War is War
"Understanding and knowing how to accurately assess one’s enemy, means possessing a necessary condition for victory" – Antonio Gramsci.
‘War is war,’ wrote the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in 1921 while Italian fascists were gathering forces against the Communists.
They ‘continually summon those needed out of the blue, given the order that they come to meetings armed; this just helps to create expectations around mysterious events and to establish a war psychology. Alarmist voices spread like wildfire.’
Australian antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal comes armed. ‘Mysterious events’ occur, and alarm is all around. This makes sense because the Australian state is in lockstep with fascists and white supremacists. In addition to Segal’s baying for Zionism during Israel and the West’s genocide of the Palestinian people, her family funds the local far-right. In 2023-4, her husband donated $50,000 to Advance Australia, described as a ‘far-right lobby group’ which is virulently anti-immigration and anti-Indigenous.
Segal’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism, it goes without saying, conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism, grossly inflates the number and severity of antisemitic incidents, and effectively criminalises and outlaws both anti-genocide protest and the very existence of Palestinians themselves as well as any expression of Palestinian culture, knowledge and politics within Australian public life. It seeks to have total control over what institutions such as universities and cultural bodies can do and say in relation to Palestine.
The plan has been rightly opposed by many groups, from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) to the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA). Guardian Australia has run three op-eds on it since the plan was announced on July 10. Social media posts from groups and individuals abound. Yet, none that I have seen get to the heart of the matter. The various articles, statements and social media posts collectively emphasise the threats to freedom of speech, political opinion, and cultural and academic expression. They decry, as Louise Adler did, the ‘the remarkably effective Jewish community organisations in Australia’ which have ‘successfully badgered the government of the day, cowed the ABC, intimidated vice-chancellors and threatened to defund arts organisations.’ The JCA has called on the government to ‘ground its response in anti-racist principles that include tackling Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, racism against First Nations people and all other forms of racism.’ Tom McIlroy proposes that ‘in considering which of Segal’s recommendations to take up, Labor must ensure a careful balance of rights is protected.’
Segal is the settler colonial Australian state’s envoy. She was appointed by its Prime Minister, head of a Labor Party steeped in the history of Australian white supremacism. As such, her ‘Plan’ is not intended to respond to antisemitism because it requires antisemitism to exist perpetually as a political object. It is part of the arsenal of what the Palestinian scholar, Anna Younes, calls ‘the war on antisemitism’. This is a counterinsurgency that goes far beyond the question of Palestine. The war on antisemitism, like the war on drugs and the war on terror before it, has a much wider function; to manage all who pose a threat to the functioning of the western state, racial-colonial capitalism, and white supremacy. As the conditions that breed resistance – not the genocide alone but also deepening unliveability for growing numbers among the populations of the states which pose as democracies – grow, so does repression. Antisemitism, and along with it the chimera of a beleaguered Jewish community, provides a framework for the counterinsurgent machinations of the state and elites.
Far-right white supremacists for whom Israel represents a utopic response to the feared (and inevitable) demise of western dominance find a home in the war on antisemitism, even as they continue to racistly decry the influence of ‘Jewish globalists’. As we can see in Trump’s America, there is a glee with which racist elites, who have no special love for Jews, wield antisemitism like a weapon of mass destruction. Germany, France and Britain do the same.
Understanding the war on antisemitism as one waged by states – which it bears reminding have the monopoly over the legitimate means of violence – exposes the futility of requesting the Australian government reject part of Segal’s plan, as McIlroy does, or to opt for truly antiracist approaches that would see antisemitism as inextricable from other forms of racism, as does the JCA. It would be to understand that pointing out the hypocrisy of the government’s dire record on Indigenous deaths in custody, ‘closing the gap’ or child removals, its neglect of Islamophobia or anti-Black racism, its torture camps for asylum seekers is a waste of breath.
Hypocrisy is the point of all racism.
That is not to say that we should not put every effort into opposing the Plan to Combat Antisemitism. However, we will be more effective if we understand that:
1) Liberal arguments on free speech are moot. When the right was gunning for free speech, it was only racist, sexist and transphobic speech they wanted protected. Governments and universities complied.
2) The framework of ‘hate crimes’ is a criminogenic one. There are a few reasons why liberals use it. They have an individualist conception of racism which stresses attitudes and behaviours over systems. The JCA uses it because it refuses to embrace anti-Zionism and feels that colluding with the narrative that antisemitism is ‘on the rise’ will bring progressive, but on-the-fence, Jews over to its side. Because white Jews in Australia do not face institutional racism, the ‘hate’ frame allows these Jews to feel legitimate in their discomfort with strong pro-Palestinian critique, especially that which celebrates resistance.
As I have already argued, the state sanctioning of ‘hate crimes’ affects those already most at risk of being targeted by repression, Indigenous, Palestinian and Muslim people first and foremost. The far-right which hates Jews and is most likely to act violently against us gets off much more lightly.
3) Overly focusing on the ‘Zionist lobby’ to the detriment of exposing the utility of the ‘war on antisemitism’ for racial colonial governance in white Australia largely misses the point. Yes, these people are terrible but, again, Segal, Leibler et al. have been empowered by the state; they do not run it. As both the Antoinette Lattouf and the Sheikh Wissam Haddad cases show, the lobby’s arguments are legally flimsy. The fear of being accused of antisemitism can be easily swatted away given these decisions, but to do so is not in the interests of the repressive agendas of the NSW and Victorian Premiers for example, or of universities who want no obstructions placed in front of their land speculation agendas in lieu of teaching and learning.
The war on antisemitism is a vehicle of state power, sitting alongside other technologies of rule. The Australian state is a racial state. Hence it can use the language of antiracism, but it cannot be a vehicle for ending colonial racial capitalism because these are its modus operandi. To say this is not fatalist. It is merely to admit truthfully that, as with all historical freedom struggles, the fight to free the people from domination will come from the people. But, it is one thing to say this and another to act. The war on antisemitism must be met by first sharpening our theoretical weapon so that we can expose its operations and attack. The current theories being aired are either wrong or incomplete. As Gramsci said,
‘understanding and knowing how to accurately assess one’s enemy, means possessing a necessary condition for victory. Understanding and knowing how to assess one’s own forces, and their position on the battlefield, means possessing another very important condition for victory.’
I have suggested what is at play now we must join forces and act.
I’d add only “universities who want no obstructions placed in front of their land speculation *and weapons research* agendas in lieu of teaching and learning”.
Good work on articulating it theoretically.
It’s rather obvious that Labor and Albanese do not ‘like’ ECAJ, Segal, etc. But they do not need to ‘like’ the pro-Israel lobby to find it incredibly useful, both to push through authoritarian legislation that will be extended to other uses and to throw Zionists under the bus when that will become necessary (with the deleterious effects this will also have on antisemitism).