Left Turn into Darkness
Fay Stender would have understood the anguish of today's Jewish progressives
An article at Barrie Weiss’ The Free Press caught my eye yesterday. “The Great Betrayal” by Suzy Weiss and Francesca Block recounts the stories of some progressive Jews who in the aftermath of October 7 saw many of their comrades reviling Israel, cheering for Hamas, and justifying its bestial atrocities—most particularly including prominent black activists such as Niokle Hannah-Jones.
Their shock and dismay over the outburst of antisemitism in progressive ranks is certainly understandable. But it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise. After all, the broad Left’s animus toward the Jewish state is of long standing. And besides that, it has all happened before.
In their struggle for equal rights in a country still deeply infected with racism, black Americans had no better friends than the Jews. With a long and painful history of bigotry and persecution behind them, American Jews were naturally drawn to the side of another oppressed group. The term allyship had not yet been coined, but that was their attitude toward the black civil rights movement. And the Jews did not merely sympathize. They took action.
But it did not end well. In the Sixties, the civil rights movement took a sharp left turn into radicalism—greatly to the detriment of the black/Jewish alliance. In 1967, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a radical civil rights group founded and led by Stokely Carmichael, expelled all white members, Jews included. It was a painful manifestation of the antisemitism that infects radical black activism down to this day.
Thinking about all this, I went back to an article that I wrote in June 2022. “Show Me a Radical” tells the story of Fay Abrahams Stender, an American Jew and radical lawyer who though largely forgotten today, played a prominent—and tragic—role in the civil rights movement at a time when it was descending into nihilistic revolutionary insanity. Reading it over, the thought occurred to me that Fay Stender’s story is of some relevance today as both a cautionary tale and a reminder that William Faulkner spoke truly when he noted that “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”
American Jews need to reconsider their allegiance to the left.
For many years Jews of principle have supported leftist causes in the belief that social justice would lead to an utopian world. (Many Jews with lesser scruples also supported those causes, but that is another issue).
But the reactions of many leftists has shocked and frightened American Jews.
They have discovered that their political cohorts don't really like them.
And 90 years of leftist activism didn't buy any gratitude.
(As an aside, American Jews ought to read "Jud Süß" by Leon Feuchtwanger (the book, not the movie) - it describes the fate of a "court Jew" who sought assimilation.)
It will be interesting to see if American politics are affected or whether American Jews will "reinforce defeat".
That Faulkner quote has been popping up a lot these says. Sadly.