Tag: israel

A history of the fight against antisemitism—and the politics it leaves out

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The struggle against antisemitism is a question of burning political importance. Across Europe, parties descended from or modelled on fascism are in government or on the threshold. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland polls as a major party. In Britain, far-right street mobilisations draw crowds unseen since the 1930s, while Reform UK sets the agenda in official politics.

At the same time, the charge of antisemitism has been turned into an instrument of state repression. It is wielded not against the heirs of Hitler and Mosley but against workers, students and Jewish opponents of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Any serious history of the fight against antisemitism must therefore answer definite questions. Who fought it? With what methods? On what class basis? And with what results?

This collection of essays, published by the Wiener Holocaust Library, poses the right question in its title. Its answers, however, are shaped by its producers’ institutional and political commitments.[1]

The book and its sponsors

The volume grew out of the Library’s exhibition Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today, shown in London from March to September 2022 and later taken to Parliament. Barbara Warnock, the Library’s senior curator, and Toby Simpson, its director, edited it, and it launched in November 2022.

Its essays trace the individuals and organisations that have countered antisemitism since the Dreyfus Affair. They cover the campaign to free Dreyfus, Alfred Wiener’s anti-Nazi work in Germany and the Netherlands, the 43 Group’s post-war anti-fascist direct action, and the Library’s own monitoring work. A final section examines what the publisher calls the differing forms of antisemitism in Britain in recent decades.

The Wiener Library deserves credit. Founded by Wiener in Amsterdam in 1933 and moved to London in 1939, its archive is an irreplaceable record of the Nazi regime and its crimes. The exhibition catalogue drew on photographs from the Community Security Trust (CST) archives and credited the CST’s head of policy, Dave Rich, among others.

That partnership, and the choice of foreword writer, signal where the book will land. Julia Neuberger, senior rabbi of West London Synagogue and a crossbench peer, was among the most prominent establishment voices in the campaign against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. That is the political lens through which a century of history is ultimately read.

Dreyfus: the decisive role of the socialist movement

The book rightly opens with the Dreyfus Affair. In 1894, a Jewish artillery officer was framed for espionage by the French General Staff and shipped to Devil’s Island. The affair became the axis around which the Third Republic’s political forces polarised: the army, the Catholic Church, and Édouard Drumont’s antisemitic leagues on one side; republicans, intellectuals, and, decisively, the socialist workers’ movement on the other.

Appeals to the authorities’ good faith did not free Dreyfus. Zola’s J’accuse in January 1898 was an act of political war on the military caste. The turning point came when Jean Jaurès overcame the Guesdist wing of French socialism, which had dismissed the case as a quarrel between bourgeois factions, and brought the organised working class into the fight against clerical-militarist reaction.

This is the period’s first lesson, and it is the one a history organised around “methods” of countering antisemitism tends to blur. Antisemitism in France was the banner of a social coalition seeking to overturn the republic and crush the workers’ movement. The working class pushed it back by intervening as an independent force.

Weimar: the limits of rebuttal

Alfred Wiener, the Library’s founder, stands at the centre of the story. A decorated veteran of the First World War, Wiener worked for the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (Centralverein). He monitored the Nazi press, exposed its forgeries and published counter-propaganda. Around 1930, the Büro Wilhelmstrasse issued Anti-Anti, a handbook of facts for those responding to antisemitic lies.

The courage and diligence of this work are unquestioned. But its strategy rested on the assumption that Nazism could be defeated by information, by the law and by the institutions of the Weimar Republic. Every one of those props gave way. The Nazis were not a misunderstanding to be corrected with better facts. Amid economic collapse, German finance capital and the Junker landowners chose them as the instrument to smash Europe’s most powerful workers’ movement.

United action by Social Democratic and Communist workers offered the only realistic means of stopping Hitler’s advance. But both sides sabotaged such unity: the SPD leadership subordinated the working class to the bourgeois state and its institutions, and the Stalinist line denounced Social Democracy as “social fascism” and rejected a genuine united front. From exile, Leon Trotsky repeatedly warned of the catastrophic consequences of this political paralysis and fought to mobilise the working class in a united front against fascism. Hitler did not conquer power through an irresistible popular mandate in January 1933. Hindenburg installed him as chancellor, backed by powerful sections of Germany’s ruling elite.

A history of anti-antisemitism that does not place this betrayal at the centre cannot explain why the Centralverein’s devoted labours ended in catastrophe. The Library’s archive of rebuttal pamphlets is, in the end, a monument to the limits of enlightenment in the face of a social crisis.

Britain: Cable Street and the 43 Group

The British chapters tell a story whose lessons point in the same direction. On 4 October 1936, tens of thousands of East End workers—Jewish garment workers, Irish dockers, Communist and Independent Labour Party members—blocked Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts at Cable Street. The police, who had been sent to clear a path for the fascists, were driven back.

Anglo-Jewry’s official leadership played no part in this victory. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle urged Jews to stay away and leave matters to the authorities. The Communist Party leadership had first planned to send its members to a solidarity rally elsewhere in Spain, and changed course only under pressure from the ranks.

The same pattern recurred after 1945. When Mosley sought to revive his movement, Jewish veterans formed the 43 Group. They broke up fascist meetings, infiltrated fascist organisations and fought them in the streets, again over the objections of the community establishment, which preferred quiet lobbying of the state.

The volume’s attention to the 43 Group is welcome. Their lesson, however, is not about the merits of “direct action” as a technique. It is that fascism was confronted successfully only when working people mobilised independently of—and often against—the police, the courts, and the official leaderships who counselled reliance on them.

Recent decades: Neuberger and the campaign against Corbyn

When the book reaches contemporary Britain, the gap between its historical material and its politics becomes a chasm. The “differing forms of antisemitism” of recent decades are, above all, the terrain of the campaign waged between 2015 and 2020 against Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

Neuberger was a leading figure in that campaign. In 2016 she told Newsnight that Labour had a “very particular problem” with antisemitism on the hard left. In June 2018 she urged Jews to resign from the party and said she hoped the issue would stop Labour from being elected. Her 2019 book stopped short of calling Corbyn an antisemite but said he had “behaved like an antisemite”. In the 2019 election, she endorsed the Chief Rabbi’s unprecedented intervention against him.

Her central criterion is that criticism of Israel becomes antisemitic when its tone would not be used of other countries. This tests subjective impression, not objective content. It mirrors the logic of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition”, whose Israel-related examples Labour was forced to adopt in full in 2018 after a campaign in which the three main Jewish newspapers ran an identical front page against Corbyn.

The campaign was political. The Labour right, the Conservative press and the Israeli state set out to destroy a leader who, whatever his limitations, had attracted hundreds of thousands of young people with left-wing rhetoric. Corbyn’s own response was capitulation: he accepted the IHRA definition, suspended allies and offered apology after apology. The 2022 Forde Report, commissioned by Labour itself, found that the antisemitism issue had been used as a factional weapon. None of this alters the existence of real antisemitism, which socialists oppose without compromise. But a history that presents this episode as a chapter in the fight against racism adopts the state’s vantage point.

After 2022: Gaza and the weaponisation of antisemitism

The book closes in 2022. Events since October 2023 have exposed the consequences of the political framework it endorses. Israel’s assault on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice found in January 2024 raised plausible claims under the Genocide Convention, has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and reduced the territory to rubble.

