Rise in Antisemitism

Gare and Mia discuss the troubling rise of antisemitic incidents across the globe.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to it could happen here, the show about the
slow end of the world and all the small little
things that are kind of pushing us that way. Isn't
that exciting?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
New Year?

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Knew me?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Not not really.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm kind of doing the same stuff, mostly staring into
the abyss and seeing what stares back. Staring at the
abyss with me today is Mia Wong. Hello, Thank you
for joining me. Oh boy, the abyss is is looking
real choppy today, real abyssle.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
You could say, the waves coming out of it are
staring back at you real hard. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, So we're gonna talk today about anti semitism, So
I guess content warning in case you don't want to
hear it a whole bunch of anti Semitic stuff. I'm
not just gonna be repeating anti semmetic things. It's just
this is just the topic for the whole episode. So yeah,
the past few months there has been a pretty dramatic

(01:00):
rise in antisemitism, ranging from physical attacks, vandalism, and lots
of rhetoric. Now, there's a few factors that I think
make this a little bit tricky to talk about, which
is why it's taken me a while to put this together. Firstly,
I want to avoid getting into like oppression Olympics here, Right,
talking about one bad thing does not negate many other

(01:21):
bad things that are happening concurrently. Having a discussion about
a very troubling rise in anti semitism and a state
backed ethnic cleansing do not need to be mutually exclusive
topics of discussion. Right. We can say both of these
things are actually pretty bad. And today we're going to
be talking specifically about anti semitism. And I think you know,

(01:43):
this show has had a history of reporting on anti
fascist movements and attempts to stop fascist entryism and promoting
of anti Semitism, So this topic is well within our
regular wheelhouse and there is a decent bit to talk
about now. The second thing that makes this topic a
little bit tricky is that some of the big extremism

(02:04):
research groups that typically do the most accessible cataloging of
anti Semitic incidents have proven themselves to be slightly unreliable
on this topic for the past four months. And that's
not just my opinion, that's also the opinion of current
and former ADL employees who have been coming out against
director Jonathan greenblatz leadership choices, particularly since the October seventh

(02:29):
Hamas attack. Now, due to the nature of their job
versus my job, ADL analysts have a lot more dedicated
time and resources to cataloging alleged anti Semitic incidents. But
under Greenblatz direction, the whole of their data from the
past four months is heavily skewed to include anything expressing

(02:50):
anti Zionism as being included in their data about anti semitism,
and even anything deemed too sympathetic to Palestinians as being
a driver of anti Semitism. So that's the kind of
situation we have here with. You know, there's many issues
the ADL has had in the past, which we may
talked about in the future, but typically they've done an

(03:13):
okay job the past few years, specifically cataloging anti semitism
during the rise of the alt right. Their data is
often relatively reliable on this topic. Some of their other
data and other practices are very open to criticism. But
this is kind of one other factor that's gonna make
this a little bit tricky. Now, as like an example, right,

(03:34):
this is this is we can we can talk about
these things in abstract. I'm gonna talk about something from Atlanta,
because this is something I have some experience in. So
on the ADL's big map of antisemitic incidents from October
seventh to the present, if you zoom into Atlanta, there's
two incidents that are right next to each other. One
is a banner drop done by the Goiam Defense League,

(03:54):
which is a group of neo Nazis.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Oh God.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Basically they make ad some banners expressing pro Hitler statements
alongside slogans like free Palestine, and they put them up
above a really big road in Atlanta. Right, So this
is pretty standard neo Nazi anti Semitism using kind of
anti Zionism as this sort of mask but I mean

(04:20):
hit very thid, yes exactly, that's not really it's not
really masked because you also have a Hitler banner. But
like you know, if someone only sees one banner, be like, oh,
it's a Palestine banner, but no, it's actually a Nazi banner.
So we have this incident logged. We also have another
incident blogged right beside it, from a protest a few

(04:43):
days later, which was an Inner Faith rally in support
of Palestine against the ongoing ethnic cleansing. That's happening in
Gaza with thousands and thousands of people being killed. So
we have this banner drop and we have this rally,
and both of these things are labeled as an anti
Semitic incident. They're both like equal in the eyes of

(05:03):
this data, which just isn't true. I was, I was
at this rally. I did not hear anything anti Semitic
coming from the speakers. Many of the speakers, if not
the majority of the speakers, were Jewish. There were a
group of Jewish counter protesters who showed up who started
many fights, fights which were very quickly de escalated by

(05:25):
the people who were putting on the rally. There was
this one woman who was carrying an Israeli flag on
his flagpole who kept hitting people with it. So there
was a lot of there's a lot of things going
on at this rally, but this was not an anti
Semitic rally. And in fact, the Jewish counter protesters were
extremely vitriolic. They were expressing explicit desire for genocide of Palestinians,

(05:48):
like very very gross stuff. It was. It was really disgusting.
So both of these incidents, though, are seen as equal,
which just show that's just eas example to kind of
show how this data isn't really reliable that the ADL
is putting together here. Now, I really don't feel like
it's my place to go through the ADYLS database and

(06:10):
decide what is and is not antisemitism, right, Like, that's
I don't have the time, nor the money, normally the
authority to be like the arbiter of what is and
isn't anti Semitic.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah, Garrison, Garrison turning into the anti Semitism commissar.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, that's that's not that's not me, right. I have
a background in anti fascist research. I have a background
in neo Nazia driven anti semitism. Right, these are the
things I usually specialize in. But still, this is a
this is a massive this is a massive field. Antisemitism
is a complicated topic. Rhetoric can be complicated, and having
not attended or reviewed every single rally or incident in question,

(06:46):
I'm simply not equipped to make informed judgments. So for
that reason this episode I will focus mostly on physical attacks, threats,
and vandalism as opposed to the much more murky waters
of rhetoric, online rhetoric. And you know, just these these
there's been probably thousands of rallies across the United States.

(07:07):
I've not been to everyone, I've not watched every single speech,
I've not heard every single offhand comment, so I'm not
going to deal with those. Instead, I'm going to be
focusing on physical like in like IRL and things that
have a very a very clear result of the action.
So this mostly attacks threats vandalism. Anyway, moving on though,

(07:30):
I guess actually the one other thing about stats is
that when talking about this rise anti Semitism, because there's
been a lot of articles from mainstream news outlets being like,
here's the rise anti Semitism, and here's the stats. Another
thing pointing towards why these stats are unreliable and the
reason why I'm not going to be using them largely
is because many of the stats included and these articles

(07:52):
are crime stats, and these crime stats are also proving
to be heavily unreliable. For example, the Metropolitan Police claimed
that there was a one thousand and three hundred and
fifty percent increase in anti Semitic hate crimes in London
during the first two and a half weeks of October,
with two hundred and eighteen anti Semitic offenses in London
during that time period compared to only fifteen in twenty

(08:15):
twenty two. But included in these stats are incidents like
the police in London arresting a man for tearing down
some of those hostage posters. That's one of the hate
crimes that they include in this and also the met
said that that's the Metropolitan Police said that chanting from

(08:35):
the river to the sea near Jewish people or near
Jewish buildings during a protest would be deemed unlawful. And
I think there is a debate to be had whether
if you're just protesting outside of a random Jewish building,
that's probably not great and that could be an indicator
of antisemitism, but having that chant be deemed unlawful for

(08:56):
just being near other Jewish people, Like I said, at
the rally in Atlanta, there was a whole bunch of
Jewish counter protesters who came to star Fights, So like,
you're going to be around Jewish people, if you're a
march you're marching around, or if you're outside in Israeli embassy,
that's a that's an it might opinion, a very valid
target for protest that would be considered a Jewish building.
So all of these stats are heavily, heavily skewed by

