Last year I wrote about the false anti-Semitism smear campaigns being carried out, mainly on social media but also in mainstream media. I wrote about the group of people, collectively known as ‘Gnasherjew’, whose main targets appeared to be left wing Labour party members and supporters; left wing Jews and those who dared to criticise Israel for its occupation of Palestine and the Human Rights violations being carried out. Many people were suspended and even expelled from both the Labour party and social media platforms. Many reputations were ruined and some victims of this campaign lost their jobs. It seemed to go quiet on social media for a long time which I suspect had a lot to do with Jeremy Corbyn stepping down as leader of the Labour party and being replaced by centrist Keir Starmer. The Labour party is no longer a threat to the Israel lobby or indeed Israel.
The anti-Semitism smear campaign seems to have begun again though not quite as rabidly intense as it was before. One of the targets is venerated poet and author Michael Rosen who is in fact Jewish. He lost family members during the Holocaust and wrote a book called ‘The Missing‘ about his family in World War II and the fact that nobody knew what had happened to some of them. Although this book is actually written for older children I would highly recommend reading it. The fact that some people on social media were calling Michael anti-Semitic, despite his being Jewish and never having written or said anything anti-Semitic, coupled with the fact that he had just started to recover from Covid19 after a long battle, absolutely infuriated me. I also noticed that somebody I had followed for quite a while on Twitter and who, like Michael, had never written anything that could even vaguely be construed as anti-Semitic was also being targeted and this just added to my anger. The person targeting him seemed to have become rather obsessed with harassing him and was mentioning him in tweets that were not even about him or what he tweeted. I had this strong feeling of deja-vu and decided I was going to write about this from a different angle.
Here is a brief explanation of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ and when it was first used:
“In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr originated the term antisemitism, denoting the hatred of Jews, and also hatred of various liberal, cosmopolitan, and international political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often associated with Jews. The trends under attack included equal civil rights, constitutional democracy, free trade, socialism, finance capitalism, and pacifism”.
The targeting of and hatred towards the Jews has actually been going on for many centuries and during the Middle Ages and early modern era, antagonism existed against Europe’s Jews which resulted in anti-Jewish legislation, violence and in some cases expulsion. A lot of Europe had policies and laws which segregated Jews from others and forbade them from performing certain jobs and owning land. During the nineteenth century many of these restrictions were lifted throughout Europe but Tsarist Russia kept these laws until 1917. The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi party) did not create antisemitism or use the term for the first time.
On the weaponisation of false anti-Semitism charges Noam Chomsky states ” Any critic, any proponent of Palestinian rights, can be tarred as an anti-Semite. This weapon has recently been wielded to great effect against Jeremy Corbyn in a campaign of vulgar deceit and slander that is shocking even beyond the disgraceful norm”. This brings me to why I am writing this article. During the time the media obsessively focussed on the almost non-existent anti-Semitism within the Labour party, they were paying minimal attention to the growing number of anti-Jewish attacks which have been part of an increase in racism in many parts of the world. This is why false anti-Semitism claims are so dangerous, not only do they ruin the lives of the people targeted in these claims but mainstream media and the public fail to notice the rise of neo-Nazi and other far right movements. Anti-Semitic attacks in the USA increased by nearly 60% between 2016 – 2017 which is the largest one year increase in 40 years. In 2018 there was a horrific attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Eleven people were killed and at least six others were wounded. This attack was described as ” amongst the deadliest against the Jewish community in the United States”. Apparently the gunman had posted anti-Semitic content online and said he wanted to kill all Jews as he saw them as a threat to himself and other non-Jews. Six months later one person was killed and three injured at the Chabad of Poway synagogue outside San Diego. In 2019 the Anti-Defamation League in America released a report which stated that “American Jews faced a significant threat” and that white supremacists were the biggest danger facing America. This was demonstrated in Charlottesville on 11-12 August 2017 during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally. On the Friday night the University of Virgina was stormed by white supremacists chanting ” blood and soil” which was a slogan used by Nazis in Germany, and “Jews will not replace us”. On the Saturday a white supremacist drove his car into a group of counterprotestors and killed Heather Heyer aged 32. Some of those who attended the rally could be seen carrying flags with the Swastika on them.
In 2018 it was reported that anti-Semitic hate crimes had reached record levels in the UK with the Jewish community being targeted at least four times a day in 2017. There were 1,382 anti-Jewish incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust in 2017. This was the highest number recorded for a calendar year since the Trust had begun to gather data in 1984. Although there did not appear to be any specific reason for this increase in incidents, it appeared that the levels of all hate crime rose after the EU referendum in 2016, and following the publicity surrounding the false claims of anti-Semitism within the Labour party. I think it is worth noting that all the mainstream media’s attention has been on the claims of anti-Semitism within the Labour party, and none on equal claims of anti-Semitism within the Conservative party. In fact Boris Johnson depicted Jews as “controlling the media and being able to fiddle elections ” in his 2004 novel Seventy Two virgins. He was pronounced “unfit to be prime minister” over passages from this book which also included questionable and offensive portrayals of other ethnic minorities. It would seem that Johnson, and others including Donald Trump, are either unaware do not care or intentionally say things that will set an example to their followers, albeit a very negative example.
