First, unconfirmed reports in the party suggest that Ken Livingstone is facing a new investigation over his comments on the relationship between Zionist organisations and the German Nazi government in the early to mid-30s. The comrade remains suspended for statements he made about the limited cooperation between these two otherwise bitterly opposed forces; concretely over the immigration of Jews from Germany to Palestine.
Ken is certainly no historian, as the hazy nature of some of his remarks indicated. But his comments were substantially correct, if not exactly accurate. There is no question that he was pointing to an historical truth – and a rather awkward one for latter day Zionists and supporters of the Israeli state. In the fluid and inconsistent tradition of all witch-hunts, it seems that Livingstone’s crime may now be recalibrated as “his failure to show any remorse” for his original comments, as TheJewish Chronicleput it (July 26).
The phrase “remorse”, with its religious overtones of repentance of sin and supplication, is apposite here. At the core of the charges against the comrade is a deep irrationality; a notion that Livingstone has blasphemed an eternal verity that can neither be questioned or the subject of contemporary rational debate. Thus, Ken was ‘done’ for violating rule 2.1.8 of the LP constitution which begins “No member of the party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the party.”
Concretely, Livingstone is charged with making comments that were “likely to prejudice the party by causing dismay among the Jewish community and indeed many supporters and members more generally” and which were judged to be “likely to deeply offend the Jewish community”. Now that is debatable enough in itself – what exactly is this monolithic “Jewish community” and who has canvassed its views plus those of Labour “supporters and members”?
However, having assumed the views of these social constituencies social, Labour’s general secretary Iain McNicol was perfectly explicit in his letter to Livingstone – referring in a footnote to a Zionist polemic about the relationship between Zionist organisations and the German state in the 1930s – that it would make no difference to the charges if every word that Ken Livingstone utter had been true.
He would still have violated Labour Party rules and jeopardised his membership if his words had been judged to have caused ‘deep offense’ to that mythical, apparently hive-minded “Jewish community” mentioned above.
The small matter of historical truth – the stuff that really happened in the past – doesn’t seem to delay the witch hunters too long when they get the scent of leftwing blood in their snouts.
Sunday April 9, 5pm, The Calthorpe Arms, 252 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8JR.
Co-sponsored by LPM and CPGB
Speakers:
Mike Macnair, CPGB
Tony Greenstein, Jewish anti-Zionist
The media fuelled furore over Livingstone’s (admittedly clumsy) remarks on the limited collaboration between some Zionist organisations and the Nazis in the early years of the fascist regime is a profoundly distasteful provocation against the left of the Labour Party. The historical truth is that the Nazis initially explored different policies to deal with Germany’s Jewish ‘problem’. These included social and financial pressures on Jews to emigrate, forced relocation, evictions, measure designed to pauperise the population and confiscate their possessions … and some degree of collaboration with Zionist groups to promote emigration: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1112/why-ken-livingstone-was-right/
So, Livingstone’s comments were clumsy and historically hazy – but not fantasy, still less ‘anti-Semitic’. The continuing ‘anti-Semitism scandal’ is nothing but the continuation of the right-wing’s coup against Corbyn. Which makes it all the more regrettable that he still choses to follow a path of appeasing the right.
Jackie Walker wandered into a political minefield when she innocently asked at a training workshop on anti-Semitism at Labour Party conference 2016: “In terms of Holocaust Day, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust?” She was robustly corrected by some right wingers in the room that formally the supposed ethos of the 46 governments who came together to create the Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 2000 was to “remember the victims of Nazi persecution and of all genocides” (our emphasis). However, she really got into trouble with additional, uncontroversial observation that “In practice, [HMD] is not actually circulated and advertised as such.”
Ken Livingstone, another comrade who is also in trouble for making clumsy comments with a kernel of truth, made the incontrovertible observation that “I suspect you’ll find the majority of people in Britain didn’t know the Holocaust Memorial Day had been widened to include others,” he said.
Norman Finkelstein’s 2000 polemic described how the Nazi holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry became the “The Holocaust”: an “ideological representation” of this real historical event, that has is now presented as “categorically unique historical event” which “cannot be rationally apprehended … Indeed, The Holocaust is unique because it is inexplicable, and it is inexplicable because it is unique” (pp41-45).
