At what point does a rise in anti-Semitism stop being viewed merely as a series of isolated, troubling occurrences and start being treated like an emergency? When mass- media programs mainstream hatemongers who target and seek to delegitimize Jews? When elite academic institutions behave as though itās acceptable conduct? When Jews are attacked in the streets?
The ongoing
epidemic of violence against Jews in New York City is mostly ignored, both by the media and much of the organized Jewish world. This is not only because the victims are Orthodox Jews who are easy to pick out. Theyāre also not the sort of people with whom opinion leaders, and even most American Jews, identify or associate.
But the mainstreaming of anti-Semitic attitudes on major campuses around the United States is harder to dismiss. Even more difficult to ignore are the widely disseminated programs that embrace open anti-Semites as legitimate voices worth considering.
Indeed, what is unfolding, inch by inch, is the normalization of anti-Semitism in the U.S. in a manner unprecedented in the post-Holocaust era. Nor is it confined to a specific segment of society or particular end of the political spectrum.
Indeed, as the events of the past week illustrate, Jew-hatred is thriving on both the left and the right. Individually, each of these instancesāthe legitimization of the BDS movement and targeting of Jewish institutions at Bostonās
Wellesley College; the establishment of a Jew-free zone by student organizations at
the University of California at Berkeley School of Law; the appearance of BDS advocate Roger Waters on the Joe Rogan
podcast; and the
featuring of the rapper formerly known as Kanye West on the Fox News Channelās āTucker Carlson Tonightāācan be unpacked, denounced or rationalized and then forgotten, before the publicās attention is diverted to new controversies.
-----
Joe Rogan embraces BDS hate
Roganās decision to grant a platform to Pink Floyd front man and anti-Israel zealot Roger Waters is defended as just one more instance of the countryās leading podcast pushing the envelope when it comes to controversial speakers.
Despite the fact that he has never been a political conservative, Rogan became a piƱata for many on the left due to his willingness to engage in dialogue with figures like social critic Jordan Peterson and skeptics of the governmentās COVID-19 policies. Indeed, many leading artists sought to get him de-platformed from Spotify for his unwillingness to suppress dissent from liberal orthodoxy on important issues. That effort rightly failed; Roganās podcast continues to thrive, with an average of some 11 million listeners per episode.
But having already ācried wolfā about him, liberals have little credibility when they criticize Rogan for a
show in which notorious anti-Semite Waters was able to spout hatred for Israelāas well as myths about its measures of self-defense in the face of the Palestinian war to destroy itāwithout being challenged or contradicted.
Waters didnāt merely engage in criticism of Israel. He floated conspiracy theories about it that justify Palestinian terrorism and promulgate the lie that itās an āapartheid state.ā
Throughout the interview, Rogan agreed with Waters that Israelās existence is an exercise in segregation and racism, and allowed him to claim that none of this was anti-Semitic.
Tucker Carlson gives Kanye West a platform
The same week, Carlson hosted West, who now calls himself āYe,ā and gave him the opportunity to speak for the entire hour of his highly rated show.
Carlson became something of a tribune for conservatives for his forthright condemnations of the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 and willingness to speak out on other issues dear to the hearts of those on the political right. That made him a target for the left, with groups like the Anti-Defamation League seeking to de-platform him for his discussions of so-called
āreplacement theoryā about immigration. This said more about the ADLās partisanship than Carlson, since the idea that demographic change will alter American politics is one that originated with and continues to be advocated for by Democrats.
Here again, the fact that liberal groups have already ācried wolfāā about Carlson makes it easier for him to dismiss criticisms when he actually does something to mainstream hatred. This is what happened in the wake of the West interview.
Carlson embraced West because some of what he says is in line with conservative views about race-baiting (his endorsement of a āWhite Lives Matterā shirt) and opposition to abortion. On the program, the rapper/fashion mogul was allowed to claim that Jared Kushner pursued the Abraham Accords for financial profit rather than to advance peace.
Carlson is unique among leading conservative media figures in that he is not a supporter of Israel. He is careful, however, to stay away from discussions about the Jewish state, lest he run afoul of mainstream conservative opinion, which is overwhelmingly Zionist.
The word āIsrael,ā thus, is a word almost never heard from 8-9 p.m. on Fox News. And it is not surprising that Carlson would allow one of the Trump administrationās greatest triumphs to be denigrated in this particular manner.
While Carlson trumpeted the interview as proof that West was not, as many claim, a disturbed individual or a hatemonger, what was left out of the broadcast was as interesting as what was left in.
In outtakes that have subsequently been published, West made numerous allusions to hateful Jewish stereotypes.
He even echoed assertions of the Black Israelite sect that African-Americans were the real Jewsāeffectually denying the existence of a Jewish people. That Carlson would leave this out of his show demonstrates that he was attempting to hide Westās anti-Semitism.
Days later, West dropped the veil. In a series of tweets, he announced that he was going to ādef con 3 against the Jewish people.ā Yet conservative talk-show host
Candace Owens defended him, in essence instructing Jews on what does or does not constitute anti-Semitism.
Like liberals circling the wagons around left-wing haters of Israel and the Jews, Carlson and Owens are doing the same for West and for the same reason. In each case, legitimizing anti-Semitism is considered justified if it defends a political ally, regardless of the consequences.
What happens at Wellesley and Berkeley or what is said on Roganās, Carlsonās or Owensās talk shows do not by themselves mean that all of the guardrails against anti-Semitism in American society have been removed. But, taken together, they demonstrate how anti-Semitic attitudes and statements are increasingly legitimized in mainstream discourse.
After last week, itās no good pretending that Jew-hatred is only a problem on one or the other side of the political aisle. And itās the obligation of decent peopleāno matter where their political loyalties lieāto condemn all expressions of anti-Semitism unambiguously.
That too many otherwise decent people are either ignoring these incidents or downplaying them, because speaking out might entail offending political allies, isnāt simply a disgrace. It explains why anti-Semitism is coming back into fashion in quarters where we thought it had become extinct.
(full article online)
The showcasing of Roger Waters and Kanye West is, along with trends in academia and woke culture, legitimizing Jew-hatred on both ends of the political spectrum.
www.jns.org
www.timesofisrael.com
