Quick Take: Antiracism Is Antisemitism
It's a quick trip from identity politics to genocidal rage
The odyssey of Ta-Nehisi Coates—from antiracism to antisemitism via “anti-Zionism”—moved me to reflect that such a journey has become characteristic of contemporary progressivism. After 10/7, the unlovable Greta Thunberg found her way from climate activism to “anti-Zionism.” Then there’s the Palestinian Feminist Collective, siding with a bloodthirsty death cult against those beastly settler-colonialist Jews. And let us not forget Queers for Palestine, surely the most striking example in many years of the turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
Coates, of course, is the exemplar of a school of antiracism that declares the whole thing to be hopeless: America is irredeemably racist, white supremacy’s iron heel presses down upon the necks of the BIPOC, imperialism long ago plundered the glories of ancient Black civilizations, etc. and so forth. It will be noticed that despite this comprehensive indictment of America and Western civilization, Coates himself has missed no meals. On the contrary, his lame antiracist schtick attracts accolades and plaudits from white progressive elites.
But what is it with progressives these days? How is it that so many branches of progressivism default to “anti-Zionism”—which to be rudely frank is nothing more than antisemitism, tricked out in postmodern jargon. Why do the obsessions and discontents of the broad Left harmonize in a hymn of hate against the Jewish state? Why is Greta Thunberg, climate activist, calling for the extirpation of Zionism? What’s the connection?
Part of the answer, I believe, is to be found among the core dogmas of postmodern progressivism. Antiracism, post-colonial discourse and the broader oppressor/oppressed template provide people like Coates, who know little or nothing about the history of Middle East, with a simple explanation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jews are white; Palestinian Arabs are brown. Jews are alien interlopers; Palestinian Arabs are an indigenous people. Jews are settler-colonialists; Palestinian Arabs are landless refugees. It all clicks together in the minds of the comrades like a set of Lego blocks.
Supplementing this plague of binary thinking is the demonology of progressivism. I was about to write that the Left turns every issue into a morality play, but that’s not quite right. Conventional morality plays no role in the progressive worldview. Instead, all people, all things, are assigned an identity, then sorted into two categories, Good and Evil. In the case of Jews, their identity is: White, racist, settler colonialist, oppressors and therefore Evil. The Palestinian Arabs are identified as Brown, antiracist, indigenous, oppressed and therefore Good.
These assigned identities lie at the heart of the progressive “anti-Zionism”—which is to say that they warp reality, radically so. Hamas and Hezbollah, bloody-handed terrorist groups with genocidal designs on the Israel, morph into gallant freedom fighters. Their puppet master, the Islamic Republic of Iran, morphs into a potential victim of Israeli aggression. In Gaza, Hamas turns down repeated ceasefire proposals, but the Ogre Netanyahu is the villain of the piece. In the Middle East, not one Arab state is a fully functioning democracy, but the democratic Jewish state is reviled as a fascist regime. The Jewish populations of the Arab states, all with ancient roots in those lands, have been driven out, but it’s Israel with its two million Arab citizens that’s reviled as an apartheid state.
Finally, it seems that in some manner, the very existence of a Jewish state affronts the progressive sensibility. As noted above, progressivism constructs narratives based on the denunciation of oppressors and the valorization of victims. Perhaps the comrades are peeved at the Jews because in the wake of the Holocaust, that ultimate act of victimization, they stood up and said: Never Again. Israel made good on its bid for independence by force of arms. Small, surrounded by hostile neighbors, it remains perforce a warlike state. Its key institution, the one that preserves and protects all the others, is the Israeli Defense Forces: the Jewish nation in arms. Si vis pacem, para bellum: This maxim of the ancient Roman writer Vegetius could well be taken as Israel’s unofficial motto.
By rejecting the label of victim, by constituting themselves as a nation, by embracing the right and duty of self-defense, the Jews of Israel have given great offense to postmodern progressivism. Hence the comrades’ burning desire to see the Jewish state eradicated. Hence their inability since October 7, 2023, to conceal that genocidal rage.
Extremely well written article. Indeed ,next to no Jews in their ancestral Arab lands ( they were kicked out), two million Arabs in Israel and Israel is call an Apartheid state! That makes sense to these viscous Jew haters!
Postmodern progressives are regressive ideologically. An insult to progress.