By Jonathan Michael Feldman, October 19, 2024

Photo by the author.

Anti-Semitism as a Displacement System for Stupidity

In this essay I will address how substance, historical accountability and practical solutions are displaced by superficiality, historical amnesia, and moral posturing in the debate about Left Party anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Swedish society.

The October 2024 decision by Sweden’s Jewish Central Council to exclude the Left Party from a commemoration ceremony highlights a deeper crisis in Swedish political discourse. While the Council cited anti-Semitism among Left Party politicians as its justification, this controversy reveals a more fundamental problem: the triumph of intellectual superficiality across Sweden’s political spectrum. The Left Party’s clash with the Jewish community exemplifies what I call “the clash of mediocrity” – a pattern where both right and left substitute shallow analysis for substantive engagement with complex historical and political realities. Aron Verständig, Chairman of the Jewish Central Council, argued that “within the [Left Party], anti-Semitism is not just a problem among individual people, but it is much deeper than that.”

The deepness may extent to Jew hatred, but it also implicates a superficial understanding which is very dangerous. This superficiality is a joint venture of Sweden’s right and left, neither of which is actually interested in changing fundamental realities about Swedish society related to basic questions of historical understanding, militarism and anti-militarism, terror, political literacy or even reading comprehension. So their mediocrities clash. This clash of mediocrity operates through three key mechanisms: Historical Amnesia: Sweden’s compromised past, particularly its relationship with Nazi Germany, is systematically ignored even when directly relevant to current debates. Anti-Semitism as Displacement: While allegations of anti-Semitism often identify real problems, they frequently serve to obscure a more pervasive issue – the intellectual poverty of political discourse. The Gaza Crisis as Catalyst: Both right and left exploit the current conflict to advance superficial arguments, with each side’s inadequacies reinforcing the other’s.”

I will review two key cases involving two individuals at the heart of the Left Party’s difficulty. These persons may or may not be anti-Semitic. Yet, the focus on their alleged anti-Semitism is less important to me than the superficiality of their arguments.

The Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism has as their mission to root out anti-Semitism, but not to root out stupidity. This limit leads to various problems. First, what if the individuals they target do not believe that they are anti-Semitic? One could say that the subjectivity of these persons does not matter. They should be outed as anti-Semites. Yet, outing them as anti-Semites won’t necessarily counter the superficiality of their views on the Gaza crisis, Zionism, the limited utility of violence or anything else. Second, what if these persons are stupid and not anti-Semitic? In that case, their stupidity is buried and the diagnosis offered is wrong. The problem won’t be solved. As it is, many such persons will leverage Israeli transgressions and the belief that anti-Semitism is used as a weapon against Israel’s opponents to continue as before. And they will be right that anti-Semitism is so used. And they will be right about Israel’s transgressions. But they will be wrong about their own stupidity and who will challenge that?

In Sweden, it seems easier to call someone an anti-Semite than a stupid person. Why? Because stupidity is something than affects a larger number of persons with anti-Semitism characterizing a more limited number. There is a growing problem of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Yet, if the deconstruction of anti-Semitism is not associated with a similar attack on stupidity, one can expect even more anti-Semitism. So the deconstruction of anti-Semitism is not going to be very effective if it is divorced from the campaign against stupidity (as it presently is). What stupidity? The stupidity of an Israeli military mission that is likely to encourage more terrorism and has led to greater popularity of Hamas in Gaza. The stupidity of left arguments which never reconcile Israel’s creation with the Holocaust, even if the Holocaust is used to defend various Israeli transgressions.

The Cases of Orwa Kadoura and Ali Hadrous

The first alleged episodes of anti-Semitism I will explore involve two persons active in the Left Party: Orwa Kadoura and Ali Hadrous. These cases illustrate how a deconstruction of Israel is associated with what I have earlier referred to as “slander rents” which obfuscate historical realities and thus solutions. A slander rent involves leveraging Israeli transgressions to spew utter nonsense. While the two cases are not necessarily slandering individuals, they are leveraging the “rents” (in the form of discursive opportunities) created by Israeli transgressions. I have also discussed the superficial character of various discussions related to Israel, the Gaza crisis and anti-Semitism in an earlier essay published this summer (2024).

