No misrepresentation here. Don’t worry, Adbusters, your readers will not be taken in by me any longer. I’ll just keep my i.d. badge handy.
A while back, I read a book called The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, by Prof. Benjamin Ginsberg. The provocative thesis of the book was that much of modern anti-Semitism was a result of Jews, out of stateless necessity, allying themselves with the powers that be for protection. When the powers that be were overthrown, the rebels took their vengeance out on the Jews, whom they saw as collaborators with the former regime.
The book had much interesting historical detail, but ended on a rather hysterical note. The book was published in 1993, and Ginsberg wondered whether the Jewish alliance with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, so obvious in the Clinton Administration, was about to cause a massive anti-Semitic backlash among religious conservatives. As we know, no such thing happened. Jews were never more influential in American politics than in the Clinton Administration, and nary an anti-Semitic peep was heard from the mainstream right.
Flash-forward to the George W. Bush Administration. Bush receives less than 20% of the Jewish vote. There is not a single Jewish cabinet official. Most of the leading Jewish “neocons” supported McCain and are not especially welcome in the White House. The two highest ranking Jews near the president, Ari Fleischer and David Frum, both leave after short stints in the administration. Direct Jewish influence on the administration is as low as its been in any administration for as far back as my memory reaches; perhaps Eisenhower’s is the last administration with as few Jews in high-level positions. The result? An orgy of anti-Semitic calumny from the Left accusing the Jews of dictating Bush’s foreign policy on behalf of Israel.
[UPDATE: Perhaps the Left feels especially threatened when part of one of its traditional constituency groups “leaves the reservation?” The Adbusters piece has a strong subtext of “Progressive Jews=Good; Conservative Jews=evil, evil of a sort that cannot be explained by simple intellectual error but rather by parochialism and selfishness of the sort that traditional anti-Semitism attributed to all Jews. Black conservatives, I’ve noticed, also get tarred with the sort of anti-Black stereotypes that “progressives” would never apply to Blacks in general. Consider how frequently Clarence Thomas is said to be a slavish, foolish lackey of Nino Scalia. This would not explain, however, why the anti-neocon anti-Semitism comes as much or more from Europe, where Jews are generally not a significant force in politics on any side, as from the U.S.]
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