Tokenism is Racism, Except When Reporting on Jews
When discussing racism in recent years, the left has made it a point that tokenism is racism. The idea is that using the beliefs of a small faction of a community to diminish the broader beliefs of that community is itself bigoted. That’s been the understanding for most communities, but the press and many on the left make an exception for Jews.
If you’ve spent any time talking to Jews in recent weeks, you know exactly how they feel. The American Jewish community has never been more united, with progressive, moderate, and right-wing sects all acutely aware of the real and rising threat of anti-Semitism. Almost all of us are discussing the threats, attacks, and harassment Jews are facing in various cities and college campuses.
Many on the left feel abandoned by their ideological partners. And yet, reports on the Jewish perspective consistently emphasize the voice of anti-Israel Jewish groups such as IfNotNow and JVP. To call these groups fringe would underplay how hated they are within the Jewish community right now. Many JVP members aren’t even Jewish and there’s strong evidence their messaging is set by other anti-Israel actors. This hasn’t stopped CNN and others from citing them to mainstream fringe views, suggesting a divide within the Jewish community that doesn’t exist, and normalizing the victimization of Jews everywhere.
Over the last few weeks, there’s been a growing trend of people ripping down flyers of hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. Regardless of your view on the conflict, ripping down flyers of hostages is obviously demented and indicative of an absurd level of hate. These are victims of a terrorist group. The missing flyers do no harm and anyone with a different view could post their own flyers rather than spread hate, as one heroic New Yorker aptly pointed out to a cretin ripping down posters last week.
Not only must you be full of hate to think ripping these flyers is reasonable, but you also must be pretty dumb given how many people have been publicly shamed for doing so. Can you really blame anyone who doesn’t want to associate with such hateful and stupid people?
Apparently, the New York Times can…
They published an article “both-siding” the actions and justifying them as a form of protest. In doing so, they once again cited fringe anti-Israel Jews to suggest the community being victimized by this behavior is fine with it. Not only are they normalizing anti-Semitism by justifying these hateful acts, but also they’re reinforcing that such bigotry is fine based on the approval of fringe elements. Tokenism is bigotry and the Times has a bigotry problem when it comes to Jews.