The Wiener Library’s conference of 7^th March 2013 on the history of British Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Jewish Defence included lectures by Professor Nigel Copsey and Dr John Richardson on the evolution of fascism from its 1930s version to the present; and how its public face has also changed.

Neither speaker directly addressed modern antisemitism, nor anti-Zionism, but their lectures provide useful analogies with both topics, particularly the question of how far a modern phenomenon can stray from its earlier types before becoming something new altogether. Just how elastic can a term such as fascism, or antisemitism, actually be – before we have to find a new word for them?

Professor Copsey noted that for decades after World War Two, most academics airily assumed that fascism was pretty much dead. By the mid 1980s, they were forced into a rethink by the electoral success of the French Front National. Prof Copsey noted that Europe had not exactly stood still during this time, and he asked if the changes in Europe and its far right parties meant that they should be termed fascist, neo-fascist, populist, nationalist, or just what exactly? If a 21^st Century ‘fascist’ party is basically pro-free market and is not committed to overthrowing democracy, can it still be properly called fascist, or do we need to call it something else?

Both academics stressed that categorising modern groups as being fascist, neo-fascist, populist etc must not obscure their sheer variety. The English Defence League differs from the British National Party, both differ from the French Front National, which differs from the Flemish Vlaams Blok; and none are the same as Golden Dawn in Greece.

Dr Richardson observed that after WW2 there was no electoral cachet for any party that admitted to being fascist. Such groups had to either subtly rehabilitate fascism, or disassociate from it. So, we cannot – and do not – take such groups at their word, regarding whether they are, or are not, fascists, pro-Nazis etc.

Dr Richardson used antisemitism as one marker regarding the true ideology of fascist groups. He charted the shifts in antisemitic discourse – sometimes blatant, sometimes coded, sometimes both – within the post-war UK fascist publication Combat as a striking example of this phenomenon.

For example, when the British National Party took over Combat in 1960, it replaced existing euphemisms about “money power” and “international finance” with explicit mentions of Jews. In 1962, the BNP split and openly Nazi elements lost control of Combat: whereupon the Jews disappeared again, replaced by a Washington/Moscow common enemy – a conspiracy that was implicitly Jewish, but did not need to be explicitly stated as such.

By 1965, new race relations laws had further tightened Combat’s language, but its readers still understood that “immigrants” meant non-white people. So, the racist ideology remained, with the wording now further encoded. Similarly, articles about Jews (or those alleged to be) did not need to actually state that the individuals were Jewish: the coding was understood, just as it had been in “money power” and “international finance”.

These lessons about defining and recognising various fascisms can assist our understanding of antisemitism, especially concerning its contested relationship with anti-Zionism (which, we must remember, is itself a hugely varied term). Some useful points:

• After WW2, many educated people assumed that fascism was pretty much dead: and they made the same mistaken assumption about antisemitism. It took decades for these assumptions to change.  

• There is no intellectual cachet for any ideology or group that admits to being fascist: and neither is there for anyone who admits to being antisemitic. You cannot rely solely on the word of someone who denies being a fascist. Similarly, you cannot rely solely on the word of someone who denies being antisemitic.

• There are big variations between different ‘fascist’ groups. Analysis of groups, including their distinctions (such as for or against democracy) must be rigorous. The same rigour is also needed when studying openly antisemitic groups, of which there are relatively very few; and especially when studying anti-Zionist groups, of which there are relatively very many. These anti-Zionist groups come from all manner of ideological positions, ranging from the obviously antisemitic to the obviously not antisemitic (such as Bundists).

• Environments and contexts change and the words that are used change accordingly. This is the nature of things. It is political and ideological evolution; and the course of history. There is a need to attract and retain adherents, to comply with what is legally and/or socially acceptable and you must react to whatever is politically relevant. In Europe, fascism has its post WW2, post Soviet bloc and existing European Union context. Antisemitism has its post Holocaust and Israel context. Neither subject can remain in its 1930s/40s variant under these conditions.

