It's understandable to chuckle at Trump turning on Netanyahu, as he inevitably turns on everyone but himself. But there's now a non-zero chance that Netanyahu becomes a public 2020 election truther in order to try and get back in Trump's good graces, which would be really bad.
Netanyahu absolutely thinks Trump might win again. And Bibi has already repeatedly bet his and Israel's future entirely on the Republican party. He can't afford to lose its current leader, whether he's president right now or not.
Netanyahu is very smart and he has seen in the US how being an election truther has become Trump's litmus test for being part of his team (see Georgia gov race). Now he and everyone else knows that he's on the wrong side of that. Question is where Bibi ultimately goes from there.
This is not going to cut it for Trump. But it's of course correct. The closer we get to 2024, the more pressure Netanyahu and other foreign leaders hoping for Trump's support will feel compelled to flatter his 2020 conspiracy theories.
My latest: 18 years ago, a religious Jewish character appeared in the cult classic sci-fi show Firefly. He had a yarmulke and tzitzit—and the series gave no explanation for how he got there or why.
Did the showrunners decide to cast a Jewish character? Or did the actor bring Judaism to the part? I spent 8 years digging into these questions. Today, I can finally reveal the answers. They were more remarkable, and more poignant, than I ever expected: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
97% of all US tweets come from less than 6% of American adults. If you're treating this platform as representative of the broader population, rather than those particular users, you will draw many wrong conclusions. Yet many elites—from pundits to politicians—continue to do this.
Previous Pew studies have shown that Twitter users are younger, richer, and more educated than the general population. In other words, very similar to the cloistered elite we see off Twitter, just a little younger. pewresearch.org/internet/2019/…
My general rule is that social media platforms are representative of the most active users on them—no more, no less. Facebook represents active Facebook users. Twitter represents Twitter users. Understand that and you can learn something. Generalize beyond it, you get in trouble.
My latest piece tackles an old question: Why are social media platforms so bad at moderating antisemitic content? Today in Deep Shtetl, I offer three reasons you probably haven't heard, but explain a lot: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
1) Social media companies lack the cultural competency to even identify most antisemitism. Because they don't know what the prejudice looks like, they are terrible at fighting it. newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
Some professional news: I'm joining @TheAtlantic to write a new newsletter about the potent but often misunderstood forces that shape our world, from social media to religious faith to popular culture. It's called DEEP SHTETL. Sign up to get it here! newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/
@TheAtlantic "Deep Shtetl is the stories behind the stories; the people off the beaten track who don’t appear on all your podcasts; the things & communities we think we understand but don’t. We won't avoid big items but will try to ask different questions about them." newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
@TheAtlantic "We’ll explore what religious traditions can tell us about forgiveness in the social-media age; what Albert Einstein’s intervention in a 1944 Hebrew University controversy can teach us about today’s debates over academic freedom..." newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
My favorite thing about Gab is that they changed their web site from gab.ai to gab.com after their own members got paranoid that it was a Jewish front because "gabai" is the traditional Jewish word for a synagogue overseer. tabletmag.com/sections/news/…
You've got this all wrong. If they banned the Gab account, I wouldn't get to have nearly as much fun making fun of them. One of the few joys of this depressing web site.
Powerful pro-vaccination PSA today from Orthodox rabbis in New York: "The ribono shel olam [creator of the world] has given us a precious gift. It's called the covid-19 vaccine." "Unvaccinated people die! They die." "What's the shaylah [question] over here? Are we playing games?"
"When we take the vaccine, we're helping everybody, and that's a double mitzvah."