Is Yuri Ivanov’s ‘Caution: Zionism!’ anti-Semitic?
‘Caution: Zionism’ (1) is one of the oddest books I have ever read on the subject of the jews, because although it is a staunchly anti-Zionist work written from a Marxist-Leninist perspective (of Soviet Union post-Stalinist orthodoxy): it has also been credited with being an important example of ‘Soviet anti-Semitism’ by prominent jewish authors on ‘neo-Nazism’ and anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe such as Semyon Reznik. (2) As you - as my reader - might be aware I have long doubted the veracity of this claim in so far as it tries to equate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, which are two very different intellectual stances as one can be anti-Semitic and not anti-Zionist as well as vice versa. It however must be confessed that most often anti-Semites are also anti-Zionists, but in addition that most anti-Zionists are not anti-Semites.
The separation of these different intellectual stances - although debatably linked - is difficult in practice. I will discuss this in detail elsewhere, but as it is related to Ivanov’s ‘Caution: Zionism’ I will briefly discuss this and offer my thoughts on how we can separate these two often deliberately confused positions.
One of the first rules of interpreting the evidence that you are taught in higher education is to ‘keep it simple’ and not to attach meaning that is not implicit in an argument or statement (for example reading anti-Semitism into a liberal’s criticism of Israel). The fact is that anti-Zionism is simply ‘opposition to Zionism’ or perhaps more specifically in the current context ‘opposition to the formation and/or the expansion of the jewish state of Israel’. While anti-Semitism is not the ‘irrational hatred of or opposition to the jewish people’, but rather simply ‘the view that jews are generally a negative part of a society’ (if we define it any other way, e.g., as ‘opposition to the jewish people’, we simply attach emotional points to our understanding of anti-Semitism leading to the conclusion that any criticism of jews is anti-Semitic).
We could get into a detailed discussion in support of my definitions and my criticism of the many other attempts to define the difference between the two intellectual stances in addition to a discussion of the almost habitual attempts to equate the two as being the same thing. However I will avoid the first part and briefly focus on the second to explain as simply as I can why it is such awful logic.
To explain the Zionist position let us use an example: a Marxist-Leninist jew could try to argue that anti-Semitism is anti-Communism because Karl Marx was - and a significantly disproportionate number of European and American communists were - of jewish origin, which we wouldn’t consider any more cogent but that is the essence of the Zionist argument. In so far as they ‘reason’ that Israel is a jewish state and anti-Zionism is therefore opposing (and viewing) jews as being a negative part of society and is therefore anti-Semitic. The problem with that logic is that although Israel is officially a jewish state not all its citizens are jews: many of them are - for example - Muslims and Christians. Therefore for the Zionist logic to be true anybody who criticised say the United Kingdom would have to be not only anti-British, but anti-Christian as well since the United Kingdom is officially a Christian country and therefore one could not help but equate the two if the Zionist logic was to hold true.
It is obvious then that the Zionist attempts to conflate the two stances are largely based on absurd premises that if applied to other like situations would cause all kinds of uncomfortable intellectual repercussions, such as Christians who criticise say British foreign policy of close alliance - the so-called ‘special relationship’ - with the United States logically being anti-Christian. Bizarre: isn’t it? However that is what the Zionist conflation of the two terms, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, is essentially doing.
Perhaps the worst and most damning point of all about this Zionist habit is the fact that it is selectively applied so that it is only Israel which cannot be critiqued therefore implying in the logic that because Israel is jewish it is somehow special and above criticism (i.e., that further implies that jews are special and above criticism, which is also easily equated with the concept of the jews being ‘Chosen of Hashem’ and therefore are the ‘teachers and priests of the world’ etc). Of course Zionist authors - like the infamous Alan Dershowitz - claim that they ‘criticise’ and ‘disagree’ with Israel (as well as endorse other ‘reasonable’ ‘criticism’ and ‘disagreement’) and it is a ‘question of degree’. The obvious and damning response to that is: from whence is this ‘question of degree’ objectively - relatively speaking - determined? After all if it cannot be determined with a relatively decent amount of objectivity then how is it anything other than a sophistic way of asserting: ‘I determine who is an anti-Semite and who is not!’
With that we can dispense with the debate over what is anti-Zionism and what is anti-Semitism and return to our original focus: Yuri Ivanov’s ‘Caution: Zionism!’ and whether it is anti-Semitic or not.
