“The true masochist,” wrote Sigmund Freud, “always turns his cheek when he has a chance of receiving a blow.”
Freud’s observation lay at the core of his explanation of “moral masochism,” one of three types that he identified (the other two being “erotogenic masochism” and “feminine masochism.”)
While psychoanalysis, which Freud fathered, is focused on individuals and not groups, its conceptual architecture has been applied to group settings with varying degrees of success; when it comes to moral masochism, there is a more persuasive case for its application to group psychology, in part because Freud argued that of the three types, this one is notably less tied to human sexuality.
One of the byproducts of moral masochism is that those in thrall to it often experience feelings of virtue. As the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner argued, “self-criticism becomes a form of self-congratulation.” Moral masochism is driven by feelings of guilt; visibly displaying one’s conscience and sense of rectitude by atoning is thus a form of compensation. It eases the pain that guilt induces and even encourages the subject to look for more reasons to feel guilty, just so that the same psychic experience can be repeated.
There are a few group-based contexts where this concept can be helpful—for example, in the case of Germany after World War II, where the process of de-Nazification led many Germans, particularly those born in the aftermath of the war, down the path of moral masochism. I once had a German colleague who felt obliged to confess to me that her grandfather had served in the SS, emphasizing that she hoped this knowledge would not wreck our friendship and that she was truly sorry for the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. I was slightly taken aback by both her words and her anxious tone, so I reassured her that any negative judgment would be reserved for her grandfather, not her. She was even more taken aback by this response, and I can still see the look of relief on her face.
But what of the Jews and moral masochism? The question here is less straightforward because the Germans really were guilty of one of history’s most atrocious crimes. With the Jews, particularly since the creation of Israel in 1948, there is a much stronger divergence between the historical record and its interpretations. The birth of the Jewish state was not a crime, but many people, particularly in the current climate, forcefully insist otherwise, and not a few Jews feel overwhelmed by this claim.
Which brings me to the Democratic Party primaries in New York. While it wasn’t all gloom and doom this past week—Micah Lasher, a supporter of Israel, won the nomination for the 12th District, and Richie Torres, the incumbent congressman for the 15th District, who has a long record of supporting Israel in Congress, was comfortably renominated—the night of June 23rd will be remembered for the sweeping victories of Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated candidates endorsed by New York’s virulently anti-Zionist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
These are candidates who clashed with the mainstream of New York’s Jewish community from the outset since they made opposing Israel’s supposed “genocide” in Gaza a central plank of their campaigns. Some went even further. The crudely antisemitic Darializa Avila Chevalier, notorious for having attended a rally on Oct. 8, 2023 that celebrated the mass slaughter and rape carried out by Hamas terrorists in Israel the day before, spoke about the “very visual similarities” between Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, and the displacement of black and Latino residents by wealthy landlords in her Uptown Manhattan and Bronx district.
Yet many Jews still supported these candidates, donated money to them and distributed campaign fliers on their behalf. One of them—Brad Lander, who defeated the incumbent Dan Goldman in the 10th District—is even a Jew himself, one who never misses an opportunity to invoke his progressive Jewish identity in his scurrilous attacks on Israel.
This is where the concept of moral masochism comes in. In his capacity as an identifying Jew, Lander brings to mind Freud’s observation about offering one’s cheek whenever a blow is incoming. Every supposed Israeli offense is an opportunity for Lander to absorb more guilt at belonging to a people that has, in his view, dispossessed the Palestinians of their rights and their homeland. He then expresses that guilt through moral grandstanding and by distancing himself from Israel and the majority of Jews who support it. A psychoanalyst might say that this was a problem; a political consultant, however, would laud him for his sound electoral strategy.
It may be that many of the left-wing Jews who vote against Jewish interests—and a secure, thriving Israel capable of defending itself is absolutely a Jewish interest—consciously feel that by joining in with the “genocide” rhetoric, they are creating the conditions for a Jewish communal life dissociated from Zionism and Israel that will be respected and even cherished by their non-Jewish comrades.
One can imagine that such a community would institutionalize moral masochism—for instance, by holding annual religious services to mourn the Palestinian nakba (“disaster” or “catastrophe”) of the establishment of the modern-day Jewish state in 1948, or by removing the Israeli flag from its place alongside the Stars and Stripes in their synagogues and temples. In such an environment, guilt and its acceptance would be externally perceived as a virtue, marking out the “good” Jews from the “bad” ones. And in order to maintain that virtue, those Jews would be required to absorb and atone for more and more guilt, even if that guilt is imagined.
Yet history shows that such strategies are only successful for a short period of time. Many Soviet Jewish Communists faithfully followed Lenin’s instruction to oppose Zionism and any form of Jewish nationalism, as well as antisemitism. Doing so didn’t protect them from Stalin’s purges. To give a more recent example, a handful of French Jews support the antisemitic far-left party La France Insoumise, but their existence didn’t prevent the party’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from mocking the Jewish name of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in a speech that was nationally broadcast.
The bitter truth is two-fold. Socialism has historically had at best an ambivalent and at worst an openly hostile attitude towards the very idea of Jews as a separate community. As Karl Marx memorably put it, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of society from Judaism. And, as I have argued in this column before, a growing element of the left increasingly sees Jews as expendable and is no longer enamored with those Jews who denounce Israel.
I suspect that the roughly one in three Jewish New Yorkers who voted for Mamdani, thus helping to unleash the next phase of the left’s anti-Zionist crusade, will have to learn these truths the hard way. Some will resist and break with this course. Others will double down on their moral masochism and thereby make guilt the foundation of their identities—until the non-Jews among them decide that they are no longer useful.
