It's Stupid to Think you Can Tackle Antisemitism Whilst Ignoring Nazis....

....I hope Keir Starmer Reads this (he probably won't)

Following last week’s attack in Golders Green, the country is asking itself an important question: What more can be done to tackling rising antisemitism in the UK?

Legitimate as this question is, there is a fairly blatant agenda by right wing politicians and commentators to engineer a response which is ‘silence any criticism of the Israeli government’.

Leader of the Conservatives Kemi Badenoch has done a series of interviews in recent days, most notably on the Today Programme, in which she argued that protests for Palestine should be banned. Tory MP Helen Whateley went on my colleague Lewis Goodall’s Sunday morning LBC programme to say the same thing, calling the protests ‘hate marches’. Both were challenged as to whether the same rationale would apply to Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom marches and both said they didn’t think there was a comparison to be drawn since, in their view, Yaxley-Lennon’s events didn’t have a ‘specific’ target and weren’t designed to intimidate anyone.

Badenoch and Whateley showcase here an example of the breathtaking double standards I called out in this now-viral clip on Sky News earlier this week. Dan Hodges, a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, wrote on X “One thing on the pro-Palestine marches. If you accept they directly intimidate the Jewish community (which they do) then you must also acknowledge the Unite the Kingdom rallies have precisely the same effect on Muslim and other minority communities. We ban both, or neither.”

Important aside: Not everyone agrees that the Palestine marches ‘directly intimidate’ the Jewish community (not least of all the 500 strong Jewish bloc who regularly take part). Having passed through most of them on my way into work on a Saturday, I’ve never seen evidence of any antisemitic chants or signs (doesn’t mean they don’t exist, of course, but it’s not the dominant vibe). Furthermore, as George Monbiot and others have pointed out, being appalled by violence experienced by British Jews and also appalled by what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon is a consistent position, because it means that you stand in opposition to innocent civilians being maimed or killed.

But even the relatively nuanced take from Hodges fails to neglect one, extremely important thing. In fact, I’d say it’s the glaringly obvious detail missing from the response of media and politicians across the board:

THERE ARE ANTISEMITES WHO GO ON TOMMY ROBINSON’S MARCHES, TOO.

On Tuesday, Starmer called a summit and laid out the government’s plans for tackling the crisis of antisemitism in a whole-society approach. Except it wasn’t ‘whole society’ at all. As this post on Bluesky attests, in singling out universities and the Arts Council and neglecting to mention Twitter (X), the MAGA movement or Reform UK, Starmer made it abundantly clear that he is only interested in tackling ‘left-wing’ antisemitism (which is embroiled with criticism of Israel).

Never mind that Nigel Farage refuses to properly engage with the 34 accusations that he bullied Jewish and other ethnic minority students whilst at college, allegedly hissing ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them’ at a Jewish classmate and singing Nazi songs. Never mind that, much more recently, Farage has appeared on podcasts wanging on conspiratorially about George Soros and ‘globalists’. Never mind that a Reform supporter turned up to a recent event where Zack Polanski, the only Jewish leader of a UK political party, was speaking to perform nazi salutes.

Never mind that both Badenoch and Farage have hitched their wagon to Donald Trump, who called the Proud Boys – a far right militia group who march through the streets chanting ‘Jews shall not replace us’ – ‘very fine people’. Or that Trump has hosted dinners with Nick Fuentes, a prominent holocaust denier, and Ye (Kanye West) as guests of honour. Or that last year he used the antisemitic term ‘Shylocks’ to describe greedy bankers.

Never mind Tommy Robinson had as keynote speaker at his last rally Elon Musk, who did what was widely interpreted as a nazi salute at the presidential inauguration. Or that video footage captures attendees of the march also performing Nazi salutes.

Never mind that the so-called ‘Great Replacement theory’ conspiracy, so beloved of the far right, states that it is Jewish people who are somehow ‘responsible’ for plotting and facilitating demographic change which results in fewer white people in Europe. Never mind that those who have gone undercover in far right groups, like Hope Not Hate’s Harry Shukman, have reported huge levels of antisemitism happening behind closed doors (hidden in public statements and interviews because a faux-concern for Jewish people is a convenient excuse for their hatred of Muslims). The same far right groups who show up for the Unite the Kingdom rallies.

If you’re claiming to be dedicated to ‘tackling antisemitism’ and ignoring it when it is perpetrated by those with right wing affiliations (who also tend to support the current Israeli government), then you don’t actually care about Jewish people at all.

As this brilliant piece by Stephen Bush in the Financial Times states, a comprehensive and sensible approach to eradicating antisemitism would be to “argue for equality before the law, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and the general anti-racist principle that individuals, not groups, bear responsibility for their actions, and that disputes are settled at the ballot box not by violence. As long as the political class rouses itself against racism intermittently and patchily and is equivocal on these points, the whole society effort to defeat antisemitism is doomed to fail.”