Targeting the “otherness” of an opponent

Above: Senate House in Bloomsbury, the central headquarters of the University of London (which comprises five big colleges and about a hundred schools and institutes scattered throughout the capital). During the Second World War Senate House became the Ministry of Information, where George Orwell worked. Orwell used the building as a model for the Ministry of Truth (with its language of doublespeak) in his novel 1984.

The Today Programme on BBC4 this morning had a feature on the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, which has produced a report saying that anti-Semitism was entering the "mainstream". The MPs blamed the tensions in the Middle East for the rise in prejudice. The MPs ignored the way in which the Labour Party used anti-Semitic images and inferences to attack Michael Howard (Jewish former leader of the Conservative Party) in the 2005 general election.

In a campaign that was extremely personal Michael Howard was caricatured as Fagin and Shylock (giant outdoor posters) and portrayed as a flying pig (again giant outdoor posters). The implied message of the campaign was that you couldn’t trust the Jews. Throughout the election Michael Howard was attacked as a hate-figure (he was dull politician, very little popular charisma, but hardly the sinister evil genius he was made out to be).

In his prophetic work 1984 the author George Orwell described a society where “Big Brother” government protected the people against both external and internal enemies. The internal enemies were led by “Emmanuel Goldstein”, and Big Brother organised daily two-minute hate sessions in which EVERYONE had to express their opposition to the (obviously Jewish) arch-traitor. In their treatment of Michael Howard in the 2005 election the Labour Party seemed to be duplicating this very easy technique of targeting the “otherness” of an opponent instead of arguing on policies.