Judging by the media noise and rain of resignations, one would think Britain and Labour’s greatest problem at the minute is rampant antisemitism. Forget about dying paupers, disappearing NHS, wartorn regions and the capitalist apocalypse. Greatest topic on everyone’s lips is the long buried facebook comments of this and that leftie that shows traces of unconscious nano antisemitism in the pancreas.

In response to this masterstroke of right wing deflection and second chicken coup, the left decide to… outcompete the right in microscopic antisemitism detection.

Corbyn allegedly put pressure on Christine Shawcroft to resign for what could only by a stretch of the imagination be considered support for Holocaust denial. Meanwhile, a war criminal who butchered a million innocent Iraqis is still in the party, and uncondemned by an eerily elusive Chilcot Inquiry. Are we really supposed to believe an upsetting word is more serious than a million lives? Then maybe we should amend our legal codes, because as it stands war of aggression is considered the supreme crime by some bodies. Someone tell the courts murder’s been relegated to the bottom of the code, just below “hurtful tweet”.

Antisemitism in Labour is an artificially exaggerated problem, that takes an inordinate amount of attention versus the little to no mainstream attention and focus real victims of violent oppression receive. There was a march in front of Parliament against Corbyn’s “failure to tackle anti semitism”. How many marches were there in front of Parliament against the black slave markets in Libya? Today 17 palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. On one hand, you have social media posts that could be interpreted to be antisemitic when the moon is in the seventh house and you stretch logic to its most panicked limits. Public outrage. On the other hand, human beings are stripped of dignity and sold as commodities, hung head down like chicken at the abattoir — in a country wrecked for profit by Hillary and Sarkozy. Palestinians killed in their own country. Millions of Yemeni starved to death. Where is the proportion? Posts that could be at their worst interpreted as slightly offensive receive international attention on the front page of big papers — slave victims tortured and worked to death, victims of war, a buried note on the last page and no protest.

What is the reason for this disproportion? Is it really accepted that offensive words trump human lives in the hierarchy of political priority? No. It’s a political tool. And it’s such an intricate and convincing tool, bleeding heart lefties are easy prey to it. Just tell them someone’s been offended and they’re happy to throw their allies under the bus.

The more strategic elements among them probably really want to play it safe and clean their image of possible controversy, but end up legitimising the weapons of the right: antisemitism being core to them.

If you apologise and explain yourself away, you’re giving credence to their dirty tricks. This is a strategic catastrophe. They will use it again, and again, until Corbyn has literally no allies and our dear socialist project is back in the hands of neoliberal right wingers. We lost Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wardsworth, and many others to these tricks. We lost Christina Shawcroft on the NEC. While war criminals still sit comfortably in the party.

The correct answer to all this would be “we don’t have a significant problem with antisemitism”, but the route the party seems to have taken is defensive: “we do have a problem and we’re trying to fix it”. It’s in fact a victory for the right. They get to define your parameters, and your problems. They get to control your every move because you’re afraid of the “controversy”. “You don’t want to appear to be antisemitic/transphobic/racist/etc … do you?” And obedience follows. This is surrender in a game that takes place at an abstract level, the language level. More subtle than we’re accustomed to, but that’s no excuse for complacency.

The new political battlefield is ideological, conceptual. The right can’t spell its intentions, it has to disguise them as protecting you from being offended. Or other milquetoast problems you are really not in danger of harm from, while being limited in your power to talk about the problems YOU ARE in danger of death from: like healthcare, war, poverty.

Every time you cede ground on one of this debates, you lose more of your free speech. Since free speech is vital for those most oppressed of us, to speak about their oppression, lost freedom of speech is lost hope. The architects of this know exactly what they’re doing. Every parachuted debate like antisemitism and transphobia where placid lefties bow out, of fear of controversy — “but NHS is more urgent!” — is a lost battle in the ideological war. It’s a further victory for the right. This is highly intelligent of them, a subtle form of warfare. And the left are being played by their own dislike of controversy and fondness of appeasement, to walk into this trap, and by not talking back, limiting their freedom of speech. A progressive and steady limitation that God knows how it will end. North Korea comes to mind — but with more shit to buy.

This is how it’s come to a level where many concepts oppressed people need to talk about their struggle are now considered pariah. Palestine, poverty, war… the real issues we need to talk at the core of this military warmongering neoliberal fascism, can no longer be talked about as they will trigger some sensitive soul. Brilliant, isn’t it? Poverty is no longer in use, we use less “offensive” terms like “just about managing” — as if the poor care more about being offended by a correct descriptor of their situation than their .. situation. In fact, eluding talk of this matter just serves *them*. You elude talking about it as “it’s a sensitive topic” and thus pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Shifty, and tragic.

This strategy is a new form of warfare at the language level, they’re using liberal guilt to manipulate the left into self censorship — including via throwing our own under the bus; and therefore SEVERELY limiting what we can say, especially about abuses of power.

It’s coming to a point where the language tricks make it “offensive” to call attention to abuse of power. Very clever, but only possible with our own cooperation!!

“But that’s offensive” is the trojan horse of tyranny. And the meek left that stays silent because it doesn’t want to upset feelings… ends up in a conceptual cage of its own manufacture. Debate is stifled. Speech is limited. More and more. And we end up in a dystopian full on ideological tyranny.