Thread by @simonmaginn

It’s not clear to me how we proceed now. The antisemitism smearing war has accomplished its aim and only limps on under Starmer’s woeful captaincy, lumbering on more from inertia and paralysis than anything else.

The heady days of Rachel Riley and Margaret Hodge’s suitcase in the hall, and Jon Snow screaming ‘Do you apologise?’ at Jeremy Corbyn seem a long way off, as media attention turns elsewhere and it becomes yesterday’s news.

I’ve lost count of how many Jewish Chronicle stories have been found to be frauds, libels. There’ll be a ‘correction’ and an ‘apology’, which no-one will ever see, and there’ll no doubt be many more as time goes on. It won’t make any difference.

The IHRA definition, and the Labour party’s agonies over it, were covered obsessively, over many months. The new EHRC chief has recently said she finds it 'extremely poorly worded and probably unactionable in law', and is a threat to free speech.

And - nothing.

The petty and ridiculous ‘dossier’ against Corbyn - mural/wreath/irony - has been patiently dismantled by skilled hands, over years. More time and energy has been sunk into these pitiful scraps of nothing than they deserved. They should never have gained any currency of any kind.

Any day on twitter you can find earnest and heated debates about the *mural* and the *wreath* and the *irony*. I’ve done many myself over the years. I still occasionally do, just to keep my hand in, as it were. It’s become a sort of hobby for a great many people.

But no matter how many times they’re defeated, back they come, these zombie ‘arguments’. And they’ll continue to do so, and they’ll never stop.

It’s the difference between a complaint and a grievance. A complaint can be resolved: a grievance cannot. A grievance remains intact in the face of all reason and argument. It has its own source of energy - hate - and it survives any contact with reality it may be exposed to.

The mural/wreath/irony brigade do not have a complaint, they have a grievance, and they always will. No progress is possible.

Those who manufactured this moral panic will never admit to doing so, of course, and those who were conned will never admit they were conned. Who wants to admit they were taken for a mug by some con-artist? They will defend and sustain the belief forever. No progress is possible.

The media will never apologise. Nick Robinson’s smear against Chris Williamson is still up, 18 months and two complaints (from me, I mean) later. They take no responsibility, why should they? Who is there to hold them to account? The media?

So how to proceed? Do we have to just accept that it happened and continues to happen, that no redress is forthcoming? Do we continue to slug it out on social media anyway, or do we just drop it and talk about something else? Try, once more, to talk about policy?

I genuinely have no idea.