Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

The ad and the op-ed:

https://77360759.flowpaper.com/jj240621/#page=6

The increasing violence against Jewish people in this country is absolutely appalling, and there seem to be so many people now who are ok with it.

That combined with the insanity of Trumpism and the increasingly bellicose public disregard for other people, in traffic, on sidewalks, in shared spaces like stores and movie theaters - it seems like a real breakdown of civility.

Come meet representatives of all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Palestine

Okay this is what had me puzzled here - you mean "in Israel", right?

Definitely been following the AOC backlash and the LA incident.

I think it's useful in this moment to look at history if you are not sure what this adds up to.

In April 2023, David Nirenberg, a professor of medieval historian at University of Chicago, gave a lecture called "How can History Help Us?" Transcript and video are here:

https://www.cornell.edu/video/how-can-history-help-the-example-of-anti-semitism

(keep in mind this lecture was on April 10, 2023, months before 10/7 or the invasion of Gaza):

But in fact, many people have imagined that attitudes towards Jews in their own time and place have nothing to do with antisemitism in previous times and places. So many people have denied that history can help us at all. Today for example, there are many who argue that anti-Jewish sentiment in the present is not due to any history of antisemitism, but entirely to the present-day actions of, in this case, the State of Israel, often. So for the most extreme of those critics, attention to past antisemitism is not only irrelevant to the present, it's a red herring, designed to excuse or distract from the crimes of the Israeli state in the here and now. . .

He skips ahead to the 1920s and 1930s:

Well, from our point of view today, the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust show that those who had concerns, who did think that this was an anti-Semitic wave that owed something to the past, were probably right, maybe obviously right. But we tend to forget that there were lots of people, plenty of people, who claimed then that the problem wasn't antisemitism, but the actions of the Jews themselves. It was their wealth that was the problem or their poverty. It was too-successful assimilation or their lack of assimilation. It was one of many contradictory reasons.

Those were the real issues, many people argued in the 1920s and '30s, not antisemitism, which many argued was merely an accusation that Jews used to silence criticism and squash free speech. So during his rise to power, Hitler brought libel lawsuits against newspapers that accused him of antisemitism. And he won.

He concludes that even starting with intelligent people sincerely thinking they are striving to do good in the world, the study of historical prejudice can nonetheless provide humility and perspective to navigate the constant danger of slippage into lethal patterns:

I'm not going to talk about the controversy except to say that once again, we all seem to find ourselves, as critical thinkers of goodwill, whether left, right, or center, trying to distinguish between reality and anti-Jewish prejudice, between legitimate criticism of Jews or of Israel, between seeing the Jews as privileged agents of power in a world of inequality on the one hand, and unacceptable antisemitism on the other.

And in the process, none of us seem to be able to recognize or to really address, directly, the growing power of anti Judaism. Or if we do recognize it, we see it only in the discourse of the other group. So the left sees it in the right. The right sees it in the left. But we never see it in our own attempts to explain the world.

So one way of putting the danger-- in the first half of the 20th century, the reality of economic inequality and stark differentials of power between capital and labor made it impossible to perceive the grotesque power of antisemitism at work in European society. Are the realities of inequality and stark differentials of power in our own day having a similar effect, making it impossible to see the growing power that anti Judaism may be acquiring in our own place and time?

I don't mean to-- well, I do mean to depress you. So let me leave you with a positive side of my message. One thing that the history of antisemitism's past can offer is an awareness that reality and anti-Jewish prejudice are not independent of each other, that it's easy to slip from one to the other without noticing, even when we're focused on our highest ideals, precisely because those ideals have often been built through a long history of thinking about the dangers of Judaism.

The slippage between reality and anti-Semitic ideas has proven very hard to detect for even the subtlest lovers of knowledge. Developing an awareness of the terrifying work that slippage has achieved at various points in the past is one of the best ways to cultivate a sensitivity to the danger today. And it's one of the gifts, if you can call it a gift, that the history of antisemitism can offer to the present.

Now I know historians hope that prejudices will become less compelling if people only understood how well-worn they are, how many times they failed to bring about the better future that they promised their adherence, those hopes are often well, disappointed.

History is not a magic amulet that we can rub to protect us from danger as we make our way through a changing world. But it is a powerful reminder of how previous generations struggled with problems similar to ours and the precious gift of humility to our own age, which is so full of passionate conviction. So when it comes to confronting prejudices, I think we need all the help that good history can offer.

This reminds me of a twist I saw a few months ago on the George Santayana quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". The twist was "Those who seek to prevent the study of history intend to repeat it."

Not sure if I feel as pessimistic as that but it stayed with me.

xp thank you Dan S. I've noticed your posts on this and appreciate them.

thank you too, felicity, I've learned a lot from reading your posts ❤️

xp Oof! Yes I meant in Israel. I was mixing up what the ad says with what the instagram post/comments/protests were saying.