Scattered among the thousands of cellphone videos depicting looting
and destruction in the streets of America’s greatest cities are clips of
a different sort. In these short videos, we see throngs of white people
on their knees, bowing before black people and asking for forgiveness
for their “white privilege” and the “structural racism” in the
deplorable, irredeemable United States of America.
Earlier this week, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
former vice president Joe Biden symbolically embraced these genuflecting
denunciations of “white privilege” as the official position of the
Democratic Party. Biden had himself photographed on bended knee with a
group of African Americans standing behind him during a visit to a
church in Wilmington, Delaware.
These videos point to a socio-political phenomenon that sparked the
riots throughout the country following George Floyd’s brutal death at
the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. They also make clear the
reason that the liberal media in the U.S. continues to back the protests
despite the fact that from the outset they have involved wide-scale
violence, destruction and looting.
Contrary to the narrative being pushed by the media and
America’s elites, the riots are not an consequence of increased police
brutality towards African Americans. As Heather Mac Donald documented
this week in the Wall Street Journal, over the past several years, police violence against black people has decreased significantly.
The violence we are seeing is a result of the steep
radicalization of progressive white Americans. Biden gave voice to this
radicalization last summer when, during a campaign appearance in Iowa he
said, “We choose truth over facts.”
Last year, political scientist Zach Goldberg published an
article in Tablet online magazine where he presented statistical data
demonstrating the depth and breadth of the radicalization of white
progressives over the past ten years. Goldberg revealed that between
2010-2019, white progressives became the only demographic group in U.S.
history to prioritize the interests of other groups over its own
interests. White progressives prioritize the advancement of the
interests of minorities and immigrants over their own and over those of
American society as a whole. Moreover, as Goldberg showed, white
progressive positions on race and immigration are more extreme than the
positions black, Latino, and Asian progressives hold on these issues.
Goldberg argues that the massive increase in internet usage by
white progressives over the past decade is responsible for the
radicalization. Online platforms have created an information bubble
which has created a warped presentation of reality to those inside the
bubble. In this warped reality, race relations are far worse than they
are in reality. Hence, those who inhabit this bubble prefer “truth” as
presented in the bubble to facts.
Goldberg is undoubtedly correct that the more time people spend
inside their internet bubble the more removed they become from objective
reality. But internet isn’t the only source of the radicalization. The
Obama presidency was also a factor.
When Barack Obama won the presidential race in 2008, many
Americans believed his victory was proof the United States had overcome
its racist past. Obama however, did not support this view. Throughout
his tenure in office, Obama used the power of his position to resonate
and legitimize positions on race that until then had been relegated to
the leftist margins of American politics.
Obama cultivated the view that far from being a post-racial
society, America is inherently racist and that American racism is
structural – that is, it was baked in and impossible to overcome. In so
doing, Obama gave credence to the false claim at the heart of the riots:
that black Americans are under continuous, existential threat from the
state as a whole and from law enforcement bodies first and foremost.
Calls by Hollywood celebrities and Obama administration alumni to defund
the police take this view to its logical endpoint.
A third cause of the radicalization of white progressives is the
higher education system. The more radicalized campuses are, the more
radicalized graduates become.
The radicalization of white progressive politics has been given
its most dramatic expression in the refusal of progressive mayors and
governors to act forthrightly to end the violence in their streets.
Instead, we had the likes of New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio (whose
daughter arrested for participating in the mayhem), stand with those
burning his city.
In a letter to police sergeants in the New York Police
Department, Ed Mullen, President of the Sergeants Benevolent Association
gave expression to the distress of New York police officers. “I know we
are losing our city,” Mullen wrote.
“We have no leadership, no direction, and no plan. I know that you are being held back and used as pawns,” he continued.
He then asked the sergeants to hold the line.
“Remember,” he added, “you work for a higher authority.”
For American Jews, the violent riots constitute a challenge on
several levels. First there is the challenge of squaring their political
identity with their Jewish identity. As the 2014 Pew survey of American
Jews showed, around half of American Jews identify as progressives. As
progressives, many American Jews share the views of their non-Jewish
progressive counterparts regarding the need to prioritize the interests
of minority communities over their own interests.
But the Jews’ progressive desire to work on behalf of those
demonstrating for African Americans places their political identity on a
collision course with their Jewish identity. Black Lives Matter, the
radical group leading the demonstrations, is an anti-Semitic
organization. BLM was formed in 2014 as a merger of activists from the
anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, the anti-Semitic Black Panthers and Dream
Catchers. In 2016, BLM published a platform that has since been removed
from its website. The platform accused Israel of committing “genocide”
and referred to the Jewish state as an “apartheid” state. The platform
accused Israel and its supporters of pushing the U.S. into wars in the
Middle East. The platform also officially joined BLM with the
anti-Semitic BDS campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. BDS
campaign leader Omar Barghouti acknowledged this week that the goal of
the BDS campaign is to destroy Israel. BDS campaigns on U.S. campuses
are characterized by bigotry and discrimination directed against Jewish
students.
