There were some concerns raised by some audience members at the end of a speech I gave (see the transcript). One person in the audience, Jeremy Green, wrote a blog post afterwards which elaborated on his concerns, which were shared by at least a few people in the audience. The following is my reply to Jeremy, which he agreed that I post on my blog, so that we can link to each others’ views on the issues arising. In personal correspondence he clarified he was not accusing me of being an antisemite, but that we can agree to disagree on the issues he raised and my responses.
19th September 2025
Dear Jeremy,
I have read your article about your experience of my talk at the Stroud festival. Thank you for agreeing to receive an email in response, as the beginning, I hope, of our greater understanding and solidarity. I have published the transcript of the speech with some footnotes which address some concerns raised during the Q&A. I took a day to draft this letter, as I felt it important to address your concerns deeply. The result is rather long, so I thank you in advance for the time it will take to consider it.
You write in your article that you felt unsafe. I am surprised, that was not my intention, and I recognise that as an unpleasant experience for you – as it would be for anyone. In retrospect, I could have stated more clearly what I assumed was obvious: criticising international banking and international bankers is neither being antisemitic nor building the case for others’ antisemitism. In the speech I defined international bankers (and the asset owners) as a ‘transnational capitalist class’ and by ‘transnational’ I mean a multi-racial group in a truly international sector. I could have additionally stated that I am not referring to Jewish bankers. I might have added that my many Jewish friends aren’t bankers. If so, I could have also said that I was stating the obvious fact of the multi-racial nature of international banking today, because people are rightfully concerned about antisemitism. My view is that anyone suggesting that Jews and bankers are synonymous is making an incorrect, anachronistic and misleading argument. In addition, when I stated in the talk that criticising Israel is not racist, I could have added that if anyone speaks badly of Jewish people in general they should be condemned, and even investigated for hate speech.
During the Q&A, I was so surprised and hurt by some people not discussing the oppression I’d pointed to, its global capitalist causes, and the way to connect that with reviving the commons, and instead criticising me with their thoughts on other matters (identity, race, and antisemitism) that I was overly combative. Instead, I could have provided the further reassurances that I have mentioned above. I apologise for how my emotions of surprise and hurt displaced the possibility of a wiser response at the time.
Your article expresses some uncertainty and concern about my intention and focus.
I took a few months to decide what to speak about. That is because this was my first speech in Britain in 2 years and so I decided to offer an over-arching analysis and story about global imperialism hurting the vulnerable everywhere, to varying degrees. I chose to speak about the most urgent manifestations of that exploitation, at home and abroad. I showed how this analysis can be mainstreamed and connected to practical action – how we revive the commons and cooperative sectors. My talk offers an angle to demonstrate to the general public that Farage is with the banking elites and not the average Brits. It is an angle that both activists and politicians in opposition to his agenda could use. I felt it is so important for this message to be shared that, despite no salary, I spoke in Stroud without fee or expenses.
Your blog expresses your consternation at my phrase “The Great Reclamation”. That is the name for an agenda I described in my book Breaking Together. The Great Reclamation refers to a period or movement in which people reclaim power (personal, communal, political) from the economic, political, cultural systems built on growth, extraction, exploitation, and hierarchy. It is not just about resisting or adapting to collapse, but about reasserting values, relationships, ways of governing and living that have been suppressed, marginalized, or co-opted by modern industrial/imperial systems. By describing the agenda, I invite more coherence to the many grassroots responses that are already happening, so that they “add up” rather than remain fragmented. Searching online would give you this background.
Unfortunately, as you didn’t look into it, nor check with me, the following statement in your blog is unsubstantiated negative speculation through word association:
“It was all rather “Great Replacement”, and the title may have been a deliberate reference – if it wasn’t, then it’s shocking that no-one noticed.”
I hope that with information about the concept of the Great Reclamation, that you will not remain shocked at anyone.
I think the ‘great replacement’ theory, where whites are being replaced by non-whites, is both nonsense and racist. My talk provided nothing that aligns with such theories. It provided no cause for thinking that Jewish bankers would be intentionally aiming for such replacement. To imply otherwise, you include logical fallacies. First, you ignore how British young couples of the Jewish faith will be experiencing the same costs of living and costs of housing that have been reducing the aspirations and speed of starting families for all British young couples. Only by ignoring them are you able to imply that I am allowing for the idea that a Jewish international banking sector is repressing non-Jewish procreation. Second, you mention in the article that I have “sympathy with Black and Brown people who couldn’t afford housing” which directly contradicts your claim that I might be promoting the white replacement theory. Instead, in my speech I explained that unaffordable housing affects every race and creed, and disproportionately ethnic minorities. Unfortunately, it is your blog, not my speech, that suggests that the natural workings of global capitalism, and the transnational capitalist class, can be regarded as somehow conspiratorial, aiming for social agendas, rather than being about capital accumulation.
