A conversation with Ruth Wisse
Introduction
At a time of rising polarization, institutional distrust, ideological extremism, and growing confusion around truth, identity, democracy, and moral responsibility, scholar Ruth Wisse argues that many of these tensions are more connected than they first appear.
Wisse explores the transformation of universities and intellectual culture, the weakening moral confidence of liberal institutions, and the growing appeal of “moral inversion” — frameworks that increasingly reinterpret aggressors as victims and democracies as oppressors.
She also argues that antizionism has increasingly become a unifying ideological language through which otherwise very different political and activist movements organize around a common enemy.
At the center of her argument is the idea that antisemitism is rarely only about Jews. Rather, it often becomes a political and symbolic vehicle through which broader social anxieties, ideological conflicts, and civilizational tensions express themselves — while also serving as a way to attack the values Jews come to symbolize within a society.
Her analysis is provocative, deeply historical, and intended to challenge many prevailing assumptions about the condition of democratic societies — and the dangers that may ultimately threaten their stability and survival.
Several interconnected themes emerge throughout the conversation:
- the changing role — and ideological transformation — of universities and intellectual culture
- the “red-green alliance” between Marxist and Islamist movements
- the weakening of liberalism and institutional moral confidence
- the appeal of moral inversion in modern public discourse and the moral collapse of liberal institutions
- intellectual inversions that turn aggressors into victims and victims into aggressors
- appeasement over confrontation in the face of radicalization
- why democratic societies must actively teach and defend their own values
- and how antizionism became a unifying language across different ideological movements
Antisemitism as a Civilizational Attack
Wisse’s central argument is striking:
“Antisemitism, in essence, has nothing to do with Jews. It has to do with what Jews represent in a particular society.”
In America, Jews became associated with the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization, liberal democracy, constitutional order, and moral responsibility.
Therefore, modern antisemitism in the United States is not merely hatred toward Jews — it is fundamentally anti-American.
The eruption of anti-Israel activism on elite campuses after October 7 revealed something much deeper than political disagreement. It is a civilizational rebellion against the very ideals universities once claimed to uphold.
The shock, was not only Hamas’s massacre itself, but the reaction that followed almost immediately on American campuses — where student groups blamed Israel before the victims had even been buried.
The eruption of anti-Israel activism on elite campuses after October 7 revealed something much deeper than political disagreement.
For Wisse, October 8 in America became its own turning point.
From Vietnam to “Zionism is Racism”
Wisse traces the ideological roots of today’s campus movements back decades.
The anti-Vietnam War movement transformed universities from institutions meant to preserve and transmit civilization into institutions increasingly hostile to their own societies.
Over time, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, post-colonial theory, radical feminism, and identity politics increasingly merged and overlapped.
A pivotal moment, in her view, came during the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 in 1975, when the United Nations declared Zionism to be “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
Wisse describes this as a major narrative inversion.
Before then, hostility toward Israel was often associated with aggressive nationalism and authoritarianism. After the resolution, Israel increasingly became cast as a colonial oppressor, while Palestinians became reframed as the universal victims.
This shift allowed antizionism to become the unifying language of multiple ideological grievances.
The “Red-Green Alliance”
One of Wisse’s most discussed concepts is the alliance between radical leftist movements (“red”) and Islamist movements (“green”).
Many modern activist causes — anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, radical identity politics, intersectionality — lacked a shared concrete target. Antisemitism and antizionism increasingly provided a common enemy connecting them.
Antisemitism gave these movements:
- a flag,
- a symbol,
- a uniform,
- and a common enemy.
The keffiyeh became not only a Palestinian symbol, but a broader ideological identity marker for a coalition of anti-Western movements.
This explains why anti-Israel activism now often appears disconnected from the actual complexities of the Middle East conflict itself. The issue becomes symbolic — a vessel for much broader frustrations and ideological ambitions.
Universities and the Loss of Moral Confidence
The criticism is that many institutions, particularly modern universities, lost confidence in teaching and defending the foundations of liberal democracy itself.
Instead of transmitting civic identity, constitutional principles, and national responsibility, universities increasingly embraced frameworks centered on oppression, grievance, and moral relativism.
One of her recurring warnings is that democracy is not self-sustaining.
“Democracy is not transmitted genetically.”
Like Jewish tradition itself, she argues, democratic civilization requires intentional teaching, cultural confidence, and moral continuity across generations.
Without that, institutions become vulnerable to movements that reject liberalism while exploiting its openness.
Hannah Arendt and the Seduction of Inversion
Wisse offers a particularly sharp critique of Hannah Arendt and her concept of the “banality of evil.”
While acknowledging Arendt’s intellectual brilliance, Wisse argues that modern intellectual culture became deeply attracted to moral inversion — the tendency to reinterpret evil in ways that blur responsibility and complicate moral clarity.
Many intellectuals are drawn to ideas that reverse conventional understandings of reality because such reversals feel sophisticated, surprising, and psychologically compelling.
In this framework:
- aggressors become victims,
- democracies become oppressors,
- and Jews become symbols of power rather than vulnerability.
This inversion is central both to modern antisemitism and to contemporary intellectual culture more broadly.
“The Betrayal of the Liberals”
Wisse’s book, The Betrayal of the Jews, explores what she views as the repeated inability of liberal societies to defend themselves against movements fundamentally opposed to coexistence.
Her argument is not that liberalism is inherently weak, but that liberalism often fails when confronted by ideological aggression.
A society committed to tolerance eventually faces a defining question:
What happens when one side no longer believes in coexistence?
According to Wisse, many liberals prefer appeasement over confrontation because democratic cultures instinctively assume others ultimately share the same values.
This mirrors a longstanding Jewish political tendency toward conciliation, self-criticism, and moral introspection — admirable qualities that can become dangerous when confronting genuinely destructive ideologies.
The “Ugly Israeli” and Internalized Narratives
Parts of Israeli intellectual culture, particularly writers and artists who adopted highly self-critical portrayals of Israel while absorbing hostile ideological frameworks developed by Marxists and anti-colonial theorists.
She compares this to the American literary trope of the “Ugly American” — the arrogant imperialist figure used to critique U.S. power.
Similarly, some Israeli intellectuals portrayed Israelis primarily as aggressors while minimizing the realities of terrorism, regional hostility, and existential insecurity.
Importantly, Wisse does not accuse these figures of lacking patriotism personally. Many served in the military and sacrificed deeply for the country.
Her critique is intellectual rather than personal: the moral self-criticism became detached from strategic reality.
Why This Affects Society as a Whole
One of the reasons Wisse’s arguments resonate with many readers, including people outside the Jewish community, is that she frames antisemitism not only as a Jewish issue, but as a warning sign about the health of democratic societies more broadly.
Her concern is that when societies lose the ability to distinguish between disagreement and dehumanization, between activism and extremism, or between moral complexity and moral inversion, the consequences often extend far beyond the Jewish community.
Historically, antisemitism has often intensified during periods of social instability, institutional distrust, polarization, and ideological upheaval.
Whether one agrees with all of Wisse’s conclusions or not, her broader challenge is directed at everyone:
- How do democracies preserve open debate without losing moral clarity?
- How do societies teach civic values and historical literacy in an age of polarization?
- And how do people resist the temptation to reduce complex human conflicts into simplistic narratives of absolute good and evil?
These are democratic and human questions. There are not only Jewish ones.
There is Still Has Hope
Despite her concerns, Wisse does not end in despair.
She sees the aftermath of October 7 as a profound wake-up call that has energized new Jewish educational institutions, media platforms, legal advocacy organizations, and intellectual movements.
She points to organizations and voices such as:
She believes a new generation is beginning to reconnect Jewish thought, Western civilization, democratic responsibility, and moral confidence.
For Wisse, the struggle is ultimately not only political, but civilizational.
And the question she leaves hanging is not merely whether Jews can defend themselves — but whether liberal democracies still possess the confidence to defend the values they claim to stand for.
The above conclusions draw from a conversation originally published in the Israeli journal Hashiloach.
About Ruth Wisse
is a renowned Jewish-American scholar, writer, and public intellectual best known for her work on Yiddish literature, Jewish history, antisemitism, Zionism, and modern political thought. She served for many years as a professor of Yiddish and Comparative Literature at Harvard University and is considered one of the leading voices on Jewish intellectual history and contemporary antisemitism. Born in Romania and raised in Canada, Wisse has written extensively about Jewish political vulnerability, liberal democracy, and the cultural and ideological challenges facing the Jewish people and the West. Her books include Jews and Power, If I Am Not for Myself, and The Betrayal of the Jews.
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