Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

I started reading the Gary Gulman memoir (he's a really funny comedian). A lot of it is about growing up poor, and Jewish, in Boston. Here's an excerpt of his discovery, in 2nd grade, so around age 6 or 7, of anti-Semitism, by way of his soon to be ex-best friend, Wally Mitler:

“But it was his Holocaust miniseries recap back when I was in Rand’s class that caused me the most pain. It had a permanent effect on our friendship and my self-image.

He had told me about the miniseries the day after it started airing in April 1978. We were playing catch on the side of my house. Wally was not good at baseball, but, like every other boy, he had a glove and played Little League. Playing Little League was basically compulsory in 1970s Massachusetts. He threw wrong and seldom caught the ball. He claimed he needed a new glove. No, he needed new hands.

I had been sent out of the family room and its door was shut when Holocaust premiered on NBC the night before. It was the talk of the town, especially among the town’s Jews. Our "Roots.”

I am not sure if I had even heard the word “Holocaust” before the series began to air, and I definitely knew none of the particulars. I had a fear of Hitler identical to my fear of the devil, but I’m not sure of its origin. If it was discussed around me, it was done quietly; my mother forbade the discussion of anything solemn or emotionally challenging in her presence. Wally, now an expert after having seen the program, filled me in on what happened to Jews during the Holocaust, sharing with me the unspeakable specifics. He said that Jews were burned alive in ovens and starved in camps. My people were also gassed with poison. I was horrified, hoping he would stop talking about it. But much like with his devil voice, I think he enjoyed unnerving me.

When his précis ended, I asked the unanswerable question. Why? Why did they do that to the Jews? What could we have done to deserve this? I was asking out of genuine curiosity, the same way when I was five, I had asked him what G-d looked like. But I also asked him because I knew that whatever he said would let me know what he thought about Jews. I understood, as early as kindergarten, that my people were the object of pervasive hatred.

“Why?” I asked.

Without any hesitation Wally gave me his analysis.

“The Jews were rich snobs … walking around with their noses in the air.”

He said this with certainty, like it was an indisputable fact and, what’s more disturbing, a valid explanation for Hitler’s atrocities.

There is no way Wally generated this explanation on his own. This was an idea an adult in his life must have expressed. Until that moment I’d never thought about how close Mitler is to Hitler. They’re one letter apart.
I’d bet that after watching the show he’d had the same question I just asked him. Instead of giving a historically accurate attempt at an answer, someone in his orbit must have said to him, “Well, kid, these kikes got too big for their britches and Uncle Adie had to put them in their place. Also, the numbers are exaggerated.”

Wally’s next move, and this was particularly sadistic, had been to let his favorite Hēb in on the exigency of the final solution.

No matter the provenance of his despicable “snobs” theory, once again my gut told me how I should respond and hammered me for resisting.

It was my fault. I had appeased Mitler. I should have fought him when he gave my dad the finger that time when we honked at him. And now, he’d gone too far.

I had let my dad down. Phil Gulman would fight you just for saying the word “Jew” in a less than reverent tone; surely, he would have torn the throat out of some Nazi spawn announcing that the Jews were to blame for the Holocaust.

“They were snobs.”

A good reason to dislike someone? Maybe. A defensible reason to torture and murder them? J-sus Chr-st.
I had to keep this to myself. If I shared this with anyone, they’d ask why I didn’t violently attack him. I did have an answer for that: I’m a coward. As evidenced by the fact that I couldn’t even defend the honor of my people. I said nothing and instantly hated myself. And I stayed friends with him. Like a schmuck.”

Ok so maybe some kids know a lot more by way of asshole parents but I still think that doesn't necessarily they grasp the impact of the words/actions.

Schmuck is SUCH a good word.

There are some people for whom no other word will do.

Also, having lived on the edge of Brookline for years, I wonder where in Boston he grew up and will check him out.

It looks like Peabody, I think?

I totally get that. But imagine the response to any other marginalized group's discomfort being "get some perspective."

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 7, 2023 1:56 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

look, i'm a jewish person, and i understand being nervous about the potential increase of anti-semitism in society. but i got a concerned message from my friend about a pro-palestinian march in brooklyn worried about me because he heard that they were "hunting jews." that just plain is not happening.

