07.09.2023
Placing anti-Semitism in context
Supposedly demanding free speech for everyone is mere infatuation. Tony Greenstein defends David Miller and upholds no-platforming as a fundamental principle
Mike Macnair’s article, ‘Anti-Semitism of useful idiots’,1 might be more usefully titled ‘View from an ivory tower’. It is long on assertion and, in so far as it discusses racism, it utterly fails to place it in any context. For example, the reflective racism of the oppressed is not the same as the racism of the ruling class. Unfortunately the connections between race and class entirely elude Macnair.
The assertion that “Jews ‘became white folks’” in the US because the Kennedy administration chose to make Israel a specially favoured vassal, in order to promote US geostrategic control of the Middle East, is without foundation. US economic aid to Israel began under Truman and ended in 1959 under Eisenhower. From then until 1985 such aid was in the form of loans, which were repaid, and commodities. Israel did not receive military aid until after the 1973 war. Before 1971 Israel received a total of $277 million in military aid, all in the form of loans. But since 1973 Israel has received more than $120 billion in assistance compared to the $3 billion before.2 Jews “became white” in the United States for the simple reason that they moved upwards socio-economically. As they used to say in Santo Domingo, ‘money whitens’.
Nor is it true that it is only recently that the USA has been open about its geo-strategic interests in the region, hence the ‘holocaust industry’. The two have always gone hand in hand, but, of course, all imperialists like their interests to rest on moral arguments. What is true is that it took time for US imperialism to become convinced that supporting Israel against the Arab states was in their interests.
I do not see any evidence that there has been a rise in a “variant of the classical anti-Semitism” (whatever that means), as a consequence of Jews being seen as a privileged class. If anything, there have been two concurrent forms of anti-Semitism in the USA. Macnair really does not understand the evolution of anti-Semitism and the difference between feudal and racial anti-Semitism. One came from below, the other from the top of society. Those arguing that Jews are privileged are at the bottom of society.
Fascist racism in the US rests on the belief that Jews are race-mixing, white liberals, as epitomised in the ‘Jews will not replace us’ slogan of the Charlottesville marchers and Robert Bower’s murder of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue. But there is also an anti-Semitism from below, as black people saw Jews as exploiters in the ghettos. Macnair mixes all this up.
I see little evidence that anti-Semitism has been the product of seeing Jews as responsible for US support for Israel. The conclusion that those who see Jews as privileged “serve as useful idiots for the benefit of US Middle East policy” is simply not true. The impact of groups like Alison Weir’s If Americans Knew are marginal and of little political importance.3 To transfer the US experience to Britain via David Miller is spurious and, as is often the case with academics, more a question of building theoretical sandcastles on non-existent foundations.
Macnair said that it is not possible to get the context of what Miller said or what he was responding to, because it has been taken down. But the tweet has not been taken down.4 And Miller was responding to a Zionist troll, Henry Mazzig, who argued that only Jews are competent to comment on what anti-Semitism is and is not.5
The commentary above Miller’s interview on Press TV that “the British public is overwhelmingly sympathetic towards the Palestinians, but, due to the government’s policies, it is impossible to tell the truth about Palestine and not suffer some kind of ill effect” is correct.
Where Miller goes wrong is in ascribing these policies to the social and economic status of Jews. However, he and others - for example, the late Gerald Kaufmann MP - can be forgiven for their mistake, since these lobbies themselves make the connection between their wealth and power, their Jewishness and government policies. One only has to look at Zionist lobby groups, such as Conservative Friends of Israel, or the efforts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) to unseat Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, and Ilhan Omar.6
The attacks on Kaufmann in the autumn of 2015 were the start of the fake anti-Semitism campaign against Corbyn. Was he anti-Semitic? Of course not. As I wrote at the time,
The term, ‘Jewish money’, is a shorthand. Of course, it would be better to say ‘Zionist money’ or ‘Zionist donors’, but to say, in the context of donations to the CFI that it is ‘Jewish money’ is not anti-Semitic. Zionist propaganda organisations and Israeli government hasbara spend all their waking time claiming that to be Jewish is to be a Zionist.7
When I searched the Jewish Chronicle archive, I came up with nearly 600 examples of the phrase, ‘Jewish money’. It is a fact that many Jews openly boast of their power and influence.
