Antisemitism Resources

This is a page dedicated to sources by and for radicals about understanding and combating antisemitism.

Marxists, communists, socialists and anarchists have been talking about anti-Jewish oppression for over a century, and, as Max Horkheimer said, “You cannot understand society if you do not understand antisemitism.” 

The vast Jewish non-profit system, even though it has many “progressive” organizations, has a fundamental limit when it comes to fighting antisemitism: they are unable to link their understandings of anti-Jewish oppression to a critique of capitalist society.

The list:

Shorter

1. Jewish Solidarity Caucus Platform
2. JFREJ pamphlet, especially pages 19-20
3. April Rosenblum, The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere
   • Analysis of this piece by Ben Lorber in Jewish Currents
4. Liberation Road pamphlet on antisemitism
5. Horkheimer, The Jews and Europe
6. Morris Schappes, The Roots of Antisemitism (Jewish Currents, 1946)
7. NY Times, The Psychology of Antisemitism
8. Ben Lorber, Attacking Antisemitism
9. Eric Ward, Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism
10. The Unbelievable Story Of The Plot Against George Soros (Buzzfeed).
11. Adam Serwer, White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots
12. Mark Tseng-Putterman, Fear and Isolation in American Zion 
    • More from Mark (with Donna Nevel) in Boston Review
13. David Nirenberg, Anti Judaism as Critical Theory
14. Aurora Levins Morales, Latin@s, Israel and Palestine: Understanding Anti-Semitism
15. Jordana Rosenfeld, The historic roots of anti-Semitism and how they play out today
16. Benjamin Balthasar, The Death and Life of the Jewish Century 
17. Verso, Antisemitism and Oppression
18. Bernie Sanders, How to Fight Antisemitism
    • Responses to Bernie’s piece from readers of Jewish Currents
19. Economics of Race Hatred
20. Jack Jacobs, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Racism in the Era of Donald Trump: The Relevance of Critical Theory
21. Cosmonaut, On Hasidic Jews, Anti-Semitism and Non-Profits

The UK and the Labour Party debacle

1. Barnaby Raine, Jewophobia
2. Verso, Antisemitism and Oppression
3. Novara Media podcast: Labour, Israel and Antisemitism 
4. UK Labour Pamphlet on Antisemitism
   • David Graeber, For the First Time in My Life, I’m Frightened to Be Jewish
   • How to Think Clearly About Antisemitism Controversies in the Labour Party
5. 972 Magazine, Labour Party infighting exploited British Jews. How do we rebuild?

The Jewish Question

1. Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question
2. Marx, On the Jewish Question
3. Abram Leon, On The Jewish Question – A Marxist Interpretation 
4. Jewish Socialist Critique: analysis of On The Jewish Question by Gary Ruchwarger
5. Marx, Leon and the Jewish Question: A Reappraisal by John Rose
6. The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate by Enzo Traverso
7. Tolerance and/or Equality: The Jewish Question and the Woman Question by Wendy Brown
8. Maxime Rodinson, Cult, Ghetto and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question
9. Ber Borochov, Class Struggle and the Jewish Nation: Selected Essays in Marxist Zionism

Longer

1. Postone, Anti Semitism and National Socialism
2. Adorno, On Antisemitism
3. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (chapter on antisemitism)
4. Sartre, Anti Semite and Jew
5. Traverso, Understanding the Nazi Genocide: Marxism after Auschwitz
6. Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction
7. Jack Jacobs, The Frankfurt School: Jewish Lives and Antisemitism (chapter two goes somewhat in depth on the various thinkers’ ideas on antisemitism) 
8. Jewish Voice for Peace, On Antisemitism
9. Mario Kessler, Essays on Antisemitism and Socialism
10. Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: the Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism
11. Karl Kautsky, Are the Jews a Race?
12. American Historical Review, issue on Antisemitism

Videos, Podcasts, other media

1. Treyf Podcast: Antisemitism and the Far Right
2. Novara Media podcast: Labour, Israel and Antisemitism
3. Philosophy Tube video on Antisemitism (FYI: unfair treatment of Marx in my opinion)
4. Brief video of Lenin on Antisemitism
5. Dove Kent on NPR 
6. IfNotNow powerpoint on Antisemitism and White Nationalism
7. The Tzedek Lab
8. Big resource dump 
9. The Antisemitism Section at Marxists.org. Mostly early 20th century, labor movement, US and Europe. 
10. Critical Theories of Antisemitism Network
    • includes video of a 2012 lecture from Moshe Postone

Fascism

(See other works on this list by Adorno and Horkheimer and Postone)

1. Walter Benjamin, Theories on German Fascism 
2. Max Horkheimer, The Jews and Europe
3. Hal Draper, Two Souls of Socialism. On the misapplication of socialism for right wing purposes, and red-brown alliances. 
4. IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black
5. Rob Ferguson, Antisemitism and the far-right today

Misuses of antisemitism, connections to Zionism, etc

1. Sai Englert, Judaism, Zionism, and the Nazi Genocide. Very good analysis of the function of state ideology. 
2. Ben Case, Decolonizing Jewishness: On Jewish Liberation in the 21st Century
3. Itzhak Epstein, An Open Letter to the Black Panther Party
4. The ADL is not an ally
5. Benjamin Balthasar, Antisemitism and the Crisis of Liberalism — Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt compares Trump to Corbyn. 
6. Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
7. Anti-Semitism and Zionism Have Formed a Brutal Alliance
8. Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, and the bitter fruits of Philo-Semitism, Houria Bouteljda (excerpt from her book)
   • More from Bouteldja on the situation in France
9. Jewdas, Philosemitism is the New Antisemitism

Connections to racism, homophobia, other oppressions 

“The Jew of today is essentially Negro in habit, physical peculiarities and tendencies . . . Like the Negroes the Jews have no country; like the Negroes, their whole history shows they were never capable of self-government without direct assistance from God; like the Negroes they have foisted race riots on countries where they have lived . . . The overshadowing predominance of the Negro question has alone kept the American people at peace with the Hebrew. When—and the day is closer at hand than we imagine—the Negro is eliminated from the citizenship of the United States . . . the American government will turn its attention to the alien Hebrew.” — Arthur Abernathy 

1. Beyond the Black-Jewish Alliance, Nylah Burton in Jewish Currents
2. Black Antisemitism is Not Necessarily “Left Wing”, Rebecca Pierce in Jewish Currents
3. James Baldwin, Negroes are Antisemitic because they’re Anti White
4. Steven Salaita, James Baldwin and the Jewish State
5. Adolph Reed, What Color is Antisemitism? — accusations of some sort of unique blackantisemitism are meant to control minorities. 
6. Devin Naar, Our White Supremacy Problem. On the color line between Jews and the racialized relationships that affect Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, internalized antisemitism and assimilation into the US status quo.
7. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Rising Costs of Whiteness
8. Irena Klepfisz, Antisemitism in the Lesbian/Feminist Movement
9. Against Analogy, Ben Ratskoff. What is risked when we compare antisemitism to racism.