small fortune, Skwawkbox and The Canary were accused of
a “heavily negative coverage of Jewish issues” to anti-Semitic audiences.
What were these ‘Jewish issues.’ Harpin did not say but we can guess - Palestine
and Israel. The same Israeli state which has been condemned as an Apartheid state by the world’s main
human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Mann has consistently engaged in the guilt-by-associationtactics favoured by Joseph McCarthy. If you want a lesson in
how to corrupt the English language, take the paragraph below which equates The
Canary and Skwawkbox with neo-Nazis on the basis of an alleged opposition to capitalism.
Fascists have never opposed capitalism. The Nazis called themselves ‘national
socialists’ yet the first thing they did when they gained power was to put trade
unionists and communists in concentration camps.
“despite the huge differences
in the beliefs that are most foundational to their ideologies, articles
published on all three sites share an opposition to capitalism, globalisation,
and liberalism, adopt similar positions on many questions of foreign policy,
and fulminate against a supposed adversary whose Jewishness is extensively
highlighted (even if in different ways).
John Mann - Supports all forms of racism except 'antisemitism'
Even
though the ReportAntisemitism and the
alternative media, which
Mann commissioned concedes
‘huge differences’ in their ideology,
it draws an equals sign between the alternative media and neo-Nazis. How then does
the Report explain the pro-Israel stance of Tommy Robinson? It doesn’t. Instead
it say:
TR News, the official website of far-right
activist… Tommy Robinson, has intentionally attempted to take the side of Jews
and Israel,
Robinson, like most
anti-Semites, openly
supports Zionism. Mann’s polemics ironically owe their
origin to Nazi propaganda techniques which sought to portray opposites as being
equal. For example they equated capitalism and communism, which they held were
controlled by Jews. John Mann is a walking conspiracy theory:
TR News has resorted to defending those Muslims who were seen
to embrace pro-Western right-wing ideology, the two left-wing websites sought
to declare allegiance with the minority of Jews who supported their own
viewpoint.
In other words fascist
Muslims and Hindus, such as supporters of India’s BJP government are no
different from anti-Zionist Jews who oppose all forms of racism. This is the
kind of intellectual sleight of hand that Mann has made into a fine art.
The ‘research’ for
Mann’s Report was carried out by Daniel
Allington, a King’s College lecturer. Allington selected 20 articles on each
site that featured the words ‘Jew’ or ‘Zionist’ for analysis. It clearly did not
occur to Mann that what fascists mean by ‘Zionist’ differs from what socialists
mean. The report is based on the assumption that ‘Jew’ = ‘Zionist’.
Allington is the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s go to academic. His ‘research’ is starts off
with the conclusions and then looks for evidence. In other words he reverse
engineers his research!
Together with Zionist ‘academic’ David Hirsh, Allington devised
a Generalised Anti-Semitism Barometer for the CAA which found that anti-Semitism was
more prevalent on the Left than the Right. The Zionist
and Tory press lapped it up.
If true this was a staggering finding. Why then had all
previous surveys found that anti-Semitism was the property of the Right? What
the CAA didn’t advertise was that they had added 6 questions to the original 6 questions
(which were themselves debatable).
That the CAA is a dishonest McCarthyist organisation is one
thing. That Allington and Hirsh should allow their support for Zionism to fix
the results of ostensibly neutral academic research raises questions as to
their academic integrity. The questions they devised to ‘prove’ that the left
is more anti-Semitic than the Right were:
1.“I am comfortable
spending time with people who openly support Israel.”
2.“Israel has a
right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people.”
3.“Israel is right
to defend itself against those who want to destroy it.”
4.“Israel and its
supporters are a bad influence on our democracy.”
5.“Israel can get
away with anything because its supporters control the media.”
6.“Israel treats
the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”
None of these statements are anti-Semitic. According to the OED anti-Semitism is ‘hostility
to or prejudice against Jews.’
The dishonesty of Allington’s
‘research’ is staggering. I wouldn’t be comfortable spending time with
supporters of Franco. Does that make me anti-Spanish? Israel’s right to exist
as a homeland for Jews assumes that Jews aren’t at home where they live. Israel
having the right to defend itself assumes that it is under attack. Obviously Israel’s
supporters are anti-democratic, as the IHRA
misdefinition of anti-Semitism proves. Supporters of Israel do
control the media but who says Rupert Murdoch is Jewish? It’s only anti-Semitic
if you assume that supporters of Israel and Jews are the same.
The most popular ‘anti-Semitic’ statement was comparisons
between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Nazi treatment of Jews. But this
is a political statement. Were holocaust survivors Ze’ev Sternhell and Yehuda
Elkana anti-Semitic for writing ‘In
Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’? and The
Need to Forget? Is it anti-Semitic to point out that Nazi mobs chanted ‘death to the Jews’ and Israeli mobs
chant ‘death to the Arabs’.
One example of Skawkbox’s ‘racism’
was
“making throwaway references to ‘a former Chief Rabbi with a history of supporting racism’ could
contribute to the creation of an impression of Jewishness as inherently
suspect.”
So accusing Chief
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of being a racist is anti-Semitic because he was Jewish! Is
accusing someone Jewish of fraud, even if they’re guilty, also anti-Semitic because
it might imply that all Jews are frauds. This is the infantile level of
analysis of John Mann.
When Sacks died, I wrote
that he was ‘An establishment bigot’. Sacks, who compared
Corbyn with Enoch Powell endorsed the Strange
Death of Europe.
Dishonesty permeates the Report.
Because Jewish conspiracy theories permeate the far-Right, the support of Skwawkbox and The Canary for the undercover Al Jazeera programme The Lobby about the
influence and activity of the Zionist lobby was anti-Semitic!
But the latter was true. What these
allegations have in common is a deliberate confusion of ‘Jew’ and
‘Zionist’.And who does this? The same
anti-Semites and fascists that Mann purports to oppose.
Liar Lee’s article concludes
with a quote from Allington:
“Government and civil society must encourage
use of high quality, reputable sources of information at the expense of
low-quality fringe sources,” it said. “We need not
be helpless in the face of hatred.”
What Mann and Allington are advocating is state
censorship. The reference to ‘high
quality reputable sources of information’ is police state stuff. Who
decides what’s ‘high quality’? Turkey’s Erdogan would agree with this. Is it the Mail and Sun?
Britain’s racist tabloids escapes unscathed. Mann’s concerns are not Jews and
anti-Semitism but Zionism and Israel.
