I'm here with Dara Horn. Dara, thank you for joining me.
Thank you very much for having me.
You've written a really excellent book, "People Love Dead Jews: A Jewish History." This is your second provocative title that I know of. The previous book was "A Guide for the Perplexed." So you haven't been shy about your titles, but this book—there's no way to exhaust the points you raise in it. Look at me. It's really a comprehensive look at the problem of the present moment, at least for many of us. So thank you for writing it, and thank you for what you do and for taking the time to talk with me today.
Thank you for having me and for all the work you do.
Let's start where I think the confusion tends to begin. How should we think of Jews as a people? How do the variables of nationality or religion not fit with reality in a way that makes it immediately understandable?
The reason it doesn't immediately fit the categories we know is, frankly, the success of empires. When people ask me this question: are Jews a nation or a religion or a race or an ethnicity? The answer actually isn't complicated. It's just old. Jews predate all those categories. Jews clearly predate the modern concept of race. Jews predate the concept of nationality. Jews predate even the concept of religion. When Hebrew linguists were reviving Hebrew as a spoken language, they had to dig through the Hebrew Bible to find a word meaning "religion" because Hebrew didn't have one. So there is actually an answer to who the Jews are. Jews are a tribal group you can join, with a shared history and homeland and culture. That sentence was in English. And in Hebrew, it's one word. It consists of just two letters. So that's what Jews have always been. And the reason this is incomprehensible to most people in the modern world is that most such groups were wiped out thanks to the success of empires. This is a very familiar category in the ancient world. But if you think about it, Christianity conquered all of Europe and the Americas and beyond. And Islam conquered the Middle East and North Africa and Central Asia and beyond. Think of all the diverse groups that lived in those places, whose cultures and civilizations were essentially erased. What distinguishes Jews is that they are still here. There are very few of these ancient groups. I mean, maybe Zoroastrians. I mean, you can, you know, find some groups like this, but they are very few. And that's why even this category is unfamiliar to people in, certainly in the modern West, and frankly in many places, because of the success of empires. And Jews are an outlier, among the few ancient groups that were not subjugated by empires, did not assimilate into them, and are still here. And that's why this leads us to the challenge we face now, which is that this is a group of people, and because of this, they have become a real test of the success or failure of a pluralistic society.
Okay, one of the points you raise in the book is that Jewish safety cannot be a matter of proving they are like anyone else, because they have spent 3,000 years telling the world that they are not like anyone else; and their cohesion as a people rests in large part on this concept of themselves. And there are theological aspects here, which you don't focus on much in the book, and maybe we'll talk about them. But this raises a problem, because in a sense, Jews were cooperating—and I mean in a very real sense—Jews were cooperating with people who see them as irreversibly different and hate them for it, by seeing themselves as irreversibly different. Right. So this seems like a kind of paradox that is hard to grasp in a pluralistic society. But how do you think about the Jewish self-concept and how it works here?
Okay, the way I think about this, and I describe it this way in the book, is that if you think about the actual content of Jewish civilization, what you end up with—and I don't claim this is the only way to understand Jewish civilization. And clearly there are many ways—but one aspect of it you find is essentially an anti-authoritarian movement since antiquity. So many of the ideas we now consider religious or theological, like monotheism. You know, we consider monotheism today a spiritual concept. In the ancient context, it's actually a political concept. Because in the ancient context, you had many groups with many gods, and often one of these gods was the tyrannical ruler. So when Jews say they don't bow to other gods, they essentially mean they don't bow to tyrants. And this idea is reinforced at every stage of Jewish civilization. Right? The idea of the rule of law. This is an early concept somewhat similar to what we have in the American Constitution, where there is a body of laws not tied to an individual ruler. Right? It's not as if the king is the legislator. It's not like the Code of Hammurabi, although some of those laws may overlap. But there is this idea that the kings themselves must follow the laws. Right? These are actually very radical ideas. And what I find really interesting is that this is a very, very small group. It was repeatedly conquered by empires. And these empires have different attitudes toward the various groups they conquer. But often the idea is that the conquering empire has a universal idea—presumably universal—and that everyone who is good and righteous will follow this idea. And this comes with religious ideas, for example, if you think about the spread of Christianity where they spread it by the sword, or by encouraging people to convert, and this happens with Islam too. So when you have a group of people who don't yield to this pressure, that puts the surrounding society in a kind of problem, right? Because it suddenly raises the possibility that there isn't just one way to be, right? And if someone rejects your ideas, that kind of forces you to question your own ideas. And the more authoritarian the society, the less capacity to tolerate that. So, going back to your question about whether Jews contribute to this by not assimilating into these societies. What's interesting is that throughout Jewish history there was a kind of push and pull about how much Jews could assimilate and how much they couldn't. And what's interesting is that at the time of Jewish emancipation in Europe, for example, which happened in the early nineteenth century in Western Europe, there was a possibility for Jews to become citizens of the emerging nation-states. And there was a belief at that time in the Jewish community that this was the way out of antisemitism. And of course, it turned out to be completely wrong. It turned out to be completely wrong. As if it didn't matter. If you think about a case like the Dreyfus case, where a French army captain was falsely accused of espionage. That was in the 1890s. And this person who was accused of espionage, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was as assimilated into French culture as possible. He wasn't a religious Jew. He wasn't part of any organized Jewish community. He had spent his entire career, his whole life devoted to France, serving in the French army. None of that mattered. And it wasn't just a false accusation. There were acts of mob violence against Jewish communities in France and in all its colonies, where entire neighborhoods were burned until they were leveled. I mean, it wasn't just a matter of one person losing his job. I mean, it was essentially a mass movement against the Jews. It was fueled by an antisemitic press. And part of that antisemitism came because he was assimilated. And that's what's interesting in Jewish history, that you see that there was, in a sense, it didn't matter what choices Jews made, whether they chose to assimilate or not, because it was about the larger role this group played in the minds of the broader society, essentially where they drew the boundaries of what they considered universal.
