OPINION:
The recent spate of antisemitic rampages on many of our university campuses by left-wing radicals and their Islamist allies and the dramatic rise of antisemitism generally compel a review of the causes of this wave of anti-Jewish activity. To explore those causes, we must take a short trip through modern history.
On May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces, bringing the Nazi regime in Germany to a well-merited ignominious end. This surrender marked the total military defeat of Germany and its European allies. It was also symbolically much more. The downfall of Nazi Germany marked a critical end, the end of a horrific experiment with nationalist fascism.
An essential aspect of the significance of the military victory was emphasized a year later when, in Nuremberg, a number of the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany were put on trial for war crimes. The trials disclosed the panoply of horrors that the Nazi regime had perpetrated. On display was evidence of the Holocaust, the most reprehensible act of antisemitic brutality in all of recorded history.
Subsequently, the publication of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which appeared in the late 1950s, brought the horrors of German fascism to a very human level, as the words of a young Jewish girl made personal the oppression imposed by right-wing extremism. The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem brought the details of the Holocaust to television screens around the world.
Militarism and fascism were substantially discredited after festering for generations. For more than a century and a half, an assortment of European nations toyed with right-wing ideology. In some, fascist governments took control. Although these diverse right-wing regimes were frequently at odds with one another, they espoused one prejudice around which they had found common cause: hatred of Jews.
For that reason, for decades after the end of World War II, those on the extreme right of the political spectrum couldn’t gain any credibility. As a result, antisemitism dissipated. From time to time, groups would emerge seeking to promote Nazism, but they would be quickly and appropriately marginalized as deranged or worse. The images of the Holocaust and the destruction of Germany had become so omnipresent that few would dare to publicly espouse fascist philosophy or seek to promote such ideology. The few who did could not be taken seriously.
Although exposure of the brutality of Nazism served to discredit right-wing ideology, the brutality of those on the extreme left was not similarly highlighted. Soviet violence before, during and after the war was also astounding. Josef Stalin’s communist policies and orders resulted in the deaths of millions of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. However, for many years, the magnitude of his murderous policies was left untold. No postwar trials were held, and very little film footage of the violence that the communist leadership of the Soviet Union imposed on its people was disseminated.
German atrocities so overshadowed those of the Soviet Union that only modest attention was cast on the suffering of those within the Soviet orbit. This obscuring of communist atrocities provided cover for left-wing political parties in Europe and elsewhere and even helped create the postwar order. Little was said of the pervasive antisemitism that undergirded Stalin’s paranoid policies.
Left-wing ideologies did not suffer the ignominy of those on the right. To the contrary, they were often exalted. After World War II, the world basked in the glow of the success in destroying the extreme right-wing ideology that had haunted Europe for so long. The victorious nations created a slew of international organizations, hoping to replace the warmongering of prior generations by institutions where disputes could be resolved through dialogue. The most prominent of these was, of course, the United Nations.
It did not take long, however, before various left-wing groups shamelessly began to exploit those institutions and their own seemingly unblemished status to promote their agendas. Although these groups often differed on their political priorities and jostled for position within the international order, they found at least one issue on which they could agree: that well-entrenched hatred, the hatred of the Jew.
The United Nations became the core around which many could coalesce. The United Nations created Israel but then became a vehicle for transforming the old antisemitism into something more modern and more in keeping with the sweep of anti-colonialist sentiment that dominated the post-World War II years, namely, antisemitism, but now in the form of anti-Zionism.
None of the shame that was visited on extreme right-wing Jew hatred seemed to cast any opprobrium on this new antisemitism.
The left could espouse this seemingly respectable version of that oldest of prejudices because it was deemed triumphant and remained generally unaffected by the reproach that had so powerfully tainted the right. Just like any virus left to its own devices, the new antisemitism has spread, infecting even the United States, a nation that had generally been spared from the worst excesses of that virus.
Today, it has become clear that, although plenty of right-wing extremists are still capable of disseminating antisemitism, the reality is that antisemitism is thriving on the left and among its Islamist allies. Just as fascism and extreme right-wing ideology had to be unconditionally defeated to marginalize their venom, it is increasingly becoming apparent that the new wave of purveyors of hate must also be unconditionally defeated. Assuredly, that must be the case if antisemitism is to be prevented from poisoning our society.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” published by HUC Press.
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