Thread by @AdamWagner1

Actually feeling a little ill reading this by @Dannythefink. If you can't access, in 2011 Jeremy Corbyn wrote a forward to John Atkinson Hobson's 'Imperialism', a book which blamed imperialism on financial houses controlled by a "single and peculiar race" thetimes.co.uk/article/corbyn…

As far as I can tell from the article, Imperialism itself doesn't specifically mention "Jews" but his book of 2 years earlier 'The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects' does.

So either he knew or (as with The Mural) it was staring him in the face but he didn't realise

But for anyone wondering why Labour sometimes seems reticent to discipline those who blame the 'Rothschilds' and the international Jewish conspiracy for the worlds's evils, it may simply be because the leadership of the party subscribes/subscribed to similar world views

I have tried to steer away from the question of whether Corbyn himself is an antisemite - but if he writes a forward to a book like this, which is promoting an antisemitic worldview, what are we meant to think?

I can hear the defence now: Imperialism doesn't mention "Jews" - it only heavily implies Jews. OK, if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt then fine, but this isn't a good look. Not at all.

A few more comments from people:
- perhaps Corbyn didn't read it before writing the forward
- perhaps didn't know much about Hobson
- perhaps it isn't such a big deal as Victorian writers were more likely to be racist and this wasn't entirely explicit
I'm open to those points...

... genuinely open to them. I think Corbyn's outlook of radical (modern) anti-imperialism has in the margins some pretty clear antisemitism, but I also think agree that in 2011 Corbyn may not have been sensitised to it. A problem for a self-professed anti-racist...

... but is it appropriate to call lack of sensitivity antisemitism? I honestly don't know. I will leave people to make up their minds.

I suppose one way of looking at it is that if a politician was writing a forward to a 19th century book which contained obvious racism, or sexism, or homophobia, they would usually be careful to distance themselves from those aspects and perhaps make clear what they were praising

Re the top tweet, the thing which was making me feel ill was reading Hobson's theory which so obviously matches a lot of the antisemitic stuff you see on social media. It feels like the missing link

This is a helpful statement from the Labour Party as it removes the defence that the book isn’t really antisemitic

https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1123288106680107008?s=20

So there are only two possibilities:
1. He didn’t know he was writing a forward to a book with antisemitic element
2. He did know and disregarded/chose to ignore
Either way it’s a mistake which he should apologise for or at least acknowledge?

I’m done on this now - I’m not going to answer more points as, frankly, I think people can and will make up their own minds and it’s genuinely painful to listen to I’m sure good people making bad arguments they probably wouldn’t touch with a bargepole if it wasn’t this issue.

You can find the whole of Hobson's Imperialism: A Study here files.libertyfund.org/files/127/0052…

Here is a longer excerpt of the bit about the "men of a single and peculiar race" which concludes by mentioning the House of Rothschild (page 63-64)

"Does any one seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European State, or a great State loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?"

He does a bit later in the section talk about Morgan (not Jewish) and in other parts of the book he refers to American bankers as a group without the antisemitic overtone - though in the section above ("men of a single and peculiar race") he is referring only to Europe

This sounds familiar