Antisemitism: An Analysis | Philosophy Tube

hi welcome to philosophy tube I make videos teaching people about philosophy and normally they look like this but seeing as how I'm quarantined inside my flat I thought it'd be a good chance to talk about something a little bit more serious we're gonna learn about anti-semitism I'm gonna teach you what it is what it does how you can spot it and I'm gonna conclude by showing you that if you really want to tackle it you've also got to think about white supremacy we are gonna have to talk about some pretty serious stuff and some contemporary political issues and parties I will do my best to cite all of my sources in the top right and to remain as impartial as I can I will obviously fail because I'm a human but I will do my best for you if you will do your best to please keep my comments section ozone of chill vibes only I'm very grateful to all of the Jewish script consultants that I hired to help me with today's episode and if you find it useful why not share it around will support me at patreon.com slash philosophy tube it's gonna be a very dry very educational video there's gonna be no theatrics no fancy costumes and absolutely no cross-dressing I am kidding welcome to the show [Music] both soir Madame Monsieur Eleazar je m'appelle ma'am was an e matrice that already stalls a sherwood revelry contain in East well Illya does shoes couldn't me let me say this the second is scandal in 1894 a French Army officer named captain Alfred Dreyfus was charged with selling military secrets to Germany one of the most damning pieces of evidence was a letter to the German military attache written in dreyfuses own hand but Dreyfus didn't confess there was also the problem of motive he was rich and didn't need payoffs from Germany and he liked being in the army why would he betray France and the answer from a lot of people seemed to be paska la roof while straight-4 sat in prison awaiting trial the right-wing newspapers got a hold of the story and went to town with it one of their big talking points in recent years had been the idea that Jewish people couldn't be trusted to be in the army that they weren't really loyal to the nation and Dreyfus seemed to confirm that when the trial came many people worried it could be the beginning of war with Germany the courtroom was closed to the public and a lot of what went on there has only very recently been Declassified Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island a fantastically named prison colony off the coast of South America that made Alcatraz look like summer camp but while Dreyfus was off on Devil's Island his family started digging launching a public campaign to establish his innocence that made them very unpopular an army intelligence colonel named George Pekar opened an investigation and became convinced not only the Dreyfus was innocent but that the real spy was a different man major Charles Esterhazy Picard submitted the results of his investigation to his superiors and was mysteriously reassigned to Tunisia but not before giving his findings to Dreyfus his lawyers the lawyers and family started a campaign to bring Esterhazy to trial Esterhazy had gambling debts and a former lover of his came forward with letters showing that he hated the French army so there was motive the country began to polarize between those who supported Dreyfus and those who didn't Esterhazy was court-martialed again with a great deal of press attention but acquitted in celebration the anti Dreyfus odds kicked off a wave of anti-semitic riots across the country Esterhazy left the army and went to England May 8th on day elia Plue the writer Emile Zola was so incensed by this that he wrote a famous letter in the newspaper titled Jack Hughes in which he said this whole thing as a conspiracy Dreyfus is innocent and the army are covering it up he named names and basically said seizure mutt romp pursue even wha J'Accuse became a huge deal even internationally which was exactly what Zola wanted because it meant the army couldn't sweep the Dreyfus Affair under the rug if they didn't sue him they'd have looked guilty and another trial meant more lawyers and more investigators sniffing around in the end Zola was charged with a libel all the while being pilloried in the right-wing press as an intellectual trying to undermine the will of the French people the cry death to the Jews swept the country in Leo Rennes North tore Bordeaux Clemmie feral and Messiah everywhere in fact anti-semitic riots broke out and were invariably traceable to the same source popular indignation broke out everywhere on the same day at precisely the same hour under the leadership of Guerra the mob took on a military complexion anti-semitic shock troops appeared on the streets and made certain that every pro Dreyfus meeting should end in bloodshed the complicity of the police was everywhere patent Gura there is Jul Guerra French journalist founder of the league anti-semetic and editor of the newspaper lon T Sharif so no prizes for guessing what he was about he was a fascist nobody would invent the word fascism for a few years and it was still emerging but looking back now the anti Dreyfus odds were very obviously proto fascists they hated communists they were very conservative and they fed on and mobilized anti-semitism a lot of leftists and liberals had quite different reactions to the Dreyfus Affair a lot of liberals were outraged but what appeared to be a gross miscarriage of justice and rallied around Dreyfus out of a genuine sense of belief in the system but initially at least a lot of leftists were like no Verma did kill a system judiciary new teeth karampudi lacklustre urgent pad a merde Sherlock what is very significant is that everybody was using the topic of Jews and Judaism to think about themselves the Dreyfus Affair was like the French equivalent of the OJ Simpson trial a media sensation that bitterly divided the nation and seemed to be a struggle between two competing visions of society zola the man who wrote J'Accuse was tried for libel convicted appealed retried fled the country and convicted again but the heat was on several people involved in the conspiracy started to crack including Esterhazy who confessed that he wrote the original spy letter and had secretly been in touch with the head of the investigation