(09:19):
these by by these sorts of reasons for how how
how the met is, including things as being anti Semitic
hate crimes.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, and I mean like this, like if you just
think about what the rationale is there for a second,
Like is a group of anti Zionist Jews chanting from
the river to the sea around themselves a hate crime?
Exactly rightight? Like this is nonsense? Like so, and also
you know what I mean. And also like this is
the British police, Like those are the most anti Semitic

(09:47):
motherfuckers this side of like the Ukrainian neo Nazis or something.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
And like I do not doubt there was an actual
increase of anti Semitic attacks bendless hate speech. That that
is what we're talking about in this EP. So we
will be getting into many incidents, but it is difficult
to pin down some of what these really big stats
actually represent. Because if tearing down one of those silly
hamas wanted posters is being labeled a hate crime on

(10:14):
the same level as drawing a swastika on a synagogue,
that data is basically useless. And now I think it's
also worth mentioning just very very briefly, The Metropolitan Police
also recorded a one hundred and forty percent increase in
Islamophobic incidents during those first two and a half weeks
of October's that's forty two incidents in twenty twenty two
compared to one hundred and three incidents in twenty twenty three.

(10:36):
And while that percentage is lower than the anti Semitic
stat it also indicates how much more common Islamophobia in
London is because the regular amount of reported incidents from
last year is so much higher than the regular reported
amount of anti Semitic incidents. Like having forty two incidents
per like two and a half weeks, be the normal
stat is not great and maybe someone should look into

(11:01):
why British people are so islamophobic. I mean that there's
that that's a whole episode in and of itself. Is
Amophobia in the UK is a massive, massive problem. But
just as a comparison, I thought I might as well
say that we will we will get to Honkah next.
But it has already been thirteen minutes of me talking

(11:23):
about stats and giving disclaivers, so that means it's time
for an ad break. I'm not going to do a
silly ad transition. Just listen to the ads. All right,
we are we are back. Since we just finally escaped

(11:46):
the holiday season, let's begin by talking about Honkkah. Public manoras,
often without any extra like iconography tying them to the
state of Israel, were a frequent target of vandalism and
anti Semitic messaging. During the months of December, a far
right member of parliament in Poland used a fire extinguisher
to blow at the candles on a manora in the

(12:06):
lobby of Parliament. A public manora in London had its
light bulbs smashed with a free Palestine sticker placed onto
the front, and then days later it was found toppled
over and left in pieces. There's many of these incidents.
I'm just gonna name a few more, just because at
a certain point it kind of becomes redundant. But I
think these things are worth talking about. An eleven foot

(12:26):
three hundred and fifty pound manora next to Lake Mari
in Oakland was cut up and destroyed in mid December,
with pieces being thrown into the nearby lake. A message
was graffitied that led We're gonna find you. You're on alert.
It was also reported that there was graffiti left nearby

(12:48):
that read free Palestine in Arabic, but I can't confirm that.
The picture they have online does not match what free
Palestine in airbath looks like. But I'm not an expert
on Arabic, so I just can't confirm that. But that
is being reported in local Jewish newspapers. Manora sand sculpture
commissioned in Palm Beach was destroyed and left defaced with
a swastika outside of synagogue in a suburb of Washington,

(13:10):
d C. A manora was toppled over on the eve
of Honka, and two manoras were vandalized and damaged in
Brooklyn in early December by masked individuals. So one other
similar incident I will talk about, which is kind of interesting,
is that there was this pro Palestine protest at Yale
where a one of the protesters climbed up onto this

(13:31):
massive I don't know how tall it was, but it
was huge. They had to climb up pretty high on
this big public manora and placed a Palestinian flag kind
of around one of the little arms on the manora.
But very quickly, like within seconds of this happening, other
pro Palestine protesters, noticing this is kind of disrespectful, asked

(13:51):
this person to take it down, like almost almost immediately.
This is a very a very quick exchange, and this
kind of sparked some peace people talking about you know,
is it okay to put Palestinian flags on manoras? Is
it okay to vandalize menoras? Which the answer is no,
The answer you shouldn't vandalize a menora. That's generally not great.

