John McDonnell Has Become Tom Watson’s Useful Idiot as Watson Openly Defies Corbyn and Prepares a Coup

McDonnell’s Pathetic Acceptance of the Right's Fake ‘Anti-Semitism’ Campaign is akin to flying the White Flag of Surrender

Sunday Times 3 March 2019

I know it is difficult for Labour politicians to absorb, but for a decade the Tories have been in alliance with a host of genuinely anti-Semitic parties in the European parliament. Parties like Poland’s Law & Justice Party or Latvia’s LNNK, whose MEP Robert Zile goes on a walk each March with veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS who did their duty helping out with the Holocaust. What is it that prevents them mentioning this every time someone accuses the Labour Party of ‘anti-Semitism’?  Stupidity? Cowardice? Take your pick. Labour's antisemitism fantasists don’t even refer to Boris Johnson and his racist comments.

Of course these anti-Semitic parties that the Tories are in alliance with are also devoted supporters of Israel, so perhaps this is not something worth mentioning?  I refer to e.g. Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, who is busy trying to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy, Hungary's war-time Nazi ruler who presided over the deportation of nearly half a million Jews to Auschwitz. The fact that he is of the opinion that Horthy was an 'exceptional statesman' doesn't prevent Netanyahu establishing a solid friendship with him or the Tories, alone amongst conservative parties in the European parliament, supporting him in a censure motion.

Horthy is a genuine anti-Semite unlike those accused in the Labour Party anti-semitism witch-hunt so what is it that prevents McDonnell engaging his brain with his mouth?

 It seems to be a little difficult for McDonnell and Labour’s so-called leftwingers, such as Angela Rayner or Rebecca Long-Bailey, to get their collective heads round the fact that genuine anti-Semites, like Richard Spencer, neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right, support Israel and even declare that they are ‘white Zionists’.  Most anti-Semites today are supporters of Israel and Zionism.  Israel is the ideal ethno-nationalist state, something to model themselves on. That is why allegations of Nazi-Zionist collaboration were no aberration. Zionism has always worked with genuine anti-Semites.

What is unforgivable is that McDonnell, Corbyn, Formby and the rest seem incapable of doing anything but retreating in the face of the Zionist and right-wing ideological onslaught.  Of course it’s not helped by the fact that Jon Lansman, Momentum’s dictator, is a paid up supporter of Israel and Zionism.

Perhaps the most abject moment in John McDonnell’s interview with Sky was when he said how much he regretted the resignation of Joan Ryan, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel.  Ryan was the person who deliberately invented false allegations of anti-Semitism against Jean Fitzpatrick, a delegate to the 2016 Labour Party Conference who had the effrontery to challenge her over LFI’s claim to support the Palestinians. Ryan was also filmed discussing a £1m contribution by Israeli agent Shai Masot to her slush fund.

Ryan has consistently been the front person for the Israeli state. Ryan it was who claimed that Jean had mentioned Jews and bankers in the same breath when criticising LFI. Fortunately the whole incident was secretly recorded by Al Jazeera’s The Lobby. Ryan, who is not even Jewish, has been assiduous in spreading the myth that the Labour Party is ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. Far from regretting  Ryan’s departure it is one of the few good things to have happened lately. The pity is that more of the racist rats have not departed.

McDonnell is allowing this man to set the pace

Although McDonnell rebutted the suggestion that the Labour Party is ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ he accepted that anti-Semitism was a major problem in the Labour Party.  It was only two weeks ago at the Labour Representation Committee, of which he is honorary President, that McDonnell gave his support to Jackie Walker, the Black Jewish activist who is currently suspended and facing expulsion on March 26^th. He also gave support to Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt whose candidature in Thanet South was rejected by the NEC Panel.

McDonnell has no problem in acknowledging the fact that the Witchhunt has predominantly netted anti-Zionist Jews and Black anti-racists but he seems unable to put two and two together and work out exactly why there never seems to be any evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party. There are just assertions.

It was good that Jennie Formby wrote a stiff letter to Tom Watson calling him out over his vague parallel complaints monitoring system.  Unfortunately she also went and appointed an ‘independent’ overseer to the complaints system, Lord Falconer, Blair’s former flat mate and ex- Attorney General. It’s called shooting yourself in the foot.

