PERSPECTIVES → TEXT MESSAGES Issue 868 · July 7, 2021

Whose Side Are They On?

The losers in all this are the Jews, who are treated as a convenient political football

Whose Side Are They On?

There are always anti-Semitic occurrences happening, some more serious than others, and these should be cause for concern and for hishtadlus to counter them. For years now, even as the number of such incidents has increased from year to year, if we step back we’ll see that in the context of a nation of 330 million people, those numbers are quite small.

Then there is the steady stream of anti-Semitism-related “controversies.” These are faux-outrage contests in which anti-Semitic remarks serve as cudgels with which to shame ideological opponents and to prove one’s own bona fides as the true lover of Jews. These case studies in how to manipulate people’s emotions for political and financial gain actually underscore just how good Jews have it here, since everyone is jockeying for the title of the Jews’ true defender.

The cynical circus of whataboutism usually works this way: Some official somewhere identified with Party A makes an anti-Semitic comment. Political hacks from Party B (developing sudden onset amnesia about their implacable opposition to “cancel culture”) demand that Party A fire, demote, or otherwise censure the offender. Party A fails to do so (usually not, by the way, because they’re a bunch of raging Jew-haters, but due to a combination of mild cowardice, a refusal to be manipulated, and the need to preserve a fragile balance of relationships with their own colleagues).

Next, pro-Party B media pundits go into overdrive, issuing hyperventilating denunciations of Party A as anti-Semitic from top to bottom. Not to be outdone, pro-Party A pundits spring into action, charging that Party B has hypocritically failed to censure, demote, or fire its own miscreants. And around we go.

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