The Epistemic Turn of the Week's Antisemitism

When I published my article on epistemic antisemitism last year, the very first paragraph carried an important disclaimer: epistemic antisemitism "is by no means the only form of antisemitism, nor (necessarily) the most important or foundational type." It is a type, one amongst many, and I wrote about it mostly because I didn't really see others writing about it.

Certainly this week, it is beyond evident that epistemic antisemitism is not the most important type. It pales in comparison to the violence, death, and dismemberment that has afflicted southern Israel, and the apologias for the same. Yet it still remains the case that epistemic antisemitism is a type, and one sees it, too, rearing its ugly head in the discourse that's surrounded the preceding week's events.

Epistemic injustice, as Miranda Fricker describes it, is the wronging of persons in the capacity as knowers. In its antisemitic dimension, it is the persistent presentation of Jewish claims and claimants as untrustworthy, deceptive, or plots -- never to be taken at face value, always in service of some higher game. Inevitable features of contested discourse -- disagreements, differing interpretations, misunderstandings, ambiguities in meaning, or even flat honest mistakes -- are all collapsed into a more sinister narrative of intentional manipulation. The result is that, even where Jews are speaking on matters central to our own experience, the default is to not take us seriously -- indeed, to assume anyone who does take us seriously, who treats us as making an earnest contribution, is a sucker or in on the agenda.

I'll give two examples from the past few days, one short, the other longer. 

First, one theme one has heard from many Jewish commentators -- some well to my left -- has been despair over witnessing others in their camp who've been at best indifferent, if not celebratory, towards murdered Jews. All of us have seen iterations of this (Eric Levitz collects some receipts, including from Students for Justice in Palestine). But the replies to such cries of despair are increasingly overrun by persons who insist that nothing of the sort is happening. "I've seen nobody praising the attacks". "Show me examples [no, the examples you just shared don't count]". And on and on.

The point is to present a wide-ranging Jewish testimonial experience as incredible and a sort of collective defamation of the left. What appears to be a repeated experience Jews have had in the past few days is actually a calculated initiative to spread falsehoods, gin up undeserved sympathy, and discredit ideological opponents (the last part is true even if the speakers are themselves part of the same broad ideological camp). Remember what Bruce Robbins said so many years ago: "The real issue here is anti-Semitism; that is, accusing people of it." When Jews say they see antisemitism, epistemic antisemites immediately see real issue as those victimized by an undoubtedly false allegation. There are clear analogue to how Jewish members of Labour who testified about antisemitism in the Corbyn era were maligned, and I feel like I've definitely seen some persons who I know were offenders in the Corbyn affair making similar moves today.

Second, there were reports that among the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during their assault there were instances of beheaded infants. These stories were shared and spread over social media, but initially they were not easy to confirm. Sheera Frankel of the New York Times has a great account regarding how the claim emerged and how responsible journalists tried to confirm it or otherwise figure out its provenance. The summary of the timeline goes, more or less, something like this:

• There was an initial report of beheadings of babies from an Israeli news source; this appears to be what kicked off the story.
• Further investigation suggested that these reports might have been based off a misinterpretation of a soldier's first-hand testimony. Other sources who were contacted were unable to provide first-hand confirmation of the "beheading" claim.
• Some of the reporters who had initially repeated the allegation accordingly began to pull back, leading still other commentators to claim that the initial story had been "debunked".
• As time passed, more reports did begin to flow in with additional first-hand testimony claiming to have seen beheaded infants, leading to the story reappearing on reputable media websites.

We may never know exactly all of the details. The Israeli government has reportedly said that it will not investigate the matter further -- the eyewitness testimony it has received is evidence enough, and whatever evidentiary gains might emerge from meticulously documenting the exact state of dismemberment of each infant corpse were negligible when weighed against the additional pain and agony such an investigation would impose on the victims' families. This forbearance, unsurprisingly, has been viewed with extreme suspicion by those who found the initial claim to lack credibility and who continue to believe that the reports are untrue. For my part, I think that right now the balance of evidence suggests -- sickeningly -- that it likely is true that there were some children with beheaded corpses found amongst the bodies in Israel.

But my point is actually not about how one assesses the current state of the evidence. Rather, it is to emphasize that -- specific depraved details aside -- a sequence like this should not feel especially abnormal. We had a fast-moving, chaotic, uncontrolled event that was chock full of incidents and abuses that 24 hours earlier would have been impossible to imagine. Even if social media sites like X/Twitter hadn't completely imploded into engines of greater misinformation, moments like these are the furthest thing from a healthy informational ecosystem. There will be rumors, and uncertainties, and panic, and hearsay. Some of it will be fully borne out, some of it will carry a grain of truth but be misshapen in some way, some of it will be entirely bogus. In the immediate chaotic froth of the event, that's to be expected.

Yet -- and this is the epistemic antisemitism link -- that was not how things were portrayed. Some social media commentators, recognizing that the situation was in flux and early reports could not be confirmed, urged caution in the face of sensational allegations. That is entirely in the right. But some social media commentators raced as fast as possible to the position that any reports of "beheadings" were pure propaganda, an intentional trick to discredit Hamas (as if they needed the help!), and those who shared them were either unwitting pawns or willing participants in a Zionist conspiracy. The most plausible explanation consistent with the claim being untrue -- that this was the sort of rumor and hearsay that one would fully expect to see bouncing about in the chaotic first moments following a surprise attack -- was blown past in favor of an explanation predicated on the most malicious possible inferences. That move -- not, to reiterate, any professional insistence on needing more confirmation before resharing the allegations -- seems to me directly linked to holding a default position of skepticism if not antipathy towards Jewish claim-makers (which is why, even though now we are seeing multiple different direct eyewitness accounts confirming the story, plenty still are holding fast to the notion that they can't be trusted).

In either case, the thrust of this branch of discourse -- and lest I be clear, it is only a branch, the vast majority of people have not indulged in this depravity -- is laser-focused on ensuring that nobody be too ready to take Jews seriously. The goal is to present Jewish testimony as presumptively suspect -- not just the baseline "skepticism" that might greet any claim before proof is supplied, but a specific insistence that Jewish testimony in particular is probably part of a plot. As I wrote in my article, the epistemic antisemite -- in addition to whatever other negative beliefs they have about Jews, tends to carry

 a concurrent belief that Jews can’t be trusted, that they’re always plotting something or working the angles, that all of their public action is in service of a deeper game. A person who believes such things about Jews may be considerably less likely to take Jewish claims made to the public seriously. Even if she does not reject them out of hand, she may be extra-alert for a hidden agenda or secret meaning, and may be unwilling to credit Jewish testimony (even—or especially—on matters where Jews might be thought to possess first-hand knowledge) to the same degree she does other actors.

This -- on top of everything else -- is something Jews are facing right now. The rapid assumption that any reporting of atrocities out of Israel is Zionist propaganda until ironclad-proven otherwise is one form of it. The dismissive derision towards Jewish testimony regarding apologism for Hamas atrocities is another. It's not on par with violence, or even verbal justifications for violence. But it is still something, and something terrible, and it is a regular feature of Jewish life in the world.