The Tragedy of Owen Jones
I mean it - it is a tragedy. Since October 7th, Owen Jones has willed himself out of his role of Lefty provocateur into something infinitely darker. Confronted with genuine evil from Hamas, he has chosen not merely to wink at it, but, in effect, to aid and abet it. Since he is neither stupid (he won the best tertiary education Britain has to offer), no longer young enough to be irresponsible (born 1984), nor in a position to be ill-informed, we are faced with the terrible reality that he chooses to do this.
Why do I call this a tragedy? I think we can call on Hannah Arendt for this: she was serious and wise when she wrote that individuals reveal who they are through their speech and action. However, she warned, individuals can never be sure what kind of self they will reveal. Only retrospectively, only through the stories that will arise from their deeds and performances, will their identity become fully manifest.
In the tumbling fury of his words and actions, I doubt this is yet clear to him. But in his words and actions since October 7th, Owen Jones will eventually discover that the story he has written for himself will bracket him with the brand of fascists, indeed Nazi, ideologists he would most fear and despise. Not Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ functionaries like Adolph Eichmann, nor the knuckle-draggers that made up the street-battalions, but the smart ones, the clever ones who knew what they were doing.
I hesitated for days before pressing ‘publish’ on this one, because this judgement seems so extreme, so harsh. We’re all familiar with the politics of personal destruction, and I really don’t want to add to it. We’re all ready ‘I-reckoners’ but at the same time shrink from the gravity of genuine judgement. Everyone has made mistakes of thought and deed they regret. This is part and parcel of what it is to be human, and mostly we can forget sufficiently well to contain our pain at those mistakes. Though sometimes I catch my breath, exclaim ‘Ohh’ out-loud at some remembered shame I must still own.
Nevertheless, there are moments and situations - thankfully rare - when suspending judgement is essentially cowardice. The relevant question becomes not ‘who am I to judge?’ but rather ‘who am I to suspend judgement?’. Refusal to pass judgement on Owen Jones as he is now revealed is itself an ethical choice, a complicity.
Why do I think Owen Jones has damned himself?
Those of you who have followed my work will have picked up that I have a great deal of time for Quaker thought and action. I have attended Quaker meetings and been both comforted and sometime astonished at their power. My children attended a Quaker school, and my eldest has recently got married in a Quaker ceremony (ceremony? probably the wrong word). My sister is a leading member of her local meeting. If you are looking for wisdom or direction, Quaker Faith and Practice is a very good place to start.
But I am not a Quaker, because I am, in the end, not a pacifist. I cannot persuade myself that faced with a Hitler I would have been wrong to fight. Sometimes, evil is so thorough-going, and so actively on the front foot, that it absolutely needs to be opposed. We repeat that ‘all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’, but we almost never, thank God, come face to face with evil on its triumphal march.
Evil on its triumphal march is very different from the all-pervasive existence of troubles, impositions and injustices which form the petty ethical fog in which we usually blunder about. (And in which Owen Jones has until now been content to play.)
Walter de la Mare gives a useful illustration of this in his short story ‘All Hallows’, usually mis-labeled as a ghost story. Actually, it is a horror story in which evil is not merely destructive - worse, much worse, it is actively and powerfully creative.
The October 7th massacres were just that. The indiscriminate massacre of babies, children, young people, old people - not just Israelis, incidentally, Thais too. Not just the murders, but the rapes, the tortures and the subsequent public desecration. The kidnappings and hostage-takings.
There is a recording of a phone call that a Hamas terrorist made to his parents on October 7. “Hi Dad!” the son shouts. “I’m talking to you from [kibbutz] Mefalsim. Open my WhatsApp now, and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews! … Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands!” The whole time, his father is repeating “Allah hu Akbar!” A little later, the young man says “Mom, your son is a hero!”
How many hundreds slaughtered? How many hundreds taken hostage? Is Moloch happy?
How is it possible not to see that this is evil on the march? How is it possible?
(BTW, I do not accept that Islam is inherently evil: but I do think that like all religions, there are times and places where it provides cover for evil to flourish. One of the smartest colleagues I have worked with is a devout, indeed rigorous, Pakistani muslim. One day, over lunch, he shared a problem with me: ‘I just can’t bear it . . . all the hate I was brought up with. . . ‘)
This is the starting point, the irreducible starting point: if you recognize October 7th massacres as evil, then it is necessary and right to fight it. Just as it was necessary and right to fight Hitler. But in destroying Hitler and Hitler’s Germany, do we bruise our souls? Of course we do, and there is no escape from that. Do I feel queasy watching the Dam Busters? Do I revel in Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin? When I see the Lancaster bomber flying, do I feel only pride and triumph? No, it’s more complicated than I’d like. But did Hitler need obliterating, did Germany need to be brought to unconditional surrender? Yes.
My father-in-law flew into Berlin in the early 1950s. The ruins reduced him to tears - and he’s a very tough man.
Owen Jones simply doesn’t see it like that: he sees Hamas atrocity as just another ‘war crime’. For Jones: ‘By murdering innocent civilians and taking hostages, Hamas committed war crimes. Serious war crimes.’ And ‘It is obvious that when Hamas committed the war crime of taking hostages, that they wished to keep man of those hostages alive to be used as bargaining chips.’
But October 7th wasn’t a war crime, it wasn’t a military operation against an armed enemy, with a military objective. It was a just a carefully-planned murderous atrocity against innocent and defenceless people. Against children and babies.
If it had any military objective, it could only have been to summon the war now in full terrible progress.
Intent? On Level Grunt: “Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews! … Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband.” And on Level BigBeard: “The al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight. . .. We are called a nation of martyrs and are proud to sacrifice martyrs. Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nations, and must be finished.”