“Holocaust denial is a form of antisemitism. The only reason to deny the Holocaust is to inculcate and foster antisemitism. The Holocaust has the dubious distinction of being the best documented genocide in the world so for anybody to disbelieve, they’ve got to come to it with some sort of preconceived notion.”
Holocaust denial is the attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jews. The Holocaust has been similarly weaponised and the same people who have false anti-Semitism claims made against them are also often called Holocaust deniers, which again is not true in their cases. There are Holocaust deniers out there, and even more disturbing there are people who think Hitler was a great leader and openly admire him. One of the most famous Holocaust deniers has to be David Irving who was written about by Deborah Lipstadt in her book Denying the Holocaust
(1993). Irving famously sued Lipstadt over his inclusion in the book but he lost his case. Denial began as soon as the war ended, one of the main reasons being that nobody could quite believe that any humans were capable of committing such atrocities against other humans. Even Jews living in ghettos around Europe during the war could not believe the stories they were hearing about places like Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor and most famously Auschwitz-Birkenau. They talk about this lack of belief in documentaries featuring Holocaust survivors. Many Jews were lied to and conned into thinking they were being transported to places where they would have a better future. There were Jews who gave up all their possessions and money so they would be sent to Theresienstadt under the illusion that they would be having a good life free of persecution there. There were six death camps, all located in Poland, and many forced labour camps and concentration camps, the most famous of which is probably Dachau, which was in Germany and had been open since 22 March 1933. In all there were 23 main concentration camps and most had a system of satellite camps. There were more than 1000 concentration camps, including subcamps, established during Nazi Germany’s history.
Holocaust deniers often claim that Jews say that 6 million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz, this is not true they have never said that. It took a long time to calculate how many were murdered between the year 1941-45 by the Nazi’s and their collaborators, but the number murdered at Auschwitz was 1.1 million. The number 6 million refers to the total number of Jews who were murdered or died of illness in all the camps ( death, forced labour and concentration); those killed in villages and towns; those murdered along the roadside and those murdered in places like Babi Yar, a ravine northwest of Kiev, were (according to reports by Einsatzgruppe) 33,771 Jewish men, women and children were massacred over a two day period.
Holocaust denial and/or distortion are in themselves anti-Semitism and in general claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews in order to advance their own interests. I, personally, find this belief or claim to be absolutely ludicrous and believe that Holocaust denial should be treated as a hate crime. There are so many documentaries and films which document what happened during the Holocaust which makes it impossible for me to understand how people can possibly claim it was a hoax. A lot of the film was taken by American, British and Russian soldiers who had trained to be cameramen. Weaponising the Holocaust by accusing people of Holocaust denial just adds to the hoax theory that the true deniers believe. By targeting people who are not guilty of Holocaust denial the mainstream media once again draw attention away from the true anti-Semites.
There are some new social media platforms which have no censorship and apart from child pornography and bestiality anything would seem to be allowable. There is a large number of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Hitler fans and Holocaust deniers on these sites. There are also websites devoted to denying the Holocaust happened and/or that Jews control banks, the media and most aspects of life. These sites include sites called ‘Holohoax’ ‘Holocartoons’ and ‘Jew Watch’.
In conclusion I would just like to say that although I have included links for you to visit this is my opinion only. I would also like to add that I am against Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the siege of Gaza. This means I am against the Israeli government and its policies not Jewish people. I was married to a man whose father was an Ashkenazi Jew and so my son ( who is the most important person in my life) is part Ashkenazi Jew. I do hope that what I have written gives you food for thought and that I have passed on some of my horror at what the Nazi party did and racists continue to do. There are loads of really educational books and documentaries on World War II, the evolution of fascism and the Nazi party and the Holocaust and murder of over 6 million Jews, communists, Poles, Slavs, Russian prisoners of war, Jehovah Witnesses, disabled, homosexual, ethnic minorities, Roma gypsies and political dissidents.
Gnasherjew and Fake Anti-Semitism Claims on Facebook
Gnasherjew, LAAS, Sussex Friends of Israel and their latest tool – “Labour Anti-Semitism Map
Why? (The colonisation of Palestine by Israel and the constant screams of ‘anti-semitism’)
Rachel Riley, Endemol Shine UK and that T-Shirt
Anti-Semitism Smear Campaign Continues Part One
Anti-Semitism from one of Labour’s Loudest Anti-Semitism Accusers
Chief Rabbi, Mainstream Media and the smears against Jeremy Corbyn (Guest post by Peter Gregson) Chairperson of LAZIR)
History Repeating Itself Trump and Fascism
Are they really this incompetent?
Way Past Time to Hold China to Account
Anti-semitism campaign continues part two
Labour Is Now Officially The Puppet of the Israel Lobby
British Actor Spearheads Twitter Dogpiling on Twitter User
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