Suspected Brooklyn subway bomber Frank James may have acted alone. But if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entire culture to initiate mass murder. Ours can find full recognition here. The toxic ideas that consumed James are all around us.
James is now a suspect in Tuesday’s subway attack, which left at least 23 people injured and at least four hospitalized. The shooter is said to have detonated smoke grenades in a crowded subway car and then started shooting.
And what motivated this act of violence? News outlets have reported that James’ alleged writings and YouTube videos are riddled with racism, including derogatory discussions of white, black, Hispanic and Asian people. This is true. But it also misses the point. If you listen closely to his tirades, you’ll pick out a unique motive: the anger of the Jew-possessed.
The subway bomber’s prolific social media posts reveal a man driven by an ideological delusion chillingly similar to that of the Colleyville bomber and other assailants. For such murderers, as for too many others, anti-Semitism is a broad worldview in which the conspiratorial Jew is blamed for his own shortcomings.
It is not insignificant that James’ YouTube nickname is “Prophet of Truth 88” based on the digits white supremacists use to code for “HH” or “Heil Hitler”. Or consider a strikingly hateful video James posted to Facebook in 2017, titled “they hate jew,” in which James belittles Jews while showing photos of Adolf Hitler and images of Jewish Holocaust victims. “This is about Jews and my personal relationship with Jews and the utter contempt that every damn Jew I’ve dealt with shows me at the end of the day,” he says.
Like so many anti-Semites, James tells of disappointments for which he must find a scapegoat. For example, James blames a professional failure on a Hasidic Jew who pretended to help. James views such Jews who offer help in the light of age-old stereotypes and accuses Jews of bullying. “This is FYI about those fucking Jews and how they’ll smile in your face while they stab you in the back in a heartbeat,” he says.
James filters the world through the distinctive form of “erasing” anti-Semitism that has developed in certain leftist and minority communities, stripping Jews of a distinctive cultural identity in order to project onto them a hateful and stereotypical distortion of the truth. For example, James insists Jews are as white “like Nazis.” This allows James to view Jews as oppressive white supremacists, a view that has stubbornly prevailed on the mainstream left.
James also engages in “secondary anti-Semitism” – blaming Jews for misfortunes – and castigates Jews for failing to live up to the lessons of their own victimhood. “These Jews obviously learned nothing from their experience. You know, it didn’t humiliate her in the slightest,” he says. “They are…still arrogant and still feel superior…And again, these mothers don’t contribute to life on this earth but to shit, piss, pollution, and death and destruction.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 13: Subway shooter suspect Frank James is escorted out of the 9th Precinct by FBI and NYPD officers after being arrested for his role in the attack on Subway Station 36 .Street in Brooklyn on April 13. 2020 in NYC. James is said to have shot dead 10 people and detonated a smoking device on an N subway train during Tuesday’s rush hour. John Lamparski/Getty Images
Every element of James’ murderous ideology is pervasive in our society. They are taught in our schools, taught at our universities, inculcated in corporate training courses and broadcast from television studios, albeit in a more sanitized version. Jewish identity is routinely embellished, and the world is presented with a distorted picture in which age-old stereotypes have become fused with ever-evolving canards.
Consider, for example, California’s new ethnic studies curriculum, which has been criticized for viewing whites and Jews as oppressors. Or Stanford’s diversity executives, who have pressured Jews to join an affinity group for employees “held by white identity privilege” while espousing anti-Jewish stereotypes. Remember an episode on Google where then-Diversity boss Kamau Bobb lamented, “If I were Jewish, I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in my defense.”
Like the subway shooter’s hatred, the problem here is bigger than just anti-Semitism; It is that our educational and social institutions teach us to see one another through a fundamental dichotomy. Either you are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color) or you are a white oppressor. If you are a white oppressor, you participate in a system of racial supremacy that harms minorities in a way that fits Frank James’ diatribe.
And if you are Jewish, you are the worst oppressor, regardless of your origin or skin color.
It is too dangerous to ignore the complicity of social institutions, including schools, colleges, corporations, and the mass media, in all of this. Frank James may have pulled the trigger, but lots of people supplied ammunition.
It’s late in the day, but it’s not too late to turn things around. Separating curricula and training programs should be replaced with new materials that teach equality and respect. Nobody should be stereotyped because of their race or religion. Everyone should be allowed to choose, cherish, and celebrate their own identity as they define it, and not the one forced upon them by diversity coaches or critical racial gurus.
If we care about diversity and inclusion, we should also care about unity and respect. As our goal, we should strive to live up to the motto emblazoned on the Great Seal of the United States: E pluribus unum.
Kenneth L. Marcus is Founder and Chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism. He served as the 11th Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.