There are some great comments here. I might expand this into a larger piece (perhaps over several posts) incorporating some of the points people have been making.
I think this is one of the more important pieces I've ever written. Understanding antisemitism is the first step in combating antisemitism, and I never got the impression that the major organizations fighting antisemitism ever truly understood it. I hope to contribute to this understanding.
Israel is a far more profound challenge to the progressive religion than just because it runs counter to the religion's basic principles. Israel actually fulfills those principles so much better in spite of all the reasons why it supposedly can't - a proudly democratic society that willingly hands its elites enormous power, capitalistic with strong socialist safety nets, an ethnostate fiercely protective of its minorities, unbridled freedom of expression in a religious-leaning culture.
The underlying philosophy of most Progressives today is Critical Race Theory (CRT), which asserts that group identity is the explanation for most things, that successful groups got that way by oppressing other groups, who are then unsuccessful.
Judaism is a direct challenge to that, as Jews are objectively the most oppressed people in history, and yet largely very successful. That is how the existence of Jews undermines what gives these people their self-worth, and thus leads them to be offended at the existence of Jews.
There is one factor that's been left out here: envy and resentment. (Unless I failed to read between the lines.)
Jews are undeniably the most successful tribe in history, leaders in everything from science to finance to business to politics to arts and literature etc etc. And this despite being a small despised minority who before the establishment of the state of Israel always lived under the aegis of other peoples and their leaders, which could be revoked any second.
When I see everything from the Arab rage against the tiny Jewish state to the angry protests of Arabs here in America to the young black people who join them to the anti-Semitism of black leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, it is obvious how jealous they are of Jews. (And that doesn't even cover downscale whites and how angry Jewish success makes them.)
All of these other minority groups look at Jews and know that their own people could never have the same wealth and achievement, could never build their own thriving state out of the desert and could never win so many Nobels and contribute so much to humanity.
People also hate Jews because they can't compete with them and they know it.
Antisemitism existed long before Israel's establishment, America's founding, and the European enlightenment, three phenomena that enabled Jews to compete - and thus succeed - in the same playing field as everyone else. That antisemitism doesn't square with your description of antisemitism as envy and resentment of Jewish success.
If antisemitism exists both with and without Jewish success, why should we assume Jewish success is a cause of antisemitism, any more than any other irrelevant factor?
1) Jews are probably the most successful tribe on earth;
2) people are often envious of, and hostile toward, those who are wealthier and more successful;
3) the other tribes who seem to have the most animosity toward Jews, Muslims and African-Americans, are much less successful and wealthy, seem to be filled w irrational hatred toward them, and pursue policies (jihad, DEI) to hobble them.
I simply combined human psychology and personal observation. Feel free to disagree.
(Also, if you think envy and resentment are "irrelevant factor(s)" in life, I salute you for leading such a blessed existence.)
"We were always the ultimate Other—communists in the view of the capitalists and capitalists in communist eyes, nationalists for the cosmopolitans and, for jingoists, the International Jew." Michael B. Oren, Ally
I'm arguing that there are any number of reasons antisemites point to as the reason for their antisemitism. It could be equally argued that poor Jews evoke antisemitism for their poverty, refugee Jews for their refugeeship, as much as wealthy, citizen Jews evoke antisemitism for their wealth and participation in society.
In the context of the author's search for a "unified field theory of antisemitism", the precise proximate cause of the antisemitism of a particular society at a particular moment in time, is IMO irrelevant; unlike the author's suggestion of superserssionism, which seems to be universal - antisemitism arises in the presence of supersessionism and not in its absence.
it occurred to me watching idiots chant Jews shall not replace us that they are trying to repudiate the repudiation they received in 1948 which you discussed regarding Christian's replacing Jews self-appointedly being replaced with the reality of Jews back in their Homeland
As Jeremiah prophesied, the Gentiles will come to see that they have inherited only Lies, Emptiness in which there is nothing of any avail!
