“Everybody knows that the left is much more antisemitic than the right.”
So commented a fellow American to me, citing that well-known and widely trusted authority on everything, Everybody Knows. Whereupon I inquired what database he could offer to back up that claim. He countered by asking me what database I had to disprove it. I gently reminded him that since I had not offered a broad generalization, I hardly needed a database; but added that, come to think of it, I had never seen a single swastika or other fascist insignia displayed next to a Biden banner, or a sign promoting any Democrat whatsoever. But I had seen a great many of them proudly displayed alongside MAGA ensigns.
He then tried to offer some “proof” of his assertion — in the form of three cherry-picked examples: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The same three cherry-picked examples that are universally touted to support the notion that left-wing antisemitism on a significant scale is actually a thing.
Jesse Jackson always makes the cut because in 1984 he uttered an off-the-cuff comment that included a slurring reference to Jews. It was, by his own admission, a stupid thing to say, even though the conversation was private. He should have known, for one thing, that for a political figure there is no such thing as a private conversation — particularly when the other party to the discussion is a reporter for The Washington Post, for crying out loud. Be that as it may, he made his apologies, which were accepted by the Jewish community — with whom he’s been on good terms ever since.
His big antisemitic sin, then, was a single remark, which sounded like it was meant to be facetious — FORTY FRIGGING YEARS AGO. And yet this is somehow supposed to be more antisemitic than the hundreds of right-wing fanatics who march in the streets RIGHT NOW chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
Sharpton, who’s even farther removed from the leftist mainstream (if there’s such a thing as the leftist mainstream) than Jackson, delivered supposedly antisemitic rhetoric that was rather more inflammatory; but he was addressing specific actual instances of conflict between black and Jewish individuals. That wasn’t 40 years ago — it was merely 30 or so. He too has made amends and has been embraced and lauded by (at least some) Jewish leaders for his denunciations of antisemitism.
BDS is an organization founded by Palestinians to pressure the government of Israel to change some of its policies. That’s it. Its target is the government of Israel, not the people of Israel. And certainly not Jews in general. Some people try to conflate these things, which is all kinds of ironic given that the leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a borderline fascist if not an actual fascist; and you may recall, if they taught actual history at your school, that certain fascists once upon a time were not terribly friendly to the Jewish people.
It’s not antisemitic or anti-Israel, or pro-Palestine or pro-Hamas, to denounce Israeli atrocities, any more than it’s anti-Palestine or pro-Israel or anti-Muslim to denounce Palestinian atrocities. In fact, these are not even two separate stances; they are two applications of the same stance — namely, pro-humanity.
About 10 percent of American Jews actually support BDS. And about 40 percent of them support the objectives of BDS, without necessarily approving of its specific actions. Are all of these Jews antisemitic as well? For that matter, about 70 percent of American Jews vote or lean Democratic (compared to only about 25 percent who vote or lean Republican). Are they also antisemitic?
If criticizing the government of Israel makes you antisemitic, then nobody is more antisemitic than Israeli Jews. According to poll results published by The Jerusalem Post, a staggering 86 percent of them say that the Hamas attack was due to failures by Israel’s own government, and 56 percent say that Netanyahu should resign. All a bunch of self-loathing bigots, no doubt.
Well, many people, like the fellow with whom I had the “discussion”, do buy into such arrant nonsense. Because there are many people who work very, very hard to make them believe it. The government of Israel has spent millions of dollars on propaganda to brand BDS as antisemitic. And right-wing media (which these days often includes what was once considered mainstream media) frequently run stories about how Democrats/ liberals/ the left supposedly have a worsening “antisemitism problem”. At least two right-wing hacks have even written comically ahistorical treatises claiming that fascism is actually of left-wing, rather than right-wing, provenance.
Why do they expend such an effort to make people believe the myths of liberal fascism and left-wing antisemitism? For the same reason they try so hard to make you believe in many other such tropes, including “grooming” and pedophilia, racism, violence, “cancel culture”, “left-wing” authoritarianism (an absolute oxymoron), government “weaponization”, censorship, “snowflake” meltdowns, extremism, and election tampering. It’s pure projection. They loudly accuse the other guys of doing such things to deflect from the fact that they are guilty as hell themselves. Every accusation is really a confession.