I think you would agree that we can all be concerned that young people are having their horizons and choices shrunk due to their exploitation by global capital, and that to displace attention from that by conjuring antisemitic tropes would be a mistake. It is not a mistake I made. Therefore, I think this was a damaging error in your blog. I would welcome any specific action you might take on that specific part of your blog.
There was one concern you raised that I recognise and welcome. You claim that by blaming rich foreign people and corporations for contributing to rising rents, when they purchase housing, that I’m implying it’s OK for rich citizens of Britain to own huge tracts of land. Obviously, I didn’t say that, as I repeatedly spoke about the importance of more “up-close ownership”. Nevertheless, you raise an important point. The ‘citizen ownership agenda’ which my talk advances would naturally include many policies to redistribute wealth, which might include some of the extremely large land holdings. I am not in favour of forcing smaller farming families to sell up through tax measures, but I am in favour of policies which enable more people to grow their own food and for properties to be more affordable. You commented on this issue in your post as a rhetorical flourish, but the issue you raised is key to the more up-close ownership that my speech was supporting.
I noticed you mentioned my support of Palestine, in its current situation, in the same sentence as discussing whether I might be antisemitic, and saying you have no evidence that I have been antisemitic previously. True, there is nothing in my writing or life that is antisemitic. However, the way you mention this issue in your piece might imply to some readers that any criticism of Israel is cause for considering whether someone is antisemitic. Such a view risks downplaying the equal humanity of the people suffering in Palestine, by immediately switching attention onto attitudes about Jewish people in general and the potential for shaming those who criticise Israel. I consider any downplaying of the equal humanity of people due to their identity to be a racist pattern. I think you would agree and therefore see how some unhelpful assumptions might arise from your mention of my support for Gazans in a discussion of antisemitism. I agree with my many Jewish friends who are appalled at what is happening in Palestine, appalled at what is happening with the rise of the far right in Britain, appalled with the authoritarianism from the Government, and appalled at how some powerful people who also happen to be Jewish are suppressing criticism of Britain’s support for a genocide. I wonder if you are also one such comrade and we just got off on the wrong foot due to my lack of specific reassurances during the speech and Q&A.
We are going to have to disagree on the usage of the term globalist. I first came across it during the anti-globalisation movement in the late 1990s, as short hand for the people who backed the WTO, World Bank, WEF etc to write the global rules of trade and finance. In my talk I defined it as the transnational capitalist class (see Prof Sklair’s book of that title). As I mentioned above, key is the term transnational: I understand it as meaning both many nations and nationalities, and across them. That means it’s not only one ethnicity. So I was stating that in my definition. Currently we don’t have a suitable alternative for talking about the elite individuals who move within international networks and support global capital and regard communities and nation states as entities to be managed top-down for their own good. Therefore, I refuse to allow the term ‘globalist’ to be confiscated for use only by extreme commentators like Alex Jones. Therefore, I will continue to dispute your claim that globalist is a “code word for Jew”. Furthermore, I will also continue to warn against people making such a claim, as that then leads to smearing as antisemites anyone on the Left using this useful term in their criticism of global power: that would divide and undermine the Left. If you believe we shouldn’t be focusing on the members of the transnational capitalist class at all, then I’d also disagree, for we need to be able to recognise there are people making decisions and influencing each other at elite levels. That does not claim a conspiracy of the few for hidden objectives: rather, professional officers of the transnational capitalist class coordinate to achieve their objectives of capital accumulation.
I do not agree that describing international banking, international corporations, international bankers, the transnational capitalist class, or a shorthand for them (globalist), as being parasitic (such as “sucking the life blood”), is an antisemitic trope. The use of the analogy of parasitism is widespread in economic theory. There is a continual transfer of financial wealth from the real economy to the international financial sector, which many analysts regard as parasitic. The horrible and hateful ‘blood libel’ medieval myth of Jewish people using the blood of gentiles in their cooking, is ridiculous and insane, and I am deeply uncomfortable with people insinuating that a critique of finance as parasitic has anything to do with that horrible medieval myth. It is an illogical comparison, and insulting to the many experts who work hard to analyse and critique the mechanisms of capitalism.