The only good thing about Mann’s Report is that
it reflects his own intellectual deficit. It was so poorly argued in its deviously
dishonest analogies that only a rogue like Boris Johnson could fall for it.
The Committee, chaired
by Labour MP Dennis McShane, gaoled for his part in the expenses scandal,
produced a Report
into Anti-Semitism in September 2006. Its ludicrous observations included:
The Israeli government itself
may, at times, have mistakenly perceived criticism of its policies and actions
to be motivated by antisemitism, but we received no evidence of the accusation
of antisemitism being misused by mainstream British Jewish community
organisations and leaders.
Ten years later the President of
the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Arkush, attacked Corbyn as
an anti-Semite and stated that a Jewish group, Jewdas were ‘the source of virulent anti-Semitism’
The Report stated that ‘anti-Zionist discourse can be polluted with
antisemitic themes’ but ignored the far more widespread incidence of Zionist
anti-Semites. E.g. Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right and organiser
of the demonstration in Charlottesville, declared himself a White
Zionist. As Ha’aretz noted:
‘In a
series of tweets, Spencer writes of his admiration for the law, which confers
the right to national self-determination in Israel to the Jewish people alone,
and says Jews are 'showing a path forward
for Europeans'
Israel provides a
model for White supremacists. The Jewish Nation State Law
excluded Arab Israelis from any claim to the land they live in. It was a
blueprint for Jewish supremacy. Yet Mann and the APPGAA never once mentioned
that the incidence of Palestinian supporters using anti-Semitic rhetoric is far
outweighed by Zionist anti-Semites like Spencer and Steve Bannon who combined
anti-Semitism with Zionism (see his description of Jewish children, whom he
didn’t want his children to go to school with, as ‘whiny brats.’).
There was no understanding
that criticism of Israel was motivated by opposition to Israeli racism. In
December 2018 the Knesset rejected
by 71-38 a Bill which affirmed
a citizens' right to equality and it refused
even to debate a bill ‘calling
for Israel to treat its Arab and Jewish citizens equally.’
Speaker Yuli Yoel
Edelstein denounced the bill saying that:
“This is a preposterous bill that any intelligent
individual can see must be blocked immediately. A bill that aims to gnaw at the
foundations of the state must not be allowed in the Knesset,”
John Mann was one of the main Labour witchunters. In April 2016 Mann staged
a confrontation with Ken
Livingstone for saying that Adolf Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad
and ended up killing six million Jews”calling him a ‘Nazi apologist’ for
saying that the Nazis had supported Zionism.
The only problem was that
the Nazis did support the Zionists, who were 2% of the German Jewish
community. In Zionism During the
Holocaust I quote Alfred Rosenberg, the
Nazi Party’s main theoretician, who wrote
in 1919 that
Zionism
must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of
German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.
Mann called for my expulsion, calling my
membership of the Labour Party ‘hugely inappropriate’.
Presumably only racists like himself were entitled to be members.
In January 2018
Mann wrote an article attacking Jackie
Walker, suggesting that her claim of a witch hunt was a conspiracy theory. He
accused Jackie, a Jewish woman, of promoting anti-Semitic tropes. Jackie
responded by saying that it was obvious that she was targeted for being a
Corbyn supporter and that she had been fighting fascists and anti-Semites on
the streets for years and was never accused of promoting anti-Semitic tropes
before Corbyn became leader.
Other
examples of Mann’s false and dishonest allegations of anti-Semitism were when,
in 2012, Mann’s wife was sent a dead bird by a disgruntled local (Roger
Dyas-Elliott). Mann later reported this as an incident of anti-Semitism
and attributed it to Momentum activists. But Momentum wasn’t set up until 2015
(3yrs after the incident) and was established by Jewish members of the Labour
Party!
In August 2018
Mann called for special privileges for Jewish
Labour MPs, calling for them to be “automatically
reselected at elections”.
In October 2018
the BBC reported that Mann had registered more
trips than any other MP, with eight overseas visits on the Register of
Interests. Mann claimed the trips were "part of the job". Most were related to his role as UK chair of
the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism. Opposing ‘anti-Semitism’
has been very profitable for John Mann.
It says everything
about the superficial nature of the mass media that I even have to
write this. Baddiel has received massive publicity for Jews Don’t Count, his
pathetic plea for Jewish Exceptionalism and for Jews to be recognised as what
they are not, victims of racial oppression.
When Sir
Keir Stürmer felt the need to display his ‘anti-racist’ credentials to Labour
Friends of Apartheid Israel, who better to praise than Blackface Baddiel's Jews Don’t Count.
The man
who declared Black Lives Matter was
just a ‘moment’ and who attacked calls for defunding the Police was
more than happy to support Baddiel’s campaign for Jews to be treated as the prime victims of racism.
Anti-racism
is, by its very nature, a threat to the power structures of British capitalism. It challenges the super exploitation that Black people experience.
Baddiel’s campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ threatens no one who is privileged. It
targets the oppressed. That is why the media has been so eager to promote it.
It is no
accident that it was two Black women – Whoopi
Goldberg and Dawn
Butler who Baddiel criticised because his targets are the left and Black
people, not the racist right or the rich and powerful.
The crux
of Baddiel’s argument is that Jews should be treated as specially oppressed
and persecuted despite being privileged and White. He provides no
evidence of Jewish oppression besides the existence of
ancient prejudices and stereotypes, most of which are dying out.
Baddiel himself
is the best example of why Jews do count and why it is Black and Muslim communities who
are marginalised. Baddiel has a long history of racism with Blackface
attacks on Jason Lee coupled with his refusal to apologise until 25 years
later, his derogatory
comments about Gypsies and a disgusting Guardian article Black men can jump. Despite being a 24-carat racist Baddiel lectures us about racism! It’s
like Harold Shipman hosting
a programme on care for the elderly.
What
Baddiel wilfully ignores, which is why his argument elides into Zionism’s anti-Semitism
narrative, is how ‘anti-Semitism’ has been weaponised against supporters of the
Palestinians.
When
the EU decided that goods produced in West Bank settlements should be labelled
as such, it was described by Israeli Minister,
Yuval Steinitz, as ‘disguised anti-Semitism’. When the US abstained on
UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned West Bank settlements, Obama was called‘a Jew hating anti-Semite.' Yet Baddiel has nothing to say about this.
Baddiel cannot bring himself to condemn this
There are hundreds of similar examples. I’ve not met a single
Palestine solidarity activist who hasn’t been called an anti-Semite. Yet Baddiel
simply ignores the way allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are used and abused and
how the IHRA
‘definition’, which conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, has
been used to target
academics for example.
