When comedian Amy Schumer shared a tweet about the FBI’s 2020 Hate Crime report — that of all hate crimes motivated by religion, 57.5% targeted Jews, who make up less than 2% of the total population — the usual infuriating, anti-semitic comments rolled in. 

Aside from numerous “Free Palestine” comments, we got: 

“Some additional stats: 13% were based on religion. 20% on sexual orientation, 62% on race, ethnicity and ancestry bias.”

“Ok…. Now let’s see hate crimes due to race… don’t forget to include police brutality, Covered up Lynchings to be called a suicide, etc. Jewish people got it bad, but they don’t have it as bad as MOST of the minority group.”

“I don’t understand how someone could hate based on religion!” 

Here’s the thing: people don’t attack Jews because of their religion. We’re attacked because we are Jews. 

Jewish businesses aren’t vandalized because someone takes issue with the fact that Jews keep the Sabbath or debate the Talmud. 

When someone asks me my opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict after introducing myself, it’s not because I was talking about attending Rosh Hashanah services. It’s because my last name is Katz, and they know that Katz is a Jewish surname. 

When kids called me a kike in high school and made fun of my nose, they weren’t making fun of me because I held a different view about covenants with G-d. It’s because they thought I looked Jewish and mocked me about that. 

When Chasidic Jews get harassed in Brooklyn in the name of ‘Palestinian activism,’ it’s not because the person takes issue with their commitment to Halacha. It’s because they saw their visibly Jewish appearance and decided to attack them. 

Do Jews get harassed based on religion? Yeah — every time a Jew gets interrogated on why they won’t accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, it’s anti-semitic. But that’s only a small portion of all anti-Jewish hate. 

You know how I know attacking Jews isn’t only a religious hate crime? Because atheist Jews get attacked. Jews with no relationship to religion get attacked. “Culturally Jewish” people get attacked. Israelis who aren’t Jewish get attacked. It’s the association with our tribe, our group: it’s not religion-based, it’s identity-based, and that’s dangerous.

Did you know that Jews are the third-most targeted of all reported hate crimes despite being less than 2% of the population? 

When you look at the charts the FBI provides, it seems like anti-religious hate crimes are no big deal compared to hate crimes of race, ancestry, or ethnicity. But when you ignore the categories and look by specific bias type — like anti-Jewish — you find that anti-Jewish hate crimes account for 9% of all hate crimes reported in 2020. 

9%. If Jews were 9% of the United States population, there would be 29.5 million Jews in the United States.

There are only 7.6 million Jews in the United States.

There are so many issues with the term “religious hate crime,” but above all, it diminishes anti-semitic hate.

It’s an issue on the left and the right. Alt-right neo-nazis don’t really care that we don’t believe in Jesus. They care that we’re impure, non-white, and a threat to the white race. Leftists don’t care that we don’t eat pork. Woke, culturally-Christian atheists care less about ‘religious hate crimes’ because they think religion is backward or something from which Jews need to evolve. In their mind, Christianity is oppressive and fucked up, so Judaism is too. 

The term itself is just ridiculous. When the FBI calls anti-semitic attacks “religious hate crimes,” they imply that anti-semitism will magically cease to exist if we stop being religious — but they won’t. 

It’s not just Jews that suffer because of this. The term “religious hate crimes” leads to confusion for other ethnoreligious groups. When Sikhs are attacked for “looking Muslim,” is that a religious hate crime against Sikhs? Or Muslims? 

Hate crimes are violence by bias, and that bias is no fault of the individual. I didn’t date in high school, and I had a pixie cut, which led my peers to call me a lesbian — even though I wasn’t. I was bisexual, but nuance doesn’t matter to those who perpetrate hate crimes. 

And many organizations — including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the international Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights — categorize hate crimes by specific bias or ideology. Categorizing hate as anti-Black, anti-Jewish, anti-Romani/Sinti, etc., allows for more nuance and clear data. 

Identity is complex, and the hate minorities face cannot be diminished to one facet of our peoplehood. So call a spade a spade: it’s racism, plain and simple, and shouldn’t be subject to diminishing terminology.

Every year in school, my classmates would learn about the Holocaust. And every year, without fail, someone would ask, “Why did Hitler attack Jews for their religion? Couldn’t he do that to Christians, too?” Then, because I grew up in the bible belt, someone would say, “Well, maybe if Jews believed in Jesus, they wouldn’t have been killed.”  

So — why do people hate Jews because of their religion? 

That’s easy! They don’t.

The post Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes Have Nothing to Do With Our Religion appeared first on Jewcy.

