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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Keith Kahn-Harris. Sort by date Show all posts

Christopher Owens ➤ 2020 is a strange time to be an anti-racist. 

 

Causes that you would normally support without blinking turn out to be fuelled by divisive post-modernist thinking which has the potential to sleepwalk us back into segregation, while people who have seemingly impeccable credentials for fighting injustice are labelled anti-Semitic, seemingly for criticising Israel.

The controversy surrounding what constitutes anti-Semitism is a long running one. It has the ability to derail political careers while also divide broad movements. Clearly, this is a deeply divisive issue, especially if one does not consider a particular statement to be anti-Semitic.

Based in north London, sociologist, author (and metal fan) Keith Kahn-Harris has been writing for many years about Jewish culture, identity and history as well as appearing on Sam Dunn's acclaimed Metal Evolution documentary. With books like Uncivil War: The Israel Conflict in the Jewish Community, he is in a position to wrestle with the differing perceptions of anti-Semitism and explain to a bemused audience how this situation has come about.

By beginning the preface with the claim that this "...is an infuriating book, about an infuriating phenomenon produced by the most infuriating beings there are - human beings", the reader is assured that this will be an intricate book with detailed perspectives and a light hearted touch. Just what is required for a layperson like me.

An expansive book, which looks at some recent controversies in Britain and America, while also examining the history of Jews since 1945 and how, in Kahn-Harris' words, they have been a disappointment to the left, right and themselves respectively by failing to fulfill the criteria that all three sides places on them.

For example, the left find their support of Israel frustrating, while the right find their liberal tendencies frustrating, while Jews themselves find the myriad of opinions on everything frustrating.

In many ways, it's not too dissimilar from the "pet fenian" charge that has been levelled at the likes of Malachi O'Doherty, Sean O'Callaghan, Ruth Dudley Edwards and even our own Anthony McIntyre. Because they dare break out of their supposed "tribal position" and are often used by unionists as a kind of benchmark of what a nationalist should be like, due to their opposition to the Provos (although some of those commentators are guiltier of playing up to this trope than others). And this is also true with the way some republican commentators view the likes of Dawn Purvis and Sophie Long.

The end result of this, as Kahn-Harris points out, is that it becomes very easy to believe that you are in touch with the thinking of a particular community and so find it angering when someone from that community accuses you of (at best) condescension or (at worst) anti-Semitism/sectarianism. 

Ultimately, however, this fetishisation (or philosemitism as Kahn-Harris best puts it in the context of the Jewish community) not only leaves you blind to the many views of the entire community, but it also plays into the old tropes of there being "good Jews" and "bad Jews" (replace Jews with Catholic and Protestant, and you'll have the same effect).

Hence why, in Kahn-Harris' views, Jeremy Corbyn could be classed as "...like others on the left and within the pro-Palestinian movement..." having "...strayed into the zone of selective anti/semitism...I don't see his wanderings...as particularly remarkable or extraordinary..." but is keen to insist that selective anti-Semitism is not something to be easily dismissed, nor is conscious anti-Semitism something much more serious.

Very easy to consume, with a casual touch to the narration that bring warmth to such a complicated subject, Kahn-Harris achieves something special with Strange Hate: he is able to demonstrate how easy it is to fall into negative stereotyping without ever once thinking that you subscribe to hatred. Although not named here, one person I immediately thought of was American commentator Ben Shapiro, who is all too quick and happy to label others anti-Semitic, yet plays into anti-Semitic tropes like labelling the likes of Max Blumenthal a "...self-hating Jew...", referring to the "...convenient Judaism..." of Bernie Sanders and even describing the Arab-Israeli conflict as "...a war between darkness and light."

Unfortunately, the book is not without flaws. Kahn-Harris' spirited defence of multiculturalism as a natural process is very much in line with the likes of Kenan Malik. However, unlike Malik, Kahn-Harris does not seem to acknowledge that multiculturalism, as a political entity, has been a failure and has led directly to some of the deep rooted divisions that we are seeing play out in modern politics today.

As I wrote in my review of From Fatwa to Jihad:

With the Scarman Report concluding that "complex political, social and economic factors" created a "disposition towards violent protest" (while avoiding to blame the police), Margaret Thatcher began to off-load money into various ethnic and community projects ... Malik correctly points out that this effectively became a bribe to keep people off the streets from protesting, and led to the creation of a professional middle class among ethnic groups ... Coupled with the Labour controlled councils ... offering cultural self-development courses and what you ended up with was separation. Suddenly people, who had never thought of themselves being anything other than British, became 'ethnic' overnight ... It's a perfect example of how good intentions can link up with amoral methods to divide and conquer.

Later on, Kahn-Harris writes how a way:

... of containing conflict would be to reconceptualise anti-racist politics as the struggle for the right of minorities to be hateful. This would not be an anti-racism founded on any illusions about the lovability of the other - although it certainly would not exclude this possibility - but deliberately extend its practice to even the most loathsome. In some ways, this would be a paradoxical act of love: The fight for the freedom of the other to live without racist abuse should be a gesture that requires no reciprocity. 

