As usual, a brilliant analysis of where we find ourselves today, Joshua. It feels, right now, a bit like being sucked down a drain. Yet again, CBC lead the radio news this morning with its lopsided coverage of suffering in Gaza, so, while your points about indifference are truly devastating, I think you underestimate the numbers of the antisemitic relative to the indifferent. So many have already been brainwashed by the media, social media, and their friends and family.
Yes, useful to blame The Jews as a scapegoat when The State itself has been and is complicit in so many more crimes than Jewish and Israel's self defence in the current conflict. However, I do not recommend normalising or being silent in the face of Palestinian suffering. But History will show they have been so badly let down by their own Leadership: Statehood and Rights offered so many times. Now non of this is possible because their leaders opted for Genocide and Martyrdom.
When a Black man died from having a knee compressing his neck, the mobilization was quick and vast and DEI was implemented and everything became "racist," and members of Congress wore African scarves and --I could go on and on. The entire country denounced "racism." When Asians were being attacked for a brief period of time during Covid, a large "Stop Asian Hate" campaign spread quickly. Russia attacks Ukraine? Big mobilization for Ukrainian support. But, yet again, even in the face of obvious and persistent world-wide Jew Hate, we can't get people mobilized to help us. Politicians in America and around the world do nothing or very little and many are antisemites themselves. The media makes it worse by constantly blaming Israel for everything. No matter how bad it gets for the Jews, no matter what might happen, I have little faith that "most people" will say or do anything to stand up for us. What to do?
Another great piece. Bystander Society : Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook deals with the issues raised here. What makes Fulbrook’s book so interesting on this matter is that she relies extensively on essays submitted for a competition run in 1939 by 3 Harvard professors. The title of the competition essay was ‘My life in Germany before and after January 1933’
Outstanding analysis. Who was it who said” all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. And that’s the thing . People who don’t have a dog in the fight just ignore it because it doesn’t affect them . Or so they think. But it may start with the Jews but won’t finish with them.
Excellent article. This should be in the NYT and any other well read newspaper. It seems that "fringes" come and go but pop up at the right time in history to sow seeds of discord and hatred. Too bad our feet, and voices, aren't big enough to stomp out their fire.
The sheer, relentless idiocy of their being an extant political condition which requires a heuristic article proclaiming the pain of giving up being a Jew and a lifelong Democrat..." is at once, absurdly stupid, depressing, depraved, mind boggling, contemptible,,risible and self-degrading. But nevertheless the sad reality of millions of de facto useful idiot American Jews. Etiologically speaking, as if these two are life conditions, immutably twinned at birth, is in reality a miserable reflection of the catastrophically massive cowardice and ignorance of American Jews, who've been marinated in generations of fear driven, non-confrontational, harm avoidance and self- dissimulation. Grasping, at any escapist, magical thinking, back firing, pseudo salvific universalism to come along. Egregiously illustrated by leading, financing and legally making possible the entire black civil rights movement of the 1960's as if by magical thinking it would ever redound to Jewish
benefit. Only to inexorably discover vast amounts of black Jew hatred unleashed against them.
Needless to say, beyond the particularity and peculiarity of this Jewish conditon.
No thinking individual would ever place unwavering allegiance to any "political party". Indeed no
thinking individual could ever attenuate his open ability to think by ever "belonging" to any political party. The absurdly stupid, slavish adherence of most American Jews to their now hateful enemy the Democrat party, represents an historically developed, mal-adaptive epigenetic fear driven inability to hard face shifting conditions of painful reality, and the pain of abandoning wishful
Whoa, thats a lot of big words for this simple mind but from what I can decipher, i agree completely. My mantra has always been to vote policy, not party. Lately, i have had to go with vote policy, not personality.
I think it was Darwin that said species that survive are those best able to adapt.
Lovely piece, Josh, well written and to the point. One oversight however: The Organised State, that is to say the part of the Government which NEVER relinquishes its power through The Secret Services ACTIVELY harbours and uses both Racism and Anti-Semitism to reboot The State's function in times of peril, either Real or Imagined. Other than this omission, a great piece of analysis and writing.
and it is growing daily. Calling them both fringe elements is truly a misrepresentation of what is happening. Almost every violent act we see and every Pro Hamas Demonstration is coming from the Left. As far as I am concerned the Jewish Dems like Schumer, Schiff and Sanders are cowards or traitors or both. papa j
Another wonderful analysis Joshua but I would like to add a very important point. When your essay writes about the silent majority, I will assume the reader will define that as non-Jews who are silent. That non-Jews want to take the easiest path.
