Yeah, I definitely see some very ugly antisemitism on the left. I also see some very ugly equation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism on the left. The former is straight-up bigotry. The latter tends toward the sort of weaponization of bigotry accusations that I talked about earlier in the thread.
Normally I’d say that the former is much worse. But the specific moment we’re in–in which stifling criticism of Israel can enable policies that are IMO horrific–makes me wonder.
Edit: and I didn’t originally include it because I don’t want to get mired in “both sides” accusations–but in case people think I’m cherrypicking, both dynamics occur just as often if not more so on the right.
AFAICT, in Europe, antisemitism is nearly as well represented on the left as on the right. In the USA it’s still almost entirely on the right. Not sure exactly why that is, aside perhaps from the much longer history of antisemitism in Europe.
That’s the relevant point to this thread. There’s more a blind eye to its presence on the Left. And it is often expressed differently. It definitely is there.
I’m mostly talking about the situation in the UK here. There are good reasons to expect a significant difference with the US.
But firstly, do you understand that I am not saying antisemitism isn’t a high enough priority in general? Islamophobia/anti-Muslim attitudes are far more common than antisemitism in the UK, and are rightly treated as a major issue. But that doesn’t mean other problems cannot be addressed simultaneously, and indeed this one is. My objection is to the way it is handled, as I described previously - an unwillingness to address the issue when it occurs in minority groups, and corresponding uneven application of social and legal sanctions. This particular example doesn’t affect me personally, but I believe it reflects a wider problem that is likely to worsen if ignored. Plus, the treatment of sexism/misogyny by the left follows the same pattern, and that does affect me personally.
On to the data. Here is a survey from Britain that looked at both antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes separately; in the general population, and specifically among Muslims, Christians, the far-left and the far-right. The headline results are that while antisemitism overall is low, antisemitic attitudes are 2-4 times more common among both Muslims and the far-right, while they are not elevated above the general population in either Christians or the far-left. (In the former case likely because there are few fundamentalist Christians in the UK.) Meanwhile, both Muslims and the left generally had higher levels of anti-Israel attitudes.
Comparing the far-left and the far-right, while the far-right had a much higher rate of antisemitism, there were a lot more people identifying themselves as far-left, so that the total number of people from each group exhibiting these attitudes was similar.
They also looked at the relationship between anti-Israel and antisemitic views, and found that while anti-Israel views are not, as a general rule, antisemitic, the stronger a person’s anti-Israel views, the more likely they are to also hold antisemitic attitudes.
Here’s the page where you can download the full report:
This survey is from 2017, so well before Hamas’s attack on Israel and the war in Gaza. Both Islamophobia and antisemitism have unfortunately increased since then, and there has been a lot more attention paid to the latter in the last year and a half.
The rest of my post is about the UK. But I did see one startling headline not long ago: according to a recent study in the US, Black and Hispanic Americans agreed with antisemitic statements at similar levels to White Americans who identified themselves as alt-right.
The US is on track to be majority-minority within 20 years. The former majority will become a minority; the ‘they’ who may come for you is not fixed. Minorities are not just objects to be protected, they are subjects who can and do act, and whose own beliefs matter.
As a young man who had recently entered the workforce, it was an eye opening experience listening to my Black coworkers talking about Jews and other groups during lunchtime conversations. I was under the mistaken belief that being a member of a marginalized group would have made them a bit more careful about engaging in stereotypes, but I was very wrong.
Sure–but that implies a backwards cause-and-effect relationship. If you’re antisemitic, the chances that you’ll dislike Israel–a country founded by and for Jewish people–approach 100%. Whereas if you dislike Israel’s government and policies, the chances that you’re antisemitic are nowhere near 100%. There are going to be very few pro-Israel antisemites, whereas there are plenty of non-antisemitic critics of Israel.
Nevertheless, because ALL antisemites are in the anti-Israel group, the concentration of antisemites in the anti-Israel group will be higher than the concentration of antisemites in the pro-Israel group.
The exceptions to this dynamic will probably be concentrated among American apocalyptic evangelicals, who believe that the antichrist’s return will be presaged by the reestablishment of Israel, bringing about the events of Revelation. These folks will be pro-Israel and antisemitic, but I’m not sure how major a force they are in UK society.
As @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness Pointed, there are a lot of Right wingers that pull the seemingly contradictory “Support Israel” and “we can also be antisemitic”
“Jews will not replace us!” This was one of the rallying cries of the white supremacists who converged on Charlottesville, VA in August 2017. While the sights and sounds of their rallies shocked the nation, they came as no surprise to ADL. Our vigilance in tracking extremist groups had enabled us to warn law enforcement of what to expect when the rally was announced.
The bigger problem is that it is from the right’s leadership where we see too much sympathy for the fascists.