I wrote this poem after hearing of the Polish government’s legislation limiting discussion of the Shoah. Most, if not all, societies try to suppress the disturbing events of their past. It is the role of historians, artists, and activists to remind them of their buried misdeeds.

They are committed

to erasing their memory

they have placed themselves

upon the table

soon the lobotomy

then the plastic surgeon

to take away

their scars

They will rise en masse

one smiling

nation

happy to have forgotten

Jedwabne and

Kielce

happy to have stopped searching

through the mountains

of ash

Image via Pixabay

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Earlier today, a regular occurrence ran its course—JK Rowling saw a tweet that upset her, and so took to Twitter to retort. Fans have learned to hold their breath whenever she says something, because she has not been without controversy.

But this time the cause was just— the tweet that set her off insisted that Jews, as a religion, could not be the victim of racism, so Rowling spoke out to decry anti-Semitism.

Most UK Jews in my timeline are currently having to field this kind of crap, so perhaps some of us non-Jews should start shouldering the burden. Antisemites thinks this is a clever argument, so tell us, do: were atheist Jews exempted from wearing the yellow star? #antisemitism pic.twitter.com/H5xLLXTdQO

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 18, 2018

(The context of the original argument was a response to British-Jewish comedian David Baddiel, who reported a racist incident he experienced.)

Rowling also shared a “test” for anti-Semitism (including questions like, “Do you accept that millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust?”), and shot down arguments that since Arabs are Semitic, anti-Semitism applies to them as well. (Did she explain this is a sensitive way that the phrase was literally coined by anti-Semites to explain that they hated Jews? No, but partial credit for explaining the gist, JK.)

Of course, some Jews on Twitter gently pointed out (not for the first time) that Rowling herself may be guilty of subconsciously perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes. The hook-nosed, money-loving goblins of her books are certainly… familiar.

In any case, today, Rowling wins the day. And finally, a mazel tov “Nice Jewish Fangirls” podcast co-host Michal Schick, who Rowling tweeted out during the course of the conversation. You finally made it, girl.

Soon enough, Rowling moved on, as she does, and switched to pictures of Harry Potter pet cosplays and Kanye’s triumphant Twitter return, and her constant vigilance over the Internet continues.

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A lot of ink has been spilled about Linda Sarsour’s place on a panel tonight at the New School on anti-Semitism, and a prominent benefactor has threatened to withdraw funding for the New School as a result. A lot of the negative reactions have to do with who Linda Sarsour is, what she’s said about anti-Semitism in the past, and what she supports. And there is an up-swelling of bigotry and Islamophobia rearing its ugly head, for which as a public Muslim figure, Sarsour is an unfortunate lightning rod.

But a lot of the censure has much to do with who is considered to be an appropriate spokesperson for the Jews about a Jewish experience. In activist and leftist circles, it is taken for granted that the people most appropriate to define their struggles in life are the ones who experience it. Thus, it is expected to defer to Muslims when the topic is the experience or definition of Islamophobia, or African-Americans when the topic is anti-Blackness in America, or women when the topic is misogyny. Why are Jews not afforded the same deference? Who has the right to define what we suffer for our Jewishness, or to define what it is to be Jewish? Who are the gentiles that are perceived to be experts on us from the outside, and why are we deferring to them?

While some of the panelists are Jews, none of them are experts in the topic of anti-Semitism. There are no scholars in the field, nor activists whose focus is combatting anti-Semitism. The panel has two members of Jewish Voices for Peace, one member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and the Arab-American Association of New York. None of these groups focus on anti-Semitism. The issue then becomes not just who is on the panel, but why this panel exists at all.

The eventbrite page reads: “When antisemitism is redefined as criticism of Israel, critics of Israeli policy become accused and targeted more than the growing far-right. Join us for a discussion on how to combat antisemitism today.”  In addition to an unproven assertion that critics of anti-Semitism do not focus on far right purveyors of anti-Semitism, the framing of this event seems to focus less on defining anti-Semitism or combatting, but minimizing it and redefining it in the framework of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is dangerous for those of us who live with the consequences— namely, Jews.

It’s no surprise then that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt slammed the event, saying “Seriously there’s not a single Jewish organization that studies this issue and/or fights this disease (such as @adl_national) would take this panel seriously, let alone the institution that put it together.”

A panel like this may not be a total disaster. JFREJ released a PDF concerning antisemitism, a result of their earlier webinar (also featuring non-Jewish input!) and while there are issues with the document, including the historically inaccurate too-rosy view of Jewish life as second class citizens in the Muslim world or glossing over the prevalence of anti-Semitic rhetoric in anti-Zionist circles, it is still a decent bit of work. But it is unlikely that we will see even this caliber of result from this panel. What is far more probable is that anti-Semitism will be minimized and redefined to suit the political needs of the group in question, as will the fundamentals of Jewish history and identity.

