Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

by David L. Bernstein

This was by no means the first time “Jewish privilege” popped up in the public square: it had been circulating in the cultural ether for several years by the time #JewishPrivilege appeared. In April 2016, a debate erupted in the Stanford University Senate over a resolution condemning antisemitism. The controversy revolved around comments made by a student senator who denied it was antisemitic to claim Jews control the media, banks, etc. Lost in the outcry was a supposedly less blatant canard offered up by other students that “some stressed the importance of understanding the intersection of ‘white power’ and ‘Jewish power’ before voting on the resolution,” reported the Stanford Review.109 In other words, it was not ok to use the rightwing, white supremacist idiom naming specific institutions that Jews supposedly control, but it was ok to use the progressive idiom