PsyPost: Weaponizing psychology against anti-Zionism

PsyPost is often interesting, sometimes good. And, occasionally crap. And, on my blogroll. (For now.)

When I saw the piece Friday morning with the header "Left-wing antihierarchical aggression emerges as as the strongest predictor of antisemitism, study finds," I clicked. I'm a leftist, at least for Merika. I'm generally antihierarchical. I'm not antisemitic, but I thought, I'm curious as to what the signs are.

The "signs" are nothing.

Other than the usual bullshit of conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism, with a nice dollop of strawmanning in the second half:

The Antizionist Antisemitism subscale focuses on extreme and irrational anti-Israel positions that are, in essence, a form of disguised antisemitism. For example, holding Israel to different standards than other countries or assuming that supporters of Israel have undue influence over global affairs.

As I told PsyPost on Twitter, just for an opener:

I call bullshit on PsyPost conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism while pretending it's not. YOU .@PsyPost — this piece is bullshit and an insult to leftists, including liberal and leftist Jews.

And, after seeing this, knew I had to google the authors, beyond their listed academic affiliations.

And a hit, right on Wikipedia, on Hirsh!

David Hirsh (born 29 September 1967) is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and co-founder of Engage, a campaign against the academic boycott of Israel.

So, he's fighting against what is, essentially, a British academia version of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions, or BDS.

But wait, the details get better, or worse, and DIRECTLY pertain to PsyPost's piece.

In 2005, he co-founded the Engage website, a resource for those working to oppose the boycott of Israel.[4] Hirsh took a leading role during 2005-07 in opposing boycotts of Israeli universities proposed by British academics.[6][7] Hirsh told The Guardian, "It may not have anti-semitic motivations, but if you organise an academic boycott of Israeli Jewish academics but no-one else in the world, that is an anti-semitic policy".[8]

His 2017 book, Contemporary Left Antisemitism, which combined narrative and case study with sociological analysis and theory to understand the controversial and contested phenomenon of antisemitism on the left, was published in 2017.[3]

He developed, with Daniel Allington, the AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) Scale, for quantitatively measuring antisemitism as expressed in relation to Israel and its supporters.[9]

One more tidbit.

Hirsh originated the term "Livingstone Formulation", named after Ken Livingstone, as the claim made by those accused of antisemitism that the accusation is made in order to delegitimise their criticism of Israel;[11] he says it is accusing Jews of playing the race card.

In other words, Israel can do no wrong and saying it can is racism. Including, I presume, if Jews say that.

In other words, PsyPost is either ignorant dupes or willing participants with a skilled and devious practitioner of hasbara, and probably, reading between the lines, willing to propagate the British version of the "self-hating Jew" meme. He's the type of Zionist in the UK who I'm sure that was affiliated with the campaign to hound Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour leadership and replace him with Der (Keir) Starmer. Der Starmer ... think about it, think about it.

And, given the amount of explanatory material around direct quotes and references to Hirsh's studies, explanatory material like this:

The study challenged the simplistic notion that antisemitism is exclusive to either the left or right ends of the political spectrum. Instead, it highlighted the complexity of political ideologies. Antisemitism is not limited to any particular political group but can be found among individuals across various ideological spectrums.

I'm filing PsyPost under "willing participants," not "ignorant dupes." You have to go looking to run stuff like this. Especially since it was written by founder Eric Dolan, not someone else. (PsyPost has four other "contributors" listed on its website.)

And, since he's on Twitter?

So, per your Wikipedia page and many other things, are Jews who call out Israel's wrongs, instead of conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism like you do, racists? Is a Philip Weiss, founder of Mondoweiss, a racist? A self-hating Jew? What about Norman Finkelstein?

There you are.

More about Hirsh, from Wiki?

His parents were Trots, it says. I'll bet dollars to donuts that like US Jews with similar parentage, he became a full-on neoconservative.

And, "congrats" to Dolan for getting me to add "hasbara" as a tag to this post and to the blog, as it's the first use, though I will "backtag."

Neither Dolan nor PsyPost has responded on Twitter.