Rudolf de Jong

Some general remarks on anarchism, "Jews", zionism and anti-semitism with some concrete information on the Netherlands

1. General remarks

There are good reasons to write here the word Jews with inverted commas - "Jews" - because there are and there have been, and especially in the anarchist and in other revolutionary movements, a lot of with Jewish origin or background without being Jew in the religieus sense of the word. For practical reason however I don't use the inverted commas.
So, what is a Jew? In my opinion: an aspect of the personality of a certain individual. The content of this aspect and the importance it has for the person has to depend on the person in question. In other words: everybody has to decide for himself if he is Jewish and in which way. So it is possible to consider oneself to be jewish and to be an atheist at the same time. I hope to illustrate this with the personality of Gustav Landauer.
A lot of anarchists militants were Jewish. Many had there roots in Germany, Eastern Europe or Russia and many came as immigrants to Western Europe or the Americas. Their anarchist conceptions were not influenced by the religion of their parents, or only in a negative way. I don't see much difference between the attitude towards religion of these Jewish anarchists and other libertarians. About their importance for the movement there is certainly a lot to say. I will mention some persons and some movements.
Antisemitsm has been "justified" on religious grounds, on social-cultural and economic grounds, on racists grounds and for political reasons. Mostly we see a mixture of the arguments. Antisemitism clash with all forms of liberalism, socialism and anarchism, it denies fundamental human rights and denies the right of persons to decide for themselves if they want to be Jewish and in what sense.
Nevertheless it remains a shamefull fact that anti-Jewish remarks and antisemitism is to be find in the writings of anarchists. Proudhon, Bakounin and others has to be mentioned here. We have to investigate their antisemitism and the reaction of other anarchists. And we have to ask if their antisemitism was different from other forms of prejudice (national prejudices for instance) among libertarians. We have to ask too if the anarchists differed from other revolutionaries and socialists in their attitude against Jews and about antisemitism.
Antisemitism as a social movement dates from the end of the 19th century (Dreyfus-affaire, pogroms in Russia; christian [catholic] social movements in Austria). It was - perhaps with a few exception - rejected by the anarchists.
Zionism was in a decisive way the reaction against the antisemitic social movements. An interesting anarchist report about antisemitism and zionism was written for the (forbidden) international anarchist congres in Paris in 1900. As a specific issue antisemitism remained rare in anarchist writings.
The libertarian reaction towards Nazism and the Shoah (holocaust) didn't differ very much from the reactions of other civilised people. It made however many libertarians realized that their conceptions about progress and revolution had been too optimistic. In consequence many turned away from revolutionary expectations to a more modest libertarian aims.
On the kibbutz movement I found few signs of interest in anarchist writings (Augustin Souchy being an exception).

2. The Netherlands

The Netherlands have a reputation of tolerance. Nevertheless there has been social-cultural and religious antisemitism in moderated forms. In these moderated forms it was often social accepted, as has been the case with other - religious and racist - prejudices.
It was rare in anarchist and socialist circles.
In the labour movement Holland - especially Amsterdam has known a socialist trade-union of diamant-workers: ANDB. The ANDB was of course not religious but the diamant workers came fast exclusive from the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
This ANDB was the model of the social-democratic ideas about trade-unionism: discipline, strong leadership, rejection of direct action, collaboration with the party etc. So the anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists were outspoken ennemies of the ANDB. I found only once in the biography of Henri Polak, the leader of the ANDB, an accusation of antisemitism directed against Polak by an anarchist; this anarchist was a Jew himself.
Cultural antisemitism was rare in libertarian circles. In the thirties however, at the time that Hitler was already in power there was a bitter discussion in the libertarian press about antisemitic remarks in the "Vrije Socialist" and in its editor G. Rijnders.
After the cration of the state of Israel there has been discussions on Zionism, the existence of Israel, its policy etc. These discussions didn't differ much from the discussion among other people. The outstanding libertarian publicist A.L. Constandse was involved in this discussions.

3. Israel and the Palestinians

In the anarchist movement the discussions and positions on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian-Arabian world has often been a question of "taking sides".
The older generations of anarchists has been mostly in favour of Israel and indeed very happy about the existence of Israel and they accepted without much critisism the Israelian position in the conflict.
In the sixties the tide turned: young anarchists and activists embraced uncritically the Palestinian position and defended the activities of the PLO. Sometimes this anti-Israelian position was mixed up with antisemitism. Especially in France there has been discussions on this topic.
I believe an anarchist approach to the conflict is possible. It has to turn away from a nationalistic appoach and from the admiration for national liberation movements.
The anarchist conceptions about the social revolution has been partly formed (and it was an essential part) in the ideological debates of Proudhon and Bakounin against the idea about national revolution, defended by men as Garibaldi and Mazzini. Today the accent has to be on the human rights of ordinary people versus the idea of national identity (the state).
In the dutch libertarian review "De AS" I once tried to formulate an anarchist and at the same time realistic approach without much illusions. I compared Yasser Arafat with the dutch national heroe William of Orange and blamed both for the same reason: looking everywhere for help and prestige, forgetting selfhelp. After all: real peace is a peace between human beings, not a state-of-no-war between states.