Being Jewish in 2021: Anti-Semitism Lately.

the 20th century was dominated by
delusions of passive progress and i would say that in the 21st century we have yet to replace these delusions with a more pragmatic notion of how progress will actively be achieved i was gonna do a day of my life so i was showing everything that wasn't jewish so this was something else you did hashtag jew talk israeli rosh hashanah fish head and traditions yeah because this is like people don't know why you have a fish head at rosh hashanah and so forth were you disappointed we didn't have a fish yet it was so sad in the pomegranates no one knew hebrew i was ready to be keeper with people i was like so excited about it and it just didn't happen so you did this one here i love ju talk is now your most common it's popular i got free falafels here for wearing an israel shirt okay this is the one i had a problem with no nutrition you know you can't she says raiding my jew lunch uh-huh do you not see what's the problem with that i couldn't fit ish in there but jew is like a derogative no my jew lunch i think it's the way if you say it i was writing like oh my good lunch i can tell you with on with 100 certainty you cannot say that it's offensive moses said it was fine and he is from israel and had a bar mitzvah i also saw israeli matzo meal and i got really excited because i said israeli and hey my boyfriend's israelis so i really love them and i love you guys if you're israeli like shout out i love you guys so much i also saw these chocolates with these cute little kids on the box and i was like oh we need to get them and i saw even more chocolates and it's like oh yeah yeah my israelis know what's up the jews really love their chocolates so i also got the chocolate cereal that has some milky milk in it which is really cool the juice also love wafers which who would have known what's in it my god really yeah oh my god it's so good i don't know how to say that in hebrew but i know something i don't know that oh my god it's all good i'm sure you've guessed by now that this is a serious video about a serious topic and if you found yourself laughing at the first minute and a half ask yourself why and what is exactly you're laughing at what it is that's so awkward or perhaps so offensive or so disturbing about what you've just seen isn't it possible that when we look at trisha paytas in her attempts to appropriate jewish culture we're actually looking at the best case scenario for the future of judaism of jewishness and of anti-semitism that may be the best thing we can hope for is that this just comes to be regarded as another normal culture in the same sense that south korean culture or japanese culture it's it's just another culture hate crimes against jews have increased by nearly a third since 2010 according to the home affairs select committee report and the volume and viciousness of online abuse is unprecedented it's all news that comes as no surprise to the community we will get calls from visibly jewish people whether it's in london north manchester gateshead leeds other places who tell us that on a regular basis when they walk to and from synagogue they get abused shouted at them by people on street corners by people from passing cars they may get stones or coins thrown at them and for too many people this is something they feel they have to put up with because it's just part of being jewish the report shows an 11 rise in anti-semitic incidents in the first half of this year compared to 2015. it also shows the number of people in britain with anti-semitic attitudes rose by 50 percent in just 12 months and as many as 1 in 20 adults in the uk could now be characterized as clearly anti-semitic daniel and theo are barely in their teens children who say they've had vicious hate shouted at them by grown men we were getting onto a bus and a car was driving by and seeing as we were wearing our suits and our kipper on our head the car slowed down and shouted you jewish i was just thinking why do they feel that way just because we're jewish i just felt it was unfair in the same way that tricia peters has just gotten enthusiastic about both jewishness and the state of israel specifically and has started kind of collecting jewish stuff and wearing pro-israel t-shirts every day there are white guys who get a japanese girlfriend and start you know becoming fascinated with and clothing themselves with japanese culture going to japanese markets eating japanese food so on and so forth does this really represent something negative or is there something more important for us to examine in the negative public reaction to this example and if you want to reply by claiming that the state of israel is in a uniquely terrible political position well no it's not unique is it it could indeed be said that israel is a war-torn country in a strange sort of cold war situation with its neighbors so is south korea there are many countries and many cultures all over the world that are in a war-torn politically fraught situation israel isn't unique we make it unique because of the expectations that we place on israel because of this very strange exceptionalism that's applied to judaism and jewishness even if in practice this is a form of racism that it falls into the heading of ethnic politics i would say that this problem is in principle political how do you think your jewish heritage impacts your vision of the world and politics and do you think it is a help or a hindrance to your role as a candidate the american jewish community experienced the highest level of anti-semitic incidents last year since tracking began in 1979 with more than 2 100 acts of assault vandalism and harassment reported across the united states the total number of anti-semitic incidents in 2019 increased 12 percent over the previous year with a disturbing 56 increase in assaults jews were the target of most religion-based hate crimes in 2018. nearly 60 percent of hate crime attacks were targeted against jews and jewish institutions in 2018. in 2018 hate crime murders totaled 24 the highest since the fbi began tracking and reporting on hate crimes in 1991. the increase is attributable to 2018 having seen the deadliest anti-semitic hate crime in american