While they’re hammering away at the leitmotif of left-wing antisemitism, they’re wholeheartedly embracing Christian nationalism, displaying Nazi and white supremacist emblems, suggesting that there are “two sides” to the holocaust, calling Nazis “very fine people” (yes, he really did), rambling about Jewish space lasers, touting the Great Replacement Theory, and of course fearmongering about George Soros, George Soros, George Soros — the big bad Jewish philanthropist who apparently manages to pull the strings on absolutely everything. Elon Musk, who has used his new soapbox not only to freely allow the proliferation of antisemitic conspiracy theories but to promote them actively himself, is almost unanimously lionized by right-wingers.
Meanwhile, if anyone dares to criticize the right-wing government of Israel (or, heaven forbid, express support for the Palestinians), they are pounced upon as a venomous pro-Hamas Jew-hater. An Irish employee of the software firm Wix was fired after she called Israel a “terrorist state”. So of course all the right-wingers who’ve been sounding the alarm about free speech/ cancel culture/ censorship/ political correctness rushed to her defense. Nah, just kidding. They smirked, gloated and high-fived.
The claim to “support Israel” has become a shibboleth among Americans steeped in the culture of Christian fundamentalism. This means mostly the hard right, but not exclusively so. When U. S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was censured by Congress, 22 Democrats joined with the Republican mob to declare that her condemnation of Netanyahu’s government was antisemitic and therefore worthy of castigation. It’s unthinkable that she would have been censured for making similar comments about any other nation — not even the U.S. itself, where painting horns on presidents is a daily pastime. (Is that “anti-Christian”, since Christians are a majority in the U.S. and the president is always a Christian?) There’s plenty of antisemitism out there, and you no doubt can even find some of it actually coming from people on the left side of the political spectrum; why resort to tarring and feathering someone like Tlaib to make your case?
It’s probably unlikely that she would have been censured for making the exact same comments had she not been Palestinian herself. By dog-piling on a Palestinian, the good members of Congress felt that they were displaying “support” for Israel. And they regarded her censure as a matter of great pitch and moment — it was brought up for a vote repeatedly before it passed. They evidently considered it more urgent than keeping the government open, more urgent than stopping gun massacres, more urgent than “defending” the border, more urgent even than impeaching Hunter Biden so they can get a peek at his homemade porn.
One justification tendered for penalizing her was her use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which some people say is a dog whistle to incite violence. True, the slogan has been co-opted by Hamas, but that’s not the purpose for which it was coined, and is not the only way it’s been employed. In fact, it was even adopted by Likud, one of the major political parties of Israel. Were they inciting violence against themselves? If so, it doesn’t do much to advance the assertions of leftist antisemitism, since Likud is extremely right-wing. Oh, and it’s headed by none other than Netanyahu himself.
Another rich irony here is that many of the people who want to string Tlaib up for saying “from the river to the sea” are themselves quite fond of babbling”America first”– which, you’ll recall, was coined specifically to promote bigotry and hate, and has always been used in that fashion. Originally, it was invoked in the name of driving away Irish Catholics who wanted to settle in America. Then it was used to spurn Chinese railroad workers. More recently, it’s been the rallying cry of those who want to keep out the desperate brown-skinned “invaders” from down south. And who want to stop funding Ukraine in its struggle to fend off imperialist aggression. And oh yes, it was once uttered in the name of turning back Jewish refugees escaping the Third Reich — refugees who were sent back to Europe to be slaughtered. But hey, they were mostly German Jews rather than Israeli Jews, so maybe turning a deaf ear to their pleas for help didn’t undermine “support for Israel” .
The America First crowd often puts Israel first, at least superficially, in its foreign policy. Because the all-encompassing demand to “support Israel” at all costs stems from Christian nationalists who want their own interpretations of “scripture” to be the basis of all policy and all law; after all, what possibly could go wrong? In their apocalyptic wet dreams Israel and Gaza are Ground Zero for the fulfillment of biblical “prophecy”. Additionally, they find it very easy to prop up the Israeli government at the present time because its leader is also a right-wing totalitarian. Perhaps we could refer to them as Netanyahoos.
