masthead

Powered byWebtrack Logo

Links

To get maximum benefit from the ICJS website Register now. Select the topics which interest you.

6068 6287 6301 6308 6309 6311 6328 6337 6348 6384 6386 6388 6391 6398 6399 6410 6514 6515 6517 6531 6669 6673

The Left must stand up to antisemitism

spiked’s extensive analysis of the Western reaction to the war in Gaza has generated much debate. Here, as part of a series of responses to our coverage, Philip J Spencer, who teaches courses on the Holocaust, genocide and human rights at Kingston University in England, responds to Frank Furedi’s essay on 21st-century anti-Semitism.

Frank Furedi’s article is a sobering reflection on the connections between anti-Israeli sentiment and anti-Semitism (see After Gaza: what is behind 21st-century anti-Semitism?). The central issues he raises have to do, firstly, with the role that sections of the left have played in legitimising anti-Semitism and, secondly, with how interpretations of the Holocaust are being distorted and abused. These issues, I would suggest, may be still more closely connected than Furedi suggests.

There are a number of ways in which much of the left now refuses to engage seriously with anti-Semitism but rather helps to legitimate it. The first takes the form of explaining anti-Semitism in a way that effectively justifies it. This occurs when, for example, suicide bombing (that is, the deliberate killing of Jewish civilians) is explained in a pseudo-materialist mode as simply a product of desperation. That many people have found themselves desperate without resorting to such actions and such hatred is ignored, as is the obvious fact that they are planned by people who are certainly anti-Semitic but not by any stretch of the imagination hopeless or without considerable material resources.

The second form is collusion – the effective toleration of anti-Semitic language, chants and slogans on demonstrations against Israel. I say ‘effective’ because this is a repeated and growing phenomenon, known in advance. It does not require an occasional well-meaning reproof but the recognition that joint participation in, and organisation of, such demonstrations provides a forum for anti-Semites to express their hatred of Jews without fear or anxiety. (It is in this respect a direct reversal of the old socialist programme of ‘no platform for fascists’.)

The third way in which the left helps to legitimise anti-Semitism, and this often accompanies the first two, has to do with the downplaying of evidence of anti-Semitism itself: the claim that anti-Semitic incidents are over-reported or misinterpreted and that, in any case, they are far less significant than other forms of hatred.

How new is all this? Perhaps it is not quite as new as we might wish, especially if we think about the left’s response to Nazi anti-Semitism. There is a certain ‘conceit’ on the left (one I confess I shared myself for a long time) that they were the most principled, committed opponents of Nazi anti-Semitism. This is highly arguable. In Germany in the 1930s, many left-wing intellectuals took an entirely reductive view of Nazi anti-Semitism. As late as 1939, for example, Max Horkheimer claimed that what was really going on was that ‘the Jews are being supplanted as agents of circulation, for the modern economic structure eliminates the entire sphere of commerce’.

In 1942 (just as the Final Solution was under way) Franz Neumann published his major study of Nazism in which he argued that they would ‘never allow a complete extermination of the Jews’. What the left did oppose was fascism, for which they had a much more sophisticated explanation, and which was a priority. For on the ground, too, mobilising against anti-Semitism as a central issue was repeatedly rejected - by both social democrats and communists. To raise this issue, leaders of both parties agreed, was pointless and counter-productive. It would not win support but would further isolate their militants. And there was more than a hidden suggestion that the Jews had somehow brought this upon themselves, that they had been too visible, too prominent, or worse.

Ignorant efforts to equate what happened to the Jews during Nazi rule with what Israel is doing to the Palestinians may be thought about, to some extent, against this background of incomprehension and avoidance. It is true that what happened then remains hard to comprehend even today. The idea that the Nazis wanted to kill all Jews everywhere is hard to hold in the mind, as (even more) is the creation of extermination camps; factories designed not to produce goods or commodities but corpses and ashes, factories of death.

But if there is little history of thinking seriously about anti-Semitism and confronting it directly when it was at its most dangerous, it may not be so surprising that there has been such a weak response to the latest outbreak of this mutating virus. It was easier then to turn away, to deny the full import of anti-Semitism in its most radical form; it is easier now not to think about anti-Semitism at all.

Philip J Spencer is associate dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences at Kingston University, where he teaches courses on the Holocaust, the Politics of Mass Murder, and Human Rights. He has also written on Marxism and the Holocaust and is currently working on a study of the left, the Holocaust and subsequent genocides.


# reads: 2426

Print
Printable version

Google

Articles RSS Feed


News

Tell us what you think


Jewish Journal, Los Angeles: Dust Over Campus Life: UCLA at a Crossroad-February 18, 2009, By Judea Pearl: http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/dust_over_campus_life_ucla_at_a_crossroad_20090218/

Posted on 2009-02-23 03:48:24 GMT


I think anyone expecting a coherent philosophy from "the left" is naive indeed. those baranding themselves "left" are more likely to be displaying a personality disorder than a rational approach to social problems. Since when is solving probelms by giving away other peoples" money anything but a rationalisation of theft?

Posted by RAS melbourne on 2009-02-22 09:00:52 GMT


This last comment is absolute rubbish, who ever writes this stuff is out of their mind. Furthermore, during the first 15 years of Israel all sorts ended up in Ramleh, Maasiyahoo, Megidoo (prisons), not every survivor was a saint and not every act of the Israeli elected officials is is ethical or correct. Israel is not a Banana Republic, nor is it a new Canada. Those who like to find faults with Israel are clueless about living under endless stress of war, terrorism and internal fragmentation (Orthodox free loaders, Lefty Fifth Columnists, Columnists, Arab Nationalists, Jewish Lunatics -Liebermans-Kach crowd, and assorted refugees who do not belong, get it in your head, it will never be another Australia.

Posted on 2009-02-22 02:53:23 GMT


This article makes a good point on several levels. There are Jews who truly believe that Israel can do no wrong, and those Jews who do not always agree with Israel. If you don"t agree with Israel 100% of the time you are suspect of being an anti-semite. When the newly released survivors of the concentration camps were released into the then Palestine population they seriously felt persecuted and personally offended when a Jewish police person stopped them, speeding or whatever. "I"m a survivor, you are persecuting a survivor, are you an anti-semite?" It was very difficult for these newcomers to establish themselves in a Jewish. well, almost Jewish state and ticketed by Jewish law enforcement people for whatever transgression. It is difficult being a Jew and please every thought wave whether in Israel or outside Israel. Respectfully

Posted on 2009-02-22 02:43:02 GMT


The Left are the fuel - kerosene - that promote growth in anti-Semitism

Posted by Leonid Shvartsman, Shalom Association of Jews from on 2009-02-22 02:42:03 GMT


Dont" make such plans! The way it used to be: Nationalism, Socialism were the ideology that went after Jews, so those demanding from the wobblies to stand for something are pissing in the wind. Grow up- it will not happen.

Posted on 2009-02-22 02:30:44 GMT