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Editor’s Note: The following columns were first published City Journal.
A wheel shelf carrying Jewish rabbis who cruised around Brooklyn’s Crown Heights in 1991. After being separated from the group, one car ran at a red light, collided with another vehicle, shaking to the curb, attacking two black children, one injured and the other killed. Within hours, the neighborhood had erupted in riots, with black residents mob targeting the Jewish system. Early the next morning, a group of young black men stabbed him and beat a Jewish graduate student to death.
As tensions escalated, Lace Hustler Al Sharpton organized protests on the ground, portraying Jews as “diamond dealers” responsible for the global exploitation of black people. Another round of looting, vandalism and violence followed.
Flash to the present. Hamas launched a terrorist campaign against Israel on October 7, 2023, creating fertile ground for another propaganda war. In the US, leftist scholars seized moments of support for Israel’s “decolonization,” and in the digital realm, new anti-Semitism has nurtured its heads. Several influential online commentators (particularly Kanye West, Candice Owens and Andrew Tate) pushed conspiracy theory into attention around October 7th, particularly in the West, with podcasts and social media platforms, and with their ostensible podcasts and social media platforms in terms of “right” view.
Stop talking and start teaching: New York must fight to end anti-Semitism in our schools
The two episodes offer comparative points that are fascinating. Anti-Semitism is an ancient suffering, but takes a different form throughout history, depending on the culture, language and technology of the moment. In today’s case we see a revived anti-Semitism that scrambled politics and perpetuated itself in cyberspace. In short, Crown Heights riots are digital.
Pastor Al Sharpton welcomes Sen from that time. Kamala Harris, D-Calif, heads to the podium before attending the Sharpton National Action Network’s medium-term elections conference in the Kennedy Senate room room in the Russell Senate office building in Capitol Hill, held on November 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The first thing to understand is that Sharpton’s activism was a kind of flesh and blood ethnic politics that was adapted to the television era. His story at Crown Heights was built on specific complaints from certain people, certain neighborhoods. It created that power for the looting of the left: that Jews oppressed poor black people and that the government supported them.”white Interroper[s]”Beyond native minorities, Sharpton’s hoped results were concrete. He sought driver imprisonment and cash for his organization, which was more widely operated, like a mafia protective racket.
The new anti-Semitism has another turn. The leaders of the movement are not political activists, not leftist oppressors/repressed frameworks, but social media “influencers” who have built their stories based on spread and right-coded conspiracy theories. In the narration of these influencers, Jews organized sex-related horror email rings to control the American media, flood society with pornography, and secure support for Israel.
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The tenors in this campaign are also new. Sharpton tried to convey a serious sense of rage, but right-wing influencers employ the hallmarks of postmodern discourse: cynical, schizophrenia tone. When Kanye West promotes Swastika’s T-shirt, it is not to show support for the organized neo-Nazi movement, but to play a martian, not because it symbolizes sin and is bait for digital censorship. (Western troubled mental states should not be discounted as a factor here.) Online, stories circulate through left-wing networks. We believe this will help undermine Israel’s support.
File – Kanye West will be taking part in the Spring/Summer 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week held in Paris, France on October 2, 2022. (Stefan Card Dinar – Corvis/Corvis via Getty Images)
Of course, the ironic tone does not eliminate Nishi and his followers. It also doesn’t mean that their stories will be included in the digital realm. American Jews are rightly afraid that this postmodern anti-Semitism would ripple into the real world and bring violence, as did the shooting of a synagogue of life in Pittsburgh. This dynamic of violence also reflects the complexity of a new digital culture. Unlike the Crown Heights riots, where Sharpton’s rhetoric mobilized mobs directly, the relationship between online discourse and decentralized meme violence It’s often vague.
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There are also problems Cui Bono. The simple answer is that Jews provide convenient scapegoats. Kanye West can lock his responsibility to the “Jewish doctor” in Fallout related to his bipolar disorder. Andrew Tate can move liability into the “Matrix” for his various criminal cases. But there is another answer. It’s a Sharpton model, a recreation of the business. Internet reward scandals, shocks, virality, and conspiracy theories enjoy the demand of a burgeoning market. Candace Owens is more popular than ever, turning each of their rage and accusations into new views, followers, subscribers and revenue.
There is no simple answer to this question. Certainly not digital censorship or the criminalization of speech. A better approach involves patience. It builds facilities that can push back anti-Semitism stories, gather attention and enforce boundaries of good sense. Anti-Semitism ideology may be beneficial in the digital economy, but it is toxic in the political realm. Just as it rejected Sharpton a generation ago, the rights should reject them and their merchants.
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