Britain is getting filthier and filthier. People can be seen every day rolling down their car window and throwing out their rubbish. Everyone seems to just drop their crisp packets and sweet wrappers as they walk along. It’s miserable and we have got to stop it.
This was the message of a major litter campaign launched ten years ago and there was data behind it, too. The moment I saw the message, I thought two things, and they were in tension. The first thing I thought was “quite right too”. Things had got really bad. You could see it in the street. I was glad someone was calling it out and encouraging us all to do something about it.
Yet the other thing I thought was “This might be an error”. I was already aware of the literature on social norms. If, for instance, you want households to insulate their homes the only method that works reliably is telling people that their neighbours are insulating. If you want people to put their hotel towels back on the drying rack to “help the environment”, the best way is to inform guests that other people who stayed in the same room, were punctilious about returning their towels to the rack.
So if you tell people that everyone is rolling down their car windows and throwing out rubbish, what happens is that more people do it. They think it’s obviously not as socially unacceptable as they previously feared that it was.
This tension between raising awareness and normalising behaviour is now one that worries me about antisemitism.
We are keen to make sure people understand how bad antisemitism has become in Britain. This awareness is essential for even the most basic protection. People who run companies and public bodies, for instance, need to protect their Jewish employees and won’t do that if they do not see that there is a problem.
And political awareness is essential too, even if just to ensure the funding is made available to help guard schools and events.
Yet at the same time, the more we raise awareness, the more we are in danger of stimulating exactly what we are trying to suppress.
Because, unfortunately, the message that there is a lot of something encourages people to join in.
Indeed, think why people organise marches. Even a huge march represents a tiny fraction of the population and no politician need do what a march tells them. So why organise them? The answer is that marches tell people that there are thousands of others that think like they do. It tells them that they have company. That they won’t be alone.
So if we say antisemitism is on the rise and Britain is becoming impossible for Jews to live in, we risk emboldening antisemites and increasing their numbers.
What then can we do?
Even if any of us were remotely inclined to play down antisemitism, which I don’t think we are, it isn’t in our gift to do so.The acts have become so public and egregious that antisemitism can’t be denied, even if we wanted to.
Yet we shouldn’t just ignore the danger of normalising behaviour we are trying to stop. A worrying thought is that people commit public and egregious acts precisely in order to spread their behaviour.
So what I think we should do is be just as vocal about antisemitism but take care to be very targeted. We should isolate antisemites rather than normalise them. Our rhetoric should stress how abnormal such hatred is, rather than stressing how common it is.
We should argue that individuals or institutions who either behave in an antisemitic way or fail to protect Jews from it, are atypical of Britain. We should make the most of the love we are shown, whether it is by the King, or in politics, or in show business. We should do all we can to promote and support and publicise our friends.
We should talk more about what a great place Britain is for Jews to live in and how we aren’t going to let a minority of haters spoil this. We should celebrate the fact that Britain in its “finest hour” came to our rescue. Antisemitism is aberrant. It is isolated. It’s an affront to Britain.
I realise that talking like this is counterintuitive. But I think it’s also smart.
Daniel Finkelstein is Associate Editor of The Times
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.