against Dreyfus the entire time and one of Colonel Picard subordinates confessed to sabotaging his investigation a conspiracy was coming to light that seemed to go all the way up to the war minister so in 1899 after years on Devil's Island Dreyfus was brought back to France for another trial that was even more of a media sensation his lawyer was shot in the street and in the end Dreyfus was found guilty again he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for treason with extenuating circumstances and then the president of France suddenly pardoned him and said there would be total amnesty for everyone involved in the conspiracy this was the last ditch attempt to just make it all go away and historians now agree that Dreyfus was from the beginning completely innocent but it still went on in 1906 the Court of Appeal officially acquitted Dreyfus after all why should you accept a pardon if you haven't done anything but the court of appeal didn't actually have the power to do that they should have ordered a third trial so technically he was never acquitted and it just went on and on so much so that even in 1931 after a world war had been fought a play about the Dreyfus Affair had to be shut down because the audience kept fighting what the story of the Dreyfus Affair shows is that anti-semitism is never just about picking on an individual Jewish person it's about the whole of society it set France on fire literally in a lot of places and you may already know that it was only the appetizer to what came next [Music] you see the reason I dressed up like this besides the fact that it's fun is I know this video will eventually make its way to the neo-nazi bit of the internet and they are not the people I'm trying to reach the hardcore anti-semites or the people who don't think anti-semitism is really a problem will already have lost patience and clicked away which means I can talk to you hi if you're still here you probably care about stopping anti-semitism a lot of people and organizations in recent years have worried about how to spot it and certainly there are some classics the little help to be aware of now that's what I call anti-semitism - CDs of the most famous tropes and stereotypes disloyalty to the nation greed drinking the blood of Christians globalists the smiling merchants the New World Order exaggerated facial features and who could forget the classic denying the Holocaust now that's what I call anti-semitism out now but if we get very focused on what anti-semitism looks like then there's a danger that will go Oh nobody's saying the bad words so we've solved it a Miller is more sin there pas vrai to fight anti-semitism we not only have to know what it looks like but also what it does Allah after World War 2 a lot of thinkers tried to answer the question why Jews the Nazis persecuted lots of people but why did anti-semitism play such a key role in their philosophy and side question how come so many people were willing to help them wherever the Nazis went they found a lot of folks a lot of liberals even ready and willing to liber8 I'm a grown on the norm-referenced Asian Thiel on collaborate the French police in particular helped the SS hunt down French Jews and put them on trains for deportation to leaf leaks on the bethubb so in 1948 French philosopher jean-paul sartre tried to get inside the minds of bigots with his famous essay anti-semite and Jew Sartre famously claimed that anti-semitism is a fundamentally irrational passion anti-semites say things for which there's no evidence or they contradict what they said five minutes ago or they just flat-out don't make sense he talks about a classmate of his who failed an exam and blamed the Jewish candidates even though he also admitted he hadn't studied properly why blame the Jews rather than himself or the other candidates who passed who weren't Jewish because he decided in advance that Jewish people are sneaking in duplicitous so the Jewish candidates by dint of being Jewish must not have deserved to pass this leads to a very famous quote far from experience producing his idea of the Jew it was the latter which explained his experience if the Jew did not exist the anti-semite would invent him this can be an interesting model for understanding why bigots often seem so committed even when their beliefs don't hold up to scrutiny Sartre says it's because they aren't really beliefs their obsessions whose job is to justify what they already want to believe that's what anti-semitism does for them this theory might tell us something interesting about other forms of bigotry too a while ago a series of tweets did the rounds in which the author says she found a pair of big shoes in a woman's only dorm and was so incensed by the possibility that they might belong to a trans woman that she drove home dangerously tired for three hours rather than spend the night this woman endangered herself and others not just on the basis of nothing but on layers of nothing a whole lasagna of nonsense because a trans women are entitled to use women spaces they have done for years and it's not a big deal B even if you don't agree with that is driving tired really a reasonable response and see some sis girls just have big feet why would anybody choose to be angry all the time about nothing well Sartre says if you go through life learning and being curious you might be changed by what you learn and what you think you know might come apart I love that feeling because to change to grow that means you're alive but we have here a basic fear of one's self and of truth since they are afraid of reasoning they wish to live the kind of life where in reasoning and research play only a subordinate role wherein one seeks only what he has already found wherein one becomes only what he already was anti-semitism in short is fear of the human condition the anti-semite is a man who wishes to be a pitiless stone a furious torrent a devastating funderbolt anything except a man Sartre si has been very influential and it is interesting but it's not everything on the upside it very clearly explains why debating bigots or giving them a platform is often a waste of time they aren't out to have a rational conversation they do not care about facts they want to express their feelings or to incite those feelings in others on the downside though Sartre