Thoughtful article’s such as that of former Jewish Court of
Appeal Judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, Defining
Anti-Semitism,which point this out are
not on Baddiel’s radar. His victim centred, Jewish exceptionalist rant, which the media are always happy to publicise, gives the lie to the very case
he makes.
It speaks volumes about the degeneration
of the Guardian, that its take
on Jews Don’t Count was that it’s a ‘a doc so shocking it sounds like a
siren.’ Really? Compared
to the Windrush
Scandal?
Baddiel makes no attempt to differentiate between racism and prejudice. AmbalavanerSivanandan
talked
of the racism that discriminates and the racism that kills. But there is a
third form of racism that neither discriminates nor kills – prejudice.
The first two operate as part of the power structure of the
state which is why they are so dangerous. The third, prejudice, is merely the leftover
of past oppression yet to Baddiel it is the only form of racism.
When the
Tory Party and Starmer proclaim their opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ and use it as
a pretext to attack
freedom of speech it demonstrates that Jews have been co-opted as partners
in state repression and supporters of imperialism in the Middle East. Jews played
the same role in Algeria as they do today in Britain. Convenient pawns at the disposal
of the ruling elites.
If Baddiel had any self-awareness he would realise that this applies to him most of all
Zionism
Baddiel
makes great play of the fact that he isn’t interested in Israel or
Zionism.But this is disingenuous. The
‘anti-Semitism’ that Baddiel talks about is the same phenomenon as the
‘anti-Semitism’ that defenders of Israel wield like a cudgel against those who
support the Palestinians and oppose Zionism .
Throughout
Jews Don’t CountBaddiel repeats the myth that Jews have experienced a never ending anti-Semitism
for 2000 years. This places anti-Semitism outside of history without any explanation of its causes. It leaves only one explanation. That Jews themselves are the cause. In the words Leon
Pinsker
‘‘Judeophobia is then a mental disease, and as a mental
disease it is hereditary, and having been inherited for 2,000 years, it is
incurable.’
Salo Baron - the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th Century
Salo Baron, the greatest Jewish
historian of the 20th century described this as the ‘lachrymose conception of Jewish history.’ Baron wrote:
All my life I have been struggling
against the hitherto dominant “lachrymose
conception of Jewish history” ... because I have felt that an overemphasis on
Jewish sufferings distorted the total picture of the Jewish historic
evolution....
Zionism transposes modern anti-Semitism
to all of history and saves itself the trouble of studying the various forms of
anti-Semitism and their evolution
Fundamental
to Zionist ideology was the desire to wind up the Jewish Diaspora, the ‘accursed
Galut’. This was the ‘Negation of the Diaspora’. It was a ‘return to
history’. In other words Jews outside Palestine had no history, because
history is a history of peoples.
This was
total nonsense. The Golden
Era of Jews was in Muslim Spain not Palestine. The Babylonian Talmud was more authoritative than the Jerusalem Talmud. It is as if Maimonides, Mendelssohn,
Freud, Einstein, Arendt, Spinoza and Heinrich Heine did not exist.
Zionism holds
that only in a ‘Jewish’ state can Jews once more take part in history. Well we
can see what a ‘Jewish’ state has produced. An assortment of bigots, racists
and chauvinists such as the present Israeli government of Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
If Baddiel really wants to find examples of anti-Semitism then all he need
do is read how the Zionists saw other Jews. Hashomer Hatzair,
the ‘left-wing’ Zionist youth movement wrote that:
The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and
spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness
of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline. (‘Our Shomer’ “Weltanschaung”
Hashomer Hatzair,
December 1936, p.26).
Arthur Ruppin,
the Director of the Palestine Office in Haifa from 1908 onwards retorted, when
a friend called him an anti-Semite that:
‘I have already established here [in his diary]
that I despise the cancers of Judaism more than does the worst anti-Semite.’
a
perusal of Zionist sources reveals criticism so scathing that the generation
that witnessed Auschwitz has difficulty comprehending them.
No one
doubts that there were periods of Jewish persecution but there were also periods
when Jews were the persecutors. Jews lived for centuries in peace with their
neighbours but Zionism focuses only on the periods of conflict and turmoil.
Zionism
offers no explanation for the persecution of the Jews. It is the mere presence
of Jews in other peoples’ lands that causes anti-Semitism. In the words of Israeli novelist and
poet AB Yehoshua, the Jewish diaspora was a ‘cancer connected to the
main tissue of the Jewish people who use other people’s countries like hotels.’[Jewish
Chronicle, 22.12.89. 'Diaspora a cancer') There is no attempt to compare
the Jews’ situation with other minorities like the Gypsies and Armenians.
Another Zionist
myth referred to in the program was the expulsion of Jews from Palestine after
the sacking of the Temple in 70 AD. In fact there is no evidence of an expulsion of Jews by the
Romans. Very large numbers of Jews had already migrated as a trading people,
populating the Hellenised cities of the Middle East. Alexandria had, according to Philo one million Jewish
inhabitants by the first century AD.
Baddiel
may deny that he is a Zionist but his conceptual analysis of anti-Semitism is
framed by Zionist ideology.
Are Jews are
a Minority Ignored by Progressives?
The whole
basis of Baddiel’s tirade against the left or ‘progressives’ as he calls it (he
has nothing to say about the racial anti-Semitism of the Right) is that Jews in
Britain are not allowed to define anti-Semitism (although he never says which Jews). Baddiel
ignores the fact that anti-Semitism has been redefined in order to negate Palestinian
oppression via the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism.
In the words of Jonathan Freedland, the
Guardian’s Zionist propagandist and the epitomy of a dishonest journalist:
On
the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can
define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call
out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell
Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy
tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism
really is.
The title
of Freedland’s article is instructive because it
encapsulates Baddiel’s argument: ‘My plea to the left: treat Jews the same way you’d treat any
other minority.’ Their
argument is that being a minority in itself entitles you to a place in the
oppression stakes:
I often wonder whether there is a loose connection in the
neutral networks of Zionists like Freedland and Baddiel. Do they not understand
the meaning of the language or the concepts they employ?
There is nothing magical about minorities. What the left
campaigns for is oppressed minorities. Jews in Britain are not oppressed
as Jews. The rich and powerful are also a minority but we don’t campaign in
support of them. Billionaires are a very distinct minority but I don’t recall
anyone calling for them to have protected status. Fascists are another
minority, except in Israel, but I don’t recall going onto the streets to
protest against their unfair treatment!
