The New, New Antisemitism

By Victor Davis Hanson, NATIONAL REVIEW

Old stereotypes resurface among today’s woke progressives.

The old antisemitism was mostly, but not exclusively, a tribal prejudice expressed in America up until the mid 20th century most intensely on the right. It manifested itself from the silk-stocking country club and corporation (“gentlemen’s agreement”) to the rawer regions of the Ku Klux Klan’s lunatic fringe.

While liberals from Joe Kennedy to Gore Vidal were often openly anti-Semitic, the core of traditional antisemitism, as William F. Buckley once worried, was more rightist. And such fumes still arise among the alt-right extremists.

Yet soon a new antisemitism became more insidious, given that it was a leftist phenomenon among those quick to cite oppression and discrimination elsewhere. Who then could police the bigotry of the self-described anti-bigotry police?

The new form of the old bias grew most rapidly on the 1960s campus and was fueled by a number of leftist catalysts. The novel romance of the Palestinians and corresponding demonization of Israel, especially after the 1967 Six-Day War, gradually allowed former Jew-hatred to be cloaked by new rabid and often unhinged opposition to Israel. In particular, these anti-Semites fixated on Israel’s misdemeanors and exaggerated them while excusing and downplaying the felonies of abhorrent and rogue nations.

Indeed, evidence of the new anti-Semitism was that the Left was neutral, and even favorable, to racist, authoritarian, deadly regimes of the then Third World while singling out democratic Israel for supposed humanitarian crimes. By the late 1970s, Israelis and often by extension Jews in general were demagogued by the Left as Western white oppressors. Israel’s supposed victims were romanticized abroad as exploited Middle Easterners. And by extension, Jews were similarly exploiting minorities at home.

Then arose a relatively new mainstream version of Holocaust denial that deprived Jews of any special claim to historic victim status. And it was a creed common among World War II revisionists and some American minorities who were resentful that the often more successful Jews might have experienced singularly unimaginable horror in the past. The new anti-Semitism that grew up in the 1960s was certainly in part legitimized by the rise of overt African-American bigotry against Jews (and coupled by a romantic affinity for Islam). It was further nursed on old stereotypes of cold and callous Jewish ghetto storeowners (e.g., “The Pawnbroker” character), and expressed boldly in the assumption that black Americans were exempt from charges of bias and hatred.

Anti-Semitic blacks assumed that they could not be credibly charged with bigotry and were therefore free to say what they pleased about Jews. Indeed, by the 1970s and 1980s, anti-Semitism had become the mother’s milk of a prominent post–Martin Luther King Jr. black-activist leadership, well beyond Malcolm X and the Black Panthers — even though Jews had been on the forefront of the civil-rights movements and had been recognized as such by an earlier generation of liberal black leaders.

Soon it became common for self-described black leaders to explain, to amplify, to contextualize, or to be unapologetic about their anti-Semitism, in both highbrow and lowbrow modes: James Baldwin (“Negroes are anti-Semitic because they’re anti-white”), Louis Farrakhan (“When they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, you know what they do, call me an anti-Semite. Stop it. I am anti-termite. The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a great name. Hitler was a very great man”), Jesse Jackson (“Hymietown”), Al Sharpton (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”), and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (“The Jews ain’t gonna let him [Obama] talk to me”).

Note that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both ran as Democratic candidates for president. Sharpton officially visited the Obama White House more than 100 times, and Wright was the Obamas’ longtime personal pastor who officiated at the couple’s wedding and the baptism of their daughters and inspired the title of Obama’s second book.

In the past ten years, however, we have seen an emerging new, new anti-Semitism. It is likely to become far more pernicious than both the old-right and new-left versions, because it is not just an insidiously progressive phenomenon. It has also become deeply embedded in popular culture and is now rebranded with acceptable cool among America’s historically ignorant youth. In particular, the new, new bigotry is “intersectional.” It serves as a unifying progressive bond among “marginalized” groups such as young Middle Easterners, Muslims, feminists, blacks, woke celebrities and entertainers, socialists, the “undocumented,” and student activists. Abroad, the new, new bigotry is fueled by British Labourites and anti-Israel EU grandees.

