How to multiply by 100 ...
... and why it's dangerous to do so if you think the reality has any importance whatsoever. (I know I'm not around here much these days, but x100 seems to be everywhere)
Andrew Feinstein (former South African MP, writer, son of a Holocaust survivor) interviewed this week, talks about his mother's survival and explains a million times better than I could ever dream of, what is so wrong and dangerous (and, not-so-incidentally, antisemitic) about how this issue is being managed.
I'm not religious. Still, I bet the entire side of my mother's family who were killed in the pogroms in what was then Russia and is now Ukraine would have been thrilled to know that one day their oppression would be cynically used by the right wing against the left in multiple countries.
It's only a few minutes and Feinstein is worth a hearing. This is not just the UK; it's far more important.
https://twitter.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1321762219017854977?s=20
Corbyn endorsed and welcomed the EHRC report (live on TV). He was the first to say that all its recommendations should be implemented in full and swiftly. He also mentioned that the public perception was that 34% of the Labour membership was accused of or being investigated for antisemitism; the actual figure is 0.3%.
In other words, the general public had got the impression (noted in Survation polls) that over a third of the party could be in question, when in reality it was one hundred times fewer (incidentally 0.3% is also lower than in the population at large).
The public perception is out by two orders of magnitude.
Now obviously even one racist in the party is one too many, as the Labour left have said many times - but what they say goes oddly unreported. Just as left-wing Jewish voices - of which there are many! - go largely unreported (Rosen, Chomsky, Graeber, the former Speaker of the HoC John Bercow, a tory but a principled human being, and many many more, must all be the 'wrong sort').
Numbers aren't everything, of course they're not, but this massive disparity between the perception and the reality is a curious one.
Some examples of the 'wrong sort':
The British Board of Jewish Deputies lean strongly pro-tory, curiously enough; Jewish members of the labour party have a somewhat different opinion. "As a Jewish Labour member, I'm sick of anti-Semitism being used as a political weapon against Jeremy Corbyn"
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jeremy-corbyn-is-an-anti-racist-not-an-antisemite/
http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/jvl/a-jvl-statement-on-the-current-attacks-on-jeremy-corbyn/
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-anti-semitism-labour-conference-jewish-supporter-vote-political-weapon-a7330891.html
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2017/01/anti-semitism-right-wing-problem
Having seen screencaps (now in the public domain) of some of the many messages from James Schneider (formerly Corbyn's PR advisor/Director of Strategic Communications - and, incidentally, Jewish) to the self-styled 'whistleblower' Sam Matthews who was the lead source for the Panorama show (Matthews was then Labour's Head of Complaints and the person in charge of actually implementing the rules), with Schneider asking and telling Matthews repeatedly to get his finger out and come down on antisemitism more effectively (such as, for one specific example, telling him to get on with expelling someone who had expressed holocaust denial; Matthews responded to Schneider that he'd get to it but didn't and left it for over a year), well ...
I put it to m'learned friends that Matthews was and is being economical with the truth through his teeth.
https://twitter.com/schneiderhome?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1192748253722370048?s=19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edicDsSwYpk&feature=youtu.be&t=1117 (Chomsky)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVcWo-W60lU&feature=youtu.be&t=3440 (this interview is an hour long (!) but the bit where Bercow talks specifically about Labour and the accusations of antisemitism is in the last 5 or 6 minutes).
Check out where the anti-Labour criticism is mainly coming from and where it's being amplified - right-wing publications like the Jewish Chronicle and right-wing organisations like the Board of Deputies of British Jews - and compare with left-wing sources such as Jewish Voice for Labour.
Article by a Jewish historian: http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/who-is-afraid-of-jeremy-corbyn/07/11/
or maybe this one, with its 200 Labour Jewish signatories: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/20/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-crucial-ally-in-fight-against-antisemitism
or any of these:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/when-jews-are-just-fodder-tory-propaganda-machine/
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jeremy-corbyn-is-an-anti-racist-not-an-antisemite/
http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/jvl/a-jvl-statement-on-the-current-attacks-on-jeremy-corbyn/
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-anti-semitism-labour-conference-jewish-supporter-vote-political-weapon-a7330891.html
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2017/01/anti-semitism-right-wing-problem
https://twitter.com/JomecMikeB/status/1192515238232506375?s=20 (Ken Loach)
or these, mostly from Jewish Labour Councillors, party members etc. Plenty of Jews actually in the party who see things differently from e.g. Berger.
https://twitter.com/JustJewsUK/status/1136936125795377152
https://twitter.com/JustJewsUK/status/1138353849104777217
https://twitter.com/JustJewsUK/status/1168907021711794177
https://twitter.com/TomLondon6/status/1170358362455908358
https://twitter.com/JustJewsUK/status/1149606154080641024
https://twitter.com/JustJewsUK/status/1174632619008507904
https://twitter.com/mattzarb/status/1190274284507320320?s=20
https://twitter.com/visitingmartian/status/1192915884542693376 (Corbyn's defence of Ralph Milliband against all the antisemitic attacks the Tories threw at him)
Are all the Jewish people who support the Labour party (and/or who point out that the parties where racists are thick on the ground are the Brexit Party Ltd., the Tories and UKIP) 'the wrong sort'? Are pro-Labour Jews somehow less Jewish than those who are campaigning for other parties?
Of course there's antisemitism in every political party, just like there's sexism, transphobia, homophobia, islamophobia and every other flavour of racism and bigotry you can shake a stick at - because all of these bigotries are pervasive in every society on earth, and no one corner of any society is immune. But one could do worse than to stop for a moment and ask why we are apparently listening only to some Jewish voices while ignoring others.