How Orwell's antisemitism resurfaced on the today's left in British politics
The celebrated author's writings on Jews have been reproduced with uncanny fidelity in the statements of today's left, writes Richard Bradford. Richard Bradford is the author of ‘A Man of Our Time’, about George Orwell, Bloomsbury, to be published in January.
"In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell recounts a story told to him by an exiled Russian cavalry officer, Boris.
“A horrible old Jew, with a red beard like Judas Iscariot” had offered him the use of his young daughter for a mere 50 francs. “It was,” Boris affirms, “bad form” for a Russian officer to spit on a Jew: “A Russian officer’s spittle was too precious to be wasted on Jews…”
Orwell goes on to describe having to sell some of his own clothes to “a red-haired Jew, an extraordinarily disagreeable man” and without explaining why this figure is any more disagreeable than the other fraudsters and thieves of low-life Paris, he adds: “It would have been a pleasure to flatten the Jew’s nose, if only one could have afforded it.”
It is interesting that he chose the Jew’s nose as his preferred target because soon after his return to London, he enters a café at Tower Hill where “in a corner by himself a Jew, muzzle down [my emphasis] in the plate, was guiltily wolfing bacon”.
In 1931, he recorded in his diary his experience as a hop-picker in Kent. Orwell takes a liking to Ginger, an engaging petty criminal, but rather less so to Ginger’s companion “…a little Jewish guttersnipe… I do not know when I have seen anyone who disgusted me so much as this boy” but he seems unable find in the habits and hygiene of the “little Liverpool Jew” anything demonstrably worse than in the other homeless figures of his account.
In Paris he comes across “a Jew” who cons his fellow slum-dwellers by selling them face powder disguised as cocaine and in his London diary he records how goods stolen from shops, houses and cars are sold to “a Jew in Lambeth Cut”.
Notably he never shows any interest in the names of these “Jews”; it was almost as though Orwell could not bring himself to confer upon them the entitlement to individuality.
In his early years, Orwell was demonstrably antisemitic but once the Nazis had taken power in Germany he made his disapproval of their policies clear enough in numerous articles.
He bases much of his essay Antisemitism in Britain (1945) on his exchanges with ordinary Britons, and one must conclude that the prospects for British Jews following a German occupation would have been dire, such was the apparent loathing for them among their fellow citizens.
Everyone he speaks to, from the milkman and builder to the middle-class accountant and west-London housewife appears capable of picking out a feature of Judaism that is foul and unacceptable.
The most important passage in the article is Orwell’s discussion of the nature of antisemitism.
He affirms that the “starting point” for any investigation into antisemitism should not be, “Why does this obviously irrational belief appeal to other people?’’ but “Why does antisemitism appeal to me? What is there about it that I feel to be true?’’
This is the closest he comes to disclosing in print that he too might share the vile prejudices of those he observes.
Perhaps the investigation conducted by Shami Chakrabarti might have been more convincing if she, as Orwell suggested, had asked all Labour members to ask themselves “why does it appeal to me?” rather than assuming that antisemitism is something which appeals only to others, and only those who are found out online.
The speech by Corbyn in which he said, “Zionists… have two problems… One is that they don’t want to study history and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time… don’t understand English irony either”, and his subsequent denial that he said anything antisemitic, suggest that he possesses no such self-awareness.
In fact, one is tempted to perceive Orwell as superior to Corbyn and other antisemitic Labour members: at least he recognised a strand of vileness within himself and exhibited a degree of remorse.
But according to his diary it seems the real Orwell would have agreed with Corbyn that Jews were somehow out of place in Britain. In November 1940, he wrote of how Jews made themselves conspicuous among the crowds sheltering in tube stations, mostly by pushing to the front of queues.
“What I feel is that any Jew… would prefer Hitler’s kind of social system to ours if it were not that he happens to persecute them… they make use of England as a sanctuary, but they cannot help feeling the profoundest contempt for it. You can see this on their eyes, even when they don’t say it outright.”
The proposition that Jews in some way sympathised with Nazism might sound deranged but it would be echoed by former London mayor Ken Livingstone in 2016, when he claimed that Hitler was an ardent Zionist, and by Margaret Tyson, a member of Luciana Berger’s constituency party, who accused the former MP of “supporting the Zionist Israeli government [whose] Nazi masters taught them well”.
Orwell, a Labour supporter in his day, neither denied nor celebrated the Holocaust. However, he did tell of how appalled he was to witness in a recently-liberated concentration camp a Jew kicking an SS guard: the former had, he felt, sunk to the level of the latter.
