The following is an excerpt from the 2021 ebook, The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it). It is set to be released soon as an audiobook, and is available in electronic format at Amazon.com.
Jews inspiring blacks
Black civil rights activists — in the United States, and around the world — have long taken inspiration from Zionism in their own struggles for equal rights and self-determination.
That is a bolder claim than the mere observation that Jews have helped black civil rights struggles, or that blacks and Jews have built important political partnerships. The emergence of radical black nationalism as a political force, and the alignment of some black movements with anti-Israel movements, has complicated that relationship. It has also obscured the fact that some black leaders drew inspiration from Zionism — and have also been Zionists themselves.
But the history is real. Nelson Mandela noted in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, that the Zionist example provided crucial inspiration to the African National Congress after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. That event, when police fired on unarmed protesters, killing dozens, led many of South Africa’s black leaders to conclude — reasonably — that non-violent resistance against racial segregation had run its course, and that their struggle needed a military component. Mandela, who had been forced to go “underground,” pursuing his political activities while in hiding, took refuge on a farm called Liliesleaf, in a northern suburb of Johannesburg.
He wrote:
Soon after this Arthur Goldreich and his family moved into the main house as official tenants and I took over the newly built domestic worker’s cottage. Arthur’s presence provided a safe cover for our activities. He was an artist and designer by profession, a member of the [liberal, white] Congress of Democrats and one of the first members of MK [Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress]. His politics were unknown to the police and he had never been questioned or raided. In the 1940s, Arthur had fought with the Palmach, the military wing of the Jewish National Movement in Palestine. He was knowledgeable about guerrilla warfare and helped fill many gaps in my understanding. A flamboyant person, he gave the farm a buoyant atmosphere. (334)
Goldreich was later arrested when the police discovered and raided the farm. He later escaped from jail and fled the country. He moved to Israel, where he founded the department of architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He was a Zionist who made a direct and lasting contribution to Mandela’s struggle, to black South Africans, and the cause of democracy generally.
And he was not alone. Mandela also noted that he was inspired by the example of Menachem Begin, the militant leader who commanded an underground paramilitary force in Palestine, and later became Israel’s first conservative prime minister. Mandela recalled his research on guerrilla war:
What I wanted to find out were the fundamental principles for starting a revolution. I discovered that there was a great deal of writing on this very subject, and I made my way through the available literature on armed warfare and in particular guerrilla warfare. …I read The Revolt by Menachem Begin and was encouraged by the fact that the Israeli leader had led a guerrilla force in a country with neither mountains nor forests, a situation similar to our own. (325-6)
The Zionist example has inspired many other leaders, as well — and not just militants. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who famously championed non-violence as a political tactic and moral principle, is often quoted for his defense of Zionism, and his declaration that anti-Zionism was essentially the same as antisemitism: “Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!”
His views on the Middle East were nuanced: he had empathy for Palestinian aspirations. But even in discussing the need for a peace that satisfied the aspirations of both sides, King acknowledged Israel as an inspiration. Nine days before he was assassinated, King delivered a speech in which he said: “I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.”
Other black leaders have cited the Israeli kibbutz as a positive example of self-improvement, and have explored the idea as a solution to urban poverty. African American artists and musicians also drew inspiration from Zionism. The folk singer Ella Jenkins — whom I had the honor to meet, as a child — sang “Kadima, Yisroel” — “Forward, Israel.” The contemporary singer India Arie has traveled the world performing — and singing in Hebrew — with the Israeli musician Idan Raichel.
Zionism has inspired black leaders as an example of an oppressed people transcending their victimhood, taking their destiny into their own hands — and succeeding, while building an exemplary, if flawed, society.
The low expectations of Black Lives Matter
In recent years, however, Zionism has faded as a source of inspiration among black leaders, who have been more influenced by anti-Zionist politics.
This is partly the result of the enduring sentimental appeal of militancy within black politics, particularly the rhetoric of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan is one of the most notorious racists and antisemites in America today. Yet while few black Americans subscribe to his political views, much less his peculiar version of Islam, many are inspired by his apparent political courage as he stands up defiantly against the (deserved) opprobrium of the mainstream media.
Moreover, he emphasizes black self-reliance, at least symbolically. Farrakhan was behind the Million Man March in 1995, an event in Washington that drew black participants from around the country. The march was not primarily staged as a political event. Rather, it was billed as a form of atonement, when black Americans — primarily men — would demonstrate their willingness to commit to self-improvement. Atonement implies sin, but it also implies moral agency. That message resonated deeply in the black community — enough to overcome misgivings about Farrakhan’s troubling, self-defeating fulminations against the white supremacist power structure and shadowy Jewish conspiracies.
