I'm Very Tired and Cranky: S.1/BDS Edition

I didn't want to write this. I really really didn't. I've been swamped the past few days dealing with Rep. Rashida Tlaib telling people who backed an anti-BDS law that "they forgot which country they represent", then explaining why that's an antisemitic dual loyalty trope even when applied to non-Jews like Marco Rubio, then excoriating the AJC for literally making its own dual loyalty accusation against Tlaib as some sort of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I racist retort to Tlaib's tweet, and finally just throwing up my hands and saying we should probably just avoid tropes of "loyalty" and whatnot in this entire discourse, because none of y'all can be trusted.

And because this is the internet and this involves Jews and antisemitism and Israel and Palestine, I was doing all this while dodging a surrounding milieu of commentary that was as dumb as you could possibly imagine.

In particular: Nobody involved in this controversy seems to have the foggiest understanding of what Senator Rubio's bill (designated "S.1") is even doing. When they're not engaged in outlandish hyperbole about it "banning criticism of Israel", they're outright mistaking it for completely different bills about BDS. And to the extent their arguments do touch on something that is within striking distance of an actual public controversy, they're almost universally awful.

That's right: this is a rant post. Feel free to skip it. I'm venting.

Longtime observers of "anti-BDS" laws may recognize that there are two very different "versions" of these laws which have been the subject of legal controversy recently. One is the federal "Israel Anti-Boycott Act", or IABA. This would (for the most part) update the Export Administration Act's preexisting ban on boycotting Israel as part of an effort to comply with a boycott demand by a foreign country to also include international governmental organizations (i.e., the EU and UN). I wrote critically about that proposed law here. Notably, neither the current law nor the IABA would prohibit, penalize, or restrict individuals or companies from boycotting Israel based on their own conscientious ideological choice -- it only covers boycotts which are done at the behest of a foreign power.

The second are state-level laws which generally prohibit the state from investing in or contracting with entities which, themselves, boycott Israel. Such laws include the recently struck down Kansas and Arizona laws, as well as the Texas law that was recently challenged by a speech pathologist who could not (she maintains) renew her contract with a local school district because she boycotts Israel. These laws do target "conscientious" boycott decisions -- not by prohibiting the choice, but by declaring that the government won't contract with bodies that make that choice. I've written critically about these laws here and here.

So which of these categories does Senator Rubio's S.1 fall into? Neither. His bill -- or rather, Title IV of his bill (the other three titles cover defense authorizations for Israel and Jordan, and tightened sanctions on Syria) -- does one thing: it states that state anti-BDS laws (of the second-type, above) are not preempted by federal law.

If that sounds technical, it is. Rubio's law doesn't itself impose any penalty or restriction on persons engaging in BDS. All it says is that if a state passes a law limiting its own investment or contracting to entities which disavow BDS, such a law wouldn't be deemed to conflict with any federal statute (preemption hasn't been a major feature of debates over BDS bills, but presumably Rubio is worried about Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council). If no states pass these laws, then Rubio's bill does nothing. If a state does pass a law, Rubio's bill still doesn't shield the state from having to defend its enactment against a First Amendment challenge. The state laws which Rubio's bill would declare non-preempted either are constitutional or they're not, but that question is utterly non-germane to Rubio's bill. And likewise, the validity of these state laws is entirely separate from the IABA and whether it is a wise or permissible alteration to the existing anti-boycott framework of the Export Administration Act -- Rubio's bill doesn't even touch on that subject.

But if we do move to the subject of the state laws and their constitutionality -- boy, are we ever getting a blast of Twitter School of Law. On the anti-side: There's the basic version that says these laws "allow punishment for Americans who protest Israel", which, no they don't -- they just hold that the state won't invest or contract with you if you boycott Israel. Why is it the case that every single intervention in these debates that at all requires any adjustment in how one registers one's objections to Israeli policy is perceived as tantamount to banning discussion outright? Don't answer that -- I know exactly why.

Then you get the more advanced play that the state can't claim its own ideological right to "boycott the boycotters" because "the Constitution is designed to protect American citizens from the government, and not the other way around", which sounds great until you think about it for a quarter-second and realize how strange it would be to apply to the government in its capacity as an employer and contractor, where it repeatedly and necessarily will be making non-viewpoint neutral choices on a daily basis. First Amendment law has recognized this since at least Pickering v. Board of Education:

[I]t cannot be gainsaid that the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.

This doesn't mean that the state can impose any condition it wants on the speech of its employees -- if the phrase "arrive a balance" wasn't a dead giveaway, the sentence immediately prior to that passage in Pickering--"[T]he theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected"--is clear enough. But there is a balancing test, and it should be obvious that there are absolutely scenarios where the government can and should limit its contracting decisions (ex: the state can't ban racist speech, but it absolutely can fire a police officer who engages in racist speech, because the state has a strong interest as an employer to not let its employees talk that way).

Moving to the "pro" side, first you have to hack through article after article talking about the IABA and how it is only a minor update to the EAA and har-de-har don't Sanders and Tlaib realize we've had a law like this for years -- you're talking about a different bill!

Then you get the folks who say "well, these are just anti-discrimination laws" and ask what your position was on Masterpiece Cakeshop. The problem with that argument (other than the obvious "wait -- what was Rubio's position on Masterpiece Cakeshop?") is that these laws -- despite my advice -- are not being written as anti-discrimination laws. Indeed, Rubio's bill -- which only applies to boycotts which are taken "for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the Government of Israel" -- wouldn't even apply to a straightforward discrimination case where someone who refused to transact with an Israeli national simply because "I hate Israelis." If these are anti-discrimination provisions, then just write them that way: "we won't contract with any party which refuses to stipulate that they don't discriminate on basis of [inter alia] national origin." They're not written that way in part because these laws are, by design, meant to encompass activity that is not in of itself discriminatory (ex: the genuinely "nonpartisan" boycotter who refuses to do business with any party that she deems violates human rights -- Israel included as one of many).

Those who cite Rumsfeld v. FAIR (upholding a federal law requiring universities which accept federal money to allow military recruiters equal access to campus facilities) are at least in the right ballpark -- it is an "unconstitutional conditions" case -- but it hardly disposes of the controversy here. FAIR relied heavily on the notion that the decision to exclude recruiters from campus is not itself inherently "expressive" (I'd also note that the government's interest in insuring its own agents have access to a facility they are, in part, funding seems especially strong and isn't present in the anti-BDS law cases). But a boycott is much more inherently expressive, and since -- unlike the law in FAIR (and again, against my recommendations) -- the state laws are explicit that they are quite purposefully targeting the expressive aspects of the boycott, not the conduct per se (again: Rubio's bill doesn't even cover a generic refusal to do business with Israelis) -- it sits on far less stable footing.

All of which is to say: the law here is not fully settled and is complex, and we could stand for a much more careful conversation about how government speech versus individual liberty versus non-discrimination intersect in cases like these. But we're not having it, and nobody wants to have it.

And I'm just really tired, all of the sudden.

End of the Year Roundup

I know what you're thinking: It's not the "end of the year". The end of the year was almost a week ago!

But Blogger thinks you're wrong. If you look at the right-hand column of archived posts, it counts anything written from the week of December 30 through January 6 as being written in 2018.

And there's more: In both 2016 and 2017, I apparently wrote exactly 229 post. This post? This one right here? This should be post number ... 230.

That's right: an overtime victory for 2018's productivity.

* * *

Israel has officially announced it will seek $250 billion dollars in compensation from other Middle Eastern countries who expelled their Jewish populations in the wake of Israel's independence.

Good to see D.C. statehood get more traction in the House.

Five Jewish teenagers were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the stone-throwing death of a Palestinian woman. Cases of Jewish terrorism targeting Palestinians tripled in 2018.

This feels like something the Joker would do: colorful balloons carry explosives sent from Gaza into Israel (the bomb was safely defused with no injuries).

Meanwhile, here in Berkeley, a man has been arrested after bringing a fake bomb covered with antisemitic writing into our campus police department.

Tyler Cowen: speech regulation policies on private media platforms (like Facebook or Twitter) can be scalable, efficient, and consistent -- pick two. Put differently: a small website can efficiently manage a consistent moderation policy. But a large website (like Twitter) must either invest tremendous sums into moderation (far more than is cost-effective) or settle for a patchwork and inconsistently applied system that's largely ineffective and makes everyone angry.

UPDATE: Oh dang -- joke's on me! Apparently, today counts as the first day of 2019. Which means that 2018 -- like 2017 and 2016 -- will go down as having exactly 229 posts written.

