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Can a Jew be antisemitic? History provides many cases of Jews being antisemitic. Individuals who seek to curry favour with a social/ political group they are attached to. Often they become more AS than the group, as a way of proving their credentials. 1/6 #LabourAntiSemitism
Whilst self-hatred is a phenomena which affects many people, it has always been present around the margins of Judiasm. In many respects they are more dangerous than antisemitic non-Jews because they provide a tacit respectability by giving ‘Jew-hate’ a faux legitimacy. 2/6
The self-hating Jew was a phenomenon of late 19th Century Germany, where many assimilated Jews were embarrassed by the poor and backward Eastern European Jews, and sought distance. Some went to great lengths to distance themselves and actually turned against their kin. 3/6
In 1903 Otto Weininger, an Austrian Jewish convert wrote a book in which he described the Jew as feminine & profoundly irreligious, without true individuality & without a sense of good & evil. Weininger’s work was to have a strong influence on Hitler‘s mentor Dietrich Eckart.4/6
I write this, in the context of the current #LabourAntisemitism row. Where the group called Jewish Voice for Labour, are today filling the roles as the Self-Hating Jews. Keen to curry favour with their political and social group, and in most cases having very little in common 5/6
with mainstream Jews. They have been formed to provide cover for left-wing Antisemites. In many respects they are similar to those German Jews embarrassed by the poor Eastern European Jews. But it is not their poverty they despise, but their Zionism & support for Israel. 6/6
