A Necessary Critique
Response to comments on United By Hate: The Uses of Anti-Semitism in Chávez’s Venezuela“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”
—Through the Looking Glass
The responses to our article raise an important question: is it possible to criticize the most egregious failings of a so-called socialist regime without turning into patsies of corporate and imperial interests? In our view the current international environment presents distinct opportunities—and even the obligation—to provide a rigorous criticism of Chavismo from the left. The Chávez government has systematically targeted its internal opposition as abject and anti-national, and therefore deprived of any possible legitimacy. The political uses of anti-Semitism are part and parcel of that strategy.
Our most vehement critics discard our argument, accusing us of distorting the facts, and, in some cases, even of outright lying. They bridle at our decision to retrieve the political logic of Chavismo, and they try (unsuccessfully in every case) to argue away this or that piece of evidence, in the hope of discrediting the overall argument. Seemingly, for these critics, the usual standards and procedures of social analysis need to be suspended in the name of “the people,” the “revolution,” or, most poignantly, the “hero.” None of our critics engages our basic argument: that anti-Semitism and homophobia sporadically but consistently emerge as symptoms and instruments of a bigger project, namely, to render any opponent of Hugo Chávez vulnerable to the accusation of being a pawn of devious international interests. By ignoring this logic, our critics leave the door open for Chávez and Chavista spokespersons to make as many slanderous or injurious utterances as they wish, without compromising the purity of the regime. Since our critics do not engage this argument, we will limit our response here to their isolated observations.
Here are some of the main criticisms, and our responses to them:
1. Ceresole was expelled by the Chavista government in 1999, and Chávez disavowed him. Ceresole was indeed forced out of Venezuela in 1999 by the more moderate, and now defeated, wing of the Chávez government, captained by José Vicente Rangel. Apparently, Ceresole had become a liability for at least some powerful elements, not only because of his anti-Semitism and his rampant militarism, but also because he was reputedly a member of Hezbollah. Chávez did not disavow him, as we noted in our article, where we cite his recognition of Ceresole as a major intellectual inspiration as recently as 2006. Our critics decided to ignore this, and, more importantly, ignored the fundamental point, which is, simply, that Ceresole is a key ideologue of the regime. According to his own admission, Hugo Chávez studied Ceresole deeply before taking power, and he took special interest in Ceresole’s geopolitical views, which is precisely where Ceresole’s anti-Semitism comes most prominently into play.
2. Venezuelan society has always been mildly homophobic, and Chávez’s statements are broadly consistent with the general ethos of the country. We never doubted that homophobia in Venezuela is a problem. There is, however, one point that we do insist upon: it matters that Hugo Chávez is the president of the Republic. He has a representative function that gives his words, and those of prominent members of his government, special weight. Chávez blurs the distinction between himself as president and himself as ‘everyman,’ whenever it suits him. In this way, he can make outrageous claims while disavowing their unwholesome policy implications. We are meant to understand his words exactly as he, like Humpty Dumpty, chooses them to signify. By invoking Venezuela’s diffuse homophobia to justify Chávez’s declarations, our critics are buying into Chavez’s Humpty Dumpty world.
3. The Tiferet Israel Synagogue was attacked by a band of thieves rather than by the Chávez government. Once again, our critics seem bent on ignoring what we actually wrote: “Whether the perpetrators of the synagogue attack were following instructions from above or were merely vandals hiding behind the government’s anti-Semitic rhetoric is to a large degree irrelevant.”
4. Some leaders of Venezuela’s Jewish community exonerated the Chávez government of the attack on the synagogue and, by extension, of anti-Semitic policies. We agree with the interpretation of some of the bloggers: this response is characteristic of a beleaguered minority that is trying, above all, to soothe and to placate the powers that be. So, for instance, Elías Farache, whose conciliatory statements to Chávez have often been cited by official Venezuelan sources, had already sounded a warning on the rise of anti-Semitism throughout Latin America in 2002, and called for immigration to Israel. One irony of Chavista anti-Semitism is that it could end up hurting the Palestinian cause by fostering immigration to Israel.
