#why are so many of the most popular/respected/de facto 'leaders' in the community so. shitty.

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

i hate the shelf ship community so much. it blows my mind how shitty people are. my mutuals exempt, but only because there are so few of them in the community.

[hjgale]

Activism and Antisemitism in Seattle

    I have been following the cluster-fuck that is the convergence of Omari Tahir-Garrett, gentrification, Seattle "radical" politics, antisemitism, and Seattle avoidance (aka "Seattle nice," passive-aggressive avoidance, etc.). There is a lot to struggle with here -- not in responding to the antisemitism, but in responding to others lack of proper response.

     I have been an activist for a long time and, despite having spent 15-20 years each in NYC, Boston, and Seattle, it is only in Seattle that I have seen activists hesitate to condemn public displays of antisemitism in activist movements -- more on that later.

   The silence and unwillingness to publicly criticize folks in the activist community is driven by many factors, some of which are exacerbated in, if not unique to, Seattle.

    During the last 20 years I have been in Seattle I can only remember two occasions where I directly witnessed antisemitism being a significant problem on the left: on both occasions my trying to deal with it without going public and without shaming people mostly failed. That is why I applaud Sydney Brownstone’s (and here) and Ijeoma Oluo's courage to take this debate public. I am disheartened that only through public shaming do many folks on the left do the right thing when it comes to this (and other) issues.

   Every public comment by activists -- save the ones noted above -- has involved some form of equivocation, including those from Cliff Cawthon for the first nine days ("We absolutely will not defend his statements"; confused much Clff? The targets of hate require defending and the perpetrators require condemnation). These equivocations utilize any one or combination of the following forms of sophistry:

(1) Hierarchy of Oppression: The belief that since one form of oppression is far worse than another, the lesser form of oppression can be ignored or "saved for another day." While there is a hierarchy of oppression -- worthy of academic study and analysis, and worth considering when strategizing certain actions -- it is not for any mortal to decide on any given day whose oppression comes first and whose can be ignored, certainly not when racist sentiments have been overtly expressed. There is also an aspect of antisemitism that exacerbates this belief in a "hierarchy of oppression": that Jews are immunized from the consequences of racism and hate, or possibly even deserving of it, since "they control so much."

(2) "They started it!": The belief that something worse preceded the antisemitism and explains or justifies it. If that notion doesn't work for kids it shouldn't work for adults.

(3) Trauma of the Oppressed: The belief that because of racism and oppression folks are traumatized and therefore lash out in seemingly irrational ways. As someone who grew up in, and has worked for years, in minority communities, this notion is both insulting, patronizing, and absurd when used to explain behavior like Omari's. Vast numbers of racists have probably been traumatized, or suffer from a mental illness, but I don't ever remember folks accepting such possibilities as anything beyond a factor that might mitigate the sanction or punishment meted out to the perpetrator.

(4) Only the non-righteous complain: The belief that those that cry antisemitism are racist themselves, they only take action when the racism is directed at them, or they are not true activists. Given that Jews make up an absurdly disproportionate percentage of social activists, the only proper response to anyone that might harbor that notion would be a "fuck you!".

    Focusing on the specific individuals involved -- what Omari or Ian Eisenberg did or said -- also misses the point that the progressive community --  both those that were there and those who later heard about it -- have a moral responsibility to publicly and unambiguously denounce words which promote hate and are injurious to folks far beyond Eisenberg and the people present on April 1.

    It should not have been difficult for people to parse four somewhat independent factors concerning the April 1 incident: (1) the specific words used by Omari; (2) the people immediately and potentially hurt by those words; (3) the wrong of allowing racism to appear tolerable by not immediately challenging it; and (4) Omari the person. Parsing those factors should have made it easy for folks to say something straightforward like:

Omari's words were hateful and hurtful, not just to Ian Eisenberg, but to all Jews in our community, and, hopefully, to non-Jews who struggle for justice. What preceded Omari's words is irrelevant. Further, we recognize that the lack of an immediate and public condemnation by those who heard the words adds to the hate and to the hurt: it makes these sentiments appear acceptable, and that the welfare and feelings of those hurt by these words are not worthy of respect and concern.