(14:14):
But you know, people were saying and specifically pointing towards
like pictures of IDF soldiers who've been taking territory in Gaza,
who've been putting up menoras in Gaza, or like the
Israeli military doing these photo ops with big menoras in
different parts of gazas being like, hey, when there's this
active ethnic cleansing going on and soldiers are using this

(14:36):
religious iconography and it's being associated directly with this, with
this ongoing ethnic genocide, how can you blame people who
are going to be treating this symbol with hostility? And
I think there's a few problems with this idea. I'm
going to quote from this Jewish artist who goes by
underscore a nunnery who I think phrased this really well. Quote.

(14:57):
Jewish symbols shouldn't be associated with Zionism or ceded to
them just because Zionists abuse them. If the monora were
put up by Zionists, as some explicitly Zionist display, then
putting up a Palestadian flag would be an active resistance.
If it's not, then it's just cementing the Zionist conflation
and exploitation of Jewish identity. There are more non Jewish

(15:20):
Zionists than there are Jews, unquote, and this gets at
a point which I think is really important when you're
talking about anti Zionist activism. Attacking symbols of Jewish culture
in the name of anti Zionism only strengthens the cause
of Zionism by affirming the conflation of Judaism and Zionism,
or Judaism and the state of Israel. This conflation helps

(15:43):
Zionists shield their actions by abusing the Jewish identity and
making these two things be more like intersectional. So I
think that is one a strategic reason for why this
is a bad idea, and two it's maybe slightly anti Semitic.
So that is my little holiday section. Just because I
saw a whole bunch of stuff around these manoras, and

(16:06):
I didn't feel good about it.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, like this sucks, Like please don't do this.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
And I've seen some people like also using the comparison
of like would you also criticize indigenous people in America
for graffitiing or taking down images of like Christian iconography
and like, No, because the oppression faced by Christians and
the oppression faced by Jewish people are two different things.

(16:34):
Like these are actually historically these are very different things.
So no, these things actually cannot be compared in my opinion.
But now I'm going to talk about some international incidents
because I think we have a tendency to overfocus on
America when there's a whole bunch of other stuff happening
and you know, the rest of the world. Back in October,
a historic synagogue in Tunisia was burned down by a

(16:57):
mob of hundreds of people in response to reports that
in Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in Gaza. This sucked.
I shouldn't have to explain why burning down a historical
synagogue is anti Semitic because you don't like something the
State of Israel did. That's just that. Just isn't that

(17:17):
just isn't like that's just not se shit, Like come on, yeah.
So a month later in November, someone posted the video
online of themselves pouring fuel and setting fire to the
only synagogue in Armenia. The entrance was damaged in the
arsen attack, but no one was hurt. The only synagogue
in Vortswaft, Poland. Sorry I pride butchered that, but it

(17:40):
is a hard word, but the only synagogue in this
town of Poland to survive the Holocaust was defaced with
graffiti that read quote Israel criminals and murderers unquote and
then like a week, I guess. Earlier that week a
group of teenagers also destroyed a anura in this same town.
In mid October, Maltov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue

(18:03):
in Berlin after Hanukkah. In Belgium, a Jewish cemetery was
vandalized with swastikas on gravestones. In late In late November,
a Maltav cocktail was thrown at a Jewish community center
in Montreal. Earlier that month, shots were fired at two
different Jewish schools in Montreal in three different incidents, and

(18:24):
four Holocaust memorials in Germany were vandalized with a mix
of anti Semitic and anti Zionist messages. So again, like
when I was looking at these ones once in Germany,
the actual content of about half of these messages were
not anti Semitic. But the act of doing this at
a at a at a Holocaust memorial just is like

(18:47):
it it gives me the ick. And there's arguments could
be made that this does actually play into antisemitic troops,
like you're what, You're blaming dead Jewish people for the
actions of the current state of Israel, like that's it's
it just And also half half of these messages left
at these at these Holocaust memorial sites were also just

