The Socialism of Fools

The Left and Anti-Semitism.

I thought about titling this article Anti-Semitism for Idiots, since it is as the late Christopher Hitchens said “an unfailing sign of a sick and disordered mind”. But also because we seem to be losing sight of what anti-Jewish prejudice is, how it manifests itself, and, crucially, among whom. We are conditioned to imagine it solely as a prejudice of the right, which is understandable given that its most notorious and dramatic case was the Nazi Holocaust, and although Stalin was allegedly set to unleash his own mass-terror on the Soviet Union’s Jewish population before he died, for many, ‘anti-Semitism on the left' is a contradiction in terms.

But anti-Semitism is a disease, and like a disease, it has various strains and mutations. There is Catholic ant-Semitism, fascist anti-Semitism, Islamist anti-Semitism, and there is left-wing anti-Semitism.

It is upsetting to admit this. The left, from liberals to communists, has a proud record of taking the side of the oppressed in questions of racism, from the abolition of slavery to the Battle of Cable Street to the overthrow of Apartheid. To admit to the existence of any form of bigotry among our fellow allies and comrades is not only distressing, but also hard to even process. But just because it does not sit comfortably with our world view does not mean that it isn’t true. And the fact that it makes us uncomfortable means we have to be ruthlessly honest about it.

So we must ask the difficult question: how does a person who ascribes to left-wing values end up holding anti-Semitic views?

In her magisterial work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt charted the evolution of anti-Semitic prejudice among the socialist and social-democratic parties of Europe in the 19th Century. According to her thesis, Jews were resented as emblematic of the ruling class, though not as capitalists per se, since they were often involved in money lending, rather than owning capital and the purchasing of labour. This was believed by many to put them in positions of great influence among the royal houses and parliaments of Europe. When twinned with the ancient theory of the ‘stateless Jew’, with no blood and soil connection to the land - the antithesis of the 19th Century Romantic nationalist movement - a parasitic, shadowy character emerged who was loyal only to himself and money, but who also held sway over the powerful. This image of Jewish people was so popular that the most famous socialist in history devoted an entire essay to it.

Marx (who was Jewish himself) wrote some deeply unsavoury things about Jews, but his writings can also help to explain the emergence of a difference between the right and left forms of anti-Semitism. Whereas the right’s anti-Semitism is traditionally grounded in reactionary Christianity, blood and race, the left’s is often centred on questions of class, power and money.

In his essay On the Jewish Question, Marx wrote;

“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money?… The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations.”

For those of us who admire Marx and his work (myself included) this is problematic to say the very least. However, for the purpose of this essay, his views are useful as emblematic of the modern leftist view of ‘the Jew’ as a creature of capital and power, whose corrupting influence on the Western World must be transcended to achieve human emancipation.

And turning to the crisis of anti-Semitism in our own time, one of the most infamous examples in Labour was in this same vein.

A mural in London by a street artist was praised by some for its graphic depiction of the working classes of the world being oppressed by financiers – some of whom just happened to be caricatures of Jews so horrendous they would not have been out of place in Der Sturmer. One of those who praised it was the then Labour backbench MP Jeremy Corbyn, who told the artist that he should take it as a compliment that the mural was to be painted over. This was in 2012, after someone had sent the image to him on Facebook. In March 2018, when the comments resurfaced, Corbyn was forced into an absurd apology in which he said that he “did not look more closely at the image”, and that only now did he see that the contents were “deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic”.

The fact that this all played out on the Internet also helps explain the current crisis. Facebook is inundated with groups and pages that invite racists, paranoids and conspiracy theorists from across the world to participate in a massive echo chamber of claims about the Rothschilds, George Soros and ‘the Zionists'. YouTube is awash with videos that take suggestible people down a rabbit hole of conspiracy and hate, promoting the idea of a powerful and evil elite who control states and international finance. And, as with almost every modern conspiracy theory, if you follow the thread for long enough, they all lead to the powerful Jews at the top.

Anyone who thinks that people on the left are immune to such nonsense should take some time to see how much of it makes its way on to pro-Corbyn/Labour pages, as highlighted in some excellent newspaper reporting. On many unofficial pro-Corbyn pages and groups, accusations of anti-Semitism are often dismissed as a Jewish and Israeli plot to smear the Labour leader. Remember that when it comes to anti-Jewish racism, it is always more than vulgar accusations about behaviour or sexual appetite or smell etc; the racism of anti-Semitism is always laced with conspiracy. And nowhere is this conspiratorial anti-Jewish bigotry distilled in a more potent form than in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ever since Rosa Luxemburg and her writings on the necessity of imperialism for the survival of capitalism, anti-imperialism has been one of the pillars of the left. And since the 1960s, for many on the left the best way to display your socialist bona fides has been your opposition to Israel.

Though a tiny country geographically, Israel possesses the region's most powerful military and has won numerous conflicts with its Arabic neighbours. It is also, for many on the more reactionary left, the most potent symbol of colonial oppression and negation of human rights in our time. To be clear: I am personally opposed to the blockade of Gaza and the continuing colonisation of the West Bank. But for many, this is not enough. For a hard core of the left, it is the very existence of Israel that seems to be the problem. They see this country as an outpost of colonialism, a satellite of the Western powers. How else, they would ask, does Israel get away with its continuing policies of occupation, discrimination and aggression?

Could it be that Western countries are somehow in thrall to the Israeli government and its apologists?

This is what brings us full circle to the origins of anti-Semitism on the left and the blind spot that has evolved over the years.

Think about it: Jews are seen as powerful. They are influential. They are rich. And now they have their own country with a successful economy, an elite military, and nuclear weapons. Given this, and since Jewish people in Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Argentina and the US are viewed as integrated and prosperous, how can criticising them be racist? Racism is punching down against the oppressed, and so for many on the left, attacking Jews and Israel (for many of them, the same thing) is punching up.

In Israel, many see an intersection of an oppressive, militarised, neo-European colonial power, aided by a powerful and shadowy elite who bend the ear of politicians for favourable treatment and a free pass for their crimes. It would be exhausting and redundant to quote the abuse directed against Jewish MPs like Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger, but it is worth pointing out that one thread that was common through all of it was the accusation that the women were agents of Israel and/or their ‘Zionist’ masters. Again, as in the 19th Century, we see the image of the Jew as loyal to outside forces and not their own country. However in our own time, this image has been fused with the mass-identification of Jews with the policies of Israel, a position as absurd as the conflation of Muslims with the politics of ISIS. It is no wonder that after either Islamist attacks, or Israeli action in Gaza, there are spikes in attacks on people who are identifiably Muslim or Jewish.

We have seen how the left became infected with anti-Jewish prejudice in the modern era due to identification of Jewish people with money and power, and this was intensified with the establishment of the State of Israel after World War II and the apparent fusing of state power with financial power.

I have not addressed the current crisis of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and its leadership, for the simple reason that this was not my goal. Nor have I addressed the recent, transparently self-serving, crude attempt by the right to weaponise claims of anti-Jewish prejudice for their own agenda.

What I wanted to do is explain where anti-Semitism on the left comes from, and in doing so, explode the lie told by so many today that anti-Semitism on the left does not even exist. The title of this essay is testimony to how far back this argument goes, having originated in the second half of the 19th Century when the leader of the German social-democratic movement, August Bebel, denounced anti-Semitism as “the socialism of fools”. The fact that anyone felt the need to come up with such a phrase is testimony to the fact that yes, even those on the left, those often on the right side of history, are not immune to this most ancient of prejudices.

As noted recently by Professor John Gray in an essay on liberalism and conspiarcy in The New Statesman, conspiracy theories take hold in movements that are beset by a dangerous mix of self-righteousness and self-pity. If you are sure that your movement, ideology or party is correct, then any failure on your part must be due to external forces. Self-doubt, self-criticism, or irony are anathema because they would concede that you may be wrong. And if you believe that the reason your radical left-wing programme of taxes and action against the financial elite is being sabotaged, then someone must be sabotaging you. And that sabotage can only be successful if directed by a large conspiracy.

And as is so often the case, any claims of conspiracy among the financial elite in the name of self-preservation invariably return to that same figure that Hannah Arendt identified in the early 1950s, just a few years after a paranoid fear and hatred of the Jewish people had resulted in the worst crime against humanity in modern history.

I do not believe that we are on the cusp of another Shoah. I only know that when Jewish people feel vulnerable and scared, it is an ominous warning sign for us all.