takes a very individualistic approach who are the hardcore anti-semites and how do they think and that is how a lot of people frame this issue a few years ago when there was a lot of talk about anti-semitism in the British Labour Party a lot of it's centered around finding and expelling the bad people and arguments about whether this or that person is personally an anti-semite journalists like Owen Jones wrote from that perspective a lot of the internal labor investigations use that framework and the group hope not hate have just completed an investigation where they infiltrated a group of anti-semites to find out who was talking to who and I'm not saying that's a bad way to think about it absolutely people who do bad things need to be identified like any good improv comedian I don't want to say no I want to say yes and and the individualistic approach can only tell us about the professional anti-semites if you like the people who consciously know they have a problem with Jews and act on it but that's only a tiny minority of people not enough to inflict the kind of persecution Jewish people have suffered what about all the collaborators who just looked the other way what about the French police officers and politicians who talked about national unity and coming together even as they hunted down their own countrymen earlier this year it emerged that several right-wing members of the Labour Party deliberately tried to sabotage the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn in several ways including not investigating complaints of anti-semitism they were happy for anti-semitism and other forms of racism to go on if it made the left wing of the party look bad and I'm sure if you asked those saboteurs they wouldn't say it's because we hate Jewish people and yet there was a tacit understanding that the safety of Jewish people wasn't the number one priority the current leadership has also been criticized for not really doing much about those saboteurs and Sartre doesn't have an explanation for what anti-semitism does for those people who are really a much bigger group the other drawback to the individualistic approach is we can all get very worried about who are the bad people I don't want to be seen next to the bad people more people will think I'm one of the bad people and that can limit to the sorts of discussions we can have this can especially be a problem if we are criticizing the Israeli government somewhere in YouTube headquarters as someone just slammed the demonetized button I know we're going to have to go it's gonna be a little tense Manor donkey at per se philosophy tube to be on to the bomb voila Lumiere voila costume voila music loaf I obviously people need to be able to criticize what the Israeli government does sometimes people need to be able to criticize what any government does it's kind of important for democracy but we want to do it in a way that isn't anti-semitic and doesn't smear every Jewish person many of whom have their own criticisms of the Israeli government Israel sometimes says that they act on behalf of all Jewish people but most Jewish people aren't Israeli and not all Israelis are Jews unfortunately as many Jewish writers have said accusations of anti-semitism or of being a self-hating Jew can sometimes be used to shut down criticisms of Israeli policy so I want to recommend a really good pamphlet called the past didn't go anywhere by April rosenbloom Leon Brett we don't literally do in which she says the way to do it is to be specific about what you are criticizing to say that Israel has an ongoing history of human rights violations whatever you think of that is specific and clear to say Israel is the root of all the evil in the world or to only focus on Israeli human rights abuses kinda seems like your problem is actually with Jewish people the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC is a lobbying group in the US who Lobby the US government to do things like send military aid to Israel to say AIPAC gives us politicians incentives to support militaristic policies that I disagree with is clear and specific to say the Israel lobby are controlling the government comprar nevela difference we could even do the same thing with Zionism Zionism is the idea that Jewish people should have their own country though of course how it should be run is another debate a Zionist person might say look Jews have been persecuted all over the world in 1938 German Jews had their citizenship taken away and there was this big international thing called the Evian conference where all the other nations of the world refused to take the Jewish refugees except the Dominican Republic buen trabajo muchachos as a result Jewish people got stuck in Germany and we know what happened next so we need a strong country under majority Jewish control to make sure that never happens again and in response an anti Zionist person might say something like okay cool but did you have to put the country there cuz there were already people living there and you can't just kill them I mean Israel came about because in 1917 Britain did a colonialism and invaded Palestine and supported the Zionist project at least in part because they wanted to get rid of the Jewish people in Britain they were like oh well I suppose we'll just take all of the Jews and send them out to Palestine and it wasn't a universally popular move so in 1948 they were like oh it appears we've buggered it um is that the king calling me out I'm sorry I have to go everybody and then the Palestinians were like can we have our land back and the UN went but that's Israel now although we've already had all the maps printed it's a wonder I'm not invited to teach more history classes or hey maybe a Zionist person could debate an anarchist somebody who doesn't think anybody should have a country right the point is there is room there for legit sensible discussion that does not dehumanize anybody but watch out wherever there are people criticizing Israel in a legit way you will find others sneaking anti-semitism in the official title of the meeting will be free speech on Israel and if you go to the meeting you'll find people openly denying the Holocaust that is a real thing that really happened or you'll find them saying Zionists than what they really mean is Jews which brings us neatly on to we