How much of a tradition of antisemitism is there in the USA?

If you want some fun, read up on what Henry Ford was up to and during WWII.

Does Mel Gibson fit into this?

x post yes, henry ford, walt disney etc. but culturally speaking, how do their beliefs fit in to the US mainstream?

But I agree with you that anti-semitism is not currently a serious problem in the UK, I'm just interested in the pattern it has followed since the ancien regime and whether similar patterns occur in the (unlinked to the ancien regime) new world.

Despised by who exactly?

My grandmother was for some reason anti-Semitic; I could never get out of her why this was, as she had no pattern of religious values at all which would have led her to this, she worked in fashion and was a lifelong Democrat who voted for FDR in her first election. She'd say things about admiring the talent of Barbra Streisand but wishing she didn't have to look at her, ever. And she once told me she knew her low opinion of Jews was insupportable and hoped we wouldn't share her prejudice - the crappy too-old-and-set-in-my-ways speech a lot of grandparents will give to rationalise their bigotry.

The controversial bit being that data about the Islamist inspired anti-Semitism in Europe was allegedly surpressed

Not Catholic by any chance?

This has set the squirm precedent for any future christmases I might have:

I was once stuck over Christmas on Long Island in a huge house with a family who all turned out to be rabid anti-semites. They didn't reveal this until the whiskey started flowing, and they started bashing Asian engineers and Mexicans(not literally). It took me two hours to pluck up the courage to tell them that I was, in fact, a bagel boy (tm). They then became incredibly apologetic, and showered me with incredibly expensive gifts, telling me that Santa was "non-denominational". Mortifying.

-- Nordicskillz (allmanbrothersrul...), December 12th, 2002.

Hasn't he read The Bible: Mel Gibson Authorized Version?

i don't really know enough about it obviously. i haven't encountered anti-semitism among the french i know, although i was at a party where a few people countenanced some jewish jokes (made by a bosnian girl) that would have been chased away with sharp tongues in america....

That's part of it, definitely. How many leading politicians in the USA have been Jewish? I mean compared to the UK, where we've already had one Jewish Prime Minister (albeit a convert) and another possible one on the way (tho unlikely, it must be admitted).

My mom grew up in the same town as me in the '50s and has a love-hate relationship with Jews. On the hate side, she finds them clannish and exclusive to non-Jews (this may be her experience of being best friends with Jewish guys and suddenly becoming invisible when all reached dating age) and also a bit pushy. She also mentioned that her female Jewish classmates relished playing 'snotty rich girl'. On the love side, she respects chutzpah, the loyalty of the friends she did make, Jewish cultural contributions and food (which she can make, inc. matzoh ball soup), the benefit of going to school with people whose parents care about education and intellectual competition, and Paul Simon. She also says 'kvetch' in daily conversation.

When I was at Northwestern, there were fraternities and sororities that were known to not accept Jews (and Italians, it appears). There was one sorority that would accept everyone who didn't get invited to join any other sorority, and it was full of Jewish and Italian girls. Maybe they've changed since then, I don't know.

When I lived in Nebraska, the anti-Semitism was much more blatant. When a friend of mine was hired at the U, they hooked her and another prof up with a real estate agent. As the agent drove past one neighborhood, she said, "you don't want to live here, there are too many Jews." One of the women was Jewish. My friend & this woman went to the U to report the agent, and they refused to do anything about it because the agent was the wife of some administrator.

When "60 Minutes" asked him why he dropped Leibowitz, Stewart explained: "Sounded too Hollywood." [June 2001]

Anti-semitism took a solid body blow when the Nazi concentration camps were liberated and the holocaust was first publicized. What passes for anti-semitism in most parts of the USA nowadays is more like the usual awkward, bland ignorance than ill-will or malice. How American!

Surely you mean more gentile than rabid...

With catholics, the KKK could tap into the very old, very deep animosities left over from the bitter religious wars between catholic and protestant Europe. Catholics were clearly a threat to wholesome 100% Americanism, because they were all a bunch of dirty Italians, Irish and Poles, who cravenly worshipped the pope and did whatever that old antichrist told them to do. And so on. Believe me, this was WAY more potent stuff in America before 1940 than jew-bashing ever was. The catholics had numbers, like the Yellow Peril. The jews were few and ghettoized in big Eastern cities.

