How anti-Semitism threatens American democracy

In our April cowl story, my colleague Franklin Foer explores how anti-Semitism on each the precise and the left threatens to finish a interval of unprecedented security and prosperity for American Jews—and the liberal order they helped set up. Frank and I chatted final week in regards to the previous and way forward for anti-Semitism, and about some lesser-understood moments in American Jewish historical past.

First, listed below are 4 new tales from The Atlantic:

What Liberalism Did

Isabel Fattal: You write that “a part of the rationale I failed to understand the extent of the anti-Semitism on the left is that I assumed its criticisms of the Israeli authorities have been, at backside, a harsher model of my very own.” How did October 7 change this pondering for you?

Franklin Foer: For a very long time, I didn’t really suppose that anti-Semitism was an American drawback. After which Donald Trump occurs, and it’s clear that he’s given this inexperienced gentle to white supremacists who existed in the dead of night alleyways of American life. All of the sudden anti-Semitism begins to turn out to be one thing that’s way more current, way more socially acceptable in America.

However I had assumed that it was extra menacing in its right-wing type than its left-wing type, partly as a result of a lot of the controversy on the left has been about Israel, and it’s simple to bracket that off into a wholly separate dialog: They’re attempting to finish an occupation; they need to finish what’s objectively oppressive remedy of Palestinians.

However then, on October 7, it turned painfully clear that there are critics of Israel who don’t imagine in peaceable coexistence. A far bigger swath of the left than I imagined appeared to need to see the disappearance of the state of Israel. I used to be additionally noticing the best way during which Zionism turned a ubiquitous time period of derision in left-wing discourse. It was fairly clear that it was typically getting used as a synonym for Jew.

Isabel: You write that “anti-Semitism itself entails an accusation of privilege.” Are you able to speak a bit about how the concept of privilege has all the time been a component of anti-Semitic theorizing?

Frank: As an idea, anti-Semitism tends to interrupt folks’s mind, as a result of it simply falls exterior of each single taxonomy we use to explain racial and ethnic hatred. We’re used to understanding racism as an influence dynamic—oppressors and the oppressed. However anti-Semitism is one thing very completely different. It’s an accusation {that a} secret cabal of individuals has obtained energy by nefarious means and is pulling the strings. It’s precisely what folks find yourself saying on campus on a regular basis. Oh, we’re being shut down due to the donors. Oh, the Zionists management the schools; the Zionists management the media. They’re not saying Jew, however they may as properly be. It’s the identical previous hideous tropes.

Isabel: Jews do maintain energy in American life and politics right now, however there’s one other solution to have that dialog, isn’t there?

Frank: Proper. There’s a solution to have that dialogue with out having to deploy the entire nasty stereotypes, and with out turning it right into a conspiratorial accusation. A part of my piece is making the argument that American Jewish success is that this unbelievable historic anomaly. Jews have risen to locations of unbelievable energy in American politics, society, and establishments. However that’s not a conspiracy. It’s a cheerful truth of residing in a rustic the place historical stereotypes and blood-and-soil nationalism haven’t dominated the society.

Isabel: Your story explores the concept liberalism was co-authored and championed by Jewish People. Are you able to converse a bit about that heritage?

Frank: One of many issues I wasn’t in a position to actually get into within the piece is that the connection between Jews and liberalism goes again even earlier than they got here to America. When Jews have been emancipated in Europe, the arrival of liberalism allowed Jews to flee the ghetto and to take part in society as one thing near full residents.

And you then get to America, the place Jews have been in a position to do even higher with liberalism than they’d in Europe, as a result of in Europe there was all the time this satan’s cut price: If you happen to needed to take part in France, you needed to do it as a Frenchman. You couldn’t do it as a Jewish French individual. One of many issues that made this nation so extraordinary was that you may take part as an American citizen and also you didn’t have to surrender your identification. That was what emerged within the twentieth century, and it was an concept that Jews helped refine after which introduce to the remainder of the world.

Isabel: Proper, after which you’ve Jews participating within the civil-rights motion of the Sixties, sharing frequent trigger with different People.

Frank: I grew up in a Jewish world the place this turned virtually mythological—the concept of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel sporting his yarmulke and marching subsequent to Martin Luther King Jr.

Isabel: How did this relationship between American Jews and the American left begin to rupture?

Frank: Simply after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, there was this broad sense that Israel was an underdog nation. It was really a liberal trigger for lots of that interval: Due to anti-Semitism, progressives fervently believed that there ought to be a haven for this individuals who simply escaped the Holocaust. Then the Six-Day Struggle occurs and Israel conquers territory crammed with Palestinian refugees. Israel then instantly will get solid as a colonial oppressor.

Different issues are occurring concurrently. Above all, liberalism has additionally began to ebb because the dominant drive in institutional life. Actually, liberalism is now beneath assault from each the intolerant left and the MAGA proper. That’s the opposite most important strand of the story. As liberalism has receded, anti-Semitism has begun to sprout. Liberalism, it seems, was fairly efficient at tamping down the hatred of Jews.

Isabel: Is there anything you’d wish to say to readers of this story?

Frank: I believe one honest query that could possibly be requested of the story is, is its conclusion a bit bit too alarmist? I clearly can’t say precisely the place issues are going. Simply because that is not a golden age doesn’t imply that we’re on the highway to Nazi Germany. There are many different stops in between, and most of Jewish historical past doesn’t include golden ages. Ubiquitous anti-Semitism is what constitutes regular existence for a lot of Jewish historical past. Jews may nonetheless be extremely influential and profitable and might take pleasure in numerous the advantages of American life whereas not residing in a golden age.

Isabel: You’re talking comparatively to this anomalous blip in Jewish historical past.

Frank: Precisely.

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