have a saying in the French Resistance and all across the left anti-semitism is the socialism of fools one theory that's been put forward to explain anti-semitism is that sometimes religious Jews formed quite insular communities unlike Christianity where there's a big emphasis on conversion one of the core tenets of Judaism is that the Jews are the chosen people so maybe they kept to themselves a lot and had their own way of doing things that just made them easy to view as Outsiders everywhere they wanted to remain Jews and everywhere they were granted the privilege of establishing a state within a state by virtue of these privileges and exemptions and immunity from taxes they would soon rise above the general condition of the citizens and municipalities where they resided they had better opportunities for trade and accumulation of wealth whereby they excited jealousy and hatred but it is kind of hard to avoid forming an insular community if you might be killed for being in the main one this theory seems to be blaming Jewish people for their own oppression you know who else forms religious insular communities Mormons Jehovah's Witnesses both of whom have faced violent persecution in the past but I at least have never heard anyone go oh well you know those moments they they put a target on their own backs it's also just flat-out not true to say that Jewish people in general had more opportunities for anything is pretty obviously false across most of history in medieval Europe it was a sin for Christians to lend money with interest they called it usury and in a lot of places it was illegal for Jews to own property or do many of the jobs that other people it so if you were Jewish and you needed to eat money-lending was one of the few jobs you were allowed in and if you're a Christian Lord who wants to tax his people without becoming unpopular you can allow some Jews to lend money to them at interest and then just tax the hell out of the Jews so a small number of Jewish people did become quite wealthy and powerful for that reason but the vast majority were second-class citizens at best but the association between Jewish people and money stuck there's an old anti-semitic stereotype of Jews being greedy and anti-semites throughout history have exploited this trope usually whenever there's an economic downturn like in the 1980s family farms across the Midwest began to fail because big business was crushing a little guy and neo-nazis used it as a recruitment drive by telling the farmers it was the fault of Jewish bankers the greedy Jewish banker thing ties into another anti-semitic trope the conspiracy theory that world finances and media are secretly run by a clandestine cabal of extremely powerful Jews bent on controlling the world in order to put a pin in that one we'll come back to it later for now it's enough to note that both of these myths are clearly exposed as false most of the wealth on planet Earth really is in the hands of a tiny number of people who really do have way too much control but among those people key reservoir Beato de coup de cheveux trip rush Jews are actually a very small percentage the biggest slice of millionaires and billionaires are white Christians so if you're looking for a group that's secretly controlling the world with Allah and most Jews as most people on planet earth have very little a lot of people are frustrated by the daily grind of living under capitalism and if you're a sneaky right winger you can say hey that frustration you're feeling is a race thing the industrialist Henry Ford paid for half a million copies of an anti-semitic book to be distributed in the United States claiming that elite Jews was secretly planning to take over the world did he really believe that who knows but what anti-semitism did for him was conveniently divert people's frustrations towards an elite that didn't include Henry Ford in one of his 2016 campaign ads Donald Trump promised to address the global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities may we new Devorah Buddhist is a stone comrade Trump but as that line was spoken pictures of Jewish people like George Soros were flashed up on the screen and in the years since that global power structure the one that made Trump rich in the first place and supported his campaign has not been addressed this happens every time right-wing political forces rediscover anti-semitism what it does is mislead people the Nazis promised that by getting rid of the Jews they would make Germany so much more prosperous and a lot of money and property was confiscated from them but the average person didn't see any of that it all went to the 1% the Nazis also banned trade unions privatized large sections of the economy and murdered a lot of socialists fascists always talk a big game about being economically radical and taking on the elites but it never seems to work and the reason it doesn't work is kind of obvious economic problems are not caused by Jewishness or greed or selfishness or billionaires naming their baby [Music] mizzle for the problem in the capital yzma but as the old saying goes long T Semitism elusive lysmer and a zombie seal one very influential thinker who picked up this idea was hannah errant in her book on the origins of totalitarianism she was still trying to answer this question why Jews and she says in vimar Germany there were some economic problems and she claims a lot of the middle management economic positions like banking were filled by Jews so when things turned bad they got a lot of the blame even sometimes from leftists the general figure of the banker bore definitive Jewish traits for historical reasons thus the leftist movement of the lower middle class and the entire propaganda against banking capital turned more or less anti-semitic now socialism of fools can be a useful idea again I don't want to say no I want to say yes and and this passage in particular kinda sums up some of the problems with Aaron's analysis she says that because some of the bankers were Jewish when there were economic problems people blame the Jews but she hasn't really answered the question why Jews why did people blame the relatively tiny number of Jewish bankers rather than all the bankers do you see what I mean Aaron's explanation for anti-semitism is circular in order for it to work people