(19:08):
blatantly at anti Semitic, like very very clearly like Nazi
style stuff. I don't have time to go over all
of the incidents across the Europe. There is a great
deal many. There's many, many, many that I've not mentioned.
These are just a few. Like I said, I'm focusing
on like vandalism, very very clear cut stuff. People doing
arson attacks, right, it's just very very basic stuff. This

(19:29):
stuff in Montreal not great. Montreal, Canada, get your shit together.
Although unfortunately not surprising but still upsetting is Jews being
barred from shops across Turkey. And oh, there's a whole,
a whole bunch of very gross government government sponsored anti
semitism across Turkey campaigns to prohibit the sale of land

(19:49):
to Jewish people. A lot of a lot of bad
stuff in Turkey. But that's not incredibly surprising.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, I mean it's aired one like, yeah, he fucking
sucks ass and he' oh yeah. Er Erdwan is a
man who has personally ordered children to be burned alive
with firebombs, so you know this is not out of
character for him.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, And I guess finally, this one other thing about
Honkah is that so last month, right after the end
of Honkah, bomb threats were sent out en mass to
more than four hundred Jewish Jewish centers and synagogues across
the United States. This was most likely orchestrated by the
same kind of small number of individuals. All of the

(20:30):
messages were very similar. None of these were incredibly credible,
but it still sparked a whole bunch of bomb sweeps
and concerned because when Jewish synagogues get bomb threats, that's
not an empty threat. Either like this is like there
is historical precedent.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Well, and I also like think I think the everything
that's important about this too is like this, this is
you know, this is like one of the things is
the culmination of everything that Wright's been doing for the
last like eight years has been the development of like
this cadre of people who do bomb threats, calling in.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Bomb threats as a tactics. Yes. No, there's the concerted
effort for bomb threats at hospitals that provide transgender care,
abortion clinics. There was a string of weirdly organized bomb
threats against schools about a year or two ago. But
I think I think Robert did an episode on.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah now, and now we're here at you know, we're
at bomb threats you can synagogues, which is terrifying.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
According to the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit security organization that
tracks threats made against Jewish communities, bomb threats and swatting
incidents basically freight trying to get a swat team to
show up somewhere because you lied about there being like
an ongoing crime or something. But bomb threats and swatting
incidents targeted against Jewish centers saw over a five hundred

(21:47):
percent increase in twenty twenty three compared to the previous year,
which I have no reason to believe is incorrect. So
on that note, I no, I don't really think we
could have a bomb threat. Segue to two ads. I
really don't really don't know.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Don't do bombs.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Don't do bomb threats typically, is what I got. Yeah, typically? Anyway,
h do you know what else is to bomb these ads? Okay, fine,

(22:26):
all right, we are back.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Maybe the worst air transition we've ever done.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
That's not true, That is definitely not true.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah, okay, okay, you're right.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Okay, So during this last section, I'm gonna talk a
little bit more about data aggregation. So, like I said
previously in this episode, due to the nature of what
my job is and the nature of what an ADL
analyst's job is, they just have a lot more time
to dedicate towards specifically logging anti Semitic incidents. So I
did look through their data set, and I've made some

(23:00):
extrapolations based on some of the findings and some of
the open source data that they have regarding specific incidents.
So on that note, the ADL has logged around one
thousand and one hundred anti Semitic incidents since October seventh,
not related to protest rallies. So this is specifically all
the incidents that are not related to these big pro

(23:24):
Palestinian Interfaith many Jewish led rallies. Now I'm not saying
that nothing anti Semitic has not happened at any of
those rallies, but these rallies were logged simply as quote
anti Israel rallies which featured over anti Semitism, anti Zionism,
and or expressions of support for terror. So crammed in

(23:47):
the middle of that explanation is just anti Zionism. So
that is one thing they are just counting as being
enough to be logged as an anti Semitic incident. So
again I'm not going through the over like one thousand
rallies that they have logged here just because I don't
have the time and I don't feel like it. But yes,

