One of the questions I pursued when working on the A12 podcast, which looked at the history behind the deadly violence in Charlottesville last year, was why the anti-Semitism of Aug 11 & 12 seemed to disappear so rapidly from the narrative. /1
It wasn’t that no one *ever* spoke of it, but given its prominence — chants of “Jews will not replace us,” Nazi flags, the targeting of the synagogue — it seemed to get relatively little attention. /2
The rabbis and scholars I spoke to mused that there were a variety of reasons for this: our limited way of thinking about white supremacy, the sense that anti-Semitism is an odd relic of the past, the awareness that black Americans face much more serious systemic racism. /3
They noted that the alt-right has reconstructed a white supremacy of the past (not that overt anti-Semitism ever fully disappeared, but it had increasingly faded from public view). /4
Many people didn’t understand this historical development. Uncertain where anti-Semitism fit, a lot of the people telling the story of the events in Charlottesville largely dropped it from their analysis and reporting, or made it more parenthetical than central. /5
What we have been steadily reminded of in the year since #Charlottesville is that anti-Semitism is central to the alt-right’s white supremacist ideology and organizing. /6
Misunderstanding or misrepresenting the nature of violent racism today leaves everyone less prepared and less safe. We need to catch up fast, to become students of the history of anti-Semitism, white power, and racist organizing. /7
There are too many books to mention, but if you need a place to start: Read @kathleen_belew on the history of white power. Read @ProfCAnderson on the history of white rage. Read @jonathanweisman for a primer on anti-Semitism. /8
@kathleen_belew @ProfCAnderson @jonathanweisman There is a lot to learn, and I hope #twitterstorians will help out with other book and article recommendations. A #Pittsburgh syllabus, I suppose, those these days we might as well merge them all into an alt-right syllabus. A violent white racism syllabus. /9
@kathleen_belew @ProfCAnderson @jonathanweisman Pay attention to how networks and ideas work, how they spread and metastasize, how they slip into the mainstream. Note that the alt-right makes use of transnational networks (even while speaking the language of nationalism). /10
@kathleen_belew @ProfCAnderson @jonathanweisman Understand that modern white supremacy, like many historical white supremacies, is anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, and more. Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, and the shooter in Pittsburgh drank from the same ideological well — a well we have to drain. 11/11
