Thursday, May 22, 2014

Follow up on UKIP 'antisemitism' article: the insanity of the "as-a-Jews"

My article yesterday (showing that antisemitism was rampant in all the major political parties so it was hypocritical to single out UKIP) was reposted to a number of facebook sites. Given that the article was highlighting antisemitism across the entire political spectrum, you would have thought it would be welcomed by those people who claim to be fighting racism.

But, unfortunately, it attracted some curious reactions especially from a number of "as-a-Jew" leftist trolls. These people (often brainwashed youngsters)  are very selective in their concerns about
  1. racism - they feel that antisemitism is not as serious as other forms of racism; and
  2. antisemitism - they feel that the antisemitism of a party like UKIP (which they classify as "right wing and racist") is unacceptable but the antisemitism from other parties is either OK or should not be discussed in case it distracts attention away from the "real threat which is UKIP". 
And, of course, there was also the "being anti-Zionist is not the same as being antisemitic" argument. The fact that this argument was made is especially hypocritical when you examine the specific accusation of antisemitism against the UKIP candidate Anna Marie-Crampton that was the whole basis for the story. What she had allegedly written was that Zionists conspired with the Nazis during World War 2. This is, of course, a disgustingly antisemitic slur. Yet the claim of Zionist-Nazi collaboration is absolutely standard amongst anti-Zionists all over the world and it is considered completely mainstream, especially among the left (for example, the Guardian Travel writer Gail Simmons made exactly this claim, while other Guardian writers are happy to tweet that Zionism equals Nazism). It was even the main claim of PA President Mohammed Abbas's doctoral thesis. In fact, if you criticise someone on the left as being antisemitic for making the Zionist-Nazi collaboration claim you will be told that anti-Zionism has nothing to do with antisemitism. So, basically:
  • if someone 'on the right' claims that there was a Zionist-Nazi collaboration then they are antisemitic
  • if someone 'on the left' claims that there was a Zionist-Nazi collaboration then they are not antisemitic, but are simple expressing a valid anti-Zionist viewpoint.
Clearly, if Anna Marie-Campton had written her article in the Guardian as a member of the Respect Party then, instead of being the subject of universal vilification, she would have been lauded and guaranteed a regular spot on BBC Question Time for years to come***.

Another type of hypocrisy in the responses was the claim that 'racial slurs about Romanian neighbours' (which UKIP leader Nigel Farage had allegedly made) was somehow uniquely despicable compared with any of the examples of antisemitism that I cited. Notwithstanding the fact that this was irrelevant to my article (which focused only on antisemitism) it was interesting that this was coming from people who also made the 'anti-Zionism is not antisemtitism' claim. So, apparently saying that
people had "a right to feel uncomfortable if a Romanian family moved in next door" (Farage's exact quote)
is uniquely racist, but saying things like
"Israelis are baby-killers" , "Zionists are cockroaches that need to be stomped out", "Israeli Jews should go back home to Russia/Poland/Germany/America" (take your pick as all have been said regularly); "Israelis are Nazis" ; "Israel is a mistake"; "Israel must be destroyed"
(which are all actual statements made by politicians from a range of parties, but mostly on the left) is absolutely OK and has nothing to do with racism or antisemitism.

Finally there was also the "being pro-Zionist means you are a racist" criticism of my article. So an article exposing the oldest form of racism and bigotry gets accused of being 'racist'.  That is the mindset of the left.

***just minutes after writing this Questions Time announced one of its panel on next week's show is none other than Joey Barton - an ignorant football thug turned into political celebrity because of his extreme anti-Israel - and also antisemitic - views 

Update: The many concerned 'anti-racists' who were forwarding messages of UKIP 'racists' were curiously not forwarding the far more serious story of the attack on a UKIP Asian candidate Bobby Anwar (by a Muslim calling him a kufar - the Arabic word for 'infidel')  that left him requiring surgery for a broken cheekbone and eye socket. Note, however,  that the main stream media even managed to spin this as a potential UKIP=racist story by a) ignoring that the victim was himself an Asian; and b) putting parenthesised emphasis on the 'claim' by Anwar that the attack was by a 'Muslim' as if to suggest that he was actually being a racist to make such a claim.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"You will find it claimed regularly in all kinds of main stream media."

citation needed

Confronting antisemitism and Israel hatred said...

Citations added