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Starmer's response to the EHRC report will be a major turning point in the history of Labour antisemitism

JLM National Secretary Peter Mason says up until now full machinery of the Party has been used to find excuses

July 2, 2020 14:04
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2 min read

For almost five years, Jewish Labour activists have been warning in voices with increasing alarm and distress of the growing tide of antisemitism within our Party.

Emerging from the leadership contest in 2015, the rapid influx of new members overwhelmed Party structures. Whilst the vast majority of new members were good people, inspired by a different kind of left politics promised by Corbyn, a committed group of hard-left activists, ideologically committed to a new form of antisemitism, one imbibing all the hallmarks of the old, were able to enter largely unnoticed.

Importing with them a set of tactics not seen inside Labour since the 1980's, they would quickly poison the well. When Hannah Arendt spoke of the "banality of evil", her observation that good people could willingly abdicate their critical thinking in deference to ideologues and rhetoricians came under much scrutiny from those who believed this excused and removed agency from antisemites.

This is precisely the debate that the Labour Party must now face. Five years of the leadership excusing, ignoring, diminishing and downplaying antisemitism has inculcated a culture of denialism and obfuscation. Whilst the overwhelming majority of Labour Party members believe anti-Jewish racism is bad, polling of members has consistently shown that most believe it to be blown out of all true proportion.