The Political Uses of Anti-Semitism
There is an excellent article today (for once)
in Tuesday's ‘i’ – by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, one of Britain’s few decent mainstream columnists.
Defining
Islamaphobia is dubious. (the online version is We
need to be able to criticise Islam – any definition of Islamophobia must
recognise that) argues against the adoption of an Islamic version of the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of ‘anti-Semitism’. Following the
debate on the IHRA a mixture of religious reactionaries, misguided liberals and
Baroness Warsi have combined to demand that there should be an Islamic version
of the IHRA hoping that it would curtail discussion of things like religious
coercion.
For
the past 2 years there has been a wholly artificial debate around the need to
define anti-Semitism. This involved a concerted attempt by the mainstream
press, the Zionist movement and the Labour Right (including Jon Lansman) to get
the Labour Party to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that could be used to
attack supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism.
The
IHRA definition has been around, in one guise or another, since 2005. The definition has been contested by academic researchers such
as Brian Klug,
David Feldman, and Antony Lerman;
jurists including Hugh Tomlinson QC, Stephen Sedley,
Geoffrey Bindman QC, and Geoffrey
Robertson QC and even the
original drafter of the IHRA, Kenneth S. Stern.
It is worth
recalling these critiques had no effect whatsoever on the determination of the Right to push the IHRA because the IHRA was never about combating anti-Semitism.
First adopted by Theresa May, Corbyn thought be was being clever in rushing to
mimic her, oblivious to the consequences not least for himself.
 |
| Paul Besser of Britain First and a signed up Zionist is a dedicated supporter of the IHRA definition of antisemitism |
‘Not only is
there now overwhelming evidence that it’s not fit for purpose, but it also has
the effect of making Jews more vulnerable to antisemitism, not less.’
‘poorly
drafted, misleading, and in practice has led to the suppression of legitimate
debate and freedom of expression.
 |
| Being accused of 'racism' by racists is an occupational hazard on Twitter - it is the go to form of abuse for (usually non-Jewish) members of the Labour Right |
Sedley, a Jewish
former Court of Appeal Judge said the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it
is indefinite. He also described it as restricting criticism of Israel and
‘placing the historical, political, military
and humanitarian uniqueness of Israel’s occupation and colonisation of
Palestine beyond permissible criticism.’
David Feldman,
Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism described
it as ‘bewilderingly imprecise” Hugh
Tomlinson QC said the IHRA ‘lacks clarity
and comprehensiveness’ and that it has ‘a potential chilling effect on public
bodies’
 |
| There is a very simple definition of 'anti-semitism' it comprises all of 6 words |
‘“The
definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or
chill speech on a college campus.,”. “It
was never supposed to curtail speech on campus.”
What the proponents of the IHRA lacked
in argument they made up for in political muscle. Britain’s delegate to the
IHRA, an inter-governmental body consisting of 31 countries, was the right-wing
ex-Conservative MP and government minister, Eric Pickles, a former Chairman of
Conservative Friends of Israel.
We can gain some idea of Pickles’
devotion to anti-racism by the decision of the High Court, in 2015 to rule that Pickles
had unlawfully discriminated against Romani Gypsies who wanted pitches in the
Green Belt. When, in 2009 David Miliband condemned
the Tory Party’s alliance with anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament,
it was Pickles who leapt to their defence. He denounced
the attacks on Roberts Zile,
a Latvian MEP who marched with veterans of the Latvian SS each March. Apparently they had only been ‘following orders’ a defence which was
thrown out at the Nuremburg Trials.
 |
As befits most Islamaphobes, Katie Hopkins is also a dedicated Zionist |
During
the whole debate about the IHRA there was one question that was conspicuous by
its absence. Why the need for a
definition of anti-Semitism at all? For
sure it satisfies a psychological need to define things on the basis that if
you don’t define something then it doesn’t exist.
However
there were already adequate definitions. The Oxford English Diction defines anti-Semitism as ‘hostility to or discrimination against
Jews.’ Brian Klug, an Oxford academic, in his lecture at the Jewish museum
in Berlin on the 75th anniversary of Kristalnacht proposed that anti-Semitism was
‘a form
of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than
what they are’ which for all its academic subtlety begs the question, what are
the Jews? [1]
but still the question that keeps knocking on the door. Why a definition?
When
my father and thousands of Jews like him demonstrated in Cable Street on October
4th 1936 against Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists,
in defiance of the Jewish establishment, they didn’t need a definition of
anti-Semitism to know what they were fighting.
Do you really need to define a brick hurtling towards you or a boot in
the face because you are Jewish?
