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The Guardian's 'Anti-Semitism' Incident
Cook, Jonathan
http://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/09/the-guardians-anti-semitism-incident/Date Written: 2023-05-09 Publisher: Consortium News Year Published: 2023 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX24872 With the row over its cartoon, the newspaper that helped oust Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party has briefly found that what you sow, you can reap. Abstract: - Excerpt: The aim was not to weaponise anti-Semitism to damage The Guardian, as happened to Corbyn, but to reinforce the limits of public discourse. It was a reminder that there is a price to pay -- potentially a catastrophic one -- for straying too far into topics the establishment wishes to remain off-limits. It was a reminder that the charge of anti-Semitism is still a powerful bludgeon, one that can be deployed to intimidate the left when its critiques of key establishment interests gain too much traction. How can we be so sure? Because that same bludgeon is kept safely in the drawer whenever it comes to the right, however overtly anti-Semitic their politics. ... There is another reason why the establishment's discourse enthusiastically embraces political confusion about anti-Semitism. The far-right has polluted the well from which the left once drank. It has imbued the imagery and language relied on by the left to mobilise popular sentiment against ruling elites with the taint of anti-Semitism . Now meaningful critiques of power can be easily and retroactively diagnosed as symptoms of anti-Semitism -- because the left's tools have been stolen from them. The left has been stripped of the populist lexicon with which to attack the ruling class. This has been particularly obvious in relation to criticism of Israel, now defined as the 'New Anti-Semitism.' Cartoonists using visual 'tropes' to ascribe malign motivation to foreign powers, whether Official Enemies such as Syria and Russia or Good Guys such as Western states, find themselves certain to come a cropper if they try to do the same with Israel. ... The Labour Party under Starmer has only intensified this erosion of the left's room to critique Israel. Now the use of terms like 'Zionism,' the racist political ideology that seeks to justify Israel's oppression of Palestinians, or 'Israeli apartheid,' the outcome of decades of Zionist policy in Israel and Palestine, are cited as evidence of anti-Semitism. But the rot has spread much further afield. Nowadays, simply using expressions like 'the ruling class,' 'bankers,' the 'establishment' or 'a global elite' is likely to get one denounced as an anti-Semite, as though anyone referencing these predatory groups representing global capital must also believe that Jews are a cabal controlling the world. Subject Headings |