Anti-Semitism and First World Problems

I'm going to leave discussion of what's going on at Yale to those with personal connections to that university/the relevant organizations, and move on to one of the questions that came up in the discussion with somewhat broader significance. At Slate, historian David Greenberg asks,

"How did a concern with anti-Semitism, whether scholarly or political, come to be seen as the province of the right?"

Greenberg's points are sound, and I certainly agree with his assessment of this particular round of liberals being wary to discuss contemporary anti-Semitism. But he doesn't, I think, get to the root of the question, one that has just about zilch to do with Israel, let alone Walt-Mearsheimer. We're about to go back a century before the founding of that country, so bear with me:

Long ago, a half-century before what we generally think of as the beginning of anti-Semitism (that fin-de-siècle moment, spanning from the coining of the term to the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus), there were a whole lot of people all worked-up about The Jews. Writing anti-Jewish tirades and so forth. Angry about the Rothschilds, the railroads, and modernity, these sorts have been labeled retroactively "economic anti-Semites." Not yet so interested in racial theorizing, this set objected to Jews not on the basis of religion, but because they saw Jews as too rich and powerful. Economic anti-Semitism fit in with populism, and was housed - you guessed it - on the left. Indeed, it was only during the Dreyfus Affair that anti-Semitism stopped being a socially acceptable element of socialism in France. Prior to that, hating Jews was perfectly compatible with fighting for social justice.

While everything was warm and fuzzy for a little bit, in France, at least, after Dreyfus was freed, but soon enough, Europeans remembered that Jews make a super convenient shorthand for that which populists like to mobilize against. Then there was the Holocaust, which I'm not getting into here, because I'm assuming my readers a) have heard of it, and b) know that economic resentment of Jews entered into it, even though many Jews, particularly in Eastern Europe, were plenty poor, as my atavistic ability to improvise ways to cook a small quantity of potatoes in a way that makes them seem like they're a lot of potatoes attests.

Fast forward to today. We're now living in an age of dividing the marginalized from the privileged, one in which the former get Studies programs, the latter not. (Of course, I study French Studies, so forget what I just said.) While "marginalized" as defined in America these days is not entirely about class, the fact that Jews are understood to be a group of well-off white people means Jewish-specific concerns are understood as by definition First World Problems. The Jewish woman who feels compelled to straighten her hair is simply a white woman with frizz, and ought not to claim hers as a hair-politics concern. The Jewish man rendered uncomfortable by Sarah Palin's praise of Real America should obviously STFU, already, because he's some privileged dude living in city, and every last sitcom since forever is based on his lifestyle. It's not that everyone living today, like me, is neck-deep in 1840s France. It's that there's a certain continuity in how Jews are understood. I mean, even in the 1840s, one French commentator explained that while the Jews were once oppressed, they were now actually all-powerful, but big whiners who complained about being persecuted. Plus ça change comes to mind.

Let me be clear: it's not that it's fundamentally in keeping with being on the left to be anti-Semitic. And I haven't begun to get into the ways in which anti-Semitism fits neatly with many strands of conservatism past and present. But the reason liberals today aren't shouting from the rooftops about anti-Semitism is the same as why they weren't long ago: Jews aren't, or more accurately aren't viewed as, marginalized. Being on the left has always been about supporting the downtrodden, and since anti-Semitism is and always was about accusing Jews of being insufficiently downtrodden, there are only these rare moments when the obvious left-wing position is to get worked up about anti-Semitism - moments when anti-Semitism's on-the-ground influence is so great (think the Dreyfus Affair, the Holocaust) that thinking of Jews as victims becomes uncontroversial.

Where does Israel fit into this? The idea that Zionism was and continues to be the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, a flawed movement but a legitimate liberation movement akin to the postcolonial ones all the same, this gets lost because Israel is a wealthy enough country with a white-ish population. The fact that Israel was founded by those Europe had rejected on account of their "Oriental" "race" and told to "go back to Palestine" gets lost and replaced by the idea that Israel's a country dominated by a bunch of white Europeans - with all the global privilege that entails - who have no place in the Middle East. But the issue isn't really Israel, or even the fact that the Palestinians are indisputably suffering, somewhat more disputably the non-white party in the conflict (disputably because, Ohad Knoller aside, Jewish Israeli's aren't all that white) - it's about how Jews are perceived at home. I suspect that many in America picture Israel as basically a wealthy American suburb, a great big West End Avenue by the sea.

Anyway. Ideally those on the left would see that anti-Semitism is an odd kind of bigotry that surfaces the most when its victims seem to be doing the best, i.e. when they seem the least underdog-ish. And there's no reason understanding this wouldn't be compatible with more straightforward social-justice advocacy, including for the Palestinians. Occasionally some on the left do see this, even in good times, but these tend to be Jews, and, as Greenberg notes, only a handful of Jewish liberals, at that.