Antisemitism reaches 'historic levels' in US
Antisemitism reaches 'historic levels' in US
PLUS: Puck's Peter Hamby on political misinformation and Gen Z's impact on the 2024 race
They came for the Jews in Russia over the weekend. The airport was stormed, and Jews hunted in the open by a mob ready to commit a pogrom. They wanted blood. Jewish blood. Their rage was fueled by antisemitism.
Yesterday, the FBI warned that antisemitism is reaching record levels in America. During a Senate hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said:
This is a threat that is reaching, in some way, sort of historic levels. It is in part because the Jewish community is targeted by terrorists really across the spectrum, including homegrown violent extremists and foreign terrorist organizations.
In fact, our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.
All across America Jews are afraid. What they are afraid of is what we are seeing play out around the world. War in Gaza between Israel and the terror group Hamas has ignited a global explosion of antisemitism. The war has given permission for Jew haters to express their hatred stripped clear of the boundary lines that policed it in polite company and society.
Our raging and increasingly illiberal society is becoming more dangerous for Jews because in many ways our democracy is collapsing. There is only one system of government in the world in which Jews have ever been safe. Democracy is what keeps Jews safe, and it is collapsing around the world. Great powers are rising that seek to challenge American power. They want to remake the world into something much darker, where people serve the state run by people who serve nothing but their self-interest. We must step back from political Armageddon lest we destroy ourselves and our children’s liberty.
I wrote this piece over a year ago because it is about the moment at hand and the story of evil witnessed:
Everyone should know who Avner Less is. Everyone should know who Adolf Eichmann and Reinhard Heydrich are. When their crimes were discovered the world promised it would never forget, but it has. In fact, it is clear that staggering numbers believe these crimes didn’t happen at all. We are at a new beginning, at the dawn of a terrible new age. It is a new age of hatred, and it is just beginning. It must be spoken about. America must choose. Peace or war. Better or worse.
Puck's Peter Hamby on political misinformation and Gen Z's impact on the 2024 race
This week on The Warning podcast, I talked to Peter Hamby, a founding partner of Puck News and host of "Good Luck America" on Snapchat. We discuss the changing nature of the media business, how the Washington elite ignore most of the country, and how young people will impact the 2024 election cycle. You can watch here, or you can listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
The Russian airport event was stoked and fired up on social media, the flight name, landing time and where in the air port to go, all got social media boosting. I am at a loss to understand how, in an age where i get instantaneous text messages for bills, deliveries, comments, updates, that the social media companies are unable to curb this. My current view is that social media is too easy to use for un-social things.
Correct, Never Again is “again”. I am in Paris now, - had been in Berlin visiting the Sachsnhausen concentration camp and Holocaust memorial. Then, to Anne Franks house in Amsterdam. I went in Bayeux, (Normandy) visiting Omaha, Utah, and the other beaches where the allied forces fought in WWII, - and the Bayeux war cemetery, second largest in the world next to Arlington National cemetery where so many died defending Democracy. I thought my trip would be tracing historical events, but the page hasn’t really turned at all. History seems to be repeating itself. The atrocities we humans commit on each other continue on; with all of our technology and so-called education, we are as barbaric as ever, and the world has never seemed more dangerous. I’m glad I’m on the “back-nine” of my life.