If
the proponents of the IHRA were being honest then they would admit that the
real reason for the definition is an attempt to redefine the traditional
understanding of what anti-Semitism in order to substitute Israel for Jews.
That they have been able to get away with this is a consequence of changes in
the Jewish community itself.
When
Moseley attempted to march through the Jewish East End of the 1930’s the Police
and the Conservative establishment were hostile to what they saw as a communist
infested, left-wing minority ethnic community. All sorts of revolutionary,
anarchist and socialist groupings competed for support amongst the Jews of
Whitechapel.
The
elephant in the room of the debate over the IHRA and anti-Semitism is that the
Jewish community has changed out of all recognition in the past 80 years. The
Jews of the East End have migrated to Golders Green, Hendon or further out
still. They have also risen up the
socio-economic ladder.
As William Rubinstein, a past
President of the Jewish Historical Society, wrote [The Right, Left and the Jews, p. 51, 1982]:
the rise of Western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high
status has led to the near
disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size:
indeed the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a working
class of any size.’
In short as the Jews changed so did anti-Semitism
and this was exactly Rubinstein’s conclusion:
It has rendered obsolete (and rarely heard ) the type of
anti-semitism which has its basis in fears of the swamping of the native
population by a limitless horde of Yiddish speaking aliens, and it has made
Marxism, and other radical doctrines, irrelevant to the socio-economic bases of
Western Jewry, and increasingly unattractive to most Jews
Dr Geoffrey Alderman, a right-wing Jewish
academic wrote that:
‘By 1961, over 40%
of Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper 2 social classes, whereas these categories accounted for less than 20% of the general
population.’ [Jewish Community in British
Politics, p. 137]
In
other words the fatuous argument of the Right that Jews are not voting for the Labour
Party because of Israel simply has no basis. Jews began voting Conservative
long before the issue of Israel even raised its head. The reasons why Jews today vote
overwhelmingly for the Conservative Party has everything to do with their own
perceived economic interests.
Of
course there will be some middle class Jews who may be put off voting Labour
because of its perceived support for the Palestinians, the Maureen Lipman’s of
this world, but they will be few and far between.
When
Jonathan Freedland defines
anti-Semitism as being in opposition to the perceived self-identity of today’s
Jews with Israel then what he is saying is that anti-Semitism is no longer
hatred of Jews as Jews but disagreement with their political views. It is this,
more than anything, which explains the hypocrisy that lies at the heart of the
debate over anti-Semitism today and also explains why anti-Semitism has been
used as a crude weapon against the Left.
Below
is a very interesting conversation from the Boston Review on What is and is not
anti-Semitism.
Tony
Greenstein
Boston Review - A Political
and Literary Forum
Two Jewish
activists discuss the place of anti-Semitism in contemporary movements for
social justice.
As Jewish
activists invested in antiracist and anti-colonial movements from the United
States to Palestine, we have been following, with interest and concern,
progressive Jewish discussions of anti-Semitism. These discussions have been
brought on in part by the horrors of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre last
October, and in part by larger concerns about the rise of racial violence in
the Trump era.
We
acknowledge the real causes for alarm behind these discussions, but we also
find a great deal to be concerned about. It is now commonplace for slanderous
accusations of anti-Semitism to be leveled against Palestinians and supporters
of Palestine, especially against black leaders and other activists of color.
Many progressives have criticized the conflation of anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism, but narratives about anti-Semitism persist that feed into the
same rhetoric used to derail movements for justice in the United States and in
Palestine. In questioning these progressive analyses of anti-Semitism, we look
to the wider context of global systems of injustice. We are concerned that a
lack of clarity about what anti-Semitism is—and isn’t—allows false
equivalencies and elisions to be weaponized against movements for social
justice.
We recognize
that some will think that we are dismissing or minimizing anti-Semitism at a
time when it is crucial to stand up to anti-Jewish ideologies. But of course we
aren’t interested in dismissing the reality of anti-Semitism, past or present.
Instead our goal is to contribute to a careful analysis of the threats of
anti-Semitic ideology, without downplaying or minimizing the very tangible
structures of racism, colonialism, and imperialism under which people of color
live every day. Our back-and-forth has challenged our thinking about how we can
be as effective and thoughtful as possible in our organizing and our work for
justice. We hope that, in sharing our conversation, it will serve that purpose
for others as well.
Donna Nevel:
I’m troubled by a common refrain I see expressed by progressive Jews on
social media, directed toward social justice communities. They say, in effect:
those who aren’t Jewish need to believe us when we talk about anti-Semitism,
when we say we’re vulnerable.
