dan friedman

Maps matter. The growing of Africa

Today an observer might notice several signs of the crisis in British democracy and in the civil societies of the West played out in London: this morning, a prime minister is deposed just two years after his election to make way for the seventh First Lord of the Treasury in ten years, one of whom he know little. This afternoon, our great parliament is scheduled to seriously debate a motion that seems to echo the darkest recesses of anti-Jewish conspiracism. Just over a century ago, operatives of the Okhranka, the secret police of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, forged a manifesto that they called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which they had plagiarized from pamphlets published in 19thcentury France and Germany, and which promoted an antisemitic conspiracy that a clique of Jews were wickedly conspiring to control Western societies using secret power and money. The Protocols were believed by the Tsar himself to be real – after he was overthrown by the Bolsheviks, he sought explanations for his downfall – and soon after they were published across the Western world – until The Times of London revealed the astonishing story of the forgery. Nonetheless they were translated into German and other languages – promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during the Third Reich – while in the 1920s the book was translated into Arabic where it was propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and widely believed, later quoted in Hamas’s 1988 Charter wherein Article 32 declares: "Their (the Jewish people’s) scheme has been laid out in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.” Today E-Petition 752646 which has attracted 118,000 signatures and is scheduled for debate, is somewhat concerning because its careful wording has echoes of conspiracy theories under the guise of a scrutiny of lobbying and public debate that seems to propose witch-hunts and purity tests that have no place in British society. The petition might be reasonable if a vast and powerful state was clearly influencing British life in a campaign of subterfuge, bribery and espionage and it proposed an investigation of malign state actors. This happens to be true of Russia, China and Iran at this moment and hopefully we are investigating those bad actors. But this petition claims to be …“concerned about reported Israeli state-linked and pro-Israel lobbying activity in UK politics…” I have no problem with criticism of Israeli government policy being a critic myself - but the call for an investigation “to determine the scope” and “scrutinise how pro-Israel organisations, networks, and lobbying efforts may shape government decisions, party policy, and public debate” is alarming because beneath its framing in the familiar language of balanced inquiry and human rights lurks the hint of hidden networks or control of politics and public opinion that echo historic antisemitic narratives and of course the world conspiracy and cosmic evil of the Protocols of the Elders. The idea of investigating (‘scrutinizing’) British people who either have relationships with a longstanding European ally and fellow liberal democracy or its citizens in any field, political commercial artistic academic scientific military or even social, or those who wish to hold free opinions and make judgements without the menace of an ideological witch hunt is concerning. After all most countries in the world have some institutional and personal relationships in other countries without allegations of secret influence. But the petition drops its mask when it ominously mentions ‘public debate’. So what 'public debate' would be ‘scrutinized’? Against whom could this ‘scrutiny’ be aimed and who would do the ‘scrutinizing’? It would certainly cast a shadow over beleaguered British Jews for a start but also the many British people who have the right to those views available to everyone in our civil society and liberal democracy and yes public debate. In an age when everyone is anti-racist and all public discourse is couched in terms of universal anti-racism and human rights, it has been clear for some time that we need to be wary of intolerance and ideological racism itself masked by exactly this jargon. It is one of the reasons that I argue that we need to evolve a much more focused definition of what now constitutes antiJewish hatred and a new vocabulary to confront it. Therefore this debate is a sign of our times, an alarming one but it is also an important test of the Government’s and parliamentarians’ commitment to tackling antisemitism and extremism and a chance to make clear that conspiracy theories about control of political life and public opinion have no place in public discourse. Following the recent summit on antisemitism, the Prime Minister pledged that “tackling antisemitism requires sustained leadership, accountability and resolve.” I have no doubt that our admirable Parliamentarians will use this opportunity not to legitimize or amplify such calumnies but to challenge them directly, to maintain the respect for facts and truth that are essential to our success. I hope they will acknowledge the risks posed by the petition’s framing, and reaffirm that antisemitic conspiracies and purity witch hunts (sorry, ‘scrutiny’), regardless of how they are packaged, have no place in British politics and society.