February 11, 2010

Andrew Sullivan, anti-Semite? No, but…

By: AF Editors

Warning: This post describes the intramural wars of current and former staffers at The New Republic. It should not be read by anyone who thinks pundits spend too much time analyzing themselves. That said…

It all started on Monday when Leon Wieseltier published a long essay in TNR suggesting that Andrew Sullivan has begun to sink into the poisonous mire of anti-Semitism. Alternately, you might say it all started more than 15 years ago, when Sullivan was editor of TNR, where he clashed repeatedly with Wieseltier. As for Sullivan, he responds that Wieseltier’s broadside is nothing more than the latest manifestation of a “tedious personal vendetta”.

In addition, Matt Yglesias has leapt to Sullivan’s defense, writing that,

flinging baseless charges of anti-semitism is the essence of the [TNR’s] commentary on Israel. For the purposes of intimidation, after all, baseless charges work better than well-grounded ones. Nikolai Krylenko, Bolshevik Minister of Justice, said “we must execute not only the guilty, execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”

Hmmm. It’s sort of unusual to accuse others of rhetorical excess, then compare them to Bolsheviks. Perhaps I’m just missing the incredibly subtle irony here.

Moving on, Jon Chait and Jeffrey Goldberg leap half-way to Sullivan’s defense. Chait says that Sullivan is no anti-Semite. Period. Yet “Andrew has begun repeating tropes that happen to track classic anti-Semitic canards.” That’s quite a caveat.

Goldberg says he knows Sullivan and that Sullivan’s no anti-Semite, even if he happens to be profoundly ignorant about Middle Eastern politics. I hope someone defends me that passionately someday! Also, Goldberg has this classic line: “On the Daily Dish, Israel is the Sarah Palin of nations.”

As for me, I don’t personally know any of the individuals quoted above, except Matt. Yet I am drawn to this whole discussion because I am so confused by Andrew Sullivan. Both Chait and Goldberg point out that Sullivan has gone from being Israel’s most vocal defender to its most ferocious critic, in the course of just a few years. (Chait provides some surprising quotes from Sullivan, circa 2001.)

As someone who has undergone a conversion myself, I find this evolution especially interesting. People often ask me how I went from being a liberal Democrat to a registered Republican. I won’t go into that here, except to say that it’s very hard to step outside yourself and give a compelling, definitive answer to that question.

What I do know is that I find it much harder to be a vitriolic critic of fellow writers, since I have been firmly planted on both sides of some very big fences. Yet I also know from growing up Jewish, that the most fervent believers and practitioners of the faith are often converts.