Celebrities and anti-Semitism: has our liberal creative elite rediscovered an ancient prejudice?




'Darling, Is that the latest from Galliano?'

There are bar-room bigots – and then there is the top fashion designer, John Galliano. Latest reports show a video of the diminutive fashionista in a bar in Le Marais (a Parisian Jewish neighbourhood that experienced Nazi deportations during World War II) where he had already been accused of one anti-Semitic and racist outburst, with a drink in one hand, declaring: “I love Hitler.”

The British designer then tells a horrified woman: “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed.”

Galliano may be adored by Kate Moss and all the other narcissistic airheads from fashion’s “master race”, but when a member of staff at the Parisian bar told one of the designer’s victims: “This guy deserves to be beaten up, but we can’t do anything, it’s John Galliano,” there were a lot of people who buy their clothes on the High Street who understood what he meant.

Yet, Galliano is not the only anti-Semite in the (celebrity) village. His drunken ramblings are reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s penchant for racist diatribes. Incidentally, Gibson’s new movie The Beaver is out next month – where’s the Jewish control of Hollywood when you need it, eh?

And then there’s Charlie Sheen. Fresh from carousing with porn stars, and despite being apparently self-cured of his cravings for drugs and alcohol, the sitcom star and once talented actor had a “Gaddafi moment” on a radio show last week, pouring invective over the Two and a Half Men creator, Chuck Lorre.

No doubt, Hollywood is a nest of vipers and everyone is screwing over somebody else but Sheen’s abuse was not restricted to a soured business/creative relationship. He repeatedly referred to Chuck Lorre (born Charles Levine) as “Chaim Levine”. The invention of a stereotypical Jewish name for his alleged nemesis was rightly described by ADL National Director Abraham H Foxman as, “at best bizarre, and at worst, borderline anti-Semitism.”

Last year, the ADL also had to have words with Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone about his “Jewish domination of the media” comments.

But if there is rising ambivalence towards Jews among the liberal, creative elite, then the British director Ken Loach represents its true face.

The dour Leftie, who can’t blame drink, drugs or rank stupidity, has endlessly used a desiccated anti-imperialist rhetoric to incite the boycott of Israel at every turn, and in doing so flirts with the very biogtry he claims to ideologically oppose.

This was highlighted by his notorious response to a report on the growth of anti-Semitism in the aftermath of the Gaza War, in which he said: “If there has been a rise I am not surprised. In fact, it is perfectly understandable because Israel feeds feelings of anti-Semitism.” So whether perpetrator or victim, in Ken’s world, the Jews are to blame.

For Booker prize winner Howard Jacobson, anti-Semitism is a historical bacillus too toxic to have become extinct in a generation or two. Post Holocaust, it has hidden in the cracks of time waiting for the right conditions to re-infect the minds of men. The bitter, at times cruel, Israel-Palestine conflict now provides the environment for renewed contagion. To borrow a phrase, it may not be long before anti-Semitism once again “passes the dinner-table test”.

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