Of course, the new, new antisemitism’s overt messages derive from both the old and the new. There is the same conspiratorial idea that the Jews covertly and underhandedly exert inordinate control over Americans (perhaps now as grasping sports-franchise owners or greedy hip-hop record executives). But the new, new anti-Semitism has added a number of subtler twists, namely that Jews are part of the old guard whose anachronistic standards of privilege block the emerging new constituency of woke Muslims, blacks, Latinos, and feminists.

Within the Democratic party, such animus is manifested by young woke politicians facing an old white hierarchy. Progressive activist Linda Sarsour oddly singled out for censure Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, saying, “I’m talking to Chuck Schumer. I’m tired of white men negotiating on the backs of people of color and communities like ours.”

In attacking Schumer, ostensibly a fellow progressive, Sarsour is claiming an intersectional bond forged in mutual victimization by whites — and thus older liberal Jews apparently either cannot conceive of such victimization or in fact are party to it. With a brief tweet, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez dismissed former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman’s worry over the current leftward drift of the new Democratic party. “New party, who dis?” she mocked, apparently suggesting that the 76-year-old former Democratic vice-presidential candidate was irrelevant to the point of nonexistence for the new progressive generation.

Likewise, the generic invective against Trump — perhaps the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish president of the modern era — as an anti-Semite and racist provides additional cover. Hating the supposedly Jew-hating Trump implies that you are not a Jew-hater yourself.

Rap and hip-hop music now routinely incorporate anti-Semitic lyrics and themes of Jews as oppressors — note the lyrics of rappers such as Malice, Pusha T, The Clipse, Ghostface Killah, Gunplay, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, Mos Def, and Scarface. More recently, LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend, tweeted out the anti-Semitic lyrics of rapper 21 Savage: “We been getting that Jewish money, everything is Kosher.” LeBron was puzzled about why anyone would take offense, much less question him, a deified figure. He has a point, given that singling out Jews as money-grubbers, cheats, and conspirators has become a sort of rap brand, integral to the notion of the rapper as Everyman’s pushback against the universal oppressor. The music executive and franchise owner is the new Pawnbroker, and his demonization is often cast as no big deal at best and at worst as a sort of legitimate cry of the heart from the oppressed.

Note that marquee black leaders — from Keith Ellison to Barack Obama to the grandees of the Congressional Black Caucus — have all had smiling photo-ops with the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, a contemporary black version of Richard Spencer or the 1980s David Duke. Appearing with Farrakhan, however, never became toxic, even after he once publicly warned Jews, “And don’t you forget, when it’s God who puts you in the ovens, it’s forever!”

Temple professor, former CNN analyst, and self-described path-breaking intellectual Marc Lamont Hill recently parroted the Hamas slogan of “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” — boilerplate generally taken to mean that the goal is the destruction of the current nation of Israel. And here, too, it’s understandable that Hill was shocked at the ensuing outrage — talk of eliminating Israel is hardly controversial in hip left-wing culture.

The Democratic party’s fresh crop of representatives likewise reflects the new, new and mainlined biases, camouflaged in virulent anti-Israeli sentiment. Or, as Princeton scholar Robert George recently put it:

The Left calls the tune, and just as the Left settled in on abortion in the early 1970s and marriage redefinition in the ’90s, it has now settled in on opposition to Israel – not merely the policies of its government, but its very existence as a Jewish state and homeland of the Jewish people.

In that vein, Michigan’s new congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, assumed she’d face little pushback from her party when she tweeted out the old slur that Jewish supporters of Israel have dual loyalties: Opponents of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement, which targets Israel, “forgot what country they represent,” she said. Ironically, Tlaib is not shy about her own spirited support of the Palestinians: She earlier had won some attention for an eliminationist map in her office that had the label “Palestine” pasted onto the Middle East, with an arrow pointing to Israel.

Similarly, Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) — like Tlaib, a new female Muslim representative in the House — used to be candid in her views of Israel as an “apartheid regime”: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” On matters of apartheid, one wonders whether Omar would prefer to be an Arab citizen inside “evil” Israel or an Israeli currently living in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.