1. I think you underestimate Islamic supersessionism and supremacism. Muslims do not recognize the Jewish prophets *as Jews*, rather, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, etc. are re-cast as Muslims. Not to mention Al Aqsa mosque sits on the ruins of the Jewish temple. Israel, where Jews are sovereign "on Muslim land", challenges the claim that Islam is superior - read Haviv Rettig Gur.
2. Judaism challenges the progressive worldview because Jews break the intersectional hierarchy. Since Jews are successful they must be oppressors, which is at odds with history and the reality of Jews being a tiny minority.
3. I think multiple taxonomies of antisemitism are missing:
(a) Envy/resentment of success.
(b) For trespass / as interlopers. For "not belonging here". I think there are many cases of distinct ethno/religious groups living in close proximity, but only when one group is seen as alien does genocidal/eliminationist violence occur.
3. Racial/Nazi antisemitism, which sees Jews as a distinct, inferior race, polluting the ethnic purity of the nation.
4. Nationalist antisemitism, i.e., the Dreyfus "dual loyalty" accusation.
You make good points. And there are other factors but they may be subsidiary. The genesis of the problem in the West stems from the religious aspects. And that never goes away because the Muslims and some (not all) Christians keep pushing the anti-Semitism. The West ostensibly feels terrible about enslaving Blacks and massacring and essentially imprisoning indigenous Americans, as it should. Now these identity groups are elevated on pedestals by the Progs along with other victims of colonialism. They can do no wrong. They turn them into saints effectively. They do the same in Europe now for the Muslims. But Jews, also massacred and oppressed many times over centuries are not given the same treatment. Why? Perhaps because we never were completely destroyed and beaten down. We keep popping back up and succeeding despite the best efforts of our oppressors. We stick a thumb in their eye by foiling their attempts at complete destruction. The refusal to knuckle under and being visibly successful grates on the bigots.
I find this thesis interesting but I’m not sure it quite holds up. First, “progressives” (I use that term loosely because I find very little that’s progressive in the modern progressive movement) support many countries that are capitalist, militaristic, and particularist and thus, per your thesis, challenge progressive orthodoxy just as strongly as Israel. Palestine is one example (though of course it isn’t a country at the moment), but the same could apply to modern-day Russia and China, both of which progressives tend to be at least relatively supportive of (and full-out supportive of the further toward leftism you go). Further, while hatred of Israel is certainly key to the modern-day progressive movement, it can only be so by abandoning actual progressive principles. What I mean by that is, if you say “indigenous people reclaiming sovereignty over their native land” without context, progressives would overwhelming be supportive of that. I’d say you couldn’t find a single person who identifies as a progressive and would say that’s a bad thing. But as soon as you say that the indigenous people in question are Jews, then suddenly progressives will shift and say that it IS a bad thing. The only difference is: are Jews involved or not? If they are, progressives are willing to abandon their support for equality, for gay rights, and for women’s rights as well their opposition to sexual violence and religious intolerance. I don’t see how progressive supersessionism can explain that. If anything, progressive supersessionism should lead progressives to support Israel as what is objectively the most progressive country in the Middle East. The fact that they don’t means that something is actually superseding *progressivism itself.* The only thing I can come up with powerfully enough to get progressives to abandon progressive values is the pure bigotry of antisemitism.
Thanks for the comment. I think that there is a difference between how progressives look at the shortcomings of China, Russia or other nations and Israel. When viewed through the "right side of history" lens, the other nations can be considered going through birth pangs but the ultimate worker revolt is still inevitable. Israel - one of the happiest nations on Earth- is successful because of its ingrained Jewish worldview which is not going to change in any foreseeable way. The very corruption and hypocrisy China/Russia is seen as a step towards liberation, Israel's workers kvetch but aren't going to change the country's DNA. (Actually, kvetching IS part of Israel's DNA.) That's why Israel's existence and success is a challenge to their very core.
