Beware the Blindspot
Let’s not allow Israel to divide us as race did in 2020
I’m not great at keeping quiet.
The last time I didn’t keep quiet was in 2020. I spent two years warning the progressive left about the blind spot it had when it came to racial justice.
Yes, there is racism, I wrote. And yes, we need to end it. But guys, you’re not seeing that the ways you’re trying to end it are having the exact opposite effect you think they’re having. You’re not seeing that you’re alienating people — including your own — and if you don’t pause and regroup it’s going to result in a serious smackdown to Democrats.
Back then, I had conversations with many on the left and the right, who could clearly see, as I did, that progressives’ headlong rush to blow up institutions, tear down statues, police words, and defund the police would come back to bite them. We simply could not understand how they failed to see it themselves.
Now some of those same people, who in 2020 had 20/20 on the progressives’ blind spot have developed one of their own.
On Israel.
I won’t lie. I’m a little scared to point this out. Five years later, I still hear a dear friend’s voice in my head asking me, “What, are you All Lives Matter?” (Translation: “What, are you racist?”) The question I fear now is, “What, are you pro-Palestine?” (Translation: “What, are you pro-terrorism?”)
No, I’m not racist, and no I’m not pro-terrorism. I’m also neither anti-white nor anti-Israel. (But I am anti-Red Sox and pro-Yankees). I’m simply pointing out how important it is to have an unobstructed view on all issues, especially those you’re most invested in.
Allow me to explain…
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered. People were rightly outraged, fed-up, gutted. They marched in the street. They demanded justice and reform. We were with them on this… until things went too far.
What does that mean?
Well, for starters…
Remember, my clear-eyed friends, how stunned we were by the droves who swallowed this lady’s horseshit whole and started reshaping their worldview based on it?
Remember how we pulled (or considered pulling) our kids out of their schools because their administrators were caving to very small factions with very loud voices and flawed, divisive, and counterproductive ideas?
Remember how we knew that making white kids hate themselves for being white was going to backfire bigtime?
Remember how we cautioned that what was happening on campuses, in newsrooms, and in boardrooms — this swift and misguided remaking — wasn’t what the majority of people wanted.
The majority, we said, was staying silent out of fear. They’d been cowed into going along to get along. But they didn’t dig the new anti-racist ideological excess. They weren’t on board with the orthodoxy.
Remember how we warned there would be devastating unintended consequences to the far-left not seeing what it was sowing? Well…
And it wasn’t just white, blue-collar evangelicals who gave rise to Trump 2.0. It was freaking everybody. He gained ground among all voters in 49 states and Washington, D.C. He did better than in 2020 among Black voters, Latino voters, Asian voters, and young voters.
There was another group that surprised me by going MAGA: a not-small number of my formerly clear-eyed Jewish friends.
I’m not talking about the Orthodox or extreme Zionists, I’m talking about reform, secular, cultural-but-not-devout Jews. Can I say for sure they voted for Trump? No. But there is definitely, as the kids say, a vibe shift.
For the past decade, they’d called Trump a moron, an asshole, a nutjob, a danger. But now, suddenly, they were cheering for this:
This surveillance video shows Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk being grabbed off the street by immigration officials. Apparently, it was because of an opinion piece she’d written last year for the school’s student newspaper, criticizing its response to the war in Gaza and demanding it divest from ties to Israel. She is currently being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana. She has not been charged with or accused of any crime.
According to NBC News, as of last week, the State Department had revoked at least 300 student visas at schools including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, and the University of Michigan, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students, “whose main transgression seems to be activism”.
Wait — so why are a not-small number of Jews finding relief in Trump’s KGB-style tactics? Giving them 👍 👏 🙏 on Insta?
What changed?
On October 7, 2023, Hamas perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history, murdering 1,200 civilians and taking 251 men, women, and children hostage. People were rightly outraged, fed-up, gutted. They marched in the street. They demanded justice and reform. We were with them on it… until things went too far.
Yes, there is antisemitism. And yes, we need to end it. But guys, you’re not seeing that the ways you’re trying to end it are having the exact opposite effect you think they’re having. You’re not seeing that you’re alienating people — including your own — and if you don’t pause and regroup it’s going to result in… possibly the end of American democracy as we know it.
