In today's divisive political climate, Canadian universities have become receptacles to radical left movements and antisemitism. In Toronto, city streets and the University of Toronto (U of T) campus are plastered with red and white posters warning that "The communists are coming." The Hammer and Sickle, Communism's trademark symbol, was prominently displayed outside the U of T's anti-Israel encampment.
Dr. Eric Patterson, CEO of Victims for Communism Memorial Foundation, explains that what we are witnessing on campuses throughout the West, including Canada, is the intellectual embodiment of neo-Marxism that labels Jewish Israelis as White European settlers and colonizers. This in turn, dismisses their legal rights and indigeneity to the land.
U of T is no stranger to accusations of antisemitism. In 2023, it was criticized for refusing to adopt the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA states that part of antisemitism is "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor."
U of T Professor Kevin A. Bryan wanted to investigate the encampment to witness firsthand what was happening.
"I told them I was a fellow comrade," said Bryan to gain entry.
What he found didn't surprise him – students and non-students embracing "a general mélange of far-left policy."
And wherever far-left movements assemble, antisemitism appears integrally intertwined in their cause. The National Chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a fiercely left-wing organization, called the October 7 massacre "a historic win for Palestinian resistance." Elsewhere, democratic socialists in America chanted at a rally, "Resistance is justified when people are occupied."
Unfortunately, these attitudes have trickled down to ordinary, uninformed, or indoctrinated students. According to Sara, a University of Guelph student, shortly after October 7, her roommate posted on Instagram, "Resist By Any Means Necessary." Alex, a student from Toronto Metropolitan University, shared her experience: "I tried speaking with former friends about how my fear for the hostages doesn't undermine my concern for Gazan civilians." However, Alex said that expressing empathy for Israelis was considered "offensive."
Josh, a U of T student, recounts how he watched one of his pro-communist classmates filming men in kippahs who were minding their own business. When he asked them why they were filming Jewish students, his classmate's response was immediate and dismissive: "You mean Zionists?" belying protestors' insistence that they only hate Zionists and not Jews.
The intertwining of anti-Israel sentiment and far-left neo-Marxist propaganda on university campuses raises complex questions about the nature of modern activism and its impact on Jewish students.
Marxism and Antisemitism
Though Jews have shown a historical affinity to leftist ideology, Dr. Patterson pointed out that "At its very heart, communism is antithetical to Jewishness, Jewish culture, and the Jewish religion. And, of course, any form of national aspirations."
While the left supported social equality and condemned Fascism, ideologies resonating deeply with Jewish values and their historical needs as a People, Jews continued to be targeted by the political left. Regardless, European Jewish immigrants to America brought leftist political perspectives along with them. Subsequently, Jews firmly believed that liberals were their allies and the conservatives were not.
Perhaps that was the case in the late 1940s and 1950s. Still, perspectives have changed with the rise of neo-Marxism in the 1960s, especially in academia, where Jewish professors often heralded this ideology and worldview.
How astonishing, given communism's bloody history and its origins. Karl Marx, communism’s founding fathe, was a virulent self-hating antisemite. His book A World Without Jews ironically excludes Jews from the "social equality" paradigm communism strives to achieve. Marx's book is replete with anti-Jewish stereotypes, such as: "Money is the zealous one God of Israel beside which no other God may stand."1 Marx, a secularized Jew who came from a rabbinic family, divided Jews into two categories: the "Capitalistic Jew" and the "Sabbath Jew,"2 -- and he hated both. Marx's attitudes and beliefs served as a precursor to the atrocities that communism would later inflict on communists, especially Jews.
Communism's Historical Impact on Jews
On August 30, 1881, the Executive Committee of the revolutionary terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) justified the use of pogroms as a valid anti-capitalist movement.3 Additionally, during Joseph Stalin's communist rule of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1952, he purged those he considered enemies or threats to his power. Many of them were socialists and intelligentsia and also ethnically Jewish.4 In Poland, in 1968, the communist government led anti-Jewish campaigns scapegoating Jews for economic and political issues.5
Since 1980, the radical left has excused "neo-Marxism," an extension of Marxist theory focusing on the conflict between social equality and human liberty. Couched in benign terminology, it is Marxism redefined: its purpose is to transfer power to the "powerless" from the "powerful." As such, Israel is perceived as the powerful, while the Palestinians are the powerless.
