Im-Politic: Shameful Holocaust-Related Revisionism from The Times

Tags

1619 Project, anti-semitism, concentration camps, Holocaust, Holocaust Survivor Syndrome, Holocaust survivors, Im-Politic, Jennifer Orth-Veillon, revisionism, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, U.S. military, World War II

If you’ve been reading RealityChek for any meaningful length of time, you know that I’m not big on using terms like “disgusting,” and “vile.” But those were the first words that came to mind last night after finishing an April 28 New York Times Magazine article titled “For Some Holocaust Survivors, Even Liberation Was Dehumanizing.” And they were still my reaction after having slept on it.

If you’re not experiencing the same repugnance upon seeing this headline or reading the entire piece, just ask yourself what its point could possibly be? It can’t be to tar every member of the U.S. and Russian forces who first entered Nazi concentration camps in late 1944 through the official end of World War II in Europe (whose 75^th anniversary came yesterday). The author, France-based “freelance writer and university lecturer” Jennifer Orth-Veillon, explicitly describes acts of (what she, at least, sees as) exceptional compassion and what may be called “re-humanization” of the prisoners by the liberators (who, just to be as accurate as possible, didn’t shoot their way into the camps but found facilities from which most of the Nazis and their non-German underlings had fled).

But readers are also told that:

>”According to accounts, not all soldiers acted equally when confronted with that responsibility [of helping the prisoners regain “their lost humanity”] and some further mistreated them, extending the trauma they had endured while imprisoned. It’s hard to imagine that survivors could have suffered further….”

>”[T]he portrayal of liberation in some of their memoirs reveals that the end of the Holocaust opened new wounds.”

>One survivor wrote in his memoirs that (in Orth-Veillon’s words), “At the beginning of their internment, prisoners who weren’t selected for the gas chamber learned quickly from Nazi guards that they weren’t viewed as humans but as animals. Orders were barked, compassion was nonexistent. Semprún [the memoirist] hadn’t expected that his liberators would view him in the same way.”

>”Semprún’s brush with his liberators echoed Primo Levi’s description of his interactions with the Soviets at Auschwitz in January 1945.”

>”Some of these [liberators’] reactions suggest soldiers were experiencing a kind of shock, while others point to anti-Semitism, even within the most senior echelons of the military. After inspecting displaced persons camps in Germany in summer of 1945, Earl G. Harrison, a lawyer and American representative to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, expressed harsh criticism of the ways Jews were treated by the Americans, claiming evidence of conditions similar to the Nazi-run concentration camps from which they had been freed. He summarized his observations by stating, ‘We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them.’ When President Harry Truman read the report, he ordered Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to inspect displaced persons camps. During a visit to a camp in Bavaria, Gen. George S. Patton told Eisenhower that he blamed the refugees for the squalor. He complained they were ‘pissing and crapping all over the place,’ and wanted to open his own concentration camp ‘for some of these goddamn Jews.’ Maj. Irving Heymont, who was stationed at the Landsberg displacement camp, said in his letters that some Americans proclaimed that they preferred German civilians, who seemed normal, to the Jewish survivors, whom they characterized as animals undeserving of special treatment.”

Again, Orth-Veillon described much nobler liberator reactions, too. But there’s no need to engage in an exercise comparing article space devoted to one set of reactions versus the others to wonder about the value of presenting instances ranging from insensitivity to outright anti-Semitism at all. The author not only doesn’t go so far as to allege that these contemptible liberator words and deeds typified their reactions. Her piece contains no data or other material indicating that such responses represented the majority of liberator reactions. Nor do readers see anything indicating that these reactions even remotely approached levels that could legitimately described as significant – by any standard.

Instead, while writing of the record of what Orth-Veillon describes as the activity of “more than 30 American military units,” including entire divisions (which during World War II generally contained 15,000 troops), she repeatedly uses the describer “some.”

To which it needs to be asked, in the snidest and most indignant way, “So what?” As the author makes clear, most of troops were either in their late teens or barely out of them. They were confronted with sights and sounds and smells that the literature’s greatest authors had never even imagined outside renditions of the underworld. They had spent varying amounts of time during the preceding months experiencing their own horrors fighting their way across western Europe.

And “some” were bigots to begin with? And “some” looked away in shame or embarrassment or simple bewilderment (or covered their ears after hearing the latest of many survivor tales, as Orth-Veillon quotes another memoirist as contending)? And “some” in general didn’t act with all the skills of psychologists or other career care-givers? What is to the slightest extent even notable about these episodes, either individually or collectively?

Don’t expect any useful guidance here from the author. The “end of the Holocaust opened new wounds”? Could anything else be expected by anyone who’s thinking is minimally adult? Ditto for the passage reporting that once the prisoners “attained long-awaited freedom…the way some [that word again!] liberators treated them reinforced the idea that they had become less than human.” Because no one before her had ever recognized that the end of months and even years of the most bestial treatment, however ardently desired, wasn’t going to be a day at the beach even in the most ideal circumstances?

News flash: These difficulties are so widely known that the mental health profession has not only long identified a group of issues known as “Holocaust Survivor Syndrome,” they’ve discovered that it can be passed on in even physiological form to survivors’ children. And don’t think that the liberators themselves have been immune to struggle (to a much less extent of course). My own late father, who worked for a time in the camps as a Yiddish language translator, stopped believing in God as a result. I hate using anecdotes to make points, but is it imaginable that his experience was unique? Or so decidedly exceptional?

