The Many Faces of Anti-Semitism

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

On Oct. 27 in Pittsburgh, a murderer killed eleven Jews, and wounded others. 

But anti-Semitism includes more than just physical violence by killers. We should not ignore other, less brutal but more insidious, forms of anti-Semitism, especially those movements and people masquerading as “anti-Zionist.” 

While the neo-Nazi ultra-right thinks left-wing Jews run the United States, the ultra-left says the same about pro-Israeli Jews.

Those on the left have more power than those deranged lunatics that slaughter Jews, because they control most cultural institutions and are often embedded in mainstream colleges, political organizations, and the media. 

All of this has led to a steady normalization of anti-Semitism in American society, particularly in progressive circles. 

“Most American Jews are politically progressive and are accustomed to thinking of anti-Semitism as an expression of right-wing ideology,” writes Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor of Political Science at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University. 

“They are often surprised and dismayed to discover how pervasive anti-Semitism, often thinly disguised as anti-Zionism, has become on the political left.”

One of the big forces on American college campuses today is anti-Semitism. These institutions are now home to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement targeting Israel – though there are no similar campaigns against countries like Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan or Zimbabwe, all guilty of major human rights violations. 

Some faculty cow Jewish students and organizations on campuses and make those institutions feel like unwelcoming places for many.

Democratic Party’s leaders, including former president, Bill Clinton, sat with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on the stage at Aretha Franklin’s funeral last August. Farrakhan has referred to Jews as termites.

Most media ignored this until Jewish news outlets began to publish criticisms. Why the silence? Because, increasingly, the “progressive” formulation of racism involves power – only those with privilege can be racist, nor can they be victims of it.

That’s why Linda Sarsour and Amika Mallory, leaders of the Women’s March, have combined anti-Zionism with a favourable view of Farrakhan. 

Especially on the left, some see anti-Semitism as a wholly separate phenomenon from and perhaps a lesser form of bias than racism.

Jews, this argument posits, are too embedded within the system to have prejudice effectively wielded against them as racism. Individuals may sometimes be persecuted, but as a group they are not oppressed, since the vast majority are well-educated members of the middle class. 

This has problematic implications for Jews. First, it equates Jews with white and institutionally privileged people, ignoring the history and ongoing prevalence of anti-Semitism.

Second, it ignores the fact that Jews as a class are often falsely maligned as too powerful--which, paradoxically, would make them fair game for ridicule under the prejudice-plus-power definition.

“Anti-Semitism is a strange form of prejudice,” notes Olivia Goldhill, a journalist with the website Quartz. “Rather than denigrating Jews as inferior, it casts them as maliciously superior. It’s a bias that’s as popular on the left as it is on the right.”

On the far right it’s easy to spot anti-Jewish animus. On the far left, though, we have a more complicated challenge because misinformation is often expressed in the language of social justice, which makes it easier to mislead well-meaning people.

Intersectional ideology, which falsely analogizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with the struggle for civil rights in the United States, has become fashionable in progressive circles. 

The growing number of critics and outright opponents of Israel among Democratic Party activists in the United States has become a concern.

The Democratic Socialists of America, in effect the left-wing of the Democratic Party, has 50,000 members and 181 chapters. At its 2017 convention, delegates voted to support BDS. They chanted, “From the river to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” As this refers to pre-1948 Palestine, it entails the elimination of Israel.

In the Nov. 6 midterm elections, three Democrats who have nothing positive to say about Israel gained seats in the House of Representatives.

Rashida Tlaib, elected in a Detroit-area district, is a supporter of the BDS movement, as is Ilhan Omar, with a Minneapolis seat. She has called Israel an “evil” country and an “apartheid regime.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a socialist who will represent a New York district, has said she wants to end the “occupation of Palestine.” 

The same people who insist that “anti-Zionism” is not anti-Semitism will then accuse those who call George Soros a “globalist” of being anti-Semites – even when not referring to him as Jewish.

No one has a monopoly on hate.

What’s in a Name? The Macedonian Issue

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

As I tell students in political geography courses, to name is to claim.

Hence, Constantinople became Istanbul, New Amsterdam became New York, Salisbury became Harare, and so on.

This has roiled relations between Greece and its northern neighbor, Macedonia, which has been forced to be known internationally -- thanks to Greek objections -- as the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” ever since the breakup of Yugoslavia almost three decades ago.

The term is used by international organizations such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, and NATO, as well as the United Nations.

Greece argued that its northern neighbour’s name implied irredentist territorial claims on its own northern province of the same name, including the strategically important port of Thessaloniki, and perhaps even portions of Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Many Greeks remain opposed to Skopje’s use of the name Macedonia at all, as they say it appropriates Greek history and fails to distinguish itself from the Greek region with the same name.

The historic region of Macedonia was the birthplace of Alexander the Great, whose conquests stretched from Greece to India.

Greeks consider his Hellenic empire part of heir national heritage and claim the inhabitants of today’s northern Macedonian state are historically unrelated to that history. They arrived 1,000 years later and lack any relation to ancient Macedonia, so the name is for Greeks alone to claim.

Greece slapped a trade embargo on the fledgling nation in the 1990s and blocked Macedonia’s entrance into a host of international organizations, including a 2008 veto of Macedonia’s bid to join NATO.

When Zoran Zaev, head of the of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), became prime minister in May 2017, he made rapprochement with Greece his top priority.

But a deal continued to face vociferous opposition from a sizeable portion of the population on both sides of the border, with detractors saying their respective governments conceded too much to the other side and damaged national interests and identity.

Last February, during ongoing negotiations between the two countries, tens of thousands of Greeks marched to the parliament in Athens, waving flags and chanting, “Macedonia is Greece.” 

Behind the protests were the conservative Greek Orthodox Church and ultranationalists including the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. 

But after years of acrimony, on June 17 Macedonia and Greece signed the Prespa Agreement, which would see the Balkan country change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia. In turn, Greece would drop its objections to the country joining the EU and NATO.

A referendum on the deal was held in Macedonia on Sept 30. It won overwhelming support, with 91.4 per cent of voters voicing their approval, but the low voter turnout of just 36.5 per cent highlighted the hurdles that remained.

Opponents to the name change included the country’s president, Gjorge Ivanov, and Hristijan Mickoski, head of the nationalist opposition Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity(VMRO-DPMNE). The latter had suggested a boycott of the vote.

Mickoski called the deal with Greece “the crime of those who are in power” while Ivanov referred to it as “national suicide.” Their supporters celebrated in the streets when turnout figures were announced.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Zaev declared the vote a success and decided to secure the required two-thirds majority of Macedonia’s 120-seat parliament for the necessary constitutional changes.

On Oct. 18, 80 deputies in the Macedonian parliament voted in favour of renaming the country the Republic of North Macedonia, just reaching the two-thirds majority needed to enact constitutional changes.

“Our journey toward a better future, toward EU and NATO membership has just begun,” Zaev remarked after the vote.

The agreement faces more hurdles before it can be finalized, as Greece will also need to ratify it, which may not be easy. The main Greek opposition party, New Democacy, is opposed.

Should All Nationalism Now be Considered Evil?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

For as long as I’ve been teaching university courses on nationalism, the literature in the field has contrasted civic and ethnic nationalism.

The former was seen as liberal and inclusive, while the latter, in which sovereignty was based on ethnic self-determination, was viewed somewhat suspiciously. It had, some felt, the potential of veering off into racism and fascism. 

The nationalism in old established nation-states could be both – if a country was very homogenous, such as France, Portugal, or Sweden, there was no reason to choose.

These could be nations as democratic as those founded along a political ideal, such as the United States.

But in the 21^st century, something strange has happened. The old idea of civic nationalism, as a counterweight to the ethnic variety, is disappearing, as political elites on the left have become globalists.

Nowadays, left-wing liberals in Europe and North America are jettisoning the idea of nationalism altogether, in favour of various versions of “cosmopolitan democracy.”

The Democratic Party in the United States is now a coalition of ethnic and gender sub-groups; it seems to believe in what amounts to open borders. 

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has proclaimed himself a “post-nationalist.” This would surely have been a surprise to his father Pierre, who fought for a distinctive Canadian identity, replacing the organic “founding nations” narrative by one that was civic and open to all.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently called patriotism “the exact opposite of nationalism.” Since when have these been antonyms? This, from the leader of the republic whose national anthem is “La Marseillaise.” 

For Macron, “patriotism” means putting the European Union above France, the nation. In this, he more resembles Marshal Philippe Pétain, who led Vichy France under Nazi occupation during World War II and served Hitler’s “New Order” in Europe, than resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who was the patriot — and nationalist.

Donald Trump is now assailed as a proponent of ethnic nationalism. But this is nonsense – Americans are a political nation, based on their adherence to the country’s constitution, which is in effect contractual. 

