The spectacular collapse of the UK’s Labour Party in the December 12 elections – the party hasn’t fared so poorly since 1935 – was caused by a complex web of interconnecting factors, including feelings about Brexit, how far left is “too far”, disenchantment in working class areas such as northeastern England, and the party’s anti-Semitism crisis. It’s hard to know how much of a factor anti-Semitism played in Corbyn’s electoral disintegration, given the country’s very small Jewish population and entrenched anti-Semitism on the right. Still, it is likely to have played some role, and American progressives, if they want to retake the White House next year, should try to take that important lesson. Unfortunately, anti-Semitism is more entrenched on the left than many would like to admit.
A mini-fury broke out on Twitter over the past few days after conservative commentator Noah Rothman published a piece in Commentary magazine suggesting that it is worth looking into whether the Sanders campaign has an anti-Semitism problem. The response to Rothman’s piece was far from measured. People on Twitter asked “Who’s cutting the checks?”, accused the author of donating to Klansman David Duke’s campaign (Duke, by the way, has previously accused Rothman of spreading “Talmudic” lies), and even made random accusations of child abuse.
For the most part, what happens on Twitter doesn’t matter. But the response to Rothman’s article is important, because it illustrates that the same tendencies at play in the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour Party are at play in the U.S.
Ad hominem
The ad hominem condemnations of Rothman are analogous to Corbyn supporters’ attempts to pin the whole anti-Semitism row, to use the British term, on right-wing propaganda. They’ve accused even The Guardian, a British liberal newspaper, of conspiring against Corbyn. Rothman is, of course, a conservative, but he’s hardly a liar or a propagandist for Trump: he’s argued that the president should be impeached, condemned hypocrisy in the GOP, and critiqued the GOP’s entanglement with white nationalists on the eve of the 2016 election. What’s more, these kinds of responses simply dodge the questions raised, which everyone should be asking.
“Anti-Zionism isn’t Anti-Semitism”
When defending Labour or many of Sanders’ supporters, the most common refrains are, “Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism” and “you can’t equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.” The most obvious point to make is that, in most cases, anti-Zionists are anti-Semites, and much of the time Israel has nothing to do with the discussion. Remember that Labour supporters used the same argument to defend everything that’s happened in their party, while a report to the European Human Rights Commission detailing Labour’s anti-Semitism featured quotes from anti-Zionists saying things like “The only reason we have prostitutes in the [area] is because of the Jews” or Jews should “be grateful we don’t make them eat bacon for breakfast everyday” or “Shut the fuck up, Jew” or “Hitler was right”.
The second reply, related to the first, is that many who’ve condemned “progressive” anti-Semites in the U.S. and the UK say very little about anti-Zionism or, in fact, criticism of the State of Israel or its policies. Much of the anti-Semitism isn’t actually hidden behind anti-Zionism, or, when it is related, is only tangentially so.
The third reply is that, while normal criticism of Israel is fine, common, and even encouraged, singling Israel out as a uniquely bad actor on the world scene is both anti-Semitic and wrong. States in the very same region are committing horrific war crimes, as in Syria and Yemen. Nothing any Israel has ever done could come close to what is happening there. The fact that Israel has been condemned by the UN’s human rights body more than any other country in the world – combined – is also obviously anti-Semitic, as it is a prime example of singling out the Jewish state as the world’s worst actor – worse the than genocide-loving and democracy-smashing Chinese regime or North Korea.
And anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Aside from a tiny number of anarchists who argue for the abolition of all states and the miniscule grouping of Charedi dynasties (notably Neturei Karta and the Satmars) who oppose Israel’s statehood on religious grounds, anti-Zionists have embraced anti-Semitism. To argue that all other states in the world have a right to exist, but that Israel does not is anti-Semitic. To go further, to say that many other states are perfectly fine having laws extending citizenship to those born abroad based on ancestral membership of the nation (Ireland, Poland, etc., all have similar laws), while it is discrimination when Israel does it, is anti-Semitism.
