Statement
Anti-Semitism: The Ultimate Logic of Contemporary Identity Politics
Written by Ron Tabor, 1/20/2024
I’ve been greatly disturbed by both the extent and the virulence of the anti-Semitism that has manifested itself in the United States and around the world in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. I have been particularly surprised and distressed that some of the anti-Semitic incidents we have recently witnessed have come from the left. I take it as given that most of the far-right is anti-Semitic. I also recognize that many politically moderate people hold to a variety of anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices. Unfortunately, it also seems to be the case that part of today’s left is anti-Semitic, even militantly so.
What follows are some thoughts about the nature and origins of left-wing anti-Semitism in the United States today.
I. Anti-Zionism is not, by itself, anti-Semitic
I do not believe that mere concern for the rights, the struggles, and the fate of the Palestinian people, along with opposition to the state of Israel and to Zionism in general, is, per se, anti-Semitic. This claim, aggressively promoted by the mainstream (Zionist) leadership of the Jewish community in the United States, is nonsense. For years prior to the establishment of the state of Israel and even after, there were a variety of visions of the destiny of Jews in modern society. The majority of them were anti- Zionist.
In Western Europe, the French Revolution (particularly, the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1791) launched a decades-long and uneven process that ultimately led to the full legal and political emancipation of the Jews. During this period, several currents of thought emerged in the Jewish community. Some Jews argued that they and their co-religionists ought simply to convert to Christianity, as did the poet, Heinrich Heine, and also (it’s worth remembering) the father of Karl Marx. (Much later, in the early 20th century, the philosopher of science Karl R. Popper, who was raised in Austria in a family of Jewish converts to Christianity, urged all Jews to become Christians.) Others advocated that Jews should culturally “assimilate” into European society, specifically, to give up Yiddish and learn the languages of the countries in which they resided, and to adopt modern dress, cuisine, and customs. (This included men cutting off their beards and payes). As far as religion was concerned, some urged Jews to retain their commitment to their religion, but in a modernized (almost de-Judaized) form, what would eventually emerge as Reform Judaism. Many “assimilationists” wound up giving up organized religion altogether, becoming either outright atheists or adopting various forms of deism or pantheism (such as the physicist Albert Einstein). (The Trotskyist historian Isaac Deutscher dubbed such individuals “non-Jewish” Jews). Meanwhile, Jewish traditionalists urged Jews to maintain Rabbinic Judaism as it had been practiced for centuries. Some even opposed Jewish emancipation; they worried that it would lead to the complete assimilation of Jews into modern society and thus to the elimination of both the Jews as a distinct religious/ethnic entity and Judaism as a distinct religion altogether.
It was only in 1862 that Moses Hess, the one-time collaborator of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, argued that the full emancipation of the Jews in Europe and elsewhere would require the establishment of a (socialist) Jewish state in Palestine. At the time, this position found little support in the Jewish community. It was only after a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in the early 1880s (250 between 1881 and 1884) and the intensification of anti-Semitism elsewhere in Europe (peaking in the Dreyfus Affair in France in the 1890s) that Zionism (meaning, an ideology advocating the establishment of a Jewish state) began to be taken seriously by a significant number of Jews. This resulted in the foundation of the Zionist movement at the First Zionist Conference, held in Basel, Switzerland, under the leadership of the Austro-Hungarian journalist, Theodor Herzl, on August 29-31, 1897. At the time, Zionism was a distinctly minority current in the international Jewish community.
In Eastern Europe, specifically, within the borders of the Russian empire, economic, social, and political conditions, in general – and the status of Jews, in particular – were much different from those in Western Europe. Here, the vast majority of Jews were restricted to a demarcated area of western Russia, the so-called “Pale of Settlement.” Most Jews were prohibited from owning land. They were also barred from many occupations, and until the reforms of Tsar Alexander II, they were prohibited from attending Russian schools or universities. Also, for a variety of reasons (too complicated to go into here), by the middle of the 19th century and later, the vast majority of Jews in the Pale were very poor.
