76 No. 73 JUSTICE rofessor Jeffrey Herf’s latest book Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist comes in the wake of Hamas’s barbaric October 7 pogrom, the worst loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust. It also arrives at a time when the various forms of antisemitism − right, left, and Islamist − have converged in a manner unprecedented in recent times. Herf refers to this convergence as the “simultaneity of antisemitism’s three faces.” Herf’s book is an important collection of essays divided into two sections. These essays collectively illuminate the intricate connections between antisemitism, Islamism, and far right and far left ideologies throughout modern history. The first section relates to the three types of antisemitism in historical context. The second section focuses on the contemporary manifestations of antisemitism since the 9/11 Al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the U.S. The essays span the corpus of Herf’s research over the past four decades. His extensive studies of German history throughout the 20th century and the ideological underpinnings of the country’s political movements focus on the Weimar period and Nazi Germany (Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, 1984, and The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, 2006). Herf’s deep and well researched exploration of the complex relationship between antisemitism and antiZionism focuses on the Communist German Democratic Republic and the West German far left. He highlights their ideological transformation from the Communists’ initial support for Israel to fundamental animosity (Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989, 2016). Additionally, Herf’s broad archival research has explored the historical and ideological relationship between Islamists and Nazis during World War II and Nazi propaganda that targeted Arabs and Muslims, which incited antisemitism and influenced Islamists throughout the Middle East (Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 2009). Most recently, Herf has examined the intersection of disparate international political interests following the end of World War II, whose support led to the establishment of the State of Israel (Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949, 2022). Throughout the book, Herf provides an especially pertinent selection of his writings which, although historic in nature, are especially suited to an analysis of the current situation. Herf discusses the early support for Zionism and Israel by the post-World War II Soviet bloc countries. For example, in his essay “East German Communists and the Jewish Question,” he points to a brief period in East German politics during the early years after the war in which Communists still found common cause with Jews as anti-fascist allies. Herf points to that support as being initially motivated by the anti-fascist position which then united Communists and Zionists. In that vein, the late East German Communist official Joseph Merker, as well as some others, expressed support for Jews receiving postwar reparations, as did “all the nations Hitler invaded and oppressed” (p. 105). Controversy over Merker’s sympathy for Holocaust victims reflected a schism in the Communist party’s attitudes toward Jews. Describing Jews as a nation violated Stalinist ideological orthodoxy which rejected the idea of Jews constituting a nation. It was also an affront to the Communist “anti-fascist resistance fighters,” who “stood at the apex of a hierarchy of the victims of Nazism” (p. 105). The elevation of the Communist anti-fascists as the sole victims of the war ultimately led to the erasure of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. The rejection of the concept of Jews as a nation paved the way towards today’s red-green alliance in which Marxist and far left organizations (red) find common cause with Reviewed by Yehudit Barsky P Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist By Jeffrey Herf Routledge, London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (2024, 286 pp.)
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