Currently Reading: Jews Don't Count

Jews Don’t Count, by David Baddiel.

A letter to the publisher…

‘Firstly what a pleasure to read something so perfectly in the best tradition of political and cultural pamphleteering. When vital ideas need to be presented and disseminated, this form of writing knocks (for all their virtues) the online Medium, Patreon, Quill models into cocked hats. Kudos to Stig Abel and the TLS for this fine initiative.

Jews Don’t Count is a supreme piece of reasoning and passionate, yet conotrolled, argument. From his first sentence, the energy, force and conviction of Baddiel’s writing and thinking will transfix you. Perhaps too rueful and wise to be called straight hostile polemic, there is as much sorrow here as anger. The main conclusion drawn — that anti-Jewish sentiment, language and behaviour somehow aren’t in the mainstream considered as much of a scandal, affront or abuse as all other kinds of racism and minority prejudice — seems to me impossible to refute.

I cannot overpraise Baddiel’s skill in marshalling his huge store of evidence and example without ever, as it were, letting us lose sight of the ball. Despite its depth and reach, Jews Don’t Count is as readable as an airport thriller. It is a rare gift, this ability to keep complex ideas in focus and to deconstruct discrepancies and inconsistencies without once losing the thread — or more importantly — losing the reader.

Bust as a Jew, or a half Jew, myself — I want to thank him for expressing a truth that most of us are too ashamed, or embarrassed, or afraid to name. The world is increasingly full of anti-Semitic words and actions and — while much is sly, implicit and perhaps unconcious — this hurts and frightens us.

In short Jews Don’t Count is in its own way a masterpiece.’

— Stephen Fry

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