Do you know what a kapo was?

A kapo or prisoner functionary (German: Funktionshäftling, see § Etymology) was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks

armband of a concentration camp kapo

For nearly four years now, establishment media and centrist dead enders in the Labour Party in the UK have been smearing the rising radical left led by Jeremy Corbyn as so anti-semitic as to be an immediate threat as dangerous as the Nazis. If the leader of a rising radical left in the US happens to be Jewish himself, this of course presents a problem. The word “kapo” solves that problem.

The smear’s main tactic is to equate the nation state of Israel with Judaism itself. Utter a single coarse word against Israel as a nation-state, boom, you’re an antisemite. I call it the Seinfeld Uncle Leo Routine. The smear relies on an antisemitic smear itself – “jewish money”. Because only the radical left ever notices (a) money rigging government, and (b) Israel rigging Congress through AIPAC to perpetuate Palestinian oppression, this smear is only, ever, used against the left. Never the right, which in America has stewed in virulent (but useful) anti-semitism for decades.

I’ve been waiting for these smears to make it across the pond as the same radical left rises in the US ahead of 2020. Lighting the match, brand new Congresswoman Ilhan Omar noticed Israel’s lobbying front AIPAC owns US government (duh), and the smears exploded. Glenn Greenwald, ever vigilant on such matters, is succinct.

What the congresswoman said is very uncontroversial. Everyone knows AIPAC is an extremely intimidating lobby, just like the NRA is. There’s nothing wrong with pointing that out. There’s certainly nothing anti-Semitic about saying that, about criticizing the Israeli government for its aggression and militarism. And anybody who cares about Palestinians and about the ability of Muslims in the United States to be able to speak freely ought to be defending her.

Diasporan lobbying anywhere, by any group (let alone AIPAC), always with campaign money, is a time honored tactic not limited to supporters of Israel. The Republic of Armenia as a government benefits from the only diaspora on earth that comes anywhere close to the power of the Israeli government’s diaspora. There are many similarities. Both Armenians and Jews suffered 20th century genocide, scattering them across the globe, where the descendants of the genocides created over time powerful lobby groups everywhere they landed, not just the US. Both diasporan Armenians and diasporan Jews supporting Israel focus most heavily on the US Congress, specifically the House, where targeted campaign contributions are most powerful.

me and my staff in Armenia in 1998

When I lived in Armenia from 1997-1998, training political parties and election observers for NDI, the Armenian American diaspora’s power was evident in everything our US funded NGO did. I could feel the tendrils reach into my keyboard as I wrote reports. Which congressman will get upset, with which word? How quickly will they call my boss? Will my report end up in a congressional hearing, will it put our funding at risk? Congresswoman Omar’s criticism is only surprising in that a member of Congress dares utter it.

Sadly, these smears against the left never stop, they only accelerate as a radical left approaches power, and there is no limit. The tired trope that the radical left is a hive of anti-semitism is only used by the forces of capital to defend the cultural hegemony of capital. In repugnant desperation, this is how an American Jew, Bernie Sanders, will himself be attacked as having the dust of the ovens of Auschwitz on his very hands. It is as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

The good news is, these smears always backfire. Always. The better news? The smear artists are so desperate, they are blind to learning that their smears backfire. As Corbyn has shown repeatedly, those deploying the smears are so desperate to protect their power, they cannot stop, so the cycle repeats, building ever more power in the radical left.

Repeated humiliation of the sort meted out to the Blairite rump which endlessly recycles such bilge is a necessary tactic of Gandhian nonviolence. The target must voluntarily realize the error of its ways, and see the wisdom in repenting, while capitulating.

Trafficking in the horrors of the Holocaust for political gain is so disgusting (let alone against someone Jewish), no amount of white hot manufactured media self-righteousness in defense of capital’s cultural hegemony can ever disguise the true nature of the smear; truth emerges upon the smear’s deployment. Because she combined her truth with love, Congresswoman Omar’s episode has functioned precisely in this way. As Gandhi said, truth and love together form the greatest power on earth, and always prevail.