{"id":24787,"date":"2023-01-15T13:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-15T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=24787"},"modified":"2023-01-15T13:01:02","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T21:01:02","slug":"survey-finds-classical-fascist-antisemitic-views-widespread-in-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/01\/15\/survey-finds-classical-fascist-antisemitic-views-widespread-in-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"SURVEY FINDS \u2018CLASSICAL FASCIST\u2019 ANTISEMITIC VIEWS WIDESPREAD IN U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Michelle Boorstein<\/a> and Scott Clement<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

January 12, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST (WashingtonPost.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At points in the past half-century, many U.S. antisemitism experts thought this country could be aging out of it, that hostility and prejudice against Jews were fading in part because younger Americans held more accepting views than did older ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a survey<\/a> released Thursday shows how widely held such beliefs are in the United States today, including among younger Americans. The research by the Anti-Defamation League includesrare detail about the particular nature of antisemitism<\/a>, how it centers on tropes of Jews as clannish, conspiratorial and holders of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surveyshows \u201cantisemitism in its classical fascist form is emerging again in American society, where Jews are too secretive and powerful, working against interests of others, not sharing values, exploiting \u2014 the classic conspiratorial tropes,\u201d Matt Williams, vice president of the ADL\u2019s year-old Center for Antisemitism Research, told The Washington Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study uses a new version of surveys the ADL has been doing in America since the 1960s in order to get at the specific nature of antisemitism, and what makes it different from other types of hate. Its new metric is centered on affirming or rejecting 14 statements, including whether Jews: \u201chave too much control and influence on Wall Street,\u201d \u201care more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want,\u201d or are \u201cso shrewd that other people do not have a fair chance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ADL\u2019s center was created in response to a spike in the past few years of reported incidents of antisemitic violence and harassment<\/a>, as well as a rise in antisemitic rhetoric from high-profile public figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That includes a march by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017<\/a> that turned deadly<\/a> and attacks on Jewish targets in Pittsburgh in 2018<\/a> and in Poway, Calif.,<\/a> and Monsey, N.Y.,<\/a> in 2019. It also includes antisemitic comments, including from former president Donald Trump in October, when he attacked American Jews<\/a> in a post on his Truth Social platform, saying Jews in the United States must \u201cget their act together\u201d and show more appreciation for the state of Israel \u201cbefore it is too late.\u201d Trump has multiple times <\/a>raised the old antisemitic trope that U.S. Jews hold, or should hold, a secret or dual loyalty to Israel rather than or in addition to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost 4 in 10Americans believe it\u2019s mostly or somewhat true that \u201cJews are more loyal to Israel than to America,\u201d according to the ADL researchers. In the fall, the rapper and designer Ye<\/a> \u2014 formerly known as Kanye West \u2014 said<\/a> that Jews exploit Black people for financial gain, that African Americans are the legitimate descendants of Jews of the Bible and that there is some \u201cfinancial engineering\u201d to being Jewish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The survey foundthat about 7in 10 Americans believe Jews stick together more than other Americans do and that more than one-third think Jews don\u2019t share theirvalues and \u201clike to be at the head of things.\u201d About 1 in 5 believe Jews have too much power in the United States, don\u2019t care what happens to others and are more willing than other Americans to use \u201cshady practices to get what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overt U.S. antisemitism returns with Trump, Kanye West: \u2018Something is different\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is difficult to assess whether antisemitic views have increased over time, given changes in the survey\u2019s response options as well as how respondents were sampled. The survey was conducted in September and October among a national sample of 4,007 adults online through AmeriSpeak, a randomly sampled panel of U.S. households maintained by NORC at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Williams and some experts who helped review the study noted that it shows the views of Americans under 30 and those of Americans over 30 are very similar. Of Americans ages 18 to 30, 18 percent saidsix or more of thestatements were true, while among those 31 and older, 20 percent did. Of younger Americans, 39 percent believed two to five statements, while among the older group, 41percent did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt used to be that older Americans harbored more antisemitic views. The hypothesis was that antisemitism declined in the 1990s, the 2000s, because there was this new generation of more tolerant people. It shows younger people are much closer now to what older people think. My hypothesis is there is a cultural shift, fed maybe by technology and social media<\/a>. The gap is disappearing,\u201d said Ilana Horwitz, one of the survey\u2019s reviewers, and an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Tulane University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cpervasiveness\u201d of antisemitic tropes the study shows is what\u2019s most interesting, Horwitz said. Even the fact that 3 percent of Americans say all<\/em> of the original statements are \u201cmostly or somewhat true\u201d is alarming, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three percent of all American adults is a little less than 8 million people \u2014 well over the 5.8 million<\/a> American adults who say they are Jewish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI like to tell my students: Kanye has more followers on Instagram than there are Jewish people in the world. So the extent to which Americans seem to believe these conspiratorial views about Jews is alarming,\u201d she said. Ye has more than 18 million followers on Instagram alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He painted a mural of Kanye West. Then a rabbi called.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new research also delved into the differences between believing anti-Jewish tropes and negative sentiment toward Israel and its supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the findings of this report is that antisemitism in that classic, conspiratorial sense is far more widespread than anti-Israel sentiment,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report highlighted that 90 percent of Americans agreed Israel \u201chas a right to defend itself against those who want to destroy it\u201d and that 79 percent agreed Israel is a \u201cstrong U.S. ally in the Middle East.\u201d However, 40percent at least slightlyagreedthat Israel \u201ctreats Palestinians like Nazis treated the Jews,\u201d and 17 percent disagreed with the statement\u201cI am comfortablespending time with people who openly support Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DHS launches panel on religious security as hateful incidents rise<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan Cooperman, director of religion research at the Pew Research Center and an adviser on the ADL project, said Judaism\u2019s long history includes periods of ebbs and flows in antisemitism \u2014 sometimes long ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted that in 2013, Pew convened<\/a> a dozen or more top experts on American Judaism for a survey and asked about their priorities and what areas needed more information and attention. The consensus at the time was that antisemitism was at a historic low in the United States and that, while it still existed, it wasn\u2019t a pressing concern. When Pew talked to experts in 2020, their attitudes were \u201ca complete sea change. They told us antisemitism is a very pressing issue and we need to devote a lot of attention to understanding it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vast majority of U.S. Jews told Pew in 2020 <\/a>that antisemitism had increased in the past five years, and a slim majoritysaid they personally feel less safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alvin Rosenfeld, director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University at Bloomington, said antisemitism never goes away but morphs in its own ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the West, it has ancient roots in Christian teachings of Jews as satanic Christ-killers. In modern times, \u201creligious bias gives way to racialized notions of Jewish inferiority or supremacy,\u201d he said, noting this year is the 120th anniversary of the \u201cThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion,\u201d an influential document falsely purporting to be a Jewish plan for world domination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came Holocaust denial and types of critiques of Israel that are antisemitic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo the \u2018new\u2019 antisemitism dates way back. Charges of Jewish conspiracy, Jews in control of the media, politics, entertainment, the money world \u2014 all of that dates back way back. It\u2019s multicausal today,\u201d Rosenfeld said. \u201cWhen hatred is so diverse, it\u2019s more potent and dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polling analyst Emily Guskin contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

washingtonpost.com <\/a>\u00a9 1996-2023 The Washington Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Boorstein and Scott Clement January 12, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST (WashingtonPost.com) At points in the past half-century, many U.S. antisemitism experts thought this country could be aging out of it, that hostility and prejudice against Jews were fading in part because younger Americans held more accepting views than did older… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24788,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24787\/revisions\/24788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}