The history of the ADL and AJC reveals that they were created to consolidate the power of wealthy men and stifle the grassroots left.

March 12, 2021

Read at Jewish Currents

Excerpt:

…the ADL and AJC have never been part of Jewish resistance to power: on the contrary, they were founded to subvert Jewish grassroots organizing. When I began researching the ADL and AJC as a political historian, I was surprised by both the substance of this history and the fact that it was so little known on the present-day Jewish left. Alongside the Jewish Federations, the ADL and AJC were established by a wealthy German Jewish capitalist class intent on suppressing the political power of poor, often radicalized Eastern European immigrants. Over the next century, those leaders and their successors courted wealthy donors who reflected their own political leanings, and closed ranks around an insular directorate. In accordance with the conservatism of their leaderships, the institutions allied themselves only selectively with civil rights organizing, even as they labored to undermine more radical movements—such as Black Power and Third World anti-colonialism—and embraced an increasingly right-wing Zionist politics in Israel/Palestine…