Porter’s Pensées

The Stockholm Archipelago is wonderful this summer, if rather over-baked; and a good place to get away from Brexit, Trump and the awful ‘anti-semitism’ row; but those three still plague my nights, and add to my endemic depression, which always flares up worst at four in the mornings. I have to say I feel pretty desperate just now.

Was there ever a worse time in modern British politics? My current holiday reading is Robert Harris’s Munich.  1938 ought to have been more depressing than today. But at least the only madman then was on the other side, and there seemed to be straightforward ways of avoiding disaster: either by averting war, or by uniting patriotically to fight it. It’s difficult to see a way out of our present existential mess that doesn’t leave half the country alienated, bitter and mean.

Maybe it would be more straightforward if Corbyn were replaced by a Labour leader who was more unequivocally against Brexit. (My daughter, here last week, has almost persuaded me of this.) Or Corbyn might be swayed this way as public opinion turns against Brexit and its ‘madmen’, just before the next election. Then it might be a better political tide to ride.

It really is difficult to understand how – in what historically has probably been the second safest home in the world for Jews, and where anti-semitism, although occasionally rearing its ugly head, has been far less common and extreme than in most other European countries – the charge  of anti-semitism has recently been levelled against the Labour Party, and its leader in particular, whose stand against racism of any sort is one of their defining features.

Last week the three leading British Jewish newspapers, deploying identical headlines, described Jeremy Corbyn as an ‘existential threat’ against Jews in Britain; which, if it means anything, means that he presents a danger to their ‘existence’ – their life – in the country. As the Jewish journalist Robert Cohen wrote in the piece I quoted in my last blog: ‘You’re probably thinking that Her Majesty’s Government must have just introduced the equivalent of Hitler’s Nuremberg race Laws of 1935. Perhaps it’s worse. Perhaps the round-ups have already begun.’ – The evidence for this is of course non-existent. The whole thing is a foul slur on a good man and a generally well-meaning party. Which is why Corbyn apparently feels so hurt, and many of us British anti-racists are genuinely puzzled. Could it possibly be because we are simply unaware of – insensitive to – the implied anti-semitism in Corbyn’s words and actions?

If so, the words and actions objected to are obviously those directed against the Israeli government and its treatment of its Arab minority and neighbours, which in some cases might derive from an underlying racist anti-semitism, but don’t need to, and almost certainly don’t in Corbyn’s case. The recent Israeli government has surely done enough to deserve the strictures heaped upon it without anti-semitism entering into it. In a rational world, these actions and events – like similar actions and events perpetrated by other governments, including our own – should be able to be debated in a reasonable way, without fear of being tarred with the vilest epithet in the liberal’s vocabulary. The injustice – even crime – that the very foundation of the Israeli state, without the permission of those who occupied the land before it, involves; Israel’s blatant imperialism – a phenomenon generally vilified in modern history – in the ‘occupied territories’; Israel’s obvious racism, tightened recently by Netanyahu’s new Nationality law; and of course its recent over-reactions to mainly peaceful Palestinian demonstrations against it: all should be proper topics of cool, rational debate, without those raising them being accused of racism themselves. None of these charges should be thought to endanger the ‘existence’ of Jews in Britain, or even of the State of Israel. Past crimes can be forgiven, and the new world they have created accepted, as has happened elsewhere; so long as the crimes are acknowledged, and not repeated. In my view that should increase Israel’s security. It’s on that basis that I consider myself to be more of a ‘friend’ of Israel – and certainly of the Jewish people, or those I have known – than those who purport to be their friends on the Right.

Faced with these extraordinary attacks on Corbyn and Labour, and if we assume that they are misdirected, there are only two conclusions that can be be drawn. One is that their critics genuinely do believe that criticism of the present government of Israel and support for a Palestinian state are anti-semitic in themselves: which implies an extension of the meaning of the term that very few rational people would accept. The second is, as many commentators have suggested, that it’s all contrived; a plot to block a Corbyn government that they fear on other grounds – his socialism, for example, or his criticisms of the present Right-wing government of Israel; and which they think could be stymied by smearing him with this hated, Hitlerian slur. In this they seem to be working hand in glove with the Conservatives (traditionally and currently the more anti-semitic of the two main parties) and the right-wing press; who probably don’t believe Corbyn is anti-semitic either, but are unprincipled enough to use any weapon that comes to hand.

