I first came across anti-subordination theory (in the form of critical race theory) right after I graduated from high school. I was no stranger to finding arguments that I found interesting, fun, or otherwise intriguing. This was different. This felt harmonic. It spoke to me in a way few things had before. It felt intuitive — like a language I had known as a child, then forgotten. I’m not saying I “got it” all right away. But, given how foreign it was to most of my friends (and indeed, the prevailing educational and social norms of American society), it certainly didn’t seem alien to me.
A major reason why, I suspect, was that I immediately identified a link between the arguments of the crits, and my own experiences a Jew. It gave me a language to talk about my Jewishness that hitherto was unknown to me, and it was like a breath of fresh air. When I first got to college (and with it obtained access to a full research library), I was excited to find what this same theoretical school had to say about Jews. And the answer was … not much. A LexisNexis search for “Critical Jewish Studies” yields exactly two hits. “Critical Jewish Theory” gets zero. The person whom you get pointed to if you go down the path of “Critical Jewish Studies” is Stephen M. Feldman, currently a law professor at the University of Wyoming. His book, Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State was tremendously influential on me (he also has a great volume entitled Law and Religion: A Critical Anthology), eventually becoming the basis for my senior thesis. But Feldman’s work, while important, is also limited to the domestic status of American Jews as mediated through legal church/state doctrine. That’s always been a very important issue to me as a Jew, but obviously is not the only one. And one of the primary areas in which Jews perceive themselves as experiencing anti-Semitism is in discussions of Israel.
I think it is fair to say that critical discussion of anti-Semitism is relatively uncommon. It’s not entirely absent, there is some excellent stuff out there, and I feel like we might be seeing a very slight uptick over recent years, but overall the amount of work produced occurs on an order of magnitude less compared to many other oppressions.
This is not to say anti-Semitism is not talked about. But it’s missing a theory. Anti-Semitism has a theory — a very vibrant and robust one at that — anti-anti-Semitism does not. And as the old maxim goes, “it takes a theory to beat a theory”.
The Feministe series was an attempt to try and sketch a theory. Obviously, it still needs work. Yet at the same time, there’s a reason there was a one and a half year gap between when I first was encouraged to write such a manifesto, and the attempt itself. It’s very daunting to try and do this on your own (indeed, one shouldn’t do it alone, but sometimes it feels very lonely out there). The monster feels too big to tackle, particularly without guides. Undoubtedly there will be missteps along the way. Any time you’re undertaking a project so new and so fundamentally at odds with the way society has operated for thousands of years, that’s a given. It’ll be hard no matter what, but the degree of difficulty will be dramatically affected depending on whether we have allies supporting us, or whether they’re jeering from the sidelines.
Resistance to oppression doesn’t go away without a theory, but it does become in many ways incoherent — the survivors know they’re being wronged, but the grammar of the system is so foreign that even their own protests seem nonsensical. Without a theory to explain them, most claims of anti-Semitism won’t make sense. They will strike us as emotional, paranoid, in bad-faith, panicky, groundless, isolated, and/or unwarranted. And many times, the speakers themselves won’t be able to clarify, because they’re are as confused (and consequently, insecure) as anybody else. They can’t explain, in exquisite detail, every syllogism and connection latent in their argument. They are just exhibiting the same reflex every other human has: if you prick a Jew, we will bleed. And very likely, we will cry out.
I understand, then, that a lot of time non-Jews have trouble understanding what Jews are talking about when they say something is anti-Semitic (particularly, it seems, when that something is a given criticism of Israel). I don’t ask that you “get it” right away, particularly when our own language is so inchoate. In many ways, I don’t think we “get it” ourselves. A lot of the time I feel confused and disoriented, and frustrated as well — I can’t expect more out of others than I can give of myself. But I do think it is fair to ask that you assume our good faith. When Jews say something is anti-Semitic, we’re saying something important. It is not a frivolous charge, even when it might ultimately be wrong. It is not something we do for fun. It is not something we do for leverage. It is not card-playing. It means something.
Richard Bernstein defines the goal of critical theory as an effort to “encounter…what is radically ‘other’ and alien. To do this requires imagination and hermeneutical sensitivity in order to understand the ‘other’ in its strongest possible light.” When J Street or the AJC or, yes, even AIPAC says that they feel some argument, institution, or person is anti-Semitic, what is the strongest possible light we can give to that statement? When many Jews say that they believe the existence of Israel is critical to their safety and well-being as human beings, and that they view the politics of certain members of the progressive pantheon as fundamentally threatening their lives, what is the strongest possible light we can use to evaluate the claim? The strongest, not the weakest — not the one that assumes even our expressions of fear or grief are closet political power-plays, not the one that assumes that the beginning and the end of Jewish political practice is as a brigade in the Western White Christian reactionary army.
It takes a theory to beat a theory. We can only create a theory if our friends are there to support us when we speak. Support is not a synonym for “agree”. Support is a synonym for assuming our words matter us, that what we are trying to say is important and represents a real experience, even if it hasn’t all come together yet. Support means not assuming you know it all from the beginning; being willing to hear an alternate tale and open to adjusting your own assumptions accordingly. Support means that when you disagree, when something sounds a false note, you see it as an opportunity to build something up, not tear something down.
The problem is that this makes more sense if you are actually a persecuted group. Most Jews in most places in the world today, especially the ones where they tend to sing out charges of anti-semitism every time I use the word “occupation”, aren’t.
The problem is that there are many Jews who disagree with these charges of anti-semitism but don’t have as powerful a lobby. We aren’t one unified group with one unified opinion; there are many Jews, myself included, who strongly feel that Israel shouldn’t exist.
The problem is, having been physically threatened/assaulted and publicly humiliated during gradeschool in the deep south for the crime of being Jewish, I get a little annoyed when extremely privileged people who have never experienced actual othering violence start to have delusions of persecution.
The problem is, I already do take the voices of these Jews who believe that any criticism of Israel amounts to anti-semitism seriously. They are my friends and relatives, and I know that they really mean what they are saying, that they are not just engaging in some sort of power play. But I also know that if they were subject to the same Zionist brainwashing program that I was through their Hebrewschool, family, and synagogue, their fear and anger is a programmed response which has nothing to do with reality.
The problem is, I’m pretty sure that these same people would be much healthier and happier if they didn’t have such a knee-jerk response to any and all criticism of a genocidal state which many of them have either never seen or only seen briefly as tourists.
I’m going to wait unit I hear exactly what you say to before I agree with Valerie. But there is at least one theory out there that is very common in the Jewish community that does exactly what she says. As a Jew I say false charges of antisemitism or self hate are not only used to silence legitimate criticism of Israel, they are a common way to silence criticism of Israel.
So I look forward to your theory. But please take the experience of Valerie and myself into consideration and make sure your theory deals with the fact that *false* charges of antisemitism are common in political discourse about Israel. And if you dismiss this, or admit the existence of this tactic, but shrug it off as peripheral, or say “well it may be important but I don’t want to make a big part of my discourse” well that is your right but you will be marginalizing the lived experience of a large part of the Jewish community. In short, to make your theory a good one, make sure it pays significant attention to the use of *false* charges of antisemitism in discussion of Israel.
