A Facebook friend’s post:
My 11 year old’s Jewish school was the latest to receive a threat today. Classes were evacuated. I hold Trump accountable for this rise of anti-semitism. This presidency is a complete disaster.
Note that if the threat was made locally, it is statistically unlikely to have been made by a Trump supporter due to the relative lack of Trump enthusiasts in the Boston area. Of course, statistics are not as important as feelings and therefore nobody on Facebook pointed out that the threat against the school was possibly unrelated to the Trumpenfuhrer. Suggestions to emigrate to Canada were made, in response to which a Canadian noted “No better here Jewish community centre in Toronto was evacuated today. Threatening phone call!” Trump has spread hatred over an entire continent, apparently.
Here’s a recent Costco purchase that I hope will help our family pass as Christian:
(If it doesn’t work, I vow to buy and consume another package every day until the hatred stops. No sacrifice is too great.)
Separately, I wonder if I can blame Trump for my jokes falling flat. At a dinner with some MIT grads/students the other night, the following occurred.
- Kid from South Dakota orders sweet and sour chicken.
- Me: Elaborate questioning of the Royal East waiter regarding what was in sweet and sour chicken, was the dish too spicy for non-Chinese, was it maybe a little too adventurous? Did they have any dishes that were more friendly to Western palates?
- 35-year-old guy who belongs to a Conservative synagogue: “I want to be introduced to a Nice Jewish Girl”
- Me: “So she doesn’t have to be a full-fledged Jew? Only Jew-ish?”
- Kid who grew up in South Dakota, buffered by miles of cornfields from any Jews: laughter.
- 35-year-old guy, totally stone-faced: “What do you mean?”
Related:
@philg: Are you claiming that Trump’s campaign and election hasn’t energized Jew haters and racists?
“was the dish too spicy for non-Chinese, was it maybe a little too adventurous?”
Grumble, grumble.
Judging by their online menu, all their dishes were for non-Chinese. They just added a few Chinese characters for decoration.
Neal: If Donald Trump is responsible for all of the anonymous phone calls to U.S. numbers I do wish he would stop calling us about the possibility of adding solar panels to our roof and also that he would stop seeking to share important news about our current credit card bill.
M: I did not choose the venue, but Royal East has been a staple of MIT nerdism for decades.
@philg: When candidate Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and called illegal immigrants “sent” by Mexico “rapists” he smeared groups of people based on their religion, race, or ethnicity with the clear implication that it is OK to hate groups of people on that basis. Naturally, people who harbor such hatreds (against those or different groups) and felt oppressed by society’s (recent) inclination to find such hatreds abhorrent were energized by his words. Even if this was completely unintentional (which I don’t concede), it is appropriate to hold now President Trump accountable for the readily foreseeable consequences of his words (even if we can’t blame him for calls about the possibility of adding solar panels to our roof).
Mr. Juan Thomas is responsible for at least six of the threats against Jewish institutions. Statistically, he’s certainly not a supporter of Pres. Trump.
NYT, 03/03/17 – Ex-Reporter Charged With Making Bomb Threats Against Jewish Sites
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/nyregion/jewish-centers-bomb-threats-arrest.html
A former reporter for a news website was charged on Friday with making more than a half-dozen bomb threats against Jewish community centers, schools and a Jewish history museum, federal authorities said.
The man, Juan Thompson, 31, of St. Louis, made some of the threats using his own name and others implicating a former girlfriend as part of an effort to intimidate her, the authorities said in a federal complaint unsealed on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan…
Trump is totally responsible. These “threats” are all from hysterical Jews trying to prove a point. I heard audio of one of these phone threats a few days ago and it was laugh out loud hilarious how obviously the caller was from a part of Brooklyn.
Neal: It sounds as though you are personally acquainted with the folks who have been making phone calls. If they have disclosed to you their motivations then you know more than I do and it wouldn’t make sense for me to offer my own uninformed conjectures.
@philg: I don’t know any more about who is behind specific phone calls than you. Are you claiming that Trump’s campaign and election hasn’t energized Jew haters and racists?
Neal: I hope that I don’t have a lot of friends who are “Jew haters and racists” so I wouldn’t presume to offer an opinion as to what might energize what I hope is a small subgroup within the U.S. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan gives a range of estimates of Klan membership of 3,000 to 6,000)
Israel is the usual whipping-boy for Jew-haters (since it is more respectable in middle class American society to express hatred or condemnation of Israel than to express hatred of Jews). Has Donald Trump said a lot of negative things about Israel or Israelis? If so, maybe that would have some effect on Jew-hatred in the U.S.
