Today we’re going to talk about a few things: fascism, virtue-signaling, and political opportunism; my thoughts on politicians latching onto “antisemitism” means, and what we can all do to stay focused on the task at hand- fighting anti-democratic forces, while addressing the meshugas and hyperbole by those who seek to get or stay in power. (For those who don’t know, ‘meshugas’ is Yiddish1 for ‘madness’, ‘crazy’, or ‘silliness’… when I use it, it’s most often to describe a person’s behavior or language as being “bullshit”, in the same vein as the more literal translations. “That was crazy” becomes “That was just meshugas.”)
Before we get started, I’m going to get some stuff out of the way. Nobody gets to choose who their parents are, the body they’re born with, or the socioeconomic and cultural conditions under which they are raised. Whether it’s convenient to anyone or not, I’m both a Jew and an atheist. I went to Hebrew school for about 8 years, and then told our rabbi I was going to quit at the reception right after my bar mitzvah. I didn’t know I was supposed to believe in a god until I was 6, yet I studied for my bar mitzvah under a Lubavitch rabbi because if I was going to go through a year and a half of study, I was going to do it hardcore. I went to Jewish summer camps and grew up being taught things about history and Israel that most non-Hasidic American Jews are familiar with.
More stuff out of the way. I’ve been a conscientious pacifist since probably age 12; I have also faced and fought actual (neo)Nazis in the street both during political protests and also in defense of others when they decided to show up somewhere and demonstrate their inhumanity with violence. I have had trash thrown at me from the back of a pickup as a smattering of teenagers gave me the “Roman salute”. I had a car that was brand new to me get ruined by someone carving swastikas into the paint and caving in the roof. I have been called a piece of shit, a traitor, and a disgusting Jew for many reasons, including my decades-long recognition of the oppression of the Palestinian people and for my acknowledgment of zionism as the cultural supremacist and religious nationalist movement with a bend toward fascism that it is.
So with that out of the way, let’s continue.
It was brought to my attention yesterday that there is a local politician who made a social media post (as they tend to do) decrying an apparent marking on the ground, near an elementary school, as an “appalling act of antisemitism”, and “the fact remains that our children were once again targeted with symbols of hate at a place where they should always feel safe.”
Here’s the thing: At the time of writing, no photos of this ground graffiti are available to the public; after it was reportedly reported on the 27th, someone promptly abated it. Some security camera footage exists, but it hasn’t been released. And according to reports, the markings on the ground appear to have been there since at least August 7th, but we don’t know when someone painted them, what they looked like, who did it, or what their motive was. It went totally unnoticed for at least 20 days.
So for almost three weeks this vile hate crime left not a single person affected or disaffected.
Idiots of all flavors have been spray-painting swastikas for decades without it meaning anything. Maybe the experience was titillating, maybe they couldn’t find a wall, maybe they were under a deadline, so random chicken scratch on the ground had to do for now; we really have no idea. And because we can’t know motive, we get to decide what it means. And based on the available evidence, it should mean jack squat.
As we face actual fascists with extreme amounts of money and power running roughshod over the federal government, operating their own secret police that terrorize, attack, and kidnap people without oversight or accountability, I’m sure it feels good to say “I stand against antisemitism! This vile hate crime will not be tolerated!” but it’s an empty gesture in the face of a meaningless act… “Thoughts and prayers” means just as much. MAGA and that silly red hat represent the same ideas, tactics, policies, and supremacist authoritarian terrorism that a swastika has represented across the Western world for over 80 years.
My concern here is that this type of alarmism, hyperbole, and perennial boogie-manning does more to harm not just Jews but also our children than any scribble on any sidewalk ever could.
For longer than most people are aware, Jews around the world have been taught they are the interminable victims. A philosophy and worldview that sees you and your friends and family at the center, and the whole world is out to get you. There is a self-righteousness in being “the chosen people,” with generations of lore and tales about the origin of the universe, the origin of man, the origin of insecurity (sin), and then a cycle of bad things happening and being tested, over and over. The tales of a homeland and living in exile, and what one single group deserves above and apart from all other lesser peoples. Holidays celebrating being released from slavery that also celebrate plagues and the deaths of children imposed on their enemies, battles against foreign legions, and being saved from annihilation at the hands of the Achaemenid (Iranian) Empire, where we make and eat cookies that resemble the hat of the high-ranking advisor to the Persian king.
