The inescapable anti-Semitism of Western nationalists
Readers of Today's WorldView are well aware of how the far right has gone mainstream over the past year. They were brought there by a confluence of events: President Trump's rise to the White House on an ultranationalist platform, the electoral gains made by once-fringe parties in Western Europe and the deepening illiberalism of parties in power farther east. As a result, we've seen a rise in Islamophobia as well as widespread demonization of immigrants in various countries.
But this resurgent nativism also encompasses an old and dark tradition: a virulent hatred of Jews.
You could see it in last year's infamous white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, where hundreds inspired in part by Trump's politics chanted Jews will not replace us. (The president decries anti-Semitism, but had a notoriously tough time denouncing the neo-Nazi marchers.) You could see it in the sly game played by Poland's ruling party, which has moved to criminalize discussion of Poland's role in the Holocaust while looking the other way during a nationalist demonstration in November where supporters chanted Pure Poland, Jew-Free Poland. And you could even see it in the hideous slaughter of 17 high school students in Florida this month the shooter's magazines were reportedly etched with swastikas.
Anti-Semitic incidents were up in 2017. If we expect law enforcement officials and community members to take these incidents seriously, we must take them seriously - report anti-Semitic incidents to the police and to ADL: https://t.co/pZrpwaRYei pic.twitter.com/3ufYXwnxFX
ADL (@ADL_National) February 27, 2018
A new study by the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based organization that tracks anti-Semitism and other bigotry, found an alarming rise in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017. The ADLs 2017 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents identified 1,986 examples of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assault in 2017, the largest single-year increase and the second-highest number since it started tracking the data in the 1970s, my colleague Tara Bahrampour reported. Vandalism was up by 86 percent, and incidents targeting Jewish schools, community centers, museums and synagogues had surged by 101 percent since 2016, the report found. The number of anti-Semitic incidents in K-12 schools has roughly doubled each year for the past two years, the report said.
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Behind the Aegis
(53,833 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)which also includes those who aren't religious but consider themselves Jewish culturally.
A little sprinkle of fact to go with this vicious indulgence of their worst character flaws.
Behind the Aegis
(53,833 posts)Worldwide, we are less than .2%.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)for the largest collections sometimes counted as "Jewish," even if not all those included would count themselves. And to anchor to a maximum for people to remember. Yours is more solid.
The planetary figure is a good one for people to be able to point out when they run into fever dreams of international Jewish conspiracies, world domination, seemingly immortal Jewish cabals that outlive national empires, U.S. Jews who couldn't get into country clubs but controlled our nation anyway, etc.
My husband's Jewish culturally but not religiously. The Third Reich would have considered me Jewish (by association) only later in their era when they were shipping everyone in the household east to the death camps.