Intersectionality: a new Hitlerism

The list of Israel’s sins is long indeed, if you ask some college students. Think of “policing, mistreatment of Indigenous people, discrimination toward Black Americans and the impact of global warming.” Who’s at the bottom of it all? If you inhabit a college encampment, the answer is obvious: Israel!

The New York Times‘ Jeremy W. Peters examined the heads of some campus tent-dwellers, summing it up in a piece titled “It’s Not Just Gaza: Student Protesters See Links to a Global Struggle.” In reading it, one cannot shake off the impression that Mr. Peters relished the comical effect of the combination of the earnestness with which those students say things, and the obvious idiocy of the things they say. It is impossible to read those sample quotes, and not laugh. Here’s a Cornell freshman for you: “we pride ourselves on viewing the world through intersectional lenses. Climate justice is an everyone issue. It affects every dimension of identity, because it’s rooted in the same struggles of imperialism, capitalism — things like that. I think that’s very true of this conflict, of the genocide in Palestine.”

Are you lost in this tangled labyrinth of a laborious “progressive” thought? This sample is perhaps as ridiculous an attempt to connect the unconnected as it gets — and yet, it is not necessarily funny. One is reminded of how Chaplin found the reels of Hitler’s speeches irresistibly hilarious (and brilliantly poked fun at them in The Great Dictator) — and yet more than enough people took Hitler seriously enough to kill every Jew they could find.

This is precisely the problem with the “intersectional lenses.” The Cornell freshman who protests climate change by marching with a sign “Free Gaza” is in reality engaged in scapegoating of Jews. Just as Hitler did, this freshman sees a Jew behind every problem — a mindset which logically leads to a conclusion that the proper solution to all problems is getting rid of the Jew.

In that sense, Hitler was an epitome of intersectional thinking. In fact, the Cornell freshman’s quote describes Hitler’s thinking — or rather, obsession — to perfection: for Hitler, a Jew ultimately “affects every dimension of identity.” That’s exactly where the logic of intersectionality (if there is any logic to it) leads.

Wikipedia informs us that the idea of intersectionality was concocted by one Kimberlé Crenshaw who is — surprisingly — a law professor. I say “surprisingly” because law rejects guilt by association; it only acknowledges adjudicating a specific act by a specific individual. While statistically, criminals may predominantly belong to a specific race, one’s being of that race is no proof of one’s criminality — even though “intersectionality” would suggest otherwise. Intersectionality is anathema to law.

Simply put, words “intersectionality” and “bigotry,” are interchangeable. Hitler saw everything he hated as intersecting with the Jews — and so do the campus loudmouths, for whom Israelis cannot be right, and Palestinians cannot be wrong — yet not because of what Palestinians do and what the Israelis do but bizarrely, because of what neither the Palestinians, nor the Israelis do: because of “policing, mistreatment of Indigenous people, discrimination toward Black Americans and the impact of global warming.” All bad things intersect — and just like in Hitler’s head, they intersect with Israel and Jews. Hence, while thinking “end the use of fossil fuels!” a Cornell freshman shouts “free Palestine!”

This is Hitlerite logic, pure and simple. Hitler invented intersectionality long before Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw stumbled on the same idea of finding connections where here aren’t any. And one needs not to be a great genius to think this way. As an ex-Soviet, I remember the Russian rhyme blaming Jews for every problem, that ran approximately like this:

Kike used all in water-closet!

(to which some Jewish wit, not to be outdone, appended — just to cover all bases, I guess, the following:

Water flows from your faucet? –

It’s kike’s pee from water-closet!)

Blaming Jews for everything that’s wrong with the world is a very old game — and a very ugly, and bloody one. Giving it a new and fancy name of “intersectionality” does not make it any less ugly and bloody — and any less Hitlerite.