Corbyn shuts down his Facebook page
Labour leader drops his personal account sparking claims he has ‘something to hide’ over anti-semitism
Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of hiding his alleged links to antisemitism from scrutiny after he deleted his Facebook page. The Labour leader deleted his personal account yesterday after it emerged he was a member of five Facebook groups understood to have contained anti-semitic posts. A Labour MP, who did not wish to be named, said the move suggested Mr Corbyn “had something to hide”, adding: “He is clearly anxious to wipe out further evidence of links to anti-semitism.”
JEREMY CORBYN has been accused of hiding his alleged links to anti-semitism from scrutiny after he deleted his personal Facebook page.
The Labour leader deleted his account yesterday after it emerged he was a member of five Facebook groups understood to have contained anti-semitic posts. Mr Corbyn was an active user of his Facebook account before he became Labour leader.
He used it to express support for an anti-semitic mural, which sparked an outcry last month when it was brought to public attention by Luciana Berger, a Labour MP.
Jewish leaders organised an unprecedented protest in Parliament Square, which was attended by more than 600 people, over Mr Corbyn’s handling of anti-semitism accusations.
Louise Ellman, the Labour MP, called on Mr Corbyn to “make full disclosure of any dubious past Facebook associations”. She said the Labour leader must be upfront about his past activity on the social media site, instead of waiting for it to emerge in the media.
Mrs Ellman said Labour’s anti-semitic associations were “horrendous”. “This issue has been troubling people for a long time. Now, everything is coming out of the woodwork. Labour should rebuild trust, not sink deeper into the hole.”
Another Labour MP, who did not wish to be named, said the deletion of the account suggested Mr Corbyn “had something to hide”, adding: “He is clearly anxious to wipe out further evidence of links to anti-semitism.” Labour confirmed Mr Corbyn had deleted his account yesterday but did not explain why. Mr Corbyn also belonged to five Facebook groups that contained antisemitic comments.
Mrs Ellman said. “This is not just about the Jewish community – it’s about the whole of society. Decent people recoil against the anti-semitism they are witnessing. Jeremy Corbyn should call on his supporters to stop claiming allegations of anti-semitism are smears against his leadership.”
The account closure came 10 days after Mr Corbyn announced he would not be quitting Facebook in the wake of the privacy scandal surrounding the social media site. He still has his official page on Facebook, which he used to post his Easter greeting message.
Other prominent members of the Labour party have been criticised over their Facebook activity.
The Daily Telegraph understands Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, was also until recently a member of several pro-corbyn groups containing anti-semitic abuse. After details of the postings were published yesterday, there was a debate on one of the groups under the headline: “All this talk of anti-semitism but where’s the evidence? I’ve yet to see any.”
Mr Burgon said he was added to the Facebook groups without his knowledge and left them once he became aware. His spokesman said: “Richard has a proud record of fighting anti-semitism and working with Leeds’ Jewish community.” A Labour spokesman said: “These groups are not officially connected to the party in any way. Labour is committed to challenging and campaigning against anti-semitism.”
Amid the furore, the Labour Party has reportedly lost 17,000 members in the past three months.
I’ve seen a lot of protests make their way to Parliament. Most of them come marching under banners and flags, banging drums, singing, blowing whistles. In Trafalgar Square or Parliament Square, they set up shop and begin a series of lectures from rabble rousers, heralded by cheers and drumbeats, and then go on their way, leaving behind a sea of trash.
The protest against Labour Party anti-semitism, organised by two Jewish groups last week, was rather different. I popped along and it was immediately clear that this was a group that doesn’t do protests. The mood was lively but directionless. The public address system was so bad that it was impossible to hear the speakers. And half the crowd had no idea how to occupy themselves. “I suppose if we could hear the speeches, that would be something to do,” I overheard one bespectacled protester say.
Thus I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, we, the dastardly Jews! Quiver with fear! The Elders are on the march.
The next day, a Jeremy Corbyn supporter posted an open letter to him on Facebook, which was soon “liked” by 2,000 people: “Yesterday,” she wrote, “we witnessed the full onslaught of a very powerful special interest group mobilising its apparent immense strength against you. It is clear this group can employ the full might of the BBC to make sure its voice is heard very loudly and clearly.”