Since October 7th, Own Jones has poured his considerable talent and ferocious energy into demanding a ceasefire and damning all those who won’t heed that call. For example, to Dan Hodges: “You’re a nauseating apologist for mass murder and war crimes and if you had an ounce of humanity the tortured dying screams of Palestinian toddlers would haunt you every single day until the day you die.’
If Owen Jones were simply a pacifist, his words and actions since October 7th would at least be consistent. But there’s no sign at all that he is a pacifist, or even pacifistic.
Meanwhile, by campaigning for a ceasefire, he is quite overtly giving cover to Hamas. Why, because Hamas has already told us that given the chance, there will be another pogrom, and another, and another, until all the Jews are gone. When the opposition is wedded to slaughter, what is the value of a ceasefire, beyond giving the slaughterers a chance to regroup, re-arm, and get back to the business of massacre?
By pretending not to know and understand this (he’s not stupid, he’s not ill-informed), he is actively encouraging terrible things. First, he is obviously helping to foster the largest and most violent outbreak of anti-Semitism in Britain seen since the 1930s. Here’s the Community Security Trust’s report: “In the 40 days inclusive between the Hamas terror attack on Israel (Saturday 7 October) and Wednesday 15 November, CST recorded at least 1,324 antisemitic incidents across the UK. This is the highest ever total reported to CST across a forty-day period. CST has been recording antisemitic incidents since 1984.
“In just over five weeks, CST has recorded more antisemitic incidents than the 803 reported in the first six months in this year.
“This is also a provisional total that is almost certain to increase further as we receive more delayed reports of incidents covering this period, and while we continue to verify and log all the reports that we have currently received.”
Owen Jones must surely know what’s happening , even if he decries it. Perhaps he tells himself he has played no part in encouraging it. He may tell himself that ‘from the river to the sea’ isn’t a genocidal anti-Semitic call. But, frankly, who cares what interpretation he (or I) put on it: it’s what the murderers with guns mean by it that matters. And they are quite unambiguous about what they mean: the river and the sea will both run red.
Second, he is encouraging anti-Islamic forces in Britain, both by identifying with and encouraging the public assertion of the hell-bent fury of the most extreme Islamists. In the long-run, how can this possibly be of any benefit to any section of society, or indeed continued civilization? Will he enjoy the ruins? Or will he enjoy condemning the fear and loathing of Islam which he is right now fostering? It’s an important truth: while diversity may be enriching, division is only destructive.
Third, by allying with the most extreme Islamists, he is helping entrench these most extreme Islamist versions in Britain’s muslim community itself, entrapping the next generation into social, political and communal isolation. This is probably the most destructive aspect - he’s not giving Britain’s muslim population the best chance of living peaceful and purposeful lives in Britain. “I just can’t bear it . . . all the hate I was brought up with. . . . “
Back to Germany: do today’s Germans think the horrific war to collapse the Nazi regime and de-Nazify the survivors was nothing but a series of war-crimes? Or do they acknowledge it was a price paid to save civilization - their civilization, Germany’s future?
It is difficult to see how he can escape from the account he has written of himself. And this is not just a matter of current reputation. As Hannah Arendt said, it is only retrospectively, only through the stories that will arise from his deeds and performances, will his identity become fully manifest. And for Owen Jones, the story he’s written will put him on the same pages with some of the worst monsters of our memory.
Whether he knows it or not, the story he has written will put him on the wrong side of the Battle of Cable Street, with Mosley and the blackshirts. Mosley himself, let us not forget, was also a fervent campaigner against Britain’s war with Hitler. Doubtless he’d have been keen for a ceasefire before Berlin was reduced to ruins. “If you had an ounce of humanity the tortured dying screams of [German] toddlers would haunt you every single day until the day you die.”
The story Owen Jones is writing for himself is quite honestly, a real and genuine tragedy for him, and for us too, indeed for all in British public life. It’s not where someone like him should have ended up, and we should question how the institutions which nurtured him and in which he is embedded allowed it to happen. I fear there’s no going back. Or maybe there is: John Profumo re-wrote his story by serving for decades after his disgrace as an unpaid volunteer and fund-raiser for Toynbee Hall. Perhaps the Community Security Trust might accept Owen Jones in a similar role? Would they? Could they?
PS. This is the third time I’ve engaged with the pogrom of October 7th and its aftermath, and the most difficult. The first time was oblique - the only way I could approach it at the time. The second time was more direct, with its contemplation of what it took for England to neuter its own terroristic religious extremism. This is the third, and the most direct, and the sorriest. It’s the first to acknowledge that what we’re living through is a genuine damnable tragedy. So much already lost. So much still to lose.
Owen Jones blocked me on Twitter, after he refused to answer this question: “If you were a neutral in Gaza, who would you rather be captured by? Hamas or the IDF?”
Tests like this always show who’s posturing and who’s not.
Superb dissection of Jones - the cap fits so many of these virtual signalers (Femi, Terry Christian, Gary Lineker, Carol Vorderman) who see the opportunity to ingratiate themselves onto a noisy cause without actually thinking or considering the consequences. Such is our society and particularly the Jones generation of neoliberals who milk the publicity cow to promote themselves (basically it is their Job) and stir up the online mob. The concept of debate or simple investigation of a situation to form an informed balanced opinion is secondary to "clicks" and "likes"..
Jones is a narcissist on a journey of self-consumption, one day he will have consumed his own persona and ultimately will fall foul of the very same mob he mobilised as they turn on him and destroy his platform. Jones is a "sea squirt", he has found his online niche and is slowly consuming his own brain as he no longer needs it to feed on the publicity generated from the environment he has created.