i've said repeatedly for 5 yrs that internal power struggles in an institutionally racist political party of state, in the exemplar colonial & imperial power of modern history, could never be the context in which to fight racism or even gain clarity over how it functions
history shows us that groups of ppl racialised by British white supremacy in colonies or the metropole have continually had to struggle from *outside* democratic institutions & institutions of the organised working class to secure any improvements in rights/status/quality of life
i understand the circumstances that led to Corbynism & this flooding into the LP, but the whole last 5 years has been riven with enmity, pain and, yes, "smears", revolving around questions of "race" & racism, hierarchies of racism and understandings of how "race" functions
but one of the big mistakes to me has been a widely held expectation that the institution of the LP & its procedures were somehow an adequate arbiter of these questions or that these internal workings could ever translate themselves onto such a thoroughly racist national context
the boxing in & factionalising of all of this within a LP power struggle has been so damaging. it's led to ppl constantly subordinating particulars to generals, comparing things that shouldn't be compared but instead integrated, & an absolutely cynical & racist instrumentalising
though it's not been widely acknowledged, ppl who've paid attention know that there is no such thing as a homogenous "Jewish Community" & that much of what's happened in the last 5 years has been bitterly contested among Jews, ended friendships and estranged families
but no matter how popular assumptions to the contrary are it's rly vital to repeat & underline that "Jews", as a "collectivity" & as a tiny minority in this society, do not hold the power to "destroy socialism" or to create the discursive & mainstream "scandal" of the past 5 yrs
to understand what it is happening right now, why some forms of racism *appear to be* more important than others isn't about the power of Jews or even necessarily the whiteness of most Jews in Britain (though that is certainly part of it), it is about how the operations & regimes
of British white supremacy and British capitalism have organised themselves through history. and yes, some Jews have chosen to take part in those processes, as have other racialised people. we have to look to the specificity of how different groups have been racialised over time
to understand the world we inherit and to understand how we can organise ourselves together & take on white supremacy. this involves understanding decades of "philosemitism" & white European Zionism for the racialising antisemitism that it is.
the appropriating embrace of "Jews" by liberal, conservative and far right white European and Western states only allows a narrow, reactionary definition of Jewishness, one that makes "Jews" the poster child of the ongoing colonial project & the human shields for worsening crises
