THE EXTREMIST: FROM THE STREETS TO THE INTERNET

Dear Deborah:

We began our exchange because I was in such a funk about the divisions in our society in general and the rise of antisemitism in particular. One of the catalysts for this funk was the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. I remember watching the television coverage of the neo-Nazi march there and being unable to fathom what I was seeing. Watching a mélange of white supremacist and white power groups march with their tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” left me, a committed Christian who takes his faith very seriously, shaken to the core. Nazi-like flags, placards declaring “Jews are Satan’s children,” and the murder of a counterdemonstrator by a marcher who used his car as a weapon left me stunned beyond measure.1

I broke down in tears when I read about the local synagogue that was holding Shabbat services that morning. Three of the heavily armed neo-Nazis positioned themselves with their arms crossed in front of the entrance to the building. The rabbi and the synagogue president decided to send everyone in the building out the back door in small groups, taking the Torah scrolls with them for safekeeping. I know you are one of those who eschews using Hitler/Third Reich/Nazi Germany analogies when discussing contemporary events. As you have told me, easy ahistorical analogies to the Holocaust and Nazism cheapen the genocidal actions of the Germans and often create an unwarranted angst among people today. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Nazi Germany when I read about these Jews who had to sneak out of their synagogue for their own safety. I don’t ever remember reading about such an event, except in literature about the Third Reich. I have certainly never heard about it happening in America.

I feel that I need to have a better understanding of the situation. What is it that we are witnessing? Are these young men who paraded through the streets of Charlottesville simply terribly misguided thrill seekers, or is something really serious going on here? I never dreamed we would see people marching in a bucolic college town, freely chanting such vile and hateful slogans.

On the other hand, I have friends—Jews among them—who have told me in the past that all the concerns about antisemitism today are overblown. Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard from them since Charlottesville. Can you, who have spent so much time in what you describe as the “sewers” of antisemitism, help me understand what happened there?

Joe

Dear Professor Lipstadt:

Professor Wilson’s letter reminds me of how I sat glued to the television for that entire weekend, watching the analyses of the events in Charlottesville. It was frightening to hear things like “Jews will not replace us.” Thanks to your class, I recognized the Nazi origins of “blood and soil.” What’s this all about? Were these just extremist crazies? Are they worth worrying about? Do they have a following? Have they suddenly appeared on the horizon, or have they been lurking beneath the surface, unnoticed by the rest of us? Is this Nazi Germany redux?

Abigail

Dear Joe and Abigail:

Charlottesville left me dumbfounded, too. It was hardly the first of such events. There have been a series of such white nationalist violent demonstrations in the past two years. Though these marchers ostensibly came to “protect” the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from being removed, there is little doubt that this was not their real motive. They were there to stoke their fellow extremists and make a display of their power. They were also there to spread antisemitism and racism. The overt antisemitism of the marchers was evident as they took their first steps across the campus. “Jews will not replace us” is self-explanatory. “Blood and soil” may sound benign, but, as Abigail knows from our class, it’s a German slogan (Blut und Boden) that was central to Nazi ideology. It idealizes a racially defined nation, and its subtext is that only those people with “pure” or “white” bloodlines can be true citizens of the nation. Only they are rooted to the soil. Jews, on the other hand, are “cosmopolitans,” not nationalists, and as such are interlopers and threats to the well-being of the nation. The demonstrators paraded with the Confederate flag, which symbolized far more than a link to a statue of Robert E. Lee. It represents a cultural and political position that melds white power with opposition to liberalism and multiculturalism.2 While these chants were chilling, something else scared me even more. It wasn’t what was there that frightened me, but what wasn’t there. No KKK robes, Nazi-inspired uniforms, or white supremacist paraphernalia were evident. No T-shirts with neo-Nazi slogans were to be seen. Most of the marchers wore neatly pressed khaki pants and smart-looking shirts. Had they not carried flags with swastika-like and white supremacist symbols or the Confederate “stars and bars” and raised their arms in a Nazi-like salute, they might have looked as though they had just walked out of a J.Crew or Brooks Brothers catalog.3 This was even more evident a few months later when they held another flash protest march. White polo shirts and khaki pants were the uniform du jour. This was not by chance. It was to make them appear to be “ordinary Americans.” As Richard Spencer, one of the organizers of the march, noted, “We have to look good.” People are not attracted to those who appear “crazed or ugly or victims or just stupid.”4

