Labour depict Zack Polanski as an anti-semitic caricature

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party have been accused of anti-semitism as a result of their latest Green Party smear:

official Labour account now caricaturing a Jewish rival as a sinister svengali type. https://t.co/ysOf5SKGhd pic.twitter.com/5GX6ynNzYw

— bat020 (@bat020) February 22, 2026

There are some complexities to this, but one thing is clear: if Labour had portrayed a Jewish politician like this under Jeremy Corbyn, the British media would have covered it 24 hours a day for a year.

Svengali

The commenter above points to the Wikipedia Svengali article, which carries the following image of an actor playing the character:

Svengali was an evil Jewish hypnotist, with the highlighted Wikipedia article noting:

Svengali is a character in the novel Trilby which was first published in 1894 by George du Maurier. Svengali is a Jewish man who seduces, dominates and exploits Trilby, a young orphan girl working in Paris, and makes her into a famous singer.

Additionally:

In the novel, Svengali transforms Trilby into a great singer by using hypnosis. Unable to perform without Svengali’s help, Trilby becomes entranced.

This is how History Today describe the character:

Svengali is one of those rare literary creations that becomes shorthand for a kind of behaviour: in this case, mesmeric control over another.

So here’s the thing; Zack Polanski was actually a hypnotist. As such, there’s an argument to be made that people should be able to portray him as a stereotypical hypnotist, even if it does resemble an anti-semitic caricature.

Here’s the other thing; between 2015 and 2019, the British establishment decided anything which even remotely looked like anti-semitism should be treated as the gravest hate crime of the century.

Now, the media is churning out stuff like this:

This caricature of Zack Polanski in the daily mail is pretty fucking dodgy isn’t it? pic.twitter.com/cVbzkWWwAO

— Godspeed You Black Tamperer (ft Maya) (@twlldun) December 29, 2025

And Reform are knocking out images like this:

#Reform in #Brighton have posted, reposted and spread this #Antisemitic meme, in reference to @ZackPolanski, a Jewish man, which is clearly directly based on a #Nazi poster from 1937.

Comments welcome from anyone wanting to defend #Reform using actual #Nazi propaganda. pic.twitter.com/nxfzIc5sv3

— John O'Connell (@jdpoc) November 3, 2025

Shameful

We said in the Corbyn years that the media and Labour right were using concocted anti-semitism smears to attack the anti-Zionist movement.

Now, the people we warned you about have made it crystal clear; they never cared about anti-semitism beyond their ability to use it as a cudgel.

Featured image via X