The Squirrel Hill massacre was the deadliest terrorist
attack targeting Jews in American history. The shooter, Robert Bowers, clearly
and explicitly emerged out of a far-right cesspool where antisemitism,
xenophobia, and paranoia meet, and so has engendered renewed attention to the toxic
interplay between the illiberal brand of reactionary bigotry taking over the
American right and ever-increasing levels of hate, harassment, and violence
afflicting Jews and so many other minority groups.
It is true, if banal, to say that antisemitism in America
predates Trump and will outlast his departure. But
this
is a strawman; nobody is suggesting that American antisemitism didn’t exist
before Donald Trump willed it into existence. The argument is instead that
Donald Trump is a key part of a political movement which facilitates, nurtures,
promotes, and accelerates the presence of antisemitism (and many other hatreds
besides) in American politics and society. Trump didn’t create antisemitism,
but there should be no doubt he’s helping it along.
Yet as the poisonous effects of Trumpism make their
ever-clearer marks on Jewish bodies, the Jewish right continues to labor in
denial. They deny that antisemitism in America is growing, they deny that if it
is growing, it is growing on the right, and they deny if it is growing on the
right, that it can in any way be attributed to President Trump and his backers.
For them, the very most important lesson we can draw from a man who attacked a
synagogue because he thought
Jews
were behind the effort to bring immigrants to America is to be crystal
clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it.
On this score, one might think that the data doesn’t lie,
and the ADL found that antisemitic incidents in America
increased
by nearly 60% from 2016 to 2017—the largest year-over-year increase since
the venerable antisemitism watchdog began compiling data in 1979. But have no
fear: today
David
Bernstein gamely rose to the occasion and sought to argue that the ADL’s
data isn’t what it appears. The ADL’s “actual findings,” in Bernstein’s assessment,
“don’t even purport to show any such [increase].”
This is nothing new for Bernstein.
A
year and a half ago, he was chiding the American Jewish community for
falling prey to the “great anti-Semitism panic of 2017”. Now that data has
emerged suggesting that the “panic” was in fact perfectly well-founded, Bernstein
falls back to the position that the data is unreliable. Yet a careful
examination of his objections show that they in fact do little to undermine
confidence in the ADL’s core conclusion. At best, they represent the sort of
methodological sniping that can be directed at virtually any attempt at
empirical social science measurement. While Bernstein’s pot-shots may provide
some helpful directions for further research to confirm and cross-check the robustness
of the ADL’s analysis, they are nowhere close to sufficient to undermine the
prima facie validity of the ADL’s asserted conclusions.
To begin, the ADL’s incident audit is by no means the only
bit of evidence pointing to a surge in right-wing antisemitic activity. My
Berkeley colleague Avani Mehta Sood has written on the utility of “empirical
triangulation” as a means of accounting for the inevitable methodological
limitations of any one exploration of proposed social phenomenon: if a series
of different experiments or methods, each of which may have shortcomings in
their own way, all converge on the same basic conclusion, then we can have
considerably more confidence in that conclusion than might be warranted from
any one investigation on its own.
And as it happens, the findings of increased right-wing
antisemitism suggested by the ADL’s audit
are
buttressed by other data: including a 22% increase in the number of
established neo-Nazi groups from 2016 to 2017, a doubling in the number of
White supremacist murders, and a
258% increase
in White Supremacist propaganda incidents on American college campuses, as well
as massive growth in the incidents of online antisemitic incidents—an increase
which the ADL found was overwhelmingly attributable to right-wing sources and
which saw localized spikes during events like Trump’s inauguration. They’ve
even
showcased a series of cases where Donald Trump has been the vector through
which the deepest recesses of the antisemitic internet are amplified and
promoted to the American masses.
On their own, any of these datapoints could be picked apart
to undermine the conclusion that there has been a material increase in
antisemitic sentiment in America. But taken together, it is difficult to deny
the overwhelming weight of the evidence without falling into a very deep rabbit
hole of conspiracy-mongering and cries of “fake news.”