90 years ago Jews were oppressed and scapegoated. They were
subject to physical attacks and violence by Oswald Moseley’s British Union of
Fascists as well as Police and state racism. Then it was the Left, not
Baddiel’s right-wing friends who came to their defence whilst the Zionists and
Board of Deputies told Jews to keep their heads down and stay indoors whilst the
fascists marched through the East End. At the Battle
of Cable Street non-Jewish and Jewish workers in their thousands ignored
the Zionist cries of appeasement.
Today Jews are a privileged part of the White community. William
Rubinstein, a past President of the Jewish Historical Society, wrote 40 years
ago that ‘Post-1945, British Jewry has migrated into the upper-middle class’.
(The Right, Left and the
Jews, p.51).
Professor Geoffrey Alderman, the historian
of Britain’s Jewish community wrote that London Jewry
is, arguably,
more bourgeois now than at any time since the mid-nineteenth century, and it is
certainly more Conservative… support for Israel has acquired a centrality
rivalling, and perhaps even surpassing, that of the synagogue.’ (‘Two Cheers for the GLC’ (JC, 26.3.86.)
Rubinstein’s conclusions were that
The rise of
Western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high status has led to the
near-disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size; indeed, the Jews may
become the first ethnic group in history without a working class of any size.
In other
words British Jews, who in the 1930s were overwhelmingly working class had
changed. Today they are mainly middle class professionals. As the class nature
of British Jews has changed so has their politics.
In 1945
Phil Piratin of the CommunistParty was
elected as MP for Mile End. It is estimated that half his vote came from Jews who
dominated many branches of the Communist Party. In 1979 Alderman could not detect a single
Jewish vote in the Hackney North constituency for the CP candidate but he estimated that about 400 Jews had voted for the neo-Nazi holocaust denying National
Front. Yet dishonest journalists like Freedland and racist clowns like Baddiel
insist that being a minority makes British Jews as oppressed as Black
people.
Sarah Silverman - A good example of Jewish oppression
Baddiel
produced a list of the examples of the anti-Semitic persecution that Jews suffer.
Sarah Silverman told how she had been told to leave a lesbian march because she
was a Zionist. Silverman exclaimed that ‘now Zionism
is racism’ in mock horror. Yes Sarah haven’t you noticed the cries of ‘Death to
the Arabs’ in Israel or the hundreds of all-Jewish communities in Israel from which Arabs
are barred?
Another example of ‘anti-Semitism’ was Jeremy Irons reading TS Elliot’s
poetry in 2017. Baddiel complained that no one had called for statues of Elliot
to be pulled down. It is true. Elliot was an anti-Semite but he had no
involvement in the persecution of Jews whereas Cecil Rhodes and Edward Colston were
personally responsible for the death and murder of thousands of Black people. That Baddiel is
incapable of grasping this demonstrates that he is as much a racist today as he
ever was.
We were entertained to a speech by Dawn Butler at Labour Party conference where she
mentions various groups but not Jews. Baddiel complains that Jews were left out. But they weren't. She referred to whether people were Black or White. Jews
are White in British society. The Whitest British religious group.
‘the
historical association of the British Jewish community with the Labour party is
a thing of the past, and that a large majority now support the Conservatives….
The
socio-economic profile of Anglo-Jewry has changed dramatically in a few
generations, with upward mobility shifting their profile towards privileged
groups who typically support for the Conservatives... A large proportion of
British Jews now live in more affluent suburban constituencies where the
Conservatives are often locally dominant. Taken together with a significantly
older age skew this provides a set of sound demographic reasons for Jews to
lean Conservative.; (p.5)
Why the
hell should the Left bother with this overwhelmingly reactionary community? Of
course we should oppose anti-Semitism whilst recognising that Jewish identity
today is largely based on Israel and that many Jews take criticism of this
identity as ‘anti-Semitism’.
Playwright and Director Patrick Marber stated (12.51) that ‘We Jews
are an oppressed minority and we can cite 2000 years of evidence.’ I don’t
know what the quality of the programmes are that Marber produces but the myth
of 2000 years persecution is not evidence!
Baddiel pretends
that Jews are as much the victims of racism as Black people. We see (16.53) neo-Nazis
marching at Charlottesville chanting ‘The Jews will not replace us’.
This was indeed shocking but large sections of the Jewish community subscribe
to the White Replacement Theory that these marchers were givingvoice to.
Enoch Powell fan and advocate of the White Replacement Theory pays tribute to the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks praised
as one of the books of the year Douglas Murray’s Strange Death of Europe which
argued that Muslims were replacing White people. The neo-Nazis variant of this
is that Jews are responsible for Muslim immigration. Gary Mond, former Senior
Vice President of the Board of Deputies and Samuel Hayek, Chair of JNF-UK are
also adherents to this theory.
And who organised the Charlottesville march?Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer who describes
himself as a White Zionist! After Donald Trump had
praised the ‘fine people’ who had organised the march Netanyahu refused
to criticise it. As the Washington Post observed:
As neo-Nazis and
white supremacists marched through Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,”
one may have expected Israel’s response to be swift and unequivocal.
But as President
Trump was being criticized in the United States for blaming violence on “both
sides,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has styled himself as a leader
of Jews everywhere, drew flak for giving no response at all.
Why Jews are the Victims of Prejudice NOT Racism
I know a
little about British Jews since I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish home,
the son of a rabbi.
I forget how many times I was told that you cannot trust an Arab. My dad
didn’t like schwarzes either. What is schwarze? Literally ‘Black’
in Yiddish. But that is not how it is used. Let Erica Davies explain:
When [my grandmother] was in a nursing
home at the end of her life, she’d say, ‘everyone who works here is a shvartze, they’ll
steal from you.’
Schvartze is proxy for nigger… anyone who says otherwise is
delusional, lying or incredibly naïve,” an Orthodox friend told me. “If it
means black then why does no one ever refer to schvartzer shoes when
talking about black shoes, why does the black hat community, which sometimes
refers to itself as the black community, never call itself the schvartzer community
— because the use of the word within the frum community is only as a substitute
for nigger.”
My father
warned me about working with Arabs. ‘They’ll stab you in the back’ I was
told. This kind of anti-Arab racism is very common in the Jewish community,
brought up as it is on a series of fables and myths about how Israelsought peace and the Arabs refused their
outstretched hand.
