On 12 October 2007 there was a conference at Chicago University on 'academic freedom' and in defence of Norman Finkelstein. The assumption of the conference was that academic freedom in general and Finkelstein in particular have come under illegitimate and powerful attack by the Israel Lobby. Tony Judt (2007) spoke the following words (near the end, at about 19 minutes):

"If you stand up here and say, as I am saying and someone else will probably say as well, that there is an Israel lobby, that there is... there are a set of Jewish organizations, who do work, both in front of the scenes and behind the scenes, to prevent certain kinds of conversations, certain kinds of criticism and so on, you are coming very close to saying that there is a de facto conspiracy or if you like plot or collaboration to prevent public policy moving in a certain way or to push it in a certain way - and that sounds an awful lot like, you know, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the conspiratorial theory of the Zionist Occupational Government and so on - well if it sounds like it it's unfortunate, but that's just how it is. We cannot calibrate the truths that we're willing to speak, if we think they're true, according to the idiocies of people who happen to agree with us for their reasons."

"It may well be true - I know this because I have received an email from him - that David Duke thinks he has found allies in John Mearsheimer or Stephen Walt or myself. But I remind you what Arthur Koestler said in Carnegie Hall in 1948 when he was asked, 'Why do you criticize Stalin - don't you know that there are people in this country, Nixon and what were not yet called McCarthyites, who also are anti-Communist and who will use your anti-Communism to their advantage?' And Koestler's response was the response that I think we should keep in mind when we are faced with the charge that we are giving hostages to crazy antisemites or whatever, and that is you can't help other people agreeing with you for their reasons - you can't help it if idiots once every 24 hours with their stopped political clock are on the same time as you. You have to say what you know to be true and be willing to defend it on your grounds and then accept the fact that people in bad faith will accuse you of having defended it or aligned yourself with the others on their grounds - that's what freedom of speech means - it's very uncomfortable. It puts you in bed sometimes with the wrong people."

Judt's response to the charge that he, and Mearsheimer and Walt, provide a respectable vocabulary for the articulation of antisemitic conspiracy theory, is a surprisingly candid and flat denial of political responsibility and an explicit refusal to 'calibrate' claims in such a way as to make them unhelpful to antisemites. There are a number of elements to this defence which are worthy of discussion.

First, Judt admits that he comes 'very close to saying that there is a de facto conspiracy or ... plot or collaboration' and that 'that sounds an awful lot like... the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the conspiratorial theory of the Zionist Occupational Government and so on'. He seems to imply that it is not just he who thinks this, but the others too, who are on the platform, including perhaps Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky (by video), John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstien. He then says that antisemites 'happen to agree with us' (but for the wrong reasons) - they agree fundamentally on the claim that there is (something very close to) 'a de facto conspiracy or... plot or collaboration that sounds an awful lot like the Protocols' or the ZOG. He admits that the antisemitic conspiracy theorists say fundamentally the same as he and his collaborators (but for different reasons) a third time, when he says: 'you can't help it if idiots once every 24 hours with their stopped political clock are on the same time as you.'

Second, Judt makes an analogy with Koestler's criticisms of Stalin in 1948. Koestler thinks that the gulag exists and he thinks that one has a responsibility to say so, even if this appears to vindicate anti-Communists who also think that the gulag exists and who say so loudly. So Judt thinks that a de facto Jewish conspiracy exists, and that he has a responsibility to say so even if antisemites, who also think that a Jewish conspiracy exists, are thereby apparently vindicated. The difference, however, is obvious. The gulag existed. A Jewish conspiracy, of the kind which has sufficient covert muscle to send the only super-power to war against its own interest, and to expel critics of Israel from the American academy, does not exist. Indeed the McCarthyites were also conspiracy theorists who believed that America was falling under the spell of a Moscow plot which encompassed every liberal schoolteacher and every 'red' Hollywood actor. Koestler did not believe in the conspiracy, nor did he believe 'anything very close' nor a 'de facto conspiracy' nor a 'plot' nor a 'collaboration'. Koestler was not like Judt. In fact Judt's anti-Zionism comes from the political tradition of those who did remain silent about the gulag on the grounds that to speak up would play into the hands of the imperialists. It is a political tradition which currently remains overwhelmingly silent about the crimes of any political movement or state which embraces anti-Zionist or anti-imperialist rhetoric. The left anti-Stalinists, Trotsky, Draper, Arendt, Koestler, Orwell, and the others, spoke out against the left commonsense of their day - that one should not criticize Stalin. Judt fails to speak out against the left commonsense of his day - which holds Israel, and the Jews who 'support it', to be both uniquely evil and uniquely powerful.

Third, Judt argues that the crucial factor distinguishing him from the antisemitic idiots is the reasoning behind the analysis. The analysis is fundamentally the same, but he believes in the existence of ('something that sounds an awful lot like') a 'de facto conspiracy' because it exists, whereas David Duke believes in it because he is an antisemite. Duke's antisemitism has, on this one occasion, just by chance, led him to a true conclusion concerning the global threat of Jewish power and its responsibility for war. Judt's problem seems to be that he is unable - or unwilling - to show how what he believes is different from what the idiot antisemites believe. He is only able - or willing - to show that he has better reasons for believing it. While Duke believes that a global conspiracy based on the theory of 'Jewish Supremacism' is responsible for all wars, Judt believes only that it is responsible for this war and that the antisemitic conspiracy theorists were wrong about the other wars.

Fourth, Judt says: 'You have to say what you know to be true and be willing to defend it on your grounds and then accept the fact that people in bad faith will accuse you of having defended it or aligned yourself with the others on their grounds.... It puts you in bed sometimes with the wrong people'. Judt accuses his accusers of acting in bad faith - he relies on an ad hominem argument. In this way he puts motivation at the centre of his defence. He is a good guy, he is on the left and he is motivated by the search for truth and justice (for the Palestinians). David Duke, who happens on this occasion to have stumbled onto the truth about the Israel Lobby and its responsibility for war, has done so out of a malignant motivation. Those who ask why Judt and Duke have been discovered together in the bed of (de facto) Jewish conspiracy theory, claims Judt, do so in bad faith. The bad faith is that of a member of the Israel Lobby who mendaciously plays the antisemitic card in order to de-legitimize Judt's unmasking of the Lobby by portraying it as similar to Duke's unmasking of the Lobby.

My argument about the potential danger of Judt's conspiracy theory is not an ad hominem argument. It does not rely on an accusation of bad faith nor of malicious motivation. It does not accuse Judt of being secretly or unconsciously motivated by antisemitism. It does accuse Judt of being insufficiently concerned about saying the same thing, using the same language and drawing on the same images, as generations of antisemitic conspiracy theorists. It is not good enough to explain that 'it's unfortunate, but that's just how it is'. It is not a coincidence which puts Duke in Judt's political bed. Duke is there because Judt is saying the same as Duke and Judt refuses to 'calibrate' his claims such they become useless to Duke. If we are 'telling a truth' which puts us in bed with David Duke then we are necessarily telling it wrong - or at least in an incomplete way. When Judt tells the truth in an incomplete way, it is no longer 'the truth'. Judt does not find himself in this predicament because he is, like Duke, motivated by antisemitism. Judt is not motivated by antisemitism. But motivation is not, as Judt seems to think, the key here.

The key is what Judt says and what he does; not what motivates him. The danger of licensing antisemitic claims and world-views, of acting as midwife to an antisemitic movement, is not neutralized by the fact that Judt is an antiracist and a good guy. Indeed the fact that Judt is widely recognized as a good guy exacerbates the danger.

See also Eve Garrard, here and Norman Geras here.

David Hirsh