Valarie: I ask, seriously not snarkly, whether that is your genuine “strongest possible light” evaluation of how the mainstream Zionist Jewish community talks about anti-Semitism. Because if so, it is very upsetting. “Brain-washed”, “delusions of persecution,” “a programmed response which has nothing to do with reality,” “a knee-jerk response”? That doesn’t seem like a very strong light to my ears. If you don’t think the Zionist Jewish community deserves (for whatever reason) to be seen in “its strongest possible light”, that’s one thing — I just want clarification as to whether that was your take on the “strongest possible light”, and if not, whether you’d be willing to try and evaluate them in that light. (And if not, again serious not snarky, what’s the point of participating in this thread? We’re not going to accomplish much if your steadfast position is that a large portion of the people I’m speaking about — and to a significant extent identify with — are delusional brainwashed automatons).
What is a “false” charge of anti-Semitism, anyway? When someone is saying “I think that’s anti-Semitic”, I take that to mean they’re saying that a given practice, argument, or institution feels threatening or marginalizing to them as a Jew. The sentiment, at least, is unfalsifiable. As Thinking Girl once said: “who better than she to know” if something hurts, marginalizes, or threatens them? Hence, a “false” accusation of anti-Semitism, in my mind, is one that is made without that feeling that one or one’s community is being threatened or treated unjustly or unlike a full person; instead made for some other purpose (the political or discursive power-play). But where the feeling is genuine and real, I think that in of itself establishes a kernel of validity to the charge that needs to be grappled with.
This doesn’t mean agreeing with the politics of the claimant: as I noted in my response to TG, that obligation, if it exists, founders upon the fact (among others) that different people in the same group have different and sometimes mutually exclusive opinions on what marginalizes them (some Jews are marginalized by [strains of] pro-Zionist discourse, other Jews are marginalized by [strains of] anti-Zionist discourse; the example I used in my post was knowing two Black women who told me that they found support and opposition to affirmative action stigmatizing.). If affirmation requires political agreement, I’m in a bind: I can’t be pro and anti-Zionist at the same time; I can’t be pro and anti-affirmation action at the same time. But I don’t think this a necessary condition to respectful engagement and affirmation. I can take the feeling of marginalization seriously — acknowledge that it stems from something “real” and worth addressing — without necessarily or automatically buying into the claimant’s expressed political positions.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “strongest possible light.” I think you’re using some sort of idiom I’m unfamiliar with- could you rephrase? I’m not willfully misunderstanding you- I just really have no idea what you’re talking about.
To be honest, as someone who is Jewish and has towed the Zionist line before, what I wrote about was the only way in which it is possible for me to see Jewish Zionism. It’s how I’ve seen it operate, and how I was taught to engage in it- blind fear fed by hours of lectures on the fact that those who don’t support Israel are bad people who want us dead was what most of my Hebrewschool training consisted of in three different synagogues across three different states- I have reason to believe that this is the norm for young Jewish people in my country.
And really, I didn’t call anybody an automaton. I get really tired of the fact that people respond huffily to any implication that they are vulnerable to the most intense forms of socialization. I said “The fact that you were raised by Jewish Zionists to consume Jewish Zionist media and have spent a few hours a week every week starting from a very young age being inculcated with the values of mainstream Jewish Zionism is almost certainly why you are so irrationally dedicated to this hateful ideology, just as many men are probably sexist through no conscious fault of their own, having been raised in a culture where sexist indoctrination is pervasive.” This is very different from saying “You’re a robot with no capacity for independent thought.”
In fact, I use such strong terms as “brain-washing” because I really do believe that the majority of people are far too smart to buy into the sort of crap that constitutes the mainstream Israeli Zionist line without some subtle forms of thought control being enacted on Jewish children.
I also would argue that there is still a point to participating in any discussion where I disagree with the author of the original post. I’m not quite sure what the point of participating in any discussion would be if those who disagreed were asked to leave, you know?
A false charge of anti-Semitism would be one in which the person who made the charge wasn’t actually being marginalized. To keep up with the feminism-related metaphors, if all we need is sentiment to make perceived hatred real, then MRAs have valid claims about feminists attacking them and feminists should respect those claims by not being so strident in their denouncement of rape.
And I do think that the perceived feelings of marginalization of MRAs and Jewish Zionists are similar. They have real fear and real feelings and are really so horrified when they feel that their power is being threatened that they actually feel attacked and victimized by any and all criticism of the unfair structures which give them power in the first place. That doesn’t mean that they need to be treated with kid gloves- it just means that they would really benefit from having been raised in a different climate and that they might feel less entitled if the current climate wasn’t so accepting of their privilege.
“Strongest possible light” means basically giving them the benefit of the doubt at every point. To use a legal analogy, “interpret all contested facts in the manner most favorable to” the claimant. And I should clarify — while I think we can do the same thing for why someone might identify as a Zionist, the request in-post actually wasn’t pointed out evaluating Zionist ideology, but in evaluating why Zionist Jews identify certain arguments/practices/institutions as anti-Semitic. What’s the most favorable cast you can put on that?
***
I read you as making a claim of “automation” based on your language of “programming”. One programs robots. Brain-washing and thought control imply that you have removed the target’s capacity for critical thought, replacing it so they have no real cognitive choice but to follow their “program”. Even the more organic metaphors “knee-jerk” and “reflexive” indicate reactions someone has no physical control over (I can’t stop my knee from jerking if it’s tapped).
This is important: one can have a conversation with someone you disagree with, but not someone who thinks you’ve been brain-washed, because all the arguments will be per se invalid — assumed to stem from the “reflex”, not mature deliberation. I can’t imagine how that conversation possibly goes anywhere productive. By contrast, a discussion predicated on the assumption that all participants are coming to their positions based on the genuine belief that they are (a) consonant with their actual, lived experience as a human being and (b) consistent with an agenda predicated on the liberation of all peoples can survive disagreement cleanly.
Respectfully, I think this might be part of why you feel “silenced” by the mainstream Jewish perspective on Zionism — why you feel your contribution is being shut down. There just isn’t that much to say or much discussion to be had when the presumptions are “you’ve been brain-washed”. It kind of boils down to “Well,I don’t think I’ve been brain-washed” “but that’s just what a brain-washed person would say, wouldn’t they!” It goes in circles.
***
“A false charge of anti-Semitism would be one in which the person who made the charge wasn’t actually being marginalized.” I just want to clarify: do you mean by this that the person isn’t marginalized in general (i.e., s/he is not part of a marginalized class) or the person isn’t marginalized by the item under controversy?
Your annoyance only makes sense if we accept that feelings of being persecuted or othered are delusional unless one has actually been a victim of violence.
I don’t think that’s a good approach. Reading through the comments in Richard’s stories of antisemitism thread, the stories there mostly aren’t stories of violence, but that doesn’t mean they’re nothing.
