Nick Cohen har en uhyre skarp observation i The Guardian: Racisme er ikke bare en holdning eller fordom der berører en isoleret del af mennesket. Det er ofte holdninger der gennemsyrer personligheden. Hvis man har et negativt forhold til Israel, så har man et sæt af forestillinger også på andre områder. Det samme gælder en “anti-muslim bigot”, sier Cohen.

Her kunde det måske være på sin plads at minde om faren for at blive præget af ressentiment, mod muslimer. Den politiske korrekthed og muslimers opførsel gør at folk oparbejder modvilje. Man må faktisk passe på sig selv for at den ikke fortærer en.

Racism is not a specific illness but a general sickness. Display one symptom and you display them all. If you show me an anti-Muslim bigot, I will be able to guess his or her views on the European Union, welfare state, crime and “political correctness”. Show me a leftwing or Islamist antisemite and, once again, he will carry a suitcase full of prejudices, which have nothing to do with Jews, but somehow have everything to do with Jews.

Mens denne indsigt synes evident for højrefløjens del, – medierne hamrer den stadig ind – er det ingen tilsvarende indsigt på venstrefløjen. Resultatet ser man demonstreret i Storbritannien, hvor debatten om Ken Livingstone peger mod et meget større problem. Han rykkede ud for at forsvare en anden partifælle for hendes antisemitiske udtalelser.

Det gode forsæt, kendt som politisk korrekthed, har givet sig selv immunitet. Derfor har jødefjendtligheden fået vokse. Nick Cohen tog ud til Bradford og Birmingham for at checke, og fandt at for at vinde valg blandt muslimerne må man indtage en ekstrem position. Ellers vil man få stemplet jødeven.

 I was in Naz Shah’s Bradford. A politician who wants to win there cannot afford to be reasonable, I discovered. He or she cannot deplore the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and say that the Israelis and Palestinians should have their own states. They have to engage in extremist rhetoric of the “sweep all the Jews out” variety or risk their opponents denouncing them as “Zionists”.

Shahs undskyldning i Underhuset betyr måske ikke så meget hvis hendes home base mener noget andet. Gør hennes beklagelse indtryk på dem? Betyder fordømmelsen af Livingstone noget? Næppe.

Venstrefløjen har legitimeret denne form for jødehad, pure and simple. Over hele Europa har socialisterne stillet sig til disposition for muslimer og legitimeret deres jødehad.

Der er måske bare én George Galloway eller Zenia Stampe, men medierne behandler dem med en respekt der overser hvad de virkelig sier: At de sprer fjendtlighed og had. På den måde får hadet et respektabelt ansigt.

Denne venlige holdning gør at medierne heller ikke tar signalerne når symptomerne viser seg:

Aisha Ali-Khan, who worked as Galloway’s assistant until his behaviour came to disgust her, realised how deep prejudice had sunk when she made a silly quip about David Miliband being more “fanciable” than Ed. Respect members accused her of being a “Jew lover” and, all of a sudden in Bradford politics, that did not seem an outrageous, or even an unusual, insult. Where Galloway led, others followed. David Ward, a now mercifully forgotten Liberal Democrat MP, tried and failed to save his seat by proclaiming his Jew obsession. Nothing, not even the murder of Jews, could restrain him. At one point, he told his constituents that the sight of the Israeli prime minister honouring the Parisian Jews whom Islamists had murdered made him “sick”. (He appeared to find the massacre itself easier to stomach.)

Cohen kalder det et race to the bottom. Muslimske repræsentanter plukker ikke op hansken og udfordrer imamer som hylder livvagten der skød Punjab-guvernør Salman Taseer. De angriber i stedet liberale muslimer.

Naz Shah’s picture of Israel superimposed on to a map of the US to show her “solution” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not a one-off but part of a race to the bottom. But Shah’s wider behaviour as an MP – a “progressive” MP, mark you – gives you a better idea of how deep the rot has sunk. She ignored a Bradford imam who declared that the terrorist who murdered a liberal Pakistani politician was a “great hero of Islam” and concentrated her energies on expressing her “loathing” of liberal and feminist British Muslims instead.

Denne ignorering er blevet en vane, en vane med konsekvenser.

Hvis man vil forstå venstrefløjens antisemitisme, må man kende ideologierne der dominerede det 20. århundrede. De har overlevet. Giften har fået virke og medierne og den politiske klasse har enten forholdt sig tavse eller de er blevet en del af den.

Challenging prejudices on the left wing is going to be all the more difficult because, incredibly, the British left in the second decade of the 21st century is led by men steeped in the worst traditions of the 20th. When historians had to explain last week that if Montgomery had not defeated Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt then the German armies would have killed every Jew they could find in Palestine, they were dealing with the conspiracy theory that Hitler was a Zionist, developed by a half-educated American Trotskyist called Lenni Brenner in the 1980s.

Ken Livingstone er et symptom på hvor dybt det politiske miljø har sunket. Han står ikke alene. David Camerons ord om at islam betyder fred er udtryk for den samme forrykthed.

Men det er venstrefløjen som bærer det største ansvar for at antisemitismen er blevet en gangbar valuta i dagens Europa. Det er bare blevet ekstra tydelig i Storbritannien med valget af Jeremy Corbyn som åbent plejer omgang med islamister fra Hizbollah og Hamas.

It is astonishing that you have to, but you must learn the worst of leftwing history now. For Labour is not just led by dirty men but by dirty old men, with roots in the contaminated soil of Marxist totalitarianism. If it is to change, its leaders will either have to change their minds or be thrown out of office.

Nick Cohen bemærker at der fortsat er mange anstændige politikere i Labour som ønsker at rydde op. Vidst. Men har de noen chance til at ændre politiken? Eller stikker alliancen med muslimerne så dybt at den er umulig at bryde?

Hvor meget gør Corbyn og Livingstone indtryk på socialdemokrater i andre land? De er jo alle på samme spor og har været det lenge.

Tittelen på Cohens klumme: I saw the darkness of antisemitism, but I never thought it would get this dark

Jeg er ræd det skal blive meget mørkere.