Amy Winehouse is vandalised by anti-semites

John Borstlap says:

Incredible… stupid people lining-up with a population who insisted to be led by the most barbarious terrorists imaginable.

V.Lind says:

This is extremely alarming, and unfortunately not isolated. People are entitled to support the Palestinian cause, and to protest the damage in Gaza. (Though they should remember what started this particular round in the ancient and ongoing strife). But the vandalism — which has also been demonstrated by the climate change campaigners, whose cause I tend to support but whose recent tactics I abhor — is indicative of a new kind of activism in the UK, and elsewhere.

One tends to expect it in the US among some other places. In the US it was basically the rightwing playbook — commentators like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and that gang, to say nothing of Tucker Carlson, built their careers on extreme positions and no quarter for different views than theirs. They, and the appallingly self-deluded “fair and balanced” coverage of the Fox network, begat the lunacy of the ultimate self-deluded president the US has ever seen and, scarier still, his appalling fan base.

But the left — if this is indeed the left — seems to have gone one further and added violence to the mix, coupled with a sick-making anti-Semitism that it seems incredible to anyone of my generation (late boomer) could still exist in a country whose tolerance had been one of its best traits.

I know very little about this artist, though I knew her name, that she was very highly regarded and, from the very little I heard of her work, she had some pipes and might have been the makings of a fine jazz singer. I never considered whether she was Jewish or any other classification — she was just a mega pop star. One of many about whom I know nothing, and have heard nothing. Just a name, like Ed Sheeran or Oasis or latterly Harry Styles, that occasionally appears at the top of a story I see in passing about some awards or something. Why on earth is she the target of this hatred, simply because she wore a Star of David? I never heard of her making a pronouncement, the way SInead O’Connor did.

I have been disturbed by reports of anti-Semitism on the left since it became a major issue in the Labour party since Corbyn’s day.

The left I knew as a student was largely composed of Jewish leadership and was totally pro-Israel. That may have shifted as Israeli politics led that country into decisions not all reasonably-minded people — including many of their own citizens — share. But decent people I knew always differentiated — sharply — between a government’s policies and a body of people of a specific faith and race. England was full of people who loathed Mrs. Thatcher, and many people elsewhere shared that view but did not hate English people. Nor did they when, after a good start and a few good years, Tony Blair led the country into what the vast majority thought an ill-advised alliance and its resultant action.

One can only assume that, as Barry said above, “Anti-Semitism is a light sleeper.” Was it really there all along? It is shocking that these protesters know so little of the context in which they are operating. But that seems to be the way du jour. Americans do not give a toss that the man they idolise is a proven liar, sexist, racist, and dangerously uninformed individual who for reasons passing understanding sucks up to the very worst elements in a world full of them. He has given carte blanche to the culture of ignorance, a path upon which American has long been careering, but I expected more resistance from the UK, where reason always seemed to eventually prevail.

Clearly the education system — if there is one — has failed spectacularly to inform young people of recent modern history. (Among many other things, but few so important). This is just the latest wake-up call in a rising trend that makes people of my generation, and I hope at least one behind it, shudder at the apparition of totalitarianism on the rise. For the love of God, where is the resistance? Where is the intelligence?

Leaders like Trump have sanctified ignorance and “alternative truth” as a badge of honour, and while thousands of brave Russians risk freedom and possibly life to lay flowers for a dead, possibly murdered, hero, we of the enlightened west are defacing art and statues of non-political Jewish artists simply BECAUSE they are Jewish?

We ignored that within the last century, in my parents’ generation, to almost unimaginable cost. I wish these young campaigners, who are not without some just cause, could grasp that and realise that there is history behind these disputes and see a broader picture. But the times are out of joint for reason to have a voice. And that should frighten every last one of us, whatever their view on this or any other disputed cause.