The Left has a Problem with the Jews

With the recent spike in antisemitic hate crimes following the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the question most people in the Jewish community are asking is not “why is this happening?”, but rather “where are our allies?”

Many Jews on the political Left are going through a serious crisis, as they are watching the same people they marched with and for over the last year turn on them or gaslight them in their time of need.  Personally, I was not surprised when the BLM movement turned against the Jews, not just because they were explicitly anti-Israel on their website, but because antisemitism is the logical outcome of modern Leftist theory/rhetoric.

Jews know that antisemitism is eternal, and radicals of all types will hate Jews be it Islamists like Hamas, far-Right groups like the alt-Right, or Far-Left ideologies like the USSR all groups inevitably turn on the Jews.  But today on the Left antisemitism is becoming more mainstream.  

The culprit here is the rise of Critical Race Theory and its compatriot’s Social justice and Intersectionality.  

A couple of key components of Critical race Theory are that all inequity is the result of inequality and that success is a zero-sum game.  Meaning that if there is any difference between groups is the result of discrimination and that certain groups gain wealth by oppressing others.  A real-world example of this logic would be “Black households have less wealth than white households as a result of racism, and white holds have more wealth because they took it from the black households.”

Now this simplistic worldview can be debunked by the fact that Japanese, Indian, Lebanese, and Nigerian families all make more money on average than the average white family. None of this is to say racism doesn’t exist, or that it is not a factor, but rather to point out what was common knowledge to every reasonable social scientist, these issues are complex and have many factors and there is no one explanation for everything.

For a while, the Jewish community and people on the center-left have diluted themselves into thinking that this strain of radical ideology only exists inside some universities and fringe groups.  However, not only has CRT leaked into all levels of academia and corporate America, but it also provides a useful rhetorical tool to the Left-wing political parties.

When the Democratic party in the US or the Liberals or NDP in Canada want to make a political pitch to what they would call “racialized communities” the appeal usual goes along these lines: Your community has issues, these issues are caused by racism, we are the party that is against racism, vote for us and we will reduce racism and make your lives better.  

The Leftists’ syllogism can be shortened here to “Racism/hate crimes= increased poverty”. Here is where the Jews become a big problem for the political Left. If hate crimes lead to poverty and the Jews experience the highest rates of hate crimes, yet have been economically and socially successful, something’s got to give.  If you are an adherent of Critical Race Theory you have two options: either your entire worldview is flawed, or the Jews are cheating the system.

Luckily for the people on the Left, they have centuries of antisemitic conspiracies to rely on and a simple lexical trick they can play by just subbing in “Zionists” for “Jews”.  It should be noted that Zionism is the right to self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.  Not at the exclusion of any other group.

The new-age progressive antisemite gets to have their cake and eat it too in this circumstance. Their worldview is not wrong, because Jews are benefiting from a cabal of secretive evil Zionists (Jews) that are controlling American policy and extracting their wealth by oppressing Palestinians.  This maintains their intellectual worldview and their moral worldview is safe because they said Zionists, not Jews.

There are two points here that I am not making but will probably be accused of. First, that all leftists/progressives will become antisemites.  This is not true; there are progressive politicians like Richie Torres that have done an excellent job of combating antisemitism while maintaining their progressive worldview. My point is that the current iteration of Leftist thought defined by Critical Race Theory is more likely to lead people down a path towards antisemitism than not.

The second is that I am willfully conflating any criticism of Israel with antisemitism. You can criticize Israeli policy and that is not antisemitic.  However, most “criticism of Israeli policy” is either divorced from reality or is just a rant about how much people hate Israel/Zionism. For example: “I disagree with Israel/Egypt’s policy of a full blockade of Gaza. Gazan citizens that want to leave the territory to move or travel abroad should be allowed to”. That is an actual criticism of an actual policy and not antisemitism.  “Israel is committing genocide/ethnic cleansing in Palestine, West Bank, Gaza or Jerusalem” is a conspiracy theory that would be abandoned with a simple look at reality and a dash of intellectual honesty. 

Below is a graph of the growth of the Arab Muslim population of Jerusalem.  To call a rapid increase in Arabs a genocide of Arabs (that directly coincides with Israel gaining the full city in 1967) is absurd and likely maintained by the internal feelings of antisemitism.

As more and more progressive Jews are awakened to the moral flaws of their Woke brethren, hopefully, they can follow in the footsteps of the former communists and former Islamists and become some of the most prolific defenders of Western Civilization. Because both the Jews and the West face a similar enemy today: the proliferation of really really bad ideas.