Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

by David L. Bernstein

“Like moths attracted to the flames that can consume them, Jews have long sought salvation in ideologies that ultimately sought to destroy them. It happened with communism and is being repeated with young Jews’ visceral embrace of ‘wokeness’ that in the name of freedom and equality, snuffs out freedom of thought and equality for Jews.

Dogmas that teach there’s something noble in persecuting political opponents because we’re ‘obviously right’ are not only reminiscent of McCarthyism, but also feed binary (and conspiratorial) thinking, creating fertile ground for one of the most persistent conspiracy theories—antisemitism—to grow.”

“Antisemitism has long been one of the most pervasive and troubling of mankind’s many forms of fratricide, in large part because of its flexibility. American conservatism had a historical problem with Jew-hatred—but so did Islamism, the Catholic Church, and the Communist Soviet Union. And now, in Woke Antisemitism, David Bernstein argues that some of the worst anti-Semites of today can be found on the ‘woke’ left. His case is persuasive: any movement that treats disproportionate success as de facto evidence of the oppression of others will be hard on a high-performing minority, and any that sees ‘Zionism as racism’ will predictably clash with the Jewish community on key issues.

And the proletariat are always right because they are the victims.

In woke ideology, if you substitute the word race for class, you will get almost the exact same Marxist-Leninist dogma in which we were indoctrinated in schools that became the basis of the hatred against dissidents and anyone who dared question the party line. In today’s ideological movements, I see some of the same forces that I experienced in the Soviet Union—forces that demonize the Jewish state—and an expectation, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit, that Jews give up aspects of their identities in order to conform to these ideological whims. Jews should be able to live in the fullness of their Jewish identity and not be forced to rid themselves of the “undesirable” aspects, such as their relationship to Israel. Going along with progressive dictates is not nearly as cost-free as many Jews might imagine. I grew up in a place where the authorities proclaimed: “the proletariat of the world unite.” In today’s conception of intersectionality, haters of Jews unite. In the Soviet Union, there were good nations and bad nations—good nations were part of the struggle against the global capitalists and bad nations were opposed to it. In woke ideology, there are good identities and bad identities. In this worldview, the most victimized identity is Palestinian and the worst identity is Israeli, that which represents the last colonial project. Intersectionality unites woke progressive theory with the most primitive forms of antisemitism.

Many on the woke left diminish the Holocaust, calling it “white on white crime,” and declaring that such crimes are unimportant in the grand sweep of history in the struggle between oppressed and oppressors.

The Jew, at once successful and oppressed, only complicates this simplistic ideological picture.

Indeed, any ideology that connects identity to power will ultimately be used to assert Jewish power over the lives of the oppressed. It’s already happening. Bernstein also offers a roadmap for extricating the Jewish community and, by extension, American society, from this woke dystopia. He argues that American Jews should build a new set of allies, particularly among immigrant communities who love America and want it to live up to its democratic ideals. He lays

out a very specific plan for how American Jews can prevail. While I will leave it to others to decide with whom American Jews should partner, I know from experience that no true ally would advance a racist ideology that puts Jews and other minorities in harm’s way.

Just look at how many in this ideological movement erase the legacy of the great civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was, after all, dedicated to broadening the borders of an inclusive, liberal society. For the proponents of this ideology, King’s was a “passive” approach that perpetuates white hegemony. But that’s only because their aims are not liberal. They seek to impose a view of the world and won’t let others with different ideas and approaches even speak their minds because it benefits “the privileged” who are already exploiting society.

One of the personal costs of conceding to this ideology is a phenomenon we knew well in the Soviet Union—becoming a doublethinker, when people pretend to believe in something they don’t. In the Soviet Union, doublethinkers did not become dissidents because it was too dangerous. They could have been killed. So they kept their critical opinions of the regime to themselves and lived in a constant state of self-censorship.

Unlike in the Soviet Union, in today’s America you cannot blame a dictator for preventing you from speaking. No one is forcing you into doublethink. The freedom of expression depends only on the courage of your convictions. If liberal democracy in America is to survive and thrive, it depends on people taking such risks. Are you a doublethinker or not? If you’re not a doublethinker, then don’t be afraid to express your views.

Indeed, this is an important moment for the American Jewish community. In my judgment, the role of the Jew is not to join forces with the ideological fads of the day, but to stand up for independent thought and the liberal principles on which the democracies of the world were founded.

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” —George Orwell

Today’s Progressive ideologues, on the other hand, claim to know exactly why some people have more and others less: they insist that those who have are responsible for bringing about the deprivations of those who have not.

Those who downplay cancel culture tend to refute the “cancel” part—i.e., “You haven’t been fired for your views” (“…So shut up!)—but those critics overlook the term “culture,” which suggests that it’s not just the act of getting de-platformed at issue, but the pervasive fear of censure that intimidates people into silence. •I generally stay away from the term Critical Race Theory (CRT) because CRT can be a valid theoretical lens and only becomes a problem when it ceases to be just a theory and ripens into dogma that aims to crowd out other perspectives.

By “woke ideology,” I mean the outgrowth of postmodernist thought that holds two core tenets: that bias and oppression are not just matters of individual attitude but are embedded in the very structures and systems of society, and that only those with lived experience of oppression have the insight to define oppression for the rest of society.

The problem I identify in this book arises because woke ideology crowds out all alternative explanations and theoretical frameworks, thereby establishing itself as the one and only explanation for society’s problems. In so doing, it shuts down liberal discourse and empowers radical voices.

Dogma begets ever more extreme dogma. The more we defer to an irrational set of beliefs, the more extreme and more dangerous those beliefs become over time. Each time an apex of craziness makes itself known, the ideology produces yet crazier manifestations, and its demands become more extreme.

As for its impact on the Jewish community, woke ideology short-circuits the deliberative process in Jewish organizations by making it impossible to discuss sensitive topics. Among other issues, woke ideology makes identifying problems and solutions to declining Jewish affiliation more difficult by insisting that such efforts are prejudicial and misogynistic. Woke ideology alienates many Jews with divergent political attitudes

from Jewish institutions by treating their views as bigotry or by otherwise insisting that their politics are beyond the pale. And woke ideology inflames both anti-Israelism and antisemitism by spreading dogma that empowers extremists and antisemites.

Francis Fukuyama argues that “these threats to liberalism are not symmetrical. The one coming from the right is more immediate and political; the one on the left is primarily cultural and therefore slower-acting.”3 Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch once likened the problem on the right to a heart attack and the problem on the left to a cancer.

Many political liberals have traded in classical liberal values for what writer Wesley Yang calls the “successor ideology,” commonly known as woke ideology. It’s an ideology that claims to have the absolute truth about why there’s disparity in the world and, hence, overrides the need for societal debate about such matters. It claims to be a successor to liberalism. In the name of justice, the ideology undercuts free discourse and foments antisemitism. It insinuates itself into institutions and changes their values and culture, often without ever firing a shot, mostly because those who oppose the ideology never bother to resist.

Inasmuch as the ACLU only defends speech it approves of, it’s no longer a civil liberties organization. It’s merely a partisan vehicle upholding a favored set of policies or ideological preferences.

They never went in for political word games—played on both sides of the political spectrum—that serve to muddle the differences between freedom and actual oppression. This basic distinction between a democracy and an authoritarian regime is something I think about when I hear right-wing populists and woke ideologues alike pretend that our hard-won democratic institutions are a mask for tyranny or oppression. They clearly don’t know what it’s like to live under a truly oppressive regime.

Being a civil libertarian, as most Jews were; loving debate, as many Jews did; experiencing antisemitism, as most Jews have; and growing up in a patriotic immigrant home full of gratitude for America, as nearly all immigrant families did, I was naturally predisposed to oppose woke ideology because it mocks civil liberties, which some woke ideologues view as a function of white supremacy; it stifles open debate and discourse; it fuels left-wing

antisemitism; and it views America as an oppressive state.

The UN marked the twentieth anniversary of this disgraceful episode in September of 2021, not to express the requisite remorse, but to celebrate its supposed achievements. The Durban conference was a watershed moment for Jews around the world: a stark reminder that deliverance from the forces of history was not yet in the offing.

Yet few American Jews understood or addressed a basic question about this revival of antisemitism: What was the underlying ideology driving the Jew-hatred at Durban? And, twenty years later, with a resurgence of left-wing antisemitism in the US and Europe, many still haven’t figured out how a variant of that same ideological virus generates antisemitism today.

The debacle at Durban was an expression of postcolonialism: a critical academic study turned dogma, highlighting the legacy of colonialism, focusing on the human consequences of the exploitation of colonized people and lands. Postcolonialism came to be regarded by an activist community as a complete and inviolable explanation for why some countries flourish and others languish: the haves caused the deprivations of the have-nots—full stop. Any other explanation, particularly any that focused on cultural differences between various countries and regions, came to be regarded as racist and beyond the pale of legitimate discourse.

Like all intellectual monopolies, postcolonialism denies the validity of other explanations, and in its certitude becomes an illiberal and dangerous source of extremism and hate. The ideology does, of course, contain a modicum of truth—the horrors of colonialism do contribute to some of today’s global disparities. The proponents of postcolonialism, however, completely paper over the highly successful Asian countries that were once colonies, and what their achievements say about the varieties of long-term impacts of colonial rule. In simplistically dividing the world into oppressors and oppressed, postcolonialism holds successful nations morally culpable and struggling nations morally pure. And in insisting on this perverse binary, the ideology enables the expression of the usual resentment and ill-will toward Jews and Israel, both of whom have succeeded in their respective environments.

Talking about the antisemitism at Durban without reference to post-colonialist ideology was like talking about the attacks of September 11th without reference to extreme Islamist ideology. We should have grasped the underlying problem then: “It’s the ideology, stupid.” Fast-forward twenty years, and we see the same political dynamic—not in a remote international conference of NGOs and diplomats, but in multiple mainstream American institutions, including higher education, K–12 schools, corporations, the law, medicine, nonprofits, and even scientific research.

Woke ideology is postcolonialism applied to the domestic scene in Western countries, neatly dividing peopl...

When Farrakhan called for and then led the Million Man March in October of 1995—a rally in Washington, DC, dedicated to fostering self-sufficiency in the Black community and combating negative racial stereotypes in popular culture—Jews implored their Black friends and allies not to attend, and a few—Congressman John Lewis, for instance—took heed. But many prominent Black figures, such as Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, and Maya Angelou attended the March, and spoke.23 A willingness to legitimize Farrakhan was an ongoing

point of contention between the Jewish and Black communities: a moral chasm in the road to justice. Many Jews could not wrap their heads around the fact that Farrakhan’s bigotry didn’t instantly disqualify him in the eyes of a community trying to overcome bigotry.

Support for Farrakhan’s work, if not for his explicit antisemitic message, became an ongoing impediment to Black-Jewish relations and dialogue.

John Butler—the program chair and the head of a Catholic high school in Washington—opened the program, stating that “racism equals prejudice plus power.” I had never heard that formulation before. “I think racism is hatred toward other races, and don’t think power, whatever that is, has anything to do with it,” I told Butler after the meeting. “You can disagree all you want but that’s what racism is,” he said. I wondered who gave him the final word on the matter. Such insistence on being right was hard for me to stomach; this was a demand for acquiescence.

Ross now acknowledges that the old style of diversity training was alienating, and that more updated forms—which focus on implicit bias—accord greater respect to people’s varied life stories. But I see nothing in today’s training, much of it based on the new canon such as Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, that demonstrates any such respect. Moreover, extensive research by Harvard sociology professor Frank Dobbin and others shows that these newer forms are no more effective in achieving workplace inclusion—and are every bit as alienating—as the earlier versions.

I didn’t reject the idea that many whites had advantages that many Blacks lacked, but I recoiled at the all-encompassing nature of the claim.

The standard rhetoric among civil rights groups started to shift away from one seeking opportunity to one asserting oppression.

“Progressive ideologues,” I argued, “believe that only people with power can be racists. Under this winner-take-all power paradigm, the formula is ‘racism=bigotry + power,’ which means that you cannot be racist if you don’t have power, and if you do have power, you cannot be a victim. Over time,” I continued, “progressives have come to view Jews as a privileged group and part of the American power establishment, and this lends little credence to Jewish claims of racism. So when Jews allege racism by Arabs or Muslims, or African Americans, progressives tend to remain conspicuously silent because, in their view, Jews cannot be victims, and ‘powerless’ minority groups cannot be guilty of racism.”33 What I began to see was the convergence of an American version of the post-colonialist ideology I witnessed in Durban, South Africa—a version that has since congealed into woke ideology—and the growth of antisemitism on the Progressive left. The simplistic ideology of “oppressor versus oppressed” fueled antisemitism by linking identity to privilege and—in the minds of some—Jewish identity to “Jewish privilege.” Durban was not a one-off, and it was not just a global phenomenon. The American left was being Durbanized, and many American Jews

were naively helping it along by acquiescing to the demands of woke ideologues.

Early in my tenure, I toured college campuses coast to coast, speaking to dozens of student activists, Jewish campus professionals, and professors, and I came away with a central conclusion: students back then embraced a kind of “soft postmodernism” in which they held that all narratives were equal. They didn’t want to be pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian; they wanted to be pro-Everybody.

My job was to train Jewish student leaders in the words of an Israeli advertisement promoting safer driving: “Don’t be right, be smart,” a phrase we used a lot with Jewish student leaders. In the winter of 2012, the David Project took a group of non-Jewish student leaders to Israel—student body presidents, newspaper editors, progressive leaders and activists, and others—along with their Jewish student counterparts, to understand the array of narratives that make up the Israeli people.

So our multiple-narrative approach to Israel advocacy did open up hearts and minds. It was working.

With Black students at the forefront, Brown’s death radicalized campus politics practically overnight. Black Lives Matter had no “everyone is right” category in its narrative—the white-dominated state oppressed Black people, period.

Gone was the soft postmodernism of multiple narratives, replaced by a hard postmodernism of binary power structures, that expressed in no uncertain terms who had power and who was powerless, who was oppressed and who was doing the oppressing.

I shared my observation that varied Progressive student groups were beginning to connect their causes. Each of them now featured a fixed sense of oppressor and oppressed. Feminist, Black, and LGBT activists were expressing solidarity with the Palestinians. During the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, signs reading “From Ferguson to Palestine” began to appear. Tweets from Palestinian activists stating “it is always the oppressed standing with the oppressed” were retweeted hundreds of thousands of times. A video produced by BLM activists likening the Black lives cause to the Palestinian cause went viral. “That’s called intersectionality,” a Georgetown University student named Max stated matter-of-factly. “And it really scares me, because there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do or say to influence the thinking of the students who buy into it.” I vaguely remembered studying “intersectionality” in graduate school: this term was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989, to describe a framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege.37 It was originally a legal framework that was meant to address a loophole in the law that let companies off the hook for discriminating against Black women, who were not a distinct protected class. But it soon became much more. Intersectionality holds that a person who is, for example, both Black and female

experiences greater disadvantage than if she belonged to just one or the other oppressed group—if she were just Black or just female. By the same token, a person who is both white and male experiences added privilege than if he fit just one of those identity categories. While intersectionality is supposedly about the relationship of identity to power, many of the activists used the term to describe their affinity and solidarity with other causes. An LGBT rights organization, for example, might, in the name of intersectionality, express solidarity with an indigenous rights organization. Like so many other social justice concepts, intersectionality has some utility in describing social dynamics, but activists have transformed a simple heuristic into a grand axiom and then into an article of faith.

Every noxious ideological fad the larger American Jewish community faced seemed to originate in the politically charged San Francisco Bay Area, and the staff at Jewish organizations there often had more experience in addressing them than the rest of the country, so we organized a webinar for the Jewish advocacy community called “Grappling with Intersectionality.” While I didn’t say so explicitly, I came to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Jews needed to be viewed as one of the oppressed groups.