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Reading: Jews Don't Count (67/365)
Mar. 8th, 2021 07:00 pmI bought David Baddiel's Jews Don't Count because I thought I probably ought to educate myself about the issue of anti-Semitism in left-wing circles which has been regularly raised as a matter of concern over the last few years, and I liked Baddiel when he was in The Mary Whitehouse Experience and thought that made his book as good a place to start as any.
Baddiel describes Jews Don't Count as a polemic; it's short and readable, but is concentrated much more on making an argument from personal experience than analysing wider trends, and it doesn't really engage with ideas about intersectionality or structural oppression*. It's also rather stream-of-consciousness in format and I didn't always find it easy to follow the thread of Baddiel's argument, or to remember it afterwards. However, the accounts of both active and "passive" anti-Semitism he himself has encountered were certainly compelling evidence that there is an anti-Semitism problem in British society, and that this isn't confined to the right-wing; his main target is the tendency of progressives to omit anti-Semitism from the list of prejudices they are pledged to combat, and Jews from the list of minorities who deserve support, and the book has definitely opened my eyes to things I hadn't really registered before and made me think about who I am including and who I might be excluding without realising it.
* I was also a bit disconcerted by Baddiel's choice to contrast the left-wing reaction to Jeremy Corbyn's failure to address anti-Semitism in the Labour Party ("he's a decent man but he's got a real blind spot") and the general reaction to J.K. Rowling's transphobia as an example of how differently anti-Semitism is treated compared to other forms of prejudice and bigotry, which doesn't really work given that as far as I'm aware Jeremy Corbyn has not personally taken to Twitter to express anti-Semitic views.
Baddiel describes Jews Don't Count as a polemic; it's short and readable, but is concentrated much more on making an argument from personal experience than analysing wider trends, and it doesn't really engage with ideas about intersectionality or structural oppression*. It's also rather stream-of-consciousness in format and I didn't always find it easy to follow the thread of Baddiel's argument, or to remember it afterwards. However, the accounts of both active and "passive" anti-Semitism he himself has encountered were certainly compelling evidence that there is an anti-Semitism problem in British society, and that this isn't confined to the right-wing; his main target is the tendency of progressives to omit anti-Semitism from the list of prejudices they are pledged to combat, and Jews from the list of minorities who deserve support, and the book has definitely opened my eyes to things I hadn't really registered before and made me think about who I am including and who I might be excluding without realising it.
* I was also a bit disconcerted by Baddiel's choice to contrast the left-wing reaction to Jeremy Corbyn's failure to address anti-Semitism in the Labour Party ("he's a decent man but he's got a real blind spot") and the general reaction to J.K. Rowling's transphobia as an example of how differently anti-Semitism is treated compared to other forms of prejudice and bigotry, which doesn't really work given that as far as I'm aware Jeremy Corbyn has not personally taken to Twitter to express anti-Semitic views.
