Is woke antisemitism becoming mainstream?
“Woke antisemitism” is often viewed as a by-product of critical race theory (CRT), which has been around since the 1970s and argues against systemic racism.
Increasingly Jewish people have Ibeen excluded from progressive spaces for expressing support for Israel, due to what is becoming described as “woke antisem-itism”.
It has seen Jewish students feel unwelcome on campus, it has led to Jewish groups being uninvited to gay pride marches for “pink washing”, it has even resulted in Jewish students being unwanted at a sexual assault survivor group at a US campus.
This type of antisemitism mistakenly brandishes Jews as “white and privileged”, having “control” of media and government. It blames the “one per cent” for having all the wealth”, and the “one per cent” is often hinted to be largely Jewish. It also claims that “Zionism is racism”, reviving Soviet propaganda and making it become mainstream.
“Woke antisemitism” is often viewed as a by-product of critical race theory (CRT), which has been around since the 1970s and argues against systemic racism. CRT is considered to be a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil rights scholars who examine the intersection of race, society and law, and challenge liberal approaches to racial justice, for example rejecting “colourblindness” as an ideal. CRT emphasises “intersectionality” – the way different forms of inequality and identity are impacted by interconnections of race, class, gender and disability. Its influence has been pronounced during the Black Lives Matter protests. It also has modern-day champions, including Ibram X Kendi in his bestseller How to be an Anti- racist. Kendi’s work is highly influential in discussions on racism. Kendi argues that any racial gap is racist by definition, any policy that maintains a gap is racist, and any explanation of its existence is also racist. CRT has arguably become the zeitgeist in educated circles.
As a result of CRT’s influence, the definition of racism has literally changed. This change was signified in 2020, when popular American dictionary Merriam-Webster updated its definition of “racism” after Kennedy Mitchum complained to the company that the definition did not include systemic racism. Mitchum reportedly wrote to Merriam-Webster that its definitions of racism, which included “racial prejudice or discrimination” and also “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”, did not include systemic oppression.
While CRT can be helpful in countering racism more broadly, the way in which some proponents have applied it to Israel and Jewish people is troubling. For example, it has been appropriated to the Israeli-Palestinian situation by viewing the conflict through the prism of a racial power dynamic, removing nuance, and instead focusing on who has the power and who is the victim. As a result, the crimes of Palestinian terrorism are often minimised and excused, while Israel’s security protocols are seen as tools of oppression. Consequently, it is viewed as a racial conflict between the oppressor versus the oppressed, white people versus brown people, or colonist versus indigenous. Yet none of these notions accurately apply to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, Israelis and Palestinians are not each a race – rather it is an ethnic conflict over land, Israelis and Palestinians include people of different skin colours, and many Israelis and Palestinians have ancestral indigenous ties to the land.
Moreover, as a result of CRT’s focus on intersectionality, what is happening in practice is that many progressives are claiming that no other cause – feminist, environmental or queer – can be cham- pioned without also expressing allegiance to the Palestinian cause. And at the same time they ignore Hamas’ criminalisation of homosexuality and oppression of women.
It is also impacting what children are taught at schools. In the US, a group of Jewish parents and teachers reportedly filed a federal lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District this year, alleging the school curricula included materials that misrepresent Jews as “colonialist” and Israel as a “settler-state” founded on “genocide”.
CRT can be useful in addressing systemic racism, but it doesn’t always help in defining antisemitism and understanding Israel. Zionism emerged in the interest of creating a safe haven for Jews in their ancestral land amid rampant antisemitism, to escape racist policies that led to the Holocaust, not to promote a racial hierarchy. That is why Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that Israel “will maintain complete social and political equality for all its citizens, without distinction on the grounds of religion, race or sex”. That is also why Israel should do everything it can to address prejudice against its minorities and improve their livelihoods, as well as resolve its conflict with the Palestinians to ensure Israel’s democratic future.
However, if racism now means not only prejudiced behaviour or racist policies but also systemic issues – one can see how Israel as a nation-state for the Jewish people, is going to come under easy attack from anti-racist cheer squads for promoting “Jewish privilege”, despite the double standard applied to Muslim and Christian countries which is met with silence. This line of thinking now permeates many on the left, our universities and student bodies. However, would progressives object if persecuted Hazaras, Yazidis, or Rohingya sought self-determination to establish a safe haven?
The reality is that Israel and the Jewish people are too complicated to fit neatly into CRT, and many proponents of CRT appear to have little room for complexity.
Nevertheless, if we are to effectively counter “woke antisemitism” we need to understand its context in order to undo the damage which has made it increasingly mainstream.
Sharyn Kolieb is deputy editor of The AJN.
comments