McCarthyism Cuts Both Ways

McCarthyism Cuts Both Ways


Joseph McCarthy (right) is one of the most infamous American senators of all-time. He served as a Republican U.S. Senator of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. McCarthy was the representative of U.S. anti-communist hysteria during the Cold War. He insisted that the U.S. federal government was filled with communist subversives and spies. The term McCarthyism today extends beyond anti-communist fear-mongering to include under its ambit extreme ideological dogmatism, unsubstantiated accusations against people or their characters, and public questioning of the patriotism of individuals. McCarthyism is also associated with demagoguery, shrill intolerance, and the silencing of political debates in the defense of ultra-nationalist values.

McCarthy is dead, but indeed McCarthyism lives. And it is not merely practiced by the right, but also by the left and other political outfits across the political landscape. A Toronto-based artist, Reena Katz (left), is at the centre of a political controversy with McCarthyite overtones. Katz had a project, "Each hand as they are called," slated to open on May 14 at Toronto's Jewish-run Koffler Centre of the Arts. The project was politically benign, telling the history of Toronto's Jewish community in historic Kensington Market and the multicultural evolution of one of Toronto's most vibrant neighbourhoods. When the organizers discovered that Katz supported Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), they decided to pull their name and support from the exhibit but let Katz keep her $20,000 project fee.

Katz's plight has received great media attention in Toronto and beyond. JVoices.com published a piece from MuzzleWatch, "More McCarthyism in Toronto." The "more" was probably an allusion to the way British MP George Galloway was banned from entering Canada for a speaking engagement in Toronto on March 30 because of his material support for Hamas, an outlawed terrorist organization in Canada. The "more" was also an allusion to IAW, which took place in 13 Canadian cities and 42 locations around the world from March 1-8. Local Toronto Jewish organizations such as B'nai Brith called for the banning of IAW because they termed it a "hate-festival" directed against the collective Jew (the state of Israel). They insisted that IAW masks anti-Semitism under the rhetorical fog of anti-Zionism, while increasing hate attacks against real flesh-and-blood Jews. The IAW poster was unfortunately banned at Carleton University in Ottawa.

I am a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, about a one and a half hour drive from where I live in Toronto. The characterization of the Katz incident by MuzzleWatch as "McCarthyism" is indeed an accurate one. Yet, what Katz and political outfits across the ideological spectrum fail to understand is that McCarthyism cuts both ways. If Katz is a supporter of IAW, why did she not openly extend the right of Zionists to speak at the events? In 13 IAW participating cities in Canada, there was sadly not one pro-Zionist speaker. Is this what passes for debate on our campuses? Is this not McCarthyism in action practiced by the left? And where was the progressive left in Canada in 2003 when violent pro-Palestinian protests at Montreal's Concordia University led administrators to shamefully cancel the speaking engagement of current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu? Even Labour leader Ehud Barak, who favours a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, could not set foot on Concordia.

So McCarthyism is alive and well in Canada, on the left, right, and beyond. In 2006 and 2008, Muslim organizations like the Canadian Islamic Congress sought to silence Canadian magazines Maclean's and The Western Standard for alleged anti-Muslim xenophobia. The latter media outfit, led by Ezra Levant, went before the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to answer a complaint of anti-Muslim bias. Levant's testimony before the human rights commission was a You-Tube sensation. See it here:

http://www.youtube.com/EzraILevant

Levant's testimony showed how the guardians of anti-racism, tolerance, and multiculturalism in Canada are also the McCarthyite haters of free expression. In 2006, Levant reprinted the infamous Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper, which set off a wave of anti-Danish, anti-Christian, and anti-Western Muslim protests and violence around the world. It echoed the Salman Rushdie affair, another McCarthyite event with global implications. Who can forget Khomeini's pathetic and shrill fatwa on the British author?

Let me make it clear. What the Koffler did is not acceptable in terms of defense of artistic values and free expression. Yet, we are increasingly policing ourselves through media outlets like Facebook, the site that has played a key role in the Katz controversy. Don't like that view, won't hire that academic. Those pictures are too explicit, perhaps you're not trustworthy. Don't like your politics, won't show you the money. We have entered a dark, Kafkaesque world where the guardians of thought are policing everywhere at all times. And post-Cold War, post-9-11, the deceased senator from Wisconsin would have been proud that his McCarthyite methods are being carefully expanded and refined. Reena Katz was caught in the McCarthyite web.