5. Chávez’s use of the expression “Christ’s killers” stems from proximity to Liberation Theology. There is no evidence of the intellectual influence of Liberation Theology on Chávez’s anti-Jewish proclamations. This statement slurs Liberation Theology, which does not equate Christ’s killers with the Jews, as Chávez does. Our severest critic on the Web site 3 Quarks Daily, “Pepito,” unwittingly put this issue very precisely: “Liberation theology, of which Chávez is a fan, routinely accused the Latin American rich elites of being ‘Christ killers’ with no mention of the Jews at all.” This is precisely the problem: unlike Liberation Theology, Chávez associates the “oligarchy” with “the Jews.”
6. The real aim of our criticism is to defend U.S. big-business interests by exploiting alleged concern for the rights of national, religious, and sexual minorities, and our piece is an example of “liberal imperialism.” We sympathize with the concerns that underlie this criticism. After all, the invasion of Iraq was predicated on an alleged imperative to defend democracy. Nevertheless, the situation today is different. President Obama is not about to invade Venezuela, nor are we in any way or form advocating this kind of intervention. On the other hand, defending the authoritarian strategies of the Chávez regime, and its use of conspiracy theories to marginalize the opposition, is an untenable stance for the democratic left. The starkest reminder of this is the current Iranian crisis, where President Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad claimed that the opposition movement was a figment of Zionist media propaganda. Ahmadinejad received Chávez’s full support.
To us, all of this smacks more of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion than of a progressive critique of Israeli policies.
7. We should stop “psychoanalyzing” Chavismo, and pay attention to its real achievements. Our critics seem to be uneasy with the word “shit”: it is not our term, but Chávez’s. Neither is our criticism psychoanalytic or even psychological (though Hugo Chávez may be crying out for this sort of attention). It is, rather, a direct appraisal of political vocabulary and its strategic mobilization. We did not review the various accomplishments of the Chávez government in social policy, education, or medicine, because they are not the subject of our essay. Beyond the very commendable policies oriented toward the redistribution of Venezuela’s oil wealth among the poor, we do not see much creativity at the level of the economic model, nor are we convinced that the Bolivarian regime is not producing its own national bourgeoisie (the “Boli-burguesía”). However, this is not the subject of our intervention.
8. We are paid “shills” of some obscure power. We’d like to see our check, please.
9. Paramilitaries are not only Chavistas, but also used by the opposition. What we wrote was that given the never-ending duality of power and endemic lawlessness in Venezuela, “paramilitary groups, drug mafias, high crime rates, death squads, and corruption thrive.” This implies that the present situation in Venezuela fosters violent extra-legal action from a variety of sources, including Chavistas, opposition members, and privateers.
10. Our concern with anti-Semitism is misplaced because Jews compose only 0.05 percent of the population. This kind of statistical reasoning is unconvincing, and misses the point, which is that the figure of the Jew is used to characterize the opposition as anti-national, and therefore as prey to dark foreign interests. Indeed, there are a number of historic examples where anti-Semitism is deployed in nations without Jewish a population or with a Jewish population smaller than that of Venezuela, such as Poland, Indonesia, and Japan.
11. We collapse anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, thereby falsely accusing Chavez of the latter. Hugo Chavez’s allusions and reactions to and statements about Israel are excessive and disproportionate to the issues that are at stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This excess is anti-Semitism, and it has a purpose: aligning Chavez’s internal and external enemies. We call Chavez’s invocations of Israel excessive because there is no parallel criticism of other governments who might violate similar principles. There have been no massive government-sponsored rallies in Venezuela protesting Indonesian policy in East Timor, Russian policy in Chechnya, or Chinese policies vis-à-vis Tibet; there is no consistent allusion to infiltrations or arms sales by French, British, Chinese, or Cuban secret service agents. Meanwhile, the Mossad is charged with lurking behind every conservative operation throughout the Americas. We also call Chávez’s invocations of Israel excessive because his movement has identified Islam as Venezuela’s national patrimony, while the star of David has been equated to the swastika. Finally, we call Chávez’s language excessive and anti-Semitic because he has chosen President Ahmadinejad as his closest international ally after Fidel Castro, without distancing himself from the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust and explicit calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Apparently our critics find no anti-Semitic connotations when Chavez mentions Jews, Christ killers, the abject Venezuelan oligarchy, and the riches of the world in the same breath, or when he blames the Jewish State of Israel for perpetrating atrocities against “half the world.” Nor are they bothered when the Chavista TV anchor par excellence, Mario Silva, claims that the Venezuelan student movement is financed by Jewish businessmen. To us, all of this smacks more of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion than of a progressive critique of Israeli policies.
