ANTISEMITISM IS/AS A POLITICAL STRATEGY: I’m planning to elaborate on this further, hopefully soon, but briefly more antisemitism goes beyond ordinary religious or ethnic hatred in that it manifests itself so often as a political tool. In the university context, it does two things. First, it allows “intersectional” groups that base their identities on victimhood that would otherwise be at odds with each to ally. How do you get feminist and LGBTetc groups to ally with Islamists? Shared hostility to Jews. Second, how do you overthrow the mainstream, white-dominated squishy liberal establishment that has run universities since the 1960s in favor of the hard-left? Well, secular establishment Jews largely replaced establishment Protestants as the heart of the university establishment–recently, eight of eight Ivy League presidents were Jews. By “excluding Jews from progressive spaces,” as liberal campus Jews now frequently complain about, you ensure that all the roles Jews have played in the university hierarchy will be replaced by the hard-left coalition, among whom Jews radical enough to be allowed to join are a small minority. My namesake David Bernstein’s book Woke Antisemitism is very good on the subject of how woke ideology fosters and foments antisemitism (buy it!) But I think even David wildly underestimates how much of this antisemitism is not merely a natural outgrowth of wokeism, but part of its political strategy. You can’t make an omelet (overthrowing the mainstream liberal establishment) without breaking a few eggs, and Jews are among the eggs.
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