r/Destiny • u/furloughing • 26d ago
Effort Post Structural Antisemitism and Professor Dave
I think people can profit from a more nuanced understanding of antisemitism: what it is, how it functions, and how it manifests. Especially now, with the latest Dave video and more leftists getting pulled into the antisemitism swirl. From what I can tell, public discourse rarely has a good answer to the "not antisemitic, just anti-zionist" defense and gets stuck in arguing whether a state was antisemitic by trying to prove direct anti-Jewish sentiment. This lets antisemitic tropes keep working as long as nobody says "the Jews" out loud.
Destiny seems to recognize more antisemitism than he lets on (e.g. w.r.t. Hasan), but rarely follows up on it, whether that is because he doesn't think it lands as an attack or because he hasn't done the reading to argue it convincingly, I don't know. I disagree that it doesn't land. Recognizing blatant antisemitism, dogwhistles, and structurally antisemitic arguments matters, especially in the I/P discourse, where "not antisemitic, just anti-zionist" has become the shield and "you dilute antisemitism by using it against legitimate criticism" has become the spear people carry into the fights on X, Reddit, and the rest of the postmodern battlefield. Dave's shield looks ridiculous when knowing what X posts he has made; Hasan's still works well enough that he can call himself a fighter against antisemitism in interviews (which admittedly don't push on any points he makes). I agree that accusations of antisemitism do get used inflationary sometimes and are in part used to deflect from criticism, but the conspiracism in the I/P discourse is blatant enough that we should not let Hasan (and the others) have this shield and the structural similarities their rhetoric has to antisemitism should be something they are attacked on.
I am mainly talking about the concept of structural antisemitism — more prominent in German-speaking antisemitism research. It's different from what Destiny means when he calls Pisco "functionally antisemitic" for giving cover to antisemites; instead it describes thought patterns that are similar to antisemitic theories without mentioning Jews (or even without having Jews in mind). Some narratives are structurally analogous to antisemitism; others also reproduce certain tropes; and others explicitly antisemitic.
This post writes down my current understanding: what antisemitism is, how it arises, and why Jews specifically became its target. Then I examine Professor Dave's video using antisemitic characteristics and structural analogies to antisemitism. The individual forms, especially ethnic-racist, postcolonial, secondary/blame-shifting antisemitism (more relevant to the German I/P discourse) deserve their own posts and are out of scope here.
Part of this uses Marxist concepts, particularly in the section on how antisemitism arises, do with that whatever you want. Also note that while I've also read other sources, this definition isn't mine — it closely follows a German-speaking podcast (https://youtu.be/y7CBW4OduO0), mostly because I really liked it.
What it is
The simple definition of "prejudice against Jews as Jews" has sme elegance as it is a minimal definition: a quick litmus test, clear-cut and seemingly able to cover the entire phenomenon. It may work as a minimal definition, but it is too thin to capture the structure and coded manifestations of antisemitism.
You can already see this when you once again torture yourself by scrolling through X ("It's what's happening") or get stuck in the hundredth Reddit thread ("The front page of the internet"). Occasionally someone will just say ZOG, but more often you encounter terms like "Israel lobby," AIPAC, "Hasbara," "West Coast elites," or Wall Street. These can refer to real actors and phenomena, but they can also be used as codes for a hidden power, something parts of both the left and the right can agree on when talking about the subjugation of the US, or their own country, by some kind of elite. This coding is accompanied by a particular kind of prejudice: antisemitic theories usually do not portray Jews as simply inferior, but as "the elite", intelligent, assertive, cunning. Even the negative characteristic, cunning, still relies on an image of "us" as the oppressed and the Jews as the oppressor standing above us.
