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I think everyone should read this piece by Yair Rosenberg, including
people who think they understand anti-Semitism. Too many Americans
on the political right and left, and people throughout the world <b><u>truly</u></b>
believe that Jews run the planet. As stated in this article "This
ignorant status quo has proved deadly for Jews, and that alone
should be enough for our society to take it seriously. But it has
disastrous consequences for non-Jews as well."<br>
<br>
Please forward this article to people and lists who may benefit from
it.<br>
<br>
Manny<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/texas-synagogue-anti-semitism-conspiracy-theory/621286/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/texas-synagogue-anti-semitism-conspiracy-theory/621286/</a><br>
<br>
<div class="ArticleLayoutComponent_title__2tOYT">
<h1 class="ArticleTitle_root__Nb9Xh">Why So Many People Still
Don’t Understand Anti-Semitism</h1>
</div>
<div class="ArticleLayoutComponent_dek__Yy5TX">
<p class="ArticleDek_root__R8OvU">Unlike many other bigotries,
anti-Semitism is not merely a social prejudice; it is a
conspiracy theory about how the world operates.</p>
</div>
<div class="ArticleLayoutComponent_byline__GDNh6">
<div class="ArticleBylines_root__CFgKs">
<address id="byline">By <a class="ArticleBylines_link__IlZu4"
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yair-rosenberg/"
data-action="click author - byline"
data-label="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yair-rosenberg/">Yair
Rosenberg</a><br>
<br>
</address>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">Most people do not
realize that Jews make up just 2 percent of the U.S.
population and 0.2 percent of the world’s population. This
means simply finding them takes a lot of effort. But every
year in Western countries, including America, Jews are the <a
href="https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/publications#Hate-Crime%20Statistics">No.
1 target</a> of anti-religious hate crimes. Anti-Semites are
many things, but they aren’t lazy. They’re animated by one of
the most durable and deadly conspiracy theories in human
history.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">This past Saturday in
Texas, another one found his mark. According to the latest
news reports, Malik Faisal Akram traversed an ocean to
accomplish his task, flying from the United Kingdom to America
in late December. On January 15, he took Colleyville’s
Congregation Beth Israel hostage for more than 11 hours. When
it was all over, Akram was dead and his captives were not. The
hostages escaped after their rabbi <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rabbi-threw-chair-texas-synagogue-hostage-taker-before-escaping-2022-01-17/">engineered</a>
a distraction, <a
href="https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/how-rabbi-charlie-cytron-walkers-training-helped-fellow-hostages-survive-the-texas-synagogue-attack/article_5def7146-77d6-11ec-9da1-5343c8d4cdca.html">drawing</a>
on security training he had received from the Anti-Defamation
League and other communal organizations. Something else most
people don’t realize is that many rabbis need and <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/us/texas-synagogue-hostages-escape.html">receive</a>
security training.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">Speaking about Jews as
symbols is always uncomfortable, and that’s especially the
case when bullet holes are still fresh in the sanctuary. But
the sad fact is, that’s why the Texas congregants were
attacked in the first place: because Jews play a sinister
symbolic role in the imagination of so many that bears no
resemblance to their lived existence.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">After Akram pulled a gun
on the congregation, he demanded to speak to the rabbi of New
York’s Central Synagogue, who he claimed could authorize the
release of <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html">Aafia
Siddiqui</a>, a Pakistani woman serving an attempted murder
sentence in a Fort Worth facility near Beth Israel.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">Obviously, this is not
how the prison system works. “This was somebody who literally
thought that Jews control the world,” Beth Israel Rabbi
Charlie Cytron-Walker <a
href="https://forward.com/news/480928/beth-israel-hostage-standoff-charlie-cytron-walker/">told</a>
<em>The Forward</em>. “He thought he could come into a
synagogue, and we could get on the phone with the ‘Chief Rabbi
of America’ and he would get what he needed.”</p>
<p id="injected-recirculation-link-0"
class="ArticleRelatedContentLink_root__v6EBD"
data-view-action="view link - injected link - item 1"
data-gtm-vis-first-on-screen-31117857_217="137473"
data-gtm-vis-total-visible-time-31117857_217="100"
data-gtm-vis-has-fired-31117857_217="1"><a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/anti-semitism-new-normal-america/608017/">Gary
Rosenblatt: Is it still safe to be a Jew in America?</a></p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">I happen to know Angela
Buchdahl, the rabbi of that New York synagogue, and I think
she would make an excellent chief rabbi of America. But no
such position exists. Jews are a famously fractious lot who
can rarely agree on anything, let alone their religious
leadership. We do not spend our days huddled in smoke-filled
rooms plotting world domination while Jared Kushner plays
dreidel in the back with Noam Chomsky and George Soros sneaks
the last latke.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">The notion that such a
minuscule and unmanageable minority secretly controls the
world is comical, which may be why so many responsible people
still do not take the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory
seriously, or even understand how it works. In the moments
after the Texas crisis, the FBI <a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-60013686">made</a>
an official statement declaring that the assailant was
“particularly focused on one issue, and it was not
specifically related to the Jewish community.” Of course, the
gunman did not travel thousands of miles to terrorize some
Mormons. He sought out a synagogue and took it hostage over
his grievances, believing that Jews alone could resolve them.
