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Yesterday reignited a debate about an article Ash Sarkar wrote for The Guardian in 2018. For me the the moment she surrendered the moral high-ground on antisemitism was not her comments on the Warsaw Ghetto, but this article. I want to explain why I think this.
Context matters. The article in question urges the Labour Party not to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism into its rulebook during a period of heightened antisemitism within the Labour Party.
Newcomers may ask why the Party, until that point, failed to do this. The reservations largely stemmed from concerns that it may stifle freedom of speech on the Israel Palestine conflict. I will touch on this briefly later, but it’s not central to my concerns about this article.
Firstly, I think her article is worth a read. It can be found here. Her arguments in this article are couched in language that reads as thoughtful, almost academic. But between the lines, her arguments don't seem anti-racist. Let me explain why. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/03/ihra-antisemitism-labour-palestine
Firstly, she states she opposes the IHRA definition because, if it is implemented, “Jewish people in the party would be afforded safeguards that no other religious or racial group in the organisation have.”
She goes further. “this creates a hierarchy of racism, in which one minority group is deemed worthy of protection and others are not.” Passing such a definition would be “corrosive to the politics of solidarity…and the shared struggle against racism in all its forms.”
Let’s examine this. Concerns that other ethnic minorities aren’t sufficiently protected by the Labour Party rule book are legitimate. What I believe isn’t fair is to imply that improving anti-racism provisions for one group would necessarily come at the expense of all others.
To my mind, that’s All Lives Matter-ing antisemitism.
Secondly, the notion that there is a “hierarchy of racism” implies that some forms of racism are viewed as more important than others - and that Jewish people’s concerns are higher up said food-chain.
She’s within her rights to argue this, but it’s a stone’s throw away from arguing Jewish people have privilege and power - tropes that have been used to justify Jewish persecution for millennia.
To my mind, her argument in this section of her article should really be a compelling case for improved anti-racism provisions across the board. The issue shouldn’t be in passing rules against antisemitism: it should be in failing to pass rules against other at-risk groups.
Sarkar, to her credit, acknowledges this. However, she denies that passing anti-racism reforms for other groups would remedy this problem.
This is the section of her article referenced in David Baddiel’s book, where she argues that Jewish people do not currently suffer from the material dispossession of other disadvantaged groups - and, she believes, definitions won't remedy material dispossession.
She says, with this in mind, “This is where we must think very seriously about what the work of anti-racism is…The gesture of “IHRA for all” would do very little to fight the institutional racism that dictates the politics of the everyday.”
This is a straw-man argument, a response to a question not being debated. This is because the purpose of clearly-defined racism definitions is not simply to fight racism within a single institution, but to make disciplinary processes fair and transparent.
They provide a benchmark against which those accused of antisemitism can be judged. It’s easiest to see how ludicrous this argument is if it is applied to another group.
A parallel argument would be that the Conservative Party shouldn’t agree on a clear definition of islamophobia on the grounds that, in doing so, it wouldn’t end the suffering of Uighurs in Chinese concentration camps. Is this the point she wishes to make?
The rest of her article is mostly devoted to the (still hotly debated) question about free speech, the IHRA definition, and the Israel Palestine conflict. I believe that Sarkar’s views on this are misguided. Lit has provided an explainer here: https://wearelit.co.uk/explainer-why-is-the-labour-party-under-investigation-for-institutional-antisemitism/
In this final section of her article, Sarkar claims that “careful study of its application shows that it works alongside external pressure from organisations and individuals aligned with the aims of the Israeli state.” I worry this flirts with Israeli conspiracism, linked to AS.
Let's return to context. Sarkar wrote this, in which she claims passing AS reforms in Labour would give Jewish people an unfair advantage, in a national newspaper during Labour’s AS crisis, when the Jewish community were calling for improved action to be taken on racism.
To me, such an argument is outrageous. And I personally believe that the arguments in this article, particularly in the context of 2018, should have caused more of an outrage at the time.
David Baddiel has agreed to make some changes to the way Sarkar is quoted in his book, as she feels he has misrepresented her. Sarkar’s thread on this can be found here: https://twitter.com/Baddiel/status/1358835395472089089?s=20