The above is not to claim that either fascism or antisemitism are forever inevitable. Nevertheless, in their recent pomp, both phenomena clearly fulfilled deep needs for millions of adherents. It is most unlikely that the psychological drivers behind them have diminished to irrelevancy. 

Today, it is quite straightforward to argue that fascism did not die after its disgrace and its defeat in WW2, and to observe that it lay low and adapted until contemporary circumstances enabled it to re-emerge in various forms. Some recalibrations went deeper than others, some merited the old label and some arguably did not. But for all the changes, these different groups essentially remained under the same part of the political spectrum, and they are still reflexively opposed by those who defend liberal principles.

Once again, the same guidance ought to apply to antisemitism, especially as it predates fascism by centuries, millennia even. And yet there are vital contrasts. For example:

• Those who afford the most elasticity to terms such as ‘fascism’ and ‘far Right’, or even ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’, will too often be those who also argue for the most restrictive definition of antisemitism, boiling it down to a forever fossilised WW2 Nazi model, in which an antisemite must profess to hate all Jews as Jews. This, despite antisemitism having had so many variations throughout its long history (which, other than Nazism, mostly offered escape via conversion). 

• The impulse to be wary of suspected fascists is not repeated with antisemitism. All too often, those accused of antisemitism are defended, rather than scrutinised. (The exception being if the accused is allegedly a white fascist.) Similarly, some circles may express deep concern about awakening or encouraging fascism by, for example, debating immigration: but apply different standards and analyses regarding antisemitic consequences arising from anti-Zionist or extreme anti-Israel agitation.

• Fascists and anti-fascists share the same basic meaning of the word “fascism”. Zionists and anti-Zionists do not share the same basic meaning of the word “Zionism”. Most Jews self-identify as Zionists, so many perceive anti-Zionism as quite obviously being anti-Jewish, within the antisemitic ballpark, part of the antisemitic family tree, call it what you will. Consequently, there is an associated perception that the word “Zionist” operates (either intentionally or not) as a code for “Jew”: and that Jews are the likeliest, or only, physical target for rhetorical hatred of “Zionists”. Many anti-Zionists and opponents of Israel are oblivious to this perception, which – accurate or not – is heartfelt.

• Fascism and antisemitism are words that bear enormous historical weight. The word ‘fascism’ sits firmly within a wider context of far right politics. One may dispute whether a group is fascist, but compromise and calmly agree that it sits within a broader far right context. Antisemitism has a broader context of racism and prejudice, but this certainly does not assist anti-Zionism’s supporters and opponents to compromise upon its relationship with antisemitism.

• A disagreement over whether or not a group is fascist, tends not to rapidly descend into furious allegations of bad faith. By contrast, disagreements over antisemitism, especially regarding hatred of Zionism and/or Israel, are dominated by allegations of bad faith (in both directions).

It is this final point that really sums up the contrast when antisemitism, not fascism, is the subject of debate. To be more precise, the debate is most heated when Zionism or Israel are claimed to be the subject under scrutiny: but Jews perceive that they themselves are what is actually being scrutinised, or that it is they themselves who will end up suffering the consequences.  

Indeed, even the mere suggestion that a specific example of anti-Zionist or anti-Israel invective may be antisemitic is, in itself, taken by many as proof that “all criticism of Israel” is being castigated as antisemitic; that those expressing concerns are trying to shut up legitimate debate; and that it is all part of a callous exploitation of antisemitism to knowingly cover Israel’s (or Zionism’s) crimes. On the flip side, such responses are taken by many Jews as proof that something fundamentally antisemitic is at play: and so the vicious cycle of mutual alienation and contempt is spun again.

To conclude, this is where the contrast with the study and discussion of fascism is at its most profound. 