I’m sure readers will roll their eyes (or worse) at me the same way they did in 2020 when I expressed reservations about the anti-racist movement. But I, along with those who have remained clear-eyed on this, can see what’s coming — and it ain’t good.
So I implore you, don’t let emotion cloud your good judgment as the current administration’s version of cancel culture defies due process in ways that play to your identity group.
Don’t let your one issue cause you to turn a blind eye to the illiberalism or illegality you used to oppose. And most important, don’t get played by Donnie T. the way you saw so many get played by Robin D.
Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, warned about this in his April 7 piece for The New York Times called “Trump is selling Jews a Dangerous Lie,” in which he writes, “Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people… Jews who applaud the administration’s crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril.”
We let a blind spot divide us five years ago: (One side: You’re a freaking racist! Other side: No, I’m not! You got brainwashed by Ibram X. Kendi!) And we’re letting a blind spot divide us again. (One side: You’re a freaking Hamas supporter! Other side: No, I’m not! You’re putting an asterisk on the Constitution to accommodate your religious beliefs!)
What happened on October 7th was unspeakably horrific and not in any way justifiable. I looked at Columbia University’s report on antisemitism, and those in this country who are harrassing Jews on campus, or anywhere, absolutely should be stopped.
But if you called for nuance on combatting racism, you must also call for it on combatting antisemitism.
You must discern between the few who are truly evil and the many who are protesting because they sincerely want to see an end to bloodshed.
You must differentiate between someone who wrote an opinion piece you you don’t like and someone who poses a genuine threat to national security.
You must recognize when an ally is actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If you read “White Fragility” and asked, “Does this chick really believe this crap about race, or is she just using white guilt to make a mint?” Then you should ask the same about Trump and antisemitism. “Does this bozo really care about Jews or is he just using Jewish outrage (and dollars) to Trojan horse his bonkers agenda into every institution in the country?”
If someone breaks the law, that’s one thing. Arrest them, charge them with a crime, and let due process play out. But now we’re booting people for having opinions we don’t like? High-fiving over the government blowing off the Bill of Rights?
If you were alarmed five years ago when you saw people being ousted and ostracized for not falling in line with, or for simply questioning, the anti-racist orthodoxy, these secret police-type moves should alarm you a thousand times more.
What do you think is going to happen when (please, no, but it could) AOC’s in the White House and doesn’t like your kid’s pro-Israel op-ed or your kid’s participation in a pro-Israel rally? Will you be cool with her sending your precious Jaden, Aiden, or Braden to a black site?
If you’re not familiar with the Skokie trial or don’t recall it, now’s a good time for a refresher. I won’t give away the ending, but in 1977 a Jewish lawyer for the ACLU defended in court the rights of Nazis to hold a demonstration in a village just outside of Chicago that was nearly half Jewish and home to hundreds of Holocaust survivors because, as he said, “We believe in the principles of the First Amendment. End of discussion.”
The word “woke” has become tired, but I’m pulling it out because it’s relevant. On a recent episode of The Fifth Column podcast, host Matt Welch said, “We are absolutely replacing woke anti-due process with anti-woke anti-due process.”
What he means is — five years ago we saw progressives excusing illiberalism in the name of fighting racism and now we’re seeing Jews excusing fascism in the name of fighting antisemitism.
“If there is a single person who is bounced out of the country… without any due process that should chill you to the fucking bone,” Welch said. “That is going to be a cycle of recrimination and reprisals back and forth until death do us part. This is the undermining of basic American ideals.”
In Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of King Lear”, Gloucester expresses his despair at the chaotic state of the kingdom saying, “’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.”
I got down my copy from 11th grade to factcheck that quote.
It’s there along with a scrawled note in the upper-right margin that I believe says, “perspective.”
The word “perspective” derives from the Latin perspicere, meaning literally “to look through” or figuratively “to see clearly”.
So take a step back, Jack, and check your vision. Make sure you’re not being a hypocrite, not putting “your people” in some special category, and are always down with due process. There can be no “yeah, buts”. No double-standard. No exceptions.
End of discussion.