In 2005, Livingstone echoed him by asking Oliver Finegold, a Jewish Evening Standard journalist, if he’d been a “German war criminal”, following with “you are just like a concentration camp guard”.
In 1946, Orwell wrote that Britain should take in more than 100,000 European Jews, rather than allow them to land in Palestine, despite his private feeling that they were irrevocably non-British, and he could not be persuaded by any of his friends, Jews included, to support the foundation of Israel.
In a similar rejection of the Israeli homeland, Naz Shah, Corbyn supporter and MP, posted online in 2014 a geographical outline of Israel imposed on the US and commented: “Solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict - relocate Israel to the United States” (although she publically apologised for her message without making excuses).
When discussing Israel, the standard excuse used by left-leaning antisemites today is: I’m against that oppressive colonialist state, not Jews themselves.
Likewise, Corbyn defended his attendance at a Hamas-sponsored conference in Doha in 2012 and his chairing of a panel which included Husam Badram, who had orchestrated fatal bombings in Israel, on the grounds that he was against injustices perpetrated by the latter - nothing to do with Jews themselves.
In 1945, Orwell wrote: “Zionism is a nationalist movement… [which] flourishes exclusively among the Jews themselves… many Zionist Jews seem to me to be merely antisemites turned upside down.”
In 2016, Corbyn appeared to pick up where Orwell left off. After comparing Israel’s actions against Gaza with Isis, he stated that “our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel… than our Muslim friends are for self-styled Islamic states”. In short: Jews who do not dissociate themselves from Israel are the equivalent of Muslims who support Isis.
In his articles and diaries, Orwell shifts between an instinctive detestation of Jews and an abiding sense of unease regarding a state of mind he seems unable to banish.
His first instinct raises the question of why he, the so-called “conscience of the nation”, the ultimate humanitarian socialist, had so much in common with many who supposedly share his ideals today, but at least Orwell, unlike them, seemed able to concede, if only privately, that there was something wrong with him.
In his last novel, 1984, Goldstein is the focus of the Party’s collective loathing and while images of him on the telescreen remind one of the caricatures that appeared in the Nazi weekly Der Sturmer, the Party insist their hatred is nothing to do with his Jewishness: no, it’s because he is a conspiratorial traitor.
In creating Goldstein Orwell looks forward to Labour today, in which so many members are able to use their allegedly rational opinions on Israel as a disguise for their feral contempt for Jews because they are Jews."
"In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell recounts a story told to him by an exiled Russian cavalry officer, Boris.
“A horrible old Jew, with a red beard like Judas Iscariot” had offered him the use of his young daughter for a mere 50 francs. “It was,” Boris affirms, “bad form” for a Russian officer to spit on a Jew: “A Russian officer’s spittle was too precious to be wasted on Jews…”
Orwell goes on to describe having to sell some of his own clothes to “a red-haired Jew, an extraordinarily disagreeable man” and without explaining why this figure is any more disagreeable than the other fraudsters and thieves of low-life Paris, he adds: “It would have been a pleasure to flatten the Jew’s nose, if only one could have afforded it.”
It is interesting that he chose the Jew’s nose as his preferred target because soon after his return to London, he enters a café at Tower Hill where “in a corner by himself a Jew, muzzle down [my emphasis] in the plate, was guiltily wolfing bacon”.
In 1931, he recorded in his diary his experience as a hop-picker in Kent. Orwell takes a liking to Ginger, an engaging petty criminal, but rather less so to Ginger’s companion “…a little Jewish guttersnipe… I do not know when I have seen anyone who disgusted me so much as this boy” but he seems unable find in the habits and hygiene of the “little Liverpool Jew” anything demonstrably worse than in the other homeless figures of his account.
In Paris he comes across “a Jew” who cons his fellow slum-dwellers by selling them face powder disguised as cocaine and in his London diary he records how goods stolen from shops, houses and cars are sold to “a Jew in Lambeth Cut”.
Notably he never shows any interest in the names of these “Jews”; it was almost as though Orwell could not bring himself to confer upon them the entitlement to individuality.
In his early years, Orwell was demonstrably antisemitic but once the Nazis had taken power in Germany he made his disapproval of their policies clear enough in numerous articles.
He bases much of his essay Antisemitism in Britain (1945) on his exchanges with ordinary Britons, and one must conclude that the prospects for British Jews following a German occupation would have been dire, such was the apparent loathing for them among their fellow citizens.
Everyone he speaks to, from the milkman and builder to the middle-class accountant and west-London housewife appears capable of picking out a feature of Judaism that is foul and unacceptable.
