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Zionism in the Age of Dictators
This book, "ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS - A REAPPRAISAL", by Lenni Brenner, is a replication of a book originally published before 1983. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature.
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First published December 1, 1983
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About the author
Lenni Brenner
16 books13 followersLenni Brenner is an American Trotskyist writer. In the 1960s, Brenner was a prominent civil rights activist and a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War
Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He developed an interest in history from reading Hendrik Willem van Loon's The Story of Mankind which his brother had received as a bar mitzvah present. He became an atheist at age 10 or 12 and a Marxist at age 15. Brenner's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement began when he met James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, later the organizer of the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s. He also worked with Bayard Rustin, later the organizer of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" march on Washington.
Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He developed an interest in history from reading Hendrik Willem van Loon's The Story of Mankind which his brother had received as a bar mitzvah present. He became an atheist at age 10 or 12 and a Marxist at age 15. Brenner's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement began when he met James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, later the organizer of the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s. He also worked with Bayard Rustin, later the organizer of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" march on Washington.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 21, 2014
Brenner's historical analysis highlights how the Zionist movement sought to emulate other European white-supremacist and nationalist colonial movements and even sought to collaborate with anti-Semitic regimes (including Nazi Germany) if such collaboration would advance their colonialist ambitions.
As Brenner shows, this collusion represented a betrayal of the masses of rank-and-file Jews, who were primarily concerned with maintaining an organized fight against European fascism.
The Zionist movement actively sought to undermine the Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany. Zionists also tried to discourage anti-fascist rank-and-file Jews from traveling to Spain to fight against Franco during the Spanish Revolution. These accounts, and other information presented in this book, help the reader to understand that the Zionist movement and the colonial settler-state of Israel have no legitimate claim to anti-fascism or anti-racism, despite their continually frequent claims to the contrary.
As Brenner shows, this collusion represented a betrayal of the masses of rank-and-file Jews, who were primarily concerned with maintaining an organized fight against European fascism.
The Zionist movement actively sought to undermine the Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany. Zionists also tried to discourage anti-fascist rank-and-file Jews from traveling to Spain to fight against Franco during the Spanish Revolution. These accounts, and other information presented in this book, help the reader to understand that the Zionist movement and the colonial settler-state of Israel have no legitimate claim to anti-fascism or anti-racism, despite their continually frequent claims to the contrary.
October 31, 2016
This covers a bunch of history and can be a bit dry at times, but it's history that just doesn't get told much anymore. If you're curious about the origins of zionism, this is the book for you. It really helps frame recent events in the middle east.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 10, 2025
“Solution of the Jewish question? It was our Zionist dream!”
Never before has it been so categorically clear that no, Zionism does NOT make Jews safer. Who could have guessed that brazenly committing genocide in the name of a religion/ethnicity hardly does wonders for their PR? Brenner’s thorough exposé demonstrates this sacrifice of the diaspora upon the altar of Zionist ambition to be far from a novel phenomenon; rather, it is the product of a fascistic ideology which would rather cast its non-adherents to the flames than even remotely imperil its colonial adventures.
For Zionism, antisemitism is less an ideological abberation to be fought tooth and nail than an imperishable reality tied to the immutable ontological makeup of “the Jew”. This deeply cynical, servile ideology reifies antisemitism into a fundamental dimension of Judaism, thereby charging Jews with the sole responsibility for their unjust suffering at the hands of bigots. The commonalities shared with gentile antisemitism are plain to see; in the spirit of “every Zionist accusation is a confession”, there truly is no more self-hating ideological position to take as a Jew.
Zionists have made a habit of undermining the safety of the Jewish diaspora in favour of flimsy rapprochements with fascists, often in hopes of striking bloodstained deals for the eventual formation of a Jewish Palestine; as we can see all too clearly today, these efforts also carelessly play right into the hands of anti-semites. Mufti al-Husseini harboured zero antipathy for jews until the relentless advance of Zionist colonialism. Atrocities committed in our name…
Zionist attitudes towards fascism and the concomitant rise in anti-semetism ranged from a maddening naivete and conservative paralysis to sheepish complicity and active collaboration, extending its bitter legacy beyond Palestine into a cruel pragmatism and callous disregard for the perils of the European Jewry during the Holocaust.
Operating under a delusionally inverted logic, the German Zionists expected their odds of success to grow alongside Jewish persecution, prompting a rather sadistic celebration in the face of increasing existential precarity, hoping this would persuade Jews to succumb to Zionism’s nihilism and join the cause. This assessment was, unfortunately, largely correct, teaching the Zionists that they are at their strongest when the diaspora is at its weakest and most afraid (a fact they still mercilessly exploit to this day); could anything be further from the interests of jews at large? It follows from these perverse positions that Zionism ended up ideologically and practically closer to the Nazis than their fellow Jewish victims.
Germany’s Zionists shared common ground with the Nazis on two key points: Jews are unassimilatable harbingers of social friction who do not belong in Germany, and liberalism is a scourge to be dealt with. Nazi officials — most famously Adolf Eichmann, who would become somewhat obsessed with Zionism (“had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist”) — were chaperoned around Palestine by Zionist representatives hoping to court their favour; it is revealing that their overtures only ceased when the Nazis themselves put a stop to it.
Whilst the exact degree of toleration they were willing to extend ebbed and flowed, Nazi’s almost always privileged Zionists over their “assimilationist” counterparts. At the bare minimum, their shared ethnonationalism enabled them to use Zionism as a tacit justification for segregationist measures — after all, they would argue, is this not precisely what the Zionists Jews want? The Nuremberg Laws decreed the flying of only two flags within the Reich: the swastika and, amazingly enough, the Zionist banner. The anti-semites chant “Kikes to Palestine” and the Zionists line up to accommodate.
It should be no surprise then that they kept their distance from the anti-nazi movement, but to have actually frustrated such efforts is so unconscionable and pathetic that it makes me truly furious like little else.
The World Zionist Congress not only firmly opposed an anti-german boycott, but actually worked on behalf of the nazis for their economic gain (a fact the latter would subsequently exploit to dismiss accusations of brutality); in 1935 the WZO dismissed using their influence and resources in defence of German jews, fearing that such an initiative would distract from the mission of zion (Brenner cites the fact that a paltry 22% of immigration certificates were awarded to Germans throughout the 1930s, reflecting the fact that whilst Zionism was pitched as a safe haven, it was never truly intended as such, ultimately favouring the “useful” over the desperate); Ben-Gurion passionately opposed the British admitting Jewish children into the country following Kristallnacht; WZO member Stephen Wise (who, mind you, would go on to testify against setting up an American rescue commission for European Jews) was temporarily deplatformed by the organisation for his anti-Hitler sentiments. Under Chaim Weizmann, organisation leader and future first president of “Israel”, the WZO saw immediately aiding persecuted Jews and building israel to be mutually exclusive. Performing grotesque apologetics for their gravediggers was all they could muster.
Whether it be Mussolini or Hitler, fascists were fair game so long as they could be construed (often thanks to some serious mental gymnastics) as beneficial to the zionist project, even if they were resolutely committed to the wholesale destruction of the Jewry. Even Arthur Balfour — now hailed as a salvific benefactor of the Israeli project — was an outspoken antisemite who had resisted Jewish immigration.
Herzl — the ur-architect of political Zionism — encapsulates the ethnonationalistic chauvinism at the heart of the project. From day one, Herzl was a keen ally of socialism’s enemies, endorsing the spectre of the jewish-socialist conspiracy and promising everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to Churchill to pogromist von Plevhe that Zionism will take care of their unique problem. Herzl was always eager to auction off the blood, sweat and tears of jewish revolutionaries to the highest bidder.
Functionally bound up with reactionary ruling class interests, Zionism proudly pitched itself as the antidote to the Jew’s inherently “destructive tendencies”, preferring to idly suffer the horrors of Nazism than dare cooperate with the Jewish left (unlike the Zionists, the Bund actually mobilised resistance). The latter’s internationalism was, for obvious reasons, odious to the Zionists, whose obdurate anti-communism and naive faith in the Nazis allowed them to dismiss the initial reports of mass jewish killings as nothing more than “Bolshevik propaganda”.
Diasporic jewish attempts to combat antisemitism, especially if they conflicted with zionist aims, were regularly diminished and disregarded. Let us not forget that for these people, anti-semetism is a foregone conclusion. In their eyes, resistance could only make things worse, and so it was actively discouraged at every turn.
Herzl’s participation also reveals an awfully inconvenient truth for political zionism: it was never really about biblical injunction or any other post-hoc religious justification. Herzl was avowedly secular, so when Britain offered the Kenya Highlands instead of Palestine, Herzl saw little wrong with the proposal. So long as it could be colonised by the metaphysically quarrelsome Jewry, it was fair game. Speaking of colonialism, Zionists were not always so shy about its ideological transparency; those like arch-revisionist and Haganah founder Vladimir Jabotinsky could not emphasise the violent colonial nature of their project enough.
“Zionism had come full turn: instead of Zionism being the hope of Jews, their blood was to be the political salvation of Zionism”
To be absolutely clear, Israel’s decades long erasure of the Palestinian people is, as it should go without saying, Zionism’s supreme crime. All other evils — its exploitation of the jewish diaspora included — flow downstream from this raison d'être: cleansing the land by any means necessary. That being says, whilst it will always be paramount to centre Palestinian voices and the dimensions of Palestinian struggle, paying closer attention to the history of the Zionist movement and its relationship with Judaism still performs an invaluable demystification, untangling decades of hegemonic hasbara narratives.
To this end, Brenner’s work cuts right through to the heart of zionist ideology, setting its carefully crafted image aflame to reveal its rehearsed appeals to Judaism and antisemitism as little more than convenient foils to deflect from the horrors in which it was, and continues to be, complicit.
Never before has it been so categorically clear that no, Zionism does NOT make Jews safer. Who could have guessed that brazenly committing genocide in the name of a religion/ethnicity hardly does wonders for their PR? Brenner’s thorough exposé demonstrates this sacrifice of the diaspora upon the altar of Zionist ambition to be far from a novel phenomenon; rather, it is the product of a fascistic ideology which would rather cast its non-adherents to the flames than even remotely imperil its colonial adventures.
For Zionism, antisemitism is less an ideological abberation to be fought tooth and nail than an imperishable reality tied to the immutable ontological makeup of “the Jew”. This deeply cynical, servile ideology reifies antisemitism into a fundamental dimension of Judaism, thereby charging Jews with the sole responsibility for their unjust suffering at the hands of bigots. The commonalities shared with gentile antisemitism are plain to see; in the spirit of “every Zionist accusation is a confession”, there truly is no more self-hating ideological position to take as a Jew.
Zionists have made a habit of undermining the safety of the Jewish diaspora in favour of flimsy rapprochements with fascists, often in hopes of striking bloodstained deals for the eventual formation of a Jewish Palestine; as we can see all too clearly today, these efforts also carelessly play right into the hands of anti-semites. Mufti al-Husseini harboured zero antipathy for jews until the relentless advance of Zionist colonialism. Atrocities committed in our name…
Zionist attitudes towards fascism and the concomitant rise in anti-semetism ranged from a maddening naivete and conservative paralysis to sheepish complicity and active collaboration, extending its bitter legacy beyond Palestine into a cruel pragmatism and callous disregard for the perils of the European Jewry during the Holocaust.
Operating under a delusionally inverted logic, the German Zionists expected their odds of success to grow alongside Jewish persecution, prompting a rather sadistic celebration in the face of increasing existential precarity, hoping this would persuade Jews to succumb to Zionism’s nihilism and join the cause. This assessment was, unfortunately, largely correct, teaching the Zionists that they are at their strongest when the diaspora is at its weakest and most afraid (a fact they still mercilessly exploit to this day); could anything be further from the interests of jews at large? It follows from these perverse positions that Zionism ended up ideologically and practically closer to the Nazis than their fellow Jewish victims.
Germany’s Zionists shared common ground with the Nazis on two key points: Jews are unassimilatable harbingers of social friction who do not belong in Germany, and liberalism is a scourge to be dealt with. Nazi officials — most famously Adolf Eichmann, who would become somewhat obsessed with Zionism (“had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist”) — were chaperoned around Palestine by Zionist representatives hoping to court their favour; it is revealing that their overtures only ceased when the Nazis themselves put a stop to it.
Whilst the exact degree of toleration they were willing to extend ebbed and flowed, Nazi’s almost always privileged Zionists over their “assimilationist” counterparts. At the bare minimum, their shared ethnonationalism enabled them to use Zionism as a tacit justification for segregationist measures — after all, they would argue, is this not precisely what the Zionists Jews want? The Nuremberg Laws decreed the flying of only two flags within the Reich: the swastika and, amazingly enough, the Zionist banner. The anti-semites chant “Kikes to Palestine” and the Zionists line up to accommodate.
It should be no surprise then that they kept their distance from the anti-nazi movement, but to have actually frustrated such efforts is so unconscionable and pathetic that it makes me truly furious like little else.
The World Zionist Congress not only firmly opposed an anti-german boycott, but actually worked on behalf of the nazis for their economic gain (a fact the latter would subsequently exploit to dismiss accusations of brutality); in 1935 the WZO dismissed using their influence and resources in defence of German jews, fearing that such an initiative would distract from the mission of zion (Brenner cites the fact that a paltry 22% of immigration certificates were awarded to Germans throughout the 1930s, reflecting the fact that whilst Zionism was pitched as a safe haven, it was never truly intended as such, ultimately favouring the “useful” over the desperate); Ben-Gurion passionately opposed the British admitting Jewish children into the country following Kristallnacht; WZO member Stephen Wise (who, mind you, would go on to testify against setting up an American rescue commission for European Jews) was temporarily deplatformed by the organisation for his anti-Hitler sentiments. Under Chaim Weizmann, organisation leader and future first president of “Israel”, the WZO saw immediately aiding persecuted Jews and building israel to be mutually exclusive. Performing grotesque apologetics for their gravediggers was all they could muster.
Whether it be Mussolini or Hitler, fascists were fair game so long as they could be construed (often thanks to some serious mental gymnastics) as beneficial to the zionist project, even if they were resolutely committed to the wholesale destruction of the Jewry. Even Arthur Balfour — now hailed as a salvific benefactor of the Israeli project — was an outspoken antisemite who had resisted Jewish immigration.
Herzl — the ur-architect of political Zionism — encapsulates the ethnonationalistic chauvinism at the heart of the project. From day one, Herzl was a keen ally of socialism’s enemies, endorsing the spectre of the jewish-socialist conspiracy and promising everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to Churchill to pogromist von Plevhe that Zionism will take care of their unique problem. Herzl was always eager to auction off the blood, sweat and tears of jewish revolutionaries to the highest bidder.
Functionally bound up with reactionary ruling class interests, Zionism proudly pitched itself as the antidote to the Jew’s inherently “destructive tendencies”, preferring to idly suffer the horrors of Nazism than dare cooperate with the Jewish left (unlike the Zionists, the Bund actually mobilised resistance). The latter’s internationalism was, for obvious reasons, odious to the Zionists, whose obdurate anti-communism and naive faith in the Nazis allowed them to dismiss the initial reports of mass jewish killings as nothing more than “Bolshevik propaganda”.
