Jews Don't Count

I've been reading David Baddiel's new book, "Jews Don't Count", which is quite enlightening. 

A series of phrases sprung out of the book. Consider the following descriptions:

1. A Christian banker,
2. A Muslim banker,
3. A Jew banker.

All three use the noun for the adherent of a particular religion, but only one of them is considered a racial slur. Jew banker is usually changed to the adjective Jewish to take the edge off it. Ask yourself why this is.

Baddiel's central thesis is that there is a hierarchy of racism, with anti-semitism sitting somewhere near the bottom for those who consider themselves left wing - or 'progressive'. This is despite the Holocaust and the Jews having a far longer history of prejudice against them than practically any other minority.

He posits that this is because progressives consider Jews as whites, and therefore privileged. The far right certainly doesn't consider them white and look upon Jews as subhuman.

There is also a dichotomy in racist portrayals of Jews - they are simultaneously the Fagin character (as portrayed in Nazi propaganda) and a group of wealthy plutocrats who seek to control the world through banking interests and ownership of the media. Black people are never portrayed by racists as wealthy.

Moneylending and banking provided a natural gravity to Jews, who because of their history of persecution, needed to have portable wealth, rather than assets that couldn't be moved. Also, there were biblical prohibitions against Christians getting involved in usury. However, the move into banking proved a double-edged sword, as the aristocracy and monarchs in the Middle Ages ended up owing a lot of money to Jews and the obvious way to get rid of the debt was to expel them, as Edward I did in 1290.

It is because Jews are considered white and wealthy by the left (although the vast majority aren't), they are not considered anywhere near the top of the prejudice hierarchy and their association with banking and capitalism automatically transforms them into Public Enemy No.1 for the far left. The left is consequently blind to anti-semitism, as Jeremy Corbyn found to his cost. It gets in the way of what the left see as the 'real' racism.

Baddiel additionally has issue with both the left and the right constantly trumpeting their appointments of 'the first BAME' whatever - Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, etc. When one considers that the ME part of BAME stands for Minority Ethnic, that actually includes Jews, who have held high office for a long time. There are over 2m Muslims in the UK, but only a shade under 300k Jews - that certainly qualifies them as an ethnic minority when you consider there were none till Oliver Cromwell invited them back.

The final thing I learned, and agree with, is that racism is in the eye of the person at the receiving end of the racist statement. Only the recipient can determine whether what is said to them is offensive and / or racist. You have to walk in their shoes and lived their life, so to speak. They are the ones feeling the effects of offence because of their lived experience, no-one else.