AFP published on Saturday 3 December 2022 at 19:42
According to experts, Friday’s strong condemnation of Joe Biden’s anti-Semitism is a reaction to an alarming downplay of anti-Semitic statements and incitement to hatred by influential figures, reinforced by social networks.
“Rather than give it a platform, our politicians should publicly denounce antisemitism wherever it is found,” Trump tweeted.
“The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a bad man,” he added the day after the outcry sparked by rapper Kanye West, who admitted his admiration for Hitler and the Nazis in an interview with a covert American host.
“I love Hitler,” launched the artist, now calling himself Ye, who had dined a few days earlier at Donald Trump’s Florida home with the former Republican president in a small committee in the presence of white supremacist Nick, Fuentes, known for to question the reality of the Holocaust.
Analysts say the comments show religious intolerance and conspiracy theories involving the Jewish community have become almost normal.
They are passed on in particular by Donald Trump’s MAGA movement (“Make America great again”, or make America great again) and the far-right conspiracy nebula QAnon, but also by sports and show business personalities such as Kanye West or basketball star Kyrie Irving, who recently for promoted an anti-Semitic film containing a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler and denying the reality of the Holocaust.
– The Trump Factor –
“If you have celebrities who advocate classic anti-Semitism, like Kanye West, who has more Twitter followers than there are Jews on planet Earth, then that’s going to get into the public debate,” notes Oren Segal of the anti-Semitism organization ADL .
It’s not just Donald Trump who’s had lunch with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, he notes. Several elected Republicans attended a pro-Trump conference organized by Fuentes a few months ago.
“This normalization didn’t start when Kanye lost his mind,” Oren Segal told AFP. “It’s something we’ve been watching for a long time.”
For him, Trumpism is an important factor in minimizing this incitement. “Trumpism is understood as the normalization of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and the normalization of anti-Semitism is not far off,” he explains.
And the consequences are real, he recalls, noting the bloody synagogue attacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (11 dead in 2018) and Poway, California (1 dead in 2019).
– Lost Alliances –
The fact that Kanye West and Kyrie Irving are both African American has raised fears of rising anti-Semitism in the black community and among young people.
But for Cheryl Greenberg, a professor at Trinity College, it is above all a “tendency to trivialize extremist ideas”.
According to her, this trend is fueled by the fact that younger generations know less about the Holocaust and are more aware of the problems of other marginalized or oppressed communities, be they ethnic minorities or LGBT+.
“By making anti-Semitism a central issue, Jews have made dialogue with many other communities difficult,” the Trinity College expert said, noting that the traditional alliance of Jewish and African-American communities formed in defense in the 1950-60s had passed civil rights has been defeated today.
Younger blacks and other minorities no longer see Jews as victims but as successful whites.
“There are many communities, not just Jews,” and the only solution is to work with others — even those critical of Israel — to continue to combat anti-Jewish sentiment, says Ms Greenberg, who is Jewish herself.
Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter also showed how quickly problematic content can resurface on social networks once content moderators relax their guard.
Oren Segal is more concerned, however, with the “ecosystem” of algorithm-based video hosts like TikTok, or content-moderated discussion platforms like Telegram or Reddit, where entire communities have been built around anti-Semitism.
“It’s a toxic environment where the most vulnerable make up their minds,” he concludes. “We’re starting to see the consequences of that.”