That's kind of cool in its own right. I guess.

Forever is a Long Time, Mr. Tobin

Benny Gantz, the centrist-cipher d'jour of the upcoming Israeli elections, said in a recent speech that a cluster of Israeli settlements -- "the Etzion bloc, Ariel, Ofra and Elkana" --  "will remain forever." Some of these settlements are ones which it is expected would become part of Israeli as part of land swaps in a two state solution. But others -- most notably Ofra -- are so deeply embedded in the heart of the West Bank so as to make it effectively impossible for there to be a Palestinian state at all.

Following Gantz's comments, Jonathan Tobin wrote a profoundly strange column of analysis. The thrust of the column is that Gantz's words demonstrate that it isn't just Bibi who is opposed to making territorial concessions to Palestinians -- even "centrist" candidates like Gantz stake out their opposition as well. As much as such concessions are a mainstay of Bibi's critics (particularly out of Israel), they are exceptionally unpopular in Israel itself.

That's fine, as far as it goes (though Gantz was always viewed as a relatively conservative figure on security issues, so his position here isn't exactly a shocker). But Tobin then proceeds to make some very weird choices of framing what Gantz's declaration that Ofra will remain in Israel "forever" tells us about the Israeli psyche. See if you can spot it:

[T]he importance of Gantz’s statement is that it demonstrates that even those who self-consciously style themselves as centrists don’t think it wise for Israel to make unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, or to plan on evicting even a minority of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live across the Green Line in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

It’s something of a shock for most American Jews hostile to Netanyahu and his right-wing allies to realize that those who share their views in Israel represent only a tiny minority of voters. As has been evident since the Palestinian Authority literally blew up the faith of Israelis in the Oslo peace process during the Second Intifada, a consensus exists from the center left to the center right in Israel that at present, no Palestinian partner for peace exists.

[...]

That’s why Israeli centrists and even moderate left-wingers have largely given up talking about relinquishing up more territory for the foreseeable future. Though most Israelis would probably still be willing to trade land for real peace as opposed to more terror, the overwhelming majority understand that just isn’t possible right now. 

See it? "Forever" apparently doesn't last as long as you'd think it does. Tobin instead sees it is a rather contingent and temporary observation. To say Israel will stay in Ofra "forever" doesn't mean it will stay there forever. It just means "at present", or "right now", or "for the foreseeable future" -- until such time as a Palestinian partner for peace comes into being and a bilateral (not "unilateral") agreement can be reached.

This is what happens when you try to get too cute and clever for your own good. Using Gantz as a barometer, Tobin wants to demonstrate that global critics of Netanyahu who want him to be more proactive in ending the West Bank occupation are staking out a decidedly minority opinion in Israeli society. But the evidence he proffers does a lot more than that: if we take it seriously, it equally undermines the ever-present refrain, echoed by Tobin, that of course Israelis want peace and would be willing to withdraw, the conditions just aren't right "right now". The problem isn't with Israelis, who would jump at the chance of a deal, but with Palestinians who "are still clinging to their century-old war on Zionism."

But Gantz didn't say that Ofra will remain "at present" or "right now". He said that settlement bloc, which renders a Palestinian state an impossibility, will remain "forever." And so if he is a barometer for the median Israeli's political psyche, then the median Israeli is saying that their objection to a Palestinian state isn't a contingent appraisal of the contemporary political situation, but an objection in principle. If Tobin is correct about Gantz, then right now it is Israeli society that is "clinging" to a hardline, rejectionist position that opposes a final peace agreement outright. His column is, in its way, one of the more searing indictments one could possibly make of contemporary Israeli society: even its so-called moderates envision staying in the West Bank "forever"! It's not a "Bibi" problem, it's an Israeli problem.

Tobin can only turn "forever" into "at present" because he is committed to the notion that it is an inherent and permanent feature of Israel and Palestine that Israelis want a just peace where they live side-by-side with Palestine in harmony, and hence if a just peace hasn't occurred, the only reason must be that Palestinians don't want one. If Gantz's "forever" means settlements that would forever bar the creation of a Palestinian state, then it can't mean "forever" at all.

But the fact of the matter is, there is no permanent and unalterable political position that is "what Israelis want" or "what Palestinians want". These things shift based on a multitude of factors -- ranging from material conditions on the ground to efforts at persuasion. It is wrong to assume that the Palestinian position simply is, immutably, a desire for the destruction of Israel at the expense of all else; and it's wrong to assume  that the Israeli position simply is, inherently, a hope for peace if only the conditions were ripe. Sometimes either or both of these views might be the majority or dominant position in their respective camps. Other times it might be the opposite -- Palestinians hoping to simply bring an end to the conflict and set up their own state, with a majority of Israelis being indifferent and content to maintain the occupation "forever".

That these positions aren't built into the bones of their respective societies is what allows changes to be made. Even if Gantz is a barometer of Israeli society right now, that doesn't mean that position is forever -- that Israelis are hopeless, unpersuadable, locked into territorial maximalism. But changing minds takes work, it doesn't come for free. And it certainly won't come if it is taken as axiomatic that Israelis are -- by virtue of being Israeli -- automatically and inherently ready to deal if only the moment is right.

I'm That Guy! I'm That "Independent" Artist Guy!

You know the character. In a TV series or a movie, he's a talented artistic sort, but utterly rejects any commercialization of his product if it entails compromise in his work. Using his song for an advertising jingle? No way. Altering his masterpiece to suit the tastes of the wealthy client/benefactor? Absolutely not. He's fiercely independent, and disdains the trappings of popularity or financial reward if it in any way interferes with the sanctity of his art.

I always hated those characters. I found them sanctimonious, self-absorbed, and more than a little ridiculous.

Except I just realized ... I might be that guy, with respect to my writing.

Of course, I'm not a TV or movie character, so I'm a more filed-off version of the sort. I'm willing to publish my opinions in the popular press, and I don't harbor any particularly negative opinions about gaining popularity or exposure or money (I'll let the readers decide whether I'm "talented" or not).

But it is certainly not why I write, and I'm pretty consistent in rejecting opportunities for greater exposure if I have even the slightest concern that the medium will entail a dilution or compromise in my message. Which it usually will, since writing for someone else involves incorporating their editorial judgment and word count restrictions and other formatting strictures. Whereas when I write on this blog, where I can write for as long or as short as I want, on whatever topic I want, for whoever cares to read (or doesn't) -- none of that applies. I'm in control of my own message.

The same applies to other potential communicative mediums I might join in. Interviewed on a TV series? Someone else is the editor of the clip -- that makes me very nervous. Serving as an expert witness? You're supposed to give decisive judgments about whether X or Y did or didn't happen -- but what if I want to equivocate? This is also why I've never had an interest in going into politics: the arguments that win elections or change popular opinion aren't necessarily good arguments, and I don't have the stomach for making claims that rouse popular support even as I know they're not analytically precise.

Of course, these self-imposed limits mean that fewer people will be exposed to the arguments I make, and one might think that -- given all the energy I invest in crafting them -- I'd view that as a sizable loss. But ... I don't. Not really, anyway. I'm always happy when people read what I write and find it compelling or persuasive, but that's never been my primary motivation. I'm a very inwardly-motivated individual; I write because I want to get my thoughts out into the world. If they happen to spark some other person's imagination (or get me some freelance dollars), that's great, but it's just a bonus.

I'd like to think I'm not sanctimonious about the whole deal: I don't think I'm better or purer or more authentic because I've made the choices I've made. But I'm definitely making that style of choice. And the more I think about it, the more the closest archetype I'm falling into is one of those independent artist types. I am, it turns out, That Guy.

"[We] Did Not Make" the Women's March Embrace Antisemitism

I really, really like Carly Pildis' essay on how the Women's March can -- if it so chooses -- succeed and undo much of the damage it's done to Jewish and LGBT women.

In particular, I loved this section:

I did not make you go to Savior’s Day. I did not make you post on Instagram with a man that calls me a termite and my marriage a threat to black America. I did not make you attack the ADL and defame their anti-bias work. I did not make you say that feminism can’t include Zionism. I did not make you sit on a panel on anti-semitism while Jewish leaders were asking you not to. I did not make you say that anti-Semitism is not a systemic hatred. I did not make you go to Israel and call the founding of our homeland, our self-determination, our biblical dream, a crime against humanity. I did not make you march with Louis Farrakhan. I did not make you write that your Jewish critics were enemies of Jesus. I did not make you write cruel facebook posts that undercut your organizational message. Jewish women did not do this to you. The “right” did not do this to you, “The Jews” did not do this to you. You did this. You did all of this.

