Antisemitism doesn't always come doing a Hitler salute
When the Ukip politician Godfrey Bloom referred to "Bongo Bongo land", there were not many who denied the remark was racist. When the same man told women who failed to clean behind the fridge that they were "sluts", most could see the comment was sexist. Yet when the target of an insult is a Jew or Jews, there is rarely such certainty. Unless antisemitism comes dressed in an SS uniform and doing a Hitler salute, we are regularly thrown into confusion. Suddenly we are in the seminar room, calling on experts to tell us whether or not this or that sentence was anti-Jewish, the debate usually ending without clear resolution. To add to the complexity, very often Jews disagree among themselves, with just as many willing to give the disputed word or deed a free pass as to condemn it.
So it has been this week with the Daily Mail's sustained assault on the late Ralph Miliband, the Marxist scholar it branded "The Man Who Hated Britain". Some detect a whiff of anti-Jewish prejudice, some swear there is no such thing. When pressed on the point by the BBC, Ed Miliband himself declined to add antisemitism to his list of charges against the paper.
All of which, I imagine, must make it hard for the open-minded outsider, the non-Jew keen to oppose all forms of racism. They know they're against antisemitism, but how exactly to spot it? When is the line crossed? Where, in fact, is the line? In the spirit of public service, let me attempt an answer.
First, the word itself. So much as mention antisemitism and someone will pop up to tell you that Arabs are semites too so why do Jews insist on hogging, as it were, all the antisemitism for themselves. But the word was not a Jewish invention. It was popularised by a 19th-century German Jew-hater called Wilhelm Marr, keen to put his loathing on a pseudo-scientific basis: he used "semites" to mean Jews and, partly because "anti-Jewish racism" is a mouthful, the word has stuck.
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ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)Wait, this is supposed to be an insult? Seems like a compliment to me.
They're confusing Jews with the brave soldiers fighting the War Against Christmas, which is an atheist war.
Behind the Aegis
(53,957 posts)Basically, it means we aren't loyal to anyone (country) but ourselves, and even that is questionable.
As for your quote, please read: The Last Blood Libel Trial.
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)I just happen to like rootless cosmopolitans with no patriotism. It's like when Republicans call President Obama a socialist and I just think "I wish!"
The blood drinking part of my post was a joke. Perhaps I shouldn't be making jokes about such a serious issue, but I enjoy mocking racists.
Behind the Aegis
(53,957 posts)I thought you'd like to read that article. It isn't well known. Hell, I'd never heard of it.
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)I have heard of the blood libel thing. I think I read about on DU a long time ago, but I will look at the article.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Or at least we'd like to think that it is. Some have made a living off it. How tiresome and discouraging to keep going through this again and again.
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)I've never heard of Ralph Miliband, but now I am intrigued and want to know more. If their intent was to diminish him, then they failed. At least with me.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,318 posts)This is the British equivalent of the birther conspiracies, or the other "Obama was brought up a Marxist by his mother/step-father/secret real father" nonsense. Their main attack on Ralph Miliband is about his supposed hatred for Britain (ignoring, for instance, that he fought in the Royal Navy at D Day).
They're not going after him because he had a Jewish father - they never tried anything like this with Michael Howard, for instance, who was Tory leader about 10 years ago, whose father similarly arrived in the UK, in 1939. But, having decided to attack him as 'hating Britain', they do seem to have used one or two of the phrases that have been used to attack other Jewish people.