"The Socialism of Fools": NYT article on Leftist antisemitism - from 1971!

There is nothing new under the sun. I kept trying to pare it down but practically every paragraph has relevance today. The roots of today's leftist antisemitism clearly come from the late 1960s, although they follow earlier leftist antisemitism from Marx himself.

From the New York Times, January 3, 1971:

TWENTY‐FIVE years after the end of World War II and the collapse of the most anti Semitic regime in history, anti‐Semitism appears to be on the rise around the world. But unlike the situation before 1945, when anti‐Jewish politics was largely identified with rightist elements, the current wave is linked to governments, parties, and groups which are conventionally described as leftist. Various New Left activists in different countries, American black militant groups, Arab “socialist” spokesmen, and East European Communist governments have moved on from anti‐Zionist to anti‐Jewish and fully anti‐Semitic statements and acts. And though the extreme right remains relatively weak in Western countries, its news‐ papers have become much more open about referring to “Jewish conspiracies.”

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THE most important expression of anti‐Jewish sentiments in the West takes the form of attacks on “Zionists” and the state of Israel by every section of the left, except the Democratic Socialists. As the war in Vietnarn peters out, the various in carnations of the extreme left new and old, anarchists, Maoists, Trotskyists, Black Panthers and Communists — have reoriented their international emotional priorities to identify the heroes as the Arab terrorists and freedom fighters, and the villains as Israel and its American ally. In Germany, New Left students, in a sickening replay of the behavior of their Nazi predecessors of 1928‐33 (university students were the first stratum in Germany to back the Nazis, giving them majorities in student council elections as early as 1931), chant as they parade: “Mach die Nahe Osten rot; schlag die Zionis ten tot” (“Make the Near East Red; smash the Zionists dead”). Dieter Kunzelmann, who played a major role in the demonstrations at the Free University of Berlin during the late nineteen‐sixties, and who is now in the Middle East with the fedayeen, being instructed, according to his published letters, “in the use of explosives ... [and] the manufacture of time bombs,”; has written from Amman that the German left must break down the pro‐Semitism that emerged out of German guilt at the Holocaust, that Germany must get over “der Judenknax” (the “thing” about the Jews) (Encounter, Nov., 1970).

French New Left spokesmen have openly defended the need to speak in anti‐Semitie terms when supporting the Arab cause. Jean Bauberot, former leader of the French Student Christian Association and currently editor of Herytem, a New Left journal, wrote in the May‐July, 1969, issue that to “demonstrate the intricacies of the Palestine problem” leftists must “use expressions which, taken by themselves, appear to resemble certain lines from ‘Mein Kampf.'” The French New Left also has expressed its pro‐Arab feeling by violent action. Members of the Mouvement Contre le Racisme Anti Arabe, formed by people active in the revolutionary movement of May, 1968, were responsible for attacks in October, 1968, on the Rothschild Bank in Paris.

The open expression of anti Zionist and anti‐Jewish feelings by important segments of the French left has resulted in the revival in some quarters of a traditional Catholic religious‐based anti‐Judaism. An article last fall in L'Arche, the monthly Journal of the French Jewish community, reports on the attacks on Judaism and Israel which have diffused from the student New Left to various Catholic groups. They deny the historic claims of the Jews to Israel on the theological grounds that the church, rather than contemporary Jewry, is the true heir of ancient Israel. They claim that, for a Christian, the only solution of the Jewish problem is “the final conversion of this people to Christ resurrected,” It is striking that these ancient concepts have reappeared not among conservative Catholics, but among the progressives who cooperate closely with the New Left, while the French bishops have criticized these beliefs as counter to Catholic doctrine as defined by Vatican II.