I don't have stats to go on but my belief is that the vast majority of Jews are just as silent. How many get involved? How many take action on a regular basis to fight anti semitism? I am not talking about preaching to the choir or complaining to each other how terrible thing are, or reading essays like yours and then its business as usual. I am talking about really getting involved, writing emails regularly for example to get antisemites fired, to complain to the universities about the encampments, to write to their local government officials, to go to demonstrations, maybe writing to soldiers in the IDF to show support and solidarity, telling all your friends to get involved etc. There is an endless amount of things that can be done that would do so much for the cause.
Bottom line ..... ask yourself, are you part of that silent majority? Do you do enuf? Can you do more?
Believe me, if the Jewish silent majority did more and especially if we were led by better Jewish organizations, we would make an incredible impact to the fight against Jew hatred and to the PR war.
The idea that "most people" have any say at all is an erroneous idea. If I'm not mistaken Haiti was the first successful slave rebellion in history, but the country was economically kneecaped as revenge.
For example, African Americans were freed when the USA granted them freedom. Hitler declared he would kill the Jews and die they did.
The government's have all the power and "most people" have zero ability to change anything.
Most people don't even know what thoughts are their own and what thoughts were put there by others.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” supposedly uttered by Edmund Burke.
Most likely it was coined by the utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill who noted, “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
The AltR's goal is a world order governed by white, Christian, racial purists.
The AltL's — the Red Green Alliance — goal is, informed by the neo-Marxism of Critical Race Theory, is the overthrow of Capitalism, Western Democratic principles such as individual rights, freedom of choice, equality before the law, and so on.
The Green's ultimate objective is Dahwah and the instillation of Sharia worldwide. One of their rallying cries is "Today, Saturday's people. Tomorrow, Sunday's people." Some European cities already have "no-go zones" which are effectively under Muslim rule.
If the Greens win, they will purge the Reds, as was done in Iran after the successful Mullah revolution. If the Reds win, admittedly unlikely, Racial Internationalism (DEI) no will dictate political agendas and social structures.
What we are witnessing today on the street, on campuses, in the worldwide media, and in increasingly in legislatures (think anti-islamophobia and the latest, APR — Anti-Palestinian Race laws) is a real world demonstration of what is now an old cliche: The Jews are the canary in the coal mine.
An interesting and most valid exposition, however, I do question the balance between the antisemite
and the indifferent in both 1933-1945 Europe and in today's global society. Antisemites do have an unnerving knack of seemingly appearing from nowhere, yet Europe in the 1930s especially, was steeped in thousands of years of antisemitic intolerance which had led to pogroms and blood libels and all manner of violent Jew Hatred. Also, it is hard to conceive of Hitler's Third Reich carrying out the Final Solution without the ACTIVE support of millions of European antisemites, likewise the post-October 7th calls for Global Intifada to be answered by useful idiots whose minds had not already been turned by antisemitic beliefs and ideologies?
I declare this to be your absolute best yet. “The fringes thrive not in a vacuum, but in the blind spots of the majority” is brilliant and beautifully written all at once.
This complacency of the well-meaning majority is at the precise core of the West’s challenge. We need to recognize that because the fringes do not seek safety and security - and I would add comfort and contentment - we need to be vigilant in recognizing the threats, brutally stamp them out, and then go peaceably back to the rule of law.
Josh, thank you for today’s post based on opening our eyes to a humbling reality. I intend to take action TODAY and send your post to facilitate conversation-to all my Jewish friends AND all my non-Jewish friends with the goal to awaken both to the necessity of realizing that this IS a problem for ALL OF US!
Scary stuff Joshua. What do you suggest? As you point out, most people are just keeping their heads above water to survive day and by day. They will only act when pushed too far. By then their neighbour's are radicals, the lose everything and submit
As usual, a brilliant analysis of where we find ourselves today, Joshua. It feels, right now, a bit like being sucked down a drain. Yet again, CBC lead the radio news this morning with its lopsided coverage of suffering in Gaza, so, while your points about indifference are truly devastating, I think you underestimate the numbers of the antisemitic relative to the indifferent. So many have already been brainwashed by the media, social media, and their friends and family.
