Der Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle. “Antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” This observation, commonly attributed to the German social democrat August Bebel, seems particularly relevant at the moment.
It can, I think, be taken for granted that most of the “anti-Zionist” pro-Hamas leftists who’ve rallied to that terrorist group’s side in the wake of its October 7 pogrom are ignorant of the history behind it. Mention terms like Byzantine Empire or Mandate Palestine and they’ll return a blank look. The antisemitism of the postmodern Left is based on gross ignorance reinforced by willful stupidity—necessarily so, for in no other way could it maintain itself.
The dogmas and jargon of postmodern progressivism buttress this socialism of fools. Settler colonialism, for instance, carves out for the Jews a niche in the demonology of the Left, connecting them to those other great evils, imperialism and white supremacy. That it can also be applied to the Arabs, relative latecomers to Palestine who arrived sword in hand, adds a comic touch to postmodern leftist antisemitism, somewhat in the manner of the Ku Klux Klan’s ridiculous white robes and ceremonies. But it’s no laughing matter when the dismal Newspeak of the Left is deployed to justify rape, mass murder, and genocide.
Though the current iteration of the socialism of fools stirs up many echoes, it has this distinctive feature: Now, for the first time in the long history of antisemitism, the haters find themselves face to face with a Jewish state. The existence of Israel makes nonsense of traditional antisemitism, which was rooted in a belief that the Jews were the eternal Other, at home nowhere, an alien and malignant presence wherever they appeared. The foundation of the Jewish state thus deprived antisemitism of a key charge in its indictment of the Jews. The chant, From the River to the Sea, coming out of the mouths of campus activists, is a demand for the restoration of that charge. Let the Jews again be made homeless, let them be welcomed nowhere, let them be reviled as rootless cosmopolitans, and all will be well.
But if you embrace ignorance and stupidity as the supporters of your worldview, blowback happens. So it is with today’s leftist antisemites, who seem blind to the effect produced, among Jews, by their vile denunciations of Jews and Israel, by their evident delight in the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas, by the joy they take in their hatred.
The founding principle of the Jewish state can be summed up in two words: Never Again. After their passage through the hell of the Holocaust, the Jews determined to replant themselves in their ancient homeland, to frame their nationhood as a body politic, and to take up arms in its defense.
The Jews are famously fractious, and the politics of Israel well reflect that trait. But the shock of October 7 and the subsequent worldwide outburst of antisemitism has galvanized the nation. Never Again and its subtext, We can count on no one but ourselves, have assumed an urgency not felt, probably, since 1947. Long-cherished illusions are dissolving. The case of Corey Gil-Shuster, a social studies professor at Tel Aviv University signifies the great reset now underway. Since 2012, he has been travelling throughout Israel proper and the Palestinian territories, asking Jews and Arabs simple questions about touchy issues, including the long-running conflict between them. He calls it The Ask Project, and his recorded interviews may be watched online.
Shuster, who describes himself as a man of “left-wing liberal values,” says he was open to a diversity of viewpoints on the Palestinian side. But October 7 has changed his mind. “Palestinians don’t want peace with Israelis,” he said in an interview with National Review. “They don’t even see Jews as being native to this land. So, they think we have to go back to Poland.”
Shuster added that people in the West have not grasped how fundamentally the Hamas pogrom has altered the collective consciousness of Israeli Jews. He believes that decades of conflict had already desensitized them to the plight of the Palestinians, and that current events will carry that process much farther, much faster. “Everybody—mainstream and right-wing—want revenge,” Shuster told National Review. “They want blood. People are really, really, traumatized, and they are angry.”
So much then, for that diplomat’s fantasy, the peace process. So much for reconciliation and the two-state solution, if not forever then for a long time to come. That, of course, is what Hamas wanted, and what it achieved by its bloody raid into Israel. Hamas, however, won’t survive to bask in the glow of its victory. But the “anti-Zionist,” Hamas-hugging Left in America and Europe claims to stand for Palestinian rights and liberation. Then they go on to chant From the River to the Sea—defining rights and liberation as a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews.
This call for a Judenfrei Palestine is not only evil in and of itself but also in its effects on the people who live in that troubled corner of the world, Jews and Arabs alike. For the Jews, it’s a reminder of what all too many of their Arab neighbors would like to see. For the Palestinian Arabs, it raises false hope for a future that can never be. And for both peoples, it stokes the atavistic, dehumanizing passions characteristic of war.
In short, Western antisemitism is playing its part in the perpetuation of a conflict that could easily be settled with a modicum of goodwill on both sides. But the socialism of fools is on the job, working every day to stamp out any such possibility.
The "socialism of fools" indeed. The modern Left have totally played themselves by abandoning class-consciousness for a solipsistic moral grandiosity. They serve the interests of entrenched elites by repeating the anti-Semitic/Zionist propaganda that diverts the attention of the millions in the Muslim underclass who might otherwise turn on their real enemies.
American Jews identified with the left: voted for them and gave them financial support. The Jewish vote was a reliable component of Democratic Party victories.
Conversely American Jews (for the most part) shunned conservatives and feared the American Nazi movement (though how many Nazis would exist in the US without FBI financial support and recruitment (informers/agent provocateurs) is an open question).
Turns out that American Jews were supporting the biggest anti-Semites - the liberal left.
Ironically, the biggest support for Jews seems to come from both the conservative right and the religious right.
Another irony is that American Jews are frequently anti-gun. They never thought through what you do when you don't have a gun and armed men intent on evil appear at your door.
"Never Again" requires realistic thinking, support for the Second Amendment, and long term support of those who will protect Jews.
Time for American Jews to get real about "Never Again". Being liberal hasn't stopped Jew haters on the left from attacking Jews.