Furthermore, some universities' sense of colonial guilt has influenced students to embrace leftist views, focusing heavily on the contrast between colonizer and colonized, a central aspect of neo-Marxist theory. Anti-Israel groups also wrongfully equate the Jewish people and the Zionist movement with colonialism. These perspectives can lead to the rationalization of antisemitic views while overlooking the Jewish people's long-standing historical and biblical connection to Israel, which spans over 3,000 years.
Subsequently, Western neo-Marxists disregard Islamist violence while holding Israel to a double standard.6 Pol Pot, who was the communist dictator in Cambodia starting in 1975, slaughtered millions of his people. Radical leftists never called this out.7 However, they had no problem referring to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a terrorist, even after signing a historic peace treaty with Egypt.8
Why Now? The Modern Political Climate and Neo-Marxism
Jewish academics wedded to neo-Marxist theory often lead the charge against Israel. McGill University's Professor Daniel Schwartz, a Jew, praised the McGill encampment on CBC radio as 'a peaceful protest.'
When interviewer Stephen Quinn asked him what being pro-Palestinian means in practice, he immediately responded that McGill ends all exchanges with Israeli universities.
Wouldn’t maintaining ties with Israeli universities yield better results, he asked?
"No," Schwartz countered. "It only allows Israel to wash what's going on in Gaza and lets them believe they are still part of the international community."9
BDS Movements and Historical Tropes
Further upping the danger to Jews, neo-Marxism has wedded itself to Radical Islamism. In her article "The BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] and Anti-BDS Campaigns: Propaganda War vs. Legislative Interest-Group Articulation," Ellen Cannon links BDS propaganda to neo-Marxism and Radical Islamist Movements that embrace the belief that "Jews are Nazis." Most Arab countries do not want a Jewish state in the Middle East, and the BDS movement has embedded antisemitism and the elimination of Israel into their campaigns. The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement further asserts that Jews have long plotted to take over the media and even accuses Jews of causing WWII, with the intent of gaining massive financial benefits from this catastrophe.10
The Complexity of Jewish Political Identities
The pro-communist images on our communities' poster boards and telephone poles are jarring. The Marxist pattern of vilification continues today. At the U of T encampment, there were drawings of inverted triangles that Hamas used to mark targets. Other visuals depicted the Jewish U of T president, Meric Gertler, as a devil with the words, "Blood on your hands," and quotes such as "Free Palestine by any means necessary," or "From the river to the sea" which calls for the destruction of the Jewish State.
Ontario Superior Court of Justice Markus Koehan presided over U of T's case against the protesters to dismantle the encampment. While he deemed in U of T's favour; however, for the wrong reasons. He based his decision on U of T's property rights and not on protesters' violation of hate and antisemitic speech that was clearly on display, as the judge stated, "the automatic conclusion that those phrases are antisemitic is not justified."
Judge Koehan's stance raises a crucial question: When will antisemitism be condemned? Campuses should be open to dialogue and discord. Still, when the rhetoric turns what should be a safe, educational environment into one that is not, we must question why this situation has become acceptable.
Playing out on university campuses is the embodiment of a neo-Marxist worldview with its blatantly antisemitic overtones. Subsequently, Jewish students feel betrayed – not just by the administration and staff but by classmates with whom they connect on personal levels.
Many Canadian universities, such as McGill and U of T, eventually dismantled the encampments but did so more for their own convenience than for the sake of keeping their Jewish students safe. This was an eye-opener for many Jewish students who identify with the progressive movement and are now questioning the inherent truths of neo-Marxism, an ideology that underlines today’s progressive movement, and where they stand in the mix. The encampments may be gone; however, they leave in their wake a more aware Jewish student body that has confronted the fundamental truths of antisemitism and their own Jewishness and is better off for it.
- Karl Marx, A World Without Jews, translated by Dagobert D. Runes (Kensington Publishing Corp., 1959), 5-9.
- Karl Marx, A World Without Jews, 5-9.
- Robert S. Wistrich, A lethal obsession: Antisemitism from antiquity to the global jihad. (New York: Random House, 2010), 107-128.
- Wistrich, A lethal obsession, 107-128.
- Wistrich, A lethal obsession, 254.
- Wistrich, A lethal obsession, 254.
- Wistrich, A lethal obsession, 254.
