Yes, antisemitism is alive and well... but where?

We are in the midst of a global Zionist offensive whose victims include many Jewish critics of Israeli policy . One such victim is the so-called "Hamas propagandist" Gideon Levy , who wrote in Haaretz on December 8: "Laws branding anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic and the anti-occupation movement as anti-Semitic are overwhelmingly passed. They now play into the hands of Israel and the Jewish establishment, but they risk fuelling anti-Semitism when questions arise about the extent of their interference."

I consider Levy a true "Israeli patriot," as he once defined himself. He rightly predicts that automatically labeling any criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitic will lead to a new wave of antisemitism. How so? To cement its Zionist policy, the State of Israel is making a catastrophic mistake: it has decided to downplay the so-called "old" antisemitism (traditional European antisemitism) and focus on the "new" and supposedly "progressive" antisemitism that, according to him, is disguised as criticism of Zionism. Along these lines, Bernard-Henri Lévy , in his The Left in Dark Times , from 2008 (an English version of Ce grand cadavre à la renverse ) claimed that 21st-century antisemitism will either be "progressive" or it will not exist. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, this thesis forces us to overturn the old Marxist interpretation of antisemitism as a confused or displaced anticapitalism (in which, rather than blaming the capitalist system, our rage is focused on a specific ethnic group accused of corrupting it). For Lévy and his supporters , today's anticapitalism is a disguised form of antisemitism.

What I find particularly troubling is the way Christian conservatives in the United States combine a stubbornly pro-capitalist stance with a newfound love for Israel. How can these Christian fundamentalists, who are antisemitic by nature , now passionately support the Zionist policy of the State of Israel? There is only one answer to this riddle: it is not that Christian fundamentalists have changed; it is that Zionism itself , with its hatred of Jews who do not fully identify with the policy of the State of Israel, has paradoxically become antisemitic.

This is what Rudy Giuliani recently said against George Soros : "Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose him. Soros is not Jewish. I'm more Jewish than Soros. I probably know more about Judaism than he does... He doesn't go to church, he doesn't go... to synagogue. He doesn't belong to any synagogue, he doesn't support Israel, he's an enemy of Israel. In the United States, he has elected eight anarchist district attorneys. He is a horrible human being."

In a similar display of latent antisemitism that underpins a pro-Zionist stance, Trump , speaking before the American Israeli Council in December 2019, used antisemitic stereotypes to characterize Jews: he said they were driven by money and not loyal enough to Israel. The title of the Vanity Fair story says it all: "Trump Turns Anti-Semitic on Room Full of Jews." According to the story, Trump began by once again invoking the old "dual loyalty" cliché, claiming that there are Jews who "don't love Israel enough." Once he had warmed up, he launched into the stereotype of Jews and money , telling those present: "A lot of you guys are in the real estate business, because I know you guys very well. You're sharks, I wouldn't call you good people by any means," he said. "But you have to vote for me, you have no choice. They're not going to vote for Pocahontas , I can assure you. They're not going to vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let's take away 100 percent of their wealth!" He continued, "Some of you don't like me. And the truth is, I don't like some of you at all. And you're going to be my biggest supporters, because if you get that bill passed, in 15 minutes you'll lose everything you own . So I don't have to spend a lot of time talking to you.

One feels almost ashamed reading such statements. We don't need any complex "critique of ideology," for what should have been implicit is made clear. The argument couldn't be clearer: you are Jews and, as such, you only care about money, and since you care more about your money than your country, even if you don't like me and you don't like me, you'll have to vote for me if you want to protect your money... The riddle is: why do many Zionists respond positively to Trump's message? Once again, there is only one coherent answer : because Zionism itself is, in a sense, antisemitic.

About the author and the book

Provocative, paradoxical, insightful and sharp-tongued, Slavoj Žižek (Ljubljana, 1949) is a philosopher, sociologist, Lacanian psychoanalyst, cultural theorist, political activist and one of the most prestigious and widely read essayists today, author of more than forty books on philosophy, cinema, psychoanalysis, dialectical materialism and criticism of ideology.

In The Sky in Disorder (Anagrama Argumentos), Žižek traces, through thirty-six short and powerful pieces, a journey through our turbulent present: Trump, China, the Middle East, the signs of a new Cold War, global warming, the pandemic, migrations and refugees, the rise of social antagonisms around the world, neo-feudal corporate capitalism... And in the face of rational optimists, who assure us that we are not as bad as they paint us, and the prophets of the apocalypse, who proclaim that it is already too late and there is nothing we can do to save the world, Žižek warns us that they are two sides of the same coin, because both call for inaction. Against them, he proposes making decisions and advocates for a new communism.

