On this day in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by the U.S. government for conspiracy to commit espionage during the Cold War. Artist Adrian Piper responded to this moment of fear in American history with Xenophobia I: Anti-Semitism (1987) in the Jewish Museum collection.
“Xenophobia I: Anti-Semitism challenges us to scrutinize ourselves in the act of xenophobic rejection, and simultaneously the rationalizations we invoke to defend ourselves against the truth of our actions. The Rosenberg case focused inward the fears of Communist contamination and infiltration generated by the Cold War and the Army-McCarthy hearings. We used the Rosenbergs to transform our fear of an alien other invading us from outside into fear of one another, alienating ourselves from the suspected invader within us: the idea of sharing, trust, and mutual solidarity."—Adrian Piper, 1988
Not to cause offense, I love my jewish brothers and sisters, but what do you mean by survivors? I get the oppressors bit, even if I don’t agree with it. I have never heard of those arguments however. What did you survive besides Hitler, like a few other persued groups? If I may ask?
Antisemitism neither began nor ended with the Holocaust.
Here’s a quick primer, read it in its entirety before you downplay antisemitism again. It’s called “the oldest hatred” for a reason.
Also, don’t decenter the Jews from the Holocaust. Antisemitism is at the core of Nazi ideology. We weren’t “one of” the groups persecuted by Hitler. We were the primary group targeted. The only other group that was targeted for total annihilation by the Nazis were Romani people. Two out of every three Jews in Europe were murdered. 6 million.
also, a note: I notice Europeans both here and elsewhere, talk awfully, gallingly authoritatively about Jewish experiences and antisemitism. I know a lot of you have never met Jews because your great-grandparents murdered most of the ones who would have been in your communities, so you’re not used to talking about Jews in front of Jews, so you can talk about us like you’re experts and we’re a museum exhibition, but we do in fact still exist and you can’t pull that shit here.
Anyone who seeks to defeat Trumpism should be extremely disturbed by U.S. and Israeli collaboration. Israel provides a model for the state that Trump wants to create: one forged in violent racial segregation, militarized policing, and white nationalist propaganda. … Now more than ever, we cannot cede the battle against anti-Semitism to Israel.
The emerging opposition to Trumpism has rightly focused on the groups facing the most dire, most violent threats–people facing deportation, exclusion, and mob assault. Within this logic, antisemitism remains a powerful ideological trope that the now-mainstreamed far Right has projected onto its authoritarian platform. From the announcement of Trump’s campaign in June 2015, it was clear that his worldview was shaped by far right conspiracy thinking, in which antisemitism is never far removed: the notion that “Mexico sends their people” is a foolish framing of why and how migration happens. Yet it reveals the antisemitic structure of Trumpian racial logic.
Put simply, Trump’s antisemitism is not primarily about Jews. Rather, the antisemitism functions as a structuring apparatus for his racist political outlook. By antisemitism, I mean a right-wing populist ideological framework that is 1) steeped in conspiracy thinking 2) premised on a misplaced anti-elitism against a secretive, racialized cabal that 3) can only be understood in crude, patriarchal nationalist terms. This kind of antisemitism is evident in Steve Bannon’s recent claim that he is not a “white nationalist” but rather an “economic nationalist.” Antisemitism here combines the neoconservative desire for U.S. militarism to fight a global “clash of civilizations” with late-19thcentury tribalist race thinking under the banner of capitalist accumulation. As the independent scholar Chip Berlet wrote in 2012, antisemitism is a racializing logic that, since 9/11, has applied as much to Muslims as to Jews. Whether it is Mexico “sending their people,” Hillary Clinton’s “secret [meetings] with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty” (yes, he said that), or a host of other paranoid utterances by the now president-elect, Trump’s worldview is antisemitic. He understands geopolitics as a series of conspiracies that need to be met with violence. Race is his shorthand for describing whether someone is an agent of a global conspiracy or its victim.
There would be 32 million jews in this world (versus 13 million today) had it not been for the holocaust.