Sarsour defended Omar with the usual anti-Israel talking points, in her now obsessive fashion. Predictably, her targets were old-style Jewish Democrats.  This criticism of Omar, Sarsour said, “is not only coming from the right-wing but [from] some folks who masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech.” Again, note the anti-Semitic idea that support for the only functioning democracy in the Middle East is proof of lackluster support for democracy and free speech.

The unhinged Hank Johnson (D., Ga.) has derided Trump as a Hitler-like character, and Trump supporters as a doomed cadre of sick losers. He had once wondered whether too many U.S. Marines stationed on the shores of Guam might tip over the island and capsize it, so it was not too surprising when he also voiced the Farrakhan insect theme, this time in connection with apparently insidious Jewish destroyers of the West Bank: “There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself.”

Out on the barricades, some Democrats, feminists, and Muslim activists, such as the co-founders of the “Women’s March,” Tamika Mallory and the now familiar Sarsour, have been staunch supporters of Louis Farrakhan (Mallory, for example, called him “the greatest of all time”). The New York Times recently ran a story of rivalries within the Women’s March, reporting that Mallory and Carmen Perez, a Latina activist, lectured another would-be co-leader, Vanessa Wruble, about her Jewish burdens. Wruble later noted: “What I remember — and what I was taken aback by — was the idea that Jews were specifically involved, and predominantly involved, in the slave trade, and that Jews make a lot of money off of black and brown bodies.”

Progressive icon Alice Walker was recently asked by the New York Times to cite her favorite bedtime reading. She enjoyed And the Truth Will Set You Free, by anti-Semite crackpot David Icke, she said, because the book was “brave enough to ask the questions others fear to ask” and was “a curious person’s dream come true.” One wonders which “questions” needed asking, and what exactly was Walker’s “dream” that had come “true.” When called out on Walker’s preference for Icke (who in the past has relied on the 19th-century Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in part to construct an unhinged conspiracy about ruling “lizard people”), the Times demurred, with a shrug: It did not censor its respondents’ comments, it said, or editorialize about them.

These examples from contemporary popular culture, sports, politics, music, and progressive activism could be easily multiplied. The new, new anti-Semites do not see themselves as giving new life to an ancient pathological hatred; they’re only voicing claims of the victims themselves against their supposed oppressors. The new, new anti-Semites’ venom is contextualized as an “intersectional” defense from the hip, the young, and the woke against a Jewish component of privileged white establishmentarians — which explains why the bigoted are so surprised that anyone would be offended by their slurs.

In our illiterate and historically ignorant era, the new, new hip anti-Semitism becomes a more challenging menace than that posed by prior buffoons in bedsheets or the clownish demagogues of the 1980s such as the once-rotund Al Sharpton in sweatpants. And how weird that a growing trademark of the new path-breaking identity politics is the old stereotypical dislike of Jews and hatred of Israel.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON — NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.

January 16, 2019 | 6 Comments »

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  1. There is a shocking new development that indicates that anti-Semitism in the U.S. is far more pervasive, and far more accepted by Federal, State and Local governments and the general population, than I had ever imagined.
    It involves a Jewish family that was booted off a plane before it took off, after having paid for their ticket and with no allegation that they had said or done anything improper,, because a few passengers and a male steward claimed they “smelled bad.” They were not aeven allowed to take their luggage off the plane when they were evicted. It was sent on without them.
    The story was not covered in the MSM and didn’t even elicit much of a reaction from Jewish organizations. Here is the account from Arutz Sheva:

    Allegations of anti-Semitism as Orthodox Jews booted off flight
    Jewish family escorted off of ‘Nightmare Flight’ and banned from Spirit Airlines for life allegedly called ‘retarded Jews’ by flight crew.

    Spirit Airlines plane
    An Orthodox Jewish family from New York was escorted off of a Spirit Airlines flight this week and banned from the airline for life following a heated dispute, which allegedly included anti-Semitic slurs, over a child safety seat.

