If we’re going to defeat the Judeophilic ethno-narcissism that pervades far too many “pro-Palestine” spaces, we’ll need to discredit the ultra-leftist view on what settler-colonialism means. This is the view that says today’s white Americans are settlers, and the modern United States is a settler-colonial entity like so-called “Israel” is. Because as recent events have shown, this narrative serves a useful role in obscuring Jewish supremacy.
What’s clarified the connection between this kind of “decolonial” leftism, and Jewish ethno-narcissism, is the Judeophilic rhetoric that’s come from DSA in particular. At this year’s DSA Socialism Conference, a “socialist” who’s gone on a Birthright trip to occupied Palestine made a statement in which they sought to paint settler-colonialism as a purely “white” phenomenon—with the implication being that Jewish settler-colonialism doesn’t exist. This individual framed their argument as a way of furthering education about institutional racism in the United States, playing into the standard idpol attitude that you must always be careful to use the most precise language. Which wouldn’t be interesting on its own, except this was coming from somebody with a direct stake in maintaining perceived Jewish innocence. And this moment, small as it may seem, happened in the context of an intensifying rift inside the left over whether we should accept these Jewish victimization narratives.
As Mamdani consistently betrays the pro-Palestine cause, the DSA’s leaders need to justify his “combat antisemitism” policy, and his condemnations of Palestine’s liberation struggle. The only way these liberal Zionists can do this is by shifting the blame for the genocide away from the people who are committing it. Their tactics include portraying Netanyahu as the core source of the problem, and redefining “Zionism” to mean “acting outwardly racist against Arabs” rather than supporting a Jewish state. But another trick of theirs, one that’s directed specifically at leftists, is to frame Jewish supremacy as being just another kind of white supremacy. Which is where it becomes so convenient to depict today’s America as “settler-colonial.”
Since the genocide made this narrative more prominent, we’ve seen refutations of it come from parts of the left that those within my own tendency have criticized for being too pro-idpol. One instance of this is Freedom Road Socialist Organization, whose theoretician J. Sykes has explained why the USA is no longer in its settler-colonial stage:
U.S. settler-colonialism is a particular social formation with a particular set of contradictions at the heart of it. Historically it is a transitionary period in the early development of the capitalist mode of production. It is characterized by the dominant role played by the contradiction between settlers on the one hand and colonized people on the other. This contradiction is the main thing shaping the trajectory of the capitalist mode of production in the period of “primitive accumulation” during its nascent development. In this way, settler-colonialism fueled the rapid growth of the capitalist mode of production in the early United States…
In a relatively short span of time, the U.S. went from being a colony to an imperialist power. The old colonial system based on the export of commodities was transformed into an imperialist system based on the export of capital. The financial oligarchy which came to dominate the U.S. sought to solve its growing crises through the oppression of whole nations and peoples, at home and abroad, in order to extract super-profits to prop up its rotten system. The multinational working class and the liberation movements of oppressed nationalities found themselves with a common enemy – the monopoly capitalist class. Thus, a united front against monopoly capitalism, based on the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and the oppressed nations, became both possible and necessary.
It’s this goal of an authentic mass working-class movement that these liberal and “labor” Zionists seek to divert socialist politics away from. Within DSA, a very large minority still explicitly call themselves “Zionist,” and their aim is to rehabilitate the image of Jewish supremacy by any means necessary. The crypto-Zionists and Judeophilic “anti-Zionists” who make up the majority are being led along by these proud Zionist actors, and made to participate in the effort at whitewashing Jewish settler-colonialism. The good news is that as time goes on, more within the pro-Palestine base are coming to see the racist role DSA plays.
DSA’s racism is of the same kind as what Bernie Sanders has put forth; it’s driven by the egocentric mentality that led Sanders to be inspired by the “socialist” Kibbutzims, where Jewish settlers have built “egalitarian” communities next to the concentration camps they’ve put Palestinians into. Though the socdem tendency has lately tried to distance itself from Sanders due to his undeniably supremacist positions, they can’t really be separated when Mamdani is now doing all he can to normalize this same supremacist politics. When Sanders first popularized socdem politics as we know them today, his assistance in Palestine’s ethnic cleansing didn’t come up as a major point of contention within the left, because the consciousness hadn’t yet shifted on Palestine. But now you can’t represent yourself as a left-wing leader without being widely judged on Palestine.
The logical conclusion of this awakening is a scenario where the pro-Palestine movement takes on a new form, rebuilding itself after the damage that opportunists did to it. One of the next things we’re going to see debates over will be about whether “equal rights” is something the movement should actually be advocating for, given the reality that “Israeli” society is almost universally racist and continues to grow more violent towards Palestinians.
The view that the settlers should no longer be welcome in Palestine—not just the newest settlers, but the broader colonizer population—is a real part of this conversation. And to any of the “coexistence” libs who will cry out in response to this, we can say: what right do these colonizers have to remain within Palestinian territory? How have they proven themselves deserving of guesthood when all but a few disparate renegades have participated in the genocidal crimes, and aren’t interested in paying restitution for these crimes?
The trick of the socdem liberal Zionists is to assert that the anti-Netanyahu settlers have shown they’re on the right side. And this is actually how we can expose these covert Jewish supremacists; because the moment the Judeophiles engage in this move to settler innocence, we can easily delineate and identify where their politics truly lies. The critical part is for us to be uncompromising in our rhetoric, and not primarily try to “debate” this sneaky version of Jewish supremacy. We can’t truly debate genocidal politics, we have to focus on rallying the enemies of these politics. This is what we’re building to when we make the DSA a focal point in our rhetoric; the point of calling out DSA’s racism is to shift the discourse, and make it unfeasible for liberal Zionists to confuse the people about where they stand.
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