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by EmailSo, 4000 people marched in Manchester on Saturday against the cuts to education with the TUC, the NUS, EAN, NCAF, Manchester Against Cuts and Fees, and I’m sure a whole bunch of other organisations as well that felt like telling people to go march on the 29th of January. Instead of covering that, or the police brutality that landed at least person in hospital that I know of, dozens more battered, and got 25 people arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong place, the media decided to go with “NUS President attacked by anti-semitic abuse”.
Tracking down this origins of this story leads to a Daily Mail article, in which an anonymous photographer heard the words “Tory Jew scum” being shouted at Aaron. That’s a pretty serious allegation. Unfortunately, people just repeating it over and over again on their Facebook statuses does not make it true.
Here is the footage of Aaron Porter at the time he was alleged to have been abused, as he walked (not particularly fast for a man being “hounded”) down to MMU away from the two hundred people telling him to go away:
Watch the video all the way through, then go back and listen hard at 5:39. The crowd, clearly still shouting the same chant, “Aaron Porter, we know you, you’re a fucking Tory too” as they have been in the previous five minutes, sounds very much like they are indeed shouting “You’re a fucking Tory Jew.”
Now, maybe I am mistaken, and many of my friends who were at that demonstration are actually virulently anti-semitic whenever I’m not around. Yes, that’s probably it. In fact, “you’re a Tory Jew” wasn’t the only slogan that these vicious, secret anti-Semites-dressed-up-as-students-bothered-by-their-crap-leadership come up with. Now listen to the video again:
* At 2:15, that person shouting “”sell-out”? Actually shouting the word “selah”, a term used in the Hebrew Bible to indicate a musical interlude. This is obviously a reference to Aaron’s Jewishness. Bastards.
* 2:50, the crowd stop shouting “scum” and are clearly bellowing “skunk”, a type of gas that the Israeli government have been known to use on Palestinian protestors. It’s just such a natural thing to come to mind on a protest about cuts to education.
* 3:35, a man calls Aaron Porter a “joke”. Really? “Joke”? Or… “Jew”? Oh, the humanity.
* At 4:05, “get out” is just obviously you missing hearing the German phrase “geht auf”, or “go on”. The context of such anti-semitic hatred and choice of tongue are intended to invoke the Holocaust. It just seems so obvious when you think about it and let go of all reason in the name of political point-scoring.
* Calling for Aaron Porter to be burned at 4:20, a cheap, childish offensive taunt? Or a deliberate identification with the Eastern Orthodox ritual of burning the Jewish Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus? Christ, I surprised this crowd didn’t just shout Jesus-killer at Aaron and be done with it.
* But even saying that, these nasty little racists offer hope at 6:05 that Aaron will one day be redeemed: you might think that the crowd are shouting, “Students and workers, unite and fight”, but does it not make more sense they are actually calling on Aaron to join them as they chant, “Judas and workers, unite and fight”?
So maybe, maybe someone actually did shout “Tory Jew scum” at Aaron Porter. And maybe there were some other protesters who shouted “no to racism, no to racism”, as the Telegraph reported. But they must have been doing it really, really quietly. Maybe it happened. Or maybe a miserable little right-wing hack sent to cover those damn trouble-making students heard what he wanted to hear. Make up your own mind.
The vast majority of people who were on the demo whom I have spoken to about this alleged anti-Semitic abuse have had the initial reaction “What?!”, followed by “I didn’t hear anything like that!”, and finally, “Aaron Porter’s Jewish? Who knew that?”. Shouting “Tory Jew scum” at someone because they happen to be a rubbish student leader seems rather inexplicable, especially as unlike his predecessor, Aaron hasn’t really done much for the Zionist cause, which is what usually prompts such attacks.
Was Aaron Porter racially abused on the 29th January? I have no idea. But I think we need a bit more evidence for such a serious allegation than an anonymous photographer claiming he heard a phrase that sounded remarkably similar to a non-racist chant. And I have yet to hear any.
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