The lead-up to this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day has been beset like few others with vivid reminders of why it is still so necessary to remember the events of 70 years ago.
The most obvious is the visit to London yesterday of Gábor Vona, leader of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party to address a rally. Hope not Hate and Labour London Assembly member Andrew Dismore had already presented a petition to the home secretary on Thursday demanding he be refused entry to the country and the event was disrupted by anti-fascist protesters. One of Vona’s recent speeches in Hungary talked about how his party is ‘fed up with being called racists’ when they attack Roma.
Another person equally unhappy with being called racist is West Bromwich Albion footballer Nicolas Anelka, this week charged by the Football Association for his now-infamous performance of the quenelle gesture at a match.
The quenelle – however it’s origins are explained as an inversion of a Nazi salute – has become entwined with anti-Semitism. It came to be that way by association. As Howard Jacobson commented: ‘When it comes to signs and language, no one is innocent of history’; when the gesture is performed outside synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials and – in the ultimate insult – Auschwitz, it is clear what is intended: denial through misdirection.
For many, Anelka’s defence is worse than the act itself. He claimed he was motivated purely by friendship with the French performer Dieudonné M’bala M’bala who has popularised the gesture, and he knew nothing of the comedian’s reputation as an anti-Semitic performer, despite the French courts banning his act.
Dieudonné, of course, makes the equally feeble attempt to distance himself from accusations of hate crime. He says he performs the quenelle because he is anti-establishment; calls himself an anti-Zionist, not an antisemite.
At least Vona is upfront about wanting to change the terms of debate. Dieudonné and his supporters instead want it all ways. They want free speech, they want to be able to say anti-Semitic things, but they want some plausible deniability in case anyone calls them out on it – and so alight on the label ‘anti-establishment’. Thus, they pass hate off as radicalism (and so giving it leftish hue, to boot).
In fact, this deniability reinforces their world view that some global Zionist conspiracy is suppressing the truth – otherwise why would they need to be so secretive, so knowing with their gestures?
The left must be ever-vigilant for this trope, which sees a tiny minority as the establishment or – even more ludicrously – a shadowy international conspiracy, pulling the levers of power across the globe.
Anelka’s foolishness shows that it is easier than ever for foreign bigotry to skip past our borders; and that ignorance is simply no excuse – something all Labour representatives must heed when sharing platforms or commentating.
HMD is a poignant mix of emotion: life-affirming testimony from survivors juxtaposed with the sheer weight of loss. We are reminded that good can triumph, and that Britain played a unique role in defeating Nazism, should be enough.
But the day also reminds us that, for evil to prosper, it simply requires the good to do nothing. For the left, which has such a strong history of fighting racism and inequality, we must now be equally ready to condemn Dieudonné’s intellectual dishonesty as much as Vona’s hateful views.
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Mike Katz is a Labour councillor who chaired Camden council’s community cohesion panel and is on the Jewish Labour Movement’s executive committee. He tweets @MikeKatz
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