As a Jew that observed the Corbyn years with horror, I’ve developed a hair-trigger sensitivity to resurgent anti-Semitism. So, I might have been expected to recoil at the Guardian headline: “Jewish groups criticise Nigel Farage for calling Grant Shapps ‘globalist’.”
This minor shitstorm-within-a-shitstorm (if such a thing is possible) blew up following Shapps’s appointment as Home Secretary and the globalist comments from, among others, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice. The word ‘globalist’ has been rattling around social media quite a bit in recent weeks but when used in the context of Shapps – who happens to be Jewish – it was treated as equivalent to the age old anti-Semitic trope that sees the Rothschilds running the world’s media and the global banking system.
Is ‘globalist’ a word we should therefore avoid using because to some – including, regrettably some Jewish groups – it feels uncomfortably close to these well-established tropes? I think not.
For Farage, Tice and many of their supporters, including me, Britain is struggling to assert its national sovereignty. Both men played a huge role in securing Brexit, after the country voted to leave the EU, a supranational organisation that was felt increasingly to diminish the national self-determination of member countries. The EU may cover just the one continent but there are a number of genuinely global organisations that have increasing sway over how we are governed in Britain:
- The World Health Organisation in December announced its Pandemic Preparedness Treaty by which it would determine the world’s approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. A petition calling for a referendum was rejected and Boris Johnson committed the U.K. to joining.
- The International Monetary Fund weighed in with criticism of Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget: “The nature of the U.K. measures will likely increase inequality.” For this global organisation to stick its oar into the domestic affairs of a developed country was unprecedented and undoubtedly contributed to the loss of nerve that led to an unravelling of a much-needed intervention for growth.
- COP26 last year saw Britain cement its period of leadership by announcing the world’s most ambitious climate change target and setting it into law.
Having witnessed a bloody and unfinished battle to get Britain out of the EU, many Britons concerned about the continued erosion of national sovereignty will have spent the last few weeks despairing as the brief Truss-Kwarteng fire has been snuffed out by an anti-growth coalition comprising the media, the public sector and our entire political class.
So, is it legitimate to call ministers globalists? Absolutely. This is partly about their ideological adherence to the global consensus of Net Zero, high taxes, low growth and antipathy to small business. There is also the mundanity of their attachment to the current status and future jobs offered by these organisations – just witness the mutual preening at group photos at any of these events.
Let’s not forget that as Transport Minister, Grant Shapps used lockdowns to impose Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and cycle lanes without consultation across the country, an authoritarian move that restricted the movement of an already constrained population in the name of Net Zero. The fact that he is Jewish is neither here nor there. Indeed, many on the Left accusing Farage et al. of using an antisemitic slur actively campaigned to get Jeremy Corbyn into No. 10. Like Hunt, Sunak and nearly all of the Cabinet, Shapps is a globalist and to shut down our ability to say so via the smear of anti-Semitism is an oppression of our freedom of speech.
Ian Price is a Business Psychologist. Find him on Twitter.
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Being a globalist has nothing whatever to do with faith. I did noit know Schapps was jewish and I don’t care, he was incompetent as Transpiort Secretary and he has been disruptive fopr a long time. He has always valued a press release or interview higher than doing his job. Maybe that is why DVLA performed so badly under his watch.
I can see no reason whatsoever why jewish people would not value the independence of the country as much as anyone else in the UK. Globalisation is not free trade (which I support with few restrictions or qualifications) but globalisation has come to mean:
1 surrendering our self government to unelected, unknown, international socialists who develop theor policy at our expense in secret.
2 unlimited mass migration of poor ill educated masses to places which have evolved greater social infrastructure and a capacity for greater output per head, which the poor in the recipient countries are expected to suffer for.
Neither did I. He’s such an unimpressive individual that none of us know the first thing about him!
So true!
Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are the two names most people would cite when asked to describe a Globalist.
I don’t believe that either man is Jewish.
Both could do with a little chop , if they haven’t already
I wasn’t aware that being a lackey of the WEF and following an agenda that uses climate change as the rationale for eradicating cash payments, eroding basic freedoms and giving governments and corporations almost unlimited power over citizens, had anything to do with Judaism or any other religion.
There’s a Jonathan Miller joke from the Sixties that comes to mind…
Now go away and get our shrubbery or we shall say “anti-Semitic” at you again.
Ah, “the age old anti-Semitic trope that sees the Rothschilds running the world’s media and the global banking system.”
Why is that anti-Semitic? It’s clearly assumed as a given in the article. The Rothschilds had inordinate influence in the banking systems of their day and were instrumental in the relationships between governments and private banks through their so-called independent central banks. They brought the model to the US through their non-Jewish counterparts Morgan and Rockefeller and eventually established the Federal Reserve on Jekyll Island. This same cabal of bankers control the world’s money supply through the IMF, World Bank, central banks in each country and the fractional reserve system which allows them to create debt money out of nothing and give it to their cronies through quantitative easing. These are age old dynastic banking empires that bear the names of their patriarchs in the firms they operate under. One of the big names happens to be Jewish.
What does this have to do with being anti-Jewish or having anything against the Jewish race? Few of the top banking families today are actually Jewish, especially at the top. Why does the name Rothschild allow our whole system of financial corruption to be shrouded by the fig leaf of the Holocaust?
Or are we really that easily discouraged from asking?
