An essential and timely guide to organizing against antisemitism

This article An essential and timely guide to organizing against antisemitism was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Shane Burley and Ben Lorber’s new book, “Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism,” is well timed. A documented increase in antisemitic attacks and harassment since Donald Trump’s 2016 election has been compounded and confused by widespread allegations of antisemitism since Hamas’ attack last October, creating an environment in which people are arguing about what is and what isn’t antisemitic. This book brings great clarity to these debates. Well-researched and sourced, thoughtful and nuanced, “Safety Through Solidarity” is an essential guide for our times.

Burley and Lorber trace the history of how the Jewish people have been scapegoated and reified as a diversion by ruling elites who’ve conjured images of Jews to draw attention away from actual sources of power. They show the origins of antisemitism resting with Christians who, in the pagan Roman Empire, were in competition with Jews, and the development through the medieval period, when Christianity became hegemonic. Subsequently, antisemitism became “woven into the ideological fabric of Western civilization, utilized by generations of reactionary movements to fortify social hierarchies and manage the tensions of global capitalism.”

With this genealogy, we can see how antisemitism is the bedrock of right-wing and fascist narratives, such as their belief that movements for economic justice, civil rights or trans rights are the work of “the Jews.” Citing historian Shulamit Volkov on how antisemitism provided a “cultural code” to bind Nazis in Germany under Hitler, the authors observe how “This cultural code continues today, as MAGA leaders rail against George Soros, ‘globalists,’ and ‘cultural Marxist’ cabals — all of which refer to historic tropes about Jews.”

“Safety Through Solidarity” looks at what Burley and Lorber see as the very essence of antisemitism today, namely conspiracy theory — which they note is not so much theory, as delusion. They examine how talk of conspiracy animates QAnon and Trump supporters, while simultaneously offering those of us in radical and left movements ways to avoid succumbing to conspiracy theories in our own work. Burley and Lorber are clear that the majority of antisemitic ideas coursing through the veins of the body politic originate with and are propagated by the political right. Antisemitism primarily serves those in power and those on the political right who aspire to such ranks.

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Burley brings his extensive history tracking and reporting on white nationalists and fascists to this book. He and Lorber do an excellent job of demonstrating how antisemitism motivates white nationalist and fascist politics and movements. They illustrate how fascists and right-wingers are both delusional and paranoid, convinced that this mirage of “the Jews” is behind everything they find threatening. Contrary to all empirical evidence and honest assessment, white nationalists assert that they are rebelling against a U.S. state hostile to white men. And then they “give this system a Jewish face, and imagine that, by overthrowing Jewish power, they can build a radically new social order of unbridled white dominance.”

Seeing the essential role antisemitism plays in animating fascism helps us better understand some of the rantings of Donald Trump. When he blows dog whistles about “globalists” or George Soros being the evil mastermind behind social movements he finds threatening, he is utilizing long established antisemetic signaling. It’s disturbing that this resonates with such a large percentage of Americans. The authors cite movement scholar Dan Berger, who told them “antisemitism is the center of Trumpism.”

Burley and Lorber illustrate Christian Zionist ideology, which has tens of millions of followers in the U.S., and who support Israel only because they believe that the creation of the State of Israel “in the Holy Land is part of a divine plan that will trigger the long-awaited end times.” The U.S.’s largest Christian Zionist organization has 10 million members, which is millions more than the entire Jewish population in the U.S. They support Israel for self-serving, delusional reasons and, along with Christian nationalists, are the engine of the Republican Party.  Those of us on the left need to pay attention when these folks show significant support, as they have in various polls, for statements such as “things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

It is not only Christian Zionists and Christian nationalists who support Israel. So does the current Democratic U.S. president and the Congress, in the form of billions of dollars in aid and a seemingly endless supply of weapons and munitions. Most of this military aid is being used to kill innocent Palestinians in what is correctly and widely condemned as genocide.

“Safety Through Solidarity” discusses the early Zionist movement, which was in part motivated to respond to increasing and widespread antisemitism at the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century, through the creation of the State of Israel. Burley and Lorber document how early Zionists believed that antisemitism was endemic to gentiles and could never be eradicated. This was in contrast to other Jews who believed in “doikayt, or hereness” personified in organizations like Jewish Labour Bund. They believed “Jews should be able to maintain distinctiveness, true to their culture and history, yet in a multicultural confederation with other working people.”

Early Zionists saw their movement as the opposite of this socialist, diasporatic orientation, advocating instead for shlilat ha’galut, or “negation of the diaspora,” which they saw as being “necessary to revitalize Jewish muscle.” Thus arose Jewish nationalism, in the form of Zionism, motivated by a belief in a “perennial antisemitism” and the need for what would become a garrison state to defend against it.