Diasporic jewish attempts to combat antisemitism, especially if they conflicted with zionist aims, were regularly diminished and disregarded. Let us not forget that for these people, anti-semetism is a foregone conclusion. In their eyes, resistance could only make things worse, and so it was actively discouraged at every turn.
Herzl’s participation also reveals an awfully inconvenient truth for political zionism: it was never really about biblical injunction or any other post-hoc religious justification. Herzl was avowedly secular, so when Britain offered the Kenya Highlands instead of Palestine, Herzl saw little wrong with the proposal. So long as it could be colonised by the metaphysically quarrelsome Jewry, it was fair game. Speaking of colonialism, Zionists were not always so shy about its ideological transparency; those like arch-revisionist and Haganah founder Vladimir Jabotinsky could not emphasise the violent colonial nature of their project enough.
“Zionism had come full turn: instead of Zionism being the hope of Jews, their blood was to be the political salvation of Zionism”
To be absolutely clear, Israel’s decades long erasure of the Palestinian people is, as it should go without saying, Zionism’s supreme crime. All other evils — its exploitation of the jewish diaspora included — flow downstream from this raison d'être: cleansing the land by any means necessary. That being says, whilst it will always be paramount to centre Palestinian voices and the dimensions of Palestinian struggle, paying closer attention to the history of the Zionist movement and its relationship with Judaism still performs an invaluable demystification, untangling decades of hegemonic hasbara narratives.
To this end, Brenner’s work cuts right through to the heart of zionist ideology, setting its carefully crafted image aflame to reveal its rehearsed appeals to Judaism and antisemitism as little more than convenient foils to deflect from the horrors in which it was, and continues to be, complicit.
June 21, 2014
Brenner's historical analysis highlights how the Zionist movement sought to emulate other European white-supremacist and nationalist colonial movements and even sought to collaborate with anti-Semitic regimes (including Nazi Germany) if such collaboration would advance their colonialist ambitions.
As Brenner shows, this collusion represented a betrayal of the masses of rank-and-file Jews, who were primarily concerned with maintaining an organized fight against European fascism.
The Zionist movement actively sought to undermine the Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany. Zionists also tried to discourage anti-fascist rank-and-file Jews from traveling to Spain to fight against Franco during the Spanish Revolution. These accounts, and other information presented in this book, help the reader to understand that the Zionist movement and the colonial settler-state of Israel have no legitimate claim to anti-fascism or anti-racism, despite their continually frequent claims to the contrary.
As Brenner shows, this collusion represented a betrayal of the masses of rank-and-file Jews, who were primarily concerned with maintaining an organized fight against European fascism.
The Zionist movement actively sought to undermine the Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany. Zionists also tried to discourage anti-fascist rank-and-file Jews from traveling to Spain to fight against Franco during the Spanish Revolution. These accounts, and other information presented in this book, help the reader to understand that the Zionist movement and the colonial settler-state of Israel have no legitimate claim to anti-fascism or anti-racism, despite their continually frequent claims to the contrary.
May 11, 2014
The book relates the history of Zionism with the second world war, the age of dictators, and the holocaust. IT tried to show the interaction between Herzl's movement and the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe. Author claims to show evidence that Zionist sought the patronage and benevolence of the avowed anti semites and, ultimately , the collaboration of the Fascist and Nazis. The author does state that Zionism is an ideology and it is not now , nor was it ever , co extensive with either Judaism or the jewish people. I thought the book was poorly organized with to many numbers and dates, too much data. I had to fight to finish it.I only gave it a 3 star because it gave me a better understanding of ZIONISM.
May 30, 2025
Clearly the best book on this subject. Note that this is to read in parallel with the book named “51 documents” for better evidence.
Witness that this book is highly censored (or shadow banned) because of the sensitive nature of the subject and proofs of collusion between Zionist’s and the Nazi apparatus.
Witness that this book is highly censored (or shadow banned) because of the sensitive nature of the subject and proofs of collusion between Zionist’s and the Nazi apparatus.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews