If you’ve been following British politics in recent years, you know that one of the reasons Tories have dominated in spite of less-than-stellar leadership is that the Labour party is even worse, having handed over the reins to a bunch of anti-Semitic loons. There’s been a campaign to expel the worst elements from Labour, but that’s been met with internal resistance, and the British left still has a long way to go before this is all sorted out. As Dave Rich, author of The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel & Antisemitism, recently reported on Twitter:
The campaign to oppose expelling antisemites from the Labour Party (“Labour Against the Witchhunt”) has taken another twist. Bear with me, it’s a good one. . . . Labour Against the Witchhunt have a meeting on Saturday [January 6] to call for “the immediate lifting of all suspensions and expulsions from Labour Party membership which were . . . connected to the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign.” Except this campaign also wants to expel some of its own members for being antisemitic: so Saturday’s meeting will oppose expulsions for antisemitism while also carrying out expulsions for antisemitism. Wait, it gets better . . .
One of the people to be expelled from the campaign on Saturday is Gerry “Jewish Question” Downing. He is angry about this so he has set up his own campaign called “Reject Bogus Left Antisemitism.” Now for the genius bit: Reject Bogus Left Antisemitism is having its own meeting on Saturday *in the same pub* as Labour Against the Witchhunt. Same day, same time, same place, same subject—but on opposing sides. Only the hard left could do this: a witchhunt against the witchhunt against the witchhunt. “You’re an antisemite!” “You’re a Zionist!” “Smear!” “Splitter!” Etc. These are people who share obsessive hatred of Zionism and contempt for most Jews. Meanwhile 95 percent of the Jewish community thinks they are all antisemites anyway, takes one look and goes to a different pub. Happy New Year!
We appreciate Rich’s sense of the absurd in all this. “Splitter!” is a reference to a decades-old Monty Python bit about the factionalism of revolutionary left-wing groups that’s remarkably still appropriate. And we would join in the laughter were it not so disturbing to see a major European political party unable to make up its mind about anti-Semitism.