(24:08):
just for full transparency, that is the information I'm not
going to be looking at. Instead, I'm looking at these
one thousand and one hundred other incidents not related to
these protests. So these one thousand, one hundred harassment and
vandals of incidents include things from anti Zionist slash, anti
Israel stickers and graffiti being left at universities and synagogues,

(24:29):
the latter which I believe is in poor taste, but
also you know swastikas being painted on synagogues, extremely anti
Semitic messages being left at Jewish centers, and street harassment
targeting visibly Jewish people, as well as just overt to
neo Nazi activity under the banner of free Palestine. Now,
of these over one thousand and one hundred incidents, I'd

(24:52):
say that a very small minority of them are principled
anti Zionist activism, which has been mislabeled. Most of the
data in these one thousand incidents is just blatant anti semitism.
I are specifically directed towards just regular Jewish people. People
writing kill Jews and bathroom stalls, threats being sent to

(25:12):
Jewish people mentioning Hitler or Hermas, a lot of just
extremely gross stuff. There's too many. There's too many, just
like threats that mentioned the word Jews, that I just
can't even read them all, nor do I want to,
because it's just gross. Like there is a truly upsetting number,
which is why I wanted to make this episode in

(25:33):
the first place is because I've been seeing this pretty
big rise of anti semitism. Other people have as well,
and I felt like this wasn't probably being as talked
about as much as it should be among the anti
fascist left, because you know, everyone's focusing on this ethnic
cleansing that's happening, because that is very bad. But meanwhile,
there's this other massive problem that if you care about

(25:53):
fascist entryism, if you care about anti Semitic behavior and
actions being either a lie to happen in leftist spaces
or just happening in general, Like a lot of the
stuff is being done by fascists who are not who
are not you know, going to a pro Palestine rally
because they believe in anti imperialism. But there's just a
lot of this stuff happening, which is why I think

(26:14):
it is needing to be talked about.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
There are a number of instances that are logged in
these one thousand, one hundred incidents here, such as you know,
for I'm just gonna I'm gonna pull from actual examples.
But also this is kind of generalizing because this was
also reflecting a small trend things like pro Palestine phrases
being yelled at random Jewish people on the street, having

(26:37):
like Antizionist stickers being poorly placed in different locations, like
at a Jewish cemetery, vandalizing non political Jewish owned businesses
with anti Zionist phrases, even like breaking the windows of
random Jewish owned businesses with no ties to Israel or
the IDF and leaving anti Zionist phrases or pro Palestine

(26:58):
phrases next to these broken windows. Now, while the content
of what's being actually said in these incidents may not
be like anti Semitic in nature by itself, right, like
just having very basic anti Sionist phrases being graffeited that
may not be anti Semitic itself, like that combination of words.

(27:22):
This sort of activity, though, plays into a classic anti
Semitic kind of trope, as if every like random Jewish
person is somehow in part responsible for the actions of Israel.
And it also conflates Jewish identity with Zionism, which is
the problem that we were talking about before when we
started this episode, right when I was talking about the

(27:45):
stuff with Hanuka just a few hours ago. As of
time of recording, the corvalis anti fascist branch. I guess, yeah, yeah,
I think they're a member of Torch put out this
thread about how the GDL, the Going Defense League. We
talked about them previously in this episode. They're a big
group of organized neo Nazis that spread a lot of

(28:06):
anti Semitic stuff, how they hijacked a city council meeting
to spread anti Semitic stuff during a discussion of a
during a discussion about a ceasefire resolution. And I think
they kind of ended their thread by talking about how
it is extremely important to call out the conflation of

(28:29):
the Jewish people with the genocidal actions of the State
of Israel and assertions that the media is controlled by
Jews or that regular Jews have some kind of say
in everything that's happening, right, It gets in this kind
of like cabalish notion. Now back to kind of the
data that I was talking about, These sorts of incidents