This this and everything this. So much of the frustration around, not the antisemitism itself, but the reaction of the Women's March to the controversy, centered on how it was portrayed as ginned up, a concoction, a plot that was crafted by enemies of progressivism and feminism in order to destroy the movement. So it is bracing and refreshing for Pildis to say, flatly, "we did not do this. You did this." I can't tell you how good it is to see that written in such an unflinching manner.

Personally, I'm mostly indifferent to the ultimate fate of the Woman's March. It wasn't my cup of tea to begin with -- which isn't a criticism, not everything has to be tea for me -- and to the extent it has become a vehicle for the specific careers of Sarsour, Mallory, Perez, and Bland, I have no particular stake in their continued prominence or power.

But for many other people, Pildis included, the Women's March does matter, a lot and so it does matter that there be a demarcated pathway by which the Women's March can accept responsibility and move forward.

Maybe they'll take it. Maybe they won't. But I can't say it's a bad thing that people are putting in the work to create it.

D.C. Circuit Dissolves Injunction Against Trans Military Ban

In a brief decision, the D.C. Circuit dissolved a lower court injunction against Trump's ban on military service by trans individuals who seek to transition, concluding that the injunction was not sufficiently deferential to the military and that in any event the ban was not a "blanket" prohibition on service by trans individuals because "not all transgender persons seek to transition to their preferred gender or have gender dysphoria".

If that latter determination causes you to roll your eyes, (a) you're right and (b) this is exactly what I've been warning about in, e.g., my "expelling Hillel can't be antisemitic because not every Jew likes Hillel" essays. This line of reasoning is one of the most powerful pathways for the conservative dismantlement of anti-discrimination law -- it is utterly unsurprising to see it used here to defend the otherwise transparently ridiculous assertion that the trans service ban isn't a trans service ban (see also: Trump v. Hawaii's "Muslim ban isn't a Muslim ban"). Find a tiny sliver of the relevant community you're okay with, gerrymander the discrimination so that sliver is admitted, and presto! No more discrimination.

As several other courts have also enjoined the trans ban, the D.C. Circuit's decision will not have any immediate effect.

Jews and Whiteness in America: The Spectrum of Opinions

"Are Jews White"? If you're Jewish -- or, it seems, even if you're not -- you have an opinion on this question. Those opinions lie on a spectrum, and I'm pretty sure I've seen every single possible iteration of views regarding the "White" status of Jews in America.

* * *

1) "No Jews are White. 'Jews', though, means pale-skinned Ashkenazi Jews who live in or immigrated from Europe -- which has nothing to do with 'White'. Persons who claim to be Jews but have different heritages or skin tones are probably not real Jews to begin with; at best, they can be accepted as Jews if and only if they perfectly accept and mimic the practices, beliefs, and ideologies of 'real' Jews. And if this sort of differentiated treatment appears to systematically benefit those Jews who appear White, that has to be a misnomer, since Jews are not White."

2) "No Jews are White. There are no distinctions of importance within the Jewish community along the axis of race. Antisemitism is the only relevant oppression a Jew can experience; it is racism with Jews as its target, consequently, any claim regarding 'racism' in America necessarily must apply with equal force to antisemitism. It is impossible for a Jew to benefit from Whiteness, because Jews are not White."

3) "No Jews are White, but some Jews, mistaken for White folk, might accidentally and idiosyncratically reap certain undefined and inchoate advantages of Whiteness outside of the Jewish community. However, these advantages disappear if and when they're recognized as Jews, and the dominant antisemitism reasserts itself. Within the Jewish community, there are no racial divisions of note, and only those who seek to stoke divisiveness try to argue otherwise."

4) "No Jews are White, but there are some Jews -- those who would, but-for their Jewishness, be seen as White in contemporary society -- who nonetheless benefit from some elements of what might be called 'White privilege', both inside and outside the Jewish community. These benefits, while real, are at the same time sharply limited by the antisemitism they experience."

5) "Some Jews are people of color. Some are White in a conditional or functional way. The latter possess some, but not all, elements of White privilege, both inside and outside the Jewish community. They might also face antisemitism, and this antisemitism mediates and modulates how they experience Whiteness (and vice versa)."

6) "Some Jews are people of color. Some are White. The latter possess most if not all elements of White privilege, both inside and outside the Jewish community, but might also experience antisemitism as a separate and distinct -- though still significant -- phenomenon from the advantages they receive from their Whiteness."

7) "Some Jews are people of color. Some are White. The latter's Whiteness is generally indistinguishable from other Whites, though in a few idiosyncratic cases White supremacists might nonetheless hate them. Outside those rare scenarios, however, only Jews of color face any racialized form of discrimination. In general, White Jews not only sit at an advantage inside the Jewish community, they are also identically situated to other Whites in their social positioning outside the Jewish community."

8) "All Jews are White (if anything, they're extra-White). Even those who'd otherwise appear to be people of color are, in effect, White insofar as they're Jewish. Antisemitism is a minor problem of an otherwise-advantaged White group. It is impossible for Jews to experience any serious deprivation from antisemitism, because their defining feature is Whiteness."

* * *

I sit right in the middle of that spectrum (I'd probably line up as a "5", so if you want a full accounting of that vantage, I dunno, read the rest of my work), but I think any position that's between 4 and 6 is basically defensible. 

The "4s" are those who want to defend the view that no Jews are White while still acknowledging a material difference between pale-skinned Jews of proximate-European descent and those who are more unambiguously "of color". Unlike the smaller numbers, they don't fundamentally deny the reality that pale-skinned Jews benefit in many ways from the advantages of Whiteness, though they might be uncomfortable with actually adopting the "White" label.

The "6s" are those who think that pale-skinned Jews of proximate-European descent simply are White in the American context, but recognize that antisemitism nonetheless remains a very real and dangerous element of these Jews' lives (just one that is conceptually separate from their Whiteness). Unlike the larger numbers, they acknowledge that antisemitism is real and significant, and in that sense Jews are very importantly differentiated from "other" White folk.

"8s" almost exclusively consist of antisemites who dislike Jewishness and think that tying it to Whiteness justifies this dislike. Position 7 is the moderate version of that view, nodding at the theoretical possibility of antisemitism materially effecting how Jews relate to Whiteness while cabining it to its narrowest possible dimensions.

The "1s" are generally those in the Jewish community who are flatly racist. The "2s" are the color-blind cousins of "1s", and is thus mostly comprised of Jews who are, at best, utterly in denial about racism within the Jewish community or the differentiated social position of pale-skinned Jews of proximate-European descent Jews versus those racialized as Black, Latino, or Asian. Like many professions towards color-blindness, it also works just fine as a disguise for simple racism. It's also, oddly enough, the closest view to that of far-right antisemites (minus the concern about antisemitism). 

"3s" include those who kinda-sorta accept that maybe there's a difference between the social position of a Jew who looks like Natalie Portman and a Black person, but insist that it's fleeting and pales in comparison to the similarities between the two. It's the mirror of Position 7, where the existence of White supremacist hatred at Jews is kinda-sorta acknowledged but viewed as basically sporadic and unimportant.

Spend enough time on the internet, though, and you'll see every variant at least a million times. It's a fun game -- try to catch them all!

Democratically-Elected Dictator Bracket!

It may not be March, but I say it's time for a good old-fashioned tournament! The competition? Democratically-elected authoritarians? Which world leader -- who came to power in a (relatively) open election -- is doing the most to trigger democratic backsliding and creeping authoritarianism in their country?

I'll get to seeding in a second, but first, the rules:

1. Only (relatively) democratically-elected leaders count. So North Korea, China, Belarus, etc., aren't in the pool. There were some judgment calls: Iran's "leader", for example, arguably isn't the "relatively" democratically-elected Rouhani but the completely-unelected Ayatollah; Venezuela's elections really skirt the edge of "relatively". But hey, if these guys were perfect angels, they wouldn't be on the list.
2. This is a "pound-for-pound" tournament, meaning that you should adjust for size. China is simply bigger than Belarus, its leadership has more aggregate opportunity to behave in a thuggish manner. But you should try to weight each leader's authoritarian tendencies proportionally.
3. However, you can take into account the starting points of each country before the current leader came to power -- a leader whose nation was already on shaky democratic footing might get less credit than one who has successfully unraveled what had been a thriving democratic space.