Now, it's important to acknowledge that this is part of a wider piece which ties together various observations and strands of thought throughout the book. However, I think most people will read that paragraph and come to the same conclusion as me: that Kahn-Harris is advocating for freedom of speech. Yet, curiously, that particular phrase does not appear at all in this chapter. While I am aware that it has, shamefully, been allowed to be appropriated by the far right, I do find it strange that Kahn-Harris, in pointing out the diverse opinions, still leaves out this particular phrase.

Regardless, this is a fascinating, provocative and quotable read that asks questions of all of us and helps the reader understand how anti-Semitism can be easily weaponised by anyone, even unintentionally so. 

Keith Kahn-Harris, 2019, Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity. Repeater Books ISBN-13: 978-1912248438.

 ⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

Strange Hate

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– Is it possible to be both mundane and significant?


When you factor in one of the world’s oldest religions, the contradictions become even more acute. But sociologist and prolific author Keith Kahn-Harris believes that it’s possible.

Discussing the motivation in taking pen to paper in order to tackle such a subject, Kahn-Harris reminds us that:

Jews seem to matter. Antisemitism, in its various forms, is fundamentally an assertion of Jewish importance in understanding the world and what is wrong with it. So it’s understandable that Jews have sought to fight Jew-hatred by showing how our existence has been a positive boon for the world. Jews have proactively gone out into the world and demonstrated how extraordinary and irreplaceable we are. We are a people of Nobel Prize winners, film-makers, novelists, songwriters and much else. Yet the Jews are still tired. Of course we are. We are on a treadmill, desperately trying to prove our worth and fight our corner. Post-October 7, I have become convinced that that Jews are in danger not just from Jew-hatred, but also from our very public significance and our exertions to maintain it. My new book…pushes back against this danger.

One cannot deny that, when laid out in such terms, the initial concept seems to be less foolhardy and more an act of genuine socio-political defiance, in a twisted way.

Based in north London, sociologist, author (and metal fan) Keith Kahn-Harris has been writing for many years about Jewish culture, identity and history as well as appearing on Sam Dunn's acclaimed Metal Evolution documentary. With books like Uncivil War: The Israel Conflict in the Jewish Community and Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity he is in a position to wrestle with the differing perceptions of anti-Semitism and explain to a bemused audience how this situation has come about.

Opening with a recollection of a trip to Poland which took in baseball, the Holocaust and a Kinder Surprise egg, Kahn-Harris then tells the reader that, for others in his company, the mundanities of history and modern life were a prelude to the real story: the suffering of the Jewish people. The realisation that there is an endless focus on the bleakest moments in Jewish history made him feel like ‘a stuffed Jew’: essentially a museum artefact.

Thus begins a work that, with a tone that is both gently humorous and sternly academic, discusses crap Jewish music like the Maccabeats, mediocre Israeli celebrities like Gimmel and the unifying, if slightly ramshackle, myriad of organisations in Jewish life and an overriding argument is that, by acknowledging that Jews can be as boring as everyone else, we help remove some of the ‘otherness’ that certain types have about Jews and maybe ensure the survival of them as people.

All the while, Kahn-Harris wrestles with how this mediocrity is an integral part of life and therefore we should celebrate this as much as the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (as, by highlighting the exemplary, we risk playing into the stereotype of ‘Jews running the (insert whatever)’ while at the same time acknowledging how this determination to survive has led to the image of the Jews as a serious and legacy framed race.

Unsurprisingly there are a multitude of detours that look at legacy issues, current political troubles, inter-community discussions and culture. All of which are woven together seamlessly by Kahn-Harris’ disarming manner.

Whether one finds the overall argument convincing or not, this is a book that will make you ponder on subjects that you probably had never considered before, thus raising it out of the realms of mediocrity and into greatness.

Keith Kahn-Harris, 2025, Everyday Jews: Why The Jewish People Are Not Who You Think They Are. Icon Books ISBN-13: 978-1837732111.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Everyday Jews 📚 Why The Jewish People Are Not Who You Think They Are

Keith Kahn-Harris answers thirteen questions in a Booker's Dozen. 

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

KKH: I just finished Victor Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev. It's a novel of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s by a then-prominent former Bolshevik exile. The book's a savage yet moving satire and brings out the lunacy of the purges.

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

KKH: Not an easy question! The easy bit is the worst book: I once tried to read a Clive Cussler thriller called Inca Gold. I've read a lot of thrillers in my time but I didn't last 20 pages with this one. Cussler's hero is called Dirk Pitt, which is a name so ludicrously macho that I couldn't really get past it.

As for the best, I don't really know what criteria to use. But I will choose two for different reasons: David Maurer's The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man is an ethnographic classic and describes a world almost too extraordinary to be real. It was the basis of the film The Sting.

In terms of sheer enjoyment, I adore Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, which manages to achieve structural perfection as a thriller whilst also injecting a note of psychological complexity in its portrayal of the unamed narrator.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

KKH: Almost too many to count! But really it depends on what stage of childhood you are taking about. I started on 'adult' books fairly early and I can well remember the sense of triumph on finishing The Lord of the Rings and James Michener's The Source.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

KKH: On the cusp of adolescence I went through a George Orwell phase and read ever book I could find by him.

TPQ: First book to really own you?

KKH: 1984 haunted me for years. It still does.


TPQ:  Favourite male and female author?

KKH: Female: I love the work of the sci-fi author Becky Chambers. She manages to do something remarkable in her work: to portray kindness and friendship in interesting ways; to portray a future that retains the best of humanity and other non-human races.

