George Soros - a unifying figure for Trump, the Zionists and the antisemites of the Alt-Right

Soros the ‘Puppet Master’ is at the heart of the anti-Semitism which Zionism Koshers

When the Tory tabloids ran a series of anti-semitic headlines attacking George Soros, including the Nazi term Puppet Master the Zionist 'opponents' of antisemitism like the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism remained silent

One of the central features of anti-Semitic ideology is the all-powerful global Jewish financier. In previous times the Rothschild family fulfilled this role, today it is George Soros. The Jewish World Conspiracy Theory, whereby Jews control both capitalism and communism is personified in such a person. Jewish capitalists were supposed to have funded the Bolshevik revolution and Hitler’s anti-Semitism stemmed from his belief that Communism was a Jewish creation. [Jewish Bolshevism]

It needs to be said that Soros, who was one of those who funded a range of anti-Communist groups in the former Soviet Block is no revolutionary. But his funding of liberal and civil society groups, including human rights organisations and his opposition to Brexit has aroused the ire of a broad swathe of the Right, including the neo-Nazi and overtly anti-Semitic Right.  The image of Soros that the anti-Semites portray is a fiction, it is the traditional anti-semitic image of the manipulative Jewish financier.  It bears no resemblance to Soros just as anti-semitic imagery also bears no relation to Jews. But the fact that Soros is a billionaire speculator is no justification for anti-semitic attacks on him.

Battle of Waterloo

In 1940 the Nazis produced a film Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo about Nathan Rothschild and how he made his fortune out of the bloodshed of Waterloo. It was based on a pamphlet which took the Europe of 1846 by storm. It still resonates to this day.

There are even some fools in the Palestine solidarity movement who trace the existence of Israel to ‘the Rothschilds’. In fact the actual relationship between this family and the Zionist movement was a very mixed one. At the outset ‘Herzl appealed in vain to wealthy Jews such as Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the national Zionist movement.’ Lionel Nathan de Rothschild founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews in 1917.

The Rothschilds have been replaced by the figure of George Soros, who was a child survivor of the Hungarian Holocaust. Soros has become the unifying figure for the anti-Semitic and Zionist Right.

Glenn Beck outlining the tentacles of George Soros, the great financial manipulator

According to Glenn Beck Soros was “the puppetmaster” – a Jewish financier with ties to no nation, intent on creating a “one world government” and subverting the United States. It is an anti-Semitic phrase that the Sun also used on a headline when attacking Soros over Brexit before quickly withdrawing it.

Beck described how “Eighty years ago George Soros was born, little did people know that economies would collapse, currencies would become worthless, elections would be stolen.” Gideon Rachman describes how ‘The nastiest moment (amongst much competition) comes when Beck tries to claim that the 14-year-old Soros came from an anti-semitic family and himself participated in the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust.’

In April Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in a campaign against the absent Soros. Orbán ran his campaign on the single issue of migration. Orban accused Soros of a ‘plot... to send millions of migrants to Hungary.’

All of Orban’s anti-Semitic venom was encapsulated in his speech of 15^th March commemorating the 170^th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. It is, to be sure, a classic summation of the caricature of the Jew as a rootless cosmopolitan, owing loyalty to nothing but his own purse.

“We must fight against an opponent which is different from us. Their faces are not visible, but are hidden from view; they do not fight directly, but by stealth; they are not honourable, but unprincipled; they are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs. They are not generous, but vengeful, and always attack the heart—especially if it is red, white and green.”

Evolve politics, which describes itself as ‘truly independent’ thus making me immediately suspicious, describes how the Tories have appointed one Roger Scruton, on the far-Right of British politics to chair an architecture quango.  Scruton was Editor of the Salisbury Review, a Tory magazine which believed Margaret Thatcher was a dangerous radical, for 18 years. 

Luciana Berger, Labour Zionist MP, takes objection to the appointment of Roger Scruton whilst turning a blind eye to Israel's love affair with Orban

More hypocrisy from an MP who is a last ditch defender of Israel's racist policies

In an example of the hypocrisy that passes for Zionist politics Luciana Berger, the Labour Zionist MP who fronts the Jewish Labour Movement and spends most of her time attacking Jeremy Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’ had the audacity to say that ‘An individual who peddles antisemitic conspiracy theories has no place advising government about anything.’ Quite why this should be so when Sir Eric Pickles was until recently in the Cabinet is difficulty to understand.  Naturally opportunist rent a mouth MP Wes Streeting joined in. Both of them were aghast because Scruton was a supporter of Viktor Orban.  Why the surprise?

