@mids2019
You are consistently bringing this back to Nazi Germany, which created an entire system to first exclude, then exploit then murder Jewish people. No one is disputing that it was racism. David Baddiel’s Schrodinger’s whites point is something I agree with. I also agree that it doesn’t matter how the minority group sees themselves, it matters how society sees them. In 2024, British people largely treat Jewish people as white so most antisemitism that they are facing is not racism.
You keep saying that the outcome is the same. I am telling you as somebody who actually experiences it, that is not true. This writer explains this somewhat, it is American and Black focused but the premise is the same. https://www.heyalma.com/stop-comparing-anti-semitism-and-racism-in-america/
Jewish people are beneficiaries of white privilege (that is not an insult), they can assimilate into the British population in the way that the rest of us cannot and generally seem to be treated accordingly. I don’t experience anything remotely similar to what Jewish people do when Israel hits the news. I don’t have to worry when going into my place of worship, my worries around school do not include security. State support is also different. Look at the government actions around BLM, protest and education. I’m not criticising the recent decision to increase funding for school security in Jewish schools, it was definitely the right thing to do but if majority black schools were being threatened I guarantee we would get performative sympathy if that.
It is not helpful to pretend that these things are the same. That doesn’t mean I’m saying antisemitism is less important or impactful but it should be tackled separately. In the same way David Baddiel doesn’t appreciate the universalisation of the holocaust, you cannot expect me to be happy with a white ethnic group coming into anti-racism spaces and inevitably being prioritised when there is a conflict of interest.
David Baddiel’s book was my White Fragility. His book is tiny, is supposed to be about the Jewish experience and yet mentions black people around 60 times. He could’ve written about how antisemitism in Labour was reduced to being about attacking the left of the party, deprivation in London Orthodox communities or the impact on people of feeling like they have to hide in left wing spaces. Instead he wrote nonsense about us (well AA because theirs was a more convenient narrative to his points). This is what conflating the two experiences leads to.