3 min read
ByDavid Aaronovitch, David Aaronovitch
A husband and wife team take to Twitter to oppose racism (kind of)
August 23, 2018 10:20Meet the Scamblers. They’re a husband and wife team of retired senior academic sociologists and this week they have been busy on Twitter. Quite a lot of the time it’s pictures and articles from the Guardian and, in the last week, quite a lot of the time it’s been Jeremy Corbyn and the Jews.
Now, though Twitter is publishing, for many people it’s still a kind of semi-private conversation, like in a pub. They sort of know they’ll be overheard and they sort of always forget. So it may be that on Monday when Professor Graham Scambler had finished retweeting his usual ten or so articles from the Guardian and a number of nice paintings, he didn’t mean to start a row when he pressed TWEET on this: “If a sociologist set out to study whether those identifying as Jewish are under- or over-represented among British elites, would this be antisemitic?” Then he used the tool that enables his followers to vote one way or another.
Now, Graham Scambler is a professor emeritus in sociology at UCL, so his views on sociological research can be imagined to be of a more lofty sort than the twittering layperson’s. And not unsurprisingly, when this tweet was retweeted there were those who wondered, quite sharply, what the Prof was getting at. After all not many of us are familiar with the suggestion that “those identifying as Jewish” (interesting phrase in itself) are under-represented in any kind of elite. Those who study the recent history of the Jews in Europe tend to discover that the boot is usually placed very firmly on the “the Jews run everything” foot.
Professor Scambler was unabashed by the inevitable reception from some people. He doubled down. It was not, of course, about race. Heaven forfend. “I think it’s a genuine research question, & I suspect class is the key factor (eg elite recruitment is largely a function of the class composition of the Jewish minority, not ‘being Jewish’). True of many groups. Lots of studies of high % of elite black athletes: role models impt.”
Then, to another objector who suggested that the timing of this proposition was odd, Professor Scambler replied, “You need to distinguish between my own views - that antisemitism is being weaponised against Labour - and the invitation for others’ responses to a hypothetical study. Shouldn’t be too hard. I’m not conducting such a study. And I oppose ALL forms of racism.”
The next day, however, he was fed up. And he tweeted this: “Strange how easily the Labour leadership is being played for suckers. What’s going on behind the scenes? Compromise not only wrong but politically fruitless. Israel doesn’t want a pro-Palestinian PM in the UK. End of.”
Just saying. End of. Oppose ALL racism. The usual violent innocence. Played for suckers by who, though? Who is “behind the scenes”? Answer: “Israel doesn’t want a pro-Palestinian PM in the UK.”
Enter Annette Scambler. Retired from the Open University, now linked to King’s College London and also a senior sociologist with #corbyn on her Twitter account. Her Twitter history has fewer Guardian articles and no paintings. For her it’s all politics. On Monday she retweeted her husband’s research query . And then she retweeted someone else who asked, “why is antisemitism treated as a privileged case? All racism is deplorable, and should be treated as such across the board. We have the Tory ‘Windrush scandal’ which has been brushed under the carpet, WHY? We have Boris Johnson’s comments ‘DEFENDED’ by the media-WHY?”
This question clearly resonated because the next day she herself wrote, “Sociological question: If someone is not a Jew and abuses Jewish people because of their Jewishness he/she would rightly be deemed anti-Semitic. Why is there no equivalent term to apply to a Jew who abuses non-Jews because of their non-Jewishness?” And then, “A few more sociological questions. Why is antisemitism given its own Code? Why don’t women, black people, Moslems, Chinese, Asian people, gay people etc etc have their own codes against abuse including lots of examples? Why is one minority privileged over all others?”
Just two middle class, highly educated Corbyn supporters shooting the Twitter breeze on matters Jewish and antisemitic. It’s almost random. And managing, in the course of a couple of days, to unwittingly reproduce and publish some of the most common and damaging antisemitic tropes in the bad old canon, from too powerful to too wealthy to involved in secret conspiracies, to thinking of themselves as better than the goyim. Thank God then, that they oppose ALL forms of racism. Can you imagine what they’d be like if they didn’t?