history when 11 worshipers were murdered in the three congregations meeting at the tree of life synagogue building in pittsburgh people like louis farrakhan who called jews satanic bloodsuckers and termites are allowed to spew their vitriol on twitter and instagram he has 348 000 followers on twitter if bernie sanders is elected he would be your first jewish american president as a jewish american that would be a huge step forward in this country and low back against the rise of anti-semitism in this country as far as the uh as far as the uh alt-right anti-semitism i mean as somebody who received an inordinate amount of hate from the alt-right in the last year uh the anti-defamation league named me the number one recipient of anti-semitic tweets for journalists on the internet last year uh and that was largely driven by uh the the alt-right um i think that people need to understand what the alt-right actually is and people who think they're all right so not everybody who likes memes is an alt-right person okay i think a lot of these i think a lot of memes are hilarious uh you know i'm particularly fond of harambee meme so i'm there a lot of these things that i think are really funny but i think that the alt-right did a good marketing thing when they broaden their appeal because the actual basis of the all-right movement people like jared taylor and richard spencer is is essentially a white supremacist argument uh that the that the white race created western civilization and that outsiders to that race are threats to western civilization uh and i think that the rise of of that movement uh is partially driven as a reaction to the intersectionality theory of the left any jewish people that vote for a democrat i think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty you know they were chanting like in charlottesville jews will not replace us and then having a jew literally replace them would be like that would be so satisfying you also had people that were very fine people on both sides tonight neo-nazi in pennsylvania a small rural town near the new york border splitting apart by a growing movement filled with hate the man at the center of it says trump's election has emboldened him and his followers it is definitely a difficult time to be jewish right now considering the trump administration's anti-semitism and there's been a spike in hate crimes and nazi empowerment so on the left you've seen the the this attempt to basically paint everybody in the united states as a member of a particular race or sex or sexual orientation they're not individuals they're groups and all of these groups have been victimized by western civilization and therefore they have to stand up and fight back against western civilization and there's a group of people on the so-called alt-right who aren't particularly conservative by the way they're not in favor of smaller government many of them many of them are overtly anti-christian not just anti-judaic uh and they come along and they say okay well if intersectionality is good for the left why can't it be good for the right right why can't we have uh why can't this be for white people right if there's an interest group for black people why not have an interest group for white people and i think that that's uh that reactionary tendency gained some steam during the last election cycle and uh and because they consider themselves to be politically incorrect more than just wrong they they glom on to a person they consider to be politically incorrect which is president trump i grew up in austria i'm very aware of kristallnacht or the night of broken glass it was a night of rampage against the jews carried out in 1938 by the nazi equivalent of the proud boys i grew up in the ruins of a country that suffered the laws of its democracy my father's family was wiped out by hitler in the holocaust i know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean i learned that lesson as a tiny tiny child when my mother would take me shopping and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in hitler's concentration camp i am very proud of being jewish and that is an essential part of who i am as a human being what we are seeing right now we've seen it in america and we're seeing this all over the world it's a rise in anti-semitism [Music] we're seeing people being stabbed in new york city because they were jewish if there was ever a time in american history where we say no to religious bigotry this is the time if there is any people on earth who understands the danger of racism and white nationalism it is certainly the jewish people this is not my normal content as some of you know i am jewish if you didn't know that surprise i've also recently decided to try my hand at making tick tocks which is when i made the discovery that tiktok is a very shitty place to be if you're jewish so how did i make that discovery well one day i was just sitting around and i decided you know what i'm gonna make a goofy little tik tok about what it's like to be jewish on social media and the response to that tick tock was interesting let me show you the tick tock i see a lot of people doing their you know social media activism but when it comes to speaking out against anti-semitism those same people are completely silent so this was just like my way of playfully poking fun at the hypocrisy if i had to guess why people don't want to speak out against anti-semitism and in some cases why they make anti-semitic comments online i would say it's probably for one of the following reasons a they incorrectly assume that all jews are privileged and therefore don't need allyship and support b they're afraid of the backlash which is you know understandable a lot of people have some very unhealthy and uneducated beliefs about jewish people c they actually just don't like jewish people d they simply do not give a [ __ ] or e they're trolling this is where i want to step into the video and disagree with her productively because if i were to make a numbered list of what the problems are and what the solutions are that they hint at implicitly out of a very different set of concerns leading to a very different set of conclusions a large percentage of people i don't know the percentage but a