The Jewish left must stop using the conservative framework of “hate” to think about anti-Semitism and racism.

Jan. 4, 2020

Read at Medium.com

Excerpt:

…This internal Jewish battle is completely historic. US Jews have been represented almost entirely by right-wing institutions since the anti-communist purges of 1950s. Leftist Jewish organizing, always vibrant, has been painted as not-actually-Jewish for 70 years. Now, Jewish groups who think about justice in terms of race, class, and colonialism are again rising as an entire cohort of mass organizations. It’s gorgeous.

But there is a piece of right-wing legacy that we have yet to shake off: hate crimes. “Hate crime” seems like a useful way to describe racial violence against people who urgently need defense — but it isn’t. In fact, right-wing Jewish organizations have built much of their power to dominate discussion of race, anti-Semitism, and Jewish safety through the single remarkable concept of hate crimes. We could call it a “rights industrial complex” or we could just say that “protecting rights” is such a powerful idea that of course right-wing forces have coopted it. (See also: “solidarity.”)…