In this context, in addition to the political trends we saw among Jews in Western Europe, a distinct ideological position was developed and propagated by the General Jewish Workers Union (the “Bund”). The Bund was formed in 1897 and played an important role in the early development of the socialist (Social-Democratic) movement in Russia. Aside from supporting the general Social-Democratic program, the Bund, after 1905, proposed that Jews ought to struggle for “national-cultural autonomy,” both within the society of their day and in the future, in a multi-national socialist society. By “national-cultural autonomy,” the Bundists meant the right of the Jews and all minority peoples within the Russian Empire to control their own cultural, educational, and intellectual affairs. The Bundists were militantly anti-Zionist, that is, firmly opposed to the establishment of a distinctly Jewish state, in Palestine or anywhere else. They argued that the Jews’ home was in Eastern Europe, where they had lived for centuries, and not in Palestine, and that this was where they should fight for their freedom. They also insisted that Yiddish, not Hebrew, was the true language of the Jews. Bundists also recognized that the Zionist program entailed the expulsion of the indigenous population of Palestine from their ancestral homeland, which they firmly opposed. The Bund, like most socialists of the time, advocated that Jews should fight for full political rights in Russia (and in all the countries in which they lived), while simultaneously struggling, in alliance with others, to overthrow the Tsar and eventually to establish a socialist society.
The traditional religious and political leadership of the Jewish community, the rabbinic elite, was also anti-Zionist. They advocated that Jews should aim to survive economically, to study the Torah and the Talmud, and to patiently await the coming of the Messiah. Even today, and even in Israel itself, many of the most devout Jews are anti-Zionist. They do not support the Jewish state, and as a result (among other things), they refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. In their view, the re-establishment of the Davidic kingdom in Palestine will occur only when the Messiah, sent by God, will come to lead all the Jews from around the world back to the Promised Land, where they will rebuild and re-consecrate Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Before then, a Jewish state established and maintained by human efforts is, and can only be, a form of blasphemy, the worship of a false idol, Baal. It’s also worth noting that even within the Zionist movement, there were significant currents – “spiritual” or “cultural” Zionists – that opposed the establishment of a Jewish state. Their aim was to build up the Jewish community (the yishuv) in Palestine as a spiritual and cultural center whose task would be to educate and uplift the Jews, Arabs, and all others living there and all people around the world.
Even after the establishment of a substantial Jewish community in Palestine, and even after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the majority of the world’s Jews were indifferent, or even hostile, to Zionism. It was only after the Six-Day War, in 1967, in which the Israelis defeated invading Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian armies, that a significant number of Jews in the United States and elsewhere became supporters of the state of Israel and embraced the Zionist project. Many of those who did so had previously been – and some continued to be – supporters of the Soviet Union. At that point, the dominant political parties and leaders in Israel described themselves as “labor” or “socialist,” and as a result, the state of Israel and Zionism as a whole were seen as being part of the international socialist movement.
In light of this history, the efforts of the Zionist leadership of the Jewish community in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere to imply that any opposition to the state of Israel and to Zionism in general is, by itself, anti-Semitic can be seen for what it is, an attempt to de-legitimize the views of their non- and anti-Zionist critics, both within the Jewish community and outside of it. And on the fundamental issue (at least for Jews), the jury, in my opinion, is still out. The Zionists insisted and continue to insist that only through the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish state would global Jewry be safe from anti-Semitism, in general, and from a new Holocaust, in particular. In light of recent events, in light of the history of Palestine from 1897 to the present, and in light of the fact that the establishment of the Jewish state entailed the brutal expulsion of the indigenous people of the region from their ancestral lands and their ongoing oppression and marginalization, this position is, to say the least, arguable. Are Jews around the world safer today because of the existence of the state of Israel? Does killing 25,000 (30,000?) Palestinians make Jews safer? Or, has the Zionist leadership of the Jewish community not led us into a fiery trap from which there is no escape except to make peace, in one form or another, with our Palestinian brothers and sisters? (My own preference, however far-fetched it may seem at the moment, is the establishment of a democratic secular state of Palestine, one that gives full rights to all its residents: Israeli, Palestinian, Ethiopian, and Bedouin; Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, and all others.