Yes, useful to blame The Jews as a scapegoat when The State itself has been and is complicit in so many more crimes than Jewish and Israel's self defence in the current conflict. However, I do not recommend normalising or being silent in the face of Palestinian suffering. But History will show they have been so badly let down by their own Leadership: Statehood and Rights offered so many times. Now non of this is possible because their leaders opted for Genocide and Martyrdom.
I trust that Israelis are not creating Palestinian suffering if it can be avoided. I’ve read a lot of books about WW1 & 2 and many civilians suffered.
When a Black man died from having a knee compressing his neck, the mobilization was quick and vast and DEI was implemented and everything became "racist," and members of Congress wore African scarves and --I could go on and on. The entire country denounced "racism." When Asians were being attacked for a brief period of time during Covid, a large "Stop Asian Hate" campaign spread quickly. Russia attacks Ukraine? Big mobilization for Ukrainian support. But, yet again, even in the face of obvious and persistent world-wide Jew Hate, we can't get people mobilized to help us. Politicians in America and around the world do nothing or very little and many are antisemites themselves. The media makes it worse by constantly blaming Israel for everything. No matter how bad it gets for the Jews, no matter what might happen, I have little faith that "most people" will say or do anything to stand up for us. What to do?
Another great piece. Bystander Society : Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook deals with the issues raised here. What makes Fulbrook’s book so interesting on this matter is that she relies extensively on essays submitted for a competition run in 1939 by 3 Harvard professors. The title of the competition essay was ‘My life in Germany before and after January 1933’
I’ll look up that book.
Outstanding analysis. Who was it who said” all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. And that’s the thing . People who don’t have a dog in the fight just ignore it because it doesn’t affect them . Or so they think. But it may start with the Jews but won’t finish with them.
First rate.
Excellent article. This should be in the NYT and any other well read newspaper. It seems that "fringes" come and go but pop up at the right time in history to sow seeds of discord and hatred. Too bad our feet, and voices, aren't big enough to stomp out their fire.
Why would it be in the NY Times. The position of the NY Times is that Israel is an evil mistake and left wing Jew hate doesnt exist.
A little education never hurts. But, they probably wouldn't want to hear from Hoffman anyway as you implied.
In 2024
The sheer, relentless idiocy of their being an extant political condition which requires a heuristic article proclaiming the pain of giving up being a Jew and a lifelong Democrat..." is at once, absurdly stupid, depressing, depraved, mind boggling, contemptible,,risible and self-degrading. But nevertheless the sad reality of millions of de facto useful idiot American Jews. Etiologically speaking, as if these two are life conditions, immutably twinned at birth, is in reality a miserable reflection of the catastrophically massive cowardice and ignorance of American Jews, who've been marinated in generations of fear driven, non-confrontational, harm avoidance and self- dissimulation. Grasping, at any escapist, magical thinking, back firing, pseudo salvific universalism to come along. Egregiously illustrated by leading, financing and legally making possible the entire black civil rights movement of the 1960's as if by magical thinking it would ever redound to Jewish
benefit. Only to inexorably discover vast amounts of black Jew hatred unleashed against them.
Needless to say, beyond the particularity and peculiarity of this Jewish conditon.
No thinking individual would ever place unwavering allegiance to any "political party". Indeed no
thinking individual could ever attenuate his open ability to think by ever "belonging" to any political party. The absurdly stupid, slavish adherence of most American Jews to their now hateful enemy the Democrat party, represents an historically developed, mal-adaptive epigenetic fear driven inability to hard face shifting conditions of painful reality, and the pain of abandoning wishful
thinking fools parardises.
Whoa, thats a lot of big words for this simple mind but from what I can decipher, i agree completely. My mantra has always been to vote policy, not party. Lately, i have had to go with vote policy, not personality.
I think it was Darwin that said species that survive are those best able to adapt.
Keep up the good fight, papa j
Liberals and Liberalism keep us safe, reminding us of The Better Angels, Mr Zukmann. Rather Conscience than Barbarity.
LIberals keep us safe .... where have you been for the past year?
Lovely piece, Josh, well written and to the point. One oversight however: The Organised State, that is to say the part of the Government which NEVER relinquishes its power through The Secret Services ACTIVELY harbours and uses both Racism and Anti-Semitism to reboot The State's function in times of peril, either Real or Imagined. Other than this omission, a great piece of analysis and writing.