Okay -- the match-ups will be posted as polls on this Twitter thread, but here are the contestants!

1. Vladimir Putin (Russia)

16. Sheikh Hasina (Bangladesh)

2. Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines)

15. Giuseppe Conte (Italy)

3. Hassan Rouhani (Iran)

14. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico)

4. Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil)

13. Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya)

5. Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar)

12. Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland)

6. Donald Trump (USA) 

11. Viktor Orban (Hungary)  

7. Nicolas Maduro (Venezuela) 

10. Narendra Modi (India)

8. Recep Erdoğan (Turkey)

9. Bibi Netanyahu (Israel)

Yes, yes, I know -- your favorite wasn't included. Grousing about bubble teams is also a favorite side-game of a tournament.

Anyway, the polls will open shortly, so play away!

Nikki Haley, Heroic Figure!

Now that she's back in private life, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is showing that principled advocacy and public dignity that set her apart from other Trump administration apparatchiks.

Here she is trying to act like complying with simple anti-corruption measures prohibiting public officials from using the office to gain private benefit was a deliberate Obama-led plot to target her and her Twitter feed.

And here she is, on her newly relaunched Twitter platform, giving fulsome praise to newly inaugurated Brazilian President Jair "I'm pro-torture" Bolsonaro. His first acts as President, unsurprisingly, were sweeping attacks on Brazil's gay community (he famously said he'd prefer his son die in a car accident than be gay) and indigenous populations. Human rights!

In conclusion, Nikki Haley is a fair-minded, principled advocate for the dignity of the least among us worldwide and one of the rare bright spots to come out of the Trump Administration.

2019 Will Be a Fun and Normal Year for Israeli Politics

As 2018 drew to a close, Bibi Netanyahu dissolved his government and called for snap elections, which will occur in April. What's happened since then? Oh, many normal things:

• The Israeli attorney general announced that he is leaning towards indicting Netanyahu for various public corruption type offenses, and that he will formally do so before election day.

• Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked broke away from the Jewish Home party and announced the formation of a new right-wing party, which they've dubbed (creatively enough) "New Right". I am not the first to immediately think "Alt-Right" would have been more appropriate. Among their first pick-ups was far-right journalist Caroline Glick, who until now has mostly existed as living proof that I'm unfair to Liel Leibovitz when I call him the worst columnist writing in Jewish media today.

• Former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz launched his own party. What does it stand for? Well, in his words, Gantz's positions are "politically flexible", and pretty much every story on him has noted how careful he's been to not stand for anything in particular in the election run-up. This development (relatively well-liked political cipher launches vaguely centrist political party) is, in fact, very normal and expected, and seems to happen at least once per election cycle.

• Meanwhile, on the left side of things, Labor leader Avi Gabbay unceremoniously ended his party's partnership with Tzipi Livni, dumping her on live TV without any warning. Apparently, he thought she was just too mean to him. I'm a long-time Livni booster, but she's never managed to fully gel with Israeli voters ("the best Prime Minister Israel never had") -- the overlaps with how a certain American presidential candidate has been treated are too stark to ignore. The question is, will this latest dose of seemingly brazen boorish misogyny finally spark a backlash that will redound in her favor (right now her Hatnuah party is just floating at the edge of the electoral threshold)? As for Labor, early polls show its support utterly crashing.

• Despite (or because) all of this, and despite the fact that pretty much nobody in Israeli likes him, Bibi is overwhelmingly favored to secure another term as Prime Minister. His opposition is hopeless fractured and the Joint List (representing Israeli Arabs) historically has refused (and, to be fair, has not been welcome) to join any government. Without them, there's virtually no math getting a viable left-of-center coalition into the majority (the only hope would be a truly uncouth Frankenstein's monster which stitches together some ultra-Orthodox parties into the coalition. But while that's worked before in the past, those parties has drifted more explicitly to the right over the years at the same time that the margin for error has shrunk).

On Alice Walker versus LeBron James

Alice Walker, the renowned African-American author of The Color Purple, has come in for sharp criticism once it became widely known that she was an inveterate antisemite. Her sins on this respect were blatant, and despite her celebrated stature in the Black community few defended her (even as she tried to pull a Full Livingstone and assert that her ravings about the Talmud teaching Jews that they can rape babies is actually "criticism of Israel").

Indeed, by and large I've been pleased by the caliber of commentary on Walker -- from Roxane Gay's early contribution that she's taken to at least noting Walker's antisemitism any time she talks about her, to Nylah Burton's longer meditation in NY Mag on how Walker's antisemitism intersects with her own personal history. The consensus view seems to be that while much of Walker's work is important and remains important, she is pretty clearly an unrepentant antisemite and that needs to be acknowledged. It is, sadly, part of her legacy, and not one that anyone should defend.

Meanwhile, LeBron James quoted some rap lyrics that referred to "getting that Jewish money." Upon being informed that this was considered by Jews to be an antisemitic trope, he immediately apologized, and for the most part Jews moved on.

"Apologies, for sure, if I offended anyone. That's not why I chose to share that lyric. I always [post lyrics]. That's what I do. I ride in my car, I listen to great music, and that was the byproduct of it. So, I actually thought it was a compliment, and obviously it wasn't through the lens of a lot of people. My apologies. It definitely was not the intent, obviously, to hurt anybody."

This, too, struck me as how it should be. I'm not saying that this apology would have earned a perfect 10 in my Rate That Apology series, but given the scale of the wrong, it was fine. James made a mistake, he apologized for the mistake, and we accepted the apology (hell, even the rapper who wrote the lyrics apologized too!). His wrong was nowhere near as bad as Walker's (nor does he have Walker's history as a repeat offender on this score), and he didn't defensively double down when people raised concerns. So on my end: no muss, no fuss.

Here, though, there were some writers who seemed very angry that Jews weren't dragging James harder. Dov Hikind -- a (hardly) Democratic New York Assemblyman -- was irate that liberal Jews weren't "slamming" James over the event (given that Hikind has worn blackface to a party and has past links to a extremist Jewish terrorist organization, to say he lives in a glass house here is an insult to the durability of glass). 

Or take Nolan Finley in the Detroit News:

James quickly apologized, saying he didn't understand the historical context of the slur, or even that it was offensive.

The NBA and James' Los Angeles Lakers accepted that lame excuse, and now want to move on. No mandatory sensitivity training for James, no scrutiny of pro basketball for evidence of a broader problem. Starbucks should cry foul.

If Starbucks' only sin was repeating and then immediately apologizing for repeating offensive musical lyrics, maybe they'd have reason to cry foul. But I digress.

Finley links James to a supposed explosion of antisemitism in the American Black community, starting with Alice Walker. But I think it's actually quite notable how differently the two have been treated -- a difference that reflects extremely well on the Black community and American liberals.

Walker's antisemitism was extreme, conscious, and repeated. James' was inadvertent, mundane, and idiosyncratic. James apologized immediately. Walker has shown no remorse. And so while James has basically been forgiven, Walker has been justifiably excoriated. That's how it should be. And it's all the more striking given that -- with all due respect to King James -- Alice Walker is a far more impactful figure on the Black civil rights movement. At least among the intellectual/political class, it's a far bigger deal to call out Alice Walker than LeBron James. And yet -- proportionality was preserved. The serious offender got serious censure. The more minor misstep was dealt with more gently.

It's things like these that give me this strange feeling of hope. Yes, Alice Walker's statements about Jews are monstrously antisemitic. But despite her celebrated status she really isn't being defended, and her attempt to deflect by citing her Good Progressive bona fides and righteous loathing of Israel didn't bear significant fruit. Yes, it's a troublesome that many people don't know why Jews squirm when folks talk about us holding all the money. But it's good when their first response, upon seeing us squirm, is to apologize -- not to lecture us about how we're just too sensitive and should understand it's a compliment and don't we know we really are all rich-os anyway? And yes, there are terrible columns being written by defenders of the Women's March suggesting that putative Jewish concern about antisemitism is actually a Putin con job. But the authors of those columns are -- remarkably enough -- apparently responsive to Jewish anger at the commentary. These conversations are happening, and they -- slowly, fitfully -- are bearing fruit.

Meanwhile, I don't know who Nolan Finley is (and I do know that Dov Hikind is basically a troll). But people of their ilk seem -- for my taste -- far too excited at the prospect of Black antisemitism. They just love the opportunity to drag on Black people and to feel righteous while doing so. It can't even all be traced back to cynical opportunism against political opponents: LeBron James isn't a particularly political figure, and yet nonetheless there is a clear thrill in getting to call him out, and an equally clear frustration that other Jews are not by and large joining in.