II. Left-wing anti-Semitism
Thus, when I speak of the recent expression of anti-Semitism by left-wing activists, I am not referring to the mere articulation of anti-Zionist/anti-Israel positions or some thoughtless pro-Palestinian slogans and chants. I mean the manifest attitudes and acts of pro-Palestinian activists and other leftists that we have witnessed in the weeks since Hamas’s unforgivable (and politically stupid) attack on unarmed Israeli civilians. These have been anti-Semitic in the most fundamental meaning of the term: threats of violence against Jews, both individually and collectively; verbal and physical assaults on Jewish individuals on university, college, and high school campuses, and on city streets and elsewhere; defacement of synagogues, Jewish-owned restaurants, and businesses; the tearing down of posters of the hostages held by Hamas; and the utterance of ancient anti-Jewish cliches, libels, and rants. As a result, today many Jews are afraid to publicly identify themselves for fear of physical assault. They are covering their kippahs, taking off their Star of David and Chai necklaces, removing mezuzahs from their door-frames, and refraining from lighting Chanukah menorahs on their lawns and window sills. While it’s not clear that all of these threats and attacks are coming from the left, it’s clear that many of them are. Although comrades who have been more active in the radical movement over the years than I have warned me of the existence of such left-wing anti-Semitism, I had not fully appreciated its strength.
I believe the left-wing Jew-hatred we have witnessed is not an accident, say, manifestations of anti-Jewish prejudice on the part of a handful of individuals or the understandable excesses of militantly pro-Palestinian activists. Instead, I see it as the (nearly) inexorable logic of the political ideology that has been embraced by a majority of the American left today.
III. Identity Politics as the source of left-wing anti-Semitism
(Note: Some of the ideas expressed below have recently been raised by conservative commentators in the mass media. Although I do not consider myself to be a conservative, I agree with much of what they have written on the topic.)
Although much of the contemporary left claims to be Marxist, most left-wing groups and individuals currently promote one or another variant of Identity Politics. Such politics, in my view, are contrary to the original Marxist vision and strategy. Identity Politics are based on the idea that especially oppressed groups, racial (primarily, Black, Latino, and Native American) and sexual/gender (women and LGBTQ+ people), constitute the main force for achieving radical social change in the United States. Those leftists who advocate this position and pursue a strategy based on it have rejected two of the most fundamental tenets of Marxism. One is Marx and Engels’ emphasis on the centrality of social class and the class struggle in their analysis of capitalist society. The other, which follows from the first, is Marx and Engels’ advocacy of a working-class/proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a truly free – democratic, cooperative, and egalitarian – society, what they called “communism.”
Marx and Engels’ views of the working class and their advocacy of a working-class revolution reflected a universalistic vision. According to the Marxist analysis, the “laws of motion” of the capitalist system would result in the working class – those who, bereft of all property, are compelled to sell their labor-power to the capitalists in return for wages (this process being the source of the capitalists’ profit) and are thus “exploited” – becoming the overwhelming majority of the population. The same dynamics would also result in the capitalist class being reduced to a handful of individuals. Because of this, the revolution of the working class against the capitalist class and the capitalist system as a whole would be a “revolution of the vast majority in the interests of the vast majority.” Understood this way, the Marxist conception of the proletarian revolution and the society it was destined to create was universal, revolutionary, and democratic.
Despite its proclaimed commitment to Marxism, the contemporary left has abandoned this universalistic, revolutionary, and democratic vision and has instead adopted a partial, reformist, and authoritarian program. Its perspective seems to be based on the idea that the struggles of specially-oppressed groups can, by themselves, lead to serious change in American society, even if those struggles are directed against a significant sector, even a majority, of the contemporary US population.
In adopting such an approach, the left has also reversed the original intent and meaning of Identity Politics. At their origins, the struggles to overcome the racial oppression of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, and other ethnic minorities and the sexual/gender oppression of women and LGBTQ+ people had an egalitarian content. At a minimum, the aim of such movements was to eliminate the barriers to the full and equal participation of these groups in US society. At a more maximal level – that is, among those activists who believed that true liberation would not be possible under our current socio-economic arrangements – the goal was to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with what they saw as a more democratic and egalitarian system, socialism.
