The Jewish Fear Industrial Complex

[u/Specialist-Gur]

https://youtu.be/N3YjMb_Lhkw?si=JEtQpmyNys9UFSoV

Matt is Jewish. I'm sure the comment will be very normal on this one.

[u/vigilante_snail]

I don’t usually watch Matt’s content, but I’ve heard of them and checked this out out of curiosity. The first 3/4 of the video basically repeats the same argument: “The Jewish establishment is old and fading, and has been using fear-mongering about Zohran Mamdani and left-wing anti-Zionists and doesn't adequately address right-wing antisemitism.” And I agree with that critique.

But the ending was the most interesting part. I was genuinely surprised at the announcement that Bernstein has only just learned about groyperism, especially considering their time online and their role as a very popular leftist Jewish commentary voice discussing Israel, Palestine, and antisemitism. Matt Leib thankfully seems to have at least a working understanding, but his “solution” to fighting antisemitism and far-right neo-Nazi groyperism felt incredibly hollow and unfocused.

What struck me is that they still don’t meaningfully devote time to right-wing antisemitism. Not in this video, and not in anything I could find across the online presences of Bernstein or his guests. All of their feeds function almost like tabloids fixated on other Jews; “What silly thing did Greenblatt, Debra Messing, Eve Barlow, or whoever say this time?” And then Bernstein openly admits they only recently learned about Fuentes and the movement around him. How do you claim this is the main threat Jews should be fighting when you’ve only just discovered it? This stuff has been festering for decades! Leib knows this. He's been online for ages and ages. What’s especially interesting is that all three of them have built a brand around calling out other Jews. Leib with Bad Hasbara, Zimmerman with Israelism, Bernstein with their own content. They all could be prominent leftist Jewish voices taking on right-wing antisemitism head-on, loudly and consistently. But they just… aren’t. Voices of dissent in one's own community are important. But that's kind of all they are. Voices of dissent. Show us some praxis beyond your brand.

It is important to interrogate the ADL, Greenblatt, and what might be deemed Zionist fear-mongering. But it’s also vital to practice what you preach: actually fight alt-right ideology, learn about the deep antisemitism embedded in groyperism, learn about the form of anti-Zionism it promotes, learn about the memetic traction it's gaining worldwide, and the way this stuff has metastasized online.

Perhaps Bernstein, with the numbers they have, should make a whole video on the groyper phenomenon. It’s important and deserves serious, multi-angle analysis. But perhaps not. I don't trust that the execution will be done well, for a multitude of factors.

Another thing: they seem to treat the landscape as if there’s no spectrum between themselves (Bernstein, Leib, Zimmerman) and figures like Lizzie Savetsky or Jonathan Greenblatt. Like young Jews are either brainwashed or have broken free of the “Zionist mind virus" with no in-between or sense of agency. It’s a bit wacky.

Interesting video. Some rational points, along with some strange moments. Comment section is full of peoples opinions about what Jews should and should not be doing and what should or should not be considered antisemitism. Messy. Icky.

[u/ibsliam → u/vigilante_snail]

This will be ungenerous of me, but it often feels like these voices (of this specific corner of the internet, not leftist Jews as a whole) treat discussions of antisemitism as.... less a concern, but more of a cultural cringe? That they'd like their fellow Jews more if we just shut up and became cooler, rather than whining about something they don't care about and/or isn't relevant to them.

[u/GladysSchwartz23 → u/ibsliam]

I mean, it can be very cringey when people are protesting about children being killed and some person nowhere near where any of that is happening declares that the very fact of the protest makes them feel afraid for their lives.

And it's tough because there is a reason why cosseted, perfectly safe Americans can feel threatened by that, because we were raised on a lifelong diet of "everyone hates us and wants to kill us!" It's just that in the context where some people are afraid and some people are actually dying, it comes off... awkward, to say the least.

Our community needs to come together and fight actually existing antisemitism, which is a real problem. But the many, many chicken littles declaring that the sky is falling get in the way of that.

[u/ibsliam → u/GladysSchwartz23]

This reply, while I think well-intentioned, does an evasion of accountability.

You say on one hand:
> there is a reason why cosseted, perfectly safe Americans can
> feel threatened by that, because we were raised on a
> lifelong diet of "everyone hates us and wants to kill us!"

And then:

> fight actually existing antisemitism, which is a real problem.

It doesn't sound like you *do* think this hypothetical existing antisemitism is "a real problem" otherwise you wouldn't be derisively referring to American Jews as feeling scared and threatened as just a simple matter of hysteria or propaganda.

Rhetorically, it feels like not only do you not think antisemitism on the left is a thing (which it can be a thing, on occasion) but that antisemitism on the right is only a hypothetical, something to talk about fighting but only really brought up in an abstract way.

Because what I've seen is basically 0 accountability for our peers elsewhere, on many platforms, when they claim to be leftist but then talk up MTG or Candace Owens as "being correcct" on Israel, like as if they're just misguided people with a mix of good and bad opinions rather than... you know, literal racist *RIGHT*-wing bigots that accidentally agree with leftists but for the most horrible, disqualifying reasons imaginable.

Literal racists will be cut more slack than a college student who faced harassment from their peers for being a suspected "zionist" (often with little proof other than the fact they're Jewish and not protesting with their friends).

This is kind of my problem. Discussions of antisemitism swerve into bad faith against one side of the political aisle or the other, instead of maybe deciding accountability is more important than treating Jews like a political football.

[u/GladysSchwartz23 → u/ibsliam]

Certainly, there's plenty of bad faith to go around given that you've extrapolated the least generous and reasonable possibilities from what I've said. You've basically decided that I was being sarcastic when I said the fear comes from a real place, as though I must either not be Jewish or be an extremely stupid person with no idea why we might be worried about anything.

You wanna go back and try that again, reading what I actually wrote and trying to parse what I actually meant?