How can we stand in solidarity with Palestinians when faced with those who weaponize antisemitism to silence critics of Israel? How can we simultaneously stay vigilant against real antisemitism in our scholarship and movement work?
Authors Shane Burley and Ben Lorber joined Contending Modernities Co-Director Atalia Omer for a public lecture on Thursday, December 12th, 2024 to discuss their most recent book, Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. Drawing on personal stories, historical reflections, and interview data from their book, Burley and Lorber clearly defined antisemitism. They traced how antisemitism is often woven into narratives that seek to oppress other communities, such as anti-Black and anti-Trans discourses. This shared danger motivates joint action and solidarity between Jewish and other groups. “We [Jewish movements] connect with communities that have like threats and build that alliance,” said Burley, referring to the Jewish left concept of solidarity to build true safety for Jews and all people.
While espousing antisemitic conspiracies like the Great Replacement Theory and QAnon, actors on the political Right have simultaneously weaponized allegations of antisemitism, accusing most notably universities of endangering Jewish students and scholars. This recent development conflates Jews and Zionism, equating a critique of Zionism and of Israeli state policy with the oppression of Jews. Lorber and Burley cautioned that movements for equality and justice need to carefully educate themselves on antisemitism, both to fight antisemitism as part of a shared liberation struggle and to reclaim the terrain from the Right. And while Jewish activists might be hesitant about taking up space, they argued it was necessary to “call in” antisemitic language when movement partners use it. In this way, movements can form intentional coalitions to combat all forms of oppression and identify where White supremacy, under the pretense of fighting antisemitism, mounts an assault on a spectrum of vulnerable, racialized, and minoritized communities. Cultivating awareness and an explicit stance of solidarity is particularly important for a powerful and charged topic like antisemitism, they noted, that has been used time and again to fracture social movements.
The event was co-sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
Lecture Video:
Selected Excerpts:
A few selections from the lecture are highlighted below, lightly edited for clarity.
Is antisemitism the longest hatred?
Ben Lorber: I often think the hate frame is an unhelpful way to understand not only antisemitism, but most forms of oppression. Obviously, there is something called hatred in the world, and there could be hatred against a group in our hearts. But it’s more helpful, I think, to understand antisemitism as a system of oppression, as a structure of domination in our world, as a series of power relations that are irrespective of what love or hatred one might hold in one’s heart.
And the “longest,” I mean, I think patriarchy, for one, is probably tens of thousands of years old. But often, yeah, we hear phrases like the longest hatred a lot, and in our Jewish community conversations. And often I don’t think it’s very helpful. It mystifies antisemitism as a kind of larger than life, you know, force, detached from history, detached from politics, detached from the structures of our world. It turns it into kind of a specter, and it turns it into like a monster so overwhelming and overpowering that there can be no way to defeat it. We tend to think that antisemitism is a form of oppression that humans have built in our unjust societies, just like anti-Black racism, just like xenophobia. And we can work together to fight and to end those structures of oppression. So that’s a much more helpful way to think about it, in my opinion.
But it’s more helpful, I think, to understand antisemitism as a system of oppression, as a structure of domination in our world, as a series of power relations that are irrespective of what love or hatred one might hold in one’s heart.
Shane Burley: I think, to pick up on what you’re saying, is that a lot of times when you frame antisemitism as this, what we call, “eternalist narrative,” that it has lasted for all time, it implicates it as being something that really can’t be solved but only mitigated. You really can’t go at the underlying foundations of it. We can’t fundamentally change the dynamic. No. Instead, we just have to find a way to manage it, maybe by funding police more, by having a militarized state of Israel. Something, other kinds of methods, of just pushing back on the encroaching threat.
It also ends up telling a story about antisemitism that in a lot of ways is just fundamentally inaccurate. You know, we talk about antisemitism in the book as something that has contours, you can identify it. It’s not just quote unquote “hatred” or “dislike” of Jews. It’s actually an ideology. It’s a way of telling the story about power and telling a story about the world. And instead, when you frame it as the longest hatred, you end up telling a story that all oppression that Jews have faced as Jews, or in Jewish communities, likely comes from the same source. So it flattens that history entirely, and you lose the specificity, and when you lose specificity there’s nothing you can do about it.
Antisemitism and its modern tropes:
Shane Burley: We look at antisemitism as fundamentally a conspiracy theory about power, and a belief in the malevolent, evil nature of a particular Other. In this case, Jews, but it can oftentimes be someone that is projected to look like a Jew, but maybe they don’t use the term Jew. And this was created specifically in a European Christian context. It emerged out of very specific versions of Christian theology, changed over time, and became radicalized, particularly in the second millennia, and then evolved into what we know as a secularized version of theology. So ideas about Jews as a sort of malevolent cabalistic force that’s actually controlling power.
Ben Lorber: European Jews, especially Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, we bear the scars and the traumas of centuries of these Christian anti-Jewish tropes. Jews became associated with the devil; demonizing means literally turning into a demon. Jews were associated with evil, with sin, with usury, and all these fantastical tropes evolved out of the imagination of the European Middle Ages of Jews, as you know, feasting on the blood of Christian children, for example. That’s where the blood libel comes from, and these tropes fueled massacres, expulsions, ghettoization, second class status. These anti-Jewish tropes also helped to fuel anti-Blackness as Shane was talking about. If you look back into the 19th century, modern European racism and modern European antisemitism evolved out of the same imaginary stew of demonizing an Other, of developing all these tropes that imparted upon another inferior status and supernatural powers.
And so you fast forward to 2018. And you have the QAnon conspiracy theory. It’s a conspiracy theory developed by the MAGA movement, you know, during the first Trump presidency that says that “a secretive cabal of blood-drinking elites is feasting on children,” and this cabal is focused in the government, in the media, among Democrats and liberal elites. And this conspiracy theory helped mobilize folks to storm the Capitol on January 6th. It serves as a connective, you know, glue, a narrative kind of glue of the MAGA movement. And it has all the hallmarks of modern antisemitism, right? Like Shane was saying, a conspiracy theory, a demonic, literally a Satanic cabal of elites who are clustered at the heights of society.
The reality is that for the last 200 years, right-wing, nationalist, and fascist movements have used these tropes to mobilize millions, and we see it today, like you were saying with great replacement theory: a cabal of liberal elites is bringing in immigrants. Or with the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory is another one that you hear of on the Right: a cabal of intellectuals is changing our kids’ gender, right? Basically, this image of the cabal is used again and again, you know, to demonize a group and to say, here’s why society is wrong. And here’s, you know, who we have to attack to fix it.
The reality is that for the last 200 years, right-wing, nationalist, and fascist movements have used these tropes to mobilize millions.
Shane Burley: As Ben mentioned, you know, right now, there’s like an all-out assault on trans healthcare. But when you look and listen to how those attacks are being done. What are people putting in their testimonies at state houses? In the articles they’re writing about it? They have a pretty clear idea of who’s responsible for this trans healthcare. Right? “It’s George Soros.” “It’s the Rothschilds.” “It’s globalists, right?” There’s actually an alignment in their mind of how this works. And so we should have an alignment in how we respond. We connect with communities who have like threats and build that alliance.