must already have been anti-semitic and an even bigger hole in the theory is that fairly often anti-semitism occurs when there are no Jewish people in positions of economic power like does anyone really think the Nazis murdered Jewish children because they were worried they might be bankers a lot of the 20th century anti-semitic propaganda portrayed Jews not as rich elites but as a poor feral underclass in medieval Spain the Spanish Inquisition expelled all of the Jews in the country and they did not chill out afterwards they became even more obsessed with detecting secret Jews people that medieval Spain were seeing Jews hiding in the I mean how do you manage to be so anti-semitic that you're anti-semitic against people who aren't even there did you fix them yes I fixed it suppose a Jewish what parts in a car a Jewish spark plugs Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic errant didn't like Sarris focus on bigots because it denies Jewish people's responsibility forward for their persecution she says Jews really did occupy positions of economic power and so they were resented but as we've seen overwhelmingly they did not occupy those positions of power the Nazis had their own academics who did studies like oh look how many Jews are rich and powerful hmm and you might think oh yeah those guys are probably gonna be pretty biased right but multiple times throughout origins errant sites Nazis she had a lot of opportunities throughout the 50s and 60s to revise these ideas and did not do that so it kind of seems like errant is also blaming Jewish people for their own oppression which is weird because she was Jewish she was even arrested by the Gestapo so we're in weirdly complicated territory now and before I take us out of it which I will let's talk about Karl Marx's anti-semitism oh that's right baby this is a call out video now and I don't do call-outs so we are gonna need a different kind of youtuber what up YouTube it's your boy in and dribbled the dremel ayah bringing you all the latest drama from the YouTube creators scene so pretty much there's this guy called Karl Marx he's a leftist and Tifa type I've been watching his videos for a few years now checking out his tweets on Twitter calm and he's put out a new essay called on the Jewish Question chancer what is the worldly cult of the Jew handling which is his worldly God money no I've never been inside a synagogue but I'm pretty certain you're talking out your bum my emancipation from haggling and from money that is to say from prayer real Judaism would be the self emancipation of our time an organization of society that overcomes the preconditions for haggling that is the possibility of haggling would make the Jew impossible why do you want to make Jewish people impossible that are impossible they're real people what nine-dimensional non-euclidean rabbis have you been talking to my the emancipation of the Jews in its ultimate meaning is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism I think the biggest argument against communism is that the cringe is not evenly distributed Karl Marx you're an anti-semite you're a communist you've never worked a day in your life your boyfriend angles pays for everything someone ought to pop you in the snout like so I'm challenging you to a boxing match anywhere anytime I'll even come to you you've got one week to respond to the challenge you won't do it you're scared you can't let your comrades down might you know what I let down my comrades by not responding to these charges there's only a couple of things left to say first smash that like button if you want more drivel and second you know what it is Karl Marx please respond [Music] now when Marx wrote that essay in 1844 he was responding to another guy called Bruno Bauer who wrote some stuff about whether or not Jews should be given citizenship rights in Germany and Bauer said no they shouldn't because Germany is a Christian country but here's the twist around Bauer was a massive atheist he didn't think Germany should have any kind of religion anyway basically he was like why are the Jewish people always bring in identity politics into it it's about religion versus atheism that's the fundamental conflict at the heart of modern society if Bauer had gone to university in the 21st century he would have stayed alone in his room on Friday nights drinking whiskey and watching Christopher Hitchens compilations like I did so knowing that context and if we read the rest of what Marx wrote we could maybe charitably interpret this as saying that the fundamental conflict in society isn't religion versus atheism but class conflict a theme that Marx obviously wrote a lot more about later we could also maybe detect hints of his famous idea that religion is the opiate of the masses you might have heard that phrase before it's the idea that religion holds society back and we need to move beyond religion in order to advance it yeah we could read it that way but on the and Jesus Christ call not a good look my dude I am not so sure about this one the chief these quotes obviously employ that anti-semitic stereotype of the greedy money-grubbing Jew remember how we've already seen that trying to find out who is an anti-semite in their hearts isn't really all that useful I think we could maybe apply back to Karl Marx here I mean he's already been canceled by bronchitis and despite his anti-semitism there are a lot of Jewish socialists including Karl Marx so how do we explain this what is Marx's anti-semitism doing is it just socialism a fool son hey even old car can be a fool sometimes maybe but in addition to the problems we mentioned with errant I think the idea that anti-semitism is just people not doing socialism good enough gives socialists a convenient pass to go oh well no true socialists would spread anti-semitism obviously so we don't need to think about it we can just mentally push it over there but there is definitely anti-semitism on the left it's not all secret Nazis or innocent mistakes I used to work with a lady who was an anti-fascist activists left-wing as they come and this was around the time a guy called Owen Smith was challenging Jeremy Corbyn for leader of the Labour Party and this lady thought that Owen Smith wasn't critical enough of the Israeli government okay that's that's the legit political opinion