Tory MEPs have just voted to defend Orban in the European parliament. The same Tory MEPs sit in the European Conservative Reform group with at least 3 anti-Semitic parties with barely a murmur from the Zionists.

Orban's 'outstanding statesman' with friend - Zionist labour can't criticise the Tories support for Orban without asking why Orban was a guest of honour in Israel last July

I have repeatedly written that Orban has called Admiral Horthy, the pro-Nazi ruler of Hungary who presided over the deportation to Auschwitz of nearly half a million Jews an “exceptional statesmen”.  None of this prevented Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visiting Orban on a state visit in the summer of 2017.

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I also described how ‘Orban dedicated a nasty and vicious poster campaign to attacking Soros last year, replete with all the anti-Semitic dog whistles that only he was capable of.  Hungary’s Jewish community was up in arms.’  Why are anti-Semitic regimes so attractive to Israel and the Zionist movement?

Anti-semitic Republican cartoon attacking Democrate candidate - with fistful of dollars in her hand - the dogs are whistling

Reuters reported last year that ‘Israel’s ambassador to Hungary issued a statement denouncing the campaign, saying it “evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear”, an apparent reference to Hungary’s part in the deportation of half a million Jews during the Holocaust. But here’s the strange thing. Netanyahu ‘hit the roof. He wasn’t going to have his closest ally in Europe attacked because of a little local anti-Semitism.’

Hours after the Ambassador made his comments, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, issued a “clarification” saying that Soros was a legitimate target for criticism. Surprise, surprise!

In 2017 Orban launched a poster campaign against George Soros in Budapest as part of his campaign to close Soros's European University - when the Israeli Ambassador uttered a few mild criticisms he was forced to retract by Netanyahu

“In no way was the statement (by the ambassador) meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments,” said foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, adding that Soros funded organizations “that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself”. Israel backs Hungary, says financier Soros is a threat

As Evolve observes

‘Orban even went as far as commissioning a deeply antisemitic advertising campaign that plastered Soros’ grinning face on billboards with the caption “Don’t let George Soros have the last laugh.“

What Netanyahu is saying is that Soros helps fund Israeli human rights groups like B’tselem and in Netanyahu’s eyes this counts as ‘undermining’ his police state regime. All of this took place without a murmur from Luciana.  Because of course she had bigger fish to fry namely Corbyn and it wouldn’t do to criticise her favourite state (Israel in case you wondered) as anti-Semitic.

Yair Netanyahu's anti-semitic cartoon of Soros attracted rare praise for a Jew from the Daily Stormer - possibly a first

Daily Stormer

None of this is surprising, because to Netanyahu Soros is the anti-Christ (we don’t have an anti-Moses!). Netanyahu’s son, Yair, helpfully posted a nice anti-Semitic cartoon of Soros at the centre of a conspiracy, complete with Lizard to undermine the Israeli state.  Praise came from neo-Nazi former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke no less.  Indeed Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer joined in the congratulations, which is no mean feat since he has sworn never to talk to or meet a Jew.

David Duke, neo-Nazi ex-KKK gives his approval to antisemitic cartoon by Netanyahu's son Yair

Not it should be thought that Orban is the only anti-Semite that Netanyahu has close and friendly relations with.  Poland’s Law and Justice Party is just as close which is why when Poland passed a law making criticism of Polish collaboration with the Nazis a criminal offence, Netanyahu moved quickly to head off criticism by concocting a deal with them that left the legislation in place. The Real Reason Netanyahu Gave Cover To Holocaust Deniers

Holocaust survivors and anti-racist Israelis picket Yad Vashem during Orban's visit 

Naturally, having been invited to visit Hungary on a state visit Netanyahu returned the favour and last July Orban found time to visit his best friend.  As is normal on these occasions Orban paid homage at the Holocaust propaganda museum that Israel maintains, Yad Vashem. We therefore had the ludicrous situation of someone who thinks Horthy, who sent nearly half a million Jews to their deaths, is an ‘exceptional statesman’ paying homage to the 6 million.  Pass the sick bag Alice, as Private Eye used to say.

However none of the claque of Zionist Labour MPs had anything to say about this.  It was left to some of Israel’s Holocaust survivors to picket Orban when he paid homage at Yad Vashem. The Times of Israel’s report of the demonstration Livid protesters block Hungarian PM Orban as he leaves Yad Vashem quoted Yad Vashem as saying that ‘its hosting of Orban was determined by Foreign Ministry directives, which require foreign leaders and other visiting dignitaries to visit the memorial.’  If Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, which has always produced a Zionised version of Holocaust history, erasing for years the name even of the Auschwitz escapees Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (because they were not Zionists) cannot even refuse entrance to a known anti-Semite because it has to follow government instructions then there is no other way to describe it other than a propaganda institution.

Below is an excellent article in Jewish Currents, a left-wing American Jewish publication on what it calls The Soros Myth.

Tony Greenstein

The Soros Myth - Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Undermining and Delegitimizing of Protest

Racism, Antisemitism, ideas of “outside agitators” are the right’s most effective tools for delegitimizing the message and messengers of social justice. If protest can be blamed on those outside, both the message and the messenger are untrustworthy.

October 11, 2018 Dove Kent; Jewish Currents (Portside)

Protestors opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, September 2018., Photo: Mobilus In Mobili via Flickr // Jewish Currents

For decades, the right has undermined Black protest and resistance movements as “violent,” “dangerous,” and “un-American” and has responded with militarized force. Under this administration, Trump and his allies are replicating and amplifying this strategy, using misogyny and antisemitism to further erode the basic foundations of political participation.

In response to weeks of women and trans protests demanding that Judge Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault, be removed from consideration for the Supreme Court, Donald Trump tweeted out:

The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers

This was quickly followed by a retweeted antisemitic message from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and a longtime Republican leader, calling Soros the enemy of Christ:

Follow the money. I think Soros is the anti-Christ! He must go! Freeze his assets & I bet the protests stop.

Trump and his allies’ deployment of misogyny and antisemitism in this moment are attempts to  undermine our movements, echoing ways the right wing has long attacked protest movements on the left. The power of protest lies in its credibility as the voice of public opinion. If women and trans protestors can be dismissed as pawns or operatives rather than agents of social change, then the power of protest is weakened. If a single Jew can be blamed for orchestrating the whole affair, then the power of protest is further eroded.

Birds of a feather and all that

This antisemitic rhetoric from the state echoes among white nationalists. In the days following Trump’s tweet and Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, fliers (created by the Daily Stormer) appeared on college campuses and in cities in California and New York. The fliers blamed Jews for orchestrating the assault allegations brought against Judge Kavanaugh. They read: “Every time some anti-white, anti-American, anti-freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it.” The Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center (the community center I grew up in) was vandalized with dozens of swastikas.

Trump’s white nationalist audience knows what he means when he points the finger at Soros—he’s invoking a time-tested antisemitic strategy for undermining social movements. According to Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) Board Member Dania Rajendra:

Antisemitism and the idea of “outside agitators” is the right’s most effective tool for delegitimizing both the message and messengers of social justice. If protest can be blamed on those outside of the state, then both the message and the messenger are untrustworthy. Delegitimizing both is necessary to eventually repress or expel said “troublemakers” by the forces of “law and order.” And in fact, we saw the president say exactly that to a conference of police the same week as his post-Kavanaugh-protest Soros tweet.

We know that we need a strong, vibrant, awake electorate holding elected officials accountable. Undermining the credibility of protest is an extremely effective tool of protecting those in power.

Right-wing regimes have long broken down the fabric of political protest by using the antisemitic notion of rich Jewish financiers as the “puppet masters” of social unrest. During the Russian Revolution, the Tsar’s secret police published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fictional account of a meeting of rich Jews plotting to break down the society of their “host countries” and rule the world through the promotion of social upheaval. For a period, the Protocols did its job to undermine and destabilize the revolution against the Tsar. Because of its success, it’s been translated and promoted by right-wing ideologues around the world ever since.

The Protocols gave us dog whistle terms like “globalist,” a slur associated with Jews that paint them as untrustworthy, ready to betray the nations of their residence in service of an unseen authority. The general idea, from JFREJ’s resource Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to our Movement, is that “Jews are a powerful, corrupting influence on otherwise good, pure people—insidious troublemakers with a nefarious agenda at odds with that of the good, ‘true’ citizens of a nation.”

During McCarthyism, these well known stereotypes about Jews were used to tar communists and leftist movement activists (Jewish and non-Jewish) as untrustworthy, two-faced “troublemakers” with foreign loyalties detrimental to the United States. The over-representation of Jews and non-Jewish people of color (always seen as suspect by the white owning class) in leftist movement circles made these claims plausible. Through institutional state repression and violence—blacklisting, closures of organizations, and ultimately the public execution of the Rosenbergs—the Red Scare successfully decimated the social fabric of leftist movements.

It is deeply troubling to see these same tropes, indeed some of the very same language, being used against today’s social movements by the president and leaders of the Republican party. Trump and other Republicans have regularly claimed that George Soros (the central target of this anti-Semitic messaging) is entirely behind the Movement for Black Lives. Here racism and antisemitism intersect: rather than admit that a strong, powerful Black liberation movement is growing throughout the US, some white people would believe that it is one or a few rich Jews propping up Black people to cause unrest in the streets and undermine white Christian society.

It's not just antisemitism on its own, but antisemitism deployed against the left that gives the lie about Soros its cultural power. Our side can point out that right-wing efforts are funded by the Koch, Walton and Mercer families all day long, but that fact and its broadcast never delegitimizes their endeavors. That's because the Soros lie—the invocation of the idea of the scary, untrustworthy Jew—is built on top of a bunch of other assumptions: that "real" Americans are Christian and white, and hew to patriarchal gender norms and racial segregation.

Luckily, we know how to fight back. We can recognize the ways in which racism, antisemitism, and misogyny are deployed to keep our movements weak and divided and we can refuse to fall for conspiracy theories. We can join together in the raw, tough, honest work of building multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-class, multi-faith movements. We can center the leadership of those most impacted. We can collectively disinvest from whiteness and practice multi-racial democracy in everything we do.

In the face of the destructive attacks of the extreme right wing, we have an opportunity to respond with a solidarity that buttresses and expands democracy—a rebuttal to an oppressive past and a promise for a liberated future.

[Dove Kent is an organizer, educator, and movement builder based in Durham, North Carolina. She is the former Executive Director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.]

Trump and McConnell Take Gaslighting to New Level in Kavanaugh Confirmation Fight

The use of an anti-Semitic trope to condemn protesters for exercising their First Amendment rights signals a turning point in the authoritarian trajectory of our politics.

By Adele M. Stan

October 5, 2018
The American Prospect

President Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Rochester, Minnesota, on October 4, 2018. credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci  //  The American Prospect

The confirmation process for President Donald J. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, continues to be a significant test of the U.S. form of government, and a display of high drama.

Washington, D.C., was only on its third cup of coffee when the presidential tweethit: “The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad,” wrote Trump. “Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers.”

He was speaking, of course, of the sexual assault survivors—mostly women—who have been following the example set by Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher when they famously confronted Republican Senator Jeff Flake by holding his elevator door open and imploring him to consider the experiences of those who have been targets of sexual assault when deciding whether to vote for moving the nomination to the Senate floor.

Before long, speaking from the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had recently promised the religious right that he and his caucus planned to “plow right through” the confirmation—complained of the “harm” he said was done to Kavanaugh and his family because of allegations of sexual assault made against him by Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor from California. Then McConnell cast the thousands of protesters who have come to the U.S. Capitol buildings in opposition to the nomination as “the mob.”

In both instances, these national leaders branded people exercising their First Amendment rights as dangerous.

In both instances, these national leaders branded people exercising their First Amendment rights as dangerous.McConnell complained of security threats to senators. And Trump trotted out the right’s favorite code word for its ideology of anti-Semitism. That word is “Soros.”

In both the fever swamps of the American right, and the forests of Europe’s right-wing nationalist movements, the hedge fund billionaire George Soros—a Jewish Holocaust survivor born in Hungary—has become a favorite bogeyman because of his support of liberal and civil-society groups. In Europe, he is cast as a destroyer of Europe’s Christian values. (His Open Society Foundation was pushed out of Hungary, which also recently passed anti-immigration legislation dubbed the “Stop Soros” law.) He’s also a favorite target of the U.S. right, where invocation of his name carries the same sort of anti-Semitic code. Here, he’s reviled for donating to progressive and liberal groups, and has consequently become fodder for the conspiracy theorists of the right.

One racist congratulating another

Characterizations of Soros by right-wing figures follow the outline of old anti-Semitic tropes such as the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and conspiracies supposedly involving the Rothschild family.