Omari as a person is someone who has a long history in Seattle's African-American community, he is... [here many thoughts could be inserted, ranging from "an important elder," to "a historical figure," to "one who has spent the last two decades bullying, disrespecting, threatening, and spewing racist rhetoric toward many"].

   Somehow almost everyone who responded to this incident felt compelled to use this as an opportunity to return the focus to the original issues being protested, failing to recognize that Omari's behavior and words were what took public attention away from the original issues. It is not an apology if, when I hurt someone, I then proceed to explain how that hurt happened in the context of me doing something I believe was important: "I was rushing to the hospital to help a whole lot of people, so me hitting you isn't really important." Instead of focusing on Omari, his injurious behavior, and the people he hurt, the folks involved in the protest decided to bemoan those who were hurt taking focus away from the issue. Far too many people spent way the fuck too many words on what they believed to be the "important" issue, rather than on addressing and resolving the issue created by Omari.

    There are many factors that lead to this sort of behavior, factors that also feed other dysfunctional behaviors among the left in Seattle. I'll note four obvious ones:

(1) Uncritical loyalty to a "principle" that folks from a dominant group must defer to the demands or actions of individuals from an oppressed group. This leads to a permissiveness for all kinds of fucked-up behavior, since this principle offers no guidance as to whose particular demands or actions we should accept, or how we should distinguish leaders from posers or provocateurs. Oftentimes this principle leads white folks to simply follow the loudest or most "radical" seeming person in the room. Many of us witnessed this during Occupy in 2012 when a "radical" People of Color (POC) caucus bullied their way into Occupy's (supposedly non-existent) leadership, nearly appropriating a six year tradition of May Day as a day for advancing immigrant rights, and trying to turn May Day into a confrontation with police. Of course the leadership of oppressed people must be central to any struggle for justice, but following the loudest and most provocative voice will often disrespect the voices of those who have been struggling the longest and hardest, and are often the more representative voice in the community.

(2) "The enemy of my enemy is my friend,"  where we make alliances with groups and folks we really shouldn't.

(3) Leaderless and coalitionless movements. The growing popularity of this style of organizing, which came to the fore in 1999 with WTO and has gained again in popularity since Occupy in 2011, exacerbates the two problems noted above. It allows for a single or a few individuals to reshape a movement, severely reducing its mass appeal and ultimately rendering it dysfunctional. In these cases you often hear folks remaining in the rump movement state "well, everyone here agrees," completely ignoring the fact that the de facto leadership, which isn't supposed to exist, has scared everyone else away and produced toxic groupthink.

(4) "Seattle nice", or an unwillingness to struggle openly and honestly with ideological and tactical differences. Combined with natural tendencies toward groupthink, this will often produce an unwillingness to confront shitty behavior and shitty ideas. This is not unique to the left in Seattle: it pervades all aspects of the social space here. It becomes easier to tolerate bad or offensive behavior rather than confront it. This exacerbates all the above issues.

   I would be remiss to not recognize that antisemitism among the left has some unique underlying support in American society. The vast majority of commercial land on the four blocks surrounding the 23rd Avenue and E. Union Street intersection is owned, controlled, or developed by entities that have nothing to do with Jews or Ian Eisenberg, but rather by: private companies (Mount Baker, LLC and Lake Union Partners); city, state, and private non-profits (Capitol Hill Housing and Casey Family Programs); a protestant church (Mt. Calvary, with a homophobic pastor, owns five lots along 23rd Avenue, property tax free); and a Catholic family (the Bangassers). How is it that the one Jew, who owns one lot, becomes repeatedly publicly targeted? How is it that antisemitic rhetoric is heard, but not anti-religious, anti-Catholic, etc.?

(1) Pervasiveness of antisemitic stereotypes in American culture, especially the "positive" stereotypes

