The problem with Corbyn, AOC and left-wing antisemitism - opinion

• Author: MARK REGEV
• Published date: 07 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

How can the Left, which proudly champions the equality of all, be bigoted against Jews? Hating Jews was often presumed to be the prerogative of the radical Right, while progressives were ostensibly committed to the fight against racism in all its forms.

Yet over the generations, antisemitism has existed and even flourished on the Left. Historic Christian teachings about Jewish money changers defiling the Temple and medieval myths about manipulative Shylock-type money lenders provide fertile soil for modern left-wing antisemitism. It was all too natural to portray the Jews as the evil capitalists living off the sweat and suffering of the poor.

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The founding ideologues of French socialism, Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Prudhon, the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and, most important of all, the German-Jewish communist Karl Marx, were all pioneers of modern socialist thought and were all also guilty of expressing antisemitic prejudice in their writings. In his essay "On the Jewish Question," Marx equates Judaism to "hucksterism" and recommends that instead of emancipating the Jews into society, society must emancipate itself from Judaism.

In Britain, the Labour Party enjoyed a proud history of Jewish support and has been led by individuals renowned for their philosemitism such as Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Yet UK Labour never had full immunity from the antisemitism virus. Keir Hardie, one of the party's founding fathers (the current Labour leader is named after him) claimed that the Boer War [1899-1902], which he opposed, was being fought in the interests of Jewish capitalists.

Britain's famous post-war Labour government was headed by Prime Minister Clement Atlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, both of whom were not free of anti-Jewish prejudice. Andrew Adonis, in his new and largely complimentary biography of Bevin, reaches the conclusion that "there was a significant strand of antisemitism in Bevin's and Atlee's anti-Zionism" and quotes a Labour colleague who worked under the legendary British foreign secretary as saying "there is no doubt in my mind that Ernest detests Jews."

By far the most extreme manifestation of antisemitism in the upper echelons of UK Labour was the recent leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who was repeatedly caught up in incidents of anti-Jewish bigotry. Corbyn's record...