Newly-minted socialists would REALLY do well to acquaint themselves with the history of fascists using antisemitism with pseudo-socialist characteristics to peel people off left movements.

It's a pretty core trait of Euro/US fascism, and the popular left keeps falling for it.

Ford pioneered weaponizing antisemitism against left worker movements.

He funded the mass publication of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most notorious modern antisemitic text.

He mandated car dealerships carry his newspaper full of antisemitic propaganda.

It's not a coincidence that contemporary antisemitic narrative about "globalists" basically cribs socialist critiques of capitalism and subs out Jews for capitalists.

Wealthy capitalists like Ford made every effort to distract workers from their culpability by blaming Jews.

Hitler was a huge fan of Ford, and built on that tradition of scapegoating Jews for the sins of wealthy capitalists.

People on the far right love to point out that Nazis were "national socialists," and. They WERE trying to trick left workers into going fash.

Contemporary Nazis do this, too.

Remember Matt Heimbach, recently made famous again when the reactionary pseudo-leftists at m4m4a put his face on a poster billing him as a speaker at their rally?

His whole thing is building a Nazi "worker" movement.

Nazis and other reactionaries also exploit the fact that the liberatory left (rightly) opposes Israeli apartheid and genocide of Palestinians.

The thing to know about Nazis is, when THEY say "Israel," they don't mean the government there.

They mean the Jews.

So Nazis and antisemites very frequently exploit leftist sentiments about Israeli apartheid by seeding confusion about what exactly is getting talked about-- the government, or Jews.

And it isn't just an outside job.

Sometimes the call is coming from inside the house.

@gwensnyder The worst part of this is how Israeli nationalists will use the fascist co-option of Palestinian movements to smear every progressive from liberals to socialists to communists as anti-Semites, then promote Christian extremists as defenders of Jewish people because their apocalyptic ideas encourage immigration to Israel.
@adamriggio @gwensnyder this is a bad takeaway from the thread.
@imstilljeremy @gwensnyder Then why do leaders and ordinary folks in my city’s substantial Orthodox Jewish community regularly smear liberals and leftists as anti-Semitic because of support for Palestinian rights and opposition to Netanyahu? And why do fascist organizers themselves encourage anti-Semitism among the left in the guise of opposing anti-Palestinian Israeli government policy? I’ve seen this happen over the last decade in Canada’s Communist parties.

@adamriggio @gwensnyder

Listen, man. I dunno what to tell you.

If your takeaway from that thread is that #Jews are bad and not to be trusted on #antisemitism, then either you didn't read it well or the hit dog is hollaring.

@imstilljeremy @gwensnyder I guess when I’ve seen years of real messaging and organizing by actual leaders and activists in Toronto’s Orthodox community smearing everyone to the left of Likud as either an antisemite or self-hating Jew, I call it like I see it. Equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is itself antisemitic because it subsumes every Jewish person in the Israeli state and its institutions, no matter who speaks the idea.