. One of the most unique characteristics of antisemitism is that some of its core tenets are, potentially, compliments. Recently someone told me "You guys (Jews) control banks, businesses, movies." When I started to object, they immediately interjected "No, no, no, that is a compliment, that is a good thing... look what you have achieved against all those odds!" It is extraordinarily rare for racist stereotypes to be based on achievement. This phenomenon is due to both the disproportionate success of Jews in a wide range of fields* and to the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion over 100 years ago in Russia (though conspiracy theories involving the secret control of banks and governments by Jews preceded this). This completely fictitious document purports to uncover the Jewish plot to rule the world, providing "evidence" of Jews scheming behind every institution of political, social and monetary control. Its first American publication was in 1918 and was originally distributed in US government circles. In 1919 Philadelphia's most popular newspaper published it (replacing "Jews" with "Bolsheviks", though few in 1919 believed there was a difference), then, through most of the 1920s, Henry Ford printed 500,000 copies (renamed "The International Jew -- The Worlds Foremost Problem" so no one would be confused as to what was claimed) while also publishing antisemitic screeds in his Michigan newspaper. Ever since, "The Protocols" has been republished and sold by a variety of neo-Nazi, white supremacist, nationalist, and religious fundamentalist organizations, most notably, in repackaged form by the Nation of Islam (more on that below). It was sold by Walmart in the early 2000s, and continues to be sold on Amazon, where dozens of different versions are available. For a hundred years now, versions of this Jewish conspiracy have been at the core of not just overt antisemitism, but in conspiracy theories involving Illuminati, the New World Order (and other "one world government" conspiracies), Free Masons, Khazars, David Icke's reptile people, and on, and on. There is almost no conspiracy theory concerning secret government control that does not, at some point, connect to Jews.

(2) The role of the Nation of Islam in fostering antisemitism over the last quarter century. In a 1991 speech Leonard Jeffries (an African-American professor of Black Studies at the City College of NY) claimed that "rich Jews" financed and dominated the African slave trade (and, of course, also controlled the American film industry). Jeffries cited as a source "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" (1991), published by the Nation of Islam (NOI, which is now aligned with the Church of Scientology -- antisemitism goes better with more generalized forms of abuse and idiocy). Mainstream scholars consider the book nonsense, with noted Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. labeling the book "the bible of new anti-Semitism" and adding that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources." The NOI is officially recognized as an organized hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    This book, along with two new volumes, remains available on the official NOI website, along with numerous other antisemitic publications (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- I'm sure I didn't catch them all). With at most around 50,000 adherents -- representing 0.12% of the African-American population -- NOI can seem insignificant, but their nine decade history, their high degree discipline and organization, and the fact that they often become involved with progressive causes and protests in the African-American community, give them outsized influence. NOI's quarter century of fostering a virulent variety of antisemitic narratives around Jewish control and exploitation of African-Americans, currently overwhelms any other historical tensions between African-Americans and Jews (which is usually facilely attributed to long-ago Jewish ownership of housing and businesses in African-American neighborhoods). Added on to the reality of a more generalized American antisemitism this can become particularly toxic.

(3) Israel and Zionism: All major mainstream American Jewish advocacy organizations (American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress, and American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- though this last one is more accurately viewed as an advocacy group for a foreign power), mainline synagogues, and local Jewish federations have increasingly, and intentionally, confounded antisemitism with critiques of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights. It is important to consider three examples I confronted in Seattle over the last 15 years.

    In April of 2002 I was working with the Church Council of Greater Seattle to organize a rally at Westlake opposing the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the possibility of war in Iraq. The rally was to have speakers on those topics, as well as on a variety of domestic and international human rights issues. The rally was scheduled for Saturday April 20. Some days prior to the rally we received a call at the Church Council from Rick Harkavy, the director of the American Jewish Committee chapter in Seattle. Harkavy warned us that April 20 was Adolf Hitlers birthday and that it would be inappropriate, and viewed as antisemitic, to have rally speakers criticize Israel. Before that day in 2002 I had never known when Hitler's birthday was, nor, as a Jew, could I ever imagine it being something I would care about. Harkavy's call went beyond "advisory": he made it clear that if Israel were criticized at the rally he would reach out to the media to make this issue public. I was shocked, but proceeded to organize the rally in ways that had already been planned. The day after the rally Harkavy was quoted in the Seattle Times saying "For people who claim to be progressives, to have a day in which they're highly critical and perhaps may also call ultimately for the destruction of the state of Israel on the same day as Hitler's birthday, I'm appalled" (Seattle Times, April 21, 2002, page B1). It was an egregious attempt to slander a rally for peace and justice -- there was, of course, no call for the destruction of Israel.

