This is Democracy – Episode 36: Anti-Semitism

Unknown Speaker 0:05
This is Democracy,

Unknown Speaker 0:07
a podcast that explores the

Unknown Speaker 0:08
interracial intergenerational and intersection of unheard voices living in the world’s most

Unknown Speaker 0:13
influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri 0:19
Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today we’re discussing a very difficult and important topic and a topic hopefully that can open opportunities for rethinking the world we’re in today. This is the topic of anti semitism. Where does it come from? Why does it seem to be growing in our society today and what can we do about it? We’re very fortunate to have with us a friend and important activist in our community and in our nation. Renee l’affaire. Renee, welcome.

Unknown Speaker 0:53
Thank you for having me.

Jeremi Suri 0:54
So wonderful to have you here. Renee is the Regional Director of the anti defamation league in Austin taxes and the anti defamation League, often known as ADL does some of the most important consistent and influential work on fighting hatred In our society. We’re going to talk to Renee after we hear Zachary series poem, what is the title of your poem today? Zachary.

Zachary Suri 1:16
Can’t feel the rain drops a song for Pittsburgh? 1027. Let’s hear it. Walk through the rain and trying to whistle into the wind. The rain fall on hillside can’t drown the pain I’m in. But I live under Pittsburgh skies and breathe under Pittsburgh guys. And I can’t feel the raindrops anymore. Lai Lai Lai, like the leaves under my feet, lie, lie, lie. Lie. They lie. Like the dreams I hope to meet, lie lie. And they say if you remove the words, it makes a song holy. But does it really matter when bullets fly and leave us holy too. And they say if you go back, you can only bruise yourself, but I’m tired of sleeping in the dark and I’ve got no other place to go. Walk through the rain trying to whistle into the wind. But the rain fall along the hillside can’t drive pain I’m in. But I live in Pittsburgh skies and breathe and CRISPR guys and I can’t feel the raindrops anymore. Lai Lai Lai, like the highway coming from the east by like the darkening parking lot in the silver slipper moon long gone away. My Lai Lai Lai Lai, and they say if you would just forget if you would just remember to move on. But I can’t help but think it’s not some bomb under the grocery cart, some accidental slip of the hand, that it’s more than just the day, the place. It’s more than just the man under the bridge. But I can’t remember to move on until I forget what we left behind today. Walk through the rain trend. It was a line to the wind. But the rain fall on the hillside can’t drown the pain I’m in. But I live under Pittsburgh skies and breathe under Pittsburgh, guys, and I can’t feel the raindrops anymore. But I lie, lie lie. But I lie. And somewhere siren roared a man slept in the moonlight and I lie, lie, lie. lie awake or lie at night and wonder lie lie. Why? Walk through the rain tried to listen to the wind for the rain falling hillside can drown the pain I’m in. But I live under Pittsburgh skies and breathe into Pittsburgh guys. And I can’t feel the raindrops anymore. And I can’t feel the raindrops anymore.

Jeremi Suri 3:16
That’s incredibly powerful. Zachary, what inspired you to write this poem?

Zachary Suri 3:21
Well, this is this poem was really in my personal reckoning with the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and October 2018. And it I think the the message of my poem was more that it may seem that this event was sort of an anomaly, but it just feels like it’s been but for me, it feels like it’s just coming to the surface again, that it’s anti semitism. It’s something that has been in our society for so long, and it was just coming to the surface. Yeah. Wow.

Jeremi Suri 3:53
Well, Renee, what is anti semitism? How do we understand this this hatred that Zachary’s talking about it?

Unknown Speaker 4:00
Well, anti semitism is like a lot of other isms is when people have a prejudice or discrimination against a Jewish person, or a or the Jewish people. That’s like the basic definition.

Jeremi Suri 4:12
And how does it often express itself, in our society today,

Renee Lafair 4:17
in a myriad of forms.

