Many are pointing to the hypocrisy of how the Zionists, despite their movement being led by the right wing, have been utilizing the same cancellation rhetoric and tactics that they’ve decried leftists for using. There’s an additional part of this, though: by aligning themselves with the narratives and mentality that today’s “leftism” represents, the Zionists have culturally isolated themselves in the same way that the “left” has.
This was not the Zionists’ ideal option. Up until this last year, when the pro-Palestine side gained an unprecedented advantage in the narrative war, “Israeli” PR managers were able to simply keep the majority of people unaware of the horrific Palestinian reality. Then the Zionist state escalated the genocide to the point where most people, even in the United States, couldn’t help being disgusted by what the settler state is doing. In the last month, a majority of U.S. Americans have been found to be against the military actions of “Israel,” which means Zionism’s defenders can now only argue from a place of minoritarianism. From a perspective of rejecting the majority of the people, and openly antagonizing that majority.
That’s what we see from how Zionists are only becoming more aggressive in their statements about Palestine supporters, rather than trying to act more diplomatically. The predominant narrative within their rhetoric is that being against the genocide makes somebody a Jew hater, leaving no space for dialogue or attempts at winning the opposition to their side. By doing this, “Israel” supporters have put themselves in a box, one they can’t escape from. Because they’ve already in effect declared war on most Americans.
This has always been the direction where Zionism was headed, at least in the United States. In “Israel,” where the vast majority of the settler population supports their government’s Hiterian policies and the rest of the people aren’t given real political representation, the architects of the genocide manage the discourse differently. They can take on a populist orientation, as shown by how Netanyahu’s career has been based on rallying land-hungry settlers around expanding the colonization project.
Because the majority of “Israelis” are conscious of and glad about the ethnic cleansing they’re complicit in, their leaders feel comfortable with making openly genocidal statements about Palestinians. U.S. Zionists usually stay quieter about these kinds of sentiments, and that continues to be true (though more of them have lately been stating their true beliefs). During this moment of escalation in Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle, the main rhetorical strategy they’ve adopted is to try to stigmatize those who speak out against the genocide, rather than take the greater risk of outwardly saying Palestinians deserve to be murdered.
The success of this strategy depends on the pro-Palestine majority becoming alienated from the minority who are actually involved in anti-Zionist activities. And the propaganda machine has been trying to isolate the activists in this way, partly through the present narratives about the student protesters being motivated by hate.
How likely is the typical Palestine supporter to fall for this lie, though? For all the efforts to hyper-focus on isolated instances of protesters acting badly, or to portray “from the river to the sea” as a call for violence against Jews, most people aren’t going to be receptive to having their views being called bigoted. And that’s absolutely the accusation the “Israeli” spokespeople are making towards most Americans when they smear pro-Palestine activists. Like how “leftism” as we know it today has isolated itself by excluding all social conservatives or non-“left” people from the class struggle, Zionists are isolating themselves by demonizing the bulk of society.
Another way the discourse managers are trying to separate the pro-Palestine movement from the masses is through keeping this movement dominated by the “left.” ANSWER, the organization that’s been mainly managing the protests, is a “pan-leftist” entity—meaning its goal is merely to gain support among “leftists,” as opposed to the broader masses. To establish itself as a faithful upholder of “leftism,” ANSWER’s source org the PSL has taken a “neither NATO nor Russia” stance on Ukraine, and has attacked the Rage Against the War Machine coalition for not being pan-leftist. It’s also abandoned the effort to save the Uhuru org from state persecution, since Uhuru operates beyond the “left” niche and is therefore seen as expendable by PSL. This has made it more likely that the DOJ will succeed at setting a precedent for criminalizing international anti-imperialist solidarity work, especially pro-Palestine work.
The state hopes that by nurturing a pro-Palestine leadership which is divorced from the people, it will be able to crack down on anti-Zionists following the Uhuru trial in September. If the Zionists can’t keep most of the people on their side, their best long-term option is to politically disempower their opponents. To manufacture confusion and division among different activist groups, allowing for a great repressive campaign. And it’s appropriate that leftism, the same ideological orientation which Zionists are presently echoing, represents the best means for sowing such conflict between Palestine supporters.
It is possible for us to overcome these efforts at sabotaging our cause. We can partly do so by recognizing that if we want to win, it’s not a good idea for us to embrace the same anti-popular attitude which our enemies are increasingly displaying. Whether this attitude manifests in Zionism, or in a bankrupt version of “leftism,” it represents an admission of cultural defeat on the part of the ones who are pushing it. Demonizing the people is the tactic of somebody who’s already lost the narrative war, and knows they’ve lost it.
Writes Caleb Maupin about why Marcyism—the driving ideology behind PSL and ANSWER—isn’t capable of winning this struggle:
The Marcyites will never take on this task because deep down they do not love the broad masses. Much like Hillary Clinton who dismissed all of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables,” the late Marcyites view average American working people who aren’t as “woke” as they are with contempt. During the Cold War, it certainly made sense for Communists to retreat into the labor movement or hippie counterculture as the comfortable lifestyle of many US workers was a basis for the chauvinism, racism and anti-communism among a big layer of the country. But the Cold War is long over and the labor aristocracy is being eroded. Living standards are falling. The Center for Political Innovation seeks to reorient socialism away from the New Left’s distortions. Demands for jobs, housing, and schools have potential to take hold among the broad masses, as do anti-imperialist sentiments. However, in order to reach the broad masses, a solid break with the toxic, middle class, pro-imperialist “woke” left and its liberal cultural atmosphere must take place.
Reject the anti-popular thinking of the Zionists, and embrace the mass-based thinking that can let us prevail. Our enemies have already shown that they’ve lost hope for gaining back majority support for “Israel,” and the Ukraine psyop is experiencing a parallel defeat. Let’s seize this opportunity to mobilize the people against colonialism, imperialism, and our dictatorship of capital.
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