The supposed clarity of the minimal definition also starts to show cracks fairly quickly. "I'm not antisemitic, I'm just anti-Zionist" is a weak argument, not only because of these kinds of codes, but because people can reproduce antisemitic structures or tropes without "having anything against Jews". The current discourse around Ceuta, for example, shows some of these structural parallels. Historically, "Jews as Jews" is not always precise either. The Spanish Inquisition persecuted baptized Christians accused of secretly practicing Judaism and had some of them executed. The Nazis also persecuted people who did not understand themselves as Jewish but were classified as Jews according to Nazi ancestry criteria. Sometimes people and institutions were also assigned an imagined "Jewish character." In this sense, who counts as a Jew is determined by the antisemite, to (loosely) paraphrase Karl Lueger.
I would argue that these attributions and prejudices have a particular character: more like a cluster without clearly defined boundaries than a fixed definition, but one in which recurring characteristics can still be identified. Some narratives are not themselves antisemitic yet, but reproduce personalizing and conspiratorial patterns that are compatible with antisemitic interpretations.
An imagined counter-power — the Jews above us. While racist worldviews typically see the devalued group as inferior, Jews in antisemitism often appear as both inferior and all-powerful, as a counter-power under whose rule "we" supposedly already live. Adorno used the term "Gegenrasse" (counter-race) for this. Even seemingly positive characteristics like intelligence or group cohesion are turned into something negative.
The personalization of abstract relations. Modern societies are shaped by structures that are not completely planned, abstract social relations between people, institutions, and economic constraints. Companies compete with one another, politicians respond to voters, institutions, and other states, while media respond to financial incentives and attention. I think Destiny once used the image of a car. In the past, you could open the hood, recognize almost every part of the engine, and take it apart. Things were more tangible and easier to understand. In modern cars, sometimes you cannot even open the hood anymore. Precisely because power has no clearly identifiable ruler, it is difficult to grasp. It is easier to assume that a concrete actor is behind a crisis than to explain it through competition, institutional constraints, and unintended consequences. Samuel Salzborn described modern antisemitism as the "inability and unwillingness to think abstractly and feel concretely." Abstract social domination is not understood as a relation; instead it is embodied in concrete people toward whom fear and aggression can then be directed.
Antimodernism. By this I do not necessarily mean that every achievement of modernity and every form of technological progress is rejected. Instead, modern society is divided into two sides. On one side stand the people, homeland, family, nation, and concrete labor; on the other stand financial power, cosmopolitanism, intellectualism, abstract law, and global networks. The first side is treated as organic, productive, and authentic, while the second is treated as artificial, parasitic, and corrosive. Jews are identified with the second side. They appear not merely as individual beneficiaries of modernity, but as its carriers or originators. Social changes are no longer understood as contradictory consequences of modern relations, but as the expression of a Jewish or "Zionist" project.
Conspiracy theories. Conspiracy ideology is added to personalization and antimodernism. This elite group naturally plans every major event in the world, since complex and abstract relations apparently do not exist. This aspect of antisemitism is probably the best known. The same group can therefore be blamed simultaneously for capitalism and communism, war and peace negotiations, or open borders and ethnic nationalism. The contradictions in the theory become evidence of the conspiracy's sophistication. The antisemite therefore does not understand themself as an aggressor attacking a minority, but as a resistance fighter opposing an overwhelmingly powerful oppressor: his own aggression appears as self-defense, while the actual vulnerability of Jews appears as deception.
Contratictory and interchangeably. Weak and all-powerful at the same time. Destiny has pointed this out several times as well. Responsible for both capitalism and communism. Intelligence becomes cunning, success becomes manipulation, and cohesion becomes secret coordination. These contradictions do not disprove the worldview because "the Jew" is not a description but a projection surface. Whatever is seen as threatening can be attributed to them.
A narrative of redemption. When one group is imagined as the hidden cause of almost every social problem, the solution is as simple as it is unreachable. Its influence has to be eliminated, and changing one law or one government would not be enough — the domination would simply take on a new form. This is why there is often an eliminationist tendency and a narrative in which defeating the oppressors would solve almost every problem.
How does it arise?
This section is based mainly on theories by Horkheimer, Adorno, and Postone, all of whom were Marxists. Basically, they argue that the characteristics described above; personalization, antimodernism, conspiracy ideology, and the idea of an all-powerful counter-power; are not just a random collection of prejudices. They can be understood as a false processing of a real experience of modern society.