THE American New Left largely shares the pro‐Arab terrorist views expressed by the movement in Europe. In general, however, the white American left has been more inhibited than the European in expressing anti ‐ Semitic statements, probably because so much of its audience and mass base is Jewish. Nevertheless, some of its spokesmen have called for terrorism against American supporters of Israel. Eric Mann, a leader of the Weathermen, writing in The Guardian of Oct. 17, 1970, stated: “Israeli embassies, tourist offices, airlines and Zionist fund‐raising and social affairs are important targets for whatever action is decided to be appropriate.” A student of Weathermen activities, Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers, has seriously raised the question as to whether the recent series of bombings in Rochester, N. Y., of assorted governmental and Establishment targets—which include two synagogues — “might be the assertion that Weathermen's embrace of the Palestinian Liberation Movement has been translated into depredations against Jewish religious institutions in America.” There is, of course, no evidence as to which group was responsible for the bombing in Rochester, but the pattern followed does strongly suggest that it was a leftist or black militant one.

Overt expressions of anti Semitism have occasionally appeared in American New Left organs. Thus, in an article, “Jews Riot in the Ghetto,” in The East Village Other of Oct. 18, 1968, Philip Anthony fantasized in a crudely anti Semitic fashion concerning the consequences of the possible assassination of Albert Shanker, president of the New York teachers’ union. The article included crude parodies of Yiddish expressions and accents. ...

The same objective has been pursued by linking Zion ism and Israelis to complicity with the Nazis in the murder of European Jews. An article by Tabitha Petran in the Nov. 21, 1969, issue of Fire (the publication of the Revolutionary Youth Movement faction of S.D.S.) claimed that after Hitler came to power “Zionist leaders offered the Nazi Government their cooperation in finding a solution to the Jewish question.” She went on to argue that collaboration with “organized Jewry ... remained ‘the very cornerstone’ of [the Nazis’] Jewish policy.” Supposedly, “hundreds of Zionist leaders were permitted to escape to Palestine” during World War II because they collaborated with the Nazis by withholding “from the masses in Eastern Europe the fact that they were marked for shipment to death camps.”

STUDENT and intellectual radicals, whether Jews or not, have historically had a penchant for self‐hatred in the form of approval for anti intellectual populism, and have defined wisdom as coming from the instincts of the masses, of the uneducated, of the poor. Currently, such masochistic populism in the United States takes the form of identifying with the values, statements and tactics of black militant groups. Many of these have increasingly engaged in anti‐Semitic propaganda, often only partially disguised as anti‐Zionism.

The most overt expressions of anti‐Semitism have come generally from the most militant of the black organizations, the one with closest ties to sections of the white New and Old Lefts, the self‐described Marxist‐Leninist Black Panther party. The party goes out of its way to Identify as Jews those in the Establishment who oppose it and who happen to be Jews. Thus, in the Dec. 21, 1968, issue of The Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver attacked Judge Monroe Friedman, who presided over the Oakland, Calif., trial of Huey Newton in the following terms: “If the Jews like Judge Friedman are going to be allowed to function, and come to their synagogues to pray on Saturdays, or do whatever they do down there, then we'll make a coalition with the Arabs, against the Jews....”

The Panthers nave even argued that Judge Julius J. Hoffman gave the Jewish defendants in the Chicago conspiracy trial better treatment than he gave Bobby Seale. Connie Matthews, international coordinator of the party, wrote in The Black Panther of April 25, 1970, that there was an alliance between the Jewish judge and the Jewish defendants:

“It was a Zionist judge, Judge Hoffman, who allowed the other Zionists to go free but has kept Bobby Seale in jail and sentenced him to four years for contempt charges. Bobby Seale alone stands trial again in April on conspiracy charges. With whom did he conspire? The Zionists?

“The other Zionists in the ... trial [i.e., Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin] were willing and did sacrifice Bobby Seale and his role in the conspiracy trial to gain publicity.”

Now clearly Rubin and Hoffman are in no way “Zionists.” This is simply a code word for Jew, just as it has become in Eastern Europe.