It is difficult to know whether McDonnell is simply stupid or disingenuous.  My preference is for the latter but it is a close run thing.

It is should be clear with anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that the anti-Semitism campaign is a fake and that anti-Semitism has been weaponised by the Right. On LBC, in response to a caller who said that he was ‘killing Labour’ Tom Watson said that he won’t rest until he drives every last anti-Semite from the Labour Party. 

Leaving aside the absurdity of thinking that a mass party can simply purify itself 100% of any bigotry or prejudice (does the same apply to homophobes, Islamaphobes and any other form of prejudice?) it is a fact that Watson is extremely unconcerned when it comes to racism against Black people and Muslims. He went along with all New Labour’s anti-terrorism and Prevent measures. 

Tom Watson also abstained on Theresa May’s 2014 Immigration Act (ie. supported it) which introduced the ‘hostile environment policy’ which led to the deportation of hundreds of Black people.  If Watson is into expelling every last anti-Semite then presumably he is in favour of expelling himself as an incorrigible racist?  And given the way Ed Miliband pandered throughout his miserable leadership to racists, with those Labour Immigration Control mugs, presumably we can start by purging the Parliamentary Labour Party?

Of course this won’t happen. Anti-Semitism is the most marginal form of racism in Britain today.  The fact that the Labour Party is alleged to be overrun by it is testimony to how a ruling class, narrative, Orwellian in the way Black has become White has come to dominate the media.

What Watson really means by his declaration of running every anti-Semite out of the Labour Party, is that hostilities will continue until Corbyn is removed. It is a declaration of war and for McDonnell to simply mouth the same pieties is unforgiveable. He is in essence giving the green light to Watson and the Labour Right to continue a campaign whose sole purpose is to be rid of Corbyn as leader. 

It was therefore pretty sickening to hear McDonnell fawning over Momentum’s latest video attacking the Rothschild’s meme (basically that the Rothchilds finance Israel etc.) At a time when the Home Office is chartering planes to take Black people to the West Indies as part of their hostile environment policy Momentum under Lansman is obsessed by ‘anti-Semitism’, the most marginal of all forms of racism.

Rothschild’s conspiracy theories are believed by nutcases like David Icke. They have no popular purchase and are essentially harmless. For Momentum to concentrate on nonsense like this when there is real state racism, when Tommy Robinson’s thugs are active and when Apartheid Israel is continuing to use snipers to murder unarmed demonstrators is sick.

No one seriously thinks anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is a problem. It barely exists outside of the Daily Mail’s headlines.  Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman faced reselection problems not because they were Jews but because they are obnoxious right-wingers.

What is appalling is the way that so called left-wingers and socialists like McDonnell feel unable to stand up and call it out.

Jews in Britain are not being deported back to where their ancestors came from. They don’t die in police custody. They are not disproportionately gaoled. They do not fear (with the exception of the visually distinctive Ultra Orthodox) attacks on the street and the Ultra Orthodox have distanced themselves from the mainstream Zionist Board of Deputies attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, although the media deliberately didn’t report a letter from 29 rabbis last year distancing themselves from the Zionist attacks on Corbyn. Jews are not  economically deprived nor do they live in the inner cities.  Jews have long moved out of the East End into the suburbs of London.

It is an easily verifiable fact that the false anti-Semitism campaign was launched as soon as a Jeremy Corbyn leadership became apparent.

A month before Corbyn was elected the Daily Mail was accusing Corbyn of associating with a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. The attention of the Zionists then turned to Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman before the incident of ‘anti-Semitism’ at Oxford University Labour Club.  All of these were fake and manufactured incidents as Asa Winstanley documented. The Chair of Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, just happened to have worked as an intern for the main Israeli propaganda group in Britain, BICOM.

The witchhunters then moved on.  I was suspended in March 2016 and Jackie Walker was suspended two months later. Around the same time Ken Livingstone was demonised for having said that the Nazis supported Zionism during the 1930’s, something clearly a matter of historical record.

If McDonnell ever got anywhere near power the Zionists would turn on him and dig up every 'skeleton' from the IRA to the PLO

Only last July the Jewish Chronicle and two other Zionist papers printed a joint editorial United We Stand which spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’ Corbyn was deemed a threat to the very existence of the Jewish community in Britain.  In other words he was anti-Semitic. Accusations that Chris Williamson was a ‘Jew Baiter’ have been the staple of Zionist propaganda. 