Valerie, like David, I am concerned that there can’t be any mutually respectful discussion if you’re proceeding from the premise that David is brainwashed, and thus incapable of rational dialog on this subject. I think there’s a lot of room for disagreement in discussions, that doesn’t have to bring in the question of brainwashing.
Indeed, the whole question feels like an ad hominin. Either David’s argument is supportable, or it isn’t; why David makes the argument isn’t important.
* * *
David wrote:
In that case, if we assume the person who said “that’s antisemitic” is speaking in good faith, is there ever any way to defend against or object to such a statement?
How can you apply exegesis to a text that consists of namecalling and violence and, worse still, silence?
It seems like assembling a corpus of 21st century antisemitic thought requires not only a strong stomach but great patience, while assembling a corpus that motivates people like Jim Adkisson and the teenager who murdered Lawrence King is comparatively easier.
Just first thoughts. I support the effort, but I don’t know where to start. I’ll be reading those articles on Feministe with great interest.
I think the first priority is to adopt the joint Amp/Julie “don’t go crazy” paradigm.
After that…It depends what you mean by “defend or object”.
If you mean trying to negate the existence of the sentiment, I don’t think it makes sense to tell someone who genuinely feels like they’re being marginalized “no you’re not!”
If you mean trying to defend yourself from the unfair belief that you’re anti-Semitic, well, first I’d make sure that you aren’t substituting “that sounds anti-Semitic” with “you’re Hitler all over again”, and second, I’d say the best way to demonstrate you’re not anti-Jew is by showing your willingness to take their claims seriously and work through the issues in a mutually respectful manner.
If you mean objecting to the (explicit or assumed) politics behind the claim, first I’d make sure that unless the politics were explicitly stated, you’ve got them right (I can’t count the amount of times my objection to perceived anti-Semitism has been met with flames about how I support every evil Israeli policy under the sun); and if you do, then I think you can split affirmation of the sentiment from affirmation of the politics (the same way I do with my Black female friend who said she felt tokenized by affirmative action programs).
***
Also, I think why I (or other Jews) make the argument is very important; both as a counter to the views out there that the why stems from either manipulativeness or neurosis, and because the why can increase our empathy and understanding even when we can’t (or can’t yet) get behind the politics being expressed.
Valerie,
In fact, I use such strong terms as “brain-washing” because I really do believe that the majority of people are far too smart to buy into the sort of crap that constitutes the mainstream Israeli Zionist line without some subtle forms of thought control being enacted on Jewish children.
I support Israel’s continued right to exist and do not consider it to be a genocidal state. I’m not Jewish (not even “Judeo-Christian”), I grew up in East Texas, I didn’t know anyone Jewish until maybe when I was in high school (there was one girl in my 500-student class named “Joyous Israel”), I never had the slightest idea what kosher rules involved until I was halfway through college and a half-Jewish friend invited me to a seder.
So who enacted the thought control on me? Did the Jew-controlled media send messages about the need for a safe place for Jews through episodes of “Strawberry Shortcake”? Or am I just stupid enough “to buy into the sort of crap that constitutes the mainstream Israeli Zionist line” without brainwashing from childhood?
David, regarding your response to me: that all sounds fair enough to me, especially if we’re talking about a face to face (or the virtual equivalent) dialog.
One minor note, however.
Keep in mind that I, as a Jew, feel marginalized when I’m put in the position of “demonstrat[ing I’m] not anti-Jew.”
I went to Hebrew school and years of Jewish summer camp. I agree with some of the things I learned there, and disagree with others.
In regard to false claims of antisemitism, I’ve never been called an antisemite. One thing that has happened to me in lots of progressive fora, though, is that somebody else says something that I think is antisemitic or bordering on it, I speak up about it (trying to avoid actually using the word “antisemitic” — just explaining why I think the statement is problematic), and am silenced with, “Jews always think any criticism of Israel is antisemitic.” Even if I’ve been sitting through an hour of various criticisms of Israel, and even made some critical comments myself, my objection to one statement which I felt went over the line is disregarded because I’m Jewish.
Fair point, Amp.
Pingback: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Sharing Your Stories of Jewish Education
David, you wrote
Some questions/comments:
1. What precisely is your theory going to explain, to theorize? This is something that is not clear to me from your post. Is it the existence of antisemitism? The systemic nature of antisemitism? Why Jews’ feelings that something is antisemitic are often trivialized, etc?
2. It seems to me that anti-antisemitism does indeed have a theory: Zionism. Historically, Zionism was conceived and has been used by Jews as a theory to explain the existence of antisemitism, the negative effects antisemitism has on us and the way to resist antisemitic oppression. Are you proposing a new theory, a revision of Zionism-as-theory? Or is there something else going on that I am missing? Given the fact that there were before 1948 and are now Jews who do not agree with Zionism, either as theory or practice, not to account for Zionism-as-theory (and as practice) in historical terms would be, it seems to me a serious problem in any theory you want to propose.
3. I think that there is something suspect about your privileging of the majority sentiment among Jews in the way that you do. (And I am going to assume for the sake of argument that what you say is the majority is indeed the majority of Jews worldwide; I do not know for sure that this is the case.) When the majority of white people in this country believed slavery to be good and true and right, it was also the right thing for the minority to fight against it, and it was the minority view that was in fact good and true and right; when the majority of people in this country believed there was no such thing as marital rape, it was the minority view that was good and true and right; when the majority in any progressive movement you might choose to name is characterized by a class or race or gender bias, it is the minority view that is good and true and right. That logic applies to the Jews as well. Just because the majority of Jews believe that Zionism is good and true and right does not make it so, nor does it mean, by definition, that this view should be privileged with an automatic assumption of goodness, trueness, rightness, especially when there have always been Jews–quite articulate and progressive and heavily Jewish-identified Jews–who have disagreed with that.
4. There is a difference that I think you fail to make explicit in your rhetoric between being concerned with how non-Jews perceive and approach and understand the fact that most Jews identify as Zionist and what it means for Jews to have a discussion amongst ourselves about Zionism.
RJN:
1) I think we need a theoretical account of what anti-Semitism is (and I’m not saying I’m going to provide it; I’m saying the Feministe series was an attempt to provide it. I’m not confident in my ability to provide the theory on my own. I need help). Anti-semites have a theory about what Jews “are”, anti-anti-Semites need a theory about what anti-Semitism is. Without that, we default to the standard liberal enlightenment view of any hatred — something sporadic, individual, isolated, and only manifest in cases of direct rabid hate and/or violence. That doesn’t explain what most Jews are experiencing when they think of themselves as experiencing anti-Semitism, but without an alternative framework, their objections seem incoherent (even to themselves).
so to 2) Zionism is a theoretical response to anti-Semitism, but it (obviously) doesn’t tell us what we’re responding to. I don’t think Zionism can be fairly evaluated yea or nay until we figure that out (and it’s accepted that Zionism — even if ultimately flawed or even outright the wrong choice — was a such response; i.e., it was not as has been alleged “all about” colonial domination).
