I've been saying for a while now that Trump won the election because he told people their problems were the fault of immigrants, and Clinton told them their problems didn't exist. I want to be absolutely clear about this: Sayoc is an abusive piece of **** and he doesn't deserve anyone's sympathy. But there are a lot of people who lost their homes like Sayoc did and didn't abuse their partners or send any bombs to anyone, and even more people who've suffered in less spectacular ways under liberal capitalism, and we shouldn't be surprised that they chose the candidate who gave them a scapegoat over the candidate who told them there was nothing wrong.

I hope I can help with this: American leftists are critical of Israel because it was founded as a settler state, displacing the people who already lived in the region and eventually herding them into open-air prisons, and because (relatedly) the ruling Likud government is an apartheid government. Criticism of Likud is a staple of anti-racist left-wing politics in America and some of the loudest critics are Jewish.

If you're looking for Americans who hate Jews, might I suggest that you look into Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon? Or today's Pittsburgh shooter, a Unite the Right marcher?



I am also willing to bet that you'll forget. It's been really embarrassing for you so far.

“Leftists are the real antisemites”
“Socialism is a Jewish conspiracy!”
“Leftists are a bunch of cowards who are afraid of guns”
“The left wing does all of the violence”

Boy are we busy. It’s a wonder we found the time to invent global warming.

Jon, do you ever wonder if the guy trying to blame the left for an attack carried out by a fascist might just be following the Reichstag playbook?

I usually try not to anthropomorphize animals.

It's pretty weird to me that you go to great lengths to convey you're a neutral, reasonable person ("I'm so easy to get along with", "I don't even watch the news anymore", ...) while really you're the quintessential partisan. At least own it.

It's weird. He'll probably come back and say he was just trolling us, but AFAIK these are his actual beliefs. It's like he's a troll who believes his own trolling. Maybe that's what happens to your brain after watching two decades of Fox News.

yea I'm pretty sure Sartre had something to say about that.

I'd like to go ahead and supply the reference on that for anyone unfamiliar, because it's become all too relevant lately. The money paragraph:

Or see Louis Farrakhan, who just recently called Jews termites and has consistently said made anti-Semitic remarks as of late. There’s no shortage of anti-semitism on the left.

Anti-Zionism isn’t an inherently anti-Semitic position, but it certainly can be anti-Semitic. And anti-semitism on the left can be even more insidious on the left, because many on the left who are anti-Semitic believe that they are combating racism at the precise moment when they’re being racist. Anti-semitism is an irrational prejudice, and there’s plenty of that to be found on the left.

In general, just as right-leaning anti-semitism casts Jews as the globalists/internationalists par excellence, left-leaning anti-semitism in the early 21st century casts Jews as the parochial nationalists par excellence, and, for example, blames Jews living in the diaspora for what Israel does.

Can we really call the Nation of Islam left wing?

Racial supremacy is only right wing when it's white supremacy. duh.

You can read Benny Morris on the origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis in ‘47-‘49. It’s a little more complicated than that (so too with your characterization of Likud). Many Palestinians were expelled, but many fled of their own volition, for a variety of reasons, including believing that the haganah would be crushed by the invading Arab armies and that they would be able to return to their homes soon. Some went to the West Bank or Gaza (where many live in refugee camps, despite living in territories controlled by the PA), others remained in what became Israel, and others still went to other neighboring Arab states.

Yes.

I highly disagree, given they advocate racial supremacy and harbor religiously conservative views. In what ways are they left wing, in your view?

Fundamentally, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are pretty socially conservative, but I think if you're a liberal or a leftist you can't simply ignore that he's at least tolerated (I'm not certain that he's welcomed with open arms anywhere lately) by some liberal and left activists. I think there are a lot of people who still see him as a civil rights icon, and that makes it difficult for a liberal party—especially one as spineless as the Democrats—to kick his ass to the curb.

Any anti-Semitism is a surplus of anti-Semitism, of course, and so Eversor's right that there is unfortunately "no shortage" of anti-Semitism on the left. To put my cards on the table: I am certainly anti-Zionist. I believe that Palestinians and other ethnic minorities deserve to be fully equal citizens in a pluralist, democratic Israeli state, and the country's present Zionist government clearly does not share that view. Obviously I wouldn't blame members of the Jewish diaspora, or even all Israeli Jews, many of whom are leftists or left-leaning and care deeply about the abuse of the Palestinian people, for this state of affairs. Unfortunately, plenty of opportunists have seized on the recent mass-murder to push the narrative that opposition to the right-wing Israeli government is inherently anti-Semitic, and so really, both sides are to blame. (To be perfectly clear, Eversor's not doing this; he's correctly and fairly identified an issue that the left is still struggling with.) This is what's behind, for example, the persistent anti-Semitism accusations against Corbyn in Britain, and a bit further back in history, against Obama here in the U.S. (though of course the meeting he took with Farrakhan didn't help).

Left-wing movements don't need to be secular (or have progressive theologies) to be recognized or to identify as left-wing.

They receive support and give support to other left-wing or left-leaning organizations and causes, including the Democratic party.

I guess if I were going to characterize Farrakhan's importance on the 2018 political scene briefly: Liberals see him as electoral plutonium, and leftists aren't courting hoteps.