Don’t expect any useful guidance on supposed lessons learned from The New York Times itself, either. The article is introduced with the observation that it’s part of “a series…that documents lesser-known stories from the war….” And the editors valued this offering because it “explores the complex and sometimes dehumanizing interactions between the concentration camp prisoners and the Allied soldiers who liberated them.” In other words, they considered illuminating enough to justify literally thousands of words the insight that human behavior among participants of various kinds in the immediate aftermath of arguably the most monstrous atrocity in human history can be “complex.” P.S. – note another use of a conveniently cover-your-butt modifier – “sometimes.”

So should the episodes described in this article be swept under the rug by scholars like Orth-Veillon, and by news organizations like The Times? Actually, the operative verb is “ignore.” Because on top of being so morally obtuse as to qualify as repugnant (unless the author, and her editors, are incapable of distinguishing right from wrong?), this article is much more troubling than the kind of shamefully slanted and thoroughly inaccurate historical revisionism represented by another New York Times endeavor – the 1619 Project. After all, for all its fatal factual and interpretive flaws, this (completely inappropriate) Times venture into scholarship – which seeks to reduce the entirety of American history to a tale of slavery and racism – at least has the intellectual honesty to claim that its findings justify major rethinking of long-held ideas.

Orth-Veillon (and her editors) display none of that forthrightness. Instead, they’ve served up a product that’s difficult to explain other than as a gratuitous, sensationalistic (“clickbait-y,” in more contemporary terms) effort to pollute the reputation of servicemen and women who accomplished nothing less than ridding the world of an historic and dangerous evil. So yes – completely ignore these findings, at least until some evidence emerges of noteworthy scale. Recognize that they’re as deserving of attention as a typographical error. And if you don’t agree, send a letter to The Times asking for an article relating how some of the concentration camp guards really weren’t so bad. After all, no doubt there were “some.”

Im-Politic: Why White Supremacist Terrorism has Become a Top Priority Threat

Tags

anti-semitism, Christchurch, Great Replacement, Im-Politic, Islamic terrorism, Islamophobia, jihadism, mosques, Muslims, New Zealand attack, social media, terrorism, Trump, white nationalists, white supremacist terrorism, white supremacists

The great 20^th century economist John Maynard Keynes is widely thought to have said in response to a challenge to his consistency, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?…” I’ve always thought that’s great advice in life generally, and in particular for anyone who spends much time commenting on public policy. As a result, I have no problem reporting that my views on the seriousness of the white nationalist/supremacist violence threat nationwide and globally are different now than when I last wrote on the issue a little over three years ago. Moreover, it’s clear that President Trump needs to get off the dime on this front as well.

Specifically, it’s now clear to me that these movements have developed into dangers to public safety that are comparable, or nearly so, to Islam-inspired terrorist movements, and that other national governments need to intensify their focus accordingly.

The proximate cause of course is Friday’s terrible massacre of Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. But the past year has also witnessed a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania synagogue, the letter bombs sent by a Florida man to Democratic Party politicians and officials as well as liberal mainstream media figures, and the arrest of a Coast Guard officer who was apparently stockpiling weapons with the intent of killing lots of liberal political figures and journalists.

My previous views on the differences between white nationalist (I know it’s a logically tortuous term, but it’s in widespread use, so….) violence and Islamic terrorism were based mainly on two observations: First, that, unlike the latter, the former had no general program (however loony in real-world terms) that it tried to push; and second, that unlike Islamic terrorists, the white nationalists didn’t seem to have an international network from which they could draw strength, inspiration, and even resources.

It’s now clear, however, that the Islamophobic, anti-immigrant hatred behind much white nationalist violence is motivated by a determination to stop what these extremists view as an effort by globalist-dominated national governments to replace their countries’ historically white populations of European descent with Muslims and other foreign non-whites. Some of this “Great Replacement” thinking (I hesitate to dignify it as anything as systematic as an “ideology”) of course also justifies anti-semitic violence by evoking the long-held belief that Jews are crucial members, and indeed masterminds, of a transnational (usually called “cosmopolitan” conspiracy to control all of humanity by dissolving all existing bonds among individuals, ethnic groups, and national populations and imposing a form of tyrannical world government).

Moreover, like jihadists, white nationalists undoubtedly the world over increasingly are using social media to talk to one another, share their poisonous bigotry, and whip themselves into a frenzy. As a result, it’s just as pointless to try distinguishing the two by contending that jihadists appear much more organized globally than white nationalists. It’s true, for example, that white nationalists haven’t demonstrated the ability to turn large chunks of physical territory into bases capable of promoting large-scale terrorist operations like September 11. But it’s also true – as noted by many alarmed by jihadism – that such capabilities aren’t needed for Islamic radicalism to deserve blame for inspiring “lone wolves” to go on terrorist rampages.

It’s also true, as far as we know, that, unlike the jihadists, white nationalists haven’t yet been able to foster the creation of and maintenance of cells that can carry out large-scale terror attacks like those Europe has suffered in Paris and Brussels. But why sit back and wait for this capacity to develop?

So President Trump obviously needs to stop denying that white nationalism is a burgeoning security threat. White nationalists may indeed be “a small group of people that have very, very serious problems,” but there’s now no doubt that however sparse their numbers, white nationalists can do tremendous harm. He also needs to stop committing the entirely unforced error of reacting to anti-Muslim terrorism in the blandest possible ways (when he reacts at all) while greeting violence by Islamic radicals with instant outrage.