In a Humpty Dumpty world, when Christ killers and Jews are mentioned in the same breath, the referent is merely the oligarchy; in any other world, expressions have histories, and denotation cannot shake off ideological connotation. Not even Commander Hugo Chávez can make words mean only what he opportunistically wants them to mean.
Comments
About the Author
Claudio Lomnitz, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, is author of Death and the Idea of Mexico and Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism.
Rafael Sánchez teaches in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. His forthcoming book is Dancing Jacobins: A Genealogy of Latin American Populism.
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Claudio Lomnitz and Rafael Sánchez, United By Hate
Max Ajl, A Response to Lomnitz and Sánchez
Claudio Lomnitz, Mexico’s Race Problem
Greg Grandin, The Rebel and Mr. Danger
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As defined by who? Over 40 years of occupation, assassination, de-development, torture, oppression, and murder. Over 40 years of massacre, dispossession, creeping annexation, territorial apartheid, humiliation, and horror? That is Israel's record in the Middle East. Palestine has understandably become a rallying point for humanists the world over--as the apotheosis of Western settler-colonialism, still playing itself out, day by dark, sickening day. It shouldn't be necessary to add this, but I am Jewish and have been to Venezuelan repeatedly. The anti-Semitism I encountered was at the hands of the upper-class. Who are these metropolitan professors to pronounce on the "correct" response to human suffering?
"This excess is anti-Semitism, and it has a purpose: aligning Chavez’s internal and external enemies. We call Chavez’s invocations of Israel excessive because there is no parallel criticism of other governments who might violate similar principles. There have been no massive government-sponsored rallies in Venezuela protesting Indonesian policy in East Timor, Russian policy in Chechnya, or Chinese policies vis-à-vis Tibet; there is no consistent allusion to infiltrations or arms sales by French, British, Chinese, or Cuban secret service agents."
A discourse precisely echoing that of Israel's apologists in mainstream American political discourse. As though Indonesia's policies in East Timor or those of China in Tibet echo those of Israel in the former Palestine Mandate.
for shame.
You do realize, I assume, that the premise of your criticism (kudos on the pretentious title) is that there are many ways to define to the extent of oppression, yet you still claim that via some objective measure the crimes of China in Tibet are less than those of Israel in the Palestinian territories (perhaps you're not aware that the low estimate of Tibetans killed by the Chinese government during the 60 years of occupation there is 200,000). I have no sympathy for the Israeli government, but I also don't pretend that it's the only regime on earth that oppresses. Have you looked at Russia's Chechnya policy lately?
I think Lomnitz and Sanchez are a bit off in their conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel statements, which is a shame because their analysis, otherwise, is on the money. There's little need to talk about Israel, I think, in the context of Chavista anti-Semitism. But, Max, you're way off base if you think you can get away with an argument that simultaneously implores us to consider a relativistic approach to human suffering while downplaying other instances of injustice for being somehow "less bad."
I don't ask for a "relativistic" approach to human suffering, but ask: who are Lomnitz and Sanchez, affluent metropolitan intellectuals, to determine what is a disproportionate or proportionate reaction?
I have been working on my thesis and haven't had time to take apart their claims but I've been looking at Venezuelan anti-Semitism well before it was on their radar screen and they get quite a lot wrong--they also respond to point 11 as though it can be analytically detached from the rest of their piece, when in fact many of the arguments depend on that very collapsing/conflation.
Here's the question: when does specific focus on Israeli state policy/anti-Zionism (two different things) become anti-Semitic? The answer: when one can produce evidence of Jew-hatred.
They have cited evidence of anti-Semitism on the Venezuelan left. They haven't found evidence of it in the government. In fact real neo-Nazis can be found within the Venezuelan opposition, but that didn't make its way into their analysis.
There's another issue: to what extent is Venezuelan anti-Semitism the product of a vicious discourse belonging to Israel's "defenders" that equates Jews with Israel and therefore Israeli evil with Jewish evil? One output of that discourse is that anger at Israeli policy manifests among the ignorant as anti-Semitism, but that's a direct and predictable output of the conflation that Lomnitz and Sanchez are partially defending here.
Who again are the anti-Semites?
