Left-wing antisemitism got going during the foundations of the socialist movement in the late 19th century when some parts of the left, often as a tactical ploy, identified “the Jew” with finance and capitalism.

August Bebel, the German Social Democrat leader, shook his head and called this the “socialism of fools”.

There was much foolishness in Britain, too. “Wherever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men’s minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity,” warned the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1891, “you may be sure that a hooked-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances.”

Left-wing antisemitism never went away. It became the “anti-imperialism of idiots” in the last third of the 20th century, when vicious, well-funded and long-running anti-Zionist campaigns were conducted by the Stalinist states, in alliance with the authoritarian Arab states and parts of the western New Left.

Those campaigns laid the ground for the form taken by left-wing antisemitism today – antisemitic anti-Zionism.

Antisemitic anti-Zionism bends the meaning of Israel and Zionism out of shape until both become fit receptacles for the tropes, images and ideas of classical antisemitism. In short, that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is: malevolent, full of blood lust, all-controlling, the obstacle to a better, purer, more spiritual world.

Read the article in full at the Jewish Chronicle.