Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

by David L. Bernstein

The Reut Group—an Israeli think tank that closely monitors and analyzes ideological trends in the US—popularized the term “erasive anti-Semitism” in March 2021, referring to “a de-facto undermining of the Jewish narrative of self-determination.” According to Reut, erasive anti-Semitism negates the rights of Jews—individually or collectively—to define their identity, experience, and vulnerability. Reut regards it as largely an “unintended consequence of contemporary progressive discourse,” and argues that current Progressive discourse distorts the historic and lived experience of Jews, who are “cast uniformly as powerful white oppressors.” Unlike other forms of discrimination, according to Reut, this strain of woke ideology does not single out Jews. Rather, it indiscriminately lumps them within the dominant majority. This effectively erases the Jewish voice in defining Jewish identity. Reut points out: “There is a marginal fringe that purposefully advances anti-Jewish and anti-Israel agendas utilizing its tenets and continues to amass influence on the left.”103 In a powerful article in Sapir in Spring 2021, Pamela Paresky wrote, “Race is the locus of power in the critical social justice worldview, which holds that the dominant group—white people—will, when it serves their interests, conditionally invite minority groups into ‘whiteness.’” According to this paradigm, light-skinned Jews can benefit from whiteness by shedding Jewish ethnic markers and are thus granted “conditio...