That’s targeting Jews, and there’s a word for that.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">The FBI later <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/17/texas-synagogue-malik-faisal-akram-investigation/#:~:text=terrorism-related%20matter%2C%20in%20which%20the%20jewish%20community%20was%20targeted.">corrected</a>
its misstep, but the episode reflects the general ignorance
about anti-Semitism even among people of goodwill. Unlike many
other bigotries, anti-Semitism is not merely a social
prejudice; it is a conspiracy theory about how the world
operates. This addled outlook is what united the Texas gunman,
a Muslim, with the 2018 shooter at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life
synagogue, a white supremacist who <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/27/pittsburgh-shooting-suspect-antisemitism#:~:text=the%20robert%20bowers%20account%20reposted%20another%20user%20who%20wrote">sought</a>
to stanch the flow of Muslims into America. It is a worldview
shared by <a
href="https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/nation-of-islam-farrakhan-in-his-own-words">Louis
Farrakhan</a>, the Black hate preacher, and <a
href="https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/combating-hate/David-Duke.pdf">David
Duke</a>, the former KKK grand wizard. And it is a political
orientation that has been expressed by the self-styled
Christian conservative leader of Hungary, <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/">Viktor
Orb</a><a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/">á</a><a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/">n</a>,
and <a
href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/irans-supreme-leader-posts-anti-semitic-cartoon-on-facebook">Ali
Khamenei</a>, the supreme leader of Iran’s Islamic
theocracy.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">The fevered fantasy of
Jewish domination is incredibly malleable, which makes it
incredibly attractive. If Jews are responsible for every
perceived problem, then people with <a
href="https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61897999d581bf0020f74c32/why-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-just-championed-louis-farrakhan/">entirely
opposite ideals</a> can adopt it. And thanks to centuries of
material blaming the world’s ills on the world’s Jews,
conspiracy theorists seeking a scapegoat for their sorrows
inevitably <a
href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/taylor-greene-conspiracy-theories">discover</a>
that the invisible hand of their oppressor belongs to an
invisible Jew.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">At the same time,
because this expression of anti-Jewish prejudice is so
different from other forms of bigotry, many people don’t
recognize it. As in Texas, law-enforcement officials overlook
it. Social-media companies <a
href="https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/6191452bd581bf0020f7b9bc/what-wont-get-you-banned-from-twitter/">ignore</a>
it. Anti-racism activists—who understand racism as prejudice
wielded by the powerful—cannot grasp it, because anti-Semitism
constructs its Jewish targets as the privileged and powerful.
