Letter to the Editor: The Socialism of Fools

This letter was sent to Yellow Scene Magazine. As with all Letters to the Editor, the views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the publication. We value providing space for community voices.

I hail from the left, and am not shy about it: a democratic socialist, an out trans and queer person, a union organizer, and a feminist. And I have advocated on all of those fronts for many years.

Right now, though, I am both disturbed and disappointed by some of my fellow lefties, who have become the unwitting tools of White Christian Nationalists by crossing the line into clear antisemitism. Some have even gone so far as to embrace such a misguided worldview that they’ve convinced themselves that hostility toward Jews is morally justified.

I’ve seen it on social media and heard it on the streets: people behaving in clearly abhorrent ways towards American Jews (street harassment, bullying, even openly saying that Jews deserve violence or death). And far too much of it is rooted in assigning collective blame for the worst of the Netanyahu administration’s atrocities.

Enough. Individual Jewish Americans are no more responsible for Netanyahu’s evils than individual Russian Americans are responsible for Putin’s. Bernie Sanders does not share in some sort of collective blame for the horrific abuses of violent settlers in the West Bank because he is a Jew from Brooklyn. In fact, he clearly abhors that violence – as do most American Jews, a supermajority of whom agree that under Netanyahu, Israel is committing war crimes, according to Washington Post polling (though of course everyone deserves safety, no matter their political ideology).

At the same time, “antisemitism” is being cynically co-opted and weaponized by MAGA forces to attack our civil liberties and our immigrant neighbors, something Jewish organizations have rebuked (1, 2). But as we stand in the shadow of the June 1 anniversary of the firebombing on the Pearl Street Mall, I’m talking about the real kind – the hatred and dehumanization of Jews because they are Jews.

That firebombing was one of the more horrifying acts of hate violence in our state’s history. Marking this anniversary, it is essential that we all have the courage to name and face hard truths. We must stiffen our spines against hatred because the death of Karen Diamond demands it, as does the pain of all the survivors and the broader Jewish community. We cannot and will not find the healing that is needed here until we do. But we also must do so because all of our fates, and our liberations, are bound together.

As the German saying goes, “antisemitism is the socialism of fools” — a once oft-spoken refrain purportedly repeated by Engels and Marx both. All those who said it knew a simple thing: that if they allowed themselves to be drawn into the base antisemitic trope that Jews as a people were somehow responsible for the worst evils of the world, they would be falling into a divide-and-conquer trap laid for them by those at the top.

As a unionist, I know the truth in my bones, and I’ve seen it with my eyes. The only thing that advances real justice is working people uniting together across the things that divide us: race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, etc. And the oligarchs who do not wish to see working people hold real power will always seek to exacerbate and inflame those divisions because if we are fighting each other, we can’t fight effectively against them.

This is why, for literally millennia, one of the core features of antisemitism has been the fomenting of conspiracy theories about how Jews are sinister figures who secretly control everything and create the world’s worst ills. That awful lie has a purpose: if we believe it, we turn our anger on our Jewish compatriots instead of the ones actually rigging the systems against us.

It is also one of the core lies that gave rise to the Third Reich. Now, the Christian Nationalists of today are fanning the flames of this oldie-but-definitely-not-goodie via intentionally destructive and manipulative schemes like the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther. In that horrific endeavor, the same organization behind Project 2025 worked to redefine antisemitism to justify MAGA attacks on free speech, thus advancing the twin authoritarian aims of curtailing civil liberties and setting Jews up as the scapegoats for that erosion.

If we are fighting for collective liberation, we have to stop falling for the tricks laid for us by those who hate and oppress us all. We need all of our siblings with us to protect each other and defeat White Christian Nationalism, and that means no exceptions. It also means being brave enough to speak up and call in those who refuse to see and hold the full humanity of all people, including Jews.

On the left, we often say that none of us can be free until all of us are free. It’s past time we all fully live out that mantra – and the knowledge that it does and must include our Jewish siblings. The only true path out of this mess and towards justice is for all of us to find a way to walk side by side. If we cannot, we will unfortunately be the worst kind of fools.

Wynn Howell (they/them) is the Colorado State Director of the Working Families Party and is a leader in the labor and LGBTQ+ movements who has spent over 25 years working as a union, community, and political organizer.