Does anyone have evidence that "left-wing anti-Semitism" is actually a thing?

[Kizzuwanda]

I am constantly hearing that anti-Semitism is found on both far-left and the far-right, but I have yet to see any evidence that there is any actual anti-Semitism on any part of the left. Anti-Zionism is anti-colonialism, not anti-Semitism. Can you give some examples of leftists being anti-Semitic?

[PSOL]

The statement is mostly a rhetorical argument to defend Israel in an argument long enough while things still go on as is. There is little to debate here as the Internet warriors aren’t interested in a real debate and don’t want to discuss the numerous crimes of the Israeli state. It’s the same with saying that one is against white people if you disagree with an apartheid system, it’s meaningless.

[darklordoftech]

I don’t think anti-semitism on either side of the spectrum was much of an issue in America from the end of WWII until the rise of Trump, but I can’t speak for the rest of the world.

[TML]

People are conflating anti-Semitism with opposition to the current Israeli government.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It seems like this type of question would only come from someone on the left who is anti-Semitic.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Ilhan Omar

[Kizzuwanda]

Ilhan Omar

No.

[Xeuma]

Ilhan Omar

And Tlaib.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

How has the would-be Butcher of Britain's name not been brought up in this thread yet?

There's no possible cultural explanation of his Nazi-level antisemitism besides his leftism.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

How has the would-be Butcher of Britain's name not been brought up in this thread yet?

There's no possible cultural explanation of his Nazi-level antisemitism besides his leftism.

Being 👏 Against 👏The 👏Israeli 👏 Government 👏 Does 👏 Not 👏Make 👏You 👏An 👏anti-Semite 👏

[darklordoftech]

“Strasserist” is sometimes used to mean “anti-semite who’s economically left-wing”.

[Beet]

The Soviet Union wasn't always the most friendly place for Jewish people.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The early German social democrats were aware of it: they referred to the phenomenon as the "socialism of fools". In essence, it's blaming the excesses of capitalism not on mysterious, intangible forces like the accumulation of capital, but on an identifiable "other": the Jews (or euphamstically the International Jewry). It often has flared up since, often without even the excuse of Israel. One infamous example is that of Stalin in his later years, who became obsessed with a supposedly Jewish agenda to kill him (worth noting that a lot of the Bolsheviks that were killed in the Purges were Jews).

I dont think most anti semitism comes across from the Left (the right, most notably the current incumbent of the White House, are also just as likely to play that card), but given as the Left defines as anti-racist we have extra responsibility to rid our movements of the taint of AS.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

“Strasserist” is sometimes used to mean “anti-semite who’s economically left-wing”.

"Nazi with populist-left economic views", to be specific, but yeah.

[dead0man]

but given as the Left defines as anti-racist we have extra responsibility to rid our movements of the taint of AS.

this is everything right here.  The left is supposed to be anti-racist, that's one of the good parts of the left.  I don't know if people like the OP are stupid, blind, or faking ignorance....whatever it is, it's not a good look.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The Soviet Union wasn't always the most friendly place for Jewish people.

But Jewish Autonomous Oblast man.

[Storr]

The Soviet Union wasn't always the most friendly place for Jewish people.

But Jewish Autonomous Oblast man.

We like the Jews....as long as they all move to Siberia.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The Soviet Union wasn't always the most friendly place for Jewish people.

But Jewish Autonomous Oblast man.

Irrelevant to the thread, but there are about 12 left there.

[The Mikado]

In 1952, believing his doctor planned to kill him, Josef Stalin generalized this out to a Jewish "Doctors' Plot," believing there was a general conspiracy of Jewish doctors throughout the USSR scheming to kill him, and that other Jews were behind this plot. Through his final year of life, Stalin meticulously planned out a purge likely to lead to the deaths of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews, who were spared only by his death (maybe he should've listened to his doctors after all). This is very highly documented, with no less than the post-Stalinist government of Nikita Khrushchev himself putting forward evidence of this.

Let us also recall the "affair of the doctor-plotters."

(Animation in the hall.)