Male: In my discipline of sociology, I would single out Les Back and Richard Sennett as practitioners of beautifully crafted writing from whom I always learn something important every time I read them.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

KKH: I go through phases. I have to read academic books for my work but sometimes my brain is too fried to cope with non-fiction outside that. For the last, anxious, year I have been focusing on fiction.

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?

KKH: The Disaster Artist by Ton Bissell and Greg Sestero is the funniest book I have ever read, let alone the funniest memoire. It's the story of how the actor Greg Sestero became friends with Tommy Wiseau, writer/director of the cult film The Room. The book was subsequently filmed. I'm a fairly obsessive Room fan and the story behind it is so odd that it genuinely deserves the phrase 'stranger than fiction'.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

KKH: From bitter experience, I have vowed to myself that I will never read another John Le Carre novel. I quite like the early ones but from The Perfect Spy onwards his books became intolerably pompous and bloated. Plus all his characters seem to have bizarre verbal tics. It's a shame because he was a fascinating person and I loved reading interviews with him. His books, even the recent ones, seem to work much better on film.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?

KKH: I don't think any one book sums me up. But one book sums up the kind of life I would love to live but will almost certainly never be able to: Brian Eno's diary A Year With Swollen Appendices showcases a life of endless curiosity, multiple fascinating projects and constant creativity.

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

KKH: I bought my mother Craig Brown's Ma'am Darling, his biography of Princess Margaret. As with everything he writes, Brown's depiction of Margaret is savagely funny yet also oddly sympathetic.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

KKH: It sort of already happened. China Mieville's The City and the City was turned into a BBC series shown in 2019. They did a decent job but nothing can really compete with the imagined world in the book.

TPQ: The just must - select one book you simply have to read before you close the last page on life.

KKH: Talcott Parsons' The Social System is a legendarily turgid doorstop of a book. Up until the 1960s, Parsons' work dominated sociology, but he has since become deeply unfashionable. I've dipped into the book and it is simultaneously unbearably dry and totally bonkers. Parsons aspires to nothing less than a total description of how the social world works. I'd like to read it properly in order to bask in the hubris. 

Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College, runs the European Jewish Research Archive at the IJPR and is an Honorary Fellow of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck College. His most recent book is Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity (Repeater 2019).  

Booker's Dozen @ Keith Kahn-Harris

Keith Kahn-Harris ✒ In 2018, American Jewry became embroiled in the then-current ‘#MeToo’ movement when multiple allegations of sexual harassment by the prominent sociologist of Jewish life Steven M. Cohen were made public. 
Cohen did not contest the allegations and stated that he was ‘engaged in a process of education, recognition, remorse and repair’. Since then he has mostly dropped out of sight.
 

Responding to the affair, three American-Jewish historians, Kate Rosenblatt, Ronit Stahl, and Lila Corwin Berman, co-authored an article in The Forward in which they argued that Cohen’s behaviour could not be disconnected from his research and writing. 


Much of his work addressed issues of intermarriage, fertility and ‘Jewish continuity’, that have been a central part of Jewish organisational communal concerns since the 1980s (and not just in the US). Rosenblatt et al. argued:

Most troubling about the data-driven mode of Jewish continuity conversations are its patriarchal, misogynistic, and anachronistic assumptions about what is good for the Jews. We learn that single women, queer people, unwed parents, and childless individuals or couples are all problems. And we learn that the Jewish community, should it want to survive, must step into the role of calling out and regulating those problems….The continuity crisis — and its prescriptions about how to regulate primarily women, their bodies, and their sexuality — has its own productive energy that can be harnessed to convince donors to open their pocketbooks and support the very research and programs that prove that the crisis exists.

This article, and others like it, identify the problematic impact that continuity discourse can have on Jewish communal life. Injunctions to Jewish marriage and fertility can end up othering and policing those whose sexuality does not ‘fit’ and can end up putting enormous pressure even on those who are straight and do indeed want to find a Jewish spouse.

None of this necessarily negates the results of research carried out by Cohen and other Jewish communal social researchers that demonstrates that, at least under current circumstances, intermarried Jews are more likely to be Jewishly less active than in-married ones. And in one respect the authors of the Forward article missed something important in the nature of continuity discourse. Cohen’s writings, for the most part, do not exhibit the detailed and prurient interest in sex that he displayed in his ‘private’ life. In fact, continuity discourse rarely openly engages in talk about sexual activity at all – and therein lies its strangeness and its limitation.


I made a similar point in a review of Nathan Abrams’ 2008 edited collection Jews And Sex, that I wrote for the Jewish Quarterly. Recalling my work for the short-lived UK organisation Jewish Continuity, I noted that amidst all the effort to commission research on those oh-so-crucial Jewish ‘singles’, no one was investigating Jewish sex lives and sexual attractions. That is still the case, at least in the UK: Despite the continuing anxiety about Jewish continuity, no Jewish organisation has ever sought to investigate the mechanism through which Jews come to make babies with other Jews. Nor has there been any academic work on the subject in the UK.

