What's left? How the left lost its way as anti-Semitism surges
My extended essay attempts to answer where the left has went wrong, as anti-Semitism spikes. If social democracy is to be saved, the politics of identity must be cast out.
Preamble
The following was originally published on Think Scotland in three parts as an extended essay which I am now republishing -adapted and edited - as one continuous piece.
It’s the product of a conversation where my Jewish ex-boyfriend asked me “why aren’t more non-Jews rallying to our side?”, as anti-Semitism spikes across the UK.
Searching for a serious answer, thoughts crystallised in my mind that a ‘new left’ has appeared in recent decades with roots in postmodern philosophies.
Occasionally called the ‘Brahmin left’ by academics, its adherents prefer to focus on the politics of identity than more traditional left politics. As Tony Blair (correctly) warned, it represents a cul-de-sac threatening to destroy social democratic movements. As a Scottish Labour member, my deep fear is that this ‘new left’ not merely represents an existential danger to my own party - and wider social-democratic politics - but also represents dangerous swamp where anti-Semitism is flourishing.
My contention is a simple one, albeit multifaceted. There is an illiberal ‘new left’, disinterested in discourses on socio-economic inequalities and class based concepts of solidarity. It suffers from an anti-Semitic blind-spot, which is a direct consequence of its postmodern philosophical traditions. At the same time, the sociological and psychological elements of conspiracies of silence and denial reinforces a collective refusal to acknowledge obvious truths vis à vis anti-Semitism.
In short, postmodernist philosophies are intermingling with the social organisation of silencing and denial. When taken altogether I believe this is why so few non-Jews (particularly on the so-called ‘progressive’ left) have rallied against the virulent sea of anti-Semitic hatred in our contemporary moment as Israel reacts to October 7.
It is my intention to outline my thesis as succinctly and accessibly as possible without counterproductive emotive language. I shall also attempt to avoid the dangers Eric Blair once warned us of - needless jargon. Should at times I fall short of either of these goals I ask your forbearance, and extend to me an assumption of honest intent.
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THE DAYS FOLLOWING OCTOBER 7 had me thinking back twelve years to when I was President of Stirling University Jewish Students Association. Back then I recall fearing a rising moral relativism and Israelophobia risked twisting anti-Zionism on parts of the left into outright antisemitism. Yet I could not have ever imagined by 2023 we would have witnessed the sight of elected Scottish politicians – consumed by an illiberal faux-progressive identity politics – blaming Jews for their own slaughter.
Perhaps my readiness to recognise the malevolent undertones of Jew-hatred in Blighty derives from my time having experienced an interfaith or inter-cultural relationship? It changes you, in all sorts of ways. It’s a bit like ecdysis – where the old dead cells fall away to reveal the new – it’s all part of a growing process. In my own case, spending a long time in a relationship with a Jewish partner resulted in fundamental alterations in my understanding, perceptions and worldviews.
Over time old preconceptions gave way to a deep and genuine appreciation for Jewish traditions, values, and way of life. Respect for Jewish traditions, involvement in Jewish community life, cultural awareness and a desire to be supportive of my partner’s faith all cajoled me toward a process of self-discovery which has made me a better person. Had I not ended up moving to lecture in China, I assuredly would have completed converting.
But not everyone has this sort of experience and insight to draw upon. Recently I was talking with my now former partner (we’re still quite close) he asked me
“Why aren’t more non-Jews rallying to our side?”
The question floored me and to answer it requires that British society undertake a serious reckoning. We have witnessed a tidal wave of anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli rhetoric barely disguising obscene anti-Semitism.
It is an urgent responsibility to understand what has been said, and dig deeper in order to deconstruct this dangerous new illiberalism on parts of Scotland’s political left. Scots must stop walking on eggshells and compel our sensible left to confront the elephant in the room: there is a dangerous illiberal faux-progressive identity politics presenting itself as a ‘new leftism’.
In what follows I will sum up political incidents which triggered my desire to write this before explaining the philosophical origins of this illiberal faux-progressive identity politics tragically consuming the political left. A place where Jewish people are never the victimised, only the victimiser.