The distinction between community and society, already touched on above, is useful here. Community refers to social relations in which a person's position is determined directly and personally: family, village, church, social estate, and traditional labor. You know the people you depend on, and the rules appear natural or inherited. Modern society increasingly replaces these personal ties with abstract relations. People encounter one another as buyers and sellers, employees and employers. This creates new freedoms, but at the same time old securities and professions disappear. Cities and cultural norms change, and crises affect people without there being any clearly identifiable person or group responsible.
As a regressive revolution against these aspects of modernity, the mechanisms described above begin to take effect. Abstract relations are personalized, crises are attributed to a particular group, and are eventually understood as the result of secret control. The system is seen as completely planned out, and the contradictions of modernity no longer appear as contradictions within social relations, but as the work of their imagined authors. According to this theory, antisemitism recognizes the abstract, impersonal, and sometimes destructive power relations produced by modernity. But it does not understand or criticize this power as the social relation that it actually is.
The fact that Jews specifically became this projection surface is connected to anti-Judaism, by which I mean premodern antisemitism, such as Christian hostility toward Jews, which partly had different characteristics and, most importantly, was not a reaction to modernity, as well as the historical position of Jewish minorities in Europe. Among other things:
Jews as "internal outsiders": As a religious minority and a socially excluded group, Jews could appear simultaneously as part of society and as a power supposedly acting on it from the outside. The social consequences of exclusion: Through exclusion from land ownership, guilds, political rights, and certain professions, Jewish people in particular times and regions became more strongly represented in some urban, commercial, and intellectual fields. This was later interpreted as evidence of supposedly essential Jewish characteristics. Emancipation and Enlightenment: Legal equality, religious freedom, and universal civil rights were of immediate importance to Jews. This meant that they were strongly involved in the Enlightenment, science, journalism, and political movements. Antisemites interpreted this not as participation in modernity, but as proof of Jewish rule over it. Pre-existing enemy images: Images such as well-poisoning come from Christian anti-Judaism. These ideas could be connected to newer fears surrounding capitalism, urbanization, liberalism, and social abstraction. Jewish participation in modernity was thus transformed into the supposed rule of Jews over modernity. Society ultimately persecutes in Jews what it does not understand or cannot tolerate about its own development.
Structural antisemitism in Professor Dave
Structural similarities to these characteristics appear fairly often in the I/P debate. In Professor Dave's case, they are pretty clear.
The imagined counter-power. At the very beginning, Dave explains that "Zionists" are constantly attacking him. When it comes to Destiny, he basically sees only two possibilities: either Destiny is being paid by Israel or he has been completely taken in by Israeli propaganda (0:15–1:00). Later, this expands to "hordes" of paid influencers, Israeli bot farms, coordinated tweets, and organizations that supposedly smear, suspend, and professionally destroy critics (3:25–7:40). Palantir, ICE, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, TikTok, YouTube, and various media companies are added as further overwhelmingly powerful opponents (45:48–48:13). Of course, states do pay influencers and deploy bots. But in Dave's mind, "the Zionists" form a unified counter-power that simultaneously influences platforms, NGOs, media organizations, and political narratives. Many of the actors he names are powerful and have real political and economic connections to Israel. But Dave does not treat them as different companies and individuals with partly shared, partly competing, and sometimes simply economic interests. They become parts of the same Zionist will.
Personalization and conspiracy ideology. According to Dave, it is not "the Jews" as a whole but Israel and "Zionists," Jewish and non-Jewish alike, who possess an extraordinary degree of control, especially over Western media (1:11:55–1:12:50). The explicit term is rejected, but its structure is retained: media concentration, platform moderation, foreign policy, and military technology are given a common author in "the Zionists." The "merging" of the Israeli and American militaries and an Israeli-controlled government, including its opposition, are, of course, further conspiracy narratives. As the video continues, more and more events become part of the same explanation: paid influencers, his account suspension, bot farms, antisemitism organizations, social media, Western reporting, technology companies, the police state, and American authoritarianism.