The controversy surrounding Orwa Kadoura illustrates how accusations of anti-Semitism can both identify real problems and mask deeper analytical failures. A DN article dated August 23rd points to an Expressen newspaper revelation that “Kadoura shared a cartoon on social media where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drinks blood and has a devil’s tail. This is clearly anti-Semitic iconography, as Ulrika Knutson, chairwoman of the Swedish Committee against Anti-Semitism (SKMA), also pointed out.” On August 29, 2024, Sydsvenskan reported that Kadoura “vice chairman of the [Left] party in Malmö,” allegedly “shared anti-Semitic posts and a video praising the terrorist attack on October 7 and spreading anti-Semitic messages.” In addition, “during demonstrations for Palestine, he has also clapped along to slogans supporting terrorist-labeled organizations.”

Hadrous’s case demonstrates three levels of analytical failure. First, the conflation of anti-Zionism with critique of Israeli policy. Second, the deployment of anti-Semitic tropes while denying anti-Semitism. Third, the reduction of complex historical processes to simplistic conspiracy theories.

According to one report, Hadrous departed from the Left party because he believed “that the Left Party’s leadership has taken too soft a line against Israel.” An August 30th report in Dagens Nyheter (DN) provides further details. Another view on this episode appears in an essay by Ulrika Knutson, Chairperson of the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism: On August 29th, the newspaper Sydsvenskan revealed “that Ali Hadrous, [the Left Party] politician in Landskrona…spread gross Jew-hatred on Facebook, including propaganda about a Jewish world conspiracy. The anti-Semitic worldview was confirmed when Sydsvenskan confronted him with this information.” Then Hadrous argued that the newspaper “serves global Zionism.” Sydsvenskan says “Hadrous has also praised terrorist groups and shared posts denying that Hamas killed Israeli civilians on October 7.”

A September 25th article in Sydsvenkan quotes Hadrous as follows: “I have nothing against Jews, on the contrary I shun Netanyahu.” A September 24 analysis in Omni explained that Ali Hadrous (V) admits that some posts on his Facebook page may be in “some sort of gray area in terms of the definition of anti-Semitism.” Hadrous has argued that the definition of anti-Semitism is “too broad” and has argued “that accusations of anti-Semitism are used to silence Palestine activists.” He added “I have nothing against Jews in general, but I detest Netanyahu.” Nevertheless, critics argued that Hadrous “has spread conspiracy theories and myths that the ‘Jews’ control the media and several countries, including the United States.” Middle Eastern expert Anders Persson believes that the Left Party politician undoubtedly spreads gross anti-Semitism.

These individual cases reflect broader theoretical failures in how both right and left conceptualize the relationship between anti-Semitism, Zionism, and political violence.

Strategic Dead-ends: How anti-Zionist positions undermine practical solutions

The Left’s misunderstanding of Zionism involves three critical failures. First, historical amnesia: The erasure of left-wing Zionist traditions. Second, false equivalences: The problematic equation of all forms of Zionism. Third, strategic dead-ends: How anti-Zionist positions undermine practical solutions.

Aside from these points, it is difficult to analyze the above cited individual cases. One can see how what the two politicians say is animated by a dislike of Netanyahu if not Israeli itself. The negative actions of Israel, including mass killing of civilians, is increasingly linked by the left to “Zionism” and “Zionist ideology.” The conflation of Israeli state policies and Netanyahu’s government is based not only on the Nakba, second class status of Arabs in Israel, occupation and mass human rights violations, but also on a revisionist view of Zionism. It is not that many if not most of the critiques of Israel are invalid. Rather, the problem is that part of the left is blind to the history legacy of anti-Semitism and how Israel’s creation was related to that, and how eliminating Israel is simply impossible. To the extent that Israel’s existence is Zionism, the problem becomes how to reconfigure Israeli society and equitable outcomes. Here the historic role of left Zionists like Zellig Harris and others becomes very important. Yet, part of the left even denies these persons’ existences. Like the right, they are not interested. In his trajectory, Harris linked left Zionism with a vision of a post-capitalist society.

There is a sloppy if not anti-Semitic language used to “expose” or critique supporters of Israeli military policy labeled “Zionists” and backed by historical scholarship which recounts Israeli transgressions. Much of mainstream society does not want to problematize Israeli transgressions, just like parts of the Swedish left do not want to examine any arguments about why an Israeli state might be necessary. Even more remarkable various left intellectuals speak very eloquently about Israel’s troubled past but have hardly any ideas about how to remake Israeli society or generate a solution to the conflict. Some at least mention a two-state solution. The idea that Zionism (a protective space for Jews) necessitates apartheid, second class citizenship, mass slaughter of civilians, is a conceit by various left scholars. The conceit makes no sense because one could easily argue that capitalist necessitates these things, which leads us nowhere. For some on the left, deconstruction of Israel and symbolic politics is all that is necessary.

Even part of the Jewish left has engaged in social amnesia and gas lighting about figures like Hannah Arendt who are falsely described as “anti-Zionist.” For example, one entry in the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) website reads: “As long as Zionism has existed, there were Jews standing in opposition to it. From the Jewish Labor Bund, to Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt; from Hajo Meyer to Judith Butler.” Apparently, JVP’s false understanding is extended by Butler herself. Shmuel Lederman in his article, “Parting Ways Too Soon: Arendt contra Butler on Zionism,” explains that Butler built on “Arendt’s political thought for her critique of Zionism,” but that her critique “obscures the complexity of Arendt’s position on Zionism.” Most importantly, “instead of Butler’s portrayal of Arendt as a proto-anti-Zionist, along the lines of Butler herself,” he argues “that Arendt was a radical Zionist” and “offered a radical critique of Zionism but at the same time she supported the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine, without losing sight of the different streams within Zionism or the different paths that were possible at every juncture in the years leading to the foundation of the state.” Other observers have similarly explained Arendt’s contradictory views.

Various political factions supporting Israeli state policies in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and elsewhere have a lot of political power. This power is global in scale and pointing that out is not anti-Semitic. What is problematic is reducing such support to “global Zionism.” That stance is problematic since many right-wing Zionists oppose what earlier left-wing Zionists proposed, i.e. they advance right-wing politics and not “Zionism.” Yet, a large part of the right and left endorse hegemonic Zionism as the real and only Zionism. Put differently, we have several cases where left-wing and right-wing intellectual inadequacy support one another. Both left and right are happy to bury left-wing Zionism with figures like Judith Butler playing a key role. Given that Israel will not disappear, that its existence is linked to Zionism, and that left Zionism offers a way to remake that society, the attack on “Zionism” becomes the displacement of one key solution to the crisis. Such displacement is profound analytical failure. Furthermore, Hamas does represent a security threat and their actions on October 7th helped debunk the idea that deconstructionism of Zionism is somehow sufficient for an alternative path forward.

Israeli policies linked to occupation, mass murder of civilians, and political repression have aided anti-Semites, anti-Zionist and stupid persons. These policies, linked to an increasingly right-wing society, have facilitated a series of memes and modes of expression which verge from political reductionism to anti-Semitism. A part of the left vents its anger by comparing Netanyahu with Hitler in various on line memes, just as Douglas Murray on the right argued that Hamas is worse than the Nazis. The Turkish leader, who has helped massacre countless numbers of Kurds, joins in the fray by arguing that Netanyahu is no different from Hitler. Of course, by this logic Erdogan is no different from Hitler either. I do not believe these formulations get us very far, other than to deflate the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis. Significant parts of the right and left seem willing to deflate these crimes because each engages in the politics of demonization to advance arguments.

Sweden’s particular failure to confront its own Holocaust-era history shapes contemporary political discourse in ways that neither right nor left fully acknowledge.

An article by Olof Bortz, “Swedish Diplomats and Holocaust Knowledge,” explains that “Swedish diplomats provided their superiors with reliable, if at times unverifiable, information about the different phases of the Holocaust from 1933 until the end of 1942,” but “that awareness of the transition from persecution to mass murder did not alter Swedish refugee policies.” At the same time, the Wallenberg interests in Sweden supported the Nazi war machine. It is far from clear to me how the Swedish left or right assimilates and applies this history. Both right and left seem to be rather isomorphic in their displacement of this reality. Each side has too much to lose from pointing out this past. The left loses because such facts help make the case for an Israeli state. The right loses because such facts help delegitimate the history of their war machine. Instead, the mainstream society wants to remind people about the history Holocaust, not Swedish culpability and responsibility. To the extent that such culpability and responsibility are repressed, we can expect a weak challenge to the very structures implicated in Swedish support for Nazi, Germany: weak accountability, displacement of inconvenient facts, militarism, and corporate opportunism.

By suppressing the dirty historical laundry, part of the debate centers on either exposing anti-Semitism or Israeli transgressions. The exposure is certainly necessary, but not sufficient if it is decoupled from exposing stupidity. The latter is similarly necessary, but not sufficient if it fails to explore the floor of why an Israeli state (or potential platform for binational cooperation in a two-state solution) is necessary. The complications introduced by Zionism are displaced by the various parties. One cost is that the Left Party can honestly claim that they are not consciously supporting anti-Semitism without confronting the additionally important problem of concealing stupidity. At the same token, exposing anti-Semitism is decoupled from exposing stupidity as the Israeli question and Jewish question are separated. The extreme right also plays this game of exposing stupidity and potentially gains by concealing Israeli malfeasance, another variety of stupidity. If the ceiling of what Israel does in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank involves an inability to combine security with human rights, that still leaves us to ask what floor of such an Israeli state might be. Some on the left implies that there is neither a floor nor a ceiling, a position consistent with part of the left’s and right’s displacement of history.

The idea that there were many “humanistic” alternatives to Israel/Palestine during the Holocaust is patently absurd. Neither the European left, nor Swedish society succeeded in blocking the Nazis (rather significant parts of the later helped them). According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia entry on “German Jewish Refugees, 1933-1939”: “By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 from annexed Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United States, 60,000 to Palestine, 40,000 to Great Britain, and about 75,000 to Central and South America, with the largest numbers entering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. More than 18,000 Jews from the German Reich were also able to find refuge in Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China.” It is rather remarkable that Japanese-occupied China let in more Jews than Social Democratic Sweden. The realist explanation that Swedes were afraid of triggering German anger can’t explain why Sweden was building up the very German war machine which put Sweden in this position.

It is not an Excuse

While the Holocaust does not justify Israel’s actions in Lebanon or Gaza, where many have died for no good reason, the Israeli military campaign does not excuse the stupidity of the left either. This brings us to a second alleged episode of anti-Semitism involving Kristofer Lundberg. Lundberg served as Chairman of the Left Party in Angered. The Angered Left Party annual meeting on February 3rd, “opened with a greeting from the [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP], who thanked the party for their support for Palestine.” A story on this episode by Erik Norman in Aftonbladet (August 29th) explains Lundberg’s view that “neither he nor any other leftist has had any direct contact with the PFLP” He says the PFLP sent its “greeting on its own initiative.” Lundberg also described “the PFLP as an organization with a democratic structure with a secular, socialist and feminist ideology.” Lundberg argues that Israel occupied Palestine in 1949 and twenty years later a popular front was formed which resisted this occupation. He also says that the group uses “the right to self-defense that international law gives them,” yet stated that “civilian casualties are never legitimate.” He also observed “that the US and EU terror lists are ‘very problematic.’ This is because the US has ‘murdered millions of people around the world.'” Lundberg argued that Israel was a “racist apartheid state” and also “‘terrorist state’ that deliberately commits a genocide in Gaza and is the party that opposes a two-state solution.” He continues: “If Israel is not classified as a terrorist for all the massacres carried out in Palestine since 1948, what gives someone the right to classify someone else as a terrorist?”

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s go over the key points. Lundberg is trading on the intellectual inadequacy of mainstream views which he uses to instrumentalize his own idiotic views. The Swedish Democrats’ media platform’s exposure of Lundberg reveals a symbiotic relationship between right and left analytical failures: the right exploits left-wing superficiality to legitimize its own positions, while the left’s inadequate responses reinforce right-wing narratives. In this case, an interview with Joakim Lamotte by Riks on YouTube is used to expose Lundberg. So the PFLP transgressions become fuel for an extremist right-wing party’s propaganda machine.

First, on January 30, 2024, the right-wing NGO monitor linked PFLP to the October 7th massacre. The Wikipedia entry for PFLP states that in the Israel–Hamas war (2023-present): “the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades published videos of it storming Israeli watchtowers during the 7 October Hamas-led attacks into Israel, and has since fought alongside Hamas and other allied factions in multiple battles inside the Gaza Strip.”

Second, the argument has been made that Palestinians have the right to self-defense against Israeli attacks, but this right is deployed to further the cycle of violence. Hamas and PFLP are linked by some to “resistance” and “self-defense.” The problem with this formulation is that an abstract right is leveraged to perpetuate a cycle of violence and militarist expansion. Ukraine’s “right” to join NATO can also be viewed as the “right” to risk nuclear war, accelerate Swedish militarism and further erode Sweden’s welfare state. Such “rights” are purely abstract moral formulations without any meaningfully productive political meaning. Israel also has “the right to defense itself,” except among groups (like PFLP) who feel the country is a colonial entity that has to be eliminated. If one defends PFLP’s position here, then the next question is whether the tactics and strategy of such a group will trigger an Israeli counter-reaction leading to mass killing of civilians, i.e. the specified rights are merely fuel for a larger fire encompassing mass deaths. While left champions of PFLP may believe that Israel has no rights to self-defense, Israelis would differ. Then, what starts off as a discussion of “rights,” easily becomes a question of who has the more powerful military and can do the most killing.

Third, the counterfactual that non-violent protest led nowhere and October 7th was the necessary response to Palestinian suffering, does not seem like a very intelligent observation. The counter-reaction to October 7th was expected by Yahya Sinwar, who said he could even tolerate 100,000 Palestinian deaths as part of an Israeli counter-reaction. So Lundberg’s liberatory rhetoric merely disguises that he is a useful idiot for the cycle of violence (which does not necessarily make him an anti-Semite, although it does align him with forces that systematically kill Israeli Jews). The weakness of peaceful or non-violence protests is certainly a problem. What is more of a problem, however, is the even greater weakness of violent activity.

Fourth, the fact that the U.S. is responsible for the killing of mass numbers of civilians as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and elsewhere does not mean that PFLP is not a terrorist organization. Israel’s state terror, which is better called “militarism,” similarly does not mean that terrorists are not killing mass numbers of persons. Lundberg’s deconstruction of U.S. labeling of terrorists as terrorist organizations does not mitigate the status of terrorist organizations as such. We also use the U.S. government for data on growth, unemployment, and the like. Even if such data can have flaws, the data usually corresponds to some portion of reality.

Fifth, Israel’s “occupation of Palestine” will not negate or eliminate the existence of Israel. Hamas and PFLP may believe otherwise, joined by Lundberg. So, the end result of this political position is simply another way to perpetuate the cycle of violence and glorify the use of violence to achieve political ends. Put more simply, peace is often made by two rotten and evil parties, not by angels. October 7th and its aftermath clearly showed that we do not have one decent side and one evil side. Rather, we have two evil sides and the large scale victimization of both Palestinian and Israeli societies. The idea that one will have one state is a completely absurd position that has no credible basis at this point in time. Even if Netanyahu blocks a two-state solution, he is considerably aided in that goal by PFLP.