Instead of wrestling with the difficulties presented by Zionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism head on, we can expect this universally anti-Zionist (or at best, agnostic) panel to redefine the issues into non-existence, and thus write off the majority of Jewish opinion as wrong and misinformed— a misled people, acting against their own self-interest, an elitist opinion trotted out by those too out of touch to understand why people make the decisions they do, and what motivates them, for good or for ill.

The left often fails in anti-Semitism by refusing to look at Jews as a community. They are usually willing to go to bat for a Jewish person’s individual rights, but almost never for our communal rights. To justify this, they will redefine our identity, our history, our oppression, and ourselves. We are not permitted to speak for ourselves. At best, we get spokespeople we did not elect, speaking on behalf of others in our name, but not in our interests— as is the case here. As with the right wing, Jews are more useful as pawns than as people.

This is odious. It is also typical. Even JFREJ admits to anti-Semitism’s cyclical nature, and the forced re-definition of Jews and the pathological bigotry we faced in order to benefit the elites. Where this panel of non-experts will inevitably drop the ball is in their failure to realize that in their circles, they are those elites, and they are doing nothing more than pandering to the demands of a gentile majority, seeking to inflict their self-interested moralizing on our backs. And if we have to pay for their self-aggrandizing in our blood, then so be it. It’s a price they are willing to have us pay.

After all, it’s a price we’ve paid before.

Image via Wikimedia

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If you haven’t heard of the jam band The String Cheese Incident, that’s OK. You probably won’t need to hear of them again after this, an incident in which their drummer Michael Travis went on an anti-Semitic tirade on Facebook.

(Tablet contributor and self-described SCI fan Armin Rosen describes the group as a “lamer, less interesting, and less fun version of Phish.”)

A few days ago, in now-deleted posts, Travis proclaimed that “the Zionist banking cartel” is at the source of the world’s evils. The whole rant merits being reproduced outright; it’s a thing of beauty.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post This is the Most Sublime Anti-Semitic Internet Rant You Will Read Today appeared first on Jewcy.

You may have missed an odd little quote from Donald Trump when he addressed the press on Air Force One last week (originally off-the-record, until the White House released the transcripts):

“Hey, now it’s shown there’s no collusion, there’s no obstruction, there’s no nothing. Honestly, the whole thing, it is really a media witch hunt. It’s been a media witch hunt. And it’s bad for the country… When they say “treason” — you know what treason is? That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving the atomic bomb, okay?”

That’s right; he brought up the Rosenbergs, the Jewish-American couple executed for spying for the Soviets in 1953.

…

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post Trump, You’re No Rosenberg appeared first on Jewcy.

On Sunday night, April 30th, a little theater in Saint Marks Place hosted a rather unusual event: a panel, and a protest. At its height, the protest outside was no more than 20 people, with a core group of ten or so sticking it out long term, most of them Jewish.

The small, but spirited crowd merrily chanted at Gilad Atzmon, a provocateur who markets himself as an “ex-Jewish” pro-Palestine jazz musician, and is widely derided as anti-Semitic for his conspiratorial views concerning a shadowy Jewish global cabal, to “go kakken effen yam,” (a Yiddish pejorative phrase that means “go poop in the sea”). They came armed with leaflets describing Atzmon’s views and their reasons for protest, and engaged in fierce, but restrained debate with Atzmon and his supporters outside the venue. At one point, a supporter of Atzmon’s and an Orthodox Jewish protester were arguing about if Jews were a race or not.

“Unfortunately, I now have to consider Lorcan an ex-friend,” said protestor Bill Weinberg, holding a stack of fliers outside the theater venue. Weinberg had attempted to convince Theater 80 owner Lorcan Otway to disinvite Gilad Atzmon, to no avail. Protest organizer Eugene Onegin added, “Free speech doesn’t mean that the venue owner is exonerated from any and all responsibility from renting — and giving a platform to — a fascist.” The protest was as much against the theater owner as against the speaker. While no one accused Lorcan Otway of harboring anti-Semitic views, the anger at him for giving a platform to bigots was palpable, and it is clear that the protesters held him responsible for his part in aiding its dissemination.

As the protest outside dwindled, the crowd inside Theater 80 numbered about 65, with only small fluctuations throughout the evening. The event billed as a chance to hear Gilad Atzmon and his co-panelists give a talk. Flyers for the event said the discussion was to be about Brexit, the Middle East, and Trump, but Brexit never came up, Syria was only mentioned by one speaker, and Trump was used as a comparison to Archie Bunker. Instead, the panelists spent most of their time talking about Jews and their nefarious effects on society: Jewish power, Jewish identity, Jewish politics.

