Sunday, November 20, 2022

The Anti-Racism of Fools

Antisemitism has long been intermingled with movements against injustice and elite control.  This is because the most widespread image in the mind of antisemites is the existence of a secretive cabal of Jews who control global finance and promote liberal-sounding ideas only because it serves their nefarious goals.  Hatred of Jews therefore deflects radical inclinations that might otherwise fuel movements against real domination.  This understanding was summed up in the expression that “antisemitism is the socialism of fools”, often voiced in socialist circles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Now that class is no longer regarded as the ur-oppression from which all others stem, new reservoirs of fools can be tapped to keep antisemitism in business.  This is apparent in the ongoing wave of anti-Jewish bigotry that masks itself as anti-racism.  Ye and Kyrie Irving are relatively easy examples to point to, since their foolishness is on display.  But even a much cleverer Dave Chappelle illustrates the anti-racism of fools trope.  Watch his recent SNL monologue closely, and you can see all the elements there—not only the winking references to Jewish collusion and control, but also the way sly attacks on Jews become a substitute for identifying and challenging the control of cultural institutions, and most of the rest of America, by the ultra-rich, who, for historical reasons, are nearly entirely white.  Like, why should the livelihood of any artist, which of course includes satirists, depend on patronage by corporate moguls?  The fool part is thinking you’ve pinpointed the problem by fantasizing about a conspiracy of Jewish moguls.

Being smart is not a defense against being stupid, and bigotry is always stupid.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hatred of Jews therefore deflects radical inclinations that might otherwise fuel movements against real domination....

[ Brilliant essay; should be extended. ]

Anonymous said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/opinion/kyrie-irving-kanye-west-antisemitism.html

November 20, 2022

Blacks and Jews, Again
By Michael Eric Dyson

“What effective measures will the collective Negro community take against the vicious antisemitism?” Rabbi Everett Gendler shared this question with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly in 1968, 10 days before King was murdered.

Nearly 55 years later, the actions of two iconic Black figures demand that we ask a version of this question again. Ye, the hip-hop artist and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West, has unleashed a rash of antisemitic tirades, while the Brooklyn Nets basketball superstar Kyrie Irving posted on social media a link to a documentary laden with antisemitic views....

Anonymous said...

Antisemitism also serves the interests of the rich by providing cover to delegitimize their critics.

Given the realities of the age, it would not be surprising if oligarchs start anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about themselves to undermine legitimate criticism. It's much easier for neoliberal conspiracies to evade public exposure if their prominent critics are racist or racist and crazy.

For instance, it has become very difficult to criticize the World Economic Forum without being tarred as a frothing anti-Semite. Conveniently for the WEF, this allows the reality of the WEF as a neoliberal conspiracy to increase inequality to be overshadowed by hordes of Trumpist agitators screaming that the WEF is a Jewish conspiracy against Real Americans.

Anonymous said...

https://gendlergrapevine.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Conversation-with-Martin-Luther-King.pdf

Here is MLK's response as part of a larger discussion...

Anonymous said...

"Given the realities of the age, it would not be surprising if oligarchs start anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about themselves to undermine legitimate criticism. It's much easier for neoliberal conspiracies to evade public exposure if their prominent critics are racist or racist and crazy.

"For instance, it has become very difficult to criticize the World Economic Forum without being tarred as a frothing anti-Semite...."

This is an entirely false and malicious comment.

Anonymous said...

"Antisemitism also serves the interests of the rich by providing cover to delegitimize their critics....

"Given the realities of the age, it would not be surprising if oligarchs start anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about themselves to undermine legitimate criticism...."

Continuing. Supposing I understand this comment, which I read several times, I find no truth in it and only bad faith. Antisemitism does not "serve the interests of the rich."

Anonymous said...

"Antisemitism also serves the interests of the rich by providing cover to delegitimize their critics...."

Again. The entire astonishing comment is meant to dismiss anti-Semitism. The comment makes people who are subject to anti-Semitism responsible for the expression of such prejudice. Astonishing.

marcel proust said...

Adding to Anonymous at 11/21/22 8:11 AM (& responding to Anonymous at 11/20/22 5:29PM) in re: "Given the realities of the age, it would not be surprising if oligarchs start anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about themselves to undermine legitimate criticism...."

The most obvious reading of this is that oligarchs == Jews and that they are playing much like partisans of Israel who equate anti-Zionist statements and statements that are critical of Israel with anti-semitism.

As a very secular, non-Zionist Jew, it sets my spidey sense atingling, much more than Dave Chappelle did on SNL recently.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much, Marcel. I was startled and disturbed by the comment and became more so as I considered what was actually meant.

Anonymous said...

Marcel,

Reading the New York Times reporting of the statement by Mr. Irving, my sense is that he continues to subscribe to the content of the anti-Semitic film in question but somehow does not wish to offend people. However the film content is false and offensive. Also, an openly anti-Semitic group is now demonstrating before NETS games. Mr. Irving has nothing to say about this groups literature and demonstrating.

Anonymous said...

What is discouraging to me is that I have no sense that Mr. Irving learned that the film he distributed was anti-Semitic and deeply hurtful. There seems to be no acknowledgment or understanding of the anti-Semitic content of the film by Irving. Where is the learning?

Anonymous said...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/28/magazine/tom-stoppard-interview.html

November 28, 2022

Tom Stoppard Fears the Virus of Antisemitism Has Been Reactivated
By David Marchese
Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya

[ Saddening and frightening. ]