On the one
hand, that makes perfect sense: we should listen to Jews who say they are the
victims of anti-Semitism, just as we would listen to those impacted by other
injustices. But we also need to look more deeply at this particular call and
its consequences, given how routinely false accusations of anti-Semitism are
hurled at Palestinians and those who support Palestinian rights, at Muslims and
those perceived to be Muslim, and at others—most often people of color—involved
in antiracist movements.
False
accusations have done real harm to people’s lives and careers. The threat of
such consequences has a pernicious chilling effect on what people say and do.
Many people
hesitate to engage with these issues because of the well-substantiated fear
that they will be falsely accused of anti-Semitism—and bullied and intimidated
in the process. These false accusations generally get a lot of air time and
have done real harm to people’s lives and careers. The threat of such
consequences has a very real and pernicious chilling effect on what people say
and do. We need to take this reality into account when statements are made
regarding who is “entitled” to speak, and to be listened to.
We all have
a lot to learn by engaging honestly and thoughtfully about anti-Semitism, both
its history and its current manifestations. The rise in white nationalist
anti-Semitism in this country should be addressed, but that reality should not
be used to buttress overzealous, reckless accusations of anti-Semitism. We must
acknowledge how deeply the conflation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
has become normalized, including within some progressive Jewish circles.
Mark
Tseng-Putterman: I also see this admonition—to trust Jews when we
talk about anti-Semitism—as problematic. Of course we need to consider Jewish
experiences and analyses. But there is a tendency in “social justice” spaces to
defer to individual subjectivity over substantive institutional critique that
becomes especially dangerous in the context of discussions of anti-Semitism. Is
“trust” politically efficacious given that criticisms of the state of Israel or
of U.S. Jewish institutions like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) or the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are so frequently shut down by Jews
claiming anti-Semitism? In order to think critically about Zionism and white
supremacy, we must all have the nuance to recognize and call out bad faith
claims of anti-Semitism when we see them.
There is a
tendency in “social justice” spaces to defer to individual subjectivity over
substantive institutional critique.
Consider an
example. The assertion that white Jews reap white privilege—and, like all white
people, play a role in upholding white supremacy—is now being denounced by
reactionaries wielding social justice language as anti-Semitic, Jewish erasure,
and even gaslighting. I worry that a consequence of this “trust Jews on
anti-Semitism” language is to silence the criticisms and analyses of people of
color—including Jewish people of color—about racism and complicity in Jewish
communities.
Many Jews do
indeed refuse to accept, or even sit with, such criticisms. They also raise the
specter of supposed “left
anti-Semitism,” claiming that Jews are being excluded from
progressive spaces. And many progressive Jews have been too quick to accept the
premise that there exists a unique “left anti-Semitism” that must be engaged.
The result, I worry, is a vacuum where Jewish communities and institutions can
cover their ears and block out critical conversations about white supremacy and
Zionism happening on the left.
Of course
anti-Semitism exists in pockets of the left, as does ingrained racism,
misogyny, and transphobia. But, to me, the way we talk about “left
anti-Semitism” reeks of a smear campaign designed to block critiques of
Zionism. These admonitions aren’t about seeking greater Jewish inclusion or
participation in the left; they’re about delegitimizing some of the most
important social justice movements of our time, from Black Lives Matter to the
global call by Palestinian civil society
for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). As Jews on the left, we need to ask
ourselves how our deference to the sensitivities of some Jews is enabling this
rhetorical violence.
DN: I think we
always need to ask whose voices are being promoted and why, whose voices are
being silenced and why, whose interests are being served and whose aren’t. At
this moment, particularly, we need to be welcoming critical, challenging
conversations about these issues, not trying to shut them down.
The rise in
white nationalist anti-Semitism in this country should be addressed. But that
reality should not be used to buttress reckless accusations of anti-Semitism.
Take the
ADL’s biased analysis of anti-Semitism. Their “research” and data
reflect a broader anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian agenda. Yet, we see people
uncritically citing the ADL as “the” expert on what constitutes anti-Semitism,
and who is being anti-Semitic. And when their authority is challenged due to
their troubling record, many claim it is further evidence of the left’s
anti-Semitism. That was the accusation made, for example, when the ADL was dropped from a
high-profile Starbucks “anti-bias training” following many substantive concerns
expressed by leaders of the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter as well as by
left Jewish activists.
Here’s
another example. I read numerous accounts after the Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute rescinded Angela Davis’s human rights award, arguing that Jews were
being unfairly blamed for what happened to her—that it was unfair, even
anti-Jewish, to focus on local Jewish organizations that had applied pressure
on the Museum to rescind the award. They argued that it was white evangelicals,
not Jews, in Birmingham, who have the power to make those things happen.
