New waves of old-style Jew-baiting are now washing across Europe.
The cemetery dauber, the synagogue burner, the thug who attacks Jews - these pose the immediate threat, and if I seemed to imply otherwise, that was clumsiness and I regret it.
But would Myra Woolfson contend that the coverage in Socialist Organiser and in Workers' Liberty, our magazine, has underplayed the danger from the new wave of anti-semitism? She couldn't, seriously.
The new wave of open anti-semitism is a relatively recent development. The demonisation of Israel and the comprehensive 'left wing' hostility to Jews that goes with it, have been with us for a couple of decades.
Even the anti-semitic thugs - those of them who can do other than grunt - now often disguise themselves as "anti-Zionists".
Whatever is "most" important, that is very important still.
The left's anti-Zionism could easily merge with the old-style anti-semitic agitation.
Below a certain level of political awareness - that is, to the degree that the propaganda of a group like the SWP succeeds in reaching raw, politically uneducated people - it is not at all easy to distinguish one from the other.
The good intentions of the left - which is not racist, but "anti-imperialist", albeit with the “anti-imperialism of idiots” - will count for very little here.
The sustained anti-Zionist polemics of the left and the demonisation of Israel - including, it should be said in the interest of truth, by Socialist Organiser for a long time - have created a widespread political culture that may well ease the way for the new fascist anti-semitic right - just as Stalinist "National Bolshevism” in 1930s Germany helped ease the way for the Nazis to win over left wing workers.
If Myra Woolfson's letter is the JSG'S reply to my article about the JSG and the WRP, then it is a throwing in of the towel. Progress!
Socialist Organiser 510, 5 December 1991