This book
was written by a Jewish communist named Steve Cohen in 1984, but I only learned
of it recently. It’s a look at the history of anti-Semitism on the Left, especially
the English Left, and why there’s been so much resistance to fully
acknowledging and addressing it.
He sees this largely as having to do with a failure to
understand the unique characteristics of modern anti-Semitism as a form of racism,
which is not merely prejudice but a totalizing ideological world-view built
around a conspiracy theory.
I must admit that before reading this I had no idea of how
bad it has gotten in some cases. Not only major English socialist and labor
organizations, but some of the great figures such as Marx and Lenin, have
apparently been affected – although in Cohen’s view Trotsky was a notable
exception.
Perhaps I’ve had less occasion to experience such things
since my Jewish ancestry is only on one side and so is less noticeable, but I
wonder if perhaps there’s been less of this here in the States than in Britain.
I can only think of a few occasions on which I’ve noticed anti-Semitism at Left
events, and it was coming from peripheral people, not leaders or organizers.
For instance, during the Q & A after a 2004 screening of the film Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land,
someone asked a question about the influence of “Jewish lobbies,” and one of
the co-chairs, at the time a comrade of mine in the socialist group Solidarity,
interjected to point out that the problem isn’t “Jewish lobbies” but the Israel
lobby (which by the way consists largely of evangelical Christians). In a
couple other instances, I’ve intervened myself in response to problematic
statements.
Cohen powerfully argues the importance of recognizing and
consistently engaging with this problem, first of all simply as a matter of
principle for socialists as humanists and working-class internationalists, but
also because the failure to do so both discourages many Jewish people from
identifying with socialism and cedes propaganda ground to Zionism. Before I
read this book I was already pondering the failure to have public events
responding specifically to recent incidents of anti-Semitism in Philadelphia,
and after reading it I feel that I should do so myself if I hear about any
more, even if it’s just me holding a vigil, simply to remind people how it’s
done.
Thanks to my friend Nancy Lebovitz for bringing this book to
my attention. Thanks also to my friends in Platypus Philadelphia for telling me
about Moishe Postone’s essay, “Anti-Semitism and National Socialism,”
which offers a persuasive analysis of the origins and unique characteristics of
anti-Semitism in terms of Marxian concepts, and may help explain why the Left
hasn’t done a better job of combating it.
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