ExtremismThe guises under which current anti-Semitism travels
Today’s anti-Semitism travels under many guises. In reviewing Deborah Lipstadt’s just-published Antisemitism: Here and Now, Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist at the New York Times, writes that the most important insight of Lipstadt’s analysis is “that the resurgence of anti-Semitism owes as much to its political enablers who aren’t openly bigoted as it does to its ideological practitioners who are — is the most valuable contribution the book makes to our discussion of modern-day Jew hatred.”
In his review of Deborah Lipstadt’s just-published Antisemitism: Here and Now, Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist at the New York Times, writes that the book is more than a trenchant analysis of today’s manifestations of anti-Semitism. “Lipstadt is isn’t just interested in compiling a list of insults, outrages and assaults. Anti-Semitism, to adapt a phrase, is the hate that dare not speak its name, and Lipstadt is at her best when she removes the guises under which it travels,” Stephens writes.
The titles of the first five chapters of the book capture the many new – and some not-so-new – aspects of anti-Semitism: “The Extremist: From the Street to the Internet”; “Beyond the Extremist”; “Anti-Semitic Enablers”; “The Dinner Party Anti-Semitism”; and the “Clueless Anti-Semite.”
Stephens agrees with Lipstadt that this is the central question: What are the guises under which current anti-Semitism travels?
The issue thus goes beyond whether some political leaders on the populist right (for example, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders) or the populist left (for example, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Melenchon, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the organizers of the BDS movement), are themselves anti-Semitic. Rather, the question is whether, in their words and actions, these leaders facilitate and amplify the expression of anti-Semitism.
Stephens writes:
One such guise is the campaign against “globalists,” the leading exemplars of which just happen to have names like Soros, Yellen and Blankfein. Donald Trump may boast of his Jewish grandchildren and his cozy relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu. But he has become the hero of the “Daily Stormer” crowd with demagogic attacks on immigrants and by taking direct aim, as he put it in 2016, at “international banks” that “plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.” It’s a theme, Lipstadt notes, that plays “on traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes of the ‘international Jew.’”
Another guise is anti-Zionism, which pretends that one can malign Israel as a uniquely diabolical and illegitimate state, guilty of Nazi-like atrocities, and still be acquitted of anti-Semitism. The leading Western voice for this view is the British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin, who has repeatedly joined hands with virulent anti-Semites who share his pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist views — all the while insisting that he opposes racism. Lipstadt makes short work of that defense.
“Is Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite?” she asks.
“My response would be that that’s the wrong question. The right questions to ask are: Has he facilitated and amplified expressions of anti-Semitism? Has he been consistently reluctant to acknowledge expressions of anti-Semitism unless they come from white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Will his actions facilitate the institutionalization of anti-Semitism among other progressives? Sadly, my answer to all of this is an unequivocal yes. Like Trump, Corbyn has emboldened and enabled anti-Semites, but from the other end of the political spectrum.”
Stephens concludes:
