Thursday, July 30, 2020
From Ian:
Can’t get cancelled for anti-Semitism, but can for philosemitism
Can’t get cancelled for anti-Semitism, but can for philosemitism
The organizations conducting their unauthorized battles against anti-Semitism have conflated prejudice with violence. They have no clue how to fight the former and no interest in fighting the latter.The Voice must apologise for its disastrous interview with Wiley that failed to distinguish between reporting on antisemitism and enabling it
Prejudice isn’t fought with Holocaust museum tours, but with dignity. The first line of defense against it is having enough self-respect not to offer atonement to bigots who have nothing but contempt for you. Unfortunately, too many Jews on the left and the right can be counted on to launch into militant defenses, asked or unasked, of bigots on their side and to do so by leveraging their own status as Jews.
And too many organizations are happy to whitewash trendy bigots while ignoring uncool supporters.
What the fight against anti-Semitism really needs is the ability to separate class anxieties about acceptance from real threats. And that won’t be done by organizations like the ADL, whose class anxieties have transformed it into a generic leftist advocacy group with little interest in Jewish issues, or the rest of its organizational cohort whose priority is winning the acceptance of the urban upper class.
And that acceptance is premised on embracing the left-wing politics and anti-Semitism of that class. That’s how fighting anti-Semitism to mute class anxieties perversely turns into embracing antisemitism.
Distinguishing between class anxieties and real threats doesn’t require futile efforts to educate celebrities who like Farrakhan with Holocaust museum tours, but to educate Jews about dignity and self-respect. People who are less worried about acceptance by those it’s not worth being accepted by are better able to deal with real threats to their physical existence instead of threats to their feelings.
Cancel culture is the product of people who don’t have actual problems and spend all their time worrying about their feelings. Jews do have actual problems, including synagogue attacks by black nationalists and alt-right gunmen, Iranian nukes and the harassment of Jewish students on campus.
When we focus on real-world attacks, then the real problems of anti-Semitism also come into focus.
A people possessing its own dignity is able to stop chasing the affections of its enemies, whether in the Middle East or closer to home, and accept the affection of its friends even if they aren’t trendy enough.
The Voice newspaper must apologise for its disastrous interview with Wiley that failed to distinguish between reporting on antisemitism and enabling it.Wiley gives incendiary interviews to Sky News and The Voice Online, which depressingly suggests that some of Wiley’s views “are the great unsaid outside of the black community”
In his interview, Wiley doubled down on his previous social media comments, describing Jews as rich exploiters and slavers, using classic antisemitic tropes and generalising about an entire ethnic group following an apparent dispute with his management team.
But rather than challenge Wiley’s views, the interviewer, Joel Campbell, suggested that there might be ‘salient’ points in Wiley’s racist ranting and seemed to affirm the idea that the Jewish community has a ‘stranglehold’ on the black community. The article also failed convincingly to dispute Wiley’s unfounded and antisemitic claims that Jews are rich exploiters and slavers.
The article’s commentary was also unacceptable. “There is no way to put this all in one nutshell but the hypothesis that you need to get a Jewish lawyer in order to progress in the music business may be a complete fallacy (I haven’t done the numbers, looking into the correlation in respect of who is and isn’t successful with or without one), but yet it remains,” Campbell wrote, adding: “I’ve never seen anyone Jewish refute or confirm this (maybe there was never a need felt to do so), but maybe, it’s a discussion that needs to be had?”
The notion that artists from the black community require a Jewish lawyer to advance is not “a discussion that needs to be had”. If anything, a discussion needs to be had about how The Voice could possibly have published such a disastrous article about such a sensitive topic. There is a difference between reporting on Wiley’s antisemitism and enabling and amplifying it. The Voice’s article was very much on the wrong side of that line.
Wiley had spent the last several days spewing antisemitic bile on social media before being locked out of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following a global #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign and mass 48-hour social media boycott. Wiley’s comments were condemned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, politicians from across parties, celebrities and many others.
The antisemitic grime artist Wiley has given incendiary interviews to Sky News and The Voice Online.Reinforcing his views, Wiley opens new Instagram account and begins uploading disturbing videos to 250,000 followers on YouTube, as CAA asks Facebook and Google to take him off air
Wiley has spent the last several days spewing antisemitic bile on social media before being locked out of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following a global #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign and mass 48-hour social media boycott, in which Campaign Against Antisemitism participated.
Wiley’s comments were condemned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, politicians from across parties, celebrities and many others.
In his interviews, Wiley doubled down on his previous comments, describing Jews as rich exploiters and slavers, using classic antisemitic tropes and generalising about an entire ethnic group following an apparent dispute with his management team. Nevertheless, the intensity of Wiley’s vitriol and some of the conspiracy theories he espoused indicate that these are longstanding beliefs that have incubated over time, rather than comments arising from the moment.
In a depressing passage in The Voice Online article, the interviewer explained that he had set out “to find out what had triggered [Wiley’s] outburst and why he would make such sweeping generalisations against a community of people in such a scathing manner. These questions were not being posed from an ignorant perspective, some of the views espoused by Wiley are the great unsaid outside of the black community.”
The notion that Wiley’s views may be widespread in some communities is deeply concerning.
The writer went on to say: “Putting anything remotely near considered antisemitic to one side of course, in fact out the window in the bin, not too many seem prepared to vocalise their consternation for some of the recurring themes Wiley believes is the stranglehold one community seems to have over another in particular relation but not confined to, the music business.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Online Monitoring and Investigations Unit is aware that Wiley, who has was finally banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following worldwide outrage, is now uploading disturbing videos to a small Instagram account that appears to be new, and a YouTube channel with almost 250,000 followers.
The videos continue in the same vein as his previous videos and his recent interviews with Sky News and The Voice, a newspaper for the black community, in which he reaffirmed his belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories and bigoted stereotypes about Jews.
For example, in one of the new videos, Wiley demands that an unspecified “you”, which appears from the context to refer to Jews in general, try taking his passport away so that Wiley can see quite how much power Jews have.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Facebook and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube, have been made aware of Wiley’s latest attempts to use their platforms to broadcast his appalling views. We have discussed this with them and asked that they urgently close down his remaining accounts. Wiley seems to be on a quest to discredit himself even further and to persuade his audience to hate Jews and even to go to ‘war’ with Jews. His musical career is undoubtedly over, but we are concerned that his fans could be inspired to act on his hateful broadcasts. That is why we have asked social networks to take him off air, and reported Wiley to the police and intend to privately prosecute him should the authorities refuse to act.”
