Bernie Sanders And The Rise Of The Jews Of Privilege

Since the genocidal October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on southern Israel, the world has seen a global surge in antisemitism unlike any since the Nazi era. With sudden and terrible force, this new iteration of the old hatred has reached even the United States, historically one of the world’s few safe havens for the Jewish people, in the form of a mass movement.

Antisemitism, of course, is not new. What is somewhat new about the antisemitism we face today is that it relies, to an enormous extent, on the endorsement of a tiny minority of American Jews and, as a conscious strategy, pushes them to the forefront.

On the surface, these Jews might seem like typical liberal-left critics of Israel’s human rights record — but they are not. They are a very particular kind of Jew, and they come from a very particular class of Jews with a very particular history and ideology; one that is defined, above all, by privilege.

Put simply, the Jews who indulge in or run interference for the new antisemitism are Jews of Privilege: Jews of a highly specific economic, cultural, social, and political status. They went to the top schools, acquired the cushy jobs, and rose to the highest levels of their professions. They got in the door, passed, and received and covet the embrace of non-Jews, especially non-Jews who don’t particularly care for the Jews. They are the American Jewish elite.

In my new book “Jews of Privilege: Elites, Anti-Zionists, and Our Secret Civil War,” I explore precisely who and what the Jews of Privilege are, the nature and origins of their ideology, and why they remain so intensely hostile towards their own brethren.

This hostility is very real. For over a century, the American Jews of Privilege have often clashed with unprivileged Jews — in particular, over Zionism. The reason was and is that Zionism has always been a movement of the Jewish masses and often the Jewish poor. It is, in other words, a threat to privilege. Thus, the Jewish elite generally opposed Zionism, fearing it would threaten their chances of assimilation and worldly success, as well as their self-appointed role as leaders of the Jewish community.

Today, a new generation of Jews of Privilege has emerged, and their hatred of Zionism and disdain for the Jewish community’s pro-Israel majority has led them to participate in the first openly antisemitic mass movement in American history. To understand how this happened and what it means, we need only examine a figure who has, in many ways, come to define it.

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One of the most important and certainly one of the most politically powerful Jews of Privilege to appear in recent years is Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who nearly gained the Democratic presidential nomination twice over.

Sanders is a somewhat strange case. He bears the legacy of the Holocaust in his family and was by no means born into wealth or class privilege. But as much as he may deny it, he is now an elite. In terms of personal history and ancestry, Sanders is not a Jew of Privilege. Ideologically, he is a Jew of Privilege in every way.

Indeed, his privilege has made him one of the most important leaders of the progressive oligarchy now vying for control of the Democratic Party, mainly through the electoral benefits of antisemitism. There have always been money and votes, after all, in running against the Jews.

It became clear very early on in Sanders’s first campaign, when he referred to his ancestors as “Polish” rather than “Jewish” immigrants; falsely accused Israel of killing 10,000 Palestinians in the 2014 war (the actual number was a fifth of that amount); and surrounded himself with advisors and surrogates like James Zogby, Cornel West, and others whose loathing for Israel and unprivileged Jews was palpable, that something was very wrong.

The extent to which Sanders had internalized privileged discourse became apparent after Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) engaged in antisemitic conspiracy theories by claiming that pro-Israel activists bribe members of Congress into supporting Israel and are loyal to a foreign power. After perfectly understandable criticism of her claim that the overwhelming majority of American Jews are corrupt traitors, Sanders leaped to Omar’s defense.

“It is not antisemitic to be critical of a right-wing government in Israel,” Sanders said, even though Omar had not been criticized for doing so, but rather for engaging in antisemitic rhetoric. While he admitted that Omar might “need to do a better job speaking to the Jewish community,” he nonetheless asserted the right of “a Muslim member of Congress not to be attacked every single day in outrageous, racist remarks.”

But it was, of course, Omar who had made the “outrageous, racist remarks,” and the criticism that followed those remarks was based entirely on what she had quite openly said, not in any way on who or what she was.

Sanders’s defense of Omar was an obvious use of obfuscation and moral blackmail to defend the indefensible and slander those who criticized Omar — that is, the vast majority of the Jewish community. In effect, Sanders was claiming that to defend oneself against antisemitism is to be an outrageous racist.

What this was all about was a very simple thing: the ongoing campaign to normalize antisemitic discourse. By portraying Omar’s antisemitism as legitimate and defaming her critics as corrupt and racist, Omar’s defenders were seeking to move the Overton Window, using Omar as the thin end of the wedge in order to do so.

It was a tactic, a first maneuver in a long-contemplated and carefully planned campaign to marginalize Jewish and Zionist voices and ultimately silence them. In other words, to cancel the Jews. Since October 7, that campaign has more than come into its own.

Sanders, as the Jewish token, the sword and shield defending Omar and striking at her enemies, played an essential role in this campaign. To an extent, it worked. A congressional resolution to condemn Omar was watered down to the point of non-existence, and she has survived all election challenges, no doubt to go on to greater heights of outrageous racism.

Without Sanders, this might have happened anyway, but the role he played unquestionably made things a great deal easier for Omar’s partisans. It was thanks to Sanders that this first attempt at the institutionalization of antisemitism in American politics met with at least a certain measure of success.

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Sanders did realize, at least to an extent, that he would have to do damage control. The outrage of the majority of American Jews, as opposed to the Jews of Privilege, was quite public and palpable. With another presidential run on the horizon, Sanders’s political considerations demanded that he at least address the issue. He did so in a remarkably tone-deaf, self-serving, and blatantly privileged fashion in the communist-founded publication Jewish Currents.

