LITTLEJOHN
The new, virulent strain of anti-semitism is driven by an unholy alliance between militant Islam and the Fascist Left. No, I didn’t write that yesterday, I wrote it in this newspaper nine years ago to accompany a TV documentary I made called The War On Britain’s Jews?
The question mark was at Channel 4’s insistence, but I’m not complaining. Back then it was heresy to suggest that anyone on the Left could be guilty of discriminating against any minority community. If it took a question mark to get the programme broadcast, that was fine by me.
My thesis was that self-styled ‘antiZionists’ were using their visceral hatred of Israel to intimidate Jews in this country. Does anybody today, outside of the lunatic fringe which now runs the modern Labour Party, doubt that I got it right?
The difference is that the malignant anti-semitism of the Far Left has gone mainstream. For the past couple of months there has been a disturbing upsurge of anti-Jewish sentiment from so-called ‘liberals’ at the heart of the Labour establishment.
It has come to a head with revolting remarks about Jews — first from Naz Shah, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and then, with depressing predictability, from former London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Naz by name, Nazi by nature, was revealed to have backed the transportation of Jews in Israel to the United States. Red Ken rallied to her defence by claiming, absurdly, that hitler was a Zionist.
BUT we shouldn’t waste too much time on Nasty Naz — even though it would be wrong to dismiss her as just another dopey bird with a fatal Facebook addiction. Jew-baiting is what it takes to get elected in the ‘Israel Free Zone’ of Bradford West these days. how else did she manage to unseat PLO puppet George Galloway? her views are largely consistent with vast numbers of her Muslim constituents. And don’t forget that until this week she was a member of a Commons committee investigating anti-semitism. You couldn’t make it up. What’s most hypocritical — nay, hilarious — is the reaction of the Labour leadership. Naz and Livingstone have both had their membership of the party suspended, as the Corbynistas have belatedly ruffled their political petticoats like a Victorian maiden aunt confronted with an uncovered chair-leg. They’ve come over all Lady Bracknell.
An anti-semite? In the Labour Party? Quickly, fetch the smelling salts, Chlamydia!
Shah was until recently a bagcarrier for Red Ken’s old Greater London Council running mate John McDonnell. Back in the eighties, Livingstone and McDonnell were joined at the hip — united in their pro-IRA, pro-Palestinian terrorists, anti-American, anti-Israel, Wolfie Smith-style socialism.
Just how extreme do you have to be to be too extreme for John McDonnell? It’s a bit like Gazza having a quiet word about your drinking.
What you have to remember here is that Livingstone is the life and soul of the new three-quid-a-pop Labour Party. As I wrote a few months ago, the only reason Jeremy Corbyn got elected leader is because Livingstone wasn’t on the ticket. had Red Ken been an MP last summer, he would have waltzed home.
The only surprise is that anyone is surprised at Livingstone’s rabid anti-semitism. he’s got plenty of history, not least the time he compared a Jewish reporter from London’s evening Standard to a Nazi concentration camp guard. he’s obsessed with hitler.
When accused of anti-semitism, he resorts to semantics, just as he did yesterday. And until now, his brothers-in-arms have been happy to indulge him and the rest of the Jew-haters in the party.
Consider Corbyn’s initial reaction to the Nazi Shah comments, which he dismissed as ‘historic’.
This is a man who sits on the front bench alongside his plus-sized deputy, Nonce Finder General Tom Watson — a muck-raking, dirt-throwing, smear-monger who has spent the past few years accusing assorted Tories of ‘historic’ sex crimes dating back decades and using his position to demand full-scale police investigations.
YeT as far as Corbyn was concerned, anti-Jewish remarks made by a Labour politician two years ago were ‘historic’ and thus unworthy of further comment. Again, you couldn’t, etc . . . But what else should we expect? I’m prepared to concede that Corbyn doesn’t consider himself an antisemite — despite counting among his ‘friends’ the likes of hamas and hezbollah, whose sole purpose in life is wiping Jews off the face of the earth.
he spent most of yesterday hiding behind the sofa as the crisis unfolded and the Boys In The Bubble went into a feeding frenzy. Assorted Labour MPs came out of the woodwork to demand strong action against Livingstone and insist that he wasn’t representative of their party.
Two questions. Where have they been for the past ten years? And what makes them think that Livingstone’s abhorrent views are in any way ‘unrepresentative’? When I was making my documentary, almost nobody would come forward to speak out publicly. There was one hero prepared to put his head above the parapet — the Bassetlaw MP John Mann. And yesterday he was again front and centre in denouncing Livingstone — a crime for which he was reprimanded by the chief whip. Also on that programme was the columnist Nick Cohen, who has always considered himself of the Left, but was horrified at the direction his comrades were taking. Cohen, who lives in Islington, North London, identified what he described as ‘dinner party antisemitism’ — insidious chatter ostensibly aimed at Israel but actually designed to denigrate all Jews.
The North London dinner party brigade are now in charge of Labour, bolstered by embittered, anti-Israel social media class warriors.
Islington is Corbynista Central. The kind of views expressed by Nazi Shah and Red Ken are considered quite respectable in such circles.
Primarily, they are motivated by blind hatred of Israel, and bovine worship of Islamist terrorists in the Palestinian territories. But there are also political considerations.
The Left’s world view is divided into ‘victims’ and ‘oppressors’. They consider the Jewish community not only to be successful, and therefore ‘oppressors’, but also pro-Israel, which is the worst crime in the world in their book.
Plus, in electoral terms, Britain’s Jewish population is outnumbered ten to one by Muslims. Yet historically, British Jews supported Labour and vice versa.
My programme was originally designed to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when Jews, trades unionists and Labour activists stood together to repel a march by Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts through London’s east end.
These days the real fascists are on the Far Left. And increasingly at the poisoned heart of the Labour Party. Maybe this is the week that everyone finally woke up to that fact.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Cable Street. Let’s hope it also marks the end of the War On Britain’s Jews.