“When you have an ideology that pretends to know exactly who the oppressors are and who are the oppressed, and you have an ideology that conflates success with oppression … then Jews who do, on average, better than the mean, are going to be viewed as oppressors.”
For decades, David Bernstein has served in senior roles at major Jewish organizations. But when he saw the effect that woke ideology was having on these institutions, he decided to tackle the problem head-on and start a new nonprofit demanding a return to classical liberalism.
“I want there to be conservatives. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says … a bird needs a left wing and a right wing in order to fly,” says Bernstein.
We dive into his book, “Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews,” and discuss Kanye West, Elon Musk, and the Soviet-Jewish refusenik Natan Sharansky.
“When he hears woke ideology in America and the West, it sounds the same to him as the communist ideology that he grew up with, except that they’ve replaced class with race,” says Bernstein.
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/david-bernstein-how-woke-ideology-provides-the-perfect-template-for-antisemitism-to-thrive_4932842.html
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
David Bernstein, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
David Bernstein:
Great to be with you.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s just start here with Kanye West or Ye. He said some shockingly, horrifically anti-Semitic things recently. There was, of course, this huge outcry, but one of the things I noticed is there was an outcry from some people on the Left who struck me as being quite anti-Semitic. I’m trying to make sense of all this. Give me your thoughts here, please.
Mr. Bernstein:
Yes. With the dynamics of American politics today, being as polarized as they are, people use anti-Semitism as a political football. We’ve even seen this in polling data that the Right tends to blame the Left for anti-Semitism, and the Left tends to blame the Right for anti-Semitism, and the center, they treat it as a pox on both of your houses. And I think they’re probably right.
You’re seeing different variants of anti-Semitism on the far-Right and you’re seeing another variant of anti-Semitism on the Left. We’re seeing it manifest in both places. Whenever they see anti-Semitism on the Left or from somebody who’s not really on the Left but expressing a different variant, they’ll blame it completely on the Right. They’re parroting white supremacy, that’s what they’ll say. That’s what they’ve accused Kanye West of doing is parroting white supremacy, when he’s actually expressing a variant of anti-Semitism that you see, I call it black supremacist anti-Semitism. It’s got a little bit of radical social justice ideology in it, with some white supremacy and traditional anti-Semitic tropes mixed in with some unique variants that you see in radical black spaces as well.
Mr. Jekielek:
That’s fascinating because you’re saying that Kanye has included some kind of critical social justice anti-Semitism in what he’s talking about. You don’t typically associate him with that though.
Mr. Bernstein:
Yes, so many of his followers and the people who defended him on the Left would say that as a black person he cannot be racist. Kanye himself might have made similar comments that racism requires you to have power, and you only have power if you’re part of the white dominant class. That is where you start to hear echoes of radical leftist social justice ideology.