The Daily - The Re-emergence of American Anti-Semitism

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

Until recently, many American Jews believed that anti-Semitism was a European problem, one the United States had left behind. But the attack in Pittsburgh did not come out of nowhere. Guest: Jonathan Weisman, the deputy Washington editor of The New York Times and author of “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Until recently, many American Jews believed that anti-Semitism was a European problem, one they had left behind. But the attack in Pittsburgh didn't come out of nowhere. It's Tuesday, October 30th. But the attack in Pittsburgh didn't come out of nowhere. It's Tuesday, October 30th.

Jonathan, tell us what happened on May 18th, 2016. On May 18th, 2016, in the middle of the presidential campaign, I read a column by a conservative Jewish writer named Robert Kagan, and it was called, This is How Fascism Comes to America. And, you know, as I do a lot, I copied, pasted, put it on Twitter, and sent it out into the world. And fairly quickly, I got a very strange reply from somebody named atcybertrump. And all it said was, hello, Weissman. But Weissman, strangely enough, was in three parentheses, three open parentheses, three closed parentheses. And I had never seen that notation. So I sent something back. I said, care to explain.

And then he sent me another note back saying, what ho the vaunted Ashkenazi intelligence. It's a dog whistle, fool. I was belling the cat for my fellow goyim. And by belling the cat, this person literally meant I am putting a digital bell on Jonathan Weissman's Twitter handle so that it will ring what exactly? Jew. Hmm.

He had put those three parentheses around my name. And unbeknownst to me, there was a piece of software. It's actually called the coincidence indicator, blandly named so Google wouldn't notice that it was sitting on the Google plugin website. sitting on the Google plugin website. And anyone who plugged in the coincidence indicator could actually search for those three parentheses. So if a leader of the alt-right decides to tag you, to bell you with those three parentheses, then all of his followers who have downloaded the coincidence indicator

then can swarm you. Jonathan Weissman is deputy Washington editor of The Times. You know, your notifications on Twitter start lighting up, and you're curious, like, what is this? How come I have 1,000 new notifications in the last two minutes? And you click on it, and you see my face photoshopped on a picture from World War II of a Jew kneeling by a Nazi, or my head photoshopped on a bunch of concentration camp victims shot in Auschwitz. And then, of course, it begins to creep into your emails, your phone voicemails.

It doesn't just get contained on social media. So just from these three brackets being put on either side of your name, It doesn't just get contained on social media. So just from these three brackets being put on either side of your name, you are suddenly opened up to this whole underworld of anti-Semitism that feels like a coordinated swarm, an attempt to kind of out of nowhere attack you. Exactly. And several Jewish journalists were tagged around this time. I was not the only one. But the Anti-Defamation League actually tabulated the attacks on Jewish journalists during the 2016 campaign. I did come in the top 10.

I was number five, but by no means was I number one. That's fascinating. And Jonathan, what do you remember thinking at the time when this started? Well, you know, I grew up in the South, in Atlanta. I actually didn't experience a lot of anti-Semitism. I went to Sunday school. I also joke that my Sunday school was Holocaust studies because basically we learned the history of oppression of our people. But it all seemed very, very distant. You know, we learned all of these tropes about anti-Semitism, that the Jew was both a radical leftist Marxist bomber and a rapacious banker,

that Jews were both sniveling cowards and all-powerful puppet masters. The Jew could be anything to anybody just as long as it's bad. And all of that stuff that seemed, you know, pre-Nazi, maybe coming during the pogrom era of Russia. But it was the past, right? The United States was the land of the free. This was a backward-looking world that American Jews had left. Germany, Russia.

This was not America. Right. It's this kind of distant thing that you're taught as kind of our collective past, but not something that's happening now, something that's been escaped. You know, the remarkable thing is that growing up, I went to a synagogue called the Temple in Atlanta. And only when I was researching the book that I wrote about all of this did I find out that one of the congregants at my synagogue was Leo Frank. I did not know. In all of my bar mitzvah work and all of my Sunday schools and all of my confirmation, no one ever said, hey, one of the most famous Jews in the history of America went here and

he was lynched. I don't know that backstory. Okay, well, Leo Frank was accused unjustly of having murdered a 13-year-old girl. And during a vicious trial, the Southerners around Atlanta whipped up an anti-Semitic frenzy. He was initially convicted and sentenced to death, but the governor of Georgia at the time realized that a great miscarriage of justice had been done. He commuted his sentence to life in prison. And then the good citizens of Atlanta went out to the