Finally I will land on the sociological and psychological foundations of silence and denial, best captured by the three monkeys: hearing no evil, seeing no evil and speaking no evil.
1. Spontaneous sincerity
Spontaneous sincerity can be tremendously revealing. We have all witnessed that moment when contrived premeditation falls away in our everyday lives. For most, usually when imbibing our favoured brew at the pub and that one bloke intoxicated beyond the safe limits of good judgement and health opts to ‘tell it like it is’. Impacted by alcohol, the sudden impulse – unrestrained by fear of embarrassment – gives us a window into honest thoughts. Spontaneous sincerity in politics is often rarer, perhaps only caught when the live microphone catches the politician out saying what he really thinks (as Gordon Brown once discovered) or when Nicola Sturgeon could not control herself at the defeat of Jo Swinson. But in these rare moments the absence of pretence or the contrived is often extremely revealing.
It occurred to me, watching the weeks following October 7th that the Scottish Greens experienced this phenomenon following the brutal terrorist assault on mostly Jewish people in Israel. As news flowed out, most reacted with justified spontaneous horror and disgust at the criminality of Hamas. Thankfully the condemnation of Hamas as the terrorists they are was swift from most corners of the political sphere.
Yet, amid that heady maelstrom of emotions as the scale of the savagery filtered out, we witnessed spontaneous sincerity of a darker more malevolent form. Scottish Green politicians, unrestrained by fear of embarrassment and acting on impulse, provided an illuminating window into how they really think.
It provides a window into this ‘new leftism’ of moral relativism, illiberalism and faux-progressivism which needs to be confronted and condemned if social democratic politics is to survive.
On the day when the largest single massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust filtered across our newsfeeds, Ross Greer MSP tweeted “Palestinians have a clear right under international law to defend themselves, including by attacking their occupiers”
His post on ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter, was not a product of careful consideration by a politician. It was spontaneous sincerity. To Mr Greer, Hamas consists of freedom fighters rather than terrorists. Nobody ought to be surprised at this position a Green would impulsively take; after all since 2015 the Scottish Greens refuse to recognise Hamas as a proscribed terrorist organisation.
Worse followed as Maggie Chapman – risibly a member of Holyrood’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee – also shared her thoughts.
As scenes played out of Jewish women being kidnapped, blood covering their bodies due to rape and hundreds of youngsters at a peace concert were slaughtered en-masse, Ms Chapman blamed the victims.
Maggie Chapman also surreptitiously helped prevent Holyrood from displaying the Israeli flag in solidarity with the victims of Hamas terror. Andy Maciver, founder/director of Holyrood Sources and contributor to The Herald, said in response to this, “I just feel quite a lot of shame.”
Scotland’s Jewish community has learned an invaluable lesson. Our country has raised the flag for Ukraine, even in the past for Palestine, but not Israel. Scotland is presented as showing support for victims of terrorism – but with an asterisk. It does not apply if you’re an Israeli, or Jewish; then we are subject to lectures about ‘complexity’.
Thankfully what followed as rounded criticism from across the political sphere. Such was the opprobrium and outrage at these displays of how the Scottish Greens really think, the inevitable calculated backpaddling soon occurred and days later the Scottish Greens backtracked telling us they “condemn Hamas without hesitation”. Days after the Hamas slaughter of more than 1,200 Jewish men, women and children occurred Chapman tweeted out a ‘clarification’. She insists he “condemns” Hamas “wholeheartedly”.
It is not merely the Scottish Greens however where a spontaneous sincerity revealed itself. In the case of my own party, Mercedes Villalba MSP’s initial October 7th tweet was:
"The systematic oppression and domination of Palestinians by the Israeli government is a crime against humanity. We will not see peace or justice without an end to the occupation of Palestine."
You will all spot her failure to condemn the terrorist attack by Hamas. She, like Greer and Chapman see Israel as a coloniser state, apartheid and racist. That this is not true is a matter for a different discussion (although I spent more than an hour on UnTribal podcast explaining this matter). The issue more pertinent for our purposes here is that this was where their collective minds went.
