Antisemitism is vile, but not sure how you can state that one form of hatred is more vicious than all others?
You're normally so good at seeing the bigger picture but you've never really got this point about antisemitism. We've had so many conversations on this when you've asked me "How is that antisemitic?" when you're normally so well attuned to all sorts of bias and prejudice.
The Holocaust was a deliberate, political & systematic attempt to wipe out a whole group of people, on an industrial scale. I'd say that gave antisemitism, where hatred turned into action, a certain status. It's not been the only example in the last 100 years or so though. Three other events where hatred turned to an attempt at extermination come to mind primarily. Those are the Ottoman genocide against Armenians, the genocide against the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda and the events in the former Yugoslavia, which were on a smaller scale but still horrific.
But what makes those different is that they were what you might call "local" issues. Simmering tensions exploded into mass murder among neighbours. Antisemitism on the other hand is a global issue. Most people have no issue with Bosnian Muslims, Tutsi or Armenians but you'll struggle to find anywhere where there aren't significant number who hate Jews. You've even got leaders of countries like Hungary & Malaysia who are openly antisemitic. There aren't even enough adult male Jews to form a
minyan (a 10-man prayer quorum) in Malaysia. There are very few religious or national groups that don't harbour antisemites. It's even a hatred that crosses political divides, as the fact we're talking about it in a thread about a supposedly left-wing or socialist party that would say anti-racism was one of its keystone beliefs, yet is under formal investigation for antisemitism and ha expelled or otherwise dsiciplined a number of its own members.
The other reason it's particularly vicious is that people disguise their antisemitism behind "anti Zionism". They don't have the courage to say they hate Jews but hide that behind hatred of Israel. Yet "anti-Zionism" is, by definition, antisemitism as it denies the right of self-determination to Jews. There's no other group on the planet where that happens. Perhaps the Kurds are the closest but there's no Western, supposedly progressive political group that has anti-Kurdistan sentiment at its heart. No one ever says "I'm not anti-Muslim, I just hate Saudi Arabia".
Finally, there are people who self-identify as Jewish, like Jackie Walker and many in Jewish Voice For Labour, so that they can criticise Jews and Israel and claim they can't be antisemitic because they're "Jewish".
So I think ban-jani has a fair point to be honest.