Right. You have a line in the book, and it's a detail I never knew, I believe Dreyfus lived, he was imprisoned for about four years, but after that—
I believe five years in solitary confinement on Devil's Island off the coast of South America, chained to his bed every night for five years. Yes.
But he lived until 1935, and you said he was only a few years away from joining his wife who was deported to Auschwitz.
So, let's pause on the issue of Jewish difference for a moment, because it clearly has theological foundations, which I don't think are the main driver of the discussion these days, at least not in the mainstream culture, but it's plausible that Jews, simply by remaining Jewish all these thousands of years, stood in a permanent state of denial of Christian and Islamic theology. I mean, Christianity relies entirely on taking seriously the claim that, and actually accepting the claim that Jesus was the Messiah. And Jews stood on the sidelines for two thousand years as Jews, saying: "Sorry guys, we met your Messiah." "Actually he was one of us, and he wasn't, he wasn't the person we were waiting for." And the same goes for Islam. I mean, Islam claims to be the final revelation of the Abrahamic traditions. Muhammad is the final prophet, who brought that complete revelation to humanity, which will not be replaced by anything we do until the end of the world. And Jews here, you know, are still here to say: "No, sorry, we met your guy." He seemed to us like a schizophrenic warlord, you know. We're not interested. Sorry. And this, for anyone who takes faith claims as central to their worldview, has proven to be perhaps tolerable for successive decades or even a century in certain contexts. But generally, it's a standing script to be invoked and reassessed as follows: "Okay, this is not just intolerable, it has now become a capital crime, and we must deal with these Jews among us who, again, simply by clinging to their Jewishness, diminish our core beliefs."
Yes. Okay, I think I, you know, you presented this as a theological argument.
I think actually it's more like a universal faith argument.
Because I don't think it has to be specifically religious, because you see something similar with communism, for example.
Communism's rejection of Jews as cosmopolitans, and the objection there is that Jews, you know, are too nationalistic.
Right? This, you know, in the communist system in the Soviet Union, they framed what was frankly decades of persecution of Soviet Jews, and inciting antisemitism among their satellite states, they framed it entirely under the name "anti-Zionism," right? That we object, essentially, to the particularity of a certain form of national movement.
So if that particularity was the thing they were objecting to.
And that's also true even in the pre-Christian environment, when you see something like the attacks on the Jewish community in Alexandria in the first century, they come from people who were incited by the idea that Jews were not loyal to the Roman Empire. This is sort of the theology, if you will, or the universal idea that assumes we all must be Roman citizens. You know, we're all supposed to worship the emperor, and these people don't do that. So this is, um, this is the idea. For me, it's about as little theology as possible, versus anything that was considered a "universal idea" at the time. And I think you can trace that even in something like Nazi racism; it was, you know, ostensibly based on: "Oh well, this isn't a primitive religious belief, it's science."
Right, this pseudo-science about race that claims Jews are inferior, so I think the Jewish objection to this idea, which demands everyone's agreement and submission to this kind of blind surrender to supposed universal ideals, is what bothers them.
This is intolerable for people, and I think it's intolerable because, as you say, this is the heart of the problem; if your belief requires everyone to believe it, and then you find an opponent, that poses a challenge to your beliefs in a way that might not happen if your beliefs didn't require everyone to agree with you.
And for me, this is where it becomes a real test of a pluralistic society. Can you tolerate opposition?
