About David Miller
Note: This statement should be read alongside Jonathan Rosenhead’s article, Trusting Heroes? David Miller, Israel and Antisemitism.
David Miller had been widely admired for his track record in support of the Palestinian struggle. But he has shifted in recent years from an investigator tracking corporate power into an obsessive conspiracist, holding “Zionism” responsible for all the ills of the world.
His latest intervention about Zohran Mamdani has prompted this JVL statement.
On 5th Nov Miller posted this:
Zohran Mamdani is a Zionist and a servant of Zionists. If you want to keep getting mugged by shysters like him while they spit in your face and then stand on your shoulders, good luck to you. But materialists, socialists, anti-Zionists, anti-imperialists and Muslims have a duty not to be naive when confronted with transparently careerist ghouls who piggyback on our popular movements and use us as vote banks.
You have to be living on another planet not to have noticed the phenomenal achievement of Mamdani winning against all the odds: against the Democratic establishment, against the mainstream Jewish lobbying groups, against the big money which dominates US politics and countless Islamophobic slurs against him. His victory has given renewed hope to radicals and progressives everywhere.
Not to Miller.
It is not as though this intervention of his were a one-off aberration.
On 5th June Miller had this to say:
Zionists like Mehdi Hasan and Zohran Mamdani think they can paint themselves as saviours and defenders of Palestine by throwing crumbs at a movement which is now completely awake to the need to defeat Jewish supremacism.
Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, need we point out, is a voice of sanity, bravery and unremitting solidarity with the Palestinians and against the outrageous drive towards fascism in US politics which Trump is spearheading.
Miller’s writings are increasingly shrill, divisive and misleading. Many of his tweets are clearly open to antisemitic interpretation. Indeed the comments on his posts are increasingly littered with clearly antisemitic statements which he is encouraging and facilitating.
Playing to people’s justified outrage at the unfolding of ever more horrific events in Gaza and at our government’s complicity with Israel, Miller has become increasingly focused on identifying everyone who is not entirely on his wavelength as an obstacle to be overcome if not an outright collaborator with Zionism
Zionism (not capitalism, imperialism, neo-liberalism or anything else) is for Miller the enemy worldwide. The truth is that Zionism grew out of European imperialism and became its instrument in the Middle East. Miller’s obsession portrays Zionism as the prime mover, controlling the US government and much else besides. He totally ignores the fact that the US has its own reasons for supporting Israel as part of its global security strategy. Without US weapons the occupation and the siege could not be maintained. As Biden famously said in 1986 and repeated in 2023: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”
The “progressive Jewish milieu” is singled out for particular opprobrium, including the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Na’amod, Jewish Voice for Liberation (previously Jewish Voice for Labour), BRICUP [not a Jewish organisation], and many Jewish individuals including Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. Jewish Voice for Peace in the States, which has organised massive civil disobedience such as occupying Congress and railway stations, is dismissed as a “Jewish chauvinist group”.
Miller clearly does not believe that Jewish voices questioning the Zionist consensus, or Jewish voices challenging the identification of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, contribute materially to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. We do. Nor does he think that flirting with antisemitism damages the solidarity movement. We do. Miller does not believe that Jews have the right to be angered by Israel’s brutality and claims that all Jewish work in support of Palestinians is duplicitous. This is ignorant racism.
He is posting dangerous stuff, posts which tar all Jews with an extreme Zionism brush, refusing any nuance or distinction, deliberately trying to push all Jews into the Zionist camp where they can then be demonised as genocidaires and targeted accordingly as Jews.
It is urgent that Miller’s excesses are called out, that they are not swept under the carpet on the grounds that he is basically “on the right side”.
On the contrary: Miller’s posts actively encourage antisemitic responses in the solidarity movement. Nothing could be more calculated to undermine that movement.
Earlier JVL postings about David Miller:
April 4, 2025 – Why David Miller is now a liability to the Palestinian cause
February 6, 2024 – David Miller Verdict – Anti-Zionist beliefs are protected in the workplace
August 9, 2023 – David Miller has crossed a line
November 11, 2021 – An interview with David Miller
“The truth is” says this statement, “that Zionism grew out of European imperialism and became its instrument in the Middle East.” The truth, yes, but is it the whole truth? Zionism also represents the lack of confidence of European Jews in socialism as a solution to their oppression.
Indeed, Zionism draws its strength from the failure of the European working class movements to defeat fascism and the betrayals of Stalinism – a failure to which Zionism made and continues to make a small and ignominious contribution.
Thank you so much for saying this in such a comprehensive and referenced way. I see members of the left reposting him without criticism which I find deeply problematic.
Very sad, and obviously we in JVL, JJP, JVP, JSG et al are feeling (and being) got at. This is scary, no question.
However, until we have succeeded in turning around the huge monster of Western foreign policy it seems to me natural that someone in Miller’s position would express exasperation and suspicion.
I would only like to remind him that even when a US soldier set fire to himself in protest at the destruction of Gaza it made no difference. Young British Jewish marxists certainly did go and support the PLO fighters in the past. It would be interesting to hear what actions Miller would accept as good-faith solidarity with Palestinians. When he lost his own job he possibly had a rare outlet for his voice on Press TV, which may in turn have influenced his bitter outbursts against Jews…
Palestinians themselves sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between Jews and Zionists, so Miller has company. I don’t think we should cut him off because he has assaulted our egos. We ourselves are not heroes and must not let ourselves be precious.
Far from every Jew is a Zionist. Most Zionists are CHRISTIAN, and millions of Evangelicals around the world pretty much want the same as Zionists.