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Josh’s Soap Box: Twitter & Antisemitism · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Okay, humans. Welcome to my soapbox. A little bit of free extra content for you.
• 0:08
  My thoughts about some things that are going on this week.
• 0:11
  There's a lot of who hiring about Elon. Ah, it's the death of Twitter, apparently.
• 0:16
  It's just going to become a hate-filled place for neo-nazis. Now,
• 0:20
  cheap people get prematurely agitated about things. I mean, give the guy three seconds.
• 0:26
  Oh, I'm as skeptical as anyone that it's going to be a change for the better.
• 0:30
  But can we give him a second? He might actually know something more than we do about what he's planning.
• 0:36
  Or he may not, but I'm certainly withholding judgment.
• 0:40
  Nonetheless, the climate into which this Twitter take over by Elon is happening is not ideal in terms of hate speech.
• 0:50
  The fear being that he's going to allow more of it on the platform and be more expansive in his idea of free speech.
• 0:58
  Then the people running social media platforms have been in trying to weed out hate speech.
• 1:06
  And the climate's particularly tender at the moment because of Kanye.
• 1:13
  Kanye has brought forth in my mind, and I think many people's minds, this lurking dark background issue of anti-semitism.
• 1:25
  And on my, I suppose first foray into this little format of just sort of ear vomiting my thoughts into your brain.
• 1:36
  I was dismissive about Kanye. I was saying, well, look, this is obviously mental health issue. You can't say hate speech blah blah blah.
• 1:43
  And when I stopped recording that and when we released it, I suddenly felt like there was an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle that I hadn't addressed that I would like to, which is anti-semitism.
• 2:02
  I've never had to think much about anti-semitism in my life. And what a privilege it is to be able to say that my paternal grandparents were Holocaust not survivors.
• 2:13
  They were never in a concentration camp, but they spent their lives being hunted around Europe by the Nazis.
• 2:20
  And eventually fled to Switzerland where my dad was born during the war in a refugee camp and bounced around between orphanages in Paris and a foster family in Switzerland until he was eight years old when they got on a boat and they came to Australia.
• 2:35
  There were a whole fleet of ships at the French port where they were boarding. And my grandmother, who was an uneducated tailor from Poland, they fled in 1938 just before the Nazis invaded and to spend most of the war in occupied France.
• 2:53
  There were boats going to Canada and the United States and Australia. And she didn't know much about geography. So she just asked the person who was working at the boats who was taking down the names of the refugees.
• 3:06
  When she was asked where she wanted to go, the US Canada or Australia, she said, which ones further away from here?
• 3:13
  If I am Australian instead of American or Canadian. And as a result of being a descendant of refugees, I've always been very strong in my support for refugees. I've always argued that the refugees from Syria, for example, should be accepted in and we should just deal with the consequences.
• 3:32
  I've never felt like we should hold people out or keep them from moving here just because we suspect that they might be the wrong kind of people.
• 3:42
  I think liberal democracies are robust enough to cope with large influxes of the neediest people in the world.
• 3:49
  And that extends to my attitude towards Palestinians. I've been called a self-hating Jew and a betrayer of Israel for simply articulating the point that it's unsustainable and unethical to hold effectively in perpetuity an entire people in squalid what a functionally open air refugee camps forever.
• 4:13
  That being said, you can't set the blame completely on Israel and I think there is a one-sidedness and a blink of an eye thinking about Israel in the West.
• 4:23
  If you're on the left, then you probably inherit a post-colonial guilt and a tendency to side with the oppressed brown-skinned person over the stroppy sort of authoritarian seeming white colonizer.
• 4:44
  That narrative is very profound for us because of the English Empire and because of our colonial history in Australia and the United States, but it is complicated.
• 4:56
  I mean, for many, many decades, the Israelis wanted an accommodation with the Palestinians and the Palestinians and Arab states absolutely refused.
• 5:05
  The goal was and still is in the charter of Hamas that rules Gaza to eliminate Israel altogether and drive the Jews into the sea.
• 5:15
  What would become of the Jews who did not willingly go into the sea is another question.
• 5:21
  You know, in 1960, immediately after the foundation of Israel, they were invaded from all sides and again in 1967 invaded from all sides and the general reason the state still exists is because they were strong enough to fight back, not because of any accommodation.