I brought with me today, and this thing called the pyramid of hate, okay. And it’s kind of like a construct of how ADL kind of like views the world. Yes. And the pyramid of hate is, is basically a pyramid where there’s five steps on the pyramid. And the top of the pyramid is genocide, which is the worst form of is, it is the ultimate form of showing what happens if hate goes unchecked, right, but you can’t get to the top of the pyramid without the bottom. So these are all of the different manifestations of hate. So at the top of the pyramid is genocide. And then below that as bias motivated violence, which is an example of Pittsburgh, like you talked about now, so beautifully in your palm. And below that is discrimination, and then x, a bias and then biased attitudes. So basically, these are all different ways that anti semitism shows itself, it can show itself in name calling a can show itself. Recently, we’ve seen a spate of increases in desecration of cemeteries, of discrimination at the workplace, and you know, desecration of synagogues. And in all sorts of ways like that. Those are the ways that it manifests itself. But it’s really based on beliefs under that of certain people.

Jeremi Suri 5:34
And why has anti semitism been around so long? Why, why have we seen it for such a long period?

Renee Lafair 5:40
That’s a really good question. I mean, it’s, it’s

the tropes of anti semitism have been around for millennia, right. And they’re based in a couple of different things that you just keep seeing recurring over time. For example, the protocols of Zion, right, which was a not true book that was written and adopted as truth, even though it was not. And which talks about Jewish domination of the world and conspiring to control things. And for some reason, those attitudes take place. And when things are bad in society, and people are looking for a scapegoat, many times, the Jews are the people who are the scapegoat,

Jeremi Suri 6:25
right? And what why is that why? Why do Jews seem to be the target of hatred in so many moments in so many ways?

Renee Lafair 6:32
And so there’s a gentleman at ADL, his name is Kenny Jacobson. He’s been there for 45 years, he has, he has like the world renowned expert on this. And he wants explained it to me as that anti semitism, in some ways is different than a lot of the other isms, or racism or other forms of Islam. Because it’s the only one where it’s not taken on face value, where you see where people look at you, and they think like, you’re Jewish, but really, you haven’t, under, you know, an undercurrent of something that’s not honest or fair, and you aren’t what you seem. And and that’s what it is, like, a racism against people of, you know, is like, let’s say Islamophobia. It’s because you’re is a Muslim. But if you get because you’re a Jew, it’s something kind of different, right?

Jeremi Suri 7:19
It’s almost a conspiracy theory that somehow behind the scenes, yes, the Jews of the world are getting together as the protocols of Zion claims, right, and somehow trying to ruin run the world one way or another.

Renee Lafair 7:32
That’s, that’s one of the tropes there’s there’s several, but that’s one of the ones and it does recur, and you see it, throughout the ages. In different times, when there’s been sicknesses, you’ve seen them say, Oh, it’s because of the Jews, the Jews, you know, so it’s, it’s all sorts of things I was in, in Prague A few years ago, and I was on a tour. And they explained that there was a lot of anti semitism hundreds of years ago, because the Jews didn’t die from different places, often as other people, they thought it was something going on. But it probably had to do more with the handwashing rituals, of course, right control of germs.

Jeremi Suri 8:08
So, in our in American society over the last hundred years or so, Jews have actually done done better economically and socially than they have and almost any other society almost any other time. And Austin’s a good example of that, where we have a relatively prosperous and growing Jewish community. Why in in in spite of that, does anti semitism remain so strong in our society, you would imagine that our society would be moving forward that we would be overcoming this. Why does that not seem to be the case?