In my review, I stated that Jews & Sex left me with ‘a lingering feeling of disappointment, heavy on representation but thin on sociology.’ That was a little harsh in that the collection was focused on Jewish sexuality in art and culture. But it does exemplify an odd duality: Post-war Jewish cultural expression has often been highly interested in sex and its representation and is often created by those who are organisational estranged from organised Jewish community with all its anxieties about continuity; Jewish organisational life is preoccupied with continuity but can rarely represent or engage with sex in an open way.

One could even say that organised Jewish communal life is often reliant on increasing sex yet can only engage openly in the practices that lead to sex (getting Jews together with other Jews) or the outcomes of sex (Jewish babies and their upbringing). What happens in between isn’t just left as a ‘black box’, at times its existence at all is suppressed. This leads to tacitly mixed messages about sex in Jewish communal life.

Jewish organisations are, in fact, very good at creating the conditions for sexual expression (including, but certainly not limited to, sexual harassment and exploitation). Summer camps and Israel tours are laboratories for the exploration of sexuality. At the same time, while part of the aim (acknowledged or unacknowledged) of Jewish youth provision is to encourage Jews to partner with other Jews, sexual activity beyond kissing is often frowned upon or actively proscribed. There are very good reasons for this of course. Unbounded adolescent sexual activity may lead to coercive sexual activity in some cases. But there is little acknowledgment that the messages are mixed, to say the least.

The Cohen affair, therefore, exposed not the dark underbelly of the organised Jewish community’s obsession with regulating sex, but the dangers of an unacknowledged obsession with regulating sex. To talk of Jewish continuity without talking about sex leads to an absence that can easily be filled with sexual exploitation.

Jews & Sex demonstrated that Jews have distinctive preoccupations with sex that are expressed in Jewish cultural activity. The problem is that Jewish arts and culture are often so separated from Jewish organised communal life that no number of Annie Sprinkles or Portnoy’s Complaints can fill the absence in Jewish communal sex talk. The challenge, it seems to me, is to find ways of encouraging cultural responses to sexuality within organised Jewish communal life.

Otherwise, Jewish life will be marked by a continuing preoccupation with sex-that-is-not-sex.

Art by Gus Condeixa

Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College, runs the European Jewish Research Archive at the IJPR and is an Honorary Fellow of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck College. His most recent book is Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity (Repeater 2019).  

On Jewish Communal Sex-That-Is-Not-Sex

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– As you’ve undoubtedly guessed from the title, here’s my list of, what I consider to be, the best books that were published in 2025. Most have been reviewed on here by me, but everyone loves a good list, especially at the end of the year.

10. The Sacrifices – Alexander Kattke

Underground writer Alexander Kattke is back with another piecing compendium of pieces looking at/imagining the mindsets of serial killers, victims, God, soldiers, writers and optimists, wrapped up in a literary style that is hectoring, confessional, delusional and disturbing. All very much fertile grounds for exploration in the manner we’re accustomed to with Kattke and, unsurprisingly, he doesn’t miss.

9. The Capitalcyst – Craig Podmore

It’s been a few years since Your Misery is for Entertainment Purposes Only and now we get this new collection of poems and stories which Podmore has described as “…an onslaught, an assault, an examination of the futility of modern man.” Lofty heights to reach for, but Podmore does it. The opening essay sets out the terrain: poets are pornographers, writing is fornication and we should abandon all pretence and indulge.

8. A Condescending Wound - Benzo Monroe

Described as an “…artist, poet, and author from Michigan”, Benzo Monroe’s new collection nails the self-absorbed and deadpan monotone that often accompanies depressive thoughts and aggravates those who do their best to be sympathetic. Some poems are only two lines long, implying that the narrator is at the end of his tether and found it taxing to hammer these demons to the page.

7. Race the Undead – Jonathan Traynor

Post-apocalyptic/survival tales thrive when you care for the band of misfits who would never be friends in a normal setting and must now survive while trying to make sense of what has happened to the world. We certainly get plenty of this material throughout as Greg grieves the death of his family at his own hands due to zombification while struggling with his advancing years and resenting the mantle of leader.

6. Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish People Are Not Who You Think They Are – Keith Kahn Harris

Opening with a recollection of a trip to Poland which took in baseball, the Holocaust and a Kinder Surprise egg, Kahn-Harris tells the reader that the endless focus on the bleakest moments in Jewish history made him feel like a museum artefact. Thus begins a work that, with a tone that is both gently humorous and sternly academic acknowledges that Jews can be as boring as everyone else.

5. Far From EUtopia: How Europe is Failing – And Britain Could Do Better – Ross Clark

At times quite heavy on statistics, this is a skilful, entertaining and provocative piece of propaganda that isn’t afraid to criticise the various Tory and Labour governments failing to utilise the opportunities on offer due to no longer being tied to the EU. Hence why some have ‘Brexit regret’. One that will provoke many a pointed argument and should be read by those who wish to see an Irexit: England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.

4. 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times - Ross Benes

A freelance journalist as well as a market research analyst, Ross Benes has put together a fascinating tome that intricately dissects this period, makes connections that you may not have considered before and all with the gusto and enthusiasm of a lifelong fan of pop culture. Written with a critical love of the period and the culture, Benes offers up plenty of thinking points and laughs along the way.

3. ‘Preparing for Power’: The Revolutionary Communist Party and Its Curious Afterlives, 1976-2020 - Jack Hepworth

Telling the story of how three members of the Revolutionary Communist Group split to form their own organisation, Hepworth does a solid job at narrating the various twists and turns as well as discussing the party’s pariah status among left wing activists in a time where it was felt that radical change was in the air before they declared class politics moribund and began a slow transition into libertarianism via spiked online.