This feeling of thrill, this excessive focus on antisemitism when it emanates from Blacks, is a form of racism -- one that is identical in form to the feeling of thrill over and excessive focus on Jewish or Israeli misdeeds serving as a form of antisemitism. We should recognize it for what it is, because we have quite intimate knowledge of it. And that shouldn't be viewed as an apologia for anyone's antisemitism. But it is a problem when people try to treat LeBron James as a persona non grata in a world where Jim Hagedorn is elected to Congress, when Hagedorn's wrongs are both objectively more severe and completely unapologized for.

We all know why this occurs. As I've written before: people of color can be antisemitic, but they're also more vulnerable to disproportionate, overwrought, hyperbolic or excessively unforgiving attacks on the subject of antisemitism because of racism. The same, in reverse, is true of Jews. It doesn't mean anyone gets a pass, but it is something those of us who write on these subjects have to be mindful of.

I think that the comparative treatment of Alice Walker versus LeBron James -- that (most) people have recognized just how ugly Walker's words were, and (most) people have recognized that James' sin was comparatively minor and not worth a huge stink over -- is a good example of how to do this right. And if we can keep that trend up -- that would make for a nice 2019, wouldn't it?

Falling on the Reputational Grenade

There is an interesting story to be written about a certain type of Trump administration official, with the following characteristics: They recognize the Trump administration is a moral catastrophe. They recognize that their participation in it will wholly ruin their reputation -- if history remembers them, it will be as a collaborator with evil. And yet they work in the administration anyway because, they believe, that if they don't do it, somebody worse will.

I suspect people like this exist -- Mattis could be one, though I don't have any interest in debating particular names and I certainly don't want to suggest that this is a common attribute of Trump administration officials.

But it's a fascinating possibility, isn't it? We talk a lot about people who sacrifice their safety or even their lives out of a sense of duty. But the idea of someone knowingly sacrificing their reputation -- wholly cognizant that they will be viewed as (at best) a schmuck and that it will be in a large sense well-deserved, but acting anyway because (they think) they're averting some greater evil -- that thought intrigues me.

(How) Do White Jews Uphold White Supremacy? (Part II)

In my post this morning, I explained how -- given the understanding of "White supremacy" and "upholding" that Tamika Mallory was using -- it is perfectly coherent to state, as Mallory did, that White Jews may "uphold White supremacy" even while we are (as Mallory also acknowledged) targeted by White supremacy. I argued that -- putting aside Mallory's own checkered history on the subject -- much of the present controversy was terminological in nature and that while such a semantic debate isn't unimportant, it is a far cry from the sort of overheated rhetoric whereby Mallory was accusing Jews of being tantamount to Klansmen.

In America, pale-skinned Jews of proximate European descent receive many (not all) of the day-to-day advantages of Whiteness. Insofar as White supremacy is understood more as a social condition than a social movement -- the state of affairs whereby White persons are systematically advantaged, not the cluster of individuals and organizations consciously and overtly ideologically committed to promoting the explicit ideal that Whites are superior -- it is fair to say (and almost unquestionably true) that White Jews who look like me are net beneficiaries of that system, and may well act in ways that (implicitly or explicitly) reenact or perpetuate that advantageous state of affairs.

This doesn't mean we don't also face antisemitism (any more than White women don't also face misogyny), and it is also wholly compatible with hating and being hated by groups like the Klan. And if you think the above paragraphs are reasonable, but blanch at labeling them "White supremacy", then the debate you're having is -- again -- primarily one of semantics, not substance.

That said, if the purpose of the first post was to work through how it is fair to think of White Jews "as Whites" (and thereby implicated in White supremacy), at the end of that post I suggested that there was a more layered and complicated discussion to be had about the relationship between Jews and Whiteness, one that can help explain why so many Jews react so fiercely against the label "White" and which puts important limits on the utility of "White Jews" as a concept.

This is a conversation that is short-circuited when people act as if White Jews are not White in any capacity -- a position which, as applied to American Jews with my skin tone, seems wholly at odds with reality. But it is also a conversation that can only occur if it is acknowledged that Whiteness is "of a different color" as applied to Jews -- that the characteristics of Whiteness, including what Jews can "do" with Whiteness, are different than how we might understand Whiteness simpliciter.

Start with the question of why many Jews who by all appearances look White seem to so fiercely reject the association. One explanation for this behavior is that it is a rather uninteresting permutation on the practice of many White people to deny the privileges they receive through Whiteness. The retreat to ethnic identity ("I'm not White, I'm Irish") or deracinated individualism ("I'm just a person") are ways to occlude the reality of how Whiteness continues to operate in America. And so, it might be thought, when Jews say "we're not White, we're Jewish", they're simply pulling their own version of that maneuver. Those who are familiar with Whiteness, are familiar with this move, and have long since learned not to take it very seriously.

Now sometimes, something like this account might suffice as the explanation for Jews who resist being labeled White -- particularly in cases where there is the most uncompromising insistence that White Jews are completely unassociated with Whiteness in America, that we gain nothing from America's racial bargain. But often, there's more to it than that. As someone who once rode the "I'm not White, I'm Jewish" train (and who tries to remember the I before I changed my mind), I know there's more at work here.

One problem with Jews-as-White, which has been raised quite a bit in response to Mallory or anyone else who tries to associate Jews with Whiteness in America, is that Jews have often been oppressed precisely because we haven't been viewed as White. White supremacist violence is an obvious case, the Nazi Holocaust is its apex. Given this history, there is something hurtful and insulting to cavalierly declare that Jews are simply "White". Anyone should understand why statements to the effect of "the Holocaust was White-on-White crime" or "we only care about the Holocaust because the victims were White" provoke an apoplectic reaction in the Jewish community. It is a disgusting erasure, and one that is teed up when Jewish Whiteness is assumed as an uncomplicated truth.

It shouldn't surprise, then, that many Jews rebel against being labeled "White" as a means of carving out and preserving space for full recognition of the realities of this persecution. As much as I say an American Jew like me today is functionally White in my day-to-day interactions, that hasn't always been true, it isn't always guaranteed to be true, and it isn't even wholly true right now. To the extent that insisting on Jewish Whiteness denies or diminishes the reality of very real and very live instances of antisemitism, it needs complication.

Another problem with Jews-as-White, less discussed but I think potentially more important, is that Jews are sometimes perceived as excessively White. Particularly in the Nation of Islam brand of antisemitism that Mallory has been associated with, Jews are often cast as embodying or exemplifying Whiteness -- the "iciest of the ice people", in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s summation. Bootstrapping onto antisemitic tropes of Jewish hyperpower and control, Jews become a convenient and accessible stand-in for Whiteness at its worst -- its most domineering, its most overprivileged, and its most bloodthirsty (this is a problem I explore in detail in my "White Jews: An Intersectional Approach" article). Hence, calls to focus on Jewish Whiteness are sometimes heard as (and sometimes function as) calls to cast a very specific spotlight on Jews as the worst offenders of Whiteness (and look how they try to slither out of responsibility for it!), or as the focal point for an assault on Whiteness and White privilege. What is cast as a general critique of "White supremacy" ends up being a specific, concentrated attack on Jews as its supposedly paradigmatic constituency.

Hence, if one reason Jews try to downplay their Whiteness is that the concept of White Jews denies circumstances and scenarios where even pale-skinned Jews are not viewed as White, another reason is that concept of White Jews accentuates tropes and understandings whereby Jews are viewed as the most extreme, blinding iteration of White -- generally via exaggerated notions of Jewish hyperpower and privilege. These can and do very easily slip into their own forms of antisemitism, and so it shouldn't surprise that many Jews view the entire discourse quite warily.

These are some reasons why Jews have, I think, an earned skepticism towards Whiteness discourse directed at them, even as I continue to maintain that the concept of Whiteness is fairly and coherently applied to the life trajectory of Jews like me. But I suggested at the outset that I was making a more ambitious claim: not just that we need to be careful when speaking of Jewish Whiteness (lest we stumble into antisemitic tropes of Jewish hyperpower, or erase historical or contemporaneous cases where Jews really aren't being viewed as White), but that Whiteness is different in kind even for those Jews who are (in the American context) raced-as-White.