For me that’s almost the most distressing aspect of the affair. If it is a ‘conspiracy’, then it’s one perpetrated by Jews; or by what is now  widely known as the ‘Israeli Lobby’. That takes us into a dark place. Jews have been a favourite targets of ‘conspiracy theorists’ for (literally) hundreds of years. Alleged Jewish plots – many of them international in scope – have lain behind, or at least been used to justify, some of the most horrific crimes in history, including of course the Nazi Holocaust. ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is a dangerous trope.

It’s for this reason that I, for one, hope that the current Jewish-led anti-Labour campaign isn’t a conspiracy. I’d prefer to believe that those who are responsible for it are simply mistaken, led by what they take to be their Jewish loyalties to  irrational and deeply dangerous conclusions. Many Jews – like those referenced in previous posts here – are distancing themselves from it. That can only aid the genuinely Jewish cause.

Holidaying in the Stockholm Archipelago with children, partners, grandchildren and various Aussie and US relatives-in-law; so not much time for blogging. But to be going on with, I think this is splendid: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/writingfromtheedge/2018/07/the-jewish-war-against-corbyn-risks-bringing-real-antisemitism-to-britain/. Just what I’ve been saying recently, but better. And from a Jew. God (or whoever) bless him.

I may resume blogging later with some thoughts on ‘conspiracy theories’. This could qualify as one.

When Margaret Hodge sadly dies and goes to her Jewish heaven – will it be for Jews only? I don’t know, but that would tie in with Netanyahu’s present plans for Israel – I predict that God is going to be very cross with her, in view of her shoddy libels on Jeremy Corbyn as ‘anti-semitic’. He (capital ‘H’)  may well be cross with Netanyahu too. I hope so. Luckily not all British Jews go along with Hodge, or with the Israeli Right. I was impressed with this interview with Michael Rosen recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVMINxG_agA. That just about lays it on the line to her. Let’s hope that the majority of Labour-leaning Jewish voters takes heed.

I’m not Jewish, though I sometimes wish I were: anything but boring old Anglo-Saxon. But I’ve had experience of an ‘exclusivist’ religion quite like Judaism. My paternal grandmother was a member of a (Christian) church in rural Essex called the ‘Peculiar People’: ‘peculiar’ in this context meaning something very close to ‘chosen’. It’s on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peculiar_People. She used to take me along as a boy to services: I must recount my experiences there sometime. (They were quite weird.) Luckily Grandad and my father were Methodists, which was the tradition I was brought up in. But not before I’d grown to be uncomfortable with sects that only looked after their own. Or which wanted to create communities made up only of their own sort.

Multiculturalism may have its problems; but its influence is generally enriching. What would Shakespeare have been if he had not moved from boring monocultural Warwickshire to the colourful cosmopolis that was 16^th-century London? Or Elgar, without his German Jewish friends? Or even little me, without the stimulating experience I had of living in a very multinational society as a graduate student at Cambridge?

That society included a few Jews of all sorts. They immensely enriched the culture of the rest of us; together with the Africans, Latin Americans, Asians, and even the North Americans. How dare the Israeli exclusivists want to keep all that for themselves?

Which takes us some way away from the awful Margaret Hodge; but that’s maybe not such a bad thing. British politics – and the Labour Party in particular – would be better off without her.

Back in Sweden now, the long way round – Hull-Rotterdam ferry, then rail from there to Stockholm via Osnabruck, Hamburg, Copenhagen. It was tiring (with suitcases) but far more pleasant than by air. It gave us a super day in Amsterdam. (I liked our canal guide’s statement: ‘Dutch isn’t so much a language as a speech impediment.’) Maybe if they hike up the cost of aircraft fuel they’ll bring back ferry routes from north-east UK to Norway or Denmark. Overland (and sea) gives you the real impression of travelling.

Everything on the way confirmed my anti-Brexit views. So did every foreigner we talked with. They think we’re mad. But I fell to musing: what if the Brexiteers turn out to have been right all along? Suppose that, in fifty years time (Jacob Rees-Mogg’s latest estimate of the time the advantages may take to get through: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jacob-rees-mogg-economy-brexit_uk_5b54e3b5e4b0de86f48e3566?bk8&utm_hp_ref=uk-homepage&guccounter=1), we really do become the powerful, self-confident, global – possibly imperial – power the Moggs of this world are looking forward to? Won’t he and his kind be lauded in the history books as national heroes?