2. The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s - Jason Burke.A lot has been written about events since October 7th. But few have really sought to understand the history, the nuances and the missed opportunities that have come and gone over the years. Quite the tall order and it’s a task that journalist Jason Burke has clearly relished as he has given us a tome that tells the story of Palestinian resistance but also how secular Marxism ended up being replaced with theocratic Islamism.

1. Strangers And Intimacies: The Rise and Fall of Private Life - Tiffany Jenkins

This book from sociologist and Scotsman columnist Tiffany Jenkins not only proves to be an excellent call for the return of a private life for us all but also demonstrates how hard-won victories have been frittered away in the face of technological advancement and disintegrating social bonds. Believe it or not, it all starts with the Reformation, and it concludes with a defence of private life. An enthralling and stimulating read.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

TPQ Books Of 2025

Keith Kahn-Harris discusses Left Out: The Inside Story Of Labour Under Corbyn
 
Ever since its publication, snapshots of sections of Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire’s Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn have been gleefully shared on Twitter amongst detractors of the Corbyn project. 

Antisocial Socialist
@Antisocialsoc19
Turns out everyone's favourite millionaire communist hobbyist Andrew Murray was such a fierce opponent of the Tories, he wanted to go into coalition with them to deliver Brexit. Amazing the brass neck of Corbynites calling others Tory lite #LeftOut
 
It’s the revelations about antisemitism or general incompetence that seem to have attracted the most attention. For me though, it’s the following passage that jumped out:

Witnesses still dispute the cause of the conflagration, and the precise language Alvarez used to deliver her coup de grâce. One attendee recalled Alvarez ‘having a pop’ that Thompson, as a long-standing friend of the couple, found particularly wounding. ‘Marsha finally blew and gave it right back to her.’ The previous evening she herself had rowed with Corbyn, whose lax approach to timekeeping and failure to keep to diary commitments had at points threatened to derail LOTO’s delicate plans for conference. That he was suffocated by his countless admirers did not help. On the night of Laura’s clash with Thompson, the hotel in which they had dined shut down its bar and kitchen temporarily so 120 of its staff could have their picture taken with Corbyn. One aide likened him to a ‘stroppy teenager’. When Thompson confronted Corbyn for an explanation of his behaviour, he accused her of siding with Murphy.

The confrontation took place at the 2019 party conference, at a time when Karie Murphy, executive director of the leader’s office, was losing Corbyn’s trust and under severe factional pressure from within the ‘project’. Marsha-Jane Thompson was Corbyn’s head of campaigns. Laura Alvarez is Corbyn’s wife. At the same time as this tight-knit inner circle was becoming dysfunctional, the leader was the focus of public celebration and adoration to the point that the business of leadership was imperilled. Behind closed doors, Corbyn was squabbled over; in public, he was venerated.

The details of this particular spat are not really important, although it’s a tribute to the authors that they have revealed a steady stream of similar anecdotes. But the story seems to encapsulate a wider duality that explains much about what happened to the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

On the one hand of this duality lay brutal conflict; on the other, joyful love. From 2015 to 2019, the Labour Party was engulfed in waves of vicious in-fighting and almost ecstatic hope and celebration. And we cannot understand one without understanding the other; the queasy dialectic they produced eventually leading to ignominious defeat.

Jeremy Corbyn was the propulsive force at the heart of this dialectic. He was the object of love, hate and struggle. Yet at the same time, as Left Out shows, he was often curiously disengaged. He loathed confrontation of any kind. He spoke in generalities. He avoided detail and the messy business of party management.

Usually, I am suspicious of historical accounts that centre on particular individuals. Social and political movements are rarely reducible to one person. Yet Jeremy Corbyn’s role within the Labour Party might be an exception. While the social and political forces that propelled him to the top and that resulted in electoral semi-success in 2017 and total defeat in 2019, are multiple and complex, in the end we cannot understand what happened without a clear focus on Jeremy Corbyn himself.

Or, rather, on ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ himself. There were multiple constructions of who he is and what he represents and it was these constructions that were the object of struggle. The movement that elected him and adored him usually constructed him as a man of unimpeachable integrity, of unflappable plain-speaking kindness, of idealism and as the embodiment of the hope of change. Amongst his detractors, Jeremy Corbyn was, according to taste, a crank, an antisemite, a lover of tyranny, a naive fool and an empowerer of bullies.

The hate and the conflict that scarred the party from 2015 and 2019 was, largely but by no means completely, the result of the clash of these irreconcilable ‘Jeremy Corbyns’.

The antisemitism issue is the most devastating example of this. Antisemitism on the left is not new, and the expansion in the scope and seriousness of the problem would have been an inevitable result of the election of any left anti-imperialist Labour leader. But what shifted the problem from ‘difficult but possibly solvable’ to ‘impossible and unsolvable’ was the use to which antisemitism was put in defending Corbyn from perceived and real threats. The 2016 coup against him from his critics in the PLP triggered an outraged response from those for whom Jeremy Corbyn was the repository of their hopes and dreams. Antisemitism was one weapon in the arsenal to defend the leader against those who threatened the golden future that Corbyn embodied. Those Jewish MPs who took part in the coup (Luciana Berger being one of the most prominent) became a symbol of the treachery of the Labour right and centre.

