The attacks on Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party are building to a crescendo. Since the 2017 General Election with its surprise advances that were won by the new style leftwing Labour Party - and the start of the Tory Party government's slow-motion car crash - Corbyn in particular has been systematically denounced by all the the main media in a hundred different ways. For example he has been wrong for following Labour Conference resolutions on Brexit; he was unpatriotic and pro-Russian for failing to denounce Russia before any evidence, in the case of the attempted murder of the ex-spy Sergei Skripal; he was a 'pathetic pacifist' when Britain's Tory government added their own little load of bombs on Syria; he was the cause of an exciting new Blairite party break-away, which fizzled in a month; and on and on.
But the most relentless attacks on Corbyn have been the charges that he is anti-semitic. Some of these are farcical, often down-right pernicious, but ultimately they get nowhere. A recent example was started up by the aptly named Baroness Hayter from the (vast, pendulous and unelected) House of Lords. She wanted to get in with a pile of Lords that had already taken out an advert in the liberal British Guardian newspaper denouncing Corbyn as anti-semitic. She was sacked as the Labour Brexit minister in the HOL when she said about the Labour Party leader,
'Those of you who ... have the seen the film Bunker, about the last days of Hitler, where you stop receiving any information into the inner group which suggests that things are not going the way you want.' She was referring to Corbyn's 'failure' to deal properly with anti-semitism in the Labour Party. She hopes to get Labour Peers in the HOL to line up for a vote of 'no-confidence' against Corbyn in response to her terrible treatment. Why can't she stay a Labour spokesperson and also state to the world that her leader is compatible with Hitler?
It should be noted that virtually the entire anti-semitic tirade against Corbyn comes from parts of the Labour Party. Naturally, all the enemies of change in Britain, from the Tories to Farage, jump, to varying degrees, on the anti-semitic band wagon. Most bizarre currently, is that the Equality and Human Rights Commission are now examining Labour's attitude to anti-semitism! This has happened starting in May 2019 completely ignoring the October 2018 all-party House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which held an inquiry into antisemitism in the United Kingdom. The committee found 'no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other party.' Nevertheless, the EHRC launched a formal investigation into whether Labour 'unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people' from the Jewish community, saying it had received a number of complaints about Labour’s handling of allegations - from Labour members and leaders.
The source of the anti-semitism attack on Labour is the spearhead of a class offensive designed by its (Labour) leaders to destroy the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party. And the rising tempo, noise and fury erupting in the name of this cause is almost entirely to prevent the Corbyn leadership going into the Labour Conference as still dominant and able to win a Corbyn led government.
The Labour Party has always held a latent combination of class interests. Its membership and voting base are most likely to defend the cause of those seeking serious social change - as diametrically opposed to MPs, some union chiefs, the party organisation etc. This is a shifting condition in time and in context.
In 2017, a radical Labour leadership proposed significant incursions into the capitalist economy in favour of the working class. Because of its success, up to this moment, still nobody in the Labour Party is able to challenge the 2017 Manifesto. Accordingly new 'sins' and 'heresies' are needed as cover to weaken the foundations of 2017 and its leaders. A scapegoat must be identified and slaughtered. Just like a scapegoat, so the sins of the world, which certainly include anti-semitism, are pinpointed onto an innocent source. A layer of the European Jewish population, rightly frightened by the rise of the nationalist right, can and often does identify support for the Palestinian revolt as a part of that danger. It can provide an initial base for antagonism to Corbyn's history of solidarity for the Palestinians - as well as an increased dependence on and acceptance of, the reactionary Israeli government. It is this worry and fear that becomes an opportunity in other's hands.
While the great corporations were not scared of Labour's program per se, they nevertheless understand that once you open the door to some real change then new forces start to act directly in their own interests, particularly after a decade of austerity. And, as they look at France and the movements on climate change, it is this opening that must be crushed. As a result, getting rid of the Brexit song and dance routine cannot not thereby be allowed to become an opening to new movements that begin to develop their own political and economic directions. That is exactly what the Corbyn leadership risks if in government with its program. That is what has to be removed. Who better to act on this than most of Labour's MPs, the Party organisers and the fellow travellers who are entirely reconciled to the maintenance of the status quo and their own golden future - in the name of the overthrow of anti-semitism - for the moment named Jeremy Corbyn.
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