Tory aide reportedly grabbed Jewish journalist’s face to check his nose and “judge his Jewishness”
An aide working for the Conservative Party reportedly grabbed a Jewish journalist’s face in order to check his nose and “judge his Jewishness”.
Alexander Brown, a Westminster Correspondent based in Parliament who writes for The Scotsman, has shared his account of how whilst out for drinks with colleagues, he was grabbed by a Tory aide so that they could view his nose from the side and, as Mr Brown writes, check his “Jewishness”.
Mr Brown said: “Going for drinks and desperate to build contacts, a staffer had asked about my background, and I’d shared I studied an MA in Jewish History. Before I’d even finished speaking she had grabbed my jaw, tilted my head to the side to look at my nose and spat out ‘you don’t look Jewish’.”
He adds that he was warned not to report the incident so as not to risk damaging his career. “This was a Tory staffer grabbing me in public to judge my Jewishness, at a time it was supposedly only the Labour Party that had a problem. It took place during the Corbyn years,” Mr Brown writes. “It was a depressing, draining time, with the avalanche of antisemitism on Twitter a constant in my life both personal and professional.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
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