• 5:39
  And then the Oslo Accords were an occasion in which Israel really, really did try and succeed in creating peace.
• 5:49
  In 1993, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, and President Clinton signed on September 13, a declaration of principles of Palestinian self-rule that was called the Oslo Accords.
• 6:04
  And then the Israeli Prime Minister was assassinated by right wing Nutter and that all fell apart.
• 6:12
  But Clinton came back for another bite and the Israelis came back for another bite in the year 2000 and again put together a really comprehensive peace plan on the 18th of July in 2000.
• 6:26
  Bill Clinton had Yasser Arafat right there in Washington and he read out the document that was endorsed in advance by Prime Minister Barak of Israel, outlining the main points of a future settlement.
• 6:39
  They were going to have a demilitarized Palestinian state on 92% of the West Bank, give back 100% of the Gaza Strip, give them territorial compensation for Palestinians from pre-1967 Israeli territory.
• 6:53
  Dismantle most of the settlements, which is the big stumbling block now, and the concentration of the bulk of settlers inside the 8% of the West Bank that had been annexed by Israel, they would put a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
• 7:09
  Some Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would become sovereign Palestinian territory, others would enjoy functional autonomy, they'd give Palestinians sovereignty over half of the old city of Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian quarters, and custodianship over the temple mount.
• 7:24
  They'd return refugees to the prospective Palestinian state, but without a right of return to Israel proper otherwise Israel would be swamped.
• 7:33
  And they planned to organize the international community a massive aid program to facilitate the rehabilitation of refugees.
• 7:42
  And Yasser Arafat walked away from it.
• 7:47
  And Clinton was enraged, he banged on the table and said you are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.
• 7:54
  Or he probably said it more like you are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.
• 8:00
  You're welcome for that fantastic Bill Clinton impersonation.
• 8:04
  Subsequently Arafat said, or Palestinian observers said, look, he thought he'd come back, he thought he'd get a better deal.
• 8:11
  Say no, then you come back, it's like negotiating for a used car, you come back, you kick the ties, you come back with a better deal.
• 8:18
  Come on.
• 8:20
  This was just months away from the end of Clinton's presidency. This was in July of 2000.
• 8:27
  So he was on his way out the door and then that ended and certainly over the past two decades Israel has become much more intransigent and I've just been endlessly frustrated and heartbroken by the lack of progress and the lack of possibility for Palestinian self-determination.
• 8:45
  But I think we sometimes allow our frustrations with Israel to cloud our relationship with the Jews, the Jewish people.
• 8:53
  This tiny, tiny, tiny and very successful group of people who are not just a religion but also an ethnicity, scattered all over the world, constantly hounded throughout history, endlessly persecuted wherever they were.
• 9:10
  And in my lifetime that has seemed like a sort of relic of the past, but it's increasingly not.
• 9:17
  It's coming back.
• 9:20
  I see it in my Twitter feed.
• 9:24
  I was tweeting something about, it was something to do with COVID and the pandemic and I always get a lot of pushback from mainly American right wingers whenever I say anything that is pro vaccine.
• 9:37
  And someone recently chimed in and said your ancestors would be ashamed of you because supposedly I'm advocating for some sort of authoritarianism because I want governments to be able to handle public health emergencies rather than us all living our libertarian lives.
• 9:57
  And then the person the same person came back the next day with a screenshot of an old tweet of mine that was in support of Syrian refugees making the point that my grandmother had come as a Jewish refugee to Australia.
• 10:09
  And this person screenshot of that and said correction your ancestors would be perfectly proud of you.
• 10:17
  Implying that because my ancestors were Jews, they'd be proud of my latent attempt to undermine Western civilization and democracy.
• 10:28
  So the Jews are always conniving wherever they are.
• 10:32
  And I've seen that as I say as sort of a backdrop to my existence, but it's getting more worrying.
• 10:40
  And Kanye is just a tip of a spear.
• 10:45
  He's making points and what I'm about to say is very controversial. I don't want it to be misunderstood.
• 10:54
  He's making points that are extremely inflammatory but not entirely untrue.
• 11:02
  So we can have a conversation about the true aspects, the kernels of truth in what antisemites say.
• 11:11
  We will always sound like we're just obfuscating and we're trying to cover something up and hide the truth.
• 11:20
  Kanye says that Jews are managers and bankers, that they control things, that they're leeches, that they're sucking the blood out of him and his other successful people.
