Another Pathetic Denunciation
Yglesias has already said most of what needs to be said about the trashy attack on Andrew by Leon Wieseltier, but I would add a couple of things. Wieseltier takes one of Andrew’s quotes of the day (“Trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to readers of The New Republic is not easy”), which he thinks bristles “smugly with implications.” Wieseltier extrapolates from this unremarkable quote some animus against Jews. Of course, it is very easy to read into anything whatever you want to see, especially if you are convinced that stand-alone, out-of-context quotes are full of implications that are waiting to be extracted. It ought to be sufficient to write this entire piece off as lunacy, but Wieseltier’s accusation is an insulting charge and obviously a baseless one. It would also be easier to dismiss the attack as the trash that it is if it weren’t winning applause in some quarters.
For his evidence, such as it is, Wieseltier first establishes that Andrew does not agree with and does not care for Michael Goldfarb and Charles Krauthammer. Even though Andew stipulated that these people are in no way representative of American Jewish opinion, he made clear that he loathed the ideology these individuals have embraced. Who wouldn’t? They cheered and defended all the worst aspects of the previous administration, and they routinely endorse destructive, inhumane policies. Andrew is not “hunting for motives” when he describes their appalling views; he is stating his opposition to those views. Unlike Wieseltier, he does not speculate about someone’s supposed undisclosed animus against an entire group of people on the basis of a few quotes and fragments.
As far as I know, Andrew does not subscribe to Walt and Mearsheimer’s actual arguments contained in their writings on the Israel lobby. Imagine how much less he agrees with the completely distorted, despicable misrepresentation of those views that Wieseltier presents! If he agreed with Walt and Mearsheimer’s actual arguments, that would mean that he supports Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, and he would believe that the U.S. should guarantee its security. In fact, Andrew is arguably much more of a Zionist than this, and this comes through in numerous posts in which he, like many other Western Zionists, expresses his sorrow at what certain political forces inside Israel, especially Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, have been doing to the country and its reputation abroad. My impression is that it is his sympathy for Israel that makes him so critical of the mistakes he believes its government has been making.
Andrew will sometimes overstate things, and he has an Obama loyalist’s tendency to attack Obama’s opponents in very harsh terms. One post that Wieseltier cites is one that I criticized at the time, not because Andrew was all that wrong on the substance of the state of U.S.-Israel relations or Israel’s fraying relationship with Turkey, but because he did not set recent events against the background of the last several years. No reasonable person could conclude that Andrew’s statement was anything more than a strong criticism of another government that he correctly saw as an opponent of Obama’s policies. As for his remarks about jihadism, Andrew was commenting on a discussion begun by Marc Lynch, who made the argument with which Andrew was agreeing.
It is quite easy to see everything Wieseltier cites from Andrew’s writings as the product of a pro-Obama advocate who has been frustrated by the false start of Obama’s handling of Israel and Palestine and as nothing more than that. As denunciations go, Wieseltier’s is probably the most intellectually sloppy, shabby one I have seen since the days before the invasion of Iraq.
6 Responses to “Another Pathetic Denunciation”
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The Wieseltier piece is a bit on the pretentiously turgid side. The trope it employs is nevertheless familiar, equating criticism of Israel and its supporters with antisemitism; one can’t tell if Wiesltier is sincere, or simply taking refuge in a familiar accusation. Wieseltier, meanwhile, feels free to attack the core beliefs of most Christians, but would probably take offense if one called him anti-Christian.
The neoconservatism that the likes of Krauthammer and Goldfarb espouse is an inverted Trotskyism. As Jacob Heilbrunn shows, it emerged from a largely Jewish milieu, though most American Jews aren’t buying.
American Jews today are part of the academic, business and political élites, in disproportion to their numbers. Like every other group (Southerners, Catholics, etc.), they often (though not always) bring certain baggage with them. It’s time to grow up and discuss such matters without exaggerated hostility or sensitivity. A grown-up discussion would require the defenders neoconnery and Israeli policy to get to merits. Alas, it’s far easier just to mutter “1938″ and view with alarm.
If Andrew Sullivan is really a practictioner of vitriol and insinuation, as his former TNR colleague suggests, then we now know from whose masterly hand he learned his trade.
Ridicuously, Leon accuses Sullivan of dividing Jews into good and bad categories, a practice with a dark and sordid history, as he loftily reminds us. Okay. Should we consider Jews as a mass collectivity? That seems anti-semitic. Well, how else are we supposed to divide them? Are Jews uniformly good? That seems improbable. Are they uniformly bad? That seems improbable and prejudicial to boot. Well, what then? Should we just decline to level any moral judgement on their opinions at all? That seems relativistic, quite untrue to the righteous and missionary tone of his magazine. Incidentally, the style of sterile argumentation is not one typically associated with Leon Wieseltier. For good reason.
To have political convictions is to make a moral statement. Effectively, you are stating that people who hold views wildly different from yours are deeply mistaken or, perhaps, even morally obtuse. This is what makes them convictions. Unsuprisingly, members of other groups are going to divide themselves accordingly: some will agree with you, some not so much. How can any person find this even remotely controversial? I guess only if they are the type of person who reads bigotry in the use of the word “wings”. What, does Leon think Andrew is comparing Jews to a predatory fowl?
I could go on, but whats the point.
I’m Jewish and I’m sick of other Jews using the anti-Semitism card like a bludgeon to intimidate people making arguments in good faith that they merely happen to disagree with, however strongly. Like minorities pulling the racism card, it makes people scared and resentful of the power a small group of people have to impugn, even permanently damage anybody’s integrity, character, reputation and moral standing–with a casual, curt accusation.
It’s reach is inescapable; If you say anything, express any opinion that could also hypothetically intersect somehow with the opinions of someone who is actually anti-semitic, no matter how coincidental or non-convergent, you lose the benefit of the doubt. “Hamas also thinks the sky is blue…Anti-Semite!”
The very label is poison, it’s effect on social relationships like a disgusting venereal disease everybody knows about. Confronting the abusers of the term on their callousness and dishonesty is, in itself, cause to have the label thrust upon you.
The sad irony is that a small cadre of vindictive and paranoid Jews have managed to both diminish the meaning of the accusation by diluting it to an absurd degree, while simultaneously increasing real animus towards Jews borne from the resentment of this extortionist tactic.
Good posts, all.
@JBraunstein: “…while simultaneously increasing real animus towards Jews borne from the resentment of this extortionist tactic.”
You think so? I think most people appreciate that neo-connery isn’t representative of American Jewish opinion. Almost the opposite, even.
What really stings is, in a few years when this stuff fades away, someone will say “Andrew Sullivan used to say…” and his friend will stop him and say, “wasn’t that guy anti-Semitic?” And the whiff of that will stop most people from continuing. It’s Sullivan’s FUTURE reputation that is effected most, not his current one (where everyone obviously can see through this charade).
It’s hard to take any willing colleague of the rabid and racist Marty Peretz seriously on the subject of Israel. Peretz has done enormous harm to TNR, as well as to Israel and the USA. If anyone actually followed through in his views, we would see the Middle East in flames, and the USA would pay a bitter price.
@Young Geezer
You’re unfortunately right about how, over time, the accusation seems to overpower virtually everything else in a person’s legacy of work.
I was once having a conversation with a liberal friend of mine, and I brought up a reference to H.L. Mencken in making a point about the inadequacy of democracy or some such. He immediately interjected “Wasn’t he some Nazi sympathizer / Anti-Semite?”
Boom. Done. I sat there stunned that now, in order to raise awareness of Mencken’s superb observations and insights, I first had to somehow neutralize the perception that he was a monster. Very depressing.