you can have you know we can imagine somebody clearly and specifically saying this politician says he cares about human rights the International Criminal Court have said they want to investigate the situation in the West Bank because they believe that human rights abuses are occurring but the politician hasn't said anything about it what's up with that unfortunately the way she chose to express this opinion was by tweeting a picture of Owen Smith with the Star of David over his face [Music] for those who don't know the history the Star of David has long been a symbol of Judaism and the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars so they could be identified harassed and murdered in the street the Star of David is on the Israeli flag so I yes I can see where she was coming from but that is a really messed-up way to put it because it looks like you're saying that Owen Smith is secretly Jewish and should be attacked does that woman secretly hate Jews in her heart who knows it's not really about that but she wasn't just doing socialism wrong she was a genuine leftist and she did a bad anti-semitism and Jewish socialists have been saying for years that the left does need to take this a little bit more seriously whilst also saying that when it comes to anti-semitism the right-wing are a lot more deadly about it despite the insistence of Jewish institutions and high-profile centrist Jewish journalists that the threat facing American Jews is coming from both sides I had no anxiety about a campus BDS activists or Muslim congresswoman walking into my synagogue and opening fire the attack I feared the attacks that have already devastated our community and others is coming from white nationalists who have been emboldened and embraced by the right-wing media and the Republican Party so what we're seeing here is lots of different groups of people using Jews and Judaism as a kind of intellectual tool they want Jews to occupy a particular place in society so that it fits their overall picture of what society should be whether that's a Catholic picture or a socialist one or a fascist one or whatever and according to historian David nirenberg and his book anti Judaism this is what we see right throughout history the idea of Judaism as opposed to actual Jewish people is a basic concept in Western thought different people pick it up and use it to define themselves by showing what they're against and this is why tackling anti-semitism just be about finding the bad people or trying to do socialism more we need to incorporate it into a bigger picture of the world we soldiers of the resistance have all dutifully read Karl Marx of Yasu every night before I go to sleep in my bunker I read a chapter of the communist manifesto I moisturize my face and I bludgeon a policeman to death with a baguette but I know not everyone has a viva la revolucion [ __ ] stamp like me so for the rest of the video I'm going to be borrowing an idea from a famous liberal thinker called Isaiah Berlin who was a big critic of Marx Jem on TV Berlin made a famous distinction between positive Liberty and negative Liberty your negative Liberty is like a circle around you that nobody can cross like I have freedom of religion I can worship any God I want or none and nobody can interfere because that's inside my circle and of course a great many philosophers have argued about exactly how big that circle should be positive Liberty is how much you're allowed to change the world how much are you allowed to control your life like technically there's nothing stopping you going to college nobody can interfere but you'll get in a lot of debt that will restrict what you can do later you've got the negative Liberty but not a whole lot of positive Berlin says the positive kind is tied up with rationality the ability to consider reasons because even animals have negative liberties you're not allowed to torture them but human beings can think about stuff and make decisions and do stuff and they need to be allowed that freedom and obviously a lot of philosophers have argued about exactly how much positive Liberty you should have so ok positive liberties versus negative liberties lose it in Toledo running you know feminism you have heard of it right it's when you get angry at big shoes and the more big shoes you get angry at that well that's the more feminism's it is one of the really big useful ideas that feminist theorists came up with is patriarchy patriarchy is a system of laws actions behaviors and values that contribute to a world in which women have less economic and political control over their lives than men less negative Liberty and less positive Liberty patriarchy is expressed through misogyny but it's not the same thing as misogyny misogyny is a personal interaction thing patriarchy is the state of the world and we can take this model and apply it to other things individual acts of misogyny are expressions of patriarchy individual acts of transphobia are expressions of what's called cysts normativity a system of behaviors laws values and actions that contribute to a world in which trans people have less political and economic control over their lives for incest people transphobia is the interaction system activity is the state of the world Dakka Dakka white supremacy is a system of laws behaviors values and actions that contribute to a world in which white people have more positive and negative liberties than everyone else as a system white supremacy has evolved over time but it hasn't gone away it used to be a lot more formal with things like chattel slavery but now it's supposed to be that people of color can't be enslaved like that's that's inside the circle no no enslaving but black and minority ethnic people in the UK are more likely to die of coronavirus because they're more likely to be in the low-paid essential jobs where they get exposed they get arrested and fined for crimes that do not exist which is to say they get kidnapped and robbed by police officers who then keep their jobs the negative liberties are supposed to be the same but people of color do not enjoy the same positive liberties as white people and that state of the world is what we call white supremacy I mean white supremacy is like a Doctor Who okay it's mainly white guys sometimes there's a white lady sometimes they're like gay