[Hac-announce] Why So Many People Still Don’t Understand Anti-Semitism by Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic
Manny Sholem Ratafia
manny at ratafias.com
Sun Jan 23 18:14:26 EST 2022
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 *_truly_*
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."
Please forward this article to people and lists who may benefit from it.
Manny
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/texas-synagogue-anti-semitism-conspiracy-theory/621286/
Why So Many People Still Don’t Understand Anti-Semitism
Unlike many other bigotries, anti-Semitism is not merely a social
prejudice; it is a conspiracy theory about how the world operates.
By Yair Rosenberg <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yair-rosenberg/>
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 No. 1 target
<https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/publications#Hate-Crime%20Statistics>
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.
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 engineered
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rabbi-threw-chair-texas-synagogue-hostage-taker-before-escaping-2022-01-17/>
a distraction, drawing
<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>
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 receive
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/us/texas-synagogue-hostages-escape.html>
security training.
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.
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 Aafia Siddiqui
<https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html>, a
Pakistani woman serving an attempted murder sentence in a Fort Worth
facility near Beth Israel.
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 told
<https://forward.com/news/480928/beth-israel-hostage-standoff-charlie-cytron-walker/>
/The Forward/. “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.”
Gary Rosenblatt: Is it still safe to be a Jew in America?
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/anti-semitism-new-normal-america/608017/>
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.
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 made <https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-60013686> 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.
The FBI later corrected
<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.>
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 sought
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/27/pittsburgh-shooting-suspect-antisemitism#:~:text=the%20robert%20bowers%20account%20reposted%20another%20user%20who%20wrote>
to stanch the flow of Muslims into America. It is a worldview shared by
Louis Farrakhan
<https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/nation-of-islam-farrakhan-in-his-own-words>,
the Black hate preacher, and David Duke
<https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/combating-hate/David-Duke.pdf>,
the former KKK grand wizard. And it is a political orientation that has
been expressed by the self-styled Christian conservative leader of
Hungary, Viktor Orb
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/>á
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/>n
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-speech-hungarys-orban-attacks-enemy-who-speculates-with-money/>,
and Ali Khamenei
<https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/irans-supreme-leader-posts-anti-semitic-cartoon-on-facebook>,
the supreme leader of Iran’s Islamic theocracy.
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 entirely opposite ideals
<https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61897999d581bf0020f74c32/why-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-just-championed-louis-farrakhan/>
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 discover
<https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/taylor-greene-conspiracy-theories>
that the invisible hand of their oppressor belongs to an invisible Jew.
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 ignore
<https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/6191452bd581bf0020f7b9bc/what-wont-get-you-banned-from-twitter/>
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.
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.
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 put
it <https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/05/13/the-bbc-and-the-jews/>:
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.
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 fire
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/aafia-siddiqui-al-qaida>
her Jewish lawyers at trial, demanded
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/04/pakistan-scientist-aafia-siddiqui>
that Jews be excluded from the jury, and declared
<https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html> 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.
“Anti-Semitism has real impact beyond just hate crimes,” the
civil-rights activist Eric Ward
<https://www.splcenter.org/about/staff/eric-k-ward> once told me
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRZWZPDYj5k&list=PL-DNOnmKkUaZh8yjn7Bhps_aEn_yCd71H&index=6>.
“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.”
Yair Rosenberg: Removing a hyphen won’t stop anti-Semitism
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/anti-semitism-new-york-times-style/620966/>
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.
“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.
Numerous historical case studies attest
<https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23785/w23785.pdf> to
anti-Semitism undermining its adherents at a large scale, from the
defeat of the Nazis, who spurned
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-2-pro-nazi-nobelists-attacked-einstein-s-jewish-science-excerpt1/>
scientific advances simply because they were discovered by Jews, to
European countries that hobbled
<https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1274.pdf> themselves
<https://www.nber.org/papers/w28766> for centuries by expelling their
Jewish populations.
“The rise of anti-Semitism is a sign of widespread social and cultural
failure,” Mead writes
<https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/05/13/the-bbc-and-the-jews/>.
“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.”
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.
Yair Rosenberg <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/yair-rosenberg/> is a
contributing writer at /The Atlantic/ and the author of its newsletter
Deep Shtetl <https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/>.
--
"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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