Throughout, governments in Britain and Europe have used the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism to criminalise opposition. Mass demonstrations in London, in which Jewish contingents marched prominently, were branded “hate marches” by a Conservative home secretary. The Starmer government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation in July 2025, and hundreds of people, many of them pensioners, were arrested for holding placards. In Germany, appeals to Israel’s security as a reason of state have been used to ban protests and cancel Jewish and Palestinian speakers.

The effect is doubly reactionary. It shields a state committing mass atrocities by identifying all Jews with its crimes, the very conflation that real antisemites exploit. And it diverts attention from the genuine and growing danger posed by the far right, which combines hostility to Muslims and migrants with the old conspiracy theories about Jews and finds a friendly hearing in official politics.

Conclusion: the lessons the book does not draw

Read against the grain, the material this volume assembles supports conclusions very different from those of its sponsors. Modern antisemitism has never been simply an irrational prejudice to be corrected by education and monitoring. It has been a tool of reaction, mobilised during periods of capitalist crisis to divert social anger from the ruling class onto a scapegoat and to split the working class.

The working class, Jewish and non-Jewish, has beaten it back only when it intervened independently: in the Dreyfusard movement, on the barricades of Cable Street, and in the streets against Mosley after the war. Where reliance fell on the state, the courts, and bourgeois liberalism, as in Weimar Germany, the outcome was catastrophe. Trotsky, writing in 1938, warned that the further advance of world reaction would bring the physical extermination of the Jews. He insisted that only the socialist transformation of society could secure their future.

The Zionist project offered a different answer: a nation-state built on the dispossession of another people. That answer has produced a state now carrying out atrocities in the name of Jews everywhere, which in turn feeds the antisemitism it claims to combat.

The Wiener Library archives will remain an indispensable resource. But the fight against antisemitism today requires a political perspective this book does not provide. That perspective is the international unity of the working class against capitalism, war and every form of racism, including the racism directed against Palestinians.

Sources

Bibliography

Book under review

  • Warnock, Barbara, and Toby Simpson, eds. Anti-Antisemitism: Countering Anti-Jewish Racism in Western Europe, 1890–2022. Foreword by Julia Neuberger. London: The Wiener Holocaust Library, 2022.

Books and documents

  • Equality and Human Rights Commission. Investigation into Antisemitism in the Labour Party. London: EHRC, October 2020.
  • Forde, Martin. The Forde Report. London: The Labour Party, July 2022.
  • International Court of Justice. Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), Order on Provisional Measures, 26 January 2024.
  • International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. “Working Definition of Antisemitism.” Adopted 26 May 2016.
  • Neuberger, Julia. Antisemitism: What It Is. What It Isn’t. Why It Matters. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019.
  • Sonabend, Daniel. We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain. London: Verso, 2019.
  • Trotsky, Leon. “Appeal to American Jews Menaced by Fascism and Anti-Semitism.” December 1938.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971.
  • The Wiener Holocaust Library. Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today. Exhibition catalogue. London, 2022.
  • Zola, Émile. “J’accuse…!” L’Aurore, 13 January 1898.

Press and online sources

  • “Jewish Peer Attacks Labour for Having a ‘Very Particular Problem’ with Antisemitism.” Jewish Chronicle, 28 April 2016. Link
  • “Senior Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger Urges Jews to Leave Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.” Jewish Chronicle, 22 June 2018. Link
  • “Rabbi Julia Neuberger Rails Against Labour Antisemitism.” Jewish Chronicle, 30 May 2019. Link
  • “Senior Rabbi Julia Neuberger Talks Antisemitism in the UK.” Amanpour and Company, PBS, 27 November 2019. Link
  • The Wiener Holocaust Library. “Book Launch: Anti-Antisemitism.” Event listing, 15 November 2022. Link
  • The Wiener Holocaust Library. Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today. Online exhibition. Link

[1] Anti-Antisemitism: Countering Anti-Jewish Racism in Western Europe, 1890–2022, edited by Barbara Warnock and Toby Simpson, with a foreword by Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger. The Wiener Holocaust Library, 2022.

Schama, Zionism and the Politics of Historical Memory

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Simon Schama’s defence of Israel and the campaign to criminalise opposition to genocide

Simon Schama’s recent intervention in defence of Israel is presented as a contribution to historical understanding. In reality, it belongs to a broader political campaign whose purpose is to delegitimise mass opposition to the genocide in Gaza by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The significance of such arguments lies not in their historical accuracy, but in their political function. At a moment when millions of people around the world are expressing opposition to war, ethnic cleansing and imperialist violence, intellectuals associated with the political establishment are increasingly being mobilised to provide moral and historical justification for repression.[1]

The campaign’s central mechanism is straightforward. Criticism of the Israeli state is equated with hostility to Jewish people. Opposition to Zionism is portrayed as a modern form of antisemitism. Protest against the destruction of Gaza becomes evidence of sympathy for forces allegedly seeking the destruction of Jews. Through this process, the unique moral authority associated with the Holocaust is transferred to the contemporary Israeli state, allowing criticism of its actions to be denounced as a revival of humanity’s greatest historical crime.

This conflation is not an intellectual mistake or conceptual confusion. It is a deliberate political operation. Its target is not the racist right, which continues to flourish across Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Rather, it is directed against anti-war demonstrators, socialist organisations, students, academics and workers who oppose genocide and imperialist war.

The narrative’s omission of the far right is especially revealing. Many of Israel’s most enthusiastic supporters are found among political forces with long histories of xenophobia, racism and authoritarian nationalism. Across Europe and North America, right-wing nationalist movements have increasingly presented Israel as a model of ethnic exclusivity, militarised borders and state violence against a subject population. These forces are rarely accused of antisemitism when they support Israel because they are politically useful allies. The contradiction exposes the dishonesty of claims that support for Israel constitutes the defining measure of opposition to antisemitism.

At the centre of Schama’s argument lies a familiar liberal-Zionist distinction between Israel’s allegedly noble foundations and the unfortunate excesses of its current government. Schama portrays Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich as departures from a fundamentally democratic and humane project. The implication is that Israel has somehow lost its way.

This narrative cannot withstand historical examination. The catastrophe now unfolding in Gaza did not emerge from a temporary deviation from Israel’s founding principles. It grew out of the state’s historical foundations. The Nakba of 1948, during which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes, was not an accidental by-product of state formation. It was the decisive event that established the state. The subordination and displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population were not peripheral episodes but central components of the Zionist project as it developed in practice.

For decades, Israel has functioned as a strategic ally of the major imperialist powers in the Middle East. Its military, economic and diplomatic position has been inseparable from its role within broader geopolitical calculations pursued by Britain and, increasingly after the Second World War, the United States. To describe the destruction of Gaza merely as the consequence of an extremist government is therefore to obscure the deeper historical and political forces that have shaped the state from the beginning.

Mario Kessler on Antisemitism

The German historian Mario Kessler has made an important contribution to understanding antisemitism by examining it through the history of the socialist movement. His work is particularly valuable because it challenges the widespread assumption that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are fundamentally the same thing. Instead, Kessler demonstrates that some of the strongest and most principled opponents of antisemitism were found within the revolutionary socialist tradition, many of whom were also critics of Zionism.

Kessler approaches antisemitism not simply as a prejudice but as a social and political phenomenon rooted in specific historical conditions. Drawing on Marxist scholarship, he shows how antisemitism often emerged during periods of economic and political crisis, when ruling elites and reactionary movements sought to channel social discontent away from the existing social order and towards a minority group. Jews were portrayed as responsible for social problems that were, in reality, products of capitalism itself.