The most important passage in the article is Orwell’s discussion of the nature of antisemitism.
He affirms that the “starting point” for any investigation into antisemitism should not be, “Why does this obviously irrational belief appeal to other people?’’ but “Why does antisemitism appeal to me? What is there about it that I feel to be true?’’
This is the closest he comes to disclosing in print that he too might share the vile prejudices of those he observes.
Perhaps the investigation conducted by Shami Chakrabarti might have been more convincing if she, as Orwell suggested, had asked all Labour members to ask themselves “why does it appeal to me?” rather than assuming that antisemitism is something which appeals only to others, and only those who are found out online.
The speech by Corbyn in which he said, “Zionists… have two problems… One is that they don’t want to study history and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time… don’t understand English irony either”, and his subsequent denial that he said anything antisemitic, suggest that he possesses no such self-awareness.
In fact, one is tempted to perceive Orwell as superior to Corbyn and other antisemitic Labour members: at least he recognised a strand of vileness within himself and exhibited a degree of remorse.
But according to his diary it seems the real Orwell would have agreed with Corbyn that Jews were somehow out of place in Britain. In November 1940, he wrote of how Jews made themselves conspicuous among the crowds sheltering in tube stations, mostly by pushing to the front of queues.
“What I feel is that any Jew… would prefer Hitler’s kind of social system to ours if it were not that he happens to persecute them… they make use of England as a sanctuary, but they cannot help feeling the profoundest contempt for it. You can see this on their eyes, even when they don’t say it outright.”
The proposition that Jews in some way sympathised with Nazism might sound deranged but it would be echoed by former London mayor Ken Livingstone in 2016, when he claimed that Hitler was an ardent Zionist, and by Margaret Tyson, a member of Luciana Berger’s constituency party, who accused the former MP of “supporting the Zionist Israeli government [whose] Nazi masters taught them well”.
Orwell, a Labour supporter in his day, neither denied nor celebrated the Holocaust. However, he did tell of how appalled he was to witness in a recently-liberated concentration camp a Jew kicking an SS guard: the former had, he felt, sunk to the level of the latter.
In 2005, Livingstone echoed him by asking Oliver Finegold, a Jewish Evening Standard journalist, if he’d been a “German war criminal”, following with “you are just like a concentration camp guard”.
In 1946, Orwell wrote that Britain should take in more than 100,000 European Jews, rather than allow them to land in Palestine, despite his private feeling that they were irrevocably non-British, and he could not be persuaded by any of his friends, Jews included, to support the foundation of Israel.
In a similar rejection of the Israeli homeland, Naz Shah, Corbyn supporter and MP, posted online in 2014 a geographical outline of Israel imposed on the US and commented: “Solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict - relocate Israel to the United States” (although she publically apologised for her message without making excuses).
When discussing Israel, the standard excuse used by left-leaning antisemites today is: I’m against that oppressive colonialist state, not Jews themselves.
Likewise, Corbyn defended his attendance at a Hamas-sponsored conference in Doha in 2012 and his chairing of a panel which included Husam Badram, who had orchestrated fatal bombings in Israel, on the grounds that he was against injustices perpetrated by the latter - nothing to do with Jews themselves.
In 1945, Orwell wrote: “Zionism is a nationalist movement… [which] flourishes exclusively among the Jews themselves… many Zionist Jews seem to me to be merely antisemites turned upside down.”
In 2016, Corbyn appeared to pick up where Orwell left off. After comparing Israel’s actions against Gaza with Isis, he stated that “our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel… than our Muslim friends are for self-styled Islamic states”. In short: Jews who do not dissociate themselves from Israel are the equivalent of Muslims who support Isis.
In his articles and diaries, Orwell shifts between an instinctive detestation of Jews and an abiding sense of unease regarding a state of mind he seems unable to banish.
His first instinct raises the question of why he, the so-called “conscience of the nation”, the ultimate humanitarian socialist, had so much in common with many who supposedly share his ideals today, but at least Orwell, unlike them, seemed able to concede, if only privately, that there was something wrong with him.
In his last novel, 1984, Goldstein is the focus of the Party’s collective loathing and while images of him on the telescreen remind one of the caricatures that appeared in the Nazi weekly Der Sturmer, the Party insist their hatred is nothing to do with his Jewishness: no, it’s because he is a conspiratorial traitor.
In creating Goldstein Orwell looks forward to Labour today, in which so many members are able to use their allegedly rational opinions on Israel as a disguise for their feral contempt for Jews because they are Jews."