Yet even restricted to just the ADL’s audit, the skeptical
case is not compelling. Bernstein offers three main objections to relying on
the ADL’s study to warrant the claim that there has been a rise in right-wing
antisemitism in America. First, he suggests that many of the antisemitic
incidents on college campuses in particular (which almost doubled from 108 to
204) may emanate from the anti-Israel left rather than the White Supremacist
right. Second, he argues that some unspecified portion of the growth in reported
antisemitic incidents might stem from increased propensity of victims to report,
rather than increases in the base rate of incidents. Finally, he objects to the
criteria the ADL uses for assessing antisemitic incidents—those where “Jews
perceiv[e] themselves as being victimized due to their Jewish identity”—as
being too broad and encompassing events which Bernstein believes do not qualify
as antisemitic.
(Bernstein also makes a fourth observation: that the ADL found a
decrease in antisemitic assaults from
2016 to 2017, from 36 to 19. There are all manner of ways I could try to
explain that fact away—starting with the relatively small raw numbers being
vulnerable to greater year-over-year volatility—but the more plausible
conclusion is that the data says what it says, and that antisemitic assaults
did indeed decline from 2016 to 2017. One shouldn’t cherry-pick, after all.).
None of these objections is particularly persuasive. Start
with the college case. Yes, it is certainly true that some number of
antisemitic incidents on campuses come from left-wing sources. But that’s
irrelevant in explaining the overall year-over-year increase from 2016 to 2017
unless there was some evidence that the
proportion
of left-wing incidents grew over that time. But Bernstein provides no evidence
suggesting this is the case. And while an explicit breakout in terms of
ideological origin of collegiate antisemitism could be useful in an ideal world
(at least where it is feasible to draw such inferences), what evidence we do
have is consistent with the ADL’s claims about right-wing antisemitism: The
giant, 258% increase in White Supremacist incidents on campuses noted above
indicates that if anything the growth on campus is occurring on the right side
of the spectrum, and the
ADL’s
own sampling of collegiate incidents likewise suggests that most (though by
no means all) of the cases in its audits are uncontroversial examples of
far-right hatred.
Next, Bernstein argues that the environment of heightened
sensitivity to antisemitism in the wake of the Trump campaign means that more
antisemitic incidents are being reported (even though there might not be any
growth in their underlying frequency). Again, this is possible—but it’s also
speculative, particularly as against the more straight-forward inference that
more antisemitism is being reported because more antisemitism is occurring. And
since Bernstein has no hard evidence regarding the prevalence of this
phenomenon other than some intuition that it’s occurring, he can offer no
indication regarding how much of the measured increase in antisemitism it
supposedly explains. Is it all of it? Half? A few percentage points? If there
was hard data telling us what, if any proportion, of the measured increase in
antisemitism is attributable to increased reporting rates, that would make for
a very valuable control. But it puts a rather giant thumb on the scale to
assume that, in absence of that data, we can just decide by fiat that a significant
proportion of the increase in antisemitic incidents is actually an artifact of
increased willingness to talk to the ADL.
Again, this argument is little more than a cheap methodological
pot-shot. Yet on this issue there’s a normative problem as well. Bernstein’s
argument is that we’re seeing higher levels of antisemitic incidents because
Jews are more frequently reporting antisemitism. But the most straight-forward explanation
for why Jews are more frequently reporting antisemitism is that there actually is more antisemitism—Jews are responding
to actual, real changes in the social milieu. Bernstein, wedded to the
narrative that this whole antisemitism story is a “panic”, needs another
story—one where antisemitism isn’t actually increasing but Jews have
nonetheless become more attuned to it. And the story he tells, consequently, is
essentially one of mass communal hysteria: the Jewish community’s assessment of
antisemitism is being driven not by facts but by “ideology, emotion,
partisanship, or panic.”
It should not be hard to see just how irresponsible this
line of argument is. Around the world, the primary rationale for dismissing
Jewish claims of antisemitism is precisely to deny the epistemic reliability of
Jews. From our unease about the BDS movement to our concerns about the UN’s
Israel obsession, from fretting about endemic antisemitism in UK Labour to
worries about Soros-conspiracy mongering in Hungary (and America), the response
is always of a kind: we’re making it up, we’re paranoid, we’re ideological,
we’re playing a game, we’re seeing things that are not there. Each of these
responses seek to avoid the more obvious truth: that Jews see antisemitism when
there is antisemitism, and so if Jews are reporting antisemitism we should take
that testimony seriously. So too in America. If it is true—and it does seem
true—that Jews have become dramatically more attuned to antisemitism in their
lives over the past few years than we have in the past, the best explanation
for why that is so is because there has been a serious, material change in the
antisemitism of our environment. There is something deeply alarming about the
propensity to resist that conclusion—a resistance which cannot help but
denigrate the testimonial reliability of Jews generally.