One of Kessler’s key themes is the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Zionism. He traces debates within the labour movement from the late nineteenth century onward, showing that many Jewish socialists rejected the Zionist project while remaining uncompromising opponents of antisemitism. For figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and many members of the Jewish labour movement, the solution to Jewish oppression lay not in creating a separate nation-state but in the international struggle for socialism and democratic equality.

Kessler’s work also highlights the twentieth century’s tragedy. The rise of fascism and the Holocaust devastated the European Jewish population and transformed political attitudes towards Zionism. Yet he argues that understanding this catastrophe requires serious historical analysis rather than political myth-making. The history of antisemitism, in his view, cannot be reduced to support for or opposition to Israel.

Kessler is particularly relevant today because he insists on historical precision. He rejects attempts to use accusations of antisemitism as a weapon against all critics of Israeli policy, while equally opposing genuine antisemitism in all its forms. His work reminds us that the socialist movement developed both a powerful critique of antisemitism and a tradition of internationalism that sought solidarity between peoples rather than separation through competing nationalisms. For readers interested in the relationship between antisemitism, socialism and Zionism, Kessler provides an important historical bridge between nineteenth-century Marxism and contemporary political debates.

The effort to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism also requires the systematic suppression of an alternative political tradition, namely that of revolutionary socialist internationalism. The historical record is clear. The socialist movement, not Zionism, produced the most consistent and principled struggle against antisemitism. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, socialist organisations opposed antisemitism not as an isolated prejudice but as a reactionary ideology rooted in the contradictions of class society.

David North’s The Logic of Zionism and the Fate of Palestine

David North’s The Logic of Zionism and the Fate of Palestine is less a conventional history book than a collection of political and historical essays that examine the origins of Zionism, the Palestinian question, and imperialism’s role in the Middle East. Written from a Trotskyist and international socialist standpoint, the book challenges both the mainstream defence of Zionism and the various nationalist perspectives that dominate discussion of the conflict.

One of the book’s strengths is its placement of Zionism in a broader historical context. North argues that Zionism emerged as a response to the oppression of European Jews, but that it developed as a nationalist movement whose fate became closely bound up with the interests of the major imperialist powers. Rather than treating Israel as simply the fulfilment of Jewish self-determination, he examines how the state was formed, its relationship to the displacement of the Palestinian population and its strategic role in the Middle East.

A recurring theme is the distinction between Judaism and Zionism. North insists that opposition to Zionism is not the same thing as antisemitism and points to the long history of socialist opposition to both antisemitism and Jewish nationalism. The book draws heavily on the writings of Marx, Engels, August Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and, above all, Leon Trotsky. These figures argued that antisemitism was rooted in the crises and contradictions of capitalist society and could not be overcome through the creation of a separate national state.

Particularly interesting are the sections dealing with Trotsky’s analysis of the Jewish question in the 1930s. Trotsky recognised the terrible danger facing European Jewry under fascism while maintaining that Zionism offered no lasting solution. North argues that subsequent events, including the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, have confirmed many of Trotsky’s warnings.

The book also connects the Palestinian struggle to broader questions of war, imperialism, and class politics. Rather than advocating either Israeli or Palestinian nationalism, North advances socialist internationalism, arguing that a genuine democratic solution requires workers’ political unity throughout the region.

Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, The Logic of Zionism and the Fate of Palestine is an important statement of the Trotskyist position on one of the most contested questions of modern history. It combines historical analysis, political polemic and theoretical argument in a way that encourages readers to think beyond the narrow framework through which the conflict is usually presented.

August Bebel and the Socialist Struggle Against Antisemitism

August Bebel (1840-1913), the co-founder and leading figure of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), played a decisive role in establishing the Marxist movement as the most consistent opponent of antisemitism in late nineteenth-century Europe. At a time when antisemitic agitation was gaining influence among sections of the middle classes and even among workers affected by economic crisis, Bebel insisted that hostility to Jews was not a form of social protest but a reactionary diversion from the struggle against capitalism.

Bebel is best known for describing antisemitism as “the socialism of fools.” By this he meant that antisemitic demagogues sought to exploit genuine popular grievances while directing anger away from the capitalist system and towards a vulnerable minority. Rather than identifying exploitation as a consequence of the social relations of capitalism, antisemites attributed poverty, unemployment and financial crises to the alleged conspiracies of Jewish individuals. In doing so, they transformed social discontent into racial hatred and protected the existing economic order.

For Bebel and the Marxist movement, antisemitism was not simply a prejudice or moral failing. It was a political weapon used by ruling elites and reactionary forces to divide the working class. Antisemitic campaigns encouraged workers to blame Jewish neighbours instead of the capitalist class as a whole. This undermined workers’ unity across national, religious, and ethnic lines, which Marxists regarded as essential to socialist struggle.

Bebel’s opposition to antisemitism anticipated later Marxist analyses developed by figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. His insistence that workers reject all forms of racial and religious chauvinism became a foundational principle of socialist internationalism. At a time when many liberal politicians accommodated antisemitic sentiment, Bebel and the SPD publicly opposed it, making the socialist movement the principal political force combating antisemitism in Germany.

His intervention remains historically significant because it demonstrated that the fight against antisemitism is inseparable from the struggle for working-class unity and social equality. For Bebel, the liberation of Jewish people could not be achieved through exclusion, nationalism, or scapegoating, but only through workers’ common struggle against capitalism itself.

No figure understood this process more profoundly than Leon Trotsky. Writing as fascism rose, Trotsky warned that capitalism’s crisis threatened catastrophe for European Jewry. The destruction of democratic institutions, the growth of fascist movements and the degeneration of bourgeois society pointed toward unprecedented crimes. At the same time, Trotsky rejected Zionism’s claim to provide a solution to the Jewish question through the creation of a national state in Palestine. He argued that the historical problem confronting Jewish people could not be resolved through a nationalist project, but only through the international struggle against capitalism itself.

Subsequent history tragically confirmed both aspects of Trotsky’s analysis. The Holocaust exposed the barbarism to which capitalism in crisis could descend. Yet the establishment of Israel did not eliminate antisemitism. Nor did it resolve the underlying contradictions that had produced it. Instead, new forms of oppression and conflict emerged, above all through the dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people.

This history poses an insurmountable challenge to Schama’s argument. The political tendency that most consistently analysed antisemitism, fought it and predicted the catastrophe confronting European Jewry was also the tendency that opposed Zionism. The existence of that tradition refutes the claim that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic.

Indeed, the current attempt to identify opposition to Zionism with hatred of Jews requires the erasure of a century of socialist political experience. Most crucially, the conflation of Judaism with the Israeli state does not protect Jewish people. It places them in greater danger. Antisemitism has historically functioned by attributing the crimes, failures and contradictions of society to Jews as a collective. Zionist ideology, particularly in its contemporary forms, insists that Israel acts in the name of Jews everywhere and that Jewish identity is inextricably bound to the state. This claim reproduces, from a different starting point, precisely the framework upon which antisemitism has traditionally depended.

When the actions of the Israeli state are identified with Jews as a whole, the distinction between a government and a people is consciously blurred. The responsibility for state crimes is transferred to an entire global community. This does not undermine antisemitism. It creates conditions in which antisemitic narratives can flourish.

The defence of Jewish people against antisemitism therefore cannot be entrusted to the Israeli state, nor to the imperialist governments that provide it with diplomatic cover, financial support and military assistance. Genuine opposition to antisemitism requires a fundamentally different political perspective.