@philg: Your aloofness is incredibly short-sighted. Obviously, Emperor Trump isn’t personally making phone calls to threaten Jewish institutions. There’s been a rise in white-nationalist and anti-ethnic rhetoric since the election with Trump and his bootlicking yes-men riding the momentum. You cannot deny that this hasn’t empowered a vocal minority of mouth breathers and exposed the seedy underbelly of America which most people hoped had vanished.
I’ve often wondered if your “Facebook Friends” read your blog and if the passive-aggressive disdain you express is just part of y’alls fun dynamic? Maybe I’ve missed it and you’ve become the latest to delve into the high-stakes/high-return world of political trolling? I can’t tell anymore.
Brytebort: “There’s been a rise in white-nationalist and anti-ethnic rhetoric”
How do we know this? Does the NSA have microphones in every American home? Well, actually maybe they do! But are they publishing a statistical summary of white-nationalist and anti-Jewish rhetoric? If not, how would anyone know whether or not there has been the “rise” you cite?
@philg: The Klan is small, but the number of people with racial animus is large enough to have a visible effect on Uber wait times for example. Even here in the liberal bay area, several people have mentioned to me that since the election they have (for the first time in years) experienced incidents they attributed to racial hostility.
As far as I know, Trump has not said anything negative about Jews (at least for the last few decades). I don’t see how this is relevant to my point. He helped to uncork the bottle and then the genie goes where it goes.
Also, I do not agree that all criticism of Israel is born from Jew hatred.
Neal: I am completely uneducated about Trump effect on Uber wait time, but I am intrigued. Could you elaborate more? By your logic you can accuse Democrats, for example Sanders supporters, in increase of anti-Semitism because Trump was vying for this segment of Democratic vote.
@dean: I didn’t mean to say that Trump had an effect on Uber wait time. In comment #9, @philg stated he hoped that Jew haters and racists were a “small subgroup within the U.S.” and presented a link to an article on the Klan as supporting evidence. My point was the subgroup of people with some degree of racial animus is in fact large enough to make uber wait times for blacks significantly longer than those for whites. If racism were limited to a few thousand Klansman I would not expect to see that effect.
@Neal
“I don’t know any more about who is behind specific phone calls than you.”
I am genuinely puzzled by this statement. You have no evidence whatsoever about the number of “Jew hater” calls pre-/during Trump era from a reliable source, about who is behind the calls (except maybe Mr. Juan Thomas’ calls), no evidence as to whether the purported increase is causally related to Mr. Trump rhetoric, and yet you insist that “Trump’s campaign and election [has] energized Jew haters”.
An honest answer to whether “Trump’s campaign energized Jew haters” would be “I don’t know”, but apparently both you and Mr. brytebort possess what used to be called “proletarian gut feeling” and do not really need any factual evidence, you just know it must be so because you say so.
The Uber argument is not even ridiculous but rather sad, too.
Your statistical argument is wrong. Just because there is a higher percentage of democrats in MA does not infer that the instigator is not a Trump supporter. Non democrats of MA supported Trump in higher percentages than other NE states.
Rather than bad stats, here is directl evidence that Trump has energized white supremists: they said so themselves http://www.advocate.com/election/2016/11/22/chilling-video-shows-white-power-rally-celebrating-trump
@Neal re: post #1
Do you feel that Obama’s actions as president (saying Trayvon martin could have been his son, taking Michael Brown’s side before the autopsy revealed he was the aggressor), stirred up anti-police feeling? (eventually energizing the crazier Black Lives Matter supporters enough that they murdered several police officers?)
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/19/remarks-president-trayvon-martin
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/28/obama-says-michael-browns-death-in-ferguson-stains/
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/blacklivesmatter-kill-list-least-11-cops-shot-dead-9-wounded-blm-criminals/
MA gives Trump largest margin of victory up to that point in the primaries
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/03/01/massachusetts-primary-trump-clinton/81158698/
And I wanted to discuss sweet and sour chicken in post #2. Chicken is less controversial. As long as we steer away of who was the wold’s worst murderer: General Tso or Colonel Sanders.
Yes, we have found that one guy who was inspired by Trump. And similarly, Hinckley was inspired by Jody Foster.
It makes no sense to have an argument about emotions.
More direct evidence that white supremacists are energized by Trump
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/20/502719871/energized-by-trumps-win-white-nationalists-gather-to-change-the-world
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/70541105d2f149cc9b7b6951d8a13e7a/energized-white-supremacists-cheer-trump-convention-message
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-david-duke-20160928-snap-story.html
http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/23/trump-im-not-looking-to-energize-white-nationalist-supporters/
@Ivan: I agree it is sad that there is still significant racial discrimination in the U.S. as evidenced by the difference between Uber wait times between blacks and whites.
It is easy to determine if racists and Jew haters were energized by Trump’s rhetoric. Just ask them. People have, and they were. Now this is in fact just a “small subgroup”, but it is reasonable to think that something similar occurred among, for example, the larger group of Uber drivers who won’t pick up black people.
It is true that it is difficult to know how much of the apparent increase in “incidents” is due to an actual increase versus increased attention. However, this doesn’t mean there is no evidence. Jewish, minority, and women celebrities and journalists have all reported an increase in online harassment/hate speech especially in response to their anti-Trump speech. While we don’t know the specific motivations for most of the current JCC bomb threat fad, it seems unlikely to be a sudden increase in love for the Jewish people.
To be clear, I am not claiming that the sky is falling. A small group of racist dead-enders has been energized and a larger group is slightly more willing to say or do things which were previously taboo. It isn’t going to change the arc of history, but President Trump’s contribution to this situation is clear and he should be held accountable for it.
Based on no Jewish Community Centers in rural Ohio receiving any threats (possibly due to large buffering corn and soybean fields), please consider it as an alternative to Canada.
“Also, I do not agree that all criticism of Israel is born from Jew hatred.”
Correct – leftist critics of Israel act only out of love for the Palestinian people and other pure and high motives and do not possess an ounce of hatred in their bodies. We can see from the Berkeley riots, the Middlebury College demonstrations, etc. that leftists are pure of heart and spirit and are incapable of hate. Leftist attempts to delegitimize not only the the State of Israel but individual Jewish professors, etc. have NOTHING at all to do with Jew hatred.
When Israel is criticized from the right, THAT is Jew hatred.
Trump is obviously not well disposed toward certain elements of the Democrat Party coalition (e.g. Latinos, Muslims) but seems to be quite fond of others (e.g. Jews such as Stephen Miller, women such as Kellyanne Conway, not to mention his family). But for purposes of maintaining Democrat Party solidarity, we must assume, despite the facts, that he hates ALL elements of the Democrat Party coalition. Otherwise he might peel off some key pieces of the coalition. Blacks, being the most loyal Democrat constituency, must not be allowed to notice that large scale immigration of low skilled labor has affected working class blacks as well as whites.
This is similar to the chanting that prevented Charles Murray from speaking at Middlebury. The demonstrators chanted ““Racist! Sexist! Anti-gay! Charles Murray, go away!” There is no record whatsoever of Charles Murray ever saying ANYTHING that could be construed as anti-gay no matter how you try to twist his words. But for purposes of creating solidarity (and rhyme), he was labeled as such. Donald Trump is “anti-Semitic” in the same way that Charles Murray is “anti-gay”.
@Neal
You still did not present any factual evidence, as in statistical evidence and an attendant well-reasoned causal inference that would corroborate your original claim that “Trump’s campaign energized Jew haters” .
Contrariwise, there’s some evidence (numerical, mind you) that the highest proportion of anti-semites can be found amongst African-American and first generation Hispanics (> 30%), hardly Trump’s electorate. The numbers translate to about 9% (out of the total anti-semitic population of 12%) being Latinos or African-American with the rest of 3% anti-semites being whites and asians.
http://forward.com/news/193011/abe-foxman-looks-back-at-changing-and-declining/?p=all#ixzz2todgoL00
A personal story amusing on many levels: my neighbor, a professor at a well-known local Boston liberal arts college and a defender of all persecuted, firmly advised me to, literally, “go back to my Putin and Russia” when she became unhappy about some neighborly issues. Doubly amusing in the context was the fact that I am not even Russian. Should I have inferred based on your suggested template (racial prejudice => anti-semitism) that Obama, the active president at the time, “energized anti-semites” ? If no, why not ?