You can disagree with categorising the EDL as being fascist, without being reflexively denounced as a fascist and/or EDL sympathiser. Alternatively, you can argue that the EDL is indeed fascist, without being reflexively denounced as someone who wishes to shut down democratic debate in order to destroy English culture, heritage and nationhood.

If only the same standards of decency and solidarity prevailed when antisemitism, not fascism, was the subject of discussion…if only.

 
A new publication from the Cordoba Foundation, a UK-based think tank that is generally supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, lays bare the sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that currently divide the Middle East, and the associated intolerance at the heart of Islamist politics. It also shows how Iran’s reputation has been transformed, via the Syrian crisis, from an ally of Sunni Islamists to a mistrusted adversary.

Called Arab and Muslim National Security: Debating the Iranian Dimension, the paper is a summary of a debate hosted by the Cordoba Foundation for “a group of prominent and influential Islamic figures, comprising of activists, leaders, thinkers and scholars from different backgrounds”. The group discussed the concept of Arab or Muslim national security now that Islamist movements are in power, or close to it, in several countries; and how they should relate to Iran. The participants are not named in the paper and consequently the comments in the debate are all anonymous.

The primary theme is that Iran uses its Shiite identity to pose a grave cultural, demographic and political threat to Sunni Arab states, and thereby threatens their security.

A secondary theme is that Islamist movements need to coordinate better, both in their theoretical understanding of national security and in their actual policies. One participant notes that the UK used to be the location for precisely this coordination:

Prior to the Arab Spring, there was a political apparatus in the UK regulating and coordinating, albeit quite loosely, the work of the Islamic movements but that is no longer the case although the need of such an apparatus now is more than ever.

What is most striking about the debate as reported in the Cordoba Foundation paper is the level of sheer contempt amongst some of the participants for Shiite beliefs, and the suspicion that falls on all Shiite Muslims as a result:

Threats to national security are those that represent an existential danger to country or a population, not a system of government. A group of people converting from one religion to another would constitute a great demographic threat that could give rise to sectarian and intellectual conflict. Such demographic pockets in some Arab countries pose a threat to society regardless of how small they are.

[...]

The difference between the US and Iran is that the former and its agents are rejected by our societies but Iran infiltrates through people who carry out its agenda under the cover of religion with the aim of destroying our history, religion and culture.

[...]

We need cultural programmes that would protect Muslim societies and similar approaches to reform Shiite thought if at all possible. We should strive to encourage Shiites to rethink many of their theories and approaches if they wished to avoid conflict and play a positive role in the region.

[...]

We are not worried about Iran’s cultural project because it is irrational and holds a belief system too absurd to attract anyone. It is the demographic expansion, such as the one in Syria that we should be worried about.

[...]

It is in the very nature of Shiite thought to reject any other identity. It thrives on disagreements and differences with other sects and is constantly in search for a political being.

[...]

We are all in agreement that Iran has a sectarian, ethnic, Persian agenda and that it buys people’s loyalties and leaders in the Muslim world. If we had our own agenda, we would be doing the same.

This narrative of a demographic threat to a society posed by religious conversions, or of people of strange belief using religion as a cover to fundamentally change a national culture, is reminiscent of the anti-Muslim propaganda of the English Defence League or the British National Party. And this, astonishingly, is how the participants spoke about fellow Muslims.

Just the framing of the debate in religious terms is revealing:

In contemplating the relationship between Iran and the Islamic movements in the Arab world there is very little to prevent the latter from organising the tenets of this relationship from a religious, Sunni perspective. The real dilemma, however, lies in the wheels of history which has pulled the world much closer to a modern democratic state with very little role for religion and religious discourse. Iran, on other hand, draws upon history and past events to revive sectarian belief systems in many Arab countries as part of its efforts to shore up its political influence through religious sectarianism.

