The Right end of the blogosphere has written extensively on the presence of anti-Semitism in the Left. Certainly there are moral and ideological failings on the Left, but I think that too often, the Right overstates Leftist anti-Semitism.
Leftists often make statements that can be interpreted as anti-Semitic. But on the whole, I do not think that Leftism is inherently anti-Semitic, but rather anti-Israel. Now I won’t indulge in the nutty fantasy that it is okay to say “Kill the Jews!” so as long as you mean the Israeli Jews. Instead, I think that the Left hates Israel not because it is Jewish, but for other reasons.
Here is what Israel is guilty of, in the eyes of the Left:
1. It is a largely White nation surrounded by brown people. Worst of all, it fights against those brown peoples, and wins. To the Left, few crimes can be as terrible as white people fighting brown people (am I calling the far Left racist? Yes). This is why America’s wars are often described by the Left as racist, and Israel’s as well.
2. It is a democracy. The Left despises democracy and idolizes its enemies. Israel is an island of freedom and popular governance in a sea of tyranny, and the Left longs for that island to be washed away.
3. Israel has a capitalist economy, more or less. Capitalism and free enterprise are anathema to the Left and must be destroyed for true freedom (read: slavery) to spread.
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So Israel’s crime, essentially, is being a Western nation. I think that it could just as easily be a Christian or atheist nation, religiously, or an Slavic or Germanic nation, ethnically, and still be just as hated by the Left.
Why, then, do we see so much anti-Semitic rhetoric spewing out of the far Left? For two reasons:
1. The Left has taken up the cause of the Arab people as a whole, and the Palestinian people in particular, because they seek to destroy Western nations such as Israel and the United States. In taking up this cause, they have simply imported much of the rhetoric of the Arab world, which is inherently anti-Semitic. Essentially, the Left is parroting its Arab allies.
2. Once someone falls into moonbattery, or idiotarianism of any variety, one has necessarily detached oneself from reality, and is therefore more prone to believe the most ridiculous theories, such as secret Jewish conspiracies.
Now by these statements I certainly do not mean to legitimize anti-Israelism. The Arab world seeks to annihilate Israel and murder its inhabitants, and the far Left is complicit in that vision by supporting the Arab ‘Kill the Jews’ policy. Rather, the Left hates Israel because it is Western, not because it is Jewish.
Friday, February 18, 2005
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2 comments:
Well, it's my impression that the far Left embraced radical Islam after 9/11 because it is the one force in the world that can take down the United States -- the greatest enemy to freedom (in their eyes, not mine). Indeed, the Left does resent the outcome of the Cold War, as you say and hopes to even up the score. Islam is therefore a useful ally, regardless of the ugly ideological baggage that it carries.
Yes, the Left's complete adoption of Orwellian language, including 'apartheid' is bizarre. They might try to spin some Palestinian leader into a Mandela, as they did, to some degree, with the terrorist Arafat. But it would be hard, as the Palestinians are so uncontrollably violent given their current death-focused culture. The black South Africans, to their credit, did not massacre the whites when they gained control of the South African government. We can be certain that if the Israelis and the Palestinians switched power positions, there would be very few Jews left alive in a week's time.
as winstoin churchhill once said: "If you're young and a conservative you have no heart, but, if you're old and a liberal you have no brain."
I think that much of the left's dislike of israel is purely BUISNESS. Arabs is where the money is.
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