Anti-Semitism →

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, which was published in 1951, reversed the then conventional wisdom about the emergence of fascist and totalitarian regimes. While many saw fascism and totalitarianism as the historical apotheosis of the nation, Arendt argued that fascism and totalitarianism emerged in the middle of the 20th century as the nation-state system began to collapse. Put simply, totalitarianism is not the triumph of the nation-state, totalitarianism is what emerges when the nation-state system falls apart.

In the first part of Origins, which offers a historical analysis of anti-Semitism, Arendt writes that anti-Semitism too is an outgrowth of the decline of the nation-state: “modern anti-Semitism grew in proportion as traditional nationalism declined, and reached its climax at the exact moment when the European system of nation-states and its precarious balance of powers crashed.” Nationalism is not the same thing as the nation-state, and while nationalism in certain authoritarian leaning countries has fed the ideology of anti-Semitism across Europe, the liberal notion of the nation-state since the postwar period has been understood to serve as a guarantor of rights and freedoms, to ward against calamitous ideologies.

I was thinking about these passages this week as I followed the news, which seemed littered with accounts of anti-Semitism across the world. Arendt’s account of anti-Semitism has always been contentious, but it is also reflective and perspicuous. It is not surprising that at this moment in time, as the world falls to illiberalism, we are witnessing a rise in hatred.

Yitzhak Melamed, a professor from Johns Hopkins University, was violently assaulted on the streets of Bonn for wearing a yarmulke, and when the police supposedly came to his aide, they beat him too. According to Melamed’s account, which can be read on his Facebook page,

It was sometime after 14:00 that we crossed the street and entered the Bonner Hofgartens. Shortly thereafter, a stocky man about 1.60 meters tall approached us and asked me “Bist Du Jude?” and then, added that he is Palestinian. I started saying that I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and deeply regret the current depressing state of Islamic-Jewish relations, when the person (realizing that I am a foreigner) started shouting in English: “I fuck Jews. I fuck Jews.” Realizing where this conversation is going Dr. Steiner and I passed to the other side and moved away from the person who then followed us with his persistent curses. Then, he tried to throw away my yarlmulka (Kippa) shouting in German that in Germany I am not allowed to wear a yarmulka. I took my yalmulka from the ground and put it back on my head. The guy got angrier: “No. You are not allowed to have the yarmulka here” (that’s my recollection of his shouts in German). He then shouted several times: “Kein Juden in Deutschland”, and threw my yalmulka for the second time. I picked it up and put it on my head. “You don’t listen to me” he shouted, and threw my yarmulka for the third time. I picked it up and put it on my head. He pushed me, and then we moved aside.

As this was happening, Lina asked bypassers to call the police, and a few of them made the phone call (there were quite a few people around). The attacker, at that point, went to the nearby lawn and started walking in circles. After about five minutes he came back to us. He pushed me and then I tried to kick him in the groin so that he would leave us. I didn’t hit, but he was deterred and went again to the green, walking in circles. I asked Lina where the police is. Then the attacker came for the third time. He pushed again, cursed, and I tried (and failed) to kick his groin. Then, we heard the siren of the police. It was at least 20 minutes after we asked to call the police (there were many passers-by around who could attest). The attacker moved slowly, then once the police car was about to park he started running away.

In Austria, which is now under the leadership of far-right populist leader Sebastian Kurz, the state of Lower Austria (one of nine states that make up the Republic of Austria) proposed a law which would require Jewish people to register with the state as Jewish in order to buy Kosher meat. Gottfried Wadlhäusel, a cabinet minister for the state of Lower Austria, defended the proposal as an attempt to protect the welfare of animals. Several organizations have responded to the proposal, comparing it to laws passed restricting Jewish life in Nazi Germany. You can read more about the proposal here.

Mark Zuckerberg set Twitter on fire using Holocaust denial as an example to defend free speech. In an interview with recode.net, Zuckerberg argued that he doesn’t think sites like infowars should be banned. Facebook originally described this as a free speech issue, but then Zuckerberg explained it further saying:

“Let’s take this a little closer to home. So I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong — I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong. It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think as important as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public leaders who we respect do, too. I just don’t think that it is the right thing to say we are going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.”

And finally, a couple weeks ago I wrote about how the Republican and Democratic parties are being torn apart from the right and the left without addressing the spate of Neo-Nazi’s that are running for political office.

There are several self-named Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists running for public office right now on the Republican platform. Russell Walker in North Carolina, Arthur Jones in Illinois, Paul Nehlen in Wisconsin who is running to replace Paul Ryan, and Corey Stewart in California. Jane Coaston writing for Vox chronicles the rise of these candidates and situates their campaigns within the context of Donald Trump’s election:

Racial animus helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump. Since the end of the civil rights movement and under Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s “Southern strategy” that used racism as an unstated cudgel against Democrats, the Republican Party itself has played a welcoming host to racial tensions and fears. Simultaneously, it has depicted itself, as conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby put it in 2012, as “the party of color-blind equality and “a party that doesn’t think with its skin.”

Racism as a form of political ideology has been used to motivate voters historically, to arouse their fears and create a sense of political solidarity by appealing to a common enemy. In each of these accounts of anti-Semitism, with the exception of the blatant violent anti-Semitic attack in Germany, we are seeing a very frightening trend. Anti-Semitism is being normalized into public policy proposals, defenses of online platforms that are shaping public opinions, and our traditional political parties.

This admittance of open anti-Semites into the public sphere of politics points to an essential failure of our political institutions and how they are functioning within American politics today. Since parties only spend money on campaigns in contested voting districts, many non-contested districts are mostly ignored. Money brings public awareness and attention to campaigns, and many elections go unnoticed or remarked upon by the popular press. When I was running a congressional campaign in Michigan, we used to talk about votes in terms of yard signs, measured by the cost of their production. There were headlines this week about the excessive amounts of money that Donald Trump has already raised gearing up for his 2020 re-election campaign. Money in politics circumscribes the public sphere and reduces candidates and voters to economic value rather than political principles.

In Origins Hannah Arendt argues that the decline of the nation-state was ushered in by the political emancipation of the petit-bourgeoisie into the public realm of politics. Private, wealthy individuals decided to run for political office in order to change the economic policies of the state as to have the military backing of the state in order to further their business ventures. The influx of money and private individuals led to a socialization of the public sphere which flattened differences amongst the classes while turning politics into a popularity contest between wealthy men.

This emancipation of private capital into the public realm led to the collapse of the political party system by undermining its legitimacy and authority, and the collapse of the party system played an integral role in the emergence of totalitarianism. The collapse of the traditional political institutions revealed to the masses of people that they were not truly a part of a democratic country and that they did not matter to the nation-state as individuals. The voters, freed from the their traditional political parties, were drawn toward anti-establishment candidates, who turned back against the party infrastructure. And this is something that we are witnessing today.

The Democratic and Republican parties are being pulled apart by outsider candidates, as they continue to run campaigns built on private donations. The surge in anti-Semitic acts since the election of Donald Trump is not a coincidence. Trump might not be an anti-Semite, but his attacks on norms and unleashing of hateful rhetoric has emboldened racists of all stripes. These daily headlines are testament to the fact that our nation-state is wobbling right now, that the people are easily persuadable, that the most vicious lies we can imagine are being accepted as truths in the public sphere.