Published: 10 June 2026
Last updated: 10 June 2026
Some years ago, I bought myself a label-maker. I spent hours printing off little sticky labels and covering everything in them. Pantry items, drawers in the wardrobe, tubs in the bathroom cupboards. I even used them to differentiate the husband’s phone chargers from my own so we could avert the perpetual marital crisis of the stolen charger.
But labels have limits and there are three things for which labels are ill-advised: people, politics and identity.
One-word labels in any of these areas rarely manage to embody what they seek to achieve. Can I really call myself a progressive if I think some women are “asking for it”? Can I call myself left-wing if I think climate change is all a bit of an exaggeration? Am I a conservative if I’m in favour of marriage equality? Because these labels might be helpful in some loosely indicative ways, but ultimately, they are all broad churches with a variety of interpretations.
We’ve seen “hunt by label” before, probably the most famous of which was the second “Red Scare” in the US after World War II. It saw the establishment of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938, followed by McCarthyist witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s.
The red scare is defined as a moral panic around the rise of left-wing ideologies in society, specifically socialism and communism, all too often intertwined with anti-Chinese and anti-Russian racism.
The first step was to define “communism” as the embodiment of all evil and totally morally corrupt, whipping up hatred, fear and conspiracy. The second step was to haul those deemed to be communist (in the pejorative sense of the word) and interrogate them and encourage them to “give up” other “communists”. And the third step was to excise them from public life.
Comments7
Simon Krite9 July at 10:12 am
Isabelle, the real issue is the greatest inversion of our time is that some of the loudest campaigns against Jews now march under the banner of “human rights.”
Using “human rights” as moral camouflage to selectively target, isolate and delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state is every bit as cynical as weaponising Holocaust language. It grants prejudice a veneer of virtue.
That’s why the obsession with words like “Kapo” misses the larger issue. While those terms should never be used lightly, the far greater damage is done by those who cloak anti-Jewish outcomes in the language of justice, equity and human rights. Respectable language does not make a discriminatory campaign respectable.
The anti-Zionist litmus test described in this article is real. Increasingly, Jews are expected to publicly renounce Zionism to earn social acceptance. This is ideological coercion.
History will not remember this era kindly. It will remember the institutions, activists and NGOs that claimed to defend universal human rights while applying standards to the Jewish state that they demanded of no other nation.
Simon Krite9 July at 10:03 am
BART, Your comment is a perfect example of starting with the conclusion and working backwards.
You redefine Zionism entirely by “alleged” outcomes while conveniently ignoring why it exists in the first place. The Jewish people’s right to self-determination after centuries of persecution in their ancestral homeland. No other national movement is judged solely by its imperfections while its legitimacy is denied.
Suggesting Palestinians have a more “relevant understanding” of Zionism than Jews themselves is comical. That’s like claiming Britain’s enemies are the ultimate authority on British history.
You’ve also erased 3,000 years of Jewish history and reduced Zionism to 1948 onwards, as though Jewish attachment to Israel began with the Nakba. That’s not history, Bart… it’s basic ideological propaganda.
The reality is that Zionism “does” exactly what every successful national movement does, it established and defends a nation-state. If your definition starts by excluding Jewish history and ends by accepting the narrative of those who reject Jewish self-determination, you’ve described Antizionism, not Zionism and your terms are straight from the Palestinianism playbook.