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Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesnt Learn
Mitchell Cohen, Dissent MagazineA DETERMINED offensive is underway. Its target is in the Middle East, and it is an old target: the legitimacy of Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas are not the protagonists, the contested terrains are not the Galilee and southern Lebanon or southern Israel and Gaza. The means are not military. The offensive comes from within parts of the liberal and left intelligentsia in the United States and Europe. It has nothing to do with this or that negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, and it has nothing to do with any particular Israeli policy. . . . It is shaped largely by political attitudes and arguments that recall the worst of the twentieth-century left. . . . There is a left that learns and there is a left that doesnt learn. . . . You know who I mean by the left that never learns: those folks who twist and turn until they can explain or understand almost anything in order to keep their own presuppositionsor intellectual needsintact. Once some of them were actual Leninist; now they more regularly share some of Leninisms worst mental featuresoften in postmodern, postcolonial, or even militantly liberal guise. Sometimes they move about on the political spectrum, denouncing their former selves (while patting their moral backs). You can usually recognize them without too much difficulty: same voice, that of a prosecuting commissar, even if their tune sounds different. . . . Their explanations, their understandings, often rewrite history or re-imagine what is in front of their eyes to suit their own starting point. Since their thinking usually moves along a mental closed circuit, it is also the end point. Sometimes it is an idea, sometimes a belief system (which they refuse to recognize in themselves), sometimes really a prejudice, and sometimes just ambition. Goblins were often part of the story for the older left that never learned, and so too is the case today. If things dont work out as you know they must, some nefarious force must lurk. After all, the problem couldnt possibly be your way of thinking, or your inability to see the world afresh, or that you got something very wrong in the past. No, it is much easier to announce that you, unlike anyone who could disagree with you, engage in critical thinking. And if your critical thinking is criticized in any way, denounce your foe immediately for McCarthyism. Pretend that your denunciation is an argument about the original subject of dispute. Thats easier than answering any of the criticism. . . . HISTORY MAY not progress but sometimes it regurgitates. Over the last decade, a lot of the old junk has come back. The space for it opened for many reasons. They range from the sad failures of the social-democratic imagination in the era of globalization to the postmodern and postcolonial influence in universities to George W. Bushs ascendancy with its many, many miserable consequences (not only in Iraq). The left that never learns often became the superego of the twentieth centurys left. Its attempt to play that same role in the twenty-first century needs to be frustrated. Nothing exemplifies the return of old junk more than the new anti-Semitism and the bad faith that often finds expression in the statement: I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic. The fixation on Israel/Palestine within parts of the left, often to the exclusion of all other suffering on the globe, ought to leave any balanced observer wondering: What is going on here? This fixation needs demystification. . . . His conclusion, that "anti-Zionism" is just a new brand name for old-fashioned Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion-with-a-cherry-on-top anti-Semitism, is nothing new to us over here on the intellectual right. What's interesting is that the author is a self-described socialist, and he's calling his fellow leftists out, and probably making a bunch of enemies in the process. Good on him! Posted by: Mike 2007-12-12 |
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