The Day of Impotent Hate (Part I)
I will admit, I was planning on publishing this on Friday, word for word, but simply did not have time to write it all up. After all, why should I wait until after Shabbat when I already knew what was going to happen on the so-called ‘Day of Hate?’
This is despite being wholly disconnected from the rest of the world, as Orthodox Jews don't use electricity on Shabbat, read newspapers, or have anything to do with the world at large. When it was brought up in synagogue during kiddush, I immediately shut down the discussion saying it was nonsense, nothing had happened, and nothing would happen.
And I was right! It’s precisely what happened. Nothing. Zilch. Nisht gornisht. It was evident from the beginning that it's precisely how things would unfold; you didn’t have to be a navi to figure it out.
Imagined by a handful of trolls, it could even be the brainchild of a single trailer park malcontent; it was a stroke of malicious genius. With a couple of keystrokes, they figured out how to make a press release sprinkled with enough Western Media's favorite catnip to make news worldwide: the specter of White Supremacy [cue dramatic music].
Our media landscape has been so obsessed with the idea of fascists, nazis, and neo-nazis that it salivates at the idea that this actual threat will materialize and pop its (skin)head somewhere. That’s why, to this day, they can’t stop talking about Charlottesville. Or fell for the extremely transparent 4chan hoax that the OK symbol was a secret neonazi signifier. You can excuse your elderly aunt falling for something she read off of Facebook, but shouldn't we expect more from our journalist class?
Actually, never mind, I'll go with my elderly relatives.
The fact that our media and politicians are so easily fooled by the permanent anonymous dwellers of a Mongolian basket-weaving image board is bad enough in itself. However, it also highlights a massive problem with antisemitism in America. Or, rather, the framing of antisemitism in America.
But first, let’s digress for a minute and go back into the distant past of May 2021.
The Chad Rage versus the Wimpy Hatred
An actual International Day of Rage was declared… and followed through. The entire month was filled with multiple high-profile violent attacks on Jews and Israelis in America, including explosive devices thrown at Jews in Times Square and raids on Jewish communities worldwide. The Intifada was finally Globalized!
The Lubavitcher Rebbe sent me on my current slichut, and I couldn't be happier to be where I am. I live in an extremely safe community, not only filled with Torah but, in a way, also functions as a very real modern Shtetl. Aside from Israel and dedicated Jewish towns like Monsey, Kyriat Yoel, and New Square, it has one of the highest Jewish density per capita in North America, or quite possibly the entire world. In less than 2 square miles, we boast over 25 synagogues, shtiblachs, kollelim, Jewish schools, community centers, kosher groceries, and bakeries… You can easily live life without needing to leave the confines of our small shtetl if not for work.
An area so extremely low on crime that people getting mugged, cars broken into, or home robberies are almost unheard of (bli ayin hara). Even porch pirates aren't a thing! Until that day, our biggest problem was the lack of zoning for constructing new synagogues.
So when, on that Shabbat, an entire float of cars came to our neighborhood, in a sense, our naive sense of security was shattered. They did not just come to honk and harass people but genuinely threatened the residents. A car tried to run over some pedestrians. A few men were arrested with guns after threatening to kill a Rabbi. Others tried to create a mob in front of a synagogue but were stopped by the police and synagogue security.
True, after the Tree of Life attack, all of the primary targets in our area created formal security groups. People volunteered and received training, but the general attitude was still, 'Nothing's gonna happen here.' No one was truly worried neo-nazis would swarm the area.
And nothing happened. Until it did, two and a half years later. And it wasn’t the neo-Nazis we keep hearing about but seldom see outside of a screen. It’s also something they could never accomplish on such (or any) scale.
The “Threat” of White Supremacy
After the Day of Rage, security kicked in. Bulletproof windows were installed, locks sealed outside facilities (no more galivanting outside during prayer services for you, children!), drills established in case of emergency. In my own synagogue, I was part of the Vaad HaShomrim, often spending most of Shabbat dealing with security issues and doing rounds than praying or learning.
After that week, there were other incidents. Much like Amalek had 'cooled off' the waters for others to come and attack the Jewish people after we went out of Egypt, these pro-palestinian protesters now felt empowered to invade our neighborhood and harass us even months later. Our children were now forced to play inside, our blinds were closed, and our doors were locked; we were living the way Jews in most of Europe do.
Our neighborhood was not the only one hit. All over a fairly large metropolitan area, Jews were harassed and beaten up; even the buildings were not left alone, as there was plenty of vandalism, graffiti, and broken windows.
For weeks afterward, there was stress. Months, really. We had increased police presence. Increased shomrim patrols. Increased people staying at home out of fear.
This had never happened because of white supremacists.
This is not to say that there are no nazis, neonazis, skinheads, white supremacists, or other ethnonationalists of similar ilk who threaten Jews worldwide. The threat they pose is simple: shootings and bombings. They happen but are very few and far in between.
Tree of Life. Poway. How many of you can name another in the last decade that didn't happen locally?
White supremacy and Naziism are a spent force in America. It was a spent force 70 years ago when George Lincoln Rockwell was holding rallies with Elijah Muhammad and Farrakhan and marveling at the number of members the Nation of Islam was able to muster at its rallies. There are still neonazi gangs today, and their presence is felt chiefly in… prisons. In the deepest, redneckest areas of red states where almost no Jews dwell. And on the internet.
They are not a threat. They are a nuisance. An occasionally deadly one, but overall, they are pathetic. Is this who we're supposed to cower from?