As the horror played out, they felt a pressing need to ‘contextualise’ a Hamas pogrom against Israeli Jews. I have a big problem with that, even as I acknowledge they all subsequently attempted to place the genie back in the bottle by later condemning Hamas. Where I’m sitting it’s a case of too little, too late.
Specifically in the case of Ms Chapman, her problem is that she and the Scottish Greens didn’t and don’t condemn Hamas. Thanks to the phenomenon of spontaneous sincerity, we now know they don’t “condemn Hamas without hesitation”.
Since 2015 they have insisted, they aren’t terrorists. On the day when 1,200 people (and counting) were murdered, Greer and Chapman told us what they really thought, “Palestinians have a clear right under international law to defend themselves, including by attacking their occupiers” and “Viva Palestine”.
There is no placing this genie back in the bottle later, like the drunk propping up the bar suddenly waking up the next morning and decrying what they said. No amount of clarifying can - or should - make us forget. The fear of social opprobrium didn’t stop them victim blaming in real time, that was their moment of spontaneous sincerity when the mask of ‘cuddly party’ slipped.
And you will notice, there is not one hint of the word ‘sorry’ in any of the Scottish Green statements. Not even a ‘sorry not sorry’ political apology that us jaded writers of politics have come to anticipate. This is because their initial reactions on the 7th and 8th of October were spontaneous and sincere.
That really is what they thought and felt.
2. Land of confusion: post-enlightenment postmodern soup
WE HAVE SEEN HOW ‘spontaneous sincerity’ has exposed the true thoughts - in my view the naked antisemitism - existing in parts of the Left. Yet the larger question to be tackled is what radicalised people like Ross Greer and Maggie Chapman to such an extent? It’s time to deconstruct the driving forces which underpin this illiberal faux-progressive ‘new left’.
The ‘French Rise’ and the American Academy
Paul-Michel Foucault, born 1926, died 1984, likely a man you haven’t heard of but really ought to be familiar with. The French philosopher spent a lifetime on the political left. Having been a member of the French communist party, and having spent time working in the Soviet satellite state of Poland, he became disillusioned with the Marxism displayed in this era. He would go on, having witnessed growing general failures of orthodox Marxism to develop a postmodernism, based on scepticism of epistemic (scientific) certainties and rejectionism of “grand narratives”.
Philip Stokes, in his book ‘Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers’ provides a succinct summary of Foucault’s philosophy,
“The theme that underlies all Foucault’s work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as ‘scientific knowledge’ are really just means of social control.”
Foucault inspired a new wave of thinking on the left from the 1960s onward which we live with today. His questioning is the modern human sciences (biological, psychological, social) was on the basis that universal scientific truths about human nature are, in fact, often mere expressions of ethical and political commitments of a particular society. Foucault taught many on the left to reject notions such as universal scientific truths, arguing in fact they are merely products of ideology and power exercising themselves over knowledge.
As an aside, this perhaps offers some explanation as to why some of the illiberal faux-progressive ‘new left’ cascading across the western world today insist biological sex is merely a social construct. To the heirs of Foucault, universal scientific truths born out of modern (enlightenment based) human sciences are mere products of power over knowledge.
In this way, we identify something important about the madness consuming parts of the left in Scotland – these people really don’t believe in objective or universal truths.
Jacques Derrida is likely another French philosopher who you really ought to know more about. Born 1930, in French Algeria, died 2004, Derrida is the father of the deconstruction movement. Putting things simply, deconstruction attempts to show that the meaning of a work is unstable and could have multiple or alternative meanings. In short, you can actually ignore objective things like author’s intent. It is really a sort of lazy literary criticism, but its impact has led to things recognisable in our politics today, such as illiberal faux-progressives insisting that what you meant doesn’t matter, merely what they heard. Reading between lines which aren’t actually present, insisting on hearing ‘dog whistles’ where none where perhaps intended, suddenly everyone can be labelled transphobic, bigot, racist etc, all you need to do is follow Derrida’s lead and apply a form of literary criticism and apply it on all walks of life. In short, deconstruct. After all, this is postmodernism, and these people don’t believe in objective truths, merely an interplay of power hierarches.