But let’s also be clear about what burgeoning white nationalist violence doesn’t mean. Principally, it doesn’t mean that Mr. Trump and his rhetoric are responsible (unless you want to hold Never Trump-ers and their extreme rhetoric responsible for antifa-type violence). And it doesn’t mean that Islam-inspired terrorism can or should be downplayed – including with all that implies for policies toward immigrants and refugees from countries where reliable vetting information simply doesn’t exist. 

Instead, it means that we live in a depressingly and dangerously complicated world in which perils can come simultaneously in many different forms; in which governments need to target them all; and in which people of genuinely good will urgently need to realize that what they have in common, and what separates them from the violent fringes, is far more important than what divides them. Mr. Trump could help greatly by recognizing that his entirely correct claim that “to solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name” applies to white supremacist terrorism as well as the Islam-inspired kind.

Following Up: Hate Crimes, Trump, and New FBI Data

Tags

African Americans, anti-semitism, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Following Up, hate crimes, Hispanics, illegal aliens, Islamic terrorism, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, neo-Nazis, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, racism, Trump, white nationalists, xenophobia

Right after last month’s Pittsburgh synagogue murders, I wrote a post that used FBI hate crimes data to cast doubt on President Trump’s direct or indirect culpability – but closed by noting that the Bureau would soon be issuing numbers that bring the story up to 2017.

“Soon” arrived this week, and the new statistics do provide evidence for a “Trump effect” on hate crimes overall, and on the incidence of anti-semitic hate crimes in particular. At the same time (and I know Never Trump-ers won’t want to see this), much of the evidence is considerably mixed, especially when it comes to the charge that, as presidential candidate and chief executive, Mr. Trump has “activated” violent anti-Semites and other bigots – i.e., he’s emboldened all of them to turn their hatred into attacks on their target groups.

To base my analysis on more data than used in that previous post, I’ve gone back to each of the 2000-2005 years, and continued examining the numbers for each year through 2017. I’ve also looked at two different categories of data that logically shed the most light on these issues – the number of total known incidents for each of these years, and the number of total known offenders. (I also counted up the numbers of victims, but believe that, even though they track well with the other two data sets, they tell us a good deal less about the activation charge. So for brevity’s sake, I’ve left them out.)

The annual figures on total hate crimes incidents typify most of the patterns. The strongest evidence for the Trump effect consists of the changes in the number of incidents and offenders for 2015-2016, and 2016-2017. Recall the Mr. Trump declared his candidacy for president in June, 2015.

Between 2015 and 2016, the incidents figure rose by 4.63 percent, and then jumped by 17.22 percent the following year. The 2016-17 increase was the biggest in percentage terms since that between 2000 and 2001 (a 20.67 percent surge that partly consisted of reactions to the September 11 terror attacks in 2001).

Here, however, is where the activation narrative starts to lose some force. Principally, the 2015-2016 increase was much smaller than that recorded between 2005 and 2006 (7.80 percent). Was then-President George W. Bush unwittingly or not encouraging extremists? Were they becoming activated in opposition to some of his policies, like the Iraq War? The overall hate crimes numbers don’t yield any obvious answers, but clearly among some groups, national tempers were flaring back then.

Another complication: The absolute 2017 number of hate crimes – like the 2016 number – was the biggest in several years. Indeed, 2017’s 7,175 total hate crimes was the highest figure since 2008’s 7,783. But think about that for a moment. It means that the 2008 number was (significantly) higher. So were its counterparts for each year since 2000. Were those years of greater Presidential activation?

It’s tempting to blame a “September 11” effect during those years. Yet the figure for 2000 – the year before the terror strikes – was much higher (8,063) than 2017’s as well.

The offender numbers are even more puzzling from the activation standpoint – since presumably they’re the individuals being activated. They did rise by 14.46 percent between 2014 and 2015 – which covers the first six months of the Trump presidential campaign. But between 2015 and 2016 – when he was running all year and clearly was much more prominent in the national consciousness – the number of offenders actually declined by 2.91 percent.

The following year, Mr. Trump’s first in the Oval Office, offender numbers shot up again – by 10.40 percent. That increase, however, wasn’t that much larger in percentage terms than the rise during the Barack Obama year 2012-2013 (9.06 percent).

Further, looking at the makeup of these numbers (in terms of the target groups) produces even bigger mysteries. Specifically, that big 17.22 percent increase in the total number of hate crimes between 2016 and 2017 was keyed largely by a 37.13 percent jump in incidents targeting Jews. Consequently, the 2017 total reached 938 – the highest figure since, again, 2008 (another George W. Bush year). But as with overall incidents, this means that the 2008 figure (1,013) topped that for 2017 by an impressive margin. In addition, the 2017 total was exceeded no less than six times in all between 2000 and 2008.

More puzzles emerge from the offenders figures. The number targeting Jews increased 8.79 percent between 2015 and 2016, and by 24.23 percent between 2016 and 2017. The absolute numbers for those years (421 and 523, respectively) are also the two highest during the 2000-2017 period. So these figures also seem to bear out the accusation that President Trump has coddled neo-Nazi/”white nationalist” types in various ways and bears some responsibility for their crimes.

But leave aside the objections that Mr. Trump has welcomed Jews into his family, has worked with them in numerous ways during his business career, and has been a staunch supporter of Israel (all of which has enraged some of those neo-Nazis). Why did the numbers of anti-semitic perps skyrocket by 69.40 percent between 2012 and 2013?

Something else that doesn’t dovetail with the activation charges: Although candidate and President Trump have been accused of stoking racism and xenophobia along with anti-Semitism, the data indicate that any Trump effect in regard to African-Americans and Muslims has been much more muted.

