The Left is deceiving itself over antisemitism
by Douglas Murray, UnHerd:
The Labour party’s antisemitism problem appears to be here to stay. And one reason for that lies deep beneath any one day’s news. It is not just that the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn is riddled with antisemites from top to bottom: people who have existed in the party and its surrounding areas for years but who have only now had a light shone upon them. It is much, much more than that. The problem is that there remains a set of fundamental misunderstandings on the political Left over what antisemitism is and where it comes from.
In May, I wrote for this website about the roots of this misunderstanding, which are there for anyone with ears to hear. It is there when Jeremy Corbyn and his followers claim that they will “defeat” or “end” antisemitism; as though one of the world’s oldest hatreds is some medical problem which can be solved with the right medicine. Or if enough ‘will’ is deployed. As I said back then, most Jews will laugh darkly at the idea that you can ever ‘eradicate’ antisemitism.
But the misunderstanding is telling. And it leads to the problem underlying the latest eruption of charges and embarrassments within UK Labour. One of the causes – which can be heard among all of the cheerleaders on the Corbynite Left – is that antisemitism is basically a right-wing disease and something which ‘anti-fascists’ of the kind that Corbynites like to fancy themselves as being could not possibly fall into.
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