BLM’s platform’s publication was greeted with wall-to-wall
condemnations by Jewish organizations from across the political
spectrum. But today, Jewish progressive are hard-pressed to turn their
backs on the group, despite its anti-Semitism. As white progressives,
they believe they must fight America’s “structural racism” even at the
cost of empowering social forces that reject their civil rights as Jews.
As Jews, they feel that their rights should be protected. One
progressive Jew tried to square the circle writing in the Los Angeles
Jewish Journal, “Today Jews need to support Black Lives Matter; tomorrow
we can talk about Israel
As white progressives radicalized over the past decade, radical
Jewish progressives built a formidable Jewish organizational framework
whose mission is to advance the progressive revolution. They have worked
to recast Judaism itself as the apotheosis of progressive revolutionary
ideals under the banner of “tikkun olam.”
Last week Tablet published a twenty-thousand word essay titled
“Bend the Jews,” on Bend the Arc, the flagship organization spawned by
those efforts.
Bend the Arc first rose to the attention of the general public
in 2018 in the wake of the massacre of worshippers at the Tree of Life
Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The organization quickly put out a statement
blaming President Donald Trump for the massacre. When Trump came to the
congregations to pay his respects, Bend the Arc organized demonstrations
against him.
Bend the Arc may not have members. But it has an annual budget
of tens of millions of dollars. $28 million of its budget comes from
three non-Jewish foundations which have no other foothold in Jewish
organizational life. On the other hand, one of the funders, the
Rockefeller Foundation is well known for its generous support for
radical anti-Israel and BDS groups.
To achieve its goal of reshaping the world views of American Jews,
among other things, Bend the Arc trains Conservative, Reform and
Reconstructionist rabbinical students. It also pays the salaries of
associate rabbis in various communities. With many synagogues long
steeped in financial crisis due to dwindling membership, Bend the Arc’s
ability to pay rabbis makes its involvement with synagogue hiring an
attractive option for many communities. This is doubly true for
synagogues whose members are progressive
As progressive politics paralyze Jews from acting against
anti-Semites in their political camp, levels of anti-Semitic sentiment
among white progressives are rising. As Goldberg reported, as white
progressives became radicalized on issues related to minorities and
immigration, they also turned against Israel. Today white progressives
are hostile to Israel. And Goldberg argued that while they express
support for Jews, “their sympathy toward and concern for Jews has become
more conditional.”
What is it conditioned on? On Jews not being opposed by blacks or
other minorities that are considered by white progressives to be less
privileged than Jews are.
On the burning streets of America today, leftist Jew-hatred is on
clear display. Although New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio has prevented New
York police from taking firm action against looters and arsonists, he
did instruct them to use all necessary force to prevent ultra-Orthodox
Jewish children from going to school. Earlier this week police in
Brooklyn chased a group of Hassidic children and their mothers off a
playground in Williamsburg.
Even worse, synagogues have been vandalized in New York and Los
Angeles. According to Yeshiva World News, 75 percent of Jewish-owned
stores in an Orthodox enclave of Beverly Hills were looted last weekend.
Graffiti in Los Angeles made clear that the businesses and
neighborhoods were targeted deliberately because they are Jewish.
Between BLM’s establishment in 2014 and the publication of its
platform in 2016, anti-Israel activists went to great lengths to create
an utterly false conceptual linkage between the Palestinians and African
Americans. Today, anti-Israel activists in the U.S. have stepped up
their efforts to capitalize on the riots. Anti-Israel activists in
Bethlehem painted a picture of George Floyd wearing a khaffiyeh and
draped in a Palestinian flag on the separation barrier. Photos of the
picture are being heavily promoted on social media.
Democrats believe the riots will wreck President Trump’s reelection
hopes. Polls this week indicate that at least in the short term, the
unrest is hurting Trump’s chances of being reelected. Then again, it’s
possible the chaos in the streets will strengthen public support for
President Trump who voters may view as the last bulwark separating them
from national destruction.
Whether Trump wins or loses in November, the radicalization of white
progressives at the heart of the mayhem represents the greatest short
and long-term threat to social cohesion in America. It also represents
the greatest threat to the communal future of American Jewry, to
relations between the American Jewish community and the rest of the
Jewish world, and to U.S.-Israel relations.
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Photo credit: cantfightthetendies