    According to a press release from the office of recently retired New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, the incident occurred this Tuesday on an early-morning Spirit Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

    A Jewish couple, identified as Chani and Yisroel Beck from Boro Park, Brooklyn, traveling with their three small children – ages 3, 2, and 1-month – say the trouble began when a flight attendant spotted them with a dual-purpose baby seat and car seat.

    The family says that the gate agent at Newark had told the couple that they would be able to take the dual-purpose seat onto the flight.

    As they buckled their youngest child into the seat, however, the female flight attendant told the couple that the car seat could not be taken on board the flight.

    After attempting to explain that the gate agent had approved the seat for the flight, a heated argument broke out between the family and several flight attendants.

    One male flight attendant tried to shut down the argument, telling the father to “shut up”.

    When the flight attendant order the family to remove the child from the car seat, the couple complied.

    But the ordeal wasn’t over after the family agreed to the attendant’s demand, a witness said, adding that the flight crew by that point appeared to be “just out to get them.”

    “It was painful to see,” a witness told The Algemeiner. “It was a young couple with three little kids. They were just out to get them. It was disgusting.”

    The male flight attendant in particular, the witness said, appeared to take the incident personally, and continued to rant about the family during the flight, calling the father “that retarded Jew”.

    “It was like they were out to get them. It was anti-Semitism. The guy was full of hatred. You could see it.”

    The flight attendant in question intervened again when the father wanted to have one of the children sit on his lap, though the family claims they immediately complied with the attendant’s instructions.

    When the plane landed and reached the gate in Fort Lauderdale, the flight crew barred passengers from disembarking for half an hour, calling airport police to the plane to escort the family off the aircraft for allegedly not wearing seat belts during the flight.

    As they were being removed from the plane, the family was told by the flight crew that they were banned from Spirit Airlines and that they would not be permitted to take their return flight back to Newark.

    The family, who live in the Brooklyn district formerly represented by activist Dov Hikind in the New York State Assembly, contacted the recently retired Hikind to report the incident.

    “This insulting and denigrating anti-Semitic remark is inexcusable,” said former Assemblyman Dov Hikind. “This family was traumatized, and their family vacation ruined by the unprofessional behavior of the airline staff. The comment about ‘retarded Jews’ qualifies the steward for dismissal. Spirit has much explaining to do.”

    In response to the report, Spirit Airlines told The Algemeiner Thursday that it would probe the incident, yet seemingly defended the flight staff’s behavior.

    Our records indicate that this guest ignored flight and ground crew instructions multiple times, beginning with the boarding process and continuing through landing.”

    “While the guests have not contacted us with any allegations of discrimination, we will now launch an investigation and take these matters very seriously. Spirit Airlines does not tolerate any form of discrimination. We are extremely proud of the diversity of our team and strive to provide exceptional service to all of our guests.”

  2. Unfortunately, Israelis living in or visiting the UNited States are major contributors to American anti-Israelism and antisemitism. Read this shocking piece in Arutz Sheva about a fundraising event for an Israeli institution in New York:

    Consul General walks out of New York gala over Israel slandering
    Consul General Dani Dayan leaves annual gala of Bezalel Academy in protest against its president’s anti-Israel remarks.

    Dani Dayan
    Dani Dayan, the Consul General of Israel in New York, on Wednesday night participated in the annual gala of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in New York, in the presence of many dignitaries.

    As part of his participation in the gala, the Consul spoke about the academy and its contribution and congratulated those present. After Dayan’s speech, the President of the Academy, Prof. Adi Schwartz, took the stage. At first he spoke about the academy’s development plans, but then Schwartz suddenly moved to political issues.

    “Freedom of expression in Israel – like in the US – is under attack and Bezalel is at the forefront of the struggle to protect democracy,” he said.

    The Consul General called out to him, “This is not true,” but the President continued his remarks on the same subject. As he went on, the Consul General chose to leave the hall demonstratively.

    After leaving, Dayan said, “I have no patience – and I am using a diplomatic expression – for those who slander the State of Israel abroad in order to find favor and raise money. I was not prepared to give this credence by my presence.”

