The persecution of French Jews and its lessons for Europe, the Left and the Nation-State

Mindless Pontificating: For the soul of the party: darkness and hope in the trenches of the New Hampshire Primary

I often spoke to Trump voters who scarcely mentioned immigration or terrorism. They were anxious about their retirement, finances and health care. They felt totally abandoned by a corrupt Washington elite. Their support for the candidate was driven less by excitement over Trump than despair at our nation’s political life.
We surely cannot deny the importance of racial prejudice in Trump’s ascendency. But New Hampshire reminded me of the folly of self-righteous, mean-spirited and simplistic denunciations of Trump supporters. We would do well to remember Solzhenitsyn’s insight that the “line dividing good and evil” passes not easily along any political division but “right through every human heart.”
Perhaps the most tragic (or pathetic) moment I witnessed of the Republican Party’s internal conflicts in New Hampshire was a town hall meeting with Bush. It was hard not to cringe throughout his address. Painful attempts to show more energy. Awkward body language. Giving a child a toy tortoise symbolizing his campaign. Ancient, flat jokes (“In Florida, they called me Veto Corleone …”). But I left feeling a great, sad respect for Jeb. His unabashed policy wonkiness was not a great communications tactic, but it revealed him clearly as the most intellectually engaged candidate in the Republican race (Kasich included). His concerns about education reform, poverty and immigration clearly came from the heart and were not superficial, marketing ploys to make the GOP look more “nice” and “diverse.”
The populist instinct within the American mind enjoys denouncing members of the establishment. But what if these establishment figures in both parties are more than caricatures of elite corruption and actually take the call of public service seriously? Should we not lament when such people are replaced by figures like Trump and Cruz seizing “the mantle of anger,” reflecting the worst pathologies of a debased democracy?
Now where was the hope in all this again? It arose out of numerous conversations with Republican voters disgusted by the party’s apparent descent into demagoguery, anger and nativism. It came from town hall meetings where voters’ questions to candidates showed their sense of responsibility to the entire nation as participants in the nation’s first primary. The greatest hope came from the character of the full-time, paid staff I worked alongside.
They broke every progressive stereotype of conservatives as either well-intentioned, naive, “useful idiots” or slimy, privileged villains. Coming from far less privileged family backgrounds than my own, they saw in Kasich, himself a man of humble beginnings, a candidate devoted to conserving and expanding the American Dream. They accepted the challenge of climate change and ranted about the prejudice and ignorance peddled by many party leaders and showmen. They were still conservative, of course. I heard more than enough passionate defenses of the Second Amendment and free market capitalism throughout my three weeks. But the spirit of the campaign gave me confidence that there is far more thoughtfulness, optimism and integrity left within American conservatism than progressives in journalism and the Academy assume.
Is my hope purely delusional in our age of angry, divisive populism? Perhaps. Maybe my coworkers’ labors in New Hampshire were a final eulogy for the Republican Party, honoring the past achievements of a party now forever lost and discredited. Or perhaps they were building up a renewed, modern conservative party guided “by the better angels of our nature,” as Abraham Lincoln would have said. Starting next Tuesday night, and in the months or years to come, we will come to know the answer.

Mindless Pontificating: Who should we blame: an assessment of guilt in Trumpism

Mindless Pontificating

The persecution of French Jews and its lessons for Europe, the Left and the Nation-State

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

David Jimenez

Columnist

February 18, 2016

Last year dispelled the hope of Europe on the cusp of a tranquil “end of history,” achieving a cosmopolitan, post-national harmony of peace and prosperity. Terrorist attacks in Paris, the refugee and Greek crisis, the visible return of dark fascist undercurrents—such challenges test the survival of the European project. But beyond such visible headlines remains another disturbing story: the continued persecution of French Jews.