    In December of 2010 controversy erupted around already purchased and printed King County Metro Transit bus ads that said "Israeli War Crimes. Your Tax Dollars at Work" above a picture of a bombed Palestinian building. Metro Transit was deluged with complaints claiming the ads were antisemitic, and they received supposed threats of violence (virtually all of which were from local Jews who had provided a name and contact information with their threat). Days were spent at Metro Transit trying to insure that buses possibly carrying the ads would not pass by the Jewish Federation offices or any synagogues: it was considered obvious that these ads would be considered antisemitic and offensive to Jews. In the end, King County Executive Dow Constantine pulled the ads, citing both safety concerns and claims that these ads were offensive to Jews in the community.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/03/23/a-jewish-man-investigates-king-countys-decision-to-censor-bus-ads

It remains uncertain why the bus ads were pulled, especially since my investigation revealed that almost all (rather minimal) threats came from known members of the local Jewish community and these threats were likely received after Dow Constantine made his decision to pull the ads. What is certain is that major local Jewish mainstream organizations put severe pressure on Constantine.

    This past January, House Joint Measure HJM 4009 was introduced into the Washington State legislature. This is (it was reintroduced into the special session on April 24) a bill condemning the movement for promoting boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel -- a movement using the only non-violent tool left to promote Palestinian civil rights -- as antisemitic. The bill contains outrageous statements such as "The international boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is one of the main vehicles for spreading antisemitism and advocating the elimination of the Jewish state." Numerous local Democratic progressive state representatives have sponsored this bill. I talked to many of them: for non-Jewish representatives they felt they had to unquestionably support their Jewish colleagues at a time of rising antisemitism, and for Jewish representatives they felt there was no question that BDS, and much Palestinian civil rights advocacy, was inherently antisemitic. Both groups of  legislators came under pressure from mainstream Jewish advocacy organizations, organizations which clearly provided the language for this legislative measure (based on the extreme hyperbole of the language and the inability on any legislator to explain it). BDS, as a modern organized movement, has been around now for 15 years. The recent sudden increase in antisemitic incidents, along with other forms of racism, is 100% attributable to Donald Trump and the forces he has unleashed over the last two years, and 0% attributable to BDS.

   What the above three incidents have in common is obvious: a cynical abuse of the concept of antisemitism in order to protect a nation state from criticism. Attempts such as these have two disastrous consequences for those concerned with real antisemitism: (1) It confuses non-Jews as to what antisemitism is, as it confounds racism with beliefs based on human rights for Palestinians or anti-nationalism (or anti-colonialism, or anti-imperialism, etc.). It allows non-Jews to trivialize antisemitism as anything that goes against Jewish interests, buying into the antisemitic notion that Israeli and Jewish interests are identical; and (2) It fuels the widespread belief the Jews have inordinate control of economic and political systems: How else to explain such unwavering support for Israel? How else to explain the first time in over 35 years that bus ads were pulled by King County?

    By watering down and confusing the meaning of antisemitism, and by perpetuating the notion that "Jews get their way" (versus a narrow interest group that joins together Jewish nationalists, Christian Zionists, the arms industry, and geopolitical interests in the Middle East) these mainline Jewish organizations actually perpetuate antisemitism. They sacrifice the safety of Jews for the (mistaken) belief that they are helping preserve a nation state.

*    It is worth noting that Jewish over-representation in a field does not necessarily correlate with control by individuals, nor does it correlate with some imagined group control. For example, in prior years at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, a Roman Catholic (Jesuit) school, a notably disproportionate number of department heads are Jewish, yet they are the ones who will often implement Catholic ethical directives (e.g., avoiding talking about or training in abortion services) the most zealously. Similarly, as Jews became dominant in Hollywood they would often carry out the majoritarian agenda of anti-communism, racism, portraying America as a Christian country, etc. It is a common phenomena throughout history that minority group members that achieve success often advocate more zealously for the majoritarian agenda.

    It is also worth noting another curious consequence of this myth of Jewish over-representation and supposed control. The stereotype focuses on the entertainment and banking industries, yet completely ignores the area of greatest Jewish over-representation: Nobel prize winners, where 22% are Jewish despite only being 0.21% of the world population, 105 times the expected rate. You can stoke people's fears by imagining Jews controlling monetary systems, but it's hard to be scared of scientific discoveries that save lives and actually help explain how the world really works.

                                                            #####