People, Class, or People as Class? : The Swedish Left, the Jews, and the state of Israel post-1967

Abstract: This study is an analytical investigation of the usage of the concept “people” and its relation to “class” in the Swedish left-wing antizionist repertoire post-1967. Relying on a critical Marxist understanding of antisemitism and nationalism, the study attempts to understand how and explain how the political left reproduced the antisemitic conspiracist structure of the “powerful Jews” through anti-imperialist nationalism. The study utilizes Freeden’s morphology of ideologies as a method to identify the position of specific political concepts, and what they mean in relation to each other. Likewise, how certain cultural constraints connected to Marxism-Leninism direct a specific political language regarding the communists understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is the author’s assumption that “people” replaced “class” as the main word, by which the political left re-positioned itself from a Marxist understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an approach characterized as a post-colonial nationalism with class nuances, which contributed to left-wing antisemitism post-1967.