What happened here isn’t much different than what happened in September at the Brooklyn Commons, when a crowd of mostly Jewish leftists protested the inclusion of noted anti-Semite and 9-11 “truther” Christopher Bollyn was given a platform to speak by the Commons’ owner, Melissa Ennen. In fact, a number of faces from that protest also appeared at this one. This time, the bigot in question was Gilad Atzmon, but the defenses floated for his bigotry were the same.

Lorcan Otway, the theater owner, speaks and writes about the importance of free speech. Unlike Melissa Ennen, Otway is not a “truther,” not a conspiracy theorist, but like Ennen, Otway relies on an absurd interpretation of free speech to be about supporting platforms for bigots— and disdaining protest. At the event, panelist Stanley Cohen accused the protesters of wishing to “shut down free speech,” as if opposition to bigotry is an act of censorship. A supporter of Atzmon, who would only go by Bill, railed against the previous demonstration at the Brooklyn Commons, saying it was an infringement on free speech, defended his enmity towards “the Rothschilds” as “not anti-Semitic!,” and grudgingly admitted that this smaller protest was, perhaps, not a violation of Atzmon’s rights. In his Times of Israel blog, Otway supports the right to picket and protest, but elsewhere seems to raise the specter of calling the cops, and both in his piece and on Facebook, lists progressive events the theater has hosted, similar to how Ennen relied on her resume to bolster her own progressive credentials.

Atzmon’s anti-Semitism and attachment to conspiracy isn’t hard to find. His rap sheet is a long one, and his co-panelists, Stanley Cohen and Norton Mezvinsky have troubling histories of their own. Only Michael Lesher, an Orthodox Jew, comes with a non-political background, as he was a whistleblower about sexual abuse cover-ups in some Orthodox Jewish communities. Lesher’s take on Jewish identity wasn’t particularly earth-shattering, but his condemnations of abusive behavior, praiseworthy in another context, took on a conspiratorial air when presented in the context of an entire evening dedicated to the myth of “secret Jewish power.” The background of the panelists only seemed to prove that Jews are quite capable of being anti-Semitic.

In the lead up to the panel, Atzmon engaged with some of his detractors, and took seeming delight in egging them on using blatantly anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as referencing “shekels,” “the Jewish condition,” or even simply calling them “you people.” Apparently, two Jews are two too many, for he mixed up two organizers of the protest: Eugene Onegin, and Bill Weinberg, the (former) friend of Otway’s who tried to engage with him before taking further action.

Certainly, the online interaction left an impression on Atzmon, well throughout his panel appearance. No less than four times did Atzmon mention Weinberg by name, interspersed between assertions that he has “no problems with national socialism,” and that political correctness and identity politics, which “intellectually castrate” the people and divide the Left, is a creation of a “Jewish intelligentsia,” which “sees a value in dividing society.” Atzmon continued, “Jewish power, which we aren’t allowed to talk about, explains the link between Marx, Soros, the 100 Jewish landlords, Israeli criminality, AIPAC….and Bill Weinberg!” Stanley Cohen, meanwhile, explicitly urged the Left to “work with National Socialists, with Al-Qaeda,” in order to break away from a “narrow” and self-sabotaging Left.

Melissa Ennen, Lorcan Otway, and Gilad Atzmon all claim to be members of the progressive left. Atzmon appeared at his panel wearing a pro-Palestine T-shirt, and before being wholly ejected by Palestinian activists for his anti-Semitism, had made for himself quite a name among far-left circles. Cohen and Mezvinsky also claim the “progressive” mantle, despite the former having offered legal aid to Hamas and Hezbollah operatives, and the latter having ties with white supremacists.

If you’re scratching your head at all this, you aren’t alone. Throughout the evening, much of what was said, when it wasn’t poorly organized word-salad, would sound at home in the mouths of the alt-right. Some of the audience members also embraced a jingoistic sort of nationalism, with one enthusiastically detailing to me his hopes of a closed border, and another asking the panelists “Is what’s going on in Syria a culmination of the Zionist policy and the Balfour Declaration?” But the panelists, the audience members, and those supporting them all described themselves as progressives — despite some troubling support from neo-Nazis and white supremacists, including David Duke.

While regressive-progressives of the likes of Ennen and Otway claim that speech must answer to speech, neither Bollyn nor Atzmon are willing to hear the concerns of their detractors, or those whom they aid in further marginalizing. And while Otway did not discourage a picket, the majority of the supporters of Bollyn and Atzmon are entirely unwilling to consider protest a form of speech, despite their enshrinement as such under the First Amendment.