A definition of national security that includes cultural or religious security is counterposed to existing global human rights standards  that treat religion as a personal matter, but which, the paper claims, Western nations are also questioning due to changes within their own societies:

Conversely, should we adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the principles of democracy and UN resolutions whose own Enlightenment project championed faith as a purely personal matter. It is worth noting that countries like France, the US and Britain are revisiting their own Enlightenment-based modes of thinking due to a firm belief that these modes have negatively impacted their national security.

According to one participant, Western countries are coming to accept the concept of “cultural security” as a result of  immigration:

Democratic countries usually avoid references to cultural security allowing for more individual freedoms, what Western politicians fondly refer to as “the Western way of life”. A sudden realisation that local cultures are losing ground to immigrant cultures and religions has prompted Europe and the US to reconsider their original position on the matter especially in light of the  fact that most Westerners are not very keen on the religious aspects of their identities.

Iran, the paper claims, has wrought demographic and religious changes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Turkey, all examples of its threat to “Arab national security”. Furthermore, it has gained “strategic victories” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Yemen and eastern Saudi Arabia, which is “almost under the sway of the Iranian government.”

Some participants warned that it would be a mistake to treat Iran as an equal threat to Israel and the United States, but others argue that it poses an even greater threat than those two traditional enemies, precisely because its threat is cultural and religious. One relays a remark from an Iraqi military leader that while the US was an occupying force in Iraq, “the bigger threat comes from Iran which has sought to change the cultural and religious identity of Iraq by gradually controlling all its institutions.”

Others warned that the political realities of leadership mean that Islamist movements, and particularly the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, have to find a way to engage with Iran. Last month’s revival of direct flights between Cairo and Tehran, after a break of 34 years, is one example of this.

A couple of participants made the excuse for Iran that it has fallen for a Western trap to sow hatred between Sunnis and Shiites, but others argued that Iran knowingly colludes with Western countries, and even Israel, “to launch attacks against Arab and Muslim countries to alter their religious identities.”

It was not always this way. Twenty years ago, in November 1993, the now-defunct Muslim Parliament held a conference in London on ‘Bosnia and the Global Islamic Movement’, a concept with Iran at its heart. Kalim Siddiqui, who ran the Muslim Parliament, was a strong supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran and is even credited with having come up with the idea of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. In the Muslim Parliament’s own account, at the conference:

Hizbullah stood shoulder to shoulder to FIS, Al-Nahda of Tunisia stood alongside PAS from Malaysia; and the Sudanese Ikhwan stood alongside those from revolutionary Iran. Representatives from the Islamic Movement of Bosnia and the Balkan republics were also present in force, together with those from the US and Canada across to Central Asia and South Africa…The conference was quite truly a microcosm of the Ummah.

The collapse of this unity is best illustrated by the report in last week’s Times (£) that Hamas fighters in Damascus are training the Free Syrian Army to bring down President Assad of Syria, while Hizbollah sends increasing numbers of fighters to defend his rule. Behind both stand the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, respectively.

Any reduction in the global influence of Iran is to be welcomed. Iranian state media routinely promotes vile antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, while their foreign policy includes terrorism against disapora Jewish communities. But opposition to Iranian policy should never stretch to this kind of religious bigotry. One participant in the Cordoba-run debate pointed out that “The raison d’etre of the Islamic Movement is essentially political”. This is true; and in this form it represents a type of politics with intolerance at its core.

Below is the Thought For The Day by Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as broadcast this morning on BBC Radio 4: -  

This coming Sunday is Yom HaShoah, the day we in the Jewish community observe our Holocaust Remembrance Day. And this year it will coincide with the seventieth anniversary of one of the most remarkable moments of that long dark night: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The Nazis deliberately timed some of their worst programmes of mass murder to take place on Jewish festivals, as a way of killing not only Jews but also Jewish faith. So they planned to liquidate the ghetto and murder all its inhabitants on Passover 1943, to prove on the Jewish festival of freedom that the God of freedom did not exist.