Yes, there are some other details here that are interesting and make antisemitism, which we'll talk about later, unusual among prejudices. For example, anyone who uses the term "Islamophobia" tends to use it as if it were completely equivalent to antisemitism. Now, I don't have to get into this, but I have my reasons for objecting to the concept of "Islamophobia" itself. I simply think it's been used to silence any criticism of Islamic doctrine and to treat it as synonymous with bigotry. And this seems to me to be a growing danger. But regardless, the reason "Islamophobia," even if we grant the term the scope its users want, is different from antisemitism is that Judaism, in essence, is not a proselytizing religion. Right? Islam is a proselytizing religion par excellence, gaining adherents in 100 countries. And therefore, there is no implication, and no necessary implication of race or origin or anything else other than your belief in a certain doctrine. I mean, that's what it means to be Muslim. Talking about a "Muslim atheist" is actually a stark contradiction. You can say you were Muslim, but you're now an atheist. But no one says, you know, I'm Muslim and Islam is very important to me, but I'm also an atheist. That simply doesn't exist. Mormon atheist.
Exactly. Or in fact, this applies to almost every other religion. But among Jews, it's very common to meet Jewish atheists who consider themselves Jewish, and more importantly, from the perspective of every antisemite on earth, they will be seen as Jews regardless of what they believe. Right? So it's not equivalent, and that's why the word "religion" isn't an accurate description here; there are atheist Jews, and secular Jews, and Jews who don't believe in much, yet are considered religious according to the Jewish perspective; and you don't see this among Christians and Muslims and Mormons, I mean this simply isn't the reality. It's much more than that, and the fact that Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, even though you can convert, plays a big role that people don't notice.
Okay, it goes beyond that. It's not just that it's not a proselytizing religion, you're right about that. There were some conversions in the ancient world but they were very few, and certainly for thousands of years it hasn't been a proselytizing religion.
I don't even call it a proselytizing religion or a proselytizing culture. But in fact, I think "religion" is the completely wrong term to describe Jewish civilization, and that's because of the successive empires; when Westerners use the word "religion," they think of something like Christianity or Islam, which are cross-border movements, where what makes you a member of this movement is, as you say, a declaration of faith.
Right, it's the declaration of faith that makes you a member of this movement.
That is not at all the structure of Jewish civilization. As I always say, Jews are not a religion. Jews have a religion that many follow, and as you noted, many don't. But Jews are not a religion. Jews are this other category, this pre-modern category, called in Hebrew "am," right? The best translation might be "belonging to a people" or something like that. Um, it's a strange word in English and doesn't quite fit the meaning either. But the idea is that this was never a movement aimed at spreading globally and conquering the world. That's not the goal. The idea of the covenant with God, even if it moved to that level of religious belief within Judaism, even God's covenant is between God and the Jewish people. It wasn't meant to be shared with the whole world.
Um, people can have different relationships with God. There's that understanding, you know, there's no feeling that this is better or worse than anyone else, this is just the Jewish relationship with God, just as I have a relationship with my wife, I don't expect you to have a relationship with my wife.
Um, but as you know, there's a kind of, this is a particular relationship in a sense.
Um, it's what some sociologists of religion sometimes call "closed practice."
And it's the idea that these are traditions designated for this group.
So, obviously it's a group you can join, but you might consider it monotheism, and yet I think the concept is more accurately described as "henotheism" (worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods), which is not the assertion that only one god exists, but that there is one god worthy of worship in the context of other gods existing. I mean, if you read the Hebrew Bible, it is.
In the ancient context, it seems like a very valid argument.
Right, they weren't asserting the non-existence of other gods. They were content to say these gods are wrong and not worthy of worship, right? Right. Well, they do assert that in the end. I mean, this is a religion that evolves over time. I mean, that's another thing, this is a tradition that has existed for a very long time and it evolves. But you're right that this more accurately describes Jewish practice in the ancient world, certainly.
Um, but that evolves quickly to move beyond that stage.
But generally, what you said I think is really accurate, which is that "religion" is the wrong category. And the only thing I'll add is that there's a reason Americans are particularly confused about this, which is that a few generations ago, American Jews spent a long time, and I discuss this in the book, reframing Judaism as an American religion. And that was a kind of strategic decision that American Jews made after World War II. And I think the legacy of those efforts also causes some of the misunderstanding and confusion in the twenty-first century we're living in now.
Right. Okay, I want to talk about assimilation and the Jewish condition in the diaspora, and what to do about all that, but let's talk about... We've covered what Jews are and what they're not, and how to think of them, you know, as an entity occupying a space in the religious and social landscape. How should we think about antisemitism? And how will you, how will you separate it, or will you separate it from anti-Zionism, which is the phrase now doing a lot of the heavy lifting, you know, on both the right and the left, as I understand it? I mean, I think we've alluded to this, but what I hope you'll explain is how antisemitism isn't just an ordinary form of bigotry or ordinary social bias, but that it contains more and less information than that.
