The Left also feels betrayed by the contemporary success of a once dramatically oppressed people, which in its view emulates the American example it has relentlessly demonized. All of this, as well as the socialist animus against religion and romanticization of the Palestinians, helps explain the Ahab-like fixation of various leftist strains on Israel. It is why so much anti-Israel rhetoric has come to echo the anti-Jewish propaganda of an earlier era.
Nader, while not a power player, represents the American wing of the ideological ancien regime cast aside by 9/11. The steepness of his fall sharpens the example. Nader is an accomplished and respectable activist. Prior to his electoral misadventures, he single-handedly established automobile safety in this country. Now that history has left him and his set behind, he is reduced to smacking the anti-Israel pinata with all the other screaming kids.
Is Nader an anti-Semite? His recent associations notwithstanding, I doubt it. Rather, his particular obsolescence in the wake of 9/11 encourages his collaboration with anti-Semites, with a man like Fred Newman, who once called Jews ‘the storm troopers of decadent capitalism.’
Revolutionary thought, even its more grounded American manifestation, is in crisis. Now, Nader resembles a newly thawed Neanderthal trying to negotiate a Game Boy or some other frustrating bauble he tripped over while trying to chart this inscrutable modern world.