And which, it must be added, via the ruthless battle for the ‘memory’ of the holocaust becomes a form of the class struggle itself. That, not the bilge about ‘anti-Semitism’ is the political significance of the attacks on comrades Walker, Livingstone and many others in the Labour Party.
LPM recommends Norman G Finkelstein, The holocaust industry: reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering (Verso 2000)
The new Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust Industry
A video of Norman speaking at Communist University 2016 on the issue is available here.
When Norman Finklestein’s The Holocaust Industry first hit the shelves in 2000, he must have anticipated that his punchy little polemic would stir the pot a little. You wouldn’t imagine he anticipated the shit storm that was about to break over him:
This book “provides considerable comfort to every holocaust denier, neo-Nazi and anti-Semite on the face of the planet” (Tobias Abse New Interventions autumn 2000).
Finkelstein comes “dangerously close to giving comfort to those who dream of new holocausts” (Alex Callinicos Socialist Worker July 22, 2000).
“How different is [Finkelstein’s] assertion that ‘the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not plain fraud’, from the holocaust revisionist David Irving’s rantings …?” (Socialist Worker July 22).
Finkelstein was “a Jew who doesn’t like Jews” and who “does the anti-Semites’ work for them” (Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian July 14, 2000),
“He’s poison, he’s a disgusting self-hating Jew, he’s something you find under a rock” (Leon Wieseltier, Zionist intellectual and literary editor of New Republic).
On the surface, Finkelstein has impeccable credentials to write on the horror of that broke over European Jewry in WWII. Both his mother and father were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from his parents, every family member was exterminated by the Nazis. In the words of Finkelstein, “My earliest memory, so to speak, of the Nazi holocaust is my mother glued in front of the television watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) when I came home from school” (p5).
It is also very ironic that Finkelstein’s project is rather moderate in its scope and its intentions – essentially, all he wanted to do is make the holocaust a subject of rational inquiry. This entails rescuing real history from the clutches of “holocaust correctness” (p65) and so-called ‘holocaust awareness’, which, to use the words of the Israeli writer, Boas Evron, is actually “an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present” (p41).
Finkelstein’s project is to strip away all the self-serving myths and falsehoods which envelop the holocaust, which can only mean stepping on a lot of very sensitive toes – some powerful, some just desperate for a crumb of ideological absolutism in an uncertain and disturbingly relativistic world. As he clearly puts it in his mission statement, “In this text, Nazi holocaust signals the actual historical event, The Holocaust its ideological representation … Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. The Holocaust is not an arbitrary, but rather an internally coherent, construct. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon” (original italics – p4). In other words, Finkelstein wants to understand how the Nazi holocaust became “the Holocaust” – a “categorically unique historical event” which “cannot be rationally apprehended … Indeed, The Holocaust is unique because it is inexplicable, and it is inexplicable because it is unique” (pp41-45).
As a graphic example of the “sacralisation of the holocaust”, as the liberal scholar Peter Novick dubs it, some have been infuriated by Finkelstein’s blunt statement that “much of the literature on Hitler’s ‘final solution’ is worthless as scholarship. Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud” (p55).
Finkelstein’s remit is to explain the way in which the ruling class and reactionary forces in general have managed to expropriate the ‘memory’ and discourse of the holocaust – to the extent that the almost unimaginable suffering endured by the victims of Nazi rule has become the virtual political-moral property of the reinvented, post-World War II bourgeoisie, which never tires of parading its new-found anti-racism/fascism.
The semi-hysterical reaction to Finkelstein’s birth described above illustrates the alarming climate of censorship that has grown alongside this ideological appropriation. It says it all that the Socialist Workers Party, former Finkelstein fans, issued a call for the works of David Irving to be prohibited from public libraries. If Finkelstein’s views also come “dangerously close” to Irving’s, as Alex Callinicos wrote in Socialist Worker (July 22 2000), then why not demand that The holocaust industry also be removed from public libraries? A very slippery slope.
‘The Holocaust’ – as opposed to the Nazi holocaust – is largely a retrospective construction by those with various (and sometimes rival) ideological and ‘special interest’ axes to grind. Indeed, ‘The Holocaust’ would not have been recognisable to most people who went through World War II and Nazi rule. In some respects, an anachronism (‘The Holocaust’) is being introduced as an alternative to understanding contemporary responses to real events. Substituting for a rational examination of the specific historical dynamics that led to the Nazi holocaust, we have the mystifying fog of ‘holocaust awareness’.
