Wednesday 27 November 2019

The Crucible re-staged


The Chief Rabbi says Jeremy Corbyn ‘is not fit for high office’, but Boris Johnson is. A Tory says I am a Tory and it’s news?


Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, takes place in 1692 during the Salem witch trials. The play tells the story of a group of young hysterical women who falsely accuse other villagers of witchcraft. The play was written as an allegory during the McCarthy years and the House of Un-American Activities trials in the 1950s. To be accused of being a member of the Communist Party then ensured that jobs, reputations and, for some, their lives, were lost.

It mattered little whether the accusations were true or not. It mattered even less that membership of the CP at that time was evidence of radical political consciousness and not criminal inclination.

In the UK today the accusation of anti-semitism is being used against those who are not anti-semitic. Most of those accused have spent their lives fighting anti-semitism and racism. Heading the list of the “guilty” is Jeremy Corbyn, many Jews and anti-racists. It is surprising that the self-imposed media inquisition has not yet used the words, paraphrased from the McCarthy hearings, “Are you now, or have you ever been, anti-semitic?”

Our Salem trials are an attempt to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister and to cow the rest of us into silence about Boris Johnson’s racism and the real anti-semitism that has always been at the heart of the British political Establishment.

On 26 November 2019 the Daily Mail declared that Jeremy Corbyn ‘dodged apologising over Labour’s ant-semitism crisis.’ That is their version of, ‘Are you now or have you ever been….’ This statement is rich coming from a newspaper which, under ownership of the same family that owned it eighty years ago, supported Hitler and Mussolini. Corbyn has not apologised because he has nothing to apologise for.

My anti-fascism was born when I discovered photos of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp inmates in my father’s desk. He was one of the first Allied medics to enter the camp when it was liberated. It haunted him for the rest of his life, as it also haunted me. Seeing those walking skeletons was my political awakening which later led me to be beaten up by Nazi thugs from the British Movement when selling Peace News. Corbyn has a similar history—his mother fought alongside other Socialists and Jews at the 1936 Battle of Cable Street.

It is an insult to anti-fascists to bring false accusations into this election. As Arthur Miller wrote in The Crucible, “now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

We have to take away the keys from those children.
 

The following are articles I have written about anti-semitism and a short video of Miriam Margolyes speaking truth about Israel

 

Corbyn Must Stand Strong: The Peoples News


Palestinian Right to Return: The Peoples News


Israeli Terror: The Peoples News

Criticising Israel is not Anti-Semitic: The Peoples News


Corbyn is not Anti-Semitic: The Peoples News


Famous Anti-Zionist Jews: Stop the War

 

Miriam Margolyes

 

My father in RAMC uniform at the time he went to Bergen-Belsen

 

 

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