(28:50):
are vastly, vastly outweighed by the number of just overt
jew hatred, invoking of anti Semitic conspiracy theories, calling for
the death of use and swastikas. But I still think
it's extremely important to mention because the targeting of random
Jewish people and businesses itself. That is a form of
anti Semitism, and this activity helps to reinforce the abuse

(29:13):
of the Jewish identity by inextricately linking it to Zionism,
which only strengthens the Zionist ideology. So that's that's that's
my little mini rant about the way we've been seeing
some of these things play out.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Many of these over a thousand incidents logged use anti
Zionism as a sort of cover for just spreading anti Semitism,
particularly from known white supremacist and neo Nazi groups. The
GDL is a good example. There's also groups like White
Lives Matter and a number of others that I could
name that When you're looking through the ADL's data on

(29:48):
these one thousand or so incidents, a large large amount
of them are done by the Goum Defense League, the GDL,
And this is this is this is a strategic thing
for them, right They're seeing the kind of moment that
people are in culturally, the way people are talking about Israel,
and if they can find a way to squeeze in

(30:11):
their neo Nazi talking points kind of under this under
this very very thin Palestine kind of Veneer. That's great
for them. If they can get people to start almost
mindlessly repeating their style of talking points, that's great for them. Right,
it makes sense why they're putting so much time and
dedication to this, because they're trying to use this moment

(30:32):
and abuse the thousands of people who might be more
susceptible to this right now to spread their ideology and
to do and to do entryism like this is a
part of what their tactic is. So while it's true
that many of these incidents do come from explicitly Nazi groups,
there's also just a really upsettingly and shockingly large number

(30:56):
of them that come from students, students from middle school
to college, who are ostensibly anti Israel but are going
about it via targeting random Jewish people and spreading anti Semitism,
whether that's intended or not. But a lot of the
talking points are just anti Semitic talking points. Now, I
can't I'm not in the heads of anybody. I'm not

(31:17):
talking to the twelve year old in some middle school
in Colorado who's leaving anti Semitic messages in a bathroom stall.
But the effect is kind of the same, and just
the sheer number of specifically like like like middle school,
junior high, high school, instance, that are logged among this
thousand was just incredibly incredibly distressing.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, and I I mean I think, I think a
lot of what's going on here is that, like the
US is a culturally Christian society, right like it has
like of the developed countries, the US is like one
of the most Christian and American Christianity. And this is

(32:02):
true of like in different ways, of like just basically
all of the major Christian nominations are enormously anti Semitic,
like and there're any Seminican theory in different in different,
in weird ways. Like I mean, I spent some time
recently for something else, like reading about like this argument

(32:23):
between like the evangelicals who are like, we need to
we need to have all the Jews go back to
Israel so that we can bring about the Second Coming,
and they were going to fight with the the hard
line like right wing Lutherans, and the hard hardline right
wing Lutherans are like, what the fuck do you mean? Like, no,
like the Holy Land belongs to us, not the Jews.
What the fuck are you guys doing? Right, It's like

(32:43):
this is the baseline of American society, right, it's unbelievably
anti Semitic in ways that you know, are are just
sort of passed down through like like culture, are culturally
received and absorbed in ways that people don't like see
or understand or think about, because it's just it's it's
the wall, it's the water that America that you know,

(33:05):
you swim in in American culture in this sort of
like like this hedemonic Christian society. And that means that
like even people with like at least in their heads,
good intentions get caught up in this ship. And it's
fun yeah, and bad.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
And there's also at the same time a very concerted
effort to slide in the anti Jewish extremism, anti Semitic rhetoric,
to slide that in sometimes covertly sometimes not into into
lots of mainstream discourse and exchanges, and social media specifically
TikTok has been really has been really bad at this,

(33:40):
which is where a lot of young people spend probably
the majority of their day if they're going to be
looking at their phone, and it's it's I said, I
didn't want to get into like social media rhetoric. But
also just like as someone who spent a lot of
time on four chan and eight chan looking specifically at Nazis.
The way Twitter currently works is like it is just
for chan eight chan level stuff pretty commonly. Like if