But Jewish
organizations, including the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center and the
Birmingham Jewish Federation, did play a key role in pressuring the museum to
rescind the award. That doesn’t mean all Jews opposed her talk; they didn’t.
And it is true that efforts to thwart supporters of the Palestinian movement
for justice extend far beyond Jewish groups. It also true that sometimes the
decision makers may not have consisted of many, if any, Jews, and that some
Jewish groups oppose these kinds of actions when they happen.
To say that
Jewish groups applied pressure on the museum—and were likely listened to—is
consistent with what Jewish groups have done across the country to supporters
of BDS applying for jobs, seeking tenure, and more. I just can’t see it as
anti-Jewish to hold these organizations accountable. It’s not anti-Jewish to
point out that many Jewish organizations have power to exert their influence in
damaging ways.
It’s not
anti-Jewish to point out that many Jewish organizations have power to exert
their influence in damaging ways.
MTP: Absolutely.
When activists, including many Jews, confront the bad politics of so-called
“liberal” Jewish organizations like the ADL, they end up getting tarred as
anti-Semitic. I’m thinking of the ridiculous allegations (many from
leaders of left-of-center Jewish groups, including T'ruah’s
Jill Jacobs, who has also falsely accused Palestinian
activists of anti-Semitism) against the Deadly Exchange campaign by Jewish
Voice for Peace (JVP). They claimed the campaign, which sought to end police
exchanges between Israel and U.S. municipalities, was perpetuating an
anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Israel was responsible for racist policing
in the United States. JVP and other activist groups exhibited very tangible
evidence of the exchange of repressive policing tactics, and the links between
racist state violence, in both nations. But this overzealous analysis of
anti-Semitism distorted the
campaign into a case of
Jew-blaming.
Most
recently, we’ve seen the attacks by both progressive and conservative Jews
directed at Representative Ilhan Omar, denouncing as anti-Semitic her demonstrably true assertion
that AIPAC and the Israel lobby influence U.S. policy in the Middle East.
What’s worse, the coordinated attack on Omar was catalyzed by Batya
Ungar-Sargon, an editor at The Forward, a supposedly progressive Jewish
platform with a rich socialist history. After Ungar-Sargon went so far as to write that Omar
“won the approval of the KKK,” The Forward used the smear campaign as a
fundraising email talking
point.
A number of
progressive Jews responded to the Omar smear by balking at the
assertion that the Israel lobby has anything to do with Jews. Similarly to the
troubling dynamic you saw in Birmingham, many were quick to excise Jewish
agency from pro-Israel lobbying, instead pointing to Christian evangelical
groups and claiming that AIPAC is not a Jewish organization—despite its U.S.
Jewish base and participation in various Jewish institutional constituencies
such as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. We
are seeing an impulse, often coming from progressive Jews, to deny the agency
and influence of Jews and Jewish institutions, which I think really limits our
capacity to foment effective antiracist change.
This
hesitance to confront Jewish institutional complicity in structures of violence
may be rooted in a particular analysis of anti-Semitism: the idea that Jews are
perpetual “middlemen” caught between the masses and the power elite. I’ve
written elsewhere—and Tallie
Ben Daniel has a wonderful essay tackling similar questions from a Mizrahi
perspective in JVP’s recent book On Anti-Semitism (2017)—about how this
notion that Jews are “allowed success” in order to be made “useful” as
scapegoats later inevitably freezes our ability to call out Jewish complicity.
It has us seeking to absolve bad-acting Jewish institutions by looking for the
“man behind the curtain.” By that logic, Jewish organizations can’t have the
power and influence to blacklist Angela Davis or defame academics such as
Steven Salaita; right-wing evangelicals must have done it. And yet we know very
clearly that there are numerous influential Jewish groups that are successfully
leading smear
campaigns against pro-Palestine activists and funding anti-Muslim
hate groups.
According to
“middlemen” logic, Jewish organizations can’t be blamed; right-wing
evangelicals must have done it.
As Ben Daniel
implores, we need to understand the privileges and powers granted to white
American Jews not as an inevitable symptom of anti-Semitism, but as a symptom
of whiteness, white supremacy, and the ability (and willingness) of many white
American Jews to align themselves with both a fundamental American
anti-blackness, as well as an imagined “Judeo-Christian” West that
serves the imperialist project of Western Islamophobia. We must confront head
on how institutions that purport to speak in the name of U.S. Jews are so deeply
implicated in perpetuating racism and Islamophobia.
DN: This is an
issue of real concern for me and for many others. Elly Bulkin and I have been
working with different groups for many years to challenge Islamophobia within
our communities. We created Jews Against
Anti-Muslim Racism (JAAMR) as a resource because we didn’t feel
anti-Muslim racism, and particularly structural Islamophobia, the “war on
terror,” and the Islamophobia-Israel connection, were being prioritized enough
within Jewish communities, including within many progressive Jewish spaces.