Renee Lafair 8:41
Well, first of all, compared to 100 years ago, ADL was founded 106 years ago, okay, with a two prong mission, the first part of the mission was to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and a big and humongous and secure justice and fair treatment for all. Because of the wisdom of our friends, founders, they realized that if you don’t secure justice and fair treatment for everyone, you’re not going to also do it for the Jewish people. But if you look at the world in 1913, and you read the ads that were in the newspapers, unless you were white, male and Protestant, there was very little that was open to you, right? So since then, I mean, if you look kind of like at the civil rights movement of this country, over the last 100 years, in terms of housing discrimination, and discrimination in schools, at all has been like, right along with that, because they knew that as we opened up society, everyone would benefit. Absolutely. And that it’s our duty, our duty to work for everyone. It is still prevalent, but it’s not as bad as it was 100 years ago in this country. And, you know, when it started off, like, you know, there were, Brandeis was founded pretty much because Jewish kids couldn’t, there was quotas on how many were allowed into colleges, right, which, so I would say now, we’re in much better shape than we were 100 years ago. But the underlying feelings and under tropes. Now in some ways are getting magnified on places like social media. And there’s audiences that have, let’s just say, of people who don’t like other people who have found homes with each other online. I see. So I have like this story that I talked about, if you look at in the 1950s, like, what what are some of the things that he has done the last 100 years that, like our top 10 list, one of them would be this thing called the D masking laws of the 1950s, which we were involved in, which basically says you have the first amendment right to say whatever you want to think whatever you want your out loud to be a bigot. You just got to take off the mask. Right. So what happened after that is Klu Klux Klan membership dropped precipitously, and it’s never recovered. So in some ways, we have a new form of mass today. And that new form of mask is the internet.

Jeremi Suri 10:50
That’s really interesting way of thinking about it. And so as a consequence of the anonymity that people can have on the internet, they can almost without retribution, say all kinds of hateful things correct. And why does that get picked up? Why does that spread? Why Why do people listen to that and read that?

Renee Lafair 11:08
I think it’s because of their fears, or their misunderstandings of others are not understanding others are thinking that other people are going to take things away from them. I mean, so there, that’s kind of what we’re saying. But we’re seeing like it. The anti semitism that we’re seeing today, I mean, there are so many more opportunities for all sorts of people in this country than there were, you know, even 50 years ago, and we still have ways to go. But it doesn’t mean that people aren’t born or raised hating. I mean, we believe that you can be taught to not hate people, but that everyone is kind of born and you are taught to hate.

Jeremi Suri 11:46
Right. And and and some people take that in and very early in their in their lives, right? Correct.

is anti semitism becoming more of a problem. Now it’s along with more opportunities opening up, what would you say, are the trends you’ve seen in the last decade, that you’ve been in this important role at a deal?

Renee Lafair 12:06
I would say that now, the trends are moving upward a little bit over just a few years ago. In this country, right now, we seem to be heavily divided in our ways that we are fighting them are often pointing out the differences and others, of which Jewish people fall into that category. So it’s not just Jewish people. It’s, you know, Muslims, right now. It’s immigrant populations. It’s all sorts of people who are having way more problems and issues, and we understand what you have to do to stop that. But it’s very hard to stop that against this perfect storm of of hatred and angry anger coming from all sorts of people with social media to amplify individual messages.

Jeremi Suri 13:03
Is there a role leaders are playing in our society today and encouraging or discouraging this? How would you characterize that?

Renee Lafair 13:14
I think that people emulate their leaders. And I think people on all sides, we see magnified speech everywhere, you know. And this is not a partisan issue. This is we try and stay not partisan by principle,

Jeremi Suri 13:33
of course.

Renee Lafair 13:36
But yes, I think that I think

Mayor Adler has a way of, of, of explaining what happened in Germany in like the 1930s, that I think is really instructive for now, is that when the Nazi Party was in power, what before they got in power, they were kind of like a fringe group. And this is right before hyperinflation and and the terrible things that have happened in Germany, but they were they had economic policies and major anti semitism. Okay. And then no one was paying attention to them. And then the people right next to them on the political spectrum said, Okay, well, if we don’t really care about what they say about anti semitism about Jews, but we do like their economic policies, and so then the next group, join them. And then if the next group join, then then group number three said, Our group number two is joining them, right, then we can join them, and pretty soon they’re being elected, right. And so if we don’t stop the like, this pyramid of hate, if we don’t stop the biased attitudes, and the acts of bias at the lowest end of this pyramid, then we’re going to be in trouble because things will, will grow into more dangerous,

Jeremi Suri 14:48
this is the problem of certain biased attitudes and behaviors becoming normalized, correct. And if we stop speaking out against them, they become acceptable behavior,

Renee Lafair 14:57
they become the societal norm,

Jeremi Suri 15:00
right? So does this get us into the range of unconscious bias, which is sometimes a controversial topic.