Sure, jew-bashing was acceptable form everywhere, but it was mostly theoretical most parts of America. In fact, if you want to whip up some good anti-jewish hatred in America, you still have to piggyback it onto the more visceral hatred many Americans have toward banks and Wall Street. The only problem is that banks and Wall Street are easily seen to be mostly WASP preserves, so it is hard to get around that glaring fact and get the hate-juices flowing in a properly anti-semitic direction.

I've picked up the idea that Jew-hating was big in Britain in the 1930s and before that, especially among the upper classes. I don't know how you quantify these things.

I don't think Ireland has much of an anti-Jewish tradition, despite being predominantly Catholic. OK, so there was the Limerick pogrom in the early 20th century, but Limerick is weird (during the 1920s they had a short-lived Soviet there).

Yes, then the masses picked up on it. It went overground and crap.

has no one mentioned leo frank yet???

This is remarkably misguided. Hate crimes against Jews do still happen all the time in the U.S., and are often reported. Just recently, I saw on the news that some homes in Borough Park, a predominantly Jewish section of Brooklyn, were graffitied with swastikas. And of course, Crown Heights was only ten years ago.

The idea that anti-Semitism only occurs out in the "hinterlands," and is only practiced by hicks, rednecks and the Klan, is one of the most dangerously incorrect things I've seen on ILX in a while.

I KNEW there was something I didn't like about Amway!

p.s. big fucking ups to Hstencil.

"Hate Crimes spike in New York State"

But... but... how could you see it, when it isn't there?!??

Since I am the only person in this thread to have used the word "hinterlands", I can only presume you were quoting me. In which case, may I suggest that, before you get your back hairs up any further, you spend a quiet moment trying to understand what I did write, as opposed to the conclusion to which you so needlessly leapt?

I believe that upon further examination, you'll discover what I said was that anti-semitism was not particularly virulent in the hinterlands of the USA, or of much interest to hicks in general, because it was so remote from their lives, jews being "so scattered as to be invisible" in the remoter parts of our fair country.

So, as you see, the 'danger' has safely passed. Thank heavens!

There are small pockets of anti-Semitism here in the States. I never experienced any blatant anti-Semitism growing up in New Jersey, other than garden-variety schoolyard insults. But it might have been different if I'd grown up in certain areas of the Deep South or Pacific Northwest.

I don't think it's particularly fair to paint entire regions of the country as bigoted when you haven't lived there (I know you live in the PacNW now mike, but you didn't grow up there). Growing up in Kentucky, I knew many Jewish families and can't recall a single time where the Jewish kids I was friends with even got so much as called a name.

Well, no. I believe that was an inference on your part, rather than an implication on mine.

And you are avoiding my question. Who made the point that "the idea that anti-Semitism only occurs out in the 'hinterlands,' and is only practiced by hicks, rednecks and the Klan[...]", which you moments ago attacked as dangerously incorrect?

You explicitly say you saw this point made on ILX. If so, who made it?

If you can't clarify a point you so vehemently made just a few minutes ago, I'm not fool enough to argue with you. So put up or back off.

If you honestly believe you answered it, then you are so incoherent, illiterate or logic-impaired that I can only shake my head. In that case, I wish you luck. You'll need it.

If you are so pig-headed that you can't admit you made a mistake, even when it bites you on the arse... repeatedly, then there's no point talking to you. You're a goddamned fool and I can't help you.

The "help" I was offering was the chance to pick himself up off his face with a measure of grace and humanity. He may or may not have been "looking for" such help when he pitched over. But it doesn't change the fact that he's certainly a fool and has just demonstrated it in manner calculated to show it off to the best (worst?) advantage. But he is a sturdy, independent sort of fool, I'll give him that.

oh, i'm not denying that there's a lot of anti-semitism in poland or that there were a lot of poles who acted terribly during WWII. it may even be that everything described in neighbors happened just as jan grosz described it. however, i also know that there had been debate -- in poland and elsewhere -- regarding the exact degree of polish participation at jedwabne, mr. grosz's methodology (e.g., his alleged reliance on coerced "confessions"), etc.

poland has to come to grips with some not-savory aspects of its history during the holocaust, like germany before it -- on that, i agree. but what does getting infuriating is that people forget that (a) a million or so polish gentiles also died in the concentration camps (it wasn't to the same extent as the holocaust, true); (b) it was a capital offense to be caught aiding, abetting, or harboring jews when the germans occupied poland; (c) the poles -- as well as slavic people in general -- were pretty low on the nazis' insane totem-pole, and were treated accordingly. (and we haven't even touched yet upon the soviets' actions during and after WWII -- that, among other things, close to a million poles were forcefully removed from the soviet-occupied sector of the country, many of those who offended stalin's hierarchy being sent off to die in siberia).