In the early days of the Zionist movement, through the establishment of Israel, Britain was the imperial instigator, seeking to establish a base for its empire in the Middle East. The British “employed a divide-and-conquer strategy between Jewish settlers and Indigenous Palestinians.” Like all colonial powers, they did this to prevent any challenge to their power. Burley and Lorber pull no punches, making very clear that Israel was formed “through ethnic cleansing, the violent dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Palestinians in what is called the Nakba — a process that continues to this day.”

In addition to mass murder, dispossession and the destruction of much of Palestinian life and culture, Israel maintains a status quo that “constitutes what human rights organizations like B’Tselem and Amnesty International call apartheid — a system of entrenched inequality that privileges Israeli Jews over Palestinians.” Further, since the 1967 war, Israel, in clear violation of international law, has maintained further military occupation of an even larger part of Palestine, including the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

A history of uprisings, or intifadas, severe repression, on and off peace talks, the rise and fall of various Palestinian organizations employing a variety of tactics, and many Israeli governments, culminated in the ugly events of Oct. 7 last year. Those attacks by Hamas have been used to try to justify a sustained genocide of the Palestinian people, funded, armed and assisted by the U.S. and other Western powers, like France and Germany, ever since.

“Safety Through Solidarity” was finished just as this latest chapter in Israel’s occupation of Palestine began and the authors speak to it. They address the widespread allegations of antisemitism among Palestinian solidarity organizers. They point out that there certainly have been isolated incidents of antisemitism on occupied campuses and elsewhere and, when this happens, those of us involved in these movements have a responsibility to stand up against it.

They are also honest in their more general assessment of left and radical movements, illustrating where the left has fallen short in confronting, and sometimes contributing to, antisemitism, calling it “a blind spot the left can’t afford to ignore.” This book is a significant contribution to eliminating that blind spot by raising awareness of antisemitism, motivating us to take it seriously as a form of oppression and enabling us to fight it.

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At the same time, Burley and Lorber make the vital point that these broad charges of antisemitism amongst solidarity organizers are meant to shield Israel — and those arming Israel — from criticism. It’s clear that antisemitism is being weaponized by those conducting a genocide, deflecting attention from the mass murder and starvation for which they are responsible.

This deflection is assisted, as Burley and Lorber say, through the propagation of groups like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Anti-Defamation League of “a thesis they called ‘new antisemitism.’” In essence these groups assert that “‘anti-Zionism is antisemitism,’ dispensing with nuance and effectively redefining the term into a political weapon.” This helps explain why people in power, such as the U.S. Congress, are using charges of antisemitism to try and stifle movements against the horrors of U.S. and Israeli policy towards Palestinians. They equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Consistent with their orientation towards collective freedom and the nuanced approach they bring to organizing, Burley and Lorber are sensitive to and share the history of inter-generational Jewish trauma that has led many Jews to embrace Israel as their protector and guardian against another holocaust. While offering principled criticisms of the actions of the State of Israel, it is essential to also understand the role that Israel plays in the Jewish psyche. This type of empathy can help guide engaging with defenders of Israel, assisting us in better understanding the arguments made and where they are coming from. This is another important aspect of the book which may help bridge differences and achieve understanding as we organize against antisemitism and all forms of oppression, as well as for a free Palestine.

Burley and Lorber embody an intersectional approach to fighting antisemitism, seeing it as a form of oppression alongside others preventing us from all being truly free. They expertly weave together the struggle against anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and transphobia into the project of collectively working for liberation. They are grounded in the history of the Jewish left, which they point out has a “particular strategy to fight antisemitism: the struggle to build safety through solidarity.”

They also draw from the politics of intersectionality, as initially developed by the Black, working-class feminists of the Combahee River Collective — and further developed by Kimberle Crenshaw. Quoting from “A Black Feminist Statement” in the book, they advocate “the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.”

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If people on the left can’t see these connections, those on the right certainly do. The authors demonstrate how the right wing and fascists mobilize using antisemitism combined with transphobia and anti-Blackness to advance their eliminationist, domineering agenda. As antiracist organizer Eric Ward is quoted in the book: “I developed an analysis of antisemitism because I wanted to smash white supremacy; because I wanted to be free.”

The various struggles in society, including that against antisemitism, are all part of our movement for collective liberation. In their words, “Fighting antisemitism and fighting for freedom, equality, and justice for Palestinians, [are] part of the same struggle for a better world.”

The guiding principle of “Safety Through Solidarity” is that, “In spite of a political culture that tries to divide us, Jews and other marginalized groups are realizing that when we rely on each other, we become stronger than the forces arrayed against us.” Thus, through the work of “building community and organizing a mass movement … we can build safety through solidarity and win a just world.”

The book concludes with an appendix, “Ten Strategies to Fight Antisemitism,” which concisely spells out a left, intersectional, revolutionary approach to fighting antisemitism, and all forms of domination and oppression. It should be reproduced and shared broadly. This book, too, should be shared widely. It’s rich and essential reading in the long struggle for freedom.

This article An essential and timely guide to organizing against antisemitism was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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