3) I think here you’re anticipating a defense of Zionism I haven’t made (yet) — I understand why you’re doing it, because you know my politics, but here I’m genuinely just talking about what Jews are thinking when they feel like something is anti-Semitic. Even someone very critical of Israel or opposed to Zionism can find much of the rhetoric or practices surrounding how Israel is treated, or how Jews are treated in relation to Israel, severely problematic (e.g., the events at York University this week). I think it’s much more valid to use the majority’s account of its experiences — though I think that particularly when dealing with a marginalized group the majority of that group’s delineation of its liberation politics should be given some weight, I agree it can’t be blind adherence. The anti-Zionist minority has the right to make its stand.
How to mediate between the obligation (if you’re an outsider) not to cherry-pick the minority that agrees with you in lieu of serious engagement with the community as a whole or (if you’re an insider) to not to present yourself as a valid substitute for said engagement, with the (outsider) right to make autonomous choices and the (insider) right to have one’s perspective seen as a valid part of the garden is a really difficult dilemma (this is related to my earlier analogy to Black conservatives). (Which also goes to #4)
That logic would apply if David were concerned only with “majority of Jews” with “Jews” being any group. But whenever he’s made comparisons, it’s always to a *minority* group coping with oppression, e.g. the majority of black Americans’ supporting affirmative action while a minority of black people oppose it and even find it demeaning and Othering. Whites didn’t come up with slavery as a way to deal with their oppression by blacks; husbands didn’t come up with marital rape as a way to deal with their oppression by wives. When a majority of a group considers a particular strategy for dealing with the group’s oppression to be useful, that’s a strategy that needs to be taken seriously by people outside the group. When a majority of a group considers a particular strategy useful for *oppressing other people*, that’s not good. If Jews came up with Zionism as “Now we’ll get those Gentiles!” or blacks came up with affirmative action as “Now we’ll get those whites!” those strategies, notwithstanding majority support, would be presumptively suspect.
David, could you provide a brief explanation of what anti-subordination theory is?
Chingona: Oy. Keeping in mind that this a wide field and I’m being very brief.
Tautologically, anti-subordination theory is theorizing about anti-subordination (both describing it and sketching normative and policy responses), but I think that the “anti-subordination” in “anti-subordination theory” is somewhat of a term of art, and anti-subordination theory really refers to the loose network of scholars and scholarly schools which conceptualize oppression against the dominant liberal conception of it.
Anti-subordination theorists take issue with the liberal conception of and prescriptions against discrimination — basically, that discrimination is something aberrant or alien to a generally just state of affairs (embodied by liberal enlightenment universalism and neutrality); the exception laid against fundamentally solid foundations. So long as we treat everybody the same, equality will be achieved, and oppression flows solely out past instances of differential treatment. Get rid of that, and equality will slowly assert itself.
Richard Delgado, for example, describes the “majority story” of racial discrimination this way:
[Richard Delgado, Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative, 87 MICH. L. REV. 2411, 2417 (1989) ].
The assumption latent in the story Delgado is reacting against is that if we remove the blatant things like slavery, everything else will fall into place, because at the deepest level the presuppositions of society are just and fair. The idea is that once we remove de jure discrimination, any other racist acts are akin to bolts of lightening: random, isolated acts — horrible, but disconnected, and not “meaningful” in the sense that the are representative of some larger moral force. And also, external — not the product of our system but beyond the control or narrative of society.
Anti-subordination theorists (like Delgado), though, would argue that the oppression runs deeper; that it many ways it is normal, the standard-operating-procedures. The basics are infected too. Racism wasn’t an alien imposition on America fostered by the slave system, it wasn’t external to the American creed; it is an integral part of the American system as currently constructed. So even when we get rid of the most extreme cases (like official discrimination), the fundamentals retrench the oppression in more subtle ways. Letting everything run on autopilot won’t create equality in that world, it will merely perpetuate the discriminatory norms, because the “neutral” baseline is one in which White is privileged over color. And precisely because liberalism appropriates the language of neutrality and equality, requests to remedy the subordination will be taken as “special pleading”, unfair requests, or “reverse racism” — wanting to be treated differently and specially compared to everyone else (which, of course, is the root of all discrimination).
So when I identify anti-Semitism from with an anti-subordination stance, what I’m trying to say is that anti-Semitism is not just represented by the sporadic, isolated acts of rabid hate and/or violence. In a real sense, anti-Semitism is part of the way the system is supposed to work. It’s normal, it’s SOP. The autopilot of “neutrality” means reinscribing the oppression, because the “neutral” state of affairs is one in which Jews are radically otherized. And when Jews take steps to try and ameliorate that condition, it will also be seen as “special pleadings” or ethnic chauvinism, because they are asking for more than they “deserve”, without noticing that the metrics themselves are slanted against Jews.
PG – A majority of women would hold many, entirely reactionary views of sexual assault. A majority of workers support capitalism. There is nothing magic or right about a majority. While a liberatory view of oppression has to include people’s experiences, it can’t be limited to them or tied to them.
David Schraub – my point to PG links to my major uncertainty with your series. In the introduction to this post you talk about anti-subordination theory, and I don’t know what you mean by that. I’d never heard of it. You appear to be appealing to a way that oppression works that people are supposed to understand and agree with. But it seems to be a label that is not common.
I don’t think you and I have a common understanding of how oppression works, but I don’t know this for sure, because instead of spelling out how you think oppression works, you refer to a body of work as the anti-subordination school that isn’t usually called that.
For instance, it seems to me that critical race theory (that you cite as an influence) includes a structural and material approach to racism (although that’s not all it contains). This is something that is consistently left out of your analysis of anti-semitism that I’ve read.
What I’m asking is, are you leaving this structural/material basis of oppression out of your analysis because you don’t think it’s applicable to anti-semitism, or is there some school of thought somewhere, which I don’t know about, that doesn’t think that structural/material bases for oppression are important.
edited to add So clearly we cross-posted, but having read your post my uncertainty still remains. You define anti-subordination as being opposed to liberal conception of discrimination, but you don’t explain where it stands compared to other radical analyses of oppression.
David (not in the order you wrote them):
Well, but Zionism also posited, both implicitly and explicitly, that antisemitism was the hatred of Jewish “rootlessness,” that if only the Jews had a land of our own, we would not be so readily hatable, and Zionists spent a great deal of ink explaining this. My point is not that Zionism-as-theory-of-antisemitism is accurate or even particularly useful; but it was, or at least tried to be, a theory, and if you want to theorize antisemitism in the way that you are talking about, I think you need to account for this aspect of Zionism in your analysis.
I agree with you that any analysis of antisemitism needs to account for the way it is systemic, normal, part of the way things are supposed to be, etc. (Zionism did attempt to explain this, as I said above.) At its core, however, antisemitism, like any other oppressive ism, is hatred and is, therefore, irrational, even if the ism that arises from that irrationality has its own internally consistent–and oppressive–logic, and even if that logic the informs entire societies and cultures with that irrationality. Why bother theorizing what is irrational? Especially since you cannot argue that what is irrational is essential? Maia’s questions about what you mean by anti-subordination are to the point here.
