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"....our touchstone should be clear solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. But not as an idiosyncratic fetish divorced from the broader politics of the Left. Rather, we should return it to what it has always been: a focal point of anti-imperialist struggle, where peasants and slum-dwellers are now fighting a desperate struggle against tanks and F-16s, and where their best weapon at the moment may be to starve themselves to death in the hope of fracturing ideological support for Israeli militarism." Editorial in the Marxist magazine Jacobin, 21 April 2013I have always been an imperialist. I think the British empire did a huge amount more good than bad, though the Jewish homeland was arguably not one of our best ideas. I even started a project for school called Imperialism (we could choose any subject under the sun) when I was only 7.
My imperialist credentials are unquestionable, but if you are left-wing you are anti-imperialist and if you are hard left of course you support the Arabs in Palestine and oppose Israel.
It is very unfair to say that the hard left are anti-Semitic because of it.
It is not just the far left. Sympathy with Arabs in Palestine is for the young what protests against South Africa were in the 1970s.
The young then and now are soft-hearted, often soft-headed, certainly inexperienced. In the 1970s they ignored Communism and minority rule in Liberia and Rwanda. Now they ignore all sorts of other things.
Jeremy Corbyn is a truly dreadful man who supported the IRA. He was a great danger to the UK, but no anti-semite.
You might, if you are far left, even question Israel's right to exist. I don't think this is reasonable, but it is not racist or anti-semitic. I don't think that most things the far left thinks are reasonable (though when it comes to foreign policy I am surprised how often they are right).
Supporting Hamas's murders is something else. It should be beyond the pale, but even that should certainly not be illegal.
No speech, in my opinion, should be illegal unless it incites a crime.
Other Western countries should copy the US First Amendment.
Europe had as much free speech as the Americans until the authoritarian 1960s, but now freedom of speech is a distant memory.
I'd argue that no speech should be criminalized at all - it's merely sounds in the wind. Only actions should be criminalized. At least in my ideal utopia.
ReplyDeleteIt is absolutely unbelievable that a British Conservative government made voicing support for Hamas illegal and British Conservative politicians are now baying for more action from the police to enforce it.
DeleteBut why exactly do you think the British empire did a huge amount more good than bad? It will be an interesting post.
ReplyDeleteOf course, empires al least since Nimrod are a constant of human life. With bad and good their reality it is as it is. But the British Empire was the first modern empire and by this very fact in his essence an anti-empire. That because axiomatically an empire is build on tradition not on modernity.
Looking back at the "results" of the British Empire: merry England transformed in today purgatory from which you refugiate; Scotland having an abulic existence, not dead but not living either; Ireland after Elizabethan genocide (light) Cromwell genocide (savage) Famine genocide ( horrible, although the former one killed more); India ravaged by famine and pestilence relegated form first class power in the begging of XVIII century to a beggar realm of Third world in 1947; in Africa I don't see positive points (nor negative admittedly, with the sole exception of Afrikaners which were devastated in second Boer war and now has a hazardous existence thanks to aforementioned "imperial interventions").
The only net positive in 1950 were Canada, Australia & N.Z.
So were is the huge amount of good?
A Jewish homeland was not an idea of the British Empire, indeed the British Empire followed a policy of restricting Jewish immigration to the land, but not restricting Islamic immigration. As for Jeremy Corbyn - of course he is an Anti-Semite.
ReplyDeleteCorbyn likes Hamas and loathes Israel but not for racist reasons. Some key allies of his are Jewish and I can't imagine him thinking ill of them in respect of their race..
DeleteI am sure he wasn't. I am sure he wanted Jews to convert. Wilhelm Marr coined the word antisemitic precisely to distinguish hostility to Jews as an ethnos to hostility to them as a confessional group. When Pope Pius XI called Jews 'our enemy' when he made the priest who translated the he meant the confessional group not Jews who converted.
DeletePope Pius XI called Jews 'our enemy' when he made the priest who translated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a protonotary apostolic, (the same position held by my beloved Mgr Alfred Gilbey). He meant by Jews the confessional group, not Jews who converted to the Church. That was before Hitler came to power. He excoriated the Nazis for their racism.
DeleteErnest Jouin, the priest in question, founded the Ligue Franc-Catholique, an anti-Jewish organisation. Describing the Protocols, he wrote: "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity." Pope Pius XI praised Jouin for "combating our mortal enemy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Jouin
DeleteThe idea that the Balfour Declaration invented the idea of a Jewish homeland is absurd - this has been a central tenet of Judaism for thousands of years. As for people saying "Gas the Jews" or "Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea" - let these evil people say whatever they want, as long as no one else has to listen to it. I see no reason why the public roads should be obstructed or people going about their everyday business should have slogans shouted in their face.
ReplyDelete