The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
Anti-Semitism – the socialism of fools – is a shapeshifter supreme. The oldest hatred has taken many forms, and is enjoyed by Christians and Muslims, communists and fascists alike. Now it can add another string to its bow. Anti-Semitism has become deeply fashionable. You might say it’s all the rage.
Years ago I coined the phrase ‘fresh’n’funky anti-Semitism’, to define a new strain of the disease which had broken free of its stale, pale, male origins and become quite the belle of freshers week balls. Jewish students had been systemically bullied since the founding of the universities – though there was a brief pause for decency after the second world war – and the first wave of banning Jewish student societies started in 1975, when the National Front was perceived as a threat, and many students’ unions adopted a ‘No Platform for racists and fascists’ policy in which they included Jewish groups.
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