Harold Ford’s comments this morning have, once again, raised the specter of anti-Semitism at Daily Kos and, more generally, throughout the left blogosphere. A number of spot-on diaries (here and here) have already been composed (and elevated to the rec list) responding to this utterly unfair and deeply troubling slander of Daily Kos. If you haven’t read them, you should.
What I want to do in this diary is take a step back from the immediate context, and use this moment as an opportunity to reflect more broadly on the varieties of anti-Semitism coursing through our world today. Where does this seemingly intractable form of hatred come from? Why are some on the left compelled by it? And what can we do to cut the legs out from under the various forms of anti-Semitism that we face?
As a way of framing this discussion, I want to begin by posing a question about the history of the Left. Why, throughout the past two hundred years, have a range of otherwise astute critics of religiously-based intolerance, social inequality, and anti-democratic authoritarianism been anti-Semites? In identifying some Left anti-Semitic individuals, we could name: Georges Sorel, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Ludwig Feuerbach, Voltaire, even Karl Marx, despite himself being a victim (and frequent critic) of anti-Semitism. This list could be extended indefinitely with more recent figures, including some proponents of Catholic Social Action, leaders of the Nation of Islam, Stalinists and other supporters of the Soviet Union, "anti-imperialist" and "anti-capitalist" figures, etc. The fact that there is a long history of people on the Left buying into anti-Semitic tropes should encourage us to think critically about what leads liberals and Leftists into this form of hatred, and should prompt us to critically self-examine our own community (this is not to say that we should quietly stand by as ideologues hypocritically demonize our community, just that we should apply the same scrutiny to anti-Semites who may share many of our political views as we would to Right-wing anti-Semites).
So where then does Left anti-Semitism come from?
What I have tried to indicate above is that Left anti-Semitism is nothing new, and that it is not something that is characteristic of "other types of people." It did not come into existence after the Six Day War of 1967 or the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 (i.e. it is not simply the result of actions [or non-actions] taken by the state of Israel); it is not something that is primarily bought into by "non-Western" individuals; and it is not exclusive to "ultra-left" radicals. In other words, in attempting to explain where Left anti-Semitism comes from, we should not be content with an explanation that either justifies this form of hatred (for instance, by seeing it simply as a reasonable response to unjust actions carried out by the state of Israel or AIPAC*), or that attributes the origins of anti-Semitism to "cultural backwardness" or "ideological fervor."
To develop an understanding of the origins and effects of Left anti-Semitism then, let us begin by examining two relatively common anti-Semitic tropes that sometimes find their way into (otherwise) progressive discourse:
• "Wall Street financiers, bankers, brokers etc.—who are predominantly Jewish—parasitically extract capital from truly productive sectors of the economy."
• "Our foreign policy is controlled by a cabal of powerful Jewish figures, who—like puppet masters—hide behind the US foreign policy establishment, controlling this establishment from behind the scenes." [The use of the term ‘cabal’ in statements of this sort is, of course, anything but incidental]
Something that is worth noting about both of these tropes is that they turn on an opposition between surface and depth, visibility and invisibility, substance and shadow. Like the neo-fascist vision of a "Zionist Occupied Government [ZOG]" or the (still popular) accounts of supposed secret meetings of the "Elders of Zion," these tropes present Jewish individuals as shadowy, yet hyper-powerful, figures.
What I want to suggest in what follows is that these anti-Semitic tropes are indicative of their purveyors’ inability to adequately come to terms with modern capitalist society. As August Bebel, the German social democratic leader, famously remarked: "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools."
On a relatively superficial level, it is easy to see how criticisms of "Jewish financiers" can be said to constitute a form of misdirected anti-capitalism. And when we consider that the United States is the chief promoter of neo-liberal global capitalism (and has been since WWII), we can also—again on a relatively superficial level—begin to appreciate the fact that narratives of "Jewish control of US foreign policy" can also be understood as a garbled form of anti-capitalism.