“Sanders is Jewish and had family who died in the Holocaust”
Many have argued that Rothman and others who have criticized the Sanders campaign on this point are wrong, because Sanders can’t be an anti-Semite, since he is Jewish and had family who died in the Holocaust. This is a strange argument, because virtually no one, certainly not Rothman in his piece, has accused Sanders of anti-Semitism, and it is hard to imagine that anyone thinks Sanders harbors such hatreds. The problem is that, for whatever reason, Sanders has brought on as surrogates and staff people who have made blatantly anti-Semitic comments at best, and who are extreme anti-Semites at worst.
The campaign’s anti-Semites
One of these anti-Semites is the wealthy (in 2017, she was paid about $70,000 by the Women’s March and about $26,000 by another organization alone) Park Slope activist Linda Sarsour, whom Sanders has made a national campaign surrogate. It is not necessary to say much about her, as she has a fairly long and well-known record of anti-Semitic comments, the reason for which she had to leave the Women’s March leadership. Speaking of progressive Zionists at a conference on Nov. 29, Sarsour said, “Ask them this, to explain to you how can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.” After being condemned for her comments, she claimed she was speaking of the recent nation state law, though the video of her speech shows this was clearly not the case.
The idea that Jews see themselves as a superior race is a long-standing anti-Semitic trope, closely related to the ideas that Jews are puppeteers pulling the world’s strings. Beyond that, Sarsour’s implication is that a person cannot be a Zionist and a progressive. Given that Zionism means only supporting the right of the Jewish state to exist, and that polling shows 90 or 95 percent of American Jews support Israel, Sarsour’s was effectively saying you can’t be a Jew and a progressive, because you support a form of racial supremacy. In other words, “You don’t belong here, Jew.”
On Dec. 4, the Sanders campaign had to rid itself of new hire Darius Johnson, who’d been tapped for the position of Deputy Director of Constituency Organizing, because in prior years he’d tweeted anti-Semitic (and homophobic) content, including a message relating to “Jew money.” The campaign’s deputy press secretary, Belén Sisa, said that Jews seem to have a “dual allegiance to the State of Israel.”
Another Sanders ally, Rep. Ilhan Omar has also made blatantly anti-Semitic statements recently. She and her allies have sought to cast any criticism for her statements as “Islamophobia, simply because she is a Muslim woman from Somalia. But this is a smokescreen; she also deserves to be condemned when she speaks hatefully against Jews or any other persecuted group.
Why are anti-Semites so visible in the campaign?
Bernie Sanders is not an anti-Semite. He advocates a different U.S policy towards Israel, but does not seek its destruction or abolition; he supports a two-state solution, as does most of the American Jewish community. On top of that, Sanders has shown over the years that he legitimately believes in a more humane society, and has demonstrated over and over again that he sees the oppression of any group as anathema to the “democratic socialism” that he advocates. It is not necessary to support or embrace his beliefs to see that he is a true believer in them. But his campaign has given a national platform to anti-Semites. Why?
Having worked in campaigns off and on for a couple decades, I know that one person is pivotal: the campaign manager. The best candidates hire a good campaign manager, and then listen to that manager’s orders. Politico Faiz Shakir, who has previously worked for Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, is Sanders’s campaign director. Shakir had already been criticized for anti-Israel bias when he was brought on board. He was the editor of Think Progress when that online outlet, a product of the Center for American Progress, came under fire for bias against Israel. The anti-Israel animosity was so pronounced that the Obama White House announced that it was “troubled” by the tone of the blog. Shakir seems to have a penchant for stumbling into anti-Semitism controversies. Whether or not Shakir is himself an anti-Semite, he is not much on guard against anti-Semitism. And, as the American left is currently configured, not purposely locking the doors on anti-Semites means that they will enter your organization.
My own best guess as to “Why?” is that the Sanders’ campaign is as much a product of the overall modern American left as it is of Sanders himself. Having spent time in this milieu myself, I know that anti-Semitism is much more prevalent than most people would assume; one often only needs to scratch the surface. The Women’s March meltdown, in which Sarsour played a leading role, is a salient example of anti-Semitism in progressive spaces, as was the banning of the Star of David at the DC Dyke March.
