Back when Donald Trump was running for president — and Republicans were still capable of feeling politically ashamed — a conservative friend made what was, to my mind, the decisive case against voting for him.
No, a ballot for Trump did not automatically mean that his voters shared his bigotries. Nor did it necessarily mean that they weren’t embarrassed by them.
It just meant that those bigotries weren’t deal-breakers. If their candidate was a birther, they could live with it. If he thought celebrity was a license for sexual predation, they could live with it. If he wanted to impose a religious test on immigrants; or discredit a judge on account of his ethnic background; or characterize the bulk of Mexican immigrants as “rapists” — that may all have been very unfortunate.
But, again, they could live with it. To adapt a line, they proved that the only thing necessary for bigots to be normalized is for the unbigoted to shrug.
I’ve been thinking about this in the context of today’s election in the U.K., in which there is a chance — not great, but hardly less than Trump’s chances of winning in 2016 — that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn might become prime minister. Multiple polls show Labour rising from a month ago, though the party still trails Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. One plausible outcome is a hung Parliament in which Corbyn makes it to No. 10 as head of a coalition government.
As with Trump’s voters, there are all sorts of explanations and excuses for why Britons might vote Labour. Some feel disgusted by Johnson, who (like Hillary Clinton) stirs deep personal antipathies. Some see a Labour government as the likeliest way of stopping Brexit. Some are convinced that only Labour can save the country’s National Health Service.
The rationales vary and multiply. But they stop at this: Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party has become, in the words of many of its own members (or former members), “institutionally anti-Semitic.” Dwell on the word “institutionally”: It means it isn’t just a matter of some bad apples. The question for the British electorate — and for anyone else who takes a rooting interest in the country’s politics — is whether or not they seriously care.
The latest evidence comes in the form of a recently leaked 53-page document by the 2,500-member Jewish Labour Movement (J.L.M.) to Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission. It chronicles “relentless” and “daily” incidents of anti-Semitism within the party.
“One respondent lists 22 examples of anti-Semitic abuse which have been directed at him,” the document notes. “Examples of these include being called ‘a Tory Jew,’ ‘a child killer,’ ‘Zio scum,’ being told that [he’s] good with money,’ ‘to shut the f— up Jew,’ ‘that Hitler was right,’ and being threatened with physical violence.”
The rot goes to the top. “Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader he has made the party a welcoming refuge for anti-Semites,” the document notes. A complaints process meant to address the issue has been routinely subverted at the highest level. “The party’s response [to the problem] has been characterized by denial, discrediting of victims, defence of perpetrators, cover-ups and active victimization of those calling out anti-Semitism.”
Labour’s apologists argue that the charges of anti-Semitism are political hit jobs; that there is plenty of bigotry in the Conservative Party; that Corbyn himself routinely denounces anti-Semitism as a form of racism; and that much of what is characterized as anti-Semitism within the party is really just a form of misguided anti-Zionism.
Bunk. The most damaging charges being leveled at Labour are coming from within Labour. Claims about Tory prejudice may be well- or ill-founded, but they are a classic expression of whataboutism. Corbyn’s denunciations of anti-Semitism overlook his long history of embracing virulent anti-Semites. And denouncing anti-Semitism as a form of racism is itself a dodge, since Jews have also been persecuted on account of religion, riches, rootlessness, rootedness, and other things that strike chords on the far left while having nothing to do with race.
As for “anti-Zionism,” the J.L.M. describes an incident in which Labourites defended the view that it is “the over-representation of Jews in the capitalist ruling class that gives the Israel-Zionist lobby its power.” The sentence captures the truth of who, really, is meant by “the few” in Labour’s campaign slogan of “For the Many, Not the Few.”
Britain’s Jewish community numbers about 280,000, is centuries-old, and has contributed immeasurably to the country’s culture, prosperity, distinction and glory. If Corbyn wins, nearly half of this community has said it would “seriously consider” exiting the country according to one poll. There could hardly be a more unequivocal expression of its sense of the absolute threat it sees in the prospect of a Corbyn government. It would represent the largest Jewish exodus from a Western country since the 1930s.
The progressive left, in Britain and beyond, may choose to ignore, downplay, or rationalize this. Fine. But someone needs to state it plainly: To support Labour is to say anti-Semitism wasn’t your deal-breaker; that it doesn’t put you to shame; that you see it as no threat to your own well-being. Trump voters did much the same when it came to the president’s various bigotries. The least Corbyn’s supporters can do, in Britain and beyond, is admit they’re no better.
Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post.