That perspective begins with rejecting all forms of nationalism and ethnic exclusivity. It insists on the unity of Jewish, Arab, and international workers based on common class interests. It recognises that war, racism, authoritarianism and genocide arise not from ancient hatreds but from the crisis of the capitalist system itself.

The growing effort to criminalise anti-Zionist sentiment and suppress opposition to genocide is part of a broader assault on democratic rights. Governments that support Israel’s actions in Gaza increasingly resort to censorship, police repression and legal intimidation because they confront widening popular opposition. The attack on Palestine solidarity movements is one aspect of a wider turn toward authoritarian forms of rule in conditions of mounting social inequality, geopolitical conflict and economic instability.

Viewed in this context, Schama’s essay is not primarily a contribution to historical debate. It is a political intervention on behalf of the existing order. Its purpose is to provide intellectual legitimacy for the suppression of opposition to imperialist violence and to shield the Israeli state from scrutiny by presenting criticism as prejudice.

Defending historical truth requires rejecting this falsification. Antisemitism is a real and deadly form of reaction whose history culminated in some of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century. But it cannot be fought through support for a state carrying out mass violence against an oppressed people. Nor can opposition to genocide be silenced by accusations designed to delegitimise political dissent.

The struggle against antisemitism and the struggle against Zionism are not mutually exclusive. Historically, some of the most principled opponents of antisemitism understood this. Their perspective remains indispensable today. The defence of democratic rights, the opposition to genocide and the fight against antisemitism all require the same political foundation: the independent mobilisation of the international working class against capitalism, imperialism and war.

Bibliography

Bebel, August. Mass and Class: Selected Writings. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1980.

Kessler, Mario. Antisemitism, Zionism and Socialism: Studies in the History of Jewish Labour and Political Movements. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, various editions.

Lenin, V. I. “Anti-Jewish Pogroms.” In Collected Works, Vol. 29. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

North, David. The Logic of Zionism and the Fate of Palestine: Historical and Political Essays. Detroit: Mehring Books, 2011.

North, David. “Socialist Internationalism and the Struggle Against Zionism and Imperialism.” International Youth and Students for Social Equality Lecture, 2023.

Trotsky, Leon. “Thermidor and Antisemitism” (1937).

Trotsky, Leon. “On the Jewish Question” (1934-1940), in Writings of Leon Trotsky.

Weiss, Clara. “Mario Kessler on Marxism, Antisemitism and Zionism.” World Socialist Web Site, 3 July 2025.

Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld, 2006.

Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

[1] Jew-Hatred: Jewish Quarterly 265 by Simon Schama, 13 Oct. 2026, 96 pages

The Withdrawal of Sally Rooney’s Novels and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Rule in Britain

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A Threshold Has Been Crossed

The withdrawal of Sally Rooney’s novels from circulation in the United Kingdom marks a decisive and unprecedented moment in the country’s political life. For the first time in modern British history, anti-terror legislation has made a major contemporary novelist’s entire body of work effectively inaccessible to readers. This is neither a symbolic gesture nor a dispute between a publisher and an author. It is a concrete expression of a new political reality: Britain is becoming a state where political dissent, artistic expression, and even the circulation of fiction are subordinated to the demands of national security and imperialist war.

Two lines capture the essence of this shift with stark clarity:

“Faber has announced that it will no longer distribute Sally Rooney’s books in the UK, as a result of legislation that prevents it from giving the author earnings from UK sales of her work.”

“A novelist’s royalties, a publisher’s contracts and the circulation of works of fiction are now subject to the terror laws.”

These sentences are not rhetorical flourishes; they describe a legal reality created by the Labour government’s proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000. Rooney’s stated intention to donate royalties to the group—a non-violent direct-action organisation that targets arms manufacturers supplying Israel’s war in Gaza—now puts her publisher at risk of prosecution. The result is censorship unprecedented in scope and significance, exposing the authoritarian logic behind British state policy.

The July 2025 proscription of Palestine Action was itself a watershed. For the first time, a direct-action movement targeting property rather than people was designated a terrorist organisation. The government cited damage to two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton, an action that caused no casualties. Yet the group was placed in the same legal category as organisations responsible for mass-casualty bombings. This redefinition of “terrorism” was no technical adjustment; it was a political manoeuvre—a deliberate expansion of the state’s coercive powers to include forms of protest that threaten the interests of the military-industrial complex.

The consequences were immediate and sweeping. Belonging to or expressing support for Palestine Action became a criminal offence carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years. Pensioners, clergy, students, and workers were dragged off by police for holding cardboard signs. On July 30, police arrested 117 people outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where more than 2,000 cases related to supporting the group were due to be heard. Even sections of the judiciary baulked. In February 2026, the High Court ruled the proscription unlawful, finding that Palestine Action’s activities did not meet the threshold to justify a ban. But the government did not retreat. In June, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision, with five judges declaring the ban “justified and proportionate” and asserting that assessments of “future risk” were “pre‑eminently” matters for the executive. In four months, the judiciary moved from scepticism to full deference, signalling the consolidation of a legal doctrine designed to insulate the security state from democratic scrutiny.

The Rooney affair must be understood in this context. Her novels have not been withdrawn because of their content or an editorial dispute. They have been withdrawn because the state has criminalised the author’s political convictions. Rooney’s intention to donate royalties to Palestine Action—a movement opposing British complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza—as an act of solidarity now makes fulfilling her publishing contracts potentially illegal. Faber’s decision to halt distribution is therefore not an act of commercial prudence but of political compliance. The publisher’s statement that selling an author’s work while being unable to pay her is “an unconscionable situation” obscures a deeper truth: the state has claimed the right to regulate cultural production through anti-terror legislation, and the cultural establishment has accepted that claim without resistance.

This acceptance is itself politically revealing. Where are the joint statements from the major publishing houses, the Society of Authors, PEN, and the literary prize committees calling for the ban to be repealed? Their silence is no oversight; it reflects their integration into the state’s ideological apparatus. The cultural establishment will not defend democratic rights because it is structurally incapable of doing so. Its function is to reproduce the ideological conditions of capitalist rule, not challenge them.

The withdrawal of Rooney’s novels thus points to a broader transformation. Britain is entering a period in which the ruling class, faced with capitalism’s deepening crisis and preparing for wider war, is dismantling democratic rights won through generations of struggle. The criminalisation of Palestine Action, mass arrests of peaceful protesters, judicial deference to executive power, and now the censorship of a major novelist all reflect the same process: a shift toward authoritarian rule. This introduction sets the stage for examining that process in its historical, political, and class dimensions. The Rooney case is no anomaly. It is a warning of what is being prepared—and of what must be opposed.

The Legal Mechanism: Terrorism Law as Cultural Regulation

The Labour government justified the proscription of Palestine Action in July 2025 based on a single incident: an act of direct action in which activists damaged two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton. The action caused no casualties, involved no threat to life, and was explicitly aimed at disrupting Britain’s logistical support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Yet this incident was seized upon to designate Palestine Action a terrorist organisation — the first time in British history that a direct‑action movement targeting property rather than people has been placed in the same legal category as organisations responsible for mass‑casualty violence. This unprecedented step marked a qualitative escalation in the British state’s assault on democratic rights.

The significance of this reclassification cannot be overstated. It deliberately expands the definition of “terrorism” to include forms of political protest that challenge the interests of the military‑industrial complex. In effect, the state has asserted that damage to military property — even when carried out as part of a non‑violent anti‑war protest — is equivalent to acts of indiscriminate violence against civilians. This is not a neutral legal interpretation but a political manoeuvre designed to criminalise dissent and insulate the machinery of war from public opposition.

