Do you remember Hobnobs madam? They were dead popular in t’70s, do you remember them? I bet you remember Hobnobs don’t you sir. You’d have them with your brew, and you see the great thing was about them that behind every Hobnob was the leering face of the Jew, or not precisely the Jew – you remember Jews don’t you sir? With their international banking systems– but the Jew as imaged by the vulgar bourgeoisie– you remember the vulgar bourgeoisie I’m sure, we had them in t’70s, I think that’s what that Abigail’s Party was about, you remember Abigail’s Party if I am certain of anything madam – the vulgar bourgeoisie, just enough education to talk but not enough to understand – one is reminded of this sort of discourse occurring in the 1970s – the grey company man who goes to t’pictures where he is indoctrinated by the ideology of the capitalist class even in his rest time – the Jew who penetrates t’biscuit tin wi’ difference and must (in their mind) be destroyed. We see in the contours of the oats t’leering visage of the ‘ook-nosed kike of popular cartoons, always grasping – for yer money you understand sir, you remember money don’t you sir I’m sure there was a lot of it in t’70s – the very image of what the anti-semite recognises in his own capitalist masters (whose existence, incidentally, he depends on for his own) but, rejecting the possibility that they might really embody these characteristics (precisely due to this point), projects them onto t’Jew – you remember anti-semitism madam it was quite the thing in t’70s – and you’d dip this Hobnob, this Jew-biscuit, in and out of yer brew, in out, in out, it was like a bloody negative dialectic weren’t it? You remember negative dialectics don’t you sir, we had them in the 1970s.

Dave Adorno is Professor of Philosophy and Stand-Up at the Bolton Working Men’s Club Institute for Social Research