very large percentage of people are simultaneously fascinated by and terrified of this idea that there are secret clubs that hold political power over them that somewhere there's a meeting of special people who discuss what parliament is really going to do what the senate or congress is really going to do or what city hall is going to do and it is the abstract idea of this possibility not the reality of the political process in the country they're living in that they're fascinated by and that breeds these hysterical conspiracy theories let me tell you something there are clubs that you can join today where members of the social and political elite meet to discuss the future of your city your province your state your country the empire club of canada in toronto has an open door they have a website i think they have a youtube channel where they upload these lectures and if you join if you pay a couple hundred dollars here and there you can attend special lectures given by the mayor given by members of parliament given by influential lawyers and leaders of public opinion here in victoria bc canada it's the capital of this province the union club was the best example i could come up with if you take a moment to look around probably in the city you're living in or in the country you're living in there are clubs of this kind and if you tried to get involved positively you might be shocked at just how easy it is to participate and why because so few people care because the reality is they have meetings where members of this political elite come together to discuss what should happen next at parliament at congress at city hall or even in foreign policy or in economic planning and nobody shows up unless they're paid to and even when they pay even when they pay a lot of money for someone with a phd from the university to come and give a presentation you'd be shocked and horrified at how little sincere interest there is in the future of our democracy you'd be shocked at the extent to which these elites are voluntary in terms of their participation that they're just comprised of whoever it is that wants to dedicate the time to really show an interest in the future of their polity very striking illustrative example here of a young woman she was a university student in california who became an influential and important person in american politics just by showing up she didn't have money she didn't have connections she didn't have a conspiracy behind her and right now there's an investigation there's a suspicion that she was doing this in order to spy on the united states of america on behalf of the government of china but we don't know that that's just a theory that's just an allegation we don't know that what did she actually do well there were these meetings for mayors in the united states america for municipal level government to get together and have a meeting and guess what just like the elite clubs i alluded to before just like the empire club of canada and so on anyone can show up and she showed up so she got to sit down at the table with and talk to and theoretically lobby or influence mayors and then later congressmen and then later senators she had no qualifications she was a member of the asian pacific islander association of her university and as the text says on screen she used this um i don't know what's her business card she used this to get her foot in the door just to say she had some reason to be there or some reason to talk to these people she showed up you can show up too you can participate in the democratic forums in your country you know what the truth is even if you live in a country that is not a democracy you would be amazed you would be amazed at how many public consultations there are how many forms there are how many opportunities there are for people to show up and at least hear what people in government have to say if not chit chat with them inform them how many social forums of this kind there are going on behind the scenes every day the people who think this way take zero interest in political power themselves they have zero interest in participating in the political process themselves they have zero interest in the actually existing clubs of this kind and then reciprocal with that mentality is this over the top hysteria about jews and jewishness in specific and you will find that those same hysterical attitudes can be applied and are applied just as readily to the idea of a russian conspiracy existing behind the scenes in the united states of america to the idea of a chinese conspiracy existing behind the scenes united states america and the way to overcome this is both to make the real political process more transparent more democratically accountable and to give people a higher level of education so they know precisely how boring the reality is of participating in that democratic or undemocratic political process yeah super [Music] super beautiful woman no [Music] gal gadot is so great at being wonderful girl good old she's in a fast and furious movies she's [Music] the 20th century was dominated by delusions of passive progress and i would say that in the 21st century we have yet to replace these delusions with a more pragmatic notion of how progress will actively be achieved what do i mean by passive progress the idea that passively people all over the world will get less and less racist with the passage of time and why just because just because there's some invisible force like gravity pulling people down to earth that's just to make people less racist less mutually invidious with the passage of time no particular government program is going to force this to happen no particular decision made democratically or undemocratically no particular direction taken on by education just the passage of time itself would result in the whole world becoming one more secular two more scientific in their attitudes three more mutually accepting and mutually appreciative i don't know maybe it's the fact that there were more and more chinese restaurants in downtown new york city people had the delusion that this alone would bring about a golden age of um i don't know the unification of all peoples and all cultures around the world it's not going to happen unless you force it to happen and i do think i'm jewish myself i do think that judaism and jewishness has played this unique catalyst's role in the western reappraisal of what the nation state is supposed to be what the future of nationalism is and what the future of ethnicity is supposed to be this is not only because of the holocaust this is the most examined chapter of the story it also has to be pointed out more broadly the jews themselves already during the french revolution were perceived as in some ways the most secular most atheistic most cosmopolitan part of the population in the 20th century it's fair to say that the idea of what an american jew looked like and how they spoke and acted was someone like jerry seinfeld and someone like jerry seinfeld is a cosmopolitan secular if not overtly atheist a modern leading edge supposedly intelligent sort of guy that's the image of supposedly who jews are and what they represent and now if you just take five minutes to look at the demographics of the modern state of israel you're gonna see not only is this not true it's not the direction the state of israel is going in the percentage of israeli jews who are religious who are extremely religious who are heredis the percentage of the state of israel who look and act and sound and think nothing like jerry seinfeld but who fall into a very different category and you relate to the ongoing peace process of the palestinians and changing foreign policy led by jared kushner and reconciliation with neighboring arab states who relate to those global and local politics in a profoundly different way that we profoundly can't understand the delusion of the 20th century was that all of these problems would just passively disappear and from the other side anti-semitism would disappear because the delusion was the masses of christians in the world the masses of muslims in the world were going to catch up with jerry seinfeld that just passively scientific cosmopolitan secular attitudes were going to blossom for no reason at all i would say this is a bit like the delusion of passive effortless weight loss you've got to look in the mirror at some point and say nothing is going to change unless i change it unless i really make a commitment to not just try harder but to really suffer right that's when you're going to lose weight that's when you're going to get in shape nothing is going to change culturally or religiously unless we commit to a kind of transformation personally individually politically culturally in a larger scale that's going to entail terrible suffering and yes it is probably going to entail the government making very hard decisions that will be bitterly protested against by people who you know value their own religion more or value their ethnicity more than the future of having a genuinely pluralistic democracy where these people sit at one table they're educated in one school and they debate the future of their country in one in the same parliament as equals you can say i'm a jew from israel but you can't use jew as an adjective like jew lunch sounds [ __ ] up people can say they're a jew and i can't say jew lunch hey i'm like promoting this like culture yeah but you're kind of like this is kind of like cultural appropriation isn't it appreciation right okay that's this i think it is so many israelis will like be like thank you so much for like you know speaking hebrew like a lot of people like say thank you for it and i mean there's some that hate it but there are some that hate it would you get aid comments yeah i mean there's certain people that are like what are they saying i mean that's where just like people who say free palestine they get pissed off but i don't know oh it's not the jews that get in not just the american jews that get angry which aren't real jews you're like what's like calm down you're from ventura california like you know you don't know the struggle at the start of this video i talked about the possibility with trisha paytas as my somewhat amusing example the possibility that the best case scenario for the future of judaism and jewishness would be for it to come to be regarded just as a culture just another culture in the world no more remarkable then and maybe no less remarkable than japanese culture or south korean just being a culture that someone like trisha paytas could become enthusiastic about now let's all pause for a minute and think about why that's not going to happen or why it's not going to happen during my lifetime all right anti-semitism is reciprocal with christianity anti-semitism is reciprocal with islam the other part of the delusion of passive progress was just that muslim people were going to give up being muslim christians we're going to give up being christians and even under communism in eastern europe in russia the ukraine poland we can see that's not true that didn't happen at all today it's not just that christianity has been revived in eastern europe anti-semitism has been revived along with it anti-semitism and a fascination with judaism the assumption that jews are some kind of special exceptional people in the history of the world and in the future of the world that mentality of jewish exceptionalism is hardwired into christianity as a religion and christian culture it is hardwired into islam and muslim culture to an unbelievable extent there is a sense in which we can never achieve this future we can never achieve this ideal of the whole world having attitudes as sophisticated as tricia paid us which is to say not terribly sophisticated at all we can't even achieve that unless or until we overcome christianity and islam in other words we're going to have a problem with anti-semitism for as long as we have a culture dominated by the judeo-christian religions ultimately the bible is a book about jews written by and for jews and paradoxically it provides the basis for two of the largest most powerful and most intensely anti-semitic religions in the world namely christianity and islam talk boss featuring words that kill my slang is editorial explicit material briefcase show lava stereo flow filming donna realty set the black people free and that's what it's all about you know everyone will always have something to say about any issue