Challenging antisemitism in history and today

Abstract

ABSTRACT Renton reviews McGeever's analysis of the Bolshevik encounter with antisemitism in 1917. He argues that McGeever's narrative builds on insights which were already in the public domain, while acknowledging that McGeever takes the story further by showing that anti-Jewish violence was more pervasive than previously understood. He argues that the rise at the same moment of both revolutionary sentiment and racist prejudice is not a phenomenon restricted to 1917, but is a recurring feature of British and European history. He notes that the heroic figures in McGeever's narrative stood at an intermediary position between Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and internationalism (Marxism), and argues that this was a recurring position within Jewish politics, as discernible in the 1940s as it had been in 1917. He suggests that further research might well elucidate the contribution of other ethnic minorities whose most principled fighters also occupied a similar position mid-way between nationalism and internationalism.