“as many as 90 percent of the civil rights lawyers in Mississippi were Jewish.”
I don't think people today can fully appreciate the level of bravery it takes to be a Jewish person living in Mississippi or Alabama, seeing the worst klan violence go unpunished, and choosing to very publicly ally yourself with Black folk, because it is the right thing to do.
(🤔Actually, the way things are going, people *are* starting to get a crystal clear picture again of what that bravery was like...)
jews have always understood that if anyone is persecuted, they'll be in line at some point; that if anyone is persecuted, everyone is in danger. that doesn't diminish the bravery. many folks see things they know are wrong and unjust, yet do nothing.
@paul_ipv6 Which is why it’s so frustrating that so few stand with us now. @mekkaokereke @donray
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @donray
i also find all the demonstrations internationally to be encouraging. the majority of people are good, kind, accepting. holding those doing evil accountable can change things.
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io 💯. Although, sad to say, the effort to portray criticism of the current Israeli government as anti-Semitic doesn't only come from right-wing anti-Semites, the Israeli government and many of its supporters (including some Jewish organizations in the US) have been pushing it for years. It's certainly true that some criticisms of the Israeli government are blatantly anti-Semitic, and some are cloaked anti-Semitism ... but I've said for years that the short-sighted attempt to define it as inherently anti-Semitic (or put such narrow definitions in place that in practice any criticism is anti-Semitic) would come back to bite us, and now it is. Sigh.
As you say though I think that the majority of liberal and leftist people are against anti-Semitism ... and for that matter so are a fair number of conservative people.
@jdp23 @mekkaokereke This has been going on for years. It erases Jews who criticize the policies of the Israeli government and makes it more difficult to discern and combat genuine antisemitism. It’s also a version of the dual loyalty trope and it makes Diaspora Jews less safe, but that’s on purpose.
Yep! People generally say they are against antisemitism
https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2022/GeneralPublic
But, surveys do suggest across ages 15-20% of people in the US have bigoted views against Jews. Conservative people are much more likely to be expressing them, but it's still hovering around 10% for overt antisemitism for even very liberal people.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10659129221111081
https://www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-topline-findings
Like you said, vast majority for liberals and leftist and even majority for conservatives. It's better than it could be, but that's still a lot of bigots
Yup.
I've pointed out to folks many times that about 36% of the US population consistently votes for the most white supremacist candidate on any ballot. This has been true since at least the 1950s. These are the people that Black and Jewish civil rights leaders fought.
I've also consistently pointed out that SF and Boston, two supposedly Blue and North places, are way more racist than Atlanta, a supposedly Southern place. Qualitatively and quantitatively.
It's the same group.
From the ADL "20% of the US population believes at least 6 anti-Jewish tropes"
Horrific.
(🤔 Unrelated: I still can't understand why the ADL resumed paying for advertising on Twitter. I've read their explanation, and it still makes no sense to me. They're taking donations from people hoping to stop defamation, and giving it to one of the more effective "free speech" enablers of said defamation? I don't get it.)
@mekkaokereke the ADL is in a weird way right now, and some of its actions haven’t been great. Paying Twitter is one of them 🤷🏻♂️
@mekkaokereke remember that just over a year ago, ADL CEO jonathan greenblatt praised elon musk as a “the henry ford of our time”.
there's no way greenblatt doesn't know that henry ford was a vicious anti-semite, so…
@jakelazaroff @mekkaokereke @raf @jdp23
ford was also a nazi collaborator. yeah. i'd say the comparison is fair. not a compliment at all but fair.
@jakelazaroff @mekkaokereke @raf @jdp23 There is A LOT to unpack in that sentence, including the fact that Henry Ford was awarded the highest honor the Reich could bestow on a foreign civilian. Wow. Just ... wow.
EDIT: The initial comment in this post is from earlier, before this tidbit hit the newswire, which makes Greenblatt's praise look even more ill-spoken.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/media/elon-musk-antisemitism-white-people/index.html
It really is the same people
@mekkaokereke @raf @jdp23 is Boston getting any better? I know it was really bad in the 90s (I hung out with Charlestown townies so YIKES ON BIKES) but is it getting better? Please tell me it is.
Not sure about Boston, because I haven't lived there in a long time.
But San Francisco is definitely getting worse.
@raf i tend to be skeptical of studies like this — even jewish people can't agree on what anti-semitism is! i think it's anti-semitic when someone expects me to support israel just because i'm jewish, but plenty of other jews think it's anti-semitic for me to *not* support israel.
re: that last link, ADL is currently advocating that *jewish student organizations* opposed to the ongoing genocide be investigated by the IRS and FBI. so you can see where i'm coming from here
All these studies are fairly clear about the questions they ask and split out questions related to Israel. Your concern is very reasonable and common. That's why modern surveys account for it.
You can dislike the ADL, but this survey has basically been unchanged for 50 years.