>You still did not present any factual evidence,
>as in statistical evidence and an attendant
>well-reasoned causal inference that would
>corroborate your original claim that
>“Trump’s campaign energized Jew haters”
Why is statistical evidence necessary when you have their direct testimony?
>Should I have inferred based on your suggested
>template (racial prejudice => anti-semitism)
>that Obama, the active president at the time,
> “energized anti-semites” ? If no, why not ?
Obama never said anything like what Trump said during his campaign. See my comment #4.
There are two stripes of people complaining about Israel. The first is the leftist anti-colonial types. They hate Israel because they categorize it as a colonial/apartheid state oppressing natives. The consistent types of this sort also complain about the Chinese in Tibet and so forth. The second stripe are the people like me who don’t care about Israel’s activities per se, but have a huge problem with The Israel Lobby. America has absolutely zero national interest in this so-called “alliance” that is costing us billions and earning our hatred throughout the muslim world. We have to be frank that the situation must be blamed primarily on American Jews, who overwhelmingly support the status quo. They have successfully organized as a special interest and undermined democracy and divided their national loyalty to get us into this mess. Voicing this rather self-evident reality gets shrieks about anti-semitism.
Trump is obviously nowhere close to either of these perspectives and is annoyingly pro-Israel.
A lot of the Jews freaking about Trump recognize somewhat correctly that a lot of the energy behind him is from white people who are coming to realize they have interests as whites in this age of identity politics. Many Jews feel more comfortable in a highly multi-ethnic post-Christian America on the trend lines it has been following. They like mass immigration and a public sphere where Christianity is just one of many influences, in direct opposition to most whites. Many other Jews disagree and identify more strongly with the historic American nation.
If the Jews freaking about Trump could be honest about *why* they’re freaking out, I could respect them. It’s a perfectly understandable perspective. But instead of being honest they make crazy noises about racism and daft insinuations about nazis and the kkk, or tell ridiculous lies about Trump’s attitudes towards Israel.
@Ivan “statistical evidence and an attendant well-reasoned causal inference” is unnecessary when I have already provided five articles that cited white supremacists themselves claiming to be energized by Trump’s candidacy or presidency.
If a known felon says on the record that he is ready to commit a crime, there is no need for additional statistical evidence in order to prove that he is ready to commit a crime. He said so!
As you may be aware, there is no way to establish causal inference without a controlled experiment. Obviously, there is no experiment that can be morally performed here. So why are you asking for something that you can’t get when the facts are already at hand?
@David
“statistical evidence” “is unnecessary”
Ah, just the opposite — the numbers do matter. We have 3% of white/asian anti-semites to whom the afore-mentioned energized supremacists belong versus 9% of African-American/Latino anti-semites. Would one come to a conclusion a) 9% is more dangerous than 3% because 9>3; b) African-Americans/Lation anti-semites were energized by anti-Israel democratic rhetoric, hence Obama being a democrat is responsible for energizing non-white anti-semitic democratic electorate ?
Also, “statistical evidence” might have been necessary to lay foundation for a possible proof that anti-semitic energizing actually materialized post-election as in: before the elections we had N1 anti-semitic acts committed by those who voted for Trump and after the election we have non-negative increase, N2 post-election > N1 pre-election. However, since you admitted that you cannot establish causal relationship between Trump’s presidency and purported energizing, the evidence is not really needed because your line of reasoning is incoherent without such inference and can be reduced to mere “because I say/feel so”.
@Neal. I have a sneaky suspicion that any attempt at a reasonable dialog is not going to bear much fruit so I’ll bow out of any further discussion on any subject with you.
If N2 > N1, (or for that matter N2 < N1) no proof or causality can be made. Only an experiment can establish the causality you are asking for. If you are really trying to make a valid statistical argument, you should know this. So how can you ask for statistical evidence when it isn't possible to obtain in this circumstance? There is no such thing as laying the foundation for a possible proof with correlation.
If the question is "are white supremacists (and only white supremacists, not blacks, latinos, whatever) energized by Trump?" and then I go ask several self-admitted white supremacists for their feelings (not mine – theirs) and then they say on repeated occasions for the record "yes, I feel energized" then I have a satisfactory and unambiguous answer to the question.
Why is the question about white supremacists? So what? Is this just Talmudic sophistry? A lot of Israeli supremacists such as Netanyahu were quite energized about Trump. Why isn’t that the question?