In contrast, today’s left has replaced the egalitarian and radical visions of the earlier movements with a program of demarcating a new hierarchy within contemporary society, one of “oppressors” and “oppressed,” victimizers and victims. Specifically, the contemporary left has constructed a rubric under which some social groups (Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans; women and LGBTQ+ individuals) are classified as oppressed, while others (white people and other “privileged” ethnic groups, men, heterosexuals, and others) are relegated to the role of oppressors. The role of the former is to struggle for their liberation (although what that precisely means is not clear). The task of the latter is (at best) to recognize (and feel guilty about) their “privilege”- that is, to publicly confess that they and their ancestors, regardless of the very real economic, social, political, and cultural obstacles they had to face and overcome to survive in the United States, have profited and continue to profit from the racist and sexist structure of American society – and to support, as subordinate players, the ongoing struggles of the oppressed (or at least to get out of the way). What this program ignores is that the vast majority of the people whom the proponents of Identity Politics classify as “oppressors” have been and still are oppressed by US capitalism. In Marxist terms, they are workers, proletarians, who are exploited by the capitalist class. As a result, instead of calling for the majority of the American people of all races and ethnic groups and all sexual and gender identifications to unite in a common struggle against the ruling elite and capitalism as a whole, the contemporary left in fact advocates and promotes an internecine struggle among the victims of capitalist society to establish their respective positions in the capitalist pecking order.
In hindsight, we can see the possibility of such an outcome in certain features of the earlier movements. First, I expect that some Black people, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asians did view their struggles in narrowly racial terms, that is, as struggles against white people. Likewise, some women certainly saw males (particularly, heterosexual males) as their enemy. And I suspect (here, I am less certain) that some LGBTQ+ people conceived their struggle as being directed against heterosexuals per se. However, in the context of the mass radical movement(s) that arose and flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, such sentiments were, as far as I remember, those of a minority. I believe (or, I’d like to believe) that most of the activists and supporters of these movements saw themselves as being part of a broader (and ultimately united) struggle for equality and justice within (or, for the militant activists, against) American society.
Beyond this, some left theoreticians, disturbed by the failure of the American working class to live up to the revolutionary expectations of Marxist theory, attempted to explain why this occurred and simultaneously to search for alternative agents of radical social change. Foremost among these was the Marxist philosopher, Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse utilized a combination of Marxist and Freudian concepts to attempt to account for the relative conservatism of white workers in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. He also looked to other social sectors, primarily Black people and other racial minorities, along with women, LGBTQ+ people, and students as possible forces for social progress.
Other Marxist thinkers wound up in roughly the same place. Noel Ignatiev and his comrades in the Sojourner Truth Organization came to the conclusion that the path towards a united, revolutionary working class was for white workers to give up their “white-skin privileges.” This meant that they should voluntarily cede the advantages they enjoyed over Black and other minority workers in the racist structure of American society, particularly in the workplace (hiring, segregated job categories, and promotion) and in the labor unions, primarily (but not only) entry into apprenticeship programs for the skilled trades. To propagandize for their perspective, they published a journal called “Race Traitor.”
The ideas of Marcuse and Ignatiev became central to the political program of the RYM faction(s) that emerged in Students for a Democratic Society in 1968 and 1969, in opposition to the Progressive Labor Party’s Campus Worker-Student Alliance caucus. Although RYM II (which eventually became the October League, and later, the Communist Party, USA – Marxist-Leninist) was Maoist and thus tended to downplay the significance of the US working class, RYM I, which eventually morphed into the Weatherman faction of SDS and then the Weather Underground, was explicitly hostile to white workers, and by extension, to the American working class as a whole. The Weather leaders viewed white workers as “sellouts” and “betrayers” of the global anti-imperialist struggle, “class collaborators,” and “running dogs of imperialism.” And, at least initially, their terrorist strategy was directed against them. The bomb that accidentally went off in a Greenwich Village townhouse in early 1970 was meant to be placed at the site of a dance of non-commissioned officers (overwhelmingly working-class men), and their wives and partners, at the nearby US army base, Fort Dix, in New Jersey.
