In the aftermath of the Tree of Life massacre and just in time for the midterm elections, the media has woken up to the fact that anti-Semitism has terrorized the nation for years. It long predates Trump, and it will persist long after Trump. But most importantly, only one minor faction of it has anything to do with Trump. On this last point, the media needs to get a clue.
The alt-right — no doubt inspired by the embrace of former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and, by extension, the president — has certainly driven a surge of visible anti-Semitism on the Internet. Alt-right adherents tend to skew younger, thrive on the Internet, and value ethno-nationalism and sexism above any other political point (hence the continual attacks on “cuckservatives”).
According to the Anti-Defamation League, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro received a whopping 38 percent of all anti-Semitic Twitter harassment that was sent leading up to the 2016 election. Other conservative journalists in the top ten recipients of anti-Semitic attacks include Jonah Goldberg and Bethany Mandel. So while Trump’s post-Charlottesville “very fine people” remarks haven’t helped quell the growth of the alt-right, it’s important to note that race motivated the alt-right more than anything else, including policy or politics.
Yet for all of their online rage, members of the alt-right tend not to leave their parents’ basements. You only need to check out a few photos of alt-right founder Richard Spencer to realize he ought to hit the gym instead of his wife. And as it turns out, the alt-right doesn’t have much impact in the real-life assault of Jews in America.
According to a stunning New York Times report, anti-Semitic attacks, 142 in total, comprise half of New York’s hate crimes for the year thus far. Despite being just 13 percent of New York’s population, Jews experienced hate crimes at a rate four times higher than blacks, who compose more than a quarter of New York’s population. Most interestingly, the New York Times reports, not one anti-Semitic hate crime perpetrator caught in the last 22 months has been a member of an alt-right or far-right group. (This sample size is significant, as more Jews live in New York City than in Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv combined.)
So although the alt-right persists online, the actual perpetrators of anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York tend to have completely different motivations. And those interested in combating hate crimes would be wise to start looking at those motivations, and the institutions that have spent decades normalizing the hatred of Jews in America.
Perhaps the worst breeding ground for American anti-Semitism is the university. Campus progressives have embraced the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel as a raison d’etre, with the student governments of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pitzer College recently voting on divesting from and prohibiting business with Israeli companies. Anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses have nearly doubled in each of the past two years, contributing “signifcant[ly]” to the sharp rise of anti-Semitic attacks in the country, according to the ADL.
Anti-Zionist activists will insist that they just want to “Free Palestine,” yet the statistical correlation between anti-Zionist activism and anti-Semitic attacks on campus is significant and horrifying. A 2015 study of more than 100 colleges and universities found that 99 percent of schools with at least one anti-Zionist group had anti-Semitic activity. By contrast, just 16 percent of schools with no anti-Zionist activists had anti-Semitic activity. More than half of schools with BDS activists experienced anti-Semitic activity, while just 23 percent of those without it had anti-Semitic activity. The study found that BDS activity was the “strongest predictor of incidents that target Jewish students for harm.”
Furthermore, professors normalizing hatred of Israel also have a correlation with anti-Semitic incidents. Every single school with ten or more faculty boycotters of Israel had anti-Semitic activity. All of this ignores the colonial revisionism narrative of Jews in Israel, promulgated in mainstream college coursework.
After all, the kids have to be learning it from somewhere. When vociferous anti-Semites like Linda Sarsour are normalized in the media and casual hatred of Israel is normalized by academia, it’s no wonder that the media has missed what might be the largest class of people committing hate crimes against Jews. They’re not the angry little boys on the Internet who can’t do much more than put together a 20-person march or send an angry tweet. They’re bigots elevated and normalized in the premier perches of American academia.
