They Won The War. Why Are They Still Fighting?
The antisemitism smearing war has been the most successful political campaign of my lifetime. It played a crucial role in delegitimising the left, it took down a party leader and was a significant factor in two general elections, and it maintained itself as a front-page news narrative for five years. It’s hard to think of a parallel in UK political history. It worked, brilliantly.
Leftists have been all but expunged from mainstream politics, their party wrenched out of their hands and delivered up to Keir Starmer, whose purposes remain, at best, opaque. The Labour party is a perilous place for leftists now, and those who remain are embattled, their way forward uncertain. Those outside are divided, and no clear leader has emerged from the new left parties.
You’d think that would be the end of it. The smearing war achieved what it set out to do, and in some style.
So why is it still going on? Yesterday, a left woman was hounded as an antisemite on twitter by a Corbyn-hating mob for making a critical comment about an actress’s performance in a TV show. The hounding reached horrifying depths — at one point it was suggested the woman be ‘dragged through the streets’, though this comment was later deleted. But the brutality of the assault was striking.
Why did this happen? If not political gain, why this continued frenzy? Should we be looking for a social explanation, something to do with mobs and the individual, the surrendering of self to a larger grouping, allowing behaviour that would otherwise be abhorrent? The anonymity and distancing effect of social media giving people ‘permission’ to behave online in a way they never would in real life? Or should we seek an answer in individual psychology, in some private motive source for these torrents of rage? Are these just individuals acting out personal psychodramas, or are there larger forces at play?
Howsoever, there is clearly an organised, predatory pack of anti-left activists, ready to pounce at any time. An odd feature of the campaign is how significant the world of light entertainment has been — the leading voices in the assaults are actors and TV presenters. Between them they have a great many followers, and they can make the online world a very tough environment when they set their sights on someone.
The savagery on display today, the blood-lust, was, for me, disturbing. Some deep well of malice has been tapped and shows no sign of abating. This isn’t politics anymore, this is something darker and deeper and altogether more elemental than that. This is hate.