This is easily observed by the way that Martin Niemöller’s famous mea culpa (“First they came for the communists …”) has been radically doctored for political reasons. Infamously, Time magazine’s ‘new’ version promoted the Jews to first place and dropped both the communists and the social democrats. Al Gore publicly did the same too – and for good measure he dumped the trade unionists as well. Gore, Time and others have all added Catholics to Niemöller’s list – even though he did not mention them. In the heavily catholic city of Boston, they were added to the ‘quotation’ inscribed on its holocaust memorial.
Naturally, the establishment-sanctified US Holocaust Museum airbrushes out the communists from its roll call of official victimhood (but, interestingly, the holocaust bureaucrats decided to retain the social democrats as authentic, bona fide victims). Others have decided to include gays – the fact that Niemöller did not was obviously a mere ‘oversight’ on his part.
This footloose and fancy-free attitude to what should be a basic, easily verified and hence non-contested truth clearly demonstrates that the ruthless battle for the ‘memory’ of the holocaust is a form of class struggle – and a handy indicator of the current balance of class forces. Once upon a time, at least in the US, to ‘harp on’ about the Nazi holocaust was a sign of dangerous pinko-commie leanings. Now it is a badge of moral and bourgeois uprightness. Niemöller himself symbolises this shift in bourgeois ideology.
In the 1940s and 1950s the protestant pastor, who spent eight years in Nazi concentration camps, was regarded with grave suspicion by American Jewry in the shape of organisations like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti Deformation League. Niemöller’s instinctive opposition to the McCarthyite witch hunts made him persona non grata for America Jewish leaders who were desperate to boost their anti-communist credentials – to the point of joining, and partly financing, far rightist organisations like the All-American Conference to Combat Communism and even turning a blind eye to veterans of the Nazi SS entering the country. Indeed, the AJC enthusiastically joined in the establishment hysteria whipped up against the Rosenbergs, and its monthly publication, Commentary (November 1953), actually editorialised about how the couple – executed as Soviet spies – were not really Jews at all. (This tradition of toadying before the US establishment continues – the Simon Wiesenthal Centre made Ronald Reagan the winner of its ‘Humanitarian of the Year’ award in 1988.)
Another significant aspect to the debate is the so-called uniqueness of the holocaust, an idea heavily pushed in schools, colleges/universities, books, TV documentaries, films, etc. Banally speaking of course, every single event that has ever happened, and ever will happen, is ‘unique’. The evangelists for ‘uniqueness’ have a different agenda though.
Take Deborah Lipstadt, occupant of the holocaust chair at Emory University, an appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and author of the widely lauded, Denying the holocaust: the growing assault on memory and truth. Lipstadt became a liberal hero for successfully slugging it out with David Irving last year in the British courts, after the Hitler-admiring historian filed a doomed libel suit against Lipstadt for branding him “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for holocaust denial”.
What was not mentioned in the mainstream press coverage of the time, and which throws a different and less salutary light on Lipstadt’s motivations, is that she is on record declaring that if you do not accept the ‘uniqueness’ theory, you must be effectively classed alongside those who deny the very historical fact of the Nazi holocaust itself. We are all potential Irvings then. Thus, in Denying the holocaust, Lipstadt rages against the drawing of “immoral equivalences” with the Nazi holocaust – like the Armenian genocide. This has “intriguing implications”, according to Finkelstein, who observes: “Daniel Goldhagen argues that Serbian actions in Kosovo ‘are, in their essence, different from those of Nazi Germany only in scale’. That would make Goldhagen ‘in essence’ a holocaust denier. (The holocaust industry: reflections on the exploitation of Jewish sufferingLondon 2000, p71).
Inconsistencies, contradictions and paradoxes may abound in the ‘uniqueness’ school of Wiesel, Goldhagen, Lipstadt et al – but it is strongly recommended that you make loud, approving noises if you want to find yourself with your feet well under the table, and if you are non-Jewish it could also mean that you are actually feted (always nice). Reject the doctrine, however, and purdah beckons – doubly so if you are Jewish and thus an abominable ‘self-hater’.
