Contemporary Left Antisemitism

By: David Hirsh

Narrated by: Simon Schatzberger

Length: 13 hrs

Publisher's summary

Today’s antisemitism is difficult to recognize because it does not come dressed in a Nazi uniform and it does not openly proclaim its hatred or fear of Jews. This book looks at the kind of antisemitism which is tolerated or which goes unacknowledged in apparently democratic spaces: trade unions, churches, left-wing and liberal politics, social gatherings of the chattering classes and the seminars and journals of radical intellectuals. It analyses how criticism of Israel can mushroom into antisemitism and it looks at struggles over how antisemitism is defined. It focuses on ways in which those who raise the issue of antisemitism are often accused of doing so in bad faith in an attempt to silence or smear.

Hostility to Israel has become a signifier of identity, connected to opposition to imperialism, neo-liberalism and global capitalism; the "community of the good" takes on toxic ways of imagining most living Jewish people.

©2020 Taylor & Francis (P)2020 Routledge

Critic reviews

"For more than a decade, David Hirsh has campaigned courageously against the all-too-prevalent demonisation of Israel as the one nationalism in the world that must not only be criticised but ruled altogether illegitimate. This intellectual disgrace arouses not only his indignation but his commitment to gather evidence and to reason about it with care. What he asks of his readers is an equal commitment to plumb how it has happened that, in a world full of criminality and massacre, it is obsessed with the fundamental wrongheadedness of one and only national movement: Zionism." — Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Columbia University, USA

"David Hirsh is one of our bravest and most thoughtful scholar-activists. In this excellent book of contemporary history and political argument, he makes an unanswerable case for anti-anti-Semitism." — Anthony Julius, Professor of Law and the Arts, UCL, and author of Trials of the Diaspora (OUP, 2010).

"David Hirsh writes as a sociologist, but much of the material in his fascinating book will be of great interest to people in other disciplines as well, including political philosophers. Having participated in quite a few of the events and debates which he recounts, Hirsh has done a commendable service by deftly highlighting an ugly vein of bigotry that disfigures some substantial portions of the political left in the UK and beyond." — Matthew H. Kramer FBA, Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, Cambridge University, UK

An academic “Jews Don’t Count”

There are other books that deal with this, for example “Jews Don’t Count”. This book is more academic, though accessible.

I appreciated the discussions on subjective intent - can someone be antisemitic without consciously hating Jews? As I see the mainstream, lefty people around me engage in antisemitic tropes I think about this a lot.

Why do the people who accept institutional racism in other cases reject it for antisemitism?

I will warn you, I feel quite hopeless after reading this. Antisemitism is becoming increasingly fashionable again, in the “community of the good”, the “people like us”; bistro antisemitism.

Yet the only antisemitism we are allowed to recognise is the beer hall variety, with a uniform and a funny moustache.

I guess one whiff of hope is what happened to Corbyn after this book was finished, but this seems to be one step forward, two steps back.

I also appreciated the discussion on having your Judaism constructed by your “enemies”, the way a Jewish identity can grow in response to attack, where before it was essentially dormant.

This leads me to consider how the more the antisemitism grows the more it creates a reaction in Jews which includes Zionism - if this is how the world treats Jews then they better look after themselves.

Hopeless, seems we’ll never see the end of it.

Amazing how a minority population, 0.2% of the world, and a minuscule sliver of land can be the focus of so much hate.