Correct. So in contemporary political discourse, criticism of Israel does lead to anti-Semitism because of the conflation/collapse I wrote about above. Lomnitz and Sanchez's piece taken to its logical conclusion is, as I pretentiously put it, not only an apologia for state terror, but a call for muting criticism of Israel, because among the ignorant, the "connotation" is that it is an attack on Jews. This viewpoint is indefensible.
"Those who killed Christ" has a specific historical meaning, shared by Jews and Catholic anti-semites alike, and its use by the head of a nation, let alone a nation with an established Jewish minority, is indefensible.
I believe the nation of Israel is indefensible; as a Jew, I see it as an embarrassment and a stain. But when the leader of Venezuela gets up in front of an audience on Christmas and calls on the blood libel, he disqualifies himself from commenting on Israeli policy. Why should I see any of his commentary as anything other than point-scoring bigotry, when he dregs up two-thousand year old slurs and slander? Criticism of Israel becomes anti-semitism when it falls from the mouth of a man whose other speech and other actions paint him as an anti-semite.
The "connotation" of Chavez's other speech and other actions put his criticism of Israel, no matter how well deserved, firmly into the category of bad faith. He's a man profiting from bigotry, and Venezuela deserves better.
What I'd like to see is evidence of anti-Semitism. You accuse me of having it backwards, but in fact Lomnitz and Sanchez are the ones who have it backwards. I wasn't going to do a close analysis of their work, but I'll do a word-by-word breakdown of their response now.
Hugo Chavez’s allusions and reactions to and statements about Israel are excessive and disproportionate to the issues that are at stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This statement presumes that there is a reaction that’s not excessive, that is proportionate. By this precise standard I am anti-Semitic, because I spend a “disproportionate” time attacking Israeli policy. And by this standard Lomnitz and Sanchez are anti-Palestinian bigots: they spend more time muttering about Venezuelan anti-Semitism than Israeli politicide. This standard is unacceptable, as I think you’ll agree: we may not read off bigotry from criticism of state policies.
This excess is anti-Semitism, and it has a purpose: aligning Chavez’s internal and external enemies. We call Chavez’s invocations of Israel excessive because there is no parallel criticism of other governments who might violate similar principles.
This a police mentality, presuming that all issues should be criticized in direct proportion to the amount of human terror they involve, on some presumably objective basis, and that Israeli actions may only be criticized after other actions have been criticized in correct proportion. Again, by this standard, Lomnitz, Sanchez, and I are bigots.
There have been no massive government-sponsored rallies in Venezuela protesting Indonesian policy in East Timor, Russian policy in Chechnya, or Chinese policies vis-à-vis Tibet; there is no consistent allusion to infiltrations or arms sales by French, British, Chinese, or Cuban secret service agents. Meanwhile, the Mossad is charged with lurking behind every conservative operation throughout the Americas.
Again the same line of argument applies.
We also call Chávez’s invocations of Israel excessive because his movement has identified Islam as Venezuela’s national patrimony, while the star of David has been equated to the swastika.
In a world of rampant Western Islamophobic bigotry, a world where Muslims are called terrorists, where their countries are under imperial occupation, where they are massacred daily by Israel and the US, Bolivarian Venezuela has decided to line up with a religion that is used to identify people as official enemies and terrorists. This makes his actions “excessive”? Lomnitz and Sanchez are collapsing distinctions between Israel, Jews, Judaism, Zionism, and anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and opposition to Israeli policies, and mixing it up with non-sense about Islam as Venezuela’s “natural patrimony,” suggesting anti-Semitism only if Islam connotes anti-Semitism. Someone looking for evidence of bigotry finally finds a nice nugget: but the bigotry is Sanchez’s and Lomnitz’s.
The equation of the Star of David to the Swastika is again by definition not associated with anti-Semitism. The Star of David is an Israeli symbol, associated with Israeli state policy, and not Jews. They are tacitly invoking the EU’s definition of anti-Semitism, which is total non-sense.
Finally, we call Chávez’s language excessive and anti-Semitic because he has chosen President Ahmadinejad as his closest international ally after Fidel Castro, without distancing himself from the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust and explicit calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
This is what’s called realpolitik. Putting aside the veracity of these claims, which are disputable, although I’m not interested in doing so here, they call on the leader of a country subject to imperial subversion through the NED and external destabilization through Colombia to criticize an allied regime. This is not a standard one sees imposed on other countries or regimes.
