What needs to be considered is the legacy of the figure of 'the Jew' in the European cultural imagination (which includes European offshoots like North America). This figure is the shadowy, conspiratorial puppetmaster behind world events, the personification of the invisible forces of capital which shape our lives. This leads to a truncated critique of financial capital rather than capital per se (as in the recent 'blame the bankers' type propaganda around the economic crisis). While explicit anti-Jewish racism is now far less acceptable than it once was, it is not identical to or necessary for these historical anti-semitic narratives to find contemporary resonance. In the case of 'blaming the bankers' for instance, one has to ask why it has populist resonance? What narratives is it tapping into? It is in this context I think the term 'structural anti-semitism' makes sense, to describe rehashed classical anti-semitic arguments without the anti-Jewish racism, arguments that are structurally identical to anti-semitic ones only the term 'Jew' is subsitiuted with 'Zionist', 'financial elite', 'wealthy bankers', 'lizards' or whatever. I would argue the prevelance of these ideas among the left mostly reflects a lack of materialist class analysis, which in turn reflects the weakness of the class, rather than any thinly veiled Jew-hating.
While anti-semitism has a long and inglorious history, the discussion in relation to the left requires a little more historical background. As the left is defined in relation to capitalism, I'll address the development of anti-semitism alongside the birth of early capitalism. In medieval europe there were three major religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Bloody wars were fought between them and between sub-sects (such as following the Reformation), but religion was a major force structuring social life. Usury - the lending of money at interest - was prohibited by both Islam and Christianity, but not by Judaism. Consequently according the the historian Paul Johnson's 'A history of the Jews':
Catholic autocrats frequently imposed the harshest financial burdens on the Jews. The Jews reacted by engaging in the one business where Christian laws actually discriminated in their favour, and became identified with the hated trade of moneylending.
This is an example of how Jews occupied a place in Christendom that was simultaneously inside it but not of it, a cosmopolitan Other, an alien within
si vous avez des avis je suis curieux...
niel a écrit:que penses tu de l'empire invisible ou de l'agenda ésothérique?
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