Is antisemitism within Labour 'exaggerated'? A short thread based on work with David Feldman ( @PearsInstitute) and Ben Gidley ( @bengidley) 1/18

Conflation and confusion abound in this debate. We need to distinguish a) public perception of the issue from b) the number of known antisemitism cases in the Party from c) the extent of antisemitism within Labour and society more generally 2/18

What do we know about a) public perception? In a Survation poll in March 2018, a thousand people were asked “Have you seen or heard anything about accusations of antisemitism (hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people) made against members of the Labour Party?” 3/18

Those who answered “yes” (note: 39% did not answer “yes”) were then asked a second question: “From what you have seen or heard, what % of Labour members do you think have had complaints of antisemitism made against them?” The mean average answer to this was “34 per cent”. 4/18

This ***does*** show that the public perception of the issue is out of step with b) the number of known cases. But this is not the end of the story 5/18

What do we know about cases of antisemitism within Labour? In July 2019, then General Secretary Jennie Formby suggested the number of antisemitism cases in Labour since September 2015 amounted to 0.06 per cent of the party’s membership over that period. 6/18

This figure is frequently held up as an indication of how insignificant the party’s problem is. We should be sceptical of such claims. Why? 7/18

Labour under Corbyn set a high bar for what ‘counted’ as an antisemitic incident. We now know that ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ of antisemitic material were not included as cases until September 2019 8/18

And while social media is a focal point, it is not the only arena in which antisemitism occurs: there are party meetings, email conversations, personal interactions...9/18

Therefore, the number of complaints dealt with by Labour’s disciplinary apparatus is ***not*** the same thing as the number of antisemitic incidents in the party 10/18

The one thing we know about reported hate crime figures in general is that they represent the tip of an iceberg. It is special pleading to think that Labour’s data are in some way different 11/18

So, what do we know about the spread of antisemitism within Labour and society more generally? Here we can turn to research by the @jprinstitute and @CST_UK, which shows that in Britain, the number of committed, ideological antisemites remains small: less than 5% of adults. 12/18

In contrast, a large minority of the population, more than 30%, will readily agree with negative and stereotypical ideas about Jews: for example, that Jews get rich at the expense of others or that their interests are very different from those of non-Jews 13/18

These ideas are as widespread within Labour as they are the Conservatives. Given what we know about antisemitism in Labour and the under-reporting of hate crimes, it is clear that the 0.06% figure is not credible 14/18

The number of cases handled by Labour’s disciplinary apparatus is a pale reflection of the volume of antisemitic ideas, stereotypes and narratives circulating among Labour members 15/18

Put simply: the number of antisemites or antisemitic cases is not the same thing as the spread of antisemitic ideas 16/18

Labour and the left needs to have a reckoning with what we can the ‘reservoir’ of antisemitism: a deep reservoir of stereotypes and narratives, replenished over time, from which people draw with ease, intentionally or not 17/18

David Feldman, Ben Gidley and I develop these arguments at greater length in this piece for @po_qu /ENDS https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12854

“A short thread....1/18”