Stand Together Against Racism
JVL Introduction
JVL is pleased to publish and endorse this statement from the Jewish Socialists Group, which has been a prominent voice in the struggle against racism.
JSG made contact with the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community many years ago and have always promoted their commemoration of the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Roma and Sinti communities, the Porajmos.
Racism towards the GRT community persists and will be compounded by forthcoming laws, especially the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill.
JVL will be joining the Jewish Socialist Group and other Jewish Groups on the 19th March demonstrations against racism.
This article was originally published by Jewish Socialists Group on Mon 14 Feb 2022. Read the original here.
Joining the dots in our struggles against racism
Group statement
We share the outrage expressed about Jimmy Carr’s comments about Gypsy communities during the Holocaust, which appealed to and amplified anti-Gypsy sentiments in society. This is not the first time Carr has targeted this particular minority.
The victims of the Nazis belonged to many categories, and we mourn each of them equally. The Nazis’ first killing programme against civilians was carried out against many thousands of disabled people from September 1939.
Only two categories, though, were marked out for complete extermination: Jews and Gypsies. In absolute numbers far more Jews were killed, but the figures come closer when we examine proportions of their total pre-war populations in Europe. Gypsies and Jews were both categorised as Untermenschen, targeted for persecution, and we met our shared fate in Nazi gas chambers. That is why we are so alert to expressions of anti-Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) racism.
We have been heartened to hear recent expressions of solidarity with Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities from more mainstream commentators in the Jewish community. We need to deepen the understanding within our community of Jews’ and Gypsies’ shared experience during the Holocaust and bring more and more members of our community into a determined struggle against anti-GRT racism, alongside our fight against antisemitism and expressions of hate directed against other minority communities. And we continue our work to engage our community in combating the structural racism that black and brown minorities/refugees suffer on a daily basis.
In central and eastern Europe where Roma often stand out as physically visible minorities in much less diverse societies than Britain, they face continued discrimination and persecution. In Britain, GRT communities are much less physically distinct – but frequently suffer hate crimes, bullying at school, and discrimination. Last year it was revealed that Pontins Holiday Camps had a list of Irish surnames it gave staff to screen out bookings by Gypsy and Irish travellers – a salutary reminder to the wider anti-racist movement here that racism and discrimination are not simply about colour.
This last point is underlined too by the rising number of antisemitic incidents in 2021, reported last week, which saw a significant increase in attacks with violence. As well as targeting a range of Jewish victims, white, black, secular, religious and “visibly” Jewish Hasidim, a worrying number of antisemitic incidents are perpetrated by people who themselves experience racism, a fact that only the far-right can be gleeful about. Anti-racists must address this urgently to bring our communities together against all racism.
Jimmy Carr’s comments should be exposed and challenged but any attempt to police the words of individual comedians is likely to backfire. Our work as anti-racists must focus more seriously and strategically on the principal threat to GRT communities and their way of life, which comes from the state, from the far-right Tory government, especially through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
That bill is all-embracing in its attack on progressives, threatening fundamental rights of protest. But as we challenge it, we need to stay very aware of the specific ways in which GRT communities are being threatened, and build practical unity with them, helping to defend them from criminalisation, evictions and arrests. We should also support demands to ensure that schools incorporate learning about the fate of Gypsy communities under Nazism in their teaching about the Holocaust.
If our Jewish community leaders are serious about tackling anti-GRT racism, combating discrimination and defending refugee rights, they will need to take a much more critical stance on the Tory Government, a government that Jewish community “leaders” seem so reluctant to criticise because it takes a hard line against Palestinian rights.
If they won’t join the dots, we have to do it for them. Anti-racism is not a pick and choose activity. All racism is racism, including racism perpetrated by Israel’s authorities and settlers. And if they insist on looking at issues through the prism of Israel and Palestine, then we have to challenge them to stand with anti-racists there too.
The JSG will be helping to organise a Jewish bloc on the national March Against Racism on 19th March in Central London – more details to follow.
One of the joys of living in Bradford is the flowering of Roma culture here. Some 4000 Slovakian Roma came to Bradford in the 2010s to escape the racism ‘back home’. Here the woman from the council knocking on the door is there to say the children must go to school not to forbid it. In the doctors surgery people are genuinely asked to wait their turn not to ignore them until they give up. etc etc.
We see displays of Roma music, dancing, cooking, story telling at our festivals alongside those from all the other cultures in this city. Roma children paint pictures saying ‘We luv Bratfod’, which is the local pronunciation shared by all Bradfordians.
Our local poet Kirsty Taylor makes videos showing how all these cultures come together, distinct but joyous in their mash up.
Why did they come here? No one seems to know. Bradford has always had a strong Irish traveller culture. The Roma were originally from where many Bradford asian people originated. Romani words are now part of normal Bratfod youth slang.
I do not know much about Jimmy Carr and cannot say what his motivation was but the reaction here is superficial. It seems to me that his point was that nobody talks about Roma victims of the Holocaust because nobody really cares what happens to Gypsies. This caused great offence essentially because it is true. Being confronted by a cruel but accurate parody like this should make people examine their own prejudices more closely, not simply condemn the speaker.