October 15 meeting of Momentum’s London Regional Committee
Condemns the unjust suspension of Labour Party members, many of whom are Black, Muslim, committed anti-racists and/or Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights, and many Corbyn supporters.
Calls for Momentum to campaign against the purge of thousands of Labour Party members and supporters in the run up to the Leadership election, some of which were targeted for spurious reasons such as tweeting about other political parties. Free speech is a right that should be respected by the Labour Party Compliance Unit.
Calls for Jackie Walker, a Jewish Black woman and anti-racist campaigner, to be reinstated into the Labour Party.
Calls for discussion on democratic structures and procedures, suspensions and elections at the national conference [of Momentum] in February.
Barnet
Barnet Momentum defends Jackie Walker and calls on national Momentum to not remove her from her role as vice-chair of Momentum.
Rossendale
Complaint letter heading to Momentum – “Dear Comrades,
At our Rossendale Friends of Jeremy Corbyn meeting on 4th October we decided we wished to establish ourselves as a branch of Momentum, which we have scheduled for 25 October. However we wish to unanimously condemn the action of the Steering Committee in their suspension of Jackie Walker and her removal as Vice Chair, following the Anti-Semitism training day at Labour Party Conference. We assert that Jackie’s words on a secretly filmed clip at a JLM training day – which was quietly handed over to the Press, presumably by the hostile right wing JLM – did not reveal her saying anything anti-Semitic.
A couple of our members were present at the Chakrabarti debate at The World Transformed in Liverpool and came back reporting that Jackie had spoken brilliantly and had lots of support from the audience unlike Jeremy Newmark of JLM, who went down like a lead balloon. It would appear that she has massive support from Momentum members across the country.
Jackie has again been suspended by the NEC of the Labour Party, and is facing a witch hunt by the Blairite/JLM section of the Party. Instead of Momentum taking a totally undemocratic vote to suspend Jackie they should be supporting Jackie and campaigning for her to be admitted to the Labour Party.
We are extremely concerned that Momentum has also fallen into the ‘witch hunters ‘ trap by removing Jackie from her position.
We call on Momentum to reinstate Jackie and to defend vigorously any members or supporters subject to these vile attacks. Momentum should not be engaging in any ‘witch hunts’ of Labour Members expressing political opinions.”
The Manchester Momentum BAME Caucus are concerned with the undemocratic and troubling actions of the Momentum leadership in removing Jackie Walker from her position as Vice Chair of the Momentum Steering Group. Jackie Walker is a Jewish Black woman and anti-racism campaigner. Her removal from the position of Vice Chair was made by a majority white panel under immense pressure from allegations she had been anti-Semitic by groups and individuals who have weaponised Anti-Semitism in order to attack the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and his support for the right of Palestinian self-determination.
The Momentum Steering Committee in their own statement accepted that Jackie Walker had not been anti-Semitic but judged her remarks on Holocaust Memorial Day and her interview to Channel 4 News to be offensive. This was despite the many Jewish voices stating her comments were neither anti-Semitic nor offensive. The committee in coming to this conclusion seems to have ignored the fact that Jackie has faced an onslaught of not only biased press coverage but also personal attacks that included racist abuse.
The Committee also failed to respect and acknowledge Jackie’s own identity and her right to question how concepts central to the Jewish community are defined as a Jewish woman. We are also troubled by the fact that there was a media briefing against Jackie from inside Momentum with Momentum’s ‘sources’ actively misquoting Jackie and contributing to her trial by media and forces hostile to the Corbyn Leadership. Removing the lifelong anti-racism campaigner from her post in such circumstances has left BAME Momentum members wondering who is representing them within the leadership.
The Steering Committee must also accept that it has made Momentum a less safe space for BAME members, who already feel marginalised by the failure of the committee to engage positively with BAME members. The Steering Committee made no effort to contact its BAME membership in order to gauge their views.
BAME Members must have the safe space necessary to advocate for issues such as Palestine and Black Lives Matter even if that means countering prevailing views. Apartheid in South Africa was supported by the Thatcher government and many in the establishment but figures such as Jeremy Corbyn fought against such views even if that resulted in arrest; Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter movement have also taken courageous stands against the oppresion of Palestinian people despite very similar pressure and attacks. Our concerns now are that the Momentum leadership will continue to capitulate and leave its membership susceptible to outside pressure when they take a meaningful stance.