I think the idea that all anger at Israel is motivated by hatred of Jews is simply false, and like nearly everything people say about either Israel or Hamas, an excused use to exculpate the speaker's favored side and turn a tragedy into a comedy with an obvious hero/villain dichotomy and an inevitable happy ending. And furthermore, I think, in concurrence with John Ganz, that to believe that Jews cannot live peacefully in a secular society alongside Christian, Muslims, and humanists ("progressive" is not the right word, some secular humanists are politically and socially conservative or even reactionary, like Ayn Rand or Christopher Hitchens) is to essentially take antisemitism at its word and simply invert the valence of good and evil. You don't get to kill 64,000 of the Palestinans' people after they killed 1,000 of yours and then paint yourselves as purely victims hated by the big bad outside world for purely religious reasons. People are angry at Israel for things their government did, and did very recently, and they are angry because they want these things to stop. And of course the Palestinians' leadership are no saints either, and to me the worst thing about the whole sordid affair is that the more sensible and moderate people on both sides have been completely shut out of authority and leadership, leading to a runaway feedback loop between Judeo-fascists and Islamo-fascists, both of which are obsessed with the story of their own victimhood, and neither of which has any desire to divert from the path towards mutual genocide.
The Muslims in Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon chose war. They hate the Jews and want to kill them all because they are Jews. Israel is their only lifeboat as America is just as safe for them as Europe was in 1930.
There have been multiple attempts at creating secular societies in the Middle East - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon. All have failed because some in-group took control of the government and used those institutions designed to protect democracy - parliament, independent branches of government, elections - to further their own group's agenda while kicking everyone else down.
For a secular democracy to work, you need a common understanding of the value of every human being, regardless of which social group they belong to.
Israel has this in spades across the political spectrum, as does the US. But most of the rest of the Middle East lacks that cultural characteristic.
"Antisemitism is not like other hatreds. Most other forms of hate hinge on disliking the other purely because they are different. Jew-hatred goes way beyond that; the hate is more extreme, more personal."
Unsubstantiated and substantially meaningless assertions right at the outset. Good start. I suggest considering that the reason there are multiple competing explanations for phenomenon X with no progress made in establishing which is correct is that the phenomenon X is misconceived to start with.
This argument seems fundamentally correct, although it still is surreal (at least to me) that so many people are pathologically fixated on a tiny group that is interested in survival, not conquest, peaceful coexistence, and with whom most anti- Semites never interact. Since cruelty and stupidity aren’t going anywhere soon, Israel and the Jews have no choice but to continue to be warriors. The thing is that the more self aware of these knuckleheads know that they are horrible people who can’t excel and project their weakness and flaws onto scapegoated Jews whom they secretly feel are more intelligent, more capable, and more righteous. The rest are just orcs and mentally ill losers. I don’t think that there is a solution on the horizon, but I’m glad the Progressives in the United States at least are getting some real pushback from normal Americans.
A pretty interesting theory. No doubt many progressives do dislike Israel as a challenge to their notion of a good society. And the criticism of Israel is frequently excessive when compared to the many other countries in which human rights are abused.
A lot of that is nonetheless explained by proximity to Europe, Israel's cultural influence in the West, and historical factors that make the conflict more salient than whatever is happening in Asia major or Africa on any given day. You can also not discount the role of sheer chance and fashion.
I think you're on to something, but you can take these things too far, basically.
“For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American commission has been going through the form of asking what they are. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs that who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.” Arthur bloody Balfour, 1919
There are some great comments here. I might expand this into a larger piece (perhaps over several posts) incorporating some of the points people have been making.
I think this is one of the more important pieces I've ever written. Understanding antisemitism is the first step in combating antisemitism, and I never got the impression that the major organizations fighting antisemitism ever truly understood it. I hope to contribute to this understanding.