Horrific things have happened throughout human history, and it’s no surprise that people tend to be the heroes of their own story. Still, nothing is apples to apples, and we don’t make comparisons between tragedy and trauma; other cultures don’t frame their collective identity and culture around being victimized. The Holocaust was horrible, but so is Gaza, Azerbaijan, Myanmar, the persecution of the Uyghurs in China, and the Ukrainian genocide, all of which are still happening today. The scars of the Indian Partition, not unlike the scars born from the creation of Israel, may not be any more healed today than they were in 1949. The list goes on, and here in North America we have had hundreds of years of slavery, followed by more slavery and subjugation thanks to bullshit language in the 14th Amendment, allowing legal prison labor (children are not exempt), and the somehow legal subminimum tipped wage. Reconstruction didn’t fail; we simply never finished doing it.
Current estimates on the number of this continent’s indigenous people who were killed in the theft of their land range from 12 million to over 50 million, and though it’s their, and our, incalculably tragic history, it isn’t core to their identity, which itself is certainly anything but a monolith.
Making a point of drawing attention to things like this tells people who have been taught for generations that someone is always out to get them, that they need to be scared, that their fear is justified, is like telling a kid there’s a monster in the closet or under the bed. It doesn’t matter if the monster is real or not when you fuel the fear and trauma that comes with not feeling safe. If or when a real threat comes (or has come), they won’t be prepared to fight it off; or, if they choose to act proactively, they lack the skills to determine what is or isn’t a threat, and little is left after the wanton destruction that is sure to follow. My understanding of the psychology of victimhood, based on what I’ve learned over the years about my own first-hand experiences and the PTSD that resulted, is that, without safeguarding those who are traumatized, it becomes relatively easy to manipulate their pain, fear, and insecurity into a tool that can fuel and rationalize inhumane acts and activities. “You have to get them before they get you” is a world nobody wants to live in, except for those who want us to do their bidding. Hurt people hurt people.
Instead of using this as an opportunity to virtue signal about how absolutely terribly bad it was when we have folks in this county actively supporting and perpetuating a very real genocide of an actually Semitic2 people, here’s what I have to say on the matter, if you’re curious.
The person who decided to spray paint two swastikas on the ground near an elementary school is nothing more than an idiot. This wasn’t a message, and it isn’t anything to take seriously, since the vandal is clearly unserious. The very real costs here are the annoyance and the labor and materials required to address it. Stuff like this only hurts the kids who attend our public schools; it hurts them by stealing resources away from their education and by subjecting them to the fear-mongering of politicians who see this nonsensical scrawl as an opportunity to virtue-signal for political gain.
And because we live in a world where the Southern Poverty Law Center’s definition of antisemitism, despite being both antiquated and outright problematic, still seems to stand, I’ll share with you why, just like this selicious graffiti incident, the examples I made at the beginning of this piece about a few of my own first-hand experiences were not, in fact, antisemitism or hate crimes.
I have been attacked by white supremacists.
It’s true. But it wasn’t because I was Jewish; they didn’t need a reason other than that I was very much not one of them, and I may have been wearing an AGAINST NAZIS t-shirt that featured a fist smashing a swastika.Trash was thrown at me from the back of a pickup as a smattering of teenagers gave me the “Roman salute.”
This one was when I was a freshman in high school. I missed the bus and had a 2-ish mile walk home down St Johns Lane. Some kids I had been friends with in middle school wanted to get under my skin and be antagonistic for some reason. I was more disappointed at them for littering and generally being idiots than anything else. How can you take it seriously when 3/4ths of the people making a particular arm gesture and shouting “heil… someone,” you know how it goes, from the back of a speeding pickup truck are Korean? It was kids being dumb, nothing more.Had a car that was brand new (to me) get ruined by a person who jumped on the roof, caving it in and carving swastikas into the paint in numerous places.
From the end of 2002 through the first half of 2006, I lived in New York’s Hudson Valley. In 2004, I think it was, I traveled down to North Carolina to pick up an old Volvo in great condition, as I didn’t have a reliable car then. I drove nonstop from NC to Kingston from Saturday evening through the night because I needed to open the cafe where I worked for business on Sunday morning. In uptown Kingston, there was a free parking garage, and I parked there instead of on the street because Sundays were busy, and taking up a street spot all day would have been inconsiderate. When I closed up at the end of the day, I found this car that had been in my possession for maybe 24 hours, still with NC tags, had been trashed by some destructive schmuck for reasons I could not comprehend. It turns out the carnival was in town, and some carnival workers decided to express themselves creatively at my expense, with no idea who owned the car. Alongside the swastikas were also scratched “bitch”, “clown”, and “666”… Was it a crime? Yes, Hateful? It felt that way. targeted? Nope. Hate crime? Not at all, and that’s my point.I have been called a piece of shit, a traitor, and a disgusting Jew for my decades-long recognition of the oppression of the Palestinian people and for recognizing zionism as the cultural supremacist and religious nationalist movement that it is.
Other jews have been the quickest to condescend, insult, tell me I’m self-hating (what does that even mean? It’s nonsense, but it’s a thing. If you know, you know), tell me I deserve to have bad things happen to me, tell me I deserve to die, spit on me, and threaten me with violence.
So what do we do? I want to say “get better at crying wolf,” but the analogy falls apart when I’d urge folks not to hunt wolves to extinction. But maybe, not unlike how we domesticated wolves, taught them to work alongside us, and became our best friends, we should eradicate fascists with reform. Fascism isn’t a political problem; it’s a socioeconomic one. It is born from hardship and strife, and wielded by those who’ve been told they are exempt from servitude and exploitation, that is, until they’re not. No political party has ever defeated fascism, but being a socioeconomic problem, we fight fascism with socioeconomic action. Voting blue won’t fight fascism, but raising the minimum wage to a living wage will. A few other socioeconomic actions we can take to fight fascism are central to my platform and campaign.
We can protect workers by
giving our teachers the right to strike
raising the minimum wage to at least $30 by 2030 and abolishing the sub-minimum wage
creating REAL affordable housing, something that a person who works 37 hrs a week getting paid minimum wage can afford
stop outsourcing and instead insource our programs and services so we can hire people right here and make sure they get paid fairly, and given access to quality healthcare
require retailers who want to offer self-checkout to give customers a 10% discount on the total of their bill as a thank you for doing the job of an employee
owning our fleet of school buses, and directly employing the drivers
We can protect everybody by
requiring our police department to protect any person in Howard County from having their civil rights violated, whether it be by a neighbor, employer, or a federal agency or employee
making cops look approachable again. make police cars high-visibility public safety vehicles; stop sending cops into schools with their guns and handcuffs, giving our kids an ever-present threat of arrest
getting rid of automated ticketing systems; they don’t prevent dangerous behavior; they raise money for the companies that develop or have contracted out the camera systems
dismantling the dystopian surveillance dragnet that Calvin Ball so proudly touts as an achievement instead of the shame that it is
Fascists are an existential threat to democracy and the humane treatment of people.
What are some ways you feel we can actually fight fascism of all forms?
For anyone who isn’t totally clear on what Yiddish is, don’t sweat it! It’s a language derived from what is called High German during the Middle Ages (400s-1400s CE), likely in the 10th century. It incorporates many elements from Hebrew and Aramaic and is/was spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. Today it’s still spoken by Ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Wikipedia article on Yiddish is excellent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish
Ashkenazi Jews, like my family and all other Eastern-European jews aren’t Semites; it’s an obsolete term that referred to groups based on linguistic and etymological histories; see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people. Key point: Arabs are Semitic people; European Jews are not.