In this twisted view of free speech, all speech must be consequence free, even the most harmful, dangerous, and bigoted of speech. Any permitted reaction must be parsed, neutered, and presented in a specific manner to render it toothless against the bigotry it seeks to counter. Ennen may not hate Jews, and Otway may not be party to conspiracy theories, but they doubtless bear responsibility for boosting the voices of bigots and attempting to scuttle challenges to the noxious views they espouse.

The key to cutting through this Gordian knot is understanding that anti-Semitism truly is the “socialism of fools,” and it functions as a social pathology and a conspiracy theory, and that will always assure its manifestation on either side of the political spectrum, right or left. In Trump’s America, that pathology has resurfaced, and its virulence appears both on the far-right and the far-left, who often crib vocabulary from each other to better propagate their ideals. It therefore is very likely that we will witness more and similar events over time, as ideas born on the far-right appear in discourse on the far-left. The far-right sees in the conspiracy mongering of the far-left an opportunity to recruit, make common cause, and inject their philosophy. When it comes to anti-Semitism, it seems they don’t have to work too hard.

Photo by B. Lana Guggenheim

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In a sentence that I cannot believe I am writing, the Anti-Defamation League has added Pepe the Frog to its hate symbol database, because of his proliferation of use in alt-right Internet circles. I also cannot believe that real news sites have to explain how a stupid picture of a frog is used as versatile Internet commentary, and are describing its origins the same way you would approach a chapter of art history.

But, fine. If you must know, and haven’t visited the Hillary Clinton website’s explanation (yes, her campaign is taking this seriously, too), Pepe dates back about ten years. He’s an illustrated frog, originally used in an intentionally crude comic. He rose through the ranks of Internet popularity through the likes of 4chan and Gaia Online, often with his facial expression as a stand-in for the user’s feelings, of, say, sadness, or smugness. Recently, he has been appearing often in the corners of the Internet’s associated with extreme right-wing racists. This has included everything, like Photoshop of Pepe as Hitler, or a skinhead, or lately, as Donald Trump, say, banning Mexican immigrants. Some examples are explicit or violent, but they always feature that same humanoid frog with the stupid face.

And now, we have granted the same seriousness to Twitter basement teens that we have to synagogues defaced with swastikas and violent attacks on Jews.

Really, ADL, do you have nothing better to do? With this election bringing bigotry of all kinds out of the woodwork, you’re going to condemn the use of a poorly illustrated amphibian? While there is certainly a need for speaking out against bigotry, reaching for low-rent nonsense like this begs the question, have you never heard the Internet saying, “Don’t feed the trolls?”

It’s not even that Pepe is a good meme. He is of the sort of dankness that makes it impossible for anyone not from the depths of the Internet to appreciate. He’s supposed to be funny because he’s weird, crudely drawn, and vague enough that he’s usable for any situation. He’s used by leftists too, including as a mocking response to bigotry. Mostly, he’s just used for absolute nonsense, as much a mockery of “relatable” Internet memes as he is used in earnest. He’s so ubiquitous that he in fact means nothing.

Creators of memes are the deadest kinds of authors, but for what its worth, Pepe’s papa is against the alt-right’s co-option of the frog, and is voting Democrat in November.

God, what has 2016 done to us? This isn’t the first example of elevating adolescent virtual whining and mashing together of cultural tropes to a point far beyond what’s appropriate. The Forward published an article back in June trying to analyze Neon Genesis Evangelion in context of Neo-Nazi twitter trolls. With my own two eyes I had to read about Asuka and Shinji on a Jewish news website, and not as graffiti in a middle school bathroom stall where that discussion belongs.

Hurt, angry, or just confused, Journalists, non-Internet addicts, and, well, adults, are making this out to be deeper than the racists intend.  You know why? Because bigots are not capable of deep thought. The alt-right’s latching onto the milquetoast Internet humor that is Pepe is ample evidence of that.

ADL, if you’re trying to stay relevant, this is not the way to do it. Get a better Tumblr. Make some memes, yourself. Give out sunglasses that say, “Throwing SHADE on anti-Semitism” on the sides. You can have that idea for free. You’re welcome.

You can’t declare the color red a symbol of hate, despite its presence on the Nazi flag. You can’t decide the number 14 has been used too many times by racists (it actually is a neo-Nazi shibboleth, and is also on the ADL’s list). As much as some of us would like to be rid of him for good, Pepe belongs to everybody.