She should have been there. One thing this “special interest group” definitely lacks is a way of projecting voices “loudly and clearly”.
A couple of days later, responding to the uproar over her letter, the same Corbyn supporter posted again, bewildered and confused. She hadn’t been referring to Jews in her message, she said. She was referring to some other special interest group that had mobilised (which one, she did not say) and was astonished that her post had been misinterpreted. A scroll through her other posts reveals that she had also defended the notorious antisemitic mural depicting a group of Jewish bankers playing monopoly on the backs of the poor, declaring that Mr Corbyn’s support for the artist was a matter of “freedom of expression” and that he was being attacked by the “media” and “rich and powerful”. This defence is, of course, a classic of the genre. There’s no problem with anti-semitism in Labour! It’s all a smear cooked up by a shadowy, rich and powerful interest group that controls the media.
I’d wager that the woman in question, Frances Naggs, genuinely didn’t intend to be a serial defender and purveyor of classic anti-semitic tropes. But she was unable to recognise them because, like so many Corbyn supporters, she has entered into a fundamentally conspiratorial mode of thinking. In the minds of many Labour members, the world is the way it is not due to a chaotic mix of historical trends, real constraints, inefficiency, incompetence, unintended consequences and special interests. It is ruled completely and only by corrupt special interests who carefully orchestrate everything, from fiscal austerity to the media. I, as a journalist on a national newspaper, am not an observer trying to make sense of an imperfect world. I’m a stooge deployed by a master manipulator with some devious scheme in mind.
There’s a certain comfort in thinking that it’s possible for the whole world to be controlled by something, even if it’s an evil something. A giant squid, a shadowy club of billionaires, a pantheon of gods or single, allpowerful god – the human mind seems almost designed to believe in some hidden force wielding absolute power. Anti-semitism is one version of this mindset. Or as Jean-paul Sartre put it: “If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.”
Sometimes it seems as if our politics is a steady diet of conspiracy theories, now able to flow freely and publicly around the internet with just as much authority as any other idea you can find by Googling. Did you know that there’s a secret plan to privatise the NHS? Did you know a group of “banksters”, aided by their political slaves, will be the beneficiaries of it all? Don’t you think it strange that the Skripal chemical attack happened so close to Porton Down, Britain’s chemical weapon research centre? Did you know that Muslim immigrants are plotting to take over the country? Did you know that all economists are in the pay of the EU? Did you know that the Brexit vote was stolen by a group of far-right Facebook manipulators? Did you know that there’s a cabal of internationalists plotting to reverse it? Did you know that the Jews are funding all of this?
Again in Sartre’s words: “antisemitic opinion appears to be a molecule that can enter into combination with other molecules of any origin without undergoing any alteration.” He goes on to argue that this is precisely because anti-semitism is not an opinion, in the way we normally define it – a view arrived at from interpretation of the facts. It’s “a passion”, he says, a way of seeing the world. Anyone who sees the world in shades of black and white, from Marxists to Islamists, xenophobes and extreme nationalists, is susceptible to this passion.
That is how perfectly “innocent” people, those who think of themselves as ardent anti-racists, find themselves spreading anti-semitic memes and consorting with those who hate Jews. They might not share the particular belief that the Rothschilds run everything, but they share the general view that someone or something is running the show, and that all that’s needed is a saviour, pure of heart and mind, to take on this malign force.
The truth, of course, is that the world is a dynamic and uncontrollable place. No one is “orchestrating” the campaign against Mr Corbyn. Individuals are drawing conclusions from his long-standing associations with highly dubious people and his slow and indifferent condemnation of them. Nor is he himself controlling and deploying some well-tuned “hate factory”, as The Sunday Times named his online supporters. No one is controlling this mob, just as no one is controlling the bond markets or the Middle East. The world is in ferment, a chaotic ever-changing morass of injustice, progress and struggle. It’s no wonder, when you think about it, that some people would rather believe that the Rothschilds are in charge.