Commentator Paul Mason, who is trying to become a Labour MP, slandered an audience member as antisemitic during a Q&A discussion at an event entitled ‘Is it worth voting Labour in 2024?’
The audience member said:
I can’t believe that there hasn’t been any mention here of the Labour Files, like you know the way that Jeremy Corbyn was outed and obliterated through the media because of Keir Starmer and his Israeli sponsors and the fact that so many in the Labour Party are supported and funded by Israel. How can anyone even consider voting Labour, they don’t stand for the people.
Israeli lobby – close ties with Starmer’s Labour
The audience member’s comment is grounded in evidence.
The Labour Files – an investigation by Al Jazeera – documented Israel putting up a £1m bounty for insiders to sabotage former anti-imperialist and left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The undercover work also revealed that Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) works “really closely” with the Israeli embassy. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is an LFI vice chair.
Pro-Israel lobbyists, meanwhile, have funded two fifths of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet, including Starmer himself.
On top of this, the mainstream media has been complicit in the smear campaign that democratic movements are antisemitic. A Media Reform Coalition case study found coverage of Corbyn’s Labour and antisemitism to be a “disinformation paradigm”.
In addition, Starmer helped secure Corbyn’s 2019 electoral defeat through pushing a re-run of the Brexit referendum, a policy elites used to guarantee Corbyn’s Labour lost.
In response at the event in Kilburn, Paul Mason said:
See, why didn’t you just say Jew? Why didn’t you just say Jew? Because…why didn’t you just say “He’s a Jewish agent”? Why didn’t you just say it because that’s what you mean isn’t it. And I’ll say to you, anybody in this room who wants to be part of a left where you go around saying ‘Starmer’s an Israeli agent’ if you want to do that, fine
Mason’s credibility was brought into question in 2022 when leaked emails revealed him plotting with an intelligence contractor to take down independent media sites.
Paul Mason’s “unhinged response”
After the event, Paul Mason misrepresented what the audience member said to hundreds of thousands of followers. And on social media, people called him out:
Paul Mason lied.
He is willing to defame ordinary people to get media slots, and ideally, a constituency.
We simply don’t need people like this in politics (or journalism for that matter). If you speak at an event with him he could lie about you too. https://t.co/qakTrjyxsh
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 26, 2024
This is Paul Mason's unhinged response to the audience member https://t.co/PZ4AtSgd53 pic.twitter.com/rqgQZqUKl7
— j (@jrc1921) March 26, 2024
Others pointed out that Mason equating pro-Israel with ‘Jewish’ is itself antisemitic, because it is holding Jewish people collectively responsible for Israel’s actions:
These dispatches from the front line of, er, Paul Mason trying to get a Labour candidacy are the distilled essence of desperation, as rude reality keeps crashing in and people *dissent*.
The conflation of Israel with Jewry, an antisemitic canard, is the cherry on top, really. pic.twitter.com/DBG87KGZj5— simon maginn (@simonmaginn) March 25, 2024
Mason went on to claim that Starmer’s Labour is “anti-racist”, despite its support for Israel’s genocidal and colonial assault against Palestinian people. Israel has now killed over 32,000 Palestinians including 13,000 children in under six months. The state has displaced 85% of the population of Gaza.
Moreover, his claims of Starmer’s party being “anti-racist” are at odds with Martin Forde KC. The author of the notorious Forde Report claimed in 2023 that:
Anti-black racism and Islamophobia is not taken as seriously as antisemitism within the Labour party, that’s the perception that has come through [from his report]… My slight anxiety is that in terms of hierarchy, and genuine underlying concerns about wider racial issues, it’s not in my view a sufficient response to say that was then, this is now.
Mason has been caught trying to suppress discussion that exposes the UK political establishment through bogus antisemitism allegations. The commentator becoming an MP is the opposite of what we need.
Featured image via Penguin Books UK- YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
