PerspectiveAnti-Semitism: The Fight That Never Flags

Published 13 September 2019

In her new book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Bari Weiss writes that Jews in the West, especially in Europe, are confronted by a “three-headed dragon.” First, there is an antagonistic environment for Jews, thanks in large measure to the rapid growth of Islamism on the Old Continent. Second, there is ideological vilification by the political Left, which increasingly regards Israel as an illegitimate state serving no other purpose than as a bastion of Western (read: white) colonialism. Third, there is a recrudescence of reactionary populism on the political right that, while often professing sympathy for Israel, evinces a fervent commitment to blood-and-soil politics that seldom ends well for Jews.

Bari Weiss, a staff writer and editor for the opinion section of theNew York Times, used to believe that the United States would never succumb to the plague of anti-Semitism. In her new book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Weiss confesses she is no longer so sanguine about the status of the “Jewish question” in the United States, even if the symptoms of a resurgent anti-Semitism are not as acute as they are in the Old World.

Brian Stewart writes in National Review that a fair reading of the times suggests that her newfound anxiety is prudent.

He writes:

How to Fight Anti-Semitism focuses more on present than past manifestations of this “disease of the mind,” as Weiss dubs it, in echo of the historian Paul Johnson. The primary targets of her sharp pen are not the Gospel of John or even Marxist revolutionaries (it’s not for nothing that the German socialist August Bebel described anti-Semitism as the socialism of fools). Anti-Semitism has spread and mutated, appearing in the guise of a modern theocratic fascism while also poisoning diverse political movements in the West.

As Weiss is fully aware, her book is most apt to court controversy by providing a political guide to these fresh outbreaks of anti-Semitism. She begins rather dauntingly by noting that Jews in the West, especially in Europe, are confronted by a “three-headed dragon.” First, there is an antagonistic environment for Jews, thanks in large measure to the rapid growth of Islamism on the Old Continent. Second, there is ideological vilification by the political Left, which increasingly regards Israel as an illegitimate state serving no other purpose than as a bastion of Western (read: white) colonialism. Third, there is a recrudescence of reactionary populism on the political right that, while often professing sympathy for Israel, evinces a fervent commitment to blood-and-soil politics that seldom ends well for Jews.