The fight against racism and anti-Semitism cannot be selective and GM BAME caucus abhors any act of anti-Semitism or racism and extends the hand of solidarity to any comrade who has suffered such abuse. There can also be no justification for any form of latent or unconscious racism and therefore we remain perplexed at the actions of the Committee over this matter.
In order to repair relationships we call on the Momentum Steering Committee to engage in the following actions:
– Engage in positive and constructive dialogue with BAME groups within Momentum with the assistance of BAME allies within the Labour and Trade Union movement
– Draw up a clear and fair disciplinary policy that is agreed by members including the right that Liberation groups be consulted and involved in any potential disciplinary action of members of their groups
– Take on board the findings of the Chakrabarti report in terms of how disciplinary cases are to be handled
– Apologise to Jackie Walker for her treatment in regards to the disciplinary procedures used against her
– Support liberation groups within Momentum to actively engage in decision making within Momentum but also respect the different viewpoints that may bring
If Momentum is truly a peoples movement committed to transforming Britain for the better under a future Labour government, then Momentum needs to learn from its mistakes and listen to its members if it is to have any role in delivering this change.
Brighton and Hove
This emergency resolution was passed:
This annual general meeting of Momentum – Brighton and Hove condemns the decision to remove Jackie Walker as vice-chair of Momentum nationally made at the Steering Group meeting held on Monday October 3rd and calls for her immediate reinstatement.
The background to this decision was a video, circulated on social media, of a contribution Jackie made in a fringe event at Labour Party conference. The event was an ‘educational meeting on fighting anti-Semitism’ organised by the Jewish Labour Movement and, as such, ran counter to the recommendations of the Chakrabarti report into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The filming was done in secret and the only part of the meeting to be circulated was Jackie’s contribution from the floor; which is difficult to hear due to the poor quality of the tape.
As such it is completely unacceptable for either the Labour Party or Momentum to use it as evidence or respond to it. Moreover, whatever one’s views of Jackie’s decision to attend the meeting or her comments at it, there is no evidence of anti-Semitism in anything she said and the suggestion that it is is both ludicrous and offensive.
It is clear that Jeremy Corbyn’s election, together with the unprecedented growth in membership this has generated, is seen as a threat by the establishment and mass media, together with some within the movement. They will stop at nothing in their efforts to undermine, demoralise, confuse and divide this movement and remove him from office. Accusations of anti-Semitism, like those of misogyny and bullying, are just one aspect of this ‘guerrilla warfare’.
Removing Jackie from her position will not appease these people rather it will embolden them to continue their attacks.
Further, we do not believe that a decision of this magnitude should have been made by a hastily called Steering Group but by a more democratic body and after wider consultation. We look forward to the inaugural national conference of Momentum in February and the establishment of a democratic constitution, structures and procedure.
Northamptonshire
Momentum Northamptonshire condemns the witch-hunt of Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker on false charges of anti-Semitism.
Jackie is a prominent anti-racist campaigner and labour movement activist; she is no anti-Semite.
The anti-Corbyn wing of the Labour Party is seeking to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to undermine the Corbyn leadership: to oppose Zionism is to be anti-Semitic; to criticise the Israeli state is to be anti-Semitic; to demand justice for the Palestinians is to be an anti-Semitic.
It is the height of cowardice and stupidity to believe that by throwing Jackie to the wolves these attacks will stop. Failing to defend Jackie will only further embolden our attackers; it will give traction to their accusations of anti-Semitism.
We will undermine ourselves and Jeremy Corbyn if we abandon Jackie.
We are not thugs; we are not misogynists; we are not anti-Semites.
Defend Jackie Walker!
Sheffield
“We, members of Momentum in Sheffield, condemn the witch-hunt of Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker on false charges of anti-Semitism. Jackie is a prominent anti-racist campaigner and labour movement activist; she is no anti-Semite.
The anti-Corbyn wing of the Labour Party is seeking to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to undermine the Corbyn leadership: to oppose Zionism is to be anti-Semitic; to criticise the Israeli state is to be anti-Semitic; to demand justice for the Palestinians is to be an anti-Semitic.
Throwing Jackie to the wolves will not stop the attackers, quite the opposite: Failing to defend Jackie will only further embolden them. This attack on Jackie is an attack on all of us!
Therefore, we call on Momentum to launch a robust campaign to defend Jackie and fight for her full reinstatement as a Labour Party member.”
Lee Rock
Ben Lewis
Dawn Teare
Bill Sheppard
Neville Wright
Abdul Galil Shaif Alshaibi
Mick Parkin
Davy King
Carolyn Jordin
Richard Chessum
Andrew Hardman
Tina Werkmann
Janet Claire Harrison
Susan Atkins
Adam Clark
Thanet
According to Channel Four News, the steering committee of national Momentum is considering removing Jackie Walker from her position as vice chair of Momentum.
This is based on a highly biased and distorted report of a fringe event in Liverpool at which, it is alleged Jackie made anti-Semitic remarks.
I was at that meeting and can testify she said nothing whatsoever anti-Semitic. Her remarks were taken out of context and the short fragment of film shown on TV was totally unrepresentative of the full discussion which took place.
This is a blatant attempt to smear Jackie and so damage Jeremy Corbyn by association. It is utterly unfair and unjust.
Anyone wishing to express support for Jackie should email emma.rees@peoplesmomentum.com stating if you are a member of the Labour Party, Momentum etc.
Momentum is taking its decision on Monday so time is of the essence.
Norman Thomas, Chair Momentum Thanet
Medway
MOMENTUM MEDWAY MEMBERS HAVE ISSUED AN OPEN LETTER
Sunday 2 October 2016
TO: JON LANSMAN, CHAIR OF MOMENTUM
RE: JACKIE WALKER, VICE-CHAIR OF MOMENTUM
We, the undersigned members of Momentum Medway, wish to show our public support for our colleague Jacqueline Walker over the increasing bullying and harassment she is experiencing.
We are distressed to hear (via statements in the Main Stream Media) that Jackie’s resignation is being sought. We hope this isn’t the case. Jackie is, as you know, a tireless campaigner against all forms of discrimination; a tireless campaigner for Momentum and therefore for Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign. This is, after all, why Momentum exists.
We stand behind Jackie and ask others join our members and share this statement.
We seek your assurance, as Chair of Momentum, that you will back us – and many members and potential members around the Country – and support Jackie Walker as fully as she supports everyone else.
Alec Price
Anna Oates
Ben Rist
Chas Berry
Dawn O’Connor
Deborah Field
Didi Bergman
Elizabeth White
Gill Kennard
Harry Keane
Jac Berry
Jaki Fox
Jez Walters
Joanna Burns
Joanne Murray
Jonathan Brind
Kevin Dyer
Kim West
Lin Tidy
Maal Dauwa
KimberleyHalawa
Matthew Kynaston
Matthew Broadley
Mike Kennard
Neil Williams
Penny Bruce
Peter Thomas
Peter Morton
Sarah Scarlet
Tricia McLaughlin
In addition, members of other Momentum Groups have asked that their names be added:
Stuart McGann (Momentum Thanet)
Isabel McNab (Corby)
Sioux Blair-Jordan (Momentum North Essex)
Mike Razzell (Momentum Falmouth)
John Beeching (Momentum Hastings)
Kate Hamlyn (Momentum Thanet)
Anne Thompson (Momentum Havant)
Heather Nicholls Doncaster)
Barbara Brown (Fareham Momentum)
Clare Dove (Thanet Momentum)
Craig Fraser (Cheltenham and Gloucester Momentum)
Eric Potts (South Warwickshire Momentum)
Gillian Potts (South Warwickshire Momentum)
Stacey Guthrie (Momentum Penzanc
Peter Bloomer (South Birmingham Momentum)
Lily Maria (Momentum Havant)
Mike Hogan ( Momentum Liverpool)
David Rhodes (South and West Dorset Momentum)
Christina McCabe, (Cambridge Area Momentum)
Norman Thomas (Momentum Thanet)
Christine Tongue (Momentum Thanet)
Di Coffey (Momentum Falmouth)
Kay Lawrence (Wales Momentum)
Philomena Hearn (Wales Momentum)
Chris Bainbridge (Momentum Bury)
Mike Hogan (Momentum Liverpool)
David Rhodes (South and West Dorset Momentum)
Gillian Jackson (Wales Momentum)
Stacey Guthrie (Momentum Penzance)
Christina McCabe (Cambridge Momentum)
Liz Milne Momentum Thanet )
Eleanor Firman (Momentum Waltham Forest)
Defend all comrades from anti-left witch-hunts in Momentum and the Labour Party!