An example of this was when the Royal Court was pressurised not to show the play Perdition. Stephen Roth of the Zionist Federation told the Royal Court’s artistic director, Max Stafford-Clarke, that he could imperil the Royal Court’s funding by contacting friends in New York and London. One London producer was told: “I own nine theatres, my friend owns six. Put the play on and you’re finished.”8
Miller’s dismissal by Bristol University was not due to ‘cancel culture’ - an ideologically loaded term for those opposed to racists and bigots being given a platform to spew their foul ideas. It was the Zionist movement, aided by the political establishment, which targeted anti-Zionist academics using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism. Miller was a victim of this.
I do not accept Mike’s and the CPGB’s infatuation with ‘free speech’ for racists. We already know that the establishment only supports free speech for those they agree with. The idea that “defending freedom of speech … has to mean freedom of speech for all” is a libertarian argument that negates class politics. Nor do I accept that Miller used “really anti-Semitic arguments”. This is hyperbole.
Macnair is wrong to say that the Socialist Workers Party was correct in calling Miller anti-Semitic because he lumped together all Jews without any recognition of class difference. It is a fact that Jews in this country are statistically and sociologically a privileged community. Is it racist to say that black and Afro-Caribbean communities are deprived and disempowered? Of course, not all Jews are rich and powerful, but on average Jews are part of the upper middle class.
It was William Rubinstein, a past-president of the Jewish Historical Society who argued:
Post-1945, British Jewry has migrated into the upper-middle class. The rise of western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high status has led to the near disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size; indeed, the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a working class of any size.9
It was Geoffrey Alderman, the historian of British Jewry, who wrote that London Jewry is “arguably more bourgeois now than at any time since the mid-19th century”.10
Anti-Semitism is about hate, hostility and scapegoatism. It is not about telling the truth, even if you do sometimes misspeak.
Macnair says that to argue that Jews are “over-represented” is classically anti-Semitic. Yes, it could be. It entirely depends on the context. If you are arguing that Bolshevism was a product of a Jewish conspiracy, then clearly it is. What Hitler and others were doing was producing a single enemy responsible for all capitalism’s ills.
But it is a fair point to say that Jews are prominent in the media out of all proportion to their numbers in the population. That cannot help but have an effect on coverage of Israel/ Palestine, given that the majority of Jews are Zionists. It isn’t the cause of the British media’s bias, but it clearly can reinforce it, as is the case in Hollywood.
Finally, Macnair goes from the ridiculous to the absurd when he criticises me for advocating the “virtuous” nationalism of the oppressed, as opposed to the “vicious” nationalism of the oppressor. This has nothing to do with the liberal argument for absolute free speech. Like Lenin I make a distinction between the nationalism of the oppressed and the oppressor. I do not equate Irish republicanism and unionism, nor do I equate Palestinian nationalism with Zionism. One is fighting oppression; the other is perpetrating it.
If Macnair cannot see this, that is because his vision has been obscured by that ivory tower.
-
Weekly Worker August 31: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1456/anti-semitism-of-useful-idiots.↩︎
-
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel.↩︎
-
See, for example, Jewish Chronicle October 28 2015: ‘Kaufman claims “Jewish money” has influenced Tories’.↩︎
-
azvsas.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-witchhunt-of-gerald-kaufman.html.↩︎
-
See Jim Allen’s letter to The Guardian March 18 1987.↩︎
-
W Rubinstein The left, the right and the Jews p51.↩︎
-
‘Two cheers for the GLC’ Jewish Chronicle March 28 1986.↩︎