Milledgeville State Penitentiary outside of Atlanta, hauled Leo Frank out and lynched him. It was a moment for American Jewry, and I was not told about it growing up in this congregation, which tells you something about American Jewry's desire to put the past into the past. It was always a European affair. It was something that we had escaped. It was always a European affair. It was something that we had escaped. It feels, Jonathan, like your surprise sort of mirrors our collective surprise over the past two years,

that anti-Semitism had felt like an un-American problem, and suddenly it wasn't. Once you saw in your own inbox and in your Twitter feed and your voicemail, I wonder where else did you begin to see it? You know, you get your antenna up, and suddenly, as the 2016 presidential campaign really kicked into gear, I started seeing it everywhere.

Are you familiar with this meme called Pepe the Frog? Okay, if you're those who don't, here's a picture. Here's Pepe the Frog. Okay? And one of the people who caught on to the sort of Pepe rage was Donald Trump Jr., who had a thing for retweeting a lot of neo-Nazis, interestingly enough, on Twitter. He posted this on September 10th, and there's Pepe right in the middle.

This shows solidarity with the alt-right. Right, with white supremacy. We have gone from dog whistles to full on barking. And because I knew it, I could see things out there in the campaign that other people would just go right by. I mean, for instance, there was a moment where... Donald Trump is facing backlash over this tweet that included the star of David. The tweet shows the Jewish symbol over images of Hillary Clinton and dollar bills. The message over the star says, most corrupt candidate ever.

A lot of people said, wait a minute, that's a Jewish star. This must be an anti-Semitic reference. Megan, the debate boils down to whether or not you think a six-sided star looks more like a star of David or a sheriff's badge. And they said, oh, no, don't be silly. That's a sheriff's star. But because I was trolling around looking at the images on these alt-right websites, I knew exactly where they had gotten that. It wasn't some innocent thing. They didn't stumble into it. They went looking for that image and somehow thought that that was a good thing to send out.

that that was a good thing to send out. And then the final campaign that candidate Trump ran, his closing statement for the 2016 presidential campaign. Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. Was this dark, dark ad that spoke of global special interests coming after America. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interest, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. They partner with these people that don't have your good in mind.

And as they ran these words, global special interests, you saw the Jewish faces of Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairman, of Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, and of George Soros, the Jewish philanthropist. Three Jewish images coming on top of those words, global special interests. It was just hard to mistake. And we will take back this country for you, and we will make America great again.

I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message. But I guess there's still kind of a plausible deniability, perhaps, to something like that. And the Trump campaign, whenever they were called on it by reporters, always said, you're seeing things that aren't there. That's right. And remember, the plausible deniability always came from the talisman that is Ivanka Trump. Do you think the president dislikes his daughter? Okay. Answer the question. always came from the talisman that is Ivanka Trump. Do you think the president dislikes his daughter?

Okay. Answer the question. Answer, because you said he doesn't like Jews and his daughter's Jewish. I'm under no obligation to answer. They'd say, what? Wait a minute. Donald Trump has a Jewish daughter in Ivanka. So you think the president does not like Jews and is prejudiced against Jews. You think that about the president of the United States.

You bet. And do you know why? And why I was right, Kayleigh. Do you know why? Does he hate his daughter? Does he hate his son-in-law? You know what, Kayleigh? He has a son-in-law who is an Orthodox Jew. He has Jewish grandchildren. How dare you accuse him of anti-Semitism? So what is it for, though, if the president does have a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren and a Jewish son-in-law? How do we understand what you're describing as kind of unmistakable appeals to anti-Semitism in an ad like this being present in the campaign? I think Donald Trump had a very hard time turning his back on his most ardent supporters.

turning his back on his most ardent supporters. He and his campaign understood that they had really riled up the far right, the alt-right, and that included racists, that included anti-Semites. I'm not going to accuse him of racism or anti-Semitism, but I will say that when confronted with the darker sides of his supporters, he was always very reluctant to denounce them, to push them away. And that, in your mind, is just purely about an electoral calculation by the president and by those around him. In my mind, I do not think that Donald Trump feels like he can waste or lose a single vote. So for me, Jonathan, as someone who did not have the kind of awakening that you did because of what happened to you on Twitter, there was talk of anti-Semitism during the campaign, but it often felt a little ambiguous. And I actually remember vividly when that changed.