• 11:34
  And it doesn't really do to just say no, no, no, Jews aren't in control of things. Jews aren't disproportionately in control of the media and the financial sector.
• 11:48
  Because we sort of are a bit.
• 11:52
  Now, some of this is just cherry picking, right? He'll point to the CEOs of big companies who are Jews.
• 11:59
  He doesn't point to the CEO of General Electric and NBC and Westinghouse, so this is the media thing.
• 12:05
  He says all the media companies are run by Jews. So the head of General Electric which runs NBC is not.
• 12:10
  The head of Westinghouse which owns CBS is not. The largest cable company in America TCI is not run by a Jew.
• 12:17
  Hurst the publishing empire is not run by a Jew. The Chicago Tribune is not run by a Jew.
• 12:23
  It is digest isn't run by a Jew. Sony's not run by a Jew. Dreamworks is not run by a Jew. The Washington Post is not run by a Jew.
• 12:31
  Kanye says that, oh, rappers get around wearing all these Jew clothes like Ralph Lauren.
• 12:38
  Okay, Ralph Lauren is a Jew. He doesn't mention Gucci, not a Jew, Versace, not a Jew, Dior, not a Jew, Tommy Hilfiger, not a Jew, actually sort of an anti-Semite arguably.
• 12:54
  Some of the people who supported Kanye are Jews.
• 13:01
  Anyway, what's going on?
• 13:08
  Is it the case that Jews are disproportionately represented in media and finance and education and disproportionately successful?
• 13:18
  Because they're part of a cabal who are trying to keep people down.
• 13:23
  No, there is something cultural though that deserves explaining.
• 13:30
  The Jews have largely a long and strong tradition of discipline, of education, of sobriety to some extent.
• 13:43
  Alcoholism is more frowned on in Judaism. I'm just talking about secular Jews here. I'm not talking about the Orthodox.
• 13:50
  I'm just talking about people who might not even be religious, but who are just ethnically Jewish.
• 13:56
  There are traditions of eating dinner together around the table, of valorizing education, of putting a very high premium on wit and smarts,
• 14:11
  and learning, and arguing, and philosophizing, and striving.
• 14:17
  Thousands of years of oppression have sort of selected for these cultural traits that do give Jews better opportunities.
• 14:27
  Because the operating system that you run in your head is probably the most important thing to determine your success.
• 14:34
  More important than skin color, more important than the disadvantages that you may be born with.
• 14:41
  What's going on in your head, your attitude towards discipline, self-reliance, success, education, hard work, it's unpopular to say, but these things matter.
• 14:54
  Cultural explanations are very risky because they can always be misinterpreted, and it can sound like I'm saying,
• 14:59
  oh, the only reason why African Americans or Indigenous Australians have worse outcomes than white people is because it's their own fault because they have bad culture or something.
• 15:12
  That's not what I'm saying.
• 15:14
  There are huge historical impediments that certain communities have to struggle against as well.
• 15:21
  You can't essentially enslave people for hundreds of years or be genocidal towards them for hundreds of years, and then suddenly give legal equality and assume that all of those scars are just going to be immediately overcome.
• 15:34
  Those are historical impediments, and we have to use public policy to redress those.
• 15:41
  But at the same time, there are also cultural components of the way that families think about how to lead a good life. That matter a lot.
• 15:53
  I mean, why are Russians good at chess? Why are Chinese people good at violin? Why are Australians good at swimming?
• 16:03
  It's not because of any racial reason. It's because in China, being a good violinist is really valorized in a way that it's not in Russia.
• 16:13
  And in Russia, being good at chess is something that you grow up and you think about that being an aspiration. In Australia, swimming is what you see. It's the pinnacle of sporting achievement in a way that it's not in Belarus.
• 16:28
  There are social incentives and priorities that favor certain behaviors and certain pursuits.
• 16:36
  And I think it's fair to say that amongst Jews, more than other communities, there is a high priority on kinship, success, education, self-reliance, diligence, sobriety.
• 16:54
  And these things lead to a disproportionate representation of Jews in certain spheres. Jews are very creative, they're very witty, not for any biological reason or genetic reason, for cultural reasons. It's how they've survived.
• 17:08
  So they're disproportionately represented in the media and arts and entertainment. These are their interests.
