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Behind the Aegis

(53,823 posts)
Thu Apr 16, 2020, 04:13 PM Apr 2020

COVID-19's Bigotry Epicenters: Asian And Jewish Americans

With COVID-19 likely originating in Wuhan China, the virus’ first epicenter, a considerable amount of global animus has been directed toward China. The Chinese regime has been blamed for providing a fertile breeding ground for this pandemic through its failure to regulate wet markets and its support of rampant wild animal farming and trade primarily for Chinese traditional medicines.

As the coronavirus spread outside of China and became a pandemic, the Chinese regime has been accused of hiding the true extent of the threat with the rest of the world, lying about essential health data, and blaming the United States for the outbreak. As Julia DeCook recently noted in her informative CARR post exploring coronavirus and the radical right, others have gone as far as claiming that the COVID-19 was a biological weapon created by the Chinese government. As a consequence, animus toward China has inevitably spread to Chinese-Americans, and more broadly, to Asian Americans as a whole.

Conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19 have been increasing exponentially along with the disease’s infection and fatality rates, and many are no longer aimed at China’s alleged role in the pandemic. A growing number of conspiracies have targeted Jews and Israel, not only underscoring the broader empirical link connecting general conspiracy and anti-Semitism but highlighting that the coronavirus offers a unique opportunity for the radical right to spread anti-Semitic hate.

While the media has documented spikes in reported discrimination and hate crime targeting Asian Americans across the United States, reports of increased anti-Semitism have come almost exclusively from organizations with missions to document anti-Jewish prejudice (e.g., the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)). Furthermore, contemporary accounts of coronavirus-related anti-Semitism have been primarily limited to the online spread of bigotry and misinformation. Thankfully, there has not been reporting of coronavirus-motivated anti-Semitic physical assaults and vandalism.

Assessing contemporary COVID-19 related bigotry leads to several significant questions for scholars and practitioners alike. I will attempt to answer two in this post. First, what is the immediate effect that the coronavirus is having on anti-Asian and anti-Semitic behavior in the United States, and why will it be different for each group? Second, after the pandemic has ended, what will be the long-term impacts of hate targeting these minorities?

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