Left wing Jew hate is certainly not fringe.
and it is growing daily. Calling them both fringe elements is truly a misrepresentation of what is happening. Almost every violent act we see and every Pro Hamas Demonstration is coming from the Left. As far as I am concerned the Jewish Dems like Schumer, Schiff and Sanders are cowards or traitors or both. papa j
Another wonderful analysis Joshua but I would like to add a very important point. When your essay writes about the silent majority, I will assume the reader will define that as non-Jews who are silent. That non-Jews want to take the easiest path.
I don't have stats to go on but my belief is that the vast majority of Jews are just as silent. How many get involved? How many take action on a regular basis to fight anti semitism? I am not talking about preaching to the choir or complaining to each other how terrible thing are, or reading essays like yours and then its business as usual. I am talking about really getting involved, writing emails regularly for example to get antisemites fired, to complain to the universities about the encampments, to write to their local government officials, to go to demonstrations, maybe writing to soldiers in the IDF to show support and solidarity, telling all your friends to get involved etc. There is an endless amount of things that can be done that would do so much for the cause.
Bottom line ..... ask yourself, are you part of that silent majority? Do you do enuf? Can you do more?
Believe me, if the Jewish silent majority did more and especially if we were led by better Jewish organizations, we would make an incredible impact to the fight against Jew hatred and to the PR war.
papa j
This Jew is not silent. I am very active.
Thank you for all you do on behalf of all of us. Keep up the good fight. papa j
And same to you! I am trying to inspire all Jews to fight as well.
The idea that "most people" have any say at all is an erroneous idea. If I'm not mistaken Haiti was the first successful slave rebellion in history, but the country was economically kneecaped as revenge.
For example, African Americans were freed when the USA granted them freedom. Hitler declared he would kill the Jews and die they did.
The government's have all the power and "most people" have zero ability to change anything.
Most people don't even know what thoughts are their own and what thoughts were put there by others.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” supposedly uttered by Edmund Burke.
Most likely it was coined by the utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill who noted, “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
The AltR's goal is a world order governed by white, Christian, racial purists.
The AltL's — the Red Green Alliance — goal is, informed by the neo-Marxism of Critical Race Theory, is the overthrow of Capitalism, Western Democratic principles such as individual rights, freedom of choice, equality before the law, and so on.
The Green's ultimate objective is Dahwah and the instillation of Sharia worldwide. One of their rallying cries is "Today, Saturday's people. Tomorrow, Sunday's people." Some European cities already have "no-go zones" which are effectively under Muslim rule.
If the Greens win, they will purge the Reds, as was done in Iran after the successful Mullah revolution. If the Reds win, admittedly unlikely, Racial Internationalism (DEI) no will dictate political agendas and social structures.
What we are witnessing today on the street, on campuses, in the worldwide media, and in increasingly in legislatures (think anti-islamophobia and the latest, APR — Anti-Palestinian Race laws) is a real world demonstration of what is now an old cliche: The Jews are the canary in the coal mine.
An interesting and most valid exposition, however, I do question the balance between the antisemite
and the indifferent in both 1933-1945 Europe and in today's global society. Antisemites do have an unnerving knack of seemingly appearing from nowhere, yet Europe in the 1930s especially, was steeped in thousands of years of antisemitic intolerance which had led to pogroms and blood libels and all manner of violent Jew Hatred. Also, it is hard to conceive of Hitler's Third Reich carrying out the Final Solution without the ACTIVE support of millions of European antisemites, likewise the post-October 7th calls for Global Intifada to be answered by useful idiots whose minds had not already been turned by antisemitic beliefs and ideologies?
I declare this to be your absolute best yet. “The fringes thrive not in a vacuum, but in the blind spots of the majority” is brilliant and beautifully written all at once.
This complacency of the well-meaning majority is at the precise core of the West’s challenge. We need to recognize that because the fringes do not seek safety and security - and I would add comfort and contentment - we need to be vigilant in recognizing the threats, brutally stamp them out, and then go peaceably back to the rule of law.
Josh, thank you for today’s post based on opening our eyes to a humbling reality. I intend to take action TODAY and send your post to facilitate conversation-to all my Jewish friends AND all my non-Jewish friends with the goal to awaken both to the necessity of realizing that this IS a problem for ALL OF US!
Scary stuff Joshua. What do you suggest? As you point out, most people are just keeping their heads above water to survive day and by day. They will only act when pushed too far. By then their neighbour's are radicals, the lose everything and submit