Greta Thunberg and the left's deep hatred of Jews
She was the global icon of the climate movement. But now she is loudly inciting against Israel. Many of her admirers are appalled, but there is also applause in the left-wing ecological milieu. The Thunberg scandal shows: There is a major anti-Semitism problem in the political cosmos of the left.
Wearing a Palestinian scarf around her neck, Greta Thunberg once again engaged in anti-Israel activism in front of 85,000 people in Amsterdam. She shouted to the crowd that the climate protection movement had a duty to "listen to the voices of those who are oppressed". Thunberg then handed the microphone to Sara Rachdan (also in the Palestinian scarf), who claimed that Israel was "committing genocide in my country". Rachdan is known for celebrating Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, admiring terrorists and trivializing the Holocaust. Many participants in the demonstration reacted indignantly, with one man even jumping on stage in front of the cameras and shouting into the microphone: "I came here for a climate demonstration, not to hear political views." Thunberg countered the man's appearance by chanting "no climate justice on occupied land".
Thunberg had no words of sympathy or even protest after the massacre of more than 1200 Israeli civilians; instead, she immediately showed solidarity with the Palestinians. Two weeks ago, she had herself photographed with fellow campaigners calling for a "free Palestine" and carrying a plush octopus - a classic anti-Semitic symbol widely used by the Nazis for the alleged domination of the world by the Jews. She then shared posts denouncing the alleged "genocide" in Gaza and calling for the destruction of Israel under the slogan "from the river to the sea". However, nothing is heard about the rocket attacks and terrorist attacks by Hamas.
The president of the German-Israeli Society and Green Party politician Volker Beck described Thunberg's statements as the "end of Greta Thunberg as a climate activist". From now on, she is "a full-time Israel-hater". Former Green Party chairwoman Simone Peter wrote: "How bitter that she has completely discredited herself with her stance on Israel." Green MP Marlene Schönberger is also disappointed: "Greta is no longer a role model."
Luisa Neubauer keeps her distance
Many climate and ecological activists are alienated or even appalled by Thunberg's loud anti-Semitism. Thunberg became famous five years ago for her pictures of a worried girl tirelessly protesting against climate change with a cardboard box in her hand. She lent visibility to the youth movement she triggered and the myth of youthful innocence. The first cracks appeared in the Thunberg iconography when it became known that Thunberg was running all kinds of lucrative PR businesses with her father. Her ruthless rhetoric ("How dare you") also alienated some, while others were annoyed by the falsification of photos. But with her demonstrative anti-Israel stance, Thunberg is now losing sympathy and credibility on a huge scale.
"It's obvious that things are falling apart," says Luisa Neubauer, the most prominent activist of Fridays for Future in Germany, distancing herself. We now have to see "with whom we can still find a working basis based on shared values and where that might be", she told Die Zeit.
But there are not only critics. Thunberg is really dividing the climate movement. This is because she is receiving applause from a considerable section of the left-wing ecological scene - including at the demonstration in Amsterdam. Hatred of Israel is deeply rooted in the international climate movement. Recent posts by the international "Fridays for Future" movement on social media are frightening testimony to this.
Left-wing anti-Semitism feeds on unreflected post-colonialism, globalization criticism and anti-capitalism, Israel is stigmatized as a stooge of the USA ("powers of capital") in a kind of bonsai anti-Americanism.
Marx was already an anti-Semite
But the actual roots of left-wing anti-Semitism lie even deeper. Karl Marx himself provided material for sheer anti-Semitic hatred in his text "On the Jewish Question" (1843): "What is the worldly reason for Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the secular cult of the Jews? The haggler. What is its worldly god? The money." Marx's passages about Jews sometimes read like original Nazi texts. Judaism is "a general contemporary anti-social element". In the Jewish religion lies "contempt for theory, art, history, man as an end in himself". Even "the woman is bartered away".
This criticism by Marx was subsequently adapted by generations of leftists. Both the KPD and the DKP warned against "Jewish capital" in Germany for decades and many members of the RAF terrorists were trained in camps run by Palestinian groups in Jordan or Yemen. On February 13, 1970, a fire was set in the retirement home of the Israelite Cultural Community in Munich with a can of petrol. Seven elderly people, mostly Holocaust survivors, lost their lives in the home at Reichenbachstrasse 27. According to research by historian Wolfgang Kraushaar, the attack was carried out by left-wing radicals from the "Tupamaros München" group. After the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games, Ulrike Meinhof wrote a paper in prison "on the strategy of the anti-imperialist struggle". In it, she praised the hostage-taking of Jewish athletes as exemplary and attacked the Federal Republic of Germany for paying Israel "its reparation capital" and supplying weapons.
Anti-Semitic GDR tradition
Soviet communism was also strongly anti-Semitic, and a "purge campaign" under Stalin was directed against an alleged "Jewish conspiracy of doctors". Since the Six-Day War in 1967, the left in Germany has largely taken sides with the Arab-Palestinian side. Old anti-Semitic stereotypes were mixed with extreme left-wing anti-imperialism.
There was also a broad tradition of socialist anti-Semitism in the GDR. The ARD television journalist Stefan Meining ("Kommunistische Judenpolitik") and the historian Michael Wolffsohn ("Die Deutschland-Akte") have documented this in detail. This anti-Semitic GDR tradition also continued in the PDS and its successor party, Die Linke. In the left-wing extremist milieu, Israel is seen as a stooge of the USA, of "imperialism and colonialism". Palestinians and Arabs, Muslims are victims, Israel and the USA are perpetrators. Yet Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, surrounded by nothing but Arab dictatorships.
The newer current of left-wing anti-Semitism mixes post-colonial attitudes with age-old resentments. Ultimately, the attempt is made to "cancel" Israel. Here, Thunberg becomes a leader of criticism of Israel. Her mass communication encourages the spread of conspiracy ideologies and Hamas propaganda in a movement that wants to listen to science. Thunberg has 15 million followers on Instagram and her "Free Palestine" photo has been viewed 25 million times on X (formerly Twitter) - presumably mainly by a young audience. She is thus bringing the left's hatred of Israel and deep-seated anti-Semitism to a whole new, young target group.
Source: www.ntv.de
