Anti-Semitism, Prosemitism and Judeophobia

Anti-semitism is still plaguing the UK political landscape. Indeed the plight of the Jews is a story that has dominated the interests of the Western hemisphere for well over a century. As I've expressed before I'm uncomfortable about people being referred to by their race. As Jordon Peterson (the youtube expert du jour) expertly expresses at the start of this video, problems occur when you promote people's group identity above their individual identity. People are individuals first, and their characteristics come second. Deep stuff here which I won't discuss, but said a lot in the blog already.

The mistake a racist makes is to have some view of a race, and then to judge everyone who belongs to that race by their prejudice. Obviously we treat people in reality on a person by person basis. People have freedom, we have choice, we have rights, we have individuality. I may be a Jew but I am to be judged as myself firstly. Indeed an individual may completely reject their Jewishness. My parents may be Jewish, doesn't mean I have to pay any attention to them. My parents may be black, but I can live my whole life without ever even noticing. Unlikely in the racially mixed West, but more likely in a place where everyone is the same colour. This is not to say we totally ignore our characteristics. If I have no legs then I will move around in a certain way and I won't be taking part in running races. This way of moving will be different from people with two legs. But my way is good for me, and that is all that matters. I may be grouped as a disabled, but this is only relative to people with two legs. It is not a grouping that effects me as an individual. I am what I am to copy Kei$ha.

Jordan Peterson is identifying the problem of identifying people by their grouping. An easy trap to fall into in organisations. If we are planning access to a venue in a city it would be useful to define categories of people. Those who are able to use stairs, those who needs ramps, those who need something else. Grouping makes this easy to manage, and when people arrive they conform to a group by using the access designed for that group. They might fill out a form asking them to tick which type of mobility they have. Now suppose that queues form. People belonging to the rarest mobility type may find it easier to gain access to the venue, and this may lead to people queuing for more common types of access to claim discrimination and preferential maltreatment of their type. To complete.

Yet in the West while we talk about individual freedom, responsibility and liberty there is also a lot of talk about "Jews." And the problem appears to be that there are people in the West who dislike Jews. Most famously it was the Nazis. Dislike of Jews has a name, it is called antisemitism. And anyone with a prejudice against Jews is called an antisemite. So an antisemite might say "I don't like him because he is a Jew." Now it is fine for the antisemite to not like him, but the problem is he doesn't like him because he is a Jew. Exactly as said above the antisemite is judging him not as a person, but as the member of a group. With this type of thinking you can have people being put in prison or worse just because they are members of a group without ever having committed any crime themselves. That is why it is so dangerous.

But look. You have people being given nationality of Israel just because they are Jews. This is exactly the same mistake that the antisemite makes. We might call this prosemitic thinking and it is equally dangerous because it might mean people don't get put in prison because they are Jews, or people being put in prison because they are Non-Jews (gentiles).

You can also have people being protected just because they are Jews. When the political world seeks to crush antisemitism it is actually standing up for the victims of antisemitism based on their race alone. It is giving preferential support to a particular race. This means that the establishment is doing more for race crime against Jews than it is other groups. Again this is the danger of such thinking.

Another problem is that in the particular case of antisemitism there is a confusion over whether antisemitism is a race or a religious hate crime. In the most recent UK statistics hate crime against Jews is actually classed as a religious hate crime. Such hate crimes make up only 10% of race and religious hate crimes. So naturally classing antisemitism as such means it is hugely over represented making up over 50% of all religious hate crimes. Yet hate crimes against Islam are called Islamophobia suggesting that hate against Jews is really Judeophobia. The name antisemitism based upon Semite suggest otherwise that hate crime against Jews is really a race crime and should be classified along with White, Black, Asian etc race crimes. An obvious problem here is that really Jews and Palestinians for example are both Semitic (along with lots of other tribes) so hate crimes against both groups would be classified together. Never-the-less if we move Jewish religious hate crime into race crime we get the following picture:

Race	Reported Crimes	Population	Years an individual must wait to experience a race hate crime
Mixed	1109	1224400	1103
Asian	5759	4213531	732
Black	2896	1864890	643
White	94643	48209395	509
Jewish	672	263346	391
Other	219	69750	318

So we can see the problem with the political hard line against antisemitism. It is not that antisemitism shouldn't be stamped out. It is that there is a lot of racism that needs to be stamped out. In particular lots of minority races appear to be experiencing racism even more than Jews. An individual Jew in the UK will report a race crime every 391 years, while other minorities every 318 years. I imagine the Gypsies are included in this. Importantly they are equal victims of the Holocaust alongside Jews, and yet the high profile focus on Jewish protection has rather pushed them to the side lines, in fact has rather discriminated against them. This in fact is racism.

Also important is the huge amount of race crime directed at White people. For every 10 race crimes reported by White people Jews will report 14. This is not to say that this is not terrible, but it illustrates that race hate happens to literally everyone not just Jews and the focus on antisemitism is discriminatory itself.

The problem for the state is not to stamp out antisemitism. It is to stamp out racism.

But there are other problems. The Labour party in the UK is clearly being specifically targeted as antisemitic. We know reports have identified the Tory party as even more racist that the Labour party. Racism is not something only the Labour is involved with. It seems the call to stamp out racism within the Labour party and not to to stamp out racism in the Tory party is highly suspicious. It is also known that IHRA has asked British political parties to ratify a new definition of Antisemitism that includes criticism of the nation of Israel. There is nothing good to say about this.

1. British politics is democratic and pressure groups cannot bully political parties into adopting policy. 
2. To make criticism of Israel a race crime, would entitle every country to do the same, and worse to define their national identity racially. If we accept this there is no reason that England could not become a White Nation. Criticism of English politics would then be a race crime against the White Race.
3. This type of political behaviour only conforms to the stereotype of a Jewish Lobby which confirms the prejudices of racists and does nothing to stop racism. A non-race based approach to anti-racism (that is an approach that is not itself racist) is the only way that all races will accept.

What is needed is a return to the very serious issue of anti-racism, and for groups using racism as a cynical political device to be named and shamed. British politics also needs more transparency and politicians being afraid to speak out for fear of a lynching by the media and pressure groups to be made a hate crime in itself. If the Labour party does not want to adopt the proposals of the IHRA they should be able to open up public debate on the subject and not live in fear. Using the memory of the Holocaust to drive a political agenda is also hugely offensive to the people who died in the Holocaust who would like their names remembered for the suffering and injustice they experienced. What happened can never be changed and the IHRA should remember that themselves. Driving a political agenda today is for the living not the dead and nothing to do with Holocaust remembrance. Holocaust remembrance is also nothing to do with race. It is a human tragedy that involved millions of people of many identities. Some were gay germans, some gay jews, some russain jews, some gay russians, some gypsies, some disabled germans, some gay disabled russians, some women, some men. There was no single identity amongst Holocaust victims, and no racial unity. It was a crime against Humanity and not something to be exploited by a particular interest group. As Jordan Peterson reminds us we should think of the individuals first before applying any group identity.