Sadly ‘anti-semitic’ has become a catch-all defence against any threats to the status quo, easily invoked because some Jews inevitably occupy positions of power. Regrettably this is also a strategy used by Israel whenever anyone criticises its policies. It’s a dangerous game; both cheapening and normalising anti-semitism, crying wolf, and running the risk of creating greater hostility and mistrust for the very group it pretends to defend.
yes before the first world war the Rothschilds were influential. when I started working in the City they were one of a number of merchant banks, all of whom were even then lightly capitalised by international standards, and of no particular reputation except for their name.so when Rothschilds are so often still mentioned when discussing international finance one must wonder whether the writer does not know the names of any others or it is intended to be anti semitic although it is debateable how many of the present lot of that family regards themselves as Jewish having married out so much
I think there is a perception that Jews are over-represented in international finance and have a tendency to be clannish. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know but there are plenty of instances of particular races being over -represented in particular sectors and probably behaving clannishly which is a natural human trait. If we can’t discuss whether these things are true or not and whether they matter then it’s hard to talk about the world in any sensible manner, while at the same time being conscious of where such reasoning might lead – but that can’t be an excuse to shut down debate and silence people you don’t like.
An antisemite is someone who proposes, implements or agrees with an antisemitic policy, ie one targetting Jews because they’re Jews. That’s the only sensible definition of the term. Any use other use of it is just another case of the tried and trusted American (of course) tactic of substituting (hysterical/ alarmist) name calling and guilty-by-association fallacies for political arguments. In the given context, it basically means Farrage is A Really Evil Guy[tm] and as All Good People Must Shun Really Evil Guys[tm] unless they want to become really evil guys themselves, what he actually said doesn’t matter anymore.
As a Jew, I would like an explanation of the opening sentence, ‘As a Jew that observed the Corbyn years with horror, I’ve developed a hair-trigger sensitivity to resurgent anti-Semitism.’
I would like to know what resurgent anti-semitism the author is referring to. What I observed was a relentless politically-motivated and very obvious smear campaign against a politician who, for all his manifest flaws, is categorically not anti-semitic. Reluctant to read the rest of the article with that ill-informed opener.
Yes I can’t stand Corbyn or his politics but that particular accusation against him never seemed all that credible to me.
His brother Piers on the other hand is carrying out sterling work on our behalf regarding upholding our rights and freedoms.
“RESIST DEFY DO NOT COMPLY!!!”
For god’s sake, let’s get this whole anti-semitism out in the open shall we? It is not anti-semitic to dislike someone of Jewish origin or to insult someone of Jewish origin. It IS anti-semitic to dislike someone because they are Jewish or insult someone because they are Jewish. There is a huge difference. The term anti-semitic is explained in the actual words used in the term as in ‘against semites’. So, it follows that it’s not anti-semitic to support the right for Palestinians to have their own country – something that is often cited as an extreme form of anti-semitism. It’s not, it’s just a way that Jewish nationalists prevent a large body of people (potential enemies now) having their own country on one’s own doorstep – having systematically taken away those people’s lands since 1948 in the first place. That’s not anti-semitic, by the way, that’s what actually happened. I personally didn’t like the way it happened but I have no problem with people being Jewish. It is what is done in their name that I don’t like and then the way that that is weaponised so no one has the right to criticise the state of Israel, which is absolute nonsense. Everyone has a right to a homeland as the Jewish people did when they carved out the state of Israel. For Jewish groups to pounce on Nigel Farage for being anti-semitic for calling out Grant Shapps as a ‘globalist’ is just ridiculous because Shapps IS a globalist who also happen tp be Jewish. Farage didn’t call him out for being ‘Jewish’ did he? Case closed.
I think it should be stronger than that: An antisemite is someone who wants to persecute Jews, who is persecuting Jews or who believes that Jews ought to be persecuted. That’s more than a mere dislike. Eg, I dislike football and football fans. But I’m perfectly ok with the the fact that both exist.
Fair enough, better description, RW.
No one ever thought about the slippery sh1thouse,s religious beliefs he’s just plain dodgy ! Didn’t he have an alias at some point intertwined with some nefarious business deals ! Actually he’d make a great MP , oh hang on …
It was from the infamous Alex Jones decades ago where I first heard the term globalist being used as a description and catch-all for the hidden hand running the gears behind the scenes. I guess I’m more interested in why these connections are becoming more frequented in the mainstream, usually the tactic was to simply ignore and leave it to the depths of the internet where any potential progress in the narrative never really gained traction or a critical mass of exposure to genuinely change perceptions, so why we’re now witnessing these powerful institutions running defence is the more pertinent question in my opinion.
Catherine Austin Fitts calls “them” Mr Global doesn’t she and I’m pretty sure she’s referencing the same elitist cartel pulling the strings. How any of this is anti-Semitic though I’ve no idea – it’s almost as if the propagandists are starting to believe the conspiracy narratives they told us were dangerous and ignore for our health themselves. What’s next – any criticism of the Israeli government to be considered anti-Semitic?
Along with many, I didn’t know anything about Shapp’s religion. He’s been one of many Transport Ministers, but one should note that Ministers in that department have to behave like steering a massive ship. Trying to get it to change course is hard work, with most of it’s policies built in under the direction of the Permanent Sec et al.
Schapps sounds vaccinated to me.
resurgent antisemitism from the Corby years, there’s a trope for a start
If people don’t want to be called Globalists, perhaps they shouldn’t behave like one.
Schwab’s book on the Great Reset singled out Brexit Britain and Trump US for criticism, while praising the EU, CCP, WHO and UN.
“Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism.” – Ayn Rand