Yes. Look, I don't claim that prejudice against Jews is unique, and I think prejudice against different groups and in different environments has a lot of, you know, there's a diverse history. What's unusual about the case of prejudice against Jews is that this is a very old group that survived all these attacks and persecutions. And because of that, you have a lot of data points that you might not have with, let's say, African Americans, a group that has existed for several centuries, but not for thousands of years. So there's a different history here, a much longer one. I think it's clearer to think of antisemitism as a lie, not just bias or bigotry, a lie that people use to gain or maintain power. And I think what's interesting about this, because you have all these data points and because this is a very long history, is that there's a range in which you can say that lie is always the same in every context. The lie is always the same. The lie is that Jews are destroying what you value most. And what changes in different environments, different historical periods, different social circles, is what you value most. And for me, this is a very important distinction, because if you think about fighting bigotry, the tools you have to fight bigotry are things like empathy. Um, you know, we need to get to know each other better, and invite people to dinner, and build personal relationships, and all of this is very important for fighting any kind of bigotry. And I don't claim this should be neglected. But if what you're fighting is less connected to bigotry and what you're actually fighting is a lie, then fighting the lie requires a different strategy. It requires exposing the lie. It requires thinking about who benefits from this lie. And what that also means is that the people who believe this lie aren't necessarily drawn to it because they carry hatred in their hearts or something, but because they've been manipulated and someone benefits from that manipulation. For me, this is recognizing the pattern that I think is important to think about, and I think it's also something very important to look at.
Not just in the context of antisemitism, but in the context that we live in a new media environment where it's become very easy to manipulate large numbers of people. Okay, this offers a key to understanding why Jews have performed so poorly in the moral accounting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, which were supposed to protect oppressed minorities of all kinds. Why didn't DEI's social justice mechanisms protect Jews, but actually bred their own strain of antisemitism?
And I want to talk about your time on the Harvard advisory board too. I mean, that really illustrates this point. But let's talk about it generally for now.
Yes, I've always presented antisemitism itself as a form of social justice. This is part of the lie. Remember the lie. Jews are destroying what you value most.
So if you value fairness and anti-colonialism,
then Jews are destroying that, and destroying anti-racism.
Exactly. So, Jews are destroying what you value most. If this is what you value most, I mean, this is a very old pattern too. I mean, as I said, this goes back to antiquity. I find it amusing that there's this belief, if you believe the world is full of huge disparities in power structures, and that we're all stuck in these structures, and that your job is to achieve equal opportunity, then this is the way to do it. I mean, there's validity to this view, and I find it extremely amusing because I'm sometimes invited to speak at companies, at events like Jewish American Heritage Month, where they're trying to make a good-faith gesture toward the idea of "we want to do something about antisemitism." And I always find it amusing when I go to speak at one of these major companies and I wonder: are there people in our community who hold a lot of power and privilege? I tell them: Hey Google, it might be you.
Right? So, there seems to be an unwillingness to look in the mirror there. But if this is your worldview, you will come face to face with the trap of antisemitism, because the antisemitic approach always claims that Jews hold too much power and privilege, and that they must be eliminated. Right? This is part of the structure of this lie, right?
Right. And this is what I mean when I say antisemitism is always portrayed as a form of social justice. That's exactly what it represents. Because this is how this big lie succeeds in manipulating populations, people don't feel they're being hateful bigots. They feel they're defending their ideals and don't realize how they've been manipulated.
But what's interesting is that it passes through this filter in ways it shouldn't. And for example, even if we assume for the sake of argument that Jews have disproportionate privilege, right? Let's assume Jews are rich. I mean, this doesn't mean this claim is true. It's certainly not true in general, but let's assume it's true. You still must not ignore their vulnerability as a historically persecuted group, because no one says: "Well, gay men are rich. And therefore there's no problem with homophobia, or that rich gay men aren't part of our diversity, equity, and inclusion calculations."
Right. Or that rich Black people, we no longer care about racism in their case.
Right. So, what's interesting is that even if you were to take bias into account,
you could say the same thing about Jews being white, which is a controversial term and often incorrect, just like describing a white gay man.
Gay, it's not the case, yes people don't believe that white gay people face bigotry.
That's what's interesting about it, and it exposes the flaws in this way of understanding antisemitism, because antisemitism is a lie that says Jews are destroying what you value most.
Right, and if what you value most is some kind of fairer world, then Jews must be placed in the category of villains and must be eliminated. You inevitably reach that point in this kind of ideology. I think there are many examples of this. It's amazing to me how many descriptions we see of actions performed by Jews, if presented as belonging to another group, would be celebrated, but if Jews do them, they're considered something evil. I'll give you just one example of that.
It happened a few years ago. The New York Times published a long article about Jewish schools in New York, and it mainly accused them of exploiting city funding or something like that. And the article was about those schools. There was a lot of truth in the criticisms in that article. What I found interesting in
That article had two paragraphs claiming that Jewish communities in New York were manipulating city politics through bloc voting. And they framed it by saying that after election day, children in schools were encouraged to bring their parents' "I voted today" sticker — the sticker you get when you vote. And any student who brought those stickers proving their parents had voted was rewarded. I believe they got a field trip to a park or something like that. And the article said, "Look how they're manipulating city politics." I just thought, if this were about any other ethnic group in New York, it would be a celebratory article like, "Look how Haitian Americans solved the voter turnout problem." I mean, don't we want people to vote? Yes. Yes. Right? It's like we're saying, what's the argument here, right? I mean, for me, this is incredibly revealing because it shows there's a need to frame antisemitism as a form of social justice, because that's the only way to get away with it, otherwise it's completely obvious what you're doing.