• 17:15
  And once you start getting successful, then hey, you're all kind of, you know, you know, people who know people, you can give each other a leg up.
• 17:24
  Why are Koreans successful all over the world? Why are Nigerians successful? Why are Nigerians in America? Why are they more successful than white Americans?
• 17:35
  If the only explanation for why there's disparity in outcomes between white and black Americans is racism, then why do Nigerians do so well? I have a higher per capita income and higher wealth than the average white, because something cultural is going on.
• 17:54
  Now, there's always been a hatred towards middlemen, towards traders. This is a common historical thing. It's been studied academically. There's a general sense, we all have this general sense that, you know, you're not really offering anything if you're just a trader, you're a middleman. Why are you overcharging me more than you paid for that thing? You didn't produce it.
• 18:16
  And to get by without a country in a state of constant oppression and attack from all sides, Jews have tended to be hustlers, to facilitate commerce.
• 18:29
  And for that, they're demeaned and demonized.
• 18:34
  It's somewhat true also of Arabs, by the way, and Indians. You know, you'll find often that the Lebanese diaspora are good at making good for themselves by opening a small business or a corner store by being innovative and entrepreneurial, same with the Indians all over the world.
• 18:52
  A lot of people don't like them. Well, a lot of bigots don't like them, because they seem to be kind of conniving and ripping you off. In actual fact, an economist will tell you that middlemen are vital.
• 19:05
  Because the reality is that you wouldn't get your hands on the things you need to get your hands on unless middlemen were seeing arbitrage opportunities and finding ways of making a buck out of it.
• 19:16
  Nonetheless, those communities are frequently frowned upon and Jews definitely fall into that bucket.
• 19:29
  Communists and socialists on the left have always said that Jews are greedy capitalists and free marketeers say that the Jews are communists and socialists trying to undermine free society, free democracies.
• 19:46
  And the same thing happens on the left and right today. There's a lot of left-wing anti-Semitism that dovetails with the Muslim anti-Semitism with this sense that Jews are the ultimate white capitalist exploitative colonizers and Israel is a perfect poster child for this criticism.
• 20:10
  So to the woke and to the Muslim world Muslims are the besieged brown people and Jews are the capitalist colonizing whites.
• 20:20
  Now flip that around and look at white supremacist attitudes towards Jews and it's the opposite. To white supremacist Jews aren't really white, but they pass as white, which is what makes them so sneaky.
• 20:32
  They can control things and let in lots of brown people and black people. This is the Jews will not replace us thing in the Charlottesville anti-Semitic rallies that happened during Trump's presidency.
• 20:47
  You'll remember they were carrying flaming tortures and saying Jews will not replace us. They weren't saying they didn't mean that they're afraid of being replaced directly by Jews.
• 20:59
  What they're referring to is a conspiracy theory on the far right that Jews in positions of power are trying to open the floodgates of immigration and let in lots of black and brown people to replace white workers.
• 21:11
  It's the Jew as the conniving puppeteer whose loyalty isn't really to this country, but is to some sense of global Jewry.
• 21:23
  So to people who care about social justice, Jews are too rich and powerful. To people who are on the far right, well, you remember those kind of Nazi caricatures of Jews where they're sniveling poor people.
• 21:40
  These hook-nosed traders who are dropping rats into boiling vats to eat and who are stealing kidnapping children and have blood dripping off their fangs and their long fingernails.
• 21:51
  So Jews are both the sniveling poor and also the opulent rich banker. They're not really white to the white supremacist, but they pass as white so they're even worse.
• 22:06
  They're sort of like n-words, but without the skin color. So you'll never know if one is tricking you.
• 22:15
  And then to the woke, they're the ultimate white capitalist exploitative colonizer.
• 22:23
  Just be careful of all this. When you hear people criticizing not the state of Israel for its policies, but Zionists, for example.
• 22:34
  I've heard colleagues of mine at the ABC talk about fucking Zionists. What do you mean Zionists?
• 22:42
  Why don't you say fucking Israel? Zionists, to me, sounds like a sneaky way of smuggling in some other baggage about people who might be likely to be Zionists.
• 22:56
  And let's just note that in all of our hand-ringing about hate speech and about discrimination against minorities and about how hard indigenous Australians and black Americans have it and not to don't forget the poor oppressed Muslims.