No matter
that there is no truth in these fables. Erskine Childers wrote an article,
The Other Exodus, in The Spectator of 12 May 1961, in which he laid
these myths to rest.
In The
Other Exodus Childers wrote how, on the basis of
examining BBC and CIA transcripts
of Arab radio stations he found that
There was not a single order, or appeal, or
suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside
or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab
appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put.’
Today
despite claims by Israeli Ambassador
Tzipi Hotoveli that the Nakba is an ‘Arab lie’ there is no doubting that
three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees were expelled. This is why
Israel’s National Archives refuses to release files on the
period.
Anti-Arab racism and Islamaphobia amongst British Jews is high. So high
that although there have been regular surveys about Muslim attitudes to Jews
there have been no equivalent surveys of Jewish attitudes to Muslims. Those who sample the views of Muslims are afraid of what they may find out if they did the same with the Jewish community. But
judgingby the racist output of the Jewish
Chronicle and companion papers, one can be certain that British Jews are
perhaps the most racist section of White British society.
Baddiel Gets a Lesson in Fake Victimhood from his
niece Dionna
Ironically
it was Baddiel’s niece Dionna who destroyed Baddiel’s argument that Jews are
as much a victim of racism as Black people. Baddiel immediately equated what she
said as equivalent to Jews changing their names in non-Jewish society, even though that is entirely voluntary.
Donna has
a Jewish father and a Black mother and spoke of not belonging in either
community.
I can’t hide the fact that
I’m Black. You know my dad can hide the fact that he’s Jewish. In America if my
mum gets stopped by the cops in her car I’m a little more worried than if my dad
gets stopped by the cops.
Forced on the
defensive Baddiel accepted that ‘there is an element of privilege’ but he
immediately switched it to Jews adopting non-Jewish names whereas in fact most
Jews chose to Anglicise their names, which is not the same thing. My name was
originally the German
for Green Stone. I assume my grandparents wanted to Anglicise derGrünstein. They wanted to be a British sounding name which was, nonetheless instantly recognisable as a Jewish name.
What
Baddiel can’t or won’t get into his head is that Jews are not victims of
racism today. Jews don’t get stopped for driving whilst Jewish whereas this is the experience of Black people. Jews don’t experience death in police
custody or police violence, Black people do. Jews aren’t singled out by
immigration control or deported because they are Black. This simply did not
fit into Baddiel's narrative because his whole programme was based on Jews not being
White.
At 33.38
there was a section ‘What About Israel’ (33.38). Baddiel asked ‘Isn’t Israel
actually an oppressor’ to a backdrop of Israel’s Apartheid Wall, which divides
Palestinian communities from their land and which resembles the ghetto walls
that Jews experienced. Yet Baddiel hurriedly moved on without answering his own question. Why?
Baddiel felt unable to say a word about Israel's Apartheid Wall
Baddiel couldn't bring himself to answer the question either because he doesn't believe it or because those applauding him might have had second thoughts about his whole argument. Instead he turned the conversation back to 'antisemitism':
Well I think there are many
things to say about anti-Semitism, a racism that goes back centuries since well
before the establishment of the State of Israel.
There
could be no more clearer example of Baddiel’s refusal to confront the fact that
Israeli Jews, acting with the support of a majority of the Jewish diaspora, are
the oppressors. Instead his main concern was the fact that Jews keep getting
asked ‘‘What about Israel’. A terrible form of oppression, to be sure! Stephen
Fry complained:
‘I’m not a citizen of
Israel. Do I have to tell you how upset I am that Palestinians are treated so
abominably.’
At least Fry
made his position clear whereas Baddiel consistently refuses to give an iota
of support to the Palestinians.
And then
we have slippery Sarah Silverman, the archetypal Jewish supremacist, feigning
shock (34.31) ‘and now Zionism is racism’. Silverman is incapable of
understanding why a State whose Prime Minister proclaims that it is a state only of
its Jewish citizens not its Arab citizens is racist.
Then
there is Howard Jacobson, who can’t even bring himself to utter the word
‘Palestinian’. He asserts that ‘however the Israeli government sorts itself
out… the country was always going to be hated’ to the accompaniment of
pogrom like flames devouring a Star of David. It is that old myth of 2,000
years of anti-Semitism. What Jacobson is really saying is that it’s not land
theft or ethnic cleansing which motivates Palestinians but a 2000 years old
hatred of Jews. Very convenient of course. Baddiel replies: (34:57)
No-one is suggesting that
the State of Israel has not done many bad things but British Jews are not
responsible for those actions.’
Britain's most well known fascist, Tommy Robinson, demonstrates in support of Israel's attack on Gaza -
But that
isn’t true. The Board of Deputies has repeatedly issued statements and organised demonstrations in support of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, the last
one being attended by that well
known anti-racist Tommy Robinson.
The Board
of Deputies claims to be the ‘Voice of British Jewry’. What Baddiel really wants
is for British Jews to be able to support Israeli war crimes whilst not being
held to account. It is a good example of chutzpah.
Baddiel claims it is racist to
expect Jews to condemn Israel whereas in fact it is Baddiel and his establishment
supporters who are the racists by demanding an unfettered right to support
Israel without suffering any consequences.
Miriam
Margoyles who has a long track record of supporting the Palestinians is interviewed
(35.15). Miriam cuts through Baddiel’s hypocrisy and cant when she says ‘we
have to say the word Israel. Israel is at the root of all this. Israel is the
problem’ She accuses Baddiel of being ‘wilful’
in refusing to take responsibility for what Israel does. Baddiel refuses to
recognise that by associating British Jews with Israel’s actions Zionism helps
perpetuate anti-Semitism.
Baddiel
immediately responds ‘I disagree with that’. He sees no problem in
Israel’s actions as a Jewish state but seeks to avoid making any criticism by
taking refuge in identity politics. It is telling that not once does Baddiel
take issue with Israel’s claim to act and speak on behalf of all Jews. That is not his concern.
It says
everything about Channel 4 that instead of examining the role of Jewish
organisations in supporting Israeli war crimes and apartheid it employs a Zionist
with a long record of racism like Baddiel to seek to muddy the waters with false
charges of ‘anti-Semitism’.
The Board of Deputies is to blame for rising
antisemitism in Britain, according to a leading member of a Jewish anti-Israel
group.
Tony Greenstein, of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods
(JBIG), was speaking on the BBC1 debate show, The Big Questions, on Sunday
morning.