After World War II, French Jews experienced a certain recovery in a postwar Europe, becoming the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community after the United States. Essays by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and Marie Brenner in Vanity Fair reveal the increasing uncertainty of the community’s future. Although French Jews make up less than one percent of the county’s population, they are victims of half of all racist attacks in the country. A record number of French Jews emigrated to Israel in 2015, quadrupling from 2011. About 43 percent today are considering an aliya—meaning “moving” in Hebrew—to Israel, and 64 percent do not feel safe in France. When asked by Goldberg on his own plans to leave France, Alain Finkielkraut, an eminent philosopher, replied that “we should not leave but maybe for our children and grandchildren there will be no choice.”

Attacks by radicalized members of French Muslim communities are inflicting deep anxiety and fear among French Jews. In 21st century Europe, riots occur where horrific chants can be heard, among them “Jews to the gas,” “dirty Jew” and “Jew, France is not for you.” In Toulouse and the banlieues outside of Paris, bonds of friendship and shared culture uniting older generations of French Jews and Muslims of North African descent risk evaporation in the face of mounting anti-semitism and radicalization. The extent of this crisis is producing surreal outcomes. Fear of terrorism is even prompting some (albeit limited) Jewish support for the far-right National Front, whose leader Marine Le Pen rebranded a party infamous for the Vichy nostalgia and Holocaust denial peddled by her father, the movement’s founder.

Hysteria and Islamophobia are not appropriate responses to this crisis and the broader question of terrorism in Europe. Many leaders across Europe recognize on the left and right that the liberal democratic order must be defended with total confidence. Prime Minister of France Manuel Valls stated unambiguously that a “France without Jews is not France.” Polls show that a strong majority of the French public share this sentiment of solidarity.

But juxtaposed alongside this Churchillian vigor in the face of extremism is a nihilistic malaise in circles of the European and American left. Unable to be both faithful critics and defenders of their Western inheritance, they have lost the confidence to challenge revived forms of secular and religious totalitarianism. No one reveals this more absurdly than the British Labor Party’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn. We now have the leader of Britain’s second largest party with a long history of flirtation with Putin’s Russia, Chavez’s Venezuela, Iran, members of Hamas and Hezbollah and British activists whose criticism of Israel unambiguously possessed anti-semitic undertones. . In an excellent“Dissent” magazine essay, Michael Walzer documents how legitimate fears of Islamophobia or a Manichean “clash of civilizations” narrative are making many leftist intellectuals thinkers unable to challenge blatantly illiberal, reactionary expressions of Islam. Such thinkers tragically reenact the same weaknesses as their predecessors on the Left decades before, who frequently responded to the Soviet Union with a similar mix of silence, unwarranted sympathy and bizarre attraction even at the heights of Stalinist brutality.

Ultimately, the rising tide of anti-semitism in France reminds us why Zionism matters. Anti-semitism might be, to use our president’s exhausted phrase, “on the wrong side of history,” but it is hardly vanquished from it. Not in a world where the president of a NATO country states that Israeli policies “surpassed Hitler in barbarism” and certain Jewish community leaders in France recommend against the public wearing of yarmulkes for security reasons. Israel is the place where the Jewish people can preserve and nurture their culture and identity, in both rich secular and religious expressions. The continued strength of such prejudices against Jews reminds us that the nation-state retains its moral legitimacy and political necessity into the 21st century.

Does this mean we should refrain from critical discussion of Israeli policies? Of course not. After all, Israel’s finest statesman, Yitzhak Rabin, united a deep love for the Zionist project with a recognition that every nation must pursue a journey of critical introspection and change. But many opponents of Israel today do not simply concern themselves with unquestionable problems of West Bank settlements, Bibi Netanyahu’s reckless diplomatic style or discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens, concerns that countless loyal Israeli citizens and leaders acknowledge. The recent calls for a one-state solution and the condemnation of Zionism as an irredeemably corrupt, evil and racist enterprise demonstrate an inability to respect the very dignity of a Jewish nation-state. Such an ideology does more than neglect history. As demonstrated in today’s uncertain times for French Jews, it may equally ignore the dark omens of our present moment.

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