We therefore have a broad outline forming:
Power over knowledge
Rejection of universal or objective truths
Deconstructionism
Postmodernism
How this became so widespread in the Anglosphere (but notice, not so prevalent in non-English-speakingcountries) is all the fault of the American academia. In the USA from the 1970s forward we can see what I call the ‘French rise’ in the humanities and social sciences departments in US universities. Foucault and Derrida became popular among leftist academics as they were compelled to slowly confront the inherent failures of orthodox Marxism. These two French philosophers offered up a chance to reinvent the wheel, casting out the notions of class consciousness struggles (and notions of solidarity) based on a Marxist scientific history concept (a “grand narrative” as Foucault puts it). Instead, a postmodernist creed based on self-reference (‘own personal truth’), came in, and power struggles between identity groups replaced those between social classes.
So, let’s add the final aspect of our broad outline:
Identity politics
Et voilà! An illiberal creed rejecting foundational elements of the enlightenment is born, consumed by identity politics groups fighting in a struggle for power over one another. Postmodernism run amok.
This leads us to the final issue; how do the illiberal faux-progressive adherents (such as the Scottish Greens) identify who is victimized and victimizer? Which group is oppressor and which is oppressed?
Enter intersectionality and the antisemitism of the ‘new left’
This brings us to the final element which explains why this ‘new left’ has such a problem detecting antisemitism. We need to talk about intersectionality, the final component of our puzzle.
Many of us like to imagine our opinion matters, but I need to break it to you, for adherents of the illiberal faux-progressive ‘new left’ – it doesn’t. Instead, what matters is your opinion only relative to your identity – and where that identity ranks on the hierarchy of intersectionality.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University coined the term ‘intersectionality’. She explained that intersectionality “was my attempt to make feminism, anti-racist activism, and anti-discrimination law do what I thought they should – highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced…”
Almost like a Venn diagram, you detect how many identity groups you belong to which (often legitimately) opens you up to discrimination and see how they intersect. Translating this into hard reality (and away from ivory towers on university campuses) means that your opinion depends on how many victim groups you can claim to belong to.
At the bottom of the totem pole is the majority group in the Anglosphere, the ‘straight, white male’.
Here is a hypothetical example which seems pertinent to the moment.
Let’s say we have two gay people, one is African-American and the other is Hispanic. They don’t belong to the same victim group racially, but they do belong to the same victim group on the basis of their sexuality.
Intersectionality focuses on the places where various victim identities intersect, creating an “us” versus “them “paradigm.
This explains twitter posts this week where my some of my fellow gays are rallying for Hamas controlled Gaza against Israel.
That’s intersectionality at work. They’re united by their victim status that it doesn’t matter if Hamas Islamists would throw us homosexuals off of buildings or rape kidnapped Jewish women. How perceived victimhood intersects trumps all other considerations. It’s deranging, postmodern rubbish, but many profoundly believe it.
In recent years it’s hardly a difficult task to point to examples of this. In the not so distant passed we saw this play out in real time when on live television in America Whoopie Goldberg insisted the Holocaust wasn’t about racism. Jews aren’t the victim; Jews are at the bottom of this totem-pole of victimhood.
Goldberg explained on The View: “Let’s be truthful about it because Holocaust isn’t about race,” “It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
When co-host Ana Navarro pointed out, “But it’s about white supremacists going after Jews.” Goldberg’s response was, “But these are two white groups of people!”
In Scotland, and across the wider English-speaking world, Jewish people are seen as ‘white’, educationally successful compared to other demographic groups and well-integrated into the majority society. In this way, antisemitism rears its ugly head on this illiberal ‘new leftism’ of Corbyn and the Scottish Greens. To folk like Goldberg et al Jews aren’t really victims of racial prejudice as Jews are “white”.
