Since the publication of her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), Zadie Smith has been a darling of tastemakers across the Atlantic. Much of her ensuing work feels like a love letter to the forces who anointed her into literary stardom. Twenty-four years on, she continues to repay the favor.
Her reflections on student activism in The New Yorker (where else?) represent a milestone in the venerable genre of Self-Important-Liberal-Novelist-Giving-Unwanted-Advice-To-Wayward-Youth-And-Uncouth-Radicals. Most entries in the genre are merely obtuse and sanctimonious; Smith manages to also be sloppy and misinformed. Give her credit. She’s mastered the trick for which the haut monde sent her off into the world. While positioning herself as a Deep Thinker detached from primitive loyalties, Smith painstakingly tethers expressions of ambiguity to the status quo, the most primal loyalty of all.
Let’s examine the essay’s most egregious failures one-by-one:
—In the first line, Smith writes, “A philosophy without a politics is common enough.” It’s not at all common. In fact, a philosophy without a politics is impossible. Only a mind afflicted by upper-class rot could think otherwise.
—Smith speaks of activism that can lead to arrest or other forms of punishment, concluding that it “represent[s] a level of personal sacrifice unimaginable to many of us.” This royal “us” betrays Smith’s position as outsider and poseur. In reality, sacrifice is eminently imaginable to the countless people who have chosen to act on their conscience and subsequently languished in prison, lost jobs and careers, or suffered exile and ostracism. It is eminently imaginable to the very students on whom Smith lavishes so much scorn. They are being punished in horrible ways and yet they keep going. Sacrifice isn’t unimaginable to “many of us.” It is unimaginable to Smith and her cohort of frivolous lickspittles. This she confirms a few sentences later with what is supposed to be a droll anecdote about her inability to give up travel to New York for the sake of the environment. “What pitiful ethical creatures we are (I am)!” she laments. This singular (and parenthetical) flash of self-awareness, meant to be ironic and thus venial, is the only aspect of the essay worth the reader’s attention.
—“The more than seven million Jewish human beings who live in the gap between the river and the sea will not simply vanish because you think that they should.” Who has called for seven million Jews to vanish? It is not a demand of any Palestinian political party, of the BDS movement, of pro-Palestine student organizations, of the vast Palestinian intellectual tradition, or of any Palestine solidarity community around the world. Not a single spokesperson in any of the student encampments has even hinted at replacing or eliminating Israeli Jews. To interpret Palestinian demands for freedom as inherently malicious is nothing more than crude racism dressed in humanistic affectations. Smith, like too many of her Western contemporaries, believes herself capable of discussing Palestine without apparently having read a single Palestinian writer.
—Regarding the encampment at Columbia University: “…it may well be that a Jewish student walking past the tents, who finds herself referred to as a Zionist, and then is warned to keep her distance, is, in that moment, the weakest participant in the zone.” Yes, and it may well be that an elephant wakes up one morning with a trunk attached to its ass. The only Jewish students facing recrimination are those who have joined with their Palestinian classmates. The ones agitating for genocide are supported by the entire corporate and political establishment.
—“To send the police in to arrest young people peacefully insisting upon a ceasefire represents a moral injury to us all. To do it with violence is a scandal. How could they do less than protest, in this moment? They are putting their own bodies into the machine. They deserve our support and praise.” Here’s the point at which a competent editor would have asked Smith if she planned on including any support and praise or if she just wants to keep bombarding college students with passive-aggressive bromides. (The same editor might have explained that in the year 2024 pretentions of neutrality have become incredibly trite and boring.)
—Smith tut-tuts protestors and their antagonists for simplifying “unbelievably labyrinthine histories.” There are precisely three reasons why a person would describe the history of Zionist colonization as labyrinthine: 1) ignorance; 2) cynicism; 3) racism. Ignorance is self-explanatory and the least troublesome of the options. Cynicism might result from careerism or bootlicking or simple contempt for the downtrodden. And racism of course arises from any form of Zionism, in this case the notion that Palestinians don’t deserve freedom because it would muck up the good times for everyone else.
—“But it is in the nature of the political that we cannot even attend to such ethical imperatives unless we first know the political position of whoever is speaking.” Finally a moment where the term “labyrinthine” is applicable. I’m having trouble figuring out what Smith wants to say. She’s probably confused, too, but, being a longstanding member of the cultural elite, understands that clarity is less important than satisfying the right audience. Anyway, students are saying exactly what their position is, as Smith acknowledges elsewhere in the essay. She just doesn’t accept it. Perhaps she’s upset that the approval of Zadie Smith was never part of their calculation.
I could explain why the essay also fails rhetorically, stylistically, and creatively, or go on about how it is thoughtless, ungenerous, superficial, but what’s the point? It was doomed the moment that Smith decided she could philosophize without politics. It only got worse when she changed her mind and then found ten different ways to butcher the word “political.”
At one point, Smith seems to almost recognize that she’s talking a whole lot of bullshit and tries to preempt the inevitable backlash: “The objection may be raised at this point that I am behaving like a novelist, expressing a philosophy without a politics, or making some rarefied point about language and rhetoric while people commit bloody murder.” Incorrect yet again. The objection is that you’re abetting a genocide.
As a college student present at the UPenn encampment I think this is a gross misinterpretation of Smith’s essay, a misinterpretation she explicitly predicts in her final paragraph. You mistake her sensibility for cowardice and dogma for virtue. 👎
Glad to hear you’re in an encampment. I hope you will be safe from harm. Regarding Smith, you can choose to see it or not, but she has nothing but contempt for you–ss
❤️🙏🥇
What exactly in this word salad did you find sensible?
“a misinterpretation she explicitly predicts in her final paragraph”
On Facebook I often see the phrase “If you laugh react it means I won”.
Doesn’t mean the laugh react wasn’t justified. Smith’s essay is exactly what Salaita says it is.
It’s so convenient that if we should dare take issue with Smith’s empty bromides and intellectual dishonesty then we are no doubt guilty of that which she so wisely indicts. Do you have anything to say for the plainly evident reality that she seeks to smear the pro-Palestinian movement as desirous of Jewish elimination in the region? Her ‘sensibility’ only speaks to those who take hoary, banal platitudes for profundity. I hope this helps!
Sort of, but could you write in plainer English ?
Yes I agree, saying “she predicted it sooo” isn’t the most astute way to justify where I’m coming from. But still, I think to suggest that she characterizes the entire pro-Palestinian movement as you’ve stated is a misreading. In my interpretation, Smith is explicitly defining the concrete, achievable demands of the student movement in opposition to unsubstantial, dogmatically espoused goals such as the elimination of Hamas or expulsion of Jewish people from the Levant. I just don’t understand how her essay can be interpreted as anything less than supportive of the student movement — should she have said “I support and praise students” instead of “[students] deserve our support and praise”?
She is, of course, a bit critical of student rhetoric that slips into what she describes as “crazed magical thinking”, but I don’t see that as an egregious offense or as especially disparaging. I also think this response from Salaita doesn’t offer much in the way of substantive critiques — just a lot of “Smith is an elite and therefore necessarily morally compromised!”
Any sensibility that paves the way for genocide is nothing but self-serving flailing on the part of the ruling class to save themselves from the judgement of history. You’re not fooling anyone here.
You don’t even know what you don’t know
As a Palestinian who is watching the livestream genocide of his people, I thought her essay was trash and Steven is on point.
Thanks so much for this piece. It made it more possible for me to read the Smith piece, for I knew I could come here right after!
My question is:
Smith states, “The person who uses the word ‘Zionist’ as if that word were an unchanged and unchangeable monolith, meaning exactly the same thing in 2024 and 1948 as it meant in 1890 or 1901 or 1920” – but my understanding is that Zionism has NOT changed radically in the last 130 or so years; reactions to it and laws made around it (by the UN and in the United States, for example) have. Curious what you think?
Having read the Smith piece yesterday, I was climbing the walls and wanting to yell at my dog. Thank you, Steven S.
Long time listener, first time caller here: this essay is a brilliant and brutal evisceration of some of the softest and most rotten tendencies of American liberalism. Have appreciated your work for a while (“but I still do, too!”)
This healed my inner child. Magnificent.
Good analysis. Smith is fully representing her class – the middle and upper middle class.
I’ve not read her books, but have seen two tv adaptations of them – White Teeth and NW. They were ok, but something seemed a bit contrived about them, which on reflection, might be the fact that you have a middle class or above author trying to capture aspects of inner city working class life. Not that it can’t be done, but with Zadie Smith her being an outsider seemed to come across. Having said that, it probably doesnt matter, as I strongly suspect she writes for a middle class and higher liberal audience who wouldn’t know, and perhaps acts as cultural tour guide for them.
Because the pro-Palestinian student protesters are questioning and challenging US imperialism and its ties to their own academic institutions, it poses a threat to people like Smith, who have vested interests in the corporate university sphere. And as an aside, theres a whole other criticism about these more elite non-American folks getting places that were probably set asides for Black Americans.
Smith apes most Zionists by demanding the spotlight of media and public attention be shone on her. How dull, what bad faith, a literary little Eichmann is still a little Eichmann.
I’ve loved several of Zadie Smith’s novels and reading her New Yorker piece I just felt that sort of sinking feeling I felt hearing Matt Taibbi say the whole situation was too “complicated” for him to really comment on, or CJ Hopkins saying the kids protesting genocide on college campuses are *also* authoritarians because they are…. wearing the kind of masks people wore during covid.
it’s very weird to watch people who otherwise have good and clear judgement go on the fritz around this one issue. To use an out of date analogy: flipping the dial, every channel comes in clear as a bell and then suddenly, fuzz and snow.
“It’s complex” or “it’s complicated” are words for people who want to remain apolitical and comfortable: it buys them more time to figure out which-side’s drivel they should commit to, based on who they are talking to, shows a lack of commitment. Taibbi has been under scrutiny for this, though he attempts to ignore the effects of his (non) actions.
I recently saw a podcaster called it “audience capture”, when writers insist they cannot take stands in order to preserve the existing audience market that they are working with. Priorities become revealed through silence and “it’s complicated” is a liberal best-attempt effort at letting folks know “you’re aware, but trying not to piss anyone off”.
It is a very unfortunate way to wield the tools of journalism as his more right-leaning audience are just the very people who may need a role model that takes that stand. I hope more journalists can begin to understand the danger of insulation from “neutrality”.
But in real life, we can’t simply change the channel, when you lack the privilege of hiding inside of consumption, that is. Nice analogy. I see it as a form of learned helplessness as well. reflexive obedience to not trust or use one’s intuition (clearly, genocide bad), indicating worse than having the ‘wrong’ take: having none at all. Just smoke and mirrors: grueling, cold.