More recently, after you brought to our attention some research about the New
York Jewish Communal Fund (JCF) and its complicity in funding virulently
Islamophobic groups, we continued that research, and recently published a report, together
with Jews Say No! and JVP-NYC, detailing this funding and calling on the JCF to
defund Islamophobia now.
While there
has been some outrage expressed within Jewish communities about the JCF’s
funding of Islamophobia, vocal opposition to it—or making it a real
priority—hasn’t been as widespread as it surely would be if grants and financial
resources were going to support anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi groups.
Institutions
that purport to speak in the name of U.S. Jews are deeply implicated in
perpetuating Islamophobia.
MTP: Another
thread here is that in the United States, the most visible forms of racism and
other forms of oppression tend to be these spectacular iterations—hate
violence, mass shootings, police brutality—and not the profound mundanity of
everyday, structural state violence. While the terrors of the Tree of Life and
Christchurch massacres have rightly inspired global outpourings of solidarity,
I think it is important to recognize the underlying institutional Islamophobia
(which doesn’t elicit the same kind of bipartisan condemnation anti-Semitism
does). It doesn’t minimize the tragedy to acknowledge that the Tree of Life
shooting is not an instance of routine state violence against American Jews.
Indeed, admitting this is a prerequisite to building the sort of coalitions
necessary to take on the forces we’re confronted with today.
It seems to
me we suffer from a lack of clarity about the meaning of structural,
state-sanctioned violence. This lack of clarity in turn muddies the waters when
it comes to understanding anti-Semitism. Some Jewish progressive organizations
argue that anti-Semitism is structural in the United States today. What
are the structures and institutions that uphold it?
This is
where I find the analysis murky. My sense is that many would respond along
these lines: Anti-Semitism is different from other forms of oppression.
Rather than depriving Jews of resources and power, anti-Semitism thrives by
allowing Jews success so that they can be made scapegoats in the future.
My issue
with this answer, which was perhaps most popularly encapsulated in April
Rosenblum’s pamphlet The Past
Didn’t Go Anywhere (2018), is that it exonerates, or
at least overlooks, Jewish participation and relative success in racial
capitalism. The strategy thus evades questions of Jewish complicity with state
power and the global racial hierarchy and instead freezes us in a perpetual
state of victimhood, or
potential future victimhood. Besides chalking up American Jewish power and
assimilation to anti-Semitism’s predetermined “middleman” role (rather than to
whiteness, antiblackness, or Islamophobia), it also assumes a cyclicality to anti-Semitism
that makes it impossible to take Jewish power or safety at face value—instead
seeing these as symptoms of a future, inevitable scapegoating. Rosenblum’s
ideas are being amplified in this political moment, in countless news articles,
Twitter threads, and resources that lean heavily on her analysis, such as Jews
for Racial and Economic Justice’s “Understanding Anti-Semitism.”
We suffer
from a lack of clarity about the meaning of structural, state-sanctioned
violence.
I also take
issue with the claim that anti-Semitism doesn’t work like other systems of
oppression, because anti-Semitism positions Jews as a powerful threat to be
eradicated rather than a weak minority to be exploited. Anti-Semitism is
certainly not unique in this regard. Take the Yellow Peril tropes that have
galvanized anti-Asian racism—from immigration exclusion to U.S. military
intervention—since at least the turn of the twentieth century. These mechanics
also invoke Asians as a powerful, external threat. The same can be said for
“clash of civilizations” rhetoric about Muslims and the so-called “East” that
is central to the “War on Terror.”
I worry that
the tendency to render anti-Semitism as abstract, cyclical, and permanent
(language of anti-Semitism as a “virus” or an “ancient
prejudice” abound) prevents us from looking closely at our current political
conditions and from understanding anti-Semitism in relation to the escalation
of racist state violence we are seeing in this moment.
DN: It is true
that negative stereotypes of Jews differ qualitatively from those about some
other groups. But that doesn’t speak to the structures at work, nor is it a
reason to exceptionalize anti-Semitism or to assume nobody but Jews can
possibly understand it or its seriousness. Promoting that view has real
consequences: it distracts us from the impact of white supremacy on targeted
communities.
At the same
time, there is the entrenched narrative of Jews as the “chosen people.” Many
progressive Jews have rejected it, but many have not as clearly rejected
notions of Jewish exceptionalism with which we were inculcated in Hebrew school
and in other Jewish spaces—that Jews have higher ethical standards and are
smarter than others, and that nobody has suffered as much as we have. (For many
of us, who have power and privilege as members of white, affluent communities
in the United States, these claims of exceptionalism perhaps have greater
potential to do harm today than in the past.)
