One would least expect anti-Semitism from the left. Isn’t their ideal that all people are equal and that no one should be discriminated against because of their ethnicity or religion?
To shed light on the situation in the U.S., Baty Ungar-Sargon’s *The Jews and the Left* was published in June 2026. Much of what she describes is also applicable to Europe. Here, I outline the major developments as presented by Baty Ungar-Sargon in broad strokes. Details, examples, and source references can be found in her compelling book.
There is one key difference between the situation in the U.S. and that in Europe: The U.S. has traditionally been very open toward Jews. Here, they were not merely tolerated, but valued from the very beginning. Their contributions to the development of the U.S. were acknowledged without envy.
Certainly, there were also outbreaks of anti-Semitism in the U.S.: In the 1880s, segments of the upper class attempted to keep up-and-coming Jews in check. After World War I, the violence of the Ku Klux Klan was also directed against Jews. And in the 1930s, the U.S. was not spared the influence of Nazi propaganda.
For a long time, however, the Left did not behave in an anti-Semitic manner. Most American Jews felt they belonged to the Left or the Liberals. For one thing, because they shared those groups’ values: compassion, a welcoming attitude toward strangers, social justice, and a sense of responsibility toward Indigenous peoples.
Jewish tradition values skepticism, questioning authority, and the power of the better argument. This, too, connected Jews to the American Left when it had not yet begun to authoritatively suppress free speech and punish those who deviated from the party line. In addition, many Jews considered the right more threatening than the left—and rightly so, of course, with an eye toward Europe. But this assessment no longer applies to the United States today.
Jewish Commitment to the Interests of the Working Class
Although Jewish refugees from Europe were not discriminated against as Jews, they were initially economically exploited because they were destitute. This, too, explains their inclination toward the Left. Many Jewish workers did not passively accept poor working conditions but fought for workers’ rights and strengthened the labor unions. One outstanding figure was the labor organizer Clara Lemlich, who led a general strike that resulted in significantly better working conditions for female textile workers in New York.
At the same time, however, Jewish workers also advanced economically and soon ceased to be workers, having joined the middle class. Yet even then, they remained connected to the working class. Thus, Jews in the middle class—and soon also in the upper class—became important pillars of the labor movement.
Roosevelt: Bitter Compromises for Victory Over Nazi Germany
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic and social reforms between 1933 and 1938 were widely welcomed among American Jews. They found this “New Deal” more appealing than socialism, as they believed it held greater promise for changing conditions within capitalism than for abolishing it altogether.
During World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt was viewed critically by European Jews because he did not allow them to flee to the United States. American Jews, however, attributed this to the constraints of the coalition: If Roosevelt wanted to win the war against Nazi Germany, he had to take into account coalition partners who strictly opposed immigration. At least Roosevelt tried to save Jews from the Holocaust in other ways, which he succeeded in doing for about 200,000 Jews—a significant number, yet a small fraction compared to the six million Jews who were murdered. Above all, however, the Allies won the war with the help of the United States.
Jews and the Civil Rights Movement: A Strong Alliance Breaks Apart
In its struggle for equal rights for African Americans, the American civil rights movement found strong allies in the Jewish community, who made great sacrifices. Jews from the Northern states traveled to the South as Freedom Riders to protest racial segregation there. As a result, Jews drew the hostility of the Ku Klux Klan. The fact that the Klan carried out attacks against Jewish families enraged their white neighbors so much that they sided with the Jews and embraced their demand for equal rights for African Americans. Jews therefore played a significant role in the success of the civil rights movement.
In the late 1960s, the Left changed its character: moving away from the demand for equality for all toward a fundamental rejection of power as such, as well as an ideological glorification of victimhood. For Jews, this development was particularly unfavorable when, thanks to their high level of motivation, they had become too successful to compete for the status of the “greatest victim.”
It is true that no one had suffered worse than the Jews during the Holocaust. But the Holocaust had not taken place in the United States. There, Jews had fared much better than African Americans, who had to contend with pervasive discrimination.
For a long time, African Americans had viewed Jews as valued allies in the struggle for their rights. But then the Black Power Movement replaced the ideal of a united America of equal citizens with a separatism focused on what divides people. Each ethnic group now found a wide audience for its complaints about its specific experiences of marginalization.
With the exception of Jews: “Jews know how to control everything you’ve got,” Malcolm X incited as early as 1962. Anti-Semitism became an integral part of the Black Power Movement. Being anti-Semitic was declared a virtue, just like being anti-white.
The New Left’s victim ideology was also unfavorable to American Jews because most of them felt connected to Israel. As Zionists, they knew that Zionism is the exact opposite of glorifying victimhood: it is a revolt against that status and aims to overcome it. Furthermore, an ideological rejection of power is out of the question for Zionists. For it was not only recent history that had shown that powerless Jews are murdered en masse: Surrounded by genocidal states, the Jews could only survive if they possessed power.