Let’s step back for a moment from Charlottesville and try to figure out who these marchers are and what they represent. The ideologies motivating them are white power and white supremacy, ideologies that include a foundational belief in the evil nature of the Jews, Muslims, and people of color. According to the supremacists, these minorities are intent on harming “regular Americans.” They find one another at white power gatherings. They visit websites that promote neo-Nazism, white nationalism, and antisemitism.5 Many of them adhere to Christian Identity, a racist interpretation of Christianity that posits that there were two creations—one that failed, which explains the existence of people of color, and one that produced Adam and Eve. Eve was first impregnated by Adam and produced Abel, whose descendants are white folks. She was then impregnated by the snake (i.e., Satan) and produced Cain, whose descendants are Jews, who are therefore, quite literally, “satanic.” Some of these people are members of anti-big-government “resistance” groups that engage in violent hate crimes, particularly against government institutions and officials.

Among the groups at the Charlottesville rally was the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which is probably the largest American neo-Nazi group. It reveres Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. At rallies and protests its members often appear in Nazi-like uniforms and sport swastika armbands. Not, however, at Charlottesville. There were lots of NSM flags visible. But those who carried them looked like clean-cut college students. Also present in Charlottesville was Vanguard America, a group with increasingly strong ties to neo-Nazis. Its members believe that the United States is exclusively for white Americans and not for non-Christians, Jews, Muslims, or people of color. The car used to murder the counterdemonstrator sported a Vanguard America decal.6 Other participants were people with no apparent ideology who, for a range of personal reasons, just hate those who are different than they are. Brian Levin, a specialist on American extremism, has described them as “thrill offenders with more shallow prejudices.” They are part of “informal associations of young people that commit hate crimes for excitement and social engagement.” But we increasingly see them acting on these latent or shallow prejudices. They may well eventually join the ranks of what has been called the mission offender, or hard-core hatemonger, who engages in outright acts of violence.7 As then FBI director James Comey observed in an address to the Anti-Defamation League in May 2017, “in a heartbeat, words can turn to violence. Because hate doesn’t remain static too often.”8

In fact, the hate has not remained static and the words have already turned to violence. In May 2017 Richard Collins, a young African American who was about to graduate from the University of Maryland and be commissioned as second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was murdered while waiting for an Uber near the campus. His attacker was a member of a white supremacist group, alt-Reich. Using a four-inch blade, he stabbed Collins in the chest. A few days later a white supremacist riding on a streetcar in Portland, Oregon, began verbally assaulting two female passengers, one who was black and one who was wearing a hijab. When two men came to the young women’s defense, the assailant slashed their throats. At his arraignment, he declared: “You call it terrorism. I call it patriotism.”9

These right-wing extremist groups and individuals serve as rallying points for a wide range of people, some more violent than others.10 In the United States, these groups regularly contend that their country is ruled by what they call the ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government), an international group of wealthy Jews intent on ending American sovereignty and bringing about a one-world government that they alone will rule. ZOG, they proclaim, already controls the media, the banks, and America’s foreign policy, and is now working on world domination.11

While the views expressed by these people are not new, they tend to proliferate during times when there is populist resentment against what is regarded as an “elite” class of people—usually highly educated men and women with liberal political and social views. This is what we are now seeing in many parts of the world. In the United States, for the first time in many decades—perhaps for the first time ever—these haters believe that they have sympathetic allies in the White House.

Until a few years ago, it could be said that these groups had fallen on hard times in the United States, in part because of lawsuits brought against them by those they have harassed and threatened. Ironically, the government had previously not seen them as a significant threat, in great measure because they were white. After the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 (at the time, the deadliest attack on American government property since Pearl Harbor), the government became more vigilant about monitoring the activities of white power groups. Nonetheless, it still took the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime close to six months after the Oklahoma City bombing to hold a hearing on militias. No other committee took up the issue. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was seen more as a lone wolf terrorist than as someone who had been influenced by a white power movement. Although some white supremacist groups were stripped of their resources, their members simply scattered to other small groups, formed new organizations, and became increasingly active on newly emerging social media.12 They did not go away. This kind of extremism is now experiencing a resurgence, especially as its adherents add hatred of Muslims to their long-standing antisemitism and racism. There are differences among the panoply of groups that constitute the Far Right, but hatred of Muslims, utter contempt for African Americans and Latinos, support of racial segregation, and deep-seated antisemitism are essential to all of them.13