I think what Michael said is a good response:



Thing is, I don't see the Nation of Islam itself as left-wing. They seem like a pretty standard far-right group, in many ways the alt-right but with black identity replacing white identity. What's the issue is how they stand in relation to the left. Since U.S. electoral politics funnels people into two categories, and given the demographics at hand, I would view the relationship between Democrats and the Nation of Islam as forced and uneasy. Black people largely only vote Democrat, even the ones who are basically right-wing in how they perceive things. The issue is weird because racial politics are weird.

Corbyn's case is a tough one (Obama's case isn't. There isn't really any substantive argument to be made that he's anti-semitic). He's certainly sometimes maligned for things that are unfairly misconstrued as anti-semitic: there are many videos of Corbyn flying around the internet that seem to be dog whistling anti-semitism, but when they're put in context it's pretty clear that they're not quite as anti-semitic as they initially seemed. But then there are things that he has done that are worse (like attending a ceremony for the death of the terrorists of the Munich massacre). He also seems to have been tolerant of many people in his own party who are unambiguously antisemitic.

Except many on the left give Farrakhan enthusiastic support because his goals align with theirs. That's the problem: despite his anti-semitism and bigotry, Farrakhan has been endorsed by mainstream left-leaning leaders and the Democratic party. At Aretha Franklin's funeral, for instance, he spoke, and sat next to Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton.

In practice, probably the only thing separating various strains of traditionalist black nationalism from the alt-right is that the (and I'm stealing here from people cleverer and less white than me) ankh-right believes in civil rights for black men and the alt-right doesn't believe in civil rights for any black people. Both the Nation of Islam and the more recent hotepism are hostile to women and even more so to anyone who's LGBT.

So much the worse that the Democratic Party can't completely divorce themselves from these toxic ideas.

From what I've read about the ceremony, I think his explanation—that he understood he was attending a ceremony for the victims of an airstrike on the PLO headquarters—holds water. I have to admit I'm not familiar with the accusations against other Labour MPs.

I guess that depends on whether you consider endorsing Donald Trump to be a service for the right-wing or for the left.

It doesn’t depend on that.

I could find no evidence of enthusiastic support, could you help find some?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/womens-march/555122/

Some on the left have no problems admitting that the left has a problem with anti-semitism that has been left unaddressed. There’s nothing requiring you to be so reluctant right now, Reid.

I do want to emphasize that I think there's a substantial difference generally between liberalism (e.g. the Democratic Party, but also some of the surviving centrist elements of the GOP) and genuine leftism (which may, if we're generous, encompass Bernie Sanders and social democracy but which I'd rather apply only to the socialist left). As I see it, both groups have issues with anti-Semitism, but they're very different issues.

In addition to Israel, another problem with antisemitism on the left stems from the left's vision of racial hierarchy/power. In short, the position that Jews occupy on it is deeply ambiguous. The problem may even be reducible to a simple question: are Jews white? It can be difficult to fit anti-semitism into the left's critique of power, because Jews are a “privileged” group in society, so many see anti-Jewish rhetoric, violence or activity as “punching up” rather than as genuine discrimination. And so some simply are led by their principles to not see anti-semitism as real discrimination, or to see it as even justified (because those who do it are “punching up”. Incidentally, that’s how white supremacists justify violence against Jews.) I’ve already seen some on the left minimize the attack yesterday as “white on white violence” (even the Holocaust I have seen described in this way).

Historically, liberals have been assimilationist in their outlook towards Jews, and so have been intolerant of Jewish difference.

When you see that some liberals/leftists are not being serious about anti-semitism because they say Jews are white, and you also see that white supremacists are motivated to violence by their conviction that Jews aren’t white, you basically have the same dynamic playing out that plays out whenever anti-semitism erupts. That sort of ambiguity - that Jews can be caste as anything and it’s opposite - is at the heart of antisemitism.

It's clear that the organizers of the Women's March are in the wrong and should condemn Farrakhan, and they are certainly on the left, so you have a point there.

What is this?

I could equally have said Jewish identity or Jewish otherness. I mean just the fact that Jews are distinct from other groups in societies, either because they practice a different religion, or because they have different customs or culture, or whatever else. It's no different from talking about, I don't know, black identity, or Polish identity.

Sounds like me.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/26/right_to_repair/

Niiice.

KK, gotcha.

The model for Jewish emancipation, effectively invented during the French Revolution, is fundamentally a liberal one. It was a quid pro quo arrangement: surrender the facets of Jewish identity that make you different from the majority population (except for religion), and in return receive full equal political rights (however, receive no collective rights). That required redefining Jewishness from being an identity that was both national and religious (which is what Jewishness was considered to be in Western Europe at that time, and continued to be considered in Eastern Europe and in Russia even through the USSR) to instead being an identity that was exclusively religious. The upshot was that a person could be fully French (to the extent that that was their national identity) and fully Jewish (to the extent that that was their religious identity). A problem, though, was European governments and societies couldn't really live up to their part of the deal, and as the 19th century rolled on, the definition of Jewish identity was increasingly racialized, further inhibiting the integration of Jews into European societies. Hence you have things like the Dreyfus Affair, which happened in France -- the most liberal of European societies.

I’m not disputing the fact that there is antisemitism on the left (either the real one or the fake American one), but I still don’t understand how socially conservative black nationalists can be considered on “the left” just because they vote for the center-right party that’s less racist than the fascist one.

I guess this is just one of those mysteries for the ages.