Safety Through Solidarity: The Necessity Of Generative Conversations About Antisemitism / Shane Burley + Ben Lorber

Ben Lorber and Shane Burley, co-authors of Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, join me to discuss the absolutely timely moment and context this book is being published in. They raise the need for, and the strong historical legacies of, Jewish anti-Zionist solidarity with pro-Palestine movements, while articulating and bringing forward critical analysis of the shape, character, and histories of antisemitism in primarily Western Christian societies. With antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise, Shane and Ben articulate a vision and present a radical guide to fight antisemitism and build safety through solidarity for Jewish and non-Jewish peoples and communities alike.

“On the one hand, I admit I had some hesitation of, as the bodies are continuing to pile up of Palestinians in Gaza, we need all eyes on that—we need all eyes on Rafah, as the viral slogan has gone—is now the best time for us to really be talking about antisemitism and conspiracy theories? And on the other hand, obviously, antisemitism is on the rise right now, so is Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. But in addition to that, claims of antisemitism are being massively weaponized against the movement to end the genocide. It's just absurd that the college students and activists calling for an end to genocide, for an end to horrific bombing, in being called antisemitic, in many ways, the conversation is being diverted.”

- Ben Lorber

“One of the contentions that we fight in the book is what's called “eternalism,” which is the idea that antisemitism is the longest hatred, eternal, and something that you ultimately can't really undo, and this is a sort of fatalism that's at the heart of Zionism. The creation of the State of Israel on the model of kind of German Romantic nationalism, was basically the assumption that all these other projects of liberation, whether it was folks in the Communist Party, the Bund, anarchists or whoever, that wanted to fix the problems that Jews were facing, were going to do it in this revolutionary way. Well, they didn't stop the Holocaust, they didn't stop pogroms, they didn't stop different expulsions. They didn't stop a lot of things. And so, instead, modeling it on what potentially Western empires have modeled themselves on and doing it in the same way, that would end up being the solution. 

“But the bottom line is, is that we are not isolated people separated from one another. It's a global world of people who have shared circumstances, relationships, material conditions. And so, if we want to understand antisemitism as a system that kind of moves around, that changes over time, but affects Jews, we have to look at the shared sources of that. And the only way you have the power to take on systems of power is you do it with other people. And so, you have to build those bonds. That's where the solidarity comes in.”

- Shane Burley

Bios:

Ben Lorber is a researcher, journalist and movement strategist. He works at Political Research Associates, a social movement think tank, as a Senior Research Analyst focusing on antisemitism and white nationalism. Lorber’s work has appeared in The Nation, Salon, Jewish Daily Forward, Religion Dispatches and more, and a range of outlets including The Washington Post and Huffington Post turn to him regularly for quotations on antisemitism and the Right.

Shane Burley is an author and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2017) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2021), and the editor of No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis (AK Press, 2022). His writing has appeared in places such as NBC News, Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, The Baffler, Jacobin, Jewish Currents, Haaretz, Oregon Humanities, Protean, Yes Magazine, In These Times, and the Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Episode Notes:

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The song featured is “Kodoma” by Nick Vander from the album Kodama (Nowaki’s Selection), used with permission by the artist