And political partisans, more concerned with pinning the
problem on their opponents, spend their time parsing the
identity of anti-Semitic individuals, rather than countering
the ideas that animate them.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">In short, although many
people say they are against anti-Semitism today, they don’t
understand the nature of what they oppose. And that’s part of
why anti-Semitism abides.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">This ignorant status quo
has proved deadly for Jews, and that alone should be enough
for our society to take it seriously. But it has disastrous
consequences for non-Jews as well. This is because people who
embrace conspiracy theories to explain their problems lose the
ability to rationally solve them. As Bard College’s Walter
Russell Mead has <a
href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/05/13/the-bbc-and-the-jews/">put
it</a>:</p>
<div class="ArticleLegacyHtml_root__oTAAd
ArticleLegacyHtml_standard__Qfi5x">
<blockquote class="">
<p>People who think “the Jews” run the banks lose the
ability to understand, much less to operate financial
systems. People who think “the Jews” dominate business
through hidden structures can’t build or long maintain a
successful modern economy. People who think “the Jews”
dominate politics lose their ability to interpret
political events, to diagnose social evils and to organize
effectively for positive change.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">For an example, just
look at what happened in Texas. An anti-Semitic gunman took a
synagogue hostage in the false hope that its parishioners
could somehow free a federal prisoner. That prisoner herself
was sentenced to 86 years in jail after she tried to <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/aafia-siddiqui-al-qaida">fire</a>
her Jewish lawyers at trial, <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/04/pakistan-scientist-aafia-siddiqui">demanded</a>
that Jews be excluded from the jury, and <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html">declared</a>
that her guilty verdict came “from Israel and not from
America.” One hateful person after another was destroyed by
their own delusions. And such debilitating delusions can
reverberate outward.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">“Anti-Semitism has real
impact beyond just hate crimes,” the civil-rights activist <a
href="https://www.splcenter.org/about/staff/eric-k-ward">Eric
Ward</a> once <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRZWZPDYj5k&list=PL-DNOnmKkUaZh8yjn7Bhps_aEn_yCd71H&index=6">told
me</a>. “It distorts our understanding of how the actual
world works. It isolates us. It alienates us from our
communities, from our neighbors, and from participating in
governance. It kills, but it also kills our society.”</p>
<p id="injected-recirculation-link-1"
class="ArticleRelatedContentLink_root__v6EBD"
data-view-action="view link - injected link - item 2"
data-gtm-vis-first-on-screen-31117857_217="382693"
data-gtm-vis-total-visible-time-31117857_217="100"
data-gtm-vis-has-fired-31117857_217="1"><a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/anti-semitism-new-york-times-style/620966/">Yair
Rosenberg: Removing a hyphen won’t stop anti-Semitism</a></p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">Neither Mead nor Ward is
Jewish. The former is a noted white historian and the son of a
southern priest; the latter is a Black activist who fights
white nationalism. Yet despite coming from different places,
both have devoted much of their work to combatting anti-Jewish
prejudice, and for the same reason: It threatens democracy
itself.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">“Anti-Semitism isn’t
just bigotry toward the Jewish community,” Ward explains. “It
is actually utilizing bigotry toward the Jewish community in
order to deconstruct democratic practices, and it does so by
framing democracy as a conspiracy rather than a tool of
empowerment or a functional tool of governance.” In other
words, the more people buy into anti-Semitism and its
understanding of the world, the more they lose faith in
democracy.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">Numerous historical case
studies <a
href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23785/w23785.pdf">attest</a>
to anti-Semitism undermining its adherents at a large scale,
from the defeat of the Nazis, who <a
href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-2-pro-nazi-nobelists-attacked-einstein-s-jewish-science-excerpt1/">spurned</a>
scientific advances simply because they were discovered by
Jews, to European countries that <a
href="https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1274.pdf">hobbled</a>
<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w28766">themselves</a>
for centuries by expelling their Jewish populations.</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">“The rise of
anti-Semitism is a sign of widespread social and cultural
failure,” Mead <a
href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/05/13/the-bbc-and-the-jews/">writes</a>.
“It is a leading indicator of a loss of faith in liberal
values and of a diminished capacity to understand the modern
world and to thrive in it.”</p>
<p class="ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI">Seen in this light, one
attack on one synagogue is not just a hate-crime statistic. It
is also a warning. The mindset of a madman in Texas might seem
alien to us today. But if we do not find a way to confront the
conspiratorial currents that threaten to overtake our society,
we may find ourselves hostage to the very ideas that animated
him.</p>
<div class="ArticleWell_root__MEFqL">
<div>
<address id="article-writer-0"
class="ArticleBio_root__AjFH1">
<div class="ArticleBio_content__WafXd">
<div class="ArticleBio_bio__5k27k"><a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yair-rosenberg/"
class="author-link"
data-label="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yair-rosenberg/"
data-action="click author - name">Yair Rosenberg</a>
is a contributing writer at <em>The Atlantic</em> and
the author of its newsletter <a
href="https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/">Deep
Shtetl</a>.</div>
</div>
</address>
</div>
</div>
<br>
-- </div>
</div>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg</pre>
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