The consequences have been sweeping and immediate. Support for Palestine Action is now punishable by up to 14 years in prison. More than 2,000 cases are pending, many involving individuals arrested for holding cardboard signs or expressing solidarity on social media. On July 30, police arrested 117 people outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where hearings related to the proscription were taking place. Pensioners, clergy, students, and workers have been dragged off by police for acts that, until recently, would have been protected under the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly. The scale of repression is unprecedented in modern Britain, and it reveals the extent to which the state is prepared to deploy anti‑terror legislation against its own population.

The impact on Sally Rooney underscores the breadth of this authoritarian turn. Rooney herself has been advised she could face arrest upon entering the UK, forcing her to accept awards by proxy. Her declared intention to donate royalties to Palestine Action — an act of political solidarity — now renders the fulfilment of her publishing contracts potentially illegal. The withdrawal of her novels from circulation is therefore not an isolated cultural event but a direct consequence of the proscription’s sweeping scope. It shows that the terror laws are not confined to policing protest but extend into artistic expression, cultural production, and the circulation of literature.

The judiciary’s role in legitimising this transformation is central. In February 2026, the High Court ruled the proscription unlawful, finding that the nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities did not meet the threshold required to justify a ban. This ruling briefly suggested that judicial oversight might check executive overreach. But the government did not retreat. In June, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision, with five judges declaring the ban “justified and proportionate.” Their ruling went far beyond a simple reversal. It established a doctrine of extreme judicial deference to the executive, asserting that assessments of “future risk” were “pre‑eminently” matters for the Home Secretary.

This doctrine represents a profound shift in the constitutional balance of power. It effectively grants the executive the authority to criminalise political movements based on speculative assessments of potential future actions. The judiciary, rather than scrutinising the government’s claims, has accepted them as matters of specialist expertise beyond judicial competence. In doing so, it has constructed a legal architecture suited to authoritarian governance — one in which the executive’s assertions about national security are treated as unchallengeable.

The implications of this shift are far‑reaching. The Court of Appeal’s ruling does not merely uphold the proscription of Palestine Action; it lays the groundwork for future bans on political organisations, protest movements, and cultural institutions deemed threatening to the state’s strategic interests. It signals that the judiciary will not act as a barrier to expanding executive power but will instead facilitate it. This is the legal foundation for the withdrawal of Rooney’s novels. The state has asserted the right to regulate cultural production through anti‑terror legislation, and the courts have affirmed that right.

The proscription of Palestine Action must therefore be understood as part of a broader transformation of the British state. It is not an isolated response to a specific protest action but a strategic move within a wider project: the restructuring of the legal and political order to suppress dissent, protect the interests of the military‑industrial complex, and prepare for the social conflicts that will accompany Britain’s deepening involvement in imperialist war. The criminalisation of Palestine Action, the mass arrests of peaceful protesters, and the censorship of a major novelist are all expressions of this project.

The construction of an authoritarian legal order is now well advanced. The question is not whether the state will continue to expand its powers but how far it will go — and how the working class will respond.

The Rooney Case: Cultural Production Under State Supervision

Rooney’s decision to donate royalties to Palestine Action was an act of political solidarity. Under the new legal regime, it became a criminal liability. Faber’s withdrawal of her books is therefore not a commercial decision but a political one — an act of compliance with the state’s demand that cultural production be subordinated to counter‑insurgency logic.

The publisher’s statement that selling an author’s work while being unable to pay her is “an unconscionable situation” is revealing. It frames the withdrawal as a matter of contractual ethics rather than political coercion. But the choice to comply rather than resist is itself political. The cultural establishment — publishers, prize committees, PEN, the Society of Authors — has responded with near‑total silence. This is not an oversight. These institutions are structurally integrated into the state’s ideological apparatus and cannot be relied on to defend democratic rights.

Rooney’s refusal to recant is admirable, but the article correctly notes that personal moral courage cannot halt the authoritarian turn. The issue is systemic, not individual.

Labour’s Role: The Party of State Security

The Labour government justified the proscription of Palestine Action in July 2025 based on a single incident: an act of direct action in which activists damaged two Voyager aircraft at RAF Brize Norton. The action caused no casualties, involved no threat to life, and was explicitly aimed at disrupting Britain’s logistical support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Yet this incident was seized upon to designate Palestine Action a terrorist organisation — the first time in British history that a direct‑action movement targeting property rather than people has been placed in the same legal category as organisations responsible for mass‑casualty violence. This unprecedented step marked a qualitative escalation in the British state’s assault on democratic rights.

The significance of this reclassification cannot be overstated. It deliberately expands the definition of “terrorism” to include forms of political protest that challenge the interests of the military‑industrial complex. In effect, the state has asserted that damage to military property — even when carried out as part of a non‑violent anti‑war protest — is equivalent to acts of indiscriminate violence against civilians. This is not a neutral legal interpretation but a political manoeuvre designed to criminalise dissent and insulate the machinery of war from public opposition.

The consequences were immediate and sweeping. Support for Palestine Action is now punishable by up to 14 years in prison. More than 2,000 cases are pending, many involving individuals arrested for holding cardboard signs or expressing solidarity on social media. On July 30, police arrested 117 people outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where hearings related to the proscription were taking place. Pensioners, clergy, students, and workers have been dragged off by police for acts that, until recently, would have been protected under the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly. The scale of repression is unprecedented in modern Britain and reveals the extent to which the state is prepared to deploy anti‑terror legislation against its own population.

The impact on Sally Rooney underscores the breadth of this authoritarian turn. Rooney has been advised she could face arrest upon entering the UK, forcing her to accept awards by proxy. Her declared intention to donate royalties to Palestine Action — an act of political solidarity — now renders the fulfilment of her publishing contracts potentially illegal. The withdrawal of her novels from circulation is therefore not an isolated cultural event but a direct consequence of the proscription’s sweeping scope. It shows that the terror laws are not confined to policing protest but extend into artistic expression, cultural production, and the circulation of literature.

The judiciary’s role in legitimising this transformation is central. In February 2026, the High Court ruled the proscription unlawful, finding that Palestine Action’s activities did not meet the threshold required to justify a ban. But the government did not retreat. In June, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision, declaring the ban “justified and proportionate” and asserting that assessments of “future risk” were “pre‑eminently” matters for the Home Secretary. This doctrine of extreme judicial deference represents a profound shift in the constitutional balance of power. It effectively grants the executive the authority to criminalise political movements based on speculative assessments of potential future actions.

The implications are far‑reaching. The Court of Appeal’s ruling lays the groundwork for future bans on political organisations, protest movements, and cultural institutions deemed threatening to the state’s strategic interests. It signals that the judiciary will not act as a barrier to expanding executive power but will instead facilitate it. The proscription of Palestine Action must therefore be understood as part of a broader transformation of the British state: the construction of a legal order designed to suppress dissent, protect the interests of the military‑industrial complex, and prepare for the social conflicts accompanying Britain’s deepening involvement in imperialist war.

A Warning and a Turning Point

The withdrawal of Sally Rooney’s novels is not a cultural controversy. It is a politically significant event. It demonstrates, with unmistakable clarity, that the British state is prepared to regulate artistic expression through anti‑terror legislation, criminalise political solidarity, and subordinate cultural production to the logic of imperialist war. This is not the accidental by‑product of an overzealous bureaucracy, nor the misapplication of a statute designed for other purposes. It is the conscious deployment of the terror laws as an instrument of political control, aimed at suppressing dissent and disciplining cultural life in accordance with the strategic needs of the ruling class.