Right. So if antisemitism is essentially a conspiracy theory about Jews...
Right, I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory. It's more direct than that. It's a lie.
It's a lie about how the world works. Right.
Exactly, it's a claim in... a confusing set of contexts. I mean, it's a claim in...
In contexts that really can't be reconciled.
Right. So if communism is your target, then Jews are capitalists. And if capitalism is your target, then Jews are communists. Right. Exactly. Literally, you can flip the coin and the result comes out right in both cases.
Yes. So it's a thesis about a kind of... covert operations by a very small number of people who succeed in corrupting or manipulating a largely hidden system, and they're working against what you value. And that's why if you go far enough to the extreme left or the extreme right on the political spectrum, you'll meet committed antisemites of the same degree. But I think I've heard you describe this, and this isn't even the "horseshoe theory" in your view. This is the same problem.
It's a circle. Yes. I mean, it's not even a circle. They're the same people.
Right? Well, I mean, there's this strange marriage. Yes. Like people like Tucker Carlson and...
Ben Shapiro, you know, seem to be best friends, but...
Let's put that aside for a second. There's something specific about... I mean, it may be the same axis of hostility, but there's a difference in the angle. Because if you go far enough to the left, Jews are seen as not only having a double dose of white privilege, right? I mean, they have all the sins of whiteness, but they also have some additional sins. So if you're anti-colonial or anti-imperialist, and if "Third Worldism" is your new religion, then Jews are at the top of the privilege hierarchy you want to despise and strip of power somehow. But if you go far to the right, it's completely different. Jews are not white. They're pretending to be. They succeed in pretending to be white and undermining Western civilization through an alliance with the Third World, right? I mean, they're not hostile to immigrant interests or anything like that.
The Great Replacement theory, right? So...
Um, these are different things. I mean, the end result is hatred of Jews in both cases, but they're very different sets of concerns, and their logic is actually the opposite of each other.
I don't think they're as different as you say, because in each case there's a desire to justify what doesn't fit with your overall worldview. And because Jews contradict your overall worldview, there's this cognitive dissonance you have to justify. For example, we haven't gotten to this yet. You asked me about anti-Zionism. There's a lot to say about that, but maybe we should set it aside for a moment. We'll come back to that shortly. But, you know, Zionism is one of the most successful anti-colonial liberation movements in the world.
It's one of the few successful movements in reclaiming land. And it's a very rare example among nations formed after World War II where it didn't turn into a failed state, you know? It's been an incredibly successful state, despite the challenges it faces, like any other country in the world. But if you look at all its neighbors, there's no comparison in terms of democracy and liberal expression and freedom of speech, and all these things. It's like, if there were a place in the world you'd want to live, and you had this list of countries, most people in Western countries would undoubtedly consider it a successful anti-colonial movement.
But as you said, if you adopt this idea about Third World countries that has become a kind of religion, that colonialism is the cause of all evils, then this ruins your narrative of events. This ruins your story. So you have to turn it into something else. You have to say that these are white people who came from Europe. And that they're just a continuation of the colonization of the region. You have to invent this silly myth about it instead of recognizing that this is actually a successful decolonization movement.
Just to be clear, it's an anti-colonial movement because Jews are actually the indigenous people of the region, right? And it's not...
Yes. And also not just abstract ideas. I mean, they defeated the British Empire. I mean, this state was a post-colonial state. It was a state that was formed, frankly, like the majority of states formed after World War II through the division of empires into nation-states. In fact, it's remarkably similar to the creation of the majority of countries in the world, most of which are younger than the state of Israel.
And almost all of them resulted from the division of empires into nation-states. And in every case, there was violent and widespread demographic disruption when these states were created. What distinguishes Israel is that it became a successful state. It's a successful democratic state that managed to build its economy, educate its citizens, and secure civil rights. I mean, all these things that the other states surrounding it failed to achieve, despite arising in exactly the same circumstances. And so you have to keep changing the criteria, clinging to the "No True Scotsman" argument, right? Like saying the reason is people's migration. Well, that was also true of modern Armenia. Most Armenians were in the diaspora before the establishment of the modern nation-state of Armenia. Guess why? Guess why. That can't be something that delegitimizes the state. I mean, and after that it seems like we're, yeah, the idea that, you know, oh, we have to call them, these are white European colonizers. It seems like most people in Israel are not of European origin. Guess why? Guess why? Most of those people were murdered. So, I mean, it seems like you have to keep moving the goalposts constantly. So, in the same context, and to get to what you said, the same thing happens on the right, where they say, how do you explain the existence of this class, let's say, the white working class that hasn't succeeded? Well, it must be because something, you know, it seems almost like it's very difficult to deal with the real problems, right? It's very difficult in these developing countries to deal with the real problems of state corruption, for example. Well, you know, I mean, not because, or, you know, oligarchs seizing the country's natural resources. I mean, you know, there are all these huge problems that are almost impossible, you know, to solve. It's much easier to say that all your problems stem, you know, from the fact that the reason you're not succeeding like others is that these people have some kind of unfair advantage. I think the same thing when you see people, you know, struggling in the United States and feeling that they're, you know, part of this neglected white working class, in cities and towns where industry has dried up. It seems like it's very difficult to solve the problem of bringing manufacturing back. Instead, it's much easier to believe this scapegoat theory, like, oh, those evil Jews are manipulating immigration so I can't get a job to support myself. You're absolutely right that these people aren't, you know, in these positions, but the idea that it's very difficult, when it's hard to solve the real problems, people turn to this. It's extremely easy, and so the people who manipulate them into believing this is their problem are the real winners in this story.
I mean, isn't it annoying, as with any conspiracy theory, that there's a kernel of truth in a lot of it? I mean, it's not pure lies. It's lies contaminated with facts that can be distorted to make them seem to support even the most insane claims associated with that lie. So...
Right. I mean, this applies to any successful movement built on a lie.
Like denying the results of the 2020 election, right? I mean, it was true that people were voting by mail because of COVID, which made voting complicated. Well...
Right. I notice, I mean, this is the first thing that comes to mind. I'm sure there are dozens of things we could talk about in this context, but I noticed when Elon Musk adopted the Great Replacement theory on the X platform, among the many things on his mind, he retweeted a post from a person I believe is an actual neo-Nazi. I mean, a person who was blaming Jews, and this happened in the wake of one of the Islamist atrocities, you know. Maybe the Manchester attack two years ago. And this person was gloating. What did you expect? You know, you opened Europe's doors to the barbarians, and this is what you've been fighting for all this time, and now you're unhappy because you've imported all these antisemites who want to kill you. You know, "you reap what you sow," I mean, this isn't the literal text, but that was the gist of it. And I think Elon's literal retweet was "the actual truth has been spoken" or something like that. You know, he's sending it to a quarter billion people.
Yeah. But the problem is that Jews are disproportionately represented in all kinds of places, like Nobel Prizes and in the places you'd want them to be disproportionately represented. But they're also disproportionately represented among the people who have humanitarian commitments that have led them over the years to believe that things like open borders would be a good thing, right? I mean, I mean, obviously Jews, and in many cases in their living memory, know what it was like when they faced closed borders while fleeing for their lives from the Nazis, right?
Ah, when they were fleeing for their lives from the Nazis. It's fair to say that you can see a lot of Jews in America, disproportionately liberal, disproportionately voting Democratic, who have a bias toward the idea that there aren't, um, there aren't bad immigrants at some level. Then they find it very difficult to think about Islamists mowing down crowds of people on the sidewalk, jumping out of the car just to stab people they didn't kill with their car. Um, and this, this happens on Yom Kippur in, in Manchester. And, uh, I mean, frankly, there's a lot even for this conversation about antisemitism. There are a lot of Jews who are "useful idiots," right, to the point where it's faded away.
But there are a lot of people who are useful idiots.
Yes. I mean, there, there... I don't know who can conduct this poll, but I'm sure that more than 2% of Americans have sided with, uh, you know, the "Islamophobia" brigades, who believe that, um, there's no problem here with Islamism or jihadism, who believe that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is basically the "NAACP" for Muslims, and one doesn't need to look further than that. I mean, the percentage is more than 2% of Jews. I'd bet anything, right? So there's a kernel of truth here. And again, it's a somewhat predictable result of Jews believing that the purpose of being accepted in an open society is to imagine that no culture is better than another, right? So the defense, I mean, a lot of Jews, a lot of Jews from the center-left, believe that defending Western civilization against Islamism is morally suspect, right? And it's easy to see, I mean, the violent reaction from the right differs from the reaction from the left, but the right-wing reaction I saw in Elon's tweet was: "Well, you didn't just overemphasize Nobel Prizes, you overemphasized progressive activism and social justice that got us to this kind of moral stupidity where you can't even acknowledge what you're facing when people mow down members of your people on a sidewalk in Manchester," right? And this is, of course, a right-wing orientation, and you know that everything I just said will make no sense in the Jewish community or any other community. But the further left you go, I just want to give you some of the background that moves me here. I've spoken to liberal rabbis who were completely stunned after October 7th because of the lack of support they received from their former allies in the progressive community, right? I mean, the phone didn't ring. There were no Black or brown friends calling to console them, right? And they were completely bewildered by all this. They had no theory to explain any of it. They were still worried about Islamophobia. And their minds were in complete turmoil, right? And as far as I can tell, they're still in turmoil. I mean, if you go to the far left, you'll find Jews in a state of deep confusion and masochism. And what I saw in Elon's tweet was that all of this was entirely predictable, and if you can't figure out how to discuss this, the uncomfortable truth is that the Nazis will be right about something. You're leaving a vacuum, a space where good people want to talk about this, and I will simply amplify the voices of white supremacists, Nazis, and the crazies who believe in the Great Replacement theory.