Thus, although Marcuse and Ignatiev did not explicitly describe white workers as oppressors, let alone as enemies, the implication was there to be had. In the rhetoric of the time, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” And it seems clear that, today, following the lead of the Weather people, this is the conclusion the contemporary left has drawn: white people (and other “privileged” ethnic groups), men, and heterosexuals are oppressors. In the process, the capitalist elite (which includes representatives of racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ people), and the capitalist system as a whole, have been left off the hook.
In this light, it should be obvious why so much of the corporate leadership, the liberal (Democratic Party) politicians, and the US government have adopted and aggressively promoted Identity Politics. Although the original intent behind the adoption and promotion of these politics (by the federal government and other agents) was to combat the discrimination against Black people, Latinos, and other ethnic minorities, and later, women and LGBTQ+ people in the workplace and elsewhere, the capitalist elite eventually realized that they could be utilized to maintain their economic, social, and political hegemony. For one thing, their advocacy of these policies has enabled them to present themselves as militant fighters for racial/sexual/gender equality and social justice. They can also utilize their DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) cadres, codes, and practices to weed out potential trouble-makers before they’re hired; to identify problematical employees who manage to make it through the hiring process; and to stoke and manipulate racial and sexual tensions among their work forces to their own advantage. Identity Politics have been aggressively embraced by other sectors of the capitalist elite, particularly, the owners and operators of the mass media, the administrators of Ivy League and other universities and colleges, members of the school boards and central bureaucracies of the public school systems, and the leaders of the national teachers unions. As has become very clear to all who care to look, Identity Politics, for all the radical and even revolutionary rhetoric of its spokespersons, represent absolutely no threat to the capitalist elite. Quite the contrary, Identity Politics have become the official ideology of the Democratic Party and the liberal wing of the capitalist class as a whole, which has been, for nearly a century, the most effective defender of the capitalist system in the United States and around the world. Although the left sees itself as being in opposition to the capitalist class and to capitalism as a system, it is in, and actively seeks to maintain, a bloc with precisely these social forces. Completely self-deluded, the contemporary left has evolved from being self-proclaimed revolutionaries to acting as stooges of the capitalist class and defenders of the capitalist system they claim to oppose.
To me, the most significant aspect of the adoption and promotion of Identity Politics by the left, and its acceptance by a majority of the capitalist elite, has been the ideological conquest of the country’s educational system, from the elementary schools, through the middle and high schools, and on to the university level, undergraduate and graduate alike. To a considerable extent, this was the result, and the conscious intention, of many left-wing followers of Herbert Marcuse, who, heeding the suggestion of 1960s German student leader Rudi Deutschke, undertook the “Long March through the institutions,” specifically, becoming university professors, lecturers, and teachers in other parts of the US educational system, with the aim of reforming contemporary capitalist society from within. The result has been the miseducation and indoctrination of millions of young people in the well-intentioned but spurious vocabularies, categories, concepts, and theories of the current Marxist left. Among other things, these young children, teenagers, and young adults have been led to believe that these vocabularies, categories, concepts, and theories have the status of absolute—uncontested and uncontestable—Truth, both epistemological and moral. As a result, many, perhaps a majority, of such students have developed extremely authoritarian attitudes toward all those who hold divergent views, and as a result, have little or no respect for the principles of free speech, discussion, and debate. We have seen this over the past years in attempts by students at colleges and universities around the country to shout down, intimidate, and “cancel” (that is, get fired) those who articulate (or even attempt to articulate) alternative points of view. Shamefully, this has been encouraged and even aggressively promoted by university faculty and administrators. Not surprisingly, many students privately express fears of expressing unpopular and unofficially recognized opinions in classrooms and other public venues and have learned to shut down whatever powers of critical thought they might still retain. One result of this has been the emergence of a cadre of authoritarian and even totalitarian thugs among the younger generation of left-wing activists who have few qualms about physically assaulting people whom they see as their political opponents. We saw this clearly in the vigilante tactics of the supposedly anarchist Antifa and in the gratuitous trashing of small businesses and threats to and assaults on individuals who disagree with them by the militants of the Black Lives Matter movement in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, 2020.
