Michael Goldfarb's dishonesty on Ron Paul and antisemitism

If Ron Paul was a Leftist, Michael Goldfarb would be pouncing all over him.

Instead, he has pounced on me (and my employer, no less), excusing the fact that Paul is building his campaign on antisemitic and anti-Zionist momentum.

Such actions betray both Goldfarb’s partisanry and either his ignorance of classical antisemitism, or his willingness to overlook it when it comes from within his own camp.

Yet despite the endless slander of Leftists by neocons like Goldfarb, antisemitism and anti-Zionism aren’t merely a problem on the Left. They are a problem on the Right as well, and at this moment, chiefly among Ron Paul’s supporters.

In the Fall 2007 issue of Dissent, Mitchell Cohen explores the conflation of Jews, capitalism and Zionism by the “Left that doesn’t learn,” and further, the extent to which such “demagogic articulations of anti-Zionism enhance anti-Semitism.” Cohen presents the four commonalities he sees between anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist discourses, writing:

Here are major motifs that inform classical anti-Semitism:

1) Insinuations: Jews do not and cannot fit properly into our society. There is something foreign, not to mention sinister about them.

2) Complaints: They are so particularistic, those Jews, so preoccupied with their “own.” Why are they so clannish and anachronistic when we need a world of solidarity and love? Really, they make themselves into a “problem.” If the so-called “Jewish problem” is singular in some way, it is their own doing and usually covered up by special pleading.

3) Remonstrations: Those Jews, they always carp that they are victims. In fact, they have vast power, especially financial power. Their power is everywhere, even if it is not very visible. They exercise it manipulatively, behind the scenes. (But look, there are even a few of them, guilty-hearted perhaps, who will admit it all this to you).

4) Recriminations: Look at their misdeeds, all done while they cry that they are victims. These ranged through the ages from the murder of God to the ritual slaughter of children to selling military secrets to the enemy to war-profiteering, to being capitalists or middlemen or landlords or moneylenders exploiting the poor. And they always, oh-so-cleverly, mislead you.

Alter a few phrases, a word here and there, and we find motifs of anti-Zionism that are popular these days in parts of the left and parts of the Muslim and Arab worlds:

1) Insinuations: The Zionists are alien implants in the Mideast. They can never fit there. Western imperialism created the Zionist state.

2) Complaints: A Jewish state can never be democratic. Zionism is exclusivist. The very idea of a Jewish state is an anachronism.

3) Remonstrations: The Zionists carp that they are victims but in reality they have enormous power, especially financial. Their power is everywhere, but they make sure not to let it be too visible. They exercise it manipulatively, behind people’s backs, behind the scenes – why, just look at Zionist influence in Washington. Or rather, dominance of Washington. (And look, there are even a few Jews, guilty-hearted perhaps, who admit it).

4) Recriminations: Zionists are responsible for astonishing, endless dastardly deeds. And they cover them up with deceptions. These range from the imperialist aggression of 1967 to Ehud Barak’s claim that he offered a compromise to Palestinians back in 2000 to the Jenin “massacre” during the second Intifidah.

Cohen adds, “No, anti-Zionism is not in principle anti-Semitism but it is time for thoughtful minds–especially on the left–to be disturbed by how much anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism share, how much the dominant species of anti-Zionism encourages anti-Semitism.”

Cohen’s call for self-introspection is certainly prescient. However, the anti-Zionist rhetoric Cohen attributes to the Left — what Goldfarb’s coworker David Brooks calls “the socialism of fools” — is, again, far from absent on the Right. All one needs to do is examine the remarks of Paul’s supporters, splashed across the web, in order to establish their consistency with the worst anti-Jewish rhetoric heard coming from the Left.

Which, again, is not to say that Ron Paul’s positions — or even all of his followers — are inherently antisemtic. Certainly there are legitimate reasons for opposing aid to Israel. And furthermore, as Shmuel Rosner notes, Paul’s focus on Israel should not be surprising considering Israel’s high profile.

However, Paul cannot escape being seen as trading on anti-Zionist sentiment and, in turn, the general undercurrent of antisemitism lurking beneath his base. Particularly when, after questioned about his neo-Nazi supporters, his campaign proudly asserted that “Ron Paul has beliefs that resonate with people.”

Despite his appearance of evenhandedness, Paul is willfully feeding into and feeding off of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment by (among other things) promoting suspicion of Zionist influence in Washington. Paul has even gone so far as to specifically identify AIPAC as the progenitor of the Iraq War. In other words, he has attributed one of the most unpopular wars in American history to an organization seen widely — if falsely — as representing the interests of the Jewish community.

Why is it that this leaves Goldfarb unperturbed? When Jim Kirchick reported on “The Delusions of [Democratic Congressman] Jim Moran,” who made similar remarks to Paul’s, Goldfarb reblogged it as “Required Reading.” Yet now, even when Kirchick himself has expressed agreement with me on this issue, Goldfarb instead chose to castigate me and, worse yet, give Paul free campaign advice. (Could it be because I referred to his publication in another blog entry as “the FUCKING Weekly Standard?”)

Even putting Israel aside, can Goldfarb recognize no parallel between the goldbugs in Paul’s camp who wage conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve and international banking consortiums, and the silverites of the Populist era who sought to encourage divestment from the gold standard by promoting the belief that Jewish usurers were controlling the gold market? Does he truly believe that there is no correlation between the rising popularity of anti-Fed views and the until-recent reign of Alan Greenspan? Is he not given any pause by the short distance between banking consortiums and “Jewish banking families?” A man who contributes to a publication which denounced the use of “neocon” as a codeword for “Jew” cannot see beyond this veil?

Hell, let’s even take the Jews off the table for a minute: Is it any secret that conservative economic policies disadvantage communities of color, which tend to fall to the lower end of the income spectrum? And what of Paul’s position on immigration? His general tendency towards isolationism? Do his other positions not mesh with a White Power agenda?

As with Paul’s positions on Israel, I do not wish to say that either conservativism or Libertarianism are inherently racist doctrines. However, doesn’t Paul’s refusal to divest himself of his neo-Nazi and White Nationalist supporters, combined with his policies and his rhetoric on Israel amount to something more than mere crankery? If we know that Paul will take $500 from a known neo-Nazi, how much has he and will he take from unknown neo-Nazis with whom his message “resonates?”

Does $8 million in two days not give Mr. Goldfarb cause for greater concern? Not for the sake of the White House, but for the sake of public sentiment towards the Jewish population, and the potential for that sentiment to be exploited as it has so many times in the past?

Does he not see the correlation between the burgeoning success of Paul’s campaign and the resurrection of the far-Right in Europe?

Can he really ignore what’s going on here — knowing full well where such things lead — for the sake of political expediency?

As they say, in the parlance of our times, are you shittin’ me?

…

And for the love of God, leave JTA out of this. All I did was pitch them a story, which I didn’t even end up writing. How do my personal thoughts as an IT person on their staff, written after work hours, even remotely reflect on the quality of their 90 years of reportage? What an insidiously low blow. Kampeas is a spectacular reporter (and, incidentally, not my editor). His interaction with Sullivan was a goof and blown way out of proportion.

Tags: antisemitism, israel, jews, neocons, ron paul