The Tyranny of the Template
If you embrace postmodern progressivism, antisemitism is inescapable
Back when George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War was a live issue, you will not be surprised to learn that I had some decided opinions about it. Mostly they pertained to the idiocy of the opposition, but it was also apparent to me that the President’s policy, pre-surge, was open to considerable criticism.
Then a thought occurred, one that gave me pause: Tom, how much do you actually know about Iraq?
That nagging question, whose answer was not very much, led me to a nearby bookstore, where after a brief search through the history section I found A History of Iraq by Charles Tripp. This classic work was published originally in 2000, with an updated edition covering the Iraq War and its aftermath appearing in 2007. It’s not my purpose to review it here; suffice to say that Tripp’s well-argued and very readable history explained many things and led me to revise some of my opinions.
I mention this incident in my continuing education because right now we’re living through another crisis about which people hold strong opinions, based all too often on ignorance and malice. Since October 7, 2023, the latent antisemitism of the Western Left has erupted into the open. It has been said, and is no doubt true, that the majority of Democrats and progressives are not active antisemites. That is, they don’t join in the river-to-sea calls for genocide or harass and assault Jews. But they don’t go out of their way to condemn such atrocities, either. On the contrary, they systematically minimize the horrors of what happened on October 7, memory-holing them to create space for a false narrative of Israeli excesses and war crimes. Joe Biden modeled the practice last week at the end of his evening press conference from Hell, fuming that Israel’s behavior in Gaza was “over the top.”
One could say that the antisemitism of most of the broad Left is latent, but that may be too harsh a judgement. I prefer the term antisemitic-adjacent. By this I mean that their antisemitic attitudes are the inevitable product of the education, mind-set, and general worldview of contemporary progressivism. The antisemitism of the Palestinian Arabs and other Muslims is an atavistic phenomenon, rooted in history, born of conflict, deplorable but understandable. The antisemitism of progressivism is a manufactured product.
It can be taken for granted that most progressives have scant knowledge or understanding of the background of the long-running conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. What they do have is an education based on postmodern discourse, which provides them with a template labeled “white supremacy,” “colonialism,” “imperialism,” etc. Simply assign to the Jews the role of white oppressors and to the Arabs the role of downtrodden, victimized people of color, and you have all the explanation of the conflict that you think you need. Yes, these categories are ahistorical, absurd, indeed comical in their crudity—but that matters not at all. They’re sufficient to support a belief that the Jews are the evildoers while the Arabs are the saintly victims, entitled to resist “by any means necessary.”
From this follows the oft-repeated claim that one can be an anti-Zionist without being antisemitic. If the Jews would just stop their reign of oppression, they wouldn’t be hated any longer. But in the background of this pleasing vision is the genocidal imperative of the template: Ending the reign of oppression requires the eradication of the Jewish state. Many progressives may shrink from acknowledging that reality, but it’s the logical endpoint of all they believe.
Examples of the tyranny of the template abound. For instance, an op-ed piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 2 with the provocative title, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” has progressives up in arms. How dare its author, Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, make such claims?! “Horrendously irresponsible!” one critic exclaimed. “Islamophobic!” charged another. And Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan (who is Jewish), called the opinion article “anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.”
Real profile in courage there, Elissa.
Characteristically, however, none of his critics claim that Stalinsky got it wrong. They simply demand that we ignore Dearborn’s status as a venomous snake pit of antisemitic hate—presumably because to take note of it would contradict the progressive narrative of Jewish evil and Arab virtue. And you know what? That’s an example of the antisemitic-adjacent attitude in action. Even Jews like Elissa Slotkin and Bernie Sanders can get in on it.
On the other hand, there seems to be no limit to the unpleasant, indeed hateful, things that it’s okay for the comrades to say about Jews and Israel.
All human beings, of course, have their blind spots, their prejudices, their irrational beliefs. But thanks to an educational model based on postmodern discourse, generations have come to maturity with their heads stuffed full of the most toxic absurdities, organized along ideological lines, based ultimately on a narrative of oppression and victimization. And if, as history seems to show, that the purpose of an ideology is the systemization of hate, postmodern progressivism has nailed it.
You got it exactly right. With postmodernism facts have no place. Nor does history.
Hatred is based on the “correct” categorisation of peoples and events.
"The bigotry of low expectations."
Somehow the terrorists of Hamas are less evil then the hard men (and women) of the IDF.
I remember the press howling about apartheid in South Africa, while merely regretting the homicidal racism of Idi Amin (ask the Ugandan Indians if they experienced racism; remember the "white man's burden?).
The American left feels both compassion and contempt for brown skinned people. Respect would demand that we demand the same standards of behavior, regardless of skin color.