Faked Labour antisemitism crisis was a stalking horse

There’s a continuity in what is happening right now in the internal Labour Party attacks on left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn.

For much of 2016, the prime vector of attack in the right-wing campaign against Corbyn has been false and weaponised allegations of anti-Semitism. Corbyn has decades of experience in the Palestine solidarity movement – anyone seriously involved in campaigning for Palestinian human rights with any sort of public profile will be targeted with a smear campaign making false accusations of anti-Semitism sooner or later.

It is a standard and habitual tactic of the Israeli government and the Israel lobby around the world. Corbyn is no exception, so has been smeared by association for his long record of supporting Palestinian human rights and opposing Israeli occupation.

It started at a lower level during his election campaign to win the Labour leadership last summer. He was accused of being close to Hamas and Hizballah, the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements. And he was accused of association with a “notorious” Holocaust denier.

This was absolutely false. Paul Eisen is certainly a person with despicable views, whose writings have denied or (worse) justified the Nazi Holocaust. But his “association” with Corbyn seems in fact to have limited to the fact that Eisen lives in Islington, the north London constituency which Corbyn represents in the House of Commons.

When these accusations ultimately gained little traction, and did little or nothing to stop Corbyn winning the leadership, they died down. That is until February, when allegations about the anti-Semitism supposedly in the Labour Party started to increase. A student, Alex Chalmers, quit as co-chair of the Oxford Student Labour Club, claiming that “a large proportion” of Labour students and “the student left in Oxford” had a “problem with Jews.” Intense media scrutiny and much political and journalistic hang-wringing about how Corbyn’s Labour had supposedly become a “hotbed” of anti-Semitism ensued.

But all was not as it seemed: Chalmers, as it turned out, and as I revealed in my investigations, was not only a part of the hard core, billionaire-funded right-wing Progress faction, but was in fact a former Israel lobbyist himself, having once been an intern for BICOM.  Even were those facts not known, Chalmers accusations were not at all credible, containing as they did no specific allegations, no names, and no evidence. They were entirely calculated to smear the left and the pro-Palestinian movement as racist.

The media, which already had it in for Corbyn, lapped it all up.

Chalmers later quit the Labour Party altogether. His co-accuser, David Klemperer, was expelled in May, after nominating a Liberal Democrat as counsellor (which is against Labour Party rules).

In a deft act of leadership, Corbyn managed to calm the (entirely manufactured) “crisis” by setting up an independent inquiry by Shami Chakrabarti, the former barrister and director of civil rights campaigning group Liberty. The inquiry reported in June that “the Labour party is not overrun by antisemitism” or other forms of racism. After all the press scandals, Corbyn told the Home Affairs Selection Committee that the number of Labour Party members who had ultimately been suspended for alleged antisemitism was “less than 20”.

And the evidence shows that almost all of these were not genuine cases of anti-Semitism at all.

While fabricated and exaggerated allegations of anti-Semitism are likely to be used again as a strategy against Corbyn, the campaign appears to have been defeated, for now. So the smearers have moved onto other strategies. But they are bereft of good ideas.

So the new strategy is essentially more of the same.

Fabricated anti-Semitism was the stalking horse, now the strategy of Corbyn’s detractors seems to be to allege “bullying” and “abuse” of every kind: sexism, homophobia and generalised extremism and nastiness.

And, once again, almost all of this is completely made up.

Angela Eagle, who was Corbyn’s initial challenger for the leadership, dropped out in favour of Owen Smith, who’s apparently seen as a fresher face.

Baroness Tessa Jowell claimed that Eagle had suffered anti-gay abuse from members of the pro-Corbyn group Momentum at a constituency meeting in Wallasey, where she is MP.

But speaking to PinkNews, local activists who were at the meeting said the allegation was “completely untrue”. Eagle did come in for criticism in Wallasey for taking part in an undemocratic attempt to remove Corbyn as leader: a branch of the CLP did pass motions supporting Corbyn and expressing disappointment in Eagle.

But that is hardly “abuse” and is certainly not homophobia.

Owen Smith, the one remaining challenger in the leadership election is piling on too, claiming recently that “we didn’t have this sort of [sexist] abuse before Jeremy Corbyn became the leader.”

The ridiculousness of that comment aside, Smith should know a thing or two about sexism, having made several such comments himself in recent years, including that time he told Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood she keeps getting invited on TV because she’s a woman.

A Mirror columnist Tuesday accused pro-Corbyn activists of being “violent, unprincipled and self-aggrandising bullies” – based on zero evidence. This is the narrative now: we supposedly are all anti-Semites, sexists and homophobe – slandered for daring to work for a change to the status quo. Because these people find it difficult to argue against Corbyn’s policies (which are sensible and have a lot of popular support) instead all they do is smear.

So there is is a continuity of tactics, and fake anti-Semitism was the stalking horse: although it may return later, for now it has dropped out.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.