gilad | Since the 1968 Student
Revolution, the European and American Left, together with a herd of
Jewish progressive intellectuals, have invested enormous effort in
attempting to break society down into multiple segments of identities.
The Left adopted this peculiar approach because it could never cope with its own failure to bond with working people.
The Jewish intellectuals,
who led the campaign, realized that fragmented and divided nations are
far less dangerous for Jews. As we know, Jews are threatened by
cohesive, patriotic nationalism, and for a good reason. After all, they
were amongst the prime victims of such an ideology.
Bizarrely enough, dazzled
by the emerging false prophecy of post-68 ‘identity politics,’ the Left
was quick to drop its universal ethos. While in the past it aimed to
cross the divide and unite the working people, the post-68 Left actually
split and ghettoized the Western subjects by means of identification.
Instead of being and
celebrating who and what we are, we’ve learned to identify with
ready-made soundbites. Rather than simply being Jill, Joseph, Abe or
Youssef, we are now identified ‘as a woman’, ‘as a gay’, ‘as a Jew’, ‘as
a Muslim’, and so on. In practice, the New Left has been erecting walls
around us in an attempt to separate us into infinitesimally small,
marginal identity groups.
Peculiarly, it is the post-68 Left, rather
than the capitalists, that drove us into segregation, isolation and
political paralysis.
But then, pretty much out
of the blue, Dieudonné, a black French comedian, has managed to re-unite
the working people: the migrant communities, the Black, the Muslim, the
North African as well as the White proletarian and at the same time, to
deliver a universal message.
Dieudonné has reminded us
what the Left stood for in the first place, before it was conquered by
Marcuse and his Frankfurt Yeshiva’s pals. It is the French entertainer
who brings to light the most instinctive Left insight -- we are actually
united and identified in opposition to our oppressors, namely, the
establishment.
