It's getting bad for the Jews

If I had to speculate, I would say two things are happening at once, and both are bad for the Jews. In the United States, the most active, passionate, young, and growing part of the American Left is determined to read American history — even global history — entirely through the lens of white supremacy. In many ways this ideology is just a form of Marxism in which “capital” and “capitalism” have been cut-and-replaced with “whites” and “whiteness.” In an ideological system so anxious to categorize people as either perpetrators or victims, Jewish success and happiness in America will inevitably cause leftists to categorize Jews as oppressors. Jews will have “become white” or, worse, their success and assimilation into America and appreciation for its political constitutions and social life will be interpreted as an unforgivable betrayal of their true status as victims who must be working to overthrow the system. In Europe, anti-Zionism is almost a form of pro-Europeanism. My friend Damir Marusic calls it a conflict between Brussels and Jerusalem — and this conflict is almost a sacred one, over the moral status of the nation-state, and of nationalism. The lesson European liberal democrats took from World War II was that ethnic states and national chauvinism were the greatest evils on earth. The European Union is a utopian project aimed at achieving the Marxist dream of downgrading and dissipating the attachment of peoples to their nationalities and religions. Many Jews, looking at the horror of the Shoah, gave up on the liberal dream and turned to Theodor Herzl and the Zionists, who held out that what the Jews needed was a homeland of their own and a state capable of defending their existence.