E
lection season brings out the best and,
in recent years, the worst in us. We are
more politically active and passionate;
we read and debate more — this is usually
healthy for the Jews.
Lately, though, the flood of
misinformation and disinfor-
mation has fostered a surge of
uncritical, one-dimensional
thinking that has compro-
mised our ability to discuss
and debate constructively.
Example: There’s a tendency
to see all left-leaning politics as a gateway to
Stalinism. This outlook seems most apparent
among those with personal experience living
in a Stalinist country, be it the former Soviet
Union or Castro's Cuba. Understandably,
these emigres and refugees associate “the
left” with oppression.
Yet Stalinism, in its Soviet or Cuban form,
wasn’t a leftist ideology but a form of author-
itarianism that subverted and betrayed the
aims of social democracy, socialism and even
Communism.
Likewise, Nazism wasn’t conservative
in the classic sense, but instead part of an
authoritarian regime that betrayed the ideas
and aims of conservatism. Stalin and Stalinist
authoritarianism had more in common with
Hitler and Nazism than with other forms of
social democracy or conservatism, and vice
versa.
Whether they adorn themselves with left-
wing or right-wing rhetoric, authoritarians
perpetrate a nearly identical set of crimes
against their people, critics and supporters
alike: undermining the rule of law, a free
press and government institutions; refusing
to accept culpability; replacing the shared
truths that are the basis of democracy with
shared lies that are the basis of autocracy;
and preying on the struggles of ordinary
people by peddling baseless conspiracy the-
ories that encourage fear and outrage, espe-
cially toward outsiders and foreigners.
As such, it is no less absurd to presume
that the politics of Elizabeth Warren or even
Bernie Sanders will lead to Stalinism any
more than the politics of Mitt Romney or
Marco Rubio will lead to fascism.
The problem with the current president
is that he is not a Republican but a wannabe
authoritarian who is posing as a Republican,
who understands and respects neither the
values of the Republican Party nor the mean-
ing of democracy.
The plethora of bona fide Republicans
allied against him attests to this folly. He has
only succeeded thus far because mainstream
leaders of his adopted party have enabled
him repeatedly.
Franz von Papen was not a Nazi but did
enable Hitler, and history has judged him
harshly. Hitler claimed that all Jews, includ-
ing Jewish shopkeepers and industrialists,
were Communists — and his followers
believed him. Stalin claimed that work-
ing-class Jews, Bundists and even Trotsky
himself were all capitalists — and no one
objected to this obvious contradiction.
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
As another contentious election cycle nears
its apogee, American Jews face the tow-
ering question as to whether the Trump
administration has been beneficial to
Israel. Thankfully, history provides some
much-needed perspective.
The euphoric reactions to the Balfour
Declaration a century ago have echoes in the
recent euphoria among many Jews regarding
the moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem,
the official recognition of Israeli sovereignty
over the Golan Heights, and the normaliza-
tion agreements between Israel, the UAE and
Bahrain.
Rabbi Stephen Wise reacted to Balfour in
an essay three weeks later as the lead article
in the Nov. 23, 1917, issue of the Detroit
Jewish Chronicle (the precursor to the Jewish
News, which you can read online thanks to
the William Davidson Digital Archive of
Jewish Detroit History). These words could
have appeared in the JN a month ago:
“It has come to pass — the day long
wished for in all its momentous and
far-reaching consequences to Israel and
the world. The declaration ... has trans-
ferred Zionism from the field of political
aspirations to the realm of political fact.
Not in centuries has any word been spo-
ken of equally vital consequence to the
well-being of Israel. The British govern-
ment, true to its policy of 200 years of
friendship with and sympathy for the Jew,
leads the way in indicating … that the day
has come for the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish People.
”
In fact, the truth, past and present, is far
more complicated and ambiguous.
The British did not issue the Balfour
Declaration out of a love of Jews, Zionism
or in support of a Jewish state, per se, but
out of self-interest. It was largely a symbolic
gesture, a rubberstamping of a situation that
was already coming into being by 1917; and
it was issued for reasons that had nothing to
do with Jewish statehood. On the contrary,
the British had already promised Palestine to
Arab leaders two years earlier.
Rather, the Balfour Declaration was a way
to win the support of the American Zionist
Movement to help convince the United
States to enter World War I on the side of
the Allies. (A lesser known fact: The Kaiser
made the same offer to American Jews for
the same reasons of self-interest.)
Once the war was over, self-interest led to
the abandonment of the Declaration. It was
now more important for the British to be on
favorable terms with Muslims in Palestine
and the Middle East to enlist the support
of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Muslims in
India as a counterweight to Gandhi and the
struggle he led for Indian home rule. This
abrupt change included, most notorious-
ly and tragically, severe quotas on Jewish
immigration to Palestine at a time when tens
of thousands of Jews wanted to go there to
escape Nazi persecution.
Thirty years after Balfour, the British —
far from supporting the creation of a Jewish
state in the Land of Israel — were the prin-
cipal impediment to the realization of this
cherished aim.
Self-interest is fickle and not always reli-
able. Symbolic gestures fill us with a surge
of hope, but what happens when a symbolic
gesture devolves into an empty one?
We must ask ourselves: Is President
Trump’s outspoken support for Israel moti-
vated by a love of Jews, Zionism and the State
of Israel or by a desperate need to hold onto
6 | OCTOBER 15 • 2020
Howard
Lupovitch
Views
guest column
Communists, Authoritarians and Self-Interest
continued on page 10