Finally, the anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism or simple stupidity revealed by these episodes suggests a larger problem of the superficiality of both right and left discourse in Sweden. Part of the right covers for Israeli mass murder, hegemonic Zionist militarism, occupation/settlements, and a global alliance of militarist states. Part of left covers for the Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, PFLP, and Houthi terrorist alliance. Large swaths of the right and left have very little meaningfully to say about how to get beyond such political violence and cycles of violence. While some on the left are fellow travelers with or clear sympathizers with terrorists, they merely mimic mainstream society’s normalization of a global arms trade in which murderous thugs get weapons from merchants of death called “defense firms.” Both sides figure out some instrumental reason (laced with some stupid moral argument) to defend their stake in violence. If Sweden can’t even figure out how to counter the decline of its democracy and civil society institutions because of all the resources re-diverted to the war budget and militarist parasites, then how can we expect it to promote meaningful alternatives to Hamas and Israeli state violence? The intellectual sloppiness of right and left is fully consistent with a higher education system which actively tolerates a hostility to high volume reading, attention to the critical past, and social amnesia/displacement of its own dirty laundry.

Conclusions: Beyond the Current Impasse

The current impasse in Swedish political discourse reflects three intersecting failures:

1. Analytical: Both right and left substitute moral posturing for substantive analysis
2. Historical: Swedish society’s inability to confront its own compromised past
3. Strategic: The failure to develop practical solutions beyond moral condemnation

Breaking this impasse requires:

• Acknowledging Sweden’s historical complicity in Nazi Germany’s war machine
• Moving beyond simplistic accusations of anti-Semitism to address deeper analytical failures
• Developing concrete proposals for conflict resolution beyond moral positioning
• Rebuilding intellectual capacity in Swedish civil society institutions

The clash of mediocrity persists not because either side lacks moral conviction, but because both right and left have abandoned the difficult work of developing substantive solutions in favor of rhetorical positioning. Breaking this cycle requires reconstructing not just political positions, but the very infrastructure of serious political thought in Swedish society.

A variety of proposals for a way out can be offered. First, there might be a mediated discussion between those advocating Israel’s existence and post-colonial anti-Zionist critics. Without a Zionist left perspective, these debates will involve rubbish excuses for Israeli transgressions. Without a left view, the criticism of Hamas and so-called “resistance” language will seem inauthentic. The left within Israel that opposes Israeli policies does not always come into focus. A mediated discussion will probably be hard to promote given how various parties operate within limited silos and engage in knowledge resistance. Given the ease with which people are not only offended but also ironically engage in character assassination within Swedish society, one can see limitations to this proposal.

Second, Swedish universities and whatever is left of development agencies should jointly mobilize to support skills transfers to Gaza and the West Bank to create advanced technological cooperatives as part of a reconstruction effort. Israelis should help finance such investments and there should be inspection systems to guard against diversity of resources to terrorist activity and encroachment by settlers and military forces. The design of such a proposal involves various elements which likely will escape most politicians. An informed social movement could advance such designs, but that movement does not exist. In other words, superficiality is like a cancer which crowds out alternative designs.

Third, a national fund raising campaign should be waged to enable folk high schools in a collaboration with universities to elaborate an alternative educational mechanism to advance the above proposals. What is required is funded a kind of ethical stance based on mutual respect, moving outside one’s silo training, and linking a variety of moral, political, economic, political, historical, sociological, geographic and technological concerns. The new approach would have to oppose both militarism, romantic terrorism worship, reductionist post-colonial approaches, and right-wing Zionism. The constituency for such a proposal is rather small, but does defined the contours imposed by the clash of mediocrity. Current politicians, social movements, and a variety of other institutions are ill equipped to do much. Rather, certain academics, religious organizations, and other NGOs could potentially play a role through a consortia.