people do some of the writing sometimes people of color play supporting roles but it keeps regenerating is my point because ultimately it's one of Britain's most popular exports anti-semitism does a similar thing to misogyny and transphobia it reinforces that state of the world which we call white supremacy Mayor Tom in minute aren't Jews white sin bond kiss Tom la reponse a Sikh complicate firstly some Jewish people are definitely not white there are black Jewish people a brown Jewish people Asian Jewish people the image a lot of people have is white wealthy intellectuals but that is also a kind of stereotype in many countries like the US and UK a lot of Jewish people are commonly considered to be white and can enjoy some of those tasty positive liberties it's true but that wasn't always the case and it still isn't the case everywhere neo-nazis and other people on the extreme right the professional white supremacists if you like do not consider Jews to be white because they need Jews to explain the world if you consciously believe that black people are subhuman animals how do you account for the fact that they contribute massively to humanity and let a civil rights movement if queer people are just weak degenerates how come we also do that and look great 24/7 if white people really are the superior race how do you explain this [Music] [Music] [Music] the white supremacists answer is that Jews are secretly manipulating things behind the scenes meddling with the natural hierarchy that's where the Jewish conspiracy theory from before comes back supposedly the objective of this fictional global conspiracy is to exterminate replace weaken the cultures of or otherwise do away with white people how do you explain all those protesters who seem to disagree with you well they're being paid by George Soros of course how do you explain that LGBT people have gotten a lot more representation it's not because we fought for it and our allies genuinely believe the world is better with us in it those weak effeminate Jewish men are obviously trying to weaken Western masculinity no member of the master race would willingly start a fight outside of Pennsylvania Red Lobster that would be ridiculous obviously some Jewish person deliberately got her order wrong in order to facilitate white genocide white supremacists see Jews lurking behind all the problems with the world that's what anti-semitism does for them and it is not a separate thing from the rest of their beliefs sella call keep your lid to the man who perpetrated the pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 shows that synagogues specifically because there was a refugee Support Agency there for white supremacists like Bauer's left-wing Jewish activists are the hidden masterminds behind immigration black lives matter feminism LGBTQ rights political correctness and all the other assorted evils of progressive politics that hinder the creation of their hoped-for white ethnos state so yes in the last few decades of Western history some Jewish people have managed to assimilate and enjoy the liberties of being considered white just like the Italians and the Irish used to be thought of as not white but got a pass often by participating in violence against black people but those liberties can be taken away for this reason anti-semitism is sometimes described as cyclical there are periods of relative Jewish stability and even success and then it kicks back in and unlike other forms of prejudice anti-semitism starts from the position that Jews have too much and are sneakily exploiting it so those same liberties can be used as evidence against them and if that seems weird and contradictory you already know another group of people who have advantages one way and disadvantages the other Karan's that's what a Karen is a white lady who has the disadvantages of living under patriarchy but the advantages of living under white supremacy which she uses to keep people of color and LGBTQ people down so Sartre was kind of right that anti-semitism justifies what hardcore white supremacists already want to believe but it also upholds a system that white people generally benefit from and which we can even without meaning to uphold that's why all the writers have been citing stress that we cannot eliminate anti-semitism without tackling white supremacy and that is no easy task remember the patriarchy example tackling patriarchy isn't just about stopping people saying sexist things although that can be helpful it's about letting women control their own lives negative liberties and positive liberties that means things like equal pay and voting funding domestic violence shelters listening to trans women supporting sex workers campaigns for decriminalization listening to indigenous women's criticisms of white police access to abortion access to birth control and most importantly access to really big shoes in the same way to tackle white supremacy of which anti-semitism is a part it's not enough to just build a big wall and get a whole lot of guns and go nobody bet across my circle we got to actually let people take control of their lives that's why we need to realize that it is part of a bigger philosophical picture say to combat the French Resistance understood that as much as our popular image of them is sexy ladies in red lipstick a lot of the French Resistance weren't even French many of them were refugees from Armenia Poland Italy recent migrants to France a lot of them Jews a lot of them people of color almost all of them Communists and anarchists ales some more Pula false Trekkie assassinate nobodies Alamo map a la police process I know these discussions can be very tense and difficult but fighting anti-semitism can't be about walking on eggshells or maintaining a strategic ignorance it's got to be about giving people those positive liberties le Phyllis off south authority lamonica the devil samanya Ilsa he spawned on the shore [Music] in perfect OC I won't do it again [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I have seen what this kind of talk can do it's very you the devil [Applause] the recipe to the practical happens live with the nation [Music] [Applause] [Music] always been meat [Music] made by someone who once remember that when you hear this [Music] we human beings are not born with prejudice you baguette