This is the strategy of authoritarians. Create fear that chaos created by backlash to the authoritarian’s exercise of raw power is really taking place at the direction of one very powerful enemy. Discourage people from public protest by painting the opposition as “evil,” as Trump did in the Mississippi rally he led this week, where he mocked Ford for her inability to remember every single little detail of the 1982 evening on which she says she was assaulted by Kavanaugh.

“These are really evil people,” Trump said of Ford and the Democrats who insisted on her right to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose job it is to vet nominees to the federal bench. Note that among the right-wing evangelicals who comprise much of Trump’s base, “evil” is regarded as an existential spiritual threat, the stuff of Satan.

As I write this, the outcome of the final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit on the highest court in the land is not certain. But the clampdown is coming—a clampdown on dissent, a clampdown on access to the levers of congressional process by the president’s opponents.

As I write this, the outcome of the final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit on the highest court in the land is not certain. But the clampdown is coming—a clampdown on dissent, a clampdown on access to the levers of congressional process by the president’s opponents. As McConnell promised, he really has “plow[ed] right through” this nomination process, complete with a final FBI report on the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh that, through circumscription of inquiry imposed by the White House, amounted to a whitewash.

The exercise of authoritarian power is not anything that Trump, McConnell, and their allies even attempt to conceal at this point. It’s happening in front of your face. Pay attention. Take note of the signs. But don’t let it keep you from the streets, or from the voting booth.

The republic as we have known it could cease to exist if we allow it. And that time is growing closer. They’re playing for all the marbles. They mustn’t be allowed to win.

[Adele M. Stan is a columnist for The American Prospect. She is research director of People for the American Way, and a winner of the Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism.]

Naomi Wolf and anti-semitism’s mystification

Anti-Semitism in the eye of the beholder – using 'anti-semitism to silence cartoonists

This cartoon in a German paper was deemed 'anti-semitic'

From the Der Sturmer stable

This is a cartoon in the Nazi paper Der Sturmer - I'll leave it to you to work out the similarities, if any, with the above cartoon

Another  obviously antisemitic cartoon from Der Sturmer

 Jonathan Cook is one of the best and most thought provoking writers around.  An award winning former Guardian journalist he lives in Nazareth.

The issue he writes about, the mystification of anti-Semitism, is an important one.  If people are confused about the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism then it is doubly difficult when it comes to works of art, especially cartoons.

Let me offer a guide.  Anti-Semitic cartoons have an intent behind them – which is to depict the Jew as the devil, the lecherer, the controller.  Pictures of  Netanyahu tend to depict someone who is willing to kill ever increasing numbers of Palestinians.  The context and intent is entirely different.

Yair Netanyahu's cartoon above had all the right anti-Semitic ingredients

Ironically last year, there was a campaign both in Hungary and in Israel against George Soros, the archetypal Jewish financier.  The campaign in Hungary, led by its Prime Minister Viktor Orban was undoubtedly anti-Semitic.  That in Israel was much the same.  Soros’s crime being to have financed some Israeli human rights groups.  He was portrayed in an anti-Semitic cartoon by none other than the son of Benjamin, Yair Netanyahu in a cartoon that had every ingredient of anti-Semitic caricature.  Little wonder that it was praised by David Duke former Grand Wizard of the KKK and Andrew Anglin, editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer.  However the usual culprits didn’t jump up and down about anti-Semitism.

Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin just loved Yair Netanyahu's cartoon

It is clear, beyond any doubt, that ‘anti-Semitism’ has become the principal weapon of the Zionist movement and Israel’s defenders.  It should be said at once that it has not won over the vast majority of ordinary people but it has befuddled and confused important  layers of people politically, not least in the Labour Party, where it has had a chilling effect on peoples’ willingness to discuss let alone motivate criticism of Israel.  Given the nature of the witchhunt, where anything anti-Zionist is called anti-Semitic by the witchhunters, this is not surprising.

In his eagerness to please the Zionists  Murdoch engaged in one of those well-known anti-semitic caricatures - the 'Jewish owned press'

A cartoon on Netanyahu not deemed anti-semitic by the Board would be so anodyne that it wouldn't be worth drawing

Five years ago there was one of these artificial Zionist controversies over the a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times.  It portrayed a bloody Netanyahu cementing a wall with the bodies and heads of Palestinians.  For some unearthly reason it was considered anti-Semitic by those who make it their business to ensure that any portrayal of the Zionist state is channelled into accusations of Jew hatred.  Of course on any objective basis there was nothing anti-Semitic about Scarfe’s cartoon.  If it had been a portrayal of the US President or George Bush or Trump today then no one would have batted an eyelid.

