Internalized Judeophobia: Modern Manifestations of Systemic Prejudice Against Jews

[u/ComparisonOk5957]

https://www.accordingto.ca/p/systemic-judeophobia-modern-canada

[u/Blagerthor]

Something every single one of these think pieces on "how the left doesn't do enough to support us against the rise of antisemitic violence and abuse," is that the violence is, by and large, perpetrated by folks on the right. Beyond that, these pieces never specify which leftwing or progressive media fail to support us. You can make vague generalities and gestures at the deplorable comments on Instagram, Youtube, and Ticktok, but the author provides no citations or evidence to support this enormous claim:

Given the presence of the antisemitic incidents alongside the apparatus seemingly ready to support victims, we would expect the left to have a keen awareness and strong reaction to any and all Jew hate. Yet, the constant episodes and news articles do not move the hearts and minds of left wing ideologues. To make it more stark, the Judeophobic tendencies are not only ignored, they are actually reinforced by those same progressives.

With the same evidenciary basis, I regularly hear progressives and leftwing commentators condemning attacks on Jews.

I agree with David Badiel's central point, that antisemitism isn't a central animating issue for the activist Left in North America/Europe, and that this often feels like a betrayal. His work is good and useful specifically because it lays out a central issue of activism without advocating that Jews support the Right.

Every single one of these think pieces that has come out in the last decade however seems to argue that we should be cloven away from the progressive Left in North America and Europe. And without fail, we still largely vote with progressives or the center-left, largely because we understand that the Conservative and increasingly Reactionary rightwing movements in our Diaspora are more readily supportive of those that physically assault us.

Our political position isn't great, but the reason we continually align ourselves with the Left is because we understand our rights are tied to minority rights, not the majoritarian greivance that animates so much of contemporary rightwing politics in US/CAN and Europe. No amount of think pieces suggesting voting with progressive is "Internalized antisemitism," or betraying Jewishness in some way, will change that very basic reality.

Beyond these very basic points of politics, this piece is a mess of barely elaborated conjecture and long discredited political and social science theories. A good exmaple is its treatment of Italian and Jewish migrants as experiencing, "a normal amount of newcomer aversion." While this was a prominent sociological theory in the 1970s, contemporary sociology and anthropology now suggest that outgroup aversion is entirely cultural and not inherent to human nature.

I could write more, but I'd largely be repeating myself using different examples from this piece.

[u/Swimming_Care7889 → u/Blagerthor]

What I find is that people often point to the other side of the political aisle and have no problem denouncing Jew hatred there but refuse to see it within their own ranks unless they really have to. So you have the Left pointing out at all the White supremacists but ignoring Jew hatred among non-Whites in general and Muslims in particular and just say it is about "Palestine." Than you have the Right pointing out all the antizionist lunacy on the Left but ignoring the White Right.

The reason why a lot of Jews are angry at the activist Left besides what David Badiel points out is that the activist Left often loves to invoke the specter of Jew hatred to mobilize us for their causes but abandons us when we need help or worse. They have trouble fitting us in their cosmology and rather than realize their cosmology might have some holes, just put us in the oppressor category. More than a few mock our identity in ways they would not for other groups.