Could another reason for the Left's unhinged Jew hatred be the fact that Leftism is at its heart a Christian heresy based on victim worship and the Jews need to be dethroned as the modern world's apex or ur-victim?
At its heart the Left (at least since the birth of Marxism) has always been centered around the worship and defense of some sacred victim, first the proletariat, then the Wretched of the Earth and now the "marginalized", this provides all the moral, political and messianic energy and taps deeply into the Christian morality that is rooted in the heart of every Westerner (even and maybe even especially the professed atheists)—but the Jews are simply too rich, too powerful and successful, TOO WHITE, to be granted this sacred status, to be (once again) the Christ that we center our church around. Especially now that there are other, better (!) victims to coalesce around, those with dark skin who live in poverty and are or have been a hated outsider Other—part of worshipping the Other means they need to be unlike us enough that we can project ourselves and our needs onto them, which is another way the Jews no longer fit the role.
The Victim faith of post-Christian Social Justice and its priesthood need a purer, more easily romanticized, more dangerous and pliable, less "problematic" apex Victim to build their church around, and (just as w Christianity) the Jews need to be banished and/or killed in order for this newer, stronger faith to flourish.
It really seems to be a case of lose-lose, going from perpetual victims of Christian doctrines to reclassification as "oppressors" in the secular faith-based Progressive doctrines.
It always strikes me as particularly discordant with regard to Israel because, on so many levels of the Progressive shibboleths, it could be viewed as a model ideal...it is a multicultural phenomenon insofar as it integrated Jews from everywhere, from North Africa to Russia. It was founded and operated, at least in the kibbutz system, along socialist principles...and by any yardstick of actual, real oppression, no people has arguably had it worse over the centuries.
And yet superimpose Americanised jargon over the situation and you end up "white colonial oppressors = bad; brown 'indigenous' oppressed = good". As reductive as it comes.
"It always strikes me as particularly discordant with regard to Israel because, on so many levels of the Progressive shibboleths, it could be viewed as a model ideal..."
An indigenous group who were kicked off their land by an imperalist global empire, who wandered homeless and were hated outcasts everywhere, until they made their way back to the ancient land of their ancestors...isn't this what all these sanctimonious land acknowledgments are about? aren't we supposed to worship and adore the "rightful" indigenous original inhabitants and doesn't Justice mean they get back what was stolen from them? I guess not in this case!
Jews are just the West's undigestable lump, and every time a univeralist creed arrives and gains power—Christians, Marxists, even Enlightenment liberalism in some forms, and now Social Justice—the universalist creed demands that this particular group (hated for their stubborn difference and their stubborn clinging to an old desert God) jumps into the purifying fire and sheds all that makes them special.
Every new creed finds Jehovah the most intolerable presence of all, he has to die for their faith to live. I almost wish the Jews would dissolve Israel and flee, if only we could swap them for the campus Infantada, and let our disaffected children live under the reign of their heroes, Hamas and the ayatollahs of Iran. Now this would be real Justice!
The people in the way of every creed's salvation...it very much speaks to some of the irrational aspects of the hate; Israel means they're no longer available for mass sacrifice.
I must say I often think about your suggestion, how it would be ideal to have an "exchange programme" (hasn't the Ayatollah recently also suggested such!?) where the blue-haired they/them's can go and live their best lives in the regimes they seem to so admire.
This is the part that most people seem to miss: “a unique contribution of Progressivism is to reframe Zionism as a cause of anti-Semitism, rather than the reality of Zionism as a consequence of anti-Semitism.” Thank you for mentioning this. It’s a critical part of the discussion to find a path forward.
Brilliant and valuable essay, Alan, you made so many points that definitely need to be heard, and "taken forward"!
First of all, of course, yes, anti-Semitism! :( I just don't get how such a perfidious construct with no "base" whatsoever can emerge and spread over and over again! Following your explanations, it actually seems to be the case that anti-Semitism is always "used" (in German, I would use the phrase, "damit zündeln" instead of "using", meaning, "playing with fire"..) to gather the masses behind oneself using a "scapegoat strategy" - and people fall for it over and over again, it's absolutely frightening!
This also hits exactly the second point that you made so brilliantly: It's no longer just the "skinheads from a social housing march who scream "Sieg Heil""; it's the "Tenured Academics at Elite American Universities" who one "has to believe" and who you "must at least listen to"? :( This is a development that can also be observed in Germany, for example - the part of the AfD that is considered to be definitely anti-Semitic (as per the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) is led by Mr. Höcke, a high school teacher, of all things history teacher, what a paradox! But anti-Semitism is obviously "catching", also because it can be so easily hidden - again a point you make clear when you talk about how progressives are reinterpreting "Zionism as the cause of anti-Semitism."
And finally, oh yes, the “safe space” you mention, I couldn’t agree more! It seems as if demonstrating is “chic” after all? Well, yes, it might actually be a worthy cause that some of them are fighting for at the moment - yet a little more foresight would not only be appropriate, but imperative, namely, the understanding of and insight into which movement you are actually joining, i.e., “anti-Semitism that disguises itself as “solidarity” with the Palestinian people”!
If your essay demands "end that campus culture, force these ideologies into the open to be confronted" - that would be so desirable because everything else is playing in the hands of forces that we do NOT want to see in power! Thank you, Alan, for your words, your valuable “voice” in this grotesque!
Thanks Mel! You're right, anti-Semitism is certainly a herd-like instinct to rally the crowd behind the "scapegoat"...how people really seem blind to the slippery slope from "just words" is frightening...the veneer of civilisation is indeed thin.