As Jonathan Cook describes, a similar controversy has blow up over a German cartoon.  Like the Scarfe controversy there seems little doubt that this is a false accusation by the supporters of Israel.  It is noticeable that when it comes to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad then anything goes but if you depict Netanyahu as the murdering bastard he is then you risk the heavens falling in.

No doubt depicting the Apartheid wall was also anti-semitic

Similarly with the nonsense about the long erased mural that Jeremy Corbyn had supported on grounds of free speech.  Corbyn was forced to backtrack by the ‘anti-Semitism’ storm in late March and accept that he hadn’t noticed its anti-Semitism.  Fake leftists like Richard Seymour and Owen Jones joined in the hue and cry but those of us who are more familiar with anti-Semitic cartoons of the Der Sturmer variety could not detect any anti-Semitic content.  Conspiratorial perhaps.  Anti-banker yes but anyone saying that all bankers are Jews is, well, anti-Semitic!

Unfortunately these days Corbyn, whose support for the Palestinians was never based on any theoretical understanding of why Zionism and Israel are racist, backed down once again and in so doing made a rod for his own back.  If just for once he stood up to his accusers he would find life far easier.

Tony Greenstein 

Naomi Wolf and anti-semitism’s mystification

24 May 2018

My previous post was about the firing of a cartoonist, Dieter Hanitzsch, by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung after its editor became concerned – though, it seems, far from sure – that a cartoon he had published of Benjamin Netanyahu might be anti-semitic. Here is the image again.

As I argued then, the meaning seems pretty clear and uncoloured by any traditional notion of anti-semitism. It shows the danger that Israel, a highly militarised state, will use its win at the Eurovision song contest, and its hosting of next year’s competition in occupied Jerusalem, to whitewash the sort of war crimes it just committed in Gaza, where it has massacred large numbers of unarmed Palestinians.

In fact, the cartoonist is far from alone in highlighting such concerns. The New York Times has reported delight among Israelis at the prospect of what they regard as a “diplomatic victory” as much as musical one. And, according to the Haaretz newspaper, the Eurovision contest organisers have already expressed concern to Israeli broadcasters about likely attempts by Israel to “politicise” the competition.

Among those responding on Twitter to my post was Naomi Wolf, a US Jewish intellectual and feminist scholar whose body of work I admire. She disagreed with my blog post, arguing that the cartoon was, in her words, “kind of anti-semitic”.

In our subsequent exchange she also noted that she was uncomfortable with the fact that the cartoonist was German. (For those interested, the complete exchange can be found here.)

In the end, and admittedly under some pressure from me for clarification, she offered an illustration of why she thought the cartoon was “kind of anti-semitic”. She sent a link to the image below, stating that she thought Hanitzsch’s cartoon of Netanyahu had echoes of this Nazi image of “the Jew” alongside an Aryan German woman.

Frankly, I was astounded by the comparison.

Nazi propaganda

Cartoons in Nazi propaganda sheets like Der Sturmer were anti-semitic because they emphasised specific themes to “otherise” Jews, presenting them as a collective menace to Germany or the world. Those themes included the threat of plague and disease, with Jews often represented as rats; or secret Jewish control over key institutions, illustrated, for example, by the tentacles of an octopus spanning the globe; or the disloyalty of Jews, selling out their country, as they hungered for money.

As Wolf notes, anti-semitic cartoonists would give the portrayed “Jew” grotesque or sinister facial features to alienate readers from him and convey the threat he posed. These features famously included a large or hooked nose, voracious lips, and a bulbous or disfigured head.

So how did the cartoon of Netanyahu qualify on any of these grounds? There is no implication that Netanyahu represents “Jews”, or even Israelis. He is illustrated straightforwardly as the leader of a country, Israel. There is no sense of disease, world control or money associated with Netanyahu’s depiction. Just his well-known hawkishness and Israel’s well-documented status as a highly militarised state.

And there is nothing “grotesque” or “other” about Netanyahu. This is a typical caricature, certainly by European standards, of a world leader. It’s no more offensive than common depictions of Barack Obama, George Bush, Tony Blair, or Donald Trump.

So how exactly is this Netanyahu cartoon “kind of anti-semitic”?