Actually there was no "affair" outside of the declaration of the woman doctor [Lidiya] Timashuk, who was probably influenced or ordered by someone (after all, she was an unofficial collaborator of the organs of state security) to write Stalin a letter in which she declared that doctors were applying supposedly improper methods of medical treatment. (66)

Such a letter was sufficient for Stalin to reach an immediate conclusion that there are doctor-plotters in the Soviet Union. He issued orders to arrest a group of eminent Soviet medical specialists. He personally issued advice on the conduct of the investigation and the method of interrogation of the arrested persons. He said that academician [V. N. ] Vinogradov should be put in chains, and that another one [of the alleged plotters] should be beaten. The former Minister of State Security, comrade [Semyen] Ignatiev, is present at this Congress as a delegate. Stalin told him curtly, "If you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head." (67)

(Tumult in the hall.)

Stalin personally called the investigative judge, gave him instructions, and advised him on which investigative methods should be used. These methods were simple -- beat, beat and, beat again.

Shortly after the doctors were arrested, we members of the Politbiuro received protocols with the doctors' confessions of guilt. After distributing these protocols, Stalin told us, "You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies." (68)

The case was presented so that no one could verify the facts on which the investigation was based. There was no possibility of trying to verify facts by contacting those who had made the confessions of guilt.

We felt, however, that the case of the arrested doctors was questionable. We knew some of these people personally because they had once treated us. When we examined this "case" after Stalin's death, we found it to have been fabricated from beginning to end.

This ignominious "case" was set up by Stalin. He did not, however, have the time in which to bring it to an end (as he conceived that end), and for this reason the doctors are still alive. All of them have been rehabilitated. They are working in the same places they were working before. They are treating top individuals, not excluding members of the Government. They have our full confidence; and they execute their duties honestly, as they did before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20051107221432/http://www.uwm.edu/Course/448-343/index12.html

Anyone who thinks that left-wingers are somehow immune from anti-Semitism clearly has no background or understanding of Soviet History. Stalin, the leader of the "Workers' State" that was the vanguard of international revolutionary left wing ideology, spent his dying breaths plotting the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews based on his own racist delusional paranoia.

[Velasco]

There is the 1968 anti-semitic purge in Poland. Maybe Kal can tell us something about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis

 The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland as March 1968 or March events (Polish: Marzec 1968; wydarzenia marcowe), pertains to a series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the government of the Polish People's Republic. The crisis resulted in the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centres across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement. It was also accompanied by mass emigration following an antisemitic (branded "anti-Zionist") campaign waged by the minister of internal affairs, General Mieczysław Moczar, with the approval of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The protests coincided with the events of the Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia – raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The unrest culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The Soviet Union wasn't always the most friendly place for Jewish people.

But Jewish Autonomous Oblast man.

We like the Jews....as long as they all move to Siberia.

Interestingly, the Soviets openly floated the idea of creating the Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic in Crimea after the war, which was of course mostly a publicity stunt to impress the west (and it wouldn't work if ever attempted, just as the Jewish Autonomous Oblast). Then, when the foreign oriented-publicity stunt was no longer needed, Stalin used the idea to prosecute prominent Soviet Jewish figures for "nationalism".

[SInNYC]

The Soviet Union wasn't always the most friendly place for Jewish people.

No it wasn't. But it was far better for Jews than czarist Russia and the first 2 decades of post-Soviet Russia (yes, Stalin killed Jews, but he killed lots of people). The jury is still out for the current Russia since they really haven't hit any major crisis recently.

The first year of Bolshevik Russia was probably the best ever for Soviet Jews.

[dead0man]

Indeed, Russians, like most Europeans are bigots.  Sometimes you can put a lid on it, but it's eventually going to come out.


also, is the OP ever going to come back and admit he was wrong or even better, still try to play ignorant?

[Senator Incitatus]

Left-wingers can clearly engage in anti-semitism and have been going back to Marx (despite his Jewish heritage) himself. Whether or not and where there exists a particularly left-wing anti-semitism is worth actual debate.

My take is that it clearly exists within movements and individuals, but it's more like that anti-semitism influenced that individual's left-wing politics than vice versa. That is, they became left-wing because they hate Jews; they didn't hate Jews because they are left-wing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Obviously the OP is not arguing in anything remotely resembling good faith, but to carry on the theme of this being a thing for rather a long time, one need only to consider that Richard Wagner wrote Das Judenthum in der Musik just two years after fighting on the barricades at Dresden for the Socialist revolution. In a British context we might wish to observe the career of Ben Tillett (1860-1943), a pivotal figure in the development of the trade union movement and, as it happens, a lifelong and really quite virulent antisemite.