WTH is Going On with the Explosion of Antisemitism on the Left? Ruth Wisse Explains

There are Charlottesvilles happening every day in America. This
time, they’re everywhere, driven by an explosion of antisemitism.
And these Charlottesvilles are happening at Harvard, Columbia,
and Stanford among other elite havens of academe. This is not the
alt-right, fringe antisemitism of years past. The modern version
has taken on the flavor of the leftist elite: it equates Zionism
with racism; it coalesces the extreme aspects of BLM, feminism,
and other groups against a common enemy; it is pro-nothing and
entirely anti. The Nazi movement had its roots in professors,
Nobel Prize winners – this too, is finding roots in elitist
bodies who can intellectualize their way around the pernicious
evil of the Hamas attacks. The only way to stand up to a culture
of hate? Intolerance of it, and imposing consequences on those
who profess it.


Ruth Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature
and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard University. She
immigrated to Canada from Romania in 1940 and is a preeminent
scholar of Yiddish and American culture, literature, and
politics. She is the author of several books, including her
memoir Free as a Jew.


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