I am with you entirely when you say that what Jews are thinking and feeling when we experience something as antisemitic needs to be taken more seriously than it usually is, especially (but not only) by people who claim to be our allies in progressive circles, and I agree (if this is what you mean) that when this core emotional response to antisemitism includes the feeling that it is a good thing that Israel exists, etc. and so on, then we need to accept that core emotional response as valid and representing something more than just colonialism, imperialism, nationalism. I think, however, and unfortunately, I need to go so I can’t say more than this, you don’t delineate in your rhetoric, the boundaries of this assertion clearly enough, and so it slips over into an implicit defense of Zionism, even when you don’t intend it to.
Maia,
PG – A majority of women would hold many, entirely reactionary views of sexual assault. A majority of workers support capitalism. There is nothing magic or right about a majority. While a liberatory view of oppression has to include people’s experiences, it can’t be limited to them or tied to them.
What do you consider the “reactionary views of sexual assault” that the statistical majority of American women hold? As for workers, why do you assume that they must be wrong to consider capitalism a better system than the alternatives? David never has said that the majority view is necessarily right, only that it is deserving of serious consideration and engagement. If you don’t bother to engage with the majority of workers’ view of capitalism, you’re making yourself pretty irrelevant to the workers.
Wow, this discussion has grown without me.
David- I wanted to clarify something. I do believe that the anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism argument can be easily dismantled by most of the people I know inside of four minutes. However, most of those opposing who hear that argument get taken down just don’t register what just happened. This is when it gets helpful to ask people if they have noticed that mental block they’ve got going on and where it comes from.
In short, I can and do have conversations with people in which I politely ignore the obvious issue- their refusing to believe a thing I say about genocide being bad because the anti-Semitism alarm has gone off. And I don’t talk down to them or call them automatons because they aren’t, but I do try to get them to think about the effect that living in the way which they do has effected them.
To tell me that it’s somehow not conducive to argument to point out that people are largely a product of their environment is really problematic. If this is true, then it becomes nearly impossible to get people to examine any form of privilege which they might possess because I can’t say “You probably feel so strongly about this because you were raised to think that way as a man.” or “Hey, do you think a person of color might have a different perspective? Why is that?”
I might add that it’s a little bit biased to tell me that I’m causing the problem in the conversations that I have with other Jews. Especially when the conversation usually ends with somebody yelling in my face that the only reason I could possibly hold the opinions that I do is that I’m a self-loathing Jew. It’s sort of ridiculous that I’m being told that the problem is me for trying to talk to people about their motivations and the culture which we were raised in, when the people I am talking to will end the conversation by loudly accusing me of bigotry at the drop of a hat. How is it not an ad hominim attack for someone to tell me that I only feel the way I do because I hate my own people, then refuse to believe anything else that I say because that’s exactly what a self-loather would say? That argument goes in circles too, why is it so necessary that I lend credence to people who refuse to listen to me? Why is the onus of respectful conversation falling entirely on those with the deeply disrespected minority opinion?
(And yes, I think that this applies to Christians too. The above poster from my home state of TX, where many many people never met a Jew until they started a physical fight with me in school, was probably still exposed and probably still is exposed almost entirely to Israel-related media whose sole mission is to manufacture consent on behalf of Israel’s occupation. The only reason I didn’t address this issue is because we weren’t talking about why Christian people might equate anti-Semitism with legit criticism of Israel, we were talking about why so many Jewish people do that.)
I think that a false charge of marginalization is one made by a person who is not being marginalized by the comment or action under question. I am, however, less likely to belive that somebody is an expert on marginalization if they are a white man with a master’s degree and a very comfortable upbringing who would be completely unidentifiable as Jewish if he wasn’t talking to me about religion. Privilege blinds people to oppression, and that person spends most of their time being blinded.
Ampersand- I wasn’t being clear enough. I do believe that there are actions other than violence which are oppressive. However, I also believe that I haven’t seen any of those actions taking place since moving north ten years ago. Ever. I tend to think of Jews in Boston as being very sensitive to a systematic anti-Semitism that doesn’t exist. That is, I understand that relatively small numbers of people in this country, many of whom I was unfortunately forced to spend time with as a child, are anti-Semitic. I also know that these people are a relatively tiny minority, clustered at the opposite end of the country, who tend to have lower socioeconomic status than the Jews who feel attacked by them and no real power over these Jews at all. In a context where a tiny number of your fellow citizens who have no power over you, live in a different state, and have less privileged lives than you in a general sense hate you, it becomes really important to not make charges of anti-Semitism constantly, complete with Holocaust references, with more righteous indignation than a Panther talking about racism.
(And yes, I think that this applies to Christians too. The above poster from my home state of TX, where many many people never met a Jew until they started a physical fight with me in school, was probably still exposed and probably still is exposed almost entirely to a media whose sole mission is to manufacture consent on behalf of Israel’s occupation. The only reason I didn’t address this issue is because we weren’t talking about why Christian people might equate anti-Semitism with legit criticism of Israel, we were talking about why so many Jewish people do that.)
I’m not Christian (that’s why I said above that I didn’t even fit into “Judeo-Christian”). I was raised Hindu and I’d consider myself a Hindu agnostic now — mentally influenced by Hinduism but not consciously believing in its deities. I had my share of fights, albeit more often verbal than physical ones, with kids who thought something was wrong with me because I wasn’t a Christian. (Which is perfectly in keeping with Christian theology, so I don’t hold personal grudges about it.)
a media whose sole mission is to manufacture consent on behalf of Israel’s occupation
I didn’t think my “pro-Zionist messages in ‘Strawberry Shortcake'” snark was going to be your actual argument. Not quite sure where to go from here. Could you point out what the subliminal message was, exactly?
Valerie:
I do think it is a problem to generalize so much from your experience–and I should be clear that I agree with much, if not all, of the rest of what you have said. On Long Island, where I grew up and where I teach, the kinds of antisemitism you say are limited only to a relatively small number of people on the opposite end of the country, is alive and well. That it is not as visible or as often acted upon as, say, anti-Latino racism, does not mean it is not there, not systemic or that it is not worth being sensitive to in the ways that David is suggesting we should be sensitive to it. You might be interested to read the antisemitism series–if you haven’t already–that I have been writing. Part one is here, and there are links at the bottom of each of the four parts to take you to the other parts.
Anti-Semitism in New York is sufficiently pervasive that the first person who voiced an anti-Semitic trope (something about Jews only being interested in money) in my presence was an Indian family friend who immigrated to NYC in the early 1980s and spent several years there before moving to Texas. I don’t think there’s a lot of anti-Semitism, particularly of that type, in India (the anti-Semitism there generally is the kind associated with the left, i.e. focused on Israel/Palestine), so I’m fairly certain this family friend picked up the “greedy Jew” idea in New York — a city where Jews are undeniably powerful politically, economically and socially, and are a significant percentage of the population.
