Antisemitism

Having lived in South Texas since the 7th grade, antisemitism was not something I encountered in my social environment while growing up. That marked the heyday of All in the Family; at least as far as Jews are concerned Archie’s prejudice didn’t go beyond ethnic/religious snobbery and not-always-negative stereotypes (good with money, holiday dedicated to eating young kippers). The signature antisemitism of that decade revolved around Palestinian terrorism. The Holocaust was a subject of history lessons, and the miniseries that aired weeks before my high school graduation.

I didn’t find antisemitism in my adult social circles, either, only in news stories and news commentary – the since-forgotten politician or two whose membership in a country club not allowing Jews drew controversy, the Crown Heights riots, Jewish conspiracy tropes, more Middle Eastern terrorism, sporadic David Duke sightings, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, the alt-right subculture, and so on. I get the impression that a lot of folks treat antisemitism as a single phenomenon and not several. The following is probably not an exhaustive list. 

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Rage

So a month and a bit after the Oct. 7th pogrom in Israel, the streets of American and European cities, and university/college campuses are filled with rage, and a disgusting display of Jew-hate. It’s as if none of them ever read Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” or had the slightest clue about what happens when the survivors of a genocide have the chance to pay back the perpetrators of mass murder – the wholesale murder of kin, friends, and coreligionists – with appropriate coin. But mostly … rage. By coincidence, the hand-scribbled ravings of the Covenant School transsexual murderer were leaked to a media outlet – it looks like some local police officers are believed to have been the conduit for the leakage. Because what comes clear about the girl who wanted to be a boy was the pure, white-hot insane and murderous rage, which somehow became focused for whatever reason on the kids, kids who were of a privileged enough background that their parents could send them to a religious-sponsored private school. I wonder if the rage grew out of frustration. The kids had something that Audrey Hale felt that she lacked – a secure sense of self in the world, comfort within their own skin, innocence and trust, parental approval – whatever. They had all that or some other quality – and she didn’t and it wasn’t fair – and so she was consumed with rage, a rage which could only be assuaged by lashing out.

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Consequences

So, looking at the actions of pro-Hamas demonstrators on university campuses and in the streets of major blue-tinged cities over the last few weeks, we really don’t have to ask as Dorothy Thompson did, in mid-1941 – who goes Nazi? College students suckled on the sour teat of DIE-addled academicians with delusions of intellectual grandeur, for a certainty, and recent immigrants who have brought their unfortunate old habits of hate with them. Still, when it comes to that first group, it has been amazing and disheartening to observe that sheltered twentysomethings driven to hair-trigger meltdown by the alleged presence of misogyny, the faintest hint of racism, and microaggressions so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye have enthusiastically aligned themselves with genocidal Jew haters from Gaza. Students and academics didn’t even pause for a split second, before cheering on indiscriminate random slaughter, torture, repeated rape so violent that it left pelvic bones broken, burning families alive in their own homes, looting and hostage-taking.

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Quote of the Day

David Harsanyi:

Though Jews are by far the most targeted religious minority in the United States, we have yet to have a big national conversation about the problem. No one in major media dares even bring it up.

There are lots of “conversations” we’re supposed to have, meaning mob actions where leftist cadres will abuse isolated non-leftists who are dumb enough to take the bait. Media and top Democrats are all-in. Maybe it’s time to go Alinsky on the Left and hold struggle sessions about antisemitism? It’s a nice thought.