It is a source of anger to many British Jews, you must understand, that far-left activists who would, correctly, immediately castigate someone who had made a racist comment about another minority, appear to take a very different stance when antisemitism is involved. When it comes to incidents of the latter, there is, apparently, endless room for understanding and a clear need for “education on the issue”.
It does seem strange, to put it mildly, that those who seem to care so much about racial hatred are simultaneously utterly blind to a form of bigotry often described as “the oldest hatred.”
This brings us to the case of Kayla Bibby, a Labour activist in Liverpool.
Last year, in a case which has become infamous, Ms Bibby shared an image of a parasitic creature, with a Star of David emblazoned on it, covering the face of the Statue of Liberty. Ms Bibby had posted the picture with the caption: “The most accurate photo I’ve seen all year!”
The question comes up once more – malevolence or stupidity?
Looking at the picture, you would have to have the brain of a pigeon not to see it as antisemitic, regurgitating, as it does, antisemitic cartoons reminiscent of the worst Nazi and Soviet “anti-Zionist” publications.
Or alternatively, you completely understand that it is antisemitic.
Fortunately, in this case, we know which one it was. And we know because of the small wording on the side of the image, which says “Incog Man”.
Incog Man is a far-right website, which shares all manner of racist and homophobic material.
The picture Kayla Bibby shared came from a 2016 post on the site, titled: “Bloodsucking Alien Parasites Killing America.”
So, who are these parasites, according to the Neo-Nazi writer? Well, black people, for a start – one particularly foul passage says: “Blacks are now HUGE parasites in White countries…They are still bilking the slavery guilt BS, even though few White people have any ancestry involved.”
It goes on to spew bile about “the black race’s criminal nature” and claims that “our once beautiful cities are filled with lazy-ass, criminal blacks sucking beaucoup dineros from America’s bottom line.”
But, for the foul author, the real parasites are Jews. As he writes: “Blacks don’t hold a candle to the parasitic, Whitish looking, chameleon Jew… Just like the continuously changing or mutating HIV virus, Jews are the virus that destroyed the proactive, protective White T-cells of our body politic, while blacks are the “opportunistic” disease bacterium ravaging the system overall… The Jew virus first infected our digestive tract (the money-making apparatus or Federal Reserve) and then sent offspring out into the nervous system and up into the brain (the educational system and media) to blind and confuse us with a somnolent-inducing drug called “PC,” while keeping us from visiting the doctor (Hitler).”
You can’t get much more racist or antisemitic than this.
Enter Kayla Bibby, Labour member and activist.
“Hi Incogman,” she wrote in a comment below the piece on March 8 last year.
“Please tell me you have that Statue of Liberty facehugger Alien pic as a .GIF file?
“If not, could you please make one and send to me please?
“I [sic] lot of facebook pages don’t allow you to reply with a photo, only gifs or text. Well done on the photo, the most accurate photo I’ve seen that depicts the current situation. It’s brilliant!”
The author of the article responded an hour or so later, saying “OK, dropped a download button at the end of the article.”
And that same day, March 8, Ms Bibby posted the picture on her Facebook wall.
Here is what Labour did in response.
No action was taken for three months, during which time Ms Bibby represented her local constituency, Liverpool Riverside, as a delegate at the national party conference. At the end of that time, it was announced that Ms Bibby would receive “antisemitism training”, with Labour claiming they had investigated the case.
We now know that the original decision not to suspend Ms Bibby was down to Thomas Gardiner, a Camden Labour councillor and head of the party’s governance and legal unit. Mr Gardiner advised Ms Bibby should not be suspended because the picture was “anti-Israel, not anti-Jewish.”
Any compliance unit worthy of the name would have done a basic check, given the clear link to the original publisher in the picture. They would have found that article, and the exchange between Ms Bibby and the writer in the comments, and they would have kicked her out of the party.
We must assume that the compliance unit did not carry out such a check. To have done so, uncovered this evidence, and still recommend that Ms Bibby not even be suspended, let alone expelled, is almost too grotesque to think about.
But it has got to a point where Jewish communal trust in Labour is so low that there are understandably people who will look at this situation and suspect that Labour’s compliance unit did know; that they knew everything, and nonetheless did nothing, simply because they don’t like Jews very much.
And so, looking at the Labour party itself this time, we have to once again ask: malevolence or stupidity?
