Fighting antisemitism means resisting state power
"Marx refused to accept the terms... because he understood them to be distortions... very clearly related to distortions, to the oppression of a people' Cedric Robinson
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are respectfully warned that this post contains the name of a person who has died.
The lead-up to Invasion Day 2025 was overshadowed by an intense scrutiny on antisemitism in Australia, rising to a crescendo as the ruins of Gaza fade from the headlines they barely existed on, and the West Bank rapidly becomes the flashpoint of Zionist murderousness. Debates about whether criminal gangs are paying white people to carry out attacks on synagogues and Jewish childcare centres in Sydney merge with the Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities and egregious attacks on Palestinian and Indigenous antiracist academics. All of this is happening in an atmosphere in which antisemitism, at the same time as being the subject of intense scrutiny, is little understood either historically or politically.
This dearth of historical understanding feeds a political objective for which anti-antisemitism is a tool; the eradication of antisemitism is not its endgame. On display is classic white ignorance (in the manner explained by the late Caribbean philosopher, Charles Mills, as not a real lack of knowledge or education but a structural determinant of the continuation of white supremacism, western imperialism, settler colonialism and racial capitalism.
An example is the ‘new antisemitism’ thesis which posits that ‘Muslim migrants’ and the ‘western left’ are responsible for it, per an Australian newspaper headline (one among countless others). The idea that Europe is no longer the primary source of antisemitism, rewrites a history in which antisemitism emerged within Christian culture and becomes a tool of differentiation and domination which served the interests of a European civilisation asserting itself in the aftermath of Arab rule, and later as a useful accompaniment to the development of capitalism. It also retells a present in which violence specifically targeting Jews as Jews - because they are Jews and for no other reason - is almost entirely carried out in Western countries by self-proclaimed neo-Nazis.
The ease with which those in power in the West, assert the new antisemitism thesis does not tell a story about the dominance of a Jewish-Zionist lobby so much as one about ongoing racial-colonialism and the imperialist endeavour that they are fully committed to. It could be seen in the Israeli president’s declaration that the Gaza genocide is ‘a war that is intended - really, truly - to save western civilization, to save the values of western civilization.’ It was reiterated in Trump’s most recent proposal to ‘take over ‘ and ‘own’ Gaza.
The temporal alignment of the Australian government’s actions on antisemitism and the perverse annual spectacle of celebrating settler nationalism on the day of British colonial invasion (or indeed on any day at all) may not be planned, but it is by design. Australia’s unequivocal support for Israel is not only a product of its position within the imperial core but is, more specifically, due to its own illegitimacy as a settler colonial power engaged in the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples and counterinsurgency against their continual resistance.
In light of these facts, the question is how to make a political intervention with regards to antisemitism.
While the right has uncovered a newfound commitment to antiracism of a very selective nature, much of the left is engaged in condemning ‘real’ antisemitism while pointing out the widespread weaponisation of its fake variant, ‘anti-Zionism.’ This discursive strategy has failed.
As the Palestinian scholar, Anna Younes has written, hegemonic strategies to combat it are best conceptualised as a ‘war on antisemitism’ in line with the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on terror.’ These wars and their accompanying ‘czars,’ ‘envoys,’ and ‘taskforces,’ are best understood as belonging to a political logic which disciplines negatively racialised populations who are seen as posing an intrinsic threat to western, white safety; that is to say to its continued global dominance.
Rather than the liberal appeal to institutions to protect the safety of all equally, ‘safety’ should be understood as indexing a defence of white supremacy, western imperialist interests, and colonial dominance. It is counterproductive to expect the state to ensure our safety when it is the state and its institutions which make us less safe to being with. Appealing to institutions whose existence as colonial bastions, regardless of acknowledgements of country, truth telling processes, and Indigenisation strategies, is currently dependent on performing outrage about antisemitism and disciplining even the most milquetoast critics of Zionism is not only counterproductive, but counterinsurgent.
Like appealing to the state to recognise and punish racial discrimination, under an Act that can be suspended at whim in order to wittingly enact racial discrimination, it legitimises the racial state and perpetuates its existence.
Joseph Finlay argues convincingly that it is time to move ‘beyond antisemitism’ because even those approaches most committed to delinking anti-antisemitism from the assault on anti-Zionism risk reproducing antiracist siloes which disconnect antisemitism from other forms of racism. This is similar to my proposal to ‘decolonize antisemitism’ in order to refuse the hierarchy in which antisemitism is posited as the master key of racism from which all understanding flows, and to which all forms are compared. However, current attempts to think antisemitism conjointly with other forms of racism have still been unable to shatter the tacit hierarchy even as they go to great lengths to assert the importance of solidarity.
One example is the recently formed Jewish Council of Australia (JCA). It seeks to promote an alternative Jewish voice to the predominant Zionism of the Jewish establishment in Australia. In doing so it is forced to operate in a climate of extreme repression, as recent unconscionable attacks against its director in the right-wing press reveal. By remaining critical of Zionism, rather than being overtly anti-Zionist, the Council hopes to appeal to a large swathe among Jews in Australia which is uncomfortable with Israel’s open genocidalism rather than being opposed to its existence and supportive of Palestinian anticolonial resistance.
With the current attention being paid to an uptick in antisemitic attacks in Australia, the JCA has issued multiple condemnatory pronouncements. Laudably, it insists on linking them to those targeting Muslim, Arab and Palestinian people. Nonetheless, these statements repurpose the state’s language and frames of reference. For example, its most recent joint statement with Human Rights Watch, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Australian National Imams Council, Human Rights Law Centre and Amnesty International, refers to ‘hate crimes and acts of discrimination.’ It suggests that
more ‘comprehensive data on hate crimes’ is needed because it ‘helps inform governments of the need to protect people faced with discrimination.’
