Thread by @thephilosotroll

I've been talking privately to some people in #Catholic media about this event; I'm grateful to those who have reached out to discuss it.

This is Coffin's Hope is Fuel conference. I want to say some things about it publicly, from my own #Jewish perspective on #antisemitism.

https://twitter.com/mfjlewis/status/1657549019134980097

Firstly, what is the event? It is an online series of videos put together by former Catholic Answers podcast host Patrick Coffin. Coffin is a public figure and influencer in right-wing Catholic discourse. You can read OSV's survey here: catholicreview.org/hope-is-fuel-c…

I don't have a view on Coffin being a sedevacantist, which is the issue driving much of the Catholic commentary. I don't have a view because I think it is generally inappropriate for those outside of a community to comment on internal theological and doctrinal issues.

My problem with Patrick Coffin is that he has a long history of fomenting and elevating antisemitic conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories which leverage stereotypes of Jews as malicious and duplicitous to sell the notion of the conspirator.

Second, Hope is Fuel is another straightforward instance where Coffin is effectively marketing antisemitic extremism to Catholics. Someone coming to this event may be interested in the Latin mass or conservative views of Catholic Social Teaching, and find antisemitism tangled in.

The most obvious name on this list, and one which is uncontroversial among serious scholars of antisemitism, is E. Michael Jones. Several of the speakers at this event have insisted that Jones is not antisemitic, or that his views are subject to interpretation. They're wrong.

Jones's antisemitic views are extensive; his book "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit" draws from the racialist pseudoscience of Kevin MacDonald (whose view is that Jewish malice and conspiracy is a racial disposition) and Holocaust deniers...
adl.org/sites/default/…

In January, Jones appeared on Iranian television to deny the Holocaust and develop the standard array of antisemitic conspiracy theories. (Jews and money; Jews control US foreign policy; etc.)

Jones is as clear an antisemite as Nick Fuentes or David Duke.
jpost.com/middle-east/ir…

The problem with having him at an event like Hope is Fuel is that it gives Jones (and similarly antisemitic speakers; I have concerns about several on the list less obvious than Jones) the opportunity to push antisemitism as though it is an entailment of Catholic traditionalism.

In discussions, I directed several Catholic writers to this piece by @kathrynajoyce and @BenLorber8, which I think effectively lays out the radicalization program we've seen from Fuentes, Jones, inter alia that ties "traditionalism" with antisemitism. salon.com/2022/05/13/tra…

This trend has been discussed by a range of journalists up to this point, including those noting that the groyper movement is especially focused on recruiting young, Catholic, conservative white and Latino men. I won't belabor the ideological moves here, except that...

The radicalization can drive relatively typical searches for religious meaning typical of young people towards both Christian nationalist political extremism (including violent varieties, as we've seen with Atomwaffen) and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

This pattern of radicalization is something that I am glad journalists and scholars who work on extremism are now discussing more actively; that is heartening. However, I think we should be careful in recognizing the ways ostensibly ordinary events are leveraged by extremists.

I suspect few of the speakers know the extremist rhetoric of E. Michael Jones. A few almost certainly do; (e.g.) Dwight Longenecker and Jeff Cavins being. But many of the speakers are coming because they had an opportunity to speak about what they're interested in.

However, many of the statements from those who are withdrawing from the event also illustrate something I've been saying about Jewish-Catholic relations in the US for a little while now: I think there's a worrying trend of many Catholic leaders and scholars treating...

overt antisemitism as within the realm of reasonable disagreement. I think this statement from Lisa Duffy is a good illustration of what we should hope for in this case. (I'm blocked by Madrid, so I'm posting a screencap sent to me.)

Whatever one might think about Duffy's views, "I firmly repudiate all forms of anti-semitism" and explicitly, unequivocally applying that to Jones is a good thing. This is precisely the kind of response that we might hope for. Unfortunately not all responses have been like that.

One of my friends forwarded me this article from @profjanetsmith at Crisis. It's really bad and illustrates the sort of active dissembling over clear cases of antisemitism (Jones) I find distressing. Smith did withdraw, but with a contorted dismount.
crisismagazine.com/opinion/why-i-…

Smith's major move is that she's fine with the antisemitic conspiracy theories about "secular" Jews (Jews Smith regards as insufficiently or incorrectly observant), but draws the line at generalization because of the Jews who she sees as appropriately religious.

Smith is engaged in a familiar maneuver among Christians to avoid accusations of antisemitism. "You can't talk generally about 'the Jews' because there are the Jews who practice Judaism in ways that we like, and we don't mean those Jews." Christians defining "real Jews."

This isn't uncommon, but it illustrates why I think Catholic-Jewish relations in the United States are in a very bad place. Many Catholic leaders have a view of Jewish identity that is authentic only when it coincides with Catholic/Christian views of religious adherence.

If Catholic respect for Jewish identity and willingness to call out explicit, obvious antisemitism like Jones's only applies when Jews are doing Judaism in way that Catholics like, then that's not a basis for interfaith dialogue. That's just chauvinism.

It’s worth pointing out that a separate defense at Crisis, by Eric Sammons, has the same problem. Jones is “accused of antisemitism.”

Again, E Michael Jones is among the easiest case of an antisemite, endorsing theological, radicalized, and conspiratorial antisemitism.

As @mfjlewis notes, Jones adopts views which explicitly violate Catholic teaching on Jews, including outright rejecting Nostra Aetate’s repudiation of deicide.

There’s lots of reasonable disagreement about antisemitism; no reasonable analysis can defend Jones.

https://twitter.com/mfjlewis/status/1659237673230270475

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