Michael Gove MP smears pro-Palestine academics David Miller, Mahvish Ahmad in 'antisemitism' speech

some of those advancing these ideas have subsequently celebrated the most terrible actions. There were actually voices in academia who described the pogrom of October 7th as de-colonisation in action.  

Mahvish Ahmad, assistant professor in human rights and politics at the London School of Economics responded to the Hamas massacre by saying that decolonisation ‘is not a metaphor’. And an associate professor at McMaster University in Canada, Ameil J Joseph, occupied the same intellectual terrain. ‘Post-colonial, anti-colonial and decolonial are not just words you heard in your EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] workshop’, he tweeted. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/secretary-of-states-speech-on-anti-semitism

Michael Gove, the housing secretary, will today accuse organisers of pro-Palestinian marches of not doing enough to stop some demonstrators spreading anti-Jewish rhetoric.

https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2024/05/30/not-the-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-192/

Speech by Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and The Rt Hon Michael Gove 21 May 2024 So far right figures – like Nick Griffin, formerly of the BNP, Mark Collett of an organisation called Patriotic Alternative, Jayda Fransen of Britain First, and Jim Dowson, a transatlantic hate preacher – have been invited to share space with Islamist advocates and broadcast from Islamist platforms, where the common focus of concern is Jewish influence, the Jewish state, the Jewish threat. And on the extreme Left, academics such as Professor David Miller and groups such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Socialist Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party jostle to share platforms with Islamist groupings, deploy aggressive language about “Zionists”, support calls for intifada and praising te the resistance - a synonym for Hamas - in terms that Jewish students say cause them physical fear. And extreme Islamist groups then weaponise this growing antisemitism to divide Muslim from Muslim. Islamists have demanded that mosques become no-go zones for “Zionists”, that inter-faith dialogue exclude any Jewish voice sympathetic to Israel’s existence, and that believers show that they are truly faithful by demonstrating their commitment in the fight against Israel. By making ardour against Israel and hostility to Jewish voices the litmus test of how good a Muslim you are, Islamists polarise and divide our Muslim communities. That is why none of us can afford to be indifferent to the increasing prevalence of antisemitism in our society. There is a reason television series about the 1930s are called “A Lesson from History”. A growth in antisemitism is both a precursor of greater hate and an enabler of further extremism. Antisemitic tropes which encourage people to think criticism of Israel is muted or censored by Jewish control of the media feed into greater distrust of the “MSM”. That leads to a greater willingness to believe in conspiracy theories and a stronger propensity to seek out “alternative” truth tellers - whether on incel message boards, anti-vax YouTube channels, far-right Telegram groups or Islamist podcasts. And thus,The common ground on which our democracy depends is eroded.