By Philip Klein
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Jews who are concerned about the rising tide of
antisemitism are in a no-win situation.
On a daily basis, we are treated as the villain of
various tales told by growing parts of both the left and right. At any given
time, according to the internet, Jews are starving innocent people and
committing genocide; facilitating the persecution of Christians in the Middle
East or trying to outlaw Christianity in the United States; stifling free
speech; or conspiring to bring about World War III.
One approach to the daily bile being directed toward Jews
is to ignore it, starving influencers of the engagement that gets them their
hits of dopamine and is at the center of their business model. The hope here is
that the increasing absurdity of the various conspiracy theories will be
self-discrediting — and that they will wither on the vine for lack of
attention. But ignoring the nonsense only allows lies to go unchallenged and
fester. It fuels the argument that the lies must be true if the Jews and
their defenders can’t even muster a response.
On the other hand, to respond to the lies with facts, to
argue that people who routinely spew falsehoods shouldn’t be taken seriously,
merely adds fuel to the fire. Because then the underlying facts cease to matter
— all that matters is the charge that Jews are trying to silence debate to
impose ideological conformity against brave commentators willing to challenge
“the elites.”
In an environment in which skepticism of “the elites” has
reached peak levels for a number of reasons (the Iraq War, the financial
crisis, the Covid response, the Russia collusion story, the Hunter Biden
laptop, Big Tech censorship, etc.), these commentators are able to present
themselves as truth tellers, while those criticizing them are portrayed as
seeking to censor the facts to maintain their grip on power.
This is nothing new.
Back in 1920, Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent published
The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. From the book’s
title, you might think that the authors (unnamed) were quite proud and up-front
about their antisemitism. And yet they went to great lengths to point out that
they were speaking not of all Jews but of only a certain type of Jew, “this international
type of Jew, this grasper after world-control, this actual possessor and
wielder of world-control.” Rest assured, not all Jews were this way: “While it
may be true that the chief financial controllers of the country are Jews, it is
not true that every Jew is one of the financial controllers of the country.”
The authors stated, “The motive of this work is simply a
desire to make facts known to the people.”
But the writers were appalled by the suggestion that
anything they were publishing could be criticized as antisemitic: “Anyone who
essays to discuss the Jewish Question in the United States or anywhere else
must be fully prepared to be regarded as an Anti-Semite, in high-brow language,
or in low-brow language, a Jew-baiter.”
The authors continued to lament:
The Jewish Question in America
cannot be concealed forever by threats against publications, nor by the
propagandist publication of matter extremely and invariably favorable to
everything Jewish. It is here and it cannot be twisted into something else by the
adroit use of propaganda, nor can it be forever silenced by threats. The Jews
of the United States can best serve themselves and their fellow-Jews all over
the world by letting drop their far too ready cry of “anti-Semitism,” by
adopting a franker tone than that which befits a helpless victim, and by seeing
what the Jewish Question is and how it behooves every Jew who loves his people
to help solve it.
The issues of the day may have changed over the past
century, but then as now, antisemitism is self-perpetuating. Those peddling
antisemitism make outrageous claims, and when they are called out for it, the
backlash is used to confirm that Jews are censoring discussion of important
issues.
I wish I knew of a path out of this doom loop. As a
proponent of free and open speech, I am against top-down efforts to stifle free
expression, no matter how much I may object to a given message. And I believe
that all such efforts to control speech inevitably backfire. I also tend to
want to ignore the propagandists rather than give them more oxygen, especially
given that any criticism will be brandished as evidence of censorial
intentions. But at the same time, it’s difficult to stand back and watch the parade
of lies directed against Jews in increasingly mainstream places and not say
anything.
It is unclear where this all ends. But if history is any
guide, not anywhere good.
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