IHRA AND THE TROJAN HORSE OF IDENTITY POLITICS

Some of the more sensible voices on the Momentul left said that the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is regrettable, but doesn’t fundamentally alter the direction of Labour. I strongly disagree with the latter part of that statement.
I think the IHRA is a further advancement of the Trojan horse of identity politics into the heart of the left. And the reason this is relevant is something that should be a left concern, but has become out of fashion and scorned as a right wing concept. Which proves there are defective thinking processes in the left. And this concept is.. freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is a fata morgana. It’s loss not visible nor immediately important to the lives of the many. It is taken for granted here in the anglo-american world, 2018. But it’s not always been around, it’s definitely the product of the free internet, and it’s something that greatly upsets the establishment. You only SENSE a loss of freedom of speech when you wish to speak against oppression. In all other concerns, nobody cares what you have to say.
So, of course, if you are a sycophant of the current neoliberal order, and all you have to say is mild criticism on non vital topics, you’ll find yourself accommodated by all media and fora.
This is typical of western pseudo democracies, where the illusion of freedom is carefully crafted. It’s not like, say, communist Romania where freedom of speech is crushed, brutally and visibly, with violence. Mild criticism is allowed to flourish for an illusion of freedom. Think milquetoast political commentary on Mock the Week post Frankie Boyle.
If you want to REALLY criticise the establishment, on very sensitive topics, you enter a twilight zone where you find, not only mysterious facebook bans (like it happened to me last year during the general election), but also hordes of fellow socialists (!) who are ready to banish you to a box on account of being one of readymade pariah intellectual categories: racist, antisemitic, transphobe, mysoginist, fake news, conspiracy theorist etc.
Think Julian Assange and his preposterous false accusations of sexual abuse and the subsequent aura of “sexism” that accompanies all those that dared to stand for him, like George Galloway.
This is the worst censorship of all. This is how freedom of speech dies in the West. Not by the boot nor by concentration camp soviet style; but via identity politics.
This is how well meaning people have been duped into silencing each other (unfriending on FaceBook, avoiding in local meetings, disengaging from debate) at the mildest paranoid, unproven suspicion of .. this or other -ism.
In this case, antisemitism. The amount of good people who were suspended from Labour for .. not outright antisemitism, but “bordering on antisemitism”, bringing the party into disrepute where the AS accusation was too ridiculous to uphold, “antisemitic tropes” etc.. stands as proof this is a campaign of subversion of the real left. And, of course, criticism of Israel.
A good example is Ken Livingstone — among the first to be abandoned, for saying a technically correct thing that Netanyahu had said just a year before.
It’s not coincidental that loud, morally upright voices like Tony Greenstein are expelled for .. bringing the party into disrepute but mass murderers like Tony Blair are still members.
The AS debate and the adoption of the IHRA are a slow gangrene. You won’t feel any immediate results. It’s a mind virus. But in time, free speech will feel a chill. Any dissenters will be expelled without due process and with no need to demonstrate a hatred of jews because they’re jews. All that’s needed is the paranoid interpretations of a feeble mind that is trained to identify traces of antisemitism in the pancreas; nano-antisemitism, if necessary. This won’t matter much to the average activist who doesn’t engage in anti war activities. But the Palestinians and their friends, and any solid anti war activist will slowly be pruned.
And with time, Labour will become a meek socialist soup pandering to the middle class, but with no guts to stand for the truly oppressed. And no matter what ID politics tells you, the truly oppressed ARE NOT the social media “victims” of unpleasant “tropes”. No, the really oppressed are those, outside of our geographical view, that fight bombs and guns in the Middle East, who lose limbs and family members every day. Standing up for those will be a challenge under the IHRA.
Organising in their support will be harder and harder under constant accusations of antisemitism and expulsions left and right.
It’s not even the only blow to freedom of speech in Labour; it’s just one of the advancements of ID politics that seeks to snatch attention from the problems of people who need it as a matter of survival and onto the superficial narcissistic concerns of the relatively well off. White becomes black and logic goes to muck. And this is the kind of left Momentum is advancing, threatening to kill — not just any speech on the left they are too quick to censor (think ditching Peter Willsman from the JC9 slate) as offensive — but also truly alienate the electorate.
The left may be persuaded that protected identities confer you magic immunity and authority from any personal failings, and primes over policy; this may seem as immutable to the Momentum left as Catholic dogma — but that should not blind us to the fact the rest of society outside the left doesn’t. And where the public lacks political energy, they don’t lack instinctive common sense. And when they see how the traditional left has come to identify itself with identity politics and uphold absurd irrational positions like criticising a person who happens to be Jewish is antisemitic.. or criticising a warmongering MP who happens to be female is sexist… well the end result of that is the average voter will be persuaded we are a joke.
I can attest to this trend as demonstrated by daily online and offline conversations I have with people from many walks of life. The left with its IHRA and other IDPOL positions has come to be seen as buffoonery. And the new IDPOL has loudly drowned out other, real, class concerns.
So you see, this type of slow poison is not as harmless as it seems. The immediate strategic agility of Labour leadership may outsmart its enemies in the short term. But the slow mental poison of IDPOL works its way into the victims.
And many people you win to your side (many of the 800K members) are now programmed to perpetually divide themselves over IDPOL matters so that any alliance is problematic. I decry the tragic spectacle of seeing Momentum abandon all from Jackie Walker to Marc Wadsworth to Ken and most recently Willsman. This type of division is making a fool out of the left to the public.
Tell me how is this not the strategic KO played by the establishment? Why does everyone downplay the number one ideological and psychological weapon used against the left?
Identity politics is brilliant, slow working mental and linguistic manipulation.
Using the emotions of the left against itself. Authoritarianism disguised as pity. Faux-charitable egolympics priming over unity and end goals. Making a spectacle out of your politics priming over solidarity with less brash and PR clever socialists who fought a solid backroom fight since the 70s (think Willsman as publicly eviscerated by 20 year old virtue signalling Lansmanites who don’t even know the Labour rule book).
Denial is expensive. And dismissing this as “crazy conspiracy theory” won’t help either — like a room full of Momentum members did with me not long ago — upon saying “As a Romanian who lived through a dictatorship, I can tell you this is another — I don’t trust governments. I know what they can do”.
