Actor Josh Malina asks a very reasonable question:
Why’s it so hard to get cancel culture on the line when the problem is antisemitism?
— (((Josh Malina))) (@JoshMalina) July 7, 2020
The likely answer is because cancel culture and antisemitism overlap.
Both the current cancel culture and anti-Zionism is based on a self-righteous, virtue-signaling worldview where the advocates are motivated not by any sense of justice but by appearing to care about justice.
The “Black Lives Matter” – based cancel culture is not led by Black people but by whites who are falling over themselves to tell the world how much they care about Black lives. The anti-Zionists of Jewish Voice for Peace are similarly not led by Palestinians but by Jews who are eager to show how much they care about Palestinians.
Cancel culture’s care for Black lives does not extend to Blacks killed by other Blacks. Anti-Zionists don’t care about Palestinians oppressed by fellow Arabs.
Both cancel culture and anti-Zionists have a one-dimensional view of the world. Real Blacks and real Arabs have much more complex and conciliatory views of whites and Jews, but these two cultures work hard to silence the reality in order to push their virtue-signaling agenda of evil whites and evil Jews.
Cancel cultures look at whites as inherently racist. Anti-Zionists look at Israeli Jews as being racist by definition.
And anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Anti-Zionists are against Jewish national rights; antisemites hate Israel. But beyond that, traditional antisemites almost always couch their hate as positive – they are protecting innocent people, they are warning the world about the dangers of Jews/Israel.
Both are meant to push a political agenda while pretending to be humanitarian.
Both of these ideas are toxic.
So, yes, don’t expect cancel culture to give a damn about Jews. To their members, everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed, and Jews are oppressors because they are Zionist and they are white. The cancel culture members who are both white and Jewish need to distance themselves from both unforgivable crimes, and their penance is to loudly denounce other whites and Jews.
It’s the woke equivalent of blackface.