On the overstatement of American antisemitism, and how that relates to polarization dynamics
Anxiety and anger make us overly pessimistic and antagonistic, and this can amplify conflict
For many issues these days, I see many people arriving at the worst-case, most pessimistic framings of people they disagree with. For example, I see a lot of people calling things “antisemitic” that I and many others wouldn’t call “antisemitic” (e.g., people being too quick to portray criticism of Israel as antisemitic; or being too quick to portray pro-Palestinian slogans or actions as evidence of antisemitism).
Conflict can influence us to have distorted, overly pessimistic, and highly certain views of the people we see as threats to us. The tendency of some to perceive antisemitism where it is not is directly related to American polarization in general, and conflict in general.
These things are hard to talk about. Some people would call me antisemitic due to seeing me as downplaying the serious problem of antisemitism (just as some people have called me racist for examining exaggerated narratives of anti-black racism in America). And I get why people can get angry about such things. Many of us are on edge, for good reason; many of us perceive very real threats around us, on various fronts. I do get that (and it’s something I examine in more depth in Defusing American Anger).
But I think it’s important to acknowledge that our negative emotions can distort our perspectives, and to see how those distorted perspectives can in turn create more discord and animosity. I’d argue it’s important to have a realistic view of the nature of our divides and the people around us because distorted, overly pessimistic views in turn widen our divides—and create more threats. And we can examine these things while knowing that antisemitism exists and anti-black racism exists and these things, and more, are problems; these ideas are not mutually exclusive.)
Below I’ll share a few resources on this topic that I think would be of interest:
Talks with Yakov Hirsch. Hirsch writes about what he sees as excessively us-vs-them thinking amongst hardline pro-Israel supporters, and how that ties into theories about Nazi behavior during the Holocaust and the Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” idea. I’d recommend listening to this talk I had with Yakov; I think you’d enjoy it, as he’s a good explainer. I had quite a few people tell me they appreciated that episode. And I had a second talk with Yakov later on the same topic, about some aspects we didn’t get to in the first talk.
Yakov and I also talked about the importance of trying to have cognitive empathy for Trump and his voters, even as one may think they’re very wrong and even dangerous.
A piece by Musa al Gharbi titled Misunderstanding antisemitism in America. He writes “According to many popular contemporary narratives, American society is rife with antisemitism” but concludes, “However, I believe these narratives are demonstrably mistaken.” (Musa is someone who I think wrote one of the most importance papers for understanding American polarization: about liberal-side overstatement of racism amongst Trump voters.)
A piece by Eric Levitz in NY Mag: How bad is antisemitism in America really?
Criticism of recent study purporting to find high antisemitism. A recent survey got a lot of traction; it found that “67% of 18-24-year-olds say Jews are ‘oppressors’.” Writing for Reason Magazine, Ilya Somin examined why you shouldn’t put much stock in that interpretation. (Part of the way our animosity gets amplified these days is by people freaking out at various surveys and what they seem to say; but the truth is many of these surveys and survey interpretations these days aren’t good. For example, see this criticism of overstated estimates of Americans’ support for political violence. I think a fairly unexamined factor there is that, when we’re highly polarized, many of us will treat such surveys as a way to vent our emotions in ways that don’t really tell us much.)
Reactions to college presidents’ testimony. I saw a lot of anger about the college presidents’ testimony. What was less examined were the factors that drove their behavior. Again, I’d argue it’s important to understand what drives people’s behavior—even the people we think are very wrong. And there were a number of factors that one could find in explaining how the presidents testified, from the hostile questioning of Stefanik (hostile questioning can create antagonism and anxiety in the questioned), to their likely anxiety around being asked to define what constitutes “calls for genocide,” and more. Tangle had a good examination of different perspectives (and I highly recommend subscribing to Tangle and sharing it; I think it’s a valuable resource for reducing toxic polarization). Also, David French (no fan of liberal-leaning academia) had some defenses of their responses. Another interesting take came from Philip Lemoine (like French, a frequent critic of liberal-leaning academia).
A talk with James Kirchick. I talked to Kirchick in December of 2022. Our talk includes his takes on why he (and others) can view far left activists as antisemitic (e.g., the categorization of Jews as “oppressors” or as possessing “whiteness,” and how racial diversity quotas can discriminate against Jews). This is a good talk for understanding some conservative-side views that antisemitism is a problem on the left. I also ask Kirchick for his opinion on why criticism of Israel is so often categorized as antisemitic.
And, as a final note, I’d say that there are all sorts of distorted views of each other I could examine. I’ve been focusing on our distorted views of antisemitism lately (here and on my podcast) because it seems to be a fairly avoided topic, for understandable reasons. These are tough topics but I think to make progress on reducing toxic polarization/conflict, more of us need to tackle such topics, and make the case for trying to understand and empathize with others—even people we view as our political opponents, and even people we may view as our enemies.