It’s social media that has really given these extremists a new lease on life. Publications attacking anyone they considered an enemy used to be mailed in plain envelopes from anonymous post office boxes to recipients who would furtively collect them. Today, they are easily accessed with a basic computer search engine. Proponents of these noxious ideas can also use social media to anonymously spew their hatred. With unprecedented ease, they find like-minded people and use Internet platforms to robustly amplify and spread their views. In fact, our perception that the number of antisemites and antisemitic events have markedly escalated may at least in part be governed by the ubiquity of social media. Incidents that we might not previously have heard about are now celebrated on racist websites. Social media allows the extremists not only to communicate more easily with one another but also to make their voices and views heard beyond their adherents. Through the various social media platforms, these hate-mongers can reach a wider audience of people, including those who might previously have not been exposed to these messages of hate. In so doing, they are normalizing open expressions of hatred.14 Many people are uncomfortable with the white nationalists’ and supremacists’ open adulation of Nazis, love of violence, and overt antisemitism and racism. They will not join up with them. But influenced by the extremists’ spread of hatred on social media, people who might not join a supremacist organization will nonetheless begin to repeat some of their arguments.

Charlottesville did not come out of the blue. We saw these extremists at work during the 2016 presidential campaign. They took particular aim at those Jewish journalists who they believed were either opposed to Trump or insufficiently supportive of him. During the primaries, Bethany Mandel, a self-described political conservative who has written for, among other publications, the Federalist and Commentary, tweeted what she described as “an offhand remark” about Donald Trump’s “legions of antisemitic fans.” She described the responses she received as “unlike anything [she had] seen before on Twitter.” She received messages branding her a “Jewess” who “deserves the oven.” Another message ominously asserted, “Missed one, you slimy Jewess.” Not satisfied with these postings, her attackers also began to “dox” her, which means to find and post online private identifying information about her. She subsequently received explicit death threats, including some that were posted on her private Facebook page. She bought a gun.

Were Mandel the only journalist or commentator to be subjected to this barrage of online threats, accusations, and antisemitism, this would be a disturbing anecdote but nothing more. But she was not alone.15 The cyber-antisemites began to place an echo symbol—((( )))—around the surnames of prominent Jewish journalists and commentators who adopted positions with which they disagreed. The echo symbol originated in 2014, on a podcast called The Daily Shoah that is hosted by The Right Stuff, a white nationalist blog. The echo began to be used in earnest to identify Jewish reporters who were critical of Donald Trump. Those who relied on it described the symbol as “closed captioning for the Jew-blind.” It ensured that the journalist’s Jewish identity was immediately evident.16 In May 2016, Jonathan Weisman, deputy Washington editor for the New York Times, mentioned an article by the historian Robert Kagan that linked Donald Trump to fascism. He quickly received a response—“Hello (((Weisman)))”—from someone who utilized the screen name @CyberTrump. Sensing that the parentheses had some connection to his Jewish identity, Weisman asked for an explanation and received the following response: “What, ho, the vaunted Ashkenazi intelligence, hahaha! It’s a dog whistle, fool. Belling the cat for my fellow goyim.” (The term “belling the cat” comes from a medieval fable in which a group of mice conspires to hang a bell around a cat so that they would have fair warning when she came close to them.) Weisman observed that the belling had its intended impact. “The horde was unleashed,” he wrote. Just like Mandel, he received an avalanche of antisemitic comments and accusations. Some messages focused on Holocaust denial, while others depicted the Jew as a fifth columnist conniving to lead America into a war for Israel. One message came from an individual who tagged himself “a proud future member of the Trump Deportation Squad.” Weisman was also sent various antisemitic images, including one of the iconic gates of Auschwitz with the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” replaced with “Machen Amerika Great.” Other images showed a path of dollar bills leading to a gas chamber, or a smiling Donald Trump in a Nazi uniform about to “flick the switch on a gas chamber.” Inside the gas chamber was the body of a man with Weisman’s face Photoshopped onto it. In an effort to expose, publicize, and possibly shame these cyber-haters, Weisman posted every message he received. The only image he chose not to post was one of his disembodied head, adorned with a skull cap and side curls, being held aloft.17