A relative of mine goes to the private girls’ school in London where some kid painted a swastika and “kill Jews” on the wall recently. On the one hand, you know it’s just some idiot kid, maybe’s not even a serious risk, maybe just a kid confusing righteous rebellion tor something stupider. On the other hand… who knows?

xpost Yeah, I wouldn't lose any sleep over that, either. That's like that day of global jihad, or whatever bullshit was foretold a few weeks ago. Though again, it's a fine line between "hunting Jews" and "targeted for being Jewish." Let's just say I wouldn't show up to that march waving an Israeli flag, or even holding a sign with a star of David on it. Unless it was, you know, depicted being tossed in the trash, that seems to be OK. (joke, sort of)

jewish voice for peace has the star of david in its logo.

i also wouldn't wave an israeli flag at a free palestine rally, idk why that would be so controversial.

Xposts ah ok - think that's north shore maybe near Salem

xpost Yeah, it would be pretty obnoxious. I think my point was that the protest itself should not strike fear into the hearts of Jews, let alone fear of being "hunted." But that it wouldn't take much provocation to invite negative attention.

Hey, good timing, Isaac:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/where-does-antisemitism-come-from

Lemme know if anyone needs it copy and pasted.

You heard about Paul Kessler then? That happened in what is considered a normal suburban enclave in LA.

I don't think anyone should be assaulted for counter protesting.

i also wouldn't wave an israeli flag at a free palestine rally, idk why that would be so controversial.

― is he disgruntled adrian? (voodoo chili), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 11:46 AM (one minute ago)

Just read this story of an 65 year old counter-prostestor waving an Israeli flag at a Free Palestine demonstration in suburban LA who was involved in a physical altercation and has died as result of a fall (witness details are mixed whether he was struck, or tripped and fell to the ground on his own). The other person (a 50 year old man) involved in the altercation is cooperating with authorities but there is a burst of social media claming this incident was anti-semitic/terrorist (source: my pro-Israel friends IG shared stories).

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-06/man-dies-after-fight-at-protest-westlake-village-israel-hamas-war

his discovery, in 2nd grade, so around age 6 or 7, of anti-Semitism, by way of his soon to be ex-best friend, Wally Mitler

Woah, Wally Mitler?

But imagine the response to any other marginalized group's discomfort being "get some perspective."

xp to steve shasta, to be clear, i don't think the guy had it coming, obviously that's a terrible thing to happen. of course it's now going to be used as evidence that none of the hundreds of other worldwide protests were peaceful at all.

gyac, I really appreciate that.

Re: taking pain seriously, I agree that it's rarely as much as is warranted or needed, and regardless, it's not like sympathy can be quantified. But here's another story involving one of my kids that I can offer (I've probably told it before). A few years back some knucklehead scribbled racist and anti-Semitic stuff on a bathroom stall at the high school. There was the expected outrage, protests, eventually an assembly, but none of it ever addressed the specifically anti-Semitic aspect of the incident. My daughter came home that afternoon and basically asked, "what about us?" She's a strong kid, and the school responses have improved some since then, but I know she still carries that hurt with her. It's probably curdled into cynicism, which helps no one.

Re "settlers" -- there were a lot of arguments going around right after October 7 that the people who were killed were not civilians because they were "settlers." (This is not true by any international law standards btw, as they were living within the 1948 borders, not to mention that I would guess few of them were first generation in Israel). In that context, putting up a sign about "settlers" being "the problem" across from a synagogue seems like pretty clear intent to me.

of course it's now going to be used as evidence that none of the hundreds of other worldwide protests were peaceful at all.

― is he disgruntled adrian? (voodoo chili), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 12:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

I think there is a difficulty in engaging with this kind of claim if there appears to be a willful blind spot or what looks like an oblivious/disingenuous denial that some symbols of hatred are mixed with legitimate political protest. Kind of a mixed-motive situation.

Notice I didn't restrict this to pro Israel or pro Palestine.

Has this happened with other peaceful protests?

The BLM protests in 2020 are still constantly talked about this way

That's terrible

For sure cops are often fucking up peaceful protestors.