Renee Lafair 15:06
And unconscious bias is a controversial topic. We believe that everyone has unconscious bias, that we’re all born that way. And that we each have to work hard to recognize our own unconscious bias, so that it doesn’t affect the people that we serve, or the people that we work with, or the people that we teach. So that, but we think it’s just very, it’s just human, if you are a human, we have unconscious bias. But not everyone agrees with that. And we spend a lot of time because of the biased attitudes, we spend a lot of time trying to teach people to recognize those. So that when they do, they can, they’re very conscious of what they’re doing so that they can kind of make up for whatever it is that they’re feeling internally.

Jeremi Suri 15:52
Right. And and we should say that ADL does this for not just anti semitism, but for all kinds of hatred and Islamophobia. Correct, etc. Exactly. Did you have a question?

Zachary Suri 16:01
Yeah. How do we reckon the rise of anti the steady rise and anti semitism in the past few years with with the fact that more Jews are being elected to higher office are seen in these, like, more powerful positions? Does that lead to more anti semitism? Or is that something that shows progress?

Jeremi Suri 16:21
A question,

Renee Lafair 16:21
both? Okay, that’s an excellent question. And my opinion, I think it shows both. One is that there’s been a great deal of progress and that people are becoming more and more accepting of others. And the other hand that feeds those who believe that there’s a conspiracy to control things are that that Jews have too much power? So I think it is. That’s the answer to your question.

Jeremi Suri 16:44
That makes a lot of sense. On that note, we have a student question from Samantha Chen. And she’s curious about the connections between anti semitism and anti Zionism, anti Zionism being a critique of the State of Israel. We don’t need to divide Israeli policy on this podcast, but more the attitudes towards anti semitism and towards the creation of the State of Israel is your question.

Samantha Chen 17:09
Hi, my name is Samantha Chen. And my question is, is there a difference between anti semitism and anti Zionism? Renee?

Renee Lafair 17:18
Yes, so anti Zionism has its own definition, which I’m going to read. I’m anti Islam Zionism as a prejudice against the Jewish movement for self determination, and the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in the State of Israel, and may be motivated, but or result in anti semitism, or may create a climate in which anti semitism becomes more acceptable,

Jeremi Suri 17:39
but they are different,

Renee Lafair 17:40
they are different. And also in terms of, you know, anti Israel bias. ADL believes that you can have attitudes and beliefs that are against that you don’t believe in Israel policy. If all you want to do if you want to, you know, criticize Israel. All you have to do is open Israeli newspapers and you see, criticism, the State of Israel,

Jeremi Suri 18:01
this is so true more in Israel from Israeli Jews than you often hear from Americans.

Renee Lafair 18:06
Absolutely, absolutely. But there are times when anti Israel criticism does cross the line of anti semitism. And that’s what we’re seeing more of today.

Jeremi Suri 18:18
Yes, and then this is a really important point, though, to to criticize the actions of a particular state does not make one racist, or, or someone who’s hateful, one can do that in a thoughtful way. We’re talking here about the the hate of people and the prejudice and bias bias toward people because of their religion, or because of their race, which is different from policy criticism. Correct. We have another question about the 2020 presidential election and various candidates. And let’s hear that that’s from Jima let a customer know,

Unknown Speaker 18:51
how can the 2020 presidential candidates address anti semitism? And what are the dangers of not acknowledging it?

Jeremi Suri 19:00
So what what are you hoping to see from presidential candidates with regard to this difficult topic of anti semitism? Renee,

Renee Lafair 19:07
again, I’m going to put this in the context of all isms. Yes, um, I think presidential candidates, or whoever is president should not tolerate racism, anti muslim rhetoric of any kind, anti semitism, they need to lead as the voice of people who are accepting of others, and model behavior for others.

Jeremi Suri 19:31
And by not accepting does that mean speaking out actively against?