Yet instead of calling these false anti-Semitism attacks out, McDonnell beats his breast about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party and how we must engage in a purge.  McDonnell is Tom Watson’s useful idiot. Anyone with the slightest guts would call out Watson and the Labour Right for their abysmal record on racism in Britain against Black and Asian people.

The real problem is that Corbyn and McDonnell believe that the road to power is via appeasing the majority of Labour MPs.  They are sadly wrong. It will not happen.  Last September Corbyn opposed Open Selection, the only device that would have allowed the composition of the PLP to change. He is now paying the price.

They said that adoption of the IHRA would put the anti-Semitism nonsense to bed.  A ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and which defines hostility to Israel as hostility to Jews.

When last year it was seen as possible that Corbyn wouldn’t survive and McDonnell was seen a possible successor the Jewish Chronicle and the Zionists immediately began digging into their files for evidence of McDonnell’s ‘anti-Semitism’.

McDonnell’s embrace of this false narrative, which is counter to the experience of all Labour Party members, is like drinking poison. It is utterly suicidal. It is clear that Watson is involved in preparations for a coup, whether it is a breakaway inside the PLP as the Sunday Times speculates or simply forcing Corbyn to resign. McDonnell’s behaviour is akin to treachery and it is no accident that he and Lansman are thick as thieves.

What McDonnell and the Labour Left, which today is difficult to discern in the PLP, should do is to call out the Labour supporters of Apartheid in Israel, i.e. Tom Watson and company.  When edicts are issued in Israel by Chief Rabbis against even Israeli Arabs renting rooms or flats in cities like Safed and members of the Labour Party like Luke Akehurst justify Israel’s use of snipers to mow down peaceful and unarmed demonstrators it is clear that McDonnell and other ‘lefts’ have lost the plot.

Yes there should be a purge but of the racist Right in the Labour Party not the anti-Zionist left.

Tony Greenstein

George Soros - a unifying figure for Trump, the Zionists and the antisemites of the Alt-Right

Soros the ‘Puppet Master’ is at the heart of the anti-Semitism which Zionism Koshers

When the Tory tabloids ran a series of anti-semitic headlines attacking George Soros, including the Nazi term Puppet Master the Zionist 'opponents' of antisemitism like the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism remained silent

One of the central features of anti-Semitic ideology is the all-powerful global Jewish financier. In previous times the Rothschild family fulfilled this role, today it is George Soros. The Jewish World Conspiracy Theory, whereby Jews control both capitalism and communism is personified in such a person. Jewish capitalists were supposed to have funded the Bolshevik revolution and Hitler’s anti-Semitism stemmed from his belief that Communism was a Jewish creation. [Jewish Bolshevism]

It needs to be said that Soros, who was one of those who funded a range of anti-Communist groups in the former Soviet Block is no revolutionary. But his funding of liberal and civil society groups, including human rights organisations and his opposition to Brexit has aroused the ire of a broad swathe of the Right, including the neo-Nazi and overtly anti-Semitic Right.  The image of Soros that the anti-Semites portray is a fiction, it is the traditional anti-semitic image of the manipulative Jewish financier.  It bears no resemblance to Soros just as anti-semitic imagery also bears no relation to Jews. But the fact that Soros is a billionaire speculator is no justification for anti-semitic attacks on him.

Battle of Waterloo

In 1940 the Nazis produced a film Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo about Nathan Rothschild and how he made his fortune out of the bloodshed of Waterloo. It was based on a pamphlet which took the Europe of 1846 by storm. It still resonates to this day.

There are even some fools in the Palestine solidarity movement who trace the existence of Israel to ‘the Rothschilds’. In fact the actual relationship between this family and the Zionist movement was a very mixed one. At the outset ‘Herzl appealed in vain to wealthy Jews such as Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the national Zionist movement.’ Lionel Nathan de Rothschild founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews in 1917.

The Rothschilds have been replaced by the figure of George Soros, who was a child survivor of the Hungarian Holocaust. Soros has become the unifying figure for the anti-Semitic and Zionist Right.