Julia Ioffe, a Jewish reporter, who in an April 2016 article in GQ about Melania Trump mentioned that she had a half brother with whom her family had no contact, was bombarded with antisemitic threats and images, including one with her face superimposed onto that of an Auschwitz prisoner.18 Other reporters and commentators—including those who these extremists among Trump’s supporters mistakenly assumed were Jewish—were also subjected to these kinds of attacks. After writing an article about Trump’s racist expressions, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (who is a Christian of Armenian extraction) was besieged with antisemitic messages, including one suggesting that he be sent to the ovens for writing “a typical Jewish hit piece.”19 Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inundated with such attacks, described the message-senders as “neo-Nazis on Twitter.” The recurring theme in the approximately one hundred messages he received every day was “[I] should be gassed and my family should be put in the ovens.” Goldberg has long had a prominent public profile, but he began to receive these messages only during the 2016 presidential campaign. They came from people who explicitly “advertise[d] themselves as Trump supporters.”20 I’m not suggesting, of course, that they represent all of Trump’s supporters. We must be careful about making those sweeping generalizations. The fact that so many of them hide behind online names and false identities suggests that they are cowards who are emboldened by the anonymity of cyber-warfare. But it’s worth noting that the vehemence, intensity, and overt antisemitism of these cyber-antisemites caught even these experienced journalists, as well as those who monitor antisemitism, by surprise.

Social media is not the only new tool in the extremists’ kit bag. The Charlottesville protests were coordinated by a group that included Richard Spencer, a leader of the alt-right movement. A loose conglomeration of organizations that espouse white nationalism and white supremacy, the alt-right aims to have these views become part of the broader public discourse and to mainstream their ideas in a way that long-established neo-Nazi and other racist groups have been unable to do. An amalgam of far-right positions, the alt-right is just as extreme as any of the long-established racist groups that preceded it. In fact, many of its political objectives are direct legacies of the ideas promulgated by twentieth-century white power movements. They echo the political platforms of former KKK leader David Duke during his various campaigns for public office.21

What is different about the alt-right and similar groups is the way they package their ideas, as they try to project a decidedly “normal” image—not as neo-Nazis or Jew-haters, but as “white nationalists” who simply (and, by their way of explaining, rather benignly) believe that white people are being marginalized in society by other racial and ethnic groups. That’s why I don’t think that, going forward, we’ll be seeing swastikas or Nazi-like uniforms at these rallies. We may even see Confederate flags replaced by American flags. (After all, who can object to the American flag?) Though one may not find an overtly racist or Nazi symbol among the clean-cut and well-dressed adherents of these new groups, their views are just as extremist as those of the most committed member of the KKK. They advocate a race-based white supremacism. For them, an American citizen is someone who is white and Christian. In the days after the 2016 presidential election, at an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C., Spencer, referring to liberals and critics of the alt-right, declared that “one wonders if these people are people at all or instead soulless Golems.” He saluted “white America,” which must “conquer or die,” and then declared that “America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.” Spencer concluded his remarks with an outstretched arm (containing a strategically placed glass of water) and the cry “Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!” As the audience enthusiastically jumped to its feet and began to cheer, many among them saluted him with outstretched arms and cheers of “Sieg heil” and “Hail Trump.”22 These Nazi-inspired expressions of support were also visible in a video of an event held at a karaoke bar in Dallas, Texas, in April 2016, in which these activists raised their arms in the Nazi salute as another of the movement’s ideologues, Milo Yiannopoulos, sang “America the Beautiful.”23

Although these and similar groups abroad present themselves as Americanists, Europeanists, white nationalists, and patriots, a closer look at their writings and public statements reveals plain old racism and antisemitism.24 The National Review, a magazine that is considered the voice of the conservative movement in America, described these groups as a “motley crew of white nationalists and wannabe fascists.”25 While the National Review may consider them a “motley crew,” not having a formal organization has served them well. Alt-right and similar groups may splinter and regroup. Many of their leaders have been disgraced and new ones have replaced them. But their adherents will not disappear. More importantly, they have managed in recent years to establish direct links to people with influence, including those in high-level government positions. President Trump and some of his associates have retweeted and reposted videos, cartoons, memes, and comments on various social media platforms that come from the alt-right and those affiliated with them. The retweeters give license to people who share these sentiments to engage in racist, antisemitic, and extremist rhetoric. And the more this kind of invective is repeated, the more it has a way of bleeding beyond its original borders and becoming part of the national discourse. As that happens, ideas that were once considered to be outside the pale of civil conversation become mainstreamed.

Regards,

DEL