The Anti-Democratic Origins of the Jewish Establishment
JVL Introduction
The United States has by far the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, so what happens there affects us all.
As Emmaia Gelman shows in this study published in Jewish Currents, two leading Jewish advocacy organisations, the Anti-Defamation league(ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) “present themselves as pillars of the US civil rights movement and exemplars of the Jewish moral tradition.”
The reality is harsher. Both were in fact founded at the turn of the C20th to undermine Jewish grassroots organising among East European Jewish immigrants and particularly the socialist Workmen’s Circles.
For the German Jewish elite, who had arrived decades earlier, “this new ethnic, politically-dissenting Jewishness threatened the genteel white identity they enjoyed”.
The ADL, in particular, made the reshaping US Jewry as distinctly white and capitalist in orientation central to its mission.
From the seventies this was expressed by the ADL and the AJC in an increasing antagonism toward anti-racism and anti-imperialism, and concomitantly the adoption of an increasingly uncritical pro-Israel mission.
So, inevitably, much of their energy to this day goes into undermining the development of progressive Jewish organisations.
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Fri 12 Mar 2021. Read the original here.
The Anti-Democratic Origins of the Jewish Establishment
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A fascinating and scholarly article. Thank you.
Yes very comprehensive. Just one addition.
When it mentions ADL’s spying on anti-Apartheid groups, the author does not mention that this was on behalf of BOSS, the Apartheid secret police
What an illuminating article. A really clear exposition of a political sleight of hand that has had so many puzzled about the ADF for so long – it is in effect a Zionist organisation and so antithetical to socialism certainly and left wing politics in general. The selectivity ( “back stairs diplomacy*) in confronting repression of progressive voices on the left mimics the historical actions of the Board of Deputies in the UK, and given the ADFs role in policing Twitter explains why many conservative and reactionary Jewish voices seem all too often to get a free pass whereas those challenging them do not.