Dead in a devastated land: That’s the only way the Left seems to want the Jews
The contradictions between the ideologically adrift Left and the Jews came to light after the Six-Day War of 1967. Five Arab states had mobilized their armies to jointly continue the European Holocaust in the Middle East and murder all Jews in Israel. By successfully holding its ground against this overwhelming force, Israel was suddenly no longer the weak, helpless state of Holocaust survivors with which leftists could so easily identify: Anyone who still wanted to stand with the weak now had to side with the failed Arab genocidal perpetrators and demonize those who had defended themselves against their extermination as “occupiers.”
The ideological glorification of weakness and poverty is only beneficial to the weak and poor themselves at first glance. For they can only remain valued as long as they stay weak and poor—or at least are perceived as such, despite all international support. Then, of course, they can get away with anything—including terrorism.
This is how the Left had come to glorify terrorist violence. Once an advocate for workers, it had evolved from a defender of civil rights into a movement dedicated to the emotional sensibilities of those who are—allegedly or in fact—marginalized.
The Palestinian activists, inspired by genocidal dreams, now saw themselves in this role. They had discovered in the liberation movements of the Third World a model of liberation through blind terror, which they now applied to Israel: Israel, the refuge of Holocaust survivors, became the negative projection of a dogmatic postcolonial ideology.
Israel’s military success in 1967 had an encouraging effect on American Jews. They now saw Israel as a strong, fearless, and well-defended state that had left behind the image of Jews as a persecuted, humiliated, oppressed people, helplessly at the mercy of every murderous horde. Non-Jewish Americans, too, viewed Israel’s victory positively. They began to see Israel as an important strategic ally in the Cold War, one that deserved support.
The left, on the other hand, could not forgive the Jewish state for having succeeded in protecting its population from genocide at the hands of the Arabs. Thus, “Zionism” became a dirty word in those circles. The fact that Israel was subjected to brutal Palestinian terrorism; that it had repeatedly offered compromises; that it was willing to share the land with the Palestinians; that thousands of Jewish civilians had been abused, slaughtered, and maimed by Arab terrorists; that Israel’s enemies had nothing less in mind than a new Holocaust—none of this was now worth mentioning to the Left. Being against Israel was now just as much a part of the movement as being against colonialism, racism, and apartheid.
For American Jews, this development came as a shock. They saw themselves as champions of leftist causes—and were now suddenly rejected by the left. And why? Because they had the audacity to feel connected to other Jews worldwide, because they saw themselves as part of the Jewish people, and because they affirmed Jewish national self-determination in a state of their own. This had fallen into disrepute among the left. Whether at universities, in the civil rights movement, in cultural communities, or in the New York Times: everywhere they were met with the same hatred.
Jewish Teachers as Scapegoats
Segregation between white and Black students had been abolished in public schools in 1954. To the frustration of African American parents, however, their children’s academic performance remained largely poor even in the 1960s. Instead of investigating the causes, people began searching for a scapegoat. And that role was filled by the teachers—who at the time were predominantly Jewish.
The fact that these Jewish teachers were rejected by African American parents was deeply distressing to them. They were highly motivated to do their part to improve the situation of African Americans. To that end, they had put up with the unfavorable working conditions at the impoverished public schools. Now they were being treated with hostility by the very people they wanted to help.
Identity Politics as a Cover for Left-Wing Exploiters
In the final decades of the 20th century, ideas from the far-left scene made their way into the moderate-liberal mainstream. Identity politics—which favors specific groups such as women, African Americans, or queer people, which can lead to the discrimination of other groups—spilled over into universities and from there into everyday culture and the liberal media.
Why was identity politics so popular in the more left-leaning Democratic Party?
Batya Ungar-Sargon argues: The Democrats pursued a policy of globalization that harmed the working class but helped them achieve wealth. Identity politics was an excellent means for them to still present themselves as morally superior.
But how did Democratic policies harm workers? Batya Ungar-Sargon explains:
The outsourcing of manufacturing plants overseas cost American workers countless jobs. At the same time, Democratic politicians facilitated mass migration, which further increased competitive pressure in the labor market. For workers, this meant higher unemployment and stagnant wages amid skyrocketing living costs, while their Democratic representatives—who, thanks to their college educations, had secured well-paid leadership positions—benefited from lower labor costs. On top of that, Obama had vocational training programs in schools eliminated—programs that had previously provided better opportunities for many working-class people. All of this also meant that fewer working people were able to compete with the now-wealthy leftists for housing, medical care, or educational resources.
Now, the Republicans certainly didn’t do any better. But social policies for the working class were no longer the moral trump card with which the Democrats could score points in the political arena. So they resorted to salvaging their moral superiority through identity politics.
The right was portrayed as racist, from whom one could distance oneself as a leftist by dividing the world into the powerful and the powerless. The powerful could do whatever they wanted: they were branded as incorrigibly evil. Only the powerless carried moral weight, regardless of whether or how lawless or inhumane their behavior might be.