Many
progressive Jews still think that nobody has suffered as much as we have.
We must
genuinely grapple with these beliefs. They impact how we treat communities we
perceive as not “our own.” They foster our sense of entitlement. They shape how
we move in social justice spaces and in the political worlds we inhabit, and
how we may come to understand and center our own suffering. (This is not to
assert that there is one fixed Jewish value system. There are many Jewish histories,
experiences, and lived realities; we all navigate multiple identities.)
One way this
entitlement shows up,
for example, is public outrage when social justice movements are accused of
failing to center anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism needs to be included as an
injustice we challenge, and, in my experience, I’ve not heard social justice
groups claim otherwise. Many movements have been focused on challenging the
dangerous structural, institutional, state-sanctioned racism, xenophobia,
Islamophobia, and other injustices at the core of U.S. society. As we are
seeing a marked rise in white nationalist anti-Semitic violence (as well as
violence directed toward other communities) part of our commitment is to
address and incorporate it meaningfully into our justice work. But that doesn’t
mean that being sensitive and responsive to anti-Semitism requires centering it
or believing that—in this country at this time—it is the same as communities
targeted daily by the state and by a range of institutions.
MTP: I think this
notion that the left, particularly people of color on the left, don’t give
anti-Semitism enough air time sets up a problematic savior complex: white Jews
swoop in as educators tasked with tackling the supposed ignorance of people of
color. This, in turn, perpetuates this patronizing and
paternalistic relationship between white Jews and particularly black activists
that the often romanticized history of black-Jewish civil rights organizing
hinges on. It’s not that activists of all backgrounds shouldn’t learn about anti-Semitism.
But when activists of color do anything deemed anti-Semitic (including merely
criticizing Israel), they are chastised by the press, forced to apologize, and
required to commit to being “educated” on the
issue—a ritual that I think receives undue airtime because it reinforces tropes
about angry and ignorant people of color.
This sense
of “finally people will believe we’re oppressed too” is echoed across the
Jewish political spectrum.
Your point
about how deep the ideology of the “chosen people” runs, even in liberal
secular American Jewish circles, resonates here. Is twenty-first-century
American Jewish identity—at least as it is popularly understood and
circulated—even possible without anti-Semitism? Can we conceive of “Jewishness”
in its modern, often class-privileged and white American manifestation, without
a sense of victimization? Certain responses to the anti-Semitism of the Trump
campaign, the “alt-right,” and even the Tree of Life shooting seem to indicate
that these episodes resolve the crisis of modern white American Jewish
identity—by confirming that anti-Semitism is indeed cyclical and permanent.
Contemporary American Jewishness has thus become parasitic on victimhood. But
retreating to these comfortable narratives about who “we” are is preventing us
from building coalitions, challenging institutions, and engaging in
self-criticism in effective ways.
This sense
of “finally people will believe we’re oppressed too” is echoed across the
Jewish political spectrum. This narrative was crystallized in a March 2017 piece in the Times
of Israel which described a “silver lining” to rising anti-Semitism: it
proved a counter to “intersectional” campus movements that excluded Jews on the
basis of their being “white and privileged.” Of course, this narrative of
Jewish exclusion from the left conveniently conflates Jewishness and Zionism.
But this concept of the “silver lining” speaks to a larger dynamic in which
instances of anti-Jewish violence are seen as “useful” insofar as they confirm
to Jews and “prove” to everyone else our oppressed status. This seems to me an
incredibly cynical and troubling way of approaching anti-Semitism in our
current moment.
Jews are
implicated symbolically in this scheme, but not materially.
Perhaps one
consequence of this ideology is the shifting in emphasis away from white
supremacy and toward “white nationalism” when we talk about anti-Semitism in
the United States. For instance, Eric Ward has argued to great
acclaim in some parts of the Jewish left that anti-Semitism is the central
“fuel” of white nationalism, and that white Jews must give up their “fantasy”
of white privilege. Ward has written that white
nationalism is a “new competitor” to white supremacy, a social movement that is
“stand[ing] up” as white supremacy “falls down.” Make no mistake: it is crucial
to recognize the growing threat of white nationalism and the role of
anti-Semitism within its ranks. But I worry that we are embracing a strand of
post-racialism by saying, in effect, that white supremacy was defeated and that
white nationalism is a new force rising to fill the void. This frame ignores
the deep continuity in structural violence through both the Obama and Trump
eras, and of course back even before the founding of the United States.
