David L. Bernstein
Ollie Anisfeld Interviews David Bernstein About his New Book, ‘Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews’.

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I don’t, I wish that were the case, but it’s, I don’t think it is. Look, if you look at any opinion piece or news piece about Jews in the right-wing media, I would urge you to take a look at the comments, that, in the comments section you will see dozens of anti-Semitic, virulantly anti-Semitic comments, made by all kinds of people. So when I wrote my book Woke Anti-Semitism, I posted about it in various like anti-critical race theory Facebook pages and the like and every single time I did it, every single time, at least one person, and very often more than one person said, “You Jews should stop whining about wokeness, because you created in the first place,” and that’s a right-wing anti-Semitic trope, not a left wing anti-Semitic trope. So I think that we have a much bigger problem, it’s much more pervasive, it finds fertile ground in places like QAnon, and there are millions of people who are buying into QAnon, it’s not like just Marjorie Taylor Green. So we have a very vibrant right-wing, conspiracy-oriented right-wing in America that’s gaining ground, and I think that there’s a reason to be concerned there as well. I think it’s also corrosive, just as anti-Semitism on the left is corrosive.

Yeah, I’m not sure it’s really become the, a big factor yet. I think what it’s done is it’s made a lot of liberal Jews worry about their relationship to Israel. They’re worried that Israel’s going to be less democratic than it once was, and it might be contributing to distancing of liberal Jews. I think that’s the more immediate threat. I don’t know that the protests in Israel have become sort of negative for Israel yet in terms of public perceptions, and whether that’s really caught on on the left so much. I don’t think we have data to support that yet, but we may find out more of that over time, as more and more polls and surveys are done.

Yeah, so there’s a lot of talk about peak woke, right? I think the two things are happening at the same time, and I know I do this a lot, I say “Yeah, it’s not so simple.” So I’m going to continue down that, two things are happening at the same time. One is that more and more people are speaking out against the ideology, and it’s becoming easier to do so than it was a year ago. and certainly two years ago. So it’s not good politics, and there are a number of heavy hitters, intellectual heavy hitters, that have come out and spoken out against it, so I think in the society.