Thread by @NudderingNudnik

As the chair of @lucianaberger ‘s CLP is revealed as a fringe crank who has repeatedly spread some of the most toxic and enduring antisemitic conspiracy theories of our time there are serious questions facing British Jews and anyone with a real commitment to anti racism.

Because none of this is news.
In April 2016 I reported Alex Scott-Samuels to Labour for his use of antisemitic language.
I alerted a number of party officials and figures to my concerns.
No action was taken
Indeed, no interest was shown
With 1 exception.

I posted a screenshot of one of ASS’s antisemitic posts on Twitter and was rapidly met with a response from a senior and influential figure in Liverpool Labour -@CllrKennedy
Cllr Kennedy was soon to become Lord Mayor of Liverpool.
In his response to me, Cllr Kennedy defended ASS

He described Alex Scott-Samuel as “a bit naive, but a nice guy” and attacked me for “over-reacting”.
I was of course simply a Jew who was calling out a Labour member for using antisemitic language in a growing climate of political hostility to British Jews.
So what was going on?

There is no evidence that @CllrKennedy is himself an antisemite. Indeed, he is now a vocal critic of the antisemitism we see from the Hard Left and has this week posted tweets hostile to Alex Scott-Samuel and the behavior of @WavertreeCLP

So how to explain his actions of 2016?

The obvious analogy is to ask ourselves how Cllr Kennedy would have responded to a revalation that a Lab member he knew had posted offensive language about, say, Pakistani people.
Would he have defended the individual and instead attacked th Pakistani person reporting the abuse?

It seems highly unlikely that @CllrKennedy would have reacted that way.
I like to think that he would have acted with basic anti-racist 1st principles by listening respectfully to the report, ensuring that an investigation was held and harming responsibility to drive racism out.

So why did anti-racist 1st principles fall at the first hurdle for @CllrKennedy ?
Cllr Kennedy will not tell me. I have several times asked him to explain his choices and actions but he declines to.

So we are forced to draw our own conclusions.
And mine is that in acting in..

..the manner he did, @CllrKennedy demonstrated how by 2016 Jews had already been deemed “outside the progressive circle/the community of the good” by much of the Left (see @DavidHirsh) , so that antiracist 1st principals were no longer the reflexive response to attacks on Jews

So even “decent”, “moderate” Lab figures like the future Lord Mayor of Liverpool failed this most basic of tests of political and moral capacity and judgement back in 2016

Since 2015 Jews have consistently been attacked and told we are lying or over-reacting.

And so in 2019 as @lucianaberger is hounded by baying mobs with anti-Jewish hate in their hearts and minds it is important to ask:
“How did this come to pass?”

And the answer is: because those like @CllrKennedy have let it, by their abandonement of antiracist principles.

By adopting - however unconsciously- the narrative of Jews as beyond and outside of the protective arm of anti racism, people like Cllr Kennedy have given space and time for the poison to infect more and more of our political discourse.

If in 2016 @CllrKennedy had acted decently, then perhaps the abuse of @lucianaberger might not have escalated to where we are now.
Perhaps the last 3 years of my life - and the lives of many, many other British Jews - would not be filled with the same anxiety & abandonment

In 2015 and in 2016 British Jews raised our voices in a way that we and our families had never done before.
And many, many of those in and around Labour did exactly what @CllrKennedy did - they choose not to listen and defend us, but to attempt to silence and attack us.

And by 2019 British Jews find themselves in a situation unparalleled in our history in this country.

Those that have stood by - or worse - until the evidence of the harm has grown such that only those deeply immersed in the hatred can possibly deny it, have shamed themselves.

For the abandonment of British Jews & the harm that this has done to us & will continue to do to our children and the harm it has done to British democracy, there are many like @CllrKennedy who ought to be staring in a mirror and asking how they came to be a part of this.

Ends