To drill down on this point, let's return to Mallory's original statement. One way of parsing her words -- and how I think many people think of the relationship between Jews and Whiteness -- is something like the following:

White Jews in America are White in all respects save the important fact that White supremacists want to murder them.

I don't mean for that to sound flip -- being the target of violent hatred by a domestic terrorist movement is no small thing! Rather, what characterizes this view is that the Whiteness of White Jews is identical to the Whiteness of any other White person in America save for a discrete and well-demarcated carve-out. Hence, whatever discourse is validly spoken of "Whites", generally, also applies to "White Jews", specifically (save, again, for the highly specific case of "being targeted for murder by White supremacists"). With very limited exceptions, there's nothing about how we talk about Whiteness that isn't applicable or needs alteration in the specifically White Jewish case.

But I think this view is wrong. Jews, even as White, are differently situated than other Whites, such that it doesn't always make sense to simply cross-apply a Whiteness frame even onto White Jews.

For example, one way it is often said that White people (particularly White women) "uphold White supremacy" is that the majority (or at least a plurality) voted for Donald Trump. To all the White women marching in their pink hats and calling themselves the "resistance", this fact has created a rather compelling demand that they "tend to [their] own garden." As a class, White women are not particularly progressive and not particularly reliable even in the really easy, straightforward case of "don't vote for a naked bigot and unqualified buffoon like Donald Trump."

Yet it should be very obvious why it's troublesome to extend this logic to Jews. Jews voted overwhelmingly against Trump in 2016 (and again against Republicans in 2018) -- 70% voting for Clinton overall (and, given typical gender breakdowns in voting behavior, Jewish women almost certainly went against Trump by even wider margins). With the exception of African-American voters, Jews are and have remained one of the most consistently progressive voting blocs in American politics -- voting Democratic at rates equal to or better than women, Latinos, and Asian-Americans.

I'm not saying that a Hillary Clinton voter can't be racist, of course. But if voting against Trump is one obligation (perhaps the bare minimum obligation) that any decent person must meet in order to not "uphold White supremacy", then it is fair to say Jews have by and large done our job discharging at least that one duty. That part of our garden looks pretty healthy, all told. So it is fair for White Jews to bristle a little bit when they're lumped in with a broader White demographic which has backed Trump. At least as far as voting behavior, "White Jewish" identity has not, by and large, obstructed White Jews from standing against the avatars of White supremacy.

And speaking of tilling your own garden, one common feature of Whiteness discourse is the assertion that White people have a particular obligation to challenge and dismantle racist practices by other Whites. This obligation inheres in part because Whites, as beneficiaries of these practices, have special duties to disgorge any ill-gotten gains, but also because in White supremacist system Whites often are accorded greater power, influence, and credibility enabling them to more effectively disrupt White supremacist practices. Claims or arguments that are made and ignored when raised by people of color are often able to gain consideration when raised by Whites (for example, if you read the arguments in my last post and thought "finally, someone making sense" -- without recognizing that my analysis wasn't really that different from how many Jews of Color had responded to Mallory (see, e.g.) -- (a) thanks for the compliment, and (b) welcome to the problem!).

So it could be said that White Jews, as Whites, have heightened obligations to publicly challenge and confront White racism, because (for better or worse) we're viewed as "insiders" with greater credibility and pull than non-Whites when making those challenges.

But is that actually true of White Jews? I'm skeptical. And, perhaps oddly, my skepticism has been most clearly crystallized through observing the Twitter experience of Sophie Ellman-Golan.

Among the many social justice campaigns and priorities of the indefatigable Ellman-Golan, one in particular she often promotes is that need to #ConfrontWhiteWomanhood. It is, as one might expect, a campaign centered around the need for White women to take stock of the ways in which their practices reify White supremacy and other oppressive institutions.

And pretty much every time Ellman-Golan tweets under the hashtag #ConfrontWhiteWomahood, she's immediately hit with a torrent of antisemitic abuse of the form "who you calling White, Jew?"

It seems (and not just from Ellman-Golan's case) that White Jews who try to confront other White people about racism "from the inside" ... pretty quickly cease to be viewed as insiders. We are in fact presented as the epitome of outside agitators, rabble-rousers, and elitist corrupters. The White Jew who confronts White racism becomes a lot less White, and a lot more Jewish, very quickly.

To be sure, I'm not saying its impossible to brush aside an "insider" anti-racism critique made by a White Christian American. But it sure is easier to do it if you can unleash a whole flotilla of "Soros-funded coastal elitist cosmopolitan cultural Marxist corrupting the youth committing White genocide and what about Israel!" antisemitic tropes at the drop of a hat. As it a result, Jews seem particularly poorly situated to engage in these sort of confrontations. Not just because we're at heightened risk of explicitly violent retaliation (though there is that), but because our White-insider status doesn't extend that far: Jews who challenge Whites, aren't recognized as White.

Consequently, if White Jews are not or are not successfully "confronting Whiteness", it might not be because we're indifferent to the project or half-assing it. It might be because even White Jews don't have full access to certain features of Whiteness; we are not White in the same way that other Whites are. And while I don't have direct evidence to support this, my strong suspicion is that if and when White identity becomes a more explicitly marked and salient feature of American discourse (whether via progressive efforts to remove it from an unmarked default and "confront" it, or by reactionary programs to reinvigorate avowed White identity politics), the perception of Jewish Whiteness will become considerably more tenuous.

In sum: clearly it is the case that White Jews in America are White in important respects -- including benefiting from many elements of White privilege and at least sometimes acting to maintain and buttress that advantaged status. At the same time, the frame of Whiteness is not one that can be plopped down on the heads of even White Jews uncritically or without alteration. For one, Whiteness discourse often genuinely does erase important facets of Jewish experience where we aren't deemed White. For two, Whiteness discourse, as applied to Jews, can act as an accelerant for antisemitic tropes insofar as Jews are cast not just as White but as hyper-White -- the epitome or apex of Whiteness via privilege, power, and domination.

Finally, White Jews simply do not experience Whiteness in the same way as do other Whites. If race is, in Sara Ahmed's words, "a question of what is within reach, what is available to perceive and to do ‘things’ with", then Jews simply are able to "do" less with Whiteness. We don't have the same capacities to "challenge from the inside", our position as White is too precarious -- and the allure of antisemitic dismissal too powerful -- to allow it.

What's necessary, then, is an analysis of White Jews as a specific case, one that isn't fully known even to those who are well-versed in the contours of "Whiteness" generally. A proper situating of Jews into Whiteness will not deny obvious realities about the racial positioning of Jews who look like me in America. But neither will it easily slide into the default modes of understanding of Whiteness, or assume that Jews like me are "simply" White save for a few piercing but ultimately idiosyncratic exceptions emanating from White supremacists.

The fact is, a lot of people like to talk about Jews without really knowing about Jews. And they're often buttressed by interpretive frames -- Whiteness very much included -- which purport to fill in those epistemic gaps for "free", without needing any specific knowledge about Jews. But knowing Whiteness doesn't mean you know Jews -- even White Jews. And consequently, if the hostile response by many Jews to being labeled "White" rings familiar to many experts on Whiteness, that familiarity is likely a deception. It seduces us into thinking that we already know what needs to be known about White Jews -- that we can draw on the same explanations, that we can identify the same behaviors, and that we can demand the same duties, without putting in any additional specific work.

The virtue of Mallory's statement is that it recognizes both that Jews can back and benefit from White supremacy and also be targeted and hurt by it -- an assertion that, in broad strokes at least, is clearly correct. Zoom in and there is a lot more work that needs to be done: first and foremost, the work of recognizing that there is a lot of work left to be done -- groundwork, foundational work where it accepted that most of us do not yet know what we need to know about the contours of antisemitism and Jewish experience.

If you enjoyed these two posts, you might find interesting my essay "White Jews: An Intersectional Approach", forthcoming in the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) Review.

(How) Do White Jews Uphold White Supremacy? (Part I)

The fallout to the latest Women's March antisemitism controversy yielded a brand new Women's March antisemitism controversy, centering around the following statement by organizational co-leader Tamika Mallory:

[W]e’ve all learned a lot about how while white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy, ALL Jews are targeted by it.

I'm not exactly a Tamika Mallory fan on the subject of antisemitism. Nonetheless, I didn't really share the outrage that this particular quote engendered among many of my Jewish compatriots. That's not to say I think she's demonstrating some sort of penetrating insight or vision on the subject. But I did view the statement as representing a forward rather than a backward step for her.