During the wide-ranging discussion, Mr
Greenstein said: “Of course there’s no justification for antisemitism, but
there’s also no justification for the Board of Deputies calling rallies in
support of the invasion of Lebanon and Gaza in the name of the British Jewish
community. That causes antisemitism.
“It associates every Jewish person with
the terror in Lebanon and Gaza.”
You cannot
support Israel right or wrong in the name of British Jews and then complain if people
associate Jews with Israel’s crimes!
In November 2019 Baddiel joined
in the Zionist attacks on Corbyn. Instead of pronouncing Jeffrey Epstein’s name “Ep-steen” Corbyn said “Epshtine”
which is the correct German pronounciation. Anxious to add his bit to the Zionists’
‘anti-Semitism’ attacks on Corbynbefore the election, Baddiel created a completely bogus
controversy.
Baddiel assertion that he feels no
connection with Israel is disingenuous. If that is true why does he refuse to dissociate
himself from the actions of a state that claims to act on behalf of all Jews? Labelling
such call’s ‘anti-Semitic’ betrays a guilty conscience.
Baddiel says ‘we have no
collective responsibility for Israel as Jews.’ So has Baddiel criticised the
IHRA which describes
Israel as having been ‘conceived as a Jewish collectivity?’ Zionism is, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson,
the last refuge of the Jewish scoundrel.
Unfortunately Miriam’s response, that Israeli Jews are ‘my
people’ misses the point. I feel nothing in common with Israeli Jews. The
reason that Jews should speak out is because Israel claims that its crimes are perpetrated on
behalf of all Jews.
Channel 4’s decision to screen
this superficial tirade of deceptions and half-truths instead of making a
serious documentary about racism such as the killing
of ChrisKaba, a Black man murdered by the Metropolitan Police, is telling.
They would prefer to pander to White Jewishprivilege rather than tackle the racism
of the British state.
The Labour Party’s decision to
reinstate Trevor Philips, a notorious Islamaphobe who believes Muslims are a ‘nation
within a nation’ demonstrates that it’s not Jews but Muslims who don’t count.
Baddiel himself is a performing
monkey working to a Zionist script. Starmer praises him because he fits in with
the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative. If you question British Jews about support for Israel
then that is anti-Semitic but if you criticise Israel that too is anti-Semitic.
Such is the hypocrisy of Israel and its perfumed supporters.
Below is an excellent article by Gavin
Lewis about Baddiel which is well worth reading. It first appeared on Labour
Heartlands.
Black history month, a little modern history: Further Reflections on‘Jewface and Other David Baddiel Racisms’.
image left, right Baddiel blacked up as Jason
Lee center image image David Baddiel courtesy of Amnesty International UK, CC
BY 2.0
By Gavin
Lewis
Introduction:
Jewface and
Other David Baddiel Racisms (Labour Heartlands, republished
JVL), responds to Jewish comic David Baddiel’s
self-promoting claims that he and his white ethnic group are ‘uniquely
oppressed’, that feature in his contentious monograph Jews Don’t Count,
now controversially being made into a tv polemic by Channel 4. It does so
by examining the history of Baddiel’s racist provocations against Black people,
and the comparative historical Black experience, of white settler oppression.
As sourced in the original
article, Baddiel’s career includes, his Guardian article Black men can jump, in which he describes Black men
on the basis of natural-sense-of-rhythm and physical primitiveness stereotypes;
picking out a Black soccer fan for public ridicule; mocking the ethnic
appearance of the footballer Jason Lee using slurs like ‘Pineapplehead ‘and
inciting thousands of others to do so – incitements that also resulted in countless
copycat abuses of other Black youngsters. Baddiel has never compensated
victims or apologised to Jason Lee.
Re-tweeting the article Jonathan Cook, noted that ‘Baddiel has gone from “Blackface
to Jewface”, given that Baddiel is not only recorded practising Blackface
in mocking Jason Lee, but has subsequently attempted to culturally appropriate
the term, as ‘Jewface’. By comparison, comedian Sarah Silverman has – in light of Jewish participation in Blackface
– advised her fans/followers, not to repeat this appropriation.
In fact, Jewish actors were also
prominent among those chosen to pass as Native Americans in Hollywood
productions. Among these Tony Curtis donned greasepaint to play Native
American Marine, Iwo Jima flag raiser Ira Hayes in The Outsider (1961),
Ann Bancroft as an Apache widow in Walk the Proud Land (1956), Janet
Margolin as a Kiowa girl in Nevada Smith (1966).
In response to the ‘uniquely
oppressed’ claim the article also cites the numerous white settler
societies in which western Jews have prospered, that have simultaneously been
hazardous and even most often off-limits to global Black citizens. It
also cites the extent pro-Israel anti-Semitism claims have been used to obscure
the colonial settler country’s 2014 killings of 2251+ people in Gaza including
551 children, all – as confirmed by the UN – via a bombardment consisting of many thousands
of shells. Despite his racist past, Baddiel has been able to reinvigorate
his career ridding on the back of this public relations campaign, even as
Israel’s crimes against the middle-eastern indigenous innocent, worsen from
year to year.
In light of the public response
to the article, it is worth going on to explore just how poorly Baddiel and the
Israel lobby’s self-serving, ethnic elitist, rhetorical victim strategies
compare with a much finer tradition of selfless Jewish artists/activists,
embracing equality movements and showing solidarity with the
oppressed. Historical reflections also demonstrate the
Baddiel/Israel-lobby claims don’t make even much sense in comparison to basic lived
sociological reality.
Unlike the self-serving actions
of Baddiel and the pro-Israel media industry, very little of this was
advantageous to Pinter either collectively to his ethnic group, or as
individual material gain or career advancement. Pinter’s campaign against
the torture of writers in Turkey in which he pointedly confronted the American
ambassador with “the reality … of electric current on your genitals” actually
got him thrown out of the US embassy’s dinner, along with Playwright Arthur Miller.
Actor Miriam Margolyes is also a
signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. She began her career
sharing the broader societal collectivist socialist sensibilities of Vanessa
Redgrave and Frances de la Tour. She is a Jewish Labour member who defended
the Party and Jeremy Corbyn against vexatious accusations of anti-Semitism that
had been made, for rightwing pro-Israeli strategic political reasons. She
told Middle East Eye“you have to be able to criticise Israel”. Once
again, particularly in our rightwing McCarthyite media reality, these are not
positions that are necessarily personally, career benefiting, or financially
enhancing.
