If we are unable to confront reactionary ideas in our own movement, we will always be inhibited in pursuing our ultimate aim: the #socialist transformation of #society.’
Daniel Randall’s book is a socialist analysis of #leftantisemitism, which asks: ‘How did the political #left, a movement apparently committed to #equality, become a site of #antisemitism, and how can antisemitism on the left be overcome?
Randall traces left antisemitism’s origins to primitive critiques of #capitalism that conflated #Jews with #capital; Stalinism’s “anti-cosmopolitan” and “ #antiZionist ” campaigns of the 1950s onwards; and a form of “ #anti-imperialism ” which designates any #opposition to western #imperialism, including #Israel, as necessarily #progressive.
He argues that, far from representing a logical continuation or inevitable endpoint of left-wing ideas, left antisemitism represents a distortion of them, and that by re-anchoring the socialist project in a #class-struggle #politics of #solidarity and #equality, the left can confront and overcome antisemitism within its own ranks.
As Keir Starmer's Labour leadership launches a new wave of proscriptions and expulsions, Randall argues that these administrative responses are inadequate at best, and counterproductive at worst. He argues that only a political-educational campaign, targeting the #ideological roots of left antisemitism, can overcome it.
This is the second original title published by No Pasaran Media and comes as debates about the response to antisemitism in the #Labour Party continue, and after a spike in antisemitic incidents following an escalation of violence in Israel/ #Palestine in May 2021.
#antifa #communism #zionism #critizism
https://www.nopasaran.media/confronting-antisemitism-on-the-left/