In which case they’ll obviously need statues of them erected inside or outside Parliament. And that’s when more doubts begin to creep in. Most of the public statues we have already of great statesmen and women are of pretty normal-looking – even distinguished – kinds of people. How will the sculpted versions of Farage, Mogg, Johnson and Gove fare alongside them? A frog, a comic toff from the Dandy, a demented teddy-bear, and a trout who looks as if he’s being sexually penetrated from behind. I don’t know why they all look so ridiculous, or whether it’s fair to use their physical appearances against them in this way. Is there a connection between looking silly and acting silly? If not, nature has clearly dealt them a duff hand.

It’s more likely that their place in history will be on the side of the ‘villains’ and (hopefully) losers; not the real villains, of course, the Hitlers and Stalins and Margaret Thatchers, but the deluded patsies who often do more damage than the deliberate nasties – men like Neville Chamberlain, in reputation at least. (If you’ve followed this blog scrupulously you’ll know I think this is unjust.) Their physiognomies – like his – will probably make them figures of retrospective fun. I don’t envy them this. Historians try to be fair, but it may be an uphill task in the cases of these four.

The row about anti-semitism in the Labour Party has broken out again: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/18/labour-party-to-take-action-against-mp-who-called-corbyn-a-racist; and with no more reason or judgment behind it than was displayed when it was last aired a few months ago – see my earlier posts. Here is an excellent demolition of it published recently: https://www.opendemocracy.net/antony-lerman/why-turning-to-jewish-exceptionalism-to-fight-antisemitism-is-failing-project. That really ought to nail it. By any objective reading, conducted on the basis of a reasonable and objective definition of anti-semitism, and not one, for example, founded only on the opinions of Jews (that’s the most intellectually disreputable suggestion of the ‘New’ anti-anti-semites), Labour is the least  anti-Jewish of any British political party in recent British history. Corbyn has always stood strongly against racism of any kind. To tar him with this brush is a quite appalling slur. (It has to do of course with hostility to him as a socialist and pro-Palestine.) It’s almost enough to turn one anti-semitic. Of course I can and will resist this; but many radicals may not be able to.

Back to Sweden tomorrow, by boat and train. (We both dislike flying, and the cost at this time of year is not very different. Plus we live in a ferry port.) So, there’ll probably be another gap before my next post.

Apparently Trump’s ‘tough advice’ to Theresa May, which she rejected, was to stop negotiating with the EU and ‘sue’ it instead: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/15/theresa-may-donald-trump-told-me-to-sue-the-eu. That’s the aggressive businessman speaking. But in any case, how does a nation ‘sue’ an alliance of which it is part? I look forward to his suing NATO.

Note also that, on being asked about the protests against him in Britain, he replied ‘Some of them are protesting in my favour, you know that? There are many, many protests in my favour.’ Sheer delusion. Most observers counted only about six pro-Trump placards.

I rather like John Cleese’s explanation of this. Trump is ‘pronoid’. Pronoid is the opposite of paranoid. A paranoiac is someone who thinks everyone is out to get him or her, without any basis in reality. A pronoiac is someone who thinks everyone loves them, also without any basis in reality. (See https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1017753969416921088.)

Yesterday’s disastrous visit of the American President must enormously weaken the hand – or at least the argument – of the Brexiteers among us. They were relying on a trade deal with the USA to compensate for our lost ‘free trade’ with the remaining countries of the EU. That was always a flawed ambition, with any prospective British-American trade amounting to only a fraction of the trade we will have lost with our present European partners, and subjecting us to poorer standards than we can now insist on: American ‘chlorinated chicken’ is the example usually given. Within the EU, of course, we can insist on higher quality food (and other things) than we would be able to do if we relied on free and unregulated trade of the kind the Americans would like. Trump’s now notorious interview in yesterday’s Sun newspaper, where he claimed that Theresa May’s current Brexit proposals would, by adhering still to EU standards, rule out any trade deal with him, at any rate, spelled this out more clearly than perhaps he realised. He obviously thought he was strengthening the hands of the Brexiteers, and particularly of his new British buddy Boris Johnson, who had just resigned over May’s plan.

He then added insult to injury by telling the Sun that May’s rival Boris would make a ‘great prime minister’. (Take that, Theresa!) His affection for him seems to be entirely due to the fact, as he said, that ‘he’s been very nice to me, he’s been saying very good things about me as president. I think he thinks I’m doing a great job. I am doing a great job, that I can tell you, just in case you hadn’t noticed.’ So that’s the way to get round him: flatter his narcissistic streak, which appears not to be founded in any great self-confidence, if it needs to be continually stroked like this.