The question isn’t whether there’s anti-Semitism in the East and North and in urban areas. There definitely is, just like there are other forms of racism there (it drives me crazy when people act like all the racism in the country is in the South — the cops in my hometown aren’t killing unarmed black men, but the ones in NYC and LA and other “liberal” cities are). The question is whether it has a detrimental effect on Jews. I think it does; this family friend’s attitude toward Jews was harmful to them even though she belonged to a much tinier minority community.
This is not how I understand oppression to work. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but it seems to me that most oppressive isms have a great deal of rationality to them. There are people and groups that benefit from the perpetuation of whatever -ism we’re talking about. We can talk until the cows come home about how sexism hurts men too, and it does, but it hurts women a lot more and a lot of men benefit from it, even the men it hurts benefit from it. Obtaining benefit for yourself, preserving benefit for yourself, is very rational. An idea doesn’t have to be good or true or just or right to be rational from the perspective of the person holding it.
What I find difficult to understand about antisemitism – and the reason I think pursuing some sort of theoretical framework may be useful – is that whatever it is about it that is rational is difficult to understand. It’s clear that it serves to provide a scapegoat, but what’s odd to me about it is that usually scapegoating of particular groups is very context specific. (It made sense for Reagan to scapegoat “welfare queens.” But if you go to, say, China, you would need a different image to push similar political buttons.) Antisemitism seems to reach across cultures and political contexts, and I think why that is and how that works and what to do about it merits some thought and the process of trying to develop a theoretical framework could be useful.
I keep reaching back to feminism, not because the analogy is perfect, but because it’s the framework I’m most familiar with. When I talk to someone I know in real life who is suspicious of feminism or suspicious of me as a feminist, I don’t throw around terms like “patriarchy” and “rape culture” and “the sex class.” But being familiar with the ideas behind feminism provides me the road map, the lay of the land. I know where I’m going with my argument. That helps me muster the comparisons, examples, and counter-arguments I need. It wasn’t always like this. I used to sit around for a week or two with something nagging at me, not sure what was wrong. That doesn’t really happen to me anymore with sexism, but it still happens to me a lot with antisemitism. (Not that I experience “a lot” of antisemitism, but when I experience it in its more subtle forms, it is very hard to articulate sometimes what it is that is problematic about it.)
l would agree that Zionism very much claimed to be an anti-antisemitism theory when it was developed in the late 19th century. It seems to me self-evident (and maybe it’s not, but nonetheless it seems to me that it is) that Zionism-as-theory has outlived its usefulness in that regard, even for people who identify as Zionist in the broad “it’s a good thing that a Jewish state exists” sense of the word. In all the ways you outlined in your last antisemitism post, Zionism-as-theory accepted at face value a lot of the negative ideas about Jews contained in the European “scientific” antisemitism of the day. That alone is enough to merit revisiting the question. There’s also the way Zionism-as-theory is tangled up with Zionism-as-practice, and the two can never be completely untangled now that Israel does exist. And there is the fact that the creation of Israel didn’t do away with antisemitism.
I think this was a problem with the stuff David wrote on Feministe, but I don’t actually see it in what David wrote here. Maybe you know something more about where he is going with this, but I think it would be unfair to bind him to an argument he made elsewhere if he is deliberately backing away from it (which is not to say that he definitely is or certainly will, but I’d like to give him the chance to go one way or the other before weighing in on that, and he has been pretty open that this is a work in progress). It is inevitable that someone’s understanding of how a particular oppression works will lead to certain policy/political conclusions (I think being a feminist and thinking abortion should be illegal are mutually exclusive, for example), but there can be a lot of room to maneuver within a theoretical framework before we get to confronting those policy/political questions.
As for whether anti-subordination theory is the right framework for this, I still don’t think I understand enough about the theory and how it operates to speak intelligently on that. To what extent does the theory’s applicability hinge on the idea that certain groups are benefiting from the oppression in question, and does that benefit need to be tangible and concrete (more money, more power) or can the benefit be just the privilege of being “normal” in your society? Perhaps it would help me if David could explain why or how or what about anti-subordination theory felt “harmonious” to him as Jew.
@ Valerie
It’s interesting to me that you identify antisemitism as a Southern phenomenon (and I had similar experiences to yours in Texas, and a different set of experiences in the Northeast), when a good bit of the back and forth in comments on Richard’s posts at his blog involved a commenter who said she had not realized antisemitism still existed because she grew up in the South and never heard anyone ever express anything negative about Jews.
Without agreeing with everything you said, I think what you are describing – the way the charge of antisemitism or self-loathing is used to shut down conversation/criticism – is real and a big problem. But I don’t think acknowledging that invalidates some of the concerns that David brings to the discussion. I’m inclined to think they are even related – that the difficulty in getting antisemitism when it does occur to be taken seriously contributes to/reinforces an embattled mentality among people who are not, perhaps, as embattled as they think they are – and when I say that, I’m really not trying to justify anyone who screams at you that you are self-loathing because you oppose Zionism. Just that I don’t think these issues are unrelated or mutually exclusive.
Maia: I guess I could use clarification on what we mean by “structural” and “material”. When I think of “structural”, I think of the standard-operating-procedure argument I made above — a structural entity is what the system does when left on autopilot. Materialist analysis I associate with Marxist-type arguments that look to see how a given oppression benefits the empowered classes by channeling to them wealth and power. I think one can look at anti-Semitism through a material lens: Jews historically served as a buffer between the ruling class and the underclass, with the objective that they take the brunt of the latter’s ire towards the injustice. Hence the expression that anti-Semitism is “the socialism of fools”. I think it plays very well into some of Machiavelli’s ideas: he recommends that the prince appoint a subordinate to carry out all the evil, oppressive policies he needs to solidify his rule, get them all over with all at once, then, once they’ve all been finished, publicly execute the subordinate. The people will forget the injustice as it recedes into the background, but the prince will retain the goodwill of the people for the execution. Jews have often been impressed into this role.
But in general, I’m not a huge fan of materialist analysis (as I’m understanding it), though I think it can be important. Though you’re right that some CRTers (namely Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado) have adopted it, I think they’re somewhat of outliers in the movement. CRT came into its own in the late 80s by breaking away from the Critical Legal Studies movement, which they alleged was too focused on materialist analysis and not enough on racial oppression as a thing of itself. I think materialist analysis risk sublimating a lot of very complex realities into very simple packages that don’t actually cohere to people’s own account of their experiences.
With regards to Jews, I think it doesn’t give us much space for independent agency and autonomy in any positive sense — either we’re pawns of the ruling class (agentless but “innocent”) or we simply are the ruling class (autonomous but evil). I don’t like that because a huge portion of the anti-Semitic tradition (flowing out of Christian supercessionism) is the idea that Jews cannot be independent political actors — Judaism is a “dead tree that bears no more fruit”. The materialist choice seems to be we either adopt this passivity and gain protection from the critique because we are objects, or we reject it but then get tagged as part of dominators precisely because we have enough power to affect independent agency (the third option, that Jewish political action is an autonomous choice to resist oppression as we understand it rarely seems to occur to anyone).