The number of incidents figures show that reported hate crimes targeting Muslims nearly doubled between 2014 and 2015 (from 154 to 294), and then climbed by another 21.77 percent the following year. Maybe candidate Trump’s calls for a ban on Muslim immigration into the United States and for registering Muslims in a national data base deserve lots of blame? Possibly. But then why would anti-Muslim hate crimes have dropped by 7.54 percent in the President’s first year in office – when the Muslim ban effort was a top priority, and front-page news, for months.

Moreover, despite the belief that Mr. Trump’s support of “birther” claims against former President Obama, and a 7.65 percent increase in hate crimes against blacks between 2014 and 2015, these numbers have stayed virtually flat over the course of the President’s main campaigning year and his first year in office.

Evidence for Trump-ian activation that’s more compelling comes from the data on anti-Hispanic hate crimes. The numbers of incidents and offenders both rose strongly – by a record 42.73 percent for the former and by 29.21 percent for the latter between 2016 and 2017, when the President kept immigration issues front and center. As with so many of the other statistics, however, the latest absolute Trump Era numbers for both categories remains way below many pre-Trump annual levels.

That’s why it seems reasonably clear to me that the main driver of the hate crimes data isn’t presidential activation, and that it may not be a major influence at all. What are some possible alternative causes? In many cases, real world events. Two examples: First, the numbers of anti-Muslim hate crimes and violent haters arguably rose so robustly from 2014 on because that period has been marked by a shocking number of fatal terrorism strikes launched by Islamic extremists in both the United States and in Europe.

Second, the anti-Hispanic counterparts of these figures were so much higher during the previous decade than they are today because those years featured mounting efforts by the Open Borders lobby – including an unprecedented wage of protest and other forms of activism by illegal immigrants themselves – to demand more rights and government benefits for this illicit population.

This explanation doesn’t seem to apply to the levels and growth rates of anti-semitic hate crimes. But then again, this form of bigotry isn’t often called “the oldest hatred” for nothing. (Racism of course has been an historical constant as well in America and elsewhere.) 

It should go without saying (but maybe not in these highly charged and polarized times) that none of the events and developments cited immediately above can ever justify hate crimes or similar bigoted actions and beliefs. Nor does it signal a belief that the President has handled these incidents on his watch acceptably. As I’ve written repeatedly, he hasn’t. But what should be clear is that anyone seeking to understand anti-semitic and other hate crimes needs to look far beyond the White House.

Following Up: No, Trump’s Guards vs Guns Idea Isn’t Crazy

Tags

anti-semitism, armed guards, Associated Press, Following Up, guns, Kansas City Star, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, TIME, Trump, Twitter, Washington Post

President Trump’s claim after the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings that the presence of armed guards would have reduced the fatalities had all the earmarkings of one of those face-palming (for various reasons) comments he too often makes. I mean, everyone knows this belief is bonkers, right? Twitter has apparently “melted down” over them. Late-night TV comics were in full snark mode. More seriously, public officials in Pittsburgh threw cold water on the suggestion.

Apparently, all these critics missed these highly conspicuous exceptions: many prominent Jews themselves. Their views of course aren’t dispositive. But given all the dismissive and/or indignant harrumphing generated by the idea that any houses of worship need such security, or should need such security, the points they’ve made certainly deserve more attention than they’ve gotten so far – and they’re worth presenting in some detail.

In particular, according to this Associated Press report:

“[B]efore those incidents, many synagogues and Jewish organizations in the U.S. had been ramping up security measures.

“Fifteen years ago, the Anti-Defamation League issued a 132-page guidebook titled, ‘Protecting Your Jewish Institution: Security Strategies for Today’s Dangerous World.’

“It includes detailed advice on controlling access to the premises, and also urged leaders of institutions to think carefully about whether or not they wanted to hire armed guards.”

In addition:

“A rabbi-emeritus at the Tree of Life Synagogue that was the site of the Pittsburgh attack, Alvin Berkun, “said guards — while used during the major Jewish holy days — were not on duty Saturday.”

And it’s not just Pittsburgh:

“In Kansas City’s synagogues, armed security has been a presence for years — particularly on major holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Some synagogues hire guards every Friday night and Saturday morning for Shabbat (sabbath) services. At others, armed security protects children as they come and go for preschool.”

One big reason? As RealityChek regulars know, Kansas City’s Jewish community was attacked by a neo-Nazi gunman in 2014.

In fact:

“Many U.S. synagogues do employ armed guards; others have taken alternative measures to tighten security.

“‘I doubt there’s a synagogue in the US that doesn’t think seriously about security,’ said [Heidi] Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center [from the AP story linked above].”

Further, in the wake of the latest shootings, the Washington Post has reported that:

“[P]olitical and Jewish leaders across the country are grappling with whether [Mr. Trump’s] suggestion makes sense.”

And in Pittsburgh itself, at least one Jewish congregation has settled on an answer: “Pittsburgh Synagogue Hires Armed Guards to Open for Sunday School After Shooting.”

At this pthatoint, I’m far from sold on armed guards as the idea way to prevent shootings at synagogues and other religious institutions – or any other public places. And I hate the fatalism implied. But we don’t live in an ideal world. And we certainly don’t live in a world that permits us to safely dump all over a recommendation just because we don’t happen to care for the source. At least that’s the message being sent by those who need to take on this challenge in the here and now, as opposed to posturing from afar.

