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Daniel Randall

@therubykid

Oct 22, 2023

When Jews see a protest where even a small minority has placards or slogans that express racism towards them, many will worry and object.

But lots of people on Palestine demos oppose it too and can be allies against antisemitism.

Find ways to make links! 🧵

This is not a matter of PR/optics. The reason to oppose even small pockets of antisemitism on demos is not because it makes the cause “look bad.”

It’s because the presence of antisemitism in any movement is toxifying. You can’t fight for equality whilst tolerating bigotry.

If we want to have a real and productive conversation around this, it will require some compromise and understanding on both “sides.” (Palestine solidarity activism and majority Jewish political identity/opinion don’t have to be counterposed “sides” but unfortunately often are.)

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Daniel Randall

@therubykid

Aug 10, 2023

Some thoughts on David Miller’s latest pearls of wisdom about (((them))):

1) Not being socioeconomically oppressed does not mean you can’t experience racism or discrimination. Not all racialised bigotry is impelled by the state or linked to class exploitation.

🧵

2) Metrics about representation of a minority group in positions of power often don’t tell you much by themselves. The richest person in Britain is Indian. Does his “disproportionate” power protect all Indian-background people from experiencing racism?

3) Jewish “overrepresentation” in banking, finance, etc., has clearly traceable origins, in the forced siloing of Jews into commercial/mercantile trades by medieval antisemitism in Europe. But to Miller, it’s simply evidence of insidious Jewish power.

Read 19 tweets

Daniel Randall

@therubykid

Jun 7, 2023

Claims that “the Israel lobby cancelled Corbyn” and that a UK MP is being controlled by “his masters in Tel Aviv” are not instances of misstated “support for Palestine”. They are claims that a hidden (Jewish) power controls world affairs. That’s antisemitism.

You don’t have to believe that Jews are racially inferior to non-Jews, the racialised antisemitism of the Nazis, to think in those terms. In fact, you can be a sincere opponent of that kind of antisemitism whilst still recycling other forms.

You may think your opposition is not to “Jews as Jews”, but only to a political power (“Zionism”). But conspiracist claims about the hidden, world-shaping power of Israel and “Zionism” are antisemitic nonetheless. David Miller’s work shows where the logic takes you…

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Daniel Randall

@therubykid

Nov 29, 2022

https://twitter.com/raffimagarik/status/1597280669964865537

Far-right antisemitism is certainly more “dangerous”, in the sense of immediately imperilling Jewish safety. But that doesn’t mean other forms of antisemitism aren’t “real”. 🧵

https://twitter.com/raffimagarik/status/1597280669964865537

The threat posed by left antisemitism isn’t that its adherents are likely to start physically attacking Jews, but that by accepting, even implicitly, antisemitism’s “pseudo-emancipatory” claims, it can mislead and poison attempts to develop a *genuinely* emancipatory project.

I’ve sometimes posed it in terms of left-AS being more of a threat *to the left* than it is “to Jews” as such. That’s a provocative and maybe hyperbolic way of stating it, and obviously “Jews” and “the left” aren’t mutually exclusive categories, but I think that frame has value.

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Daniel Randall

@therubykid

Jul 19, 2022

One of several risks in aftermath of the #FordeReport is that discussion around antisemitism, and other bigotries, in the party/movement yet again gets lost in weeds of process, procedure, and bureaucracy, rather than being about a political confrontation with reactionary ideas.

The most robust and efficient complaints procedure in the world is not going to uproot bigoted or reactionary ideas. Obviously those procedures should be improved (although “make it easier to expel people” shouldn’t be the aim), but changing ideas requires political education.

On antisemitism, the issue I’ve been most engaged with, successive Labour leaderships have failed on this. Under Corbyn, one decent educational resource (the ‘No Place for Antisemitism’ pamphlet) was produced, but there was no accompanying drive to use it for ongoing education.

Read 6 tweets

Daniel Randall

@therubykid

May 7, 2022

There’s a lot about “lockdown spirit” (icky term but indulge it as a shorthand) that was very admirable, emerging from a sense of social solidarity that impelled us to make major personal sacrifices for the sake of the greater collective good. (1/4)

But the same period also gave rise to a lot of petty, embittered, curtain-twitching social spite that saw the whole experience as an opportunity to snitch on and do down other people: the exact opposite of appealing to a sense of social solidarity. (2/4)

In different ways, I think both dynamics are at play in the responses to #Partygate (which is rightly seen as an affront to the former) and #Beergate (which seems to me to have a lot to do with the latter). (3/4)

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