IV. The philosophical roots of left-wing authoritarianism
The intellectual origins of these authoritarian attitudes can be located within Marxist ideology. While jettisoning positive features of Marxism, Identity Politics retain some of Marxism’s more questionable facets. I refer specifically to the implications that flow from Marxism’s philosophical assumptions.
First is Marxism’s conception of the truth. Although Marxism insists that it is scientific, its categories, methods, and theories are philosophical and were derived via philosophical methods and modes of thought. Specifically, Marxism insists that there is one Truth; that this Truth is synonymous with the Good (human liberation); that this Truth is theoretically discernible; that Marx and Engels discerned it; that all others outlooks are false; and that Marxists have the duty and the obligation to impose Marxism’s Truth on society through the instrument of a dictatorial state (what Marx and Engels called the “dictatorship of the proletariat”). Although in Marxist theory, this dictatorship is supposed to “wither away” rather quickly, in practice, it never does. Instead, it grows to monstrous proportions and snuffs the life out of all sectors of society. This is why all the attempts to implement the Marxian program in the 20th century led to the establishment of totalitarian (or in a few cases – Nicaragua and Venezuela – authoritarian) systems, and why all such efforts in the future will lead, I have little doubt, to similar results.
Second, although Marxism presents itself as a form of materialism, it is actually a form of Idealism, specifically, a variant of Hegelianism. The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel saw the universe, and particularly human history and consciousness, as being determined by the dialectical evolution of a cosmic logic, the mind or spirit of God. Analogously, Marx and Engels saw nature and history as being determined by the “dialectics of nature” (including Charles Darwin’s evolution through natural selection), the “laws of history,” and the dynamics (the “laws of motion”) of capitalism. What is common to both is the idea that the real reality – the fundamental structure of the universe – consists precisely in these laws, which, together, determine the evolution of both the material universe and human society. These laws are in fact logical categories in motion. As a result, when it comes to analyzing human society, such a way of thinking defines social entities in terms of the categories to which they belong. Thus, in Marxism, people are defined by the economic class to which they are members; they are, first and foremost, workers or capitalists (or landowners, peasants, or small businesspeople). Their characteristics as concrete individuals – their personalities, histories, ethnicities, religions, cultures, family relations, ideas, values, etc. – are strictly subordinate to, and defined by, the class to which they belong. The economic class of which each individual is a member thus becomes his/her/their true nature or Essence. Seen this way, Marxism is a form of Essentialism.
Third is Marxism’s deterministic view of reality. According to Marxism, not only are human beings defined by their essences, their behavior is, in fact, determined by these essences, more precisely, by the logic (the “laws of motion”) of the evolution of society. Marx put this explicitly. In the Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he wrote: “Social being determines social consciousness.” Reflecting the same idea, Marx insisted that the economic base of society determines the political (cultural and ideological) superstructure. This is an expression of Essentialism: dialectically-evolving essences determine reality.
Finally, there is Marxism’s moralism. Marx and Engels consistently denied that their revolutionary program had a moral basis. They were not, they insisted, against capitalism because it is wrong, bad, or evil. They merely claimed, based on their scientific investigations, that the capitalist system is historically obsolete and that it will inevitably be overthrown by the working class and replaced by a higher – more progressive, more democratic, and more productive – mode of production, socialism/communism. Despite this, it is obvious that Marx and Engels’ views and activities had a deeply-felt moral basis. Although they admired what international capitalism had accomplished, socially, technologically, and scientifically, they were horrified by the human costs capitalist development entailed, both in the past (e.g., the liquidation of the peasantry in England; the destruction of the artisan weavers in India; the trans-Atlantic slave trade; chattel slavery in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil) and in the present (e.g., the horrible conditions of the workers in the textile factories of their day). The other side of this de facto moral critique of capitalism is the implication that some social classes, primarily the working class, are, in their essence, good, while others, especially the capitalist class, are evil. This reveals that Marxism is actually a form of Manichaean-ism, the philosophical/religious world-view that conceives of the universe, including human society and history, as the arena of a cosmic struggle between two fundamental (ultimately, moral) forces, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil.
