Dec 24, 2023·edited Dec 24, 2023Liked by Alan Flanagan
Yet when the conversation turns to modern Jew hate and I say to my friends and family, "It's not necessarily that Leftists hate Jews, they just hate all Europeans and European civilization (and they consider Israel to be a European outpost)," everyone looks at me like I'm a deranged fanatic and/or rightwinger.
And if I say to my more educated friends something like, just about every famous Leftist from Sartre to Chomsky to Sontag etc have cheered on multiple tyrants and massacres and would strip us of our civil liberties in the name of "socialist liberation", they also think I've gone off the deep end.
What is this thing we call "the Left" that most people believe is just "fighting for a better world" and/or "uplifting the poor and oppressed", but that has a much darker side that comes out every time it gets a whiff of power? (It's ironic to me how the people who claim to be anti-capitalist have gained more from PR than even the largest corporations.) Is the Left just Eric Hoffer's "adversary intellectuals" gone full jihad (unless it's full Calvin)? How is it that people who seem to have gained the most from Western Civ hate it the most? Or do they just hate not having total control of it?
Oppression in the name of the Oppressed may just be another odd feature of humanity and its inability to step out of its Jungian shadow and its inescapable fate (akin to death) of always becoming the thing it claims to hate. Save us all from the professed saviors of mankind!
Thanks again for another outstanding piece and Merry Christmas!
Once again thank you, Alan, for this brilliant and comprehensive essay! Always grateful for you proving that we can never learn enough.. You indeed dug into rabbit holes, and I feel that this is so important, especially when, as you say, we are witnessing the "most public and widespread explosion of anti-Semitism in society"; while, at the same time, it seems like this anti-Semitism is growing and hiding where we never or hardly expected it, a frightening paradox :( In Germany, AfD, which is (in parts?) openly anti-semitic, adds its voice to right-wing conservative forces "fighting" anti-Semitism, only to strengthen a xenophobic agenda; while at the same time, (part of) leftist and far-left forces can nowadays definitely be positioned near this AfD, as "anti-imperialistic" and, yes, also anti-semitic! It's frightening, and it clearly shows how deep anti-Semitism is still engrained - obviously, for reasons you diligently explained here. And it is so important to state and note these facts! All that said, I am definitely still all for acknowledging "that it is possible for a people to be both a perpetrator and a victim at the same time" and realising "this applies to the Jewish people as much as the Palestinian people". Thank you for your thoughtful, reasonable and humble voice, highly appreciated!
It should be noted that the footage in Sydney that went viral of a crowd chanting "gas the Jews" is still under investigation by police for dubbing over with a different audio file. There is no other videos showing the crowd shouting this and the original video was posted on social media by the Australian Jewish Council.
Yet when the conversation turns to modern Jew hate and I say to my friends and family, "It's not necessarily that Leftists hate Jews, they just hate all Europeans and European civilization (and they consider Israel to be a European outpost)," everyone looks at me like I'm a deranged fanatic and/or rightwinger.
And if I say to my more educated friends something like, just about every famous Leftist from Sartre to Chomsky to Sontag etc have cheered on multiple tyrants and massacres and would strip us of our civil liberties in the name of "socialist liberation", they also think I've gone off the deep end.
What is this thing we call "the Left" that most people believe is just "fighting for a better world" and/or "uplifting the poor and oppressed", but that has a much darker side that comes out every time it gets a whiff of power? (It's ironic to me how the people who claim to be anti-capitalist have gained more from PR than even the largest corporations.) Is the Left just Eric Hoffer's "adversary intellectuals" gone full jihad (unless it's full Calvin)? How is it that people who seem to have gained the most from Western Civ hate it the most? Or do they just hate not having total control of it?
Oppression in the name of the Oppressed may just be another odd feature of humanity and its inability to step out of its Jungian shadow and its inescapable fate (akin to death) of always becoming the thing it claims to hate. Save us all from the professed saviors of mankind!
Thanks again for another outstanding piece and Merry Christmas!
Excellently put. Thank you!
Once again thank you, Alan, for this brilliant and comprehensive essay! Always grateful for you proving that we can never learn enough.. You indeed dug into rabbit holes, and I feel that this is so important, especially when, as you say, we are witnessing the "most public and widespread explosion of anti-Semitism in society"; while, at the same time, it seems like this anti-Semitism is growing and hiding where we never or hardly expected it, a frightening paradox :( In Germany, AfD, which is (in parts?) openly anti-semitic, adds its voice to right-wing conservative forces "fighting" anti-Semitism, only to strengthen a xenophobic agenda; while at the same time, (part of) leftist and far-left forces can nowadays definitely be positioned near this AfD, as "anti-imperialistic" and, yes, also anti-semitic! It's frightening, and it clearly shows how deep anti-Semitism is still engrained - obviously, for reasons you diligently explained here. And it is so important to state and note these facts! All that said, I am definitely still all for acknowledging "that it is possible for a people to be both a perpetrator and a victim at the same time" and realising "this applies to the Jewish people as much as the Palestinian people". Thank you for your thoughtful, reasonable and humble voice, highly appreciated!
It should be noted that the footage in Sydney that went viral of a crowd chanting "gas the Jews" is still under investigation by police for dubbing over with a different audio file. There is no other videos showing the crowd shouting this and the original video was posted on social media by the Australian Jewish Council.