Glenn Beck outlining the tentacles of George Soros, the great financial manipulator

According to Glenn Beck Soros was “the puppetmaster” – a Jewish financier with ties to no nation, intent on creating a “one world government” and subverting the United States. It is an anti-Semitic phrase that the Sun also used on a headline when attacking Soros over Brexit before quickly withdrawing it.

Beck described how “Eighty years ago George Soros was born, little did people know that economies would collapse, currencies would become worthless, elections would be stolen.” Gideon Rachman describes how ‘The nastiest moment (amongst much competition) comes when Beck tries to claim that the 14-year-old Soros came from an anti-semitic family and himself participated in the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.’

In April Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in a campaign against the absent Soros. Orbán ran his campaign on the single issue of migration. Orban accused Soros of a ‘plot... to send millions of migrants to Hungary.’

All of Orban’s anti-Semitic venom was encapsulated in his speech of 15^th March commemorating the 170^th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. It is, to be sure, a classic summation of the caricature of the Jew as a rootless cosmopolitan, owing loyalty to nothing but his own purse.

“We must fight against an opponent which is different from us. Their faces are not visible, but are hidden from view; they do not fight directly, but by stealth; they are not honourable, but unprincipled; they are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs. They are not generous, but vengeful, and always attack the heart—especially if it is red, white and green.”

Evolve politics, which describes itself as ‘truly independent’ thus making me immediately suspicious, describes how the Tories have appointed one Roger Scruton, on the far-Right of British politics to chair an architecture quango.  Scruton was Editor of the Salisbury Review, a Tory magazine which believed Margaret Thatcher was a dangerous radical, for 18 years. 

Luciana Berger, Labour Zionist MP, takes objection to the appointment of Roger Scruton whilst turning a blind eye to Israel's love affair with Orban

More hypocrisy from an MP who is a last ditch defender of Israel's racist policies

In an example of the hypocrisy that passes for Zionist politics Luciana Berger, the Labour Zionist MP who fronts the Jewish Labour Movement and spends most of her time attacking Jeremy Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’ had the audacity to say that ‘An individual who peddles antisemitic conspiracy theories has no place advising government about anything.’ Quite why this should be so when Sir Eric Pickles was until recently in the Cabinet is difficulty to understand.  Naturally opportunist rent a mouth MP Wes Streeting joined in. Both of them were aghast because Scruton was a supporter of Viktor Orban.  Why the surprise?

Tory MEPs have just voted to defend Orban in the European parliament. The same Tory MEPs sit in the European Conservative Reform group with at least 3 anti-Semitic parties with barely a murmur from the Zionists.

Orban's 'outstanding statesman' with friend - Zionist labour can't criticise the Tories support for Orban without asking why Orban was a guest of honour in Israel last July

I have repeatedly written that Orban has called Admiral Horthy, the pro-Nazi ruler of Hungary who presided over the deportation to Auschwitz of nearly half a million Jews an “exceptional statesmen”.  None of this prevented Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visiting Orban on a state visit in the summer of 2017.

Add caption

I also described how ‘Orban dedicated a nasty and vicious poster campaign to attacking Soros last year, replete with all the anti-Semitic dog whistles that only he was capable of.  Hungary’s Jewish community was up in arms.’  Why are anti-Semitic regimes so attractive to Israel and the Zionist movement?

Anti-semitic Republican cartoon attacking Democrate candidate - with fistful of dollars in her hand - the dogs are whistling

Reuters reported last year that ‘Israel’s ambassador to Hungary issued a statement denouncing the campaign, saying it “evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear”, an apparent reference to Hungary’s part in the deportation of half a million Jews during the Holocaust. But here’s the strange thing. Netanyahu ‘hit the roof. He wasn’t going to have his closest ally in Europe attacked because of a little local anti-Semitism.’

Hours after the Ambassador made his comments, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, issued a “clarification” saying that Soros was a legitimate target for criticism. Surprise, surprise!