On September 30, Jackie Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party for alleged “anti-Semitism”. Again. Having once been cleared of the same charge by the Labour Party, national Momentum vice-chair Jackie has come under renewed attack – but this time, the attackers include, shamefully, her own comrades in Momentum.
The (unelected) Momentum steering group is trying to remove her from her post at its meeting on Monday (please send messages of protest to Emma Rees). Barbara Ntumy, billed as a “Momentum activist”, has gone further on the ‘Daily Politics’ show (September 30), coming very close to calling for Jackie to be expelled from Momentum and the Labour Party: “Her comments are not acceptable in that room, they’re not acceptable anywhere. … Momentum and the Labour Party should deal with her appropriately and that may include her not being part of either organisation anymore.”
It sounds as if the right-wing bureaucrats in the compliance unit of the Labour Party have followed her advice.
It takes a huge amount of bad faith to describe her secretly filmed comments, made at an anti-Semitic training day at Labour Party conference and chaired by Mike Katz of the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, as anti-Semitic.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust?”, she asked. She was informed that this was what the event officially stands for – the supposed ethos of the 46 governments who came together to create the Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 2000 was to “remember the victims of Nazi persecution and of all genocides” (our emphasis), the press release ran. Comrade Walker made the uncontroversial observation that “In practice, [HMD] is not actually circulated and advertised as such.”
It is ludicrous to suggest that anything in this (accurate) comment constitutes “downplaying” the holocaust of Jewish people. Given the original ‘inclusive’ project of the initiators of the Holocaust Memorial Day, were they also guilty of making light of the suffering of the Jewish people? This is just absurd.
At worst, comrade Walker might have shown herself to be a little ignorant on the supposed scope of HMD – but many other people will be pretty much in the dark about this given the way the Nazi holocaust has been utilised to bolster the Israeli state-sponsored “Holocaust Industry”, as Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein has dubbed it.
Also, in what was obviously a critical comment on the organisers of the training day, she noted that “I was looking for information and I still haven’t heard a definition of anti-Semitism that I can work with”. Laughable attempts torture this simple statement into the implication that the comrade refutes the concept of ant-Semitism – again, absurd. (Jackie in fact states that she subscribes to David Schneider’s definition of anti-Semitism, in case anyone is in doubt.)
Neither comment is anti-Semitic. Neither warrants suspension or expulsion from the Labour Party or Momentum. But disturbing news reaches us that a majority on the (unelected) Momentum leadership committee have apparently turned against the comrade and are intent on throwing our comrade to the wolves. Implicitly this would help to legitimise the foul slanders of the Labour right and the yellow press. It would mean:
Bolstering the campaign against us by the right, the capitalist press and the Israeli government.
Wetting the hunger of the witch hunters. Their reactionary appetites will grow if they taste blood in the water, whether we have been the ones to spill it or not. No more appeasement of our enemies!
More generally, we need to ask – Is Labour Party stuffed with anti-Semites?
‘No’ is the short answer and even the figures produced by media outlets such as the Daily Telegraph -an establishment rag that has been energetically megaphoning the idea that is badly infected with this chauvinist filth – was only able to report (May 2 2016) that a total of just 50 Labour Party members had been suspended “for anti-Semitic” and undefined “racist comments”. No more recent figures have been published – presumably, because that number has not actually grown by very much, despite the best efforts of the right.
Given the hysteria of the yellow press and its echo chamber on the Labour right – some may find this a surprisingly small figure. After all, the likes of MP Ruth Smeeth assured us that the problem was of such a magnitude that the Labour Party as an organisation was “not safe for Jews” and that shambolic muddle headed dope, Nick Cohen, writes in The Observer (September 11) that the Labour Party is now “the natural home for creeps, cranks and conspiracists”.
Utter mendacious nonsense, of course; a crude Goebbels-style ‘big-lies-work’ campaign. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the Labour Party and the wider workers’ movement will be well aware that the numbers of people who peddle any latter day versions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are infinitesimally small. They are oddities who exist on the fringes of the fringe.