Chingona:
I suppose I understand what David wants to theorize differently than you do. From what I have read, an awful lot of work has been done theorizing how antisemitism works, why it is, or can be, as you say, so context unspecific, etc., how it works systemically, how it has worked materially, etc., and so I find David’s contention that that has not been theorized problematic. So I guess I read David, when he says we need a theory to understand what antisemitism is, to be saying that he would like to account theoretically for the hatred itself, and the hatred itself is irrational. There is no rational reason for men to hate women, for example. I don’t mean that there isn’t a logic to misogyny and that this logic is not real, with real consequences in real people’s lives, or that it is not important to understand and theorize about this logic, but to try to say what misogyny is in its essence beyond saying that it is the hatred of women is, I think, pointless.
Now, maybe I have misread David; if so, his subsequent posts will demonstrate that and I will happily withdraw my critique. I just find it troubling that David keeps talking as if there is no theory of antisemitism, when quite a lot of work has been done to theorize, for example, the roots of Western antisemitism, even its manifestations in the non-Western world, in the Jew-hatred of the medieval Church–Sander Gilman, whose work I keep referencing because it is the work I am most familiar with, is one person who has done this work, but there are others–or as if Zionism (with all of its attendant problems and questions) was not one attempt to come up with such a theory. It’s not that I expect David to have read everything I have read–and, in fact, there are ways in which I think he is better, or at least more widely, informed about certain aspects of these questions than I am–but when he frames what he wants to say by sounding like he thinks we need to start from scratch to come up with the theory he is talking about, I think there is a problem; and that is where I see the slippage in rhetoric that I mentioned. He sounds like he is being ahistorical in his thinking.
And, David, please do not read me as meaning that you need to go read everything before you start to write, because I don’t mean that.
“What, exactly, about X makes it anti-Semitic?”
I think being able to answer that question is what I want to be done.
Why people are anti-Semitic I’m less interested in. A materialist analysis (as I understand it) would label it rational in some circumstances (namely, if you’re part of the class that gains wealth, power, and resources due to the drumming up of anti-Semitic hatred). If it’s just irrational hatred, then obviously there is no ultimate reason. I don’t think anti-Semitism is caused by the perception of Jewish rootlessness (though I think the idea that Jews have to remain rootless might be an effect of anti-Semitism). I think early Zionists were too optimistic that the creation of Israel will stop anti-Semitism. I don’t believe that at all: if it’s irrational hatred, then the creation of Israel will have no effect either way; if it’s rational wealth-maximization, then Israel might change particular calculations but won’t get rid of the basic incentive. I think Israel offers a check against anti-Semitism still present — an escape hatch, a safe haven. It’s about mitigation, not elimination. I’m not sure how to eliminate anti-Semitism. Sometimes, I don’t think it can be.
David:
This will be my last comment to you and then I will shut up until you start posting the rest of the series. You wrote that this question is the one you want to be able to answer:
I don’t understand why it is not sufficient to answer this with, “Because it expresses or enacts hatred of Jews.”
Does it really make sense to define anti-Semitism as necessarily involving *hatred* of Jews? To use chingona’s analogy, I don’t think of sexism as necessarily involving *hatred* of women; most sexists happily associate with women, love some women, but simply don’t accept women as equal to men (heck, some women are themselves sexists and neither hate themselves for being women nor hate men). Other forms of bigotry generally permit for more avoidance (it’s easier for a white supremacist to avoid association with POC than for a sexist man to avoid association with women), but there’s still plenty of space for oppression and inequality without hatred. White slave-owners often sincerely believed there was a bond of affection between them and their black slaves. The sentiment that Jews as a group are lesser than some other group doesn’t require hatred.
I agree that defining it as a hatred is problematic. That puts us back in antisemitism=Nazi territory, which is not where we want to be.
I know it’s bad etiquette to talk about something someone posted in another forum, so if she reads this, I hope she doesn’t take it personally. It’s just the example that springs to mind most readily. When David posted the other day about the situation in Venezuela, one commenter decried the synagogue vandalism but didn’t understand why Chavez’s call for the Jews of Venezuela to denounce Israel’s actions were problematic. After being given several different examples that compared the position this places Venezuelan Jews in to situations other groups might find themselves in (like how it’s a problem when some Americans expect “Muslims” as a group to denounce terrorism), she understood why Chavez’s comments were a problem.
Maybe this is just the “showing, not telling” version of what Richard is talking about. But it does strike me that this commenter could not see why it was a problem when it involved Jews, but once it was put in the context of some other group, then she could see it. I certainly don’t think the reason for this, though, was that she “hates” Jews.
And if the conversation about Venezuela had been mixed in with a conversation about Israeli policy, as these conversations so often are, it’s pretty easy to imagine it reaching an uglier end, with the commenter coming away from it thinking that criticism of Israel is silenced with charges of antisemitism and others believing the commenter is indifferent to antisemitism.
To offer up another example I used on Richard’s blog, if someone says, “Zionists control the media,” I react one way, and I’ll be very suspicious of what that person is really trying to say. If someone says, “The U.S. media is biased toward Israel,” I react differently and feel like I can have a productive discussion about that. But it’s not always that easy to say why one statement is problematic and the other isn’t and to know how to express that in a way that still allows for discussion, as opposed to silencing.
Maybe this doesn’t belong in a theoretical framework. Maybe it’s just one of those things that happens that needs to get worked through by dialogue between individuals. But if someone thinks a particular argument or statement is antisemitic, I don’t think “it expresses or enacts hatred of Jews” is always going to be really adequate to expressing what the problem is. Often, an assertion like that would just be met with confusion.
(And I know you said you weren’t going to respond any more, so I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I think the questions you are raising are valid ones. But I do wonder if some of your statements here set the bar too high.)
To offer up another example I used on Richard’s blog, if someone says, “Zionists control the media,” I react one way, and I’ll be very suspicious of what that person is really trying to say. If someone says, “The U.S. media is biased toward Israel,” I react differently and feel like I can have a productive discussion about that. But it’s not always that easy to say why one statement is problematic and the other isn’t and to know how to express that in a way that still allows for discussion, as opposed to silencing.
It’s that Valerie expressed the first sort of sentiment, rather than the second, that made me very surprised. I think the U.S. media probably *is* biased toward Israel; the U.S. media with the exception of that nutter Lou Dobbs also is biased toward free trade; in favor of secularism and gay rights and sex equality, and against unions, and in favor of environmentalism only to the extent that it doesn’t really get in the way of consumerism. But I don’t think it’s because union-busting, recycling, atheist lesbian capitalists in SUVs *control* the media; I think it’s because those are the sentiments of the educated upper middle class in America, which makes up most of the media.