But their pretense at being champions of Israel and the Jews is merely inept cosplay. Because at the same time they profess to “support” Israel, they are cheering on the escalation of conflict in the region because they think it will help spur on those “end times” and that Armageddon that fundies have been insisting is just around the corner for centuries now. Their twisted eschatology calls for utter devastation, which is not terribly healthy for Israelis any more than for Palestinians. Their ultimate vision for the Jewish people is that they either will convert to Christianity or die.
If that isn’t antisemitic, what is?
The Propaganda Professor 
Bravo! Tipjar, everything! Thanks for such a comprehensive view.
Thanks!
Several years ago, I was commenting on a social media thread that looked comical when viewed at arm’s length. All up and down the thread were liberals angrily accusing Trump supporters of being antisemitic and racially Biased–which drew a turn-the-tables response in which conservatives shot right back that liberals were the antisemites and racially biased ones. When viewing a long list of comments and replies throughout the thread it seemed sort of like watching a Punch and Judy puppet show in which liberals batted clubs at the heads of conservatives and then visa versa. I laughed a bit to myself when I was conversing with a right-wing commenter who eagerly tossed such judgemental words at me, just because I disagreed with him on many points. My response though, completely surprised him–I told him it’s easy for one man to judge another man for his heinous attitude before actually examining oneself. I also admitted to racial uptightness every time I saw angry black men who seemed upset with me as I looked at them, and I tried to explain that because of the racially volatile political reality in America, all of us probably had some amount of fear and uptightness towards black Americans simply because they exist with us in the same social zeitgeist which has been perpetrating misunderstandings and angry accusations towards those who looked different from others for centuries, as well as towards those having different prejudices and political views, and thus voted differently most of the time. He was impressed by my comment yet he thought I was pretending. I wasn’t!
During my college days, while enjoying some beers in the student union I shared them with a close friend as well as with two dark black students from Nigeria. I naively expressed amazement about how well they spoke the English language, and my friend quickly reminded me that Nigeria was a British colony. But what impressed me the most, is that while looking back at our conversation, I realized that these two black students were easy to talk to with no racial uptightness involved. Why, I suppose because they did not grow up in the same political and social caldron that African Americans and the rest of us grew up in. They expressed no bitter histories and no pent-up anger towards the US and thus, I began to feel much more relaxed while I talked to two fellow human beings. Later in the evening, they told us how they were forced into the military at 14 years old, which they did not resent and instead, displayed a “those are the breaks,” attitude. Their military days included vicious fights between themselves and other politically affiliated “Tribes,” who were extremely angry and were at ideologically opposite polls. So, ever since then, I have known there is much more at work with racial bias than just the colors of our skin and therefore we should try not to accuse others of feelings things that we may hate about ourselves.
What made all the “culture wars” bunk so successful is that it exposed politically raw nerves that many of us have long suffered from. However, I still completely reject Trump because he has deliberately exposed our raw racial and religious nerves so well he is the primary person most responsible for using all of our biases to propel him into office.
This is the favorite tactic of all Authoritarian wannabe dictators, and Trump has also set back scientific knowledge about Global warming and how the public perceives it. And more than any traitorous patriot during the War of Independence he is far more corrupt and power-driven.
I anticipate minor improvements at the beginning of Trump’s term which will later fail to bring about the political Shangrila that was promised by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, and now himself. It’s uncertain where the anecdote originated, but it’s the one in which an outsider asked an Italian something like, Well if (fill in the name of any dictator) you know he is such a corrupt person why do you support him?–the reply–“Because now the trains run on time.”
We all give up our freedoms so easily in return for empty promises and by mischaracterizing Biden as someone who was, “destroying the country,” Even though at best Trump secured a small amount of extra take-home pay for the electorate, and blamed it on Biden–while under Biden the economy was truly regaining its resilience “biggly!”