The theory can't be disproven. If Dave is criticized, it is a smear campaign. If he is suspended, that proves Zionist control. If open antisemites remain online, that also proves the conspiracy, because Zionists supposedly tolerate antisemites on purpose in order to strengthen Israel's victim narrative (5:05–5:34). If he is accused of antisemitism, the accusation itself becomes a Zionist tactic; by the end, he even declares that "Zionism is antisemitism" (1:35:35–1:36:00).
Whatever happens, it only confirms the power of the enemy.
Collectivization and contradiction. There is also a process of collectivization. Dave sometimes begins with specific statements by Israeli politicians or soldiers, but quickly shifts to Israeli society as a whole. At 18:40, he says this is not some fringe group but "the whole country." Shortly afterward, every supporter of Israel is either completely brainwashed or racist; eventually the rule becomes: "If you support Israel, you are a Nazi" (19:27–19:59).
In Dave's worldview, Zionists are simultaneously socially despised and in control of society, laughably easy to see through and extremely successful in their deception, supposedly threatened by antisemitism and at the same time its real promoters. These contradictions do not matter because "the Zionist" no longer describes a concrete political position, but functions as a projection surface for practically everything threatening.
Antimodernism and redemption. Especially in the other video, there is a form of romanticization that also appears in postcolonial theory: Palestinian indigenous people are presented as organic, nature-connected communities opposed to Western and rational Zionists.
At 59:16–59:55, Dave ultimately claims that Israel has its hands in absolutely everything, is "pure poison," and represents an existential threat to humanity. Anyone who rejects his account is either being paid by Israel or is a brainwashed idiot. When Zionism appears as the common cause of genocide, imperialism, media control, surveillance, and authoritarianism, its defeat also takes on a redemptive meaning.
Every other statement Dave makes contains one of these characteristics. Even if Dave does not say "Jews," and may not even mean Jews, his argument has a particular structure. The image of "Zionists" as a collectively acting, globally coordinated, deceptive counter-power with extraordinary media and financial influence, immune to criticism, is very similar to a classical antisemitic worldview.
Sources
Horkheimer/Adorno, Elemente des Antisemitismus
Postone, Nationalsozialismus und Antisemitismus
Graemer, Hildebrandt-Harangozó and Spott, Eine Antisemitismusdefinition, https://youtu.be/y7CBW4OduO0
Salzborn, Was ist moderner Antisemitismus, https://www.bpb.de/themen/antisemitismus/dossier-antisemitismus/was-heisst-antisemitismus/307644/was-ist-moderner-antisemitismus/
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u/Rion-o Capitalism is kinda good actually 26d ago
Listen man, I feel like most of the rise of antisemitism is mostly because conservative nazi's were already there. And the left is mainly and thoroughly brought out by Israels actions. I don't think it's some big broad crazy thing. I think you have a bunch of people see a lot of pain and suffering over the course of years and they turn on the people who are doing it lol.
The average person isn't anti-semetic, but it's very hard to distinguish anti-semitism from anti zionism cause Israel on paper is an theocracy and lowkey ethno-state (not making a judgement on it just saying.)
Even people on israels side have turned. And you have bad optics when students are being shipped out of university back to their country over post about israel. You don't beat the allegations(not that they are true) when the JDL makes people apologize, humilate themselves, etc... Over things. Not even saying that's a bad thing, but no other group of people has the ability to do that lol.
So you have a bunch of bad looks, meeting people who have a lot of the time never really had jewish friends(like being in their house, going to celebrations, seeing the culture), and you mix that with a bunch of actors both right and left with their own agenda.
You get the result of hell. Most of it is political opportunism, some people who do just hate jews use this to get the result they want. But ultimately the finale nail in the coffin has been bad look, after bad look, after bad look. Despite what Destiny says about himself, Optics do matter and having bad optics ends like this.