Much of the negative reaction to Mallory centers on her relatively broad usage of "White supremacy" and "uphold". Many people hear those terms and think of consciously organized endeavors of racial terrorism designed to declare and enforce White dominance. The social movements who most clearly embody these practices -- the KKK, the Aryan Nation, etc. -- almost always target Jews as well. So, the argument goes, it is inaccurate, insulting, and hurtful to accuse Jews of being part of these movements and these practices. Indeed, it is so implausible that Jews are mass supporters of these sorts of far-right extremist organizations that the argument otherwise rings antisemitic -- how could one think that but through a sort of 7-dimensional "the Jews are behind all our misfortunes" conspiracy theory?

But that response relies on that particular understanding of "upholding White supremacy" as meaning overt participation in these sort of far-right violent movements, and Mallory was almost certainly thinking of those terms differently. For her, White supremacy less describes a movement, and more a social condition. White supremacy is the state of affairs where White people systematically occupy a superior social position vis-a-vis non-White people along the axis of race. Put differently, there can exist White supremacy (the social condition where White people are systematically advantaged) even in contexts where few if any people are White supremacists (avowedly ideologically committed to a state of affairs where Whites-qua-Whites are systematically advantaged). Consequently, the fact that White supremacists hate Jews doesn't necessarily mean that those Jews who are -- to most everyone else -- viewed as White will fail to reap the (majority of the) benefits of White supremacy.

Likewise, "uphold" might be thought to imply a conscious effort to facilitate and buttress conditions of White domination -- again, most obviously instantiated by membership in overt White Power organizations. But here too it seems clear that Mallory means to speak more broadly. There are all manner of ways to uphold an extant status quo without making that one's primary mission in life.

Most obviously, persons who are beneficiaries of a set of privileges -- for example, White people who benefit from living in a society where they are systematically favored -- might have little interest in disturbing that state of affairs, an indifference that manifests as apathy rather than public support. They might not notice the advantages they receive, and thus unknowingly reenact or support social practices that reify those advantages. They might deprioritize the struggle against racism, acknowledging the reality of certain unjust practices but viewing them as comparatively unimportant as sites for investing their energy and attention. Or they might recognize and frown upon certain practices they acknowledge as racist but be willing to overlook them in pursuit of more important agenda items (think the proverbial Trump voter who genuinely doesn't like all the racism, but just cares about getting his taxes cut more).

These all represent ways one can be complicit in, perpetuate, and uphold White supremacy that fall far short of joining the Klan -- that are, in fact, quite compatible with both hating the Klan and having the Klan hate you right back. If you're Jewish, think of all the times you've read something like "if you're marching in the Women's March" (or voting UK Labour) "that doesn't make you an antisemite -- it just makes you someone who doesn't care that they support antisemites". These are ways of talking about people "upholding" antisemitism without themselves necessarily being antisemitic or desiring antisemitism. They are targeted at people who do not share Mallory or Corbyn's views on Jews, and may in fact be repelled by them, but nonetheless think that on net that matters less than whatever other factors drive them towards the Women's March or Labour. If it is at least coherent to speak of that as "upholding antisemitism", then one should also grasp how one could speak of similar complicity in movements or practices that (among other things) rely upon, perpetuate, or act out a system where Whites are advantaged over non-Whites "upholding White supremacy".

The point is, upholding White supremacy, in this context, is not meant to solely encompass people "running around in white hoods or marching with tiki torches". There are no doubt extraordinarily few Jews playacting as Klansmen. But White Jews in America absolutely receive many -- not all, but many -- of the benefits accorded to White people in our society. We don't tend to be shadowed in department stores, we don't tend to be randomly stopped-and-frisked by police, we don't tend to have our murder victims cast as "not exactly angels". And so it is quite possible and plausible that White Jews can and do "uphold" White supremacy in that they are relatively content with a state of affairs where they don't (but others do) experience shadowing, stop-and-frisks, and insinuations that our crime victims were nothing but trash anyway.

When I frame the controversy in this way, many of my Jewish friends are relatively receptive to the basic thrust of these arguments -- but suggest that they aren't the things people generally associate with a phrase like "upholding White supremacy". Mallory's terms are misleading; the connotation is all wrong, suggesting far more explosive allegations than this. Sure, it is fair to say that many White Jews benefit from many White privileges, and may even act in ways that perpetuate this status quo, and all of that is worthy of critique. But to label it a case of Jews "upholding White supremacy" implies that they're doing something far worse than that -- something tantamount to being a Klansman or a White Power activist -- and that's wrong.

As it happens, I have some sympathy for this view -- persuasive definitions can be dangerous things. But note that if this is the gravamen of the controversy, then what we really have here is a semantic argument about terminology. I'm not saying terminological debates don't matter -- they can help avoid fiascoes like this -- but they're different debates than what we've been having, and hardly deserve the level of venom that's being directed towards Mallory. If we agree that White Jews can and do benefit from the prerogatives of Whiteness in our society, and that we often are complicit in allowing the social condition where that racially unequal distribution of prerogatives exists, then we agree with the thrust of Mallory's underlying point (even if we might have expressed it differently).

These are all ways of suggesting that it is entirely appropriate, even necessary, to consider (under whatever label) the fact that White Jews gain many (not all) of the privileges of Whiteness in America and are perfectly capable of acting in ways which perpetuate the continuation of that racialized hierarchy. None of this requires denying that White Jews also face antisemitism -- but that should be a mundane point. There are all sorts of oppressions that one can experience while nonetheless being White: White women still face misogyny, queer Whites still face homophobia, and White Jews still face antisemitism. Being White doesn't displace those oppressions; and those oppressions don't displace being White.

Simply put: those who flatly deny that White Jews in America are White in any capacity -- as if a Jew who looks like me is identically situated to an African-American in my interactions with the police, employers, universities, landlords ... -- are denying reality. They are only obstructing badly-needed reckonings with our community's relationship with racism and racial hierarchy, both in terms of how we relate to community outsiders as well as those Jews of Color inside our community.

But another thing they obstruct is a more nuanced conversation about the precise contours of the relationship between Whiteness and Jewishness. If it isn't the case that it's nonsensical to apply the label "White" to a Jew who looks like me, it's also not the case that one can uncritically apply it to those Jews who look like me -- that anything we know about "Whiteness", generally, we consequently know about the Whiteness of White Jews, specifically.

The obvious example is, of course, that unlike most White people, White supremacists hate me and want me dead. That's a rather significant deviation from standard-issue Whiteness!

But I suggest that it's much deeper than that. White Jews are not simply White people in all respects but-for the bizarre and inexplicable fact that White supremacists want to murder us. Jewishness does things to Whiteness (and vice versa). Understanding the unique cocktail that's created when these identities intersect is critical to understanding the limits of the "White Jew" frame and comprehending why so many Jews resist it with such ferocity. This is the project I will take up in Part II (which I plan to put up shortly).

UPDATE: Part II is now available here.

The Nub of the IfNotNow/Birthright Dilemma

The crux of the dilemma in observing the fallout over the latest IfNotNow Birthright protest is as follows:

1) Everything I've seen from institutional and establishment Jewish organizations over the last few years indicates that a group like Birthright is wholly capable of wildly overreacting to perfectly legitimate demands that they take seriously the occupation and the equal standing of Arabs in Israel in Palestine.

2) Everything I've seen from IfNotNow over the past few years indicates that they're exactly the sort of organization whose activists would stage a preplanned massive disruption that completely obstructs the operation of their Birthright trip, then innocently bat their eyes at passing journalists while saying "we were only asking questions!"

Since both #1 and #2 are equally true, the fair-minded observer stands at an impasse. And impasses like these permeate this entire arena.

It is simultaneously true that open questioning and free inquiry are at the heart of any Jewish communal experience worth its salt, and true that operators acting in bad faith can hijack such openness and freedom in order to take over a space in service of a narrow ideological agenda.

It is simultaneously true that no understanding of Israel is complete without a fair and honest reckoning with the reality of the occupation and the continued unequal and subordinated status of Palestinians (both in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Israel proper), and true that not every single Israel-related experience needs to be constantly refracted through that lens at all times.

It is simultaneously true that participants signing up for Birthright presumably know that they are getting only a partial view of Israel (what curated trip could promise otherwise?), and true that Birthright would be betraying its own mission if it ever started to conceptualize itself as a propaganda vehicle sold via the bribe of a free vacation.

It is simultaneously true that there is something tacky about taking Birthright's money and then spitting in its face, and true that there is something tacky about acting like the young Jews who take Birthright's money are somehow cheating if they don't agree that they've been bought off.

