As a Jew that observed the Corbyn years with horror, I’ve developed a hair-trigger sensitivity to resurgent anti-Semitism. So, I might have been expected to recoil at the Guardian headline: “Jewish groups criticise Nigel Farage for calling Grant Shapps ‘globalist’.”
This minor shitstorm-within-a-shitstorm (if such a thing is possible) blew up following Shapps’s appointment as Home Secretary and the globalist comments from, among others, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice. The word ‘globalist’ has been rattling around social media quite a bit in recent weeks but when used in the context of Shapps – who happens to be Jewish – it was treated as equivalent to the age old anti-Semitic trope that sees the Rothschilds running the world’s media and the global banking system.
Is ‘globalist’ a word we should therefore avoid using because to some – including, regrettably some Jewish groups – it feels uncomfortably close to these well-established tropes? I think not.
