Equating Dissent with Anti-Semitism: a Beacon at the Edge of the Abyss

There have been a barrage of stories about the spread of anti-Semitism among anti-establishment forces. A recent example is Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura's "For U.K.’s Labour, Anti-Semitism Is as Divisive and Damaging as Brexit." The New York Times reporter traveled to Liverpool to uncover evidence of Jew hatred among Labour Party members in the Wavertree constituency because

[I]ts member of Parliament, Luciana Berger, resigned this week after receiving anti-Semitic abuse, and with local Labour activists having called her a “disruptive Zionist” and a supporter of a “murdering” government.

Lucian Berger is one of the eight Labour MPs to abandon the party this week to form something called the "Independent Group." They were joined by three Tories.

Craig Murray took aim at Berger in his Tuesday post "Democracy and the Corrupt Seven (Eight)":

Luciana Berger is a one trick pony and it is worth noting that her complaints about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party date back to at least 2005, while Tony Blair was still Prime Minister. Berger had already by April 2005 spotted anti-Semitism in the National Union of Students, in the Labour Party and in her student union newspaper, those being merely the examples cited in this single Daily Telegraph article. I am extremely sorry and somewhat shocked to hear of the swamp of anti-semitism in which we were all already mired in 2005, but I do find it rather difficult to understand why the fault is therefore that of Jeremy Corbyn. And given that Tony Blair was at that time Prime Minister for eight years, I cannot understand why it is all Corbyn’s fault and responsibility now, but it was not Blair’s fault then.

On the contrary, the Telegraph puff piece states that Berger had met Blair several times and was Euan Blair’s girlfriend. This was of course before the privately educated Londoner was foisted on the unfortunate people of Liverpool Wavetree, doubtless completely unfacilitated by her relationship with Euan Blair.

The kind of abuse Berger has evidently been attracting since at least 2005 is of course a crime. Two people have quite rightly been convicted of it. Joshua Bonehill-Paine and John Nimmo sent a series of truly disgusting tweets and both were jailed. Both are committed long term neo-nazis. Yet I have repeatedly heard media references to the convictions squarely in the context of Labour Party anti-semitism. I have never heard on broadcast media it explained that neither had anything to do with the Labour Party. Like the left wing anti-semitism Berger has been reporting since at least 2005, this Nazi abuse too is all somehow Jeremy Corbyn’s fault.

It is further worth noting that in that 2005 article Berger claims a 47% increase in attacks on Jews, which is highly reminiscent of recent claims from community groups, such as the 44% increase claimed 2015 to 2017 or the 78% increase in violent crimes against Jews in the UK in 2017 alone claimed by the government of Israel.

One antisemitic attack is too many and all anti-semitism is to be deplored and rooted out. But if all these claims repeated again and again over decades of 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70% increases in attacks per year were true, then we would be now talking of at least 12,000 violent attacks on Jews per year, if we take Ms Berger’s 2005 claim as the baseline.

Yet we are not seeing that. The average number of convictions per year for violent, racially motivated attacks on Jewish people in the UK is less than one.

If we add in non-violent crimes, the number of people convicted per year for anti-semitic hate crime still remains under 20. And I am not aware of a single such conviction related in any way to the Labour Party.

Murray also took aim at Joan Ryan, another one of the eight defecting Labour MPs, by noting

If you want to understand that the UK truly is not a functioning democracy, consider this. Joan Ryan is all over the MSM this morning as being the eighth defector to the Independent Group. Yet astonishingly, while she is universally reported as citing anti-semitism as the reason she is leaving, it appears not one MSM journalist has asked her about her receipt of US$1 million from the Israeli Embassy for spreading Israeli influence. Not one. Nor has any mainstream media outlet cited the fact in its reporting today. Most, of course, never even mentioned it at the time.

Well, Freytas-Tamura does mention it in her NYT story; in fact, drawing attention to Israeli funding of the Independent Group is evidence of anti-Semitism:

And just hours before Ms. Ryan’s defection, another Labour member of Parliament came under fire for suggesting that the seven rebel lawmakers might have had financial backing from Israel, in what critics said invoked a well-known trope.

“Over the past three years, the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism,” Ms. Ryan wrote in a statement posted on her Twitter account. The problem did not exist in the party before he was elected leader, she said, adding, “No previous Labour leader would have allowed this huge shame to befall the party.”

With French President Emmanuel Macron equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in a widely publicized speech this week (see Will Morrow's "Macron threatens to criminalize opposition to Zionism in France") what we are witnessing is a prohibition of criticism of the Israeli state. Since the politicians who are fronting this effort are -- Macron is a perfect example -- staunch neoliberals who favor an endless number of foreign military interventions, what we have here is a bold move to declare dislike of the status quo as anti-Semitic.

This comes at a time when the Russian Internet bogeyman is starting to deflate while Internet censorship is locking in. New propaganda is required to keep people penned in on the neoliberal perpetual warfare reservation. Equating dissent with anti-Semitism is a desperate, last-ditch effort, a beacon at the edge of the abyss.

That abyss will be an attempt by Western leaders to construct a police state reminiscent of Thailand or Egypt.