Israel is playing a dangerous game here. Some time ago, Fox News , the main voice of the American radical right and a staunch supporter of Israeli expansionism, had to fire its most popular host, Glen Beck , whose comments were becoming openly antisemitic . When Trump signed the controversial executive order on antisemitism at the Hanukkah holiday at the White House in 2019, John Hagee , founder and national president of the Christian Zionist organization Christians United for Israel, attended the event. In addition to adhering to the typical conservative Christian ideology (Hagee sees the Kyoto Protocol as a conspiracy to manipulate the US economy; in his bestseller Jerusalem Countdown , the Antichrist is the head of the European Union ), Hagee has made openly antisemitic statements: he has blamed the Holocaust on the Jews themselves; he has claimed that the persecution ordered by Hitler was a "divine plan" to lead the Jews to create the modern state of Israel; he calls liberal Jews "poisonous" and "spiritually blind"; and he admits that a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran—which he supports—will result in the death of most of Israel's Jews. (As an interesting aside, he claims in Jerusalem Countdown that Hitler was born from a line of "mongrel, murderous, genocidal, and damned Jews.") With friends like this, Israel doesn't need enemies.

While the struggle between hardline Zionists and Jews open to genuine dialogue with the Palestinians is crucial, we must not forget the underlying context: West Bank Palestinians are subjected to daily administrative and physical terror (burned crops, poisoned wells) and manipulated by the Arab regimes that surround them. While the real conflict is not one between "Jews" and "Arabs," it is not some sort of collective psychodrama between divided Jews, with the Palestinians merely a background voice. There is no way out without an authentic Palestinian voice.

How to kill the idea of ​​Trump

On November 23, 2020, Donald Trump agreed to begin the transition period to leave presidential power, but the manner in which his acceptance was announced speaks volumes. It came after the General Services Administration declared Joe Biden the "apparent winner" of the US election, allowing the formal handover of the Trump administration to begin. Emily Murphy , director of the ASG, stated in a letter to the president-elect that she had made that decision "independently," without pressure from the executive branch. (Note the reference to Biden as the "apparent" winner of the election: if the opposite of appearance is the essence, this qualifier implies that "essentially" Trump won, regardless of the final outcome of the count.) However, minutes after the contents of Murphy's letter were reported, Trump tweeted that he had given Murphy permission to send it, although he promised that he would continue to contest his election defeat ; In fact, his campaign would continue to encourage his supporters to collaborate and raise funds in a last-ditch attempt to overturn the election result. So Trump accepted the transition without conceding defeat , allowing acts carried out independently of his will... He is a living contradiction: the culmination of the postmodern ironist who presents himself as the guardian of traditional Christian values; the culmination of the destroyer of law and order who presents himself as their unconditional safeguard.

A similar tension lies in how Trump relates to the far right, and specifically in how he seeks to formally distance himself from its most problematic aspects while simultaneously praising its overall patriotic attitude. This distance is, of course, empty, a purely rhetorical device. While he weakly condemns the worst aspects of groups like the Proud Boys (telling them to "stand back"), he simultaneously makes it clear that he expects them to act (stand by) in accordance with the implicit calls for violence in their speeches.

Opinion

Trump's response to the Proud Boys is just one illustration that their "excesses" should be taken seriously. In a rare appearance supporting her husband on the 2020 campaign trail, Melania Trump denounced Biden's "socialist agenda." But what about Kamala Harris , who is often perceived as further to the left than the extremely moderate Biden? Melania's husband was clear on this point: "She's a communist. She's not a socialist. She's much more than a socialist. She wants to open the borders to allow murderers and rapists into our country." (By the way, since when are open borders a characteristic of communism?) Biden immediately reacted: "I have not said one syllable that would lead one to believe that I am a socialist or a communist." True, but this rebuttal misses something essential. Calling Biden and Harris socialists/communists isn't simply rhetorical hyperbole : Trump isn't just saying something he knows to be false. Rather, Trump's "exaggerations" present us with an exemplary case of what we should call ideational realism : the idea that ideas are not just names, but structure political space and, as such, have real effects. Trump's "cognitive map" of political space is a near-symmetrical inversion of the Stalinist map, in which anyone who opposes the party is part of a fascist plot . Similarly, from Trump's point of view, the liberal center is disappearing—or, as his friend Viktor Orbán put it, liberals are just career communists—which means that there are only two real poles, populist nationalists and communists.

In Serbian, there's a wonderful expression: " Ne bije al' ubija u pojam" ("He doesn't defeat him, but he kills him in the idea-concept"). It refers to someone who, instead of destroying you with direct violence, bombards you with acts that undermine your self-esteem so that you end up humiliated , deprived of the very essence "idea" of your being. "Killing in the idea" describes the opposite of real destruction (of your empirical reality), in which your "idea" survives in a heightened form (e.g., killing an enemy in such a way that it survives in the minds of thousands of people as a hero). This is how we should proceed with Nazism: we should not just destroy Hitler (to get rid of his "excesses" and save the healthy core of his project), but kill his idea. And the same goes for Trump and his legacy. What we need to do is not just defeat him (opening up the possibility of his return in 2024), but “kill his idea,” make it visible in all its futility, vanity, and incoherence , and also (and this is the crucial part) ask ourselves how such a despicable person could have become president of the United States. As Hegel would have said, killing the idea of ​​Trump means bringing him to his idea—that is, allowing him to destroy himself simply by making him appear as what he is.