DO JEWS HAVE A FUTURE IN BRITAIN?

It’s time for the silent majority to speak up

By Andrew Fox

My friend and The Brink co-host, Jake Wallis Simons, recently posed a question in the Daily Telegraph:

“Do Jews have a future in Britain?”

An entirely reasonable question, given the raging storm of antisemitism that has blustered for two years. Jake is usually the optimist of the two of us, and I am the pessimist, but allow me to briefly reverse those roles and write a positive response (while openly stealing his title).

There is a strange dissonance in Britain right now. If you listen only to the street marches, the online cacophony, and the endless churn of algorithmic outrage, you could convince yourself that antisemitism has become the dominant cultural mood of the country. Many (if not most) of my Jewish friends feel that way, and it is wholly understandable, painful, and visceral.

However, if we step back, look up, and pay attention to the quiet majority, the picture changes. Antisemitism is not a mainstream opinion in Britain or even in the USA.

Not even close.

It remains what it has long been: a persistent, ugly, but numerically small fringe. The difference today is not the size of that fringe; it is the volume. The antisemites have learned how to be loud.

There is a psychological trick at play here, and it is one that extremists understand instinctively. When a small group screams loudly enough, often enough, and aggressively enough, they create the illusion of size. People hear the shouting, see the placards, watch the videos, and assume that noise equals scale.

This is a mirage. All the data tells a far calmer story. Most Britons and Americans do not hate Jews. In fact, most Britons do not think about Jews or Israel very much at all, and that is exactly how a liberal society should be: minority groups not fetishised or scapegoated, and simply allowed to live in peace. Our problem is the tiny but committed fraction who regard hatred as a vocation, and who understand that a single drum can sound like a whole orchestra if it is struck hard enough.

Pointing out that antisemitism is a minority view does not diminish its significance: it is undeniable that antisemitic incidents are on the rise. Our communities are justified in being worried. This highlights the government’s duty to safeguard public spaces from fringe groups that confuse tolerance with weakness. When authorities allow chants of violent hatred to echo through our capital city every week, permit marches filled with eliminationist rhetoric, and let intimidation masquerade as protest, extremists take notice. They recognise this permissive environment and escalate their actions.

Political violence begins with a handful of people who realise no one intends to stop them. A minority emboldened can do more damage than a sleeping majority.

Part of why antisemitism feels so omnipresent is the rise of the influencer economy. Figures like Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, pseudo-intellectual grifters on YouTube, and the constellation of anonymous accounts orbiting them have mastered a simple truth:

outrage travels further than accuracy, conflict outperforms consensus, and noise beats numbers.

They target impressionable fringes: alienated young men, confused teenagers, disaffected minorities, anyone drifting on the edges of identity and belonging. Then they radicalise them in real time, in front of an audience. Extremism sells.

When a community feels threatened, it often turns to the loudest person who claims to be on its side. That is human nature, and it is understandable, but it is dangerous. There is a growing, worrying instinct among the pro-Israel and Jewish to look toward figures like Tommy Robinson; people who drape themselves in solidarity with Jews as a convenient coat over years of anti-Muslim incitement. This is a false bargain.

You cannot oppose antisemitic extremism by embracing anti-Muslim extremism. You cannot defend your dignity by standing beside those who deny it to others. You cannot protect liberal democracy with illiberal allies.

These political fringes feed off fear. If they cannot recruit you, they will settle for frightening you into amplifying it. Much of the panic filling Jewish communities (and much of the exhilaration filling extremist ones) comes from forgetting a simple fact: social media is not the country.

X is a coliseum designed to reward combat. TikTok is a hall of mirrors with no sense of proportion. Instagram is a performance stage.

These platforms amplify the loudest, angriest, most theatrical versions of reality. They reward extremism over moderation and turn a few hundred agitators into a spectacle that appears to be a mass movement. However, when you walk outside, you are not entering TikTok or X: you are entering actual society. It is quieter and far more decent than online.

Here is the critical factor in that decency: if antisemitism is a fringe view (and all the data shows that it still is), then the health of the country depends on those who reject it saying so. The silent majority cannot remain silent.

Non-Jewish allies against antisemitism do not need to march or brawl or tweet. We need to challenge extremism when we see it, support colleagues who feel unsafe, refuse to indulge conspiracies, insist that political leaders show moral clarity and remind the extremists that they do not speak for the nation. Silence is a vacuum, and vacuums get filled; usually by people you do not want speaking on your behalf.

The truth is both reassuring and sobering: antisemitism is not widespread, but it is loud, organised, and increasingly confident in spreading its message.

Confusing noise with meaningful data can lead to despair, while dismissing minority opinions as insignificant risks can lead to complacency. This moment demands neither panic nor retreat, nor alliances born of desperation. Instead, it calls for a confident, democratic majority to remember who it is and to make its voice heard.

Jews absolutely have a future in Britain. The antisemites are few. They were just emboldened and stopped whispering. It simply needs the silent majority of decent people to stop whispering, too.

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).