The annual assault of antisemitism [PART 2]

Is the volume of #LabourAntisemitism press coverage warranted?

[This is Part 2 of a series: you can read Part 1 here.]

A survey carried out by Deltapoll for The Observer in April this year¹ found that more than half of the electorate considers the Labour Party to be ‘riddled with’ or ‘contain pockets’ of antisemites, and more than a third believe Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic himself. Additionally, more than twice as many people believe that antisemitism is most prevalent within the Labour Party (relative to other parties) as there are people who believe the reverse.

None of this is surprising given the degree to which the press has reported on #LabourAntisemitism, but are the public right?

Antisemitism in the UK is low, and declining

It should go without saying that any antisemitism is too much antisemitism, but it is important to establish a global context. In September 2017, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) published a study on antisemitism in Britain today.² The author of the report, Dr Staetsky, writes:

It is worth stressing a fact that runs the risk of being understated in a problem-centred report: levels of antisemitism in Great Britain are among the lowest in the world. British Jews constitute a religious and ethnic group that is seen overwhelmingly positively by an absolute majority of the British population: about 70% of the population of Great Britain have a favourable opinion of Jews and do not entertain any antisemitic ideas or views at all.³

Another thing to consider about both this study and another (the ‘Antisemitism Barometer’, which I will introduce later) are their limitations. In both, levels of antisemitism are measured by the number of people who say they agree with or endorse a number of antisemitic statements. While this metric can provide a useful illustration of the diffusion of antisemitic beliefs, it does little to illustrate the extent to which there exists an active hostility towards Jews. To this end, the author writes:

While 30% of British society hold at least one antisemitic attitude, to varying degrees, this emphatically does not mean that 30% of the population of Great Britain is antisemitic.⁴

Many would contest Staetsky’s assertion that holding an antisemitic attitude doesn’t necessarily make someone antisemitic. Sure: if somebody believes that ‘Jews think they are better than other British people’, it doesn’t follow that they are likely to become abusive towards a visibly Jewish person — but that doesn’t mean they are not antisemitic. There are many shades of racism, but believing just one racist idea necessarily means somebody is racist.

There is a pervasive and toxic misconception that there are acceptable levels and types of racism: that believing black people are naturally more inclined to commit crime is perfectly acceptable and harmless, so long as you don’t treat black people any differently to others. It is possible, they say, to be racist without being a racist.

Such relaxed attitudes to ‘casual’ racism are dangerously naïve. Nazi Germany’s march towards the Holocaust didn’t happen because a majority of Germans always believed that Jews were subhuman: it was made possible because a critical mass believed racist stereotypes and tropes. It is these casually racist views that — in times of destitution — are susceptible to developing into more sinister and hateful prejudices.

With that said, there are reasons to be positive about the current state of antisemitism in the UK. The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) published its own study of British antisemitism, the ‘Antisemitism Barometer 2017’, last August.⁵ CAA’s report found similarly low levels of antisemitism to JPR’s, as well as a steady year-on-year decline: