Femophilosemitism and the Co-Option of Feminist Rhetoric

Abstract

In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, Germany faces a conflict. On the one hand, Germany is met with accusations of complicity in the Gaza genocide through its supply of weapons to Israel, as well as public pressure over its repression of the Palestine solidarity movement by means of allegations of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Germany must maintain its image as a redeemed, exceptional nation that has learned from its genocidal past through its anti-anti-Semitism measures. Existing scholarship on Staatsräson and the war on anti-Semitism has analyzed this conflict as a mechanism of domestic counterinsurgency and racial governance. However, the gendered dimensions of this state philosemitism remain critically undertheorized. This article introduces femophilosemitism to describe the convergence of feminist co-option (purplewashing) with Germany’s war on anti-Semitism. The article demonstrates that femophilosemitism is a structurally embedded state apparatus in which feminist language is extracted from decolonial movements and redeployed to legitimize imperial violence abroad while governing racialized populations at home. Through situated engagement, a decolonial Jewish practice of refusal, this article traces how transnational feminist movements are domesticated to govern race at home. This article argues that femophilosemitism operates by producing feminism itself as vulnerable to anti-Semitic infiltration, thereby justifying perpetual state surveillance and the expansion of racial governance through counterinsurgency logics.