In regard to Ivanov’s ‘Caution: Zionism!’ we must address the assertion made by authors such as Reznik that it is ‘anti-Semitic’ and this is fortunately relatively easy to do. The idea that ‘Caution: Zionism!’ is anti-Semitic is rather absurd and is based on the above discussed equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism without the necessary recognition of the considerable distance between the two intellectual stances. It could be argued that Ivanov uses ‘anti-Semitic charges’, but this would be placing Ivanov’s argument well out of its context. The ‘anti-Semitic charge’ that you can most easily associate with Ivanov’s work is the ‘jewish conspiracy’ (and the often congruent position, that is also endorsed in a different expression by Marxists, international finance) as Ivanov often discusses ‘Zionist control’ (which is not the same thing as ‘jewish control’ in the same way criticism of the ‘Israel Lobby’ is not the same as criticism of the ‘jewish lobby’), but at the same time Ivanov makes it often implicitly and explicitly clear that when he is talking about Zionism and its relation to jews: it does not include jews who are anti-Zionist and particularly those who are anti-Zionist and of a Marxist-Leninist persuasion.
It is no fault of Ivanov’s that those authors who are pro-Zionism or pro-Zionist explicitly and implicitly identify Zionism with the specific interests of the jewish people as a whole and that Zionism as an ideology is exclusive to the jewish people. The idea that Ivanov is anti-Semitic, because he rejects Zionism and therefore the jewish people is obviously absurd. If it was true that the rejection of Zionism was anti-Semitic then anti-Semitism itself wouldn’t have historically and currently have factions that are for and against Zionism: now would it?
Ivanov’s criticism of the jews is limited to their history, their religion (i.e., Judaism), their capitalistic practices throughout history and the strong jewish nationalist currents throughout jewish history. Ivanov doesn’t criticise Marxist-Leninist jews - which he would have to if he was anti-Semitic - but rather he only criticises Zionism and Ivanov rightly recognises that because Zionism is based on the assumption of a unique nationalist and racialistic identity of the jewish people that he has to criticise the aspects of jewish history which he believes have informed Zionist ideology. These are specifically: early jewish history, Judaism and jewish capitalists, which Ivanov implicitly and explicitly argues are deluding the ‘jewish masses’ with false promises and distracting - as well as dissuading - them from looking at the ‘objective economic conditions’, which would force ‘class struggle’ and ‘class war’ to occur leading the ‘jewish masses’ to support the Marxist-Leninist position and the Soviet Union.
It is really as simple as that, but yet Reznik - among others - makes a mountain out of a molehill and declares that Ivanov’s ‘Caution: Zionism’ is a ‘classic example’ of ‘Soviet anti-Semitism’. If Reznik and his fellow jewish ‘thinkers’ would simply step back for a moment and look at ‘Caution: Zionism’ rationally and dispassionately: they would see the book does not attack jews as a whole, but rather criticises general jewish behaviour at various points in history as being conducive to nationalism and Zionism: therefore leading - in Ivanov’s eyes - to a negative spiral necessarily contributing to the misery of the working class, which incidentally - according to Ivanov - the jews are a part in the Marxist-Leninist world.
How on earth is that anti-Semitic?
It is merely criticism of jews from a Marxist-Leninist perspective! It isn’t describing the jews as being a negative part of society: it is describing some jews and some gentiles as a negative part of society because they are capitalists or ‘delude the masses’.
For heaven’s sake: that is standard left-wing fare. What are we to do, but condemn the entire intellectual left for being ‘anti-Semitic’, because they criticise an action or two of Yahweh’s little darlings? Of course not, but this is; in effect, what Reznik et al’s argument is!
After all the one piece of Marxist-Leninist doctrine that Reznik et al have conveniently ‘forgotten’ is that nationalism in any form is (supposedly) a tool of the capitalist to divide the international working class and that there are no significant differences within the working class except those created and exploited by capitalists to keep labour from uniting against them. This realisation completely neutralises Reznik’s logic, but yet Reznik seems completely unaware of the implications of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and rather prefers to see anti-Semitism being masked in Marxist-Leninism. What is Reznik going to tell us next? That he has seen Moses Maimonides in his gefilte fish? Reznik is but one of many jewish ‘thinkers’ who prefer to construct massive conspiracy theories about anti-Semites rather than deal with the cold, hard facts of our age, but yet when have jews not loved self-delusion and basking in their own falsely-created light?
My challenge to Reznik and his fellow ‘Soviet anti-Semitism’ theorists is to provide a systematic evidential basis for their claims rather than going off half-cock about a book that I severely doubt they have read let alone taken the trouble to try and understand.
Go on Reznik: I dare you…
References
(1) Yuri Ivanov, 1970, ‘Caution: Zionism!: Essays on the Ideology, Organisation and Practice of Zionism’, 1st Edition, Progress Publishers: Moscow. The edition is unstated in the PDF that I have acquired and in addition Jim Saleam and Alec Saunders who digitized it did not include the pagination.
(2) I am told by a friend who has had some correspondence with Reznik that he now lives in the United States although he is all but unknown to English-speaking audiences as he writes prolifically in Russian. Although some of his books have now been, or have begun to be, translated into English and have received typical laudatory reviews in parts of the mass media: he is still barely known to the Anglophone reading public.