Europe’s far-left problem
In France, the far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon is harnessing and mainstreaming antisemitism, according to K., the Paris-based French Jewish magazine that authored the France segment of the ADL report.
(TIMES OF ISRAEL) – The entry of a far-left party into government in Spain is allowing antisemitism to return to mainstream platforms, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said on Tuesday.
The assertion appeared in a report on left-wing antisemitism published by the ADL and partner organisations in France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain.
The report focuses on a phenomenon that is often eclipsed in reports about antisemitism in Europe, which many associate primarily with neo-fascists.
In the section about Spain, the ADL singled out “radical neo-Marxist party” Podemos. The coalition in 2020 allowed Podemos to enter government, which “disrupted the postwar exclusion of antisemitism from mainstream platforms, and antisemitism is now making inroads in the pro-independence Basque and Catalan parties”, the report said.
ACOM, a pro-Israel group in Spain that is a local partner of the ADL, wrote in the report: “Anti-Israel antisemitism of the political left accounts for the overwhelming share of antisemitism, while the Spanish right is almost entirely pro-Israel and guards against antisemitism.”
In the United Kingdom, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn signalled to antisemites on the political establishment’s left-wing fringes that they were welcome in the party, the CST watchdog on antisemitism wrote in the joint report. But Keir Starmer, his centrist successor, has taken significant steps to reverse this, the authors added.
In France, the far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon is harnessing and mainstreaming antisemitism, according to K., the Paris-based French Jewish magazine that authored the France segment of the ADL report.
Melenchon has made many statements widely condemned as antisemitic. In 2019 he vowed never to accede to the “arrogant dictates” of CRIF, the umbrella of French-Jewish communities. In 2014, he defended Arabs who torched synagogues in France and called Jewish supporters of Israel “citizens who decided to rally in front of the embassy of a foreign country or serve its flag, weapon in hand”.
In Germany, “the debates on the political left are normalising antisemitism and shifting the baseline,” Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, an anti-discrimination group, wrote in the segment dealing with that country. What once was “considered an extreme position a few years ago is now a centrist opinion in the wider discourse”, it said.
There is a lot the US Jewish community can learn from the experience of Jewish communities across Europe, the ADL added: “Anti-Zionist rhetoric and terminology popular in European left circles are increasingly utilised by some in US political far left” circles.
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