Comment

Husband of CNN Contributor Dana Loesch Calls CNN Host Soledad O'Brien 'Anti-Semitic'

65
Nyet3/14/2012 5:27:21 pm PDT

In summer 1998 issue of University of Chicago Law Review Kathryn Abrams has a lengthy critique of a book by D. Farber and S. Sherry. She touches on their critique of Bell, and specifically allegations of antisemitism:

2. Pervasive claims of anti-Semitism.
These explicit arguments, however, are not the only ways in which Farber and Sherry seek to connect multiculturalism with anti-Semitism. They also seek to bring home the ostensibly anti-Semitic implications of multiculturalism by less direct means. In this respect, their arguments assessing the consequences of multiculturalism descend from the unpersuasive to the deeply disturbing.
The authors wage a campaign of guilt-by-association against Derrick Bell, the originator of the critical race narrative and one of the founders of critical race theory. Bell is criticized for authoring a fictional chronicle in which Jewish protagonists demonstrate mixed motives in seeking to prevent Blacks from being removed by a group of aliens. n35 He is charged with displaying solicitude toward that veritable lightning rod for Black-Jewish tensions, Louis Farrakhan (p 44). With the exception of a brief section in the introduction (p 4), however, Farber and Sherry do not actually mount an argument that Bell holds views that are anti-Semitic. Nor do they argue that Bell—and by inference other multiculturalists—should be regarded as holding views that are anti-Semitic because Bell has written a particular chronicle or displayed solicitude toward Farrakhan. (I would add that I would find either argument unpersuasive, given Bell’s actual writings. n36 ) [*1109] [*1110] Such associations are simply dropped into paragraphs that are not facially concerned with anti-Semitism.
Nor are Bell’s alleged affiliations the only indirect means the authors use to suggest a connection between multiculturalism and anti-Semitism. Although Farber and Sherry survey a range of social and cultural damages that are alleged to flow from multicultural scholarship, one theme predominates: virtually every harm that is predicted or hypothesized is illustrated by reference to a development or controversy that has victimized Jews. Thus, the tendency toward authoritarianism by those who employ narrative methodology is illustrated by the Dreyfus affair (pp 102-03); the consequence of relativism in the characterization of “truth” in narrative is illustrated by difficulty of challenging Holocaust revisionism (pp 109-10); the tendency of narrative to degrade scholarly discourse is illustrated by an academic battle between two Jews over a Patricia Williams narrative dealing with anti-Semitism (pp 90-94); even Chapter Four, which identifies as a specific drawback of multiculturalism the fostering of arguments that the authors take to be anti-Semitic, ends with a reference to another, implicit connection, a chilling story about the failure to recognize merit in a concentration camp (p 71). n37 The cumulative effect of these connections is to suggest that wherever multiculturalism shows its face, norms or controversies evincing anti-Semitism are not far behind. [*1111]
Finally, Farber and Sherry make the claim, which operates to ratify the preceeding implications, that multiculturalism threatens Jews by challenging the protection conferred upon them by Enlightenment values. The authors cite a series of historical figures, from French counter-revolutionaries to German Romantics to Christian crusaders, who have both challenged Enlightenment premises and displayed variously virulent forms of anti-Semitism. Farber and Sherry then suggest that this connection is not accidental, because Jews have both perpetuated and received protection from Enlightenment values: