The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Antisemitism Is Rising in America, Left and Right. The Bible Helps Explain Why

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

The greatest tool for fighting antisemitism is the Bible, and Jew-hatred is on the rise in the U.S. because Americans are less and less familiar with the holy text, a Christian leader warns. Antisemitism "is on the rise in general," Luke Moon, deputy director at The Philos Project and leader of Philos Action League, told The Daily Signal. Philos Action League mobilizes Christians to fight antisemitism. Speaking with "The Daily Signal Podcast" late last month at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Moon said Jew-hatred is "on the rise because we as an American society are becoming less biblically literate, less connected to the Bible."  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, June 7th. I'm Samantha Sherris. Tyler O'Neill sat down with Luke Moon, deputy director of the Philos Project, to discuss the Philos Action League's innovative strategy to combat anti-Semitism. Moon said the greatest contributing factor to growing anti-Semitism is not being familiar with the Bible. We'll get to Tyler's conversation right after this. Are you looking for an easy and entertaining way to keep up with the news, you care about. The Daily Signal and Heritage Foundation YouTube channels offer interviews with

policy experts on the most critical issues and debates America is facing today, as well as short explainer videos that break down complex issues and documentaries that dive deep into the way its policy actually impacts people. Go ahead and subscribe to both the Daily Signal and Heritage Foundation YouTube channels today. You can search for either on your YouTube app or visit YouTube. com slash heritage foundation and YouTube.com slash daily signal. This is Tyler O'Neill. I'm managing editor at the Daily Signal, and I'm honored to be joined by Luke Moon, deputy director at the Philos Project. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. It's wonderful.

So you were talking to me about the Philos Action League, this part of this project of the Filos project that's really focused on combating anti-Semitism. Can you share more about it? Yeah, so over a year ago, we started the Feles Action League. Basically, it was to mobilize Christians. Anytime there's an anti-Semitic incident anywhere in the country, a Christian will show up with a bouquet of white roses and a card saying, we stand in friendship and solidarity with you. And the idea was like, I was tired of the social media kind of activism. It was like, let's get people to actually show up and do something physical. And when we did, you know, we did. And when we did, that, it just makes such a big difference, right? It actually gives you something to talk about

on social media, but it's very physical. And I think that that matters so much today. Yeah, no, it really does. And recently you had a situation where a neo-Nazi group was gathering, and you organized a counter-protest, and then they pulled out. Yeah, it was great. The National Socialist Movement, which is a Nazi and neo-Nazi organization, They had planned to protest Sheriff Chitwood of Volusia County, Florida. And so we heard about it, and we organized a counter protest in which we were able to get over 65 people, mostly conservative Jews and Christians, to man the barricade and stand in opposition to the neo-Nazis and the cowards, they never showed up. It was great.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's encouraging. to hear because oftentimes you hear from the left this threat of anti-Semitism and hate from the right and they act as though, you know, there's a clan hood under every Republicans, in every Republican's closet. And how would you respond to that kind of rhetoric? Well, the problem is there is voices on the far right that are behaving in a manner that is inappropriate of the right, I would say. And I think it's important for us to call that out. I think it's important for us to draw a clear line between those who are using anti-Semitism, any kind of like xenophobia, any kind of like proper old-school racism is inappropriate for anybody on the right. And so my goal is to really draw a bright line between what I would call the good right and the bad right. And the problem is that the bad right is using and exploiting the issues that are major issues that the right sees are problematic and blaming the Jews for those.

And that's a real problem. That's why I want to make sure that we're clear to everybody out there. I'm a man of the right. and I am leading one of the most powerful movements against anti-Semitism that exists in the country. And you talk about, you know, there is anti-Semitism on the right and it needs to be combated, but there's also anti-Semitism on the left. What does that look like? Well, Mathis itself a little bit differently. So I have this anti-Semitism on the left is I love Jews and hate Israel, and on the right it's I love Israel and hate Jews. And it really actually plays out a lot like that,

for instance, the same month last August that Kanye came out and said all his anti-Semitic statements on like Alex Jones show and stuff like that, that same month, Berkeley, California, the university passed, the student body, passed a bunch of initiatives where they were like, we're not going to allow any Zionist speaker to speak to our group, all the student associations. were like, oh, a Lao Zionist, right? And it was, you know, so we're busy calling out the anti-Semitism of UC Berkeley, and then Kanye came on the scene, and then everybody got focused on Kanye. But it really kind of highlighted that issue in that month of August of the problem of the right

and the problem of the left. Well, I think we saw, and I don't know if you can speak to this or not, because she is an elected official, but Ilhan Omar, having an event in Congress to lament the 75th anniversary of Israel. Yeah, I mean, it is, again, her constituency are largely Muslims or Palestinians, and she is responding to their desires. But the issue of what it's called Nakhba catastrophe of basically the Arab armies losing to this fledgling Israeli force that was,

You know, they just had endured the Holocaust. They had their backs against the wall. And, you know, the Jordanian soldier, you know, his wife and kids were in Amman, right? He wasn't, he hadn't had the same existential crisis that the Jews faced that day. And so, yes, it was a catastrophe for the Palestinians that their armies lost. But to celebrate that, it's a little weird, to intentionally antagonize Jews, also weird. I mean, it's not, I don't think it's very positive view of society when you're celebrating the, the, the, the destruction of the Jewish people or the, or the attempted destruction

of the Jewish people. That's a problem. Yeah. And I've been hearing a lot of reports saying that in election years, attacks on Jews ramp up, that hate crimes increase, that, that, various things like that are going on. Would you say that that tracks with your monitoring of anti-Semitism? Well, it's going to, it's on the rise in general. It's on the rise because we as an American society are becoming less biblically literate, less connected to the Bible. You find that, you know, people who are biblically literate tend to have a more positive view of Jews and Israel. And as a result, like that as that declines, so does. any kind of affinity, any kind of knowledge.

And so it's very easy for those tropes, the scapegoating of the Jewish people to begin to kind of rise. And that's what you see, you know, groups like to go in Defense League taking advantage of when they go after Jews, is they're like, you know, here's the 12 Jews that are wanting to take away your guns.

Right? So they're using issues that the Reich is very concerned about and weaponizing them. against Jews. And I think that's really what we're going to see an increase of. And again, one of those things I'm fighting very hard to highlight the difference between the good right and the bad right. Yeah.

And I think of, you know, the Southern Poverty Law Center. It recently had a report, a very outdated report from what I understand, when you look at the actual state of traditional Catholicism in the U.S. but they had, you know, radical traditional Catholic hate groups, and the FBI was citing this report. And the report essentially boils down to these groups are anti-Semitic. And have you seen a lot of radical traditional Catholic anti-Semitism? It's not very common, but there, again, it does exist. You have guys like Nick Fuentes, who has, you know, come out pretty aggressively against Jews.

He's very, I mean, he just, I remember watching a video of him, you know, yelling at Ben Shapiro when he was walking with his wife and kids across a parking lot and like just saying the most foul things. And he identifies as a Catholic. I don't think he's a faithful one, but, you know, that's me. But one of the things that we're doing is we have a whole arm of the Fields Project called Fields Catholic. And this fall, we will have a conference on Catholics against anti-Semitism. So we're actually going to raise that issue within the Catholic community, have a conference, get people, people are going to sign on to our statement, and it's from the Catholic right. And they're, again, creating that nice, bright line between the good right and the bad right.

Because there's a majority of conservative Catholics, traditional Catholics, they have nothing against the Jews, right? Like the Nostreitate settled that for them, which was the, which was the papal decree that, you know, we can't blame the Jews for killing Christ. Like that kind of the deicide argument was taken off the table. And for traditional Catholics to say, oh no, we're going to hold on to that. They're actually going against papal authority. And my understanding of Catholic traditions, that's wrong. Yes. speaking, yes. That's interesting because I had always thought, you know, being growing up Protestant, but also in high church circles that, you know, we all as a church repeated, you

know, those horrible words in the passion narrative where we say, you know, crucify him, crucify him. The implication is we all are implicated in the death of God. It's not, you know, it's not like singled out Jews, this is something that we all Muslim met because we all share in the sin that led Jesus to the cross. Absolutely. And actually, I was just teaching a group last week on the history of Christianity Semitism. And it was actually before Christ was born that the Romans took away capital punishment from the Jews. It took it. It was a law. It just, you know, it was part of the taking on the authority of Rome over a province was it took away. the ability of the, you know, I don't know, conquered people to be able to, like, exact capital

punishment. And so it explicitly wasn't the Jews alone. And it was the Romans actually, you know, pulled the trigger. And so regardless of whether it was Jews or Gentiles, all of us participated through, you know, our sin of the killing of Christ. and all of us then need the saving grace of Jesus Christ in order to be redeemed. So how important is it for Christians to stand up against anti-Semitism? Well, I actually define anti-Semitism as an irrational hatred of the Jewish people rooted in the fact that the people by which God brought his moral revelation into this world and the world hates them for it.