But the reality is that we are all caught in the McCarthyite web. We check for peoples' political affiliations all the time in all fields of human existence, sometimes subtly and other times more conspicuously. I pride myself on being a dissident against the establishment right and the left. So I empathize with Katz. But I must tell Katz that her lack of political realism strikes me as naive and disingenuous. Did she never hear the word realpolitik? And did she think it was free from the hip arts scene, academia, journalism, or governments? Let's assume Katz ran the Koffler. A stretch, I know! Would Katz allow a Holocaust-denier artist to be funded? Or, how about a rabid right-wing ultra-nationalist of a Greater Israel variety? How about a Christian fundamentalist that hates gays and lesbians?

My point is that McCarthyism is wrong from the perspective of a pluralistic liberalism, but McCarthyism cuts both ways. You cannot support McCarthyite political projects like IAW and then expect that you will not be the victim of McCarthyism. If we are against McCarthyism, then we ourselves must not practice it, or support organizations and movements that practice it. IAW is more interested in winning the war of public opinion by peddling falsehoods about Israel than solving the tragedy of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Katz's statements, in light of the Koffler's decision, highlight her lack of realistic political instincts. She plays the ritualistic role of the artistic victim with no role in the unfolding drama: "It repulses me that I have to justify my practice here, as I sit falsely accused. I am as Jewish as they come, and not the Jew the Koffler claims me to be." Perhaps Katz does not know the type of Jew she sits accused of by the Koffler? Katz is a gay artist working to bridge cultural divides. Noble ideals, no doubt. Yet, Katz fails to see how she follows rather than leads. She is led by a self-declared anti-racist, multicultural, progressive left that does not practice what they preach. The IAW crowd is the same one that supported Durban and unwittingly Ahmadinejad's recent anti-Israel, anti-Zionist UN diatribe.

To be on the progressive left in Canada means that you must ritualistically recite the anti-Zionist mantra. To be on the left in Canada, in the arts, academia, or government bodies, is good for academic and artistic careers. And those same people are McCarthyite experts in chasing out perceived racist, anti-feminist, anti-multicultural voices from their organizations. Or, chasing out those that don't like the abstract, dogmatic labels that characterize you by your politics rather than the merits of your ideas.

Yet, Katz and IAW supporters cannot see how the causes they support, particularly among anti-Zionist Jews, are imbued with a dark McCarthyite spirit. 161 anti-Zionist Jews in Toronto recently signed a petition in March, saying they were tired of silencing of criticism of Israel through the distorted lenses of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Tasteless but legitimate political debate. Yet, not a word about growing anti-Semitic murders in Paris, police vigilantism against Jews in Caracas, the beatings of Jewish students on Canadian campuses, Hamas or Hezbollah rockets and suicide bombings, or Iran's role in killing 85 Jews at a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994? Why the omissions by Jews concerned with racism? Because they are intolerant of a diversity of political perspectives. They want to show their leftist brothers and sisters that they are good Marxists by even taking on their own cruel, apartheid co-religionists in Israel. They are a left that is about winning, black and white dualism, and the silencing of alternative voices. They also cannot get their facts straight about IAW, as Katz shows below:

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and its organizers do not act to delegitimize Israel, but rather, “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.” I have not stated that I advocate for the “extinction of Israel as a Jewish State” as the Koffler’s statement claims. What I do state publicly is that I am an anti-Zionist Jew. This is an ideological stance, not one that determines any specific outcome for the contemporary state of Israel. I consider the Koffler’s press release a blatant misrepresentation of my position as well as that of IAW.

Let me wrap my head around the aforementioned verbal gymnastics. IAW does not delegitimize Israel? I will not rehearse my arguments about IAW, but will refer you to a piece I wrote about IAW in Canada's national newspaper, The National Post, on February 26, 2009:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/26/tamir-bar-on-the-manipulative-mythology-of-israeli-apartheid.aspx

The aim of IAW is to compare Israel to one of the most heinous regimes on the planet, former apartheid South Africa. The aim is to show that Zionist Israel ought to be an extinct political entity, like apartheid South Africa.

