Reading: Jews Don't Count (67/365)

[white_hart]

I 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.

Comments

[white_hart]

I'm not sure he even "accidentally" liked anti-Semitic tweets, did he? He entirely failed to address the problem of anti-Semitism in Labour, and I'm sure there are plenty of examples of him actually addressing e.g. anti-Black racism, but it's very different from Rowling and transphobia. (I feel a bit bad for criticising what was generally an interesting and thought-provoking book on this, but it is a hole in the argument that you could drive a bus through and it did have the effect of making me stop and re-examine how I'd responded to some of Baddiel's other points, which is not really doing himself any favours.)

[lilliburlero]

Corbyn liked a Facebook post that showed a mural with antisemitic "global banker" tropes, didn't he?

I am a bit curious anyway as to how Baddiel came to the conclusion that Corbyn somehow escaped criticism in comparison to Rowling - the perception of his failure to deal with antisemitism was surely one of the major reasons for his overall defeat: he took enormous flak for it from almost every major news outlet as well as on social media.

[legionseagle]

Whereas the fact that the LibDems adopted a candidate for Mayor of London who in a previous (Tory) incarnation had driven round Blackburn with a megaphone broadcasting, "Don't vote for Straw, he's a Jew"* barely raised a ripple in either social or mainstream media.

*I can think of many reasons not to vote for Jack Straw, one of them being that he instituted police road blocks breathalysing everyone driving out of Blackburn one Christmas, which is an appalling example of executive overreach, but hers was not one I can endorse.

[white_hart]

Oh yes, there was that (although I think he actually apologised when it was pointed out to him that the mural was anti-Semitic). But he did receive huge amounts of criticism and vitriol over the anti-Semitism issue (and a lot of those critics, or at least the ones in related to and friends with on Facebook) are still talking about it.

(ETA - I normally post the links to the Goodreads version of these reviews on Facebook, and I very deliberately didn't for this one, because I couldn't face the prospect of an argument with my anti-Corbyn relatives who I suspect will interpret any criticism of the book as actual anti-Semitism.)