Nick Griffin has endorsed George Galloway in the upcoming Rochdale by-election. What unites Griffin, the fascist, and Galloway, the self-proclaimed anti-fascist, is that both see “anti-Zionism” as a starting point from which an entire worldview can be developed. For both, “Zionism” is a world-shaping power.
“Free Palestine and Britain from Zionism”, says Griffin’s Twitter profile. The musician and activist Lowkey, who has shared many platforms with Galloway, presents a video hosted by Double Down News purporting to “expose” Israel’s “secret role” in “controlling key functions of our intelligence and police services”. The first target in the video is Infosys, an Indian company; the fact it has Israeli subsidiaries and employees is enough to render it part of Israel’s web of international control.
Labour ditched Azhar Ali, its candidate in Rochdale, after comments Ali made in a Lancashire Labour meeting were picked up by the press. Ali claimed Israel deliberately “allowed” Hamas’s 7 October attacks to get a pretext for bombing Gaza.
Israel redeployed forces from the Gaza border to act as security for armed settlers in the West Bank, hobbling its ability to respond swiftly to Hamas’s attack. Maybe frontline reports that Hamas was preparing were dismissed. But imperial hubris is not the same as deliberately “allowing” the attack to happen.
Such claims feed, and are fed by, the idea that “Zionism” pulls strings behind the scenes to such an extent that even Hamas attacks can ultimately be attributed to Israel. Other comments by Ali were even more explicitly antisemitic. He claimed the recent suspension of Andy McDonald MP was the result of influence from “certain Jewish quarters in the media”, promoting an idea of all-pervasive Jewish power.
Racialised antisemitism, casting Jews as biologically subhuman, is now relatively rare. It remains dangerous despite that rarity. And antisemitism in varied forms still impels violence. In Britain in the last year, antisemitic assaults rose by 96%.
Those actual assaults were only 6% of antisemitic incidents overall. The primary threat posed by antisemitism in Britain is more of ideological abuse than physical attacks. Anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitic. But those “anti-Zionisms” where “Zionism” is held to be a conspiracy by Jews for world domination are antisemitic. And such forms of “anti-Zionism” have currency, including on the left.
If not confronted, antisemitic ideology will poison the left, miseducating activists, sending them down conspiracist rabbit-holes hunting for the hidden hand of “Zionist” power, rather than organising to resist real capitalist class exploitation, in the name of freedom and equality for all.
Where antisemitism poses a physical threat, it must be confronted physically. But where it exists mainly as ideology, it must be confronted primarily through a campaign of political education.
The Labour leadership’s “solution” to antisemitism is no good: just bans and exclusions, while positively discouraging debate and education, rarely promoting discussion on exactly how statements like Ali’s are antisemitic, and discrediting the whole enterprise by deploying the bans and exclusions arbitrarily and factionally. Workers’ Liberty has been working for political education against antisemitism, including left antisemitism, for decades, long before Keir Starmer said anything about it. Join us in our efforts!