In Labour Party Marxists’ submission to the inquiry headed by Shami Chakrabarti we made what should be a simple, incontrovertible point that “Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism.” Yet it is precisely this false amalgam that lies at the heart of the spurious category of the “new anti-Semitism” – ie, that opposition to the barbaric state policies of Israel, and in particular its colonial oppression of the Palestinian people equates to anti-Semitism.
LPM comrades report that they have encountered many, too many Labour Party comrades who express the idea that if we ignore it – or even make concessions to the accusers – this “anti-Semitism” problem will eventually fade away. Jackie Walker may be the highest profile victim of this craven attitude, but unchecked it will see us decimate our own ranks – the right won’t have to break sweat.
Most worryingly in this context, we have had the co-founder of Momentum, Jon Lansman, advising us “to start talking in a new language”, a vocabulary “that expresses our views about Israel, about the policies and actions of its government and about the rights of Palestinians without alienating any of those who might agree with us.”
The point being, of course, that if people “agree with us” about the oppressive colonial actions of the state of Israel then, ipso facto, they ain’t Zionists. In practice then, comrade Lansman is advocating we avoid “alienating” Zionists of various stripes, that we attempt to placate them.
Of course, we want to win all manner of people who currently hold reactionary views to socialism. But not by blurring what should be clear lines of political delineation with fuzzy, unfocussed and opaque language. Because where vocabulary leads, politics follow.
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Here is a selection of articles that address some of the key accusations deployed by the right wing of the Party in this ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt:
‘Anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism’?
Weapon of choice. Author Tony Greenstein is himself a high profile victim of the right’s smear campaign. In this useful article, the comrade explains that the “new anti-Semitism” assumes that Israel is the “Jew amongst the nations”. It is targeted, not because it is engaged in ongoing colonial oppression of the Palestinian people, but simply because it is a Jewish state. Opposition to the Israeli state and Zionism therefore qualifies as anti-Semitism, in this warped logic.
Everything in socio-economic context. Having equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, the capitalist press attempts to extend the accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ back into history, that the left’s ‘racist’ problem is lodged in very origins of modern socialism. Thus, Simon Schama writes: “Demonstrating that you do not have to be a gentile to be an anti-Semite, Karl Marx characterised Judaism as nothing more than the cult of Mammon, and declared that the world needed emancipating from the Jews” (Financial Times February 21-22 2016). Jack Conrad puts the record straight. (This contribution is adapted from the opening chapter of Fantastic reality (2013). A chapter which is itself part based on a reworking of Michael Malkin’s February 1 2001 Weekly Worker article, ‘Karl Marx and religion’.)
A shameful retreat. Paul Demarty explains why a clear understanding of the Labour right’s motivation in prosecuting this disgraceful campaign is necessary so that we can be clear on how to fight it. After all, lies – unlike the truth – must necessarily have an instrumental purpose. Otherwise there’s justification for the risk and expense of making things up. Tweaking our vocabulary, a la Jon Lansman, just won’t cut it …
Anti-Semitic smears employed by right. Gary Toms of Labour Party Marxists takes the right wing’s shameless shenanigans at the February 2016 Young Labour conference as an object lesson in how the left must up its game to win.
In the cause of imperialism. The right claims that one concrete expression of the left’s supposed anti-Jewish racism is the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. Tony Greenstein explains what is behind the timing of move to outlaw boycotts by western governments and its links to the scurrilous activities of right wing in Labour.
Moshé Machover and Tony Greenstein discuss the question of the anti-Semitism ‘scandal’ in the Labour Party as part of Communist University 2016. Tony, a Jewish socialist, is fighting his suspension from the Labour Party for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’ and blogs here.
Communist University 2016 was co-sponsored by the Communist Party of Great Britain and Labour Party Marxists. CU 2016 took place from August 6-13 in London. The views in these videos do not necessarily represent the views of either organisation. More videos from Communist University 2016 are available here.
CU 2016 took place from August 6-13 in London. The views in these videos do not necessarily represent the views of either organisation. More videos from Communist University 2016 are available here.
Refound Labour as a permanent united front of the working class
On the surface, Finkelstein has impeccable credentials to write on the horror of that broke over European Jewry in WWII. Both his mother and father were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from his parents, every family member was exterminated by the Nazis. In the words of Finkelstein, “My earliest memory, so to speak, of the Nazi holocaust is my mother glued in front of the television watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) when I came home from school” (p5).
