Two years ago, David Baddiel published an angry polemic, Jews Don’t Count, which set out to demonstrate “how identity politics failed one particular identity”. Since many on the left more or less consciously regard Jews as both privileged and “white”, he argued, they often fail to take antisemitism as seriously as other forms of racism. Despite a good deal of humour, the analysis is razor-sharp – and designed to persuade basically decent fellow progressives that they have something of a blind spot.
The God Desire presents itself as a similarly rigorous statement of the case for atheism. Yet it is actually a much more subtle and ambivalent book, at its most intriguing when it turns to Baddiel’s reservations about prominent fellow atheists and how his Jewish background colours his atheism.