I’m not worried about Netanyahu blowing up a US Jewish school or institution.
If antisemitism is going to get any traction, it sounds like the proposed immigration ban would be counterproductive
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Poll-90-percent-of-ME-views-Jews-unfavorably
The New York Times, NPR, LA Times, MSNBC all say there is a rise in anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric and behavior. That’s all I need to know.
@David
“There is no such thing as laying the foundation for a possible proof with correlation.”
On the contrary, establishing correlation is the usual first step in trying to discover causation. It’s an imperfect tool (e.g. in some borderline cases there may be causation without correlation), but that’s the best we have. (see Judea Pearl work on causality). Without numbers showing an increase in anti-semitic acts, your argument is entirely specious even before moving to establishing causality that you admitted you cannot establish anyway.
But for fun, let’s operate within confines of your numberless logic.
Obama energized Afro-American and Latinos to the extent that an overwhelming majority voted for him. Up to 10 times more anti-semites can be found amongst Afro-Americans and Latino voters than whites-asians-and-the-rest including Native Americans (see the earlier reference). Ergo, Obama energized his anti-semitic supporters by criticizing Israel on multiple occasions.
My neighbor who was energized by Obama to the extent of being his fundraiser at her place of work and putting pro-Obama and later pro-Hillary signs in her front yard committed an act act racism by uttering a racist statement in my address. Should not one blame Obama for her energizement resulting in anti-russianism and, by automatic extension, anti-semitism ?
Now, let’s consider the white-supremacist from your NPR reference allegedly energized by Trump’s victory (we do not have a transcript of his speech). Firstly, he might have been energized by many things like for example the promise of low taxes and not ability to express his alleged hatred of Jews — he could do that before thanks to the 1st Amendment. What’s more important he did not commit an actual anti-semitic act as my neighbor did or the Afro-American leftist who issued numerous bomb threats against synagogues.
As to Trump, he was nothing but friendly towards Jews in general and Israel in particular going as far as to promise to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem. He also explicitly disavowed any association with the white supremacist movement.
Would not you agree based on your own sort of logic that there’s much stronger case in favor of Obama’s energizing his electorate to commit anti-semitic acts than for Trump’s supporters to do the same ?
@ivan I have a sneaky suspicion that any attempt at a reasonable dialog is not going to bear much fruit so I’ll bow out of any further discussion on any subject with you.
I think the comments above and the nearly 100 enraged replies that an analogous posting gathered on Facebook (plus the obligatory defriending by a few passionate Trump-haters) show that one of the most serious thoughtcrimes that an American can commit is questioning someone’s status as a victim or mocking our culture of victimhood (see https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/ ).
However, I also think that the above comments show that American Jews may not be doing themselves any favors by adopting victim status. To the extent that there are Americans angry about Jews having high incomes, powerful jobs, etc., the spectacle of Jews saying “we are helpless victims” is going to further enrage them in the same way that a male Walmart cashier would be enraged at seeing a female Goldman Sachs partner in her pussy hat protesting male oppression.
(Note that all of the statistics on Jewish income and positions are heavily distorted by the high median age of American Jews. See http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-2-intermarriage-and-other-demographics/ for how the median age of American Jews is 50 and http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/04/20/the-nations-latino-population-is-defined-by-its-youth/ for how the median age of Latinos in the U.S. is 18. A 50-year-old is more likely to be a medical doctor than an 18-year-old. A 50-year-old is more likely to earn a good salary than an 18-year-old.)
Who is saying “we are helpless victims?” I don’t feel like a victim but I do feel threatened and will fight back by any legal means at my disposal. That is not a victim mentality.
What is your recommended course of action in the face of threats to you, your family or your community?
David: I haven’t experienced any threats so I haven’t come up with a plan! Nearly 20 years ago I visited a friend in Lexington, Massachusetts who had a cache of AR-15s in the basement. The invasion that he was prepared to repel turned out to be Chinese-Americans PhDs filling up the schools with kids who knew more than the teachers. Reflecting on that, I don’t feel deprived because I don’t have any AR-15s (though I do wish that we had a basement!).
@philg: I agree that “American Jews may not be doing themselves any favors” by “saying we are helpless victims”. I’m going to assume that particular comment was not directed at me since I don’t see how anything I said in this thread could be interpreted as describing myself or anyone else as a “helpless victim”. If you understand my comments differently please explain. I do not see myself (or others) as a “helpless victim” and do not want to come off that way when discussing this issue. Personally, I don’t see a lot of people saying “we are helpless victims”, but my Facebook feed seems to be quite different than yours.