You know what? Jewcy hereby declares Pepe not inexorably linked with anti-Semitism. You are all free to use him to express your general disappointments, frustrations, and struggles of your daily life. Or just Photoshop him onto Shrek’s body; we don’t care.

In any case, you can pick your Jewish authority, the ADL, or us.

Images via Wikimedia

The post Pepe is Now a Symbol of Hate Speech, Because We Can’t Have Anything appeared first on Jewcy.

“What the fuck?”

That’s what slipped out as I scrolled through my Facebook feed Monday night. I had just got back from a busy Labor Day weekend, and was under the weather as a result. I wanted to look at cute puppies while I moaned about how sick I felt, not deal with some neo-Nazi nonsense.

And yet, there it was, plain as day. Apparently booked for months, since July, no one in my progressive, activist New York circle had realised a “Truther” (someone who doubts the actual facts of 9/11, and insists it was an inside job) had booked the usually Progressive-friendly Brooklyn Commons for a talk. And worse, the man in question, Christopher Bollyn, was a dyed-in-the wool antisemite, with ties to neo-Nazis and friendly relations with David Duke, Grand Wizard of the KKK. A real mensch! Introducing his talk was another dyed-in-the-wool antisemitic conspiracy theories, Randy Dent. Randy is an African-American, but apparently anti-Semitism was the glue that held the bond between a black man and a neo-Nazi together. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

Now, just days before the event, set for Wednesday, September 7, the Internet was going crazy. Folks were ringing up the Commons, emailing owner Melissa Ennen, who had insisted that she “didn’t know” the truth of Bollyn’s views. Considering how easy they are to find on his own website, this is very hard to believe, and is shockingly irresponsible for a business owner. She refused to cancel the event. Then she dropped a jaw-droppingly tone-deaf letter where she used “free speech” as a defense. (The letter has since been erased from the website, only two days after she put it up; hence my use of the WayBack Machine. Remember, the Internet is forever!) She both said she wanted the Commons to be a safe space – but not all the time; not that safe; not for Jews. If the letter doesn’t make sense on the third go-round, don’t blame yourself. It’s an incoherent mess that is more indicative of her cognitive dissonance than anything actually worth saying.

Some Internet sleuths did their thing and revealed that Ennen herself is a “truther.” So it isn’t about “free speech” or even “keeping the lights on” as she also had claimed – as Ennen is independently wealthy, which is how she came to own and run the Commons in the first place. Less so now though; a great many progressive movements, meetings, and groups condemned her choice and divested from the space. Which, as David Schraub noted, is a very good first step.

But with all of this going on, and Bollyn going on as planned, no one had planned a protest, or any other sort of action. Surely that can’t be right, I thought. I wasn’t as active “in the scene” as some of my peers, but usually people plan actions to speak against such things. And yet, the more I looked around, the more I saw people asking “Is there an action? Where is it? Is there one? I’ll go if there is.” But there wasn’t. No one had planned anything.

So I did.

I had one day, and I had never done this before. I’ve attended some, sure, but I’ve never organized a protest on my own. Study groups, Shabbat dinners, panels, talks, okay, sure, but not this. I didn’t even know how to begin. I was running a fever and made stupid spelling and administrative errors, which didn’t help. I asked for help and advice. I asked some friends to co-host, to signal boost, to show up. Some of them did. I’m grateful.

Soon after the event page went public on Wednesday morning, the day of the event, another progressive reached out to me. He told me he had been trying to get someone to bottomline – a term that means take some responsibility and do some work, apparently. He didn’t want to do it all himself. But we combined forces, swapped notes, and the crowd that showed up is in no small part thanks to his networking, organizing skills, and passion.

I made it clear from the start, and stated it multiple times: I wanted things calm, peaceful, and legal. No police involvement, no one gets in a fight, no one breaks the law. Everyone goes home with their limbs and sanity intact. My goal was, and is, to show that neo-Nazis will not go unchallenged. My goal was not to land in jail, or others land in jail because of me. (Some activist groups actually deliberately wish to get arrested when they attend actions, to send a powerful message. That’s fine, and their right, but that was not this.)

Miriam, an activist, street medic, and personal friend continued to give me advice and warnings throughout the day. She also showed up with her medkit and gave the crowd advice about what to do if the cops showed up and we were arrested. The point was not to get arrested, but white supremacists and their ilk aren’t exactly known for dealing with Jews peacefully – and nearly everyone who was there was Jewish. Best to be prepared.

