Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise, up 57 percent in 2017 from 2016, the largest single-year jump on record, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That increase came on top of the rise in incidents in 2016 that coincided with a brutal presidential campaign.
I have personally seen the anti-Semitism, in online insults, threatening voice mail messages and the occasional email that makes it through my spam filter.
If not quite a crisis, it feels like a proto-crisis, something to head off, especially when the rise of anti-Semitism is combined with hate crimes against Muslims, blacks, Hispanics and immigrants. Yet American Jewish leaders — the heads of influential, established organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations of North America — have been remarkably quiet, focused instead, as they have been for decades, on Israel, not the brewing storm in our own country.
But American Jews need to assert a voice in the public arena, to reshape our quiescent institutions and mold them in our image. And Jewish leadership must reflect its congregants, who are not sheep.
When the Anti-Defamation League, a century-old institution founded to combat anti-Semitism, released its guide to the “Alt Right and Alt Lite” last year, Ohio’s Republican state treasurer, Josh Mandel, who is Jewish, actually expressed support for two of the people on the list: Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, conservative provocateurs who have found notoriety in the Trump era. “Sad to see @ADL_National become a partisan witch hunt group targeting people for political beliefs. I stand with @Cernovich & @JackPosobiec,” Mr. Mandel proclaimed on Twitter above a link to Mr. Cernovich’s screed charging that the league was trying to have him killed.
Mr. Cernovich advocates I.Q. tests for immigrants and “no white guilt,” and is an unapologetic misogynist. Last summer, he circulated a cartoon depicting H. R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser, as a dancing marionette with George Soros pulling his strings and a disembodied, wrinkled hand labeled “Rothschilds” controlling strings attached to Mr. Soros.
Mr. Posobiec has been one of the promulgators of fake news, including the “Pizzagate” story that claimed that Hillary Clinton helped run a child sex-trafficking ring out of a pizza parlor and the claim that a young Democratic National Committee staff member, Seth Rich, was murdered by the Clinton campaign.
For drawing attention to these men, the Anti-Defamation League was tarred as a partisan organization by an elected Jewish Republican. I did not see any organized effort to rally around the institution, one of the few major Jewish groups in the United States that is still not predominantly engaged in debate over Israel.
Of course, as you recall, many of them were hate hoaxes perpetrated by that Jewish guy in Israel, the black leftist journalist, and who knows how many more hoaxers? But how can anybody expect New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman to remember all the way back to 2017?
…I think a fair amount of the agitation of elite journalists comes from their largely committing to Twitter a half decade ago. The seemingly minor differences in how Twitter worked from how email, comments, discussion groups and so forth had operated led to a huge growth in ethnic paranoia among their ranks, as the title of Weisman’s book suggests. (I’ll try to flesh this theory out more when Weisman’s book arrives.)
…iSteve commenter Anonym notes:
Help! The poor, defenceless Anti-Defamation League is being defamed! There needs to be some sort of organization, maybe a League, to defend the ADL. An ADL for the ADL. That’s a great idea.
But hey, what if the ADL for the ADL comes under attack by virulent anti-Semites? The only foolproof solution is an ADL for the ADL for the ADL.
* If they’re only 2% of the population they have to have 49 times the firepower to make up for it. Make sense?
* “Ohio’s Republican state treasurer, Josh Mandel, who is Jewish, actually expressed support for two of the people on the list: Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, conservative provocateurs who have found notoriety in the Trump era. …”
How . . . unusual Mandel would specify those two individuals for approval. Cernovich, who may be Jewish himself (have seen conflicting info) is quite specifically NOT alt-right, believing in civic nationalism and the melting pot, and his 2nd wife is an Iranian Muslim. Posobiec is another questionable individual to much of the alt-right, both regarding his ethnicity and perceived government connections.
Otherwise this is, of course, more of the standard persecution paranoia porn common among Jews in America; cue (((Tyrion2))) from England to explain how Weisman is really not saying what you think he’s saying, Steve. He’s really a super patriotic nationalist American who’s writing a super-clever argument that actually advocates that which he theoretically denounces.
* >Mr. Cernovich advocates I.Q. tests for immigrants and “no white guilt,”
Wouldn’t that be PRO-Jewish? I mean, I’m assuming it’s the low end of the IQ distribution he wants to keep out, so wouldn’t Jews be the ones best able to take advantage of that?
I wish these people would make up their minds about whether IQ matters or not. Because it does actually tie in with the whole “no white guilt” thing. This is kind of how things go:
Person: “Man, Jewish people sure do have an awful lot of power in the media.”
ADL: “Well, you have to understand. That’s just because our IQs are so much higher!”
Person: “OK. Well then, maybe the reason white people are so much more successful than black people is because our IQs are higher than theirs? Maybe we don’t have anything to feel guilty about?”
ADL: “You’re banned from YouTube!!!”
Dealing with these people is just never very pleasant. I don’t know where they got the idea that serving as “trusted flaggers” on YouTube and getting people’s channels shut down is going to make people like them any more either.
* As Leon Wieseltier noted in a video Sailer put up a couple months back, Jews historically made vertical connections with the princes and rulers instead of horizontal connections with the local hoi polloi. Had they made these horizontal connections,…
* Jews have been quiet and polite for too long. And not only don’t they have any wealth or power, what little they do have they never use to advance their own interests. They’re always doing things for others, never for themselves. Alan Dershowitz used to make this argument.
* I’m surprised at the hostility aimed at Weisman. Isn’t he the guy who came up with the Jew-tracker regarding the Iran deal?
* “But American Jews need to assert a voice in the public arena,”
Translation = there are still goys left we need to silence.
It must be frustrating to control so much of the traditional media, entertainment industry and social media and still those dastardly goys don’t know their place
* In the old days of print media things went through editors, who kept things within limits. The leftist media now publishes a lot of things on social media, which is completely unedited, and does not seem to edit pieces very much published on regular websites. You frequently see basic errors that anyone taking a second look at the piece- even the author doing a double check- should have corrected.
Leftists have developed the habit of saying more aggressive and extreme things, and they don’t seem to realize that the subjects of their hate and contempt can read and understand what they are saying. A lot of people who didn’t used to be “anti-semitic” have become so by reading what Jews really think about them on Twitter.
* People talk about “Black Twitter”, but “Jewish Twitter” is something largely unspoken of. Not having an account myself, I’ve still seen enough screencaps to believe that it is a thing.
It is quite interesting and revealing to see journalists and media figures speaking with less of a filter.
* I have a friend (actually he’s my law partner) who is Jewish and follows the movements and polemics of white nationalism and the like with a passion. He’s convinced that there is going to be a white nationalist uprising in the Pacific Northwest very soon based on what he’s been reading.
I told him he’s crazy. Portland? Seattle? These are like the most devote liberal places in the country. They might as well be part of the EU.