But let's not be too defensive. Apartheid Israel is better than Nazi Germany. And frequently the IAW crowd will bring out the Israel = Nazism posters. The reality is that Israeli dailies like Ha'aretz and university campuses have debated Israeli apartheid for years. Yet, apartheid claims should cuts both ways. Why does Katz or IAW supporters not speak of apartheid in Arab and Muslim lands where Jews have been cleansed and even officially expelled from countries like Libya? Where are the Jews of Gaza, Morocco, Libya, and Saudi Arabia? In contrast, one million Israeli Arabs are citizens, MP's, professors, mayors, judges, and footballers in allegedly "apartheid Israel". Moreover, IAW proponents want us to believe that Israel alone is responsible for Palestinian suffering. It is responsible, but so are Palestinian political actors, Arab states, and major powers. But nuanced positions are not necessarily a forte of the IAW crowd.

Second, Katz says she does not advocate the extinction of a Jewish state, but this is precisely what IAW supports. No two-state solution. And don't be fooled, as New Historian Benny Morris astutely points out recently in One State, Two States (2009), there is no official Palestinian support for "one, secular, democratic Palestine" with equal rights for all cultural and religious groups. It is a slogan that has been conveniently utilized by the Palestinian movement, understanding that there can be no equal rights for non-Muslims. The "one, secular, democratic Palestine" is neither supported by the genocidal Islamists Hamas, nor the Fatah secularists.

Third, Katz admits she is an anti-Zionist Jew. She has the right to be an anti-Zionist Jew, but the Koffler also has the right to determine what it does with its money. It prefers to promote Jews that are pro-Zionist. Jews that defend Israel's right to exist, with all its warts, just like most people defend the right of their nation-states to exist. A Zionist is compatible with a Palestinian nationalist. Katz would have us believe otherwise because she swims under the cloudy spell of the IAW crowd. The same crowd that does not utter a word for real genocide in Darfur, yet farcically calls Israel a genocidal state. What is so wrong with two states for two peoples caught in a terrible, tragic drama created by both parties, as well as external influences?

Fourth, Katz states that her anti-Zionism is an "ideological stance". A stance on Zionism that is not ideological? Is Zionism not the dream for a homeland for the Jews of Palestine, with the caveat that Palestinian rights are respected? Is Katz a religious anti-Zionist, insisting that the Jew cannot make an idol out of state worship? Given her left-wing secular politics, this is unlikely. Katz says that her stance does not determine a "specific outcome" for the state of Israel. Worldviews, political ideologies, and media are all powerful tools in what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called the "war of position" in civil society. There is a struggle in civil society between competing groups (some with more power than others) for hegemonic control of what becomes acceptable and common sense, and the future direction of political and cultural systems. One cannot put out a particular "ideological stance" and then say it has no impact on the world. Fascism, extreme communism, and Islamism were all born first as ideological constructs. They then gained adherents in civil society. They challenged the existing hegemonic conceptions of their respective political systems. They all proposed to get rid of liberal parliamentary democracy. They formed movements, parties, paramilitary organizations, and captured the levers of power in different historical epochs. They were all McCarthyite to the core.

Does Katz not see that the IAW supporters similarly want political victory and not justice? That they practice McCarthyism. I have spoken to many IAW supporters on campuses throughout Canada. I have never heard of an IAW supporter acknowledge genuine Jewish suffering both yesterday and today. And that Israel is a response to that suffering, which had its claim to statehood already recognized at the 1920 San Remo Conference well before the Holocaust. Palestinian statelessness and suffering are indeed real, but the realities go both ways. Mutual recognition of suffering and statehood claims will lead to peace in Israel-Palestine.

I do, however, agree with Katz's brilliant defense of political pluralism and dissent:

I do not expect the Koffler or the UJA to agree with my political leanings. The issue here is the silence because of my political affiliations, and the stonewalling of internal dissent and debate within our cultural institutions. I am deeply committed to open discussion both within Jewish communities and with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities worldwide. Dissent and discourse are crucial parts of this now global conversation; silencing and blocklisting are cowardly and toxic.

It is true that the Koffler acted like the CIA, or the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), by spying on Katz's Facebook for her political leanings. Welcome to our McCarthyite world! But let us not be too hasty to judge. Remember the British MP Galloway that is now a martyr of free speech in this country and around the world. Well, he supported the bannning of Geert Wilders, the anti-immigrant Dutch politician, from Britain. He said Jean-Marie Le Pen, another despicable anti-immigrant politician and head of the French Front National, was a Nazi and should be denied entrance to Britain. Katz supports IAW, which completely banned Zionist voices from its speaker list in 42 locations around the globe. And now Katz faces the chilling, Arctic winds of McCarthyism. McCarthyism is unfortunately part of the zeitgeist of the age. We should fight it with all our hearts. But it is about time we understand that McCarthyism cuts both ways.

Tamir Bar-On