“Opposing antisemitism is a core value of progressivism,” Sanders wrote, which was irrelevant. Even if it were true, progressives were clearly violating that core value. But Sanders quickly moved to delegitimize anyone who pointed this out by asserting, “It’s very troubling to me that we are also seeing accusations of antisemitism used as a cynical political weapon against progressives,” which was blatantly untrue, as many Jewish progressives had criticized Omar and her defenders.

He then attempted to connect the rather commonsense criticisms of Omar with the Left’s bête noir Donald Trump, saying, “One of the most dangerous things Trump has done is to divide Americans by using false allegations of antisemitism, mostly regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

To bring Israel into the debate is, of course, a favorite judo throw employed by progressives. It is standard procedure to obfuscate Left-wing racism by claiming it is mere “criticism of Israel” and that Jews who object are acting in bad faith. This Sanders proceeded to do, claiming, “We should be very clear that it is not antisemitic to criticize the policies of the Israeli government.”

That was not the issue at all. The issue was that Omar and others were criticizing Israel and its supporters in an antisemitic fashion. By asserting a general principle, Sanders both gaslighted the Jewish community and used a cynical political weapon to avoid dealing with the actual content of what Omar had said. The principle Sanders cited was not what was at stake.

Sanders then made the bizarre claim that antisemitism is not, in fact, directed against Jews, but rather against the Palestinians. “The forces fomenting antisemitism are the forces arrayed against oppressed people around the world, including Palestinians,” he said. “The struggle against antisemitism is also the struggle for Palestinian freedom.” This was, at best, hypocritical — especially given the endemic antisemitism in Palestinian society — but it was also important, because it essentially erased antisemitism in its entirety.

Antisemitism may be many things, but one of them is that it is directed against the Jews and no one else. To assert otherwise is to assert that antisemitism does not exist. This was, behind the sanctimonious and arrogant bromides, exactly what Sanders was attempting to do.

Most telling, however, was what Sanders then said about the Jews: “They are part of a broad coalition of activists from many different backgrounds who believe very deeply, as I always have, that we are all in this together.”

This claim, more than any other, exposes Sanders’s deep and consuming privilege. The truth is that one of the most essential tenets of antisemitism is that we are not “all in this together.” Antisemites have never been “in this together” with the Jews. They refuse to be.

Ironically, by adopting the ideology of the Jews of Privilege, Sanders completely failed to recognize that what he said actually made the case for the unprivileged Jews. It is precisely because non-Jews have so rarely seen themselves as “in this together” with the Jews that things like Zionism and Israel, and support for them on the part of the Jewish masses, exist at all. We know that much of the world is not “in this together” with us. At the very least, it can easily choose not to be.

So, we choose to be “in this together” with ourselves. We look to ourselves for the strength necessary to resist. We are for ourselves as much as we are for others. We hold to the principle, historically vindicated in the most terrible way, that to prostrate ourselves before antisemitism means indignity, self-hatred, and ultimately death. But in his admiration for privilege, and the unconscious belief that he shares it, Sanders cannot possibly understand this.

In many ways, the reaction to Omar on the part of Sanders and his ilk was conclusive proof of this. The majority of American Jews were appalled, insulted, and frightened by what Omar had said. Her defenders, including Sanders, could not possibly have cared less. They were, to say the least, not “in this together” with the Jews.

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Since the October 7 massacre, Sanders has reached his nadir, doing everything possible to elevate and further the antisemitism now coursing through the veins of the alliance between radical Muslims and radical progressives of which he is a part.

To be fair, Sanders initially condemned the massacre, calling it “horrific” and saying, “Nobody should forgive or forget those atrocities, which began this war.” There is no doubt, however, that in saying so, Sanders was at best hedging his bets. Indeed, in the same statement, he quickly pivoted toward attacking Israel.

He claimed, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government has not simply waged war against Hamas. It has waged total war against the Palestinian people,” which, given Israel’s efforts to evacuate Palestinians from the war zones in Gaza, was patently untrue.

He further claimed that Netanyahu “has consistently sabotaged efforts to obtain a ceasefire deal and secure the release of the hostages,” when it was Hamas that persistently refused to surrender and meet basic ceasefire conditions.

Sanders then engaged in a blood libel, taking the lead and providing cover for other libelists. He was one of the first U.S. Senators to claim, “The [Israeli] intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” It is through such libels that anti-Zionist forces in the U.S. have justified their antisemitic incitement and violence, including the murder of both Jews and non-Jews.

There are good reasons for Sanders’s self-debasement. The truth is that, as much as Sanders may claim to be a socialist ideologically opposed to privilege in all its forms, he has benefitted immensely from privilege. After all, it nearly made him president of the United States. It has turned him into an adored guru to many on the Left — in not a few cases because he is so forgiving of their antisemitism — as well as a decidedly wealthy man. Perhaps most of all, Sanders enjoys the love and affection of non-Jews. He may not be aware of his prostration, but they are. They understand its value, and they reward him accordingly.

Sanders misses the possibility that this love is contingent and can be withdrawn at any time, because he cannot perceive it and, if he could, would not believe it. He has paid too high a price for his privilege and will never let it go, which one imagines is the origin of his endless assertions of his own moral rectitude and that of his antisemitic supporters and colleagues, who grant him seemingly endless but highly conditional indulgences.

It is precisely this that the Jews of Privilege refuse to understand, a refusal that Sanders embraces in the most unctuous terms. In effect, as the Jews of Privilege have always done, Sanders prostrates himself before antisemitism. The results have been terrible, because it is likely that no American Jew has done more to damage his own community than Sanders. For this alone, if for nothing else, he stands condemned.

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Benjamin Kerstein is an Associate Fellow at the Z3 Institute and author of “Jews of Privilege: Elites, Anti-Zionists, and Our Secret Civil War.”

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