by Aaron Astor
I’m going to be charitable here and assume that a lot of people genuinely don’t understand how anti-Semitism operates. So here’s the deal. Anti-Semitism can take on religious or ethno-racial forms. The term anti-“Semitic” is a product of the racialization of anti-Jewish thought in the 19th century. That was an age when scientific racism mixed with new varieties of nationalism to give vitality to various nationalist movements.
One thing the more modern anti-Semitic version had in common with older religious anti-Jewish currents was a belief that Jews are dangerously stateless, culturally alien and obsessed with global financial domination. Anti-Jewish/Semitic theories could be deployed by various political/clerical elites to pit the peasants or working classes against Jewish “foreign exploiters” and “interlopers.” Jews couldn’t be trusted because they were “cosmopolitan”, and not wedded to the values of the nation in which they resided. While modern Zionism was a way to construct a Jewish form of nationalism in the face of this rising anti-Semitic current, its ultimate success did little to stem the tide of persistent anti-Semitism. Shock after the Holocaust lessened some of the most egregious forms of anti-Semitism in the West, but the theories of anti-Semites continued to percolate on the margins of Western discourse. They still do.
It comes as no surprise that recent iterations of “nationalism” have brought forth a resurgence of anti-Semitism. But we should be aware of how it manifests itself today. In the past, anti-Semites fixated on a handful of wealthy Jewish financiers like the Rothschilds. Today, it is George Soros. In the past, the fraudulent pamphlet called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion outlined a supposed “global” conspiracy, which Henry Ford dubbed the work of the “International Jew.” Today the term “globalist”, often attached to various Jewish media or cultural figures, does the same work. In the past the Jews were accused of “sucking the blood” out of nations by undermining political sovereignty and cultural/religious tradition. Today, Jewish organizations like HIAS – the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that welcomed Russian Jews into America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – are attacked by anti-Semites for welcoming refugees and immigrants. The Pittsburgh terrorist’s last social media posting blasted HIAS for its support of the immigrant caravan and other refugees.
By all means, immigration and refugee policy should be openly discussed and debated. George Soros is a publicly engaged political figure and his efforts should be debated openly and honestly. And matters of political sovereignty, cultural tradition and capitalism’s global reach should be subject to serious public debate.
But if you hear people talking up the immigrant caravan as “Soros-funded,” or the pernicious effect of “globalism” – especially in its more ethno-cultural variety – you are witnessing modern anti-Semitism. It does not matter if one supports the state of Israel, or has prominent Jewish friends on his or her political side. Anti-Semitism is about fear of “globalism”, “cosmopolitanism,” and cultural or demographic mixing.
It is October 2018 and yesterday in Pittsburgh the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history took place. Not even during the Holocaust or the waves of anti-Semitic rantings of Father Coughllin did this happen in America. We can no longer pretend that the cancer of anti-Semitism has disappeared. It is alive and it must be confronted and defeated.