    Unfortunately, some Jews are the worst and most effective antisemites of all. Most people can’t believe that a Jew, especially an Israeli Jew, would lie about his own people.

  3. @ yamit82:
    Hi, Yamit. You said,

    “The existence of Judaism is a theological threat and challenge to both Christianity and Islam. Therefore by extension, hatred of over half the population of the world is directed against the Jews either directly or by proxy by substituting Israel in place of Jews.”

    I believe you should rethink this. You say that antisemitism has a “theological” basis. Are most antisemites theologians? Hardly. In the US, I dare say that the most virulent antisemites are not theologians of any stripe, but rather atheists. Look at the Ivory Tower professors, the anarchists, the Berkeley mobs. Do they look like theolgians?

    Another point — if there were a theological basis for antisemitism — which I think you can see is directly tied to opposition of Israel — how come so many anti-Israelites, the most vocal and vile of them, are Jews? Are they getting their scripts from the Pope?

    As I say, I think you are wrong; but since none of us ever wants to be wrong, we know that will lead nowhere. I don’t expect you to agree with me — not now, not ever. For what it’s worth, though, I will give my opinion: Antisemites are not angry at the Jews, whom in many cases they don’t even know. They are angry at God, Whom they know all too well. And they can’t fight God, because He’s a spirit; so they fight His people.

    That’s why I say antisemitism is “camouflage”. It’s the highest self-flattery, tor the Jews to think everyone’s concerned about them and the whole world revolves around them; but in fact, it doesn’t.

  4. It is remarkable and truly depressing that so many people cling with such tenacity to this ancient, completely it]rrational hatred in every generation. People just can’t let go of it. No other hatred has endured for so long, nor is there any other example of the endurance of the shopworn stereotypes and cliches, that have been used to justify and reinforce this irrational hatred. People have enormous difficulty letting go of a scapegoat. Scapegoating and bullying seem to give people enormous pleasure. Antisemitism is malicious and irrational that its persistence from one generation to another makes me wonder if the human race deserves to survive. Probably not.

  5. Michael S Said:

    If virulent anti-Israel sentiment is camouflage for Antisemitism, one might consider what Antisemitism is camouflage for.

    The challenge and hatred of the G-d of the Jews…The modern source of Antisemitism can be sourced directly from two sectarian offshoots of Judaism. The existence of Judaism is a theological threat and challenge to both Christianity and Islam. Therefore by extension, hatred of over half the population of the world is directed against the Jews either directly or by proxy by substituting Israel in place of Jews.

    “And when they came into the nations, whither they came, they profaned My Holy Name, in that the nations said concerning them: These are the people of the L-rd and they are driven forth from the land! But I had pity for My Holy Name which the House of Israel profaned among the nations whither they came. Therefore say unto the House of Israel: Thus saith the L-rd, G-d: I do this not for your sake O House of Israel, but for My Holy Name… And I will sanctify My great Name which hath been profaned among the nations which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the nations shall know that I am the L-rd, saith the L-rd, G-d, WHEN I SHALL BE SANCTIFIED THROUGH YOU BEFORE THEIR EYES. For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries and will bring you into your own land.” (Ezekiel 36)

    This scares the crap out of most christians and Muslims. Israel and the return of the Jews prove their theological underpinnings as FALSE!

    Over 2000 years of pogroms, inquisitions and Holocaust make it clear, Judaism says it uneq.uivocally: “It is an eternal law, Esau (the non-Jew) hates Jacob (the Jew)” This is the eternal law – it is immutable. America is no different, nor Australia, nor Russia, nor Latin America, nor Europe, nor South Africa.

    “If a Jew will forget his origin and true identity and consider himself a full-fledged citizen of the country of his exile… if he thinks that Berlin is Jerusalem…then a raging storm will uproot him by his trunk… the tempest will arise and spread it’s roaring waves, and swallow, and destroy and spread forth without pity.” Rabbi Meir Simcha HaCohen, The Ohr Somayach, in Meschech Chochma, p. 191-192

  6. If virulent anti-Israel sentiment is camouflage for Antisemitism, one might consider what Antisemitism is camouflage for.