 

Following Up: Trump and Hate Crimes: What the Data Say

Tags

African Americans, anti-semitism, bigotry, Following Up, hate crimes, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, racism, Trump, whites

If you’re one of those who believe that hate crimes against Jews and other religious or racial or ethnic minorities in America have reached unprecedented levels, and that President Trump’s too often offensive rhetoric is solely or even mainly responsible, here are some numbers to consider:

5,938

5,446

4,869

4,563

4,461

4,200

4,150

4,862

These numbers represent the FBI’s figures on the annual number of reported religiously, racially, and ethnically motivated hate crimes in the United States in the year 2005, and then annually from 2010 through 2016. The FBI won’t be reporting its 2017 results for at least a few more weeks, but these statistics indicate that the incidence of such transgressions has been falling recently, not rising. (I chose these years assuming that, by 2005, much post-September 11 anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Easterner sentiment had cooled, and then listed annual numbers in 2010 because that’s our last beginning of a decade.)

It’s true that there’s been a major rebound between 2015 and 2016, and that Mr. Trump declared his presidential candidacy in June, 2015. So maybe that accounts for the increase? Possibly. But then how to explain the considerably higher numbers in 2005 and 2010 – and the slightly higher number in 2011? Were dog whistlers occupying the Oval Office then?

Blame-Trump efforts look even weaker when the makeup of the 2015-16 increase is examined. Here are those data, by reporting/victim group, along with the statistics for the previous year’s change, to provide some context:

percentage changes                         2014-15                   2015-16

blacks                                                -0.09                          0.86

whites                                                 7.64                        15.21

Jews                                                    6.87                       17.92

Muslims                                          107.43                       26.38

Hispanics                                           -9.26                       23.21

In other words, a case can be made that Trump rhetoric played some role in prompting a significant number of hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and Hispanics. But the President is widely accused of being a racist, too. Why, then, was there virtually no change in the incidence of hate crimes against African Americans? The rate of increase in hate crimes against whites, moreover, nearly doubled. What’s up with that? And although the numbers of such offenses against Muslims rose strongly between 2015 and 2016, they rose at more than four times faster the previous year – in fact, more than doubling. Did more extremist bigots decide to tune in to Mr. Trump on Hispanics between 2015 and 2016, as opposed to his Muslim remarks? And if so, what could explain that development?

Saturday’s Pittsburgh synagogue shooting justifies a special focus nowadays on hate crimes committed against Jews, so here are the FBI figures for reports of such incidents for 2005, and annually between 2010 and 2016:

976

1,040

935

836

737

684

731

862

These results provide some support for claims that Mr. Trump’s emergence on the political scene inspired some of the nation’s worst anti-semites to crawl out from under their rocks. But they also show that the Jewish-focused alt-right/neo-Nazis etc were significantly less activated in 2015 and 2016 than they were in 2005 or 2010. And of course, the overall U.S. population grew during that period.

Further, it’s easy to reach similar conclusions from this list of years, starting in the twentieth century, that have seen acts of actual violence on American Jews themselves (as opposed to, e.g., synagogue vandalism or verbal harassment):

1915

1958

1960

1977

1984

1985

1986

1991

1994

1999

2000

2009

2014

2018

The source is The Atlantic Monthly; I’ve added the 2000 Pittsburgh murder that I described in yesterday’s post which the magazine for some reason omitted. Although numbers like this per se can’t convey casualty counts and other qualitative measures of lives lost or individuals wounded or fear induced, there’s no support here for the idea that American Jews should feel less safe now than ever before. In fact, the worst decades look like the 1980s and 1990s. (Keep in mind that actual casualty levels don’t necessarily reveal the virulence of an attack.)

It’s certainly possible that the FBI’s upcoming 2017 data could show a big jump in various types of reported hate crimes, and that a Trump effect will be lot clearer (depending, again, on the makeup of the increase). Until then, however, the charges that Trump-ian dog whistles are the big reason for record (at least in modern times) threats to American minorities of all or even many kinds will be sounding an awful lot like dog whistles themselves.

Im-Politic: Before You Blame Trump for Pittsburgh….

Tags

alt-right, anti-semitism, bigotry, FBI, Gab, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jews, letter bombs, Open Borders, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, refugees, Robert Bowers, Trump, xenophobia

Yesterday morning’s Pittsburgh synagogue shooting hit home especially hard for me – and not just because many of the victims, and the clear targets, were fellow Jews. I also attended college with numerous students from the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where the atrocity took place, and recently learned that a professional friend hales from there as well. I’m no longer in touch with the folks from college, but for all I know some of the victims were their friends or loved ones. And although I’ve never visited the neighborhood itself, the descriptions I’ve heard suggest that other than being a little more urbanized, it’s not so different from the one I’m from on the north shore of Long Island.

Then there are the political and public policy angles: Apparent murderer Robert Bowers was an active participant on the alt-right and highly xenophobic social media platform Gab, and was especially infuriated by the activities of HIAS, (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) a Jewish group that seeks to assist immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers to the United States. I’m a strong supporter of President Trump’s efforts to reduce illegal immigration and control more tightly some forms of illegal immigration. But as I’ve written before, his words on immigration and other issues have too often been unnecessarily inflammatory or insensitive or simply clueless.

(I’m much less ambivalent about claims that Mr. Trump has singlehandedly pushed American politics in general into a more violent phase with his often harsh attacks on Democratic party and other political opponents. Yes, the accused sender of his week’s letter bombs sent to some of these figures over the last week is a Trump supporter. But it’s time for the Trump critics to start recognizing how their own over-the-top and often even harsher language has played a role in generating acts like the attempted mass shooting of Republican members of Congress in the Washington, D.C. area in June, 2017.)

