Perceiving the Hierarchy

As you may have seen, there was antisemitic stabbing/car ramming attack on a UK synagogue on Yom Kippur yesterday. Two Jews were killed (one, apparently, by the police in the course of their response); the attacker was also killed on site.

In the wake of the attack, the New York Times quoted a recently-released report by the Runnymede Trust on the subject of antisemitism in the UK, making the case that the "current approaches designed to tackle the problem [of antisemitism] are not working." Specifically, the report critiques how "The significant funding given by governments to protect Jewish people specifically makes Jewish communities feel safer in the short term but has given rise to perceptions that there is a hierarchy of racisms in the U.K.."

[W]hen the state and political parties put significant energy into combating antisemitic ideas but fail to act with similar force against Islamophobia or structural racism, it confirms the perception of a hierarchy of racism. While this type of state-led opposition to antisemitism can make many Jewish people feel safer in the short-term, it gives life to a competitive victimhood that further pulls apart the horizontal alliances and broad political coalitions required to confront all racisms.

A couple things about this formulation that jumped out at me, but the main one is the acceptance of the narrative that Jews are "anti-discrimination" winners -- winning so much, and so hard, that it's generating understandable resentment that fractures the possibility of cross-group solidarity. The reason this "jumped out" is that one of my earliest public writings on antisemitism specifically addressed this phenomenon in the context of the UK, pointing out that the public perception of Jews being very well- (perhaps over-)protected by anti-discrimination law coexisted with a reality that Jews weren't actually receiving much protection at all.

I won't claim to be an expert on the UK. But the Runnymede report, as far as I can see, does not actually provide much evidence that Jews in reality receive enhanced material support for their security compared to other groups. The only concrete example they provide is the proliferation of Holocaust memorials in contrast to the lack of such memorials for other atrocities suffered by other groups (including ones that the UK is more directly implicated in, like the slave trade). 

I do think there is something to be said about making Holocaust remembrance the be-all-end-all of what "reckoning with past racism looks like". But this has little to do with funding initiatives meant to provide security for Jewish institutions from violent attack.

In the United States, at least, funds meant to bolster security at religious institutions have been made available to applicants of all faiths. Jewish organizations have received a large chunk of the funds (perhaps because Jews are by far the most common targets of religious-based hate crimes), but it would be wrong to say there is a "hierarchy" here. But that doesn't seem to change the fact that there is a perception of a hierarchy; and where perception is not matching reality we need to interrogate more deeply what's driving the perception.

Put simply: it is a common feature of antisemitism to present Jews as "the outgroup that's in" -- the paradigm of protection (perhaps over-protection) to the point where they are seen as hoarding the bounty of public sympathy from groups who need it more. This perception is itself inextricably linked to antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish hyperpower and influence (obviously, Jews can't really be marginalized when it's so clear that they control Congress/the media/the banks/the world), and it is I think a category mistake to assume that the perception is substantially related to an actual, objective assessment of how much protection Jews are or are not receiving. 

Just like with fears of "voter fraud" or anti-vaxx conspiracies, where the underlying complaints about Jews being over-protected are grounded not in rationality but in resentment, a "rational" response will never assuage and the conspiracists will never be accommodated. Eventually, the only "move" in this politics is for Jews to self-abnegate -- to performatively lose, over and over again, even in circumstances where they are being genuinely wronged and deserved genuine protection under well-established and universally-applied principles, so as to "reassure" their neighbors that they aren't winning too much and aren't being given special favors. This is not sustainable, and it is not actually a productive strategy for fighting antisemitism.

I absolutely agree that -- whether in the UK or the US -- the government and other social actors need to take all forms of racism and discrimination with the seriousness they deserve, and direct concrete and tangible resources and proposals to combatting it. But I do not think reinforcing the narrative of "hierarchy" is helpful in this respect. I will keep on tapping the sign: they'd say it about Jews, they'd say it about other groups too. It is not the case that "only the Jews receive such solicitude", it is not the case that "everyone but the Jews receives such solicitude." We should reassess both narratives that assert a clear "hierarchy of racism" that likely is not present and which is itself built upon unhelpful and unproductive resentments.