Antisemitism is surging. So is Islamophobia, not to mention every other ugly or murderous gesticulation that tends to surface in the wake of mad social, economic, and national defense policies. When targeted groups are regularly and systematically unemployed, underemployed, overemployed, impoverished, exploited, disparaged, disenfranchised, persecuted, displaced, invaded, bombed, or otherwise pillaged and slaughtered, individuals within those groups often surrender to irrational fears and hatreds. If history teaches us anything, this is it.
Of course, the majority of our press corps doesn’t exhibit much of a knack for serious reckonings with the past (serious reckonings with anything, really), so we’ve been treated to one asinine “analysis” after another. These commentaries have ranged from anti-Palestinian and/or anti-Muslim screeds issued forth from self-styled liberals, conservatives, and (of course) centrists to 6th-grade-reading-level reminders that antisemitism is bad, we must stop antisemitism, and if we don’t stop antisemitism there will be another Holocaust because the antisemitism wasn’t stopped. The strangest but most predictable response also proves the most unworldly. It is the insistence that the antisemitic escalation must not be attributed to anything actually happening in this world. Instead, it must be treated as a dark ahistorical force that, unlike every other human reality, forever stalks the land regardless of changing cultural, social, and political factors. In this most hallow of morality plays, the reader is nonetheless instructed to do the same as in the prior two cases: Put vigilance and skepticism aside and let the very serious people — that is, figurehead defense secretaries, hawkish heads of state, trigger-happy security or armed forces, and war-profiteers — do their thing.
Amid all the drivel, I was surprised to stumble on a decent take on the matter, and at the GE-sponsored Vox no less. Aside from this Richard Seymour essay at Jacobin, it might be the only other relevant piece I’ve found that rises to the level of substance.
Any other recommendations are always welcome.