There's an ongoing perception that the BLM protests were 100% violent and destroyed entire cities

Ok the last question in my post was poorly worded. Were people saying there were hate symbols and messages mixed in to otherwise peaceful protests, what were they, and what should be the response?

maybe I need a gut check on the "settlers" one, maybe it's just my media-addled brain seeing something that isn't there, idk. I'm not exactly sure what it means anyway, Brooklyn itself was a Dutch settlement so it seems odd to say settlers are "the problem" within Brooklyn. Brooklyn is mostly settlers by the broad definition used in theory about "settler colonialism" as I understand it. If it means gentrifiers, I think calling them "settlers" is kind of a poor analogy but w/e.

I think there is a difficulty in engaging with this kind of claim if there appears to be a willful blind spot or what looks like an oblivious/disingenuous denial that some symbols of hatred are mixed with legitimate political protest. Kind of a mixed-motive situation.

Notice I didn't restrict this to pro Israel or pro Palestine.

Has this happened with other peaceful protests?

The question that is elided here is what is "legitimate," who decides what is "hatred" or not? While I think what happened to that person in LA is execrable, I would also argue that waving an Israeli flag in that situation is essentially cheering on ethnic cleansing, and is pretty illegitimate as a result.

Regarding your follow-up, I remember very clearly a moment during the early days of Occupy Oakland when I came upon the camp and a friend of mine was in a small group yelling at a woman and asking for her to be escorted away from the camp. The reason? She was spouting off one of the standards of economic antisemitism regarding Jewish people controlling the gold supply, etc etc. The woman *was* escorted away and I never saw her again. There are absolutely fucked up antisemitic things that go on in leftist protest movements, but many times that I've seen, the people being antisemitic are pretty quickly put in their place and told to fuck off.

Over here we've got the UK Home Secretary explicitly calling the pro-Palestinian protests "hate marches". This despite the fact that there's been barely any arrests made at the dozens of marches that have taken place in towns and cities the length and breadth of the UK.

x-post Again, that's just my experience in protest and social liberation movements, not universal since much of that experience was in the Bay Area or Philly.

From what I've read the marches in London have been overwhelmingly peaceful. It would be infuriating to have the Home Secretary call them hate marches.

There are absolutely fucked up antisemitic things that go on in leftist protest movements, but many times that I've seen, the people being antisemitic are pretty quickly put in their place and told to fuck off.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 12:45 PM bookmarkflaglink

I am very glad to see this acknowledged and to hear that this is the response. It feels like a topic that is absolutely not tolerated for discussion whatsoever.

Free Palestine is not exclusively a leftist protest movement.

I never said it was, I was answering more generally about my experience in such movements. I haven’t seen anything antisemitic at recent Philly rallies, fwiw

Ok the last question in my post was poorly worded. Were people saying there were hate symbols and messages mixed in to otherwise peaceful protests, what were they, and what should be the response?

― felicity, Tuesday, November 7, 2023 3:38 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago)

the george floyd protests are not really relevant to the discussion of hate speech, hate symbols etc bcuz the police aren't an ethnic class. you're asking about a dynamic that just wasn't present at that conflict. i'm sure there were "counter protestors" in places saying horrible shit about black people but i don't think that's what you're asking

there were speakers at the DC rally leading the crowd in chants of stuff like "israel go to hell" & things of this nature. personally speaking bcuz of my upbringing that phrasing & concept is not something i'm entirely comfortable with, but i also don't think such chants were intended as anti-semitic dogwhistles even if i'm sure there were some people in the crowd who were receptive to hearing them as such. ultimately i saw/heard nothing that day that made me think the rally was about anything other than an end to the bombing of innocent civilians and achieving permanent humane living conditions for the people of palestine, both of which i just see as plainly agreeable causes

man alive, fwiw I think you're right about that sticker. I thought about it more after posting, and while it's basically impossible to parse with confidence, one possible reading of its co-opting of the anti-colonial term "settler" to refer specifically to Brooklyn is that its implying the project of European settler colonialism was a Jewish conspiracy, which is repulsively racist in multiple ways

plausible deniability is a big part of that kind of thing, so that's a reason why they don't always make clear sense

That's what I mean about the subliminal advertising too.

If anyone's curious, the tests at https://www.projectimplicit.net/ about implicit bias are pretty eye opening. And that's on well-educated adults.

Imagine the effect of all these inputs on children.

Interestingly, I tried one of those tests (the Religion test) and when you select "White" as your race, it gives you a bunch of ethnicities/nationalities to choose from. "Jewish" is not one.