Limiting political debate

What follows is not meant as an attack on Wolf. In fact, I greatly appreciate the fact that she was prepared to engage sincerely and openly with me on Twitter. And I acknowledge her point that judgments about what is anti-semitic are subjective.

But at the same time ideas about anti-semitism have become far vaguer, more all-encompassing, than ever before. In fact, I would go so far as to say the idea of anti-semitism has been metamorphosing before our eyes in ways extremely damaging to the health of our political conversations. It is the current mystification of anti-semitism – or what we might term its transformation into a “kind of antisemitism” – that has allowed it to be weaponised, limiting all sorts of vital debates we need to be having.

It is precisely the promotion of a “kind of anti-semitism”, as opposed to real anti-semitism, that has just forced Ken Livingstone to resign from the Labour party; that empowered Labour’s Blairite bureaucracy to publicly lynch a well-known black anti-racism activist, Marc Wadsworth; that persuaded a dissident comedian and supporter of the Palestinian cause, Frankie Boyle, to use his TV show to prioritise an attack on a supposedly “anti-semitic” Labour party over support for Gaza; that is being used to vilify grassroots movements campaigning against “global elites” and the “1 per cent”; and that may yet finish off Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, currently the only credible political force for progressive change in the UK.

None of this is, of course, to suggest that Wolf would herself want any of these outcomes or that she is trying to misuse anti-semitism. I fully acccept that she has been a strong Jewish critic of Israel and doubtless paid a price for it with friends and colleagues.

But unlike Wolf, those who do consciously and cynically weaponise anti-semitism gain their power from our inability to stand back and think critically about what they are doing, and why it matters. There is an intellectual and cultural blindspot that has been created and is being readily exploited by those who want to prevent discussions not only about Israel’s actions but about the wider political culture we desperately need to change.

Israel and Jews

In fact, the mystification of anti-semitism is not new, though it is rapidly intensifying. It began the moment Israel was created. That was why a Nazi cartoon – drawn before Israel’s establishment in 1948 – could never have been described as “kind of anti-semitic”. It simply was anti-semitic. It attributed menacing or subversive qualities to Jews because they were Jews.

To understand how the current mystification works we need briefly to consider Israel’s character as a state – something very few people are prepared to do in the “mainstream”, because it is likely to result in  allegations of … anti-semitism! As I observed in my previous post, this has provided the perfect get-out-jail-free card for Israel and its supporters.

Israel was created as the national homeland of all Jewish people – not of those who became citizens (which included a significant number of Palestinians), or even of those Jews who ended up living there. Israel declared that it represented all Jewish people around the world, including Wolf.

This idea is central to Zionism, and is embodied in its Declaration of Independence; its constitutional-like Basic Laws; its immigration legislation, the Law of Return; its land laws; and the integration into Israel’s state structures of extra-territorial Zionist organisations like the Jewish National Fund, the World Zionist Organisation and the Jewish Agency.

A dangerous confusion

It is also why the rationale for Israel is premised on anti-semitism: Israel was created as a sanctuary for all Jews because, according to Zionists, Jews can never be truly safe anywhere outside Israel. Without anti-semitism, Israel would be superfluous. It also why Israel has a reason to inflate the threat of anti-semitism – or, if we are cynical about the lengths states will go to promote their interests, to help generate anti-semitism to justify the existence of a Jewish state and encourage Jews to immigrate.

So from the moment of its birth, the ideas of “Israel” and “anti-semitism” became disturbingly enmeshed – and in ways almost impossible to disentangle.

For most of Israel’s history, that fact could be obscured in the west because western governments and media were little more than cheerleaders for Israel. Criticism of Israel was rarely allowed into the mainstream, and when it did appear it was invariably limited to condemnations of the occupation. Even then, there was rarely any implication of systematic wrongdoing on Israel’s part.

That changed only when the exclusive grip of the western corporate media over information dissemination weakened, first with the emergence of the internet and satellite channels like Al Jazeera, and more recently and decisively with social media. Criticism of Israel’s occupation has increasingly broadened into suspicions about its enduring bad faith. Among more knowledgeable sections of the progressive left, there is a mounting sense that Israel’s unwillingness to end the occupation is rooted in its character as a Jewish state, and maybe its intimate ideological relationship with anti-semitism.

These are vital conversations to be having about Israel, and they are all the more pressing now that Israel has shown that it is fully prepared to gun down in public unarmed Palestinians engaging in civil disobedience. Many, many more Palestinians are going to have their lives taken from them unless we aggressively pursue and resolve these conversations in ways that Israel is determined to prevent.

