A Failure of Understanding

The Labour Party has continually shot itself in the foot over antisemitism, and I have been reflecting why that is so.  The arguments that there is a vital "free speech" argument doesn't convince me the adoption of the IHRA definition was rapidly followed by the Conference motion on Palestine where no one appears to have been constrained by definition that the Labour Party had finally adopted.

I think the real difficulty lies in people who consider themselves as anti-racism campaigners as a key part of their identity having to come to terms with accusations that they are in fact articulating racist ideas in the shape of antisemitic tropes.

Part of this problem is the question of whether a binary choice of racist/non-racist is actually appropriate.

I would certainly argue that racism, and other forms of prejudice, tend to be on a spectrum.  Very few people will be entirely obsessed with hating a group of people, and very few people will be entirely free from any prejudice or assumptions whatsoever.  This contrasts with an idea which seems quite common among leftwing activists that there is a group of virtuous campaigners (themselves) and a group of KKK types, and no one in between.

Debate under that model becomes not an act of persuasion to suggest to some one that they a (perhaps unconscious) bias and that they need to correct it, but more an attempt to pin a label on them and then excommunicate them as a result.  The consequence tends to gladitorial combat rather than reasoned debate.

It also tends to emphasize intentionality with surprisingly little attention paid to institutionalised prejudice.

I can recall when the Macpherson Report first came out, and the difficulty many police found with the whole idea of institutionised racism.  They didn't intend to be racist and they found it hard to accept that the way the Met operated might be inherently biased against certain groups through the procedures it had or unconscious bias.  I suspect come Labour activists are going through a similar difficulty.