And I actually remember vividly when that changed. White lives matter! White lives matter! White lives matter! It was Charlottesville. It was a white nationalist rally that seemed like it was about race. But suddenly you had all these young white men marching in unison and chanting, Jews will not replace us! Jews will not replace us! Jews will not replace us! Jews will not replace us.

And I remember being truly confused by that chant. Like, why are white nationalists talking about Jews? It did not make a whole lot of sense to me. It made a lot of sense to me. Why? Because there is kind of a pantheon of evil in the alt-right, in this new breed of neo-Nazis. And in that pantheon, the watchword is white genocide, that they believe that the white race

is being supplanted, replaced, watered down. And they also believe that the white race is superior to Latinos, to blacks, to anyone who's not white, right? And remember, Jews, in their mind, are not white. But they look around them and they say, well, wait a minute. If we're the superior race, how could it be that these brown-skinned and black-skinned people are succeeding in white genocide, are replacing us? And that's where they look for the puppet master, and they find the Jews. The Jews in the alt-right world are the ones who are orchestrating the white genocide. Maybe not the field troops. The shock troops of white genocide are brown-skinned and black-skinned,

but the orchestrators of white genocide are Jews. That's why Jews will not replace us. And it's interesting because if you look at the rhetoric right now about immigration, you go back to the 1930s and you heard the same thing about immigrants and migrants and refugees coming from Europe, and those were Jewish refugees. At that time, in the 1930s, Americans feared Jewish children the way they seem to fear Muslim children or Mexican children now. And when Gallup would poll people about whether they supported controls on immigration or controls on the flow of refugees, they were actually talking about Jewish refugees, not Syrians, not Mexicans or Guatemalans. Jews were the refugees that everyone feared in the 1930s.

We are Christian in so far as we believe in Christ's principle of love your neighbor as yourself. And with that principle, I challenge every Jew in this nation to tell me that he does not believe in it. So what's the connection? Why are Jews now seen as the puppeteers of Syrians, Mexicans, etc.? Well, you know, one of the central tenets of Judaism is remember the stranger for you were a stranger in the land of Egypt. It is actually part of the religion to welcome strangers, to welcome immigrants, to welcome refugees. And actually, American Jews really created the concept of repairing the world, tikkun olam. And this kind of welcoming response to the stranger extended in the 1950s to African Americans who were then stirring the civil rights movement.

When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime. I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned in my life is that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence. The Civil Rights Movement was a seminal moment for Jewish and black alliances. Martin Luther King had tremendous allies among rabbis, especially in the South. America must not remain silent, not merely black America, but all of America. It must speak up and act from the president down to the humblest of us, and not for the sake of the Negro,

not for the sake of the black community, but for the sake of the image, the dream, the idea, and the aspiration of America itself. And yeah, that has tremendous resonance to Jews and to fighters and civil rights, and it also has tremendous resonance for the alt-right, who always see Jews somewhere in the background orchestrating their demise. What's kind of complicated about this discussion is that I was so prepared to have you tell me that all these tropes you heard about were factually false. But what's really tricky about this conversation and hard to grapple with is that Jews in America have done the things by welcoming outsiders that they're being

accused of doing by these white nationalists in ways that completely defy all the simple hate. But what white nationalists believe is that these things you're describing are being done not out of altruism, not out of a kind of spirit of generosity, but to undermine white people. They see it as something being taken away rather than something being given. Exactly. It all fits into the alt-right world of white genocide.

So from everything that you're saying, it would stand to reason that anti-Semitism would flare up whenever nationalism is on the rise in the U.S. Or internationally. Frankly, it is my view, and this is a controversial view, that when borders are blurred, when distinctions actually are diminished, Jews tend to flourish. But when the drawbridge is raised, when borders are more clearly defined, when people are defining sharply what it means to be an American or a Frenchman or a Briton. Those are bad times for Jews because as nationalism rises and as these ethnic and national distinctions are sharpened, the Jews

tend to be left out of that definition. They tend to be isolated and eventually they tend to be persecuted. I'm going to go back to my temple in Atlanta. In the 1950s, the Klan actually bombed my temple. Nobody was hurt. But at that time, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, Ralph McGill, wrote, you cannot isolate hatred for the Negro from hatred from other groups. When the wolves of hate are released, nobody is safe. When the wolves of hate are released, nobody is safe. When the wolves of hate are released, nobody is safe. So if we're seeing anti-Semitism, we are likely to be seeing other forms of hatred too. And when we're seeing other forms of hatred, we're seeing anti-Semitism. They are inextricably linked. Yes. I will say it is tragic, it is terrible for me to say this,