Israel is a far more profound challenge to the progressive religion than just because it runs counter to the religion's basic principles. Israel actually fulfills those principles so much better in spite of all the reasons why it supposedly can't - a proudly democratic society that willingly hands its elites enormous power, capitalistic with strong socialist safety nets, an ethnostate fiercely protective of its minorities, unbridled freedom of expression in a religious-leaning culture.
They are forced to create a whole new category of accusation - <color>-washing - to get around the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFOwQs9XZ6w
I had never thought of leftist antisemitism as another supersessionism, but you're right!
The underlying philosophy of most Progressives today is Critical Race Theory (CRT), which asserts that group identity is the explanation for most things, that successful groups got that way by oppressing other groups, who are then unsuccessful.
Judaism is a direct challenge to that, as Jews are objectively the most oppressed people in history, and yet largely very successful. That is how the existence of Jews undermines what gives these people their self-worth, and thus leads them to be offended at the existence of Jews.
This is the correct explanation as to why Jews are a direct challenge to progressivism. Jews break the intersectionality hierarchy of victimhood.
There is one factor that's been left out here: envy and resentment. (Unless I failed to read between the lines.)
Jews are undeniably the most successful tribe in history, leaders in everything from science to finance to business to politics to arts and literature etc etc. And this despite being a small despised minority who before the establishment of the state of Israel always lived under the aegis of other peoples and their leaders, which could be revoked any second.
When I see everything from the Arab rage against the tiny Jewish state to the angry protests of Arabs here in America to the young black people who join them to the anti-Semitism of black leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, it is obvious how jealous they are of Jews. (And that doesn't even cover downscale whites and how angry Jewish success makes them.)
All of these other minority groups look at Jews and know that their own people could never have the same wealth and achievement, could never build their own thriving state out of the desert and could never win so many Nobels and contribute so much to humanity.
People also hate Jews because they can't compete with them and they know it.
Antisemitism existed long before Israel's establishment, America's founding, and the European enlightenment, three phenomena that enabled Jews to compete - and thus succeed - in the same playing field as everyone else. That antisemitism doesn't square with your description of antisemitism as envy and resentment of Jewish success.
i never said it was the sole cause, I said it was "one factor".
i stand by my comment.
If antisemitism exists both with and without Jewish success, why should we assume Jewish success is a cause of antisemitism, any more than any other irrelevant factor?
1) Jews are probably the most successful tribe on earth;
2) people are often envious of, and hostile toward, those who are wealthier and more successful;
3) the other tribes who seem to have the most animosity toward Jews, Muslims and African-Americans, are much less successful and wealthy, seem to be filled w irrational hatred toward them, and pursue policies (jihad, DEI) to hobble them.
I simply combined human psychology and personal observation. Feel free to disagree.
(Also, if you think envy and resentment are "irrelevant factor(s)" in life, I salute you for leading such a blessed existence.)
All true. However:
"We were always the ultimate Other—communists in the view of the capitalists and capitalists in communist eyes, nationalists for the cosmopolitans and, for jingoists, the International Jew." Michael B. Oren, Ally
I'm arguing that there are any number of reasons antisemites point to as the reason for their antisemitism. It could be equally argued that poor Jews evoke antisemitism for their poverty, refugee Jews for their refugeeship, as much as wealthy, citizen Jews evoke antisemitism for their wealth and participation in society.
In the context of the author's search for a "unified field theory of antisemitism", the precise proximate cause of the antisemitism of a particular society at a particular moment in time, is IMO irrelevant; unlike the author's suggestion of superserssionism, which seems to be universal - antisemitism arises in the presence of supersessionism and not in its absence.
Very well thought through
it occurred to me watching idiots chant Jews shall not replace us that they are trying to repudiate the repudiation they received in 1948 which you discussed regarding Christian's replacing Jews self-appointedly being replaced with the reality of Jews back in their Homeland
As Jeremiah prophesied, the Gentiles will come to see that they have inherited only Lies, Emptiness in which there is nothing of any avail!
