While the rising tide of anti-Semitism on the European left is most evident in the British Labor party, whose leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is an Israel-hater in the old Soviet mold, it is apparent elsewhere in Western Europe as well. Furthermore, writes Alex Joffe, there are disturbing signs that the U.S. is not so far behind. Joffe asks why it is that these hostile attitudes toward Jews and the Jewish state, long present on the fringes of the left, are now moving to the center:

Coupled with the burgeoning of racialized identity politics and “intersectionality”—localized versions of Third Worldism and the “red-green alliance” [between socialists and] Islamists—traditional anti-Semitism has been updated. Jews are suddenly called upon to [make a familiar false choice]: reject their identity and join the vanguard, or become an enemy of the people. . . .

Another explanation for the current explosion of deep-seated anti-Semitism is [that] Jews are simultaneously the most assimilated Western minority and the one that remains demonstrably—even uniquely—grateful to host nations and to the idea of the nation-state and its opportunities. This is intolerable to left-wing positions that reject the nation-state, national identity, and national pride. Jewish attachment to Israel compounds the transgression against post-nationalism, and this connection to a unique and cosmic evil positions the attitude firmly as old-new anti-Semitism. . . .

This sort of reasoning generally appeals most to members of the educated elite, but they have given license to popular outbreaks of what might be called middle-class anti-Semitism, expressed most vividly by hundreds if not thousands of British Labor-party members. A sudden eruption of mostly traditional anti-Semitism from the public was waiting for its moment, with oddly familiar rhetoric: Jews as disloyal, greedy, alien, clannish, manipulative, and conspiratorial. This is merely 19th-century anti-Semitism updated, no longer theological but not yet racial.

But anti-Semitic attitudes also refract another phenomenon: the unrootedness of a broad swath of the British populace from Britishness. Few nations have repudiated their histories with the speed and anger of Britain, and post-imperial and post-colonial Britain possesses a deep self-loathing of its history and culture. Few cultures are so explicit about guilt and repudiation, although this is matched by the American far left, which sees the country’s founding as Original Sin. These are elite formulas that have been disseminated to the middle class through the educational system and media.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.