I really don't intend for my post-election coverage to be so ADL-centric. But I can't help but be struck at the degree to which Trump's Jewish and Israel-related decision-making might as well be solely based on how to personally humiliate the ADL, and prompt them into embarrassing and degrading acts of submission and hypocrisy, to the greatest extent possible.
For example, Trump's announced pick for UN Ambassador is New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. One of my basic rules of 2024 political observation was that "one does not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Elise Stefanik," who defined the term bad-faith grandstanding when it came to her supposed objections to campus antisemitism even as she was directly promoting dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories on her own.
But alas, the ADL eagerly jumped in with praise for the selection, allowing us to juxtapose this:
Like I said -- just abject, humiliating supplication. It couldn't be more pathetic.
Or consider the position of United States Ambassador to Israel. If ever past was prologue, this is it. The first time Donald Trump was elected, he appointed an ambassador to Israel who referred to liberal Jews as "kapos". The ADL maintained a studious silence, a choice which I maintained "sold out" a substantial swath of the Jewish community that it purportedly was tasked to protect.
This time around, the nominee is going to be former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has an even more illustrative history with the ADL. You see, back in 2011, the following sequence occurred:
- Huckabee made spurious and offensive analogies to the Holocaust (comparing it to, of all things, the national debt).
- The ADL publicly took exception.
- Huckabee threatened the ADL.
- The ADL scampered backwards and issued a groveling apology.
So here, at least, the ADL already got ahead of schedule, and I look forward to some embarrassingly effusive praise directed towards Huckabee to emerge forthwith.
What we saw in 2016, is only going to be worse in 2024. That's true on many levels, but for the ADL in particular it is evidently apparent -- they will sell us out. They will take vulnerable American Jews, who are rightfully terrified about emergent Christian nationalism and White supremacy and violent extremism and, yes, left-wing campus antisemitism too*, and they will leave us to twist. They will do it regularly, and repeatedly, and without hesitation, and for an embarrassingly cheap payoff.
* I include this because, by cuddling up to the far-right powers that be, the ADL will necessarily kneecap any ability to effectively fight campus antisemitism, though they certainly will retain the capacity to yell about it. The sorts of tactics which actually might tamp down on and respond to campus antisemitism, versus the sorts of tactics which yield good Fox News ragebait and can justify blowing up the Department of Education, are not compatible with one another, and the ADL is going to lash itself to the latter at the expense of the former. While there still may be utility in what the ADL can do for someone like me on the local level, in terms of a cohesive, national strategy I do not have any more confidence in the ADL's ability to effectively protect me from campus antisemitism than I have confidence in its ability to protect me from conservative antisemitism.
5 comments:
This seems, well, churlish. Something Huckabee said in 2011 or a tweet from 2021 ...I dont think anyone sees these appointments about ADL at all....and I dont think any of the Jewish faculty, students or community members with whom Ive interacted over the past year have expressed concern that ¨Christian nationalism¨ is their primary concern. Above all, your comment that ADL cant help you makes me wonder if youve worked with ADL California at all or if this is just about the executive director. What I think is particularly odd about this is that folks pronouncedly on the right think of ADL as far too liberal and tolerant. Your criticism seems to me that they are insufficiently anti-Trump. Look, I know that the Harris campaign pushed ADL to come out against Trump and was disappointed the national office did not -- notwithstanding that ADL is not a PAC, does not have a 501c3, and was closed for Shemini Atzeret the day the Harris people wanted them to make a statement -- but really ADL is hardly the point here. What will be important with respect to domestic antisemitism first and foremost is if the Senate finally acts on pending legislation during the lame duck and then how the administration approaches the OCR if, as it has announced, it does not intend to appoint a Secretary of Education. But in the meantime, maybe Im missing the point about the ADL but it seems to me really odd that youve twice focused on the ADL in your analysis of Trump transition.
I appreciate this analysis very much, especially as I grow so tired of hearing optimistic pronouncements from conservative Jewish voices in the last week. I can’t remember if you’ve remarked on Franklin Foer’s Atlantic piece from a few months back, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Coming to an End.” This all feels like it’s strengthening his case, to me.
I don't see these appointments as "about" the ADL. But from the vantage of the ADL, they create this juxtaposition of humiliating supplication in defiance of their own values, and it's an embarrassment to behold. I'm aware of the conservative claim that the ADL is too liberal, and from my vantage point it boils down to a complaint that Jewish organizations should not reflect the priorities of the actual American Jewish community (or, more bluntly, is reflective of the critics' general disdain for the American Jewish community as it is actually constituted). The ADL's "base" should lie at the center of the American Jewish community -- which is to say, it should be normcore Jewish Democrats -- and I've been warning for years that it is losing the support of that base.
As it happens, I regularly chatted with the local ADL staff back when I lived in California (less so in Portland). I like them a lot. But I also had plenty of ADL staffers at that level (not naming names, in part because they expressed real fears of retaliation from senior leadership) reach out to tell me how the national office was -- directly and indirectly -- kneecapping their efforts and making it impossible for them to effectively do their jobs. Morale has been a huge problem, particularly amongst the midlevel staffers who are doing the organization's best work, precisely because the national leadership is no longer aligned with what's happening and necessary on the ground.
The fact is that the ADL does have a job to do at a national level, not just its local offices, and it has been floundering at that job for months if not years. That can't be waved off by praising the genuinely excellent work that still happens (though is becoming more difficult) in local offices.
Can I ask though about your view on what I expressed as the key question? Title VI enforcement. Who's going to do it if DOE is defunded and DoJ is led by Geotz (whom Greenbatt demounces strobgmy yesterday) or in general politicized beyond recognition?
At that point it seems to me the point about ADLs politics are beside the point, no? Is there any doubt that the response to campus antisemitism is going to come from the major organizations that have the experience, resources and yes political capital to mobilize?
I'm suggesting that you're in a position now to be a leader in helping frame how our community responds to this crisis. I'd really encourage you to lay I UT some thoughts on what to do, rather than focus on inter-organizarional tensions.
What would you do If you were ed of adl?
That's the point of my Leviathan analogy, no? The ADL isn't really replaceable even if its in an unprecedently weak and vulnerable position, and so if in its weakened state it can't (effectively) mobilize to fight campus antisemitism anymore, we're going to be in a really nasty spot (and the most likely filler of the vacuum is a weaponized DoJ that politicizes the issue beyond recognition in a fashion that appeals primarily to the Christian right (and a small bloc of Jewish conservatives).
I've tried to give some insight on "what I would do" via my work with Nexus, but we don't have the juice to move the conversation inside or outside of the Jewish community. And while new leadership at the ADL could start undoing the damage Greenblatt is causing by, e.g., showing mainline Jewish liberals that it will have their backs even where the antisemitism that targets us drapes itself in pro-Israel bona fides (see Stefanik), even in the best case scenario it's not something that can be turned around overnight. I'm just really pessimistic at the moment.
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