In response to ‘Livingstone affirms anti-Semitic remarks’
by International Christian Assembly Jerusalem, 23/3/2006

Also in response to ‘Livingstone renews anti-Jewish slurs’
by George Conger, Jerusalem Post, 23/3/2006.

These two articles, and similar ones in various publications, explain how the Mayor of London got annoyed at the poor performance of contractors hired to build London’s Olympic City, complaining that the Reuben Brothers were the ‘main impediment’ to the successful completion of the project and that the taxpayer might have to ‘pick up the bill of £600m to £700m’ because of their actions.

Venting his frustration with the contractors, he said that they should go back to Iran (they are of Iranian descent) if they refused to accept the Mayor’s planning régime for the Olympic City.

Now, an anti-racist reader might object to Mr Livingstone’s comments on the basis that telling anyone to go back where they came from creates a climate in which outsiders are unwelcome. However, we can detect no articles attacking Livingstone on behalf of Iranians. Instead, the Mayor is attacked in two rather contradictory ways. On one hand, he is rebuked for not knowing enough about the Reubens (their grandparents are Iranian, but their parents were born in Iraq and they themselves were born in India; additionally, they are Jewish). On the other hand, there is an assumption that he did know about them, and that his comments were ‘anti-Semitic’, i.e. anti-Jewish.

This is an interesting new concept in racism: that someone can be racist against a person for belonging to a certain ethnic group even if one demonstrates no knowledge of their belonging to that group and even if one’s comments are unrelated to that group.

This obviously raises the question of what happens if the ‘victim’ belongs to multiple groups. Is one then racist against all those groups? Well, let us take this as a test case.

The Reubens are Iranian, Iraqi, Indian and Jewish. If Livingstone tells them to go back home to Iran , against whom is he racist? Against all four groups? Against the one he mentioned? Against the ones beginning with ‘I’?? No, according to the Jerusalem Post and others, he is against Jewish people. Rationalists may be highly puzzled at this point, for obvious reasons.

We believe that the only rational explanation for the condemnation is that the people involved are speaking a special form of English. When they say ‘anti-Semite’, they are including many more people in the definition than the rest of us do. As well as including people who denigrate Jews as Jews, they want to be able to include people who denigrate any individual who later turns out to be Jewish.

Since applying such an inclusive definition with consistency would result in labelling almost the entire world population as ‘anti-Semites’, it is of course used inconsistently: it is applied to people seen as enemies of Israel, such as Livingstone. Because the definition is so absurd, its proponents need some back-up when they try to apply it. That is to say, they need to argue using some logical fallacies. With Livingstone, the fallacy used is equivocation. It goes like this:

  • Livingstone has made a racist comment about the Reubens.
  • The Reubens are Jewish.
  • Livingstone has therefore made a racist comment about some Jews.
  • So, Livingstone is racist against Jews (‘anti-Semitic’).

The equivocation lies in a misinterpretation of the third point. The preposition ‘about’ here simply tells us which two people he was talking about, but it can be misconstrued as referring to the nature of the comments. This false argument by ambiguity of language is clearer still if we add different information about the Reuben brothers:

  • Livingstone has made a racist comment about the Reubens.
  • The Reubens are property developers.
  • Livingstone has therefore made a racist comment about some property developers.
  • So, Livingstone is racist against property developers.

This line of argument is faulty whether we insert ‘Jews’, ‘property developers’, ‘brothers’, ‘Iraqis’ or anything else. So why do journalists go to such absurd rhetorical lengths to defame people like Livingstone who criticise individual Jewish people or Israeli government policy? One can only conclude that these journalists are hideously biased in favour of a certain race, granting protection not given to other groups.  Since no other group gets this special individual protection that these journalists give to Jewish people, we multiculturalists must condemn as racists those who use the term ‘anti-Semitism’ in this overly insidious way. Special protection for an ethnic group means discrimination against non-members, which is by definition racist. George Conger of the Jerusalem Post and all those who echo his supremacist suggestions therefore demonstrate their own racism whilst ironically trying to tar Mayor Livingstone with that brush.