Jewish actor, the late Miriam
Karlin was a much loved figure in British popular culture. As well as her
stage work, she was a hit playing a shop steward in the tv sitcom The Rag
Trade (1961-63 & 1977-78) and enjoyed character roles in prestige film
productions including The Entertainer (1960) and Clockwork Orange
(1971). Packing a lot into her life, Karlin was also a Trade Unionist
off-camera, active in Equity and a member of the Labour Party. She
was a committed anti-Fascist, a member of the Ant Nazi League[viii]and
prominent in protests against Holocaust denier David Irving. She also targeted
Austrian politician Jörg Haider over his Nazi sympathies. Karlin was
Patron of the human rights group Burma Campaign UK.
Craig Murray recalls her politics and personal loyalty.
“David Aaronovitch had published an article calling me anti-semitic.
Miriam was even more furious on my behalf than I was myself, and wrote a letter
to the paper (it wasn’t published). But I won’t forget what she said; she said
her own mother was an Aaronovich, and that many of their family had been killed
in the holocaust, and that those who had suffered would be horrified to see
their legacy perverted to a neo-conservative agenda.”
Like Pinter, Karlin protested the
Iraq War, like both he and Margolyes she supported Jews for Justice for
Palestinians. Her policy demands on behalf of Palestinians, still
features on the ‘who-we-are’ section, of the organisation’s website.
It’s worth noting that a lot of
this altruistic selfless solidarity by prominent British Jews occurred over the
adult period of David Baddiel’s life. Equivalent public activism from
Baddiel has been nowhere to be seen. The current pro-Israel ‘hierarchy of
victimhood’ has allowed Baddiel the option of playing the social ‘commentator?’
despite his lack of scholarship, activist pedigree, and his reputation having
been justifiably torpedoed by his previous racist incitements.
Jewish Black Civil-Rights –
Anti-Racism
The inappropriateness of these
‘hierarchy of victimhood’ and ‘uniqueness’ claims are best exposed by the
actions of those Jews who have actively combated racism against Black people or
supported them in their struggle. Veteran Jewish Cockney actor Harry Landis
joined Labour – like Denis Healy and Eric Heffer – after being with the
Communist Party. He recalls warmly the times he spent with Paul Robeson,
though reflects sadly on his “haunted look”. Doubtless, working-class Landis would not claim
to have had things worse than the persecuted great African-American
artist-activist.
Martin Luther King in his journals now held by Stanford University
recalls fighting an African-American rent strike against exploitative Jewish
Landlords in Chicago. However, he juxtaposes this reality with the experience
of Jews as “partners in the civil rights struggle”. One such
example was Rabbi Israel Seymour Dresner, dubbed America’s ‘most arrested Rabbi’ due to his activism on Freedom
Rides (in other activisms he was also a critic of Israeli annexation, and
Israel’s PM Netanyahu).
Voter registration activists
African-American James Chaney plus Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner – the latter
two both from Jewish families – were murdered in events later fictionalised in
the movie Mississippi Burning (1988).
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner James Chaney
Despite in that era some elite
facilities – golf clubs and the New York Sporting Club (NYAC) – still excluding Jews along
with, African-American members, clearly Schwerner and Goodman were not subject
to routine segregation. They enjoyed comparatively enhanced economic
opportunity and had the vote, yet put themselves at risk anyway. Nor
could Jewish activists be accused of merely opposing racism, because of some conscious
‘thin-end-of–the-wedge’ self-interest.
David Baddiel’s repeated
historical practices demonstrate he is the antithesis of this Jewish
anti-racist tradition; though any direct advocacy for Israel by him is yet to
be established. However academic David Miller draws attention to the fact that Baddiel is a
former pupil of the privileged Haberdashers fee paying school, whose
other alumni have also been guilty of Blackface and ethnic bullying.
This Miller attributes to an overt Zionist ideology at the
institution.
Whatever the relevancy of the
school, the more telling evidence of a shared pro-Israel agenda is the fact
that against every tradition of Jewish cross-community anti-racist solidarity,
represented in this article, Baddiel’s Blackface to Jewface
ethnic exclusive, racist cultural theft, is a public relations tactic, repeated
by the lobby.
Jeremy Newmark the disgraced
former leader of the pro-Israel Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) is alleged to have
taken Malcolm X’s expressions house slave and house n*gg*r and
rebranded them as ‘court Jew’ in reference to Jewish pro-Palestinian activist
Jackie Walker. He also took the ancient uppity
n*gg*r slur and changed it into pushy Jew. The sentiment expressed as variants on “only
Black people know what racism feels like”– was changed, for the purposes of
advocating for Israel in a Guardian column by Howard Jacobson, into “Jews know what anti-Semitism is and what
it isn’t.” Items selected for the follow-up letters page material were framed by this
misappropriation.
Zionist Guardian writer
and former opinion editor Jonathan Freedland took an expression so old it changed from
“I’m not racist some of my best
friends are colored,”
to
“I’m not racist some of my best
friends are Negro,”
which evolved over time to
“I’m not racist some of my best
friends are Black,”
and now finally in the United
States
“I’m not racist some of my best
friends are African American”, and spun it as a uniquely a
Jewish experience and phrase.
This strategy is not restricted
to stealing the Black experience. Put ‘ethnic child-stealing’ into any
search engine and a list of sites will be provided, documenting a racist smear
historically directed at Gypsy Roma people. The Daily Beast and New Europe returned to this topic a few years ago, followed
more recently by Travellers Times. At the height of the 1960s tv western
craze, the Barbara Stanwyck series The Big Valley critiqued the racist
slur against Gypsy Roma in a double-episode entitled ‘Hide the
Children’.
Yet in an era of increased
secularisation, if challenged over Israel’s history of killing and imprisoning
Palestinian children, Israel supporters as policy, accuse critics of repeating
a supposedly unique ethnic blood libel of Jewish threat to children, dating
back to the middle-ages.
The same strategy is initiated,
if mention is made of the eugenics policy known as the Yemenite Children Affair. Israel’s settlers subjected
middle-eastern Yemeni Jewish children to human experimentation.
Yemeni-Jewish newborn babies were also stolen to be given to childless
settler couples, with the birth mothers told the infants were stillborn.
In pro-Israel PR, the Gypsy Roma experience gets sidelined-appropriated
in favour of a narrative suggesting western critics who mostly can’t even name
the 12 Apostles, have 12th C anti-Jewish blood libels, committed to
memory.
