ANTISEMITISM AS A BADGE OF HONOR
Self-declared antiracist activists are so ideologically pure that they willingly and enthusiastically welcome accusations of anti-Jewish racism as evidence of their righteousness.
It is hard to fight antisemitism — in part because it is “the perfect prejudice.” The inherent characteristics of the phenomenon provide the very armor that protects it from being defeated. Call out an antisemite and the trope of Jewish power is invoked — “The powerful Zionists are silencing me!” — and the perpetrator becomes the victim.
In an environment where power and wealth are the measures of the presence or absence of privilege and discrimination, racist ideas of Jewish wealth and power negate concerns about antisemitism. It’s the perfect prejudice.
Those are structural factors inherent in antisemitism that make it hard to confront and defeat.
Then there are factors inherent to the people who are (consciously or inadvertently) propagating antisemitism today that make the conventional strategies for fighting racism and other forms of bigotry largely ineffective against this problem.
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Our grandparents saw the cataclysmic power of antisemitism and vowed to combat it wherever and whenever it threatened.
Antisemitism, in decent society, became taboo.
Of course, almost nothing is taboo now. In fact, activists seek out the most taboo ideas and wave them like pirate flags. Shattering shibboleths is second only to camping on the quad among today’s protestors’ preferred methods of diverting attention from world crises and onto their solipsistic selves.
Defying the taboo on antisemitism — to the extent that there is a taboo anymore among people who have little knowledge of this history and a lack of basic humanity — is a badge of valor.
Israel is so insufferable an entity, the quintessence of contemporary evil, that it permits — no, it demands — activists to cast aside any residual restraint they have around antisemitism in order to condemn it.
It is not a coincidence, of course — not at all — that the quintessence of contemporary evil that young people project onto Israel is precisely the characterization that antisemites have always applied to Jews. Point this out and expect a wall of outrage, allegations that you are “silencing” and “gagging” them (as if!) and the mantra that “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism!”
Accusations of antisemitism are irrelevant to them, because any concerns about antisemitism are negated by the severity of Israel’s “crimes.”
No — let me correct that.
Accusations of antisemitism are proof of virtue. To be accused of antisemitism for fighting for Palestine is evidence that these activists are prepared to withstand all the slings and arrows — including “false” accusations of antisemitism by the “powerful Zionists” and their “bought-and-paid-for” collaborators — in order to prove their dedication to the cause.
How righteous!
Self-declared antiracist activists are so ideologically pure that they willingly and enthusiastically welcome accusations of anti-Jewish racism as evidence of their commitment to today’s most righteous cause: Palestine.
How transgressive!
There are a few things happening here.
It is true that some activists (and many others) do not know enough about the range of forms antisemitism takes to recognize it in themselves. Ignorance presents a learning opportunity, but their unfaltering commitment to obliviousness (see: “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism!”) generally slams the door on this opening.
Then there are those who can be broadly defined as antisemitic and unapologetic about it. You can’t reason someone out of a problem a lack of reason got them into, so arguing with these folks is usually useless. There are strategies for dealing with them, but that is for another time. These people will respond (if not publicly, at least to themselves) to accusations that they carry antisemitic ideas with, “Yeah. So what?”
Often, they do not understand the complexities of Jewish identities (complexities aren’t their strong suits, generally) and so satisfy themselves that Jewishness is “just a religion” and maybe they oppose all religions or, at a minimum, “If Jews aren’t a ‘race,’ antisemitism can’t be rac-ism.” Spending too much time trying to make sense of what goes on in these people’s heads is time flushed down the swirly whirly.
Finally (at least off the top of my head), there are those whose antisemitism gives them special pride of place in today’s troubled activist environment.
These are the activists who metaphorically pin medals of valor on their own chests (like the tinpot dictators they seem to so often idolize). With everything short of blazing trumpets, they hail their own audacious and intrepid determination to stand with Palestine even in the face of the mighty Zionist puppet-masters and ubiquitous Judeo-imperialist colonizers who lurk under their beds and behind every door ready to stifle criticism of Israel.
These are the people who take every opportunity to provoke, to rhetorically jab at Jews, to dance like nobody’s watching on the line of plausible deniability — except they want everyone to watch.
They want the world — but mostly they want their radical friends — to see that they have no fear of the omnipotent Zionist intimidators.
Their equation of the Star of David with the swastika (“Legitimate criticism!”), their chants of “From the river to the sea!” (“Genocide? Wha? Meeee?”), their use of every form of classical and modern antisemitic imagery and trope (“I didn’t know cartoons of creepy hooknosed, moneygrubbing demons was antisemitic!”) are favorite toys in the activist funbag.
And when, as they had hoped decent people would, we finally explode and condemn them as the antisemitic dirtbags they are, they recoil.
There you go again! How dare you? False allegations of antisemitism! We’re not allowed to criticize Israel! I’m the victim here!
And then they chortle quietly and walk a little taller, knowing that they have not only hurt and enraged the Jews but raised their stock among the deplorables whose admiration they so desperately crave.
It’s hard to get into people’s heads — and I’m not a psychiatrist — so I may be slightly off on my assessments about what they are doing.
But this I can assure you incontrovertibly: what they are not doing is freeing Palestine.
Their behavior makes any and every decent person in a position to make substantive change at a governmental, civil society or interpersonal level cower away from these people and their ideas.
Which, again, is fine to them. Because just as being accused of antisemitism is no big whoop for these people, neither is Palestinian suffering.
No — I’ll correct myself again.
Palestinian suffering is the welcome fuel for their bonfire of vanity-boosting indignation. Without Palestinian statelessness and death, these activists would have nothing to rally around, no Great Cause to camp out over, no purpose in life.
For most of these activists, this was never about Palestine, which plenty can’t even find on a map. (Ask them: Which river? Which sea?)
It’s about centering themselves and nurturing a sense of self-righteous, self-aggrandizing outrage.
But at least it gets them out of their parents’ basement.