When anti-racism has a blind spot

The Philosopher Karl Jaspers argued that what remains unexamined, and unconscious cannot be changed. Writing in the shadow of twentieth-century upheaval, Jaspers saw clearly that societies often evade their most uncomfortable truths, and in doing so, they ensure those truths persist.

Fast forward over a century later in Britain and we have a situation where a sizeable section of civic society, charities, arts/cultural organisations and academia haven’t faced up to the reality of antisemitism in Britain today. As a life-long anti racist, I’ve grappled with this issue and in the past few years have seen it deepen in progressive spaces.

Not only have some progressive spaces and organisations failed to meet the challenge, but some have actively become the engines, incubators and transmitters of harmful anti-Jew rhetoric by hosting it in respectable and mainstream thinking.

I don’t believe progressive frameworks are inherently antisemitic, but some of the core lenses through which they view the world: power, race, colonialism etc… don’t always map neatly onto Jewish history and identity. That mismatch can create blind spots around antisemitism and without that education and context antisemitism can be overlooked, misunderstood or outright denied.

I’ve seen first-hand on university campuses and progressive spaces across the UK how Jewish experiences of discrimination and trauma are often minimised, reframed or excluded from social-justice narratives. Jewish suffering is treated as less legitimate, and Jewish claims of discrimination are met with scepticism in ways that other minority claims are not.

Progressive and anti-racist spaces will have to do the same work that they asked others to do after the George Floyd murder and subsequent BLM movement; they will have to learn what antisemitism is & unlearn existing scripts, they will have to sit with discomfort and identify their own cognitive dissonance around the selective use of racism and why a religious minority under sustained attack is so frequently excluded from the solidarity and support it deserves.

I suspect this is what, in part, the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley was referring to after Wednesday’s horrific terrorist attacks in Golders Green when he said “Why don’t we see more condemnation of the attacks we’ve seen in recent weeks? Where are all the voices against hate? And where is the solidarity with fellow Londoners who are being targeted simply for who they are?”

And that inclusion can’t be conditional either, Jews are welcomed into progressive spaces, but only on terms that require their identity to align with dominant political views. Those who fit the script are elevated; those who can’t find themselves marginalised. The result is a quiet but persistent message: Jewish identity is acceptable, but only in certain forms and on our terms.

There will always be a violent fringe, an extreme minority willing to wield knives, spread fear, and terrorise communities. The bar of expectation for such individuals is, and always has been, tragically low.

But we hold a far higher standard for those who shape our public life and national discourse. The household names, the cultural, academic and civic institutions who have asked for our trust in their stewardship of the nation’s conscience. They have asked us to grant them moral authority in service of the common good, with the promise of a society where every community is able not just to exist, but to flourish.

That authority is now being tested. For many of these organisations, the harder task lies not in speaking out, but in looking inward. Meaningful change will demand uncomfortable reflection, an honest reckoning with the ways in which their own choices, silences, or incentives may have helped create the very conditions they now condemn. And if they fail to do so now, their silence will not be neutral, it will be remembered as part of the problem they claim to oppose.

Irfan Zaman is the Founding Trustee of Yad Fellowship, a campus-based charity working with students’ unions and universities to combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred in UK Higher Education.