From Ian:
Simon Sebag Montefiore: This antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do
Jonathan Tobin: An utterly, unspeakable wrong new ‘right’
Simon Sebag Montefiore: This antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do
Obviously Corbyn is no Stalin. But the mural of hooknosed Jewish bankers, alliances with antisemitic terrorists and refusal to condemn many disgusting anti-Jewish confabulations are the rotten fruit of this ideology, now oozing from Corbynists all over the internet. Corbyn himself has met with Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. Stalin refused to admit Hitler’s final solution was any different from his killing of other Soviet citizens.
Why should this Jewish problem matter to non-Jews faced with Brexit, Tories, austerity? It undermines the Labour leadership’s ability to be real progressives at all. Hostile towards Western democracies for their “imperialism”, Corbynists support dictatorships in Russia, Iran and Venezuela while claiming that what is called “antisemitism” is not anti-Jewish, merely pro-peace, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel.
That is untrue. It is fine to criticise the Israeli government without being antisemitic. British Jews support a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But Corbynists are fixated with the destruction of Israel above all other causes – and that includes a strange neglect for the plight of any other Arab peoples such as the 500,000 killed in Syria by Bashar Assad. (Emily Thornberry recently insisted on Assad’s popularity in Syria.) This is not really about Israel but a preposterous worldview that requires Jews as enemies, only making sense in a shady cavern of conspiracy theories, the stupid path that has shamed a great party.
This racist rot poisons any good Labour might do. There are flickers of hope that calm reason can work amid Twitter shrieking. Tuesday: historian Sir Richard Evans tweeted he’d vote Labour. Thursday: after lawyer Anthony Julius wrote an open letter to the New Statesman, he courageously changed his mind.
Tragically, this is not just about one man: Labour is now controlled by this thuggish camarilla while frontbench “moderates” passively enable Corbyn. But Britain’s soul is at stake: many decent Labour supporters will surely show that they are better than the racism of their shameful shameless leadership.
And I am still grateful I was born Jewish in Britain.
Jonathan Tobin: An utterly, unspeakable wrong new ‘right’
Malkin is also apparently untroubled by groyper anti-Semitism. Other conservatives defend them on narrow free-speech and procedural grounds — instead of taking on their odious substance.Brendan O'Neill: It’s time to get real about Islamist terror
This isn’t the first time that the conservative movement has faced such a challenge. In the early 1960s, extremists from the John Birch Society peddled racism, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories like those of today’s alt right. The Birchers were establishing a foothold in the GOP.
It was at that moment that conservatism’s intellectual leader, the late William F. Buckley, made it clear that Birchers wouldn’t be welcome in the movement or the GOP. Buckley ultimately succeeded, as the Birchers were forced to retreat to the fever swamps of American politics. In no small measure, Buckley’s efforts made the subsequent electoral victories of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives possible.
So it is important that a group Buckley founded to spread conservatism on college campuses, the Young American Foundation, has taken the first step toward isolating the groypers and those who condone them. YAF has taken Malkin off its speakers’ list over her refusal to disavow Fuentes.
That’s encouraging, but if this contagion is to be stamped out, it will require more such actions. The longer the White House fails to channel the spirit of Buckley and have Trump explicitly condemn groypers and the alt-right, the danger for both conservatism and American society will only grow.
We’ve seen this for years now. Even to use the i-word — Islam — in relation to recent acts of terrorism is frowned upon. Anyone who gets angry about these attacks, whether it was 7/7 in 2005, the slaughter at the Manchester Arena in 2017 or yesterday’s stabbings, risks being denounced as ‘Islamophobic’. The left, including the left that currently runs the Labour Party, is myopically devoted to distracting attention from the Islamist threat. ‘What about the far right?’, they’ll say. Such cynical and spineless whataboutery wilfully overlooks that the far right has not killed anywhere near 500 people in Europe over the past five years — Islamists, on the other hand, have. ‘Don’t look back in anger’, we are told after Islamist attacks. In short, lay a flower, be sad for a day, and then move on — whatever you do, don’t talk about it.
This policing of emotion and of public debate about radical Islam is explicitly designed to suppress difficult questions. In particular questions about the divisive ideology of multiculturalism and the way it has nurtured a culture of victimhood, grievance and even violence among certain religious and social groups who have been convinced by officialdom for years and years that they are hated by ordinary Brits — or ‘dogs’, as Khan came to view us. This cultivation of separatism, this sowing of a victim mentality, this inflaming of community grievance and community bitterness — these are the ‘achievements’ of the ideology of multiculturalism and they have played an important role in the rise of Islamist violence in the UK.
It’s time to get real about Islamist terror. No more censorship. No more demonisation of people who are concerned about this violent threat. No more whataboutery. And no more treatment of self-styled holy warriors who want to slaughter us ‘dogs’ as run-of-the-mill criminals. The ideologies of victimhood and separatism have helped to give rise to Islamist violence and traitorism on a very worrying scale — let’s talk about them. Let’s find out why a holy warrior was released from jail to visit holy war on the citizens of London.






























