Where Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Semitism Intersect

I  have little doubt that Jeremy Corbyn was sincere when he originally denied that anti-Semitism could be a problem for the Labour Party, since it had always been staunchly opposed to racism. London's former Labour mayor Ken Livingstone also probably believes that his fierce anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. As he put it: “A real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel, they hate their Jewish neighbour . . . It's a physical loathing”. But hating Jews in Israel is apparently OK; they are Zionists, after all, and the loathing isn't physical.The reason Corbyn and Livingstone can make these claims with such conviction is that anti-Semitism long ago came to be associated with the Right. To them, left-wing anti-Semitism is an oxymoron; such prejudices are strictly for reactionaries. This view owes a great deal to the Dreyfus trials. The Dreyfusards were, on the whole, liberal,…