JEWISH ERASURE
Understanding Jewish Erasure by Progressives
Suppressing speech about Jews paves the way for anti-Semitism
Jews are often unwelcome in progressive spaces, and the history of Jews helping Black Americans and supporting other progressive causes is often suppressed by progressives. This amounts to an “erasure” which opens a space for antisemitism to thrive.
If you read antiracist and other social justice literature, you’ll see a lot of great content. How Black people are harmed by seemingly neutral policies and structures in the world — like ghettos and the tradition of funding education based on nearby property values, which are lower in Black neighborhoods, and hetero-normative assumptions driving many policies and attitudes — but you won’t see much about Jews and Jews’ contributions.
I wrote a pretty well-researched piece (meaning there are many, many links) about how Jews are also left out of antiracist literature — particularly the 1619 project, but also others, despite their amazing allyship over the years. You can read it here:
It covers the puzzling absence of Jews from both the 1619 project and other progressive works like the “Not My Idea” children’s book.
Accusations of pinkwashing and veganwashing
There are other, new, and more pervasive approaches to exclude Jews from the anti-racist and social justice movements.
One is the “-washing” discourse as applied to Israel. This is where if someone says that gay people and animals have lots of rights in Israel, which they do (particularly relative to other Middle-Eastern countries), it is attacked or rejected because it detracts from a progressive narrative of Israel being colonialist and racist.
Those are actually at least somewhat valid critiques, as oftentimes, Israel is abusive to their Arab minority, and they do occupy the West Bank.
But the overall situation is just that — overall. We have to look at all aspects of Israeli society and governance to understand the complexities and get a full picture. Progressives, for some reason, really don’t want us to do that, so they attempt to ban any information that does not conform to a certain narrative.
Now, of course, “Israel” is not the same as “The Jews” but as we will see next, this is part and parcel of a larger set of taboos and language games used to avoid praising Jewish people from the left and often to demonize or attack them.
Jews as “hyper-white”
It’s a required article of faith on the left to agree that Jews are white. Even the erudite and informed Whoopi Goldberg suggested the Nazis’ attacks on Jews were about “two white groups of people.”
In fact, many on Twitter now say that Anne Frank (a Jewish girl killed by the Nazis) had “white privilege.”
As my 1619 piece above calls out, the main technique is actually not to mention the Jews when talking about racism or oppression — but to ignore them and demand others do so as well. Particularly not to talk about Jews as oppressed people, or as allies and even leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, or as allies to Black America in other ways.
Tolerance of antisemitism
Many modern politicians (mostly far-left Black politicians, unfortunately) are sympathetic to the Nation of Islam and their leader, Louis Farrakhan, or are loosely antisemitic. The Women’s March leadership was anti-Jewish, and Rep. Omar said that U.S. Israel policy was “all about the Benjamins,” implying that Jews are money-grubbing and control the world through banking, etc.
There’s been some criticism of these actions and statements, but it has become embedded in the far left without much pushback.
Boycotts
The progressive Sunrise Movement boycotted an event because three Jewish organizations there refused to denounce Israel. As usual, they suggest this is about Israel, not Jews, but as noted above, Black politicians are not required to denounce the Nation of Islam to participate in progressive circles.
Bans
Many Jews are blocked from student governments and related spaces if they refuse to actively denounce Israel (which excludes most Jews overall and over 90% of Orthodox Jews).
Leftist dating profiles often exclude “Zionists.”
Jews were ejected from a Chicago gay pride parade because they displayed Jewish Stars (🔯 — Stars of David).
An absence as a presence
Sometimes when something is so clearly missing, it is puzzling. We can say that absence actually becomes a presence.
Because this is a case of erasure instead of libel, there are not a lot of links to share showing explicit antisemitic activity in progressive circles (except in the UK). The point is Jews are erased rather than directly attacked, so there’s literally nothing to link to.
But of course, the slanders against Jews come from other quarters — from white nationalists or Nazis or the NOI itself, and the erasure of pro-Jewish stories from progressive spaces has softened the ground, allowing these libels to take hold unchallenged. At this point, Black people, in particular, are far more antisemitic than whites due to these dynamics.
Don’t take my word for it
Go forth and tweet. Tell your (far-left) progressive friends that Jews were the best allies that Black America ever had (you can use my 1619 story above to make the point). Tell them that Jews were killed by the Nazis because of their race, so they are actually a racial minority. Tell them that Jews are not really white in the same sense as someone who is in the majority. Tell them that a light-skinned Black person who can “pass” is functionally equivalent to a Jew who passes as Christian. Tell them that Israel is one of the best places in the world to be gay.
Let us know how that works out for you.
