Rampant Celebrity Anti-Semitism

Earlier this week, my friend Rabbi Jason Miller wrote up some interesting thoughts about the seeming rise in celebrity anti-Semitism. This comes as a response to the recent episodes involving Charlie Sheen, John Galliano, and Julian Assange … and to the on-going problem that Glenn Beck seems to have with Judaism.

He concludes as follows:

Are anti-Semitic comments on the rise? I don’t think so. Rather, there has been a trend of high-profile individuals making anti-Semitic statements. It’s entirely possible that these hate-filled tirades reveal the true sentiments of these celebrities. Hopefully, they will apologize for their outbursts and be more dignified and sane in the future.

As regular Running Chicken readers know, I’ve been thinking about anti-Semitism of late and I’ve been writing about it more than I normally would. This is the case, in part, because I keep getting messages from thoughtful bloggers about their own perceptions of the casual anti-Semitism that seems to exist on a social networking platform like Tumblr.

As such, I thought I should probably spend a few minutes writing about Miller’s conclusion because it struck me as being not quite right. That is, I’m not entirely convinced either that we’re seeing the same amount of anti-Semitism that we’ve always seen or that we’re seeing a trend of celebrity anti-Semitism.

What I want to suggest is that overt anti-Semitism — the sort where someone praises Hitler or claims that there’s a Jewish cabal that controls the media or politics or the global economy — remains at the same level we’ve seen for quite some time now. Strangely, this tends to be the sort of thing we see whenever there’s a celebrity meltdown … but we’re seeing more of it because — with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like — we’re seeing much more of these celebrities than we ought to be seeing.

But, while overt anti-Semitism is neither waxing nor waning, it also seems to me that what I’ve taken to calling casual anti-Semitism is on the rise. When I refer to casual anti-Semitism, I’m thinking especially about the following:

1. Conflation of Jews around the world with the Israeli government and condemning the former for the policy choices of the latter;
2. Disproportionate condemnation of the Israeli government for its policies when compared with any other country or group;
3. Winking at overt anti-Semitic tropes rather than challenging them as one would almost certainly do with racist or sexist tropes.

There is no doubt in my mind that I’m seeing more casual anti-Semitism, especially amongst American and European progressives under the age of thirty. This is a group that, by and large, will condemn racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, Islamophobia — and so on — but fails to offer any challenge to the casually anti-Semitic trope that, for example, the Jews control America’s foreign policy. It’s also a group that actively condemns the Israeli government for its treatment of Palestinians (in some of the most vitriolic language) while ignoring or even excusing abuses by Hamas — for example — against Palestinians.

Now, like the above examples of celebrity anti-Semitism, casual anti-Semitism might be holding constant while technology is bringing more of it to me. But I want to argue is that this isn’t the case, especially when you consider that anti-Semitism can be measured — using surveys or by counting incidents, for example — and that, by both of those measures, anti-Semitic beliefs and incidents have been on the rise in America and Europe of late.

As I’ve argued before — and as some of the data suggests — a lot of the rise of casual anti-Semitism can almost certainly be attributed to policy decisions of the Israeli government … most notably Operation Cast Lead. But while we can expect criticism of any government’s policies, especially if those policies cause serious harm, we ought to insist that anti-Semitism has no place in our debates and discussions. Just as we do with racism, sexism, or anything else we find objectionable, we ought to be quick to call to account those who engage in either overt or casual anti-Semitism.