Twitter hashtag #firstantisemiticexperience reveals harrowing stories
Swastikas. Hate speech. Bullying. Threats.
As the year 2019 kicks off, Twitter users around the globe are showing that antisemitic behavior is not something relegated to history books. Using the hashtag #firstantisemiticexperience, people have been sharing stories of their first exposure to antisemitic taunting and abuse.
The hashtag appears to have been started by Rabbi Zvi Solomons, the spiritual leader of the Jewish Community of the Berkshire synagogue in Reading, England.
On Monday morning, Solomons posted the hashtag, asking his followers to use it – allowing it to become a link on Twitter showing tweets from all those who include it – and share their own experiences.
And the stories began to pour in.
Carly Pildis, a Tablet Magazine writer and nonprofit professional, said that her first antisemitic experience “was when I was 13 and someone drew a swastika on my synagogue.”
Annika Rothstein, a political adviser and activist from Sweden, said hers “was in 7th grade; 6 neo-nazis at school stood next to my locker saying I should be turned into soap like ‘the others.’ For three years they tormented me to the point where I ended up shaving off my big, curly hair, hoping to hide my ‘Jewishness.’”
The New York Times Whitewashes Voltaire and ‘The Dark Enlightenment’
Historians of antisemitism have yet to fully explain why great satirists from the Roman Juvenal to Voltaire to Gore Vidal hated Jews and the Jewish religion.12 CAMERA Accomplishments in 2018
Gore Vidal’s 2012 obituaries, including a front-page New York Times tribute to the “prolific, elegant, acerbic writer,” generally ignored his hatred of Judaism and Jews, often dismissing it as “anti-Zionism.” After all, his life-long companion was Jewish — Howard Austen, an advertising executive.
Vidal’s solution to the antisemitism that his partner faced in the advertising industry was for him to change his name from “Auster” to “Austen.” He apparently believed that if others took his advice, and abandoned particularism for assimilation by changing names, that would go a long way toward solving the embarrassment of Jew hatred.
But Vidal’s disdain went much deeper than the embarrassing last names, accents, and mannerisms. Vidal loathed The New York Times as not only “homophobic,” but for being unwilling to sell advertising space to Nasser’s Egypt, while Commentary was “the Pravda of our Israeli Fifth Column.” Other literary celebrities like Capote and Mailer were contemptible, but worse were Bellow, Malamud, and Roth — Jewish-American writers unable “to put themselves into gentile skins — much less foreskins.”
Israel’s American supporters like Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz should be forced to register with the Justice Department as agents of a foreign power, Vidal claimed. And America — “a nation that worships psychopaths” — was “a corrupt society” made up of “ongoing hustlers.” About the country of which Vidal the historical novelist claimed to be “the biographer,” he warned: “We must never underestimate the essential bigotry of the white majority in the United States.”
What is clear is that Hertzberg was correct that Voltaire “opened the door” to the horrors of the 20th century. It is also true that Vidal — who as a young man backed the isolationist “America First” Movement that sought to appease Hitler — did not really try to close the door to intolerance. The Times has forgotten Hertzberg’s 1990 warning in its own columns about Voltaire, just as it ignores the antisemitism of so many bigots masquerading as “anti-Zionists” today.
Voltaire’s motto was “Écrasez l’infâme” — by which he meant that all organized religion, not just infamous prejudices, should be eradicated. Be careful whom you glorify as you seek to slay dragons.
- CAMERA broke last year’s record of 185 media corrections. We prompted 206 corrections in US, UK, Spanish-language, Hebrew and Arabic publications.
- CAMERA Arabic launched its Arabic website, the first media-monitoring body to monitor Arabic-language reports from Western media outlets, ensuring accurate coverage of Israel and the Middle East and promoting adherence to professional journalistic standards.
- CAMERA’s UK Media Watch set a record number of media corrections this year, prompting 51 corrections from publications such as The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, Times of London, The Financial Times, The Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Irish News and Irish Examiner.
- CAMERA ran hundreds of student workshops and events at 86 colleges and universities, including Ivy League schools, as well as Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of London.
- CAMERA’s Spanish department launched a new college campus program – “CAMERA on Campus Latinos for Israel” – bringing a pro-Israel message to Spanish-speaking students across the world.