Love can make people do terrible things in defence of the loved object. Love led members of Corbyn’s staff to tear each other apart in their rival attempts to defend the leader. Love led people who had rarely thought about Jews, Israel and the Palestinians, to retweet memes about ‘The Rothschilds’. Love led Corbynite Jews to let themselves be chosen as the ideal Jew, to be a beautiful reflection of the leader himself, to abandon any kind of solidarity with other Jews. Love led Corbyn’s inner circle to fight amongst themselves over how best to protect the man, when it was really he himself who should have had the strength to protect them from their worst selves. And Corbyn’s own love for the people he could relate to, was accompanied by an inability to relate to those he could not love.

The Corbynite who comes across best in Left Out is John McDonnell. While he was, for many years, Corbyn’s only real friend in the House of Commons, the events of 2015-2019 show him to have been motivated by a love greater than love for one man. McDonnell loved the project to build socialism first and foremost. Sometimes that meant steadfast defence of Corbynism and all that it entailed (including, on occasions, colluding in dismissing antisemitism), but from 2017 to 2019 his greater desire for socialism began to win out as he pushed back against what he saw as the increasingly disastrous job that Corbyn’s acolytes were doing. In fact, the closer one got to the Corbynite inner circle, so it became easier to express frustration with the man himself and to voice (privately) the criticisms that would, if voiced publicly, have led to vicious abuse from the Corbynite grassroots. What is depressing is how far the movement’s ‘outriders’ and grassroots activists chose to make Corbyn untouchable. Paul Mason is one of the only prominent fellow travellers who refused to bet all their desires for social and political change on the political survival of one individual.

It is only by understanding the warped effects that love can have that we can truly understand what happened to the Labour Party under Corbyn. There’s a lot of loose talk amongst critics of Corbyn that the party became a ‘cult’. To a degree, there’s something to this: It’s hard to view memes celebrating Corbyn’s ‘Nobel prize’ and crediting him for the Good Friday Agreement, without seeing something culty. But the problem with this perspective is that it assumes that Corbyn was not just fundamentally unlovable, he was positively and deviously malign. The point about a cult leaders like Jim Jones is that, while followers love them, they are actually evil charlatans.

I don’t think Corbyn is an evil charlatan. In fact, the mistake that many anti-antisemitism campaigners often make is to see the hate that undoubtedly mushroomed under Corbyn as a reflection of the man himself. In other words, they accuse Corbynites of loving a man with nothing to love about him.

One of the great strengths of Left Out is that, however devastating a picture the authors paint of Corbyn, they also detail his good qualities: He is clearly devoted to his constituency, is capable of great kindness to friends and strangers and has endless empathy for the poor and marginal. These are prosaic and relatable good qualities: not those of a hero but of an everyday decent person.

Corbyn’s worst qualities are similar: mundane and a bit pathetic rather than evil. He is peevish, has gigantic blindspots in his worldview, is not particularly bright, is often passive aggressive, is sometimes indolent, is largely incapable of dealing with people who don’t already agree with him, and is incapable of managing a team let alone a party.

Corbyn may have shared platforms with appalling haters, antisemites and friends of dictators, but he rarely joined in with and repeated their hatred; most of the time he simply stood by, deluding himself that the hate was a little bit of unfortunate excess. Even at one of the few times he explicitly repeated an antisemitic trope – the now-notorious comment that two particular Jews didn’t understand irony despite living here all their lives – seems to have been as much as anything, a way of honouring the urbanity of his Palestinian co-panelists, rather than a vicious attack. To accuse him of hating Jews (or, at least, Zionist Jews), as some have done, is to misunderstand how he works: I don’t think he hates anyone particularly, it’s just that he has no idea how to relate to those he cannot understand and that leaves the door open to tacitly colluding with those who have much more hateful feelings towards them.

It is extraordinary that a man of such regular and ’normal’ good and bad points should be the focus of such extreme love and hate. It is bizarre that this was the man over whom so many people fought, hurt and abused; the man who twisted so many decent people on both the left and right of the party, and on the inside and the outside of the Jewish community, into becoming obsessive haters.

Corbynite readers of Left Out will take comfort in the stories of shoddy behaviour of Tom Watson and the Labour right. Certainly, there is a culture of factionalism and mutual abusiveness that dates back to long before 2015. But whereas in previous eras, this tendency was held in check to the extent that it did not permeate across the party, in the Corbyn years people across the Labour spectrum into performing their worst selves. It is to Labour’s and Corbyn’s shame that so many people fell into the abyss.

Perhaps the story of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is ultimately a cautionary tale of what happens when the image of a person becomes completely disconnected from the actual person. Corbyn could never square accusations of tolerance for antisemitism with his self-image as a lifelong anti-racism. He made the mistake in thinking that good intentions are enough; that if you understand yourself as working for good, if bad things follow then it is not your responsibility.

Pogrund and Maguire argue at the end of Left Out, that ‘on no subject was he more stubborn than his own sense of identity’. As they conclude:

When it came to Labour’s relationship with the Jewish community, the failure was his. The empathy that defined him as a man and politician escaped him. In the face of accusations of racism, he too often empathised with himself. It might reasonably be argued that here was a leader whose preference was to split his own party, rather than apologise.

