Thread by @shaifranklin

Thanks to @TimesofIsrael for publishing my latest piece, on how Holocaust denial isn’t the only negative product of the anti-#CRT movement, and why this was predictable.
>>THREAD >>
blogs.timesofisrael.com/are-you-racist…

The recent absurdity of teaching ‘both sides’ in a Holocaust curriculum in Texas cuts through all the conservative gaslighting and ‘outs’ the perverse premise that hate deserves equal time. 1/25
texastribune.org/2021/10/15/Tex…

Not only have these self-styled contrarians demanded equal time from schools, they’ve pushed laws to mandate it and to ban normative social studies, even if it’s alongside their own fringe teachings. 2/25

The Texas Holocaust Massacre is no unfortunate exception – it’s fallout from a sophisticated strategy to discredit the same anti-racism values which most of us had previously taken for granted. 3/25

This strategy involves no less than the enabling of hate. And once you do that, once you legitimize and even pick a winner that claims the champions of equality are the real racists, then you’ve declared all hate is welcome – even Holocaust denial. 4/25

The timing is no accident, nor is this some non-partisan intellectual moment. The peak of national outrage over the #GeorgeFloyd murder and sympathy for #BLM spurred a right-wing backlash with strong GOP backing. 5/25

It should have been enough for Jews when teachers were being threatened for distressing students with the idea that persistent institutional racism as an unacceptable fact. But for too many, it was not. 6/25

Combating all forms of racism would seem to be worthwhile on its own, but too many American Jews seemingly keep their heads in the sand until it comes back to bite the Jews. And so it has. 7/25

Is it any more absurd that there’s an opposing view on Holocaust facts, then the proposition that – six decades after the March on Washington – there can be a legitimate “counterpoint” to the facts of systemic racism? 8/25

The hysteria and bullying against school officials over “CRT”, critical race theory, distorts a graduate-level debate and ridiculously misrepresents it as a K-12 curriculum. And of course, as a threat to Jewish survival. 9/25
jta.org/2021/07/08/opi… @hmabramson

What is finally being taught in many schools is the history and persistence of racism in our institutions, society, and daily interactions–what it means to be Black in America today and why, and that racism is always bad. 10/25

Educating *against* racism and genocide has been recast as the *true* racism, the gateway to “white genocide”. 11/25
adl.org/blog/extremist…

By the same twisted logic, the Justice Dept’s offer to help local police protect school officials from anti-CRT mobs is being framed as the *real* attack on parents and on freedom of expression. 12/25
apnews.com/article/educat…

This presumption–that talking about ambient, persistent racism is more offensive and divisive than the racism being depicted–has long been cynically invoked to justify banning books by Mark Twain and other literary greats. 13/25

As disarming as it is to keep hearing the same two or three MLK lines quoted out of context, at its core the hysteria against the CRT boogeyman is a fight against everything that’s been learned and achieved since. 14/25

The most recent text the Texas law mandates for teaching is the 1965 #VotingRightsAct (which conservatives have successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court to mostly gut). That's right, 1965. 15/25
capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/bi…

And yes, the same Texas law has set off a new purge of public school libraries. So read Tom Sawyer & The Caged Bird with your kids while you still can. 16/25
texastribune.org/2021/10/26/tex…

Calling for “open discourse”, Jews have joined this assault on justice & truth, with some of our intellectual elite signing a letter that–however unwittingly–has buttressed those now banning books and infusing Holocaust ed with dissenting views. 17/25
jilv.org/be-heard/

The same group admonished a top Jewish day school for its “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice” framework. 18/25
washingtonjewishweek.com/an-open-letter…

Decrying “anti-racism” they explain, “While we do not have a problem with students reading an article calling for the ‘dismantling of whiteness,’ where is the counterpoint?” They’re not racist, merely anti-anti-racist. 19/25

No less than @bariweiss has defined critical race theory as “an ideology that segregates people by race; that insists on a racial hierarchy in which entire racial groups are monolithically good or bad...” 20/25
bariweiss.substack.com/p/should-publi…

Yes, there *is* an entrenched ideology that does just that–it’s called racism, and it still pervades America. It’s evidenced in our policing, in the voting districts set by state legislatures, in housing & mortgage policies across the country. 21/25
americanprogress.org/issues/race/re…

Even if you honestly perceive the fight against racism as somehow opening the door to antisemitism, you can’t protect Jews or uphold our values by tearing down the anti-racism agenda, by banning books, or by legislating classroom discussion. 22/25

Contrary to their high-minded call for “liberal values”, the anti-CRT movement (also reformulated as anti-“critical social justice”) is not just about presenting *both* sides of systemic racism “in a spirit of intellectual honesty and integrity.” 23/25

In Florida now, the *only* side allowed is ‘no racism to see here’, since the state Board of Ed banned schools from any teaching “that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.” 24/25
apnews.com/article/florid…

Many Jews just got hit over the head with the rock of state-sponsored Holocaust denial. Even as we cry out in pain and horror, we must not lose sight of the twisted logic that got us here—and which animates so much of our own communal debate. END/