New York, NY, August 15, 2017 … Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), released the following statement on President Trump’s remarks today:
We have a history in this country of presidents standing up to bigotry and hate. Today, for the second time in four days, President Trump did the opposite.
President Trump went beyond the pale today in equating racist white supremacists in Charlottesville with counter protesters who were there to stand up against hate. Let us not forget. The entire Unite the Right rally was built on racial and conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Marchers threw Nazi salutes as they waved swastika flags, proudly wore swastika pins and shirts, and shouted ‘sieg heil!’
This may seem like a quibble but it’s not. I don’t think it is “unwillingness” per se so much as not choosing a heavy handed tactic. Tactically keeping an alliance together is is the higher priority.
Blacks and others have endorse many antisemitic tropes for a very long time. It is not new. I don’t think it is increasing. Working together is in mutual best interest anyway. The hope is progress gets made. Right now and for the foreseeable future though, the ones coming after the others are the fascists in charge. I’ll work with those who hold some beliefs about Jews in general against that greater evil gladly.
I’ll endorse this. As a Jew, if a non visible and non practicing one, I know that the real and most significant enemies of Jews are the same as they’ve always been - religious extremists and white fascists. Not African Americans or other largely-Democratic minorities.
i.e. They’re unwilling because they fear alienating allies and harming their cause. That’s understandable, a lot of groups are willing to ignore or even hide the bad behavior of their members for fear of harming the cause. That doesn’t really make it okay though.
The identity of white fascist is a threat even if the antisemitism is not evident. Even if they say they are against antisemitism.
The intersectionality of Black or Hispanic and beliefs in various antisemitic tropes of Jewish power in banking, media, so on… not much of a threat. Is it “okay”? No. But I can live with not okay.
I don’t understand why you didn’t give this answer in the first place, instead of claiming it was just anti-Israel attitudes rather than antisemitism. But fine. If this behaviour from the left is indeed cynical pandering rather than ideological blindness, that makes it much worse in my eyes, and left-wingers more culpable for it.
So, the bolded option is the correct one?
Earlier in this thread, someone posted a study claiming endorsement of ‘hostile sexism’ correlated significantly with voting for Trump in Latina and Asian American women. Unfortunately, they didn’t do the same analysis for male voters, but I have seen it claimed elsewhere that Trump’s anti-immigrant invective was a significant reason Latinos supported him. Minorities are perfectly capable of voting for and supporting the fascists because of their own prejudices, the ones that you strategically declined to address. Fascists are able to do the electoral mathematics, and to strategically choose scapegoats that will allow them to put together a majority coalition.
And as I also said earlier, left-wing hypocrisy in ignoring and excusing prejudice in less privileged groups is a significant factor driving disillusionment with the left among young men, and among white voters.
Far from leading to a harmonious and tolerant society, racial tensions have increased, there is an alarming surge in misogyny among young men, and support for LGBT rights has started falling for the first time in a couple of decades. And a reinvigorated Trump has been reelected, the biggest threat to democracy in America in your lifetime. Please, please reconsider your strategy.
Huh? Not what I tried to say. The conflation and confusion is much more multifaceted than that. And this is about a completely different point. But whatever.
Not in an absolute sense no. In a relative sense to some degree.
Look I had a father who was in his explicit beliefs racist. But in his actions he treated everyone fairly and respectfully. So I don’t really care too much about beliefs that aren’t said to my face and that are not acted upon. Of course actions powered institutionally is the most worrisome and it is not the only one. But the Black American who believes some trope about Jews and who does no actions that harm based on those explicit beliefs? They are of less threat than the person in any level of power who acts in harmful ways in complete self denial of their implicit antisemitism and racism.
I mean, it’s true that calling the left hypocritical in allegedly “ignoring and excusing prejudice in less privileged groups” is a significant strategy among conservatives attempting to “driv[e] disillusionment with the left among young men, and among white voters”.
It’s just another iteration of the standard decades-old right-wing accusation that liberals are “coddling minorities”.
Yeah, i don’t, either. It’s an age-old strategy of the powerful to try to turn the powerless against each other. But i don’t think “Black antisemitism” is a factor in how young white men feel about “the left”.
There’s also the difference between hating a government, hating a nationality, and hating a country. Hating the Israeli government, its members and its policies is a perfectly legitimate political belief. Hating Israelis as a group of people is a form of bigotry, regardless of your opinion of other Jews. Hating Israel, the country… that’s a trickier question, which I can’t really answer here.
It’s not just Israel, of course. Take the Russia-Ukraine war: saying “I hate Putin” - perfectly fine. “I hate Russians” - bigotry. “I hate Russia” - can go either way.
Either way, people should be careful with what they say.
