Understanding Asian Antisemitism
A new phenomenon
Naturally, my identity politics were shaped around East and Southeast Asian people. Chinese Indonesians, my father’s tribe. Chinese Americans, people like us but in America. Indonesians, as a multiethnic nation but mainly represented by the Javanese, my grandmother’s tribe. The Indonesian diaspora is minuscule, even in the Netherlands, where they have been overshadowed by Surinam, the Dutch Caribbean, and even the Moroccan diaspora for the last 50 years.
Everybody knows the Asian diaspora. We’re well educated and well paid. We contribute to society – in medicine, sciences, politics, and sports. Everybody also knows about the bamboo ceiling, where Chinese and other Asian Americans (except Indian men, an interesting group to ponder) are stuck in middle management. Everybody knows about the mugged and bashed Asian grandmas and murdered Asian women, although they are not discussed because the perpetrators are not white men.
Naturally, there are parallels between Chinese Americans and Jewish Americans. Our academic achievements from Stuyvesant to Harvard. Our high income. Our vulnerability to become the target of riots and pogroms, which in the Barbenheimer Summer, seemed to be historical.
And yet, while to my knowledge the Jews never insult Asians, since October 2023 many Asians on social media have attacked the Jews, under the guises of anti-Israel and anti-Zionism. Some couldn’t hide the facade and specifically wrote the J word.
This is a new development. Many Muslims and Arabs state that they were raised to hate Jews (not just Israel or Zionists). But Asians? Many are strangers to Jews. The Christians were raised on Moses, David, and Zion. Many grew up with The Nanny and Friends (two Jewish main actors, and two and half Jewish main characters). Many admired Jewish figures from Albert Einstein to Hannah Arendt.
And yet, the Asians express their hate with gusto. It’s about the genocide. It’s about from the river to the sea. It’s about settler colonialism. Below I try to categorize the Jew-hating Asians into three categories and describe them in around 300 words each.
1. Left-Liberal Asians
Starting with who I know. Naturally, I was part of one. Feminist. Liberal. Ally. We were surprisingly synchronized with the English-speaking liberals because it’s part of networking. If you want to get that international job. If you want to get that fellowship. If you want to get followed by that Twitter (not X) blue check.
In the 2010s it was fun to be a left-liberal Asian. Commenting on power moments in Academy Awards and MCU movies. Sharing our love for Asian American celebrities and Asian fun things – memes, viral food, technology. Joining the American Resistance, joining the Remainers to boo on Trump and Johnson. Seeing our articles on LGBT, on women’s rights, and minorities published and shared.
The mood swings went in parallel with the mood swings of BIPOC Americans. 2018 might have been the transition year, as Asian writers received the information that #MeToo was important, but it was only about white women. By 2019, as more Asian American writers joined the intersectionality of attacking liberal white women, their articles were shared and discussed by Asian writers.
There are not enough white women living in Asia compared to white men. The ones who I met had Left politics, as conservative white women had little interest in Asia in the first place (again, compared to the more numerous conservative white men), and they were also Left liberals in the first place. Journalists, activists, academics, and digital nomads, the grandchildren of hippies.
Many of them left Asia during the pandemic, or even deported, or maybe, who knows, shunned by other Asian progressives for being white. Rest assured that they have checked their white privilege and microaggression. They never fall out of love with Asia and are still in contact with some Asians, but I am not sure that many left-liberal Asians count these white women as their lifelong friends.
Unfortunately, Asians were also in lockstep with Asian Americans in reacting to the assault and even murders of Asian Americans during the pandemic. It was Trump’s fault. More white people assaulted Asians than others (i.e., black people). Eventually, Asians had to decenter their hurt and focus on black people, who suffered more from the pandemic and systemic racism.
This systemic racism finally got a name in late 2023: Zionism. It was easy to explain: Many left-liberal Asian writers are Muslims from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. In the 2010s, antisemitism was not cool. Antisemitism made you an Islamist, a MAGA, a domestic. But in the 2020s, antisemitism becomes cool. The Squad is antisemitic. The Hadids are antisemitic. The sassy Al Jazeera journalists are antisemitic.
That explains the Muslim liberals, but what about the Chinese? Many recent Asian antisemites I know are Chinese Southeast Asians, and this is a bigger puzzle. Now we look at the second group.
2. Left-Liberal Asian Americans
Or Canadians. Or Australians. More than the Americans, the Canadians, and the Australians state that they live in the unceded land of a tribe. The Canadians love to write ‘Turtle Island’ as their home instead of Canada. They also identify settler colonials of color.
As children of immigrants, they usually share the bad memory of having their lunches mocked (assumingly only by white children, never by black children). That bad memory follows them to adulthood, when yes, some white (again, only white) co-workers or bosses would make a patronizing comment on Asian food.
But wait a minute, Jews love Asian food. Jews revere Asian food. So why the anger? Again, Arab Americans run a theme that Jews steal Arab foods like falafel and hummus, and that Jews don’t have real Middle Eastern culture, only European culture.
Now you have the Arab Americans hating Jews, and black Americans who are also hating Jews, despite the Jewish conviction to stand up with African Americans during the sixties. You have Nation of Islam (who is linked to #MeToo figure Linda Sarsour) and Kanye West sharing conspiracy theories about Jews, and in the spirit of intersectionality, eventually, Asian American writers join in the hate in this decade.
I don’t know if several Asian American writers have personal bad experiences with Jewish classmates and co-workers, or if they are just jealous. The Jews don’t have to deal with bamboo ceilings. The Jews feel at home with American culture, from bagel to Seinfeld. The Jews are white the way Asians are not white. It is more debatable with Indo-Europeans like Persians and Indians and the half-Dutch Hadids, but they are readily taken as ‘brown persons’ by themselves and by other Asian American writers.
Perhaps, in brief, the Jews don’t have bad experiences with WASP Americans, although many Jews would dispute this as well.
3. The Omnicause
Finally, what’s called the omnicause. The environment, the trans flag, and the Palestine flag. The watermelon emoji. Asians across the Pacific have embraced trans rights and the environment for decades. As I said, antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism was gauche a decade ago, but now cool. Mocking white people has been cool for a decade, and after mocking white women as Karen for some years, you could mock an ethnicity without feeling guilty at all.
After all, your black and Muslim friends say that Israel is the new apartheid South Africa. Worse, it doesn’t have any right to exist, the name itself is illegitimate. Things will only be right if there is no more Israel because from there on there will no be capitalism, no American hegemony, no white supremacy. Maybe that’s the idea.
These three groups have their right-wing counterparts. Asians who believe that Jews are agents of neocolonialism. Asian Americans who believe the Jews hoard all the privileges and are responsible for the bamboo ceiling. Asians who believe that Jews are responsible for everything bad in history.
Back to the Left. Hating Jews, Zionists, or Israelis, is cool because cool writers do it. Because you don’t feel Jews matter in your life, maybe in fact burdening you with Seinfeld references and envy. Because it gives you a free pass in dehumanizing a group of people while claiming it is the Zionists who are inhumane.
As usual, the antisemitic Asians won’t care, because they have no incentive to wise up. They see no point in trying to reach out to any Jew, even online. They love this punching bag. Prove that they are not the ones with privileges. Let out all those years of resentment. Demonstrate how woke you are. Maybe even, to back at their classmates who are hitched by Jewish men.