If your intention was to mock the “culture of victimhood” described in that Atlantic article I think the posting is a non-sequitur or at least way to subtle. I don’t see how telling Muslim Americans they shouldn’t be readmitted to the US if they travel abroad or phoning in a bomb threat to a JCC could be considered “microaggressions”. I’m not disputing the premise of the Atlantic article or criticising your desire to mock it (although mockery is not a particularly good way to convince others to change their minds about something); I am only saying I don’t see how it applies to the topic we are discussing in this thread.
>As to Trump, he was nothing but friendly
>towards Jews in general and Israel in particular
Americans who hate “The Muslims” and “The illegals” are also likely to hate “The Blacks” and “The Jews”. Making it more acceptable to hate one group (see my comment #4) is likely to have the effect of increasing hatred for all of them. Not that it matters who the target is anyway.
Neal: I hope that I wouldn’t violate my own comment policy by characterizing what you were saying instead of letting you speak for yourself. (Also I had no idea that you identified as “Jewish”.) It was more about the celebration of Jewish victimhood in the media. Here’s an example:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/03/07/jewish-bomb-threats-anti-semitism-column/98847960/
“What is it like to receive a text message notifying you of bomb threat at your child’s preschool at 6:40 in the morning?”
The suffering of receiving this text message, in a world of more than 7 billion people who have various challenges, now makes the author’s victimhood sufficiently newsworthy for a story in a national newspaper (one that said the U.S. would collapse into a race war if Donald Trump were elected: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/09/29/dont-vote-for-donald-trump-editorial-board-editorials-debates/91295020/ )
[And if what you want to do is discourage bomb threats that are purportedly from people who want to make Jews suffer, why would you run an article on the acute suffering of Jews who receive these bomb threats?]
And here’s one about the “notorious anti-Semite” Steve Bannon who would soon be victimizing American Jews from the White House: http://www.salon.com/2016/11/14/steve-bannon-runs-an-anti-semitic-website-is-a-misogynist-and-will-be-one-of-donald-trumps-senior-advisors/
From an organization that claims to exist to protect Jews: https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-statement-on-president-elect-trumps-appointment-of-reince-priebus-and-steve (article on these two boring white guys is tagged with “extremism, terrorism & bigotry”; what tag would they use for the Tsarnaev Brothers?)
> Americans who hate “The Muslims” and “The illegals” are also likely to hate “The Blacks” and “The Jews”.
Opposing ongoing mass immigration of people from other cultures with poor track records of assimilation makes one a “hater” and an anti-semite. Got it.
I hope you realize how offensive and polarizing the goyim targets of this tactic find it. This is not going to play out well in the long run.
@philg: “How do we know this? Does the NSA have microphones in every American home? Well, actually maybe they do! But are they publishing a statistical summary of white-nationalist and anti-Jewish rhetoric? If not, how would anyone know whether or not there has been the “rise” you cite?”
I said anti-ethnic, not specifically anti-Jewish.
I live in a heavily populated international community in the south. I know that there has been a rise in anti-ethnic behavior because I’ve seen people harassed and I’ve spoken to friends and acquaintances who’ve been harassed. I’ve also seen an unfortunate resurgence of white-power skinheads.
To reiterate Neal’s earlier comment, this is coming from people who’ve kept this behavior buried and now feel empowered to break the taboo.
A lot of us have had to become much more aggressive in communicating that, no, this behavior is still not okay.
I haven’t seen anything public toward Jews. Most of the boneheads down here are more caught up with crushing the browns and the blacks and the slanty-eyes and the women and the gays.
brytebort: People in your neighborhood are so prejudiced that they have chosen to live in a “heavily populated international community”? Why aren’t these white supremacists smart enough to move to an all-white/all-native-born area such as western Massachusetts or Vermont? Is that like the Jew-hater Trump being so dumb that he chose to live in Manhattan and South Florida?
If we are all about the anecdotes then let me tell you about expressions of hatred in my neighborhood (a suburb of Boston populated by Millionaires for Obama). My neighbors regularly talk about the deplorable character of white working-class Americans who have the unforgivably bad taste to either oppose Hillary Clinton or live in the Rust Belt or both. They say that these deplorables should be shunned socially, banned from public life, and maybe deported from the U.S. (because the states that are full of good people will secede).
The beauty of this is that, unlike in your neighborhood where you are brave enough to communicate that “this behavior is still not okay,” these folks are constantly being reinforced by others congratulating them on their superior virtue in denouncing the stupidity, racism, and sexism of fellow citizens whom they have never met. There is nobody to scold the local anti-white racists.
(See also http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/sanctimony-cities/ )
@philg: What exactly is happening? Are we debating? I’m not arguing “sides”. I’m just telling you my local experiences and the social ideals I try to stand behind.
For a man who’d come to be known for flatly and unabashedly expressing his opinion, you sure have become passive-aggressive in your political posts. This kind of meta-argument where everything is deconstructed into emptiness and every point is no point and all roads lead to nowhere makes my head hurt.
I can walk out in my community and recognize that people are not treating each other right. It’s been building for a long time and there are countless factors, but sidestepping accountability for the sake of academic acrobatics is terrible.
The study on Uber and Lyft driver discrimination did not take the next step and see if black drivers were more or less likely to cancel rides on black passengers.
Taxi drivers in New York tried to avoid picking up black passengers at least as far back in 1970 (film cited in a 1987 New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/10/nyregion/metro-matters-hailing-a-taxi-is-even-harder-if-you-re-black.html ). From this we can infer that Trump has been fomenting racism since at least 1970.
Trump was also responsible for racism (albeit not “white racism”) by drivers in 2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-larosa/nyc-cab-drivers-blacks_b_6116602.html (“There are no more white cab drivers in NYC. The New York Times reported earlier this year that only 6 percent of yellow cab drivers are even American-born. So when Leon and other blacks are not getting picked up, the drivers passing them by are not white racists. They are mostly Indian and/or Pakistani men (and a very few women) — men of color.”)
[MODERATOR MOVED RESPONSES HERE TO STAY UNDER LIMIT OF 50 COMMENTS:
From David Wihl: @philip “From this we can infer that Trump has been fomenting racism since at least 1970.” Obviously nothing can be inferred from this, especially linked to Trump. Why would you add something so irrelevant to the discussion at hand?
From Neal: From this we can infer that: 1) There is still discrimination in the U.S, and
2) that it is more widespread than implied by the link to a wikipedia page placing the number of Klansman in the thousands.
]
This article substantiates the connect between Trump and the rise of anti-semitism
http://www.vox.com/2017/2/23/14691010/bomb-threats-jccs-jews-anti-semitism-trump
150 civil rights organizations from a broad spectrum of US society call on Trump to denounce racism. Betcha he don’t do anything substantial:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hate-crimes-civil-rights-president-donald-trump_us_58c310d6e4b054a0ea6aac8f?
[#44} >There is nobody to scold the local anti-white racists.
If it is your (@philg) intention to be that scold there are better ways to go about it than this posting on Facebook. I am willing to spend the time expanding on this (i.e. explain in more detail what I would consider better ways), but apparently we would need a new posting to open up the comment space.
Thanks, David. The only thing missing from the articles that you cite is a comparison of the number of hate crimes (and/or bomb threats) in the pre-Trump and the post-Trump era. Without that, what do the articles “substantiate” except that some journalists do not like Donald Trump and have become suddenly passionate about perceived Jew-hatred?
Why would a rational person be persuaded by a journalist noting “100 bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers, synagogues, and Anti-Defamation League offices” without knowing how many bomb threats there were from 2010-2015, for example? Maybe the number has gone down? Let’s assume that the number has gone up and let’s further assume the most widespread possible base of hatred, i.e., that the 100 threats were made by 100 different people. Except for Mr. Juan Thompson, the (anti-Trump?) journalist already arrested for making threats (at least 8, actually), how do we know that any of the 99 remaining threateners reside in the United States? If they do, is that a significant social movement in a country of 325 million? If it is a social movement, what is the motivation for adherents? Are they upset at the election of Donald Trump because his daughter Ivanka is a Jew? Or are they happy about the election of Donald Trump because they are avid New York Times readers and have learned that Donald Trump is anti-Jewish?
Personally I would revisit this issue after there is some data from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=37 on 2017 compared to previous years and also after it has been confirmed that any of the people making threats in fact (1) live in the U.S., and (2) support Donald Trump.