Renee Lafair 19:35
Yes, absolutely. shutting it down? Right. So they should call it out? Shut it down. And then and then I mean, at all, I mean, our big belief is that when we get phone calls about things, our first goal is to educate. Yes. I mean, we’re not interested in finger wagging. Right, unless, unless we’ve tried education, and that’s not working

Jeremi Suri 19:52
very well said, very well said. What can our listeners do? Many of our listeners are young people and citizens are very various kinds, who I think are concerned about this, concerned about watching what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue that Zachary spoke about so eloquently, but also the manifestations of hatred in so many other forms the the shooting at the church in Charleston, South Carolina, right? Where we see so many examples. These are just too many, unfortunately, of individuals acting out violently, toward particular groups, because of explicit hatred often circulated on in social media. Well, what can we as citizens do about this?

Renee Lafair 20:32
And you can participate by that I have, like, I wrote a little list of what people of what people could do,

Jeremi Suri 20:39
we like lists,

Renee Lafair 20:40
we like lists of things. First of all, you can learn about what the issues are. I mean, I think that’s really important, at all, is a great resource. There’s all sorts of resources online to learn, not just about anti semitism, but about racism, and about what’s going on kind of in those worlds, and what people are seeing and what their concerns are. And this is adl.org adl.org. Great. And ADL actually, because we have the second half of our of what our mission statement is, we have a lot of information on everything

Jeremi Suri 21:07
and materials that can be

Renee Lafair 21:08
materials, we have table talks for how to handle certain current events that you can do around your your your table, a dinner at night, about how to talk about important issues with your kids, not just about anti semitism, but I bet about major issues that are going on around social justice issues and things like that. We also have curriculum online that are free to everyone about different issues really good. I’ve used some of them actually happy. Yes, good. I’m glad to hear that. And also you can speak out against it and learn to be an ally. And be an ally is there’s different ways of doing it. And the goal is always to do it safely. But we found like it bullying in school, if there’s another person there who speaks up for the person who’s being bullied, bullied against the perpetrator, that really derails things pretty quickly. So one of the things that ADL really looks at is, is never again, and that concept comes from the Holocaust and making sure things like that, and genocide never happened again, unfortunately, they have in different parts of the world. But to stop the behaviors at the low end of the pyramid, we all need to participate. There was before the last presidential election, there was a kind of targeted troll campaign against Jewish journalists, where they, there was some sort of plugin where if you were Jewish, you were identified as Jewish, as a journalist, you had three parentheses put around your name. And this became they became targeted by trolls and received thousands of really hateful, horrible tweets, you know, about, you know, Holocaust imagery with their family. And you know, it’s all sorts of really terrible things. What other people started doing is they started adding parentheses to their own names, that took a little bit of the steam out of out of the perpetrators. So there’s kind of clever ways that you can really fight things. This, we just finished Passover, or we’re kind of in the middle of Passover. But on a deals website, again, there’s right now a list of 10 modern plagues, and under each of the plagues that’s listed as an action item. So for example, first one is anti semitism, and then Islamophobia, and then racism, and then April ism, and what the 10 modern plagues are on the under each item is an action item. One is, you know, to call congressman about a particular bill, and one is to read this comic, and if you ever see something that’s going on, here’s a way to handle a particular situation and to educate yourself, or to get involved in organizations like ADL, or their counterparts and other org and other assistance.

Jeremi Suri 23:49
What what in general, though, what what what do you hope to see, in the daily behaviors of individuals, I think about this a lot, because I have the great fortune of working with so many things, students and traveling to many places and meeting lots of groups. And it does strike me that we’re in a moment, in part because of broader divisions in our society and the nature of our political discourse, where there is more hate just on a daily basis. I was, you know, watching the NBA playoffs, there’s more arguing with with referees, people seem to be more combative than ever before. What What can we do about that?

