Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

by David L. Bernstein

“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