Black politics have also been affected by the rise of the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States, particularly on university campuses. It is more accurately described as an anti-Israel movement, since the Palestinian national movement devotes little attention to developing its own national symbols or institutions and more energy to protesting against Israel.
The same academic and civic institutions that embrace radical theories about white supremacy in America also nurture anti-Israel radicalism. They have also cultivated the idea of “intersectionality,” the idea that different oppressed groups have a natural duty and inclination to support each other’s struggles.
“Intersectionality” has led many left-wing movements to declare themselves opposed to Zionism — and, often, to Jews — when there is no apparent connection between the issues at stake. For example, the Women’s March, a radical organization opposed to President Donald Trump, was co-founded by Palestinian-American radical Linda Sarsour, who tried to exclude “Zionist” women from participation. As the online Jewish magazine Tablet documented in 2018, the organization was divided over allegations of antisemitism, after some co-founders allegedly claimed that Jews “bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people” and ran the slave trade.
The Black Lives Matter movement of recent years has suffered from the same problem. The movement was founded in 2013, and gained national prominence in 2014, after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed a young black man named Michael Brown. Activists claimed the officer had shot Brown in the back as he attempted to surrender.
But subsequent evidence — and an investigation by the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — indicated that Brown had attacked the officer inside his vehicle, reaching for his gun and causing it to discharge. Far from trying to surrender, Brown was charging the officer when he was shot.
Nevertheless, the myth — encapsulated by the slogan “Hands up, don’t shoot!” — persisted. And when a grand jury declined to charge the officer later that year, activists rioted in Ferguson, setting fire to the city’s business district, where many of the businesses were owned by minorities.
Similar incidents, in which black suspects died in encounters with police, inspired other riots. The mainstream media, notably CNN, gave intense coverage to these events, though they are a tiny minority of black homicides, the majority of which are committed by other black people.
On the one hand, the problem to which Black Lives Matter drew attention is a real one. Statistics suggest that black Americans are more likely to encounter force in interactions with police. And there is certainly racism in American society, and a small minority of police are probably racist as well.
But as Harvard economist Roland Freyer — who is also African American — notes, there appears to be no racial disparity in police shootings: “No matter how we analyzed the data, we found no racial differences in shootings overall, in any city in particular, or in any subset of the data.”
Black Lives Matter decided to focus on the tiny subset of killings in which police were involved, rather than the broader problem of violence within the black community — a problem that is not only the fault of the black community, but which is certainly larger than “police violence.”
Moreover, the movement sought to impugn the entire institution of law enforcement, and society itself, declaring that America was guilty of “systemic racism.” And by declaring “mattering” to be the movement’s goal — the lowest level of achievement, as sympathetic cartoonist Scott Adams pointed out — Black Lives Matter set its sights absurdly low.
The radical temptation
Black Lives Matter rejects reform in favor of radicalism. For example, it ignored decades of improvements in police conduct in places like Los Angeles, and instead made demands to “defund” or “abolish” the police. Democratic leaders were often eager to comply: in Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti immediately pledged to cut $150 million from the police budget in June 2020 — more than 10% of the total — even as the National Guard deployed on the streets of his city to prevent looting by “peaceful protesters.” Garcetti claimed that the money, once redistributed to “communities of color,” would make those neighborhoods safer.
The preference for radicalism over reform is a common human temptation. Sociologists have described it as a gesture of desperation by oppressed groups of people. Examples include the disaster at Wounded Knee in 1890, when Native American believers in the cult of the Ghost Dance, believing that white people could be made to disappear, were led into a confrontation in which hundreds were massacred by federal troops. In South Africa, despairing Xhosa people, following a prophet named Nongqawuse in the mid-19th century, slaughtered their own cattle in the belief that doing so would defeat colonialism; instead, they starved themselves.
But radicalism sometimes is the preference of dominant elites — or elites within oppressed groups. The African American scholar W.E.B. du Bois, widely revered as an intellectual giant, took on Booker T. Washington, one of the most important black reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Washington, a former slave, became a leading force for the idea of black self-improvement, shunning political confrontation while focusing on practical advancements that would help African Americans improve their quality of life. He founded what would become Tuskegee University, and the National Negro Business League. In partnership with Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck & Company, Washington helped build nearly 5,000 schools for black children across the South.
Du Bois and other dissenters pushed back against Washington’s willingness to accept the racist political status quo. In their time, Washington had the upper hand. But it is Du Bois’s criticism that resonates today in the American academy, and which is valued as the authentic expression of black political aspirations and identity.
