This Is How It Happens
The ongoing surge in antisemitism was both predictable and predicted.
Years ago, I was talking to my girlfriend at the time about some friends of ours who’d accidentally gotten pregnant and were freaking out because they weren’t married. These friends were of the evangelical bent and they’d been trying to save sex until marriage but you know how that goes. “They only did it one time” I told my girlfriend mournfully. She kind of snorted in response. “Well yeah,” she said. “That’s how it happens.”
Fair enough. Anyone who’s been in the heat of the moment there can find all sorts of reasons that this little unprotected rumble in the sheets won’t end in pregnancy. Pregnancy is what happens to other people. People who aren’t careful. People who don’t know any better. It won’t happen to us, here, now, right? But let the nigh-entirety of human history speak for itself: That’s how it happens.
I thought about this while reading Robert Downan’s report on rising antisemitism in the state of Texas. Following the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, antisemitic violence has continued to surge across the U.S. to a now four-decade high. In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League logged 2,717 anti-Jewish incidents nationwide, representing a 34 percent increase since 2020 and the highest number since the group started tracking this stuff. The country is on track to outpace that number this year.
Downan’s a great reporter, and I highly recommend reading his whole piece for a better understanding on how this antisemitism spike is the natural and expected culmination of related surges in things like white nationalism, Christian Nationalism, QAnon conspiracies and fascist sympathies. Even in very mainstream news outlets, the growing tolerance of anti-immigration sentiment and “Great Replacement Theory” voices can be very directly linked to a rise in antisemitism. Words like “globalists” or “cabal” might pass for “just asking questions” type talk on CNN, but you don’t have to be an expert in World War II history to recognize those particular dog whistles.
What’s striking and very sad about the report is how painfully predictable and predicted all this was. At every step of the way over the last few years, you had experts and historians saying that the train track we are on is headed for a cliff. This is history repeating itself. We are following a well-researched and well-understood pattern. The road we’re on has been trod many, many times over the course of history, and it ends at the most hideous place there is. We know all this. We can clearly see the direction we’re headed. We just can’t seem to get off the tracks.
From QAnon to the Stop the Steal rallies to the Proud Boys, things that looked like fringe freakshows have proved very resilient in this current landscape, worming their way into mainstream thought. Neo-Nazi weirdo Nick Fuentes had dinner with the former and possibly future President. The most-watched cable news host in the country had a guest on to suggest the victims in Colorado Springs’ Club Q shooting had it coming. And Kanye …what can you even say about Kanye.
And we allowed all this stuff to happen right under our nose. In many cases, we failed to take it seriously and dismissed expert warnings as feckless fearmongering. In other cases, we excused it because we needed some more numbers on our side in the culture war and tolerated ill-advised alliances with toxic ideological groups. And in some cases, we just decided to hear these guys out because something, something “free speech.” And at each turn, we gave evil a little more leverage to thrive. “Never, ever, period” became “well, it’s complicated” and finally “yes, again, no matter what.”
And so now, one of the world’s dozen or so biggest pop stars is praising Hitler even as the presumptive nominee for the presidency in 2024 dines with open Neo-Nazis. I can’t help but note that both Trump and Kanye were on a fast track to irrelevance before they found some fresh wind in their sails by pivoting to Christian audiences.
What a grievous mess. What a preventable state of affairs. The easy temptation is to believe that such things could never happen in America. But a casual read of even America’s recent history should make it clear that we are very vulnerable to the sort of fascist ideologies that are mounting against us. From Japanese internment camps to Indigenous reservations to the Patriot Act to Guantanamo Bay to, of course, our lengthy history of anti-Black oppression, America has not been granted any sort of special protection against state-sanctioned ethnocentrism and violence against our own.
“This only happens in other countries.” No, it doesn’t. “We are being careful.” No, we aren’t. “We know better.” No, we don’t. “It won’t happen to us, here, now, right?” It is. That’s how it happens.
In anticipation of Scorsese’s next movie, I’ve been reading David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon and it’s a pretty fascinating look not just at a chilling spate of Indigenous murders across Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s, but the evolution of American law. Go get ‘em, Marty.
I’m in my Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds era. Join me!
Was really moved by this essay about Texas by Elizabeth Bruenig (who I still like! Be mad!).