All these facets of Marxism can been seen quite clearly in today’s Identity Politics. According to such politics: (1) people are defined primarily by the Identity groups/categories to which they belong; (2) these groups/categories and their evolution determine the behavior of the individuals who make them up; (3) as members of either “oppressed” or “oppressor” groups/categories, all people are, essentially, either Good or Evil. The logic of Identity Politics is thus not merely to define some people as oppressors but, even more important, to demonize them. Specifically, the implication of contemporary Identity Politics is that some groups – whites and other “privileged” ethnicities, males, and heterosexuals—are Evil.
V. The Jews as oppressors
During the hey-day of the Identity movements in the 1960s and 70s, Jews were recognized by liberals and leftists alike as being members of an oppressed group (although precisely how Jews were to be defined sociologically remained problematic). After all, Jews were, and had long been, treated as second-class citizens in the United States. Despised and feared, they were prevented from immigrating into the country for 45 years; barred from living in many communities; excluded from important economic sectors and professions; prevented from patronizing many hotels, summer resorts, youth camps, and social clubs; their numbers strictly limited by quotas in colleges and universities. Jews were not considered to be white until after World War II, and even then, it was years before they were fully (or almost fully) accepted into US society.
Today, in the conceptual world of Identity Politics, Jews (along with east and south Asians) have become members of the category of oppressors. They are now considered to be white, even though roughly half of the Jews living in Israel, and some living in the United States, originally come from western Asia and northern and northeast Africa and share much of the cultures of those regions. Moreover, many Jews of Ashkenazi/Northern European background have dark complexions (throughout my life, I have regularly been taken for Latino, Arab, and Black.) Jews on the whole are relatively successful economically and have high levels of educational achievement. Also, for a variety of historical and sociological reasons, they are very prominent in certain sectors of society. Probably most important in the current political context, a majority of American Jews (my guess is 75-80%) are moral, political, and financial supporters of the state of Israel.
Given these circumstances, it should not be surprising that many young leftists, educated in and blinded by the categories of Identity Politics, should succumb to the age-old stereotypes of traditional (nationalist, right-wing) anti-Semitism: “the Jews” run the economy; “the Jews” own the banks; “the Jews” control Hollywood, professional sports, and the entertainment industry; “the Jews” dominate the mass media and academia; “the Jews” control Congress (through the financial largesse of the “Zionist lobby”); “the Jews” have too much power, and ultimately, “the Jews” are conspiring to take over the world. (According to a recent poll, 67% percent of young people, 18 to 24 years of age, consider Jews to be “oppressors,” even though the vast majority of Jews today are members of the middle class.)
The fundamental fallacy of all this is the assumption that we Jews always act in a united, concerted fashion, working together to promote our interests, when anybody who has ever attended a gathering of Jews (a Passover Seder, a celebration of Chanukah or Purim, a Thanksgiving dinner, or just an ordinary family reunion) knows, “the Jews” are a highly fractious, disputatious bunch of people. (As the saying goes, “Two Jews, three opinions.”)
Holding all this together is the historical trope that the Jews and the Jewish religion idolize money and personify the drive to make and accumulate it, that we are all crude materialists totally bereft of the loftier, spiritual feelings and aspirations of Christians. In this conception, the Jews represent — are, indeed, the very embodiment — of capitalism. To at least some young Marxists, in order to abolish capitalism, one must first abolish Judaism and those who confess it, Jews.
This is not a new idea. One hundred eighty years ago, Karl Marx (the grandson of a rabbi) put it rather succinctly:
“Let us consider the actual worldly Jew, not the Sabbath Jew… but the everyday Jew.
“Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.
“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
“Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its pre-conditions – the Jew will become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.
“The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 1843
In sum, much of the anti-Semitism we have witnessed in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on unarmed Israelis has come from, and is likely to continue to come from, the left. And, as I’ve tried to show, such bigotry has deep roots in leftist, especially Marxist, theory and modes of thoughts.