And the degree to which Christians are hated were hated because we're actually affirming that same law. And, you know, there's a verse in Romans that says, you know, you don't sustain the root. The root sustains you. And I think drawing on that understanding of the Hebraic roots of our faiths, not only shapes our Christian faith, but also shapes our understanding of Western civilization. Because it was, and particularly as a Protestant, I'm Protestant as well, the Reformation was a direct result of people. reading the Bible for the first time with their own eyes, reading the development of the Hebrew nation, and beginning to articulate the principles that they found there. And that was significant in shaping Western political thought. And all that is somehow lost. It's now coming back to the

forefront, but I think it serves Christians well to understand that we see. stand on the shoulder of giants and those giants are the patriarchs. Yeah, well, are there any other impressive, you know, interesting things that Phyllos is working on that you'd like to share? Well, also working on a big project with Armenia. It's a very interesting country. Obviously, the word genocide was coined because of the genocide against the Armenian people. and they were the first Christian nation, the first nation that as a people adopted Christianity. But, you know, I was talking recently to a group,

and I was like, well, what's the, how does the Armenian story fit into the, I don't know, the meta-narrative of Christianity? And, you know, in almost like an offhand remark, Robert Nicholson, who's the executive director of the Fields Prize, he says, you know, Noah's Ark was landed there. And I'm like, well, that's kind of important.

Like, we should lead with Noah's Ark is Armenian, right? Like, because, you know, to degree to which, you know, there's the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs, the line that we follow that developed the Israeli people, the Jewish people that continues to this day, really the Armenians kind of almost represent. the nations, everybody else. You know, the Bible kind of divides things that way. You get the Jews and then everybody else. And I think, you know, Armenians represent that everybody else in the

meta-narrative of our faith. And by, I think, articulating and highlighting the importance of that people as a particular representative people, I think, is important for us. Well, and from what I understand there's a particular community in Armenia that's being cut off by Azerbaijan. Yeah, the Artsakh, which is this like little, I don't know, appendage almost that's connected with Armenia by a very narrow corridor. Armenians in the mountains, so you have a lot of mountains and valleys kind of things going on. And Azerbaijan's basically just cut it off, not allowing fuel, not allowing food. It really has a stranglehold

on the hundreds of thousands of Christians that are living there. And, you know, I don't want to overstate the kind of Muslim Christian element to this, but it does matter. That Azerbaijan is a Muslim country. Turkey, which also borders, Armenia, is also a Muslim country.

And they have an antagonist. antagonistic relationship against Christians, not only in Turkey and Azerbaijan, but around the region. Yeah. And from what I understand, Phelos is planning to do something on it. Understand if you can't share with me what that is yet, but. Yeah, well, we have a trip coming up, actually later, or actually not later, but next month in June. Just really a fact-finding trip. One of the things that we love to do is just bring people to a place and say, let you see for yourself. We're not prescriptive about, you know, the policy applications afterwards,

but more understanding that we bring smart people to these places and give them a variety of views that they will walk away with a better understanding and then also be able to articulate their own positions. And who is going on this trip? Is that something you can share? Yeah, basically Ambassador Brownback is going on the trip, several leaders from, there's Catholic leaders, leaders of organizations, major ones in Washington, D.C. Yeah, it's a good trip.

It's a good number of people. Yeah, well, I'd be very curious to see what comes out of that trip. You and me both. You and me both. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Luke. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Where can people find the Phelos project and plug into your important work?

Yeah, we like everybody else. Have a website. And it's Phelosproject.org. Phelos is spelled P-H-I-L-O-S. Phelos means friend in Greek. Our goal is to just basically be, promote positive Christian engagement in the Near East. And that means identifying your friends and affirming them and doing stuff with them to show. that you're a friend, physically show that you're a friend.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Luke. I appreciate the time. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signals Interview Edition. Make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We read and appreciate all of your feedback.

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