In 2017 Orban launched a poster campaign against George Soros in Budapest as part of his campaign to close Soros's European University - when the Israeli Ambassador uttered a few mild criticisms he was forced to retract by Netanyahu

“In no way was the statement (by the ambassador) meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments,” said foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, adding that Soros funded organizations “that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself”. Israel backs Hungary, says financier Soros is a threat

As Evolve observes

‘Orban even went as far as commissioning a deeply antisemitic advertising campaign that plastered Soros’ grinning face on billboards with the caption “Don’t let George Soros have the last laugh.“

What Netanyahu is saying is that Soros helps fund Israeli human rights groups like B’tselem and in Netanyahu’s eyes this counts as ‘undermining’ his police state regime. All of this took place without a murmur from Luciana.  Because of course she had bigger fish to fry namely Corbyn and it wouldn’t do to criticise her favourite state (Israel in case you wondered) as anti-Semitic.

Yair Netanyahu's anti-semitic cartoon of Soros attracted rare praise for a Jew from the Daily Stormer - possibly a first

Daily Stormer

None of this is surprising, because to Netanyahu Soros is the anti-Christ (we don’t have an anti-Moses!). Netanyahu’s son, Yair, helpfully posted a nice anti-Semitic cartoon of Soros at the centre of a conspiracy, complete with Lizard to undermine the Israeli state.  Praise came from neo-Nazi former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke no less.  Indeed Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer joined in the congratulations, which is no mean feat since he has sworn never to talk to or meet a Jew.

David Duke, neo-Nazi ex-KKK gives his approval to antisemitic cartoon by Netanyahu's son Yair

Not it should be thought that Orban is the only anti-Semite that Netanyahu has close and friendly relations with.  Poland’s Law and Justice Party is just as close which is why when Poland passed a law making criticism of Polish collaboration with the Nazis a criminal offence, Netanyahu moved quickly to head off criticism by concocting a deal with them that left the legislation in place. The Real Reason Netanyahu Gave Cover To Holocaust Deniers

Holocaust survivors and anti-racist Israelis picket Yad Vashem during Orban's visit 

Naturally, having been invited to visit Hungary on a state visit Netanyahu returned the favour and last July Orban found time to visit his best friend.  As is normal on these occasions Orban paid homage at the Holocaust propaganda museum that Israel maintains, Yad Vashem. We therefore had the ludicrous situation of someone who thinks Horthy, who sent nearly half a million Jews to their deaths, is an ‘exceptional statesman’ paying homage to the 6 million.  Pass the sick bag Alice, as Private Eye used to say.

However none of the claque of Zionist Labour MPs had anything to say about this.  It was left to some of Israel’s Holocaust survivors to picket Orban when he paid homage at Yad Vashem. The Times of Israel’s report of the demonstration Livid protesters block Hungarian PM Orban as he leaves Yad Vashem quoted Yad Vashem as saying that ‘its hosting of Orban was determined by Foreign Ministry directives, which require foreign leaders and other visiting dignitaries to visit the memorial.’  If Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, which has always produced a Zionised version of Holocaust history, erasing for years the name even of the Auschwitz escapees Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (because they were not Zionists) cannot even refuse entrance to a known anti-Semite because it has to follow government instructions then there is no other way to describe it other than a propaganda institution.

Below is an excellent article in Jewish Currents, a left-wing American Jewish publication on what it calls The Soros Myth.

Tony Greenstein

The Soros Myth - Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Undermining and Delegitimizing of Protest

Racism, Antisemitism, ideas of “outside agitators” are the right’s most effective tools for delegitimizing the message and messengers of social justice. If protest can be blamed on those outside, both the message and the messenger are untrustworthy.

October 11, 2018 Dove Kent; Jewish Currents (Portside)

Protestors opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, September 2018., Photo: Mobilus In Mobili via Flickr // Jewish Currents

For decades, the right has undermined Black protest and resistance movements as “violent,” “dangerous,” and “un-American” and has responded with militarized force. Under this administration, Trump and his allies are replicating and amplifying this strategy, using misogyny and antisemitism to further erode the basic foundations of political participation.

In response to weeks of women and trans protests demanding that Judge Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault, be removed from consideration for the Supreme Court, Donald Trump tweeted out:

The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers

This was quickly followed by a retweeted antisemitic message from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and a longtime Republican leader, calling Soros the enemy of Christ:

Follow the money. I think Soros is the anti-Christ! He must go! Freeze his assets & I bet the protests stop.

