left antisemitism¶

There is no such thing as "left antisemitism." Any actual antisemitic mythemes you spot among "the left" are the result of syncretism: fascists draping themselves in red garb, undermining a materialist framework in favor of aesthetics. They have no power to advance their hogwash. It is true that the key thinkers of the ascendant wing of fascism -- the "revanchists," overtaking the "supranationalists" -- uphold this theoretical framing. They posit a "once-pure, righteous hierarchy" that has been tampered with by scheming alien elements. In this framework, they are able to slot whichever "alien element" is most rhetorically useful at any given moment, and they are constantly probing their base to find the best targets (defining "best" as "when we agitate around this, our people respond"). At the moment, Jews are very low on the list of buttons to press, both because there is a lower extant appetite to draw on compared to other buttons, and because of the tactical limitations posed by Israel's continued usefulness. Drawing on antisemitism while still propping up Israel is a messy proposition, although not impossible.

In fact, expect to see exactly that as US support for Israel winds down. The response to antisemitic probing will help the revanchists modulate the speed of their withdrawal. But for now, they have plenty of other, much more useful buttons to press: Muslims, China, immigrants, "criminals," trans people, etc.

Each individual target draws on particular "anxieties" -- that is, vulnerabilities in the edifice of white nationalist hegemony. I could go point by point on each, but most relevant to the topic at hand is the use of "Jew" as a dogwhistle for "financial capital."

There is an inkling among the Faithful of the Nation that capitalism is being puppeteered and diverted from its "natural form" by "bankers." This conception allows them to pin any perceived fall in standing on the manipulation of capital by those who don't deserve it -- an alien entity who parasitizes production without producing (with the understanding, of course, that "normal" capitalists are doing the production). This framing allows labor aristocrats and the petty bourgeoisie to cling to capitalism itself without recognizing financialization as a composite of lower forms of accumulation. The highest capitalists aren't pooling their winnings to multiply profit -- they're being puppeted! And of course, that framing requires something from outside the Great White Nation to be doing the manipulation. Someone clever, scurrilous, and greedy enough to subvert the natural order, but weak and cowardly enough to be incapable of ascending its ranks "naturally." Jews have filled this narrative niche nicely for centuries. When communists started gaining power, it was trivial to equate the two, painting communism as the latest Jewish plot to topple the white, capitalist, natural way of life. Israel tempered the thematic coherence of that narrative -- Jews were now useful to the empire. And they were doing colonialism! Fighting "the savages"! Not so weak and cowardly anymore. They weren't parasitizing white production, they were "justly ruling" the Middle East. The point of all this is to establish the fact that fascism relies heavily on aesthetics and mythology to animate its constituents. The particulars are not random; they are continuously probed for and reworked to fit the moment.

And at the moment, Jews are not a valuable probe.