All of us have sometimes faced a situation when someone accuses us of being something other than who we feel we are. It’s disorienting, hurtful and even scary. Sometimes facing up to such accusations, when they are made in good faith, can allow us to grow as people, to incorporate new elements into one’s self-identity. Sometimes such accusations are purely malign gaslighting. But you can never know which is which without at least allowing for the possibility that who you think you are is not all that you are.

Years ago, when he was a marginal MP, and in the right private circumstances, perhaps Jeremy Corbyn might have been able to open himself up to a serious dialogue about the blindspots in his identity. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would always have been someone who would countenance no discussion of his self-identity, regardless of whom he had become in life. We will never know. But as head of the Labour Party, as someone the continual eye of the political storm, there was never any prospect that he could have seriously engaged with the limitations of his anti-racist identity and the unintended consequences of his good intentions. When there are people who have constructed you as a uniquely loveable figure, would any of us listen to those who say we are uniquely hateful? That’s not narcissism so much as simple human weakness – it’s nicer to be validated than challenged.

So love was always the problem. Unloveable – but not unhateable – politicians may be healthiest for democracy. In Keir Starmer we have an unloveable Labour leader. While my politics are further to the left than Starmer’s, I am more content with a leader of the opposition that sparks only tepid emotion. When the book is written on the Labour Party under Starmer, I hope that it will be intensely dreary. That Left Out is a page-turner isn’t a good thing. 

Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College, runs the European Jewish Research Archive at the IJPR and is an Honorary Fellow of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck College. His most recent book is Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity (Repeater 2019). This article was originally published at JewTh!nk

The Problem Of Love In Corbyn’s Labour Party: Reflections On Left Out

Keith Kahn-Harris ✏ writing in New Statesman. Recommended by Christopher Owens. 

Cooperation between Palestinian and Jewish Israelis is the only model for a peaceful future.

Being a Jew on the left right now feels like being torn apart.

I work for two British Jewish communal organisations and I’ve been involved in the Jewish community all my life. 

These are dark times and I share the worry that, sooner or later, the growing wave of anti-Semitic incidents in this country will have deadly consequences. I’ve also spent significant time in Israel, I speak Hebrew and have family and friends in the country. I am mourning those who were killed on 7 October and I am desperate for Hamas’s Israeli hostages to be returned unharmed.

Yet while I can share these feelings of loss and trepidation with much of the UK Jewish community, I also feel like an interloper. I am constantly fretting that if I make one false step – one ill-advised tweet or blog post – I will be cast out.

My fears may or may not be justified but I still feel the need to be cagey about what I believe. 

Continue reading @ New Statesman. 

The Left Fails To Appreciate Competing Loyalties

Christopher Owens  ✒ The relationship between art and the artist should really be quite simple in that we separate the two and can appreciate/criticise both without it crossing over.


Often, however, we find ourselves in a quagmire in relation to our personal beliefs and the art of someone who may share differing beliefs. 

Messengers of Deception is bound to invoke similar emotions.

Forming in 2013, Tau Cross began life as a way for Rob Miller to carry on after his previous band (the legendary crust-punk pioneers Amebix) ground to a halt the previous year. Recruiting people like Michel “Away” Langevin (from Voivod) on drums and Andy Lefton (from War/Plague) on guitar, it was clear that Tau Cross were going to be a formidable band.


Subsequent releases like the self-titled debut and Pillar of Fire proved that this conception was not mistaken. Building upon the epic crust sound of Amebix’s 2011 record (Sonic Mass), we ended up with two forward thinking modern punk/metal albums that were bellicose with righteous fury in their grander moments and with a tender, folky feel in the more introspective songs.

Last year, the group had recorded Messengers … and handed it over to their label. Advertisements were taken out and a release date announced. Suddenly, the group found themselves dropped and the album pulled from the release schedule.

The group’s label at the time, Relapse, said that:

Over the weekend the German magazine Ox brought it to our attention that a person named Gerard Menuhin was prominently thanked in the new Tau Cross album, and specifically credited in the liner notes for inspiring Rob Miller. All Relapse records go through a vigorous proofing process — checking for spelling and punctuation mistakes, mostly. We all read this name, but didn't recognize it or think that it was anything other than a personal friend of the band's, that we did not know. Ox however recognized the name as a far-right conspiracy theorist, focused specifically on Holocaust denial. Suddenly the lyrics and themes of the new record were cast in a new light, for me. I spoke with Rob Miller, who is the individual in the band who Ox was interviewing, and while he denied being a Holocaust denier, I cannot comfortably work on or sell a record that dabbles in ideologies such as these. There are certain issues that rise above mere political differences and this is one of them. I spoke with the rest of the band on Monday, and NONE of them had any idea who Gerard Menuhin was, and were as shocked by these references in the record, as we at the label were. I firmly believe that these references and mentions in the record do not represent the band as a whole. but rather just Rob Miller's. In light of all this, Relapse swiftly decided we cannot move forward with this album — we gave the masters back to the band, together with the rest of their catalog.