Such blatant cultural thefts do
have their unintentional amusing sides. When Baddiel was condemned for
his Blackface racist incitements he responded by culturally
appropriating the term into Jewface. When then condemned for his
cultural appropriation, he again simply copied this term and used it to attack a Twitter critic who’d used
Yiddish derived idiom – the critic turned out to be Jewish.
Given the original term – schtum
– was assimilated from the German stumm meaning
silent, Baddiel in stealing other people’s anti-racism demonstrates he can’t
differentiate between cultural appropriation and cultural hybridity.
Imagine Baddiel having to debate with intellectuals like Paul Gilroy or the
late Stuart Hall – this is why Baddiels work is not sent out to academics for
review.
The one group of people who know
Baddiel’s awful ethnic elitist notion of victimhood to be rubbish are Jewish
women that historically have married Black men. When African-American
entertainer Sammy Davis Jr converted to Judaism he understandably wasn’t
anticipating it making his status any worse – segregation already meant Davis
often could not stay at the hotels where he entertained. However, plans
for his interracial marriage to blonde May Britt who’d also converted,
generated “threats against the synagogue” that had offered to perform the
wedding.
Jewish girl Mary Jacobs married
her Caribbean husband Jake, in 1948. Jake had come over from Trinidad,
for Air Force training to serve during WWII. After announcing her marital
intentions her father threw her out of the parental home. She recalled “People would point at us in the street”. And
Mary also couldn’t get a roof over her head. By having a Black husband,
Mary found that the post-war British landlord prohibition ‘No Blacks, No
Irish, No dogs’ now applied to her.
“In effect, mere proximity
to Black ethnicity had acted as a sort of taint against the synagogue marrying
Sammy Davis and May Britt. For Mary Jacobs having a Black husband
actually dropped her social status.
Over the years white women – many
of whom are Jewish – who chose to be wives and mothers in Black mixed-race
families have had to heroically contend with an entire vocabulary of racist
sexualised abuse that would be vilely inappropriate, even if applied to modern
sex-workers. Another form of heroism often forced upon these mothers
occurs in instances where they find themselves in public transport, social
spaces etc, where racists are spouting their nonsense. In these
situations, mothers would often try to protect their children from the fact
hatred exists in the world against them, by using their very bodies as a physical
shield. Would white Jewish mothers subscribe to a ‘hierarchy of
victimhood’ that excluded their own mixed-race children?
As the landlord housing
prohibition demonstrates in post war Britain arguably the most oppressed white
ethnic group was actually Irish Catholics. Just as there is no UK
phenomenon of Jewish BLM-type deaths at the hands of the police, also nothing like
the practice of Irish suspects dying from state collusion and loyalist death
squads, has been replicated in the Jewish community. Nor have the
beatings and fit-ups exampled in the Birmingham Six, and Guildford
Four injustices been repeated among UK Jews. One reason the
Baddiel/Israel-lobby narrative is media-pushed, in comparison to Black and
Irish experiences, is because it would require confronting, state, police,
foreign-policy, institutional societal and capitalist participation in
oppression. Instead this narrative supports the continued manifestation
of western power, in the expansionist, colonial example, of Israel.
Conclusion Baddiel’s Straw-man
racism
Words like bias, prejudice,
and bigotry have long existed. Superseding these, the term Racism
was subsequently invented to describe the societal structural condition of
people-of-colour who in various combinations, were once owned and colonized;
whose original lands, culture, languages, and more were taken by force; and
who, in modern society, have little or no collective institutional or financial
power to combat their ghettoization in, predominantly, the lower reaches of Western class systems. The term’s
specificity makes it difficult for Baddiel to repeat his Blackface-to-Jewface-type
cultural theft of this experience, so he has created a straw man argument
about this just being about ‘Jews having money’.
The easiest way to rebut this is
straight comparison. If Baddiel as a boy had exchanged racist and
anti-Semitic slurs in an argument with a Black child in a local play area, any
adult intervening would most likely have blamed the Black child. On their
way to their respective homes, the Black child has the greater risk of
stop-&-search. When Baddiel goes on to his fee paying school, the
Black child goes to a state school. Here unless blind marking is
practised, the child will likely never be given the benefit of the doubt in
coursework. Getting strip-searched at some point in the Black child’s
school career is not out of the question, nor is the possibility of having to
fight school racists.
Baddiel will go to
Cambridge. The Black youth will likely be failed by the education system
or if lucky enough to make it to university, it will be a former
Polytechnic. As Baddiel gets into his career, the Black individual will
experience lesser employment opportunities, less likelihood of getting pay
increases or promotions. The Black individual is more likely to be failed
by the health services and treated as a scrounger by the welfare authorities
and media. Periodic police stop-&-searches and potentially even death
at their hands, will be the Black adult experience.
Historically there were also
certain forms of segregation that uniquely applied to Black Britons. From
boxing’s earliest 20th C legalisation, working-class Jewish fighters
like Jack ‘kid’ Berg enjoyed success. By comparison for many decades Rule
#24 would demand that a boxer must have two white parents. Writing in the
Empire News, Hugh Cecil Lowther (Lord Lonsdale) of the National Sporting Club, explained
the legality of boxing was made conditional on having no ‘inter-coloured
contests’, following talks with Winston Churchill at the Home Office.
Dick Turpin – older brother of future world Champion Randolph Turpin – finally
became the first Black British champion in 1946 after the prohibition on Black
title participation was lifted.
Martin Luther King mentioned
exploitative Jewish Chicago landlords in his journals. Jackie Walker
mentioned Jewish participation in the slave trade – easily evidenced by the
Jewish Museum in the former slave economy of Jamaica, and by the mirror-cracked
copy of the religious mythology of the Jewish colonial class that is
Rastafarianism (one section of Rastafarianism is the 12 Tribes of
Israel). The opportunist neoliberal right will suggest repeating this is
some sort of slur. All it means is that at certain historical times, when
presented with racial, class and economic privilege some Jews will opt to
commit the same offences as other white ethnic groups.
Given this reality, only makes
the fact that Jews have continuously punched so far above their weight as human
rights activists, all the more praiseworthy.
Sadly instead of these numerous
Jewish anti-racists Ch4 and our corrupted media market Baddiel.
For complaints, Ch4 Commissioning
Editor is Shaminder Nahal
Gavin Lewis
is a freelance Black British mixed-race writer and academic. He has published
in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States on film, media,
politics, cultural theory, race, and representation. He has taught critical
theory and film and cultural studies at a number of British universities. He is
a member of the British trade union Bectu.
