How American Progressives Normalize Anti-Semitism

As explained by me in a new essay on The Hill.  Here is the gist (but there is lots more exposition, and the full piece is not paywalled.) 

How American progressives normalize anti-Semitism

BY STEVEN LUBET, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/15/21 08:30 AM EST 

Just as critics of Israel should not reflexively be accused of bad intentions, neither should expressions of anti-Semitism be brushed off as only anti-Zionism. Regrettably, there is a demonstrated tendency among American progressives to make excuses when their confreres use overtly anti-Jewish memes or stereotypes directed at Israel, to the point that anti-Semitism is becoming a normalized aspect of liberal discourse in the United States.

In reasoning all too common among American progressives, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, steeped in millennia of persecution, become merely “dubious arguments.” Intellectually severed from existential threats to an endangered minority, they are recast as mere rhetorical excesses of the sort routinely endured in everyday politics. That is the definition of normalization. 

It has become commonplace on the American left to condemn anti-Semitism among neo-Nazis and white supremacists, while viewing its anti-Israel instantiations as only overheated taunting, or perhaps just an expression of poor taste. There is painfully scant realization, for whatever reason, that ambient anti-Semitism has never in history led to anything truly progressive. It is a short step from normalizing anti-Semitism to enabling it, which will assuredly be worse. 

Steven Lubet is Williams Memorial Professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. His new book is “The Trials of Rasmea Odeh: How a Palestinian Guerrilla Gained and Lost U.S. Citizenship.”

Comments

[Scott Fruehwald]

What is your view of the situation at CUNY Law School? NY Post: CUNY law students warring with faculty members over anti-Israel resolution at https://nypost.com/2021/12/10/cuny-law-students-warring-with-faculty-over-anti-israel-resolution/

[Steve L.]

Scott: I will have something to say about that next week.

SL

[anon]

Wow. Censor any discussion of the broad-based racist, sexist, ageist, etc. attitudes of so many on the left, in the context of you, once again, grinding away on one aspect of it?

Doesn't seem like a "policy" to censor; seems more like just an ego thing.

[Bill Gainsborough]

To anon: Say what?

[anon]

Bill

Steve deleted a comment that pointed out that beyond the religious biases he decries above, the regular demeaning among those on the left of "white people," "males," "the old," cis gender, etc. is now a daily occurrence. It is demeaning and really beyond belief coming from those who profess to believe in equity for all.

I have no idea the reason that comment was deleted. I could guess, but then this comment will be deleted too!

[Anon - but not the previous Anons]

Anti-Semitism is a bigotry that spans the political and economic spectrum. But the left does a very good job of couching anti-Semitism in the language of social justice, and this enabled by well-meaning progressives who likely believe that its an acceptable price in order to bring economic, environmental, and social, justice to the world.

In regard to the students and faculty at CUNY who support the BDS movement, no matter how you roll it, they - as a collective group - fall into this category. I am not suggesting that Israel is pure. It is far from it, but I think that concentrating a boycott on Israeli academia or Israel itself and permitting exchanges with other human rights violators is more than a marker of anti-Semitism