Why does the left have a problem with Jews? I don’t think the current analysis goes deep enough. We need to take two or three steps back from recent political events.
The key concept is universalism. Socialism is a universalist ideology: it thinks it has a solution to the world’s problems that everyone ought to subscribe to. The right by contrast is semi-universalist: it thinks free markets are good for everyone, but this is more theoretical than heartfelt, and it balances this with some degree of nativism.
Socialism has had an anti-Semitic streak from the start: Marx was an anti-Semite as well as a Jew. The seeming contradiction makes a lot of sense when you realise that socialism inherits and adapts the Jewish belief in universal justice, liberation from servitude and the day of judgement. But the true universalism is for all people, not just ‘the chosen people’, said Marx and his followers.
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