Acknowledging that any ‘legislation responding to recent acts of hate crimes will involve debates about freedom of religion, speech, association and assembly’ they call on ‘governments to consult with human rights experts and affected communities, and ensure that any restrictions on rights are legitimate, necessary and proportionate.’ Hate crimes, they say, ‘underscore the need for Australian governments to support anti-racism community initiatives, as well as education and community dialogue to combat prejudice and promote understanding.’
The statement’s naming of racist violence as ‘hate crimes’ mirrors the state’s language and framing. Equating racism with hate crimes implies that it can be parcelled into discrete events. It also suggests that the state and its criminal punishment institutions can be the arbiters of what constitutes racism and how it should be dealt with. It, unintentionally to be sure, isolates racism in the actions of outlier individuals, while the state is allowed to remain neutral, disconnected from the historical development and continual deployment of race as a technology of domination, exploitation, discrimination and violence. This in turn legitimises popular racist violence.
In his analysis of the US lobby group, Stop Asian Hate, Dylan Rodríguez remarks that the framework of hate also
‘fabricates and projects a canonical set of liberal reactionary feelings. Liberal feelings work to pacify, narratively rationalize and politically domesticate actual and potential forms of insurgent, insurrectionist, abolitionist and anti-state imagination and activity.’
Data collection
The JCA’s call for the Australian government to produce ‘more comprehensive data on hate crimes’ is dangerous because, as Rodriguez shows, data collection on ‘hate crimes’ always has criminological ends. It relies on isolating ‘criminal elements’ and punishing them according to the logic of state racism. It uses the carceral institutions established to control colonised and negatively racialised peoples - primarily on this continent, Indigenous people - to do so. Taken to its logical conclusion, this approach tacitly condones the state’s retaliation against those most affected by its racist institutions because these practices are always used to increase repression against them. Support for government action on ‘hate crimes’ will do little to enhance solidarity between Jews and other groups because it could justifiably be seen by Indigenous people, Muslims, and Black people as opening the door to more policing and punishment.
Further, as history has shown, once these practices are in place, they will but reverberate later for other groups seen as oppositional by the state and its institutions. As the sanctioning of even the most liberal opponents of Zionism within institutions such as universities has shown, once certain policies, such as the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association working definition of antisemitism, have been actioned, they can be used for mass scale repression.
Restrictions on rights
The acceptance by the JCA and its co-signatories that ‘any restrictions on rights’ that may flow from ‘legislation responding to recent acts of hate crimes’ could be made ‘legitimate, necessary and proportionate’ is a further cause for worry. Any restriction on rights will have the most negative effect on the people already most vulnerable to the harms enacted by the state upon them, as has already been fully exemplified in cases involving the JCA itself. As the last fifteen months have shown with the greatest of clarity, we cannot expect any restrictions to be placed on the ‘rights’ of Zionists including those who engage in violence. This should be seen, not as any special treatment, but as consistent with the racial state’s general failure to punish the actions of violent racists. Look no further than Zachary Rolfe, the police officer and former solider acquitted of all charges in the 2019 murder of the Warlpiri teenager, Kumanjayi Walker, in Yuendumu in the Northern Territory to name but one example.
Promoting understanding
Second, the joint statement’s call on the government to support initiatives such as ‘education and community dialogue to combat prejudice and promote understanding’ is also a cause for concern. The notion that racism is an expression of prejudice has long been criticised for promoting the idea that it dwells largely in the realm of individual attitudes, beliefs and values, once again avoiding state racism. By further requesting governments to support intercommunal dialogue, the JCA and its co-signatories unwittingly participate in placing Palestinians, Muslims, and other negatively racialised people at risk of heightened surveillance and repression. Racism is not derived from, neither can it be resolved through, more dialogue. With regards to Palestine specifically, dialogue initiatives have been used to normalise Zionism and to surveil anti-Zionists. When radicals refuse to ‘come to the table,’ because they see through the call to collude with what Lara Sheehi refers to as the stance of ‘white innocence’ contained in these invitations, they are turned on and duly punished as ‘unreasonable,’ ‘unruly,’ or even as violent.
Not a matter of belief
We should not have to proclaim our belief in the existence and significance of antisemitism to critique its current politicisation. This plays into the dominant characterisation of the disparagingly named ‘social justice left’ as believing that ‘Jews don’t count,’ as the speciously-named book by antiblack comedian, David Baddiel asserts. The existence of racism is not something to be believed in, nor to convince the public of; it forms the structural condition of the colonial racial state, and must be fought as a whole, rather than by attending piecemeal to its components. This is the failure of popularised intersectionality; a liberal approach which misconstrues the fundamentally co-constitutive and relational workings of oppression, domination and exploitation.
Fighting antisemitism means fighting racism, and fighting racism means fighting antisemitism. Fighting racism means resisting state logics, not appealing to or unwittingly colluding with state power.
My call for vigilance should be taken in the spirit of comradely critique much as I am aware that this is not the done thing. However, this turning away from critique routinely does a disservice to the advancement of antiracism. We see instead a tendency to fall back on pointing out hypocrisy and double standards, vague invocations of ‘weaponisation,’ or generalisations about the impact of lobbies that, as Max Ajl and Joseph Massad point out, play into the hands of western imperialists by diminishing their role. If we are to deliver any kind of blow to racism and colonialism, here or in Palestine, we need to have more, not less, critical discussion.