Antisemitism, Britain under attack and our degraded information ecosystem

This is my newsletter for paying subscribers. This edition is a Labour leadership contest free zone, quite deliberately to spare you as there will be months more of the unfolding farce and as an old editor of mine used to say when presented with a long piece about politics: “Will no-one think of the readers?” Instead, I’ve looked at the antisemitism crisis, our rotting digital information ecosystem, the monarchy, Wells Cathedral, buskers and a must-read new book on Weimar. Have a good weekend.

On Thursday, King Charles III visited Golders Green in North London to meet victims of the recent terror attacks. With much of the British media focussed on the interminable and dispiriting Labour leadership “drama”, the extraordinary visit by the monarch got less detailed attention than it might otherwise have done.

This omission means the grave significance of what just happened risks being overlooked. Remember, so serious is the situation that the monarch is concerned enough to have to show public solidarity with a British community facing daily abuse and death threats whipped up by domestic and foreign agitators. If this was any other group of Britons under attack in this way, it would be thought simply impossible that this could be happening in our country in the modern era.

But this is the Jews and antisemitism, and the shameful idea is so familiar and embedded in the dark corners of our consciousness through historical experience and folk memory, that somehow, incredibly, it is still treated differently, safe to be compartmentalised and sectioned off from other such hatreds, as though distinct rules apply when it comes to Judaism.