Anti-Semitism is a unique form of hatred that fits on the left and right equally well: the idea of the Jew as the rich globalist comports easily enough with the loathed capitalist. The multinational banks that pushed Latin America into a global debt crisis fits snugly into the Jewish banker trope.
Beyond easy parallels, the notion that “Zionism is racism,” an idea manufactured in the Soviet Union to fit foreign policy aims and adopted for several decades by the United Nations, became commonly accepted by progressives, as it is to this day, long after the Soviet Union disintegrated and the UN reversed itself on Zionism. If you don’t want to take my word on Soviet anti-Zionism’s relationship to anti-Semitism, simply check out this article from an early 1980s issue of Australian Left Review, the official journal of the Communist Party of Australia. Even Pravda acknowledged in 1990 that the Party had erred, and that the anti-Zionist campaign had given new life to anti-Semitism: “Hiding under Marxist phraseology,” Pravda stated, the leaders of the campaign “came out with coarse attacks on Jewish culture, on Judaism, and on Jews in general.” Unfortunately, no one in the West appears to have read the editorial; perhaps more leftists need to read later issues of Pravda. Keep in mind that the Soviets spent millions of dollars spreading their anti-Zionist campaign throughout the world.
Now we are left with a left that believes Zionism is racism. To believe that, one must logically believe that Israel, the product of Zionism, is a racist creation. Trace this horrific logic a step further, and supporters of Israel – including about 90 percent of American Jews – become racists (as Sarsour alluded).
For the first time in decades, a major political campaign is openly left-wing. This is a step forward for progressives, but it brings with it all the baggage that had been easily hidden from view by an unwatchful public before. Sanders himself seems to have an early Socialist Party mentality, in that he sees the class struggle as paramount, above all else. According to this logic, fighting racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other social maladies are laudable, but come second to winning the class struggle, i.e. putting the working class into political power. Doing that, these early socialists argued, would automatically lay the conditions that would naturally cause these social ailments to disappear. Of course, none of that is true, as the experience of all socialist societies, from Sweden to the Soviet Union, shows. Still, Sanders seems to have long embraced this principle and is only now slowly moving away from it; the class reductionist approach is the reason Sanders has found himself in trouble with, among others, the African American community.
The need to get rid of anti-Semitism
Some defenders of Sanders’ campaign argue that there is far more anti-Semitism on the Trump side of the political aisle. Whether or not that is true, it doesn’t excuse anti-Semitism anywhere, just as racism and sexism are inexcusable on the left, even if they are more extreme on the right. This is a moral issue of justice; it is incumbent upon Sanders to purge his campaign of anti-Semites. Rothman, the conservative columnist, is right: everyone should bring up the anti-Semitism issue with Sanders. Hopefully, this will move him to get rid of Sarsour and other anti-Semites on his team.
For anyone aiming to oust Trump in the coming election, it should be obvious that anti-Semitism cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Jews have been a vital component of the Democratic Party, and are one of the most solid Democratic-voting demographics. Hundreds of thousands of Jews happen to be clustered in Florida, a swing state. All of Florida’s 29 electoral votes were awarded to Trump in 2016, who won the state by only about 113,000 votes. The most heavily Democratic section of the state is Broward County, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties. This is also an area with a huge concentration of Jewish voters. It’s unlikely that Jews would in majority switch to Trump, but it is not out of the question that a perceived Corbynization of the Democratic Party, or at least the Democratic presidential campaign, could depress enough people into staying home.
Ensuring the maxim turnout against Trump is important, especially given his growing popularity.
Do the right thing
Sanders has a shot at winning the nomination, as he has been polling well. Unfortunately, anti-Semitism is not currently likely a deal-breaker for the Democratic primaries, but it can do real harm in the national election. Besides that, it is a major moral stain on any campaign that allows it, and, if not immediately, a dangerous threat to American Jews and to America itself in the long term. It’s up to Sanders to get rid of the the stain on his campaign, and it’s up to all people of good will to push him to do so.
Image: Anti-Zionist display at a 1972 Soviet parade. Photo by Vladimir Sychev, assumed to be public domain.