The wave of alleged “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations whose slogans embrace the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group are routinely denounced as anti-Semitism. Certainly, the brutality of the attacks by Hamas on October 7, which were directed at civilians including the beheading of babies, expressed genocidal hatred. And chants by misnamed “antiwar” protesters on college campuses and in the streets to “gas the Jews” and wipe Israel off the map “from the river to the sea” are also genocidal threats. But what has triggered these actions is more complex than anti-Semitism and broader in ambition.

The Department of State has a section on its website dedicated to defining anti-Semitism and presenting examples. One of the most common is “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” This leads to defining Jews are being “them” rather than “us” and justifying actions against them as aliens. Closely related is “the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.” So, they are hostile aliens. There are clearly elements of both in the current protests and in the ideologies that have generated the protests. This is true, sadly, even in some mainstream venues such as "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by professors Stephen Walt (Harvard University) and John J. Mearsheimer (University of Chicago). This accusation is made to advance the authors’ campaign for an isolationist foreign policy which they see the alleged Israeli lobby as thwarting by keeping us engaged in foreign wars. There is a long dark history behind this argument.

J. A. Hobson in his seminal 1902 book Imperialism: A Study alleged that Jewish bankers were behind Western expansion across the world and were the only ones who gained by war because they financed what came to be called the “military-industrial complex.” As late as 1938, when Nazi Germany was conducting its pogrom leading to the Holocaust, Hobson’s new edition still accused “men of a singular and peculiar race” of being the main element of “the central ganglion of international capitalism.” Like Walt and Mearsheimer, Hobson was using the defamation of Jews as a means to an end, in his case the overthrow of capitalism. And it is this tactic that expands anti-Semitism into a threat that menaces all of us. It assails the modern world created by the vigorous and innovative economic system of capitalism, bounded and guided by the values and energy of western civilization. If Jews were once attacked for being outside society, they are now being attacked for being the vanguard of society. And in the Middle East, Israel is called a “Crusader State” established as an outpost of the West.

Student activists and the faculty members who have filled their heads with this mush (to use Rush Limbaugh’s polite term for what we really know originates from where the sun don’t shine) have no direct interest in the Israeli-Hamas (Iranian) conflict. So why would they choose against Israel, a democratic society with liberal values allied with the country within which they live? Is it pure ignorance, like the Harvard group “Queers for Palestine” which does not seem to realize that under Palestinian law, being homosexual is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Hamas-ruled Gaza, by death? Or has Israel simply been assigned a role in a larger ideological drama: the domestic war against western values and success?

The success of the West in creating the modern world, first in Europe and then by extension, pollination, and imitation around the globe, is undeniable. The original Marxist notion that it would become unbearable for the vast majority of exploited workers has proven to be nonsense as living standards have risen to heights undreamed up before the wave after wave of Industrial Revolutions. The leftist vision of despair has manifested itself far more often in areas that tried to substitute intellectual theory for this real-world experience. The evolution of China is the most spectacular case of a land with a rich heritage being driven into the ground by the Marxist radicalism of Mao Zedong. Yet, despite its brutality, Julia Lovell has shown how “Maoism” was held in high regard by leftists everywhere, including in American universities. Post-Mao reformers adopted a form of state capitalism which generated rapid growth in national capacity and personal wealth even if it adopted only part of the Western model.

In terms of “imperialist wars” a comparison of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts presents a stark contrast. Where communist aggression was stopped, South Korea became one of the “tigers” of Asia, now ranked the tenth largest economy in the world. South Vietnam was lost to communist conquest, due in part to the political success of the same leftist “antiwar” movement we are seeing again today. It languished in poverty and oppression for generations. It has only recently started to adopt parts of the Western model. In per capita income Vietnam ranks 106^th in the world compared to South Korea’s ranking of 29^th, which is just one stop behind the United Kingdom and slightly ahead of Japan. Two other countries saved from conquest, Singapore and Taiwan, have per capita GDP ahead of Germany. The charge that the Western model is racist or merely “white supremacy” is disproved by its accomplishments in a variety of countries around the world, and among communities in many more. It is a set of ideas and practices, based on human nature and experience, that can work anywhere.

They are not, however, the ideas and practices popular among left-wing intellectuals who think they should rule the world. Yet, they know they cannot produce the triumphs they see around them, and in which they indulge as privileged parasites. I can say this having spent 10 years as a college student (including six in graduate school earning degrees in history and economics) followed by seven years on the faculty. Of those years I tell people “It sure beat working for a living.” As I knew from working my way through school in factories as a spot welder.

The intellectual attack is no longer based on claiming they could do better. It is now based on claiming our success is immoral, the result of slavery at home and imperialism overseas; and with the sin of climate change recently added to the list. The charge that Israel is a “settler colony” is the tip of the iceberg in this campaign as the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other affluent remnants of empire also fit this description. We “stole” the land we have built into centers of high civilization whose residents (including the descendants of the indigenous people) set new records for affluence every decade. Philosopher John Locke, who was an official in the British Empire, justified property rights as mixing labor with resources to produce something of value. Our claim is unimpeachable.

They have moved from rejecting the methods that generate affluence to rejecting affluence itself. This is the essence of the Green movement which references “pre-industrial society” and “living with nature” in a simpler, impoverished but morally superior time. And, of course, we should retreat from the world and surrender to any movement or rival nation that presents an alternative (any alternative) to our history and values. The spoiled brats who call for these outcomes could not live under the results. But they are wrapped up in the self-hatred of higher education and know not what they do. The rest of us must stay on guard and in control, adhering to the lessons of history that got us here.

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who served on the professional staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications. 

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