This is antisemitism as a product of the faux-progressivism of intersectionality, deconstruction, identity politics and rejectionism of universal or objective truths.
Goldberg’s comments are cut from the same cloth as what we witnessed in recent weeks with the Scottish Greens. They insist the Jews are somehow the “coloniser” in their own homeland, even as 1200+ are slaughtered. It’s their slaughterers who are the real victims. To people like Goldberg, Chapman and Greer, Jews are “white groups of people”, not applicable to be seen as victimised.
It’s also why Corbyn couldn’t detect the antisemitism on that wall mural he defended which pictured several apparently Jewish bankers playing a game of Monopoly, with their table top resting on the bowed naked backs of several workers. All the anti-Semitic stereotypes were immediately visible, but not to an identity politics ‘new leftie’.
It doesn’t compute in the minds of adherents of this scary worldview of the postmodernist ‘new left’ that Jews are victims of racial hatred.
It’s all a sordid mixture of the poverty of low expectations meeting a new form of Orientalism. There is no doubt in my mind that to some on the illiberal left that the ‘westernised white Jew’ of their imaginings in Israel cannot possibly be ‘oppressed’. In their Foucault and Derrida ridden mindset, it is instead the Arab they unwittingly orientalise.
This means for people like Greer and Chapman they can expect less from a Palestinian than the “white” ‘westernised’ Jew. It’s a sordid mixture of antisemitism, orientalism and the poverty of low expectations intermingling beneath a worldview where objective truth doesn’t exist, leaving only power hierarches of oppressor and oppressed.
Postmodern philosophies turn Jews from victimised into victimisers
It seems to me that to the illiberal, identity politics touting faux-progressive ‘new left’, Jewish people aren’t victims. Which is why people such as Jeremy Corbyn struggles to even identify antisemitism and Scottish Green MSPs blame the Jewish victims in real time as they are being massacred under the guise of ‘providing context’.
Why? Because to someone corrupted by the writings of Foucault and Derrida, Jews can’t be victimised, but merely victimisers. It’s at the heart of the profound problem of antisemitism on the far left of our Scottish politics today.
“The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.” Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel 1964-1979
Remember this, I beg of you all, going forward as Israel steps up its response to Hamas.
3. Our elephant in the room: silence and denial in everyday life
AS ALICE PLUMMETED down the rabbit-hole in Lewis Carroll’s famous 1865 novel, she mused ‘Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end!…how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’
Tumbling down the rabbit-hole has become synonymous with getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. As English vernacular for distraction, getting lost and losing track, the idiom perfectly fits the current tragedy of our moment.
The last month has witnessed a tragedy of untold proportions unfolding in the Levant, as 1,200+ mostly Jews were slaughtered. A calamity which has loosened the always-present danger of the timetable for punch and counter-punch in what is apocryphally known as the Holy Land.
But the seemingly endless ‘peace marches for Palestine’ indicate that it isn’t just in Israel where a lurking danger has been loosened. There’s something very wrong closer to home. We need to go beyond identifying examples of spontaneous sincerity indicating - at the very least - anti-Semitic blind spots. Equally, examining how certain post-modern philosophies have served to erode and challenge the legitimate role of the social democratic left is also insufficient.
When last weekend I was talking with my now former partner (we’re still quite close) he asked me
“Why aren’t more non-Jews rallying to our side?”
This question floored me and to answer it requires we undertake a serious reckoning. In attempting to provide a serious answer to him, so far -keeping it brief - I have outlined how a generation on the left have been inculcated by illiberal post-modern ideas:
Foucault’s insistence that all knowledge is merely the result of ideology and power imposing itself is widespread. A land where objective truths don’t exist, merely games of power.
Derrida’s lazy deconstructionism has primed young student activists to feel entitled to dismiss intended meanings. Why bother worrying about authors intent or identifying the main idea when you can simply pull evidence apart and piece back together in any way which best accommodates your ‘own personal truth’?
Never forget this is now the land of the blind, where the one-eyed man is the bloke who can claim the most intersections of victimhood in his Crenshawe Venn-diagram of oppressed.