Somehow Jews within the ghetto heard about this in advance, and though they were weakened by starvation and disease, and had only a handful of weapons, they determined on a collective act of defiance. They knew that, surrounded by the German army, they couldn’t win, but they held out for a month, and sporadic fighting continued for another three weeks. It was a turning point in Jewish history.

Great rabbis in the ghetto supported the Uprising. They said: this persecution is different from any other in Jewish history. In the past, Jews were persecuted by people who wanted them to convert. So Jews were willing to go to their deaths as martyrs rather than betray their faith. But the Nazis did not want Jews to convert. They wanted them to die. So, said the rabbis, we must defy them by refusing to die, by fighting for the right to live.

They knew that almost all of them would die anyway, but they wanted to make a protest in the name of life, and they did so with immense courage.

After the Holocaust, Jews, and much of the world, vowed, “Never again.” Yet in the last few years antisemitism has returned to Europe, from Greece in the south to Norway in the north, from France in the west to Russia in the east. Nothing like what it was in the past, yet enough to make Jews fear what the future may bring.

Antisemitism matters not because it is an assault on Jews but because it’s an assault on humanity. Jews were hated because they were a minority and because they were different. But we’re all different, and any group may one day find itself a minority. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler.

Which is why we must learn to fight hate together.  We owe the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto no less.

CST wishes everyone a happy and safe Pesach.

 
The Jewish Chronicle features the below article by CST’s Mark Gardner.

Thanks to Lord Ahmed, over the past week we have seen antisemitism subjected to the ridicule that it so richly deserves. Within hours of reports of his alleged comments in Pakistan emerging, there was even a website where you filled in the blank space next to a mocking graphic of Lord Ahmed’s face and the punch-line: “blame the Jews!” My submission, “too many people coming for Seder night? – blame the Jews!” was quite well-received, but this latest antisemitism controversy is no laughing matter.

To quickly recap: last week The Times reported that Lord Ahmed had given an interview in Urdu, broadcast on Pakistani television, in which he apparently blamed his imprisonment (for dangerous driving, before a fatal car crash) upon pressure from “Jewish” media owners who had “opposed” his visiting Gaza. He added further nonsense by alleging that the judge’s appointment to the High Court had followed his involvement in a case about a mutual “Jewish colleague” of both Lord Ahmed and Tony Blair.

If readers are upset by Lord Ahmed’s remarks, they might at least take some comfort in the extensive rubbishing of them. The Labour Party’s suspension of him was immediate. The Times was at its thunderous best, denouncing his Lordship for echoing The Protocols and reminding readers that the paper had made the first proper exposure of their falseness way back in 1921. British Muslim anti-radical groups have seized the opportunity to plainly condemn such Jew-hatred from a man who will forever be Britain’s first male Muslim peer.
 
Far less comforting is to consider what would have happened if Lord Ahmed had spoken not of a specific Jewish conspiracy against him alone, but of a more general Zionist or pro-Israeli drive to run Britain, America, and indeed everywhere. It has become depressingly commonplace to hear claims that the highest echelons of the UK media are in thrall to some Zionist or pro-Israeli agenda.

Similarly, the idea that Mr Blair was (and remains) somehow utterly ensnared within all of this is accepted wisdom within many left-wing activist circles, including much of the anti-Iraq War movement and practically all of the contemporary anti-Israel scene. These prejudicial narratives have been seamlessly transferred on to current government circles, with Messrs Cameron, Hague et al being wrapped up in the charge.

So imagine if, rather than crass self-pitying nonsense about Jews being out to get him because he visited Gaza, Lord Ahmed had merely stuck to the usual script as heard in Westminster and elsewhere, telling Pakistan that Zionist money and influence pretty much controls our media and politics, in order to defend Israel.

Would anybody, other than Jewish news outlets, have even bothered to report this? And what of the ensuing controversy? Would Labour have kicked a peer out, especially when the front cover of last week’s JC showed how its spin doctors appear to treat the word Zionism as if it were radioactive?