• 23:15
  The background reality of hate crime is that Jews are the overwhelming target. You know, hear about it much. It's not talked about much, but it's happening.
• 23:27
  The most recent FBI data from 2019, these are United States figures. I don't have Australian ones.
• 23:35
  I mean, the U.S. is the country where Jews have the largest population outside of Israel needless to say. In fact, I think it might even be including Israel.
• 23:43
  I think there might be more Jews in the states that have to fact-check that. But anyway, the data is certainly better there than it would be in a place like Australia, where you just don't have that many Jews.
• 23:52
  But based on 2019 FBI data on hate crimes, Jews are 2.6 times more likely than blacks to be victims of a hate crime and 2.2 times more likely than Muslims.
• 24:09
  I do hear a lot about Islamophobia and about the importance of respecting the hijab and respecting our Muslim friends, and I am 100% on board now and should ever be discriminated again against no individual human being on the basis of their faith.
• 24:26
  I have criticisms of the doctrines of Islam, just as I have criticisms about the doctrines of Judaism as a religious faith and Catholicism or Christianity more broadly.
• 24:38
  But individual human beings should always be free from judgment and mistreatment and discrimination on the basis of their faith or anything else.
• 24:51
  That being said, let's just bear in mind who is actually bearing the brunt of bigotry.
• 24:57
  2-3 times more hate crimes against Jews than against Muslims and blacks. It's not a competition. It's just worth noting.
• 25:07
  The amount that you hear about that, which is almost nothing because Jews on the whole suck it up.
• 25:15
  It's just the reality of existence has been for 5,000 years and they just take an attitude of we'll just keep on chugging on.
• 25:22
  Not always, of course. You have anti-deformation and anti-discrimination leagues that are run by historical Jewish advocates.
• 25:34
  And I give them as harder time if not more than other groups. I mean, there was a controversy recently in Australia.
• 25:42
  It's Duarli, the Hindu holiday. And in Victoria, the swastika is this ancient Hindu symbol.
• 25:55
  And on hate speech grounds, they're banning Hindus from putting what, you know, it's not a swastika, but it looks exactly like a swastika.
• 26:04
  They're banning them from putting those in windows in public places because it might offend Jews.
• 26:10
  Now, I'm sorry. I think that's ridiculous. Hate speech should be about the intention of the attacker.
• 26:17
  If you're a Hindu and the swastika doesn't have anything to do with Nazism or Jew hating, it only has to do with your own spiritual and religious traditions.
• 26:26
  Then, of course, you should be allowed to put up a swastika. And we Jews should look at it, momentarily go, oh, that looks awful. And then go, oh, but it's intended in a different way.
• 26:36
  I have the same policy towards the end word. You know, if we're talking, if we're saying it's a terrible word, it should never be used.
• 26:44
  Then I don't understand why we can't use the word in conversation and why we can't respect people who find it offensive enough.
• 26:52
  Respect their intelligence enough to assume that they're going to be able to say, oh, that sounded terrible.
• 26:58
  I triggered something in me and I thought I was thinking of all of those horrible ways that it gets used, but this is obviously not one of those ways.
• 27:05
  So I'll write it off because I'm a fucking grown up and not a baby.
• 27:12
  So it is also with the swastika.
• 27:15
  So I say all of this just because I didn't feel like I had adequately addressed for Kanye anti-Semitism issue.
• 27:21
  It's on the rise. It's coming up. He's talking about things that a lot of people feel and that is getting, is getting more and more cultural traction, these anti-Semitic tropes.
• 27:32
  Be aware of it. Be careful. Be very clear about when you're talking about Israel and when you're talking about fucking Zionists,
• 27:40
  ashtag, fuck all Jews. In fact, let's not call it anti-Semitism. That sounds too antiseptic. Let's just call it Jew hate.
• 27:50
  That's a bit more clarifying.
• 27:54
  I hope this is in some way a help. Let's all love each other. Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Christians, atheists, Hindus, giants, confusions. Have I left anyone?
• 28:06
  I probably have, I'll probably get hate mal because why didn't you want about the, what about the Zoroastrians? You didn't mention the Zoroastrians.
• 28:14
  Anyway, have a wonderful week. I'll be back next week with yet more uncomfortable conversations.
• 28:24
  Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma. Follow me, Josh Zeps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest. May your day be fruitful, your mind humble, your enemies generous.
• 28:35
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