But this is still incomplete. After all, we have witnessed a veritable tidal wave of anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli rhetoric barely disguising obscene anti-Semitism.
Don’t believe me?
In Manchester, the World Socialist Website helpfully interviewed ‘peace protesters’ from across the UK. In one case, student Myra explains “It’s not an invasion by Hamas, it’s a rightful resistance to a brutal occupation by a racist, apartheid regime. It’s genocide—the people can’t evacuate.”
Denying a real attempted genocide by inventing a fictitious one is more than strange in the passing. It underscores that something is going very wrong in the UK.
Then there is the unhinged keyboard anti-Semite who insisted on tweeting me to say that “the Jew will have his day again” and that I was “a murderous Jew”. I didn’t waste time pointing out that technically I never completed converting. Why bother? I’m Jew enough to merit his hate; especially when he ominously told me “jew is gonny [sic] jew we have to stop them”
The same thought crosses my mind as did Alice as she tumbled down the rabbit-hole, how many miles have we fallen this time?
During the fifth ‘Peace march for Palestine’ jack-booting its way across London the other week all manner of disturbing episodes played out. One case was a pro-Corbyn former Labour activist and trained therapist Kate Varnfield. Hers was a face of the ideologically possessed, so convinced of her own virtue she felt no qualms carrying a swastika interwoven into a Jewish star of David. I suppose if you’re going to reach for ways calculated to maximally wound Jews, what better way than to describe them as Nazis?
Jewish schoolchildren in our cities must hide their uniforms and yarmulkes – or have their schools closed if they happen to live in a wonderfully diverse multicultural city. Yes, British children being told to hide their school uniforms, lest strangers succeed in identifying them as Jews and open them up to assault.
We’ve fallen that far this time.
Thank goodness we have a police force you might be thinking – but do we?
As the various hate-marches continue on – with a former Hamas commander behind them – the Metropolitan Police unveiled their crack Quran interpretation squad, announcing “The word jihad has a number of meanings. We have specialist counterterrorism officers here in the operations room who have particular knowledge in this area.” So, when British Jews are confronted by a furiously angry bearded man screaming about jihad on London streets, just generally take it to mean he’s wrestling with an inner theological struggle.
Welcome to the tumbling rabbit-hole of hate
This myopic world of casual Jew hatred permeating a purblind British society has a number of underpinning factors. I have already dug into some of the philosophical underpinnings driving anti-Semitism, especially on the left.
But it’s incomplete as I say, so let’s explore the final element of my thesis.
Taking all this together it occurs to me that I’ve left something else out. Despite the derangement of these illiberal philosophies, isn’t there an element of the conspiracy of silence playing out?
The elephant in our room…
The Rutgers University Sociology Professor Eviatar Zerubavel’s book ‘The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life’ gives us a clue.
Zerubavel examines “the denial of social realities – whether incest, alcoholism, corruption or even genocide”. He contends that conspiracies of silence are widespread in all human societies, and the refusal to acknowledge an obvious truth is multifaceted, growing out of social and political underpinnings.
From small family groups, whole communities to politicians and corporations “open secrets” exist and are routinely perpetuated.
It comes in part from childhood, where we grow up learning ‘etiquette’ (Zerubavel contends etiquette produces ‘tact’ which can often function as a soft form of taboo making). From childhood we are inculcated with a need to practice rehearsed indifference, and learn to ignore. This extends to the rules of irrelevance
“There is a considerable difference between merely seeing or hearing something (that is, perceiving) and actually noticing (that is, paying attention to) it, as not everything we experience through our senses always captures attention.”
Thus, perhaps when the young leftie radical is in London marching for Palestine and sees the swastika posters or the shrieking calls for Jihad against Israel he is practicing the rules of denial? Learn to ignore, practice rehearsed indifference…
Yet Zerubavel expands on all of this. He emphasises that all too often we aren’t simply failing to notice something, “indeed, it is, quite often the result of some pressure to actively disregard it”.
