Racism and Antisemitism

11-10-2018

Racism and Antisemitism

Antisemitism has suddenly inserted itself into the questions of privilege and racism in the wake of the marches in Charlottesville and the attacks in Pittsburgh. What is not often recognized, however, is that White nationalist groups in the United States are founded upon an antisemitic ideology. Few have made this point more clearly than Eric Ward, who has spent years studying and infiltrating White nationalist groups. Ward notes in an understatement, that “Not a lot of Black folks show up at gatherings like the Preparedness Expo, one site in an extensive right-wing counterculture in which White nationalism is a constant, explosive presence.” He is deeply aware that as a Black man, he is viewed by White nationalists as subhuman, someone who should be excluded from the White nation they hope to build. But what Ward learned from his experiences with White nationalists is that their extreme racism is built upon a foundation of antisemitism.  

From the time I documented my first White nationalist rally in 1990 until today, the movement has made its way from the margins of American political life to its center, and I’ve moved from doing antiracist organizing in small northwestern communities to fighting for inclusive democracy on a national level, as the Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice program officer at the Ford Foundation until recently, and now as a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Yet if I had to give a basic definition of the movement—something I’ve often been asked to do, formally and informally, by folks who’ve spent less time hanging out with Nazis than I have—my response today would not be much different than it was when I began to do this work nearly thirty years ago. American White nationalism, which emerged in the wake of the 1960s civil rights struggle and descends from White supremacism, is a revolutionary social movement committed to building a Whites-only nation, and antisemitism forms its theoretical core. That last part—antisemitism forms the theoretical core of White nationalism— bears repeating. Let me explain.

The intricate links between antisemitism and racism were at the center of Hannah Arendt’s thinking about totalitarianism and imperialism. That connection is the subject of the Hannah Arendt Center’s 2019 Annual Conference “Racism and Antisemitism” on October 10-11, 2019. Save the Date.

Form more information visit: https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/skin-in-the-game-how-antisemitism-animates-white-nationalism/

Checking Privilege

Robert Boyers interviews Phoebe Maltz Bovy about her book The Perils of Privilege. Boyers begins by citing Bovy’s argument that privilege is a malleable concept so that pretty much anyone can be called privileged in some context. He asks, what is the point of continuing to use the term privilege given the lack of specificity? Bovy answers:

The concept of privilege took hold in part because of the term’s malleability. That is, it’s a way of suggesting that your opponent is aloof, oblivious, and insensitive on some profound level rooted in their experience. And I use the word “suggesting” intentionally – a privilege-check doesn’t have to line up with reality. Many privilege call-outs involve one well-off white person calling out the privilege of another, but doing so in a way that discreetly obscures the accuser’s own (identical) identity categories. If privilege call-outs were simply about marginalized people alerting the not-marginalized (in whichever area) to their experiences, then it would be easy enough to support this. But that’s not how privilege discourse always plays out. It’s very often about privileged people finding rhetorical ways of portraying themselves as underdogs.

To which Boyers responds:

Not so sure I agree that it would be easy enough to support this if those call outs were aimed at the “not marginalized” by the “marginalized.” In the first place, don’t you mistrust those very terms, “marginalized” and “not marginalized”? After all, they derive from a time when attention was rarely paid to the kinds of injustices now central to the American conversation. Though we can surely agree that race relations are not where we want them to be, and that white supremacy in particular has unmistakably reared its very ugly head in this first year of the Trump presidency, and that we have a long way to go to reverse the systemic inequality that has long been a feature of American life, the notion that black people are “marginalized” seems to me somewhat misleading. Beyond that, I’m not sure that privilege call outs can conceivably affect the situation in a beneficial way, and I suspect that they are mainly apt to stir self-righteousness in the callers, and bitter resentment in those on the receiving end. More, they encourage the callers to feel that there is no need to make important distinctions as regards privilege—that is, as regards degrees of privilege, and efforts on the part of those who are privileged to use their privilege in salutary ways. The privilege call out is in this sense what I would call a blunt instrument, and I see no reason to suppose that it would be otherwise if the callers were mainly what you call marginalized people.

Form more information visit: https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/88-on-privilege

Cynicism Unbound

The Trump administration is marked not by ideology but by unrepentant cynicism. Nothing exhibits this more clearly than the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Bret Stephens makes clear just how corrosive Whitaker’s appointment actually is.

Of all the ways in which Donald Trump’s presidency has made America worse, nothing epitomizes it quite so fully as the elevation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States. Intellectually honest conservatives — the six or seven who remain, at any rate — need to say this, loudly. His appointment represents an unprecedented assault on the integrity and reputation of the Justice Department, the advice and consent function of the Senate, and the rule of law in the United States.

Form more information visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/opinion/trump-whitaker-attorney-general-appointment.html