Antisemitism Does Not Exist If Not Illegal

Example 49: Responding unsympathetically to concerns about antisemitism by saying that it does not exist if it is not illegal:

This is another instance of people apparently regarding antisemitism as a lesser form of racism, and it is a criterion which tends not to be used about other forms of racism, at least not on the left.

Of course many forms of racism don't actually break the law in this country or many countries - even Holocaust denial is not per se illegal in this country although it is in a few countries e.g. Germany. To make illegality the sole arbiter of what is racist is, in our view, racist itself and, in the case shown here, antisemitic. (It is perfectly respectable, for example, to argue that it is not possible to draft a satisfactory law to prevent Holocaust denial, and indeed from a legal point of view it is possible that such a law could pose some questions which are potentially difficult to answer; it could, for example, make it technically illegal for anti-racist groups to highlight and oppose such denial or revisionism.) However, very few people would argue that Holocaust denial is not a racist act, or that wearing a swastika armband, which is also not in itself illegal in Britain, is not a racist act.

In the example below, the author of the tweet is motivated by a wish to minimise antisemitism in the Labour party, by using this spurious argument. The great majority of complaints about antisemitism in Labour do not involve illegal acts, but the acts complained of are no less antisemitic for that reason.