@raf that's fair, but there are many other examples. ilhan omar gets accused of anti-semitism for accurately saying that AIPAC lobbies US politicians. people accused greta thunberg of anti-semitism for… having a plush octopus toy.
tbh the practice of measuring anti-semitism in terms of tropes has always felt fundamentally weird to me. with other groups, we can see actual discrimination (e.g. lower appraisals of black homes). why with jews is the foucs always on sentiment?
@raf and to be clear, i know that anti-semitic discrimination and violence obviously does happen and we can see it and measure it. maybe sentiment is a leading indicator of that, idk. but the concepts often feel weirdly decoupled in our discourse.
I share these concerns. ADL really goes off the rails sometimes. (Ilhan Omar is my rep, so that example hits close to home!)
It's really worth looking at the actual study. As @raf said, they're clear about what they asked, and why. They're not quite asking the questions you posit. And despite using ADL resources in formulating some of the questions they did ask, their methodology answers a whole lot of the concerns you & I share.
Excerpts in screenshots:
There’s much more in the paper. It seems to me they're quite scrupulous about treating anti-Israeli-policy, anti-Israel, and antisemitic as three distinct things. In fact, part of the point of the research is to suss out just how distinct those things are.
And having made that careful distinction, their findings are •fascinating•.
@inthehands oh, that is interesting. would you mind linking to the PDF? i read through the topline findings link but i didn't realize that was a summary of a larger paper.
The link was somewhere upthread, but easy to get lost in all that! Here it is: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10659129221111081
@inthehands oh i see — i didn't realize the two links @raf posted were related! thank you for clarifying
@jakelazaroff
It takes a village to read the news! (For real — it's one of the primary purposes of social media for me. I can't possibly have all the perspective and click on all the links all by my lonesome.)
Apologies I linked a few studies! I wanted to link multiple to show there were consistent findings across them. The ADL page was good for showing the kinds of questions they ask. But I wanted to include a study which had the charts where it's split out by ideology
Both studies split out the anti-Israel questions as I think any thoughtfully designed study should
That makes complete sense to me. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but personally I have never met overt anti-semitism on the left. ie Hard anti-Jew rhetoric or holocost denial. Plenty of anti-semitic tropes where folks should know better - but I have also seen plenty who, when told they had gone there, backed right off and apologised.
The right on the other hand...
I'm a Brit by the way - but it all applies here.
@JimmyB overt anti-semitism on the left often centers around the jewish diaspora's relationship to israel. what exactly that looks like depends on whom you ask. i think anti-semitism is when people expect us to support israel and deplatform jewish groups who don’t. the zionist left (who tend to be more center; "liberal" rather than "progressive”) think anti-semitism is BDS and calling israel an apartheid state. but we can all broadly agree that it exists.
What this line of research shows to my eye is that this specific line of thought you are describing is •not• as widespread a pattern on the left as it seems.
It exists. We experience it. Yet it’s not as widespread as it feels. What does this mean?
The obvious explanation is that we’re experiencing this blowback from a loud minority. That’s important info. Who are they? Why are they so loud? If they’re outliers on the left, what's their agenda?
@jakelazaroff
And as I answer those questions, I think early and often of what Mekka has been posting about the fash constantly striving to drive wedges between marginalized groups.
Eyes on the ball.
Jewish quotas in university and being banned from social clubs is still in living memory. I don't know why these specific questions were chosen, but I don't think a survey is the worst way to try to measure antisemitism.
Also if you are interested in how prevalent bigoted beliefs are within in a population, I'm not sure anything other than a properly conducted survey will work
@raf i know, i have family members who experienced that. it was indefensible. but i can’t help but notice that we’re now talking about the past rather than the present. of course, one affects the other — university quotas live on through legacy admissions.
i’ll admit this isn’t a fully formed opinion. i’m not an expert on measuring these things. i don’t know what the ADL should do instead. the way prominent organizations tend to discuss anti-semitism just feels off to me.
I haven't been shy about sharing my criticisms of the ADL. Probably best captured in articles like this one:
https://newrepublic.com/article/175013/anti-defamation-league-where-stand-today
I also hope we can agree that antisemitism is alive and well at least in stochastic terrorist events like the Jewish school that was shot up twice in one week in Montreal.
Or with workplace discrimination with more than 50% of Jews and 62% of Muslims have said they experienced it.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231211070920
How we should measure that is always going to feel dissatisfying since there will always be some disagreement.
@raf (this thread is branching and getting difficult to keep up with so i just wanted to assure you that yes, we can absolutely agree on that.)
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray not only anti semites but the far right Israeli gvt and its funders. That gvt it currently jailing Israelis that dare to speak out on civilians in Gaza or against the current gvt actions.
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray Definitely this. I've seen **a lot** of Jewish solidarity against Israel's genocide
@owenblacker Oh absolutely! I think the majority of us are against the Netanyahu regime. My question is where is the Gentile solidarity protecting us? Where is the equivalent of BLM? @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
I don't think I'm fully understanding this question?