Subsequently, the rest of the band walked away, telling the press that:

…the four of us were informed that Rob Miller has submitted a thank you to a notorious right-wing author who none of us are familiar with. We promptly researched this author's history and we are adamantly against anything relating to this kind of ugliness. We've been vigilant in our attempts to get answers as to why this has happened and, frankly, how it could possibly happen considering our background and beliefs.

Miller has released two statements on the matter and, since then, has quietly re-recorded Messengers… for release on Easy Action Records.



This is a situation worth pulling apart for discussion, especially considering the “controversy” surrounding Michael Gove earlier in the year. First and foremost, it is not a crime to read material that you find morally reprehensible and as, Kenan Malik wrote, “…possessing a book is not the same as being sympathetic to its contents.” Indeed, reading such material is often the sign of a mind looking to understand how people manipulate data and selectively interpret events and testimony in order to come up with ludicrous statements, such as the Holocaust being a hoax. Learning what the opposite side say is how you refute their talking points. There is also the argument that creative types will always want to explore areas considered repulsive by mainstream society (such as murder, rape, racism etc) and so will use such texts in which to get themselves into a similar frame of mind (akin to method acting).

Miller’s appearance on The Meads of Asphodel’s 2013 album Sonderkommando could be cited as an example of this mindset. Described by Keith Kahn-Harris as an example of how metal can engage “…with the Holocaust in ways that disturb in a more productive way” through “…making their own position difficult to perceive, metal artists can ask difficult questions of the listener: Who are you identifying with? Who are the heroes? What is the source of your fascination?”), it’s an example of how far artists can go to make art that disturbs.

However, publicly thanking such a person like Gerard Menuhin (and thereby, implicitly, giving your seal of approval) is where questions have to be asked. Although Miller has not given any indication that he is a Holocaust denier, he will have to face questions about this for a long time. Indeed, I am deeply uneasy regarding the public thanking of Menuhin, especially because (based on his two statements) Miller doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal. Then again, Noam Chomsky never apologised for Memoire En Defense, did he?

By this point, most will have made their mind up about whether they want to listen to this album or not. That’s up to you to decide. I am here, ultimately, to review the record. So here we go.

‘Yaldabaoth’ (often seen by Gnostics as the manifestation of the vengeful God in the Old Testament) opens the record and, straight out of the gates it’s a formidable Tau Cross riffer, almost a kind of rewrite of Amebix’s ‘Arise’ (which, combined with the title, suggests an intentional crossover). While the main bulk of the song is exciting as it is, the middle eight adds keyboards into the mix and swirls to an epic crescendo. Lyrically, it depicts a narrator gazing at the wonder of the stars and wondering how paradise could become a prison (some would say a metaphor for social media and modern life). The repetition of the word “infection” makes it a very 2020 song, especially with the payoff line that "Religion is our downfall."

Following on is ‘Hollow Earth’, where a crusty one chord riff gives way to an Iron Maiden style gallop, giving the feeling of riding into battle, while some plaintive piano work adds a sombre texture to proceedings. The song appears to be a shamanistic style call for a return to a simpler lifestyle with a warning about eco collapse. Vocally, Miller is on fine form here as he alternates between world weary singing and his ferocious bark.

‘Burn with Me’ was the first track previewed and it revealed a more NWOBHM style influence in the guitar lick, but with some machine-like chugging to contrast and compliment the lick. Gotta love the Motorhead style bass run in the pre-chorus, which is carried on through the guitar solo which sounds like Phil Campbell did a session for Tau Cross. Lyrically, there seems to be an overarching metaphor of truth equalling fire. While this sounds nasty, the narrator offers solace when he announces in the chorus "Take my hand/And burn with me." Combined with the music, it’s a soaring anthem of defiance.



‘Black Cadillac’ is an odd curveball as it combines seemingly fun imagery invoking Jack the Ripper and undertakers until it gradually reveals itself to be about secret police removing people from society, while ‘Violence of the Lord’ sounds and feels like it was recorded at a cliffside, owing to the echoey and (dare I say) folky bass riff, the power of the chorus and the main riff which could start hurricanes.

‘Sorrow Draws the Plough’ closes the album in sombre (but optimistic) fashion. The evocative acoustic piano line and strings compliment the narrator ruminating on the end of the world/beginning of winter but still finding solace in the beauty of the stars (a cyclical motif shared with the first song) and accepting that the environment will conquer and rebuild again once spring begins.

As a Tau Cross record, it does its job effectively without ever sacrificing the purity of the band’s sound. The riffs are bludgeoning and widescreen, while the rhythm section doesn’t just drive the songs, they power them. Lyrically, the general theme is that of fake news and the suppression of alternative narratives, with the odd bit of Ufology thrown in. Undoubtedly there will be those who will suggest that these lyrics are “dog-whistles” and, while they are entitled to that interpretation, there is nothing here that would suggest anything to do with Holocaust denial.

Miller once reflected that the crust-punk scene (which was meant to be filled with free thinkers and anarchists) were sheep like in their mentality, citing the example of so called crusties not mentioning anything about the Falklands until Crass has put out ‘Sheep Farming in the Falklands’ as a single. Such distain for groupthink is evident throughout Messengers of Deception, marking it out as a record about the trials and tribulations that we have felt in 2020.

A questioning, thought provoking modern punk/metal album that will spark passionate debate as well as get heads banging.



⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

Tau Cross ➖ ‘Messengers of Deception’

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