Could another reason for the Left's unhinged Jew hatred be the fact that Leftism is at its heart a Christian heresy based on victim worship and the Jews need to be dethroned as the modern world's apex or ur-victim?
At its heart the Left (at least since the birth of Marxism) has always been centered around the worship and defense of some sacred victim, first the proletariat, then the Wretched of the Earth and now the "marginalized", this provides all the moral, political and messianic energy and taps deeply into the Christian morality that is rooted in the heart of every Westerner (even and maybe even especially the professed atheists)—but the Jews are simply too rich, too powerful and successful, TOO WHITE, to be granted this sacred status, to be (once again) the Christ that we center our church around. Especially now that there are other, better (!) victims to coalesce around, those with dark skin who live in poverty and are or have been a hated outsider Other—part of worshipping the Other means they need to be unlike us enough that we can project ourselves and our needs onto them, which is another way the Jews no longer fit the role.
The Victim faith of post-Christian Social Justice and its priesthood need a purer, more easily romanticized, more dangerous and pliable, less "problematic" apex Victim to build their church around, and (just as w Christianity) the Jews need to be banished and/or killed in order for this newer, stronger faith to flourish.
It really seems to be a case of lose-lose, going from perpetual victims of Christian doctrines to reclassification as "oppressors" in the secular faith-based Progressive doctrines.
It always strikes me as particularly discordant with regard to Israel because, on so many levels of the Progressive shibboleths, it could be viewed as a model ideal...it is a multicultural phenomenon insofar as it integrated Jews from everywhere, from North Africa to Russia. It was founded and operated, at least in the kibbutz system, along socialist principles...and by any yardstick of actual, real oppression, no people has arguably had it worse over the centuries.
And yet superimpose Americanised jargon over the situation and you end up "white colonial oppressors = bad; brown 'indigenous' oppressed = good". As reductive as it comes.
"It always strikes me as particularly discordant with regard to Israel because, on so many levels of the Progressive shibboleths, it could be viewed as a model ideal..."
An indigenous group who were kicked off their land by an imperalist global empire, who wandered homeless and were hated outcasts everywhere, until they made their way back to the ancient land of their ancestors...isn't this what all these sanctimonious land acknowledgments are about? aren't we supposed to worship and adore the "rightful" indigenous original inhabitants and doesn't Justice mean they get back what was stolen from them? I guess not in this case!
Jews are just the West's undigestable lump, and every time a univeralist creed arrives and gains power—Christians, Marxists, even Enlightenment liberalism in some forms, and now Social Justice—the universalist creed demands that this particular group (hated for their stubborn difference and their stubborn clinging to an old desert God) jumps into the purifying fire and sheds all that makes them special.
Every new creed finds Jehovah the most intolerable presence of all, he has to die for their faith to live. I almost wish the Jews would dissolve Israel and flee, if only we could swap them for the campus Infantada, and let our disaffected children live under the reign of their heroes, Hamas and the ayatollahs of Iran. Now this would be real Justice!
The people in the way of every creed's salvation...it very much speaks to some of the irrational aspects of the hate; Israel means they're no longer available for mass sacrifice.
I must say I often think about your suggestion, how it would be ideal to have an "exchange programme" (hasn't the Ayatollah recently also suggested such!?) where the blue-haired they/them's can go and live their best lives in the regimes they seem to so admire.
This is the part that most people seem to miss: “a unique contribution of Progressivism is to reframe Zionism as a cause of anti-Semitism, rather than the reality of Zionism as a consequence of anti-Semitism.” Thank you for mentioning this. It’s a critical part of the discussion to find a path forward.
Thanks Alissa, I agree; it is at the core of the misdiagnosis by Western liberals.
Brilliant and valuable essay, Alan, you made so many points that definitely need to be heard, and "taken forward"!
First of all, of course, yes, anti-Semitism! :( I just don't get how such a perfidious construct with no "base" whatsoever can emerge and spread over and over again! Following your explanations, it actually seems to be the case that anti-Semitism is always "used" (in German, I would use the phrase, "damit zündeln" instead of "using", meaning, "playing with fire"..) to gather the masses behind oneself using a "scapegoat strategy" - and people fall for it over and over again, it's absolutely frightening!
This also hits exactly the second point that you made so brilliantly: It's no longer just the "skinheads from a social housing march who scream "Sieg Heil""; it's the "Tenured Academics at Elite American Universities" who one "has to believe" and who you "must at least listen to"? :( This is a development that can also be observed in Germany, for example - the part of the AfD that is considered to be definitely anti-Semitic (as per the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) is led by Mr. Höcke, a high school teacher, of all things history teacher, what a paradox! But anti-Semitism is obviously "catching", also because it can be so easily hidden - again a point you make clear when you talk about how progressives are reinterpreting "Zionism as the cause of anti-Semitism."
And finally, oh yes, the “safe space” you mention, I couldn’t agree more! It seems as if demonstrating is “chic” after all? Well, yes, it might actually be a worthy cause that some of them are fighting for at the moment - yet a little more foresight would not only be appropriate, but imperative, namely, the understanding of and insight into which movement you are actually joining, i.e., “anti-Semitism that disguises itself as “solidarity” with the Palestinian people”!
If your essay demands "end that campus culture, force these ideologies into the open to be confronted" - that would be so desirable because everything else is playing in the hands of forces that we do NOT want to see in power! Thank you, Alan, for your words, your valuable “voice” in this grotesque!
Thanks Mel! You're right, anti-Semitism is certainly a herd-like instinct to rally the crowd behind the "scapegoat"...how people really seem blind to the slippery slope from "just words" is frightening...the veneer of civilisation is indeed thin.