You conclude your blog with comments about how there is an ideology that Jewish people influence or control everything. I do not agree with such an ideology. My speech does not support such an ideology. In certain instances, Jewish people might be involved in certain processes of influence, just like people of other ethnicities, and that does not render analysis of processes of influence, via capital and corporations, a suspect ideology. So although I agree with you that we must be vigilant not to provide the context from which racial hatred could draw, that does not mean we should restrict our political critique, but state, when questioned, that our critiques are not implying a conspiracy of elites who might be Jewish.
To emphasise the point that systemic critique is not inherently providing context for antisemitism, we can remember the many Jewish scholars, journalists and activists who have made some similar points to those in my speech – about global finance, about IDF actions and about Western complicity. For instance, Glen Greenwald, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, Katie Halper, James Schneider, Naomi Klein, Charles Eisenstein. Even Marx and Engels made some similar points about capital many years ago! I am sure you already know that many Jews criticise international banking, bankers, the transnational elites, the foreign expropriation of land, and various forms of colonialism and imperialism. These Jewish scholars do not state every time that they are not blaming Jews and not inviting views on systems of power that could, later, be turned into criticisms of Jews. Just as I don’t think they would need to, nor do I think I would need to. However, when questioned as I was in the Q&A, I agree with you that there is an important need to reassure about these matters. For not doing that at the time, I am sorry.
I discussed the criticism during the Q&A with a decolonisation expert. She raised an issue which is quite awkward to share, but I feel it is one possible interpretation. Challenging a speaker and writing a speculatively negative article about them can be regarded as embodying a confidence to claim space and define reality, not a sense of unsafety or victimhood. She explained that by centring your feeling of unsafety, and criticising me from that feeling, that might actually be reproducing patriarchy and colonialism. That would be if you are to be considered a relatively privileged white man, prioritising your emotional reactions, and the stories you wish to tell about those, to then influence others, above the topic of the talk and the people I was inviting our solidarity with: relatively poor young people in Britain, of any race or creed, and the people of Palestine in such a desperate situation that is made worse by the British government and some British corporations. She also wondered whether any unquestioning support you might receive from community members might reflect a white supremacy culture in middle-aged middle-class Stroud, which de-centres discussion of active solidarity with the disadvantaged. I am unsure about that critique, as I don’t know anything about you nor much about your community. I raise this here, as I consider matters of race and class, identity and privilege, can be explored curiously and reflexively, rather than weaponised to shut one another down for opinions we might disagree with.
After talking with her, what I did clarify is that I wish to avoid a hierarchy of oppressions, whereby a concern for those who are being exploited or suffering the most is displaced by attention to the legitimate worries of relatively privileged and safe people. With that in my mind, I feel uncomfortable if attention is moved away from the exploitation I described in my speech, such as an ongoing genocide, to discuss the opinions and understandable feelings of relatively privileged people who are living safely in the UK. I worry that your article might be having that effect. I am sorry that my lack of reassurance on the day contributed to the potential for the distraction.
I am hopeful you might conclude, upon reflection, that there were no conspiracy theories in my speech and therefore no conspiratorial tropes about Jewish people having secret coordinated power. I hope that my apology for not reassuring you at the time may support you in that reflection.
I have learned that what is on the internet stays there and is then amplified to divide and isolate opposition to corporate power. Therefore, I am interested in how you could address the potential damage that your blog post could cause in future, to both the potential of my analysis, to my personal reputation and to the reputation of the festival organisers. One option might be for you to paste this email to the bottom of your blog, not in the comments, and then append any response or clarification you might want to make. However, if you recognise that some elements of your blog are misinformed and misinforming, such as on the meaning of the ‘great reclamation’, I’d welcome the original text being edited accordingly, or unpublished, and a new version replace it. I wonder: perhaps if there is a coming together in our understanding, it might be powerful for others to witness. Towards that end, I am available for a 1-2-1 conversation.
Because some of your public claims could lead to misinformed criticism of my character, I’d welcome a reply within 3 days. Until then I will refrain from sharing any of this email to anyone else, or making it public, apart from the two organisers of the conference (Chik and Dave), who I believe should be informed about our discussion, as your public criticism may have implications for them. Gail has expressed an interest in seeing my reply, but I will await your thoughts and decision about how to proceed.
Sincerely,
Jem Bendell
If you wish to share your views on this topic, I recommend considering commenting on Jeremy Green’s blog, as I do not monitor comments on my blog.