But before anyone starts viewing the Pittsburgh shooting as a reason for fully embracing an Open Borders agenda for the Western Hemisphere, and for refugees from the Middle East, and making even louder calls demonize Mr. Trump as a Hitler-in-waiting, or white supremacist apologist, or dog-whistler to racists and fascists, and/or to impeach him for this supposed record, they should consider this newspaper paragraph:

“Stunned congregants rallied in prayer to a bullet-pocked, swastika-smeared synagogue today as police pursued a hate-crime motive in the [Pittsburgh-area] shooting rampage that left five people dead.”

No, this isn’t an early report of yesterday’s murders. It’s the lead from a newspaper account of a spree of anti-semitic (and racist and xenophobic) killings and vandalism in the Pittsburgh suburbs in April, 2000. That’s a decade-and-a-half before President Trump’s inauguration, and almost as long before he announced his White House run. To refresh your memory, the chief executive then was Bill Clinton. And the list of presidential primary candidates for Democrats and Republicans alike wasn’t exactly dominated by extremists, and those considered outside the mainstream of either party (like Patrick J. Buchanan) didn’t get very far. Yet according to FBI data, that year was actually tied for the highest number of annual anti-semitic hate crimes for the 1996-2016 period. (The Bureau’s 2017 data will probably be coming out a bit later this year.)

In other words, anti-semitism in the United States is nothing new, violent anti-semitism in the United States is nothing new (remember the attack at the Overland Park, Kansas Jewish Community Center of 2014 – also well before the Age of Trump – although none of the white supremacist’s victims was Jewish), and even violent anti-semitism in the Pittsburgh area is nothing new.

It’s completely appropriate to voice outrage at the killer and the mail-bomb sender, about anti-semitism, and about bigotry and unreasoning hatred, about politically motivated violence of all kinds (nothing new in American history, either – as presidential assassinations alone should make all too clear), and about incendiary speech from all manner of U.S. leaders. But those insisting that the nation would be free of such problems if only Mr. Trump had never run for president may have some unreasoning hatred issues of their own.

Im-Politic: Charlottesville & Trump: A Never-Ending Story?

Tags

American South, anti-semitism, Charlottesville, Confederate monuments, free speech, hate groups, Im-Politic, neo-Nazis, racism, Trump, white supremacists

And so President Trump has stepped in it once again, and guaranteed that, unless something major changes, self-inflicted wounds will become the hallmarks of his presidency.

Of course, I’m talking about his impromptu remarks at yesterday’s press appearance, in which new, explicit denunciations of racist and anti-semitic hate groups were accompanied by descriptions of some of their individual members present in Charlottesville, Virginia as “very fine people” – along with comments that at least could reasonably be read as establishing a moral equivalence between the marchers and those who came to the region to protest their planned rally.

Among the least defensible:

>The contention that the torchlight marchers last Friday night included “people protesting very quietly the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee”;

>The charge that supporters of removing Confederate memorials are “changing culture” – which closely resembles the specious claim that the memorials were erected to honor the American South’s distinctive “heritage.”

As per the views I expressed on Saturday, I still don’t believe that Mr. Trump is a racist or an anti-semite. I still believe that his behavior mainly reflects a “pathetically mistaken” belief that a big chunk of his largely white, working class base will take offense at overly harsh attacks on bigoted, fringe figures like David Duke and Richard Spencer.

But upon reflection, I’d add that he’s stunningly inarticulate, and terminally – and in many ways childishly – argumentative. And although I’m not concerned that his verbal indiscipline will needlessly spark a war or some other kind of domestic or global crisis, those are worrisome traits in a figure whose every syllable is (understandably) put under a microscope. Nor is much simple common sense visible on the President’s part, or at least not often enough.

After all, how difficult would it have been to draw up sometime over the weekend and deliver on TV a statement along the lines of:

“My fellow Americans [or whatever standard presidential speech introductory wording you like]. I loathe the Charlottesville protesters and everything they represent. The neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and their ilk have deliberately associated themselves with historical atrocities and injustices that are not only appalling. They are uniquely evil in nature. It is indeed infuriating to see them openly displaying their perverse and destructive views in our streets and parks and squares. In fact, I am personally infuriated that they keep invoking my name, and portraying my efforts to reinvigorate the ideal of a practical, healthy nationalism as an endorsement of racism and anti-semitism and xenophobia.

“But we also must remember something crucial about our democratic values – which of course are values that the hate groups’ evil historical idols have tried to destroy. They demand that even loathsome figures and voices enjoy the freedom to exercise their Constitutional speech rights. So in that respect, attempts to disrupt their activities, or the First Amendment freedoms of other unpopular speakers, must be condemned, too.

“Therefore, law-breakers will be prosecuted – whatever their political views and associations.

“But much more important, I hope that the vast majority of Americans angered by the disgraceful Charlottesville marchers and their supporters understand, and take to heart, that the best way to counter, and defeat, the hatred they spew is not by joining them in the gutter and resorting to violence – unless it’s a matter of self-defense. The best way is to expose their sick lies with the power of reason. The best way is to remember our love, compassion, and respect for each other, and take every opportunity to show it. The best way is to strengthen our nation’s unity of spirit. And the best way is to fulfill our sacred duty each and every day to keep our great national experiment in self-government a beacon for all of humanity.”