Yes, there's a polarization that you're partly identifying, but I would object to your claim that "Jews brought this on themselves." This is a very old and antisemitic idea, which holds that the reason for antisemitism is something Jews do.
Well, no, I was trying to...
If only Jews had that much power, right? That doesn't seem to be the case.
I'd just bet that you know, especially the example you mentioned about Britain, that the Jewish population in Britain is a few hundred thousand.
Um, and also, the process you describe, this kind of tradition that we certainly have in the United States among Jews, where they're perhaps disproportionately aligned with the progressive movement or something like that, has already seen a radical change in Britain over the past ten years with Corbynism. So, I mean, again, Britain has a very small population as you said, I think it's around a few hundred thousand. So, um, the claim that huge waves of Islamic immigration to Britain have something to do with what Jews did is a completely ridiculous claim. I mean, you can't make that claim, but the claim I think you can support is the idea that yes, there's a big tradition in the American Jewish community of aligning with progressives, or certainly Jews tend to vote Democratic, and that's been true for about a hundred years, and as you said, I've seen exactly what you described in corners of the Jewish community, where leaders of liberal Jewish communities were very surprised by the lack of support from people they considered their allies after October 7th, and as you said, those people weren't making the calls. Um, in some cases, it's clearer than that, like the Jewish-Muslim initiatives that completely collapsed.
Um, I'm aware of many of them.
I'm also aware of the opposite, which I can also talk about, regarding interfaith work that has been more successful recently. In diaspora Jewish communities where you're a small minority, you feel you need to participate in coalition politics.
And I mean, this makes sense to me, and this was a logical alliance decades ago, these major institutions are very slow to change, very slow to change. There was a belief in the American Jewish community that America was an exception in Jewish history. And that was a basic premise in the American Jewish community, which is understandable because it's one of the most welcoming places for Jews in their long history.
And I think there was a belief that this stemmed from the liberal traditions of this country. And I think that belief has a lot of validity. And where I see it falling apart is the idea that those liberal traditions exist only on one side of the political spectrum. I don't think so, in the age of polarization we're living in, where we're seeing a realignment of what these parties represent, we're in a two-party system. We have two parties. What do either of these parties mean? I feel the meaning changes every ten minutes, and certainly there's an acceleration of extremism in both parties, and this is confusing not just for the Jewish community, but for many people.
Yes. And the extremism against liberalism exists on both the left and the right.
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So for me, it's not about a "suicide pact." It's about having to vote for a party in this country. Um.
There are a lot of people now facing very bad choices in local House and Senate races for the Jewish community, and for everyone frankly.
And I think this is a symptom of the broader polarization the country is experiencing. It's interesting that people often say that antisemitism is like a "canary in the coal mine," a sign that worse things will happen in society in the future. It's like an early warning signal. I actually believe the opposite. I believe it comes at the end of a series of institutional failures. And what you're seeing before you is the failure of these major political parties. I mean, and institutional failures, which we see in many cases, I mean, in the cases I explore in the book, I mean, certainly universities are one of them. Um, you know, new media, I mean, there are many different sectors where the institutions we trusted are no longer serving us.
Yes. Well, I want to move on to institutions. I definitely want to talk about Harvard. Um, but we haven't talked about anti-Zionism yet. So yes, how can you distinguish between antisemitism and anti-Zionism historically? I mean, I think you'd probably concede that there was a moment in time when one could be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic. But there aren't many people now who can fall into part of that pattern without ending up in the other part. At least, if what I see online is an indicator of that. I mean, how do you think about anti-Zionism now?
So, I look at this through a longer historical lens than many people might. First, look, there has been a huge effort on the internet driven by authoritarian regimes abroad to redefine Zionism, and this has been going on for decades and decades. To clarify for your listeners, Zionism is support for the existence of a Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. That's all. That is literally the meaning.
Nothing to do with any particular Israeli government. And nothing to do with, there's nothing in Zionism that prevents Palestinian independence or dignity. That's all there is to it. And what that actually means in terms of living in 2026 for most Jews around the world, what it means to be a Zionist is that I don't want the state of Israel destroyed.
Frankly, that's all it means.
You know, for me, this idea of anti-Zionism comes from a position of enormous privilege, because you can sit at a dinner party in New York and talk about...
You mean if you're Jewish?