Edgy Is As Edgy Was
They are not the reason why antisemitism is rising (I’ll cover that in Part 2). Yes, there have been plenty of articles about how teenagers feel it's edgy to say things like 'Hitler Did Nothing Wrong,' but this is simply because they know that the church ladies in the media will overreact. That’s how they'll get their laughs. If they could get away with saying the n-word without risking their entire futures and livelihoods being destroyed, they'd also say it just as openly. Not out of hate-fueled racism, but out of getting a rise out of people. That's what teenagers do.
Now, it should go without saying that I'm not condemning or excusing this kind of behavior. Rather, I'm simply stating what people have always known: Teenagers like to rebel, playing with or breaking boundaries is part of their natural development, and very few things are as exciting for many of them as doing or saying something they were told they shouldn't do. Even kids from the best families can be swept up by raging hormones, peer pressure, and the desire to be perceived as cool.
All this is no different than when David Bowie, Siouxsie, or Joy Division used Nazi imagery in the 70s and 80s. These people were not genuine fascists or racists; they were just out to shock people. The British Media is frequently ranting about the dangers of the far-right? Time to dress like Hitler and walk around SoHo' Sieg Hailing' (if your name is Keith Moon, that is). Juvenile? Crass? In bad taste? Absolutely. What else do you expect from people off their heads on whatever drug they could find rebelling against "the man"? If Communism had been the bête noir du jour (can we call it du jour when it's been 80 years?), they would have dressed like Mao or Stalin instead.
When adopted by the mainstream, those things that used to be controversial eventually stop and even become boring. Passe. Cliche. Some other french words implying detachment. That's why it would be far more transgressive today for a celebrity to go to the Grammys and declare to the crowd, "Read the Bible, don't have relations before marriage, start a family, get a career, buy a house, and live your life righteously." than to walk in dressed in a Satan outfit singing about marital infidelity.
Maybe 30 years ago, it might have been transgressive and shocking still. Today, it's so dull and expected that it gets you a sponsorship from Pfizer.
Nazis Today
It's not to say that there are no places in this world where white men with shaved heads sporting huge swastika tattoos are not a real threat to the minorities around them. Right now, many of them are dying on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
And even in Eastern Europe, for the most part, white supremacists and nazis are a spent force (though not as much as in the West). If you really want to worry about Nazis, There is one place in the world where Nazi ideology has taken root. Where Mein Kampf is a number one best seller. Where people unironically praise Hitler, openly say believe he did not do enough, and no one bats an eyelid at them.
It's not in Louisiana or in London, but in Lebanon. And in Syria. And in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. All over the Middle East, in fact.
After World War II, many Nazi war criminals fled Europe and found shelter in Egypt, Syria, and other hostile countries surrounding Israel. They were determined to finish the job they began in Europe. They served as political and army advisors to those that attacked Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973. They trained soldiers and terror groups who took the lives of so many. They taught their hatred of Jews to Muslims, who more than willingly mixed their antisemitism and created some hybrid that exists to this day.
That is not to say that Muslims needed European Nazis to hate Jews. Islamic history is rife with the persecution of Jews. As the Rambam wrote in his Iggeret Teiman:
"God has entangled us with this people, the nation of Ishmael, who treat us so prejudicially and who legislate our harm and hatred…. No nation has ever arisen more harmful than they, nor has anyone done more to humiliate us, degrade us, and consolidate hatred against us."
"We bear the inhumane burden of their humiliation, lies and absurdities, being as the prophet said, 'like a deaf man who does not hear or a dumb man who does not open his mouth'.... Our sages disciplined us to bear Ishmael's lies and absurdities, listening in silence, and we have trained ourselves, old and young, to endure their humiliation, as Isaiah said, 'I have given my back to the smiters, and my cheek to the beard pullers.'
The fleeing Nazis found an audience that was receptive to their message, as a people who already hated Jews and were more than ready to assimilate new reasons why they should hate them even more.
There is much more to write about this, and G-d willing, one day I will (add this to the pile of things I need to follow up on), but for the purpose of this article, my point is straightforward:
White Supremacy and Naziism is not a tangible threat to Jews in America. All attempts at mainstreaming their beliefs have failed in various horrifyingly hilarious fashion.
Where is Richard Spencer now? Nick Fuentes? Andrew Anglin? Weev? Milo?
Mike Enoch tried to make an alt-right political party with many of the Charlottesville organizers. It was such a failure that their biggest boast was 150 members. It is not even registered as an official political party. The Goyim Defense League can fit in a single airport shuttle. The rest are all edgy teenagers posting fashy memes who will eventually move on to bigger and better things, and those who don't will find edgier and edgier subjects to make the alarmed church ladies write about their next craze.
A Dangerous Distraction
I will go a step further. Concentrating on the "threat" of neo-Nazis is itself a threat to the Jewish community. It disconnects the genuine antisemitism and violence that Jews suffer from their actual perpetrators.
For every single incident of a handful of white supremacists unfolding a banner over a highway and milling around for 30 minutes or harassing passersby with megaphones, you have literally dozens of Jews assaulted by non-white supremacists. Dozens of cases of vandalism, too. Dozens more cases of people yelling insults just as bad, if not worse, as those from the GDL or Groypers.
Sure, the FBI and other Law Enforcement Agencies need to keep track of domestic terrorists, of which constitute a hefty portion. Still, there is no need to overinflate their impact or pretend that the rise of antisemitism violence in America and the threat against Jews are in any way linked to them.
In the Ye x Milo x Fuentes collab, the latter two were only lampreys to Ye's gay fish.
In the next installment, stats in hand, we will deal with the actual threats to American Jewry and how to hopefully move forward.