Enough is Enough: Rachel Riley, GnasherJew, and the Political Weaponisation of Antisemitism

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”.

Introduction

In July of last year, as he concluded his excellent piece on Labour’s proposed Code of Conduct on antisemitism, Brian Klug, senior research fellow at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, made an appeal — which he already knew would be in vain — for a return to moderation. “A part of me feels the hopelessness of appealing to reason, a sense of swimming against a mighty and unmindful current of opinion”. Six months on, that sense of hopelessness, and the absolute poisoning of the discourse around antisemitism in Britain, is if anything even worse.

The Labour Party would go on to apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition on antisemitism, complete with all its examples: despite the huge problems with several of these, highlighted by the definition’s own author, Kenneth S. Stern, in his November 2017 testimony to the House of Representatives; human rights organisations such as Liberty; myself in this article for Open Democracy; and Klug too, among many others. Those examples are still being misused: although in this case, Paul Jonson was at least reinstated by Dudley Council after a campaign to clear his name.

Throughout Britain’s long, fractious political summer, what was so noticeable was how almost nobody in the mainstream media was prepared to report anything like…