But how could the powerful be distinguished from the powerless? The left relied on a marker without realizing that it was just as racist as the racists from whom they claimed to distance themselves: skin color.
The white people were powerful = evil; the “people of color” were powerless = good. And since the Jews they knew were often white, they, too, were branded as evil. In contrast, the Palestinians, with their slightly darker complexion, were “people of color”—and thus, a priori, the good guys.
Whenever I read about this, I ask myself: How on earth do these left-wing ideologues reconcile this madness with reality? After all, many Jews are physically indistinguishable from Palestinians. And if racism is rampant anywhere, it’s surely in the supposedly innocent Gaza: Black people are referred to as “slaves” there and are socially isolated. Marriages between white and Black people are extremely difficult due to social stigma, unless a white man takes a Black woman as a subordinate second, third, or fourth wife. In Israel, on the other hand, people of different skin colors interact with one another as equals and marry one another without anyone taking offense.
So how does all this fit in with the left’s distorted image of the evil Zionists and the beloved indigenous Palestinians?
Well, the truth is this: Ideological thinking has never let facts get in the way.
Black Lives Matter: Jewish Solidarity Unwelcome
The damage this ideology had caused became clear after the death of George Floyd. Numerous Jewish organizations drafted resolutions expressing solidarity with Black Lives Matter. To their immense disappointment, the reactions were consistently either icy silence or rejection.
How can we explain that the majority of American Jews nevertheless continued to vote for Democrats? Well, they weren’t just Jews—they were also students or college graduates. And at America’s elite universities, the Democrats are the established order.
The only question is: How much longer?
After October 7: Left-Wing Solidarity with the Murderers
It’s quite possible that the elite universities went too far with their reaction to October 7, 2023.
On that day, Hamas terrorists raided a music festival, murdering, raping, and mutilating 380 young people there, and then turned their attention to the kibbutzim—Jewish village communities. There, they burned babies alive and cruelly tortured entire families to death. Over a thousand people were murdered, often in unimaginably brutal ways. 250 were taken hostage and abducted to Gaza, where hell on earth began for them. The terrorists were accompanied by thousands of civilians from Gaza. They looted and betrayed the Israeli victims to their executioners.
On that day and the days that followed, it became clear just how far the Left had strayed from its humanitarian ideals and become mired in its racist, postcolonialist identity ideology: In a way that is incomprehensible to any sentient human being, they showed solidarity not with the victims, but with the perpetrators. Yet the scale of this horror could not have escaped their notice, for the Hamas terrorists filmed their horrific acts themselves and boasted about them on social media.
“The bodies were not yet cold, the hostages in the dark tunnels of Gaza not yet bound; the rape victims were still writhing in the agony of their heinous defilement—and already a cruel, mocking cry rang out from the West: ‘Well, what did you expect?’”
Feminists and human rights groups, who were otherwise always the first to condemn rape as a tactic of war: when the victims were Jewish women, their reaction was a deafening silence.
The anti-Semitic left is losing support among Jews
Among America’s Jews, this lack of empathy led to a dramatic drop in support for the left.
It’s true that even after October 7, many Jews in New York still voted for an anti-Zionist—Mamdani—as mayor. It doesn’t seem to bother them that his wife praises Hamas and that his supporters call for the mass murder of Jews with the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” without Mamdani taking offense. Nationwide, however, American Jews’ support for the Democrats has declined rapidly since October 7. At the same time, Zionism is now reaching significantly more American Jews. According to polls, 81% of American Jews support Israel.
As for young Jews on college campuses: it is precisely among them that there has been an explosive rise in Zionism—much to the astonishment of the anti-Zionists. The reason is obvious: on their college campuses, young Jews were confronted with left-wing anti-Semitism more intensely than almost anyone else.
Thus, the American left can today, at best, only offer a home to those Jews who renounce the world’s only Jewish state.
The situation is no better in Europe. Worldwide, the term “Zionist” has become a slur in left-wing circles. Only a minority of Jews are still considered socially acceptable—those who fixate on Israel’s self-defense while downplaying or ignoring the plans of Hamas and Hezbollah to murder all Israeli Jews. Or who even consider the terrorists to be superior human beings simply because of their skin color.
Sources
- Batya Ungar-Sargon (2026): The Jews and the Left
- Brendan O’Neill (2024): After the Pogrom: October 7, Israel, and the Crisis of Civilization
- Malcolm X: quoted from http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_history.html
- On racism in Gaza: Queries to Ecosia AI and Gemini yielded, among others, the following sources:
– https://www.ruhrbarone.de/rassismus-in-gaza/249418/
– Wikipedia / Historical reference works: “Afro-Palestinians” and the entry on the historical development of the term “Abeed” in the Arab world.
– Associated Press / CityNews (2017): “Afro-Palestinians forge a unique identity” (interviews with Afro-Palestinians about racial discrimination in marriage and language use)