Later, at Chequers, having clearly been told by his advisers of the harm these remarks had done, he tried to make up for it by heaping oleaginous praise on poor Theresa (I never thought I’d feel such sympathy for her!), and claiming that the Sun’s report of the interview had been ‘fake news’ – even though it had been recorded and shown to be accurate. How can you deal – or do business – with this man? Best to scuttle back under Europe’s wing.

If he needs to be flattered, he won’t have felt much affection towards the UK in view of the enormous – 250,000? – demonstrations against his visit that filled London and other major cities yesterday, and are the most newsworthy aspects of the whole event. Today’s Daily Mail paints these as the usual rent-a-crowd Lefty snowflakes, but they clearly represented far more than this. They literally filled the streets from the BBC to Trafalgar Square, and beyond that to Parliament Square: young and old, white and black, men and women (the separate Women’s march that fed into the main one was particularly impressive), Left and moderate Right. Apart from showing how thoroughly despised Trump is by most Britons, they also illustrated the creativity of the new generation of protesters in Britain today, with some bitingly humorous placards (my particular favourite was ‘Free Melania!’), and of course that wonderful baby-Trump dirigible.

This whole affair was unprecedented. Although the demos were kept well away from him, with all the meetings being held outside London – fancy a foreign leader having to be quarantined to this extent! – and despite the fact that the government put on a show of military pomp and circumstance of the kind he apparently likes in order to pander to his vanity, he must have been aware of the far more significant protests beyond his sight and hearing. Fox News must have covered them. That won’t warm him to us, or consequently do much for Britain’s chances of surviving alone in the wider world, when we’re cut off from the Continent. Brexiteers claim we are a ‘colony’ of Europe right now. Believe me, existence as a dependent ‘trading partner’ of America, on her terms, will feel far more ‘colonial’. (And I write as a historian of ‘imperialism’.) That’s one of the things the EU was supposed to protect us against.

He’s now in Scotland, at one of his ghastly golf resorts. Kajsa and I were in Edinburgh without our laptops this last week (hence the brief silence), where opinion is even more anti-Trump, despite his maternal roots on the island of Lewis, and his claim that everyone loves him there. He made the mistake – yet another one – of claiming that Scotland had voted for Brexit. It didn’t. Another reason why it shouldn’t be dragged out of Europe on England’s coat-tails.

I may blog about Scotland later. In the meantime, enjoy your chlorinated chicken.

Well, that was quite a nail-biter, wasn’t it? (England’s penalty shoot-out against Colombia, for anyone who’s been off-planet for the past 24 hours.) I was surprised how thrilled I was, having told everyone that I’ve backed Sweden to win the World Cup final this year. (At 150:1. If I win it will enable us to buy a new boat.) That’s mainly out of political principle, of course, and in anticipation of my being granted Swedish citizenship shortly.

But perhaps blood really is thicker than any of these things. Mine – on my father’s side – is illiterate East Saxon peasant through and through, and for centuries so far as I and my family-history expert friend Sylvie can find out; although with poor Essex having been continually raped and pillaged by those Viking bastards (some from Sweden, I’m sure) a thousand years ago, I shouldn’t be surprised if I have some Nordic blood too. (I can imagine a sweet innocent little rosy-cheeked Saxon ancestor of mine being taken advantage of by a hunky Dane.) I must take one of those DNA tests to see.

On the other hand, it has been pointed out several times that the English team is a very multi-ethnic one, which means that at least I’m not being racist, or Ukippy, by supporting it. Here are some examples: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailyPolitik/photos/a.982535205202005.1073741830.959780427477483/1609791952476324/?type=3&theater. – That’s my England! A great vibrant mix of peoples. Always has been, ever since the dastardly Danes.

It remains to be seen which team I’ll be supporting more when England meet Sweden on Saturday in the next round. I’ll let you know.

But he assured us, faithfully, cross-his-heart-and-hope-to-die, that the British Secret Services had no part in or knowledge of American torture of prisoners during the Iraq War. Only ‘conspiracy theorists’ thought otherwise.

‘He’ was the Director-General of MI5, speaking at a meeting of ‘intelligence’ historians in Cambridge a few years ago, held under ‘Chatham House Rules’ (look it up): which means that I shouldn’t really be telling you this.

And now we learn this, officially: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/28/uk-role-torture-kidnap-terror-suspects-after-911-revealed.

You mean to say he was fibbing?