In his essay, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” later included in his celebrated polemic The Souls of Black Folk, du Bois wrote:
Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things, —
First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth,
— and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro. 2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. 3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington’s teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment.
…
It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro … Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth.
Du Bois’s forceful criticism seems both powerful and correct, with the benefit of hindsight. Discrimination and political disenfranchisement were an obstacle to black success that, ultimately, no amount of self-improvement could overcome.
And yet the shift toward Du Bois’s view seems to have been an overcorrection. Today, more than a century later, black Americans have political power, and benefit from affirmative action. And yet black communities continue to struggle with inferior education, poverty, and social malaise.
That is partly the result of political radicalism. The urban riots of the 1960s chased businesses and homeowners out of the inner cities, condemning generations of black Americans to poverty; those who entered the middle class quickly left their communities behind.
Today, the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a new wave of unrest, which has been followed by a surge in violent crime — just as the economic fortunes of black Americans were improving.
Transcending victimization
Success requires both approaches — the focus on self-improvement favored by Washington, and the focus on political freedom favored by Du Bois. Indeed, elsewhere in his essay, Du Bois acknowledged as much: “So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses,” he wrote, “we must hold up his hands and strive with him.”
But Du Bois also found Washington’s approach distasteful. Focusing on education, and work, he argued meant accepting “the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.”
Du Bois added: “In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.”
The emphasis on pride, above practical achievement, has negative consequences for the effort to obtain “lands and houses” that are the material basis for self-respect. An emphasis on pride can also mean an obsession with victimization as the foundation of identity. Victims can claim a right to material compensation, as a form of restorative justice. But unless they transcend victimhood, they can never allow themselves to succeed.
If black lives mattered to Black Lives Matter, the obvious problem to address would be violence within the black community. But while one death at the hands of a police officer can bring thousands of people to the streets across the nation, a dozen shooting deaths on a Chicago weekend will rarely merit attention from Black Lives Matter. The political struggle against a “white supremacist” power structure, real or contrived, is what animates black identity today — above efforts at making black communities safer and more prosperous, which would require help from the police, and the surrounding society.
Ironically, the political struggle reinforces the very “white privilege” that Black Lives Matter wants to challenge. In 2020, the black radio host Lenard Larry McKelvey, known as ”Charlemagne tha God,” debated with the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. At one point, Charlemagne demanded: “How are you gonna use your privilege as a white male to combat this prejudice?” Limbaugh replied: “I don’t buy into the notion of white privilege.”
Charlemagne was incredulous at Limbaugh’s answer. But the idea Charlemagne took for granted — that black liberation depends on the self-renunciation of “privileged” white people — actually denies agency to black Americans.
The secret to Farrakhan’s appeal is that he preaches self-reliance, and moral agency. Farrakhan’s mistake — which undermines his message of self-determination — is to preach that the American system is inherently racist, run by whites and Jews.
When you insist on being a victim, you gain tremendous power over others. The mere accusation of racism, for example, is powerful enough to destroy reputations and careers, even in the absence of evidence. But in insisting on being a victim, you also lose power over yourself. The idea that “white privilege” remains the problem elevates the importance of white elites — which is why “woke” ideology has been readily embraced by the American academy and the corporate world. It flatters those elites without challenging their position; it merely requires that they perform occasional, purely symbolic acts of self-abasement.
Zionism has largely avoided this problem. True, the Holocaust is an important part of Israel’s story, and remains part of Jewish identity today. But it is not the foundation of Israeli statehood, nor the essence of Jewishness. Long before the events of the Second World War, the Zionists understood that the most effective practical answer to antisemitism was self-reliance and self-determination. Herzl did not ask that the rest of the world stop hating Jews; he took that prejudice for granted, and sought his political goals within that framework. The result was a new communal identity that transcended victimhood.
It is also true that Israel received some reparations from postwar Germany, whereas black Americans have yet to receive reparations, or even the “40 acres and a mule” once promised to freed slaves. But Israel did not depend upon those reparations to succeed. The Israeli experience also shows the vulnerability of a position that depends on victimhood.
Once the darling of the West, when it was weak and vulnerable, Israel found itself isolated once it had defended its borders. The French state, once Israel’s main patron and source of weapons, cut Israel off abruptly before the Six Day War. Whatever moral obligation Europe owed to Israel ended where the particular interests of European states — in this case, French relations with the Arab world — began.
The lesson of Zionism is that the point of political struggle is not further struggle, but independence. It is not enough that black lives matter. Black people can and should aspire to succeed — setting aside victimization and expecting prosperity.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.