Bernstein’s third argument against the ADL’s conclusion is
by some measure his most substantive. He disagrees with the ADL’s criteria for
an antisemitic incident as one where “Jews perceiv[e] themselves as being
victimized due to their Jewish identity.” This definition, Bernstein contends,
incorporates cases where that perception is mistaken—contrary to the victim’s
perception, the act was not motivated by antisemitic intent.
Like with the college case, the first problem with this
objection is that so long as the ADL was consistent in its metrics the use of
this definition shouldn’t have an impact on the year-over-year increase from
2016 to 2017. The same types of incidents which Bernstein thinks should not
have been included in 2017 will also have been included in 2016. So again,
unless one has evidence that the ratio of perceived-but-not-actual antisemitic
incidents changed from 2017 to 2016 (and here presumably Bernstein would return
to his “antisemitism panic” hypothesis), this objection tells us nothing.
But the bigger issue is that this criteria for measuring
antisemitism—which Bernstein refers to as a “methodological tic”—is actually
quite standard in the field, at least since the famous
MacPherson
Report assessing racism in British policing practices in 1999. And that’s a
good thing: incidents of antisemitism should
not be restricted to cases where the perpetrator is motivated by
nothing more than raw Jew-hatred. Indeed, the examples Bernstein relies
upon—the JCC bomb threats that ripped through the Jewish community in early
2017—provide a sterling example of why any picture of antisemitism in America
the ADL tried to draw would be distorted by a rigid focus on antisemitic
“intent”.
Bernstein contends that the bomb threats should not have
been included in the ADL’s tally because the two perpetrators—an
African-American man in Missouri and an Israeli teenager—“were not motivated by
anti-Semitism”. The Missourian reportedly was looking to frame his
ex-girlfriend in an elaborate revenge scheme (contrary to Bernstein’s
assertion, there has been to my knowledge no reporting one way or the other
regarding the Israeli’s motivations). Bernstein presumably believes that unless
the reason for sending bomb threats
to JCC was to elicit terror or fear in Jews, then these acts were not
antisemitic.
I, of course, have argued passionately the opposite:
that
both actors were indeed antisemitic even absent that motivating reason. My
logic was, I thought, straightforward: if you care more about exacting revenge
on a former lover than you do about terrorizing innocent Jews nationwide,
you’re being antisemitic (it clearly wasn’t quite as straightforward as I
thought: nothing I’ve ever written has elicited more antisemitic harassment
than that column). It is entirely beside the point if one wasn’t “motivated” by
Jew-hatred. Someone with proper moral attitudes towards Jews would have behaved
differently; the utter failure to properly weigh Jewish safety as against
misogynist vengeance plots represents a complete neglect of one’s moral
obligations towards Jews.
Indeed, it is worth stressing
how
little of what we commonly think of as
antisemitism would qualify if the term only encompassed those whose
explicit motive was literally nothing more than “antisemitism”,
simpliciter. Adolf Eichmann, for
example, fervently denied to the very end that he ever harbored any sort of
malice towards Jews. He did what he did, he said, because he wanted to advance
his career in the Nazi German government. To most of us, that is woeful,
bordering on bizarre, as an attempt to deny the antisemitic character of his
actions. Participating in the mass extermination of Jews is antisemitic
regardless of you’re doing it out of hatred or careerism. So too with sending
bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers only because you loathe your
ex-girlfriend. And with
vandalizing
a Hillel because you really want to “Free Palestine.” And
with
running advertisements accusing the rich globalist Jew of “owning” your
opponent simply because you want to win an election. It is absolutely
appropriate, and absolutely correct, to dub all of these antisemitic, because
careerism, romantic jealousy, pro-Palestinian politics, and electoral triumphs
are not good enough reasons to kill, threaten, vandalize, or degrade the Jewish
community.
For his part, Bernstein is quite well aware of this. In
other writings, he is careful to not assert who is and isn’t “antisemitic” in
circumstances where we cannot access what is in another’s mind (but then, when
can we?).