If someone tells me that I support Israel because the media fails to show the full extent of the horrors perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians, and if I knew those horrors then I’d no more support Israel as a state than I would apartheid South Africa, then we can get somewhere because I can say, “well, show me what I’m missing.” That’s a good faith dialogue in which I am open to being educated about what I allegedly don’t know, and the other person is willing to educate me because she has a desire to persuade me and not just insult me.
If someone tells me I’ve been brainwashed my entire life because all American media has the purpose of promoting Zionism so I won’t even be able to comprehend the truth when it’s shown to me because of the subliminal Stars of David in “Strawberry Shortcake,” I’m going to feel a bit insulted and also doubtful of this person’s reasonableness and good faith.
Just to chime in on what I mean by false charges of antisemitism.
I’m a member of Jews Against the Occupation. As part of demonstration I held up a sign that had an Israeli flag, a Palestinian Authority flag (remember the Palestinian Authority is officially recognized by Israel) and a statement “Palestinians are People Too”. The response from a number of members of the local synagogue was to call me a self-hating Jew. Do you really think I should give them the benefit of the doubt on this? I did talk to them courteously. But I did not proceed from the position that it was up to me to prove this was not self-hatred.
Here is example from Black Feminism. Normally I’d agree that someone saying something is racist deserves the benefit of a doubt. But back in the 70s if an African-American woman took part in a pro-choice demonstration, there was a good chance African-American men from certain nationalist groups would tell her that she was siding with whitey to kill African-American babies. And I’m pretty sure she was not obligated to give them maximum benefit of doubt.
And I would say that the Palestinian people are an oppressed people right now. And there is a lot of racism against Palestinians both in Israel and in the U.S. So I would say that as when certain 70s African American nationalists used charges of racism to defend male dominance they did not have to be given the benefit of the doubt – even though they would probably claim to be defending African-American womanhood, even though racism was and is very fundamental in our system. Similarly I’d say accusations of antisemitism don’t have to be given the benefit of the doubt when they are accompanied by racism against Palestinians, that is when they portray ANY criticism of Israel from the viewpoint of Palestinian rights as antisemitic.
And it is not that white feminism did not have plenty of racism. But it would not have been reasonable to say that any accusation that feminism in general was racist, and that Black feminist were self-hating black women had to be given the benefit of the doubt. And for that matter it would not have been fair to say the fundamental premises of feminism that women are people, that the deserve equal rights with ment and that they don’t have them were racist principles.
chingona: I have posted a little more about what I mean by hatred on David’s other post here. I would agree that I was a little too terse in my comment here, and I am sure that I need to develop more fully what I started to say in the comment on the other post, but I am exhausted and on my way to bed, and I need to finish Part 5 of my own series, and there’s a ton more other work that I need to do, so I may not respond much more while I do that.
I wonder if you might find the Frankfurt School useful? I’ll assume that, if you’re familiar with Iris Young, you’re also likely familiar with Habermas. My personal view is that he absconded from everything that was ever “critical” about that kind of traditional critical theory, but… Adorno/Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment is a wonderful book, but a depressing one. It is written very much about and from the writers’ personal experiences as German Jewish intellectuals during World War II.
Also, possibly writings often cross-referenced in “Judaica Studies” like those of Emmanuel Levinas. His writing on alterity is often picked up in critical social theory, but no one (who isn’t a philosopher) tends to read him. Also, maybe Zygmunt Bauman?
You may be familiar with all of these, but I do think that some of these post-WWII German philosophers would speak more directly to some of your concerns than your general American critical social theory course.
You are listing all the authors that I’m perpetually going to read “next week” :-). (Except Bauman — that one’s a new tip, so thanks!)
It’s very tragic — they’re people who I feel like I need to have a better hold on to talk about the things I want to talk about, but something always comes up and I can never find the time (I need to switch to grad school from law school so, so badly).
Bauman is interesting, very influenced by Levinas (perhaps a little easier to read if you don’t have a very strong background in the history of German philosophy). He has one book on the Holocaust… Right now, I can’t remember the title, but he basically takes up Adorno’s claim that “enlightenment” is self-negating and provides a critical look at why the Holocaust came about. He’s also written (following Levinas) about postmodernity and the possibility of ethics.
wrt the Frankfurt school, then, I’ll assume you’re familiar with Benjamin as well? He may be less relevant to what you’re looking for, but I’m not as familiar with him as Adorno. As those philosophers go, Adorno is my favorite writer.
And…. hmm… Although Marcuse is all too often dismissed in philosophical circles for being “overly activist oriented,” I also find some of his ideas about resistance useful. At a Frankfurt school conference not all that long ago, Jurgen Habermas actually claimed that Marcuse had always been seen (in Germany and once in the States) by the members of the school as *the* best philosopher among them. And you can be sure that Habermas would share *very little* in common with Marcuse, so this wasn’t about ideological commitment. He said that Marcuse simply toned down his rhetoric in any attempt to make it more accessible to mass audiences (and I value that too. There is no reason anyone else should ever write like Derrida ever again.).
In that context, David, is it possible for a given statement to be both anti-semitic and true?
Examining the definition you offer, I think the answer is yes, since it hinges on an emotional reaction (it feels threatening or marginalizing to them as a Jew), and there’s not really a reason one couldn’t have that reaction to something that’s true. I tend to see that as a flaw in the definition, but maybe you don’t.
—Myca
Myca,
Would you consider it racist for someone in a discussion of the merits of welfare, particularly with an African American person, to harp continuously on the fact that African Americans are overrepresented on the welfare rolls relative to their proportion in the general population? Certainly something can be both true and a racist thing to say in a particular context, with a particular tone, attitude, perceived intent, etc.
I think Myca is noting that an inherent flaw in subjective analysis is that of claiming
If you look at this
It is reciting the common (and correct) claim that emotions are both unfalsifiable and correct. But that is a largely unworkable basis for something like antisemitism, because it makes it functinoally so amorphous as to be undefinable.
I have known some Jews–relatives–who think that admiring the driving qualities of a BMW* is threatening or marginalizing to them as a Jew. My grandmother not only hated BMW to her dying day, but also basically seemed to assume all Germans were Nazis. Germans made her feel like the pogroms were coming.
Yet obviously, although her emotions were real and unfalsifiable, the mere existence of a group of Germans in her vicinity is obviously not antisemitism.
*BMW made cremation ovens for the Nazis, if you didn’t happen to know that.
PG:
Oh, absolutely, I think it’s possible to say true things in an anti-semitic way, and you offer a great example of what that would look like in regards to racism, but I’d draw a distinction between that and saying something that is, of its very nature, anti-semitic.
Sailorman:
Yeah. I mean, my thoughts ran along the lines of saying, “look, I think that the only morally acceptable options for Israel are a two-state solution or full political rights for the Palestinians .”
I can see how that argument might feel “threatening to someone as a Jew,” since many would say that either option leads to the destruction of Israel (either literally or as a Jewish state), but I also think it’s true.
Sailorman pretty much pegged what my problem is with the definition as it stands.
—Myca
Pingback: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Hitting that Dusty Trail