Let's Talk About Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy

Updated on May 5, 2019 at 5:40 PM

Hatred is baffling to me. But the more I seek to understand, the more I believe that hatred is ultimately grounded in fear.

In the case of the 19-year-old who opened fire on a San Diego synagogue on Saturday, April 27 — a man currently under investigation for the arson of a nearby mosque and whom I will not name because he doesn't deserve it — the fear was explicit: he is afraid of losing his power and being replaced. His hate-filled, historically anachronistic manifesto (I read it so you don't have to) documents his belief that, with the aid of various communities of color, Jews are systematically seeking to eradicate and replace white Christians in America.

If we can put aside the nonsense of this claim for a moment — Jewish people make up two percent of the American population and are institutionally averse to evangelism, and there is literally nothing to back up this idea — let's dig into it. Part of this fear is tied to the contradictory concept of accelerationism, which, "fueled by the perception that the future of the white race is bleak" due to outsiders like Jews and immigrants, animates the white supremacist belief that "they must employ any means necessary to expedite the collapse of the current system." Essentially, they must destroy the system before the system is destroyed.

This is also contradictory, of course, because we know that what white supremacists actually want is to uphold the current system — a system that keeps white men in power, black men in jail, Asian men emasculated, Jews afraid, Muslims marginalized, and women silent and underpaid.

Another part of this is just old-fashioned anti-Semitism. When my own synagogue was firebombed in 1999, it joined a grand tradition of physical, legal, and rhetorical violence against Jews with roots across the limpeza de sangre (blood purity) laws of 15th century Spain straight through to an April 2019 New York Times editorial cartoon that superimposed Benjamin Netanyahu's head wearing a Star of David necklace on the body of a dog being walked by Donald Trump. Anti-Semitism posits that Jews are "a distinct, inferior and troubling race" (as with anti-black racism); heretical nonbelievers; agents of destruction.

The final part is that this guy walked into a synagogue on a Saturday morning during Yizkor (a memorial service to pray for deceased relatives) and opened fire with an AR-style rifle because they are easy to come by and cause unthinkable damage in mere moments. Gun violence is tied to white supremacy, in part because gun rights arose as one way of "controlling the means of violence and suppressing the voices of the disenfranchised." Indeed, the "well-armed militias" we are so fond of referencing in the Second Amendment were, before the outbreak of revolution, almost entirely organized out of fear and greed to suppress slave rebellions.

The gunman himself, like the shooter in New Zealand before him, actually directly noted that he used a gun because they are the easiest way to cause harm and panic quickly — essentially, kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, while spreading the most amount of terror.

What do you get when you mix a mounting fear of outsiders overturning the established order (accelerationism), in this case Jews (anti-Semitism), with easy access to military-grade weapons? You get a white supremacist mass shooting in a synagogue. Or a mosque. Or a gurdwara. Or a hospital. Or a school.

So, what are we going to do about it?

I have had the profound privilege of living the majority of my nearly 30 years mostly unafraid of random or hateful violence. This is largely a factor of my skin tone, the socioeconomic status of my parents, and the fact that post-Holocaust America has been one of the safest places for Jews to live in history.

Professionally, I run communications for a Jewish public policy and social justice organization. This means it is often my job to hear bad news first and then ruin other people's days with it. On Saturday, I heard about the shooting at Chabad of Poway while attending a Nationals baseball game with friends after several weeks out of town.

After I made a few calls, I did something radical (at least for me). I stayed at the baseball game. At least, I stayed at the baseball game for a while (honestly, it's not super appropriate to read and analyze a white supremacist manifesto on a cell phone surrounded by 20,000 people) because in that moment, I chose not to be scared. Some part of me instinctively rejected the notion that I should take the gunman's fear as my own, let it twist inside of me, then take me away from my friends and family.

This is not to say that other Jews do not feel fear, or that I won't feel it myself when I enter a synagogue on Friday. This is just to say that I won't let this guy win, and I hope you don't either.

We are not helpless. There are things we can do to improve our world.

After the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, I wrote about five things you could do to help. Painfully, they are all still very relevant.

In the face of the unabated, preventable epidemic of gun violence, urge your senators to cosponsor and call for the immediate passage of the Background Check Expansion Act, the Senate version of the first gun violence prevention measure to pass the House of Representatives in decades. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not going to bring this bill to a vote unless we make him.

Teach yourself or seek out conversations about implicit bias. None of us is perfect (especially me), and to overturn a millennia-old system like white supremacy, we're each going to have to do internal and external work.

Ask yourself: What are you afraid of? How does that fear affect your behavior? What could you do to address it? How could you be better? How could we all be better?

I'm game if you are.

For an excellent resource on anti-Semitism, read "Understanding Anti-Semitism" from Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.