Now the President is reaping the whirlwind. I have no idea whether this latest uproar will simply blow over (as with the Access Hollywood video episode), or become superseded by another headline news development, or will doom Mr. Trump to a single term, or will erode his political support so drastically that his presidency becomes impossible to continue. What does seem certain is that the prospects of a successful Trump presidency, and especially of promises kept to economically struggling middle class and working class Americans, have taken a body blow, and that something on the order of a dramatic display of executive competence, an equally dramatic display of contrition and/or explanatory eloquence – plus a tidal wave of dumb luck – will be needed for even a partial recovery.

Im-Politic: First Thoughts on Charlottesville

Tags

ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, anti-semitism, Charlottesville, civil liberties, Civil War, Confederacy, Constitution, David Duke, Founding Fathers, free speech, Im-Politic, neo-Nazis, racism, Robert E. Lee, secession, slavery, treason, Trump, Virginia

It’s as tempting to offer timely thoughts about today’s Charlottesville, Virginia violence and the reactions it’s generated as it is difficult – for new developments keep taking place, and incontrovertible facts are hard to come by. That said, here are what strike me as as points worth making at present.

First, as I’ve previously written, the triggering complaint of the white nationalist/neo-Nazi/confederate revivalist/call-them-what-you-wish protest and the narrowest-gauge cause it represents should be unacceptable to all Americans who truly love their country. Confederate statues and other monuments to the rebellion (e.g., street and high school names) have no place in our national life. And removing them has nothing to do with erasing history. The history of the Civil War must of course be taught in the most intellectually honest way possible. But statues and street names etc are unmistakable efforts to honor and memorialize.

And whether you view the secession as motivated by intertwined racism and slavery issues (where in my view the bulk of the evidence points) or more legitimate federalist and states rights claims, the decision to revolt violently against the federal government was a simple act of treason, which should always be condemned in the harshest possible terms.

Moreover, please don’t respond with observations that the Founding Fathers’ ranks included slave-owners (like Washington and Jefferson) or that many subsequent American leaders were racists (like Woodrow Wilson). For slavery was, tragically, legal under the Constitution until emancipation. And as I’ve written (in the post linked above), most of the historical national figures with inadequate records on race were, first, to great extents products of their time and, second, known for playing many other roles and making many other contributions to the nation and its success.

As for the protesters’ broader supposed grievances about repressed and endangered white rights and even safety, I have no doubt that economic stresses and anxieties are at work in many cases. But feeling the need, or advisability, to fly the Confederate flag or wear the swastika simply signals a form of derangement that our society has rightly decided is beyond the pale politically and morally speaking. So public figures should decry this message and reject any association with those sending them.

Which brings us to the question of the Trump response. It was, as critics have charged, far too weak. What I can’t figure out is the “why”. Is the president a racist? He’s had too many African-American friends and supporters for that charge to stick. He and his advisers and aides also have too often argued for restricting immigration by pointing to the benefits U.S. blacks would reap.

Related anti-semitism make even less sense, given that Mr. Trump’s daughter married an orthodox Jew (who he has anointed as a top White House aide) and then converted herself to Judaism. I know that the “some of my best friends are….” argument can be and has been abused by anti-semites (as well as racists). But insisting that “some of my children and grandkids….” is much harder to dismiss.

The only explanation that makes even some sense to me (meaning of course that I’m not totally convinced) is that the president worries that a substantial part of his (largely white) base either covertly or (much likelier) subconsciously sees itself as racially repressed or marginalized, too, and would suddenly desert him if he went after the David Dukes and Richard Spencers of this country. In other words, Mr. Trump’s troubling words reflect a political calculation, not a shared bigotry.

If so, his position is not only timorous, but pathetically mistaken. Because for every hater he retains by his silence or anodyne words at times like this weekend, he risks losing many more moderates and independents who have no use for the identity-politics obsessed, and therefore intrinsically divisive, Democrats but who are disgusted by overt racists – much less neo-Nazis. In fact, Duke’s tweets today show that this arch-racist and anti-semite is infuriated by the president’s Charlottesville remarks.

More important, the president will earn much more durable support from independents and moderates – especially those who have actually lost economic ground or fear such losses – by keeping the campaign promises he made to restore living wage jobs than by even minimal pandering to prejudice.

Finally, the role of the Charlottesville police and any other law enforcement authorities tasked with handling the protests needs to be scrutinized thoroughly – along with our notions of protesters’ rights. I’m pretty certain that most Americans would agree with the right of Nazis and the like to stage a protest over the treatment of Confederate memorials (or any other reprehensible) cause, and to display symbols that should disgust all people of good will. And of course, these are Constitutionally protected rights.

But I’ve long thought that the right to protest also entails the right of protesters to be protected from those seeking to disrupt their events. In other words, once counter-protesters started physically interfering with the Nazis, the police force present should have stepped in and started making arrests. Even better, they should have taken much more effective measures to keep the counter-protesters physically apart from the protesters, to reduce the odds of violence breaking out to begin with. To my knowledge, law enforcement authorities have never been sued for such failures (not even by the American Civil Liberties Union, which admirably supported the Nazis’ etc right to demonstrate in Charlottesville). I hope the organization will consider bringing such a case in the wake of Charlottesville, if the circumstances merit this action.

For failing to establish protesters’ right to security could easily turn into an open invitation for harassment that could crimp free speech rights yet further. And what would induce the Nazis – and violence-prone lefties – to start licking their chops more eagerly?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Middle East Refugee Admissions Must be Hyper-Cautious

Tags

anti-semitism, elites, ISIS, liberals, libertarians, Marco Rubio, media, Middle East, neoconservatives, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris attacks, progressives, refugees, Syria, terrorism, The New York Times, World War II, xenophobia

If there are good arguments against hyper-cautious U.S. policies towards accepting Middle East refugees, I haven’t heard them yet. Instead, those urging lenient, “generous” approaches have simply supplied the latest burst of evidence that large percentages of America’s political and media elites, as well as other avowed progressives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians, have lost most of their common sense and even their instinct for self-preservation.

It’s also important to note that too many advocates of tighter restrictions for those fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq and the Middle East’s general turmoil have taken butt-headed positions, too. (The main example – admitting only Christians.) But on balance, the restrictionists have been much more realistic than their opponents – whose ranks of course include President Obama.

I’d quote from his remarks on the subject earlier this week in Turkey but they were so narrow and shallow (focusing solely on that religious discrimination issue) that they’re easily dismissed. No better was the New York Times’ main editorial on refugees. Its writers – rightly seen as leading voices of what passes for American liberalism these days – endorsed Mr. Obama’s claim that the restrictionists were “betraying” American values. But they also accused the restrictionists (without naming them) of “confusing refugees with terrorists” and of “absurdly” portraying Muslims as “inherently dangerous,” thereby running the risk of validating terrorist propaganda about the Western world’s implacable hostility.

Most revealingly, it handled the crucial issue of vetting refugees streaming in large numbers from lands completely convulsed by chaos simply by scoffing at Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s concern that “you can have 1,000 people come in and 999 of them are just poor people fleeing oppression and violence, but one of them is an ISIS fighter.” Surely, The Times contended, “America can offer a smarter and more generous response.” But it seems that presenting specific recommendations would have meant exceeding space limits, since none were mentioned.

My perusal of the Mainstream and social media has turned up several prominent arguments for leniency that at least make a nod toward history and logic – but only in the most superficial and tendentious ways.

For example, one supposed “Aha!” point made by the lenience backers consists of citing polls from the 1930s indicating strong U.S. public opposition to admitting (often Jewish) refugees fleeing the Nazi-fication of Germany and outbreaks of similar persecution elsewhere in central and eastern Europe. Those past restrictionists unmistakably were motivated by anti-semitism and broader xenophobia. Therefore, imply the modern refugees’ avowed champions, so are today’s restrictionists.

But was the world of the 1930s threatened by anti-American Jewish- or other European-dominated terrorist groups? That’s news to me. One Facebook friend noted that (at least two) German spies had made it to the United Kingdom in December, 1940 disguised as refugees, suggesting that this kind of danger did exist.

But at that time, the U.K. had been at war and fully mobilized for more than a year. Normal peacetime transport between the continent and the British Isles was non-existent, the government was closely guarding the coast against spies and saboteurs, and whatever refugees who managed to leave (perhaps more heavily guarded) Germany, its allies, or occupied Europe, were few in number and easily identified. Indeed, the aforementioned spies came in a rowboat that was escorted to British shores by British forces. Such episodes are supposed to hold lessons for Americans today?

Others advocating for today’s refugees have noted that terrorists can also enter the United States as travelers using valid foreign or forged passports, and that threats can also come from domestic “lone wolves” and cells. All true. But are those observations supposed to demonstrate that there’s no point in vetting Middle East refugees today with the greatest care? That no vetting at all should take place? That today’s procedures should be loosened? If so, that’s tantamount to saying that since many crimes will never be prevented or solved, all law enforcement is pointless.

In fact, this kind of reasoning most plausibly buttresses the restrictionist argument. That is, it’s possible that some refugees or others in the Middle East and elsewhere who are politically inactive may be so enraged by restrictive U.S. and other Western policies that they wind up signing up with ISIS or similar groups. But the strength of these organizations makes clear that many other individuals in many countries have responded to many other terrorist recruiting pitches over many years. So why not use the greatest possible vetting prudence to at least boost the odds that dangerous extremists won’t cross American borders?

Of course, many supporters of lenience do agree that vetting is essential. Logically, this implies a confidence that the current system is satisfactory. But it’s difficult to see why this confidence is justified. It’s true that the current screening process is rigorous and protracted. It’s equally true, however, that significant numbers of Middle East refugees haven’t been admitted into the United States in the Age of ISIS. And although the United States has indeed safely admitted many such individuals previously, not until the latest round of Middle East conflicts had refugee numbers themselves reached flood-tide proportions.

Moreover, precisely because of these conflicts, today’s refugees present unusually difficult vetting challenges. As made clear even by Obama administration officials, the data needed to corroborate identity, criminal records, and other crucial details simply don’t exist or aren’t available.

Ironically, on the one hand, the detailed scrutiny refugees already receive makes clear that, under current U.S. procedures, there’s no chance of the country being flooded with large numbers any time soon. So unless these procedures are considerably eased, and/or American leaders decide to expand greatly the refugee numbers the nation has promised to take (currently “at least 10,000”), neither the threats feared by the restrictionists, nor the humanitarian relief desired by their opponents, will significantly increase any time soon.

But the ability of fewer than ten terrorists to turn Paris into a war zone for hours last week demonstrates that even overwhelming screening success may not prevent unacceptable danger. And the administration’s stated determination to bring all 10,000 Syrian refugees next year troublingly indicates a desire to expedite vetting, not reenforce it.

So anyone listening with intelligence and genuinely wanting maximum possible protection for the American people should recognize that most restrictionists are saying, “Better safe than sorry,” not urging completely closed doors. It’s also obvious that their critics don’t have a message remotely this responsible, or even coherent.