1. I think you underestimate Islamic supersessionism and supremacism. Muslims do not recognize the Jewish prophets *as Jews*, rather, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, etc. are re-cast as Muslims. Not to mention Al Aqsa mosque sits on the ruins of the Jewish temple. Israel, where Jews are sovereign "on Muslim land", challenges the claim that Islam is superior - read Haviv Rettig Gur.
2. Judaism challenges the progressive worldview because Jews break the intersectional hierarchy. Since Jews are successful they must be oppressors, which is at odds with history and the reality of Jews being a tiny minority.
3. I think multiple taxonomies of antisemitism are missing:
(a) Envy/resentment of success.
(b) For trespass / as interlopers. For "not belonging here". I think there are many cases of distinct ethno/religious groups living in close proximity, but only when one group is seen as alien does genocidal/eliminationist violence occur.
3. Racial/Nazi antisemitism, which sees Jews as a distinct, inferior race, polluting the ethnic purity of the nation.
4. Nationalist antisemitism, i.e., the Dreyfus "dual loyalty" accusation.
You make good points. And there are other factors but they may be subsidiary. The genesis of the problem in the West stems from the religious aspects. And that never goes away because the Muslims and some (not all) Christians keep pushing the anti-Semitism. The West ostensibly feels terrible about enslaving Blacks and massacring and essentially imprisoning indigenous Americans, as it should. Now these identity groups are elevated on pedestals by the Progs along with other victims of colonialism. They can do no wrong. They turn them into saints effectively. They do the same in Europe now for the Muslims. But Jews, also massacred and oppressed many times over centuries are not given the same treatment. Why? Perhaps because we never were completely destroyed and beaten down. We keep popping back up and succeeding despite the best efforts of our oppressors. We stick a thumb in their eye by foiling their attempts at complete destruction. The refusal to knuckle under and being visibly successful grates on the bigots.
I find this thesis interesting but I’m not sure it quite holds up. First, “progressives” (I use that term loosely because I find very little that’s progressive in the modern progressive movement) support many countries that are capitalist, militaristic, and particularist and thus, per your thesis, challenge progressive orthodoxy just as strongly as Israel. Palestine is one example (though of course it isn’t a country at the moment), but the same could apply to modern-day Russia and China, both of which progressives tend to be at least relatively supportive of (and full-out supportive of the further toward leftism you go). Further, while hatred of Israel is certainly key to the modern-day progressive movement, it can only be so by abandoning actual progressive principles. What I mean by that is, if you say “indigenous people reclaiming sovereignty over their native land” without context, progressives would overwhelming be supportive of that. I’d say you couldn’t find a single person who identifies as a progressive and would say that’s a bad thing. But as soon as you say that the indigenous people in question are Jews, then suddenly progressives will shift and say that it IS a bad thing. The only difference is: are Jews involved or not? If they are, progressives are willing to abandon their support for equality, for gay rights, and for women’s rights as well their opposition to sexual violence and religious intolerance. I don’t see how progressive supersessionism can explain that. If anything, progressive supersessionism should lead progressives to support Israel as what is objectively the most progressive country in the Middle East. The fact that they don’t means that something is actually superseding *progressivism itself.* The only thing I can come up with powerfully enough to get progressives to abandon progressive values is the pure bigotry of antisemitism.
Thanks for the comment. I think that there is a difference between how progressives look at the shortcomings of China, Russia or other nations and Israel. When viewed through the "right side of history" lens, the other nations can be considered going through birth pangs but the ultimate worker revolt is still inevitable. Israel - one of the happiest nations on Earth- is successful because of its ingrained Jewish worldview which is not going to change in any foreseeable way. The very corruption and hypocrisy China/Russia is seen as a step towards liberation, Israel's workers kvetch but aren't going to change the country's DNA. (Actually, kvetching IS part of Israel's DNA.) That's why Israel's existence and success is a challenge to their very core.
Brilliant and insightful!
Here is a theory. When Jews do evil and defy God’s ordinances, God hardens the hearts of the gentiles against us, even to destroy us, as punishment.