This sorry tale sums up the razor’s edge nature of contemporary antisemitism. A peer is reported to have said “Jew” in an asinine manner and ends up in the public stocks, but if CST or other Jewish defence bodies criticise the more seductive, and more dangerous 21st-century “anti-Zionist” variant of this logic, we are accused of trying to shut down public debate on Israel.

So, how does saying “Zionists” really differ from saying “Jews“? How does what passes for legitimate comment on “Zionists” both reflect and mentally reinforce older antisemitic ways of thinking? If Lord Ahmed helps us to better understand this question – and its answers – then this latest sordid little antisemitic spat might actually have been worth it.

Today we remember Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Aryeh and Gabriel Sandler, and Miriam Monsonego, victims of antisemitic terrorism at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, France, one year ago. We remember Bryan Bijaoui, who was seriously injured in the attack.

We also remember Sergeant Imad Ibn-Ziaten, Corporal Abel Chennouf and Private Mohamed Legouad, French soldiers murdered by the terrorist Mohammed Merah.

In the words of French President Francois Hollande, at a memorial service on Sunday:

The Jews of Toulouse died for the same reason as the Velodrome d’Hiver or Drancy, because they were Jews.

Our thoughts today are with the Jewish communities of Toulouse and all of France, and with our counterparts in the Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive (SPCJ).

The above photograph is of Miriam Monsonego, remembered at the 2013 CST Annual Dinner

 
CST unreservedly condemns Lord Ahmed’s reported antisemitic statements that appear in today’s Times newspaper. CST welcomes the Labour Party’s suspension of Lord Ahmed and expects a full investigation pending further disciplinary measures.

If accurately reported by The Times, Lord Ahmed’s allegations about Jews controlling British politicians, judiciary and media, will be the most blatantly antisemitic remarks by such a public figure for many years. As The Times editorial correctly states, such themes are the bedrock of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious tract purporting to demonstrate a world Jewish conspiracy”.

The Times alleges that the Labour peer made these antisemitic statements in Urdu, “during a television interview on a visit to Pakistan…thought to have been broadcast in April last year”. The Times article begins:

A Labour peer who was jailed for sending text messages shortly before his car was in a fatal motorway crash has blamed his imprisonment on a Jewish conspiracy.

Lord Ahmed claimed that his prison sentence for dangerous driving resulted from pressure placed on the courts by Jews “who own newspapers and TV channels”. Britain’s first male Muslim peer also alleged that the judge who jailed him for 12 weeks was appointed to the High Court after helping a “Jewish colleague” of Tony Blair during “an important case”.

He claimed, falsely, that Mr Justice Wilkie was hand-picked and sent from London to carry out the 2009 sentencing at Sheffield Crown Court because no other judge was willing to handle his case. The alleged plot to punish him stemmed, Lord Ahmed claimed, from Jewish disapproval of his support for the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Times further claim that Lord Ahmed told the paper yesterday:

that he had ‘no recollection’ of giving the TV interviews last year. ‘I’ve done a lot of interviews. If you’re saying that you have seen this footage then it may be so but I need to see the footage and I need to consult with my solicitors before I make any comments in relation to this’ he added.

The Times then states that it:

Sent a transcript of Lord Ahmed’s comments in Pakistan to his solicitor, at the peer’s request, but no further response was provided.

It is sad to note that those who agree with Lord Ahmed’s reported antisemitism will merely regard this Times story as proof of their convictions.

Furthermore, if the reports are shown to be accurate and the Labour Party then punishes Lord Ahmed accordingly, we can be assured that the antisemites will regard it as further vindication of their poisonous hatred.

Finally, there is what this teaches us about the remarkably precarious nature of such arguments. If Lord Ahmed claims (or is shown) not to have made these remarks about “Jews” controlling the media and politicians - but rather about “Zionists” or “pro-Israelis” controlling them, then how would that differ from what passes for legitimate, even de rigeur, comment within certain leftist and mainstream circles today?