but on Saturday, when a gunman opened fire in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, I was not surprised. So you started by telling us that in your synagogue as a kid, you were raised to see anti-Semitism as something from the past, something that we overcame. Do you think now, especially in light of Saturday, that that is going to change for American Jews? There is remarkable, surprising division in American Jewry right now. There are probably a majority of American Jews who are going to be stunned, who are really understanding that this far-right hatred is a clear and present danger. But there is a vocal minority of Jews

that don't want to hear it. These are the Jews that really identify their mission as American Jews as supporting the state of Israel. And they look at what's happening right now in the Trump administration. They look at the support that President Trump has given the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, his decision to abrogate and step out of the hated Iran deal as the apotheosis of pro-Israeli policy, right? And they think that Trump is the greatest thing that's happened to Jews because he's the greatest thing that has happened to Israel. They don't want to hear about right-wing antisemitism. They don't want to hear about right-wing anti-Semitism. They don't want to hear about a threat from the right because a threat from the right to them

conjures up images of Trump supporters and he undermines the support that Donald Trump should have from American Jews. So acknowledging the anti-Semitism of this moment and its roots in the alt-right and in the white nationalism that ties itself to Trump could mean undermining Trump and undermining support for Israel. That's right. And the remarkable thing is since Saturday,

I've been speaking about this a lot and a lot of the angriest responses I've gotten have come actually from Jews who actually called me an anti-Semite for suggesting, for suggesting that right-wing anti-Semitism might have had anything to do with the atmosphere created by this president. They're calling you an anti-Semite for drawing attention to this. Yes. Anti-Semitic Democrat Party, Jonathan Weissman, it's your despicable Democrat Party that's anti-Semitic, hate Jews like me. We were once

with the Democrat Party, but after eight full years of anti-Semitism on Obama and the Democrats, we love Trump and we're Republicans. And just today, actually in the dead of night, at about 1 o'clock in the morning, I got a voicemail from a woman, don't know her name, don't know where she was calling from, basically saying that I'm an anti-Semite and the Democratic Party is the anti-Semitic Party. Because you hate Jews. You hate israel jonathan weissman you're a liar you lie and you hate israel you want a second holocaust because you're a democrat you voted for you love the iran deal by obama to destroy israel thank god for trump Jonathan, thank you very much for an enlightening conversation. Thank you for having me, Michael. I guess a question that this all leaves me with is,

can you be a white nationalist and a supporter of Israel? That is a fascinating question, because the answer is yes, believe it or not. Because white nationalists believe in what they love to call the ethno-state. And they believe that the United States should be a white ethno-state. And they actually model that on Israel, which they see as a white ethno-state. And they actually model that on Israel, which they see as a Jewish ethno-state. In fact, they like Israel. Israel is the place where American Jews should go. So, hey, why should we get rid of Israel? So in their minds, Israel's a model for what America looks like with no Jews. Everyone should have their own state.

Jews should have their own state. Whites should have their own state. And yes, especially now under Netanyahu, who has just declared a new law to fortify the identity of Israel as a Jewish national state. Right now, Israel is kind of actually pretty high up on the totem pole for the alt-right. It was looking for a model for the ethno-state.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Our message to the organizers and participants of this caravan is simple. We will not allow a large group to enter the United States in an unsafe and unlawful manner. On Monday, the Trump administration said it would deploy thousands of active duty troops to the southern border to hold off a large group of Central American migrants who are traveling toward the U.S., many of them to seek asylum.

By the end of this week, we will deploy over 5,200 soldiers to the southwest border. That is just the start of this operation. The deployment is the latest attempt by President Trump to draw attention to the issue of undocumented immigration, with just a week left before the midterm elections. The caravan is not expected to make it to the U.S. border for weeks, if not months. In a tweet on Monday, the president declared without any evidence that the caravan contains, quote,

many gang members and some very bad people. And on Monday, President Trump said he had offered his congratulations to the newly elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing candidate whose election marks the country's most radical political change in decades. As a candidate, Bolsonaro advocated torture, threatened to destroy, jail, or exile his political opponents, and, like Trump, had said he would refuse to accept the outcome of the election, unless he won. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.