Dear editors:

I read with dismay your republication of Rob Ashlar's "On the Zionist Para-State." If Ashlar believes that his analytical framing of the Zionist Para-State is useful, it was unwise of him to couch it in the explicitly anti-Semitic language of "ZOG," which makes it easy for critics to dismiss his essay tout court. This mistake is connected to other problems with his analysis, to be discussed below. In any case, it's one thing to publish poorly thought-out material on a personal Substack; a much greater error was made by the Cosmonaut editors in republishing the essay here without first requiring thorough editing.

The term "ZOG," referring to the so-called "Zionist Occupation Government" that secretly controls American politics, was coined in 1976 by a neo-Nazi activist and subsequently became a rallying cry throughout the American neo-Nazi and white supremacist communities. The term, Ashlar admits, has "hideous origins," but "seems self-evidently true". He offers an alternative term, the "Zionist Para-State," but then ignores it for most of his essay, instead framing his essay through the lens of ZOG, which structures his argument throughout.

Why does Ashlar choose to use explicitly and admittedly anti-Semitic language as an organizing principle of his essay? It becomes clear by his conclusion: "The Zionist Para-State position makes the Israeli genocide a specifically Jewish issue, rendering Jews writ large culpable for their complicity and even participation in the genocide as mediated by the Para-State." (Emphasis mine.) This is almost definitionally a modern instance of the blood libel: Jewish communal culpability for a murderous crime. Perhaps Ashlar is untroubled by this, although the editors of Cosmonaut should be. 

Besides the obvious violation of leftist principles of anti-racism, the reason why Marxists should be averse to blood libel is that it's not true. Ashlar concludes from his analysis that "Jewish grassroots culpability in this genocide must therefore take center stage in the anti-Zionist struggle," a pronouncement which demonstrates a major flaw in his understanding. In fact, Jewish grassroots organizing in the United States has mostly run in the other direction. The Jewish institutions responsible for manufacturing the Zionist consensus in America are all powerful organizations funded by ultra-wealthy donors, about as far from grassroots as one can get. This is in stark contrast to the many young Jews who have been working tirelessly within their communities to carry on exactly the fight Ashlar claims to want, namely "to fight and break the rabid Zionism of Jewish communities." The American Jewish community, much more politically diverse than European Jewish communities, contains a sizable left wing which has supplied many heroic organizers over the past several years; it is not a coincidence that many major anti-Zionist tendencies in the United States are led by Jews. The change Ashlar is calling for is not going to come about by attacking "Jews writ large" but rather by uniting in solidarity with those Jews who are working to build a better Judaism.

Cosmonaut's decision to run Ashlar's essay unedited is therefore a mistake, one that risks promulgating shoddy analysis in order to foist a prescriptive anti-Semitism on the left, which would be hugely damaging to the solidarity required in the struggle Ashlar claims to be interested in. Ultimately, the editors of Cosmonaut are going to have to make a choice: anti-Semitism or Marxism? You can't have both, and by running Ashlar's essay unedited, you are making a choice that risks undermining the Cosmonaut project.

Benjamin G.