HOMOPHOBIA AND ANTISEMITISM
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ONE ABOUT THE OTHER? (IN WHICH I OPEN A CONVERSATION.)
In one of the greatest examples of evil political genius, then-closeted-gay political operative Ken Mehlman masterminded the use of anti-gay-marriage ballot measures during the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
Mehlman was campaign manager for President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. The strategy involved placing state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in key swing states to drive conservative turnout. Even if voters weren’t thrilled with Bush, they would still come out in numbers to oppose marriage equality and, while in the booth, what the hell, pull the lever for the least worst (in their minds) of a bad bunch.
In the 2004 election, 11 states voted on such bans (including Ohio, a crucial swing state), and all passed. The measures were widely credited with increasing evangelical and socially conservative voter turnout, helping Bush secure reelection.
This history became especially notable years later, when Mehlman came out as gay in 2010 and publicly apologized, calling his role in opposing marriage equality “one of the things I regret most.” Yes, well, anyways. #unforgiven
This history returned to me recently as I’ve been immersed in a project around what the movement against antisemitism might learn from the gay rights movement. (It also recurred to me and a few others during last year’s US election, when all evidence was that Democrats could use the same playbook to exploit wide public support for reproductive freedom to swing voters to the disastrous Harris-Walz campaign but were, of course, too blundering to make use of it.)
The way that those opposed to marriage equality have made it such a central part of their identity is another thing that stands out for me. Consider: a matter that literally could not affect the person less (whether or not someone else is married) would become the foremost political and social concern for millions of people.
Among the parallels striking me around the gay rights fight and the current pandemic of antisemitism is the obsessive centrality of the issue to people who are utterly unaffected by it.
The parallels are never exact, of course. In both cases, though, people could argue that they are acting altruistically, absent self-interest. Gay-haters pretended to be doing God’s work and Israel-bashers pretend to be helping Palestinians. (They’re not.)
One interesting incident recently is worth mentioning.
As often happens when someone asks what I do in life, I responded to an acquaintance with the litany of hats I wear, including “writing about and organizing against antisemitism.”
The young man responded instantaneously to this news by blurting out, “I’m an anti-Zionist.”
Interesting. I didn’t even have to make the connection. No “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” for him. He got the connection right away, intuitively, that somehow my opposition to antisemitism and his devotion to anti-Zionism were antagonistically symbiotic. Quite the self-own.
It would turn out (of course) that, despite literally self-designating as “anti-Zionist,” he didn’t remotely know the history of the region or really anything else. Yet somehow “anti-Zionist” had become a foremost descriptor of his identity.
What motivates this level of affiliation with a subject that seems inversely proportionate to the level of awareness? People who made their whole lives about opposing marriage equality were (presumably) personally unaffected by the issue. While “anti-Zionists” could, presumably, be more personally engaged in the issues, most, in my experience, are political dabblers who, like that young man, have no skin in the game, and no knowledge, and yet have made it their self-defining trait.
Entire political campaigns, even careers, were built by straight people opposing marriage equality. Just imagine: building your life around something that does not affect you in the least and defining your self-identity through that profoundly negative commitment to preventing other people from self-actualization and enjoying the full protections and rights afforded to other people.
Now consider the people who run around calling themselves “anti-Zionists.” Imagine: choosing a subject in which you have no vested interest, no legitimate personal investment, and precious little awareness, and making it the defining force in your life.
It gets worse.
I recall the exultation of the haters who reveled in the young gay men dying of AIDS. The gleeful insistence that AIDS was God’s punishment for hemophilia. Oh wait. No, somehow the hemophiliacs and Haitians weren’t subject to God’s wrath. That was reserved, in the deranged minds of the “holy,” for the homosexuals whose bodies were being ravaged by the most horrific diseases. Not the kind of God I would choose to worship, but anyways. Queer people my age were, on the one hand, nursing friends and family in the last stages of the most grotesque illnesses, then watching on TV while people celebrated the deaths and rubbed the tragedy in our faces.
I am reliving that inhumanity again, seeing the despicable mercilessness of people celebrating the torture, immolations, desecrations, rapes, beheadings and mass murders of Israelis, young and old, on 10/7.
What kind of humans celebrate such things? And yet these are not inconsequential numbers. Thousands, if not millions, of statements of support and celebration for these atrocities have been recorded.
How additionally devastating it has been for me to see that a disproportionate number of the horrible people celebrating the loss of lives and the associated barbarisms are members of my own gay community. To think that anyone whose community has experienced what ours went through could feel anything but empathy for the victims is just devastating for me. What incredible betrayal. Do we learn nothing from the past?
There are all sorts of explanations. There are the true believers who, despite a planet filled with humanitarian disasters, have drunk the Kool-Aid and myopically focused on this one alone. There are the shameless exploiters who, like Ken Mehlman, use this issue as a wedge for political advantage. (This is huge. The left today is a disparate blob of a coalition. What unifies Islamists, environmentalists, queers, civil libertarians, disability justice people, anti-police activists and on and on?) There are the altruistic activists who (blind to the hypocrisy of Palestinianism and the destruction it is doing to actual Palestinians) believe they are acting on moral conviction and advancing justice or fairness. There are those who are craving to belong to an in-group.
There are lots of answers.
But they all funnel down to one.
Hatred.
I’ve said this before: Not all anti-Zionists hate Jews. But every one of them stands on the shoulders of people who do.
Anti-Zionism is a movement created and fuelled by anti-Jewish animus.
This should not be difficult to understand. We accept (if we are progressives) that even the most ardently antiracist white person benefits from privilege afforded us in a white supremacist society.
Why is it so hard to recognize that anti-Zionism thrives in an antisemitic society? Hell, even my anti-Zionist “friend” got that intuitively.
I raise these seemingly disparate examples because, as a student of history, I believe as nothing else that the lessons of the past can inform the future. We have witnessed, in the fight against homophobia, one of the most rapid reversals of societal prejudice in human history. In almost exactly the same timeline, we have seen the reemergence of one of history’s most tenacious racisms.
Few people seem to be poking the entrails of these experiences to find lessons from one for the other. That’s where I’m going to be going in the next little while.
*
Some people have generously asked me to make it possible to make one-time contributions to support my work. I have now set up a PayPal link for donations. If you like snappy smackdowns of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and want me to keep it up, any support is deeply appreciated. Click here.
my parents were born at the end of the First World War. my father lived through the Second World War in an occupied country before coming to Canada. Here are his words of wisdom to me that still hold true. " In this world you will meet the best of people and the worst of people but most people are banging around in the middle. The colour of their skin does not matter, It does not matter if the are male or female, straight or gay, left or right, rich or poor, educated or not. We can only strive to be better." I hope you understand this.
More than ten years ago I was complaining to a friend about the rise of intolerant ideology (woke) in the mental health system. My friend had been a part of the gay pride movement and present, front and centre. at every gay pride parade since the beginning. He told me that a new movement of younger, angrier people had started taking over. He was no longer welcome. The bridges that had been built were now to be burned. We wondered then where this would go and how much damage would be done. Now we know.
It seems that the loud angry voices dominate again. Pick your tribe and hate the other. I do not like this world we made.
Thank you, Pat, for showing the symmetry between another intolerant, hateful ideology and antizionism. I look forward to reading more from you on this, as always!