This is where a cultural norm, reinforced by etiquette’s ‘tact’ as a soft form of taboo making enters to reinforce the “open secrets” all around us. Institutional hierarchies and norms serve as enforcers of the unspoken rules. As we all grow up inculcated on where the red lines are and where the eggshells we need to gingerly walk silently over lurk.
Perhaps students like Myra that I previously referenced suffers from the institutional hierarchies playing out in universities? Places where all too often new more profoundly illiberal post-modern norms have manufactured new eggshells which us ‘older’ generations are blind to? Might that explain why so much of what is changing around us does not make sense or appear remotely sane?
But the intellectual traditions of the post-modern ‘new left’ intermingles with cultural narratives all to ensure that nobody dares to become a “silence breaker”.
Robert E. Pittenger said “It only takes one person to produce speech, but it requires the cooperation of all to produce silence” If we consider what drives people to insist on denying an obvious reality we need to move away from the mere psychological and instead take a sociological perspective. Once we do so, we can see that it takes more than one person to maintain the silence in a society. Co-denial is essential and measures must be practiced to ensure few dare to be a “silence breaker”.
In this sense there is a double wall of silence in our societies. The psychologist Dan Bar-On theorised in relation to the Nazi perpetrators and their children in the aftermath of WW2. As Zerubavel puts it, “by collectively seeing and showing, or hearing and speaking no evil we thus construct a “double wall” of silence”.
What this means, to attempt to put it simply, is that there is a symbiotic relationship between the twin acts of not speaking and not hearing. A relation perfectly captured by the subtle yet profound relationship between secrecy and tact.
This symbiotic relationship is best seen in Bill Clinton being able to keep his affair with Monica Lewinsky a secret, this was only possible in the hustle and bustle of the Presidency on the proviso that people around the former President knew – at least publicly – not to be too curious. I’m reminded of Bettie Currie (his personal secretary) explained once that she tried studiously hard to “avoid learning the details”.
We can see this occurring in Britain right now, inevitably facilitating the sea of Jew-hatred flowing in response to Israel’s legitimate defence of its people. The man who would have been Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn waxed lyrical that, “Today, as we wave the Palestinian flag, let’s hear it for the people of the West Bank, for the people of Gaza, for the people of the refugee camps.”
There was nothing from ‘Oh Jeremy’, nor the clapping crowds in attendance saying, ‘Let’s hear it for the people of Israel, who have suffered the worst pogrom since the Holocaust’.
Of course not. After all, for many giving it up for Gaza they – like Bettie Currie – knew to “avoid learning the details”. Details like there already was a ceasefire on 6 October and it was Hamas – not Israel – that broke it. Details such as how Gaza’s Palestinians are reduced to such penury because the Hamas terrorists steal, commandeer and thieve the world’s refugee aid sent their way. All are treated with internal walls of silence.
When some pro-Palestine ceasefire demanders read all of this, it will undoubtedly cause them much upset. Not least because I am insisting on violating a fundamental rule if their denial of the open secret that the politics of anti-Zionism, ceasefires ‘free Palestine’ is really merely cover for anti-Semitism.
After all, I put it to all of you that it is obviously much easier to continue to hear no evil, when others speak no evil, and also it’s far easier to see no evil when the others around you “show no evil”. In this way the double wall of silence as described by Dan Bar-On is maintained.
Ultimately, however, we shouldn’t leave out the final piece in our analysis of what is deranging this ‘new left’ into such a trothing fury of Jew-hatred. There is what I like to call the phenomenon of ‘bystanders and enablers’.
When the Metropolitan Police crack squad of Quran interpreters hear extremists of Hizb ut-Tahrir call for “Muslim armies” to “liberate Palestine” in Belgravia, they muse about the multiple possible meanings of ‘Jihad’ and wring their hands reflexively about ‘community tensions’ preventing robust action.
What is really going on is the old canard about not being ‘in the know’. PC Plod is basically saying the truth is tightly held by a small guarded circle of folk who really understand the truth. So, you, I and Britain’s Jews should just zip it.