Did you do the test? Were you surprised? I did one as a CLE in NY and I definitely was.

tbh, I didn't finish it, I started to feel both uncomfortable and annoyed with the seemingly endless barrage of categorizing things into "Good" and "Bad" and "Islam" and "Judaism" and it weirded me out that it put "Islam" and "Bad" on the same side even though I'm sure there was some subtle effect being tested for.

You can do one that's much less emotionally charged. Mine was about male and female careers I think.

A relative of mine goes to the private girls’ school in London where some kid painted a swastika and “kill Jews” on the wall recently. On the one hand, you know it’s just some idiot kid, maybe’s not even a serious risk, maybe just a kid confusing righteous rebellion tor something stupider. On the other hand… who knows?

― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 7 November 2023 19:41 (two hours ago) link

That is indescribably messed up. Sorry to have skipped over it when you first posted.

There were swastika's in my daughter's public middle school too recently. I'm actually not 100% clear on whether they were pre- or post-Oct 7 though. I saw them scratched into desks in my schools growing up too, nothing new.

doesn’t make it any less fucked up of course

You'd see swastikas everywhere when I was a kid. Not used as specifically targeted hate speech but just the symbol being drawn, mostly on desks or notebooks or bathroom stalls etc. I do think most of it was done by kids who didn't really have the context or if they did, just didn't understand the true depth of abhorrent evil it represented. Lots of kids grew up seeing the symbol in WW2 films or stories with the Nazis as genuine bad guys but one who were as threatening as Cobra in GI Joe. This is what I like to believe anyway, that most of it really was wrongheaded and regretted later. I don't think that excuse still holds water but I don't know what the kids across America are being taught about it and the Nazis at a young age.

Keeping in mind I grew up in the midwest sticks

My sister left high school (in the Philly burbs) early because, among other things, someone scratched a swastika into her locker. Pretty confident the person doing it knew what they were doing, even if they weren't explicitly a Nazi or whatever.

Imagine the effect of all these inputs on children.

There was a really long radio piece (or podcast?) about the woman that discovered implicit bias, at least from an academic vantage. It began with her assisting another researcher in a memory study about finding familiar or famous sounding names in the phone book or something, and iirc she learned that male names were more likely to be remembered or identified as "famous" than female names. Something like that. Anyway, once she pursued her new field of research she made all sorts of surprising discoveries, including the revelation that while she expected children to display implicit bias less than adults (innocent, blank slate, etc.) that was often very much not the case, revealing the impact environment (among other factors) has on even young kids when it comes to bias. Illuminating.

I thought the New Yorker interview (David Feldman, the director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, at Birkbeck College, University of London) I posted was full of interesting observations. Like:

I have written about antisemitism as a reservoir in the culture, something there to be drawn on. And this is a reservoir which has built up over centuries, even over millennia. There are three key elements in this: one is the idea that Judaism has been superseded by Christianity (the notion that Jews have a particularistic and narrow morality is one consequence of that idea); second, the idea that Jews are forever conspiratorial and up to something against the common good; and, third, the connection of Jews with money. These ideas have been repurposed over centuries in multiple political contexts. And we see them repurposed in some of the antisemitic attacks on Israel.

One thing shown by multiple opinion surveys in the United States, Germany, and in the U.K. and elsewhere, is that the percentage of committed ideological antisemites is relatively small, but the diffusion of negative stereotypes and narratives about Jews through the culture is much higher and much wider. At certain moments, people draw on these, especially at political flash points when these ideas appear to be useful, and when they appear to explain something. Yes, there are antisemites, sort of ideologically committed individuals and groups who have an antisemitic world view, but much more commonplace are individuals who draw on the well of antisemitism within the culture. And that’s what we see in antisemitism around Israel.

Tied in with the second is probably linking anyone Jewish to Israel and its policies, and the implicit suggestion that they support those policies. There is a Jewish deli in West Hollywood which was tagged with anti-israel graffiti, pro-palestinian slogans, etc. perhaps not anti-semitic in another context but in that context it feels quite obviously to be the case.

Getting more into the Jews vs "Zionists" thing, one popular strain of thought that comes up a lot in the context of Palestine is that European Jews are not "real Jews" - they are Khazars or some other similar theory. This is again a good example of the messiness of anti-semitism vs anti-zionism. Part of the reason this theory is so popular is that it is seen as undermining the idea that "Zionists" have any actual historical connection to Israel. But it also bleeds into the idea that European Jews are "not real Jews" but rather evil "zionists."