Trump and his allies’ deployment of misogyny and antisemitism in this moment are attempts to  undermine our movements, echoing ways the right wing has long attacked protest movements on the left. The power of protest lies in its credibility as the voice of public opinion. If women and trans protestors can be dismissed as pawns or operatives rather than agents of social change, then the power of protest is weakened. If a single Jew can be blamed for orchestrating the whole affair, then the power of protest is further eroded.

Birds of a feather and all that

This antisemitic rhetoric from the state echoes among white nationalists. In the days following Trump’s tweet and Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, fliers (created by the Daily Stormer) appeared on college campuses and in cities in California and New York. The fliers blamed Jews for orchestrating the assault allegations brought against Judge Kavanaugh. They read: “Every time some anti-white, anti-American, anti-freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it.” The Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center (the community center I grew up in) was vandalized with dozens of swastikas.

Trump’s white nationalist audience knows what he means when he points the finger at Soros—he’s invoking a time-tested antisemitic strategy for undermining social movements. According to Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) Board Member Dania Rajendra:

Antisemitism and the idea of “outside agitators” is the right’s most effective tool for delegitimizing both the message and messengers of social justice. If protest can be blamed on those outside of the state, then both the message and the messenger are untrustworthy. Delegitimizing both is necessary to eventually repress or expel said “troublemakers” by the forces of “law and order.” And in fact, we saw the president say exactly that to a conference of police the same week as his post-Kavanaugh-protest Soros tweet.

We know that we need a strong, vibrant, awake electorate holding elected officials accountable. Undermining the credibility of protest is an extremely effective tool of protecting those in power.

Right-wing regimes have long broken down the fabric of political protest by using the antisemitic notion of rich Jewish financiers as the “puppet masters” of social unrest. During the Russian Revolution, the Tsar’s secret police published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fictional account of a meeting of rich Jews plotting to break down the society of their “host countries” and rule the world through the promotion of social upheaval. For a period, the Protocols did its job to undermine and destabilize the revolution against the Tsar. Because of its success, it’s been translated and promoted by right-wing ideologues around the world ever since.

The Protocols gave us dog whistle terms like “globalist,” a slur associated with Jews that paint them as untrustworthy, ready to betray the nations of their residence in service of an unseen authority. The general idea, from JFREJ’s resource Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to our Movement, is that “Jews are a powerful, corrupting influence on otherwise good, pure people—insidious troublemakers with a nefarious agenda at odds with that of the good, ‘true’ citizens of a nation.”

During McCarthyism, these well known stereotypes about Jews were used to tar communists and leftist movement activists (Jewish and non-Jewish) as untrustworthy, two-faced “troublemakers” with foreign loyalties detrimental to the United States. The over-representation of Jews and non-Jewish people of color (always seen as suspect by the white owning class) in leftist movement circles made these claims plausible. Through institutional state repression and violence—blacklisting, closures of organizations, and ultimately the public execution of the Rosenbergs—the Red Scare successfully decimated the social fabric of leftist movements.

It is deeply troubling to see these same tropes, indeed some of the very same language, being used against today’s social movements by the president and leaders of the Republican party. Trump and other Republicans have regularly claimed that George Soros (the central target of this anti-Semitic messaging) is entirely behind the Movement for Black Lives. Here racism and antisemitism intersect: rather than admit that a strong, powerful Black liberation movement is growing throughout the US, some white people would believe that it is one or a few rich Jews propping up Black people to cause unrest in the streets and undermine white Christian society.

It's not just antisemitism on its own, but antisemitism deployed against the left that gives the lie about Soros its cultural power. Our side can point out that right-wing efforts are funded by the Koch, Walton and Mercer families all day long, but that fact and its broadcast never delegitimizes their endeavors. That's because the Soros lie—the invocation of the idea of the scary, untrustworthy Jew—is built on top of a bunch of other assumptions: that "real" Americans are Christian and white, and hew to patriarchal gender norms and racial segregation.

Luckily, we know how to fight back. We can recognize the ways in which racism, antisemitism, and misogyny are deployed to keep our movements weak and divided and we can refuse to fall for conspiracy theories. We can join together in the raw, tough, honest work of building multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-class, multi-faith movements. We can center the leadership of those most impacted. We can collectively disinvest from whiteness and practice multi-racial democracy in everything we do.

