A toxic combination of the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and radical re-interpretations of history are responsible for the “extremely painful” growth of antisemitism “in some parts of the American left,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer writes in his new book, published Tuesday.
“Just as Jews noticed a rekindling of antisemitism on the right in the wake of the financial crisis, we started to see a few signs that the left — our natural home for so many years — was no longer immune to the poison,” the Brooklyn Democrat writes in “Antisemitism in America: A Warning.”
“The financial crisis caused many on the left to deepen their existing distrust of financial institutions and financiers, the banking system and bankers,” he adds. “None of those thoughts are inherently antisemitic, but they do intersect with historical stereotypes about Jews and finance. One antisemitic conspiracy
theory floating around on the internet in the fall of 2008 alleged that Lehman Brothers and other investment banks secretly transferred $400 billion to Israeli banks before going under.”
However, Schumer goes on to say that “signs of future left‑ wing antipathy toward Israel were present more than fifty years ago,” when the future Democratic leader was a student at Harvard, “and it was intimately related to conceptions of race and oppression.”
“An intellectual framework was also being built on the political left in which Israel wound up on the wrong side of a perceived historical struggle between oppressor and oppressed,” he writes. “… Our own (rather dense) history of being oppressed and persecuted is no longer deemed relevant to the radical fringe.”
“In this new world order, because some Jewish people have done exceedingly well in America, because Israel has grown only more powerful over the last several decades, it could appear that Jews have become strong enough to singlehandedly overcome prejudice and bigotry, that in fact we now— to quote the language of some— are the ‘oppressors’ … Among Jewish young people, it can sometimes lead to excessive guilt, and the urge to exculpate themselves from feeling responsible.”
Elsewhere, Schumer — the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in US history — admits that he’s “struggled to come up with the right response” to the growth of antisemitism on the left.
“Truthfully, it’s much harder to grapple with than antisemitism on the right. Jews know that far‑right movements tend to cast us as villains,” he writes. “We expect it, and we never really had close relationships with the kind of antisemites whose hatred for Jews is overt.”
Schumer also suggests that “unlike antisemitism on the far right, which is almost always deliberate, antisemitism on the left, while just as harmful, can sometimes be less intentional.”
However, he also acknowledges that “some left‑ aligned figures in politics and government have … gone too far by using antisemitic tropes while criticizing Israel and its supporters.”
Schumer specifically calls out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for tweeting in February 2019 that US lawmakers’ support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” though he adds that to her credit, she subsequently apologized.”
“For the first time in decades, Jewish‑ Americans were starting to hear and be subject to stereotypes and slander, that Jews were secretly powerful and domineering, that they were racist oppressors, exerting undue influence on politics and media, with our money and privilege,” he writes. “And those things were being said by those we had assumed were our allies on the left.”
Turning to the current far-left uproar over Israeli military action against Hamas in Gaza, Schumer writes: “While certainly many protesters harbor no ill‑intent toward Jews, certain slogans and chants repeated by large groups of protesters have gone way beyond expressing support for the Palestinian cause or principled opposition to Israeli policy.”
Referring to the anti-Israel chant “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” the senator writes: “A multicultural society tends to join together and condemn the use of those dog whistles.
“Many words and phrases that were commonly used a few decades ago, even in polite society, are now appropriately no longer in use; they had problematic origins and caused great offense to the particular group. The same standard, I believe, should apply to slogans like ‘from the river to the sea.’”
The minority leader closes by urging the left against being “too complacent or forgiving about those who exhibit antisemitism within their ranks.”
“Be careful,” he warns. “Do not let passion overwhelm your better instincts. Do not let your desire for justice in the world lead you to bring a little more injustice into the world.”
