baddiel
Howard Epstein – GOOD DEAL OR BADDIEL?
Call me hypersensitive if you will, but I have an visceral aversion to anyone who says (worse, writes) “f**k Israel”. It’s bad coming from a gentile, it’s delusional from a Jew and utterly bizarre in the context of a Jew’s 130 page complaint about antisemitism. A desire to distance oneself from the inextricable centrality of Israel to the life of every Jew today should confer automatic membership of the Flat Earth Society. It’s as unrealistic.
I write of David Baddiel, self-declared identifiably-Jewish comedian, writer, etc, whose book, “Jews Don’t Count”, I first read upon its publication in early 2021, and again in the couple of days before seeing him plugging it in the Quays Theatre, Manchester.
Early on, Baddiel explained he had a problem with the “N” word, the “P” word and (don’t we all) the “Y” word. On the other hand, he has no problem with the “F” word, which seems to be a verbal crutch for him in print and on stage; doubtless he could raise his game by using epithets without any provenance in sexual activity or (as they said about Donald Trump) construction site patois.
So much for the form but what about the substance? Undoubtedly, Baddiel has assembled sufficient to demonstrate that anti-Jewish racism (aka “antisemitism”) is alive and kicking, as it has been throughout Christendom, often in jackboots, for two millennia. (Who knew?) The book also identifies something important: anti-Jewish racism is not decried when observed; although we know from the Corbyn years of threat and failure that that is not the whole story. There are 67 million people in this country and the majority are plainly not anti-Jewish racists.
Of course, had Corbyn formed a government, all bets would have been off, not because the majority would immediately be seen in their true Jew-baiting get-up, but because an uncomfortably large minority might have emerged from all sorts of dark places on the right — and the left.
Baddiel’s massive accumulation of examples of behaviour ranging from insouciance to the loud exposition of vile lies about us is not going to change any of that. I’m sorry, David, but few gentiles will read your book and set up groups of vigilantes to protect Jews. That’s the job of the redoubtable CST (Community Security Trust) of the UK, and they have not been waiting for this book to come along.
The reality is this: Baddiel is steeped in the world of entertainment, media and the arts. It is a world that is naturally inclined to the left, which in recent years has embraced wokeism more than other societal groups. Woke, of course, comes from California, so may be expected to be detached from reality. (See under: castigating your family on “Oprah” and then wondering why you got uninvited from a state banquet.) It is an article of faith for the woke that waking up every morning to find I am still white means I must feel pangs of shame for all that the White Man inflicted on the world. Baddiel argues, correctly, that the Jew is seen as “White” (although many are not) and is therefore unacceptable to the woke.
Further, cultural appropriation is condemned, such that a deaf character must be played by a deaf actor — who has “lived experience” — and that of a Japanese character by someone of that origin. “But hey!” Baddiel says. When it comes to Jewish characters, the parts are not necessarily given to Jews. (Incidentally, you don’t think that Jason Isaacs playing the part of Marshal Zhukov in “Death of Stalin” was unconvincing because he did not have the lived experience of killing millions of Germans, do you?)
There is a fundamental unfairness, of course, and it would be worse if Jews were not already hugely influential, which is what really gives our detractors the heebie-jeebies.
Influential is what the Jews are. If you doubt it, consider the collapse of the BBC’s Newsnight’s viewing figures since Emily Maitlis left, the fact that the Chair of the BBC is Richard Sharp, and that lack of work has not been a constant complaint of Daniel Radcliffe, Richard Garfield, Rachel Weisz or a certain David Baddiel.
Nor do we need the artificial leg-up that other minority groups get. Afro-Caribbean actors are over-represented in BBC drama not to the point where I complain but there may be those lacking in goodwill towards them who notice how far the pendulum has swung in their favour. It will swing the other way one day — just as it did after the licentious Weimar Republic.
Here’s an idea. Rename the book: “Jews Don’t Count for the ‘Progressive Liberal’ Left”.
© Howard Epstein – November 2022
Author, “Israel at 75: In Weizmann’s Image” – www.howard-epstein.com