It is possible, however, to say more about the link between superficial or partial critiques of capitalism and anti-Semitism. In order to do so though , we need an analysis that explains why forms of anti-Semitism that posit shadowy yet hyper-powerful Jewish figures are compelling to people living in modern capitalist societies. What is it about modern capitalist society that makes these forms of anti-Semitism (as opposed to earlier, religiously-based, forms) seem reasonable to wide swaths of people—even people who are otherwise so politically astute?
Moishe Postone, a professor of mine at the University of Chicago, has attempted to answer this question. His writing is sometimes rather dense, but I don’t think that I could do justice to his argument by summarizing it.... so I will copy an excerpt of one of his essays:
When one examines the specific characteristics of the power attributed to the Jews by modern anti-Semitism—abstractness, intangibility, universality, mobility—it is striking that they are all characteristic of the value dimension of the social forms analyzed by Marx. Moreover, this dimension—like the supposed power of the Jews—does not appear as such, rather always in the form of a material carrier, such as the commodity. The carrier thus has a "double character"—value and use value....The dialectical tension between value and use-value in the commodity requires that this "double character" be materially externalized in the value form, where it appears "doubled" as money (the manifest form of value) and the commodity (the manifest form of use-value). The effect of this externalization is that the commodity, although it is a social form expressing both value and use-value, appears to contain only the latter, i.e., appears as purely material and "thingly"; money, on the other hand, then appears to be the sole repository of value i.e. , as the manifestation of the purely abstract, rather than as the externalized manifest form of the value dimension of the commodity itself....[T]his "double character" allows industrial production to appear as a purely material, creative process, separable from capital. Industrial capital then appears as the linear descendent of "natural" artisanal labor, in opposition to "parasitic" financial capital. Whereas the former appears "organically rooted," the latter does not. Capital itself—or what is understood as the negative aspect of capitalism—is understood only in terms of the manifest form of its abstract dimension: finance and interest capital.†
Despite all of the Marxist jargon, what Postone is saying here is, in my opinion, quite profound. First, he is saying that, because of the way modern capitalist society is organized, it is very difficult to develop a consistent, rigorous analysis of contemporary economic processes and problems. And second, he shows that anti-Semitism is quite consistent with a one-sided, partial analysis of capitalism (or economic globalization, outsourcing, trade policy, etc.). Thus, we should not be surprised that anti-Semites sometimes gravitate to communities that—like this one—are generally suspicious of free market orthodoxy.
Of course, I am not suggesting that we should all give up our economic populism and fall in line with the DLC when it comes to trade policy. What I am suggesting is that we should A) vigorously criticize anti-Semitic comments when they are (infrequently) expressed by community members , and B) work to develop analyses of economic globalization and US foreign policy that do not rely on frameworks of analysis that are either explicitly or implicitly anti-Semitic (or that are easily appropriated by anti-Semites). A tall task for sure, but one that is absolutely crucial if we are to become a truly progressive, truly transformative, movement.
Notes:
*I am not saying that a non-anti-Semitic critique of AIPAC or of certain actions carried out by the state of Israel cannot be developed. I am a strong critic of AIPAC’s agenda and tactics, and support the formation of alternative American Jewish advocacy organizations. I am also a critic of the human rights abuses carried out by the state of Israel, and a supporter of the formation of a (single) secular democratic state throughout Israel/Palestine—a state whose constitution would expressly protect the rights of Jews and Muslims, as well as religious minorities. For more extensive discussions of the relationship between anti-Semitism and contemporary Middle Eastern politics, see: April Rosenblum, The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Anti-Semitism Part of All of Our Movements (available online here); and Moishe Postone, "History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism," Public Culture 18:1 (2006). A full text copy of this article can be found here.
† Moishe Postone, "Anti-Semitism and National Socialism: Notes on the German Reaction to ‘Holocaust’," in A. Rabinbach and J. Zipes (eds.), Germans and Jews Since the Holocaust (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986) 109-110. A full-text copy of this essay can be found here.