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

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