Risk and Extortion XI: The Double.Edged Sword of Identity-Thinking

The post that had been missing

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/to-those-who-only-speak-out-when-it-is-risk-free/

One of the interesting features of debating anti-Semitism is the issue why it is not being treated similar to racism. This is often referred to as Jewish Exceptionalism. In a perverse way, Jewish Exceptionalism is based on the idea that Jews are a unique and very special ethnic group and cannot be compared. This is exactly what Zionism/ Jewish Supremacism and anti-Semitism have in common, even if they are on opposite poles in terms of the valuation of this state of exception. This shows how the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism actually shares some very basic premises with anti-Semitism regarding the aforementioned issues of loyalty and Jewish self-determination vis-à-vis “racist endeavours” (such as settler colonialism or the One Nation Law as the basis of a Jewish State).  “We are exceptional because we are Jews” does indeed work both ways.

The accompanying “historicist” justification of Jewish Exceptionalism and the incomparable status of anti-Semitism is the singularity of the Holocaust, which was the subject of a huge controversy among historians in the 1980s. A denial of the singularity of the Holocaust is claimed to be the equivalent of Holocaust denial oreven worse. The singularity of the Holocaust is not racism, not even genocide, but instead the systemic and institutionalized character of operationalizing racial hatred into both all everyday operations of society as well as the mass-destruction that took place in concentration camps. The main “lesson” we learn from the Holocaust seems to be that the only reason why concentration camps existed was to eradicate the Jewish population from the face of the earth. The idea that the Third Reich solely existed because of anti-Semitism does indeed rely on the premise that there is such a thing as “Jewish Exceptionalism”.

Historical research shows, that at the start of the Third Reich concentration camps were deployed to intern political prisoners, i.e. Bolshevists. In their propaganda, Bolshevists were “ehnicized” as beign Jewish, simply because (a) Karl Marx was Jewish and (b) many members of the Communist Party were Jewish. By associating communism with Jewishness, it was easier to portray the fight for labour rights as something anti-German; as something that is directed against the nation state of Germany; and by default, this made capitalism very pro-German and patriotic, which in turn justified the embrace of corporatism: the use of the repressive  state apparatuses to force people into relations of exploitation that benefit the wealthy.

Unfortunately, teaching history in this respect would make capitalism complicit in the rise of fascism. By removing the association with communism, the alleged motivation of the Holocaust could simply be allocated to anti-Semitism as a phenomenon that exists in itself and for itself and has nothing to do with either the conception of Nationhood or the interests of Capitalism. To portray anti-Semitism as an autonomous mind-set requires mythology instead of history. As I have stated in an earlier blog, nationalism is rooted in a myth of a common identity. In its simplest form identity thinking is an imitation of genetics, in which it is assumed, that one’s identity is, or is like, DNA. This is then used to argue that there is a congruence between individual identity and ethnic (collective) identity, because they are also passed on through bloodlines or a cultural imitation of it (instead of genes, this would involve memes). Hence, there is no manifestation of anti-Semitism that is not derived from identity thinking, just as every form of ethno-nationalism is rooted in identity thinking.

Those that argue that there is a strong connection between the transmission of genes and of memes, either through hereditary forms or forms of imitation, are also more likely to accept Carl Schmitt’s thesis that a political community (for him this was the Nation) is derived from the separation of friends and foes. Hence, a key part of identity thinking is animosity towards others. It is thus no surprise that during the times in which European Nations were being invented, hatred towards others – Africans, Asians, Arabs, Native Americans and Jews – also increased. Being identified as “the enemy within”, Jewish communities were particularly singled out as the means through which nationhood could serve as the object of identity thinking. It should thus also come as no surprise, that some members of these Jewish communities started to think along the same lines, by arguing the case for the institution of a Jewish State. Biblical narratives of the promised land, as described in the book of Exodus, including the destruction of Jericho and the violent conquest of Canaan, were a very useful mythological tool to tie in religion as providing a transhistorical justification with reference to a God that allegedly made that promise. This was the birth of Zionism.

The expression “a land without people for a people without land” which was at the centre of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and is often seen as the operationalization of the Zionist aspiration to create a Jewish State, has rightly been criticized for failing to acknowledge the inhabitants that land, now widely referred to as Palestinians, as people, i.e. human beings. However, it is equally fallacious to claim that Jews were a people without land. Jews were living all over Europe for many, many generations. It is the anti-Semitic racism, with which the help of which European Nationhood was created, that had deprived Jewish communities of their land. The very embrace of this dispropriation by the Zionist movement is an affirmation of the normalcy of anti-Semitism.

Zionism, which some use as synonymous for Jewish Supremacism, is in its essence no different from any other nationalist ideology, even its claim to Jewish Exceptionalism perfectly resonates with every other nationalist ideology that suggest that your nation is superior because you are a member of it. However, not every nation has been subjected to a genocide, and very few have been exposed to a genocide as brutal and intense as the Holocaust. However, as anti-Semitism has been deliberately mystified and mythologized, it has been decontextualized and dehistoricized and is being treated as an autonomous pathological mind set. As a result, it can function as an accusation against almost anything.

Because of its mythological plasticity, a Jewish Supremacist such as Benjamin Netanyahu can easily be close friends with known anti-Semites such as Donald Trump and Victor Orban, as they all share the same ideology: Jews belong in Israel. For Jewish Supremacists, European anti-Semitism is actually very functional as the persecution of Jews outside of Israel may increase the likelihood of them emigrating to Israel, hence increasing the Jewish majority inside Israel and numerically affirming the objective of ensuring that Israel remains a majority-Jewish state. There is absolutely no contradiction between anti-Semitic, right-wing nationalism and pro-Israel politics. All the right wing parties in Europe are pro-Israel, as they (rightly) consider the majority of Israeli Jews as Europeans and Arabs as a threat to European Supremacy (which according to Edward Said is the hallmark of Orientalism).