As Hope not Hate have recently reported. Jobbik seems to be stepping up its antisemitic rhetoric.
Addressing Parliament last November, Gyongyosi called for a list of Jewish lawmakers and government members to be compiled, suggesting they posed a national security risk.
“Jobbik has been exposed to unprecedented attacks in Hungary and abroad … Relying on its huge lobbying and blackmailing potential, Zionism has deployed all its strength to launch a global campaign to discredit Jobbik,” the party said in a statement.
Jobbik also accused “Zionists” of creating a grand coalition of the ruling Fidesz party, the opposition Socialists, LMP and the Democratic Coalition while deploying its communication arsenal which, he said, had co-opted almost the entire media.
Meanwhile Flesh is Grass reports the latest in a wearisome string of examples of antisemitic tropes being recycled by the ‘left’. She links to this open letter from Jewish members of the National Campaign Against Fees And Cuts, responding robustly to the feebly apologetic response to protests against these images, which appeared on the International Socialist Group’s Communiqué site:
Put bluntly, we think this is transparent nonsense and we don’t want to spend time saying why. We do believe, though, that the image and the apology demonstrate clearly the existence of anti-Semitism within the ISG and the attitude towards ‘left-wing’ anti-Semitism from sections of the Left more generally.
Flesh is Grass also comments on the weaselly apology from ISG:
Shortly after being posted it was taken down with an apology which avoided using the word ‘antisemitism’ or taking the necessary steps to explain why the cartoon was “inappropriate”. There was also a comically unconvincing claim that the cartoon had been posted by “members of the public unaligned with Communiqué” who had got their hands on [their account], and a hollow reiteration that “that there is not and will never be any space in the Communiqué project for racism of any variety”.
More accurately, whether or not Communiqué flirts with antisemitism depends on whether enough people notice it and object.
To look on the bright side, antisemitism remains something that few people on the left are proud to own up to. For now.
Finally, here is an analysis of left-wing German journalist Jakob Augstein’s inclusion in the Simon Wiesenthal’s Center’s 2012 list of top ten antisemites.
Hat tips: rigs and Sarka
