David Baddiel is wrong – anyone should be able to play Jews

Adam Solomons | 17th February 2021 | Uncategorised

More details David Baddiel - Soho Theatre - Thursday 9th January 2020 (CC BY 2.0)

David Baddiel's Jews Don't Count is well-intentioned but sloppy, says Adam Solomons

David Baddiel’s polemic Jews Don’t Count has proved surprisingly controversial. He seems to have gone out of his way to rile political opponents - mostly antisemites, and their enablers and apologists. Rightly so. There will never be a surplus of books lambasting antisemitic hatred or hypocrisy among the darker corners of the political left, which - shock - didn’t vanish when Jeremy Corbyn ceased to be Labour leader. Baddiel is wise to have written this tract when he did and wise in much of what he says in it. The basic thesis is a convincing one: modern social justice efforts too often exclude Jews because of their (or our: I’m half-Jewish) status as white, and often privileged. Antisemitism doesn’t fall into the category of traditional far-right bigotry expounded by your traditional far-right bigot, Baddiel argues, and is therefore an inevitable blind spot among those who close their eyes to it. Despite being subject to one of the oldest forms of racial hatred, in contemporary debat...

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