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Note the editor: The following column was first published in City magazine.
In 1991, a motorcycle that passed the Jewish rabbinus cruised Brooklyn’s Crown Heights Neighborhood. After separating himself from the group, one of the cars lit the red light and collided with another vehicle, which switched to the curb and hit two black children, leaving one injured and the other. For several hours, the neighborhood broke out in the riots, and the mobs of black residents were targeting Jewish institutions. Early the next morning, a group of young blacks stabbed and beat up a Jewish graduate student until his death.
As the tensions escalated, the Hustler Al Sharpton racetrack organized protests at the scene, showing Jews as nasty “Diamond Diamond Diamines” responsible for the global exploitation of blacks. Another round of robbery, vandalism and violence followed.
Flash forward to the present. Hamas started October 7, 2023, a terrorist campaign Against Israel and created fertile soil for another propaganda war. In the United States, leftist academics took the moment to bring together support for the “decolonization” of Israel, and in the digital empire, a new anti -Semitism raised its head. Several influential internet commentators-Kanye West, Candace Owens and Andrew Tate-used attention around October 7 to push the conspiracy theories, and especially in West’s case, direct anti-Semitism, on the subcasties and platforms of social media, from the “right wing” perspective.
Stop talking, start teaching: New York has to fight to end anti -Semitism in our schools
Two episodes provide a fascinating point of comparison. Anti -Semitism is an ancient troubleBut throughout history, a different form is needed, depending on the culture, language and technology of the moment. In today’s case, we see a re -anti -Semitism that has inserted itself and immortalized himself in Cyberspace. In short, Cioti Crown Heights are digitized.
Rev. Al Sharpton welcomes the then Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., To the podium before addressing after a re-election meeting of Sharpton’s national action network in Kennedy’s room for Kaukus at the Senate of the Senate of Russell at Capitol Hill on November 13, 2018 in Washington, DC (Chip Somodeville/Getty Images)
The first thing to understand is that Sharpton’s activism was a form of ethnic meat policy and blood adapted to the television era. His narrative at the Crown Heights was built on a certain complaint against certain people, in a particular neighborhood. He created his power on the left trop: that the Jews were oppressed by poor blacks and that the government had favored “white an intruder[s]”Through the domestic minorities. The desired outcome of Sharpton was tangible: he sought the driver’s prison and, wider, cash for his organization, which acted like a mafia racket.
New anti -Semitism has bypassed a different turn. The leaders of this movement are not political activists, but “influences on social media” who have constructed a narrative based not on the left -wing, oppressed/oppressed frames, but on the widespread, right -wrapped conspiracy theory. The Jews, in the storytelling of these influences, took control of the American media, flooded the society with pornography and organized blackmail rings related to sex to ensure the support of Israel.
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The tenor of this campaign is also new. While Sharpton sought to convey a sense of serious anger, right-wing influencers accepted a separate, ironic, schizoid tone of postmodern discurs tags. When Kanye West It advertises a swastika T -shirt, this is not because it signals the support of an organized neo -Nazi movement, but because it symbolizes a transgression and is a bait for a digital censorship, which would allow him to play the martyr. (WEST’s problematic mental state should not be discounted as a factor.) Online, the narrative is spreading to left-wing networks, which they consider useful for undermining support for Israel, and through right-wing nets, which they believe is useful for the construction of the audience.
File – Kanye West participates in Givenchy Womenwear Spring/Summer 2023 as part of the Paris Fashion Week, October 02, 2022 in Paris, France. (Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
The ironic tone, of course, does not betray the west and its followers. Neither does that mean that their narratives will be contained in the digital empire. American Jews are rightly afraid that this postmodern anti -Semitism will spill into a real world and result in violence, as it has done in Europe And with the synagogue of a wooden life Shooting in Pittsburgh. The dynamics of such violence also reflect the complexity of a new digital culture. Unlike Crown Heights, where Sharpton’s rhetoric directly mobilized the mafia, a relationship between internet discourse and a work of decentralized, Memet violence is often ambiguous.
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There is also a question Cui Bono. The simple answer is that the Jews provide appropriate sacrificial goat: Kanye West can be guilty of a “Jewish doctor” for relegation associated with his bipolar disorder; Andrew Tate can transfer responsibility to “Matrix“For its various criminal proceedings. But there is also another response that reproduces the Sharpton model: a job. The Internet rewards scandal, shock and virtue and conspiracy theories enjoy growing demand in the market. Candace Owens has never been more popular, turning any anger and accusations into new views, followers, subscribers and rematch.
This problem has no easy answer – it is certainly not a digital censorship or a criminalization of speech. Better approach includes patience: push back to anti -Semitic narratives and build an institution capable and attract attention and implement the limits of decency. Anti -Semitic ideologies could be lucrative in digital economyBut they are poisons in the political empire. They should be rejected by their traders, just as Sharpton rejected before the generation.