It’s always easier to deny something when you can imagine distance between yourself and the elephant. To quote Zerubavel once more, “silent bystanders act as enablers because watching others ignore something encourages one to deny its presence”.
With anti-Semitic hate crimes spiking in London by over 1,350 per cent I for one insist on breaking this vital rule. I refused to ignore this elephant called anti-Semitism; so obvious across parts of the British left. And as I do so I am preventing all of the useful idiots, radicalised illiberal student activists, fellow travellers and casual observers from having the ‘distance’ by declining to join them (and the Met Police) in ignoring it.
Remember, silence and denial only functions when it’s a collaborative effort.
It’s high time we arrested our fall down any deeper into this rabbit-hole of hate. I for one have precious little desire to join Alice in whatever wonderland lurks at the end of this drop.
In Han Christian Andersen’s book ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, there is a very good reason the author gave the role of silence-breaker to a small child.
“But he doesn’t have anything on!” cried a little child. “Listen to the innocent one,” said the proud father. And the people whispered among each other and repeated what the child had said. “He doesn’t have anything on. There’s a little child who says that he has nothing on.” “He has nothing on!” shouted all the people at last.”
As this elephant of anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli hatred grows, so too the conspiracy to silence gets larger. But there is always hope, so too grow the opportunities to end it too.
Sure, the pressures on these would-be whistle-blowers is intense, as Andersen’s story demonstrates, a silence-breaker requires a seconder. These vicious cultural conspiracies to silence and deny truths and realities can only end if there is no longer anyone engaging in the conspiracy to silence.
Andersen’s story has the initial role be a small child as this “innocent one” is still too young to have learnt to ignore, to be practicing rehearsed indifference or to even understand the confines of social etiquette as taboo making.
In this sense the innocence of a child corresponds to an unrestrained spontaneous sincerity determinedly grappling with the obvious reality before his young eyes. He has not become captured by the intellectual rot of cynical professors in ivory towers, nor is he yet subject to fears of social opprobrium or cynicism that comes with age.
In our case here, the elephant lurking in this room is the reality of an ingrained racism against Jews widespread across the post-modern identity left. Their visceral hatred of Israel is sincere, it dared to have the temerity to defend the Jewish people. Israel exists as a reminder that Zionism is the real anti-colonial success story, and the microaggression-addled, bed-wetting ‘new left’ detests this reality. After 3,000 years the Jewish people have obtained self-determination in the homeland, with international sanction. And oh don’t the usual suspects just hate it.
I for one intend to defy this ‘new left’ and their rotten eggshells. Watch me stomp loudly on them and make one hell of a noise as I do it. I can honestly say I have absolutely no intention of humouring any of this silence and denial in British contemporary political, media or cultural life. When I spot anti-Jewish racism on the left (or anywhere else) this mensch shall call it out.
Otherwise, how could I possibly look the loved ones in my life who are practicing Jews in the eye? How could I look my ex-partner in the eye when he seeks some comfort from me as he inquires why aren’t more non-Jews rallying to show support?
And to my critics who can’t abide this? Take a long run off of a vanishingly short pier, as I shan’t ever relent in breaking your silences and denials.
These are my thoughts on what has gone wrong on the left, as anti-Semitism spikes and so few see, hear and recognise it.
Dangerous illiberal postmodern philosophies derange the us, denying objective truths and grand narratives. Foucault, Derrida and Crenshawe’s toxic brew cripples the capacity to feel solidarity based on objective realities or agreed facts. Conspiracies to silence and deny realities in front of our very eyes leaves us blind stumbling in the land of the blind.
Anti-Semitism flourishes in an illiberal ‘new left’ which I reject as a dangerous deviation which - if not urgently challenged - will be the cause of our fall. Social democracy cannot function in a world where the only real things are temporary alliances based on subjectively perceived victimhoods.
If social democracy, the legitimate left and our rejectionism of racism is all to salvaged, the poison of the politics of identity must be cast out. But can we? Is the game already over? If so, the future is a dark land of populism, rhetoric and ‘personal truths’ little different from ‘alternative facts’.
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