Jeremy Corbyn, it is said, does not have a racist bone in his body, and therefore cannot, by definition, be anti-Semitic (‘Semitic’ here referring to Jews, not Arabs). The Jewish community, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the problem is that Corbyn and Momentum take a Roman attitude towards the Jews.
If racism today relates to defining people as inferior simply because of some unalterable characteristic (e.g. heredity, colour), irrespective of evidence, the Romans, it has been argued, were ‘proto-racist’. The reason is that, like the Greeks, they thought that the environment or heredity made a people what they were. One born in the frozen north, therefore, would automatically be stupid but hardy and brave, one born in the warm south, intelligent and cunning but cowardly, and so on.
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