The radical left have a new favourite phrase: ‘hierarchy of racism’. This is when one form of racism is treated more seriously than another. Such racial favouritism infuriates online leftists. It is anathema to the noble cause of anti-racism to elevate one ethnic group’s suffering over another’s, they cry. All racism is bad, they’re forever reminding us.
But here’s the thing: they only ever use that phrase ‘hierarchy of racism’ when it’s anti-Semitism that is being talked about. I guarantee that every time you hear a Corbynista or some other virtual radical bemoan the treatment of certain kinds of racism as more concerning than others, it’s because anti-Jewish hatred is in the news.
It’s like a tic they have. Someone dares to pipe up about anti-Semitism and the Pavlovian cry goes up: ‘Why are you creating a hierarchy of racism?’ Labour takes action against the anti-Semitic scourge that infected the party in the Corbyn years and they instantly rage: ‘What about other forms of racism?’ A Jewish public figure talks about the venomous hate he or she has experienced and swarms of Very Online leftists will bark: ‘And what about Islamophobia? And anti-Palestinian racism? Why are your experiences more important?’
Abbott’s unhinged letter to the Observer has caused a political firestorm
That the accusation of building a ‘hierarchy of racism’ is only ever made against those who speak about anti-Semitism should make us very wary indeed of this fashionable new phrase. It increasingly feels like a left-wing version of the hard right’s feverish belief in the idea of ‘Jewish privilege’.
Where right-wing racists are convinced that Jews enjoy special advantages in Western society, left-wing identarians are convinced they receive special treatment in the discussion about racism. Both sides promote the toxic theory that Jews sit atop a ‘hierarchy’, whether of wealth and privilege or of political sympathy for their suffering. This is dangerous stuff.
Wails about a ‘hierarchy of racism’ made a return this week in the Diane Abbott scandal. Abbott’s unhinged letter to the Observer – in which she said Jews, Travellers and Irish people experience prejudice but not racism – has caused a political firestorm. Abbott, who later apologised, has had the Labour whip suspended. And with depressing predictability, Keir Starmer is now accused of worshipping at the ‘hierarchy of racism’ because he acted more swiftly against Abbott’s denialism about anti-Jewish racism than he might have done against a different kind of problematic speech.
Worse, he denounced Abbott’s comments as ‘anti-Semitic’, overlooking the fact that she didn’t only mention Jews in her letter – she talked about Travellers, too. There it is, cry the embittered Corbynistas: the ‘hierarchy of racism’; the elevation once again of Jewish persecution over, in this case, the persecutions suffered by the GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) community. Quick, someone’s focusing on anti-Jewish hatred – dust down the ‘hierarchy of racism’ slur.
In truth, of course, it is entirely logical that Starmer would hone in on Abbott’s comments about Jews. Labour is coming out of a very bleak period in which it was plagued by anti-Semitic speech and behaviour. It was found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to have committed ‘unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination’ against Jewish members. Starmer has committed himself to ridding the party of this problem.
So of course it was Abbott’s mention of Jews, rather than Travellers and Irish people, that most concerned him. The idea that his condemnation of Abbott as ‘anti-Semitic’ – rather than as anti-Traveller or anti-Irish – is more proof of a ‘hierarchy of racism’ is arrant nonsense. This is yet another cynical effort to shut down discussion about anti-Semitism by essentially saying: ‘Stop privileging Jews!’
The twisted irony in all this is that if anyone is fashioning a ‘hierarchy of racism’, it is Abbott and her supporters. In distinguishing, with extraordinary historical illiteracy, between the ‘prejudice’ experienced by Jewish people and the ‘racism’ experienced by black people, Abbott is implying that black people have had it harder than Jewish people. They experience the worst kind of hatred – racial hatred. It’s not Starmer, with his perfectly legitimate aim of chasing anti-Semitism out of Labour, who is making a pecking order of racisms – it’s the Corbynista crew.
The idea of a ‘hierarchy of racism’ was first proposed in the Forde report, Martin Forde QC’s inquiry into the leaking of an internal Labour document on anti-Semitism. Yet the Forde report only talked about some Labour members’ ‘perceived hierarchy of protected characteristics’ (my emphasis) and made it clear that ‘it is impossible to make an accurate quantitative assessment of the extent to which such attitudes and behaviours exist amongst the party membership’.
That hardly sounds like cast-iron proof of a ‘hierarchy of racism’ in Labour. The reality is that Labour had a far worse problem with anti-Semitism than it did with other forms of racism. No doubt black and Muslim members of the party have experienced prejudicial comments and treatment. But Jewish members were hounded out of the party. Then Labour MP Luciana Berger required police protection at the party’s 2018 conference. The ECHR found literal unlawful acts of anti-Jewish discrimination. This racism was of an entire different order; it was of an institutional order. It is right for Labour to prioritise expelling this hatred from its ranks.
The radical left in this country is still riddled with the Socialism of Fools. This mix of conspiratorial anti-capitalism, violent contempt for the State of Israel and adherence to the social-justice ideologies of ‘white privilege’ and ‘Jewish privilege’ has led it down the dark road of anti-Semitic thinking. And still they refuse to engage in self-reflection, to have an honest discussion about the moral corruption of the left by the divisive creed of identitarianism. This is why they cry ‘Hierarchy of racism!’ at all who talk about anti-Semitism – to try to shame us into silence.
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