The Rooney case reveals the true scope of the authoritarian turn. Counter-terrorism policy has placed a novelist’s royalties, a publisher’s contracts, and the circulation of fiction under its jurisdiction. The state has asserted that an author’s political convictions — expressed not through violence but through the donation of earnings — constitute grounds for restricting access to her work. This profoundly ruptures the liberal‑democratic norms that Britain’s political establishment claims to uphold. It signals that the boundaries of permissible expression will henceforth be determined not by public debate or artistic autonomy but by the government’s security priorities.

This development must be understood within the broader context of Britain’s deepening involvement in imperialist conflict. The proscription of Palestine Action, the mass arrests of peaceful protesters, and the judicial doctrine of deference to executive power are all components of a single process: the restructuring of the state to prepare for war abroad and repression at home. As Britain supplies arms components for the F‑35 programme, flies surveillance missions over Gaza, and aligns itself ever more tightly with Washington’s geopolitical agenda, it simultaneously expands the domestic machinery required to silence opposition to these policies. The censorship of Rooney’s novels is not an aberration; it is the cultural expression of this militarised political order.

The cultural establishment’s muted response confirms the depth of the crisis. Publishers, prize committees, PEN, and the Society of Authors have issued no collective defence of artistic freedom. Their silence is not simply cowardice but reflects their structural position within the state’s ideological apparatus. These institutions are not designed to resist authoritarianism; they are designed to accommodate it. Their function is to reproduce the cultural legitimacy of the existing order, not to challenge its foundations. When confronted with the terror laws, they comply.

The judiciary has likewise demonstrated its willingness to facilitate the authoritarian turn. The Court of Appeal’s ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action is “justified and proportionate,” and that assessments of “future risk” are matters for the executive, represents a decisive shift in the constitutional balance of power. It effectively grants the Home Secretary the authority to criminalise political movements on speculative claims. This doctrine is not a temporary aberration but a durable legal architecture suited to the needs of a state preparing for intensified social conflict.

It warns of what is being prepared. The censorship of Rooney’s novels is a harbinger of future measures aimed at suppressing political opposition, regulating cultural production, and criminalising solidarity with movements that challenge Britain’s imperialist role. The question now is whether the working class will build the political force capable of resisting this offensive — or whether the authoritarian transformation of Britain will proceed unchecked.

The courts, the cultural establishment, and the parliamentary parties cannot be entrusted with the defence of democratic rights. It requires the independent mobilisation of the working class, armed with a socialist programme that opposes war, rejects the authoritarian state, and challenges the capitalist system that produces both. Without such a movement, the repression now directed at Palestine Action and Sally Rooney will expand, deepen, and harden into a permanent feature of British political life.

Bibliography & Relevant Articles

Primary Reporting

  • Publishers Weekly: Coverage of Faber’s withdrawal and legal implications.
  • Times & Star: Reporting on Rooney’s statements regarding criminal liability.
  • New Arab: Analysis of the proscription’s impact on protest movements.
  • Leinster Express: Details on the High Court and Court of Appeal rulings.
  • Huck Magazine: Documentation of mass arrests and police repression.
  • Express & Star: Commentary on cultural institutions’ muted response.
  • AP News: Background on Palestine Action’s designation and political context.

Secondary Analysis

  • World Socialist Web Site (WSWS):
    • “Britain’s High Court says government acted illegally in outlawing protest group Palestine Action.”
    • “Labour’s authoritarian turn and the criminalisation of dissent.”
    • “The political significance of the Rooney case.”

Theoretical & Historical Works

  • E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.
  • Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy.
  • Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany.
  • Stuart Hall, Policing the Crisis.
  •  

Comment On the Observer’s A Declaration of Interdependence

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The recent Observer editorial, ‘A Declaration of Interdependence,’ reveals more about the panic within Britain’s liberal-imperialist class than its analysis. It shows disorientation among a ruling elite whose global framework is collapsing under contradictions. The editors claim that Donald Trump has “pulled the rug from under the Starmer project,” implying that Britain’s capitalist crisis stems from a single reckless act rather than decades of militarism, austerity, and imperial decline. The editorial outlines four ways Trump has supposedly sabotaged Starmer. In truth, each “shock” merely exposes the corruption at the heart of the entire system.

1. The economic crisis is not Trump’s doing—it is capitalism’s

The Observer laments that the UK’s fragile economic recovery was disrupted when Trump authorized the US-Israeli attack on Iran, leading Tehran to seal the Strait of Hormuz. It mournfully notes that “world oil prices are still nearly 30% above prewar levels,” as if this situation were an unpredictable act of God rather than a direct result of imperialist intervention in the Middle East.

The editorial criticizes not the fact that the US and Israel initiated another unjust war, but that it harms British capitalism’s interests. The hardships faced by Iranian and Palestinian civilians are ignored; what’s crucial is that Starmer’s “green shoots” story doesn’t resonate with voters in Makerfield. This reveals the genuine stance of the Labour-liberal circle: war can be justified or even needed, provided it doesn’t interfere with internal political interests.

2. Labour’s crisis over Gaza is a crisis of imperialism, not of messaging

The Observer criticizes Trump’s backing of Israel’s destructive attack on Gaza, which has led to the loss of nearly 73,000 Palestinian lives, claiming it has caused a division within the Labour Party. However, Labour’s division was not caused by Trump; it was due to its persistent support for imperialist violence.

Starmer’s so-called “tortured expressions of support for Israel’s right to self-defence” are actually sincere, representing Labour’s position within the British state. The real focus of the editorial is that the working class, especially young people and Britain’s Muslim community, is shifting away from Labour towards parties perceived as more supportive of Palestine. For the Observer, the concern isn’t the widespread violence itself but the political consequences it might trigger.

3. The culture‑war panic reveals the fragility of the British state

The third critique in the editorial—that JD Vance and Elon Musk are fueling Britain’s “culture wars”—exposes a feeling of helplessness. The British elite, having spent years demonising migrants, refugees, and the poor, now shows shock when their own reactionary rhetoric is echoed by their American counterparts. The Observer points out that Musk “acted as an arsonist, reposting flagrantly false and racist comments” following the Belfast stabbing. However, Musk is not an anomaly; he embodies the core of capitalist reaction. The far right’s rise is not solely due to online provocateurs but also because the political establishment—Labor included—has legitimised nationalism, militarism, and xenophobia.

The editorial’s fear is not fascism, but the loss of control over the forces it helped unleash.

4. The defence‑spending crisis exposes the bankruptcy of British imperialism

The Observer’s final complaint is that Trump has called for NATO members to allocate 5% of their GDP to defence, a target Starmer “can’t afford.” This is seen as an outrageous demand from a reckless American leader. However, it is actually a natural extension of Britain’s own imperial commitments. The British government cannot sustain global wars, maintain a nuclear arsenal, challenge Russia and China, and keep its welfare state intact all at once. Something has to give—and the ruling class has already decided it will not cut the military. The editorial worries that the working class might resist this arrangement.

The Observer’s conclusion: a desperate plea for imperialist unity

The article concludes by urging Britain to adopt “interdependence” with NATO, Europe, and the U.S., framing it as a pragmatic alternative to Brexit’s rejection of reality. However, in reality, it demands that the working class endure ongoing austerity, perpetual conflict, and subjugation to the major imperialist powers. The Observer claims Britain is “fortunate” to be at the crossroads of these powerful systems. But is it fortunate? To be a subordinate member of NATO’s military actions, Europe’s austerity policies, and America’s military-industrial complex? That’s not luck; it’s a trap.