This
is what he says about Mondoweiss
proprietor Philip Weiss, for instance, after noting the many, many ways
that Weiss and his website indulge in obvious antisemitic themes. But he is
also quite clear that, ultimately, the psychological assessment is not the
point. “Most people of goodwill”,
he writes
in the context of journalists referring to American Jewish writers and
politicians as “Israel-firsters”, “will try to avoid using phrases” (or, I
assume, taking actions) “related to Jews once they recognize that they have the
odor of neo-Nazism about them.” What then, should we say about people who refuse
to make such efforts? I’d say they’re engaging in antisemitism of a negligent
or reckless form. Bernstein might use another term to describe some sort of
inchoately defined failure to discharge one’s proper obligations towards Jews.
But ultimately, he understands that the difference is purely terminological. Hence,
his final word on Weiss: “who cares” whether Weiss is “anti-Semitic” versus
having “some other motivation”; either way, Bernstein concludes, “when you’re
reading Mondoweiss, you’re reading a hate site.”
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that, in trying to
paint a picture about the prevalence of antisemitism in the American
environment, the ADL is absolutely correct to include cases of these sorts—to
echo Bernstein and reply “who cares” to the motivational question. If Jews live
in an America where people devalue Jewish lives so much that “other” political
or social projects take precedence over not sending bomb threats to our
community centers, not defacing our synagogues with graffiti, not excluding our
coreligionists from marches and organizations, not using neo-Nazi terminology
to refer to our politicians, or not blasting out antisemitic tropes in
political advertising—that’s a really scary America for Jews to live in! Jews
are absolutely justified in viewing those trends with concern, and the ADL
would be absolutely warranted in characterizing them all as incidents of
antisemitism.
In sum, none of Bernstein’s objections to the ADL’s
antisemitism statistics do much to undermine the core conclusion: that
antisemitism has been rising in America over Trump’s tenure, and that much
(though not all) of that rise is attributable to the sort of far-right currents
which both sustain and are sustained by Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
But while Bernstein’s response to the ADL’s antisemitism statistics may be
shallow, it is part of a much broader phenomenon.
The ADL, in particular, has over the past few years faced
a
concerted right-wing endeavor
of discrediting—a naked attempt to “work the refs” and undermine the most
prestigious antisemitism watchdog in the world as an indelibly leftist
organization (ironically, if anything the ADL has been far too gunshy at
forthrightly tackling the mainstreaming of right-wing hate:
its
recent essay on George Soros conspiracy theories, for example, somehow
managed to omit mention of any of the very prominent elected Republicans—from
Chuck Grassley to Trump himself—who were spreading it. Elected Republicans regularly
receive this tactful silence from the ADL; needless to say, for some reason
someone like
Keith
Ellison does not share in this kid-glove treatment). In this world, the
spotlight the ADL has shone on the prevalence and growth of vicious, virulent,
and violent right-wing hatred does not reflect a dangerous problem needing
confrontation, but yet another “fake news” plot. Rather than face up to the
obvious need to clean house, the right prefers to deny, deny, deny.
This is nothing new of course. There is a deep,
almost
intractable denialism about the seriousness of antisemitism as an going and
materially dangerous phenomenon in this country (and clearly, this denial
is by no means restricted to the right). But there’s something
extra-infuriating at how rapidly
this
was the response that characterized the Jewish right after Pittsburgh. As we
mourned our loss, buried our dead, and tried to imagine what needs to change in
our society so that horrors like this (and like Louisville, and like
Charlottesville, and … so on and so on and so terribly on) their response to
that atrocity seemed coordinated around the need to make absolutely, positively
sure that Donald Trump and his supporters are okay.
So forgive me if I’ve lost my tolerance for penny-ante games
of methodological gotcha that seek to discredit Jewish voices and deny what the
evidence makes clear. Antisemitism is real. It is growing. It is growing on the
far-left, but it is surging into the conventional right, which (
as
Republican Representative Steve King just inadvertently admitted) is in any
event increasingly indistinguishable from its ethnosupremacist (former-)fringe.
Jews are not delusional when we report it, and the ADL is not fabricating when
it compiles it.
Right-wing antisemitism is real, it is growing, it is growing mainstream, and it needs to be confronted. The time for rear-guard denialism is over.
