Antisemitism and art - The Jewish Standard

Antisemitism is an unpleasant subject. Who wants to read about it? Even more basically, who wants to write about it?

But not only is it on the rise, it’s in the news.

Will Sommer is a young journalist whose career has taken him from the Daily Beast to the Washington Post to the Bulwark, which he has just joined and where he is going to continue to write about the rightwing fever swamp.

In his first newsletter for the Bulwark, he wrote about the new antisemitism on the right.

That always reminds me of Abe Foxman, who’s been saying for the 10 years that I’ve known him that there always was antisemitism in this country, but that it had been tamped below ground since the end of World War II revealed the horrors of the Holocaust. It was not socially acceptable in most respectable circles to be more than circumspectly antisemitic. The antisemitism oozed and slimed below the surface, but it was contained. Just about exactly 10 years ago, though, those sewer covers were lifted, and the filth began to slither out.

The antisemitism on the left has been overt; crude and vile, but not hidden. Now, it’s been joined by the antisemitism on the right.

Sommer’s newsletter, False Flag, is headlined “MAGA Brocasters Grow Suspicious of the Jews.” In it, he looks at two extremely popular podcasters, Joe Rogan and Theo Von, who both have hosted Holocaust deniers in the last few weeks; some of their guests also advance the theory that Jews were behind 9/11. Sommer thinks that this resurgence of online antisemitism on the right grows out of the podcasters’ need for fresh outrages rather than any deep-seated beliefs, but he warns against it nonetheless.

And then in the Wall Street Journal, opinion writer Gerard Baker makes basically the same argument. Antisemitism is on the rise on the right, he warns. He’s a flashier, funnier writer than Sommer — it shouldn’t be fun to read about awful thing,s but his column is — but the point is the same.

We shouldn’t be afraid, but we should pay attention.

But this week, we have two stories about the relationship between resilience and art. YIVO is celebrating its centennial. The culture that it celebrates was hunted nearly to death, but it survived; the organization has the archives, filled with writing and art, to prove it.

And the two exhibits in the Drawing Rooms in Jersey City show pain and resilience, defiance and hope, the black well of grief, and the joy and color and light of being alive. It’s all deeply Jewish.

And it includes hope. We could all use some hope just about now.

—JP

Opinion

comments