Though opposed to all capitalists, the Panthers single out Jewish businessmen for attack. Thus, a statement in the May 19, 1970, issue of the party newspaper declares that they are against “Zionist exploitation here In Babylon, manifested in the robber barons that exploit in the garment industry and the bandit merchants and greedy slum lords that operate in our communities.” In describing a tenants’ action in Atlantic City against a landlord, an article in the June 13, 1970, Black Panther praises the ten ants for “gathering together to form a United Front against Zionist Pig Sobel. . . .” The article concludes with the exhortation: “ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE — DEATH TO THE ZIONIST PIGS.” And as if to prove that the reference to Sobel was not fortuitous, the paper a week later carried a story on “Substandard Housing in America” which referred to buildings “owned by a Zionist by the name of Rosenbaum."

To make Jews (or “Zionists”) as a group responsible for the actions of single individuals is anti‐Semitism in its purest form. Ironically, it would appear that the very fact of disproportionate participation of Jews in leftist causes is a major cause of subsequent anti‐Semitism. In the United States, the integrationist movement was largely an alliance between Negroes and Jews (who, to a considerable extent, actually dominated it). Many of the interracial civil rights organizations have been led and financed by whites, and the majority of their white members and big financial contributors have been Jews. Insofar as a black effort emerged to break loose from involvement with whites, from domination of the civil rights struggle by white liberals and radicals, this meant concretely a break with Jews.

THE white left, both new and old, while increasingly anti‐Israeli, and occasionally anti‐Semitic, does not engage in the kind of virulent anti Semitism which may be found among the black militant left and the white extreme right. But it is important to reiterate that the white left does not challenge black anti‐Semitism. This is not because it fears to criticize the black militants. ....Yet in all of this criticism, anti‐Semitism is never mentioned. The white left acts as if it were of no consequence, or as if no one on the left were capable of it.

The same double standard with respect to anti‐Semitism is seen in the response of much of the American leftist press to the propaganda themes of the Arabs. On one hand, it accepts the self description of a number of Arab states and movements as socialist, though little is nationalized or socialized in these countries, and though the inequality of income and land ownership is greater in all the Arab nations than in Israel. More significant, however, is the fact that the American left‐wing press also ignores the fact that the Arab militants, as well as a number of Arab governments, have been ready to use whatever sources of anti‐Semitic, anti American, anti‐capitalist or anti‐Israeli feelings exist to foster their cause.

The Arabs, of course, like other critics of the Jews on the far left and right, insist that they are only anti‐Zionist. Yet there is clear evidence that anti‐Semitism — not simply anti‐Zionism — has deeply penetrated Arab groups and governments. Many official Egyptian books and pamphlets dealing with the Palestine problem, for example, have reprinted or cited as factual the hoary mythological “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” a document put out in the late 19th century by the Czarist police, which purports to contain the details of an inter national Jewish conspiracy to control the world.
...
At least one prominent French New Left spokesman, Jean Bauberot, has acknowl edged and sought to justify the repeated anti‐Semitic state ments in Arab propaganda, “To be against all forms of racism is as stupid as being against all forms of violence,” he wrote. “We must begin by saying that the Palestinians have the right at present to appear anti‐Semitic to us. . . . The [Middle East] situation is a racist one, and if we refuse the Palestinians the right to name their oppressors, this amounts to a right to disband them culturally” (Harytem, May‐July, 1969).

Not surprisingly, Arab spokesmen have been willing to work with extremist groups on the right as well as the left. And the far right has reciprocated in many countries. When the Belgian Jean Robert Debbaudt, a veteran of the German SS Walloon Legion, announced the re‐formation of the fascist Rexist movement founded by the Belgian Quisling, Leon Degrelle, he concluded his announcement with the words: “Vive Leon Degrelle! Vive Al Fatah! Rex vaincra!” The West European neo‐Fascist magazine, La Nation Europeenne, which stands for a unified anti‐Communist Fascist Europe, has only two foreign representatives, one in Algiers, and the other in Cairo. It has carried many advertisements from Arab sources, e.g., publicizing fairs in Algiers and Iraq, or French language anti‐Zionist books?

The ultrarightist, racist American National States Rights party, for example, has repeatedly expressed pro Arab, pro‐guerrilla sentiments in its newspaper, such as: “The time has come for us White Christian Americans to come to the aid of our good anti‐Communist Arab friends and demand that the Government stop aiding the Jews” (The Thunderbolt, Dec., 1969). ... Arab materials increasingly appear in left‐wing, right‐wing and black‐nationalist papers which share an antipathy to Israel and Jewry.