For most of the time we were there, a total of over three hours, things were calm and peaceful, even quiet. Brad Lander, a New York City Council member, was with us for about an hour, and told us he was more inspired by the group outside than inflamed by the bigot giving his racist talk within. That was heartening to hear. The protest group was about 30-some-odd in total. While many were young professionals, we also had quite a number who were middle-aged. Most of us were white or white-passing; only a few were (visibly) Jews of Color. There were only a few gentiles who stood with us, excluding the reporters (and of the three or four of them, at least two were Jewish). Many of the young professionals were anti-Zionist, but some were Zionists. Many of the older protesters were liberal Zionists, not anti-Zionists. This didn’t seem to matter, for once: we were all there to tell Nazis to fuck off, something every Jew can agree on!

I mention the demographic breakdown for a number of reasons. While it is clear that this issue matters across generations, it is not so clear it resonates across all political lines. Both Jewish groups and the Left in general are notorious for in-fighting. We are a fractious lot. But this was put aside when it came to this issue. That is good. But that unity seems to have only extended as far as our own ethno-religious group. The lack of gentile support might have been because this was done on such short notice; after all, many groups did divest from the Commons, at personal expense and hardship to themselves. Still, I am not so sure.

I say that for most of the time, things were quiet. This is true, but there were three violent incidents, and more of verbal aggression. The first was when a protester, who had gone inside the event, started challenging Bollyn, and shouting at him. He was violently shoved out of the premises – thrown, really, – and Ennen nearly snatched his phone away. “But I have it,” he told me.

Another started when a blonde white woman walked by, and inquiring what we are protesting about, we tell her about Bollyn, Dent, and their noxious material. “Fuck that!” she said, and strode inside. Soon after, she was physically shoved out the door. The manager, a white Jewish man wearing a red shirt, had called her “bitch” and “fatass.” He told her she was banned from the premises. She had been a regular there. She hadn’t even gone into the event room, but she was violently expelled from the premise nonethless.

She looked visibly shaken. I gave her a hug. She stayed with us for a while, long enough for the Commons employee to knock off his shift and come outside. Folks started yelling at him, he shouted back. He started walking away, then turned back, walked back to the middle of the crowd, and started shouting at us, really trying to rile everyone up. I guess it worked, because one protester spat, which prompted the barista to take a swing at him in return. They barely got any blows in – the spitter was tackled by no less than three men, including a large, burly security guard in Bollyn’s employ. They were quickly separated. The employee said he would like to press charges, and soon after that, the cops arrived. Some said Ennen called the cops; others say it was someone else. I am still not sure. I don’t think it matters.

Someone seemed to have informed the police that there was a “forty person fight” going on. Instead, they found a bunch of Jews quietly milling around on the street. I think they thought this was normal. They were slow to do much of anything, and remained chill for most of the night. Some tried to chit-chat with us. They were nicer than the attendee who shouted at us about 9/11 being an inside job, and that the Zionists were behind it. They shouted less, at any rate, which I found surprising and impressive.

One fellow protester associated with JFREJ (Jews for Racial and Economic Justice) remarked with me how of course it’s two guys who start slugging each other that get the cops involved. Because of course it is. She was holding a sign that said “Yet another antizionist Jew against antisemitism.” I stood next to her with a more sarcastic sign that read “Proud member of ZOG” (The “Zionist Occupation Government” conspiracy). I enjoyed the joke, even if Nazis are notorious for lacking a sense of humour.

The last incident came shortly after 9 p.m., when Bollyn’s two-hour talk was due to end. Some protesters entered the Commons, and they were violently shoved out by Bollyn’s security thugs. The cops quickly separated everyone, took statements, including one from a visibly shaken Melissa Ennen, and stationed themselves by the entrance, whereas before they had been casually milling around. “Make a hole!” one bellowed. Legally, we are allowed to stay on the sidewalk so long as there is an accessible path to the building, and an accessible path past us. We have to keep half the sidewalk clear. Herding protesters is much like herding cats except more so, so it took us a few minutes.

The cops remained present for the rest of the evening. It wasn’t a big deal, but we didn’t want them there. Some of us were anti-police as part of our politics. On a more practical side of things, the police being present increased the chances of one or more of us being arrested, something I was keen to avoid. Police can arrest you even if you aren’t breaking the law. Later in the evening, they did just that, when one protester named Joel swore at an officer. (I, and most of the protesters, had quit the scene before this.) Swearing at police is not against the law, but he was taken into custody anyway, and later released at just before 2 a.m.

A few times, Rudy Dent came out to engage with the crowd, pushing past the huge, almost comically intimidating body guard he had placed at the door. Speaking to a reporter, he said “Everyone here [gesturing to the protesters] has pre-conceived ideas that are not true,“ he said. “What I see here is big signs with hatred… based on fallacies and fictition [sic].” Our signs read “Bigots not welcome” and “Nazi scum fuck off.”

