The Left and the Jews, Part Two. Where Does the Hatred Come From? It All Started with Marx.

By Markus Somm

The facts: In the United States, anti-Semites are taking over the Democratic Party; in Switzerland, “anti-Zionist” members of the Juso are forcing the only Jewish member of the Council of States out of the SP.

Why This Matters: Anti-Semitism on the Left, Part Two. How Did This Happen?

One of the most famous anti-Semites of all time wrote the following sentence in 1844:

“What is the secular religion of the Jews? Bargaining. What is their secular god? Money.”

The author’s name was Karl Marx, and he was a leftist.

True, Marx himself came from a Jewish family; both his paternal and maternal grandfathers were rabbis, and his father had been baptized only because, otherwise, he would have had little chance of pursuing a career as a lawyer. This was Prussia in the early 19th century, where anti-Semitism was state policy. Karl Marx himself grew up as a Lutheran and knew little about the Jewish religion.

His thoughtless remarks, however, had lasting effects. Perhaps they were as toxic as the anti-Jewish outbursts for which Martin Luther, the Reformer, became notorious—whose unchecked anti-Semitism has permanently poisoned German Protestantism. No such statements are known to have been made by Zwingli or Calvin —which is why the Reformed Church has never behaved as anti-Semitically as the Lutheran Church, let alone the Roman Catholic Church.

I’m telling you all this because anti-Semitism is a disease that lies latent in most Christians—due to similarly ambiguous statements in the New Testament—and it often takes just one famous, otherwise socially admired anti-Semite to trigger an outbreak of the disease. It’s as if we were waiting for a doctor to use his authority to declare a vice a virtue.

If we ask ourselves why the left in America is now infected with anti-Semitism, then prominent figures who were taken seriously have played just as much of a role. Unfortunately—and this is regrettable—many Black people were among them:

• First and foremost, Jesse Jackson, the first Black presidential candidate in American history—a Democrat who, in the 1980s, managed to make quite vile anti-Semitic remarks without paying any price for them. Because he was Black and a leftist, he got away with everything—with the result that soon no white person dared to criticize a Black person, even if that person turned out to be a racist.

• Barack Obama, the first Black president—a Democrat himself—was also among the pioneers of this new, left-wing anti-Semitism, treating Israel with more harshness and indifference than any American president before him. Once again, a white president would likely not have dared to do so. Was Obama an anti-Semite? We don’t know—and of course, one can treat Israel badly with impunity, even as U.S. president—but it was a first, and many of Obama’s role models were avowed anti-Semites. All of them were African Americans.

Belonging to a minority that had been discriminated against throughout history just as the Jews had been naturally made it easier for these Black people to give free rein to their anti-Semitism. It immunized them. This was entirely in line with the mistaken notion that a victim can never become a perpetrator.

Conversely, this has the exact same effect when we consider the causes fueling current left-wing anti-Semitism: By portraying the Palestinians as eternal victims—after all, descendants of a former, brutal master race, the Arabs—the left robs Jews of the indisputable fact that they still belong to a discriminated-against minority. Or have you ever counted how many Jews are verbally abused on the open street—and compared that to your own experiences as a red-green cyclist? Exactly.

Jews must no longer be victims —so that, in the end, even the Holocaust must be made to disappear, which can be achieved by accusing the Israelis, of all people, of genocide. Certainly, the accusation is as false and baseless as it is outrageous and distasteful, but above all, it turns out to be revealing.

• Why is this so important to modern anti-Semites?

After all, it’s obvious: When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine or the persecution of Christians by Islamists in Nigeria, it would never occur to them to speak of genocide. That accusation is reserved for the Jews—and only for the Jews.

Why is that?

• So that people can hate Jews—without feeling guilty.

By the way, that’s an old trick. The Nazis also claimed that the Jews wanted to exterminate all Germans, before they went on to exterminate the Jews, ostensibly in self-defense.

Or as Martin Luther recommended in his “Seven-Point Program” against the Jews:

“Let them set fire to their synagogues or schools.”

He wrote that in 1543. It was implemented 395 years later.

I hope you have a day of reflection

Markus Somm

Markus Somm is the editor of Nebelspalter.ch, where this commentary was first published.