We need to
talk about the white nationalist movement while recognizing that white
supremacy—as a structure—remains in full force, one too often accepted as the
status quo. If that’s the case, what are the implications of anti-Semitism
supposedly being at the core of white nationalist ideology, if white supremacy
remains hegemonic? And why should we restrict our analysis of anti-Semitism to
its supposedly central role in white nationalist thought and not consider its
more marginal role in systemic white supremacy?
The core of
white nationalism is not anti-Semitism, but settler colonialism and
antiblackness.
It also
seems odd to position white nationalism’s pursuit of a white ethno-state as a
new ideology rather than the founding doctrine of the United States. Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz has traced (in these
very pages) the genealogy of white nationalist thought back to the so-called
Indian Wars that founded the United States as a white nation-state. All of this
is part and parcel with the liberal amnesia that has folks responding to, for
instance, the state-sanctioned violence at the U.S.-Mexico border or the
separation of asylum-seeking families with the ahistorical “this isn’t the
America I know.” So while anti-Semitism may play an important role in
contemporary white nationalist discourses, we need to keep in mind this longer
history of white ethno-nationalism. Its core is not anti-Semitism, but settler
colonialism and antiblackness.
DN: I had
similar concerns reading a recent piece by Tim Wise as those you describe about
Ward’s analysis. While Wise correctly rejects “the false equivalence some are
trying to draw” between Minister Louis Farrakhan and far right, neo-Nazis, he then makes
assertions about the role of anti-Semitism in white nationalism that I
question.
“For
neo-Nazis and modern white nationalists,” Wise writes, “anti-Jewish bigotry is
literally the fuel of their movement, the glue that binds them.” He adds that
“Jew-hatred is the thing, bigger than racism against folks of color.”
While I’m skeptical that neo-Nazis actually believe Jews are worse than black
people or Muslims, I also don’t see that it’s a relevant or useful distinction
to make. White nationalists, with great
frequency, target people of
color, transgender and queer people, and others. At the 2017 Charlottesville
march, anti-Semitic chants were indeed frightening, but they were also plainly
a part of a broader call to uphold white supremacy and defend the legacy of the
Confederacy, which goes well beyond the march, reflecting the day-to-day
realities for communities of color. I am concerned that, while surely not his
intention, Wise’s assertions about the role of anti-Semitism in the white
nationalist movement end up diminishing both the consequences and impact of
white nationalism on other communities and the central role of pervasive,
structural forms of racism and of white supremacy—with its long and deep
foundational history that continues until today.
I’ve also
been reflecting upon what Lesley Williams wrote after the
Charlottesville march about the swastika and what it means for white Jews
versus for Black people. “For Jews, Nazi symbols evoke a terrifying, traumatic
past,” she wrote. “For African Americans, they evoke a terrifying, traumatic, unending
present. White Jews may be shocked at this undeniable evidence of U.S. racism;
African Americans merely see more of the same. Black people did not need to be
reminded by hoods and swastikas that we live in a dangerously racist country.”
MTP: I agree. The
language that Wise and Ward use about anti-Semitism as the “fuel” of white
nationalism decenters the communities most tangibly targeted by the white
nationalist agenda. Trump has alluded to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that
George Soros funded the Central American migrant caravan approaching the
U.S.-Mexico border. Jewish progressives certainly need to confront that
rhetoric. But the tangible impact remains the same: to militarize the border,
separate families, and detain and deport asylum seekers, many of whom belong to
Indigenous Maya groups. Jews are implicated symbolically in this scheme, but
not materially. Clearly, that symbolism has consequences—the Tree of Life
shooting being the most chilling example of late. Still, I think it is worth
sitting with the distinction between being a symbol in the white nationalist
imaginary versus being a target in the crosshairs of the state.
There is a
difference between being a symbol in the white nationalist imaginary and being
a target in the crosshairs of the state.
The same
problem can be seen in responses to the Tree of Life shooting. The Forward ran
a telling piece entitled
“Is America Still Safe for Jews?” This phrasing—“still safe”—says so much. When
has America ever been safe for black people? For Indigenous people? For those
living under the boot of U.S. imperialism and militarism abroad? There are
truths about this country—truths being exposed in new ways in this moment—that
American Jews have not had to fully grapple with, as Jews, in recent U.S.
history. So how do we sit with what for many white American Jews is a new,
creeping feeling—that the promise of America is in fact built on violence—while
recognizing that communities of color have been feeling that violence for
centuries?
I think it
starts with realizing we don’t need to be the center of attention in order to
have a role to play in dismantling the structures of oppression that the
contradictions of the Trump era continue to reveal.