That’s what the Bible says.
That is not my focus but the Jewish view of antisemitism and punishment may be a topic for a future chapter.
I think the idea that all anger at Israel is motivated by hatred of Jews is simply false, and like nearly everything people say about either Israel or Hamas, an excused use to exculpate the speaker's favored side and turn a tragedy into a comedy with an obvious hero/villain dichotomy and an inevitable happy ending. And furthermore, I think, in concurrence with John Ganz, that to believe that Jews cannot live peacefully in a secular society alongside Christian, Muslims, and humanists ("progressive" is not the right word, some secular humanists are politically and socially conservative or even reactionary, like Ayn Rand or Christopher Hitchens) is to essentially take antisemitism at its word and simply invert the valence of good and evil. You don't get to kill 64,000 of the Palestinans' people after they killed 1,000 of yours and then paint yourselves as purely victims hated by the big bad outside world for purely religious reasons. People are angry at Israel for things their government did, and did very recently, and they are angry because they want these things to stop. And of course the Palestinians' leadership are no saints either, and to me the worst thing about the whole sordid affair is that the more sensible and moderate people on both sides have been completely shut out of authority and leadership, leading to a runaway feedback loop between Judeo-fascists and Islamo-fascists, both of which are obsessed with the story of their own victimhood, and neither of which has any desire to divert from the path towards mutual genocide.
The Muslims in Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon chose war. They hate the Jews and want to kill them all because they are Jews. Israel is their only lifeboat as America is just as safe for them as Europe was in 1930.
This is an infantile, ahistorical, messy, poorly developed argument. Other than that, really top notch.👍🏻
There have been multiple attempts at creating secular societies in the Middle East - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon. All have failed because some in-group took control of the government and used those institutions designed to protect democracy - parliament, independent branches of government, elections - to further their own group's agenda while kicking everyone else down.
For a secular democracy to work, you need a common understanding of the value of every human being, regardless of which social group they belong to.
Israel has this in spades across the political spectrum, as does the US. But most of the rest of the Middle East lacks that cultural characteristic.
"Antisemitism is not like other hatreds. Most other forms of hate hinge on disliking the other purely because they are different. Jew-hatred goes way beyond that; the hate is more extreme, more personal."
Unsubstantiated and substantially meaningless assertions right at the outset. Good start. I suggest considering that the reason there are multiple competing explanations for phenomenon X with no progress made in establishing which is correct is that the phenomenon X is misconceived to start with.
https://nonzionism.com/p/what-is-antisemitism
https://nonzionism.com/p/antisemitism-as-the-resting-state
This argument seems fundamentally correct, although it still is surreal (at least to me) that so many people are pathologically fixated on a tiny group that is interested in survival, not conquest, peaceful coexistence, and with whom most anti- Semites never interact. Since cruelty and stupidity aren’t going anywhere soon, Israel and the Jews have no choice but to continue to be warriors. The thing is that the more self aware of these knuckleheads know that they are horrible people who can’t excel and project their weakness and flaws onto scapegoated Jews whom they secretly feel are more intelligent, more capable, and more righteous. The rest are just orcs and mentally ill losers. I don’t think that there is a solution on the horizon, but I’m glad the Progressives in the United States at least are getting some real pushback from normal Americans.
fascinating
A pretty interesting theory. No doubt many progressives do dislike Israel as a challenge to their notion of a good society. And the criticism of Israel is frequently excessive when compared to the many other countries in which human rights are abused.
A lot of that is nonetheless explained by proximity to Europe, Israel's cultural influence in the West, and historical factors that make the conflict more salient than whatever is happening in Asia major or Africa on any given day. You can also not discount the role of sheer chance and fashion.
I think you're on to something, but you can take these things too far, basically.
“For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American commission has been going through the form of asking what they are. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs that who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.” Arthur bloody Balfour, 1919
That explains everything. Brilliant. 🙄