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

[lilliburlero]

If J.K. Rowling had stuck at the "middle-aged moment", "accidentally" liking transphobic tweets stage, which I think is roughly the level of Corbyn's social media antisemitism gaffes, I think the mainstream left reaction would definitely have been "her heart's in the right place but she doesn't always pick up on transphobic dogwhistles..." But she, uh, didn't.

[danieldwilliam]

Corbyn had power.

Rowling does not.

[liv]

I haven't read the book, but based on the general shape of argument, which I'm extremely familiar with as I hang out with lots of leftists, lots of Jews and lots of leftist Jews: Baddiel is right that many on the left regard anti-Semitism as an acceptable prejudice or think it doesn't really matter (crudely, because British Jews are usually white and on average richer than the general population). Corbyn I'm pretty sure is in exactly that position, he doesn't hate Jews personally, he just thinks anti-Semitism isn't serious.

However it's almost always a mistake to talk about a prejudice being acceptable by contrasting it with another prejudice that you think is taken more seriously. Much of the British left, within the Labour party and in traditional as well as social media, is extremely tolerant of, if not actively participating in, transphobia. It's like when someone says "nobody would ever say / do that to a Black person"... the reaction is universally, er, actually people do say and do that kind of thing to Black people all the time.

[legionseagle]

This slightly ties in, but I was disconcerted to hear about Harman J's antisemitism today - not that I'm surprised that a man who was a misogynist and all-round jerk might be an anti-semite, but that no-one (including the Jewish barrister present at that jaw-dropping example of his anti-semitism) had raised it about him.