COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
What is the row over
Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism about?
____________________________
Response to a comment, “Antisemitism has been weaponised by those in the right of the Labour party, Labour friends of Israel and the right wing media to bash Corbyn, following on from the previous Red Corbyn campaign”:
Absolutely.
It is nothing else.
Corbyn is not liked by the Israel Lobby, a very real force
today in British affairs.
Their kind of man is Tony Blair or Owen Smith.
Blair's ugly influence on the general public, despite many
efforts by the corporate press to revive his rotting political carcass, has
been destroyed. He's widely regarded as the liar and mass killer that he is.
Owen Smith still tries, but he has always been an
ineffectual and rather arrogant politician, and it was his demotion, after
again trying to tell the Party leader what to do, that brought all this latest
wave on.
The campaign against Corbyn has been almost continuous from
his first election, just with little splutters of greater or lesser intensity.
Every Britain should ask, is it right that our democratic
government and corporate press are so influenced by unproven claims from a
relatively small group - a group, which never offers proof of anything and
which, moreover, very much has an agenda of its own?
They also should ask, if it is true that there is so much
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, why didn't the beloved Tony Blair root it
out and create a benign environment long ago?
It couldn't explode into being overnight, as it were, yet
that is the nonsense idea contained in all of these vicious attacks on a decent
man. It's very much akin to believing in demon possession.
This is a fraud, a very unpleasant fraud, and it is using
the ugly tactics supposedly discredited long ago after the fall of Senator
Joseph McCarthy and his career-destroying "commie" witch hunt.
But the tactics, in fact, have not been discredited. They
still work. Throw enough crap on the walls, and some of it sticks, always. That
principle is as true today as ever, and it is employed just as frequently by
special interest groups and governments as it was in Joseph Goebbels’ day.
That is precisely the approach of Theresa May and Boris
Johnson with their accusations of poisoning, an event which for all the world
seems never to have happened. If it indeed did, we have been given not a scrap
of proof regarding any aspect of it. Yet the shouting and charges just keep
being hurled.
Corbyn is under attack only for his fair-minded views on
Israel-Palestine, but it would never do for his opponents to say that openly
since its sounds ridiculous, so we have this ugly McCarthyite campaign either to
intimidate him or to unseat him, something Owen Smith, of course, already has
tried doing.
Of course, over the long-term, piling on unsupported charges
of “anti-Semitism,” much like the crying of “Wolf!” by the unpleasant boy in
the fairy tale, only serves to bring the day when most people will simply
respond with, “So what?”
AFTERNOTE:
No one can doubt that Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most
decent and thoroughly liberal-spirited politicians in the western
world, and you might think he would be welcomed and greeted for that very
quality, but you would be wrong. That quality is precisely why he is so hated
by apologists and lobbyists for Israel.
People who do not keep up with public and international
affairs may not be aware of what a term of contempt "liberal" has
become in Israel. It is used almost like a four-letter word, sputtered out with
contempt. Liberals are widely hated for the very qualities which define
liberalism: belief in human rights and dignity and the rule of law. Clearly,
the Israel we see at work could not function under such assumptions.
What you find in Israel very much parallels what you find
from America's Alt-right. On its Internet sites, the Alt-right almost cannot
bring itself to use the word "liberal," regularly substituting
(pathetically childish) pejoratives like "libtards" and "snowflakes."
There obviously is no meaningful discussion possible with such people, and that
is exactly the way they want things to be.
So, we have some very dark forces at work in our world,
forces openly expressing contempt for fairness and decency and rule of law,
forces pushing away debate or discussion, forces exhibiting extreme contempt
for large groups of others, forces who want what they want regardless of how
they obtain it. I do believe that gets pretty close to defining fascism.