I thought the New Yorker interview (David Feldman, the director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, at Birkbeck College, University of London) I posted was full of interesting observations.

Agreed. Although Feldman didn't answer some of Chotiner's questions in less than 30 seconds or in the form of a haiku, he seems to have kept a sense of humor.

European Jews are not "real Jews" - they are Khazars or some other similar theory

Ah! But what about all those Lost Tribes of Israel? Chances are that the Khazars were just Jews who got lost for a while and then suddenly remembered about that covenant thing. Makes as much sense as the "not real Jews" theory.

inclined to agree with table here tbh. Any country where there's a state religion and/or explicitly priveleged ethnic class... the track record is not good. With Israel being created with this *specific* goal, is it really any surprise things turned out the way they did.

― famous instagram dog (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 9, 2024 9:27 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

perhaps this was a point that was extrapolated out during the conversation about democracy and Israel as mentioned in Hillel's charter, but still.

yeah that is not related to the Hillel charter, was agreeing with you more broadly that ethnostates are fundamentally undemocratic

otherwise I agree w man alive's assessment of the Hillel charter

You don't need to agree with every last thing in this thread, just have a little bit of awareness of how it comes across when you repeatedly feel the need to use it as a platform to aggressively debate and insult people posting about their discomfort with various antisemitic tropes and declarations. Perhaps winning your point isn't as important as you may think.

I will be more mindful.

Fwiw, I can see the point— that repeating antisemitic tropes as a form of levity can merely reinscribe the antisemitism of the tropes— but the accusatory tone is a bit too much for me.

This was all you had to say.

Now why don't you try keeping my name out of your accusatory mouth. People can read for themselves what my posts say.

I will be more mindful.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, May 15, 2024 4:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks. I really try not to spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on this, but Jews feel very much in the world's fishbowl right now. There are only 15 million of us in the world (roughly the same # as pre-Holocaust) and half live in Israel. A huge percentage of us have family in Israel or family who took refuge in Israel at some point. I'm well aware that there are people who "weaponize" accusations of antisemitism, but I also think that we are hypersensitized to antisemitism. I don't necessarily have the same reactions as Shakey or Felicity, but I can understand them. The glibness with which a lot of non-Jewish people are now weighing in on what is and what isn't antisemitic and who the "real" antisemites are and which side they are on disturbs me. There *is* real antisemitism on the pro-Palestinian side. I'm not sure that calling it "left" is necessarily accurate, because a significant part of it comes from reactionary Muslim sources or conspiracy kooks that are merely aligned with the left on this issue. But it is real. Not to mention that, while anti-Zionism is not per se antisemitism, "zionist" has been used as a code word for Jews/Jewish conspiracy by antisemites for a very long time. So it can be easy to fall into paranoia about what people are really saying or thinking.

So I get it, forked tongue, what's next, horns? But when I'm reading tweets from supposed pro-Palestinian activists (who admittedly I don't actually know who they are IRL) about how "Zionists" control worldwide organ theft, it does feel a bit less funny.

fwiw I'm not sure anyone was trying to be funny. Just acknowledging the lineage and persistence of the tropes. But fair points.

Sure. And I didn't take offense at the posts themselves, fwiw, I was more using them as a jumping off point. And also, fwiw, I'm not familiar with "forked tongue" being an antisemitic trope, other than just I guess having some general evocation of devil? It seems like evangelical GOP folks accuse people of speaking with a forked tongue all the time.

Yeah, I think of "forked tongue" as a Biblical reference, the Garden of Eden and all that. I'm also not aware of it as specifically antisemitic — and a quick Google bears that out — but it is ascribing Satanic characteristics that feel close to horns etc. I would think best avoided under the circumstances, but I agree it's not a blatant invocation.

fwiw I'm not sure anyone was trying to be funny. Just acknowledging the lineage and persistence of the tropes. But fair points.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 16, 2024 7:05 AM bookmarkflaglink

tipsy, thank you.

I said "I wonder" since I wanted to leave open the possibility of mere thoughtlessness. You answered that.

What for you is "just" hypothetical abstract, language is for the target, when repeated, circulated, and shared online on a massive scale, especially with "we" and "them" in-group-out-group signaling, something that causes real psychological and emotional harm. It's dehumanizing language which has been used for centuries to justify violence against Jews. It's a mark of privilege that you don't need to consider it after you made your post whereas here I was carrying it around a week later wondering whether it's worth the typical ILX knee-jerk backlash to register my objection.