Tumblr talks a lot about racism, but antisemitism is often forgotten in favor of “OMg IsRael”, but Jews suffer some of the greatest effects of racism despite making up so little of the population.
hey if a Jewish person tells you something is antisemitic, you should fucking listen to them. the antisemitism on this website is out of control and y'all let it go unchecked all the time
It’s really frustrating seeing Nazis, swastikas and antisemitism being legal in the US and other countries.
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I witnessed the hole “the cw is antisemitic for not hiring a Jewish actress as batwoman” like chill… you clearly don’t know what antisemitism is.
Have you even heard of WW2? How terrible the holocaust was? How everyone that was Jewish got hunted down and every family had to hide in attics or cellars? How Hitler portrayed Jews as ballast to the people? How children got indoctrinated by his ideals? How it was legal to put those ideals in children books, radio programs, schools etc.?
This is antisemitism!
I was born and raised in Austria and am still here. I learned about the second world war since I got in primary school. I am in my last year now. We still read protocols, diaries, reports, listen to survivors, watch documentations, discuss pictures, discuss how it came to that situation and even went to an ex - KZ in upper austria to learn more about it.
Now this wasn’t just this year. We did that EVERY year. And not just my generation.
WW2 is a part of our history. One that we’re not proud of. One that is terrifyingandterrible. And this part got silences till the 60s-70s .
Since then children - young children - learn about it and discuss the hate and antisemitism. It’s not just my generation.
The swastika, Nazi salute, active antisemitism etc. is illegal in Austria and Germany and gets censored on media. We don’t even say words like“Hitler”or“Nazi” in public and whisper when we’re doing it. And it’s really sad to see it happen elsewhere.
It’s really sad to see someone accusing a network as antisemitic and Nazis because it didn’t hire a Jewish actress - just because her character is Jewish.
I guess most of the complainers where Jewish themself. Well, you should know better. That was not antisemitic. That was a casting for a role. It’s their job to play someone their not. It’s not like with skin colour, where you can tell when someone’s not black. And when you believe that, than concrats! You’re stereotyping (yourself)!
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Now I asked someone who posted a complaint, why the cw was antisemitic. And they said exactly that.
I told them, why I think it’s not antisemitic and was accused of being one. I was told that I should educate myself.
But friends. I am educated. I am. I learning about it since primary school.
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Fazit:
Don’t compare everything non-jewish to Nazis. WW2 was terrible. Don’t do that.
You being Austrian gentile doesn’t give you the right to educate Jews on what is or isn’t actually antisemitism what the fuc-
this.. i dont….
I- hm……
hi im a goy and im gonna need you shut this bullshit up chief. if ur not gonna listen to the actual Jewish people about what is anti-semitism and what is not then listen to another goy when they tell u that ur opinion is BULLSHIT and that u need to shut the fuck up. why can’t u listen to the people who have actual experiences with this just because you read a fucking book doesn’t mean u know what oppression is like.
“We realize that some people who happen to be Jewish and who support Israel will use the Black Panther Party’s position that is against imperialism and against the agents of the imperialist as an attack of anti-Semitism. We think that is a backbiting racist underhanded tactic and we will treat it as such. We have respect for all people, and we have respect for the right of any people to exist. So we want the Palestinian people and the Jewish people to live in harmony together. We support the Palestinian’s just struggle for liberation one hundred percent. We will go on doing this, and we would like for all of the progressive people of the world to join our ranks in order to make a world in which all people can live.” (On the Middle East, Huey Newton)
The Catholic Jewish Fetus Who Learned Torah With An Angel
“I recently learned that my mother’s mother’s mother was Jewish,” she wrote in her email. Apparently Cynthia’s grandmother had converted to Catholicism before World War II as anti-Semitism was rising. (Her great-grandmother had perished in the Holocaust.) Cynthia understood that although she was raised Catholic, according to Jewish law, she was considered a Jew.Despite not being particularly close to her mother or grandmother, Cynthia explained how she had been inexplicably drawn to her Jewish heritage ever since she discovered it…
Announcing Jew in the City’s 2014 Orthodox Jewish All Stars!!
