Ken Loach ha annunciato di essere stato espulso dal Partito Laburista
britannico.
“Lo stato maggiore laburista ha infine deciso che non sono adatto a far
parte del loro partito, poiché non rinnegherò quelli che sono stati già
espulsi. Ebbene, sono orgoglioso di stare con i buoni amici e compagni vittime
dell’epurazione. C’è davvero una caccia alle streghe”, ha scritto su Twitter il
regista di 85 anni, famoso per i suoi film di forte denuncia sociale.
Loach ha attaccato il nuovo leader del partito Keir Starmer, succeduto a
Jeremy Corbyn, sostenendo che “Starmer e la sua cricca non guideranno mai un
partito del popolo. Noi siamo tanti, loro sono pochi. Solidarietà.”
Ken Loach aveva lasciato il Partito Laburista negli anni Novanta,
disgustato dalla politica di Tony Blair, per poi rientrare con l’elezione a
leader di Jeremy Corbyn nel 2015, un evento che ha segnato una decisa svolta a
sinistra e un enorme aumento del numero di iscritti. Corbyn si è dimesso in
seguito alla sconfitta elettorale del dicembre 2019 ed è stato sospeso dal
partito l’ottobre scorso.
In Defence of Ken Loach - Yanis Varoufakis
So, it’s come to that: Ken Loach is now the target of a character
assassination campaign waged by those who will stop at nothing to shield the
apartheid policies of Israel. Their message to people of good conscience is
simple: Unless you too want to be tainted as an antisemite, keep quiet about
the crimes against humanity and the assault on human rights in the land of
Palestine. They are putting the rest of us on notice: If we can do this to Ken
Loach, a man who has spent his life championing the victims of oppression,
racism and discrimination, imagine what we shall do to you. If you dare support
the Palestinians’ human rights, we will claim that you hate the Jews.
The art of assassinating the character of a leftist has become better honed
in recent times. When the Financial Times called me a Marxist
biker, I confessed to the charge gladly. Calling me a Stalinist, as some
unsophisticated rightists do, also fails to ignite an existentialist crisis in
my soul because I know full well that I would be a prime candidate for the
gulag under any Stalinist regime. But call me a misogynist or an antisemite and
the pain is immediate. Why? Because, cognisant of how imbued we all are in Western
societies with patriarchy, antisemitism and other forms of racism, these
accusations hit a nerve.
It is, thus, a delicious irony that those of us who have tried the hardest
to rid our souls of misogyny, antisemitism and other forms of racism are hurt
the most when accused of these prejudices. We are fully aware of how easily
antisemitism can infect people who are not racist in other respects. We
understand well its cunning and potency, for instance the fact that the Jews
are the only people to have been despised both for being capitalists and for
being leftie revolutionaries. This is why the strategic charge of antisemitism,
whose purpose is to silence and ostracise dissidents, causes us internal
turmoil. This is what lies behind the runaway success of such vilification
campaigns against my friends Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Brian Eno, Roger
Waters and now Ken Loach.
‘Is your exclusive criticism of Israel not symptomatic of antisemitism?’,
we are often asked. Setting aside the farcicality of the claim that we have
been criticising Israel exclusively, criticism of Israel is not and can never
be criticism of the Jews, exactly as criticism of the Greek state or of
American imperialism is not criticism of the Greeks or of the Americans. The
same applies to interrogating the wisdom of having created an ethnically
specific state. When remarkable people like my heroes Hannah Arendt and Albert
Einstein questioned the Zionist project of a Jewish state in Palestine, it is
offensive to claim that to debate Israel’s existence is to be antisemitic. The
question is not whether Arendt and Einstein were right or wrong. The question
is whether their questioning of the wisdom of a Jewish state in the land of
Palestine is antisemitic or not. Clearly, while antisemites opposed the
foundation of the state of Israel, it does not follow that only antisemites
opposed the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
On a personal note, back in 2015, while serving as Greece’s finance
minister, a Greek pro-troika newspaper thought they could diminish me with a
cartoon depicting me as a Shylock-like figure. What these idiots did not realise
was that they made me very proud! Trying to tarnish my image by likening me to
a Jew was, and remains, a badge of honour. Speaking also on behalf of
aforementioned friends vilified as antisemites, we feel deeply flattered
whenever an antisemite bundles us together with a people who have bravely
endured racism for so long. As long as a single Jew feels threatened by
antisemitism, we shall pin the Star of David on our chest, eager and ready to
be counted as Jews in solidarity – even though we may not be Jewish. At the
very same time, we wear the Palestinian flag as a symbol of solidarity with a
people living in an apartheid state built by reactionary Israelis, damaging my
Jewish and Arab brothers and sisters and stoking the fires of racism which, ironically,
always forge a steelier variety of antisemitism.
Returning to Ken Loach, thankfully no smear campaign against him can
succeed. Not only because Ken’s work and life are proof of the accusation’s
absurdity, but also because of the courageous Israelis who take awful risks by
defending the right of Jews and non-Jews alike to criticise Israel. For
instance, the group of academics who
have methodically deconstructed the IHRA’s indefensible definition of
antisemitism, which conflates it with legitimate criticisms of Israel that many
progressive Israelis share. Or the wonderful people working with the Israeli
human rights organisation B’TSELEM to resist
the apartheid policies of successive Israeli governments. I am just as grateful
to them as I am to my friend and mentor Ken Loach.
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