Conceptual Vandalism, Historical Distortion: The Labour Antisemitism Crisis and the Limits of Class Instrumentalism

Abstract

Through secondary analysis of survey data collected by YouGov for Campaign Against Antisemitism, this research note provides a longitudinal account of changes in Judeophobic antisemitism (that is, antisemitism articulated in relation to Jews identified as Jews) in mainland Britain from 2016-2020. Because survey responses are aggregated by most recent general election vote, the dataset facilitates comparison between those who voted for each of Britain’s three main parties in the 2015, 2017, and 2019 UK general elections. (Those who voted for other parties, as well as those who did not vote and those for whom voting data are missing, are aggregated as a fourth category.) Amongst those who voted for the centrist Liberal Democrat party, levels of Judeophobic antisemitism declined throughout the period. Amongst those who voted for the left-wing Labour Party, levels of Judeophobic antisemitism began at a low level, rose to a peak in 2018, and then declined, returning to something close to their 2016 level by 2020. Changes amongst other voter groups were less clear-cut, although all voter groups saw a decline in Judeophobic antisemitism from 2019 to 2020. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to analyze trends in antizionist antisemitism (that is, antisemitism articulated in relation to Israel and its supporters), comparative figures for that form of antisemitism are provided for the years 2019–2020.

Antisemitism is predicted by anti-hierarchical aggression, totalitarianism, and belief in malevolent global conspiracies

“…In the 1980s, it was observed that the antisemitism of British far-right leaders brought them no political advantage, having little appeal to members of the communities within which they sought to recruit followers (Billig, 1988), and it has since been argued that a reorientation around anti-Muslim (as opposed to anti-Jewish) agitation has been key to recent electoral gains by radical right-wing parties in Europe (Berntzen, 2020). Moreover, since the 1980s, the influence of antisemitic ideas on the far left has emerged as a concern for many scholarly observers (Billig, 1984a, b;Bolton, 2020;Fine and Spencer, 2017;Hirsh, 2007;Johnson, 2019;Julius, 2010;Rich, 2018Rich, [2017), and an argument has been made that conspiracy narratives used by both right-and left-wing populists possess an inherent potential for linkage with antisemitism (Bolton and Pitts, 2018, pp. 214-219): as one observer puts it, contemporary antisemitism transcends the ideological differences associated with 'opposite ends of the political continuum … by travelling … through the connective tissues of enduring tropes' (Elman, 2022, p. 112).…”