Schumer condemns anti-Semitism on the left, but fails to understand it's real source.

Late last month, Chuck Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor, warned that anti-Semitism has taken hold on the left. He also wrote an op-ed to this effect for the New York Times.

Pointing out the existence of anti-Semitism on the left is no scoop. But it could not have been easy for Schumer to call out his allies in the Democrat base. He should be commended for doing so.

Nonetheless, although Schumer’s speech was “directionally correct,” it was well wide of the mark. Schumer failed to identify the root of the left’s anti-Semitism. Therefore, his argument does not point the way to a less anti-Semitic left.

What is the root of the left’s current anti-Semitism? In this post, I maintained that it’s the left’s Manichean identity-centered ontology, which divides the world into West and non-West; whites and “people of color;” oppressors and the oppressed. In each case, the former category is evil and the latter category is good.

Israel falls on the evil side of all three divides. So do American Jews.

We are white and we are Western. In the left’s account, moreover, we are oppressors because, as a group, we are successful (“privileged,” they would say). We are winners in life and therefore losers in identity politics.

Jason Willick, that rare conservative Washington Post op-ed writer who provides consistently conservative commentary, makes this point in a powerful takedown of Schumer’s speech. Schumer, he points out, based his anti-anti-Semitic pitch on the fact that “the Jewish people have been humiliated, ostracized, expelled, enslaved, and massacred for millennia.” Schumer also made the familiar argument that Jews must be okay because they have “marched. . .for Black and Brown lives, stood against anti-Asian hatred, protested bigotry against the LGBTQ community, [and] fought for reproductive justice.”

For these reasons, in Schumer’s view, Jews shouldn’t be viewed as oppressors or as privileged darlings of the West. With Jews free of this taint, the left should reject anti-Semitism and embrace Jews as fellow liberals.

It’s as if anti-Semitism would be okay if Jews hadn’t been mistreated throughout history and hadn’t marched for various liberal causes in America.

Willick puts it best:

Left-wing antisemites, [Schumer’s] speech suggested, are putting Jews in the wrong box. Jews belong in the oppressed box — not the oppressor box. Fix this mistake, caused by a failure of historical literacy, and antisemitism on the left will be ameliorated.

Willick then explains why this is a fantasy:

Schumer noted accurately that antisemitism pits “what successes the Jewish people have achieved against them, and against their fellow countrymen.” But resentment of successful groups is inculcated by identity politics in general. Dividing groups of people into categories of oppressed and oppressor is a poisonous way to conduct politics in a liberal multiethnic republic. But it’s precisely the way the progressive vanguard believes politics must be conducted to achieve social justice.

Accordingly, the “progressive vanguard” will never place Jews in the “good” box. We can chant “black lives matter,” march in favor of abortion, vote Democratic, and even denounce Israel. We will still be successful white Americans and the Jewish state will still be land-grabbing colonizers.

It follows, as Willick argues, that combatting the left’s anti-Semitism requires combatting the left’s identity politics. Heather Mac Donald makes the same point in this excellent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Can there be a left without identity politics? Yes. For most of my life, identity politics as practiced today was not a major part of the left’s playbook,

Leftism always finds victims, but victim status need not be defined by racial, ethnic, and gender identity. Define victim status based on mutable traits and you’ll have a less anti-Semitic left. But this isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

As for Schumer, Willick, though unwilling to give him a pass, observes that the Majority Leader’s speech was “a particularly careful piece of political rhetoric that sought to persuade more than condemn.” Persuading the left means using, rather than denouncing, the lens through which it views the world.

It’s a fair point. But, for the reasons set forth above (including by WIllick), the left’s anti-Semitism follows from its current world view.

I also suspect that Schumer wasn’t just nodding to that view for reasons of political rhetoric. I suspect that Schumer is okay, and perhaps has come largely to agree, with what Willick calls the “Manichean progressive fixation on identity and oppression.” All he probably wants is for Jews to be placed in “the right box.”

Certainly, that’s true of many American Jews. When will we ever learn?