These and these are the words of the living God.

Unprompted Media Reporting on Racism is the Exception, Not the Norm

I've said my bit on the Alice Walker controversy, but I did have one more thought to add on the meta-controversy -- namely, the complaint that the media hasn't (until the Tablet article, anyway) "covered" Walker's antisemitism. A similar hue and cry has gone up about the Women's March: until Tablet did its big expose, big media sources weren't "investigating" the Women's March for antisemitism.

The idea here is that there is something distinctively passive in the media's treatment of antisemitism. Had it been a different author who'd put up a racist poem on his blog, or had it been a conservative social movement whose leaders had a history of misogyny, the media would have been all over it -- there would have been an endless stream of reportings and investigations and think pieces. But on antisemitism? Silence.

I find this complaint a bit strange, as it appears to live in a media world I'm utterly unfamiliar with. Namely: one where the media, without any particular prompting and without some specific sharp instigating event, just runs a story about a given public figure or social movement's racism problem.

It's only in a world where that happens regularly -- where the New York Times, every other week or so, picks out some celebrated author or actor and of its own accord runs a story about their terrible racist or misogynist or xenophobia viewpoints -- where it seem remotely weird that they hadn't yet done that for Alice Walker. Right? Because otherwise, the failure of the media to run such a story here is utterly normal, and perfectly in keeping with their regular practices.

And the fact is that the media generally doesn't run such pieces. Unless there is a clear instigating event -- something like the Tablet article -- the New York Times doesn't just search about and look for social movements or public figures it can call racist. It mostly studiously avoids such "inflammatory" pieces unless and until it is absolutely impossible to hold off on it. Which is to say, exactly how it's handled the claims of antisemitism in the Women's March or for Alice Walker.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Whatever they'd do or say about Jews, they'd do or say about others too (and vice versa). What we think is unique to Jews on matters of oppression -- whether we think it's uniquely favorable or uniquely disfavorable treatment -- very rarely is. One can very much believe that mainstream media sources should take on a more proactive posture towards reporting on prominent figures and movements who have problems of prejudice. But when they don't do so in the case of antisemitism, they're doing nothing more than what they fail to do for everyone else.

I Have No Holocaust Survivors in My Family

I have a confession to make.

None of my immediate family were (directly) impacted by the Holocaust.

All of my grandparents were born in the United States, before World War II. My great-grandparents were the immigrant generation, arriving just past the turn of the century. So when the Holocaust began, everyone was already here. I have some distant relatives who were (and are still) in Europe, so I assume they must have some survival story, but I don't know it.

And, weirdly, I feel a strange guilt about this.

The Holocaust, and being descended from survivors, is a huge, central part of the contemporary Jewish narrative (especially contemporary antisemitism). And while I don't feel alienated from it -- indeed, there's an obvious "there but for the grace of God" association -- sometimes I feel like I'm somehow cheating when I refer to it, as if it isn't truly "mine".

And worse still, I sometimes feel as if my very existence is a trap waiting to be sprung by Holocaust deniers. "The Holocaust never happened!" "Yes, it did." "Oh? Tell me you clever Jew: where was your family during this supposed 'Holocaust'", "Well, they were in America, but ..." "Aha!"

I'm not saying this is rational. But it is something I've felt for a long time. I wonder if other Jews with family backgrounds similar to mine feel the same way?

New Year's Resolutions: 2019 Edition

It's that most wonderful time of the year -- New Year's Resolutions! The 2018 edition is here, and the entire series of prior years are collected here.

As always, we begin by seeing how we did last year.

Met: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (steak farm reopened!), 12, 14, 15 (and how!).

Missed: 6 (but I should be doing something early 2019), 13 (I think?)

Pick 'em: 4 (definitely an improvement on last year, though!)

Damn, I sure am resolved -- and/or, am good at picking resolutions I feel confident I can meet!

Onward to 2019!

* * *

1) Have completed drafts of at least three dissertation chapters. (Missed -- unless you have a very generous definition of "completed")

2) Complete a draft of a political theory article (it's okay if it draws from a dissertation chapter, but it has to stand alone as an article). (Met!)

3) Attend a hockey game. (Pick 'em -- I might have attended a Sharks game, but I can't remember)

4) Have a permanent plan of attack regarding at least one of the following bodily ailments: knee pain, sore calves/shins when walking up hills, cholesterol deposits around the eyes, and/or cross-link surgery for keratoconus. (Pick 'em -- the cross-link surgery got hung up thanks to insurance-related incompetence, and I've stopped worrying about the eyes, but I'm in regular physical therapy for knees/shins/calves)

5) Do one Vegas trip with friends. (Missed)

6) Have one fantastic honeymoon in Hawaii. (Absolutely met!)

7) Read a political theory book (broadly defined) by an author whom you've never read before. (Met!)

8) Read a new political theory book (broadly defined) by an author whom you have read work from before. (Missed)

9) Publish an article in a non-Jewish "popular publication" or appear on a television segment. (Met -- The Atlantic)

10) Organize one visiting speaker somewhere at UC-Berkeley
(Missed).

11) Get over 2,500 Twitter followers (current count as of December 24, 2018: 2,298) (Met -- a year later I'm at 3,127, and that's with my account private!).

12) Add a new home-cooked meal to our regular rotation. (Met -- chicken and orzo!)

13) Find a new binge-able TV show (Met -- Lucifer!).

14) Host a Passover Seder (Met -- and it's the social event of the Berkeley season, if I say so myself!).

15) Put up the Mezuzah (Met!).

Boycott Buyers versus Boycott Sellers

Is there a difference between how we view buyers and sellers in a "boycott" campaign?

Arguably, a "boycott" only refers to a purchaser, not a seller to begin with. But I don't think in practice most people adhere to that distinction, which tends to melt as applied to more bilateral agreements anyway. There seem to be many boycott campaigns which urge a more broad refusal to transact with a given party -- refusing to purchase their goods and services as well as refusing to allow them access to your own goods and services.

But on face it seems to me at least that our intuitions are very different if the boycotter is buyer-side or seller-side, and I want to know if those intuitions hold.

For example: suppose John Smith refuses to buy a Sodastream because he's boycotting Israel. Many people would say "he has the right to do that", even if he's misguided. Indeed, on one level it's a bit perplexing to think through what it would mean to say he doesn't have the "right" to do that -- can he be compelled to buy a Sodastream? One Sodastream for every American, whether they want it or not?

Now imagine the reverse scenario: John Smith wants to buy a Sodastream, but Sodastream really dislikes his politics. So the company decides, unilaterally, "we won't sell to John Smith". Is that okay? Aside from some hardcore libertarians, I think this would be broadly condemned. There is an expectation that businesses which are generally marketed to the public will make their goods available to the general pubic in an open and non-discriminatory fashion.

Perhaps it's just our political sympathies driving this answer. But I'm dubious. When right-wing "Christian conservatives" tried to boycott Disney World for being too pro-gay, I thought that the boycotters were disgusting bigots, but I thought they had the "right" to express that bigotry via refusing to go to Disney World (again, what's the alternative? Mandatory Disney vacations?). But I'm not sure I would have been okay with Disney World deciding on its own to close its doors to conservative Christian families who otherwise are coming in and adhering to park rules. 

The same logic applies to conservative bakers who don't want to serve gay couples -- there is an asymmetry in that the gay couple could very much say "I don't want to patronize this business", but I'm warier of the business saying "I don't want these sorts as my customer."

Another possibility is that the distinction isn't really buyer/seller, but rather individual/business (or institution). This could cover cases of solo contractors -- an artist, say -- who limit who they'll accept commissions from to those who share their values. They're "selling" art, but do we view them same as a company? On the other hand, if that artist was on Etsy and just picked certain ethnic groups or nations or religions she'd refuse to ship her wares to -- how would we view that?

I don't have a clear answer to these questions. But I do think there are some intuitive distinctions that are driving a lot of public discourse. There's a naive (dare I say) neoliberalism that treats boycotts as simple a matter of free contract -- anyone can transact (or not) with anyone they want, for any reason; the decision to refrain from buying or selling from a given person is purely a matter of individual taste expressed through the market. But I don't think that view actually is sustainable, and doesn't account for our actual views on these questions. There's a clear difference between saying "John Smith can't boycott Sodastream" and "Sodastream can't boycott John Smith", one that belies any superficial parity between buyer and seller as free contractors.