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Daniel Randall Profile picture
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24 Aug, 6 tweets, 4 min read
Pleased to announce that my book ‘Confronting Antisemitism on the Left: Arguments for Socialists’ will be published by @NoPasaranMedia on 23 September. Details here: nopasaran.media/confronting-an…
You can preorder the book from a variety of sites. If you don’t have ethical objections to buying books from Bezos Corp., it’s available on Amazon here: amazon.co.uk/Confronting-An….
The book includes forewords by @dr_camila_bassi and Tom Cohen, son of Steve Cohen, author of @dontlookanti. It attempts to locate the historical roots of antisemitism on the left in primitive conspiracy theories conflating Jews with finance, and Stalinist-derived “campism”.
I have drawn on the work of a whole range of thinkers and writers, both historic and contemporary; Steve Cohen is probably the main one. Moishe Postone is another key reference point. I hope comrades who value their contributions feel I’ve honoured their legacies.
During the writing process I benefited from critical feedback from, and exchanged with, a large number of comrades, including @Livesrunning, @Sisyphusa, @HPollinGalay, @joeyayoub, and many others, whose input I’m hugely grateful for. I hope the book can spur ongoing discussion.
There’ll be an online launch event on 23 September at 6:30, where I’ll be discussing the themes of the book with @dr_camila_bassi. Sign up here: eventbrite.co.uk/e/167765568331

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Daniel Randall Profile picture
2 Sep
What the debates about when and how Labour should announce policy, and even what the policy should be, invariably leave out is the equally (arguably, more) fundamental question of how the policy is formulated.
Corbyn’s leadership largely left intact the Blairite model of policy production: that it was something cooked up by specialists (SPADs, policy wonks, whoever) in LOTO or Shadow Ministers’ offices, and “announced” to the party and the public simultaneously.
There’d even be policy announcements out of the blue *at conference*, which the left had fought for years to empower. Failing to make a politically sovereign conference the place where policy was debated and agreed (and then acted on!) was a huge missed opportunity.
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
27 Aug
Disciplining someone for writing this tweet would not only be an affront to free speech, but inimical to the fight against both antisemitism specifically and racism in general. (1/4)
White Jews have been substantially integrated into the constructed category of “whiteness”. That integration is both recent and extremely precarious, but ignoring or denying it helps no-one, and certainly doesn’t aid serious confrontation of antisemitism. (2/4)
I have made a similar point to the one in the tweet, in speech and print, multiple times, as have many other Jews I know - never to diminish antisemitism or downplay the need to confront it, but the opposite. I think people are more ready to complain about a black woman. (3/4)
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
24 Aug
Owen will get a lot of flack for this from all sides (“he’s caving to the Zionist lobby” from some, and “he doesn’t mean it/he’s just two-faced” from others). Personally I think he’s sincere, and the ability to admit having made a mistake is important.
As a side note, and this isn’t a criticism of Owen per se, more of discourse in general, I don’t think it’s necessary to pose these things as apologies for having caused “upset” or “offence”.
I think it’s fine to say, “I’ve reflected and I’ve changed my mind”, whether or not anyone was “upset”… and also to maintain your existing position, even if lots of people *were* “upset”, if that’s what you actually think.
Read 7 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
21 Aug
Another thoughtful and welcome contribution from David. I share much of his approach. One point of difference: he approvingly quotes a Jewdas article describing antisemitism as “hatred of Jews because they are Jewish.” I think this description obscures more than it clarifies. 1/4
Antisemitism is not simply hatred of or animus towards “Jews as Jews”. It is what Moishe Postone called “an ideology and form of thought”, which presents itself as “antihegemonic” - i.e., a critique of a power, which is seen as in some sense Jewish. 2/4
People who uphold and reproduce elements of that “ideology and form of thought” may not harbour “hatred” for “Jews as Jews” on an individual level, and very often aren’t “racists” in the sense of seeing Jews as a racialised other. They might even be Jewish themselves. 3/4
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
18 Aug
Now that the initial clamour has died down (a bit), gonna attempt putting some thoughts on the expulsion of Ken Loach down in a bit more detail. 1/
I oppose it. Supporters of the expulsion have focused on Loach’s undeniably dodgy track record on antisemitism, especially his directing of the play ‘Perdition’ in 1987, an antisemitic revisioning of Holocaust history written by someone formed politically by the toxic WRP. 2/
But he wasn’t expelled for having directed a crap antisemitic play in 1987, nor for his bizarre 2017 remarks about “all of history being up for debate” in response to a question about Holocaust denial. Nor was he expelled for having himself once been WRP-adjacent. 3/
Read 12 tweets
Daniel Randall Profile picture
24 Jul
Setting aside the notion that state ownership renders “production defined by wage labour” “minimal or non-existent” (which will come as news to anyone who’s ever worked in a publicly-owned industry), are we really still doing “socialism is when the state owns things” in 2021?
But in a way, the worst bit is the throwaway “bad things still happened” remark. Presumably that refers to… industrialised state terror, mass repression, hyper-militarism, deep social conservatism on nationality, gender, sexuality… etc. etc?
If you can look at all that and say “sure, there are bad things, but it’s still good and socialist because the state owns means of production”, then you reduce “socialism” to a (misapplied) mechanical label for a property relation, rather than a project for human emancipation.
Read 6 tweets

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