(34:03):
I look at the quote tweets of any almost any
tweet made by a Jewish person, there is there is
just some of the most atrocious, unmoderated anti semitism that
I've seen on a platform like like Twitter, Like this
is this is really like eight chan level stuff, I think,
And this isn't intentional to slide this stuff in to

(34:24):
make it look normalized. The ADL reported a nearly one
thousand percent increase in the daily average of violent messages
mentioning Jews and Israel in white supremacist and right wing
extremist channels on Telegram in the days following the October
seventh massacre. So this, this is something that is specifically

(34:46):
being done in far right spaces. I'm gonna quote again
from this corbalis against fascism. The struggle for the liberation
of Palestine is one of the most pressing of our time.
It's imperative that we shut down anti Semitic attempts to
co p that strug immediately, which if you care about
the liberation of Palestine and Palestadtian people, this is something

(35:08):
you also need to be concerned about because these two
things are linked. There's twenty seven assaults have been reported.
Around eight of these assaults are stemming from fights which
broke out at protest rallies. I'm not going to get
into those ones as much because that can be tricky
because I've seen Zionists start fights like right next to

(35:29):
me before and then claim a victimhood like no, you're
the one that started that. You swung a flagpole at
these people, and then they de escalated very quickly, and
I'm sure there's incidents of the reverse happening. But a
majority of these assaults that have been reported are very
clear cut anti Semitic attacks targeted against Jewish people, some

(35:51):
of which are quite frightening to read about. There's been
a large number of a vehicle attacks. There was one
incident of someone breaking in to a Jewish family's home
and assaulting people inside their own home, and then also
there's been a number of incidents of just assaulting people
as they leave synagogues. I've seen very very off start

(36:12):
fights with people right next to That is kind of
what I had to say about this rise in anti Semitism,
because I saw this being a major problem that was
being not talked about as much as it should be.
Because this is it is higher than what we've seen
in years, not to even mention the rise in Islamophobia,

(36:33):
which is also a massive rise is in Islamophobia has
been happening the past four months, including resulting in murders.
Right Just in the four weeks after October seventh, the
Council on American Islamic Relations logged an unprecedented number of
Islamophobic incidents. The research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said
in a statement, quote, both Islamophobia and anti Arab racism

(36:56):
are out of control in the ways we have not
seen in almost ten years. The one thousand, two hundred
and eighty three complaints we have received over the past
month represent a two hundred and sixteen percent increase in
requests for help and reports of bias. The Islamophobic and
anti Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to justify both
violence against Palestinians and Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian

(37:18):
human rights here in America have contributed to this unprecedented
surge in bigotry. It's just been bad the past four months. Yeah,
it's just things have been bad. There's been murders, there's
been assaults. It's it's horrible, and I think both of
these things are things that need to be interrogated more,

(37:38):
the Islamophobic incidents as well as anti Semitic incidents. So
that's what I wanted to talk about as I have
been slowly slowly logging more synagogue attacks, more death threats,
all of these sorts of stuff. So yeah, that's kind
of all I have to say today.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Yeah, it's it's real bad. I don't know. I mean,
it's that out there.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
I mean, if you care about the struggle of the
liberation of Palestine and the people in Palestine, you need
to if you see, if you see anything that plays
into these sorts of antisemitic tropes that we've talked about,
blaming just random Jewish people for what's going on, attacking

(38:25):
random Jewish owned businesses without any ties to the IDF,
without any ties to the State of Israel, just all
of this stuff. It needs to be called out because
this actually, this sort of thing only strengthens the ideology
of Zionism. So if you call yourself an anti Zionist,
it is your imperative duty to be on the watch

(38:46):
for this sort of thing and stop it if you
see it. That's kind of the thesis at the end
of this All right, well, without further ado, I think
we will We'll end this episode. Stay safe out there, everybody.
Hopefully this new year will be complete chaos for all

(39:06):
of us.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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