Antisemitism is in the air we breathe. It wears a deep groove in the history of Western thought. Antisemitism offers many pleasures: the lure of tradition, the thrill of transgressiveness, the high of moral superiority. I understand a lot of this is passed on thoughtlessly or without conscious bad intent. The way to respond is to make people aware of what they are doing and ask them to be more conscious.

You'd think lawyers would have evolved, but this is the crap we are still dealing with in my profession:

Two ex-Lewis Brisbois partners were pushed out of the boutique they started after their former firm released racist, sexist and antisemitic emails the partners wrote while employed there.

The remaining leaders at the boutique, which was formed by John Barber and Jeff Ranen, will start a new firm, said Tim Graves, chief executive officer at the operation that had been named Barber Ranen.

“Effective immediately, the firm has requested and accepted the resignations of John Barber and Jeffrey Ranen,” Graves said in a statement Monday. “The remaining equity partners express their disappointment and disdain for the language Mr. Barber and Mr. Ranen used.”

The partners’ former firm, Lewis Brisbois, shared a tranche of emails spanning more than a decade that show Barber and Ranen making disparaging remarks about female associates, clients and others, as well as using racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ slurs.

“We are resigning from Barber Ranen effective immediately in order to allow our friends and colleagues to continue on without the cloud of our conduct hanging over them,” Ranen and Barber said in a joint statement.

They added, “We are ashamed of the words we wrote, and we are deeply sorry.”

Barber and Ranen were California-based leaders of Lewis Brisbois’s labor and employment group until last month, when they broke off from firm and took nearly 140 lawyers with them.

Lewis Brisbois opened an investigation into the two partners after receiving an “anonymous complaint” following their departure, the firm said in a statement Monday.

“Because the vast majority of these emails were sent in private between John Barber and Jeff Ranen, neither the Lewis Brisbois HR department nor the executive committee were made aware of their behavior until after the anonymous complaint first came in,” the firm’s statement said.

In one email, after Ranen complained about a female colleague’s overtime request, Barber told him to “kill her” through a sexual act. In another, Ranen mocked the religious practices of a Jewish attorney who asked not to be emailed during the sabbath.

Many states have training mandates for lawyers that require them to complete continuing education courses to topics related to ethics and bias. California requires lawyers to complete at least 25 hours of training every three years.

Emails from Barber and Ranen demonstrate the little quality control that state bar associations perform on these trainings, said Rima Sirota, a Georgetown University law professor.

“This kind of stuff is unethical,” Sirota said. “Most companies wouldn’t want to be associating with a firm with that kind of atmosphere.”

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/ex-lewis-brisbois-partners-quit-firm-after-racist-sexist-emails

These weren't some white collar criminal defense attorneys. They were leaders of the labor and employment law group.

It really pains me to see this being taught to younger generations.

Yep, totally hear you. My own comment about drinking blood was a shorthand nod toward the way QAnon has updated and recirculated blood-libel slander and that all of these things are connected. But I realize that things that sound one way in conversation can scan differently in text. The point of all it being that antisemitism remains endemic in our social and political rhetoric.

The point of all it being that antisemitism remains endemic in our social and political rhetoric.

Thank you. And my point is we don't need to see a demonstration of the dog whistling to see that antisemitism in the air like wild yeast.

You can refer to "blood libels" and tropes, like the N-word, without inhabiting the role of a person who says slurs yourself.

I hear and affirm.

I am glad that we can all be gracious about this. The jokes actually did make me feel uncomfortable in the context of this thread… says the goy with a Jewish best friend

curious about this author, haven't read this one, plot summary gave me pause
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Hallows%27_Eve_(novel)

reminded me of weird antisemitic tropes popping up in Chesterton's (who I don't otherwise like) "The Man Who Was Thursday" (which was still v entertaining)

a Jewish magician, born in Paris at the end of the 18th century, with an urge to master the world

truly vintage reaction

what can I say, the peculiarities and specific manifestations of UK anti-semitism often take me aback.

but obviously it's basically impossible to imagine a context where valiant Christian theologians combatting an evil Jewish magician bent on world domination is not anti-semitic