After a storm of criticism (or perhaps only as a result of the Whoopi Goldberg fiasco), the ADL retracted this new definition, and Greenblatt wrote a long piece admitting that it was woefully lacking and excluded antisemitism. But the obvious question is how an organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism could possibly make such a ridiculous and terrible error in the first place. And the obvious answer is that they are staffed by the wrong type of people.
Meanwhile, the ADL has posted what they call an "interim definition" of racism. As a friend pointed out, it's quite remarkable that a major organization dedicated to fighting racism can't even figure out what it is.
(For another interesting perspective, see this article. And for a satirical video which is definitely not to everyone's tastes, see here.)
Looks like slifkin is finally waking up to the dangers of the progressive American left and BLM, and why people who live in America who understand this, supported Trump against the progressive left and BLM. We're not racists or cultists, we are realists and we see what's happening.
ReplyDelete"supported Trump against the progressive left and BLM. "
DeleteWhy not support someone else against the progressive left & BLM?
R' Slifkin, I am more than happy to encourage your enforcement of your "no anonymous posts" rule -- especially after silly "you're finally waking up" posts such as this.
DeleteI don't know Ms Goldberg's views on Critical Race Theory (though I think I can guess), but to say the Holocaust was not racist denies one of the theory's tenets: "Scholars of CRT view race as a social construct with no biological basis." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory) This tenet doesn't jibe with Dr. Sztokman, but it does refute Ms Goldberg.
ReplyDeleteTrying to have it both ways, then. If race doesn't exist, then blacks can't have an exclusive hold on any definition of "racism," or the benefits that accrue in response to it. If race does exist, it raises all sorts of other troubling questions for them.
DeleteSo the people to suffer are...the Jews, as always.
Sztokman writes:
ReplyDelete"As a result, she is being corrected all over the media and internet with well-meaning people saying that Hitler thought Jews were a race, and so Jews are a race."
I don't see people are saying that at all. People are saying, "Hitler thought Jews were a race, even though they're not, but that doesn't mean Hitler wasn't motivated by what he thought were racial considerations." So far...sort of good. But then we get the reaction Sztokman herself writes, which is:
"First of all, despite Hitler, Jews are not a race. We are multi-racial and completely dispersed, There is no Jewish DNA or standard Jewish skin color. Anyone can be Jewish just by converting. The entire “Jews are targeted because we are a race” has the effect of denying our ethnic diversity, which is obnoxious to some of our own people."
And it's at this point that the criticism of Goldberg gets seriously garbled, and drifts into fantasy land, especially the fantasy that liberal Jews (who are overwhelmingly white in this case, as it happens) like to have about Jews.
Because, you see, Jews *are* a race. Yes, Jews are very diverse: in *Israel*. The Jews that Hitler dealt with were, by and large, *not*. The Jews that Goldberg, l'havdil, deals with every day- American Jews- are, by and large, *not*. They were and are Ashkenazim, mostly Eastern European, a subset of- yes- white people (so on that note, at least, Goldberg is right even when she's very, very wrong- after all, there were plenty of other perfectly white- gentile- people Hitler really didn't like)- with, yes, certain distinct physical and genetic characteristics.
This is a problem for American Jews. Many of them are *very* committed to assimilating, one way or another. Being told the fact that they can very often be sniffed out by the average gentile- even one who is not at all anti-Semitic- pretty quickly based on (among other things) physical characteristics is pretty troubling to that worldview. The idea that Jews have distinctive genetics is *very* troubling to them because, of course, it raises the specter of the Holocaust and all sorts of other racial issues. (After all, Current Orthodoxy is that Race Doesn't Exist, which is a farcical and unscientific claim but widely believed nonetheless.) And so they retreat into claims that Jews are not a race, that Jews are diverse, that there are no Jewish genetics, which is all very nice and fitting with Current Orthodoxy...except what they're really saying is something they can't even think, which is that American Jews are identical to white people. (Of course, there's the added little twist that Jews are- *very* broadly speaking- actually a lot more "privileged", to use the common term, than most American whites, not to mention blacks.) And, to a great extent, this is why the ADL has crippled itself from its core mission, which is to prevent anti-Semitism. It can't stand up to the contradictions.
(As per genetics, there's the uncomfortable little fact that Jews *love* taking pride in Jewish brains and Nobel winners and all that without really pausing to consider what it all means. And of course that a standard ancestry test can tell you with an extremely high degree of certainty whether or not you're Jewish- or any other race, for that matter, see "farcical and unscientific" above. Indeed, even the "diverse in Israel" argument doesn't really work here, as Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Yemenite Jews share certain genetic markers, with each group at the same time each having distinct ones of their own. Not that Hitler knew that.)
And then Goldberg says it out loud and the various contradictions they've been telling themselves come into stark relief, and they stumble and stutter and try to have it both ways. They can, for now, especially because Goldberg is so obviously speaking racially-influenced nonsense here. I just don't know how long it can last.