The Community Security Trust (CST) has – together with the data science company Signify – released a report concerning “The online networks behind the Labour Party’s antisemitism crisis”.
“The problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party over the past four years has been fuelled by a flow of antisemitic tweets and posts on social media, carried out in the name of the Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Many of these tweets use hateful language to attack Jewish Labour MPs or other people who raise concerns about antisemitism; other tweets claim that any mention of antisemitism is part of a conspiracy to ‘smear’ Corbyn and Labour. […]
This report analyses the behaviour of Labour supporting Twitter accounts, networks and alternative media sites to discover whether (and if so, how) antisemitic narratives have taken root in Labour-supporting online circles. Using up to four years’ worth of tweets, it finds that there is no separation online between generic pro-Labour Twitter accounts and campaigns, and abusive Twitter accounts that claim to act in support of Labour in order to shut down allegations of antisemitism against the party.”
The report states:
“Over the last three years, the Community Security Trust (CST) has recorded a year-on year increase in the number of antisemitic incidents reported in the UK. In 2018, the months in which CST recorded the highest monthly antisemitic incident totals correlated to periods when political and media debate over allegations of antisemitism in Labour was at its most intense. […] Data collected for this report shows that Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader has seen the baseline level for national online coverage and engagement, across all media, of Labour, antisemitism and related issues, reach a level unprecedented in recent years.”
It shows how:
“…networks of Labour-supporting Twitter accounts endorse or spread the idea that allegations of antisemitism against Labour are a fake smear campaign; allegations that sometimes stray into wider conspiracy theories about a shadowy Israeli, Zionist or Jewish lobby. […]
Underpinning all of this is a network of alternative media sites that have risen to prominence as supporters of the Corbyn leadership and have become influential voices on the left. These websites consistently claim that antisemitism is being weaponised as a smear. […]
The allegation that Jews invent false accusations of antisemitism to prevent people from criticising Israel was named The Livingstone Formulation by the academic Dr. David Hirsh, after Ken Livingstone had written in 2006 that “for far too long the accusation of anti-Semitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government, as I have been.””
Readers are no doubt aware that the BBC has repeatedly promoted the Livingstone Formulation in its reporting on the UK Labour party over the past three years. It has also long promoted another theme to which the CST report refers: the notion of a ‘Jewish lobby’ and/or an ‘Israel lobby’.
Among the ‘alternative media sites’ named in the CST’s report is ‘Electronic Intifada’ and one of the people named in the report is contributor Asa Winstanley. Another is ‘The Canary’, the editor of which – Kerry-Anne Mendoza – has been a contributor to BBC programmes such as ‘Question Time’, ‘Newsnight’ and political shows.
One of many topics mentioned in the report is “the antisemitic mural that Jeremy Corbyn was criticised over, after it emerged in 2018 that Corbyn had posted a message of support on the Facebook page of the artist”. Readers may recall that at the time the BBC refrained from informing its audiences that the mural was antisemitic.