The other thing that's happened is that all the old Judeo-Christian intramural schisms are now confronted with a much greater schism between Judeo-Christians and the rest of the world: people who don't believe in Christ as savior, and/or secular humanists who view all of the above as mythological systems. So evangelicals realize they have more in common with Catholics than they do with nonbelievers, and some Catholics (hello, Mel) feel the same pull in the other direction.

One thing that ain't is new.

i've only encountered the lightest forms of anti-semitism, mostly from the mouths of ignorant babes, in the states but i wouldn't generalize from my personal experience.

i do think the adl, for example, is grotesquely misguided in mixing up voices speaking out against israel and israel policy (which sometimes are infused with things that resemble anti-semitism) and old-fashioned anti-semitism... and as a result they often hopelessly exaggerate the extent of active anti-semitism in the states, or at least mischaracterize it. i think they are among those chiefly responsible for that "jews are paranoid/oversensitive" meme.

Oh, is that what these people are about? They have an office in Kentish Town Road, they obviously have money. I would have thought a "Jew For Jesus" would be a Christian... surely?

Long-time lurker/bore fan, first time poster. Here's my dillema w/r/t yamamoto's tzadik releases:

I'm a journalist working in the Mideast, where there's a fairly comprehensive boycott levied against jewish-themed or produced products. So, as you might surmise, a label with a hebrew character for a logo isn't going to have any of its releases find their way into the record stores.

Nevertheless, I'm gripped with the need to hear these two Yamamoto albums. I'll pick them up in the US when I go back for the end-of-year holidays (along with the new VOORE record, and how about that?), but that seems like such a long ways away.

er... jon...

and, according to this web site, "the [rock] dassie is the African elephant’s closest living relative" (!)

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), July 20th, 2004. (hstencil) (later)

Now that I think of it, I think that's what my father's parents were.

yes, actually. there are "eastern rite" catholics (also "greek catholics") -- who are mostly ukrainians -- and who follow orthodox liturgical rites but catholics b/c they accept the authority of the pope.

sometimes being a half-slav comes in handy!

The train, en route from Washington to Boston, was detained shortly after 8 a.m. for more than an hour as officers, accompanied by police dogs, boarded it at Newark Penn Station. By about 9:30 a.m. the train was allowed to continue its run.

Amtrak officials would not disclose the contents of the note but a spokesman said that a passenger told Amtrak employees about it and they then contacted law enforcement authorities.

The note did not contain any specific threats to the train, an Amtrak spokesman said.

But a law enforcement official said the note was found in an envelope and contained statements calling in effect for the death of of all Jews.

"It was a little hectic," said Al Leckerman, a passenger who boarded the train in Philadelphia.

Mr. Leckerman, who works in marketing, and other passengers said the incident began just as the train neared the Newark station when Amtrak officers announced that although passengers shouldn't be alarmed, no one would be allowed to leave the train. While passengers remained on the train, officers checked each rider's identification, checking the information with hand-held devices. They also checked overhead luggage compartments with metal wands.

"Everyone was calm in my car," said a passenger, Lynn Martin Haskin, "but I don't know if anyone was sleeping at that time."

An investigation is continuing.

https://www.revealnews.org/blog/the-hate-report-the-alt-rights-newest-target-is-kosher-products/

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2023/01/27/holocaust-remembrance-dayis-a-time-to-remember-more-than-one-atrocity/69832129007/?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot

This is a pretty strong example

Uhh, “Eastern European Jews” weren’t the only victims of the Holocaust.

Featuring hits like "Jews do not have a monopoly on persecution and atrocities," "For one group, for one person, to claim that the hate and violence towards them is more important than another’s, only encourages more acts of violence against others, including Black people, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBTQ+, trans-gender and Native Americans," and the smash #1 single "Hitler was just one of many dictators."