I’ve often thought that the most astute summary of modern progressive politics is a 2006 sketch by Mitchell and Webb. You’ve probably seen it – they play two Waffen-SS officers in a trench preparing to be attacked by the Red Army. “The badges on our caps…Have you looked at them?” asks Mitchell as they wait. “They’ve got skulls on them…Are we the baddies?” It’s brilliant.
Which brings us to the latest development in so-called progressive politics: Jew hunting. They don’t call it that, of course, but in recent days groups of people who consider themselves to be members of the community of the good have started going to door-to-door in Brighton, Bristol and Sheffield – those are the places we know about – asking if households will support a boycott of the world’s only Jewish state. It hasn’t, of course, occurred to them that they are the baddies.
Because not only are they asking if people will boycott Israel, they are then noting the response given. In other words, if you dare to tell them that you will not boycott Jewish-produced goods, your address will be taken and the information held on file.
Having spoken to lawyers in this field, it seems clear to me that there are GDPR issues involved in the use of this data. Be that as it may; when it comes to door-to-door searches for households which refuse to boycott Jews, focusing on data protection is what one might call missing the point.
Because this is not merely a one-off activity pursued by a tiny group of fringe freaks. It is becoming a national operation, backed by the Green Party, which is currently outscoring the LibDems in the polls. These door-knocks are intended to be a long-term, regular activity. Another is being advertised in Bristol for next weekend, and the spread of neighbourhoods being targeted is growing.
Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer (co-leader of the party until she was ousted last September by Zack Polanski) has released a video of her joining colleagues in the “Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone” campaign. It’s got upbeat music in the background as we follow Denyer in her element going door to door in Bristol.
Denyer is the archetype of the modern progressive – the person who thinks of themselves as being part of the community of the good and on the "right side of history” but is, in reality, anything but. So self-consumed are these people with their own oft-proclaimed virtue and rectitude that they cannot comprehend the idea that anyone who disagrees with them might not be amoral or even evil. Literally so – the likes of Denyer are incapable of thinking through the consequences of their own stances on issues such as Palestine, trans rights, open borders or any of the other buzz-issues for the modern progressive, let alone thinking through the arguments of anyone who disagrees with them.
History has repeatedly shown the dangers posed by those who believe unswervingly in their own rectitude, and it is a lesson being played out in so many ways today with, as so often, Jews as the target – with antisemitic incidents soaring to record levels.
These people see their own behaviour as, by definition, moral and worthy. So when they go door-to-door demanding to know if people are willing to boycott the Jewish state, and when they are told in response that someone will not support a boycott and then take a note of where these Jew-supporters live, they cannot see what is plain to everyone else: that they are in reality driven not by morality but by hatred, and that their actions are chilling.
Noting down the addresses of those who refuse to support their demands is a tactic used by totalitarians through the ages, as anyone not suffused with this hate can see. It is especially resonant for Jews, of course, since some of those who experienced this the last time it was used to identify Jews and their allies are still alive.
Nazi comparisons are often over-blown when it comes to antisemitism and the targeting of Jews. But it is difficult to avoid the comparison when we see the spread of groups who consider that anyone who does not conform to their demands to boycott Jewish goods is beyond the pale, and who devote their time to tracking down where those Jewish allies live.
This is Jew hate, pure and simple. The hate marches were a signal of where we were heading. Door-knocking to hunt down the addresses of those who refuse to boycott Jews shows that we have arrived.
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