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 1,042,035

Rating: 4.8854737 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy, education, antisemitism, politics, judaism, the labour party, jeremy corbyn, israel, karl marx, socialism, hannah arendt, origin of totalitarianism, white supremacy, racism

Id: KAFbpWVO-ow

Length: 55min 46sec (3346 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/WorkingClassReptiles]

Woah, an hour long video. I'm guessing we're looking at his next "The Philosophy of Antifa" video.

Edit: Olly's neonazi deterrent trick is pure genius.

[u/drunkfrenchman]

Sadly he didn't really give an explanation of why antisemitism is a thing apart from being a useful tool for white nationalists. In 1905, the Anarchist Geographer Reclus wrote a whole part of his last book about antisemitism and anti-roma bigotry. His general idea is that capitalist society has kept the old moral values of non capitalism and that to stay in existence capitalism pushes forward these ideas that yes some capitalist relations are opposed to our moral values but it is only the jews or the roma taking part in it. He goes further from simply denouncing "capitalism", but precises that it is us, the individuals who take part in social and political relationships that we disagree with who have to reject our own flaws onto the foreigner and the jew to be able to maintain our relationships. As such antisemitism has nothing to do with the actual place of the jews in society but with our own social relationships.

Edit: rests the question as to why anti-capitalist morals haven't vanished from our capitalist societies, to which Fisher partly answers in Capitalist Realism.

[u/BadFurDay]

Goysplaining pisses me off. I spend of a lot of time explaining to people that they should listen to the experiences of jews more before discussing the topic. Literally any time left wing folk start talking about anything related to antisemitism/Israel, I know I'm about to get super pissed at all the antisemitic dogwhistles and bad faith arguments.

Olly did his research. He listened before talking. There's no goysplaining there. Only quality talk.

The bit about how to criticize Israel is a masterclass that should be taught in breadschool.

Hearing a callout of the left wing brand of antisemitism made me happy.

Great video. Thanks for this, Olly.

Really, thank you so much.

 

PS: I exploded at this bit. RIP me:

I think the biggest argument against communism is that the cringe is not evenly distributed

[u/slacker7]

One of his best videos in quite a while, in my opinion. Extremely well done, especially for a topic that can be so touchy and controversial.

[u/BriseLingr]

I am extremely curious about how long he has been working on this video.

[u/ratguy101]

So, I'm a Jewish leftist (born in Israel, actually) and this video hit pretty close for me. I think Olly did an excellent job handling this extremely challenging issue, and the presentation was clear, logical, and effective. A lot of his recent videos have felt a bit messy and all-over the place, but tackling the issue "one framework at a time" really tied it all together. I think is his best work in a while.

My one piece of small constructive criticism is that I think defining "zionism" as the "idea that Jewish people should have their own country" is a bit generous. I'd align myself with the anti-zionist, anti-nationalism anarchist left, and from all the discussions I've had with Jews on my political right, it's a bit more severe than that. I think a genuine part of zionism --contemporary, historical, and theoretical -- is at least some level of exclusivity. Not insofar as gentiles should not be allowed to live in the proposed Jewish state, but insofar as they shouldn't be allowed to meaningfully contribute to its organization. This means that ideas such as an "Israel-Palestine Confederation" are widely rejected by almost all zionists, even though it would technically offer Jewish people their own country.

[u/PeteWenzel]

I’d kill for that hair...

[u/ChikenBBQ]

Is ollie gay? I thought in his other videos I swear his language was more like "I support LGBTQ people and I understand the privilege I have as cis straight person" but in this video hes like we and us with queer people. Is it like an in character thing because hes in drag?

[u/Sulemain123]

I liked the video, and agreed with many of its points, but the historian in me feels compelled to point out that not almost all the French Partisans were communists or anarchists. Plently of them were, I'm not denying that. But one of the consequences of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was that, as Charles de Gaulle put it, when he established the Free French in London, the only people with him were "the monarchists and the Jews"-their was a substantial nationalist, liberal and even conservative elements to the French resistance.