No, certainly if you're Jewish. Yes. This is a position that comes from a position of enormous privilege, for everyone actually, but certainly if you're Jewish, it comes from a position of great privilege. Because you know, you can sit at a dinner party in New York and say, oh, I think Israel should open its borders and let's see what happens. You can't really do that if you're sitting in Israel in a bomb shelter. And you know exactly what happened when the country's borders were opened on October 7th. And that wasn't a big secret before that either. So, to clarify for your listeners, when most Jews use the term "Zionist," they simply mean they don't want the state of Israel destroyed. And that's why it's hard for most Jews to understand how a person who claims to be anti-Zionist isn't antisemitic; just wanting half the world's Jews to die, or allowing for that possibility—which is more than just a possibility, it's an explicit political program for parties like Hamas and Hezbollah and others—doesn't mean you're not antisemitic. I'll set that aside then. But the truth is that there's a very long history of anti-Zionism that actually predates the state of Israel. And you're right that certainly within the Jewish community, yes, anti-Zionism was a pleasant premise for debate in 1920 when there was no state of Israel. But it's not just a premise for debate in 2026 where there is now a state of Israel, where half the world's Jews live.
Right? Right? I mean, it's more like us discussing whether we should have a child, then discovering we have a 70-year-old child. Let's kill that child, right? That's not the same discussion really. So it's very deceptive for people to pretend that it is. That's regarding the Jewish community. But what I think is very important for people to understand is the long history of anti-Zionism, because this is the only thing that distinguishes Zionism from other national movements of its era. First, its success. As I said, in building a truly successful society, which unfortunately doesn't apply to many other countries formed in exactly the same way after World War II.
But the other thing that distinguishes it is this long history of anti-Zionism. The oldest anti-Zionist political text is the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." This text, as you know, is an antisemitic document.
Yes. It's a Russian forgery. An antisemitic document created by the Russian secret police. It was created in response to the World Zionist Congresses that had been meeting over the previous six years. So it was really an objection to the idea that Jews should have any control over their own destiny. And with the rise of the Soviet Union in 1918, we find the Bolsheviks consolidating their power over what would become the Soviet Union. They were fighting a civil war. As part of their effort to win the two million Jews of the former Russian Empire to their side, they adopted an approach where they told this Jewish population: "We are not antisemitic. We are only anti-Zionist." This happened in 1918. That's 30 years before the establishment of the state of Israel. Presumably it's not about Netanyahu. So you have this, and of course these people say: "Oh, we're not antisemitic. We're only anti-Zionist." Of course, they're Marxists. And they're also anti-religion. So what they're saying is we love Jews. But you can't practice Judaism or study Hebrew or be a Zionist. And basically, this effectively destroyed every Jewish institution in the Soviet Union, and then the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union for decades. And this continued later. The Soviets exported this to their client states in the developing world. And anti-Zionism as an ideology had the result of emptying the remaining countries with Jewish populations of their Jews. Every country that adopted anti-Zionism as an official state ideology in the twentieth century destroyed its Jewish population, either in the way the Soviet Union did by persecuting and discriminating against and suppressing and silencing anyone who opposed it.
Or the way every country in the Middle East and North Africa that became anti-Zionist did it, for example, Baghdad in the 1940s was 30% Jewish, yes, more than New York.
Yes, more than New York. Certainly. Tripoli was 25% Jewish. New York is not 25% Jewish today. In 1940, Tripoli in Libya. Tripoli in Libya was 25% Jewish.
Aleppo in Syria was 20% Jewish. Cairo was 15% Jewish. How many Jews live in those countries and cities today?
How many of those Jews have a right of return today? Who cares about that? Is there...
Zero? Is there a UN refugee committee concerned about that?
Right. That's what's interesting, right? I mean, and you raise another point, there's a lot we could talk about regarding the United Nations.
Um, yes, I mean, these were people, in many cases these were communities that predated even Islam. I mean, these were ancient Jewish communities that had been there for thousands of years and suffered a lot of persecution during those thousands of years. And these countries adopted anti-Zionist ideology. They all destroyed their Jewish populations, completely destroyed them. And I think I mean the same thing happened in Poland in 1968. There was an anti-Zionist campaign in Poland...
Where the government officially announced that we are not anti-Semitic, we are just anti-Zionist. Fifty thousand Polish Jews lost their jobs or were expelled from society.
I mean, how many Polish Jews were there left after the Holocaust, right? I mean, we succeeded in getting rid of who was there.
Yes, it was more than 90 percent.
So, yeah, I mean, this and anti-Zionism resembles most anti-Semitism campaigns. It's something authoritarian regimes adopt to distract their peoples from their inability to solve their own problems. But, I mean, you see this happen over and over again. And I mean, this is the entire history of the 20th century. For this reason, Jews, as you know, the Jewish population is very small. It has not yet recovered from the Holocaust.
This is unbelievable. There are still fewer Jews on earth compared to 1939.
Yes, I think we are within, as you know, a million or two of 1939 levels.
Right. Right. And also that Jews used to live in all these different countries. I mean, now the Jewish presence has shrunk to, as you know, there are about five countries on earth where you can live as a Jew and have a supportive community and, as you know, not have to live inside a fortress.