Brendan O’Connor, a reporter from Jezebel, asked me why I didn’t plan for us all to go inside and challenge Bollyn and Dent head on. Entry fee was $10, and as I told him, “I’m not giving money to a fucking Nazi.” But I also didn’t want us to be in violation of trespassing. Even if we all paid the entry fee, as soon as Ennen or her employees told us to vacate, refusal to comply would put us in violation of the law. We could easily be arrested. I thought it best to avoid such an easy trap.

Ennen seems to be unwilling to come to terms with the fact that her actions have consequences. She moaned to O’Connor that her friends had abandoned her and that she was “under attack” because she “refuses to censor” and “stands by freedom of speech.” She seemed focused on the fact that “not all Jews are Zionists,” as if that is at all relevant to a white supremacist relying on tropes copied from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, blaming 9/11, the War on Terror, and a whole mess of ills on the “Zionist cabal” that controls the United States. Listening to the recording of his interview with her, I was utterly unimpressed. Not only are comparisons of neo-Nazis to Tea-Party platforms ridiculous, it’s disingenuous. Genocide denial and incitement to violence are worlds away from shitty politics. It isn’t in the same universe. “He definitely goes overboard,” Ennen said of Bollyn. And that’s as far as she is willing to go, flat out denying his easily-found and documented antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

“If they want to ….they can come in and ask in the Q and A!” she said of us protesting outside. “But they won’t come in.”

“But they won’t let people come in,” O’Connor reminds her. She contradicts him. He doesn’t point out the violent ejection of those who were within who dared to challenge… or even enter the space.

Moreover, Ennen seems not have learnt the basic lesson that friendship requires commitment, honour, and integrity. Above all, it requires work. “She told me she can’t be my friend anymore,” she said, speaking of a JFREJ member protesting with us outside. “It makes me very sad, this disagreement with my friends, who are no longer my friends… I find it astonishing.” But if Ennen wanted to keep her Jewish and progressive friends, she shouldn’t have given a platform to a pair of wildly racist antisemitic bigots. If Ennen wanted people not to divest from the Brooklyn Commons, she should have done basic due diligence and quickly Googled who it was who was renting the space – and I do not believe her when she says that she didn’t know. It is my opinion that that is a cowardly lie, and a shockingly irresponsible one at that. But pretending that she is honest, she was still made to know by many people, so many that they crashed her servers through emailing. And having been made to know, she could have and should have taken responsibility. She did not. It might seem like a no-brainer, but to Ennen, cloaked in entitlement, privilege, and willful ignorance, was a rude shock. Too bad.

It is clear that without a sincere apology and some serious self-reflection and deep structural changes, the Brooklyn Commons is no place for us to gather. By us, I do not just mean Jews, or Liberals, or Progressives. I mean any person possessing of decent moral fiber.

Bollyn and Dent are entitled, under the First Amendment, to spout whatever gutter filth they please. That does not mean we are obligated to give them a platform – or support those who do.

Photo credits Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Why We Protested Brooklyn Commons appeared first on Jewcy.

In case you missed it, Brooklyn Commons, a space for progressive community gatherings, is hosting an anti-Semitic writer and speaker tonight.

Christopher Bollyn is a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist, a 9/11 truther whose thumbtacks-tied-to-string ideas frequently blame “Jewish Zionists” for the 2001 attacks and continuing ills of the world.  In response to the controversy of his current speaking tour, many places that originally booked him have cancelled their event.

Not so Brookyln Commons.

The Commons responded with a laughable response letter, about how they couldn’t possibly have time to research all their speakers, how the Commons is so dedicated to fighting bigotry in all forms, and most bafflingly, but that how inviting someone like Bollyn is good because it helps “get to the root of racist thinking.”

This is obviously not satisfactory, and if you’re interested in going to the event tonight in protest, you can join an independent group currently organizing to attend the event, either to picket outside or cause disruption inside.

The information is all on Facebook, but here is some information it contains:

• To get inside (assuming you’re not just staying outside to protest) it costs $10.
• Any signs being brought cannot use a wooden pole or stick.
• Although Bollyn has a history of working with major White Power publications, the person introducing his talk is a black anti-Semite named Rudy Dent. Because of the “optics” of calling someone a neo-Nazi in public when they are appearing alongside people of different backgrounds, it could be a little tricky.
• If you plan to go inside, the use of whistles and noisemakers is rather effective.
• The address is 338 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

You can coordinate with protest organizers here.

See you there?

Image via BKReader

The post Tonight: Protest an Anti-Semite appeared first on Jewcy.