Oh dear!

A couple of weeks ago, UKIP's Nigel Farage spoiled the left's “narrative” on Jew-hatred by saying that most anti-Semitism – in terms of actions and words – in the U.K. comes from Muslims, not from what people now call the “far right.”

More precisely, Farage said:

I have detected quite a sharp rise in anti-Semitism in Britain and across the EU. What's fuelling it is there are many more Muslim voices and some of them are deeply critical of Israel and some of them question Israel's right to exist.

We've got this counter voice which is deeply critical. This is one of the challenges we face; when you've got more groups [to deal with].

Farage even said – quite rightly – that leftism (or political correctness) is largely to blame for this, because, as everyone knows, Jew-hatred is an acceptable kind of racism to large parts of the left (as is the hatred of the non-leftist white working class).  In fact, Jews are called “Zionists” nowadays by both the left and by Nazis.

Farage went on:

There's a lot of people in politics who would be nervous about speaking up about anti-Semitism. I feel we've not doing enough in defending the Jewish right to have a homeland because we are worried of offending another group.

Predictably, then, Nick Lowles's Hope Not Hate said that Farage's comments were “nonsense.”

Matthew Collins, the Hope Not Hate spokesman, said that "Farage gets a dig in at Muslims but he should be aware he is fishing in the same swamp as the BNP."

I would suggest, Mr. Collins, that it's the (far) left that's "fishing in the same swamp as the BNP."  And Matthew Collins should know that.

(Matthew Collins moved from being a member of the National Front to being a Trotskyist/communist as swiftly as a moving bullet.  Clearly Mr. Collins is what psychologists call an "extremist type."  That is, he has a penchant for ideological and political extremes.)

To get back to the leftist "discourse" on racism.

You see, every Jew-hater is supposed to be a white male member of a Nazi or fascist group.

Except that Muslim Jew-haters number the tens of millions worldwide, and the Islamic hatred of the Jews dates back to Muhammed and the Koran.

And the (far) left too has a tradition of Jew-hatred that dates back some 60 years before the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party).  That is, it dates back some 160 years before the BDS movement, almost one hundred before the creation of Israel, and even before the beginning of modern Zionism in the late 19^th century.

It dates back to Marx (a Jew by blood) and to the numerous other 19^th-century Marxists/socialists who strongly stressed the connection between Jews and capitalism.  (Nazis, of course, stress the connection – ironically enough – between Jews and communism.)

These facts are just so damned inconvenient, aren't they?

In any case, some people have said that Muslims "use anti-Semitism."  I don't think that's entirely true, though it can be true in some cases and to a degree.  That idea implies that Jew-hatred is a peripheral part of Islam.  It's not.

Almost the whole of Muhammad’s enterprise was to trump and then destroy Judaism – as well as Christianity – in Arabia and beyond.  The whole of sura 2 ("The Cow"), for example, is one relentless diatribe against Jews and their evil ways.

Racial Jew-hatred might well have been a 20^th-century addition to a theologically and politically based Islamic hatred. However, since Islam has always also been Arab-centric, the racial/ethnic aspect can't be overlooked.  It is still true, however, that Muslim groups and individuals did indeed borrow many ideas, theories, and values from both the Nazis and the communists/Marxists, such as Jew-hatred, a hatred of democracy, anti-capitalism, different takes on totalitarianism, Manichean worldviews, the glorification of revolutionary and other kinds of violence, etc.