And this is why the “kind of anti-semitic” confusion – a confusion that Israel precisely needs and encourages – is so dangerous. Because it justifies – without evidence – shutting down those conversations before they can achieve anything.

The Livingstone problem

In 2016 Ken Livingstone tried to initiate a conversation about Zionism and its symbiotic relationship with anti-semites, in this case with the early Nazi leadership. We can’t understand what Israel is, why the vast majority of Jews once abhorred Zionism, why Israel is so beloved of modern anti-semites like the alt-right and hardcore Christian evangelicals, why Israel cannot concede a Palestinian state, and why it won’t abandon the occupation without overwhelming penalties from the international community, unless we finish the conversation Livingstone started.

Which is why that conversation was shut down instantly with the accusation that it was “anti-semitic”. But Livingstone’s crime is one no mainstream commentator wants to address or explain. If pressed to do so, they will tell you it is because his comments were perceived to be “offensive” or “hurtful”, or because they were “unnecessary” and “foolish”, or because they brought the Labour party “into disrepute” (Labour’s version of “kind of anti-semitic”). No one will tell you what was substantively anti-semitic about his remark.

Similarly, when pressed to explain how Hanitzsch’s cartoon of Netanyahu was anti-semitic, Wolf digressed to the entirely irrelevant issue of his nationality.

This is the power and the danger of this “kind of anti-semitic” logic, and why it needs to be confronted and exposed for the hollow shell it is.

A mural becomes anti-semitic

The next stage in the evolution of the “kind of anti-semitic” argument is already discernible, as I have warned before. It is so powerful that it has forced Corbyn to concede, against all evidence, that Labour has an anti-semitism problem and to castigate himself, again against all evidence, for indulging in anti-semitic thinking.

Corbyn has been on the defensive since a “controversy” erupted in March over his expression back in 2012 of support for street art and opposition to censorship amid a row over a London mural that was about to be painted over.

Is this antisemitic or anti-masonic?

After he was elected Labour leader in 2015, the first efforts were made to weaponise the mural issue to damage him. The deeply anti-Corbyn Jewish Chronicle newspaper was – like Hanitzsch’s boss at the Süddeutsche Zeitung – initially unsure whether the mural was actually anti-semitic. Then the newspaper simply highlighted concerns that it might have “anti-semitic undertones”. By spring 2018, when the row resurfaced, the status of the mural had been transformed. Every mainstream British commentator was convinced it was “clearly” and “obviously” anti-semitic – and by implication, Corbyn had been unmasked as an anti-semite for supporting it.

Again, no one wanted to debate how it was anti-semitic. The artist has said it was an image of historical bankers, most of whom were not Jewish, closely associated with the capitalist class’s war on the rest of us. There is nothing in the mural to suggest he is lying about his intention or the mural’s meaning. And yet everyone in the “mainstream” is now confident that the mural is anti-semitic, even though none of them wants to specify what exactly is anti-semitic about it.

The 1 per cent off-limits

Much else is rapidly becoming “anti-semitic”. It is an indication of how quickly this slippage is occuring that repeating now a slogan of the Occupy Movement from only seven years ago – that we are ruled by a “global elite”, or the “1 per cent” – is cited as proof of anti-semitism. The liberal New Statesman recently ran an article dedicated to proving that the articulation of basic socialist principles – including ideas of class war and the 1 per cent – was evidence of anti-semitism.

On Frankie Boyle’s popular TV show last week, comedian David Baddiel was allowed to misrepresent – unchallenged – an opinion poll that found 28 per cent of Corbyn supporters agreed with the statement “the world is controlled by a secretive elite”. Baddiel asserted, without any evidence, that when they spoke of a global elite the respondents were referring to Jews. What was this assumption based on? A hunch? A sense that such a statement must be “kind of anti-semitic”?

Lots of young people who support Corbyn have never heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and have little idea about Der Sturmer or Nazi propaganda. More likely when they think of a secretive global elite, they imagine not a cabal of Jews but faceless global corporations they feel powerless to influence and a military industrial complex raking in endless profits by engineering endless wars.

The mystification of anti-semitism is so dangerous because it can be exploited for any end those who dominate the public square care to put it to – whether it be sacking a cartoonist, justifying Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, destroying a progressive party leader, or preventing any criticism of a turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism destroying our planet.

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