Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left with Benjamin Balthaser and Gabriel Winant

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Join us as we welcome Benjamin Balthaser and Gabe Winant for a discussion of Benjamin Balthaser's new book, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, out now from Verso Books. Citizens of the Whole World is a 100 year cultural, political and literary history of the American Jewish left and its critique of the colonial and nationalist project of Zionism. Since October 7, 2023, the world has witnessed a vibrant American Jewish uprising in support of Palestinian liberation. Through sit-ins in Congress or Grand Central Terminal, through petitions and marches, thousands of Jews have made it known the Israeli state is not acting in their name. This resistance did not come out of nowhere. Citizens returns us to its roots in the “red decade” of the 1930s and, from there, traces the history of American Jewish radicals and revolutionaries to the present day. Covering more than just the politics of anti-Zionism, Citizens of the Whole World explores the Jewish revolutionary traditions of Marxist internationalism, Jewish solidarity with Third World struggles, and relations between Jewish and Black radicals during the Civil Rights era, delving into radical Jewish novels and memoirs, as well as interviews with Jewish revolutionaries, to unearth a buried if nonetheless unbroken continuity between leftist Jewish Americans and the diasporic internation­alism of today. Benjamin Balthaser is Associate Professor of Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature at Indiana University, South Bend, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago. He is the author of books including Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left from Verso, and Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Radical Transnational Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War from University of Michigan Press. His work has also appeared in journals such as Boston Review, American Quarterly, Jacobin and elsewhere. Gabe Winant is Associate Professor of History at University of Chicago and the author of Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America