Renee Lafair 24:24
So what I’ve really tried hard to do in the last few years, is try to understand why people feel so differently than I. So I really try and seek out people who have different opinions than I do, and sit down with them and try to understand Yes, why is why we may not vote the same way? Or why we you know, in a very creative, safe space, yes, to have honest and open dialogue with with people who are different from ourselves, yes, whether it’s different political persuasions, or people from different ethnic groups, or people of different races, to try and understand their lens. And if we can all go out and engage nicely and come and understand going in, that we’re not going to agree on everything. But the purpose is to understand a different perspective, and understand the value in perspective. And that really, the beauty of our democracy is that we’re all allowed to have these different perspectives in this big melting messy pot, you know, of of, of differences. Yeah,

Jeremi Suri 25:33
that’s beautifully said. Exactly. What do you think about that reaching out to people from different points of view, and really sitting and talking and trying to get to understand them? Is that possible?

Zachary Suri 25:42
I think it’s really possible, I think that the issue of anti semitism has really, I think that we’re doing a much better job educating people about it. I think that that’s really important, because I see it in my daily life at school, that people are much more aware of it. And, and, and the education on the top and these topics is really important. And I think that when when when students have teachers who they trust speaking to them about these issues, they feel much more comfortable embracing these ideas of acceptance, right, and, yeah, and kindness.

Jeremi Suri 26:24
I think what underlies a lot of what we’ve discussed here is that there is there’s there’s a place for hate, unfortunately, in passivity. And that active engagement around the issues is often the most effective way of helping good citizens to see beyond the conscious and unconscious biases that they bring to their work. And that includes all of us. In many ways, Renee,

Renee Lafair 26:46
I also think that we right now have these echo chambers of the news we choose. Yes. So I try really hard. I don’t do this for everything, but I try on major stories. I look at the New York Times, and The Washington Post, I mean, and the Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News, because I want to know every different perspective how they’re viewing the same story. Right,

Jeremi Suri 27:05
right. And and opening oneself to different perspectives does not mean that one has to accept hate, right? No.

Renee Lafair 27:12
Now, as a matter of fact, when I’ve done that, and I’ve been able to explain the perspective I’m coming from, I’m also often able to help people see a different perspective that they hadn’t thought of before. Yeah,

Jeremi Suri 27:23
I think ADL has done such a good job in in, in helping people to to examine themselves, and see the world around them better. And I think we all have room to learn in that area.

Renee Lafair 27:35
And it’s hard work. The internal work is really hard. And it’s not as scalable as I’d like it to be. No, it really is one person at a time. I think that’s right.

Jeremi Suri 27:44
I think that’s right. And we all have a role to play. And we all can make a positive difference by finding people around us who we should spend more time talking to about different points of view.

Renee Lafair 27:54
Correct. And then the last thing is, if you see an incident, report it yes, you can report it to ADL, these numbers drive things. I mean, I didn’t understand the importance of collecting data until I worked at ADL, yes. Numbers drive policy. And they drive, you know, attention to different issues. So those kinds of things are important.

Jeremi Suri 28:17
Absolutely. Zachary, as a final question, do you are you optimistic that people of your generation are more conscious of these issues and will do more to try to fight hate going forward?

Zachary Suri 28:32
Yes, I definitely think that there’s a large, consistent consensus concerning the problem of hate in our society. And I think that even people who are a pathetic to politics really, like are repulsed by similar the hatred that we see around us. But I do also think that there needs to be more talk of things such as unconscious bias or the normalizing of prejudice because though I see a lot of hope and progress on these issues, I also see a lot of issues of people saying things that are have become normal, but when you stop and think about them are really biased and, and and hurtful to many people.

Jeremi Suri 29:13
Well, I think a call to action for all of us today from this wonderful podcast and the insights from Renee l’affaire. And from Zachary and others. A call to action should be to talk more and engage more with people who see the world in different ways. And to call out bad behavior and hateful attitudes we shouldn’t allow them to linger. We should support free speech, but also call out the bad behavior that sometimes becomes normalized. I think this is something we all can do. And hopefully we will thank you for joining this episode of This is Democracy.

Unknown Speaker 29:55
This podcast is produced by the liberal arts development studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison lumpy, and you can find his music at Harrison lemke.com.

Unknown Speaker 30:09
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai