Capitalism Race Antisemitism...,

independent |  A key feature of modern antisemitism has been the racialised projection of “the Jew”, an archetype which stands above and in conflict with the working class. Throughout the history of the left, certain anti-capitalist visions generated by socialists have overlapped and combined with this strain of antisemitism. What makes antisemitism particularly attractive and dangerous for the left is that it can appear oppositional. It provides an easy personification of oppression in the face of less tangible, global forms of domination. 

Scandals provoked by accusations of antisemitism have become a recurrent feature of British politics. As the latest tumult subsides we have an opportunity to reflect on the issues that underlie these controversies and prepare the way for Labour and the left to do better in future. 

theoccidentalobserver |  In the months immediately before his coronation in 1189, Richard the Lionheart became aware of rising anti-Jewish sentiment among the people of England. This ill-feeling was the result of decades of rampant usury, property seizures, social disparities, and what historian Robert Chazan described as the “effective royal protection” of Henry II.[2] Eager to ally himself with the mood of the nation, particularly in the tenuous early days of his reign, Richard appealed to the sentiments of the masses by banning Jews from attending the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey. News of the ban was welcomed by the people, but the move was deeply unsettling to England’s Jews. The prohibition was nervously perceived by the nation’s Hebrews as a weakening of the vital Jewish relationship with the elite. This relationship, particularly the protection it provided to Jewish loan merchants, had been absolutely essential to the untroubled continuation of the Jews’ highly antagonistic financial practices among the lower orders. Without this protection, the position of the Jews in England would no longer be viable. Therefore, in a desperate attempt to resist a decline in Jewish influence, on the day of the coronation a party of senior Jews arrived at the doors of Westminster Abbey bearing lavish gifts and sycophantic tongues. The effort was in vain.

The Jewish party were refused entry by nobles and officials, and the group was then stripped and flogged for their flagrant defiance of royal orders. Since this punishment was a public display, a story soon circulated among the peasantry that the new king consented to general action against the Jews, and that the royal elite was now siding with the people. In the ensuing days, luxurious Jewish homes were burned, and castles containing Jewish debt rolls were stormed and their contents destroyed. These actions, however, were built on an assumption of elite backing that was in reality non-existent. The expectations of the masses were soon rudely crushed. The Lionheart’s banning of the Jews had been a mere measure of propaganda intended to endear him to his subjects, and the flogging of the intruding party was carried out without his consent. In truth, the King remained as beholden to the sway of mammon as his predecessors. When push came to shove, the peasantry, unlike ‘his’ Jews, were expendable. Richard wasted little time in rounding up and executing the ringleaders of the anti-Jewish action, even including those who had damaged Jewish property by accident. He then issued orders to “the sheriffs of England to prevent all such incidents in the future.”[3] In the aftermath of this crushing of the people, the Jews of England would once again remain under high levels of royal protection until ‘the Lionheart’ left the country for the Third Crusade — a venture, ironically, to relieve people in foreign nations of the tyranny of ‘infidels.’ The entire affair remains a perfect illustration of the centuries-old symbiotic relationship between Jews and our native elites, and the thread of parasitic capitalism that binds them.

Here we are in 2016, and so little has changed. More than that, we find that another Lionheart is making the news in Britain in relation to protected Jews and a suffering peasantry. In one of the more perverse insults to follow notorious financial parasite Philip Green’s frenzied feeding on the British Home Stores (BHS) pension fund, it has emerged that the Jewish billionaire recently purchased his third luxury yacht, aptly named Lionheart. While Green and the $120 million Lionheart float serenely on the Mediterranean, more than 20,000 former BHS workers struggle through the day, wondering if they will ever receive the pensions they spent their working lives contributing to. Elite responses to this tragic and incendiary grand larceny have been anodyne and, much like Richard the Lionheart’s early gesture, limited to tokens of mere propaganda. Green’s activities have recently been described by a British Parliamentary committee as the “systematic plunder” of a formerly thriving business, with the committee’s host of banalities concluding that the Green saga was the epitome of “the unacceptable face of capitalism.” In one of the blandest possible statements on the egregious crimes of this apex predator, the politicians chirped that there was “little to support the reputation for retail business acumen for which he received his knighthood.” These insipid chastisements have been followed by Prime Minister Theresa May’s clownish and empty proclamation that she wants to “reform capitalism.”

Notably absent among these and similar complaints about ‘corporate largesse’ and ‘the failings of capitalism’ has been any real interest in the Green case from the Far Left. There are distractions of course, and these arise chiefly from the current predominance of cultural Marxism in the Leftist mind rather than its economic counterpart. Western socialists are now incessantly, and from an economic standpoint counter-productively, engaged in assisting government efforts to flood our nations with cheap exotic labor. The modern Left thus plays a crucial role in depressing the salaries, living conditions, and public services of the working class they claim to speak for. Other recent moral-ideological Leftist crusades have included agitation for same-sex marriage, the opening of various ‘anti-racism’ ventures, and the creation and expansion of Black Lives Matter militancy — none of which benefit native workers in any form.