...
THE fact that this time the predominant weight of the anti‐Semitic thrust is on the left rather than the right will surprise only those who are unaware of the considerable literature on anti‐Semitism it the socialist and other leftist movements. The identification of the Jews with international finance, with capitalism, with the status of businessman, with Shylock has long replaced the image of the Jew as Antichrist for many on the left and right. Karl Marx himself accepted the stereotype which linked Jews with capitalism. Thus, in his essay on “The Jewish Question,” he wrote: “What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Bargaining. What is his worldly God? Money. . . .”

Some leftists have been willing to accept or tolerate anti‐Semitism since the mid 19th century as some sort of groping toward a progressive anticapitalist position by masses in contact with Jewish businessmen. ...[F]avorable reactions to popular anti Semitism among German and Austrian Socialists led August Bebel, the famous German Socialist leader, to describe anti Semitism as “the socialism of fools.”

The task of analyzing the sources of these sentiments among the left is further complicated by the fact that, as we have seen, Jews play a very great role in various radical groups, both new and old, both student and adult. Some who have tried to analyze the special appeal of leftist universalistic ideologies to Jews have argued that identifying with a universalistic movement, one which rejects all forms of religious or ethnic particularism and all group loyalties, as the extreme leftist movements do, appeals to members of minority groups who seek to escape the stigma of belonging to an unpopular minority. To some degree the literature on “Jewish self hatred” and on “Jewish anti Semitism” suggests that adherence to radical causes has been a way of escaping one's Jewishness. Hence, one finds youths of Jewish origin who react with fervor to every nationalist cause but that of the Jews, who are sensitive to every slight against every other minority, but not to overt attacks against Jews, not even when directed against Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

In expressing directly or in directly a disdain for Jewishness, the young New Leftists are following in a classic tradition set by a number of prominent Marxists of Jewish origins, who could find it in their hearts to be concerned about many national groups, but not the Jews. The famous Polish Jewish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg specifically repudiated any concern with the plight of the Jews in a letter written in 1917, in which she indicated that the exploited of Asia and Africa were “so much closer” to her than the Jews that “I cannot find a special corner in my heart for the ghetto; I feel at home in the whole world.” In “Are the Jews a Race?,” the only book on the Jewish question written by a major Marxist theoretician, Karl. Kautsky, who was also of Jewish origins, criticized Judaism as the major source of medieval thinking left in the modern world, one which must “dissolve . . . and disappear.” And like Marx, Kautsky wrote about Judaism: “The sooner it disappears, the better it will be, not only for society, but also for the Jews themselves.”

The Jews have suffered severely in the past from the insensitivity to the consequences of anti‐Semitism exhibited by many “internationalist” leftists, both Jewish and non‐Jewish. The late Isaac Deutscher, a leading Marxist analyst, and himself of Polish Jewish background, wrote in his book “The Non‐Jewish Jew”: “If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the nineteen‐twenties and nineteen thirties I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers.” Today, the revival of anti‐Semitism, or of a tolerance for it when expressed by “progressive,” proletarian, Third World or racially oppressed people, not only increases the insecurity of Israel, but severely endangers Soviet Jewry. ...

The author goes on to say that not all Leftist thinkers are antisemitic, but the trend is troubling.

It goes even more so today. The explicit Jew-hatred is toned down but the roots of today's "anti-Zionism" is clearly yesterday's explicit antisemitism. That is, after all, the only logical reason for the obsession with Israel's crimes, real or mostly) imagined.

No criticism of explicit Leftist antisemitism? Check.
No criticism of Arab antisemitism? Check.
Embracing antisemitic motifs under the guise of "anti-Zionism"? Check.

The main difference is while the 1970s-era Jewish leftists joined to run away from Judaism, now they happily pretend to embrace their Jewishness - to shield their fellow Leftists from the charge of antisemtism. Even though most of them know nothing about Judaism and they want to know less.

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