Jewish Quarterly 244 The Return of History by Jonathan Pearlman

Author:Jonathan Pearlman [Pearlman, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922517005
Google: ujoozgEACAAJ
Publisher: Black Incorporated
Published: 2021-05-06T05:19:08+00:00

The enduring appeal of antisemitism

As the rhetoric, symbolism and thought present at Charlottesville make clear, antisemitism is the ideological foundation stone of the far right’s racism. Sadly, in the years since Charlottesville, the extreme right has grown in strength and audacity, as the insurrection on Capitol Hill so clearly demonstrated. Those who adhere to this ideology were – and are – convinced that they were being given a “dog whistle” or a green light by President Trump to engage in extremist activity. In short, they felt empowered. And while this is most evident in the United States, it is not unique to it.

However, it is important to recognise that in much of the Western world, antisemitism emanates from both the right and the left. Antisemitism from the left has been evident, for example, in the British Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership and on university campuses in both North America and the United Kingdom. Often this antisemitism is couched within expressions of overt hostility to and degradation of Israel. That, of course, is not to suggest that hostility towards Israel or criticism, however severe, of its policies automatically constitutes antisemitism. It does not. But sometimes it does. Such was the case when, in 2016, the former mayor of London Ken Livingstone tried to link Zionism with Nazism, thereby discrediting the former through its putative link to the latter. He offered multiple historical canards in order to do so. Consider, for example, Livingstone’s pronouncement that Hitler’s “policy was originally to send all of Germany’s Jews to Israel and there were private meetings between the Zionist movement and Hitler’s government which were kept confidential, they only became apparent after the war, when they were having a dialogue to do this”. Hitler’s policy was not to send all Jews to Israel. There was no Israel then. His policy was to terrorise them into leaving Germany. There was one set of negotiations between German Zionists and the Nazis in 1933 to facilitate Jews being able to extricate a small portion of their funds from Germany. While there are legitimate grounds to debate the wisdom of this agreement – and many Jews did at the time – it was neither “confidential” nor ongoing and hardly constituted collaboration.

Ultimately, the tropes and stereotypes on which the antisemite relies are the same, irrespective of the end of the political spectrum from which the hatred emanates. They can be grouped into three subsets: Jews are financially powerful; Jews are “clever” in a pernicious fashion; and Jews have political power beyond their number. Finally, bringing this all together as a conspiratorial plot, the antisemite charges that Jews use that wealth, brain power and political leverage to advance their interests to the detriment of non-Jews.

I have focused on far-right antisemitism in America, but it is important to avoid the delusion that this is strictly an American phenomenon. In the spring of 2020, Germany’s Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, noted regarding antisemitism that currently “the biggest threat is still the threat from the right”.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.