The country was formed through a voluntary union of people who rebelled against an empire. There is no American “ethnicity.” Indeed, the old “melting pot” ideal was the very antithesis of ethnic nationalism. American nationalism is inherently inclusive.

Liberal globalists fail to distinguish what is legitimate and justifiable in nationalism from what is small-minded and bigoted. Their cosmopolitanism, which advocates open borders, free trade, and rampant outsourcing, brands nationalist sentiments as nativist xenophobia.

Are nationalists like Egypt’s Nasser, India’s Nehru, and Ghana’s Nkrumah now villains?

Political philosopher Yoram Hazony makes the case for a renewed appreciation of the national state. In Hazony’s view, the history of mankind since the invention of the state is the history of two competing principles: nationalism, or the principle that the world should be divided up among a multiplicity of self-governing nations, and empire, which he defines as any order “whose purpose is to bring peace and prosperity by uniting mankind under a single political regime.” 

Empires today include those based on “liberal imperialism,” embodied in the European Union and, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the American-led “new world order.”

Hazony agrees with Oxford University professor Jan Zielonka, who in his study of empires and their “civilising missions,” also asserts that the U.S. and the EU possess all the characteristics of empires, albeit in diverse forms.

The rise of globalism among Western elites should be understood, according to Hazony, as the re-emergence of the ideology of an imperial ruling class that sees strong commitments to the nation as threats to the unity of the empire.

Hazony maintains that liberal imperialism has replaced national self-determination as the ideal world order in the minds of Western elites. And it denigrates the particular traditions, beliefs, and loyalties that are the foundation of actual nations.

But if all versions of nationalism are going to be defined in a negative light, this will end up driving patriotic citizens into the arms of those right-wing nationalists so abhorred by the globalists.

After all, observes Bard College professor Sean McMeekin, in countries where memories of devastating invasions, civil wars and foreign occupations remain fresh, “firm national identities and secure frontiers are bulwarks against catastrophe.”

Elections Become Tribal in America

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In many states deeply divided by ethnicity or religion, elections become battles between rival groups for the power to control the state and its resources. 

They are winner-take-all affairs in which both sides cheat and try to suppress the vote of their enemies.

Now that the United States is dividing into its own version of tribes, along ethnic and gender lines, both Democrats and Republicans will increasingly do “whatever it takes” to win.

“There’s a really big racial divide between the two parties,” according to Professor Steven Webster of Washington University in St. Louis. The non-white share of the American electorate has been increasing tremendously over the last few decades, and most of those voters have chosen to affiliate with the Democratic Party. 

Political parties which more closely reflect racial and cultural differences have bred intense negative partisanship -- strong dislike of the opposing party rather than support for one's own party). According to Alan Abramowitz, a professor of Political Science at Emory University in Atlanta, this contributed significantly to Hilary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.

“We're in a new era of electoral competition in the United States that's a direct result of this transformation of the party system that's occurred over the past 60 years,” he contends.

The Republican Party will not win support among black voters, even those who hold social and economically conservative beliefs, as long as it is perceived as “white.” 

“Every election becomes almost a single-issue election for black voters: Are you for or against civil rights?” according to Theodore R. Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. All other social and economic issues “get muted by racial issues.”

The reverse increasingly also becomes the case. White Republicans have become more intolerant about the country’s growing diversity. 

Even those who are not “identitarians” see a Democratic Party that seems to loudly applaud the gains made by Blacks, Latinos and other people of colour, and equates their advances with a politics of “progress” – and of course with electoral gains by Democrats.

This is why Democrats seem positively gleeful as they contemplate an America that will be majority non-white by 2044, according to census projections. 

Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, told the New York Times Nov. 22 that progressives, envisioning political power, became enamored with the idea of a coming white minority.

“It was conquest, our day has come,” he said of their reaction. “They wanted to overpower them with numbers. It was demographic destiny.”

This is another way of saying American politics is now tribal. No need to worry about program or policies, just make sure you can get your groups to the voting booths.

After all, how many Arabs vote for a Zionist party in Israel, no matter its policies? How many Tamils vote for a Sinhalese nationalist party in Sri Lanka? 

How many Northern Irish Catholics vote for a Protestant Unionist party? In many African states, how many vote for a candidate from a party who is a member of an antagonistic ethnic group?

We already saw versions of this play out in the 2016 presidential and 2018 midterm elections. The Washington Post has already predicted, in an article published Nov. 19, that the 2020 contest will be “intensely tribal.”

Significant fissures have opened in the nation’s body politic, and they extend beyond politicians and partisan zealots. This is a disaster for American democracy.