The Observer fails to recognize that Britain’s crisis is rooted in the failure of global capitalism itself, not in Trump, Brexit, or Starmer’s errors. The decline of the “special relationship” reflects the broader collapse of the post-Cold War international order. Ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and the South China Sea are not isolated incidents but signs of a coming global upheaval. The working class should reject the Observer’s appeal for “interdependence” with imperialist powers. Instead, the only effective solution is for workers across Britain, Europe, the U.S., and worldwide to organize independently in opposition to war, nationalism, and capitalism.

The Counter Revolution of 1776: Gerald Horne’s Historical Falsification and the Politics of Racialist Reaction

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Introduction: The Manufacture of a Counter‑History

Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776 has been praised in some academic and media circles as offering a radical reinterpretation of the American Revolution. However, it exemplifies what Trotsky termed “the Stalin school of falsification”—a tactic in which the past is not thoroughly examined but is instead reshaped to align with current political agendas. The book’s main argument—that the American Revolution was a pro-slavery counter-movement opposing an abolitionist British Empire—is not only false but also a politically driven reversal of history, achieved through repeated misquoting, misattribution, and the intentional omission of evidence that contradicts its narrative.

Horne’s thesis does not hold up under scrutiny; the book is largely a work of fiction. This article aims to do two things: first, to reveal the falsehoods underlying Horne’s narrative; second, to place his approach within the wider context of racialist political ideology in the U.S., as exemplified by the 1619 Project and its associated pseudo-left supporters.

The Historical Record and the Fabrication of a Pro‑Slavery Revolution

The American Revolution arose from intensified conflicts between the colonies and Britain over issues like taxation, sovereignty, and representation. This is supported by extensive historical evidence, including the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767, the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Intolerable Acts of 1774, and the ongoing debate over Parliament’s authority. Notably, none of the key revolutionary texts refers to the Somerset case or British abolitionism.

This is a decisive point. The Somerset ruling of 1772—Horne’s key case—was a narrow legal decision about the status of an enslaved man brought to England. It did not end slavery across the empire, did not spark an abolitionist movement (which was non-existent then), and was not part of the political focus of the revolutionary generation. By 1772, the revolutionary crisis was already in progress.

Horne’s thesis asks the reader to accept that the colonists fought for independence to safeguard slavery from a British Empire that wouldn’t abolish it for another sixty-one years (1833). This is not a historical fact but a conspiracy theory cloaked in academic language.

The Method of Falsification: Inversion, Omission, and Fabrication

Horne’s book contains a series of egregious distortions that reveal not error but method.

1. Inversion of Sources

Horne quotes a Virginia Gazette letter as if it defended slavery. In reality, the full text is a “blistering attack on the absurdity of enslaving people based on skin colour.” This is not a mistake. It is an inversion of meaning.

2. Misattribution

Horne attributes a Loyalist pamphlet to the revolutionary William Henry Drayton, claiming Drayton was “apoplectic” about Somerset. An anonymous Loyalist wrote the words. This transforms a pro‑British argument into an anti‑British one.

3. Erasure of Abolitionists

Benjamin Franklin—who published anti‑slavery essays, collaborated with Granville Sharp, and later led the Pennsylvania Abolition Society—is portrayed as a pro‑slavery figure. This requires suppressing Franklin’s own writings, including his attack on slavery in the London Chronicle.

4. Factual Incompetence

The Gaspee Affair is mangled beyond recognition. Horne claims the Gaspee was a slave ship arriving from Africa. It was a customs enforcement vessel that had been patrolling American waters for years.

5. Suppression of Contradictory Evidence

Rhode Island is depicted as a slaveholding stronghold rebelling to protect slavery. Horne omits that Rhode Island banned slave importation in 1774 and passed gradual emancipation in 1784—explicitly linking these measures to revolutionary ideals.

These are not just occasional mistakes but part of a consistent pattern: each distortion steers the narrative toward a preset conclusion. This isn’t genuine scholarship; it amounts to propaganda.

The Political Function of Horne’s Narrative

The political context of Horne’s book involves his association with the Communist Party USA, which has ties to Stalinism. Stalinist ideology has a history of distorting facts, not as a personal critique of Horne but as an analysis of his approach. Historically, Stalinism has consistently manipulated history—up from the Moscow Trials to the reinterpretation of the October Revolution—to serve political objectives. Horne’s methodology reflects this pattern.

The modern importance of The Counter-Revolution of 1776 is not about Stalinism itself but about how it aligns with the racialist politics of the American pseudo-left. The book’s positive reviews from outlets like the New York Times, The Guardian, Democracy Now!, and academic journals show its usefulness for a political agenda that prioritises race over class as the key lens for analysing history.

The 1619 Project, citing Horne as a primary source, clearly exemplifies this pattern. It’s claimed that the Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, which is directly drawn from Horne’s biased interpretations. The intention isn’t to enhance historical knowledge but to deepen racial divisions within the working class. They serve as tools to split the working class along racial lines—replacing race with class as the main driver of history.

The Marxist Interpretation: Revolution, Class, and Historical Development

Countering this misconception, the Marxist perspective views the American Revolution as a bourgeois-democratic uprising. Marx and Engels recognised that the Revolution overthrew feudal property systems in North America, increased the political power of the emerging bourgeoisie, was closely linked to Enlightenment ideas, and inspired both the French Revolution and other democratic movements.

Instead of dismissing the contradiction of slavery, this view considers it as part of broader social relations. The Revolution spurred forces that challenged slavery’s foundations: Northern states abolished slavery during and after the war, anti-slavery sentiments grew rapidly in the 1780s and 1790s, and the Revolution laid the groundwork for the Civil War, called the “Second American Revolution,” which ended chattel slavery. This perspective is dialectical, not moralistic. It emphasises that revolutions are complex processes driven by class forces, not racial essences.

V. Horne’s Methodology: A Marxist Critique

Horne’s methodology is the antithesis of Marxism. It is characterised by:

1. Idealism

Horne treats race as the primary motor of history, independent of material conditions. This is a retreat into pre‑Marxist, quasi‑theological thinking.

2. Presentism

He projects contemporary racial politics backwards into the 18th century, reading modern anxieties into historical actors who did not share them.

3. Source Manipulation

Rather than deriving conclusions from evidence, he reshapes evidence to fit conclusions. This is the hallmark of Stalinist historiography.

4. Rejection of Class Analysis

The class struggle—central to any Marxist account—is absent. The Revolution becomes a morality play of white oppressors and Black victims, not a conflict between colonial bourgeois forces and imperial authority.

5. Political Instrumentalism

History is shaped to serve current racialist politics rather than seeking genuine understanding. Its purpose is to mobilise resentment. That’s why the pseudo-left favours Horne’s work: it offers a superficially radical appearance while backing a reactionary agenda.

Conclusion: The Necessity of Historical Truth for Working‑Class Unity

The falsification of the American Revolution is not an academic dispute. It is a political intervention aimed at disarming the working class by severing it from the progressive traditions of the past. The Revolution was not a counter‑revolution. It was a decisive step in the global struggle against feudalism and absolutism. This struggle created the conditions for the later abolition of slavery and the emergence of the modern working class.

The Holocaust: A New History Paperback – 1 Jun. 2009 by Doris Bergen – The History Press

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In the opinion, not of evil men, but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can be helpful to. . .