“In 2012, when we created this award, we focused on shattering people’s misconceptions about Orthodox Jews and what they could accomplish professionally. Last year, when Chanukah historically intersected with Thanksgiving, we celebrated the religious freedoms that exist in the world today which allow people of all faiths to excel in a variety of career paths,” said Allison Josephs, Jew in the City founder and director.
“This year, our message is our most crucial one yet: With anti-Semitic attacks on the rise across the globe, we are celebrating ten individuals who proudly observe Jewish traditions as they’ve soared to the tops of their fields.”
As a child, I had a recurring dream that I was in the Holocaust. Twenty-five years later, much of it is hazy, except for the intense fear of trying to escape from pursuers who considered it a crime to be Jewish. I wondered if this was a common thing. “Do you think most Jews have ‘the Holocaust nightmare?’” I asked my husband the other night.
“Dunno,” he said, “I never did.”
“Oh,” I responded. “I guess it was just me.”
“My nightmares were about the Spanish Inquisition,” he interjected.
We both burst out laughing. (Laughter is the best medicine.)
Although I’m feeling more and more unease as I witness the rise of anti-Semitism around the world, there is something else I find myself feeling: comfort. Believe me, I too am baffled and even embarrassed by this emotion. Then again, maybe it’s not so hard to understand.
I saw this ad for American Apparel on my way to the subway today (sorry for the poor photo quality!). It’s using Hebrew letters to sell children’s clothes for American Apparel, a company that absolutely nothing to do with Judaism. It’s weird because the ad uses actual letters from a different language as some kind of “font,” so that Hebrew is reduced to an aesthetic choice made by the marketing department and stripped of its very real connection to any language/religion/cultures.
Oddly, this reference to Hebrew/Judaism doesn’t really seem to relate to the image at all. But I’m still trying to put my finger on just what bothers me. Is it appropriation of the Hebrew language? Is it the exoticizing of Hebrew, and by extension of Judaism itself? What do you think?
A big problem I and many other Jews have is, with whom can we safely and ethically ally? I cannot ally with Islamist, chauvinist or otherwise autocratic forces in the Arab world and pretend that they are a meaningful part of the global left. I cannot pretend that Iran or Hamas or Saudi Arabia is more “entitled” to ethnocracy or human rights violations because its citizens are Arab and not Jews. I cannot ally with Western individuals or organizations who are anti-Semitic, who believe that Jews have no right as a collectivity, or who participate in revisionist history (naively or otherwise).
Is the Israeli left as strong as it could be? No, certainly not. Nor is it strong in the Western countries (certainly not in the United States) or the Arab world. But it seems to me a complete myth that principled Israelis are non-existent and that anyone who tries to speak out is punished in some kind of Stalinist government program. The huge numbers of “dissident” Israeli academics/journalists, along with the prominence of publications like Ha’aretz and +972 indicate otherwise. Personally, I know many people who have travelled to work in “peacemaking” or human rights organizations in Israel, or who have gone on interfaith “reverse birthrights.” What other middle eastern country would tolerate this and, indeed, support a whole economy of foreign NGOs, activist journalist, and peacemaker Christians? Would America tolerate a flood of foreigners who came for no other reason than to expose the treatment of Black Americans or migrant farm workers? Would Belgium? Would Qatar?
In some ways, Israel’s right-wing or tribal tendencies are not actually colonialist imports but reflect the values of its neighbors. Israel is surrounded by autocratic, dueling ethnic groups and the lesson of the contemporary Middle East is, surround yourself with your own kind or you’re fucked. Leftists talk about how Israel needs to be “re-indigenized” to be acceptable to them. What if “re-indigenizing” means becoming more tribal and autocratic?
Information about Israel is presented to us with a narrative already built in. That narrative could not have higher stakes. Whatever Israelis do that is wrong is proof not that they need to be corrected, but that they need to be destroyed. This is an impossible situation. Look at the outcry the UK and the US have faced for “bombing Syria,” a country in far worse shape than Israel. Look at the forgiveness shown to Germany and Japan (and the acceptance that the Allied forces committed atrocities, too). Israel is not a metaphor. It’s dangerous to treat it like one.