Apparently our critics find no anti-Semitic connotations when Chavez mentions Jews, Christ killers, the abject Venezuelan oligarchy, and the riches of the world in the same breath, or when he blames the Jewish State of Israel for perpetrating atrocities against “half the world.”
“The Jewish State of Israel”; not my state, although yes, our stain and our shame, because of the conflation reinforced here by Lomnitz and Sanchez although they deny it, again and again. It was not merely local Venezuelan Jewish groups that denied connotations of anti-Semitism but the American Jewish Committee. As someone has asked elsewhere, ““do references to ‘Christ killers’ and ‘gold and silver’ have the same connotations in their culture as they do in ours?” As the Forward article answered, “One official noted that Latin America’s so-called Liberation Theology has long depicted Jesus as a socialist and consequently speaks of gentile business elites as “Christ-killers.””
Discussion over.
Nor are they bothered when the Chavista TV anchor par excellence, Mario Silva, claims that the Venezuelan student movement is financed by Jewish businessmen. To us, all of this smacks more of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion than of a progressive critique of Israeli policies.
Indefensible, and surely a bigot, but not the government.
As for your statements:
Every sane person can separate the actions of a government from the actions of its people. That's what's being objected to; Chavez's rhetoric conflates Israel with Jews with Homosexuals with The Enemy Within. Everyone who doesn't love him-- from deposed right-wing militarists to concerned left-wing dissenters, get rolled up into a single category.
A lot of people aren’t sane. The conflation must be proved, rather than assumed. I suggest that it relies on a different conflation: the conflation of Jews and Israel, and hence the transformation of Israeli crimes to Jewish crimes.
"Those who killed Christ" has a specific historical meaning, shared by Jews and Catholic anti-semites alike, and its use by the head of a nation, let alone a nation with an established Jewish minority, is indefensible.
I dealt with this above. Even if you find my explanation not entirely convincing, which I would understand although I don’t agree nor do I yield the point, you’ll agree that there is room for ambiguity.
But when the leader of Venezuela gets up in front of an audience on Christmas and calls on the blood libel, he disqualifies himself from commenting on Israeli policy. Why should I see any of his commentary as anything other than point-scoring bigotry, when he dregs up two-thousand year old slurs and slander? Criticism of Israel becomes anti-semitism when it falls from the mouth of a man whose other speech and other actions paint him as an anti-semite.
But it is not clear that he has done so. Criticism of Israeli can anyway serve as a mask for anti-Semitism, but it can never be anti-Semitic. Let Israeli crimes cease, let Israel atone for them, and then we’ll smoke out the anti-Semites.
The only odd stereotype they seem to have about Jews down there (in Yucatan) is that we live to about 120. They say "every time a Jew dies" instead of "once in a blue moon"--and they are very self-conscious when they say it around me because they realize they must sound really racist, I think. I think they also have the stereotype of Jews being smart. Oh, and of course they do believe that Jews killed Christ, but they don't have any enmity toward modern-day Jews for that, as far as I can tell. In fact the people I've spoken with believe that the Jews DO have a special covenant with God, etc..
Anyway I have no experience with Venezuela but the experience I have with Mexico tells me that we can't just assume everyone in the world has the same Jew stereotypes that we are familiar with.
Oh, and Ahmedinejad never said he wanted to erase Israel from the map or push it into the sea. That was a bad translation. Of course he may be very good at implying that, but he has not said it explicitly that I'm aware of.
Max says this is "police mentality." I'm not sure what that means. I think it's fine for Jews and Palestinians to focus on Israel, since it concerns them especially. Maybe the same goes for U.S. Americans, as long as they first criticize the U.S. for its wars, since Israel is a U.S. client state.
But why does it seem like it's just the "cool" thing all over the world to criticize Israel more than any other country? I think there's probably some antisemitism involved, yeah. But there are other factors. For example, in both Israel/Palestine and Sudan, you have a "white vs. colored" i.e. race war. And everyone loves a good race war. It's so simple to understand. Then let's consider the West's Global War o[f] Terror which is targeting the Islamic Middle East, and there's another reason Israel is front and center. They are a front line in the GWoT.
Billy
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