France did a march *against anti-semitism* and 100s of thousands of people showed up.♥️👍🏿
🇫🇷182K marched against anti-semitism
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/world/europe/france-antisemitism-march.html
The US had a march presumably *For Israel*, but where Van Jones was chanted over with "No ceasefire!" because he dared to suggest that he doesn't like bombs or rockets falling on Israeli or Palestinian children. Fewer than 10K people showed up. 🤷🏿♂️
@mekkaokereke While there are some large rallies against antisemitism around the world, they’re caused by the overt acts of antisemitism. And while it’s easy to join a crowd yelling “no more antisemitism,” there is a distinct lack of people comforting their Jewish friends with a simple text, phone call, or Facebook post. @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
I don't think I've seen a march organized specifically against anti-semitism, where no one showed up to support the Jewish community?
In fact I'm seeing the opposite: young Jewish and non-Jewish people united in saying that they reject anti-semitism, but don't accept that that means that they must agree with all of Netenyahu's policies.
I saw Amy Schumer try to say that "no one" checked in on her, then admitted that Black folk had checked in. 🙂🙃
@mekkaokereke Amy is fortunate then. I have not had that experience. @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
Amy Schumer has a history of saying problematic things about / to Black people. She's peak white feminism.🗑️
But I'm hearing the "Black people aren't showing up for Jewish people" trope a lot, and whenever I poke at it, it doesn't appear to be based on a lot of facts?🤷🏿♂️
Is it that you have a *close* Black friend that hasn't even checked in on you? You don't have to tell me. I'm not asking for proof. But if so, I understand how that can hurt.
@mekkaokereke Prior to moving to my current location, 1.5 years ago, I knew 3 white people. Due to my job, all my friends and coworkers were Black. The women who have been my best friends for 20 years are Black. Not even a “like” from them on a FB post. It hurts. @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
(Unsolicited advice inbound! Feel free to ignore!)
I would consider telling your friends that them not checking in with you during a time of rising anti-semitism, hurt your feelings.
One of the best things a friend ever told me, was after the Pulse shooting. This friend reminded me that after high profile police shootings of Black men especially in our area, he made sure to check in with me. But after Pulse, crickets from me?
His words changed me
@mekkaokereke Open communication is key. @owenblacker @paul_ipv6 @donray
@mekkaokereke I sure hope you’re right. I’ve long played a game called “who would hide me in their attic.” Right now, the only person I know would do it is the German girl next door, which I find ironic. @paul_ipv6 @donray
@mekkaokereke And Bibi may be Jewish, but NOT all Jews are responsible for his various razor-thin coalition victories.
Animated GIF of a Nazi getting punched out cold.
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray
This image brings me joy.
Leftists are generally pro-mass murder so there's no surprise there
@EvilSandmich What? Leftists are simultaneously against antisemitism and pro mass murder?
How do you define liberals and leftists?
@mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
Hate White people
Jews do a genocide/ethnic cleansing job because of some crime issue impacting them and there’s nary a complaint Because they’re at the top of their totem pole of the aggrieved.
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray
You’ll also hear this coming from right-wing Orthodox Jews, btw. I know more than one. (Because of family history, I don’t often say this, but I am Jewish.)
@deirdresm My father’s side is Lubovitch. My mother’s side is Israeli. We’re slap in the middle, and pretty much atheist, culinary Jews. 😂 @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
My mother's mother was adopted into a Christian family (great-grandfather was both a Methodist minister and a physician), and the story was that she had been adopted from a Jewish woman who had to give up her child.
Except, we find out from 23andme, that was an anti-semitic lie.
Meanwhile, I had a Bat Mitzvah to reclaim the family heritage when I was young, but not as a convert (as we believed I wasn't).
So. Complicated.
@deirdresm Wow! That is quite the story! @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@AlliFlowers @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
Many Jewish people *were* adopted into Christian families, so there was no reason to disbelieve the story at the time.
Anyhow, not ethnically Jewish, but that knowledge is only within the last 10% of my life. My bio great-grandmother turns out to have been from a poor area of rural Norway and not, as we'd been led to believe, Germany.
@deirdresm I can only imagine how that’s played with your head. @mekkaokereke @paul_ipv6 @donray
@mekkaokereke @AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray there’s plenty of individual Jews and Jewish organisations attacking Netanyahu.
It’s nothing to do with antisemitism.
@AlliFlowers @paul_ipv6 @donray
The good news is that I don't think that it is so few?
I think that there is an intentional effort by right-wing anti-semites to portray any criticism of current Israeli government policy as broad anti-semitism against Jews everywhere.
There is vile, dangerous, rising anti-semitism everywhere right now. A lot of masks are coming off. But I think the vast majority of liberal and leftist people are against anti-semitism, and stand with Jewish people on this.