The Yellow Jackets, populism and anti-semitism

One of the easiest and most effective ways of closing down debate is accusing your opponents of racism. 

It was done most unfairly with the Tea Party and with Mr Trump's supporters. 

We see people condemning Israel's domestic and foreign policy slimed with the accusation of anti-semitism simply for so doing. People who consider Diane Abbott stupid and malign or think ill of President Obama are accused of racist dog whistling. 

The yellow jackets in France have been accused of anti-semitism. The yellow jackets have no organisation or policies and anyone can go along and take part in their demonstrations, so it is unfair to condemn the whole movement for the actions of individuals, but I was sceptical about this accusation. It smelt fishy. 

I found out something very important by reading The Guardian. 

As far as I know, only The Guardian reported that, in a video recorded of someone telling the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut to go back to Tel Aviv, 

'a man whose face is contorted with rage screams: “We are the French people, France is ours.” At one point the protester, who was later arrested, shows his keffiyeh, a traditional Arab scarf.'

The man in question was, the Guardian said, a 36 year old Muslim convert. 

This is very important because the implication of accusations of Yellow Jacket antisemitism is that the Yellow Jackets represented the old French Catholic, conservative anti-semitic tradition, harking back to the Dreyfus case and culminating horribly in the deportations of foreign Jews to their deaths under the German occupation.

Muslim anti-semitism is not better or worse but discrete from that sort of anti-semitism, which I am told is very common among older French people. 

Alain Finkielkraut himself explains in the Guardian article the distinction.

“This is not classic antisemitism that we saw with Hitler – this is another antisemitism altogether. It does not come from France; it’s brought to France by a new population from Arab-Muslim countries and from black Africa and is then relayed by the extreme left. 

“This antisemitism is very different from the swastikas on monuments. But if we point this out, we are called racist and accused of discrimination. I am called a racist because I criticise young Muslims who have been radicalised by Islamism, but in criticising Islamic extremists I am not criticising Islam in general. The idea that we cannot hear antisemitism from people who suffer from racism themselves is a kind of blackmail and denial of the situation.”

The old right-wing anti-semitism is, people tell me, much less common among French people under 50 than among their parents, despite the Alt Right. The tide of left-wing and Muslim anti-semitism, on the other hand, seems to be rising rather than ebbing. Here is one news story I just read.

A similar story is unfolding to some extent in other countries with large, recently arrived Muslim minorities, but thankfully in a more subdued and less violent way. 

This does not mean being pro-Arab or critical of Israel means being anti-Jewish. 

Nor is wanting an end to mass immigration racist.