On first and second order antisemitism: the Williamson case

The suspension of Chris Williamsom MP for shouty comments made at a Momentum meeting, further to the wave of condemnation of his continued “Jew baiting”, will make some of those who have been calling for it feel good for a while.

I am not sure this is justified, because the broad failure to analyze in what way his remarks constitute a further assault on Jewish people will further embed in other people — such as those applauding his remarks in Sheffield — a sense of righteous indignation (and more) in the face of what they will see as yet another attack from what they see as the right of their Labour party.

In other words, suspending Williamson without being absolutely clear about what lines he has crossed, has probably made things worse [1].

Let’s then look at those crossed lines.

The short clip made available by the Yorkshire post can be split into three parts.

First Williamson says that the party that stands up to racism is being “demonized”.

Second, he asserts that the party has “given too much ground”, and been “too apologetic”.

Third, he stresses that antisemitism is a “scourge”, but that the accusations of antisemitism which have brought [too many] apologies are wrong, because the party has shown its anti-racist credentials.

Let us leave aside the veracity or otherwise of the claim that Labour is and always has been an anti-racist party [2]. Let us also leave aside for simplicity the elision, when defending the party’s record, of racism and antisemitism [3].

There is nothing in the segment of his speech shows in the clip that can be said to be directly, or what I will call first order, antisemitic (IHRA Working Definition), and Williamson makes a point of describing antisemitism as a “scourge”. That, of course, is the principal claim amongst his social media-based defenders (look below the line of his ‘apology’).

And that, in my view, is what makes his words more pernicious, and what justifies his suspension (and I suspect) expulsion from the Labour party.

For all speech is relational both to listenership and to wider context. Williamson knows — though the extent to which he could articulate it is unclear — what kind of trope he is creating in the linguistic minds of his listeners, and he knows (or at least should) that these tropes are antisemitic.

They are the tropes of

a) false victimhood, according to which Jews, as a collective, use their past persecution to further their collective aims;

b)of Jewish people as a collective conspiring to create false messages; and

c)of a sinister desire on the part of Jews to harm the party.

Of course Jews are not mentioned, but, in the context, who else would have the collective power to “demonize” (his word), either directly or as shadowy backers?

This is a second order antisemitism, which relies for its virulence on the fact that those listening to it will

a) not recognize it for what it is; but

b) through this lack of recognition, allow it morph over time into a first order antisemitism, in which Jews as a collective are no longer simply context for this assault on the party they (rightly) love [4], but are active agents in making “things go wrong” (in the IHRA definition terminology).

Now, of course any disciplinary charge amounting to ‘second order antisemitism designed to foster first order antisemitism’ is difficult to prove to the standard that might be required of a disciplinary process; I imagine that any disciplinary hearing will need to rely, somewhat unsatisfactorily given how the suspension of Williamson was triggered, on an argument that this latest incident is the latest in a series of incendiary remarks/acts intended to create anti-Jewish sentiment amongst those prone to notions of conspiratorial attacks on their party of choice [5].

Nevertheless, those really committed to addressing antisemitism in the party would do well to take the Williamson case as a new starting point, because it flags up two areas for action.

First, activists appropriately sensitized to how the dynamic of antisemitism is changing from one of isolated and excisable ‘exterminatory antisemitism’ to a more widespread and harder-to-treat ‘denialist antisemitism’ (as my colleague ‘Vae Victis’ has caustically renamed my first and second order antisemitisms), need to bring that analysis to bear, both rigorously and without the kind of distracting moralizing critiqued by Chris.

‘Calling out’ antisemitism is no longer enough. Indeed, it may well make things worse. Deconstructing and contextualizing the language is what is needed, alongside the establishment of a process to build the notion of second order antisemitism into Labour’s Code of Conduct and allied disciplinary codes.

Second, and building on this, ‘control’ measures must go beyond excision from the party of the relatively small number of first order antisemites — and towards the active treatment of those exposed to second order antisemitism of the type Williamson seeks to spread.

I have set out previously the kind of self-sustaining structure that such a programme of treatment might take, though the details of how that structure facilitates a suitable andragogy (my view for what it’s worth is that properly designed exploratory group work like this is worth the investment [6]).

But whatever the precise design, one thing is clear. Antisemitism has morphed into a more dangerous issue in the Labour party than can be treated by strict application of the IHRA code to the odd case, and an urgent party-wide education programme is needed.

Notes

[1] This piece comes in part as a response to a very brief twitter exchange with prominent Human Rights lawyer Adam Wagner.

Adam retweeted the clip of Williamson at the Momentum meeting, with the comment

Chris Williamson, the seemingly untouchable Corbyn ally, is filmed here saying Labour has been “too apologetic” over antisemitism. Here is a test, because only an institutionally antisemitic institution could let this stand without sanction.

I replied to Adam with something along the lines of “We need to be clear on what he actually said”, because I thought, briefly, that his retweet had the hallmarks of the kind of ‘calling out’, at the expense of proper critique, that I have now written about over, and because I wanted to engage an intelligent interlocutor on this. I thought I had established a reputation of someone thoughtful enough to do that.

Adam thought differently, and replied with a simple ‘facepalm’ emoticon, from which I took it that I was simply one of the many denialists, arguing the case for Williamson on he basis that what he said was not first order antisemitic.

I deleted my reply when I saw that it was surrounded by other replies which were absolutely of this denialist style, because I did not want to be associated with same.

I overestimated my reputation and standing, and recognize that now that there is no earthly reason for Adam to have differentiated what I wanted to be a ‘starter’ tweet from the other mass.

I apologize to Adam for that mistake and the offence caused (though I am sure he won’t read this).

[2] See this thread for a challenge to Labour’s claim to be an antiracist party, though I do think it underplays the shift in local party cultures from the 1970s to the 2000s.

[3] I sought to explore what I saw as an odd lack of distinction between antiracism and the particularity of antisemitism, employed by people opposed to the Labour party, in this thread.

[4] Here it is important to note that the whole current Labour party context, in which there ha been a deep split on grounds other than antisemitism, caused (in part) this sense of being under assault from the the other side. Sadly, what may have been a partial cause for the growth of antisemitism, has now become a symptom of antisemitism, and a vicious circle has developed. Thanks to Tom Miller for this insight.

[5] In Habermasian prosecution terms, his past conduct does not allow him to pass the validity claim for sincerity in his Sheffield remarks.

[6] Declaration: I am now a facilitator on this programme.