I’m an opinionated Jew with a PhD in the history of antisemitism, but I
find it daunting to weigh in on the debate about antisemitism in the Labour
Party. To describe the accusations as disproportionate is to risk being branded
an antisemite. But while genuine instances of antisemitism should be tackled, there is no more of it in Labour than in other parties. The sustained offensive by the Labour right and by Conservatives is
not only unfairly damaging the party and the left in general, it also
unthinkingly reinforces antisemitic motifs.
The populist right’s public enemy number one is the ‘liberal elite’.
This phrase deliberately merges two very different entities: metropolitan
intellectuals on the one hand, and global capitalism on the other. In her 2016
‘citizens of nowhere’ speech, Theresa May declared that ‘liberalism and globalisation … have left
people behind.’ The elision harnesses public anger at banks and multinational
corporations and turns it onto members of the middle-class precariat:
academics, journalists and left-wing MPs.
This scapegoating of a relatively powerless ‘elite’ echoes the
antisemitic fantasy of the rootless cosmopolitan who is also part of an
international financial network. The notion that prejudice is festering among the ‘chattering classes’ of North
London unwittingly invokes an antisemitic stereotype. It also undermines
qualities that are both vital and under threat in an age of philistine
oligopoly: intellectualism, expertise, rationality.
Allegations of antisemitism employ a hermeneutics of suspicion, often
uncovering examples recorded in meetings, or buried on social media, even from years ago. This
replicates the classic dynamics of conspiracy theory, a common feature of
traditional antisemitism. The language of the accusations, too, echoes that of
antisemitism – a ‘stain’ or ‘scourge’ that has ‘infected’ the party and must be ‘rooted out’. I’m not
arguing that centre-right and right-wing critics of antisemitism are
antisemitic, but their campaign has a ferocious hygiene about it that carries unpleasant
and ironic resonances, and leads to irrational outcomes. Attempts to reveal
hidden hatred are a central feature of the asymmetrical identification of
antisemitism with the left. Right-wing antisemitism is assumed to be more
blatant, and therefore attracts less scrutiny. The left is held to a higher
standard, and ‘gotcha’ moments trump statistical evidence.
On Monday, the Labour MP Siobhain Mcdonagh said on the Today programme that ‘it’s very much part of their politics, of hard-left politics, to
be against capitalist and to see Jewish people as the financers of capital,
ergo you are anti-Jewish people.’ ‘In other words to be anti-capitalist you
have to be antisemitic,’ John Humphrys interrupted. ‘Yes,’ Mcdonagh said. ‘Not
everybody but there’s a certain strand of it.’ I could hardly believe my ears,
but she is not alone. In the New Statesman last year, Matt Bolton and
Frederick Harry Pitts wrote about the ‘deep-seated theoretical underpinnings of left critiques of
capitalism that have antisemitism as their logical consequence’.
Such commentators make associations that they would regard as
antisemitic if articulated in reverse: the link between Jews and a version of
capitalism that is about actors as well as systems. Similarly, they are keen to
stress the distinction between Israel’s actions on the one hand and Jews on the
other, yet at the same time frequently identify criticism of Israel as at least latently antisemitic.
Unlike political opposition, and because of the Holocaust, the charge of
antisemitism has an absolute, unarguable quality, which is exploited by Jeremy
Corbyn’s critics for a political end. It’s true that Corbyn and some of his
allies are digging their heels in, creating a vicious circle, but many of the
accusations are implacable because their aim is to undermine the left. On
quitting Labour last month, Joan Ryan MP said antisemitism was ‘never’ a
problem before Corbyn became leader: fifteen years ago I reviewed a volume of essays on the perceived rise of ‘a new antisemitism’ on the
left.
What is new is Corbyn’s indictment of the financial greed hollowing out
our society. An analysis of broader social and economic power was missing from
British politics through the decades of New Labour, and is still absent on the
right of the Labour Party. Corbyn’s message has resonated profoundly with many
people. But it is being muted and drowned out by the antisemitism row.
Some conspiracies – not involving the Rothschilds – are real: the networks of offshore tax havens and shell companies, and the links between
Russian money, Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Trump and the Brexit campaign.
Bolton and Pitts criticise Corbyn’s portrayal of ‘a parasitical “1 per cent”
draining the vitality from the “real economy”’ and a ‘global elite’ who ‘do not
produce anything tangible but merely make money out of money’. But that
portrayal rings true.
Viewing power in perspective lays bare the vast and widening wealth gap,
and a left that is at a low ebb compared to the neoliberal hegemony and the
resurgent populist right. The antisemitism furore is undermining the left still
further at a time when we need more than ever to challenge the real financial
elites that are wrecking our world. Critics should not feel bullied into
silence.
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