In the face of the destructive attacks of the extreme right wing, we have an opportunity to respond with a solidarity that buttresses and expands democracy—a rebuttal to an oppressive past and a promise for a liberated future.

[Dove Kent is an organizer, educator, and movement builder based in Durham, North Carolina. She is the former Executive Director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.]

Trump and McConnell Take Gaslighting to New Level in Kavanaugh Confirmation Fight

The use of an anti-Semitic trope to condemn protesters for exercising their First Amendment rights signals a turning point in the authoritarian trajectory of our politics.

By Adele M. Stan

October 5, 2018
The American Prospect

President Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Rochester, Minnesota, on October 4, 2018. credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci  //  The American Prospect

The confirmation process for President Donald J. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, continues to be a significant test of the U.S. form of government, and a display of high drama.

Washington, D.C., was only on its third cup of coffee when the presidential tweethit: “The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad,” wrote Trump. “Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers.”

He was speaking, of course, of the sexual assault survivors—mostly women—who have been following the example set by Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher when they famously confronted Republican Senator Jeff Flake by holding his elevator door open and imploring him to consider the experiences of those who have been targets of sexual assault when deciding whether to vote for moving the nomination to the Senate floor.

Before long, speaking from the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had recently promised the religious right that he and his caucus planned to “plow right through” the confirmation—complained of the “harm” he said was done to Kavanaugh and his family because of allegations of sexual assault made against him by Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor from California. Then McConnell cast the thousands of protesters who have come to the U.S. Capitol buildings in opposition to the nomination as “the mob.”

In both instances, these national leaders branded people exercising their First Amendment rights as dangerous.

In both instances, these national leaders branded people exercising their First Amendment rights as dangerous.McConnell complained of security threats to senators. And Trump trotted out the right’s favorite code word for its ideology of anti-Semitism. That word is “Soros.”

In both the fever swamps of the American right, and the forests of Europe’s right-wing nationalist movements, the hedge fund billionaire George Soros—a Jewish Holocaust survivor born in Hungary—has become a favorite bogeyman because of his support of liberal and civil-society groups. In Europe, he is cast as a destroyer of Europe’s Christian values. (His Open Society Foundation was pushed out of Hungary, which also recently passed anti-immigration legislation dubbed the “Stop Soros” law.) He’s also a favorite target of the U.S. right, where invocation of his name carries the same sort of anti-Semitic code. Here, he’s reviled for donating to progressive and liberal groups, and has consequently become fodder for the conspiracy theorists of the right.

One racist congratulating another

Characterizations of Soros by right-wing figures follow the outline of old anti-Semitic tropes such as the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and conspiracies supposedly involving the Rothschild family.

This is the strategy of authoritarians. Create fear that chaos created by backlash to the authoritarian’s exercise of raw power is really taking place at the direction of one very powerful enemy. Discourage people from public protest by painting the opposition as “evil,” as Trump did in the Mississippi rally he led this week, where he mocked Ford for her inability to remember every single little detail of the 1982 evening on which she says she was assaulted by Kavanaugh.

“These are really evil people,” Trump said of Ford and the Democrats who insisted on her right to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose job it is to vet nominees to the federal bench. Note that among the right-wing evangelicals who comprise much of Trump’s base, “evil” is regarded as an existential spiritual threat, the stuff of Satan.

As I write this, the outcome of the final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit on the highest court in the land is not certain. But the clampdown is coming—a clampdown on dissent, a clampdown on access to the levers of congressional process by the president’s opponents.

As I write this, the outcome of the final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit on the highest court in the land is not certain. But the clampdown is coming—a clampdown on dissent, a clampdown on access to the levers of congressional process by the president’s opponents. As McConnell promised, he really has “plow[ed] right through” this nomination process, complete with a final FBI report on the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh that, through circumscription of inquiry imposed by the White House, amounted to a whitewash.

The exercise of authoritarian power is not anything that Trump, McConnell, and their allies even attempt to conceal at this point. It’s happening in front of your face. Pay attention. Take note of the signs. But don’t let it keep you from the streets, or from the voting booth.

The republic as we have known it could cease to exist if we allow it. And that time is growing closer. They’re playing for all the marbles. They mustn’t be allowed to win.

[Adele M. Stan is a columnist for The American Prospect. She is research director of People for the American Way, and a winner of the Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism.]