This just says so much about the true nature of the artificially manufactured panic around “antisemitism” in the West.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley read this article.
The U.K. is getting crazier and crazier in its defense of Israel. Now they’re canceling the visas of mainstream normie political pundits for criticizing the state of Israel, and investigating people for antisemitic hate crimes when they denounce Zionists who aren’t even Jewish.
American progressive commentator Cenk Uygur and his nephew Hasan Piker have both been denied visas by the British government, saying they were blocked from entering the country because of their criticism of Israel.
“I’ve been banned from the U.K.,” Uygur said in a tweet. “I tried to get on a flight to London to attend SXSW London and give a speech at Oxford. I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!”
“the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel,” said Piker in a repost of his uncle’s statement. “the west is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel.”
This is a significant escalation from London, because neither Uygur nor Piker could reasonably be described as politically extremist in any way. They’re essentially just Bernie Sanders progressives who sit well within the mainstream U.S. political Overton window; I personally don’t follow either of them because they are both far too aligned with the Democratic Party for my liking.
This move is yet another win for the U.K.’s extremely powerful Israel lobby. Two weeks ago The Jewish Chronicle ran a story titled “Social media influencer Hasan Piker must be banned from Britain, say Jewish leaders,” subtitled “Online agitator who said Zionists were like ‘Nazis’ and refused to condemn Hamas poses a threat to British Jews.”
So the pressure campaign appears to have paid off.
This comes as the Metropolitan Police launch an investigation into an incident in which actress Helen Mirren was called an “evil Zionist bitch” by a man on the street last year, saying in a statement that “We are aware of a video circulating online, showing a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill.”
To be clear, Helen Mirren is not Jewish, so she can’t have been a victim of “antisemitic verbal abuse”. She is however an avowed supporter of the state of Israel, which makes her a Zionist.
In a 2023 interview with Israeli media, Mirren stirred up controversy with her remarks on her 1967 visit to the Zionist ethnostate, saying, “I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.”
This just says so much about the true nature of the artificially manufactured panic around “antisemitism” in the West. That a woman who is not Jewish can be framed by law enforcement as the victim of an antisemitic hate crime because someone criticized her support for Israel is an admission that this has always been about protecting the interests of the Zionist state, rather than protecting Jews.
Jewishness or Judaism never entered into the equation here; a person who isn’t Jewish was criticized for supporting a genocidal apartheid state, and nothing more. Yet the person who uttered that criticism is now under investigation for antisemitic abuse, because in the eyes of British law enforcement, “antisemitic abuse” just means criticizing the state of Israel.
Western governments will tell you that it is antisemitic to equate all Jews with the state of Israel, and then in their very next breath they will tell you that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism. These two statements are completely contradictory; they cannot both be true. If it’s wrong to equate all Jews with the state of Israel, then it’s wrong to equate criticism of the pro-Israel political ideology with a hateful attack against all Jews.
But that’s how insane the West’s support for Israel is making everything. They’ve got everyone performing impossible mental gymnastics and feats of Orwellian doublethink in order to reconcile the official narrative with reality.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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