John Stuart Mill

“Palestine appears a tragic mirage, Biro-bidjan a bureaucratic farce. The Kremlin refuses to accept refugees. The “anti-fascist” congresses of old ladies and young careerists do not have the slightest importance. Now more than ever, the fate of the Jewish people—not only their political but also their physical fate—is indissolubly linked with the emancipating struggle of the international proletariat. Only audacious mobilization of the workers against reaction, creation of workers’ militia, direct physical resistance to the fascist gangs, increasing self-confidence, activity and audacity on the part of all the oppressed can provoke a change in the relation of forces, stop the world wave of fascism, and open a new chapter in the history of humanity.”

Leon Trotsky

“Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.”

― Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question

This book is not without merit. Her study is well-researched using new sources which draw on the testimonies of both survivors and eyewitnesses, as well as rare photographs, to reveal the global nature of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis.

Bergen’s book adds to an already very crowded market. In his excellent review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, the Marxist writer David North made the following perceptive point: “For all that has been said and written about the Holocaust, it remains a strangely obscure event. It is true that a vast amount of empirical data about the Holocaust has been collected. We possess detailed information about how the Nazis organised and executed their “Final Solution,” the murder of six million European Jews. And yet the issues that are central to an understanding of the Holocaust—its historical origins, political causes and, finally, its place in the history of the twentieth century—have, with very few exceptions, been dealt with poorly. This is, really, an intolerable state of affairs. The one basic question raised by the Holocaust, “Why did it happen?” is precisely that to which it is most difficult to obtain an answer.”[1]

I want to say that Bergen attempts to answer the question “Why did it happen posed by North, but she does not even come close. Bergen’s work is strong on empirical data and incorporates the ‘voices’ of the Holocaust, but light on analysis. She says next to nothing about the betrayals of the leadership of both the Stalinist German Communist Party and the German Social Democratic Party, which allowed not only Hitler to come to power without a shot being fired and led to the crushing of the workers’ movement, which was a prerequisite for the Nazis to murder 6 million jews.

Given the extent of her research and the fact that she makes little attempt to examine the betrayals of Stalinism and Social Democracy, it is not surprising that Bergen claims that there was little resistance to the rise of the Nazis to power. Daniel Goldhagen, who praises the book on its back cover, makes a similar point in his book.

Goldhagen writes: The Nazi German revolution … was an unusual revolution in that, domestically, it was being realised—the repression of the political left in the first few years notwithstanding—without massive coercion and violence. … By and large, it was a peaceful revolution willingly acquiesced to by the German people. Domestically, the Nazi German revolution was, on the whole, consensual.

David North replies, “Until I read those words, I had been inclined to look upon Goldhagen as a rather sad and somewhat pathetic figure, a young man whose study of the fate of European Jewry had left him intellectually, if not emotionally, traumatised. However, in this paragraph, something alarming emerges. Except for its treatment of the Jews, the Nazi “revolution”—Goldhagen does not use the word “counterrevolution”—was a rather benign affair. His reference to the “repression of the political left” is inserted between hyphens, suggesting that it was not all too big a deal. The claim that the Nazi conquest of power was “a peaceful revolution willingly acquiesced to by the German people” is a despicable falsification. What Goldhagen refers to as the “repression of the political left” consisted, in fact, of the physical destruction of mass socialist parties that represented the hopes and aspirations of millions of workers and the best elements of the German intelligentsia for a just and decent world. German socialism was not only a political movement: it was, for all its internal contradictions, both the inspirer and expression of a flowering of human intellect and culture. Its destruction required the barbaric methods in which the Nazis excelled.”[2]

Given the right-wing nature of Goldhagen’s work, if this were my book, I would not have him anywhere near it. There is no need for me to examine Goldhagen’s previous historiography on the matter of Genocide, as this has been more than ably covered by others, such as David North and Daniel Finkelstein.[3] It would, however, be remiss of me not to discuss recent pronouncements by several historians, including Goldhagen, on the ongoing Genocide carried out by the fascist Israeli government in Gaza.

In a recent well-written and thoughtful article, the historian Shira Klein wrote, “A chasm has formed between Holocaust scholars concerning Israel/Palestine, deepening immeasurably since 7 October 2023. Unlike previous controversies in the field, the divide is not just historical or methodological; it revolves around academics’ role in the world today, particularly the public stand they choose to take on Palestine/Israel and Zionism. Two main camps have formed. Put reductively, one camp defends Israel, while the other defends Palestinians, although differences between individual scholars within each camp make for more of a spectrum than a clear-cut divide. How, despite a diversity of ideas and foci within each camp, did two academic-political antipodes solidify over several decades, and how has 7 October and the ensuing war widened the rift between them?[4]

Klein makes the point that scholars supporting Israeli war aggression is nothing new and dates back to the illegal formation of the Israeli state.  What is a relatively new phenomenon is the equating of criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza with anti-Semitism.  One of the leaders of this new movement is Daniel Goldhagen. Goldhagen, following the 11 September 2001 attack, wrote that “the internet and television’s biased stories and inflammatory images of Palestinian suffering” were nothing but “globalised antisemitism.” According to Goldhagen. Europe had exported its classical racist and Nazi anti-semitism.to Arab countries, which they applied to Israel and Jews in general.” Then the Arab countries re-exported the new hybrid demonology back to Europe and, using the United Nations and other international institutions, to different countries around the world.”15 In 2006, while Israel was curtailing Palestinians’ movement with a massive separation barrier, Goldhagen contended that “hostility to Israel is not, and never was, based on Israel’s policies.”[5]

In his book The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide, David North opposes vehemently the slander that opposition to Israel’s genocide is antisemitic, saying this claim is absurd, given the significant participation of so many Jewish people in the anti-genocide protests—including, one could add, a developing movement within Israel itself.

He also points out the brazen hypocrisy of the howls of “antisemitism” given the “open alliance of the imperialist powers with the regime in Ukraine, whose principal national hero, Stepan Bandera, was a vicious fascist and antisemite, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews of Ukraine. The establishment of the Zionist state was not only a tragedy for the Palestinians; it was, and is, a tragedy for the Jewish people as well. Zionism never was, and is not today, a solution to the historic oppression and persecution of the Jewish people.”

He quotes the assessment of Leon Trotsky, who warned in 1938 that the Jews faced the threat of “physical extermination” in the coming war, and declared in July 1940, one year after World War II had begun: “ The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it was: a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. … Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system”.[6]

Given that Bergen has not elaborated her position openly in the press as regards the Israeli genocide, it is perhaps not surprising that she has not distanced herself from Goldhagen’s blatant right-wing stance.

She did, however, sign The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which, according to its website, “ Is a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism as it manifests in countries around the world today. It includes a preamble, definition, and a set of 15 guidelines that provide detailed guidance for those seeking to recognise antisemitism to craft responses. It was developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to address a growing challenge: providing clear guidance on how to identify and combat antisemitism while protecting free expression. Initially signed by 210 scholars, it now has around 370 signatories.[7]

[1] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[2] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[3] https://newleftreview.org/issues/i224/articles/norman-finkelstein-daniel-jonah-goldhagen-s-crazy-thesis-a-critique-of-hitler-s-willing-executioners.pdf

[4]  The Growing Rift between Holocaust Scholars over Israel/

Palestine http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14623528.2024.2448061

[5] Daniel Goldhagen, “The Radical Politics of Islamic Fundamentalism,” SPME, 13 March 2006, https://spme.org/

[6] The Only Salvation for the Jews (July 1940) The Militant, Vol. X No. 35, 31 August 1946, p.www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1946/v10n35/trotsky.htm

[7] https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/